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: Inside Higher Ed
May 23, 2008
John Updike delivered the National Endowment for the Humanities’ annual Jefferson Lecture Thursday night, accepting the highest honor bestowed by the federal government on humanists. Seizing on the NEH’s Picturing America project, which places reproductions of American art in public schools and libraries across the country, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author toured the artistic landscape to answer the question, “What is American about American art?” After surveying painters from John Singleton Co
Source: Herald Sun (AU)
May 23, 2008
THE last time they had the chance to offend anyone was 2700 years ago, when they were wandering around ancient Egypt.
Since then, as mummies, they have given little cause for annoyance, spending the last 120 years in a museum where countless thousands of visitors have managed to see them without becoming the least upset.
No longer, it appears.
As a result of complaints, the naked remains of Asru, a chanter at the Temple of Amun in Karnak, the partially wrap
Source: LiveScience
May 22, 2008
Seems everyone these days is giving the thumbs-up, no matter the circumstances.
Senator Edward Kennedy gave a big thumbs-up as he left the hospital Wednesday, facing a new outlook on life with a potentially deadly brain tumor. Hillary did it just this week at a we're-not-mathematically-defeated-yet campaign rally in Florida. John McCain can't not do it.
The gesture, for better or worse, has long breathed life or death into major events.
Death to gladiators
Source: KTRK news
May 22, 2008
It's a valuable artifact, which represents one of the worst, most brutal eras ever. Something that belonged to Adolf Hitler, and it's now in the hands of a Houston World War II veteran.
Eyewitness News takes a closer look at the debate over what should be done with this painful piece of history.
it was the summer of 1945 and U.S. troops had just taken over Munich, Germany.
"I was 20 years old and we had just been through a heck of a war," said Ja
Source: http://www.news.com.au
May 22, 2008
POLISH war crimes prosecutors today announced they have dropped a probe against John Demjanjuk, 88, an ethnic Ukrainian living in the United States dogged by allegations of Nazi war crimes.
"The investigation was dropped December 19, 2007 due lack of evidence to incriminate Demjanjuk for murder," prosecutor Anna Galkiewicz of Poland's Institute for National Remembrance (IPN) said.
The IPN is charged with investigating and prosecuting Nazi and communist-era cri
Source: AFP
May 22, 2008
High above the world's oldest operating irrigation system, Zhang Shuanggun, a local villager, stands on an observation platform cracked by China's massive earthquake last week.
She has a simple answer for why the ancient, bamboo-based Dujiangyan irrigation system sustained only minor damage, while nearby modern dams and their vast amounts of concrete are now under 24-hour watch for signs of collapse.
"This ancient project is perfection," Zhang said.
Source: BBC
May 22, 2008
At one time, chisels would be handed to people visiting Stonehenge, so they could chip away at the ancient monument to get their own souvenirs.
But the practice has been outlawed since 1900, when landowner Sir Edmund Antrobus decided the site needed protecting and introduced charges.
Before then, anyone who visited the site could walk freely among the ancient stones.
Now, the stones are fenced off, with private access allowed only by special arrangement.
Source: Email from Calvin E. Johnson, Jr.
May 22, 2008
HNN received the following announcement from Calvin E. Johnson, Jr. It is self-explanatory.
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Is the "War Between the States" still taught in our schools?
The Jefferson Davis State Historic Site in Fairview, Kentucky
marks the spot where Jefferson Davis was born on June 3, 1808.
Plans are underway to celebrate Davis' 200th birthday on June 7th
8th, there, in the shadow of a 351-foot monument to Davis.
Earlier,
Source: Huffington Post (Blog)
May 22, 2008
John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of Sen. John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God's behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a "hunter," sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God's will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.
Going in and out of biblical verse, Hagee preached: "'And they the hunters should hunt the
Source: BBC
May 22, 2008
The view from the top of Preah Vihear temple is well worth the steamy, uphill trek to get there.
Stone steps and paths lead visitors through a series of ancient entranceways to the carved sanctuary high in the Dangrek mountain range.
Look one way and a Thai flag flies on a distant rocky outcrop. Turn the other way and the cliffs fall sharply down to the blue-green Cambodian jungle below....
