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 13, 2005
Heather Carbo, a matter-of-fact librarian at an evangelical seminary outside Philadelphia, was cleaning out an archival cabinet one hot afternoon in July. It was a dirty and routine job. But there, on the bottom shelf, she stumbled across what may be one of the most important musicological finds in years.
It was a working manuscript score for a piano version of Beethoven's "Grosse Fuge," a monument of classical music. And it was in the composer's own hand, according to Sot
Source: NYT
October 13, 2005
The nonfiction finalists include works of current and more distant history, biography and memoir, including the much talked about book at the moment, "The Year of Magical Thinking," by Joan Didion. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Ms. Didion's work explores a year in which her husband dies and her daughter becomes gravely ill.
Also named as finalists were "102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers" (Times Books/Henry Holt), a chron
Source: AP
October 13, 2005
Vivian Malone Jones, the first black University of Alabama graduate, has been hospitalized in Atlanta. A woman answering the telephone at Atlanta Medical Center confirmed Thursday that Jones is being treated in the hospital's intensive care unit.
Jones grew up in Mobile, Ala., and had enrolled at historically black Alabama A&M University in Huntsville when she transferred to the University of Alabama in 1963. The move led to former Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace's infamous "
Source: Hartford Courant
October 13, 2005
Slamming shut the federal tribal recognition era in Connecticut, the Interior Department yesterday rejected bids by the Schaghticoke and Eastern Pequot Indians and effectively ended the prospects of additional casinos in the state. The long-awaited rulings, after years of research, reversals and rising tensions over the prospect of more mega-casinos in Connecticut, crushed tribal members gathered in Kent and North Stonington. The denials followed an Interior Department appeals panel's reversal i
Source: Guardian (UK)
October 13, 2005
Lawrence of Arabia told the cabinet at the end of the first world war that there was no case "for separating Sunni and Shia Arabs", an extraordinary foreshadowing of the issues at stake in this weekend's Iraqi constitutional vote, overseen by US and British occupying forces. TE Lawrence's ideas are shown in a recently unearthed map that is one of many uncanny links between past and present in an new Imperial War Museum exhibition marking the 70th anniversary of his death in 1935.
Source: scotsman.com
October 13, 2005
A 90-MILLION-year-old dinosaur with striking bird-like features may force scientists to rewrite part of the family tree of the extinct reptiles, suggesting that flight evolved in two separate evolutionary paths. The creature found in Argentina is the earliest known dromaeosaur - a group of predator dinosaurs which includes the velociraptor, one of the stars of the movie Jurassic Park.The discovery of an almost complete fossil skeleton at La Buitrera in Neuguen province in Pa
Source: BBC
October 13, 2005
The remains of the world's oldest noodles have been unearthed in China. The 50cm-long, yellow strands were found in a pot that had probably been buried during a catastrophic flood. Radiocarbon dating of the material taken from the Lajia archaeological site on the Yellow River indicates the food was about 4,000 years old. The discovery goes a long way to settling the old argument over who first created the string-like food.Scientists tell the journal Nature that the noodles w
Source: NYT
October 12, 2005
New discoveries in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, notably another jawbone, appear to give additional support to the idea that a separate species of little people new to science and now extinct lived there as recently as 12,000 years ago.
But a vigorous minority of skeptical scientists were unmoved by the new findings. They contend that the skeletal remains are more likely to be deformed modern human beings, not a distinct species.Th
Source: Inside Higher Ed
October 12, 2005
The Haworth Press has announced that it will proceed with publishing Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in the Classical Tradition of the West, but without one essay that had been planned. Haworth had called off publication because of criticism of that an essay, “Pederasty: An Integration of Cross-Cultural, Cross-Species, and Empirical Data,” could be viewed as endorsing sex between adults and adolescents. The Haworth announcement said that a future volume would deal with the
Source: Daily Pennsylvanian
October 12, 2005
he NCAA's effort to rid college sports of the Sioux, the Savages and the Indians, raises another question ...
