Huffington Post Launches Investigative Journalism Venture

Bravo! Just what the current events of today need, forensic analyses reported by journalists, held to standards one will hope. A branch of anthropology, economic anthropology, studies markets in different cultures, one I met, once escaped Tibet on horseback, studying their market, cut short by a Chinese invasion. This endeavor has much to do, so it seems from various websites I've seen. Considering that the former President George W. Bush fired the head of the US Army, he was on the board of Enron, and that it wasn't until 2/3/1949 on Governors Island, NY that enlisted soldiers were allowed to sit as members of the court in court martial trials in the U.S., there is much to decipher in the current economic climate that will take alot of savvy to get to, so I hope they don't forget our troops, who have been there and seen that who might be able to provide information.

Reid: Justice Roberts Lied To Us

If he did, I hope it wasn't about his brother-in-law who perished when he crashed off the Tappan Zee Bridge in a Land Rover into the Hudson River. His wife grew up right nearby here in the Bronx, NY, a friend of a friend. I was alarmed to hear that the Chief Justice has had a few seizures and perhaps for his own medical safety, he might be considering resigning as Justice Ginsberg has opened the rumor "door" to someone leaving. She must be a little lonely the only woman on the bench, we did once have two. Not to many people, though more these days get out to Governors Island in NYC's harbor, where I once worked in geoarchaeology for a short week, but it has always given me a chuckle to think that Fort Jay there named after the First Chief Justice John Jay, whose farm in Westchester is a delightful visit, was built, the sign it says, by appreciative Columbia University students, formerly of Kings College.

Ice jams still threaten flooding in Bismarck area

Waddington, NY: February 24, 1924 Thermit used to break ice jams. - from "Famous First Facts: A Record of First Happening, Discoveries and Inventions in the U.S." © 1973 Joseph Nathan Kane, 3rd Edition, The H.W. Wilson Company, NY 1964.

- Wed Mar 25, 2009 11:33 AM EDT

Sorry the year is wrong, it was 1925. Waddington has an interesting history. I did some archaeology survey there to return properties to the tax roles that had been seized in the creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway overseen by the Feds (head appointed by the President) and the NY Power Authority. We share a half of a hydroelectric dam with Canada that was built with the locks, water control features and seaway. Before it was a very dangerous river and is where Abbie Hoffman was "found out" as an activist against year-round use of the system by icebreakers which uprooted the locals docks and properties. Personally I find it strange that a port was never built for New York along it, mostly dairy and farms, Canada more densely settled on the other side, though Remington's wonderful museum is in Ogdensburg, who collaborated with Theodore Roosevelt to chronicle the disappearing American West, and all seems to benefit Chicago, Illinois and other Great Lakes ports.

- Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:03 PM EDT

Newsvine - 'Mandatory' National Service Corps Bill Clears Senate

The US government already has a secondary-school program, JROTC, it was called back in the tail-end of the Selective Service Draft lottery (co-sponsored by a NY legislator) and was in my high school in Selden, NY named after the "character witness" judge at Susan B. Anthony's trial for dressing as a man to vote in Upstate NY. The "Junior Reserve Officer Training" program whereby a single branch of the armed services, my school the US Marine Corps, at Newfield on Marshall Drive, is part of the curriculum for volunteers. Last I heard there were 20,000 of them in mostly poor school districts costing $1 billion a year, reported by the "Defense Monitor" back in the 1990s, though touted as the alternative to the draft back in the then ending lottery I was part of. The "Defense Monitor" asked "Are they worth it?" before they went off PBS television. It seems a contradiction to ask this new proposed corps to be "mandatory" and the military one "volunteer" when one looks at a majority of countries with mandatory military service.

As a once NYPIRG employee I would rather see the organizations attract the "right stuff" rather than force compliance or in a much shorter time we might be asking "Are they worth it?" - also NY Times comment

Newsvine - FBI investigating Exxon Valdez oil spill - March 31, 1989

I found it ironic that it was the Bligh Reef on the nautical charts, and not heard about. I also found it almost a total lack of ethical news coverage to not report "larger" how "fortunate" we were to have a Russian oil skimmer nearby which assisted, and question why nothing like it was readily available. I also would like to know why the "Fourth mate" was at the helm and how much recent cutbacks to crew size affected the operation of the oil tanker, single hulled. The captain had been previously honored at an "Op-Sail" event in his town of Huntington, NY on Long Island where all the captains had been invited to a dinner MC-ed by Rufus Langhans the Huntington Town Historian I once had the pleasure to meet and work with on archaeology for a "gifted and talented" school children program in archaeology. In my opinion the "criminal" part of this investigation was in the lack of foresight and proper regard for maritime law by the operators. It's like in NYC finding out "Yeah! the Staten Island Ferry is free!" but that means it's no longer inspected for life-saving equipment, no longer under commercial operation supervised by the US Coast Guard. My two cents working in Skagway, Alaska summer of 1980, busing through the falling ash of Mt. St. Helens.

