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: Boston Globe
September 7, 2005
Willa Cather won the Pulitzer Prize and appeared on the cover of Time magazine when that meant something. She gained critical and eventual commercial success for books like "O Pioneers!" and "My Antonia" and wrote one of the great books of the 20th century, "Death Comes for the Archbishop." Her work is secure in the American literary canon. ... Tonight, PBS's "American Masters" reintroduces her to us in a 90-minute documentary, a solid, earnest eff
Source: Epoch Times
August 30, 2005
An international team of researchers have discovered after chemical analyses, that organics absorbed and preserved in pottery jars from the Neolithic village of Jiahu, in Henan province, Central China contained a beverage of rice, honey, and fruit made as early as 9,000 years ago. The discovery was made by an international team of researchers including the University of Pennsylvania Museum’s archaeochemist Dr. Patrick McGovern of MASCA (Museum Applied Science Cen
Source: Seattle Times
September 7, 2005
Recently conservative columnist Michelle Malkin argued in "In Defense of Internment" that the rounding up of Japanese Americans during World War II was justified on military grounds. Most historians dispute that judgment. And now Greg Robinson, assistant professor of history at the University of Quebec at Montreal, has drawn attention to a letter written by John J. McCloy that undermines Malkin's argument. The letter, dated July 23, 1942, is to Robert Patterson,
Source: Nature.com
September 7, 2005
Scientists have discovered a way to slow the disintegration of old manuscripts. The technique involves bathing papers in an organic solution doped with alkali compounds and antioxidants. These help to tie up atoms of copper and other metals in the ink that may eat the paper away. It is the first successful treatment that is not water-based, the researchers announced at the annual conference of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Dublin on 5 September.Th
Source: NYT
September 7, 2005
We are just beginning to appreciate the human disaster occurring in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast. It also faces the loss of some of America's most notable historical architecture. Maybe not in the French Quarter, which may emerge relatively intact, or the Garden District, which was spared most of the flooding. The dangers lie in neighborhoods like Treme and Mid-City, which extend along Bayou Road toward Lake Pontchartrain and are rich in 18th and 19th century homes, shops, churches and soci
Source: NYT
September 6, 2005
A book about the deadly 1927 flood along the Mississippi River has become a strong online seller since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, The Associated Press reported. "Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America" had risen to No. 11 on Amazon.com's best-seller list by yesterday afternoon. The book, by a New Orleans resident, John M. Barry, describes the history and politics behind a flood that killed 1,000 people and displaced 900,000 from Lo
Source: NYT
September 6, 2005
A coin owned by generations of a California family has been confirmed by numismatists as one of 12 known quarter eagle coins that were made of Gold Rush ore in 1854 at the San Francisco Mint. "The coin is only about the size of a dime and contains just one-eighth ounce of California gold, but I guarantee it will be worth much more than its weight in gold when it's sold at the auction," said John Kraljevich, director of research at American Numismatic Rarities of Wolfeboro, which authen
Source: NYT
September 6, 2005
As a Supreme Court law clerk more than two decades ago, John G. Roberts Jr. learned how not to be chief justice. His boss back in 1980-81 was an associate justice, one who often chafed under the leadership style of Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and who freed, even encouraged, his law clerks to poke fun at what they saw as the chief justice's pomposity and penchant for self-aggrandizement.Later, when Mr. Roberts was working in the White House counsel's office, me
Source: NYT
September 6, 2005
Dr. Daniel A. Ruge, the White House physician who made crucial decisions in the care of President Ronald Reagan after he was shot in 1981, died Aug. 30 in Denver. He was 88. Mr. Reagan went back to the White House 12 days after the shooting. Many doctors credited his recovery, if not his survival, to Dr. Ruge's decision not to disrupt the hospital's routine.
