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: Solomonia (Blog)
Aug 30, 2005
Richard Landes, a medievalist at Boston University, has announced his intention to establish "a media oversight venue for discussing how the media processes the information they gather and how they present it to the public as news. We'll take significant news events and present them as dossiers to the public for discussion, using for grist as much primary source material as possible, starting with the Pallywood discussion."Pallywood is "a play on t
Source: Robert A. Schneider Editor, American Historical Review
Aug 30, 2005
The American Historical Review will host an on-line discussion of the June 2005 Forum Essay, "From Bold Beginnings to an Uncertain Future: The Discipline of History and History Education" by Robert Orrill and Linn Shapiro. This article, which charts the changing involvement of academic historians in elementary and secondary schools over the last 100 years, asserts that the history profession today has largely failed to live up to its historic role as shapers of public education.
Source: Wa Po
Aug 30, 2005
Former North Carolina senator Jesse Helms, writing with the same passion that made him the Senate's leading archconservative for 30 years, renews his criticism of abortion in a memoir published this week, comparing it to both the Holocaust and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "I will never be silent about the death of those who cannot speak for themselves," Helms wrote in "Here's Where I Stand," which is scheduled for release Tuesday.In the book,
Source: Wa Po
Aug 30, 2005
Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. advised the Reagan administration's attorney general that "it makes eminent sense" to seek legislation permanently barring the use of employment quotas to redress discrimination and prohibiting the busing of students to foster the integration of schools, according to newly disclosed archival documents. The March 15, 1982, recommendation to enact administration policy into law came up in a written assessment that year by Roberts and a colleague
Source: BBC
Aug 30, 2005
The world's most eminent scientists are not usually associated with the dim-lit surroundings of a clairvoyant's parlour. But some of science's biggest names have not only dabbled in, but been entirely convinced by the world of the seance. Guglielmo Marconi, Alexander Graham Bell and John Logie Baird are familiar to most for the household indispensables they invented. But the attraction to spiritualism they all shared is definitely not part of the GCSE science syllabus.
Source: BBC
Aug 30, 2005
An excavation in Wiltshire has recently revealed the grave of a Bronze Age archer, buried with a rich array of precious metal goods and a quiver of arrows. Was this the King of Stonehenge? In the spring of 2002 what started as a routine excavation was undertaken in advance of the building of a new school at Amesbury in Wiltshire. By the end of the excavation the richest Bronze Age burial yet found in Britain had been discovered. The Bronze Age man discovered there had been b
Source: CNN
Aug 30, 2005
Poland's Solidarity hero Lech Walesa has told his countrymen that any price, including the pain accompanying economic reforms, was worth paying for the freedom they have enjoyed since the overthrow of communism. Addressing a special session of parliament marking the 25th anniversary of the birth of Solidarity on Monday, Walesa praised the role of communist East Europe's first independent trade union in changing Poland and ending the post-1945 division of Europe. Representati
Source: NYT
Aug 30, 2005
The Gulf Coast has always been vulnerable to coastal storms, but over the years people have made things worse, particularly in Louisiana, where Hurricane Katrina struck yesterday. Since the 18th century, when French colonial administrators required land claimants to establish ownership by building levees along bayous, streams and rivers, people have been trying to dominate the region's landscape and the forces of its nature. As long as people could control floods, they could
Source: WP
Aug 30, 2005
Despite what he looks like on the dollar bill, it turns out George Washington may have been kind of hot. For the first time, it's possible to see what the teenage Washington probably looked like, and though at this stage he is nude and hairless, he will be fully realized in October 2006 when he goes on display at Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens. Young George will be a life-size figure with auburn hair and gray-blue eyes, perhaps propping his foot on a stump in a manly fashion as he scans the hor
Source: Forbes
Aug 29, 2005
Forget annoying earthquakes like the 1906 temblor that destroyed San Francisco, or events such as the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state, and even the 1994 Los Angeles shaker that brought down sections of major freeways. In terms of total destruction, these natural disasters are pikers by world standards and serve only to remind us that extremes are the norm.The National Hurricane Center pegs Hurricane Andrew, a category five storm in 1992, as the most destructive to hit the United States. It caused damage estimated at $26.5 billion.To date, 2004 was the most destructive hurricane season with four named storms slamming ashore: Charley, causing $15 billion in damage; Ivan, $14.2 billion; Frances, $8.9 billion and Jeanne, $6.9 billion. Total: $45 billion.Hurricane Hugo is ranked as fifth most destructive storm, causing $7 billion in damage in 1989.Hurricane Allison caused an estimated $5 billion in damage in 2001; Floyd, $4.5 billion in 1999; Isabel, $3.4 billion in 2003; and Fran, $3.2 billion in 1996.New Orleans last took a direct hit from a hurricane in 1965 when Betsy's 8-to-10-foot storm surge flooded the city. The storm was blamed for 74 deaths in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.
