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: Reuters
Oct 4, 2006
Mexican archeologists have found what may be the most significant Aztec ruin in decades, with the unearthing of an altar and a monolith in the busy heart of Mexico City, Mayor Alejandro Encinas said on Wednesday.
The 15th-century altar, part of the Aztec empire's main temple, was uncovered last weekend near the city's main Zocalo square along with the 11-foot (3.5-meter) stone slab, most of which is still buried under earth.
"It is a very important discovery, the b
Source: NYT
Oct 4, 2006
Just before 6 p.m. on a recent evening, students began to fill a lecture hall at Vanderbilt University. Some pressed cellphones to their ears, others sipped cups of coffee. Flip-flops scuffed the carpet as the students shed book bags and opened laptops.
A typical class, perhaps — until the teacher with the shock of white hair rose from the table at the front of the hall, greeted the students and asked a question: “How many of you have experienced a hate crime against yourself? Let’s
Source: The Australian
Oct 4, 2006
THE remains of the unknown sailor believed to be the sole survivor of Australia's most enduring wartime mystery -- the sinking of HMAS Sydney off Western Australia -- have been unearthed on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. The Defence Department last night confirmed that bones had been discovered in the island's Old European Cemetery by a navy-led team of experts and, once removed, would be taken to Sydney for further forensic tests in an attempt to establish identity.
The disc
Source: NYT
Oct 4, 2006
A consortium of major universities, using Homeland Security Department money, is developing software that would let the government monitor negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas. Such a "sentiment analysis" is intended to identify potential threats to the nation, security officials said.
Researchers at institutions including Cornell, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Utah intend to test the syste
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Oct 4, 2006
An 18-inch piece of metal wasn't exactly what commercial fisherman David Canepa and his two-man crew expected to see when they hauled in their sablefish traps during a five-day cruise off California's Point Sur 27 years ago.
They weren't sure what it signified, but they figured their catch of corroded aluminum might be from some sort of aircraft, he recalls. "By looking at the piece and its structure, we knew it wasn't any kind of ship or boat."
During the pa
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Oct 4, 2006
When Harvey Ball took a black felt-tip pen to a piece of yellow paper in 1963, he never could have realized that he was drafting the face that would launch 50 million buttons and an eventual war over copyright.
Mr. Ball, a commercial artist, was simply filling a request from Joy Young of the Worcester Mutual Insurance Company to create an image for their "smile campaign" to coach employees to be more congenial in their customer relations. It seems there was a hunger for a
Source: BBC
Oct 3, 2006
A simple tag to prevent shoelaces from fraying was deemed to be worth more than gold by the indigenous Cubans who traded with Christopher Columbus.
Scientists from University College London, UK, have been analysing grave goods from indigenous burials on Cuba dating to the Spanish contact.
They were surprised to find little gold - which is abundant in the region.
Instead, the most common artefacts were small brass tubes thought to be cheap lacetags fro
Source: AP
Oct 3, 2006
Before the Internet came along, vodka with cranberry juice and a bet over a six-pack of beer were tools of seduction in the hands of House members with designs on congressional pages....
In 1983, an investigation into dozens of reports of sexual misconduct between House members and pages noted the more permissive nature of society at the time, with the age of consent dropping, sexual mores relaxing and people appreciating ''an increasing recognition of the frailty of human nature.''
Source: NYT
Oct 3, 2006
In the end, only one vote mattered.
Saying it ran “counter to the tradition of our great nation,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill on Saturday that would have automatically allocated all the state’s 55 electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate received the national popular vote.
The bill, which passed the state’s Legislature this summer, was devised by John R. Koza, a computer scientist who envisioned a system in which a series of states holding the nu
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Oct 3, 2006
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is considering drafts of documents that would form part of a public-education campaign on campus anti-Semitism, a follow-up to the commission's report on the issue last spring.
A 25-page draft of the commission's proposed Web page on campus anti-Semitism, a set of documents that was obtained by The Chronicle, aims to inform college students about anti-Semitism and the resources available to victims of anti-Semitic harassment or intimidation.
Source: AP
Oct 3, 2006
Underwater sonar images of a black shape against a background of grainy monochrome are safely stored on two computer hard drives at Bruce Abele's home in Newton, Mass.
