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William Appleman Williams: Fifty Years After His Book on the Tragedy of American DiplomacyNews Abroad
Fifty years ago, William Appleman Williams published The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, the emblematic text of "revisionist" diplomatic history. That anniversary was celebrated by a conference last weekend at Rutgers University which was organized and hosted by my colleague Lloyd Gardner, Williams's first PhD student at the University of Wisconsin. The conference featured a lacerating keynote address by Andrew Bacevich, twelve papers by "revisionist" historians of several generations, wonderful stories about Bill Williams in his intellectual prime, and the graying eminence of founders such as Thomas McCormick, Walter LaFeber, Stanley Kutler, Marilyn Young, Stanley Katz, and Warren Kimball.
In spite of those wonderful stories, three brilliant papers (by Jeff Engel, Nick Cullather, Greg Grandin), and the ambient eminence, I have to say the conference was disappointing, even disquieting. There was too much consensus, too little conflict in that big room on the second floor of the brand new Heldrick Hotel, where a flop house used to face the World War I monument, the site of every local anti-war rally since 1965. There was so much agreement on the immediate relevance of Tragedy that I am sure Bill himself would have protested.
But then I barely knew Bill Williams. I met him only once, in 1976, at Carl Parrini's house in DeKalb, Illinois, where he had given a talk extracted from his new book, America Confronts a Revolutionary World. He drank us graduate students under the table, literally—one of us slept until morning under Carl's coffee table—and meanwhile parried our intellectual protests with infuriating aplomb. Bill and I did correspond manically in the mid-1980s after he became a reader for Cornell UP of my book manuscript on the origins of the Fed; he was then experimenting with stationery design, so every letter was worth looking at even without the words that filled those tiny, fragile, ragged pages. He was already terminally ill. I wrote his obituary for In These Times in March, 1990, at Jim Weinstein's request, and a decade later published a paper on his contribution to counter-progressive historiography in Diplomatic History.
So we were professionally acquainted. But I have long felt that somehow I knew Bill Williams as a close advisor, an intellectual mentor, a trusted friend. Maybe because his presence at Northern Illinois University in the 1970s was everywhere you looked—he decisively shaped my origins as a professional historian. To begin with, the department of history there was overpopulated and overdetermined by alumni from the University of Wisconsin that had been his home between 1957 and 1968. My advisors, Parrini and Martin Sklar, were themselves alumni, having been present at the creation of "revisionist" diplomatic history along with Gardner, LaFeber, and McCormick. And the European side of the curriculum was dominated by students of Harvey Goldberg and George Mosse. But even those who began their careers elsewhere were swept up in the "revisionist" sensibility animated by Williams—for example, Al Young assigned The Contours of American History (1961) in every graduate course he offered, and that book was a point of contention in almost every conversation, in class and out (even the matters of its form, language, and style kept us up at night, imagine that).
"Revisionist" diplomatic history as inspired by Charles Beard, Howard Beale, and Fred Harvey Harrington, then restated, recast, and renewed by Williams, is often characterized as an instance of economic determinism because the revisionists consistently emphasize(d) the relation between the development of American capitalism and the evolution of US foreign policy. In fact, they have paid close attention to the economic dimensions of the Open Door world—of which more below—but they have never equated foreign relations and dollar diplomacy. Their goal has always been to dismantle the stale opposition of "realism vs. idealism" which still regulates conventional thinking about the making of US foreign policy; the means to this end is the revisionists' recognition that until the very late 20th century—when "human rights" became a new benchmark—policy-makers saw no contradiction between their commitment to the globalization of capitalism and the realization of the highest possible morality.
"Revisionist" diplomatic history accordingly grasps US foreign policy as fundamentally imperialist in its origins, aims, and results. By this accounting, the American empire was not the spastic, temporary effect of high spirits and sloppy thinking at the State Department, ca. 1899-1900, as George Kennan, a quaintly "realist" architect of Cold War "containment" policy, described it in American Diplomacy (1950). Nor was it the unintended effect of hurried reactions to Great Power moves on the chessboard of world politics, as other so-called realists would have it. Instead it was a reliable way of exporting the social question—of pacifying internal conflicts, particularly the conflict between capital and labor over their respective shares of national income—and, inevitably, of externalizing evil. It eventually became, in this sense, an agenda for changing everything in the world elsewhere, everything, that is, except the American standard of living.
But the tragedy residing in American diplomacy was not, according to Williams, the imperialist urge itself, simply because the Open Door World posited by policy-makers at the turn of the last century did represent a real break from the received tradition of Great Power politics, which equated military preponderance with world power. It was also a genuinely anti-colonial and implicitly post-imperialist design for a new international order. An Open Door world would, to be sure, permit the unfettered expansion of the American "business system" into areas of the globe hitherto closed off by European spheres of influence. But this expansion would also transfer the most advanced technology of economic development to countries that suffered from a shortage of capitalism as well as capital; therefore it would enable the peaceful passage of the seat of empire from East to West, even, perhaps, unto Asia.
No, the tragedy of American diplomacy came later, according to Williams, when the Open Door hardened into a brittle anti-communist ideology under the hammers of the Cold War. When a novel, flexible, pragmatic approach to world politics and the problem of development became an intellectual imperative that was no less arcane, dogmatic, and metaphysical than the inane exhortations which passed for true Marxism in the Soviet Union or the Peoples' Republic, the youthful strengths of the Open Door became fatal weaknesses.
In this important sense, Williams assumed that a post-imperialist future was legible in the original intent of what he called the "imperialism of idealism" and in the real differences over diplomatic means and ends heard in the corridors of power as well as on the dissenting margins of political discourse (as, for example, in the offer to Williams of a State Department job from Adolph A. Berle, the prominent Kennedy appointee who had reviewed Tragedy on the front page of the New York Times Book Review).
Without that assumption, I would insist, his critique of the American empire stops making sense because its fulfillment would then require the evasion of the world as it actually exists—an evasion that would not allow for history as a way of learning. If the ethical principles of a post-imperialist future do not reside in the historical circumstances Williams taught us to study, then our only honorable recourse is to repudiate and escape those circumstances—to flee from the past as we understand it, and thus leave the world exactly as it stands. As John Dewey put it in 1891, at full Hegelian speed: "An 'ought' which does not root in and flower from the 'is,' which is not the fuller realization of the actual state of social relationships, is a mere pious wish that things should be better."
In other words: When people start wishing that things were better and assuring you that they won't be, largely because nothing has ever changed except for the worse, you know that you're in the presence of Kantian radicals who lack, or despise, historical consciousness—you're in the presence of metaphysicians who know the past cannot be a guide to the present because it is the repository of myths, lies, deceptions, and their attendant moral atrocities.
But what if this happens at a conference of historians? What if you find yourself among people who make daily professional visits to the past for the sole purpose of mapping the easiest evacuation routes? What if, in the name of history as a way of learning, these same people were telling you that you can learn about the past, but not from it?
Wouldn't you want to ask yourself, where am I? Wouldn't you want to know what discipline was at work in that big room full of professional historians? I confess that I did last weekend at the Williams conference. I further confess that I have no good answers to these questions. Hence the disquiet I mentioned at the outset. But let me at least explain in some detail why I'm worried about what I witnessed.
I'm worried that, with few exceptions, no hermeneutical principles were acknowledged as necessary in citing and appropriating the arguments of Tragedy. It is true that the book appeared in two revised editions after 1959, but the participants I heard merely restated the original arguments as if nothing had changed since the 1960s in the articulation, in every sense, of foreign policy—as if once enunciated, Empire is a phenomenon that is not itself subject to historical change, except for the worse, as, for example, when American military power begins in the 1980s to stand in for world power as such. Or as if once enunciated, a holy text is to be quoted, not interpreted, criticized, and made new.
I'm worried that Empire thus appears as a Totality that resembles the closed system we call capitalism or the commodity form or the market or whatever—the external, evil thing from which we must remove ourselves if we are to speak truth to power as authentic, uncorrupted critics. I'd much prefer that we stop pretending we have access to an Archimedean point outside of the fallen, imperialist world we address, and that we stop acting as if that imperialist world is an instance of an Absolute that excludes our democratic hopes and purposes.
