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: BBC News
9-3-13
Egyptian civilization developed more quickly than previously thought.
Source: NYT
9-1-13
After all the ceremonies for M.L.K., there’s now J.F.K.
Source: NYT
8-22-13
There are hundreds of thousands of carefully preserved manuscripts and recordings that chronicle every speech, interview and public appearance made by one of America’s greatest orators, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At least one of his appearances, however, seems to have slipped through the cracks of time, only to be discovered nearly 50 years later in the archives of the New School.And it still seems as relevant today as it was back then.“I think America, somehow, must face her moment of atonement.” Dr. King said, in response to a question about “preferential treatment” for African-Americans. “Not just atonement for atonement’s sake, but we must face the fact that we’re going to pay for it somehow. If we don’t do it, we’re going to pay for it with the welfare rolls, we’re going to pay for it in many other ways.”...
Source: LA Times
8-21-13
The budget ax has fallen on a CIA office that focused on declassifying historical materials, a move scholars say will mean fewer public disclosures about long-buried intelligence secrets and scandals.The Historical Collections Division, which has declassified documents on top Soviet spies, a secret CIA airline in the Vietnam War, the Cuban missile crisis and other major operations, has been disbanded. The office that handles Freedom of Information Act requests will take over the work.
Source: AP
8-22-13
WASHINGTON (AP) — It's a good thing Richard Nixon was such a klutz.The president's ineptness at all things mechanical is what prompted his aides to install a voice-activated recording system that didn't require Nixon to push an on-off button, ensuring that every word he spoke in the Oval Office and other key locations was caught on tape.With the secret taping system on autopilot — seven microphones planted in wall sconces and the president's desk — Nixon largely forgot about it, and let loose with the raw, gossipy, conniving and too-clever words that ultimately toppled his presidency and forever changed the way Americans think about their presidents and their government.The tapes — the last installment of them released Wednesday — are like the black box in an increasingly out-of-control airplane, recording right up to the crash.In the tapes, Americans began to see their presidents as "less glorious, less heroic, less romantic — either more like us, or more like people we don't like," says presidential historian Julian Zelizer of Princeton University....
Source: State Department
8-20-13
The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXXIII, SALT II, 1972–1980.This volume is part of a Foreign Relations subseries that documents the most important foreign policy issues of the Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford presidential administrations. Because of the long-term nature of the SALT II negotiations, however, this volume also includes the period of the Jimmy Carter administration, as Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter worked to resolve the complex, evolving, and interrelated issues necessary to reach an agreement. All three presidents sought to go beyond the Interim Agreement signed at the Moscow Summit in May 1972 through the achievement of a formal treaty on strategic arms. The negotiations were a central component of foreign policy for all three administrations, demanding sustained attention at the highest level of government. This volume offers a rare direct comparison of bureaucratic processes and leadership styles as well as the personal and institutional interplay across these administrations.
Source: NYT
8-21-13
An outside review of Bloomberg L.P.’s practices found that a controversial article that compared the damage in an Italian town after a bad deal with JPMorgan Chase to the fallout from the Nazis’ occupation in World War II went “too far.”The 2011 article, which JPMorgan complained about at the time and Bloomberg declined to change, has long been a sore spot between the bank and Bloomberg and was recently mentioned in a New York Times article that focused on the friction between Wall Street and Bloomberg.“In one of the great campaigns of World War II, Monte Cassino was completely destroyed in a wave of battles that claimed 75,000 casualties and the lives of hundreds of townspeople. To suggest that a bond deal gone sour, curtailing daycare for 60 children and services for the poor, is comparable to the terror and cataclysm of war is inconsistent with BN’s high standards,” Clark Hoyt, an editor-at-large at Bloomberg News and a former public editor of The Times, found in his review, which focused on the relationship between Bloomberg’s news and commercial operations....
