It is as if the entire Washington press corps has forgotten everything any of them knew in 2001 and early 2002 and have no perspective on what is going on in Afghanistan now.
In late September of 2002 newspapers were flooded with glorious tales about the Northern Alliance – and the NA deserved every bit of […]

read more from this topic.....

President Obama was brought up in Asia, yet he seems clueless about Afghanistan, and of the geopolitical problems in this area.
The press is even worse, preferring the simplistic out of date explanations of the “Afghanistan is Viet Nam” meme, or the “Stop the war” meme, or stressing civilian casualties “reported” by Taliban linked sources without […]

read more from this topic.....

I wasn’t too surprised that Proposition 8,which defended traditional marriage, passed in California because of the large number of Black and Hispanic Democrats who voted against it.
Their votes were actually about how people traditionally live together, and the place of marriage in society, but fifty years after the sexual revolution, one doubts that the mainstream […]

read more from this topic.....

Some Anthropology associations have been worried about the US Army recruiting trained anthropologists to help in the war on terror.
Part of this is because they remembered how anthropologist helped the US during the war in Southeast Asia, and they viewed the war around Viet Nam wrong (huh…fellahs, ever hear of the boat people? the Cambodian […]

read more from this topic.....

There has been a small story that has gotten a lot of criticism in the news lately, about a nine year old girl in Saudi Arabia whose father “married” her to his friend.
The news stories are unclear if he did this to get money, or if he just wanted to make sure the girl had […]

read more from this topic.....

On April 9, 1942, the American and Philippine soldiers who were holding out in the siege of Corregidor surrendered to the Japanese.
The Manila Bulletin reminds us of what happened then:
Some 72,000 men of the United States Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) laid down their arms. On the Death March, 20,000 died. Of the […]

read more from this topic.....

A news article in the Christian Science Monitor describes an Anthropology class that teaches students to understand cultural change by making up fake cultures, and then going into the “big bad globalist conqueror versus poor natives who lose their wonderful culture” mode to teach them about globalization.
The people of Mekka’ kneel in the dirt, sorting […]

read more from this topic.....

In describing the Taliban’s destruction of the two colossal Buddhas of Bamiyan in March 2001, The Wall Street Journal noted:
History has accustomed us to the persecutions that intolerance exercises on those persons whom it intends to subjugate and to the destructions inflicted on the monuments that represent their beliefs and convictions. … The case of […]

read more from this topic.....

A lot of talk and venom has been spit against Muslim women wearing headscarves.
It makes one wonder if these “christians” have ever read the Bible admonition for women to cover their heads. No one follows the rule nowadays, but it is there, because in pagan societies, the veil was a symbol of a modest married […]

read more from this topic.....

I love conspiracy theories.
The stories often have a smidgen of truth in them, but are amplified until they become larger.
So we are now reading lots of news stories about the genitalia stealing witches in Africa and that mobs are going around killing the witches in Africa.
Actually, the problem, called Koro, is a world wide phenomenum.
Usually […]

read more from this topic.....

As a Catholic Church, we need to be quite sensitive about the disposition of sacred articles that are no longer being used in our parishes. A trend developing is finding Catholic sacred articles on places such as E-Bay or other online salvage sites. The real problem with these sites is that there is no attempt […]

read more from this topic.....

Eat your heart out, Indiana Jones – and all those others who have been searching for the Ark of the Covenant for the last 2,700 years.  It’s been found in a small museum in Harare, Zimbabwe.  “I felt a shiver down my spine… a strange sanctity seemed to shine from it…”
 
The hero who claims to […]

read more from this topic.....

A quote from an ABC interview:
It’s one of the biggest censorships of history. So, I thought somebody should say this, and then others might disagree, say, “Ahhh, this could not be! This is blasphemy!” But it’s OK — this is the 21st century. It’s time for information. It’s time for communication. They can go check […]

read more from this topic.....

Ah yes, that glorious left over Plesiosaur that somehow escaped extinction and although cold blooded and alone, managed to live in the cold Scottish Loch is probably dead.
Yes, the Loch Ness monster is no more, a victim of global warming.
At least that’s what Nessie Hunter Robert Rines told the UKDaily Record:
Despite having hundreds of sonar […]

read more from this topic.....

I once worked in Winslow Arizona, where the main tourist attraction is a nearby meteor crater that they tout as the “best preserved meteor crater in the world”.
the photo is from their website, and if you ever get out there, consider a trip to the site.
It’s not as much fun as the Roswell museum, […]

read more from this topic.....

