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: AP
12-4-12
AMSTERDAM (AP) — Foreigners visiting the Netherlands in winter are often surprised to see that the Dutch version of St. Nicholas' helpers have their faces painted black, wear Afro wigs and have thick red lips — in short, a racist caricature of a black person.The overwhelming majority of Dutch are fiercely devoted to the holiday tradition of "Zwarte Piet" — whose name means "Black Pete" — and insist he's a harmless fictional figure who doesn't represent any race. But a growing number are questioning whether "Zwarte Piet" should be given a makeover or banished from the holiday scene, seeing him as a blight on the nation's image as a bulwark of tolerance."There is more opposition to Zwarte Piet than you might think," says Jessica Silversmith, director of the regional Anti-Discrimination Bureau for Amsterdam. She said that historically her office received only one or two complaints per year, but the number jumped to more than 100 last year, and will escalate much further this year....
Source: The Daily Caller
12-4-12
Judge Andrew Napolitano really doesn’t like Woodrow Wilson.Napolitano, a former Superior Court judge and the senior judicial analyst for Fox News, is out with a new book, “Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom.”Asked whether there was anything about Wilson that he admired, Napolitano compared Wilson to the 20th century’s most notorious killer.“He was awesome the way Hitler was,” Napolitano said...
Source: NYT
12-3-12
Sicilian cuisine is famous for the bounty of the Mediterranean: fish, clams, mussels, shrimp. But 20,000 years ago, around the time of the last ice age, the first modern humans who arrived in the region ate very little seafood, researchers report after studying the remains of human skeletons.“The source of the dietary protein consumed mainly originated from the meat of medium to large terrestrial herbivores,” said the report’s first author, Marcello Mannino, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.The remains were found in a cave on the small island of Favignana, which thousands of years ago was part of Sicily. Sicily itself was connected to the mainland by a land bridge, allowing humans to cross over....
Source: NYT
12-3-12
A plan now before Congress would create a national park spread over three states to protect the aging remnants of the atomic bomb project from World War II, including an isolated cabin where grim findings threw the secretive effort into a panic.Scientists used the remote cabin in the seclusion of Los Alamos, N.M., as the administrative base for a critical experiment to see if plutonium could be used to fuel the bomb. Early in 1944, sensitive measurements unexpectedly showed that the silvery metal underwent a high rate of spontaneous fission — a natural process of atoms splitting in two.That meant the project’s design for a plutonium bomb would fail. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the project’s scientific head, was so dismayed that he considered resigning.But he and his colleagues pressed ahead with a new design. On July 16, 1945, the world’s first atom bomb — a lump of plutonium at its core — illuminated the darkness of the central New Mexican desert with a flash of light brighter than the sun....
Source: NYT
12-3-12
Anthony W. Robins did not set out to amass one of the most important surviving archives of the original World Trade Center. Though he is an architectural historian devoted to the buildings of New York City, Mr. Robins didn’t even set out to study the twin towers.Rather, Gale Research, which was planning a series of books in the 1980s under the rubric “Classics of American Architecture,” asked Mr. Robins if he would turn his attention first to the trade center before tackling a monograph on the Chrysler Building, which was his preference.Mr. Robins, now 62, is a well-known figure in landmarks circles, having served on the staff of the Landmarks Preservation Commission for 19 years. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia University and New York University. And if you happen to see a walking tour coming your way under the confident leadership of a man in a Bailey Dalton safari hat — well, that’s Mr. Robins....
