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
October 3, 2006
In the end, only one vote mattered.
Saying it ran “counter to the tradition of our great nation,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill on Saturday that would have automatically allocated all the state’s 55 electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate received the national popular vote.
The bill, which passed the state’s Legislature this summer, was devised by John R. Koza, a computer scientist who envisioned a system in which a series of states holding the nu
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
October 3, 2006
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is considering drafts of documents that would form part of a public-education campaign on campus anti-Semitism, a follow-up to the commission's report on the issue last spring.
A 25-page draft of the commission's proposed Web page on campus anti-Semitism, a set of documents that was obtained by The Chronicle, aims to inform college students about anti-Semitism and the resources available to victims of anti-Semitic harassment or intimidation.
Source: AP
October 3, 2006
Underwater sonar images of a black shape against a background of grainy monochrome are safely stored on two computer hard drives at Bruce Abele's home in Newton, Mass.
Blurred by odd shadows and striations, the silhouettes are the biggest clues in more than 60 years to the fate of his father's World War II submarine, the USS Grunion, which sank nearly 5,000 miles west of Massachusetts, near the obscure islands at the tip of Alaska's Aleutian chain.
Source: Christian Science Monitor
October 4, 2006
An 18-inch piece of metal wasn't exactly what commercial fisherman David Canepa and his two-man crew expected to see when they hauled in their sablefish traps during a five-day cruise off California's Point Sur 27 years ago.
They weren't sure what it signified, but they figured their catch of corroded aluminum might be from some sort of aircraft, he recalls. "By looking at the piece and its structure, we knew it wasn't any kind of ship or boat."
During the pa
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
October 3, 2006
The white, cotton T-shirt with the $15,000 price tag has a Hollywood pedigree, having once hugged the torso of actor James Dean during the filming of "Rebel Without a Cause."
That makes it a valuable collectible to some of the quarter million registered customers who could bid on it during online auctions scheduled for Friday and Saturday.
Source: Christian Science Monitor
October 4, 2006
When Harvey Ball took a black felt-tip pen to a piece of yellow paper in 1963, he never could have realized that he was drafting the face that would launch 50 million buttons and an eventual war over copyright.
Mr. Ball, a commercial artist, was simply filling a request from Joy Young of the Worcester Mutual Insurance Company to create an image for their "smile campaign" to coach employees to be more congenial in their customer relations. It seems there was a hunger for a
Source: Hartford Courant
September 30, 2006
Sen. Christopher J. Dodd today takes his crusade against the new system of trying terrorist suspects from his father's Senate desk to a conference commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials - trials where, Dodd will say, "America's moral authority in the second half of the 20th century was born."
But nowadays, Dodd plans to tell the conference, "For 60 years, a single word has best captured America's moral authority and commitment to justice: Nuremberg
Source: Newsweek
October 2, 2006
Scott Cameron and Dennis Kanke had a lot in common. Residents of Duluth, Minn., both fought in Vietnam and returned home with traumas that lingered for decades. Both clawed their way out of the pit with the help of therapy and medication. And both fell back into it when the Iraq invasion began more than three years ago, with war scenes on television triggering nightmares and flashbacks. "It all came rushing back," says Cameron, a sinewy 56-year-old who took a bullet in the spine in 196
Source: Time Europe
October 3, 2006
Rarely has art had such an immediate effect on policy as it did in France last week. The war movie Indigènes — literally 'natives' — hit theaters with a tale of the 130,000 North African and other colonial troops who fought to liberate France from the Nazis in 1944. The same day the film was released, the government pledged that from next year African and Asian veterans will receive pensions equal to those of their French brothers-in-arms. As a result, the French government will end a 47-year
Source: Independent (South Africa)
October 3, 2006
Republic of Congo welcomed home the remains of its colonial founder on Monday with plans to re-inter the body in the capital that bears his name, prompting a fiery debate about whether the country should be commemorating its colonisers.Francois Camille Pierre Savorgnan De Brazza founded the city of Brazzaville in 1884 and began to establish the colony that became Republic of Congo after independence from France in 1960. He governed the colony from 1886 to 1897.
