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: Discovery News
May 17, 2012
May 17, 2012 -- The woman known as the Queen of Disco, Donna Summer, died today at the age of 63 after a battle with cancer.Summer, a five-time Grammy Award winner, shot to fame in the ‘70s with iconic hits produced by famed disco producer Giorgio Moroder, according to Rolling Stone. Her hits in the ‘70s, "Bad Girls" and "Hot Stuff" were followed by hits in the ‘80s like “She Works Hard for the Money” and “This Time I Know It’s for Real.” With her ‘80s hits she was also able to move into the MTV era with memorable music videos....
Source: Discovery News
May 17, 2012
Ocean researchers exploring the depths of the Gulf of Mexico have discovered a wooden shipwreck laden with anchors, navigational instruments, glass bottles, ceramic plates, cannons and boxes of muskets.Resting on the sea bottom in about 4,000 feet of water, some 200 miles offs the northern Gulf Coast shore, the wooden-hulled vessel "is believed to have sunk as long as 200 years ago," the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said in a statement."Artifacts in and around the wreck and the hull's copper sheathing may date the vessel to the early to mid-19th century," said Jack Irion, a maritime archaeologist with the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management....
Source: NetworkWorld
May 16, 2012
Unless it turns out that Alexander Graham Bell didn't really want to see Watson - that he was just goofing on the guy - then the first documented prank phone call would appear to have occurred about eight years after that famous 1876 exchange ... and at the expense of an undertaker in Providence, R.I.This little-known nugget of telecommunications history comes from the Feb. 2, 1884 edition of The Electrical World, via Google Books, and was unearthed by Paul Collins, an associate professor of English at Portland State University, who is perhaps better known as The Literary Detective....
Source: Huffington Post
May 16, 2012
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Ratko Mladic was a shadow of the swaggering general who once "held Sarajevo in the palm of his hand" during Bosnia's 1992-95 war as his long-awaited genocide trial opened Wednesday. Yet he still managed to inflame Bosnia's festering war wounds with the flick of his hand.Hobbled by strokes and wearing a business suit instead of combat fatigues, the frail 70-year-old gestured toward the families of massacre victims in an angry exchange of hand signals through the bulletproof glass that separated them."Not even an animal would behave like that," said Mevlija Malic as she watched the trial on television in Bosnia....
Source: AP
May 16, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is awarding the Medal of Honor to a Pennsylvania Army specialist killed in combat in 1970 while serving as a rifleman in Cambodia during the Vietnam War.Paperwork for the award was lost for three decades, the Army says, and the efforts of a Vietnam veteran are largely credited for the medal being awarded posthumously to Spec. Leslie H. Sabo Jr. for heroic action. His platoon was ambushed by North Vietnamese forces in 1970 near the village of Se San in eastern Cambodia.
Source: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources Press Release
May 16, 2012
A N.C. Highway Historical Marker for a Revolutionary War general and former Orange County sheriff will be dedicated on Saturday, May 19, at 11:30 a.m. When John Butler became sheriff in 1770, he represented the authority of the Crown at a time when settlers in what was then North Carolina's backcountry wanted none of it. Even his brother was a member of the Regulator Movement that in 1771 fought Royal Governor William Tryon and his militia and lost.
Source: NYT Editorial Board
May 15, 2012
...On Monday, four Democratic congressmen, including John Lewis of Georgia, got so frustrated that they filed suit against the Senate, saying its filibuster rule is unconstitutional and illegally nullified their legislative votes. They argue that unlimited debate was never envisioned by the Constitution, and that supermajorities were required only in unusual cases, like overriding a veto or treaty ratification. They are joined by three students, the children of undocumented immigrants, who could have benefited from the citizenship path in the Dream Act until it was filibustered.This suit, organized by Common Cause, makes some strong historical points, but it may not be necessary. Only recently have filibusters become a daily impediment to Senate operations, and they would not be that difficult to curb. We have supported eliminating the filibuster for judicial and executive nominees. Making other filibusters harder would be good for both parties. If Mr. Reid remains majority leader in January, he should lead the reform....
