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: Inside Higher Ed
August 19, 2008
A self-proclaimed men’s rights lawyer on Monday filed a lawsuit in federal court charging that Columbia University is engaged in illegal discrimination against men by maintaining women’s studies programs, and that these programs amount to a religion that should disqualify Columbia from receiving certain state and federal funds. The lawyer, Roy Den Hollander, is currently engaged in a series of suits against what he perceives as anti-male bias. For example, he is challenging the legality of “ladi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 19, 2008
The discovery is one of the largest and best-preserved Roman villas yet discovered in the country.
Shaped like a church, the building was discovered on the Isle of Wight, and has been likened to a medieval hall.
Its remains were discovered at the site of another Roman villa in Brading, and are believed to have been constructed 150 years before the other building.
The later Brading villa's remains had disappeared from sight until 1879 when a couple of local men st
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 19, 2008
[John Tusa recalls the day in 1968 when the Soviets brutally ended the Prague Spring.]
The radio came on a minute or two before 8am on the morning of August 21, 1968. It always did.
That was the start of family routine in our north London home. This morning, however, was shocking and unforgettable. The BBC bulletin led on the news that 165,000 Warsaw Pact forces had invaded Czechoslovakia from all points of the compass.
The blessed few months of the "P
Source: Media Matters (liberal watchdog group)
August 19, 2008
During an appearance at Pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, responding to a question about "the most gut-wrenching decision you've ever made," Sen. John McCain cited his refusal to accept an early release from a North Vietnamese prison camp. The Politico claimed that McCain's answer "shows the power of his biography, and a new willingness to publicly discuss it." In fact, McCain has repeatedly referred to his Vietnam war experiences and has specifically cited his refusal
Source: NYT
August 18, 2008
The story of how a 16-year, low-grade conflict over who should rule two small, mountainous regions in the Caucasus erupted into the most serious post-cold-war showdown between the United States and Russia is one of miscalculation, missed signals and overreaching, according to interviews with diplomats and senior officials in the United States, the European Union, Russia and Georgia. In many cases, the officials would speak only on the condition of anonymity.
It is also the s
Source: Politico.com
August 19, 2008
Bob Woodward’s new book is shrouded in such mystery that even the title was a secret until now.
Publishing sources say the book, completed just three weeks ago and out Sept. 8, is titled “The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008.”
The book's revelations are likely to propel a re-examination of the Iraq war into the headlines just as the fall presidential campaign is taking off.
Woodward has had remarkable cooperation from all levels of the
Source: NYT
August 15, 2008
Writing in The Financial Times last week, Chrystia Freeland
recalled Francis Fukuyama's 1989 essay"The End of History?" - which
trumpeted the definitive triumph of liberal democracy. The great nightmare
tyrannies of last century - the Evil Empire, Red China - had been left
behind by those inseparable twins, freedom and prosperity. Civilization
had chosen, and it chose us.
So much for that thesis. Surveying the Russian military rout of
neighboring Georgia and the spectacle of China's
Source: NPR
August 17, 2008
A group of people claiming to be the heirs of the legendary Knights Templar are suing Pope Benedict XVI, seeking more than $150 billion for assets seized by the Catholic Church seven centuries ago.
They also want to restore the order's good name. Founded in 1119, the Knights Templar was a secretive order of Christian warriors who protected pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem during the Crusades. They fell out of favor years later, and members were accused of denying Christ, worshippi
Source: NYT
August 18, 2008
TEL AVIV — Franz Kafka’s final wish before his death in 1924 — that his papers be burned — was famously defied by his friend, the writer Max Brod. The world got “The Trial,” “The Castle” and the adjective Kafkaesque; Mr. Brod got the papers.
When Mr. Brod fled to Tel Aviv from Prague on the last train out in 1939 as the Nazis rolled in, he had with him a suitcase full of Kafka’s documents.
Here, he took up with his secretary, and when he died in 1968, he bequeathed to h
Source: WaPo
July 18, 2008
There is Jackson, sitting astride his mount, Little Sorrel, surveying vistas of rolling fields, towering signs, high-voltage power lines and trees.
The iconic statue of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson commemorates the place where he inspired Confederate troops to victory. Federal and Prince William County officials want to preserve views of Manassas National Battlefield Park. There's not much they can do about the signs and power lines. But the trees? They can go.