Source: NYT
Aug 29, 2005
Close to the heart but far from public consciousness, the World Trade Center Memorial Museum - where visitors will be immersed in history in the very crucible where it unfolded - is beginning to take form. There is no director, though a national search is under way. No artifacts have been chosen, though a three-volume catalog suggests how many there are to choose. Boundary skirmishes among the users of underground space on the trade center site are settled enough that officials can say the museu
Source: NYT
Aug 29, 2005
As President Bush traveled around the country last week, he got caught up in a battle of women. The tableau was a striking change from the 1960's protests against the Vietnam War, when the demonstrations were largely led by young men, who were subject to the draft. Although mothers protested that war too, they were not in the forefront of the movement.Will Ms. Sheehan's movement spread? The historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose son, Lt. Joseph K. Good
Source: LAT
Aug 29, 2005
Bush's summer vacation at the 1,583-acre spread, which ends Friday after close to five weeks, allows him not only to relax, but to remind the nation that he's a Cowboy President. It's a tradition started by Teddy Roosevelt, and followed by Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan, that casts the chief executive as a plain-talking, outdoors-loving leader.With a handful of cattle now on the property, some Texans suggest that calling the place a ranch could be considered a str
Source: Guardian
Aug 29, 2005
Scientists have identified the precise origin of the marble block used for Michelangelo's David, and say the discovery will be useful for helping to preserve one of the world's greatest sculptures. Until now, art historians knew only that the large block came from the Carrara quarries in Tuscany, which still produce many types and qualities of marble.Analysts have now used three tiny samples, retrieved from the second toe of the left foot of David when the figure was d
Source: NYT
Aug 29, 2005
A new book asserts that the American folklorist Alan Lomax gave short shrift to the work of black scholars who accompanied him on now legendary trips to the Mississippi Delta to record seminal blues artists like Muddy Waters.Lomax's recordings for the Library of Congress, made during his travels through the South in the 1930's and 40's, make up perhaps the greatest repository of American vernacular music ever compiled.
But he was not alone on some of
Source: Romanesko
Aug 29, 2005
The photographer responsible for the Times-Dispatch business section cover that resembled a Dec. 2004 Richmond Style Weekly cover has been fired. "We learned that the photographer had seen the Style photo while at the candy company, and was told of the similarity, but submitted the picture anyway as original work," writes managing editor Louise Seals. "That is visual plagiarism and that is why we have dismissed the photographer."
Source: Journal of Turkish Weekly
Aug 29, 2005
In a speech he delivered at Setif on Thursday, Algerian President Abdulaziz Bouteflika called on France to recognize the fact that it tortured, killed and destroyed Algerian people between the years of 1830-1962 to eradicate their Algerian, Muslim, Arab and Berber identities, and their culture, history and language.
Source: AP
Aug 29, 2005
A group representing California religious schools has filed a lawsuit accusing the University of California system of discriminating against high schools that teach creationism and other conservative Christian viewpoints.
The Association of Christian Schools International, which represents more than 800 schools, filed a federal lawsuit last week claiming UC admissions officials have refused to certify high school science courses that use textbooks challenging Darwin's theory of evol
Source: Chosunilbo
Aug 29, 2005
An independent committee putting together an encyclopedia of collaborators during the Japanese colonial era on Monday announced an initial list of 3,090 names, many of them leading figures in Korea’s postwar development, to be included in the tome.
The Institute for Research in Collaborationists Activities said the standard of selection was cooperation with Japan's theft of Korea's sovereignty, participation in institutions of imperial control, interference with the independence mov
Source: IPS
Aug 29, 2005
The U.S.-based retail giant Wal-Mart, which last year opened a store near the ancient Teotihuacan pyramids of Mexico despite loud protests from local activists and small businesses, is now seeking a repeat of its earlier victory, this time in two heavily indigenous areas. But local opponents are set for a pitched battle. This time we will definitely keep Wal-Mart from continuing its attack on Mexico's culture and its people," said Lorenzo Trujillo, head of the Civic Fro