Source: NYT
October 1, 2006
The “Sex Scandal” club is only one subcaucus in the big tent of Washington infamy and shame. There is also the “Blatant Financial Improprieties” subcaucus (with the guest star Duke Cunningham), the “Ill-Advised Nazi Comparison” subcaucus (Howdy, Senator Dick Durbin) and the “Racially Insensitive Remark Directly Into a Video Camera” (“You’re an animal, George Allen”).
But the sex subcaucus is easily the biggest.
“You always seem to have politicians doing bizarrely self-d
Source: NYT
October 2, 2006
review of White House records has determined that George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, did brief Condoleezza Rice and other top officials on July 10, 2001, about the looming threat from Al Qaeda, a State Department spokesman said Monday.
The account by Sean McCormack came hours after Ms. Rice, the secretary of state, told reporters aboard her airplane that she did not recall the specific meeting on July 10, 2001, noting that she had met repeatedly with Mr. Te
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
October 2, 2006
The University of Mississippi marked the 44th anniversary of a milestone in its history today with the dedication of a civil-rights monument that features a life-size statue of James H. Meredith, the first black student admitted to the university. Mr. Meredith, whose arrival on the Oxford, Miss., campus sparked riots in 1962, was an honored guest at the ceremony.
“This monument is an appropriate way to memorialize the role of the University of Mississippi and James Meredith in openi
Source: National Security Archive
October 2, 2006
For understandable reasons, the George W. Bush administration has shunned comparisons between the war in Iraq and the Vietnam War. But in his latest book, State of Denial, Bob Woodward writes that Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state--and a secret (and frequent) consultant to the current president--has made the parallel explicit to the White House.
According to Woodward, Kissinger recently gave a Bush aide a copy of a memo he wrote in 1969 arguing against troop withdrawals
Source: Fredericksburg.com
October 1, 2006
Ongoing work at Montpelier, which is being restored to look as it did during Madison's time, is helping to increase visitation at the 2,650-acre estate, said spokeswoman Peggy Seiter Vaughn.
"It's up 10 percent this year, and it was up 3 percent last year," she said. "It's because there's a lot that's new to see here."
The stucco that once covered the main house already has been stripped away, as have the 20th-century additions made by the duPonts, t
Source: Yahoo
September 29, 2006
A Texas teenager has found what one archaeologist at the Gila Cliff Dwellings in southwestern New Mexico describes as a "pretty big deal."
Andrew Connell, 15, was on a hike with his classmates in the Gila Wilderness this spring when the group was distracted by what sounded like an owl. While looking for the bird, he spotted something among the rocks and oak leaves.
It ended up being an almost intact prehistoric bowl that dates back to the time when the Mogollo
Source: ABC.net.au
October 2, 2006
2000-year-old recipe for hair dye shows Ancient Greeks and Romans used nanotechnology to permanently colour grey hair black, say experts.
Dr Philippe Walter of the French state museum agency's Centre for Research and Restoration and colleagues report their findings online in the journal Nano Letters.
The researchers made up a batch of dye according to a recipe used since Greco-Roman times, which includes a mixture of lead oxide and slaked lime....
Source: Christian Science Monitor
September 7, 2006
Mention the name Bangalore, and sprawling high-tech campuses of a saffron-scented Silicon Valley come to mind. In short, "New India." By year's end, however, Bangalore could go the way of Bombay, changing its name from an international totem to a Jeopardy question. What is the city formerly known as Bangalore: Bengaluru. Or perhaps Bengalooru.
The trend that began vexing cartographers a decade ago when Bombay became Mumbai, Madras became Chennai, and Calcutta became Kolka
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
October 2, 2006
When San Francisco was being rebuilt after the disastrous 1906 earthquake and fire, more than 5,600 temporary shacks thrown up for refugees were hailed as symbols of the city's plucky resolve to rise from the ashes.
Thousands of people lived in them from the spring of 1906 to the summer of 1907, when the refugee camps were closed and the shacks were either scrapped or given away.
Just over two dozen still exist, and what to do with them is a dilemma of historic propor
Source: Hollywood.com
October 2, 2006
Actress Kirsten Dunst has come under fire from historians for her "frightful" interpretation of tragic French queen Marie Antoinette.
Dunst plays the 18th Century monarch in Sofia Coppola's racy new biopic, which was booed by critics at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
Now her overtly sexual performance has been attacked by France's Marie Antoinette Association as well, who insist the queen's bedroom antics are not factually based.
The associat