Source: BBC
May 22, 2008
Suspected souvenir hunters broke into Stonehenge and vandalised the ancient monument, English Heritage has said.
A hammer and screwdriver were used to take a small chip the size of a 10p piece from the side of the Heel Stone.
English Heritage said further damage was prevented by security guards who spotted the two men at the 5,000-year-old site in Wiltshire.
Source: BBC
May 22, 2008
The pundits are foretelling hard times at the moment and doing their best to explain why the world economy could be headed for trouble. But imagine a time when people struggled to understand why they were going hungry.
Between 1440 and 1460 England was suffering a late medieval equivalent of the credit crunch.
The country was still recovering from the effects of the Black Death a century earlier. The population had dropped from as much as five million before the plague and it
Source: NYT
May 22, 2008
PUERTO RICO, an afterthought trophy for the United States 110 years ago at the end of the Spanish-American War and an island in limbo since, has become an improbable player in the contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Its primary on June 1 could bolster Mrs. Clinton’s claim to a majority of the popular vote — the combined tally for all the Democratic primaries and caucuses held across the country over the past six months.
Puerto Rico’s formal role in the process is indee
Source: AP
May 22, 2008
It was so singular a marvel, so ambitious a feat, that its opening drew the president and a crowd of thousands. A leading national magazine said it stood poised to become "our most durable monument."
Some 125 years later, the Brooklyn Bridge remains a powerful symbol of engineering might and imagination, and a revered fixture in the landscape of the nation's largest city.
And it can still draw a crowd. Thousands of people are expected at the bridge's 125th bi
Source: LiveScience
May 21, 2008
Senator Paul Tsongas had a secret when he ran in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary — his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma had returned despite a bone-marrow transplant. Yet Tsongas and his physicians continued to claim he was “cancer-free” and his true medical condition became public only after his campaign folded. Had voters elected him president instead of Bill Clinton, Tsongas would have endured crippling cancer treatments and died in office, as he did just a few years later. “I don’t know if he
Source: AP
May 21, 2008
Syrian customs officials seized 40 artifacts stolen from the National
Museum in Iraq as they were being smuggled across the border into Syria, state media reported
Wednesday.
The report quoted the chief of the customs department, Nabil al-Sayyouri, as saying the pieces
were seized at al-Tanaf crossing on the Syrian-Iraqi border. They were hidden in a bag carried by
an Iraqi crossing into Syria.
Source: AP
May 21, 2008
Federal authorities charged an Indiana man with stealing historical documents from the library at Transylvania University more than a decade ago.
An FBI affidavit unsealed Tuesday charged 70-year-old Eugene Zollman of LaPorte, Ind., with theft of major artwork.
Authorities said Zollman is accused of taking documents of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy during the Civil War, during visits to the university in Lexington in 1994.
Source: BBC
May 21, 2008
German neo-Nazis have used a personalised stamp service to send letters bearing the image of Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess.
Deutsche Post spokesman Dirk Klasen confirmed that an order of 20 55-cent stamps had been printed by the service.
Mr Klasen said Deutsche Post would review its procedures, but that it was impossible to guarantee that unsuitable images would not slip through the net.
Rudolf Hess died in 1987, aged 93, after more than four decades in prison.
Source: CNN
May 21, 2008
An elementary school at the center of a civil rights battle, a hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and a hangar that once housed U.S. Navy dirigibles are on this year's National Trust for Historic Preservation's endangered list.
The 11 sites represent the country's architectural, cultural and natural heritage, and "reflect extraordinary periods of American history," National Trust Director Richard Moe said.
The sites were chosen from about 70 nominees by th
Source: Richard Bernstein in the International Herald Tribune
May 21, 2008
World War II, we know on good authority, was unnecessary, the authority being none other than Winston Churchill. By unnecessary Churchill meant that if the Allies' appeasement of Hitler hadn't taken place earlier, the war wouldn't have to have been to fought later.
Now, in this country at least, a current of opinion is gaining strength that stands Churchill on his head. It wasn't appeasement that brought about the disaster of the conflict, but warmongering on the part of the Allied
