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: Time Magazine
Sep 20, 2011
For much of the year, Mongolia covers up under a thick layer of snow and ice, lacerated by glacial winds that make its frigid expanses as uninviting to potential visitors as they are punishing for the thousands of nomads who call the country's wilderness their home.But for a few months each summer, that freezing grip disappears long enough for the warm, green bustle of life to return to the enormous steppes, sweeping hills and rushing streams of Mongolia's sub-Siberian outback.It's during this brief period that outsiders can seize the opportunity to strike out into the far reaches of Mongolia's pristine heartland. Once there, they will experience the kindness and unhesitating hospitality of its nomadic inhabitants and partake in the centuries-old, equestrian-based culture that the nation's traveling horse breeders embody and honor as part of their daily activities. Our group of 10 riders did just that for two weeks in August, when we swapped our modern French routines for full immersion into the lives and passions of our Mongolian hosts....
Source: NYT
Sep 19, 2011
Daniel Mowles preparing roasted rabbits for a tasting of Civil War-era food at the Roger Smith Hotel on Monday. The chef, it turned out, was from southwest Virginia and grew up in a household that, he said, had inherited some of Robert E. Lee’s silverware.Those were just coincidences at a tasting of dishes from the Civil War era, prepared according to recipes adapted from cookbooks published between 1861 and 1865.Here was another coincidence. The tasting was organized by Andrew F. Smith, a faculty member at the New School and the editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, who said he was distantly related to a Miss Leslie.He said she was famous among culinary historians as a 19th-century cookbook writer from Philadelphia. And it was her stewed mutton chops that were on the tasting menu, right after “Captain Sanderson’s boiled pork-and-bean soup” and before “Mrs. Haskell’s 1861 mashed potatoes.” That accompanied the roast rabbit....
Source: NYT
Sep 19, 2011
DUBLIN — Declaring himself a “peacemaker who can be trusted,” a former commander in the Irish Republican Army began a campaign on Monday to become Ireland’s next head of state.The former commander, Martin McGuinness, who is currently the deputy first minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly, was jailed in the 1970s in the Republic of Ireland for possession of bomb-making equipment and ammunition. He was the I.R.A. commander in the city of Londonderry and was reputedly the leader of the overall organization in Northern Ireland for many years.
Source: NYT ArtsBeat Blog
Sep 19, 2011
Before Philip Roth announced his tortured feelings about his own Jewishness to the world in “Goodbye, Columbus” (1959) and “Portnoy’s Complaint” (1969), he described to Martin Greenberg, the editor of Commentary magazine, his difficulty in writing about the subject. “If fiction isn’t hard enough to write, personal dilemmas — my own Jewishness — don’t help it any,” he wrote in a January 1958 letter.That letter is part of a collection of documents and correspondence that Commentary has donated to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin. The archive, which spans 1945 to 1995, includes letters by and to Bernard Malamud, Norman Mailer, Amos Oz, Elie Wiesel and Isaac Bashevis Singer, as well as the revisions of essays written for the magazine by George Orwell, Pearl S. Buck and Jean-Paul Sartre....
Source: LiveScience
Sep 19, 2011
A century after the golden age of polar exploration, ordinary folks with some spending money and a taste for adventure — but who'd rather forego the frostbite, starvation and killer-whale attacks — can own a piece of the compelling story of humankind's fevered race to the Earth's poles.
Source: WaPo
Sep 19, 2011
MOUNT TAMBORA, Indonesia — Bold farmers in Indonesia routinely ignore orders to evacuate the slopes of live volcanoes, but those living on Tambora took no chances when history’s deadliest mountain rumbled ominously this month.Villagers like Hasanuddin Sanusi have heard since they were young how the mountain they call home once blew apart in the largest eruption ever recorded — an 1815 event widely forgotten outside their region — killing 90,000 people and blackening skies on the other side of the globe....The April 1815 eruption of Tambora left a crater 7 miles (11 kilometers) wide and half a mile (1 kilometer) deep, spewing an estimated 400 million tons of sulfuric gases into the atmosphere and leading to “the year without summer” in the U.S. and Europe....No one expects a repeat of 1815 just yet — it takes much more than 200 years for that type of huge pressure to build up again, said de Boer, who teaches at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.The present activity could be part of the birth of Tambora’s so-called child, he said, a process whereby magma still being pushed upward from the original massive blast forms a new volcano in its place.But that’s little consolation for those confronted with the mountain’s new burst of activity....
Source: NYT
Sep 19, 2011
LONDON — The plan seems eminently reasonable: field a soccer team to represent Britain at next year’s Olympics, which after all are being held here, the home of the modern game.But there are several problems. For one thing, there is no such thing as a British soccer team. Instead, in a country where devotion to sports is fueled by ferocious regional and political rivalries, there are instead individual teams representing Britain’s fractious, proud and fiercely competitive constituent nations — namely England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland....Modern soccer began here in 1863. Through the influence of Britain’s far-flung empire, it spread to become the world’s most popular sport.But Britain has not played men’s soccer in the Olympics in more than half a century, since the 1960 Rome Games, or even tried to qualify since the early 1970s. The British women have never entered a team since the Olympic tournament for women began in 1996.While the International Olympic committee recognizes Britain as a combined team in all sports, FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, recognizes England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as separate teams. And there lies the heart of the controversy....
