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: WaPo
February 18, 2011
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Months after the University of Alabama dedicated a plaza and clock tower to its earliest black students, the school has been swamped with unwelcome attention over the past two weeks because of racial slurs used on campus.
First, a white student was disciplined for yelling epithets at a black student early this month. Days after that incident, insulting messages about several racial and ethnic groups were written on campus sidewalks in chalk.
The flap
Source: WaPo
February 18, 2011
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A longtime Murray State University professor has decided to retire after referring to slavery while making a point about tardiness to two black students last semester, the school said Friday.
Political science professor Mark Wattier has filed his retirement application with the state, with an effective date of March 1, university spokeswoman Catherine Sivills said.
One of the students filed a complaint with the university, and Wattier was suspended wi
Source: NYT
February 18, 2011
As a child, Razib Khan spent several weeks studying in a Bangladeshi madrasa. Heather Mac Donald once studied literary deconstructionism and clerked for a left-wing judge. In neither case did the education take. They are atheist conservatives — Mr. Khan an apostate to his family’s Islamic faith, Ms. Mac Donald to her left-wing education.
They are part of a small faction on the right: conservatives with no use for religion. Since 2008, they have been contributors to the blog Secular
Source: NYT
February 18, 2011
SEDALIA, Colo. — The mechanics were simple. A trailer latch popped, a gate swung open and three wild bighorn sheep — two females, presumably pregnant, and a year-old lamb, definitely frisky — trotted up the rocky slope of Thunder Butte under a pale afternoon sun.
It is the back story of the animals’ release this week by wildlife biologists here in the mountains southwest of Denver that can stagger the mind with its complications of coincidence, historical accident, devastation and h
Source: NYT
February 18, 2011
In the half century since Wisconsin became the first state to give its public workers the right to bargain collectively, government employee unions have mushroomed in size and power — so much so that they now account for more than half of the nation’s union members.
But the legislative push by Wisconsin’s new governor, Scott Walker, a Republican, to slash the collective bargaining rights of his state’s public employees could prove a watershed for public-sector unions, perhaps signal
Source: NYT
February 18, 2011
OSWIECIM, Poland — For nearly 60 years, Auschwitz has told its own story, shaped in the aftermath of the Second World War. It now unfolds, unadorned and mostly unexplained, in displays of hair, shoes and other remains of the dead. Past the notorious, mocking gateway, into the brick ranks of the former barracks of the Polish army camp that the Nazis seized and converted into prisons and death chambers, visitors bear witness via this exhibition.
Now those in charge of passing along th
Source: Monsters and Critics
February 17, 2011
Croatian police have completed the exhumation of remains from mass grave in a Zagreb suburb, on one of more than 200 known sites where thousands of Germans, both soldiers and civilians, were buried in the closing days of the Second World War.
Yugoslav communist partisans carried out executions across the c country as the Nazi regime crumbled and fell in 1945. So far the Croatian interior ministry has compiled a list of the sites more than 200 German mass graves.
Yet jus
Source: BBC News
February 18, 2011
t crops up in our speech dozens of times every day, although it apparently means little. So how did the word "OK" conquer the world, asks Allan Metcalf.
"OK" is one of the most frequently used and recognised words in the world.
It is also one of the oddest expressions ever invented. But this oddity may in large measure account for its popularity.
It's odd-looking. It's a word that looks and sounds like an abbreviation, an acronym.
Source: NYT
February 12, 2011
TEL AVIV — When Google, the world’s largest search engine, joined forces with Yad Vashem, keeper of the world’s largest Holocaust archive, the first thing one Google employee here did was search for his grandfather’s name.
A link took the employee, Doron Avni, to a Google-operated page on the Yad Vashem Web site showing a photograph of his grandfather, Yecheskel Fleischer, taken in 1941 just after he was released from a Nazi-run prison in Lithuania.
Under the photograp
Source: BBC News
February 18, 2011
Four hundred years after his death, Caravaggio is a 21st Century superstar among old master painters. His stark, dramatically lit, super-realistic paintings strike a modern chord - but his police record is more shocking than any modern bad boy rock star's.
An exhibition of documents at Rome's State Archives throws vivid light on his tumultuous life here at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries.
