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: The New Republic
Mar 1, 2011
Charles Darwin considered the evolution of the human eye one of the toughest problems his theory had to explain. In “On the Origin of Species,” he wrote that the idea that natural selection could produce such an intricate organ “seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.”
But Darwin dispelled that seeming absurdity by laying out a series of steps by which the evolution could take place. Making this sequence all the more plausible was the fact that some of the tr
Source: NYT
Mar 1, 2011
The specter of the 1995 government shutdown hangs over Capitol Hill, a memory many hoped to leave behind, along with beepers and episodes of “Baywatch Nights.”...
for some lawmakers in the new Republican freshman class, the circumstances and stakes of a budget showdown are quite different today. They frame their mission less as a one-term spending fight than as a crusade to redefine the role of the federal government in American life.
Many freshmen believe a government
Source: NYT
Feb 28, 2011
RAMAT GAN, Israel — One of the mysteries that scholars have puzzled over for centuries is the exact shade of blue represented by “tekhelet,” which the Bible mentions as the color of ceremonial robes donned by high priests and ritual prayer tassels worn by the common Israelite.
What was known about tekhelet (pronounced t-CHELL-et) was that the Talmud said it was produced from the secretion of the sea snail, which is still found on Israeli beaches.
Traditional interpretat
Source: WaPo
Feb 28, 2011
What was it like in the trenches? What was it like in all those places whose names have faded in the dusty recesses of memory, places like Ypres and Gallipoli, Verdun and the Marne? What was it like to fight the war that was supposed to make the world safe for democracy?
There's no one left to ask.
The Great War has almost passed from living memory. The veterans have slipped away, one by one, their obituaries marking the end of the line in country after country: Harry P
Source: Fox News
Feb 28, 2011
LOS ANGELES -- More than four decades after Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, his convicted murderer wants to go free for a crime he says he can't remember.
It is not old age or some memory-snatching disease that has erased an act Sirhan Bishara Sirhan once said he committed "with 20 years of malice aforethought." It's been this way almost from the beginning. Hypnotists and psychologists, lawyers and investigators have tried to jog his memory with no useful result.
Source: Seattle Times
Feb 28, 2011
MCNEIL ISLAND, Pierce County — When the prison that eventually would become McNeil Island Corrections Center opened more than 135 years ago, a tight-knit community of fishermen and loggers, brothel owners and bootleggers, and prison employees and their children developed around it.
As in any small town, everybody knew their neighbors' business — even if their neighbors were serving 15 to life.
"It was a wonderful place to grow up," recalls Tim Taylor, 60, of L
Source: Fox News
Feb 28, 2011
Two years ago this month, President Obama met with the families of Sept. 11 victims and other victims of terrorism at a special meeting in Washington, D.C., and promised “swift and certain justice” for the perpetrators. But the high expectations of that meeting have given way to frustration for many who met with Obama.
But with no timetable for a trial for those charged with being behind the attacks, Hamilton Peterson, who lost his father and stepmother on 9/11, says the families fe
Source: CNN
Feb 28, 2011
One of the most eccentric dying requests has finally been fulfilled as a mansion closed for most of the 20th century reopens to the public.
Maison Mantin was left to the town of Moulins in central France by Louis Mantin, in a will written months before his death in 1905. The landowner, who had inherited several properties, died unmarried and childless aged 54, only eight years after his house was completed.
Despite rumors that Mantin had demanded the house be closed for
Source: Tourism Review.com
Feb 28, 2011
The town of Stepina in the south-eastern Poland hides one of the best preserved fortified shelters built by Germans during the WWII. The concrete complex was supposed to protect Nazi trains as well as the special train of Adolf Hitler called ‘Amerika’. Similar fortification can be also found in nearby Strzyżów where Hitler had one of his headquarters.
Trains were one of the favourite means of transport for the Nazi commanders because they were fast and mobile. Since they we
Source: BBC News
Feb 28, 2011
Items once owned by Wallis Simpson, the woman for whom Edward VIII renounced the throne, are set to be sold in an auction.
A collection of her lingerie, handbags and luggage will be auctioned next week in central London.
A scarlet chiffon nightdress from the 1940s to early 1950s is expected to fetch up to £1,000.
Proceeds from the sale, at Kerry Taylor Auctions, will go to the Dodi International Charitable Foundation.