Source: AFP
Sep 18, 2011
AFP - Twenty years ago Monday, a German couple hiking the Italian Alps veered off a marked footpath and stumbled upon one of the world's oldest and most important archeological finds: Oetzi, "The Iceman".Oetzi fast became a sensation, not just because he proved to be more than 5,000 years old, but because his remains were so well-preserved, allowing paleontologists to uncover new details about the Stone Age in Europe.On September 19, 1991, Helmut and Erika Simon from Nuremburg were hiking at an altitude of 3,210 meters (10,500 feet) in the Italy's South Tyrol alps, according to an account published online by the South Tyrol Museum of Archeology....
Source: Dayton Daily News
Sep 18, 2011
1947: Hagerman v. Dayton — Ohio Supreme Court rules that local governments could not permit voluntary deduction of union dues from employees’ paychecks; declares municipal contracts improper delegation of governmental authority.Ferguson Act: Bans public employee strikes and provides for dismissal of strikers.1958: Voters reject right-to-work initiative, which would have prohibited adoption of union contracts that set union membership as condition of employment.1959: Legislature authorizes union dues checkoff for public employees, overturning that part of 1947 Hagerman ruling....
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Sep 18, 2011
Calls to change the Constitution are suddenly everywhere, and they aren't limited to any political quarter. Rick Perry, the Texas governor and Republican presidential hopeful, has proposed repealing the 17th Amendment—the one permitting the direct election of U.S. senators—and some Tea Partyers have rallied around a proposal to let state legislatures overrule acts of Congress (the so-called Repeal Amendment).At the same time, many on the left support a constitutional amendment, if necessary, to undo the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United opinion, which grants corporations many of the same free-speech (and campaign-donation) rights that ordinary citizens have.Lawrence Lessig, the Harvard law professor best known for his work on intellectual property but more recently a good-government reformer, has sensed the ferment and seized the moment: This month he will play host, with Mark Meckler, a national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, to a conference in Cambridge to discuss whether the time has come for a constitutional convention. Calling such a convention is a right given to Congress and the states under Article V of the Constitution but has never been exercised."Fifteen years ago, I didn't have the sense that the republic was prepared for this," Mr. Lessig says. "Now I do."...
Source: NYT
Sep 18, 2011
It was eerie 40 years after the deadly riot at Attica state prison to hear the voice of the late Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York employing his breathless signature adjective — “fabulous!” He was speaking back then to President Richard Nixon and attributing “a fabulous job” to the state troopers hours after they took the prison in a barrage by rooftop riflemen who killed 10 hostages along with 29 inmates. The president is heard complimenting the governor for “the courage you showed,” their voices resounding from newly available White House tape recordings.A state investigation commission has long since quashed the celebration, establishing how reckless the governor was to allow troopers, some with shotguns, fire down through thick clouds of tear gas at the innocent and guilty alike massed in the prison yard. Despite what the Rockefeller administration insisted, inmates did not slash the hostages’ throats; they were killed by state gunfire.Establishing the truth of that frenzied morning helped ease a painful experience for some. I am still troubled that the day before the raid, I foolishly stoked hope while talking to hostage families waiting outside the prison walls....
Source: BBC News
Sep 17, 2011
The Beatles showed their support for the US civil rights movement by refusing to play in front of segregated audiences, a contract shows.The document, which is to be auctioned next week, relates a 1965 concert at the Cow Palace in California.Signed by manager Brian Epstein, it specifies that The Beatles "not be required to perform in front of a segregated audience".The agreement also guarantees the band payment of $40,000 (£25,338)....
Source: Independent (UK)
Sep 17, 2011
Gruesome evidence of medieval Japanese Samurai warriors being decapitated, so that their heads could be taken as trophies by their enemies, is being examined by Japanese and British scientists.In a bid to fully understand the nature of warfare in medieval Japan, Dr. Michael Wysocki, a specialist in forensic anthropology at the University of Central Lancashire, and Japanese scientists from Santa Marianna University, School of Medicine, near Tokyo, have been examining battle and decapitation trauma suffered by Samurai warriors in a 14th century Japanese civil war.“The skeletal material is of huge importance in helping to understand the nature of warfare in medieval Japan,” said Dr. Wysocki of the University’s School of Forensic and Investigative Sciences....