Source: NYT
12-2-12
MOSCOW — There are scattered reports of unusual behavior from across Russia’s nine time zones.Inmates in a women’s prison near the Chinese border are said to have experienced a “collective mass psychosis” so intense that their wardens summoned a priest to calm them. In a factory town east of Moscow, panicked citizens stripped shelves of matches, kerosene, sugar and candles. A huge Mayan-style archway is being built — out of ice — on Karl Marx Street in Chelyabinsk in the south.For those not schooled in New Age prophecy, there are rumors the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, when a 5,125-year cycle known as the Long Count in the Mayan calendar supposedly comes to a close. Russia, a nation with a penchant for mystical thinking, has taken notice....Related Links
Source: NYT
12-3-12
NEW HAVEN — In the summer of 1968, John Shepherd Jr. enlisted in the Army, figuring that the draft would get him anyway. By January 1969, he was in the Mekong Delta, fighting with the Ninth Infantry Division.Within a month, his patrol was ambushed, and Mr. Shepherd responded by tossing a hand grenade into a bunker that killed several enemy soldiers. The Army awarded him a Bronze Star with a valor device, one of its highest decorations.Yet the medal did little to assuage Mr. Shepherd’s sense of anxiousness and futility about the war. A few weeks after his act of heroism, he said, his platoon leader was killed by a sniper as he tried to help Mr. Shepherd out of a canal. It was a breaking point: his behavior became erratic, and at some point he simply refused to go on patrol....
Source: Fox News
12-2-12
HANOI, Vietnam – A mortar shell left from the Vietnam War has exploded in a southern village, killing four children and seriously injuring five other people.Hieu Nghia village official Le Van Giang says three children aged 4 to 11 died at the scene Sunday afternoon and a 6-year-old boy died at the hospital. The blast seriously injured two other children and three men....
Source: WaPo
12-3-12
People who think standardized tests are wreaking havoc in education today may be interested to take a look back at a different kind of trouble they sparked many years ago.The first standardized tests, any world history student can tell you, were created in ancient China, during the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD), when officials designed civil service exams to choose people to work in the government based on merit rather than on family status. The goal was to create an intellectual meritocracy based on Confucian learning. The system of exams was consolidated during later dynasties; through the centuries until the late 18th century, the core material was hardly altered.......The civil service exams actually played a part in the Taiping Rebellion, which left about 20 million people dead in the 19th century. How? In the mid-1800s, a lower middle class man named Hong Houxiu, who was only partly educated, wanted to join the Qing bureaucracy. Here’s how the society’s website explains what happened...
Source: WaPo
12-2-12
WASHINGTON — David Letterman’s “stupid human tricks” and Top 10 lists vaulted into the ranks of cultural acclaim Sunday night as the late-night comedian received this year’s Kennedy Center Honors with rock band Led Zeppelin, an actor, a ballerina and a bluesman.Stars from New York, Hollywood and the music world joined President Barack Obama at the White House on Sunday night to salute the honorees, whose ranks also include actor Dustin Hoffman, Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy and ballerina Natalia Makarova.The honors are the nation’s highest award for those who influenced American culture through the arts. The recipients were later saluted by fellow performers at the Kennedy Center Opera House in a show to be broadcast Dec. 26 on CBS....
Source: AP
12-1-12
ALMATY, Kazakhstan — Kazakhstan on Saturday observed a new holiday lauding President Nursultan Nazarbayev, part of a growing cult of personality around the leader of the sprawling, resource-rich former Soviet republic.The highlight of First President’s Day, which marks the anniversary of Nazarbayev’s first election in 1991, was a carefully choreographed pageant by some 30,000 performers in an arena in the capital Astana, including mass singing and banner-waving.Across the country, schoolchildren and state employees held demonstrations of affection, concerts, and sports events in his honor. To what extent the participation was voluntary was unclear....
Source: AP
11-30-12
DALLAS — A dilapidated Dallas apartment complex where Lee Harvey Oswald briefly lived before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is being demolished.After a four-year battle over code violations at the uninhabited 10-unit, two-story apartment complex built in 1925, owner Jane Bryant is in the process of taking the building down per a court order. She’s been salvaging building materials and selling off items from Oswald’s three-room apartment. The toilet already has a new owner.Bryant was never able to realize her plans to renovate the building in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas after buying it in 2007, and the next year got caught up in litigation with the city over the state of the building at 600 Elsbeth St....