To see what happens when we do, I offer you Judith Butler's example. Here she is criticizing Monica Wittig for assuming that only release or abstention from heterosexuality can break its stranglehold on our political imaginary. I ask you to insert the words imperialism and imperialist (or capitalism and capitalist, if you like) where "heterosexuality" and "heterosexual" occur, and conclude, with Butler and against, say, Lenin, that the resulting either/or choice is at best inadequate:
Wittig appears to believe that only the radical departure from heterosexual contexts—namely becoming lesbian or gay—can bring about the downfall of this heterosexual regime. But this political consequence follows only if one understands all 'participation' in heterosexuality to be a repetition and consolidation of heterosexual oppression. The possibilities of resignifying heterosexuality itself are refused precisely because heterosexuality is understood as a total system that requires a thoroughgoing displacement. The political options that follow from such a totalizing view of heterosexist power are (a) radical conformity or (b) radical revolution.
I'm worried, then, that "revisionist" diplomatic historians have become merely radical, and so are satisfied with this either/or choice in addressing the historical reality of imperialism. I'm more worried that they invariably choose (b) for themselves, as if this prospect is visible on any horizon, and typically align contemporary political culture with (a), as if this conformist option is even available to their students and the larger population. I'm worried that in doing so, they're manning the barricades on a dead end street.
I'm worried that the post-imperialist possibilities of the Open Door world were never mentioned, whether by passing reference to Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri's Empire (1999) or by substantive use of the now voluminous political science literature on "post-imperialism" which was pioneered in the 1970s by Richard L. Sklar and David Becker and later applied to the Mexican Revolution, with brilliant results, by Keith Haynes. This is a serious omission because the absence of thinking along these lines only validates the unproductive idea that Empire is an indivisible Totality that remains impervious to counter-imperialist sensibilities and strategies either at home or in the world elsewhere.
It is no accident, by the way, that Hardt and Negri explicate the American template as the introduction to their analysis of a de-centered, post-imperialist Empire. The expansive immanence of power expressed in the wholly original U.S. notion of sovereignty "does not consist, then, in the regulation of the multitude," they argue, I believe correctly, "but arises, rather, as the result of the productive synergies of the multitude. . . . [And] when it expands, this new sovereignty does not annex or destroy the other powers it faces but on the contrary opens itself to them, including them in the network. What opens is the basis of consensus, and thus, through the constitutive networks of powers and counterpowers, the entire sovereign body is continually reformed. Precisely because of this expansive tendency, the new concept of sovereignty is profoundly reformist."
I'm worried that speakers at the conference, all in plenary session, took it for granted that Hardt and Negri can be safely ignored because policy-makers from James Madison to Donald Rumsfeld somehow believe(d) in the "exceptionalism" of the American experience. One paper treated John Winthrop and James Madison as true believers in a polity exempted from the vicissitudes of historical time, as if the latter's design for a modern republic didn't presuppose his recognition that the balance between the "two cardinal objects of government, the rights of persons and the rights of property," was endangered as early as the 1780s by the kind of economic development already evident "even in Kentucky"—the kind of development that would render the "smaller part only" interested in protecting the rights of property.
Madison understood that economic development would produce a division between "the Class with, and the Class without Property"; he also understood such development as the engine of a regional division of labor which would keep producing a diversity of political interests. But he hoped this diversity would in turn postpone—not prevent—the formation of majorities, and thus preserve the possibility of popular government. In that crucial sense, Madison welcomed the very division of labor that earlier republican theorists had read as evidence of a descent into historical time and a death sentence on popular government. The mind of the founder had no room for exceptionalism. The minds of his successors were no more accommodating to this notion, regardless of what "revisionist" diplomatic historians would like to think.
I'm worried that "revisionist" diplomatic historians have accepted without question the periodization of imperialism on offer from world-systems theory and its cognate, dependency theory. By this accounting, the impoverishment of a less-developed country is the inevitable result of any economic relation that conjoins it to an advanced capitalist nation, whether that relation is conducted in the form of trade or investment, and regardless of when the relation was established. The developmental results enabled in the 19th and 20th centuries by transfers of technology—by direct investment of surplus capital accumulated in the advanced capitalist nations—therefore remain invisible, even though the work of Bill Warren, Carl Parrini, Martin Sklar, and Jeffry Frieden, among others, suggests that they are theoretically conceivable and empirically measurable. The broader post-imperialist possibilities produced by such transfers also remain invisible.
I'm worried that Andrew Bacevich is now the heir apparent to the "revisionist" legacy prepared by Williams and kept alive by the "Wisconsin School" of diplomatic history. Don't get me wrong, he is a brilliant, trenchant, bracing critic of US imperialism; his new foreword to the 50th anniversary edition of Tragedy is worth the price of the book. But his keynote address on Friday night reminded me of nothing so much as Lynne Cheney's attack on the National Historical Standards back in the early 1990s, which resulted in her book of 1995, Telling the Truth. For both of them end up accusing us—the professoriate and the people—of a postmodern aversion to "morally serious history."
Professor Bacevich updated the periodization of American history Williams offered in Contours by suggesting that we have entered a fourth phase of development, following the Age of Corporation Capitalism, which he called the Age of Techno-Narcissism and/or Conspicuous Consumption. His emphasis throughout was on Williams the intellectual historian, the scholar who appropriated Wilhelm Dilthey's notion of Weltanschauung to explain the coherence and power of what Marx called "ruling ideas"—what Gramsci called "hegemony"—and to equip his readers with the ability to wage a "war of position" on this ideological terrain.
Professor Bacevich concluded by measuring the gap between the world view (Weltanschauung) of American leaders—which still acknowledges no limits on US military power in or economic claims on the world elsewhere—and the reality of world politics, where the once-indispensable nation is now a hapless debtor with two unwinnable wars on it hands and no international support for its imperial ambitions. He explained this absurdly enormous gap between rhetoric and reality as a result of intellectual inertia, of cultural obstacles to political maturity and the corresponding recognition of limits on American power.
The principal obstacle, so conceived, to "morally serious history" and its policy-relevant consequences is the post-modern idea that there is no single, objective truth on which a "moral consensus" can be founded. Personal opinion is all that matters anymore. So there is no way to fight "the system," let alone name it, because we don't know how to tell the truth. No wonder we're still in thrall to a Weltanschauung that has no purchase on reality—we can't even designate that reality.
Now I admit that I love this indictment because it makes intellectual historians like me both the symptom and the attempted cure of what ails us. If only I could say, just compare the rhetoric of imperialism to the reality of underdevelopment, and you'll agree with me on what to do about the reality! The trouble is, I don't believe there's a reality out there that exists apart from my designation of it (and this makes the intellectual work of designation all the more important). Yes, I'm a post-structuralist, or rather a pragmatist, and therefore I can't see how Professor Bacevich's indictment helps us speak truth to power.
To be specific, I can't see any practical difference between history, the past as such, and historiography, our interpretations of the past, because all we actually know about the past is contained in those interpretations (the rhetoric of history, if you will). You will of course say that the interpretations change but the past doesn't. My response is, really, how in the world would you know that? Again, everything you know about the past as such has come from interpretations, even when you are fondling those primary sources in a dusty archive, because documentation itself—what qualifies as admissible evidence—has a history determined by prior judgments on acceptable forms of narrativity, on what properties a real event displays, on who has the attributes of political agency, and so forth.
The truth of historical reality is always plural. The rhetorics are the reality. Our task is not to strike through the mask, demonstrating the appalling difference between the appearance or the rhetoric, on the one hand, and the reality, on the other. It is to ask, how and why is this rhetoric so convincing if the underlying reality is so evidently out of phase with its designations? In other words, what evident yet unknown reality does the rhetoric make plausible and actionable? What alternative reality does it meanwhile make invisible as inadmissible evidence? Our answers cannot boil down to the "false consciousness" of the benighted masses or to the power of money to shape political discourse.
For good ideas or true beliefs are not copies or transcripts of a fixed, external reality—there is no independent body of fact to which rival paradigms can appeal in making their case, because the facts themselves are convened by the different values, purposes, and methods that constitute the paradigms. Good ideas or true beliefs cannot, then, correspond to a fixed, external reality; they do something else for us, and to us.