Re: Cologne, Germany State Archives building collapse: Histarch

Thanks for the information. I have been trying to follow it. I had just been reading "Vikings in Ireland and Scotland in the Ninth Century" by Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Department of History, National University of Ireland, Cork (ISBN 2-503-50624-0) and there is references from the Cologne archive that place the Vikings from the "kingdom of Lothlend, Laithlind or Lochlainn" there sometime between 825-859 CE. An important archive that will be missed for some time, and in part forever. I found the animation of the disaster informative as it showed how it could have led to a greater loss of life if not for the quick thinking of the workers in the subway tunnel who perceived the impending disaster, stopping traffic and alerting those working in the archives on the surface. It seems hydrostatic pressure has caused the slip and fall of what we here sometimes call a "slurry wall" which I've worked alongside the construction of by a French firm back in 1984 while in urban archaeology in New York City. A water displacing bentonite "slurry" is pumped through a channel dug to whatever base, in bedrock, chiseled into, rebar cages lowered and concrete pumped displacing the slurry monitored for content, filtered and recharged a section at a time. It apparently was used in the World Trade Center so-called "bath-tub" design and the former US Federal Assay Site, recently sold as the most expensive property in Manhattan, per square foot, two blocks from the East River, NYC where a large crew recovered over 1 million artifacts in 1984. Personally terms such as "bath-tub" and "ground zero" do nothing for our field often a part of tourism to the original significant sites these terms come from, in my opinion, once working in the now demolished, could have saved it's facade building on Trinity Place nearby and for the firm which conducted the original archaeology survey of the US Army's Fort Drum, NY in 1983 once located in the 90s of floors of the WTC, tragically struck on Sept. 11, 2001. By the way a ca. 18th c. horse harness was recovered in the orginal construction of Building 3 there and is conserved at the Long Island Science Museum, NY. The towers construction had seen a ship hulk in landfill and later when I accompanied archaeologist Edward Johanneman, MA to Building 3 to look further, we were denied access. Another 'Johanneman' singled out by the press as a 'hero' on that day, helping burning victims out, late for his janitor job stopping for coffee, recently committed suicide over the notoriety it brought and the 'fate' his tardiness brought.

Craigmonie Centre | 2009 Event Preview

National Theatre of Scotland: 'Our Teacher is a Troll' 'Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off'

'Once upon a time, there were twa queens on the wan green island, and the wan green island was split inty twa kingdoms.’

Newsvine - Proposition 8: Starr argues that any right can be taken away

"Starr argues that voters have an inalienable right to amend the state constitution as they see fit." - Maybe that's why he thought President Bill Clinton should not have been impeached. In NY State we just voted to change the wording in the state constitution to help "veterans" even though we have a provision for calling a constitutional convention every I think 20 years to change it. I would not have thought it possible by election turnout to change such important and fought for documents of government. Really, what if 10% of the potential electorate changes it is that right? We also have a right not to vote if we think there might be no choice provided. No votes, no mandate, then taxation without representation. Fri Mar 20, 2009 10:55 AM EDT Many years ago, as an undergrad, I read the State of California handbook, which stated that the beauty of their laws and structure was in the simplicity of language and transparency of how it works. Recently in NY without notice or explanation, the voters changed the wording in the New York State constitution to help veterans get work in the state, to paraphrase the paragraph almost hidden in the bottom right lower corner of the early 1960s voting machines which no longer work, the curtain no longer opens and closes when pulling the lever, the change I thought was not possible by simple majority vote in New York. We have a state constitutional right to amend the constitution in public convention if so needed, not changing rights by voter turnout. For example the court found it "constitutional" to discriminate using property values to create different levels of aid to education, richer property getting more money for its schools, which we might want to change if the lottery system, created to ameliorate the differences is found lacking. As the state with the first National Guard guarding the new US Congress, I could see why a right to a "state militia" with arms was the second most important amendment, perchance the new federal government's troops wanted to over-run one of the states. I doubt that is one of the "rights" Mr. Starr thinks could be voted out by popular vote, or is it? Thu Mar 5, 2009 9:34 PM EST

