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POPSLee Sandlin: Losing the War Quite long – click through for the full essay. More: I figured people had to know the basics -- World War II isn't exactly easy to miss. It was the largest war ever fought, the largest single event in history. Other than the black death of the Middle Ages, it's the worst thing we know of that has ever happened to the human race. Its aftereffects surround us in countless intertwining ways… So what did the people I asked know about the war? Nobody could tell me the first thing about it. Once they got past who won they almost drew a blank. All they knew were those big totemic names -- Pearl Harbor, D day, Auschwitz, Hiroshima -- whose unfathomable reaches of experience had been boiled down to an abstract atrocity. The rest was gone… I think what my little survey really demonstrates is how vast the gap is between the experience of war and the experience of peace.
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POPSHiking Into History: England’s Ancient Ridgeway Trail More: The full 87 miles of the official Ridgeway National Trail can easily be divided into shorter segments, depending on time available. It can be cut more or less in half, by deciding to walk only the older, original western section, which passes all the great prehistoric sites. Day hikes, and half-days centered on the Uffington White Horse, or Wayland’s Smithy, or the Avebury Stone Circles, can easily be devised by studying the map. The trail’s excellent Web site (www.nationaltrail.co.uk/ridgeway) is full of advice, and possibilities for accommodations and meals.
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POPSData-mining medical records could predict domestic violence
More: Using the new system, the researchers were able to predict abuse an average of two years before the doctor made the diagnosis. Presumably, the computer is picking up signs of ongoing maltreatment the patient hasn’t yet revealed. The researchers also speculate that, in principle, some subtle signal could precede direct abuse. One surprise finding that could be relevant… is that infections turned out to be strongly linked to abuse. That might suggest worsening hygiene in the family or increased psychological stress, possible omens of abuse. But at this point, it is anybody’s guess whether true predictions are possible. Predictions or not, with the current model, fewer than 20 percent of the patients flagged as high-risk cases turned out to have a diagnosis of abuse. Part of the problem may be that the system is only as good as the data it was based on. And as Emory University’s Houry points out, that data isn’t up to speed when it comes to diagnosing abuse.
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POPSDear Republicans: An angry but heartfelt rant More: I'm sick of your rewriting of history. You've bleated so loud and long that Reagan was a great president, that the New Deal didn't work, that cutting taxes increases revenues, that you actually have the people believing this bullshit… I'm sick of your dragging the center ever further to the right. How many whackjob fringe ideas have you dragged into the mainstream? …you push these ideas through your corporate media and you do it so long and loud that they become part of the accepted political landscape and because it is easier to tell a lie than to debunk one, we never get away from this rancid shit… I'm sick of your casual criminality…all I've heard from my rightist friends for days is Chappaquiddick, Chappaquiddick, Chappaquiddick. Your fucking golden boy raped the Constitution…and you bastards are obsessed with a fucking accident a Democrat had decades ago? Plus much more, too long to clip.
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POPSThe Sutton Hoo Treasure "Sutton Hoo, (grid reference TM288487) near Woodbridge, Suffolk, is an Anglo-Saxon cemetery and the site of an early 7th century ship burial. The ship-burial was discovered in 1939 and contained a wealth of artefacts. Sutton Hoo is of primary importance to early medieval historians because it sheds light on a period in English history that otherwise has little documented evidence remaining - it has been called "page one of English history". It is one of the most remarkable archaeological finds in England because of its age, size, far reaching connections, completeness, beauty, rarity and historical importance."
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POPSLunatique Fantastique presents E.O. 9066 More: Beginning on February 19, 1942, approximately 110,000 ethnic Japanese and people of Japanese decent living on the United States west coast were forcibly removed from their homes and incarcerated in remote camps in California and Utah. Over half of the 110,000 internees were children. This incarceration was the result of the infamous Executive Order 9066, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the wake of Pearl Harbor. In June 2005, EXECUTIVE ORDER 9066 was performed at The Topaz Museum in Delta, Utah, site of the internment camp featured in the play, at ceremonies commemorating the 60th anniversary of the camp’s closing. Lunatique Fantastique using images told by survivors and history text to create the story of one family and their struggle before, during and after life in an internment camp.
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POPSObama's choice of Warren "tone-deaf" and "on the wrong side of history" More: By the historical standards of presidential hubris, Obama’s disingenuous defense of his tone-deaf invitation to Warren is nonetheless a relatively tiny infraction. It’s no Bay of Pigs. But it does add an asterisk to the joyous inaugural of our first black president. It’s bizarre that Obama, of all people, would allow himself to be on the wrong side of this history.
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POPSWhy we stand in line to vote - a historical photo essay Over the last few days when looking at the photographs of people standing in line at early voting sites across the country, I've been reminded of so many pictures I've seen of election lines before - lines of voters from throughout the world, voters who have had to fight for the fundamental right to vote, voters for whom standing in line is perhaps the easiest part of everything they've had to do to bring about change. … So when I think about whether we'll have to wait in long lines on Tuesday, I'm not intimidated. I know that we won't be standing in those lines alone, we'll be accompanied by the history of millions of people a whole lot braver and tougher than we'll ever need to be to stay in line for a few hours.
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POPSAmerican Generations - cycles in US history (based on Strauss & Howe) Based on the work of historians William Strauss and Neil Howe, authors of Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2059 and The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny . I'm about 1/3 of the way through Fourth Turning right now and finding it absolutely fascinating and surprisingly heartening. It's a lot easier to learn from history when someone lays it out in a way that makes sense than when it seems random and unconnected to anything. Note that on this webpage, where he writes "secular" he actually means " saecular ".
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