Source: AP
11-30-12
MEXICO CITY — Mayan priests started off ceremonies aimed at marking the end of the current era in the Mayan long-count calendar Thursday, with dancing, incense and rituals designed to thank the gods.The Mayas performed the “New Fire” ceremony at a park in Mexico City, but complained they have been barred by authorities from performing rituals at their ancestral temples in the Maya region.The Mayas measure time in 394-year periods known as Baktuns. The 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, and 13 is considered a sacred number for the Maya....
Source: Fox News
12-3-12
Congregants of one of the nation's oldest churches have voted to auction off a 372-year-old hymn book that's expect to fetch $10 million to $20 million at auction.Members of the Old South Church in Boston authorized the sale of one of its two copies of the Bay Psalm Book, which was published in 1640. It is among the first books ever published in North America, and only 11 copies remain.Board of Trustees Chairman Phil Stern says the church wants to continue growing its endowment and take care of some "critical capital needs."...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
12-2-12
From July to October 1940, the Spitfire was hailed by the British public as the RAF fighter that saved the nation from invasion by Hitler's Nazis, inflicting heavy losses on wave after wave of Luftwaffe bombers.Now models of the classic fighter plane, made in Germany for toy firm Revell, are on sale in Marks & Spencer for £10 each.Justin Reeves, who spotted the model in the flagship M&S store on Oxford Street in central London, said: "I picked it up as a present and couldn't believe it when I saw the 'Made in Germany' tag on the back."The Spitfire is one of the most iconic images of the Second World War and one of the reasons we kept the Nazis at bay."At least they came up with this 60 years too late to make a difference in the Battle of Britain."...
Source: NYT
11-30-12
Public opinion surveys conducted since President Obama won re-election show an improvement in his job approval ratings. Compared to previous presidents, however, Mr. Obama’s post-election approval bounce has been relatively meager. Most recent presidents — whether they were running for re-election or retiring and whether they won or lost — received a larger boost to their approval ratings after Election Day than Mr. Obama, according to an examination of polling by Gallup, which has been testing presidential job approval much longer than any other polling firm. A comparison of the last Gallup poll conducted before each presidential election since 1952 to the first Gallup poll in the field entirely after the election shows that incumbent presidents have seen their net job approval (the percentage of people who approve minus the percentage that disapprove) jump by an average of six percentage points.
Source: AP
11-30-12
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The obscure book's margins are virtually filled with clusters of curious foreign characters — a mysterious shorthand used by 17th century religious dissident Roger Williams.For centuries the scribbles went undeciphered. But a team of Brown University students has finally cracked the code.Historians call the now-readable writings the most significant addition to Williams scholarship in a generation or more. Williams is Rhode Island's founder and best known as the first figure to argue for the principle of the separation of church and state that would later be enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
11-25-12
It may sound like a plot straight out of a science fiction novel, but a U.S. mission to blow up the moon with a nuke was very real in the 1950s.At the height of the space race, the U.S. considered detonating an atom bomb on the moon as a display of America's Cold War muscle.The secret project, innocuously titled 'A Study of Lunar Research Flights' and nicknamed 'Project A119,' was never carried out.
Source: NARA Press Release
11-30-12
Washington, DC… On Friday, November 30, at noon (EST), the National Archives and Records Administration will release records that have been sealed under court order since the 1970s Watergate criminal trial of seven men involved in the Watergate burglary, U.S. v. Liddy, et al. The release includes 36 folders of documents totaling approximately 950 pages (in whole or in part), and is in accordance with the order from Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the District Court for the District of Columbia. These records will be available online at www.archives.gov/research/investigations/watergate/us-v-liddy.html on Friday, November 30, 2012, at noon EST....
Source: WSJ
11-29-12
Ask Sally Rothemich how her husband’s doing, and you’ll usually get the same reply: “My real husband or my fake husband?”Her real husband is Don Rothemich, a teacher from Massachusetts who wears sweaters and loafers.Her fake husband is an American immigrant, originally from England, named Francis Eaton, who wears cassocks and sailed on the Mayflower.Ms. Rothemich and her fake husband are re-enactors at Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Mass. The job makes for a mighty juggle – between work and life, and between past and present....
