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: NYT
Nov 19, 2011
DAKAR, Senegal — The world-turned-upside-down of the European debt crisis reached a new extreme last week when Europe came pleading for lucre where it once only seized it: Africa.The hands-out visit on Thursday of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho of Portugal to its former colony Angola — once a prime source of slaves, then a dumping ground for the mother country’s human rejects and now swimming in oil wealth — was a milestone of sorts.While Europe’s financial distress has already revived bad historical memories — 70 years after Nazi occupation, Greeks are grumbling about taking marching orders from German gauleiters — and reversed others — there was talk of a Chinese rescue for the continent that once humiliated it — the Angola-Portugal moment has had no equal in its upfront plaintiveness.“Angolan capital is very welcome,” Mr. Passos Coelho said in Luanda, the capital city. That may be an understatement: the former colony’s cash could be essential as Portugal is forced to sell off state-owned companies and shutter embassies after a $105 billion International Monetary Fund bailout this year....
Source: NYT
Nov 19, 2011
...Law schools’ aversion to all things vocational has been much debated, both inside and outside the academy. But critics are fighting both tradition and the legal academy’s peculiar set of neuroses.“Law school has a kind of intellectual inferiority complex, and it’s built into the idea of law school itself,” says W. Bradley Wendel of the Cornell University Law School, a professor who has written about landing a law school teaching job. “People who teach at law school are part of a profession and part of a university. So we’re always worried that other parts of the academy are going to look down on us and say: ‘You’re just a trade school, like those schools that advertise on late-night TV. You don’t write dissertations. You don’t write articles that nobody reads.’ And the response of law school professors is to say: ‘That’s not true. We do all of that. We’re scholars, just like you.’ ”This trade-school anxiety can be traced back to the mid-19th century, when legal training was mostly technical and often taught in rented rooms that were unattached to institutions of higher education.
Source: National Geographic
Nov 18, 2011
The nobility of Renaissance Venice may have been among the first to hear music in stereo, according to new acoustics research. Architectural innovations in churches may have been intended to clearly separate the sounds from a split choir, audio engineers announced this week.The researchers used computer models to simulate what concerts in some of the city's churches—including tourist staples such as the Basilica of San Marco—sounded like 400 years ago."First, we modeled the acoustics for the churches as they are now," explained Braxton Boren, a student in music technology at New York University."Once we were sure that the models were functioning correctly, we consulted with architectural historians and professional acousticians to tweak the models" to simulate how the churches might have sounded during the Renaissance, said Boren, who presented the findings this week at an Acoustical Society of America meeting in San Diego, California....
Source: The News from Poland
Nov 18, 2011
Archaeologists believe that the remains of soldiers who died after Napoleon's doomed march on Moscow have been found during the creation of a new bypass at Olecko, north east Poland.The skeletons of some 350 people were discovered in the forgotten graveyard, after woodland was cut back to lay the new road.“Analysis of the bones of several men buried there shows changes characteristic of people who rode on horseback for much of their lives,” archaeologist Hubert Augustyniak told the Polish Press Agency.About half of those buried were children, and experts believe that they were from the local village. Tests confirm that the villagers suffered from a poor diet and were exposed to hard labour....
Source: Nature
Nov 18, 2011
Archaeology in Libya finally has a chance to flower. Research into and conservation of the country's rich cultural heritage could expand in the wake of this year's revolution, after decades of neglect by the Gaddafi regime, say scientists. But political and security uncertainties look set to delay the return of the foreign archaeologists needed to work with Libyans to develop their archaeological capacity.Revamping its archaeology risks being a low priority for a country recovering from conflict, the fledging government of which must not only rebuild schools, hospitals and roads, but also create a democratic civil society. But researchers agree that there is an opportunity to begin planning how to reinforce Libya's archaeological base and develop plans that might attract domestic and international support."It is moments like these when big directions are taken by design or default, and those who care about heritage should aim for design," says William Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, a non-profit public-policy organization, who this month published an article calling for Libya to add protection and research of its heritage to its new constitution....
Source: LiveScience
Nov 18, 2011
At the outset, the researchers wanted to learn something about how ancient hominids used their landscape — that is, whether they covered far distances, or stayed closer to home. The goal was to discover whether their travel habits contributed to their becoming bipedal, since moving on two legs is far more efficient and takes less energy than using all fours.