So what is to be done, about imperialism among other atrocities? Can we salvage Professor Bacevich's critique without endorsing his epistemological premises, his metaphysical realism? I think so, in part because I believe, with Williams, that the post-imperialist purposes of the Open Door world invented a century ago are worth understanding, and realizing. Our ethical principles are legible, in this sense, in the historical record of American imperialism—we don't have to make pious wishes that things should be better, we can instead act upon possibilities that are already impending in our historical circumstances. We don't have to settle for the intellectual exile that mere radicalism forces upon us. We can make professional visits to the past without memorizing the exits.
Let me conclude with a variation on the theme of tragedy, in keeping, I would like to think, with the sources of Bill Williams's intellectual odyssey. Professor Bacevich noted in passing, in response to a question, that Reinhold Niebuhr's Irony of American History (1952) is "the most important book on American foreign policy ever written." It got me to thinking that the participants in the conference, myself included, were perhaps overlooking the extent to which Williams was trying to answer Niebuhr as well as Kennan in writing Tragedy, and that revisiting the difference between these literary categories with the help of Kenneth Burke and Hayden White might be worthwhile.
I take as my texts the opposition between rhetoric and reality which almost every participant brandished as an intellectual credential, and Nick Cullather's thoughtful paper, "Contradictory Truths," which both refused and indulged this opposition in specifying the origin of tragedy as Williams understood it.
Here is the refusal, at Professor Cullather's page 6: "Tragedy directly confronts the claim that international behavior can be understood only in reference to an underlying reality." Here is the indulgence, again at page 6, indeed in the same paragraph: "In the preface to the 1962 second edition he made his point more explicit, referring to the 'contradictory truths' on which policy and perception were based. The tragic quality of American diplomacy stems from these contradictions. . . . For Williams, tragedies are manufactured out of inconsistencies of belief and action." And here is the way to grasp these contradictions or inconsistencies, these disjunctures between words and things, perceptions and policies, rhetorics and realities: "[His research] consisted in doing what we all do now, finding out everything leaders read and said, and everything said about them, and patiently determining their unique outlook on the world."
It seems to me that Professor Cullather is addressing the issue of irony, not tragedy. He is nevertheless opening up a promising line of inquiry because irony allows a formal ambiguity, or forensic complexity, that treats our current condition as something other than the non-heroic residue of a completed tragedy. Irony derives from distance—from our removal as the audience from the scene of the action, where, unlike the actors on the stage, who can grasp only the partial truths available to them in the lines they read, we can see the whole truth unfolding. In these terms, reality is the whole, while rhetoric is the part, and irony resides in the discrepancies of knowledge which can be perceived only by the audience—or, transposed to history's workshop, by the scholar who is safely removed from the event she studies and who wants to know more about it than its makers.
But the whole truth is never available to those who would interpret as well as watch the play. That is why interpretations of plays are always plural. The interpreters, no matter how immersed they are in everything the playwright read and said, must bring partial truths to bear on the play in the form of their values, purposes, and methods. The same goes for the scholar who wants to know more about the event she studies than its makers. There is no God's-eye view of anything. So irony is a permanent and indispensable dimension of all retrospection, even the systematic version of it we call the discipline of history. As an irreducible element of the human condition, it is no more intrinsically tragic than, say, language.
All tragedy will then contain this element because the discrepancies of knowledge that produce irony are a condition of tragedy—the hero doesn't know that his great strength will prove to be a fatal weakness, and, if the author is any good, neither will we until Act III. Even so, Niebuhr and Burke are right, irony can produce comedy as well as tragedy. "But tragic elements in present history are not as significant as the ironic ones," the former insisted: "Pure tragedy elicits tears of admiration and pity for the hero who is willing to brave death or incur guilt for the sake of some great good. Irony however prompts some laughter and a nod of comprehension beyond the laughter; for irony involves comic absurdities which cease to be altogether absurd when fully understood."
Burke was more playful, and more casually erudite: "Like tragedy, comedy warns against the dangers of pride, but its emphasis shifts from crime to stupidity. . . . The progress of humane enlightenment can go no further than in picturing people not as vicious, but as mistaken. When you add that people are necessarily mistaken, . . .that every insight contains its own special kind of blindness, you complete the comic circle, returning again to the lesson of humility that underlies great tragedy. The audience, from its vantage point, sees the operation of errors that the characters of the play cannot see; thus seeing from two angles at once, it is chastened by dramatic irony; it is admonished to remember that when intelligence means wisdom, [it] requires fear, resignation, the sense of limits, as an important ingredient." In short: "The best of Bentham, Marx, and Veblen is high comedy."
As Burke appropriated William James in writing Attitudes Toward History (1935), from which this excerpt is taken, so Hayden White appropriated G. W. F. Hegel in writing Metahistory (1973): "Hegel regards Tragedy and Comedy, not as opposed ways of looking at reality, but as perceptions of situations of conflict from different sides of the action. Tragedy approaches the culmination of an action . . . from the standpoint of the agent who sees before him a world which is at once a means and an impediment to the realization of his purpose. Comedy looks back upon the effects of that collision from beyond the condition of resolution through which the Tragic action has carried the spectators, even if the action has not carried him there but has consumed him in the process."
By these accounts, the narrative form of comedy contains tragedy in both the exclusive and the inclusive sense—it acknowledges the real losses and the unspeakable costs that historical time has imposed on human beings, but it will not rest there. As White puts it: "Comedy is the form which reflection takes after it has assimilated the truths of Tragedy to itself." I would translate this dictum by saying that the moral calendar of comedy converts despair to hope—it permits an optimism that is neither innocent nor naïve—and I would offer the fundamental American music, the blues, as a colloquial example of the realistic yet redemptive urge that comedy makes practical, audible, and actionable in the here and now, not in some otherworldly, disembodied space beyond time.
These formal distinctions between tragedy and comedy can become political differences. When regulated by the narrative form of tragedy, for example, the irony determined by our distance from the scene of the action tends to remove us even further, so that resignation from the completed action will feel more mature and realistic than identification with the actors. When regulated by comedy, irony tends to reverse this relation, so that identification with the actors and vicarious participation in an incomplete action will feel more realistic than resignation.
With these distinctions and their consequences in mind, I would propose that "revisionist" diplomatic historians re-read William Appleman Williams with Niebuhr, Burke, White, and Hegel close at hand. Let them keep their understanding of irony intact—and indeed let them amplify its narrative effects by developing the forensic complexity which follows from knowing that every truth is one-sided, that no reality is singular, and that any moral consensus is momentary. But let them also consider the possibility of writing a book called The Comedy of American Diplomacy. I think Bill Williams would approve.
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Jonathan Rodwell - 5/5/2009
Surely, the point of Williams and this kind of discussion is that researchers need to be aware of the theoretical problems of any research, but that in doing so should work with the problems, rather than continue to worry about defending false dichotomies.
If we take the epistemological (and ontological) premises of post-positivism to its extremes then it is of course the case that there is no fixed 'reality' or 'empire'.
But by the same token we know that ontologically and epistemological this means we can say nothing of any normative value about anything, be it morals, the problem (or existence) of American 'imperialism', or whether the Red Sox have a better shot at the World Series than the Yankees. Because, in a post-positivist world, how do we know any of this? Of course most of the time we don;t live in a post-positivist world, each of us does think we know these things.
However, That political (and human) beings experience irony, self-doubt AND certainty, doesn't mean post-positivism is wrong, or that a positivist history cannot claim 'truths'. It means we should borrow the proper lesson from Williams, that all we can do is weight up the factors, which are both ideological and material and attempt to understand the links. Unless one of us has a solution to the mind-body problem this might be the best we can manage.
So, as long as conclusions fit the conceptual scheme that was the foundation behind the hypothesis what's the problem? What if there isn't a conceptual scheme that fits all questions? Perhaps it is fine to undertake a positivist analysis and a post-positivist one as well as as the limits of either are understood.
Of course, if only we could find an epistemological and ontological approach that justifies this stance outside of actualism and common sense, then perhaps we can get somewhere!
Jonathan Dresner - 5/5/2009
I don't use Himmelfarb as a guide to anything: I cite her in this instance because she is, in my humble opinion, right to argue that the perspective on sources and subjectivity offered by postmodernism was easily integrated into historical writing because it was fundamentally cognate with ideas about sources and authorship already inherent in critical historical scholarship.