Caravaggio's friendships, daily life and frequent braw
Source: AP
February 17, 2011
Egypt said it will reopen historical sites to tourism on Sunday as it sought to revive a key industry shattered in the turmoil that ousted President Hosni Mubarak. Archaeologists were cheered by the recovery of the most important artifact stolen from Cairo's Egyptian Museum, a rare statue of King Tut's father.
A 16-year-old anti-government protester found the statue of the Pharaoh Akhenaten next to a garbage can and his family returned it, the antiquities ministry said.
Source: AFP
February 16, 2011
Iceman Oetzi, whose mummified body was famously found frozen in the Italian Alps in 1991, will get a new face for the 20th anniversary of his discovery.
As part of a new exhibit at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano (www.iceman.it), two Dutch experts -- Alfons and Adrie Kennis -- have made a new model of the living Oetzi, this time with brown eyes.
Indeed, recent research has shown the Iceman, now approaching the tender
Source: Live Science
February 15, 2011
The political upheaval in Egypt has thrown Egyptian archaeology into a state of uncertainty — expeditions have been disrupted and Zahi Hawass, the head of the country's antiquity council, is now coming under fire from protesters.
Known for his flamboyant style – including an Indiana Jones-style fedora – and his boosterism of Egypt's treasures, Hawass is the face of Egyptian archaeology. As secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), Hawass is in charge of approvin
Source: PBS
February 16, 2011
As the dust settles on Egypt's recent protests, one less-discussed outcome of the uprising is the damage done to some of the country's ancient artifacts. After would-be looters broke into the famous Egyptian museum in Cairo in search of gold on Jan. 29, approximately 70 artifacts were damaged.
Among the items were several small statues, a 3,000-year-old tomb, and a statue of King Tutankhamun. The king, who formerly stood atop a panther, was severed from the animal after the break-in
Source: Guardian (UK)
February 16, 2011
Good taste is not a feature of a new Roman house that has risen, with much sweat and cursing, from a flat Shropshire field at the genuinely ancient Roman town site of Wroxeter: painted bright yellow and oxblood red, the building can be seen a mile off,
The wall, which is 7 metres (23ft) high and stands on top of a metre-high mound, protects the remains of an real ancient Roman forum.
They had to take some shortcuts, including using some machine-cut roof trusses, in orde
Source: BBC
February 16, 2011
Ancient Britons were not averse to using human skulls as drinking cups, skeletal remains unearthed in southwest England suggest.
The braincases from three individuals were fashioned in such a meticulous way that their use as bowls to hold liquid seems the only reasonable explanation.
The 14,700-year-old objects were discovered in Gough's Cave, Somerset.
Scientists from London's Natural History Museum say the skull-cups were probably used in some kind of rit
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
February 17, 2011
Not even in his wildest dreams could Martin Luther King Jr have imagined that he would one day find himself honoured alongside two of America's best-known and best-loved presidents.
But Dr King is soon to stand shoulder to shoulder with Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson when a statue of the slain civil rights leader is unveiled in the National Mall in Washington, DC.
The memorial will be positioned in a direct line between those dedicated to legendary former leaders
Source: BBC News
February 17, 2011
A rare Andy Warhol self-portrait has sold for £10.79m ($17.44m) at auction, having been in private hands since 1974.
The red and white portrait, which measures 6ft (1.8m) by 6ft, had been expected to fetch no more than £5m.
It was bought by an anonymous bidder at the auction held by Christie's in London.
The 1967 work was part of a historic series of 11 large-scale self-portraits created that year.
Warhol was at the height of his fame when he f
Source: Voice of America
February 16, 2011
Thurgood Marshall is perhaps best known as the first African-American justice on the Supreme Court, where he served from 1967 to 1991. But he had a long history of working for justice. As an attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), he waged legal battles against racial discrimination which helped reshape American society.
Now, a new collection of letters from that period offers a new portrait of Marshall as an important force in the civil
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 16, 2011
A photograph taken of Heinrich Himmler minutes after he committed suicide will be sold at auction next month.
The previously unseen picture, captured by Lance Corporal Guy Adderley of British Intelligence in May 1945, shows the Nazi second-in-command lying dead after biting a cyanide pill, still wearing his trademark round glasses.
Himmler, who had been arrested by Army officers, was due to be interrogated over his war crimes the following day.
After his d