Source: AP
August 17, 2008
It took nine years of sleuthing and advanced DNA science and cutting-edge forensic techniques, but a mummified hand and arm found in an Alaska glacier have been identified.
The remains belong to Francis Joseph Van Zandt, a 36-year-old merchant mariner from Roanoke, Va., who was on a plane rumored to contain lots of gold when it smashed into the side of a mountain in 1948. Thirty people died in the crash of Northwest Airlines Flight 4422.
"This is the oldest identi
Source: LAT
August 18, 2008
Most deaths in the 1918 influenza pandemic were due not to the virus alone but to common bacterial infections that took advantage of victims' weakened immune systems, according to two new studies that could change the nation's strategy against the next pandemic.
"We have to realize that it isn't just antivirals that we need," said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and coauthor of one study. "We need to make sur
Source: Simon Wiesenthal Center
August 7, 2008
Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus today received the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr.Shimon Samuels, at the Presidential Palace in Vilnius.
Samuels raised the following issues of concern in the Jewish-Lithuanian context:
-the poisonous political climate conflating the fate of Jewish Holocaust victims mass murdered in Ponar with that of Lithuanians exiled to the Soviet Gulag
-the subsequent antisemitic media attacks and judici
Source: AP
August 17, 2008
A group of Native Hawaiians claiming to be the state's legitimate rulers occupied the grounds of a historic palace for two hours before being arrested by state officers in the second recent takeover of its kind.
A staff member of the Iolani Palace said she was assaulted and slightly injured during the takeover Friday night, then snubbed by city police who claimed they didn't have jurisdiction. Gov. Linda Lingle said Saturday that there would be an investigation into the police response t
Source: Detroit Free Press
August 17, 2008
Al Smith spent the last 12 years filling in the shell of his cherry-red 1957 2-door Chevrolet Bel Air.
And today, it became a part of history, driving in a parade of 100 General Motors Corp. vehicles to celebrate the automaker’s 100-year history at the Woodward Dream Cruise.
“These cars are automotive art,” said Smith, whose wife is a financial manager at GM, which was founded almost 100 years ago – on Sept. 16, 1906.
GM put out a call to employees and reti
Source: Halifax Herald
August 17, 2008
If it hadn’t been for the presence of aboriginal people, European settlers could not have endured life in Nova Scotia centuries ago, a conference in Halifax heard Saturday.
Amateur historian Niven Sinclair said the Mi’kmaq helped colonizers adapt quickly to the New World, and for that their efforts should be publicly praised.
"The reality is that the early voyagers who came to these shores could not survive for a single day without the help of the indigenous peopl
Source: International Herald Tribune
August 17, 2008
She was "The Korean Seductress Who Betrayed America," a Seoul socialite said to have charmed secret information out of one lover, an American colonel, and passed it to another, a top communist in North Korea.
In late June 1950, as North Korean invaders closed in on this panicked city, Kim Soo-im was executed by the South Korean military, shot as a "very malicious international spy." Her deeds, thereafter, only grew in infamy.
In 1950s America, grippe
Source: Telegraph
August 17, 2008
The artwork was previously attributed to an anonymous German artist, however after a year long study, experts now believe the Nuptial Portrait of a Young Woman was instead drawn by the Renaissance master.
It is thought that the 500-year-old drawing was commissioned by the woman to send to a prospective husband.
Alessandro Vezzosi, the director of the Da Vinci museum, in the artist's hometown of Vinci near Florence, said: "The intensity, quality and purity of the
Source: NPR
August 17, 2008
Think of a coup d'etat and images of a far-flung banana republic likely come to mind. So it might come as a surprise that it happened here in the United States — just once, in 1898.
A mob of white supremacists armed with rifles and pistols marched on City Hall in Wilmington, N.C., on Nov. 10 and overthrew the elected local government, forcing both black and white officials to resign and running many out of town. The coup was the culmination of a race riot in which whites torched the
Source: BBC
August 17, 2008
Next time you cut down a monster in an online game or punch a supervillain into the next county remember that your actions are helping to write the history of a new world.
To ensure that the big and small events in these fledgling worlds are not forgotten, erased or overlooked, the University of Texas, Austin has kicked off a project to study the best way to preserve their history.
"It's a huge challenge for archivists to deal with digital information," said