Source: USA Today
Nov 18, 2011
If you want to prepare for Thanksgiving like a real Pilgrim this year, here's what you should do: Cancel the plane reservations. Stop jotting down recipes. Leave the libations alone.For the Pilgrims and Puritans, "thanksgiving" days were spontaneous and sober affairs.When friends arrived from overseas, European Protestants defeated Catholics in battle, or a bumper crop was reaped, the Pilgrims dedicated a day to thanking divine Providence.They would have considered it presumptuous to schedule a thanksgiving day in advance, said Francis Bremer, an emeritus professor of history at Millersville University in Pennsylvania. "It assumes that God is going to be good to you each particular year."...
Source: Hurriyet Daily News
Nov 18, 2011
France's foreign minister today said that his country could host a Turkish-Armenian joint history commission meeting.Alain Juppe defined the incidents of 1915 as a challenging issue, and all countries were making a memory homework about their history.Such a memory homework could be done in a history commission, Juppe told a joint press conference with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu in Ankara....
Source: Star Tribune
Nov 18, 2011
LOS ANGELES - A yacht captain said on national TV Friday that he lied to investigators about Natalie Wood's mysterious death 30 years ago and blames the actress' husband at the time, Robert Wagner, for her drowning in the ocean off Southern California.The circumstances of her death remain one of Hollywood's enduring mysteries and continue to create renewed intrigue, with homicide detectives unexpectedly re-opening the case Thursday that had long been classified as a tragic accident.A Los Angeles County sheriff's detective will speak to reporters Friday about the decision to take another look at the Oscar-nominated actress' nighttime demise in the chilly waters off Southern California on Nov. 29, 1981. Wood drowned after spending several hours drinking on Catalina Island and a yacht with Wagner, fellow actor Christopher Walken and the ship's captain, Dennis Davern....
Source: PennLive
Nov 17, 2011
For eight weeks this summer, three archaeologists and a team of volunteers dug through several feet of dirt next to Dills Tavern in Dillsburg searching for the foundation of Matthew Dill’s original tavern that stood on the site as early as 1750.They didn’t find it, but their work turned up between 35,000 to 40,000 objects, many dating back to the Colonial days.Among their finds were 21 British copper coins, two Spanish silver coins, a religious medal, many pieces of pottery, plaster, pieces of window glass and iron nails. The artifacts are being catalogued by archaeologist Steve Warfel, who was in charge of the excavation.He said after all the items are placed in a database he can look for a pattern to see if there is any change in the way an area of the site was being used....
Source: LiveScience
Nov 17, 2011
A toothy Mayan skull, made of limestone and in the shape of a monkey head, is set to go on display at a Maya exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto Canada.But unlike the famous crystal skulls, which are widely regarded as fake, this one is believed to be real.The skull is roughly life-size and small enough that you can hold it in your hands. It has eight inlaid white teeth made of shell in two groups of four, with a black tooth made of iron pyrite in the middle. The mouth of the skull is wide open, and the eyes may have originally had shells in them....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Nov 17, 2011
A soldier whose bravery helped change the course of World War Two has died.John Stone was a mine expert who carried out a daring reconnaissance mission of the Normandy beaches just before the D-Day landings.Wearing dark clothing, he crept up the beach and got to within 40 yards of German soldiers while he examined deadly bombs they had laid.He discovered wooden poles with anti-tank mines on top positioned along the shoreline that would have been hidden at high tide and devastated landing craft....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Nov 17, 2011
We like to think our superior brainpower led to their demise.But it seems the real reason the Neanderthals died out may be because they were too clever for their own good.Researchers say that rather than being outwitted by the superior intellect of modern man, our caveman cousins were every bit as sophisticated.Their brains and charms led to them being sought as mates by our ancestors, who, due to simple numbers, soon began to rule the roost.Arizona State University academics came up with the theory after running data about life in Europe and Asia during the last Ice Age through a computer program....
Source: NYT
Nov 17, 2011
LAST Thanksgiving my wife was trying to explain to our granddaughter, Lizzie, 5 at the time, that some of her ancestors had been participants at the original 1621 feast in Plymouth. “I know,” said Lizzie, who apparently had been learning about Thanksgiving in school. “We’re Indians!”Actually, Lizzie’s forebears were Pilgrims. (My wife, like several million Americans at this point, is a Mayflower descendant.) Nowadays Pilgrims, with their funny, steeple-crowned hats and buckle shoes and their gloomy, pious ways (no games on Sunday, no celebrating even of Christmas!), have gone out of fashion. It’s true that upon arriving in the New World they were so hapless that they would surely have perished during their first winter without the help of the American Indians.But the Pilgrims were nevertheless heroic in their way. There were a great many Puritans in England at the beginning of the 17th century who wanted to purge Christianity of what they considered the laxity and corruption introduced by Rome and by the insufficiently rigorous Church of England. But only a few hundred of them felt strongly enough to become separatists and emigrate to another land....
