“Upon arriving in Washington, Ahmet went first to the St. Albans School. He left St. Albans after a brief while and went to the Landon School, in Maryland. In 1940, he entered St. John’s College, in Annapolis. During this period, with his brother Nesuhi, who is four years older, he built up a collection of jazz and blues records. He and Nesuhi canvassed Negro neighborhoods. They bought from Negroes records that were of interest to collectors but were no longer of interest to Negroes. In 1940, he and Nesuhi sponsored a jazz concert at the Jewish Community Center in Washington, featuring Sidney Bechet, Sidney De Paris, and Joe Turner. At subsequent concerts they sponsored there were Pee Wee Russell, Lester Young, Teddy Wilson, Mezz Mezzrow, Zutty Singleton, and Johnny Hodges.” Link@newyorker.com

“One rainy night eight years ago, in Watertown, Massachusetts, a man was taking his dog for a walk. On the curb, in front of a neighbor’s house, he spotted a pile of trash: old mattresses, cardboard boxes, a few broken lamps. Amidst the garbage he caught sight of a battered suitcase. He bent down, turned the case on its side and popped the clasps. He was surprised to discover that the suitcase was full of black-and-white photographs. He was even more astonished by their subject matter: devastated buildings, twisted girders, broken bridges — snapshots from an annihilated city. He quickly closed the case and made his way back home. At the kitchen table, he looked through the photographs again and confirmed what he had suspected.” Link@designobserver.com

“JERUSALEM (AFP) – High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

“As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don’t believe, or a legend, which I don’t believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics,” Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the “burning bush,” suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil’s Amazon forest in 1991. “I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations,” Shanon said.

He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, that is frequently mentioned in the Bible.”

“On 13th August 1642 Tasman received instructions to find the mysterious and supposedly rich Southern Continent, which had been eluding and tempting explorers for centuries. This unknown land, Terra Australis Incognita, was said to stretch across the Pacific. Tasman’s instructions were to take possession of all continents and islands discovered and set foot on in the course of his voyage “on behalf of their High Mightinesses the States-General of the United Provinces”. On 13th December 1642, the coast of New Zealand came into view, and Tasman noted in his journal “groot hooch verheven landt” (a large land, uplifted high). Tasman named this land “Staten Landt”, which refers to the “Land of the (Dutch) States-General.” The area of New Zealand which Tasman sighted was in the vicinity of the coast between modern Hokitika and Okarito, on the west coast of the South Island.” Bio@historynz.org

“Burke’s fascination with technology and its impact on society led in 1979 to the highly-acclaimed, prize-winning series, Connections, a ten-part science-history series that was filmed in over 19 countries and 150 locations. The program took a series of seemingly unrelated events, people and situations and fit them into a puzzle that helped explain the fundamental process of social and technological change. As Burke notes, “There is always a connection but, if the link has never been made before, nobody knows its there.” When first broadcast in the U.S. on PBS , Connections achieved the highest-ever audience for a documentary series in the United States” Bio@JB Fan Companion

MADRID.- Los hijos y nietos de exiliados españoles podrán obtener la nacionalidad española aunque sus progenitores la hubieran perdido o hubieran tenido que renunciar a ella por razones políticas.

Los descendientes de emigrantes podrán también acceder a la nacionalidad española sin necesidad de que sus progenitores hayan nacido en España, como ahora exige la ley.

Según publicó en exclusiva el diario El País, esta medida que afectará a cerca de un millón de personas de acuerdo con fuentes gubernamentales, será incluida en la Ley de Memoria Histórica que se está discutiendo en el Parlamento español y cuya aprobación se prevé para el 31 de octubre.

“Thomas Thetcher’s grave is well known around the world because it was immortalised in the Alcoholics Anoymous Handbook in the story of the organsiation’s co-founder Bill Wilson. Wilson recalled visiting the Cathedral on a trip to England and having his attention caught by “a doggerel on an old tombstone”. He went on to quote the epitaph but conveniently ignored the advice to “drink Strong” beer and presented it as a warning against alcoholism. Small beer was in fact the staple drink of much of England until the Tea revolution towards the end of the 18th-century. Some workers would have been provided with free small beer by their employers and even children would have drunk it. Water was often unsafe to consume but the alcohol in small beer would have killed off several harmful pathogens.”

