A couple of years ago, I did a post that just said: "Life sorts. Time levels." To that, perhaps we can add, "History decides":
By freezing him at that point, by putting him on a pedestal of perfection that doesn't acknowledge his complex views, "it makes it impossible both for us to find to new leaders and for us to aspire to leadership," Harris-Lacewell said.
She believes it's important for Americans in 2008 to remember how disliked King was in 1968.
With "The War," Ken Burns is showing us details that we didn't know could still be learned about World War II. Maybe the series should be required viewing in all our high schools:
If high school juniors' answers to a World War II questionnaire were strung together, here's how history would look:
World War II took place in 19-something, when Theodore Roosevelt was president and the Germans claimed to be the best race.
Sputnik totally freaked out this country. The fact that the Soviet Union might be ahead of us led us to question our science education and fueled the space race, which we won by landing on the moon, still the greatest achievement of humankind. And it turns out that Sputnik was a lot of hype and hoax:
I wonder how many schools in Fort Wayne are going to be talking about 9/11 today and how many will ignore it:
KUTV) SALT LAKE CITY - Several Utah schools have decided to let Sept. 11, 2007 pass without observing the sixth anniversary of the unprecedented terror attacks against the United States -- over fear of re-kindling the haunting memories for those who vaguely remember them, or introducing them to children who weren't born yet.
Here's somebody's idea of the top 10 "most evil women" in history. I don't know enough to judge its accuracy, but note the number of serial killers, for those of you who think that is exclusively a male enterprise. One of them is Belle Gunness of LaPorte, Ind., whom I read a lot about when I lived in Michigan City:
Young neo-Nazi Jews?
Israeli police say they have broken up a gang of neo-Nazis who are accused of carrying out attacks on foreigners, gay people and religious Jews.
The eight suspects, aged 16-21, are all Israeli citizens from the former Soviet Union. They were arrested a month ago, but the news only emerged on Saturday.
Police say searches of their homes yielded Nazi uniforms, portraits of Adolf Hitler, knives, guns and TNT.
Shocking, simply shocking:
LONDON (Reuters) - Rock stars -- notorious for their "crash and burn" lifestyles -- really are more likely than other people to die before reaching old age.
A study of more than 1,000 mainly British and North American artists, spanning the era from Elvis Presley to rapper Eminem, found they were two to three times more likely to suffer a premature death than the general population
Woody Guthrie is one of my musical heroes, but he was, alas, a hard-core Communist. "This Land Is Your Land" was not a sentimental song of American idealism; it pretty much presented the Stalinist view of land and property. Many leftists who came of age in the 1920s and 1930s, it is said, became party members or avid followers of the Soviet Union out of some misguided sense of collectivist altruism. For many, this was true.
Nobody needs to hunt anymore, and the rural lifestyle that supports it has been diminishing, so this seems like a natural evolution:
Hunters remain a powerful force in American society, as evidenced by the presidential candidates who routinely pay them homage, but their ranks are shrinking dramatically and wildlife agencies worry increasingly about the loss of sorely needed license-fee revenue.
A veteran of the Iraq war calls for a return of the draft:
A deferment draft, however, is a different story, and ultimately counterproductive because of the acrimony it breeds. By allowing the fortunate and, often, most talented to stay home, those who are drafted feel less important than what they are asked to die for. At the end of the day, it was this bitterness that helped fuel the massive antiwar movement that pushed Nixon to end the draft in
