This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: NYT
March 29, 2008
A Japanese court rejected a defamation lawsuit on Friday against Kenzaburo Oe, the 1994 Nobel laureate in literature, agreeing with his depiction of involvement by the Japanese military in the mass suicides of civilians in Okinawa toward the end of World War II.
In a closely watched ruling, the Osaka District Court threw out a $200,000 damage suit that was filed by a 91-year-old war veteran and another veteran’s surviving relatives, who said there was no evidence of the military’s i
Source: Dan Barry in the NYT
March 30, 2008
The members of the 2:20 tour follow their guide up the front steps of Monticello, past those iconic white pillars and into the domed building’s aura of wonder. The wooden floor creaks like the knees of an aged host rising from his seat to explain a few things.
The guide speaks in present tense of the home’s most famous occupant — Mr. Jefferson, as he is often referred to around here — while leading the tour into the family sitting room, where his daughter Martha supervised the slave
Source: NYT
March 30, 2008
Invention may be mothered by necessity. But determining the father can require a paternity test.
Take the sound recording. Researchers said last week that they had discovered a recording of a human voice, made by a little-known Frenchman two decades before Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph.
An unusual case of innovation misconception? Hardly.
The reality is that the “Aha” moments of industrial creation are preceded by critical moments far less he
Source: Chicago Tribune
March 31, 2008
Elmore Nickelberry has guided his grumbling garbage truck down Memphis' alleyways and avenues for 54 years, picking up not just trash, but a remarkable life story along the way.
March marks 40 years since Memphis and its sanitation workers took center stage in the nation's civil rights struggles. While time has tempered this city's downtown district — gone are the protests, curfews and bloodshed of '68 — the memories of that period live on within Nickelberry.
"This
Source: Wired.com
March 26, 2008
Family and friends of servicemen and women who died or vanished in the Vietnam War no longer have to travel to Washington to pay their respects at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
An interactive version debuts online this week, a project of historical document archive site Footnote.com in conjunction with the National Archives and Records Administration.
Source: LiveScience
March 28, 2008
Yards and yards of clear plastic sheeting line the cellar floor, dwarfing the corpse: headless, frail, supine. The young bony arms — covered in fine black powder from centuries of immobility in the frozen tundra — are crossed at rest, reminiscent of a ceremonial burial. Camera flashes illuminate the scene. Several dozen scientists stand around the body, murmuring in Russian and English about the find of the day. "How long do you think it was buried?" "Do you think it's male or fem
Source: NYT
March 27, 2008
At first listen, the grainy high-pitched warble doesn't sound like much, but scientists say the French recording from 1860 is the oldest known recorded human voice.
The 10-second clip of a woman singing ''Au Clair de la Lune,'' taken from a so-called phonautogram, was recently discovered by audio historian David Giovannoni. The recording predates Thomas Edison's ''Mary had a little lamb'' -- previously credited as the oldest recorded voice -- by 17 years.
The tune was c
Source: Voice of America
March 26, 2008
The fields around the battlefield of Ypres, the site of four years of bloodshed during World War I, are littered with hidden trenches, bunkers and dugouts that are being excavated by archaeologists. But the expansion of an industrial park, combined with the city of Ypres' rapid expansion, threatens to destroy kilometers of hidden history.
Source: Times (UK)
March 26, 2008
Friedrich Nietzsche declared famously that “God is dead!” so it is probably safe to assume that he did not much care what happened to his skeleton.
Which may be just as well as bulldozers prepare to turn over the philosopher's grave and his birthplace in search of brown coal.
The village of Röcken, south of Leipzig, is plastered with posters bearing quotes from Nietzsche's masterpiece, Thus Spake Zarathustra, announcing “Be true to the soil!” in a desperate attempt to p
Source: BBC
March 27, 2008
Race equality campaigners are angry after a Devon city centre pub changed its name to honour the 16th Century slave trader John Hawkins.
The Breton Arms has been renamed Hawkins Meeting House, angering the Racial Equality Council based nearby.
Hawkins was a 16th Century shipbuilder, merchant, pirate and slave trader.
