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: Discovery News
5-15-12
Min, the ancient Egyptian god of phallus and fertility, might have brought some worldy advantages to his male worshippers, but offered little protection when it came to spiritual life.Researchers at the Mummy Project-Fatebenefratelli hospital in Milan, Italy, established that one of Min's priests at Akhmim, Ankhpakhered, was not resting peacefully in his finely painted sarcophagus."We discovered that the sarcophagus does not contain the mummy of the priest, but the remains of another man dating between 400 and 100 BC," Egyptologist Sabina Malgora said....
Source: AFP
5-15-12
WASHINGTON — A massive block of limestone in France contains what scientists believe are the earliest known engravings of wall art dating back some 37,000 years, according to a study published Monday.The 1.5 metric ton ceiling piece was first discovered in 2007 at Abri Castanet, a well known archeological site in southwestern France which holds some of the earliest forms of artwork, beads and pierced shells.According to New York University anthropology professor Randall White, lead author of the paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the art was likely meant to adorn the interior of a shelter for reindeer hunters....
Source: The Atlantic
5-14-12
One of the most compelling -- and enduring -- mysteries in archaeology concerns the rise of early humans and the decline of Neanderthals. For about 250,000 years, Neanderthals lived and evolved, quite successfully, in the area that is now Europe. Somewhere between 45,000 and 35,000 years ago, early humans came along.They proliferated in their new environment, their population increasing tenfold in the 10,000 years after they arrived; Neanderthals declined and finally died away.What happened? What went so wrong for the Neanderthals -- and what went so right for us humans?...The Cambridge researchers Paul Mellars and Jennifer French have another theory, though. In a paper in the journal Science, they concluded that "numerical supremacy alone may have been a critical factor" in human dominance -- with humans simply crowding out the Neanderthals. Now, with an analysis in American Scientist, the anthropologist Pat Shipman is building on their work. After analyzing the Mellars and French paper and comparing it with the extant literature, Shipman has come to an intriguing conclusion: that humans' comparative evolutionary fitness owes itself to the domestication of dogs....
Source: CS Monitor
5-14-12
The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up the appeal of American treasure hunters who were forced earlier this year to surrender $500 million in silver and gold coins they recovered from the wreck of a Spanish warship 3,000 feet deep in international waters.The high court took the action without comment.A federal judge in Tampa, Fla., and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ordered Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. of Tampa to surrender the coins and other artifacts to Spain....
Source: Huffington Post
5-15-12
A Republican lawmaker in New Hampshire was physically removed from the state House of Representatives on Tuesday afternoon after he made a Nazi salute during a contentious debate about limiting what is considered valid voter identification.Rep. Steve Vaillancourt (R-Manchester) shouted, "Sieg Heil" and moved his hand in the air after House Speaker William O'Brien (R-Mont Vernon) restricted what he could address during a floor debate on an amendment to a state voter ID bill. O'Brien had restricted what Vaillancourt could say about the full bill, saying that he could not reference the House Election Law Committee's discussion, only the issues presented in the committee report.O'Brien, who had previously threatened to toss Vaillancourt from the floor, used Vaillancourt's outburst to have the veteran lawmaker moved off the floor. It is the first time in at least a decade that a House member has been removed from the chamber in New Hampshire. House members then voted 238 to 103 to allow Vaillancourt to apologize to the full chamber in order to be allowed back in, setting off further debate when Vaillancourt did not apologize in the manner that O'Brien had expected....
Source: Huffington Post
5-16-12
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Ratko Mladic was a shadow of the swaggering general who once "held Sarajevo in the palm of his hand" during Bosnia's 1992-95 war as his long-awaited genocide trial opened Wednesday. Yet he still managed to inflame Bosnia's festering war wounds with the flick of his hand.Hobbled by strokes and wearing a business suit instead of combat fatigues, the frail 70-year-old gestured toward the families of massacre victims in an angry exchange of hand signals through the bulletproof glass that separated them."Not even an animal would behave like that," said Mevlija Malic as she watched the trial on television in Bosnia....