Source: NYT
May 15, 2012
FLORENCE, Ala. — Dianne O’Neal still lives on the rustic cattle farm that her husband’s family has owned since his great-great-great-grandfather purchased the land in the 1830s. She still stays in a log cabin built from chestnut trees that his ancestors chopped by hand.But one aspect of the family’s long history here in northern Alabama is not so well preserved: Coffee Cemetery, an overgrown one-acre graveyard where the ancestors of her husband, Edward O’Neal, and their slaves are buried.That has become a pressing matter in Florence because Walmart plans to build a store right next to the graveyard. The O’Neals’ biggest concern is that nobody knows exactly where their ancestors’ 80 slaves are buried....
Source: LiveScience
May 15, 2012
More than 400 years before modern-day governments tried shutting down blogs or blocking tweets, two people tasked with censoring a sometimes-critic of the Catholic Church in Renaissance Europe took to their duties in very different ways: one with great beauty, the other with glue and, it appears, a message.Now, two books, housed at separate libraries at the University of Toronto, illustrate two unusual approaches censors took when dealing with the same author, Erasmus.Born in Rotterdam around 1466, Erasmus was a prolific writer who sought out wisdom in ancient Greek and Latin texts. His writings, mass produced thanks to the printing press, were at times critical of the Catholic Church....
Source: Discovery News
May 15, 2012
When most people think of beheadings they probably think of events far away in time and place, such as Marie Antoinette's 1793 guillotine execution during the French revolution.But beheadings are hardly a thing of the past; in fact in some places they are becoming increasingly commonplace....In centuries past beheading was actually preferable to other common forms of execution (such as being burned alive or disemboweled). In early England beheading was considered a noble, and even honorable, death. Nigel Cawthorne, author of "Public Executions" (2006, Capella Press) notes that "Hanging was usually reserved for the lower classes....
Source: Discovery News
May 15, 2012
Min, the ancient Egyptian god of phallus and fertility, might have brought some worldy advantages to his male worshippers, but offered little protection when it came to spiritual life.Researchers at the Mummy Project-Fatebenefratelli hospital in Milan, Italy, established that one of Min's priests at Akhmim, Ankhpakhered, was not resting peacefully in his finely painted sarcophagus."We discovered that the sarcophagus does not contain the mummy of the priest, but the remains of another man dating between 400 and 100 BC," Egyptologist Sabina Malgora said....
Source: AFP
May 15, 2012
WASHINGTON — A massive block of limestone in France contains what scientists believe are the earliest known engravings of wall art dating back some 37,000 years, according to a study published Monday.The 1.5 metric ton ceiling piece was first discovered in 2007 at Abri Castanet, a well known archeological site in southwestern France which holds some of the earliest forms of artwork, beads and pierced shells.According to New York University anthropology professor Randall White, lead author of the paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the art was likely meant to adorn the interior of a shelter for reindeer hunters....
Source: Huffington Post
May 15, 2012
A Republican lawmaker in New Hampshire was physically removed from the state House of Representatives on Tuesday afternoon after he made a Nazi salute during a contentious debate about limiting what is considered valid voter identification.Rep. Steve Vaillancourt (R-Manchester) shouted, "Sieg Heil" and moved his hand in the air after House Speaker William O'Brien (R-Mont Vernon) restricted what he could address during a floor debate on an amendment to a state voter ID bill. O'Brien had restricted what Vaillancourt could say about the full bill, saying that he could not reference the House Election Law Committee's discussion, only the issues presented in the committee report.O'Brien, who had previously threatened to toss Vaillancourt from the floor, used Vaillancourt's outburst to have the veteran lawmaker moved off the floor. It is the first time in at least a decade that a House member has been removed from the chamber in New Hampshire. House members then voted 238 to 103 to allow Vaillancourt to apologize to the full chamber in order to be allowed back in, setting off further debate when Vaillancourt did not apologize in the manner that O'Brien had expected....