Source: Nixon Library
8-21-13
On August 21, 2013, the Nixon Library opened the final installment of 94 White House Tapes, as well as formerly restricted and unprocessed textual materials.White House TapesThe final installment of 94 tapes cover the period from April 9 – July 12, 1973, and cover discussions of foreign policy issues including: implementation of the Vietnam peace settlement and the return of Prisoners of War (POWs); tensions over Most Favored Nation tariff status for the Soviet Union; and the history 1972 “Soviet Summit” between the United States and the U.S.S.R. Domestic conversations include Presidential appointments and personnel management, energy policy, wage and price controls, campaign finance reform, Wounded Knee, and Watergate.Listen to the newly released tapesListen to sample foreign policy clips on the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum's YouTube Channel
Source: NYT
8-19-13
LOS ANGELES — It was known as the Temple of the Stars: a soaring sanctuary capped by a 100-foot-wide Byzantine dome, built by Hollywood moguls on the eve of the Depression and splashed with the kind of pizazz one might expect at a movie palace rather than a synagogue.But over the last 80 years, the Wilshire Boulevard Temple has become a monument to neglect, its handsome murals cracked, the gold-painted dome blackened by soot, the sanctuary dark and grim. A foot-long chunk of plaster crashed to the ground one night.The congregation, too, has faded; while still vibrant and active, it has grown older, showing no signs of growth. This once proud symbol of religious life in Los Angeles seemed on the brink of becoming a victim of the steady ethnic churn of the city, as its neighborhood grew increasingly Korean and Hispanic and Jews moved to the west side.
Source: NYT
8-20-13
In a life that was relatively brief but exceedingly active, George Orwell was, among other things, a police officer in Burma, a dishwasher in France, a tramp in England, a combatant in Spain, a war correspondent in Germany and a farmer in the Hebrides. Like many people of his era — he was born in 1903 and died in 1950 — he was also a prolific letter writer, and a particularly captivating and thoughtful one at that, thanks partly to the wealth of experience he had acquired.“George Orwell: A Life in Letters” is a judiciously chosen selection of some of the most interesting of these casual writings, from a 20-year period that included both the Great Depression and World War II. Peter Davison, who selected and annotated the letters, was also the lead editor of Orwell’s 20-volume “Complete Works” and has sought here to distill Orwell’s essence, as man and thinker, into a more manageable size and format.
Source: NYT
8-20-13
Granted that Rome was not built in a day, the unresolved question among scholars has been just how long did it take. How early, before Julius Caesar came, saw and conquered, did Romans begin adopting a monumental architecture reflecting the grandeur of their ambitions?Most historians agree that early Rome had nothing to compare to the sublime temples of Greece and was not a particularly splendid city, like Alexandria in Egypt.Any definitive insight into the formative stages of Roman architectural hubris lies irretrievable beneath layers of the city’s repeated renovations through the time of caesars, popes and the Renaissance. The most imposing ruin of the early Roman imperial period is the Colosseum, erected in the first century A.D.
Source: NYT
8-20-13
Four years ago, the American Museum of Natural History agreed to return to the Apaches 77 objects from its collection, including headwear, feathers, bows and arrows, medicine rings and satchels containing crystals and charms.But none of the items have gone back because of an unusual, if persistent, disagreement with representatives of the Apaches over whether the museum will officially designate the items as sacred relics that should never have been taken.At first glance, the dispute would seem to hinge on semantics: the museum is prepared to refer to the objects, many more than a century old, as “cultural items,” while the Apaches insist that they be designated as “sacred” and “items of cultural patrimony,” legal classifications set out under federal law. The Apaches say this is hardly a case of being fussy. They say the items are imbued with their religion’s holy beings, that tribal elders attribute problems like alcoholism and unemployment on reservations to their unsettled spirits, and that the museum’s position is insulting to them and their deities....
Source: NYT
8-21-13
How to get a kid jazzed about the oldest stories in the world in an age of distraction? Make a game of it. That’s the idea behind History Hero, a new app for portable Apple devices that asks children to defend history – for video-game-style points — against an alien group known as the Erasers.Using portable devices, players seek to “save” world culture from an alien breed bent on social obliteration by answering questions or snapping pictures of artifacts.The app combines newfangled gaming rewards with old-fashioned scavenger hunts in institutions like London’s British Museum to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art....
Source: AP
8-19-13
An Austrian collector has found what may be the oldest globe, dated 1504, to depict the New World, engraved with immaculate detail on two conjoined halves of ostrich eggs.The globe, about the size of a grapefruit, is labeled in Latin and includes what were considered exotic territories such as Japan, Brazil and Arabia. North America is depicted as a group of scattered islands. The globe’s lone sentence, above the coast of Southeast Asia, is “Hic Sunt Dracones.”“ ‘Here be dragons,’ a very interesting sentence,” said Thomas Sander, editor of the Portolan, the journal of the Washington Map Society. The journal published a comprehensive analysis of the globe Monday by collector Stefaan Missinne. “In early maps, you would see images of sea monsters; it was a way to say there’s bad stuff out there.”...