Source: AP
5-8-12
WASHINGTON -- Washington National Cathedral is preparing to dedicate a new carving of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks in a section of the church devoted to human rights.The Episcopal cathedral formally installs the new sculpture Thursday with a ceremony of evening prayer songs. The carving of Parks will join others on the cathedral's Human Rights Porch that celebrates those who struggled to bring equality and social justice to all people. Other figures include former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.One of Parks' nieces, Rhea McCauley, will join the ceremony, along with Elaine Eason Steele, co-founder of the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development....
Source: AP
5-16-12
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is awarding the Medal of Honor to a Pennsylvania Army specialist killed in combat in 1970 while serving as a rifleman in Cambodia during the Vietnam War.Paperwork for the award was lost for three decades, the Army says, and the efforts of a Vietnam veteran are largely credited for the medal being awarded posthumously to Spec. Leslie H. Sabo Jr. for heroic action. His platoon was ambushed by North Vietnamese forces in 1970 near the village of Se San in eastern Cambodia.
Source: AP
5-14-12
Here's what's not going to happen this year: the earth won't end on Dec. 12; it won't be swallowed by a black hole, consumed by the sun or get taken out by a collision with the imaginary planet Nibiru. Here's what will happen: as of today, more people than ever will believe that those calamities will occur on precisely the day they're predicted to. The reason: a new discovery -- just reported in the journal Science -- of the earliest known Mayan astronomical calendar, featuring elaborate and detailed work by one of the most impressive civilizations that ever lived.It was earlier interpretations of other Mayan calendars that gave rise to the Internet-fueled doomsday scenarios of the past few years -- mostly because one calendar cycle the Mayans computed ends Dec. 12 (though no one paid much attention to the fact that another one was supposed to begin immediately after that). If people can stay focused on the science this time though, they'll find a lot to be impressed by in the new findings....
Source: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources Press Release
5-16-12
A N.C. Highway Historical Marker for a Revolutionary War general and former Orange County sheriff will be dedicated on Saturday, May 19, at 11:30 a.m. When John Butler became sheriff in 1770, he represented the authority of the Crown at a time when settlers in what was then North Carolina's backcountry wanted none of it. Even his brother was a member of the Regulator Movement that in 1771 fought Royal Governor William Tryon and his militia and lost.
Source: Fox News
5-15-12
Architect Frank Gehry has proposed changes to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, following strong criticism from surviving family members and questions from top GOP House lawmakers. The family had initially complained that the design focused too strongly on the late president's humble Kansas roots, as opposed to his accomplishments as a president and military commander. While members of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission have voiced approval for the changes, they don't necessarily address one of the family's complaints -- a life-size sculpture of a young Eisenhower would remain at the center of the memorial despite the family's earlier objections....
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
5-4-12
Please write your Members of Congress and ask them to support the National Historical Publications & Records Commission (NHPRC), the “grant-making” arm of the National Archives & Records Administration. Letters are needed to urge Congress to provide fiscal year 2013 funding of $5 million for the NHPRC’s regular grants programs.The NHPRC is funded at $5 million for FY 2012. This figure represents a $2 million cut from the FY 2011 level of $7.0 million (and a decrease of $8.0 million from the FY 2010 level of $13.0 million). The Administration’s FY 2013 budget request includes only $3 million for the NHPRC, an amount that will not support the ongoing programs and mission of the Commission at even a minimal level. It is up to the Congress to preserve this program, which has already been cut substantially in previous fiscal years.The NHPRC grants program is funded under the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill.