Mysterious Memorials@BBC History Magazine

In all of human history the night skies have been a source of awe and wonder. Since the dawn of man we have looked up to the sky.

In fact it was early man’s desire for the understanding of something so beautiful and so vast (our sky), that has led to the development of math, navigation, geography, the understanding of seasons and just now, the exploration of space and time. Our evolution is not over, we thrive on chaos.

We stand before a watershed event today, just as the understanding of our world was irrevocably changed when we first gazed upon a picture of the whole Earth taken during an Apollo mission to the moon. Children born after 1969 could look to the night sky and see the unknown, but look at the moon and say, “we’ve been there!”

From this day forward the International Space Station shall shine in the night sky as a brilliant moving star. Children born beyond today will no longer be able to look upon the unknown, they can ponder the beauty and vastness of the stars, but must say, “we made that one!”

A fundamental change in human understanding begins tonight.

december 13, 2 0 0 6

A young woman runs to avoid being shot by a Serb sniper during the siege of the city, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, April 1993.

The siege of Sarajevo was the longest siege in the history of modern warfare. It lasted from April 5, 1992 to February 29, 1996. It was fought between the forces of the Bosnian government, who had declared independence from Yugoslavia, and the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) and various Serbian paramilitaries, who sought to secede from the newly-independent Bosnia and Herzegovina. An estimated 12,000 people were killed and another 50,000 wounded during the siege.

“Muslim culture is a term primarily used in secular academia to describe all cultural practices common to historically Islamic peoples. As the religion of Islam originated in 6th century Arabia, the early forms of Muslim culture were predominantly Arab. However, with the rapid expansion of the Islamic empires, Muslims came into contact with, and assimilated much from, the Persian, Turkish, Mongol, Indian, Malay and Indonesian cultures.”

“In recent time, Muslims, have come under severe strain. Aggression or violence by the use of the sword and Islam are nearly always depicted as co-existent. History though, reveals the complete opposite.”

“First, the good news. In October, a comprehensive three-year study led by Andrew Mack, former director of the Strategic Planning Unit in the
office of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, concluded that there
have been major declines in armed conflicts, genocides, human rights
abuses, military coups and international crises worldwide.”

Texto Completo

Biografía

‘I’m not afraid to say that I think Band Aid was diabolical. Or to say that I think Bob Geldof is a nauseating character. Many people find that very unsettling, but I’ll say it as loud as anyone wants me to. In the first instance the record itself was absolutely tuneless. One can have great concern for the people of Ethiopia, but it’s another thing to inflict daily torture on the people of England. It was an awful record considering the mass of talent involved. And it wasn’t done shyly it was the most self-righteous platform ever in the history of popular music.’

- Morrissey talking about the first Do They Know It’s Christmas?

“We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision.”

The Gift of Scripture@The Times

Inquisición@Wikipedia

“The breakdown of the Carolingian Empire in the later 9th century, combined with the relative stabilization of local European borders after the Christianization of the Vikings, Slavs, and Magyars, meant that there was an entire class of warriors who now had very little to do but fight amongst themselves and terrorize the peasant population. A plea for help from the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I in opposing Muslim attacks thus fell on ready ears.”

Las Cruzadas@wikipedia
Historia de Las Cruzadas@UW-Madison
World-Historic Crimes@The Nation

“From 4-11 February, 1945 the Big Three – Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt – met at Yalta, a resort in the Crimea. . . . . . . . they put the seal on what became the division of Europe for almost 50 years. Yalta put the Iron in the Iron Curtain – the Cold in the Cold War. What happened here settled the fate of tens of millions of people in Eastern Europe until the fall of Communism – though it did keep Greece, Turkey and Iran out of Stalin’s reach.”

Big Three@bbc.co.uk