But Dr. Ruge later said in interviews with this reporter that he erred in neglecting to invoke the 25th A
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
September 6, 2005
Olaudah Equiano's famous first-person account of the Middle Passage in his 1789 autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, has become the definitive version of the harrowing journey endured by slaves transported across the ocean. But what if Equiano did not make the journey?Vincent Carretta did not set out to question Equiano's tale, but in the process of his research, he uncovered evidence in public records that E
Source: Inside Higher Ed
September 6, 2005
Tulane University announced Friday and Loyola University on Sunday that they would not open for the fall semester in the wake of the damage of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The universities’ announcements came as leaders of key higher education groups issued guidelines for colleges to use in helping students unable to attend college in New Orleans. Other colleges in New Orleans may well be forced to make similar decisions. And academic meetings scheduled to t
Source: NYT
September 6, 2005
Only the wind inhabits the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in Colorado, birds and vines the pyramids of the Maya. Sand and silence have swallowed the clamors of frankincense traders and camels in the old desert center of Ubar. Troy was buried for centuries before it was uncovered. Parts of the Great Library of Alexandria, center of learning in the ancient world, might be sleeping with the fishes, off Egypt's coast. Nothing lasts forever.
"Cities rise and fall depending on what ma
Source: Boston Globe
September 6, 2005
When ordering people to leave New Orleans while Hurricane Katrina lurked in the Gulf of Mexico, state and federal authorities apparently failed to consider that 27.9 percent of the city was below the poverty line and therefore unlikely to have transportation.
The oversight was perhaps more understandable given that society as a whole seemed to have tabled its debate over poor, largely black, inner-city neighborhoods somewhere around two decades ago.
The notion that a disaster
Source: Christian Science Monitor
September 6, 2005
The saga of William H. Rehnquist at the US Supreme Court is very much the story of a long-term Republican campaign to conquer an institution that had become a citadel of liberal power in the 1960s.
Now, with the passing of the chief justice on Saturday evening, legal historians and constitutional scholars are assessing the Rehnquist legacy. It is an assessment that began months ago amid speculation of Rehnquist's possible retirement.He is being call
Source: Scotsman
September 6, 2005
The beginning of the 19th century was a good time if you were ambitious, male and British. There was money to be made in the Empire for those willing to travel in search of opportunity. Two young Scots, William Jardine and James Matheson set up a company that became hugely successful then and is still flourishing today. They also stand accused of starting the Opium Wars.Born in Dumfriesshire in 1784, Jardine left Scotland after completing his medical degree at th
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
September 6, 2005
Colleges and universities across the United States are offering admission for the fall semester to undergraduates and graduate students whose hurricane-battered campuses will remain closed for months. And a handful of institutions -- including Cornell University, Vermont's Green Mountain College, and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History -- say they will offer temporary positions to faculty members from the affected colleges. At the ve
Source: NYT
September 5, 2005
Americans are accustomed to looking at the Depression in black and white. But a more vibrant nation appears in an exhibition of 70 color photographs that opens Thursday at the Library of Congress. Culled from a collection of little-known color images made by photographers from the federal Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information, the prints bring alive everyday rural life between 1939 and 1943.A few photographs from the full cache of 1,602 images
Source: NYT
September 5, 2005
After a series of damaging newspaper scandals involving plagiarism in recent years, a new piece of software looks to help editors stop wrongdoers before their articles go to print. The LexisNexis data collection service has introduced CopyGuard, a program aimed at exposing plagiarists or spotting copyright infringement. According to John Barrie, chief executive of iParadigms, the company that developed the program with LexisNexis, CopyGuard can generate a report that calculates the percentage of
Source: NYT
September 5, 2005
The trial of Saddam Hussein will begin in six weeks, the government said Sunday, when he and seven aides face a special tribunal on charges of massacring almost 150 residents from the town of Dujail, the scene of a failed assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein 23 years ago.Laith Kubba, a spokesman for the prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, said the trial would begin Oct. 19, four days after a national vote on a proposed new constitution. The trial raises the possib
Source: Wall Street Journal
September 5, 2005
While storms such as Hurricane Katrina are sometimes called an act of God or a natural disaster, the devastation they leave behind is not. Some scientists believe even the storms themselves could be at least partly man-made.
In New Orleans, the worst-hit parishes were the lower-income ones. But the city also ignored the power of nature. More than 1 million acres of Louisiana's coastal wetlands, or 1,900 square miles, have been lost since 1930, due to development and the construction