I have no idea what an "ideological dividend" would be. What I want, more than anything else, are historical approaches which shed light on reality and experience.
You may "explicitly abjure 'false consciousness' as an explanation for anything," but that makes you an atypical postmodernist. This is part of the problem with talking about postmodernism: There really is no such thing, because each practitioner defines it particularly, not generally. Fine, that's consistent with the relativism and subjectivism of postmodernism, but it makes conversation difficult when we always have to start with posturing and definitions.
James Livingston - 5/5/2009
Clearly, I'm not as clear as you think. I explicitly abjure "false consciousness" as an explanation for anything, no matter who peddles it, Marxists or post-structuralists.
Furthermore, I don't care whether my method functions as an ideology--only Lenin could until Lynne Cheney trumped him in Telling the Truth (1995)--except in the sense that I know that my post-structuralist method, not yours, addresses the problem of commensurabilty without settling for relativism, and thus allows for civilized politics even in the midst of serious ideological division. By the way, I get this from MacIntyre and Kuhn, not from Foucault.
And for god's sake if you think that Gertrude Himmelfarb is a reliable guide to anything, I got a bridge to sell you, for cheap. No wonder you're looking for an ideological dividend--that's about all she's good for. Compared to her, Lynne Cheney and Robert Bork are deep thinkers.
Jonathan Dresner - 5/5/2009
Prof. Livingston,
Your portrayal of non-poststructuralist historian -- "we will tend to believe that our function is to expose the discrepancy between the rhetoric of historical actors and the reality of historical fact--as if that reality is the SINGLE TRUTH, inert, fixed, and observable from any rational point of view." -- is a straw man portrayal, at best. The concern with "false consciousness" is a particularly Marxist issue, which many post-structuralists have also adopted as a problem, but which many social, political, economic and intellectual historians consider to be a distraction more than a central issue.
As I said above, postmodernism has a place in historical inquiry, but really is a poor ideology, especially when it comes to its adherents tendency to express themselves in the most obtuse fashions (not you: you're being quite clear, but some of the stuff I've read....).
Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote that "Historians, ancient and modern, have always known what postmodernism professes to have just discovered - that any work of history is vulnerable on three counts: the fallibility and deficiency of the historical record on which it is based; the fallibility and selectivity inherent in the writing of history; and the fallibility and subjectivity of the historian." ("Postmodernist History and the Flight from Fact," 1994) Fundamentally, I believe that there are true things, but I also believe that causality is very difficult to prove and that multiple perspectives are necessary. But the postmodern fixation on text and narrative is a conscious abstention from precisely the kind of "learning from history" which you claim to hold in high esteem.
James Livingston - 5/4/2009
I see, you want an owner's manual. Directions indeed. Try reading and following those listed below.
We need to learn from the past, not just about it. If all we find in the past is reason to flee from it, we cannot learn from it. If we think there is A SINGLE truth out there, in the past or anywhere else, we will never be able to learn from the past.
Without a post-structuralist attitude toward history, we will tend to believe that our function is to expose the discrepancy between the rhetoric of historical actors and the reality of historical fact--as if that reality is the SINGLE TRUTH, inert, fixed, and observable from any rational point of view.
So we will scratch our heads when we encounter disagreement with our point of view, which we of course accredit as reasonable.
There is no body of fact that is independent of the model or method or point of view that convenes it. Incommensurability, mere opinion of the kind you seem to abhor, follows unless you can show how your model or method or point of view is superior to that of your rivals and critics.
But if you want to make rival accounts of the same historical phenomenon commensurable, and demonstrate the superiority of yours, your account must contain the others--it must include them and explain why and how they fail according to their own criteria, not yours. You must become an intellectual historian who is willing to understand the plurality of truth, like Hegel. If you are unable or unwilling to do this, all you have is your opinion.
OK, now assemble the historiographical device. If you have a built-in bias against post-structuralist tools, fine, you can still put something together by reading and using Thomas Kuhn and Alasdair MacIntyre.
But please, enough already with the silliness about nihilism.
Jonathan Dresner - 5/4/2009
Interesting critique and commentary, but I don't really see it going anywhere. Postmodernism -- or poststructuralism, as it's called here -- is a useful tool for getting at the contours of a debate, though the participants may find themselves unrecognizable in the process. But as a recommendation for future progress, it's a dead end because the epistemology of pure textualism gives us no reason ever agree on anything ever again.
This is problematic enough when deconstruction becomes nihilism in social or intellectual history, but in a presentist field like foreign policy (and I use "presentist" in the most favorable light, here, because there are fields of history which influence our discussions of policy, both directly and by influencing our sense of our past selves) it is a ticket to irrelevancy, even absurdity.
Epistemological humility is a good thing in an historian, but at some point we need to have the courage to say something.
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- Peter Cole's 'Dockworker Power' Highlights Transnational Struggles for Justice


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DIMARIO email@example.com.
sudbury_star 2001-01-06 published
DIMARIO, Lidano
In loving memory of Lidano DIMARIO, 66 years of age. His family announces his passing on Sunday, January 7th, 2001 quietly surrounded by his family at the Sudbury Regional Hospital - Laurentian Site, after a brief illness. Lidano was born in Sezze Romano (Latina) Italy on October 9, 1934. He came to Canada from France in April, 1956 and settled in Sudbury where he met and married Maria (Nella) DIMARIO (nťe BIANCONI) in February, 1960. He worked at Cecutti's Bakery until he started at INCO in 1967. He retired in October, 1997 after 30 years of service. He took great pride in his gardening and sharing his harvest with neighbours. As a young man in Italy and in France he played on several soccer teams. He was very active in mixed league bowling at Plaza Bowl, where he received many bowling awards over the years. He was a member of the INCO Quarter Century Club, the Caruso Club and the I.O.F. Lidano was a gentle man and was happiest when in the company of his loving family and Friends. His home was always open to anyone in need. Beloved husband of Maria (Nella) DIMARIO (nťe BIANCONI) of Sudbury. Loving father of Tony of Sudbury, Adelaide (husband Peter VENDRAMIN) of Hanmer, Luciano (wife Ginette LEMIEUX) of Sudbury and Patrizia (attending university in Kingston). Cherished Nonno of Kirk, Keana and Dominik. Predeceased by his parents, Luigi and Adelaide DIMARIO of Italy, brother Joseph DIMARIO and sister-in-law Maria of Ottawa and sister Maria (husband Ulderico PETRIANI) of Sezze, Italy. He is survived by his sister Anna (husband Alfredo SCANELLA deceased) of Rome, Italy and sister Marcella (husband Andranotto ZACHEO) of Sezze, Italy and brother Sestilio (wife Carla) of Rome, Italy. Dear son-in-law of Quirino and Gina BIANCONI of Sudbury. Will be dearly missed by Angela (BIANCONI) and
Andimo BATTISTI and Fernando and Jackie BIANCONI and Rita (BIANCONI) and Bill RICHER all of Sudbury. Dear cherished family friend of Brian and Adele DONNELLY. He will be kindly remembered by many nieces and nephews, family, neighbours and Friends. Funeral Mass in Christ the King Church on Thursday, January 11th, 2001 at 10: 00 a.m. Burial at the Civic Memorial Cemetery, Sudbury. Eternal Rest Grant Unto Him O Lord.
D... Names DI... Names DIM... Names Welcome Home
DIMARIO - All Categories in OGSPI

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The multi-faceted mission of the Department of Safety encompasses protection of the lives and safety and preservation of the quality of life of New Hampshire citizens and visitors to our state on the highways, on the waterways, and in their homes and businesses. We enforce motor vehicle and highway safety laws, criminal laws, commercial vehicle regulations, fire safety, building and equipment safety laws and regulations, and boating safety laws and rules. We also provide enhanced 911 emergency communications statewide, and are responsible for homeland safety and emergency management activities.
Welcome to the New Hampshire Department of Safety Online!
Commissioner Robert L. Quinn
Assistant Commissioner Richard C. Bailey, Jr.
Assistant Commissioner Perry E. Plummer


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CoQ10 Shows Promise for Kidney Disease
Maylin Rodriguez-Paez, RNCoQ10 is good for the heart, but little emphasis has been made to date on its kidney-protective effects.
Why should you care? Because the number of Americans that are affected by chronic kidney disease is growing.