Blurred by odd shadows and striations, the silhouettes are the biggest clues in more than 60 years to the fate of his father's World War II submarine, the USS Grunion, which sank nearly 5,000 miles west of Massachusetts, near the obscure islands at the tip of Alaska's Aleutian chain.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Oct 3, 2006
The white, cotton T-shirt with the $15,000 price tag has a Hollywood pedigree, having once hugged the torso of actor James Dean during the filming of "Rebel Without a Cause."
That makes it a valuable collectible to some of the quarter million registered customers who could bid on it during online auctions scheduled for Friday and Saturday.
Source: Time Europe
Oct 3, 2006
Rarely has art had such an immediate effect on policy as it did in France last week. The war movie Indigènes — literally 'natives' — hit theaters with a tale of the 130,000 North African and other colonial troops who fought to liberate France from the Nazis in 1944. The same day the film was released, the government pledged that from next year African and Asian veterans will receive pensions equal to those of their French brothers-in-arms. As a result, the French government will end a 47-year
Source: Independent (South Africa)
Oct 3, 2006
Republic of Congo welcomed home the remains of its colonial founder on Monday with plans to re-inter the body in the capital that bears his name, prompting a fiery debate about whether the country should be commemorating its colonisers.Francois Camille Pierre Savorgnan De Brazza founded the city of Brazzaville in 1884 and began to establish the colony that became Republic of Congo after independence from France in 1960. He governed the colony from 1886 to 1897.
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Oct 2, 2006
University of Illinois archaeologist Robert Mazrim wasn't looking for anyone who made history or even earned a footnote. He just wanted to understand the average lives of French settlers who lived in the Mississippi River Valley hundreds of years ago.
But a shard of "too-fashionable" pottery stoked his curiosity and led him eventually to claim a thrilling discovery: the site of the home where Pierre Laclede, the founder of St. Louis, likely lived when he first sailed up th
Source: Newsweek
Oct 2, 2006
Scott Cameron and Dennis Kanke had a lot in common. Residents of Duluth, Minn., both fought in Vietnam and returned home with traumas that lingered for decades. Both clawed their way out of the pit with the help of therapy and medication. And both fell back into it when the Iraq invasion began more than three years ago, with war scenes on television triggering nightmares and flashbacks. "It all came rushing back," says Cameron, a sinewy 56-year-old who took a bullet in the spine in 196
Source: NYT
Oct 2, 2006
review of White House records has determined that George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, did brief Condoleezza Rice and other top officials on July 10, 2001, about the looming threat from Al Qaeda, a State Department spokesman said Monday.
The account by Sean McCormack came hours after Ms. Rice, the secretary of state, told reporters aboard her airplane that she did not recall the specific meeting on July 10, 2001, noting that she had met repeatedly with Mr. Te
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Oct 2, 2006
The University of Mississippi marked the 44th anniversary of a milestone in its history today with the dedication of a civil-rights monument that features a life-size statue of James H. Meredith, the first black student admitted to the university. Mr. Meredith, whose arrival on the Oxford, Miss., campus sparked riots in 1962, was an honored guest at the ceremony.
“This monument is an appropriate way to memorialize the role of the University of Mississippi and James Meredith in openi
Source: National Security Archive
Oct 2, 2006
For understandable reasons, the George W. Bush administration has shunned comparisons between the war in Iraq and the Vietnam War. But in his latest book, State of Denial, Bob Woodward writes that Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state--and a secret (and frequent) consultant to the current president--has made the parallel explicit to the White House.
According to Woodward, Kissinger recently gave a Bush aide a copy of a memo he wrote in 1969 arguing against troop withdrawals
Source: ABC.net.au
Oct 2, 2006
2000-year-old recipe for hair dye shows Ancient Greeks and Romans used nanotechnology to permanently colour grey hair black, say experts.
Dr Philippe Walter of the French state museum agency's Centre for Research and Restoration and colleagues report their findings online in the journal Nano Letters.
The researchers made up a batch of dye according to a recipe used since Greco-Roman times, which includes a mixture of lead oxide and slaked lime....