Source: Baltimore Sun
Sep 17, 2011
Imagine driving into Annapolis along Rowe Boulevard or sailing into the city's harbor, glancing up toward the tiered State House dome, and seeing that it's colored not in the brick red and Colonial white you've known your entire life, but in lemon gold, muted blue and honey bordering on apricot. Sound like something from a weird dream? It's not. When George Washington strode inside to resign his commission in 1783, when the Continental Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris there, ending the Revolutionary War, and when the British sailed up the Chesapeake to sack Baltimore in 1814, those were the colors they saw. So found a team of workers as they stripped away paint layers during an $800,000 maintenance project this summer.
Source: NYT
Sep 17, 2011
DUBLIN — Even as it remains preoccupied with its struggling economy, Ireland is in the midst of a profound transformation, as rapid as it is revolutionary: it is recalibrating its relationship to the Roman Catholic Church, an institution that has permeated almost every aspect of life here for generations.This is still a country where abortion is against the law, where divorce became legal only in 1995, where the church runs more than 90 percent of the primary schools and where 87 percent of the population identifies itself as Catholic. But the awe, respect and fear the Vatican once commanded have given way to something new — rage, disgust and defiance — after a long series of horrific revelations about decades of abuse of children entrusted to the church’s care by a reverential populace.
Source: AP
Sep 17, 2011
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Visitors to Kansas City museums can easily find exhibits about Anglo, Native American and African-American contributions to the metro region.But there's been a major gap in documenting the history of Latino residents, even though it stretches back hundreds of years.Kansas City Museum officials have begun an effort to collect artifacts and documents from Latino history for its collections. The first important step was announced this week, when the museum received the entire 30-year archives of the Dos Mundos bilingual newspaper, according to The Kansas City Star (http://bit.ly/pUN0a7 )."We're incredibly honored to be identified as the repository of this material," said Christopher Leitch, director of the Kansas City Museum. "It's a real obligation. It's really humbling."...
Source: Irish Times
Sep 16, 2011
HOLY WELLS, bridges, milestones, vernacular buildings, lime kilns and other industrial sites that post-date 1700 will be “left without any protection” following moves to “delist” them, the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland has claimed.In what it described as a “very worrying proposal”, the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht is seeking to exclude all post-1700 archaeological and historical structures and sites from the national Record of Monuments and Places (RMP).Finola O’Carroll, the institute’s chairwoman, said this arose from “a perverse Civil Service sense of fair play” because of discrepancies between counties, with Cork having a “very comprehensive record” of monuments and others having little or none at all.“Instead of seeking to apply the Cork standard across the board, they are instead opposing to level out the playing field by delisting the lot,” she said. “We are very concerned because this would not be regarded as best practice [in archaeology].”...
Source: Steve Aftergood's Secrecy News
Sep 16, 2011
The National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that develops and operates U.S. intelligence satellites, is observing the 50th anniversary of its establishment in 1961 with a burst of declassification activity.Tomorrow, September 17, the newly declassified KH-9 HEXAGON satellite will go on public display -- for one day only -- in the parking lot of the Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum.The KH-9 HEXAGON was a photographic reconnaissance satellite that was first launched in 1971 and ceased operation in the mid-1980s. At sixty feet long and ten feet in diameter, it is said to be the largest intelligence satellite ever launched by the U.S.
Source: Connection
Sep 15, 2011
The men who built and manned Fort Ethan Allen for four years in the Civil War might enjoy the notion that a 150 years later a bunch of civilians are fighting over what to do with their lonely and sometimes scary gun emplacement.Fort Ethan Allen was built in 1861 and became one of the 68 forts and batteries that surrounded Washington after Union troops were defeated at the First Battle of Bull Run, which resulted in what Arlington Historic Preservation Coordinator Michael Leventhal calls the "great skedaddle. The 32-mile foot race" back to Washington.President Lincoln ordered the military to immediately build a series of forts to surround the nation’s capital and defend it against being overrun by Southern Forces. In the end, Washington became the most fortified city in the United States.Many of these forts never had to fire in anger any of the 1,120 guns distributed around the city, but for the Virginia perimeter forts there were other hazards. The pickets and rifle pits manned to screen the guns were raided by rebel guerilla bands and of course, there was disease, one of greatest killers in the Civil War and certainly so at Fort Ethan Allen, where in one summer alone Ohio units had 200 men disabled by disease and 50 died....
Source: WaPo
Sep 15, 2011
Names of people enslaved in Virginia, pulled from some of the Virginia Historical Society ’s 8 million documents, have been compiled into Unknown No Longer, a searchable database now available to the public.The online tool includes more than 1,500 names found in letters, wills, court records and other sources. Each name is connected to a digital copy of the original document in which it was found. Society spokeswoman Jennifer Guild said the work of extracting the information began more than a year ago.“It is possible these names have never been seen before,” she said. “This is the first time we have published them.”The database can be searched by keywords such as name, occupation and plantation. “For instance, if all you knew was your great-great-great-grandmother was named Ann and she had been a slave in Virginia, that is enough to begin a search with this database,” Guild said. “Or, if all you have is a plantation name, you go to that name and you will find what we have on the slaves who lived there.”...