In fact, approximately 13% of Americans have chronic kidney disease.1
This is a condition in which your kidneys are damaged and don't filter waste properly. It can lead to problems such as cardiovascular and even bone disease.2
Kidney disease can progress to end-stage renal failure, an illness which can only be treated by dialysis or kidney transplantation. However, if chronic kidney disease is treated in time, kidney function can be preserved.
Research actually shows that CoQ10 supports kidney function in a few ways. Below, we'll explore some of the research in further detail.
CoQ10 Guards Kidneys Against Oxidative StressEach day your kidneys produce about 8 cups of waste.3 This makes them extremely vulnerable to damage and oxidative stress.
Fortunately, nutrients like CoQ10 increase the production of kidney-protective antioxidants which combat free radicals.
CoQ10 increases serum levels of glutathione and catalase,4 which are both powerful kidney-protective antioxidants. In addition, it quenches production of superoxide,5 a damaging free radical.
Dialysis patients taking CoQ10 have been found to experience reduced oxidative stress.6
CoQ10 Protects Against Nephrotoxic DrugsAccording to the CDC, 47.9% of Americans take at least one prescription medication.7 Depending on the drug, it could strain the kidneys and even cause irreversible damage.
Particularly offensive drugs include NSAIDS, certain antibiotics, acetaminophen, and lithium.
Research shows CoQ10 protects kidneys against various drugs including gentamicin,8 cisplatin,9 cyclosporine10 and simvastatin,11 a commonly used cholesterol-lowering drug. These drugs are known to often cause kidney damage.
CoQ10 Prevents Kidney DysfunctionDoctors monitor kidney function by examining markers such as creatinine, BUN, albumin, and protein urine levels. The kidneys filter these compounds, and elevations may signal kidney damage or disease.
At the University of Tokyo, rats given CoQ10 (also known as ubiquinol) showed decreases in albumin levels after being subjected to a kidney-damaging procedure.5
The CoQ10 was found to be helpful in preserving kidney function. The researchers concluded, "Ubiquinol may be a candidate for the treatment of patients with kidney disease."
Other studies show CoQ10 inhibits rises in urine protein levels12 and prevents elevations in creatinine when given along with alpha tocopherol.13
The Bottom LineChronic kidney disease is a growing problem in the US. It can significantly alter your quality of life and increase your risk for multiple diseases.
CoQ10 is a valuable nutrient that both protects and preserves kidney function. As such, it should be considered as a preventive first line of defense.
Have you monitored your kidney function within the last year? If you haven't, please discuss it with your doctor!
- Available at: http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/nov2007/niddk-09.htm. Accessed November 5th 2012.
- Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pubs/factsheets/kidney.htm. Accessed November 5th 2012.
- Available at: http://kidney.niddk.nih.gov/kudiseases/pubs/yourkidneys/. Accessed November 5th 2012.
- J Diabetes Complications. 2012 Jul 11. [Epub ahead of print]
- Clin Exp Nephrol. 2011 Feb;15(1):30-3. Epub 2010 Sep 28.
- Blood Purif. 2008;26(4):371-8. Epub 2008 May 29.
- Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/drugs.htm. Accessed November 5th 2012.
- Indian J Exp Biol. 2006 May;44(5):416-8.
- Toxicology. 2010 Jul-Aug;274(1-3):49-56. Epub 2010 May 25.
- Int Braz J Urol. 2012 Mar-Apr;38(2):230-4; discussion 234.
- Indian J Exp Biol. 2005 Oct 2005;43(10):845-8.
- Diabetologia. 2012 May;55(5):1535-43. Epub 2012 Feb 5.
- Transplantation. 1981 Aug;32(2):137-41.


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The Board of Directors of the Golden
Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District is comprised of 19 members, representing six counties.
Meeting Calendar - The Board of Directors meets monthly at 10:00 a.m., in the Board Room, Administration Building, Golden Gate Bridge Toll Plaza, San Francisco, CA. Present
and past Committee and Board agendas as well as associated staff reports can be found for each meeting. Any public
hearing or special workshop meetings will be noted on the calendar.
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or education on potential impacts to services.
Master Ordinance - The Master Ordinance is a repository comprising the actions taken by the Board of Directors to set policies for the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District.
Resolutions of the Board of Directors - Board Resolutions are motions by the Board of Directors to enact a rule, regulation, or a Board decision.
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Conflict of Interest Code - The Conflict of Interest Code designates employees who must disclose certain investments, income, interests in real property and business positions, and who must disqualify themselves from making or participating in the making of governmental decisions affecting those interests.
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Unless otherwise noted, information contained in each edition of the Kansas School Naturalist reflects the knowledge of the subject as of the original date of publication.
Volume 35, Number 1 - October 1988
Making an Insect Collection
by John Richard Schrock
2003 Reprint of October 1988 Issue
Published by EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY
Prepared and Issued by THE DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
1988 Editor: ROBERT F. CLARKE
2003 Editor: JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
1988 Editorial Committee: TOM EDDY, GILBERT LEISMAN, GAYLEN NEUFELD, JOHN RlCHARD SCHROCK
2003 Editorial Committee: TOM EDDY, GAYLEN NEUFELD, DAVID SAUNDERS
2003 Editors Emeritus: ROBERT BOLES, ROBERT F. CLARKE
Circulation and Mailing: ROGER FERGUSON
Circulation (1988): 1,700
Second Press Run (2003): 5,000
Press Composition: John Decker
Printed by: ESU Priming Services
Online Composition: TERRI WEAST
The Kansas School Naturalist is sem free of charge and upon request to teachers, school administrators, public and school librarians, youth leaders, conservationists, and others imerested in natural history and nature education. In-print back issues are sem free as long as supply lasts. Out-of-print back issues are sent for one dollar photocopy and postage/handling charge per issue. A back issue list is sem free upon request. The Kansas School Naturalist is published on an irregular basis with one to four issues per year. The Kansas School Naturalist is sent by bulk mail to all U.S. zipcodes, and first class to Mexico and Canada and overseas. The Kansas School Naturalist is edited and published by Emporia State University, Emporia, Kansas. Editor: John Richard Schrock, Department of Biological Sciences. Postage paid at Emporia, Kansas. Address all correspondence to Kansas School Naturalist Department of Biological Sciences, Box 4050, Emporia State University, Emporia, KS 66801-5087. Opinions and perspectives expressed are those of the authors and/or editor and do not reflect the official position or endorsement of ESU.
Cover Photo: Beetles form rows in this scientific research collection. The labels underneath each insect take up more space than the insect, so the labels must be kept as small as possible.
The Kansas School Naturalist is indexed in Wildlife Review/Fisheries Review; selected issues are indexed in the Zoological Record.
Many Kansas School Naturalist issues are available online at: www.emporia.edu/ksn/
Dr. John Richard Schrock received his doctorate in entomology from the University of Kansas and is Professor of Biology at Emporia State University. The drawings and photographs in this issue are by the author.
Richard Schrock received his doctorate in entomology from the University of Kansas and is an Assistant Professor at Emporia State University. The drawings and photographs in this issue are by the author.
Making an Insect Collection
by John Richard Schrock
Insect collecting is more popular than stamp or coin collecting in many countries. Students who assemble and identify an insect collection are learning about a group of animals that include our main competitors for food and resources and are important vectors of disease. A properly labeled and cared for collection provides important information on the range of insects, their life cycles and food habits. Unlike birds, mammals and other well-known animals, insects often go unseen, and there are hundreds of new species described each year. It is possible that a student collection may contain new state records or even a species new to science.
Insects are driven to extinction by habitat destruction, not by insect collectors. Indeed, we have spent millions of dollars to destroy certain pest species and never succeeded. Most insects live but a few weeks or a season before they are eaten or die and decompose. The insect collector helps preserve the passing beauty of butterflies and other interesting insects.
Beginning an insect collection requires just a few items, although a young collector may want to add more elaborate collecting equipment and storage boxes later. The essentials are: insect pins, labels, a killing jar, an aerial net, spreading boards and storage boxes. Certain insect groups require special hunting methods and a teacher can help students discover this hidden world of insect life.