Newsvine - London squatters make their home in luxury mansions

I've heard sometimes they are blamed for neighborhood problems, like the theft of the lead from a local church roof might be attributed to them though no proof. Were Charles Laughton and Vivian Leigh "squatters" in "The Sidewalks of London" ("buskers" sidewalk performers in aka "St. Martin's Lane" 1938)? Maybe? If so then "squatters" were before WWII? Perhaps the veterans of WWI then. I worked for someone who went to the "London Institute of Archaeology" excavating at Winchester Cathedral who said he lived in a "squat". Oh bodie doe doe. Fri Feb 20, 2009 9:36 PM EST

Newsvine - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: 'People are scared'

Maybe the intelligence community should be investigated too. Is there federal oversite? $6 billion was "handed" to the FBI for "Operation Megiddo" based on the "belief" that the "millennium" could or would bring the need for federal operations at that level of spending. What nerve to name it after a place in Israel where the so-called "battles of Armageddon" had already or will take place. And what was the rationale? What did it really buy?

I also saw the suit brought against the brokers in 20 major brokerages back when the market was still computing in the non-decimal parts of shares, i.e., 1/8s, 3/8s, 1/2s, etc., the investigation and court papers came to my residence as part of that investigation, which the government alleged the brokers in collusion were dealing across brokerages based on 20 blue chip stocks ending on certain days in certain "odd" or "even" fractions, to the tune of $1.5 billion in damages.

Once upon a time the Senator that arguably was replaced by Madam Secretary, Daniel Patrick Moynihan in my state, New York, now surely missed, asked what have we wrought? We began an agency or agencies that were needed during a world war that now receive unprecedented amounts of money that have no one watching the watchers, and he seriously proposed eliminating them and the $20 billion a year then that did not require any oversite or review. Now it seems we have gone just the opposite way and created even more reasons to wonder if spying and industrial espionage is being conducted without regulation.

Thu Feb 19, 2009 9:28 PM EST

Newsvine - Inside Clooney and Kristof’s room

In City Hall Park in NYC there is a plain monument to Joseph Pulitzer right near the sitting statue of Horace Greeley, both important publishers of news. In some irony I suppose below them are the remains of the "First Almshouse" cemetery in New York. I worked in the cemetery in 1999, when then Mayor Giuliani had the state flag of Arkansas flown over City Hall, contemplating a run against now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had been the First Lady and was thinking of running for New York's Senator, as improvements to security were made though closed for many years after 9/11. I will go on with hope that the other institution in New York, the United Nations, will help these people further and safeguard their future. Some of their descendants here in the New World were recently honored at the new US National Monument, the African Burial Ground, just to the north of City Hall Park where they, who helped build America, were laid to rest. Sun Feb 22, 2009 6:49 PM EST

NY1 24 Hour Local News: March 20th In NYC History

1691...After days of fighting and bloodshed between two colonial factions, British Colonel Henry Sloughter becomes Governor of the City of New York. His rival, Jacob Leisler, is charged with treason and hanged, but is later cleared of wrongdoing. 1899...Martha Place of Brooklyn becomes the first woman in New York State to be put to death in the electric chair. She is executed at Sing Sing prison for the murder of her stepdaughter. 1988...The Tony award-winning play "M. Butterfly" opens on Broadway. It closes two years later after 777 performances. Today's New Yorker birthdays include comedian Carl Reiner, born in the Bronx in 1922; and director Spike Lee, born in 1957.

They did the right thing after William and Mary ascended to the throne. They dug up Jacob Leisler from a potters field, who they had hung not far from today's City Hall Park, on the edge of the marsh that became full of tannery vats, and had a parade through the street honoring him and then a formal burial.

The strange case of the missing NYC landmark...

At io9 there is an interesting posting: "Digging Deep: 24 Science Fiction Archaeologists" I commented: "The excavation on the Moon in Kubrick's and Clarke's "2001 A Space Odyssey" was archaeological I thought, though I don't recall who was in charge. From the original short story and idea I think "The Sentinel" by Arthur C. Clarke. Conforms to the idea of archaeology unleashing some unknown force as stated here, like in "The Exorcist" by excavating something unknown, like a "devil pipe" on a site I worked on that had a ship buried in it in lower Manhattan years ago." I stated at facebook when asked for the name of the ship buried in Manhattan referred to above: "They named it after Harold Ronson of HRO the developers company they had developing some of the last parking lots the "Ronson" ship. We found it, I and an African American and a backhoe operator, West Point MP during WWII in the last test of three permitted, they were intent on excavating in the backyards there the archaeologists. They represented a British consortium that became National Westminster Bank. It was a "trailer truck" of the 18th century thought built before 1740 about 80' by 25', which we know little about, the warships however much ado about everything. They gave us from Dec to March to empty it out and document parts of it and the bow was taken out and conserved at Newport News Mariners Museum, VA the "apple-cheek" type it was called. Ship worms (teredo) of the N. Atlantic and Caribbean in it IDed by a biologist. Some frags of a woman's jaw too were found I was told but not publicly described. It was a hulk used to create landfill along the former shore."