Source: Detroit Free Press
8-20-13
Less than seven weeks from now, Oct. 7 will mark the 100th anniversary of the moving automobile assembly line at the historic Highland Park complex, where Henry Ford first paid workers $5 a day to build Model T cars.But as with far too much of metro Detroit’s automotive heritage, the Ford Highland Park property has sat largely dormant and ignored for decades, sorely in need of restoration and renovation so it can be properly celebrated as a shrine of American ingenuity.Today, the Woodward Avenue Action Association (WA3) is launching an online crowd funding campaign, dubbed Five Dollars a Day, hoping to raise the final $125,000 needed to buy two historic structures on the site, the four-story Administration Building which fronts Woodward, and an adjacent 8,000-square-foot executive garage....
Source: The Art Newspaper
8-19-13
Emergency restoration work started today on a section of Florence’s famous Vasari Corridor, after some plaster and tiles fell from the roof on Friday. The damage occurred in the section of the raised corridor that passes next to the church of Santa Felicita, just over the Ponte Vecchio, on the south side of the river Arno.It is reported that no one was hurt, and museum professionals are already establishing the best course of action to restore the damage to the building. Around ten portraits have been removed from the walls as a precaution while restoration work begins, but the popular tourist site will remain open.Coincidentally, the same portion of the corridor was due to be closed most of next month while curators install a series of self-portraits of 20th-century and contemporary artists for an exhibition that is scheduled to open at the end of September....
Source: Tablet Magazine
8-19-13
For one of his first translation projects after his retirement, Barry Goldstein, a former computer programmer, found an empty table at his local Starbucks in Boston and settled in to work on the “Treebeard” chapter from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. But Goldstein soon realized that he needed something more sizable to occupy his time: 95,022 words later, he had translated the entire text of The Hobbit, the prequel to the Ring series, into Yiddish.Only a little more than 130 copies of Goldstein’s translation have sold since it was released in December. But as Goldstein tells it, he always knew Der Hobit wouldn’t be a best-seller, and the sales were still double his original two-figure estimate.
Source: Der Spiegel
8-19-13
The German government has denied British media reports that it tried to influence the tone of Britain's planned ceremonies to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. A spokesman has confirmed Germany sent an envoy to London to discuss the plans, though.The German Foreign Ministry on Monday denied allegations that it was attempting to influence Britain's plans to commemorate the 2014 centenary of the outbreak of World War I.A spokesman for the ministry confirmed reports that it had sent an envoy to London in early August to discuss the centenary ceremonies. But he added: "There was no intervention of any kind in how our friends and partners intend to shape their commemoration of World War I."The Daily Telegraph reported on Sunday that the visit by Andreas Meitzner, a German diplomat tasked with coordinating European commemoration plans for the centenary, was prompted by German concerns that the ceremonies might have an excessively "declamatory tone," placing more emphasis on victory rather than reconciliation....
Source: Toronto Globe and Mail
8-16-13
A new totem pole the height of a three-storey building now looms over the southern Haida Gwaii, carved with symbols to note the remote land is protected from ocean floor to mountaintop.Hundreds gathered in the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve to watch the nearly 3,000-kilogram pole raised using six ropes and sheer manpower, the first such raising in over a century. Spectators were dwarfed by the colourful and intricate pole, which took more than a year to carve and paint and represents Gwaii Haanas’ modern and ancient history....
Source: ArtDaily
8-15-13
MEXICO CITY.- The face of a Pre-Hispanic skeleton, recovered in Michohacán 35 years ago by archeologist Roman Piña Chan, is to be reconstructed by specialists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and support from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), as part of the preservation and conservation job of an individual’s skeleton remains who belonged to Occidental Cultures, over 700 years ago, and was apparently a member of the elite. Restorer Luisa Mainou, a member of the National Cultural Heritage Preservation Coordination (CNCPC) from the INAH, explained that the skeleton was found in a cornfield within the township of Ario de Rayon and then moved to the Regional Museum of Michohacan. The specialist, who leads the Organic Material Conservation and Restoration Workshop of the CNPC, clarified that as part of such treatment, a layer of glue that covered each of the skeletal remains, had to be removed....