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
5-11-12
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is seeking public comments on the draft guidelines for the FY 2013 Museums for America and National Leadership Grants for Museums programs. The guidelines for these programs have been revised to align with the IMLS Strategic Plan.The IMLS is seeking comments to assess how well these guidelines accomplish the following goals:
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
5-11-12
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) recently released its 2011 Records Management Self-Assessment Report. NARA’s findings are similar to last year’s. The responses indicated that a large majority of Federal agencies that responded remain at high to moderate risk of compromising the integrity, authenticity, and reliability of their records.Key findings of the report include:
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
5-11-12
John Gray, founding president of the Autry National Center of the American West, a consolidation of three cultural organizations in Los Angeles and Denver, has been appointed the Elizabeth MacMillan Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, effective July 23, 2012.Gray was known for his leadership in banking and government service until he became director of the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles. He enlarged the museum’s mission and scope, and, in 2002, merged the museum with Colorado’s Women of the West Museum and, in 2004, with Los Angeles’ oldest museum, the Southwest Museum of the American Indian. The new organization became the Autry National Center of the American West based in Los Angeles.The Autry National Center has more than 500,000 objects, a 130-member staff and an annual budget of about $16 million. It is accredited by the American Association of Museums and gained national prominence during Gray’s tenure.
Source: Commentary
5-15-12
...The Heritage Foundation’s Rory Cooper tweeted that Obama had casually dropped his own name into Ronald Reagan’s official biography on www.whitehouse.gov, claiming credit for taking up the mantle of Reagan’s tax reform advocacy with his “Buffett Rule” gimmick. My first thought was, he must be joking. But he wasn’t—it turns out Obama has added bullet points bragging about his own accomplishments to the biographical sketches of every single U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge (except, for some reason, Gerald Ford)....
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
5-13-12
The Salvadoran jurist Reynaldo Galindo Pohl died this year at age 93. A former education minister and president of El Salvador's National Constitutional Assembly, Pohl spent much of his career pressing for human rights, first as a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and later as his country's ambassador to the United Nations. News of his death barely registered outside Latin American diplomatic circles. But the more than seven million global adherents of the Bahai faith marked it with deep sadness. They remembered Pohl as the tireless diplomat who shed light on the persecution of their co-religionists in the Islamic Republic of Iran at a time when few others were paying attention.From 1986 to 1994, Pohl served as the U.N. Human Rights Commission's special representative on Iran. The Iranian regime, he found, was subjecting its largest non-Muslim religious minority to a systematic campaign of cultural eradication. In 1993, Pohl disclosed a chilling memorandum written by Seyyed Mohammad Golpaygani, then secretary of Iran's Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. The Golpaygani memorandum, as it came to be known, set out a national policy for dealing with the "Bahai question." The Iranian government, Golpaygani forthrightly recommended, must ensure that "progress and development are blocked" for Bahais.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
5-9-12
When a cargo ship carrying 66 women convicts to Australia was seized in the 18th century, it became one of the most infamous mutinies of all time.Now a diary written by the carpenter has shed new light on the incident which happened on the Lady Shore off the coast of South America.Today the work, produced by Thomas Millard, from Deptford, south London, sold for £12,500 at auction.The ship was heading from Gravesend, Kent, to Bontany Bay in 1797 when it was seized by the French soldiers employed to guard the convicts....
Source: NYT
5-14-12
Researchers have discovered illustrations of female anatomy in a rock shelter in France that date back 37,000 years.It is “the oldest evidence of any kind of graphic imagery,” said Randall White, an anthropologist at New York University and one of the researchers working on the project.He and his colleagues report their findings in the current issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....
Source: NYT
5-14-12
...[T]he months between the end of the primary season and the formal start of the general election at the conventions are an especially perilous period for candidates in Mr. Romney’s position....The risks of failing to win the spring-summer narrative battle are substantial. Just ask Michael Dukakis, Bob Dole or John Kerry, all of whom failed to establish strong positive images during this period and allowed their opponents to brand them in ways they never overcame.In 1988, Vice President George Bush used Willie Horton starting in June to portray Mr. Dukakis, the Democratic nominee that year, as a soft-on-crime liberal. Mr. Dukakis never really found a way to respond, and was wiped out in November.