The pub's owner says she is celebrating the life of the man who helped his fellow Plymothian Sir Francis Drake defeat the Spanish Armada.
Source: BBC
March 27, 2008
The 40th anniversary of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association's decision to take protests onto the streets is being marked.
A number of those involved at the time have set up the NI Civil Rights Commemoration Committee.
They are organising a series of seminars, exhibitions and conferences to take place over the next few months.
Source: AP
March 27, 2008
A small piece of jawbone unearthed in a cave in Spain is the oldest known fossil of a human ancestor in Europe and suggests that people lived on the continent much earlier than previously believed, scientists say.
The researchers said the fossil found last year at Atapuerca in northern Spain, along with stone tools and animal bones, is up to 1.3 million years old.
That would be 500,000 years older than remains from a 1997 find that prompted the naming of a new species
Source: NYT
March 27, 2008
The Florida Legislature formally apologized Wednesday for the state’s “shameful” history of slavery, joining five other states that have expressed public regret for what Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, recently called America’s “original sin.”
The two-page resolution passed overwhelmingly in the Senate and then the House, bringing at least one lawmaker to tears. Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican, called it a “significant step” toward reconciliation.
Source: Deborah Lipstadt at her blog
March 27, 2008
According to theJTA, Jean Ziegler, a man who praised a Holocaust denier as one of the"leading thinkers of our times" has been appointed by the Swiss government as an"expert" to, get this, the U.N. Human Rights Council.Not only has Ziegler praised the denier, Roger
Source: Deborah Lipstadt at her blog
March 27, 2008
As someone who teaches about the Holocaust and, of course, Holocaust denial, any form of genocide denial infuriates me. The meeting of Rwanda genocide deniers which is scheduled for Montreal is an outrage. Read about it hereThis is something that causes great pain to Rwandese survivors and damage to historical accuracy.I would be upset about it in any case. But, as I noted in a previous
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
March 28, 2008
Did he or didn't he? The question is vexing Coleridge scholars. Did the author of "Christabel," "Kubla Khan," and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" compose a blank-verse translation of Goethe's Faust that was published anonymously in London in 1821?
Two prominent Romanticists, Frederick Burwick and James C. McKusick, both Americans, believe they have clinched the case for Coleridge, settling a debate that stretches back decades. Last November, Oxford Un
Source: NYT
March 26, 2008
Next time you’re considering whether to run for president, don’t forget to weigh the value of the fast and free genealogical research that comes with candidacy, guaranteed to uncover your ancestral connection to a modern-day celebrity — or at least a minor historical figure.
Last fall, The Chicago Sun-Times revealed that Senator Barack Obama and Vice President Dick Cheney are distant cousins. On Tuesday, the New England Historic Genealogical Society said Mr. Obama had at least six p
Source: WaPo
March 26, 2008
Sen. Barack Obama offers himself as a post-partisan uniter who will solve the country's problems by reaching across the aisle and beyond the framework of liberal and conservative labels he rejects as useless and outdated.
But as Obama heads into the final presidential primaries, Sen. John McCain and other Republicans have already started to brand him a standard-order left-winger, "a down-the-line liberal," as McCain strategist Charles R. Black Jr. put it, in a long line of
Source: Nixon Blog
March 26, 2008
Sen. Clinton erred again today even as she admitted she misspoke about her experience in Bosnia as First Lady:
Clinton backpedalled Tuesday, saying that she had “made a mistake in describing it. “We were … very much told by the Secret Service and the military that we were going into a war zone and that we had to be conscious of that,” Clinton told an audience. “I was the first first lady taken into a war zone since Eleanor Roosevelt during World War II.”
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
March 26, 2008
In a memorable TV interview with former Secretary of State James Baker,
prankster"Ali G" (Sasha Baron Cohen) wondered about the possibility of
confusing"Iran" and"Iraq.""Do you think it would be a good idea if one of them changed their name
to make it very different sounding from the other one?" he asked
Secretary Baker."Ain't there a real danger that someone give like a message over the
radio to one of them fighter pilots whatever saying bomb 'Ira...' and
the geezer don't hear it pr