Source: Fox News
May 15, 2012
Architect Frank Gehry has proposed changes to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, following strong criticism from surviving family members and questions from top GOP House lawmakers. The family had initially complained that the design focused too strongly on the late president's humble Kansas roots, as opposed to his accomplishments as a president and military commander. While members of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission have voiced approval for the changes, they don't necessarily address one of the family's complaints -- a life-size sculpture of a young Eisenhower would remain at the center of the memorial despite the family's earlier objections....
Source: Commentary
May 15, 2012
...The Heritage Foundation’s Rory Cooper tweeted that Obama had casually dropped his own name into Ronald Reagan’s official biography on www.whitehouse.gov, claiming credit for taking up the mantle of Reagan’s tax reform advocacy with his “Buffett Rule” gimmick. My first thought was, he must be joking. But he wasn’t—it turns out Obama has added bullet points bragging about his own accomplishments to the biographical sketches of every single U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge (except, for some reason, Gerald Ford)....
Source: The Atlantic
May 14, 2012
One of the most compelling -- and enduring -- mysteries in archaeology concerns the rise of early humans and the decline of Neanderthals. For about 250,000 years, Neanderthals lived and evolved, quite successfully, in the area that is now Europe. Somewhere between 45,000 and 35,000 years ago, early humans came along.They proliferated in their new environment, their population increasing tenfold in the 10,000 years after they arrived; Neanderthals declined and finally died away.What happened? What went so wrong for the Neanderthals -- and what went so right for us humans?...The Cambridge researchers Paul Mellars and Jennifer French have another theory, though. In a paper in the journal Science, they concluded that "numerical supremacy alone may have been a critical factor" in human dominance -- with humans simply crowding out the Neanderthals. Now, with an analysis in American Scientist, the anthropologist Pat Shipman is building on their work. After analyzing the Mellars and French paper and comparing it with the extant literature, Shipman has come to an intriguing conclusion: that humans' comparative evolutionary fitness owes itself to the domestication of dogs....
Source: CS Monitor
May 14, 2012
The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up the appeal of American treasure hunters who were forced earlier this year to surrender $500 million in silver and gold coins they recovered from the wreck of a Spanish warship 3,000 feet deep in international waters.The high court took the action without comment.A federal judge in Tampa, Fla., and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ordered Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. of Tampa to surrender the coins and other artifacts to Spain....
Source: AP
May 14, 2012
Here's what's not going to happen this year: the earth won't end on Dec. 12; it won't be swallowed by a black hole, consumed by the sun or get taken out by a collision with the imaginary planet Nibiru. Here's what will happen: as of today, more people than ever will believe that those calamities will occur on precisely the day they're predicted to. The reason: a new discovery -- just reported in the journal Science -- of the earliest known Mayan astronomical calendar, featuring elaborate and detailed work by one of the most impressive civilizations that ever lived.It was earlier interpretations of other Mayan calendars that gave rise to the Internet-fueled doomsday scenarios of the past few years -- mostly because one calendar cycle the Mayans computed ends Dec. 12 (though no one paid much attention to the fact that another one was supposed to begin immediately after that). If people can stay focused on the science this time though, they'll find a lot to be impressed by in the new findings....
Source: NYT
May 14, 2012
Researchers have discovered illustrations of female anatomy in a rock shelter in France that date back 37,000 years.It is “the oldest evidence of any kind of graphic imagery,” said Randall White, an anthropologist at New York University and one of the researchers working on the project.He and his colleagues report their findings in the current issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....
Source: NYT
May 14, 2012
...[T]he months between the end of the primary season and the formal start of the general election at the conventions are an especially perilous period for candidates in Mr. Romney’s position....The risks of failing to win the spring-summer narrative battle are substantial. Just ask Michael Dukakis, Bob Dole or John Kerry, all of whom failed to establish strong positive images during this period and allowed their opponents to brand them in ways they never overcame.In 1988, Vice President George Bush used Willie Horton starting in June to portray Mr. Dukakis, the Democratic nominee that year, as a soft-on-crime liberal. Mr. Dukakis never really found a way to respond, and was wiped out in November.