Dried insects become brittle, similar to potato chips, and handling them directly will break off wings and legs. Before they harden, insects must be mounted on special rust-proof insect pins. This gives them a handle to grab, so they can be moved among boxes and labels can be attached. Regular straight pins used with clothing do not work well because they soon rust and break. Special insect pins are made with a rust-proof black finish ("japaned") and are longer than common straight pins to provide room for labels under the insect. Insect pins come in sizes from thin "00" to thick "5", but size "3" is best for all-purpose use. Youngsters in 4-H entomology can purchase insect pins from the local county extension agent. Pins may also be bought from the biological supply houses listed on the last page.
Insects are pinned in the patterns shown here. Butterflies, moths and dragonflies are pinned in the thorax, directly between the wings. All other big insects are pinned through the thorax just to the right of the mid-line to avoid destroying important identification features. Beetles are pinned in the right wing cover, true bugs in the triangular area, and grasshoppers in the prothorax or "saddle" area. All insects should be pinned upright and level. Leave about 1/4 of the pin above the insect to provide a handle for moving the specimen.
Insects too small to pin directly can be glued to the end of a 1 centimeter long triangular card point, and the base of the card point is then pinned. These card points can be cut from white file cards.
To be of scientific value, a specimen should carry a label telling when and where the insect was captured. The name of the collector and the immediate habitat can also be added. Labels are printed in ink and are made as small as possible. This makes the label permanent and easy-to-read. If labels are too large, they will take up more room than the insects above them. It is logical to give the state before the county, and the date should be in day-month-year order with the month in Roman numerals. The labels shown in the illustration are correct for a specimen collected on October 9, 1989.
Labels under a pinned specimen run with the length of the insect's body. Labels under a small insect on a card point extend out under the card point to the left. This saves space in your collection.
Freshly collected insects must be quickly killed before they are pinned and mounted. Because butterflies and moths shed their dust-like wing scales, it is wise to have a second killing jar to keep other insects from getting powdery. Ethyl acetate is a safe killing fluid used as the solvent in fingernail polish and remover. Available from a druggist, this fluid relaxes insects making them easy to pin and spread on a spreading board.
To make a killing jar, select a heavy glass or plastic jar with a tight-fitting lid. Pour a 2 cm layer of wet plaster-of-Paris into the bottom of the jar and let it dry. When the plaster has hardened, a few drops of ethyl acetate will charge the killing jar. After it has been opened several times, it will need to be charged again. The bottoms of glass jars should be taped so students won't be cut by broken glass if the jar is dropped.
Freezing insects in the freezing compartment of a refrigerator is safe and keeps them fresh for mounting until they are thawed out. Butterflies and dragonflies can be slid inside an envelope or folded piece of paper before they are placed in a freezer. This envelope can temporarily hold the information on the time and place the insect was caught.
Dunking insects in 70% ethyl or isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol is safe. Although the alcohol temporarily wets the wings, the wings soon dry and true colors return. However, insects killed in alcohol will harden and become brittle much sooner.
Experienced collectors and advanced students often use carbon tetrachloride or cyanide jars. Carbon tetrachloride, a dry-cleaning fluid, can charge a plaster-of-Paris-bottomed jar in place of the ethyl acetate mentioned before. Cyanide jars are specially made with the cyanide powder sealed under plaster-of-Paris. Instructions for making these jars can be found in the reference books listed on the last page, and a teacher or an adult entomologist should help in the preparation of cyanide insect killing jars.
Commercial nets can be bought from the biological supply houses, but nets as good or even better can be made at home.
An aerial net is used to capture flying insects and it can be assembled from a broomstick, heavy gauge wire and nylon mesh. Heavy wire (coat hanger is too light) can be bent into a circle about 40 centimeters across with the ends wrapped securely to the end of the broomstick handle with electrician or duct tape. A bag one meter deep can be sewn from nylon wedding veil or a similar durable mesh. The deep net allows the collector to turn the net sideways and trap a butterfly in the bag. A durable cloth rim of cotton muslin extends the life of the net.
An aquatic net for water insects is made with a shallow bag, since the specimens won't escape by flying away. As in the aerial net, an open weave is necessary to allow the water to pass through.
Sweeping nets can be made of heavier cloth to scoop insects from weedfields. Other collecting devices are described in the reference books for young entomologists.
Butterflies, moths, dragonflies, and other insects with big wings must be pinned and spread when freshly caught so they will be easier to identify and make an attractive and orderly collection. Also, the veins and color patterns are easier to observe in a collection of well-spread insects. Spreading boards can be made from many materials. An inch-thick sheet of styrofoam can simply be cut so a center groove receives the pinned body of a butterfly. Balsa, stacked sheets of corrugated cardboard, and regular wood have all been utilized to make spreading boards. However, a smooth surface that mounts the wings at a gentle incline is best, for insect wings often droop slightly over the years as the moisture in the air changes.
Some insects have fat bodies while others are very thin. The groove of a spreading board should vary in width to accommodate different insects. Some commercial spreading boards are available with adjustable-width center grooves.
Spreading an Insect
- Correctly pin a fresh insect and insert the pin straight up-and-down into the center groove of the board. Push in until the insect's wings will extend out level with the board.
- Use pins to align the abdomen, antenna and legs. With the body anchored, use pins to pull the front wings forward on the spreading board. The back edge of each front wing should form a line perpendicular out to the left and right of the body. The hind wings are then pulled forward to meet the forewing; all wings are pinned down with strips of paper.
- After an insect is completely dry (3-4 days in dry weather or weeks during wet weather), the pins and paper straps are removed and labels are added under the insect.
David Schmidt, a high school student, collects butterflies and displays them in glass-top cases. If they are correctly labeled and protected from insects, dried insect collections are valuable to science and can last centuries.
Much hard work and many long hours go into collecting, pinning and spreading insects to make a beautiful and valuable collection. However, insects can be destroyed as rapidly as they are collected if they are not protected.
The two main threats to a collection are live insects called carpet beetles and mold that covers insects with a fuzzy coating. Unless the humidity is very high in a house, or the insects are stored in a wet basement, mold is usually not a problem.
Carpet beetles however can find their way inside the most clean and modern of buildings and penetrate sealed wooden cabinets. In a short time, they can reduce a beautiful collection to a barren box of pins and dust. Therefore, mothballs or similar fumigants are used to protect boxes of insects. Naphthelene mothballs are safest to use and also slow down the growth of mold. Mothballs or mothflakes should be anchored in some container inside the insect box, since a rolling mothball would damage the specimens. Naphthalene moth balls can be melted onto the head of a heated straight pin and pinned in the box with the insects.
Scoop up a large sample of moist (not wet) top soil or "duff' under hedge rows. The material can be carried in a large grocery bag and should not be allowed to dry out before processing. Estimate the total number of soil insects in your school yard, etc., as did Dr. Byers (see p. 8).
Set up a plastic, metal, or glass funnel as shown illustrated here. Cut a small piece of screen to fit across the inside bottom hole to prevent dirt and debris from falling through. Set a jar of rubbing alcohol (50-80%) under the funnel. Place the sample of soil or leaf litter, etc., in the funnel. Position a gooseneck lamp or other light over the sample to slowly dry out the sample from the top down. Do not use a hot light bulb or position the lamp too dose where it could ignite the dry leaves. (Another means of driving the animals out of the soil is to coat the top of the sample with a layer of naphthalene moth balls and use the odor to drive.them out the bottom.)
The lamp will have to shine for several days to slowly dry out the sample. Springtails and other insects and mites will move around, detect the dryness above, and slowly move down to wetter material until they fall out the bottom. When the sample is totally dry, remove the collection jar. turn off the lamp. and clean out the funnel.
The jar of collected specimens should be poured into a flat dish (a Petri dish works fine) and examined with a stereomicroscope. Students should be able to match up many of the critters with the illustrations of springtails. ants, and mites shown in reference books.
Springtails are small and can barely be seen with the naked eye; they may look somewhat like the specimen shown here. Virtually every cubic inch of top· soil in Kansas has these insects, and they help build rich humus. Springtails are stored in alcohol vials or on slides.
ORDER THYSANURA--Bristletails and Diplurans
Silverfish and firebrats can sometimes be found in attics and closets. Some jumping bristletails are
found in the moist litter of forest floors or in crumbling rotten logs. Because their bodies are delicate, they should be preserved in alcohol in vials.
Proturans are much smaller and cannot be seen without a microscope. In fact, until recently, no one knew these insects existed in Kansas and very few people today have seen them.