It helps children in need
Source: Salon
Feb 28, 2011
Did Haley Barbour misremember an episode in which he claimed to have seen Martin Luther King speak in Yazoo City, Mississippi, in 1962? A growing body of evidence is pointing in that direction.
The controversy centers on comments made by Barbour, the Mississippi governor and likely presidential candidate, to a Weekly Standard writer last year. The resulting profile already landed Barbour in trouble because he lauded the racist White Citizens Council of his hometown as a force for go
Source: AP
Feb 28, 2011
An FBI file contends that a young Edward M. Kennedy arranged to rent a brothel for a night while visiting Chile in 1961, a year before he was elected to the Senate.
The previously redacted State Department memo, dated Dec. 28, 1961, was released by Judicial Watch, a Washington-based organization that said it obtained it through a Freedom of Information lawsuit.
According to the memo, the Massachusetts Democrat made arrangements to rent the brothel "for an entire ni
Source: Discovery News
Feb 28, 2011
Remains of the Husky-like dog, buried 7,000 years ago in Siberia, suggest people saw it as a thinking, social being.
Burial remains of a dog that lived over 7,000 years ago in Siberia suggest the male Husky-like animal probably lived and died similar to how humans did at that time and place, eating the same food, sustaining work injuries, and getting a human-like burial.
For the study, Losey collaborated with excavation director Vladimir Bazaliiskii and researchers Sand
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Feb 28, 2011
The remains of a 4,500-year-old sauna have been discovered by archaeologists excavating a Stone Age temple.
They unearthed the foundations of the building at Marden Henge, near Devizes in Wiltshire.
Located close to the River Avon, the neolithic ‘sauna’ was in a key position overlooking a ceremonial area at the site.
Marden Henge, which has no standing stones, is located on a line which connects stone circles at Stonehenge and Avebury but remains a mystery
Source: ABC News
Feb 28, 2011
The most comprehensive research project into Tasmania's convict ancestry is scouring the globe for information.
An international team of demographers, historians and epidemiologists is collating Australia's biggest family history.
Led by the University of Tasmania, the team is following the fortunes of convicts transported to Tasmania in the 1800s.
Historian Hamish Maxwell-Stewart says convict records are proving a rich source of information.
R
Source: BBC
Feb 28, 2011
John Lennon and Yoko Ono's autographs secured by a Mayo teenager more than 40 years ago are to be auctioned next week.
Sheppard's Irish Auction House in the Republic of Ireland, is to sell the signatures in Durrow, County Laois, next Wednesday.
They have been valued at between 500 to 800 euros.
Auctioneer Michael Sheppard told the Irish Times that the autographs were being sold by a man who had asked the couple to sign his autograph book during a visit in 1
Source: BBC
Feb 28, 2011
Gulf War veterans have staged a protest in Westminster to call for greater help with their medical problems.
Campaigners say 1,000 British veterans have died because of Gulf War Syndrome and they want improved testing, treatment and compensation.
The government says there is no evidence of a specific illness caused by the war.
The march is timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the end of Operation Desert Storm.
Many British veterans ha
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 28, 2011
Five thousand years after the bundle of frozen bones that became known as Otzi the Iceman met his end at the hands of Alpine robbers, two Dutch forensic artists have reconstructed his face.
Otzi is believed to have been killed in 3289 BC, while trekking up the Schnalstal glacier in the Italian Alps.
Wearing a coat and leggings made from sheepskin, and cattle-hide moccasins, Otzi was eating a last meal of unleavened bread and meat when he was ambushed.
Hit
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 28, 2011
Two former Argentine military dictators have gone on trial charged with the kidnapping of babies allegedly seized from political prisoners and opponents minutes after birth.
Jorge Videla, who ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1981, and Reynaldo Bignone, the last leader of the military regime from 1982 to 1983, are accused along with six other former military figures.
Federico Delgado, federal prosecutor, called the theft of children "one of the darkest episodes in Argen
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 28, 2011
Ted Kennedy, the late US senator and youngest of the three brothers who lit up Washington in the 1960s, rented an entire brothel for a night during a South American junket, it has emerged.
The FBI's file on Mr Kennedy states that he "made arrangements" to hire a bordello in Santiago, Chile, while visiting the region in 1961 - toward the end of his brother John's first year as US president.
Mr Kennedy, then a 29-year-old district attorney in Massachussets, also