The oh so politically correct anthropologists at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting.are going to debate if female mutilation under the guise of multiculturalism is okay.
Writes John Tierney of the NYTimes:
Should African women be allowed to engage in the practice sometimes called female circumcision? Are critics of this practice, who call it female genital […]

read more from this topic.....

The big news is that archeologists have reassembled King Tut’s mummy and are putting it on display, in a way that will protect the mummy from deterioration from the humidity and germs of visitors.
Tut’s head was removed at the time of discovery by over eager archeologists, so it’s nice to see him together again.
But with […]

read more from this topic.....

Another day, another giant Buddha destroyed.
Yup. It’s that bunch of cheerful Saudi funded Iconoclasts, better known as the Taliban, trying to purify the region of pagan idols.
Luckily there was little or no damage to these archeological treasures.

These treasures were made 2200 years ago during the spread of Buddhism in the area. Later Muslim conquerers allowed […]

read more from this topic.....

The most beautiful woman in the world.
Queen of Egypt, powerful consort of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, who tried unsuccessfully to instroduce monotheism to Egypt,  and one of the most powerful women in her times, Nefertiti. Reigning with her husband, she gave birth to six daughters, and her history disappeared 14 years into his reign, presumably from […]

read more from this topic.....

Many of those recovered from the Titanic were laid to rest without names.
One of the more poignant stories is that of an unknown baby who was found and laid to rest in Halifax Canada.
The child was one of some 150 Titanic victims buried in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
For decades, the boy was known simply […]

read more from this topic.....

The historic Ford’s Theater in Washington D.C., which is in the process of being renovated, is now going to be delayed several months because the bidding process for the job was unsuccessful. The National Park Service closed the theater in early June for an 18-month renovation job. The theater has since been reopened because bids […]

read more from this topic.....

Attention - Due To Allegations of Plagiarism, This Article Is Highly Suspect 
In the United Kingdom, which has many historical structures, the buildings which are listed or which lie within a conservation area are protected by law. Any repairs, alterations and modifications that are required to be done are meant to be done by firms and […]

read more from this topic.....

Most of the official Seven Wonders of the World have disappeared. Most people probably couldn’t even name them. Because of this, Bernard Weber, a Swiss-Canadian filmmaker and aviator decided that a new seven wonders list should be established for existing pieces of architecture. He created the site new7wonders.com to allow people to begin to vote […]

read more from this topic.....

Hartwood Mansion is a popular tourist attraction in Pittsburgh. Built in 1929 as a Tudor, Elizabethan style, the 31-room mansion sits on a 629-acre park. It was originally owned by John and Mary Lawrence. Mary was the daughter of Senator William Flinn who owned the city’s largest construction firm. In 1969, she sold the mansion […]

read more from this topic.....

This week, Titanic memorabilia was sold at Christie’s auction in Europe. Probably the most talked about item sold at the auction was a handwritten account of a 16-year-old girl who survived the sinking. Laura Marie Cribb, a third-class passenger from Newark, New Jersey scribbled her account on eight handwritten pages of the ocean liner’s last […]

read more from this topic.....

Forget the Egyptian cats.
Tabby probably domesticated us 12000 years ago in the Middle East, about the same time as agriculture was invented. The theory is that agriculture allowed fixed settlements and grain storage, and the cats were attracted by rats eating the grain, and gradually became used to humans, who fed and tamed them.
DNA studies […]

read more from this topic.....

In the dark days of World War II, the United States started flying B17 bombers across the Atlantic to England.
Operation Bolero was the name given to the operation that ferried the airplanes and crew on this difficult route, where original estimates was that ten percent of the flights would never arrive. But arrive they did:
By […]

read more from this topic.....

Richard Dawkins, scientist, atheist, and author of “The God Delusion”:
Refusing to believe that science and religion could ever be happy bedfellows, the self-confessed atheist said that professional scientists who did promote that theory needed to prove the existence of god because it was a scientific question.
Emphasis mine, to point out that there have been many […]

read more from this topic.....

Most people like a good ghost story, and one of the most popular is the story of King Tut’s curse.
As a scientist, I suspect the “Mummy’s curse” story originated with those trying to keep tomb robbers from stealing grandmom’s jewelry, and was reinforced by a nasty fungal infection that can kill those who open crypts…
So […]

read more from this topic.....

As a doc who has worked in cross cultural medicine most of my life, I love to read history. One of the sites I usually read is History News Network, a blog of George Mason University.
Often the essays are merely regurgitation of Chomsky, but sometimes you get insight into todays news thru the eyes of […]

read more from this topic.....