A layer of woods soil one inch deep and one foot square was collected by K.U. entomologist Dr. George Byers and his class near the Biological Survey Building on their West Campus. This is a habitat not too unlike that found around a public school. The sample was placed in a funnel and the following organisms were driven out and identified:
Roundworms.............. 11 Insects: Springtails.... 359
Since there are 43,560 square feet in an acre (metric would be much easier!), this count for one square foot provides an estimate of 182,995,560 animals per acre.
ORDER EPHEMEROPTERA--Mayflies
Mayflies emerge as dainty flying insects with two or three long tails trailing like a kitetail. They are often found resting on vegetation near streams, rivers and lakes, usually near the month of May. They also come to lights at night if the light is not far from their water habitat. Adult mayflies appear in large numbers but only for a day or two. They mate, lay eggs in the water, and die. The young larvae live in the water and can be scooped up from ponds and streams with an aquatic net.
ORDER ODONATA--Dragonflies and Damselflies
This dragonfly nymph has shed its smaller exoskeleton and expanded to become a bigger larva. Such soft aquatic insects are usually preserved in alcohol vials.
Dragonflies fly fast and are a great challenge to catch. Dragonflies spend their time catching insects in midflight and they greatly reduce the numbers of mosquitoes and midges in the area. Like mayflies, they stay near water and the young live and develop in ponds and streams. The young are underwater predators, feeding on other organisms and providing food for fish. As they grow bigger, the larvae shed their hard exoskeleton and form a new larger skin, as shown in the dragonfly larva to the right.
Damselflies are dainty fliers and flit among the grasses near bodies of water. Their larvae are also aquatic. Soft-bodied larvae cannot be preserved dried on an insect pin, but must be stored in a vial.
ORDER ORTHOPTERA--Grasshoppers, Cockroaches, Crickets, Walkingsticks and Mantids
Insects in this order mature throughout the summer season and large adults are usually conspicuous in the fall. However, the few cockroaches that live indoors can be collected year around. Nearly all are easily collected by hand or aerial net, and a few crickets and katydids are active at night and come to porch lights.
The American cockroach lives year around in
ORDER DERMAPTERA--Earwigs
Since earwigs are active at night, they are not commonly seen and are not usually common in Kansas. Some are attracted to porch lights.
An earwig stays under objects or close to the edges (thigmotropism).
ORDER ISOPTERA--Termites
The termite found in Kansas is often located in rotten logs, old lumber at sawmills, etc. Winged adults may be collected when they swarm each year, but their wings come off easily. Since the workers are soft-bodied, termites should be preserved in vials of alcohol.
ORDER PLECOPTERA--Stoneflies
Stonefly nymphs are aquatic and are found under stones in streams or along shorelines. The adults emerge and some fly to lights where they are easily collected. Others rest on bridge foundations and vegetation near the water. Some stonefly adults even emerge on mild winter days! Adults should be pinned and spread. Larvae are preserved in alcohol vials.
ORDER ZORAPTERA--Zorapterans
This is a rare insect resembling a small termite in appearance. In Kansas a student might locate their small colonies under pieces of wood in old sawdust near a sawmill. They sometimes are collected when rotting logs are processed through the Berlese funnel shown on page x. They are soft-bodied and should be preserved in alcohol.
ORDER PSOCOPTERA--Psocids
These "booklice" and "barklice" are not parasitic lice but chew on molds and pollen and debris. Although they are the size of lice, most have wings as adults. They may be found in the bottom of bags of rice, grain or flour containers. A collector is virtually guaranteed finding psocids if an abandoned bird nest is jostled around on a white sheet of paper--the small psocids appear as little specks crawling across the paper.
ORDER MALLOPHAGA--Chewing Lice
Lice that occur on birds are in this order. Chewing lice also infest mammals. The easiest way to collect an insect from this order is to inspect a chicken (the chicken head louse is very common). Different lice infest different hosts--a loon louse will be a different species. Also, lice are very selective where they live on a host (those under a chicken's wing may be a different species from the head louse). It is difficult to identify lice without using a microscope. Chewing lice have a broad head and a narrow thorax. Lice are too small to mount even on a card point and should be preserved in a vial of alcohol or mounted on a microscope slide.
ORDER ANOPLURA--Sucking Lice
Sucking lice are only found on mammals. They can be distinguished from lice in the previous order because they have a narrow head and broad thorax. Head lice and crab lice occur on people and outbreaks occassionally occur at schools. Therefore, school nurses usually have experience locating and identifying these insects. The hog louse is large and easy to find on pigs at a farm. A pair of forceps is useful for grabbing and pulling off both the sucking and chewing lice mentioned above.
ORDER THYSANOPTERA--Thrips
Thrips are little insects about the size of a hyphen. They are pests of onions, pear tree buds, gladiolus, and many other flowers. It is virtually impossible to pluck a leaf from the fuzzy light-green mullein plant that does not have thrips on it. Thrips are also extracted in Burlese funnel samples. Because of their small size, thrips are preserved in alcohol vials or on microscope slides.
ORDER HEMIPTERA--True Bugs
The wide variety of insects possessing a beak and front wings that are half leathery and half membranous are the "true bugs." This includes stink bugs, chinch bugs and other terrestrial bugs that mostly suck plant juices. Therefore, many can be located on a host plant (like squash bugs). Nearly every sycamore tree leaf has a lace bug. Some are predatory and attack other insects (see picture) or feed on man (bed bug). You would need an aquatic net to catch water striders and their relatives (see picture), water boatmen, backswimmers, or giant water bugs. Many bugs from both land and water are attracted to lights at night.
ORDER HOMOPTERA--Cicadas, Hoppers, Aphids
These insects also possess a beak, but their front wings are uniformly leathery or membraneous. Spittlebug larvae live inside the spittle seen on weeds (see picture).
Leafhoppers thrive in weeds and grasses and have to move fast to avoid our lawnmowers. A sweeping net will collect hundreds of them in an old field in less than a minute. Many planthoppers come to lights and everyone who has cleaned out overhead lampshades has collected leafhoppers.
During each summer, noisy cicadas emerge from the ground having fed on tree roots for three or four years. They leave behind empty shells (see picture) and fly to trees to sing for mates.
Many Homoptera can be pinned directly or glued to card points. However, the scale insects also belong to this order and a whole twig must be collected with scales attached. Soft-bodied aphids, sometimes called "plant lice", should be preserved in alcohol.
ORDER NEUROPTERA--Dobsonflies, Lacewings, Ant Lions, etc.
This is an ancient group of insects with soft bodies and very netted wings. Some can be collected by sweeping vegetation, especially near water. Big green lacewings, small brown lacewings, dobsonflies, fishflies, and some rare neuropterans are attracted to lights at night. The larvae of lacewings run around on vegetation eating harmful insects. Ant lion larvae produce funnel depressions in loose sand and dusty soil to trap ants to eat. The larvae of some Neuroptera are aquatic.
The owlfly is a rare Neuropteran in Kansas.
ORDER COLEOPTERA--Beetles and Weevils
Forty percent of all insects, and one of every five living species is a beetle. So far, over 30,000 species have been described for the United States. Beetles occur on nearly every species of plant, competing with us for grain and other crops. Some beetles eat other insects or clean up dead plant and animal matter. The larvae are "grubs." Beetles show up virtually everywhere, and are collected with aerial, sweeping and aquatic nets, at lights and with funnel samples.
These large beetles have hind wings that allow
them to fly; they project out from under the
protective forewing in one specimen here.
ORDER STREPSIPTERA--Twisted-wing Parasites
In this group of small insects, the females are parasites on other selected insects. A Kansas collector's best hope of finding these uncommon insects is to inspect paper wasps visiting flowers. Wasps carrying these parasites will appear to have BB-sized projections between the body plates of the abdomen.
ORDER MECOPTERA--Scorpionflies
Scorpionfly adults are common only in eastern forests, where they rest among the vegetation. They eat insects and are quite harmless to man. The larvae scavenge on the surface of woodland soil and some larvae and life histories remain unknown.
ORDER TRICHOPTERA--Caddisflies
Among the insects that come to lights at night, especially near bodies of water, will be narrow moth-like insects with long hair-like antenna. These caddisflies have caterpillar-like larvae that build cases and live as hunters and grazers in ponds and streams. Very close examination of their wings will reveal fine bristles rather than the layers of scales found in the next order.