Source: Salon
Nov 17, 2011
“Saying it’s okay to choose is the same thing as saying it’s okay for Hitler to choose,” says a fresh-faced young man. He’s talking about choosing an abortion in “180,” a 33-minute movie comparing legalized abortion to the Holocaust that has so far gotten over 1.5 million hits on YouTube, thanks in part to heavy distribution by fertilized-eggs-as-people promulgators Personhood USA.That’s precisely the conclusion Ray Comfort, a mustachioed evangelical pastor and sometime Kirk Cameron collaborator, wants from his eight young interview subjects. And with the help of footage of murdered Jews and fully-developed fetuses, it’s what he wants his viewers to conclude, as well. The New Zealand-born Comfort, who says his mother is Jewish, is by no means alone in making the equivalence: Mike Huckabee, who supported Personhood USA’s failed efforts in Mississippi, has often compared the Holocaust and abortion, saying of Nazi extermination, “educated scientists, sophisticated and cultured people looked the other way because they thought it didn’t touch them.”...
Source: AP
Nov 17, 2011
NEW YORK — The National Book Awards ceremony, held just blocks from the Occupy Wall Street protests, was a gilded tribute to the 99 percent.Stories of resilience in the face of poverty, displacement and disappearance were awarded Wednesday night as hundreds of writers, editors, publishers and other industry officials gathered under the 70-foot ceilings of the luxury venue Cipriani Wall Street."I thought I should point out, since nobody else has," said poet Ann Lauterbach, who introduced honorary winner John Ashbery, "that we are occupying Wall Street."Jesmyn Ward's "Salvage the Bones," a bleak but determined novel about a black community in Mississippi devastated by Hurricane Katrina, won the fiction prize. Ward's acceptance, the culmination of a night of emotional speeches and tributes to those who had been silenced, noted that the death of her younger brother had inspired her to become a writer. She realized that life was a "feeble, unpredictable thing," but that books were a testament of strength before a punishing world....
Source: IOL SciTech
Nov 17, 2011
Vienna - Hundreds of skeletons have been exhumed from a Nazi-era graveyard suspected of holding mentally or physically disabled victims of mass killings and many had bones apparently broken by hospital personnel, an anthropologist said on Monday.George McGlynn told reporters that about a third of the 221 skeletons have been examined and half of those - about 35 - had broken ribs. Others had broken noses or collarbones.It had long been suspected that the remains - dug up over the past seven months from a disused hospital cemetery in the Tyrollean city of Hall, east of Innsbruck - were those of people killed by the Nazis because of physical or mental disabilities.McGlynn said it could still not be confirmed whether they were killed, although the fractures were likely the result of violence they suffered while in the hospital. “I doubt they resulted directly in death,” he said....
Source: CNN.com
Nov 17, 2011
London (CNN) -- Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" encouraged amateur "symbologists" everywhere to scan their favorite paintings for secret codes -- but the practice has been going on for centuries.From the inscrutable prehistoric cave drawings inside the Chauvet Caves in Southern France to the abstract paintings of Jackson Pollock, artists have kept the intentions and significance of their work close to their chests.Famously opaque paintings include Bronzino's 1545 work "An Allegory with Venus and Cupid," which contains allegorical figures even scholars aren't able to decipher.Still, historians often discover hidden images, symbols and texts in works of art.CNN World's Treasures selects examples of such discoveries -- some reputable, others outlandish....
Source: Austrian Times
Nov 16, 2011
An unidentified visitor to a cemetery in Leonding, Austria, has placed a vase on the grave of Hitler’s parents, engraved with the word "unforgettable" and the letters "SS". According to the state office for protection, the visitor posed as a Viennese artists and "Hitler’s grandson". An increasing number of German skinheads have held vigils around this grave. On Hitler’s 120th birthday, a large wreath was placed on the grave and on all saints day it was also lavishly decorated....
Source: The Hill
Nov 16, 2011
Members of the House on Wednesday put new pressure on European companies to compensate relatives of Holocaust victims who were denied insurance payments, and whose family members were transported on French trains to concentration camps where they were killed.The House Foreign Affairs Committee held a Wednesday hearing on two bills aimed at forcing these companies to compensate survivors."It pains me to say that survivors of one of the greatest atrocities of the twentieth century continue to feel the pain of the Nazis' brutality and oppression," Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) said in her prepared statement. "These lingering injustices stem from those who sought to profit from the abuse of innocent victims and that took advantage of circumstance to enrich themselves while others suffered."...