When the NCAA passed new rules regulating the use of Native American mascots in collegiate championship events this past summer, there was a mild outcry over whether other ethnic or religious groups should be similarly considered. For now, though, the Quaker has been spared as the subject of any such debate.Representatives of the Penn athletic department
Source: USA Today
October 12, 2005
If Australian forklift operator Mike Hastings is, as genealogists contend, the rightful heir to the British throne, then he really needs to brush up on his tea-making skills. A documentary team from Britain's Channel Four conducted extensive research and concluded Hastings' ancestors were cheated out of the crown in the 15th century, meaning he should rightfully be the British head of state.The documentary's historian Michael Jones found documents in
Source: The Australian
October 12, 2005
Lawrence of Arabia's vision for the Middle East has been revealed in a map he created after World War I. T.E.Lawrence, the British colonel whose wartime collaboration with the Arabs against the Turks was immortalised in the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia, attempted to reward Britain's Arab allies by dividing territory between them. His sympathy for the cause of Arab self-determination is well known, but the details contained in the map eluded historians because it was filed at Britain's archives u
Source: USA Today
October 11, 2005
The year 1948 resonates with Israelis just as 1776 does with Americans — as the year their nation was born in blood during a war for independence against all odds. For Palestinians, 1948 means something very different. It marks the defeat of the Arab armies, the failure of Palestinians to establish their own state and the beginning of exile. It was the year 750,000 Palestinians became refugees in neighboring Arab countries — the start of a period they call "The Catastrophe," or al-Nakb
Source: WP
October 10, 2005
It took a lot of digging to bring back to life the Spanish influenza virus of 1918. Some was done with invisible molecular primers in a PCR machine in Rockville. Some was done with pick and shovel in the frozen ground of Alaska. Either way, it was a huge amount of work on a project whose chance of success at the start seemed very, very slim. Now, it will go down as one of the most astonishing technical feats in the history of science -- the viral equivalent of bringing dinosaurs back in the fict
Source: Wa Po
October 12, 2005
This much is clear: One of the former Supreme Court justices most admired by nominee Harriet Miers is Warren E. Burger. But just how quickly Miers recalled his full name and whether she ever referred to him simply as "Warren" is now a matter of dispute.
Miers noted her admiration of Burger during a meeting last Wednesday morning with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. No staff members were present during the session, which took pl
Source: Yahoo News
October 8, 2005
Officials gave initial approval Thursday to a memorial for victims of communist regimes that would be located within sight of one of the icons of democracy the Capitol.
The 90-square-foot monument would be built on National Park Service land one block west of the Capitol. A central feature will be a bronze Goddess of Democracy statue similar to the papier-mache and Styrofoam statue erected by pro-democracy students in Beijing's Tiananmen Square during 1989 demonstrations.
Source: Robert Essner, CEO of Wyeth, in the NYT
October 9, 2005
"When I was in high school, I got involved in Latin, and I set out on an academic plan to become a history professor. I went to undergraduate school and graduate school with the aim of teaching history, and taught some classes at Ohio State in my early 20's, during the Vietnam War. I was studying history at Ohio State when I realized that there was no future in history. I came from classical Greek and Roman history training, and there were no jobs available along those lines in the U.S.
Source: altweeklies.com
October 10, 2005
North Carolina historian Timothy B. Tyson's review of Jesse Helms'"Here's Where I Stand" apparently was a little too tough for News & Observer editors. They balanced it with R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.'s valentine to Helms. Tyson says of the Raleigh newspaper's move:"I see it as an unprincipled change in a paper's policy for one book that won't be applied to other books, and the only explanation is Helms' fame, power and popularity. It tends to marginalize the work that I had done. The piece that I wr
Source: NYT
October 11, 2005
The U.S. government issued a statement of regret Tuesday for the actions of soldiers who took valuables belonging to Hungarian Jews that had been seized on a Nazi ''Gold Train'' during the chaotic end of World War II.
The statement issued by the U.S. Justice Department said that the government ''regrets the improper conduct of certain of its military personnel'' who took items that had been on the train, which was carrying jewelry, gold, artwork, Oriental rugs, china, cutlery, linen
Source: Fred Kaplan in Slate
October 11, 2005
Thomas C. Schelling won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences this week. Today's papers note his ingenious applications of "game theory" to labor negotiations, business transactions, and arms-control agreements. But what they don't note what is little-known in general is the crucial role he played in formulating the strategies of "controlled escalation" and "punitive bombing" that plunged our country into the war in Vietnam.
Schelli