ORDER LEPIDOPTERA--Butterflies and Moths
Butterflies and moths develop from caterpillars (see picture) and most feed just on specific plants. Collecting caterpillars and rearing them in a jar is not difficult if they are fed daily with leaves from the host plant (usually the plant on which they were found). Butterfly caterpillars will eventually form a chrysalis; moth caterpillars will usually spin a coccoon. The adults that emerge will be "perfect" specimens for a collection.
The hairstreak is a fast-flying small butterfly that earns its name.
This moth holds its wings outright, just as it would appear if perfectly spread in a collection.
An aerial net, often called a butterfly net, is necessary for capturing most butterflies in the field. Exotic specimens show up following storms that blow them in from hundreds or thousands of miles away. Care must be taken not to hold Lepidoptera by the wings, for the color of wings is on the fine scales that rub off easily.
Many moths are attracted to lights at night. However, a few moths (like some beautiful underwings) never come to lights. Adult Lepidoptera have a long proboscis and only feed on liquids. Just as butterflies come to flowers to suck up nectar, some moths are attracted to sweet fluids and "sugaring" is the best way to collect these moths. A solution of brown sugar, molasses and stale beer is mixed. The young entomologist then walks a trail in a woods before dusk, painting the mixture on trees, stumps and fenceposts. Well after dark, the trail is walked again. The eyes of the moths sipping on the sweet fluids will glow in the flashlight beam.
ORDER DIPTERA--True Flies
This is a large order of insects with two wings. The larva are maggots and live in many environments: stagnant swamps, decaying debris, flesh and mining in plant leaves, etc. Adults can often be collected by plopping a net over garbage cans, waste heaps, or animal manure. Some mosquitoes (see picture), crane flies and others are attracted to lights at night. A sweeping net will harvest flies as well as leafhoppers in the order Homoptera. The larger flies are pinned, but smaller ones are mounted on points or in alcohol vials or on slides. A pin should pierce the insect to the right of center to preserve important bristles used in identification. Larvae are stored in vials.
ORDER SIPHONAPTERA--Fleas
Fleas may seem common until you need one for your collection. They parasitize birds and mammals. Unlike lice, fleas spend much time off their host, and fleas can be found in carpet, doghouses, animal bedding, etc. Rarely fleas are mounted on points in a collection; usually they are mounted on slides
ORDER HYMENOPTERA--Bees, Wasps and Ants
These insects occur about everywhere and require general collecting methods. Some will come to lights at night. An aerial net is useful for the females that sting, and the young entomologist will soon become skilled at maneuvering stinging insects into a killing jar.
Many private collectors live in Kansas and maintain important collections of butterflies, tiger beetles, and other insects. Most college and university biology departments use insect collections in zoology classes. However, two Kansas universities have major collections used in research, teaching and public education. The collections listed below have hall displays and are open to the public by arrangement; contact the person listed to arrange a tour.
Dr. Steven Ash, Director
Snow Entomological Museum
University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS 66045
(913) 864-3065
Chair, Dept. Entomology
Waters Hall
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506
(913) 532-6154
In addition, arrangements can be made to tour the most extensive butterfly collection in Kansas by contacting: Dr. Charles Ely, Museum of the High Plains, Fort Hays State University, Fort Hays, KS 67601 (913) 628-5887.
The best 4-H insect collections from across Kansas are displayed at the Kansas State Fair in September. In recent years, entomology has decreased in popularity and fewer students make insect collections in elementary science or high school biology classes.
Bland, R.G. and H.E. Jacques. 1978. How to Know the Insects. 3rd edition. 409 pages. Wm. C. Brown Co.,
135 South Locust, Dubuque, IA 52001 (5th grade up)
Borror, D.J. and R.E. White. 1974. A Field Guide to the Insects of America North of Mexico, (Peterson
Field Guide Series) 404 pages. Houghton Mifflin Co., 1 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108 (paperback
$11.95) (7th grade up)
Borror, D.J., D.M. DeLong and C.A. Triplehorn. 1981. An Introduction to the Study of Insects. 5th edition.
852 pages. Saunders College Publishing, 383 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10017 (cloth $41.95)
(high school levels up)
Edmonds, Jr., W.T. 1976. Collecting and Preserving Kansas Invertebrates. 101 pages. Tech. Publ. 3 of the
Kansas State Biological Survey, Lawrence, KS (Out-of-print but available in libraries)
Klots, A.B. and E.B. Klots. 1977. 1001 Questions Answered About Insects. 260 pages. Dover
Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, NY 11501 (paperback $5.00)
Mitchell, R.T. and H.S. Zim. 1964. Butterflies and Moths. 160 pages. Golden Press, Western Publishing,
850 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022 (paperback $2.95 - 5th grade up)
Smith, R.C., E.G. Kelly, G.A. Dean, H.R. Bryson and R.L. Parker. 1943. Common Insects of Kansas (also
under title "Insects in Kansas") 440 pages. Kansas State Board of Agriculture, Topeka, KS. (Out-of-print but available in many school and public libraries.)
Steyskal, G.C., W.L. Murphy and E.M. Hoover. 1986. Insects and Mites: Techniques for Collection and
Preservation. U.S.D.A. Misc. Publ. 1443. 103 pages.
Zim, H.S. and C.A. Cottam. 1951. Insects. 160 pages. Golden Press (see above address under Mitchell;
paperback $2.95 - 5th grade up)
Carolina Biological Supply Company
Burlington, NC 27215
BioQuip Products
P.O. Box No. 61
Santa Monica, CA 90406
Entomological Supplies
P.O. Box 4748
Baltimore, MD 21211
Fischer Scientific-EMD
4901 West LeMoyne Street
Chicago, IL 60651
Ward's Natural Science Establishment
3000 Ridge Road East
Rochester, NY 14622
|The Kansas School Naturalist
|Department of Biology
|College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
|Send questions / comments to
Kansas School Naturalist.
|Emporia State University


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The number of DDoS attacks reached their highest ever level for a single quarter in the last three months of 2012, recording a 19 percent year-on-year growth, mitigation vendor Prolexic has reported.
The key to understanding DDoS trends is deciding what actually matters. Is it the total number of attacks, their average size, the number of rarer massive attacks, or the type of attack employed?
Judging from Prolexic's customer base, the news is mostly bad. With the exception of a slight drop in attack duration to 32 hours compared to Q4 2011, all the other DDoS numbers show a modest but unmistakable shift towards red.
Year-on-year average attack bandwidth rose from 4.9Gbps to 5.9Gbps, with attack volumes jumping a notch in 2012 compared to a year earlier.
Three quarters of attacks are still at layer 3 and 4, which means they are packet-based attacks targeting network infrastructure; the remaining 25 percent are more complex layer 7 attacks that try to overload applications.
The company detected seven attacks greater than 50Gbps, it said, with one or two above even that huge level.
The deeper question worth asking is whether the numbers really help explain changes in the motivation of those doing the attacking or on whose behalf attacks are being carried out.
Prolexic underlines the rise of one botnet attack tool in particular, itsoknoproblembro, as being noteworthy for its connection to a number of highly targeted attacks on the US financial sector during the second half of 2012.
Prolexic doesn't say it but these have been serious enough to catch the attention of the US authorities which now suspect a state-sponsored attack on US banks by Iran.
The challenge of itsoknoproblembro is its sophistication, allowing "automated reconnaissance, exploitation, infection and attack management," to borrow Prolexic's own description.
More than half of attacks originate in China (which doesn't mean they're necessarily under Chinese control), followed by Germany, India, Egypt and Pakistan with between roughly five and ten percent each.
"The fourth quarter was defined by the increasing scale and diversity of DDoS attacks. While bandwidth attacks of 20 Gbps were the story last quarter, 50 Gbps is more relevant now," said Prolexic CEO, Scott Hammack.
"The take away for businesses from this Q4 report is to make sure that their DDoS mitigation provider can handle attacks in excess of 50 Gbps in a single location," he added.
"When attacks are this large, it's important that the provider can mitigate this volume of attack traffic in one place and distribute it effectively so it does not compromise intermediary transit providers and affect others."


text:
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