And: "One of the archaeologists thought it was the derelict stated in the city council meeting minutes as a nuisance though a location was not given. Very early in New Amsterdam there's also cited an "old shipwreck" nearby Philippe du Trieux whose property became the Isaac Allerton Warehouse, outside the Wall for the English doing business there. Isaac Allerton is reburied in New Haven in the cemetery Yale University maintains. He's also named in Allerton Ave. in the Bronx a large street, the exit between the Bronx Zoo and the Botanical Gardens on the oldest motor parkway in the US the Bronx River Parkway. He kept a home in New Haven had business in Maine and "abandoned" the Pilgrims, he a Puritan, apparently a partial construction's archaeology discovered discussed "In Small Things Forgotten" by J. Deetz. Once upon a time a monument erected by the Mayflower Society was up in the Seaport, across the street from where Alfred E. Smith grew up, first Catholic to run for President, I reported."

I Was Too Early on Solar Power -- Let's Not Be Too Late

Long Island has a Solar Day or did every year. One man recently, using electric torpedo motors, circumnavigated Long Island, NY on solar power alone. Out on the "North Fork" it was found to have the most days of sun per year in the state and the Hargrave vineyard, the first of now many, opened back in the 1970s, though the story goes of a Mr. Moses back in the 1600s was shown how to graft European vine to native root stock by the Rocky Point natives. Vineyards had been blown off in a hurricane in 1840. For some years Long Island summer cottages had water tanks on their roofs to warm water to wash up in (West Meadow beach) and it would be a good place for more solar energy use, and I read to happen when a large project comes online at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, in part a former WWI training camp where Irving Berlin wrote "Yip yip Yaphank" and other tunes. I once watched tiny turquoise samples go into a "reactor" there to be "neutron activated" for trace element analysis in the peaceful use of atomic energy to help determine origins of that material. Last I heard pyrite or "fools gold" has increased solar cell output efficiency dramatically. About Green Energy Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Northeast US to suffer most from future sea rise

I recall, there's a tidal power plant in "Downeast" Maine that was started during the FDR administration that the Passamaquoddy natives run. A huge tidal power plant was once proposed in Nova Scotia. The Bay of Fundy has some if not the highest tides in the world and it was thought to design one that could provide a lot of energy, which I see one in China does. "Scientific American" published an article which showed that it could have the unintended consequence of changing the tides along the coast as much as half a foot in the Boston, MA harbor quite a distance away. Perhaps some mathematical model might be developed to counteract both as a benefit. About Climate Change Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Justice Ginsburg: Possible Supreme Court Opening Soon

Maybe it should be Charles A. Reich, ("The Greening of America") who served as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Hugo LaFayette Black. About Supreme Court Read the Article at HuffingtonPost "Sorry Mr. Reich is 80. Whoever can get the "Skull and Bones" of Yale University to give up what they're holding, under the Federal "Native American Graves Protection And Repatriation Act" should be a candidate. They're rumored to be from Geronimo's grave. Another judge I see, has the broken cavalry swords the Apache had, perhaps used as pikes, at the Hoyt Farm in Hauppauge, NY. An anthropologist of the Apache, Morris Opler, presented briefs to the US Supreme Court over the internments of Americans to camps in WWII."

Recently on Facebook…

I worked for Ebasco, a Texas based power plant designer's Envirosphere division in 1983 on a number of floors in the 90s. We were part of the archaeological evaluation of Fort Drum, NY for the new cantonment of the US Army 10th Mountain Division, about 7,000 people on the former Pine Camp then temporarily used Fort Drum just east of Watertown, NY. I noticed the lack of stairwell lighting then. My significant other was also sent home one day working there on 93 (?) when they worried in the wind if the elevators would go out of alignment. I read after 9/11 a secretary recount here online that they had been at 40 Rector St., threatened to leave and Mayor Koch gave them rent-free for three years WTC floors 79-96 (?). Their Envirosphere division later moved to New Jersey.

A few years earlier I traveled in from Long Island to visit the Building 7 construction site, where an 18th century horse harness had been recovered and is in conservation at the Long Island Science Museum with archaeologist Ed Johanneman and we were denied access. An earlier story had been heard of a ship in the construction excavation for one of the towers.  I later located a ship at 175 Water Street in an archaeological investigation, there have been recorded others, i.e., the AT&T construction, another actually appears in a basement in the South Street Seaport Historic District, the parking lot there used to be on the water at Pearl Street, the original proposed location for the World Trade Center, fought by preservationists.

My condolences to those who are still in pain and torment over that day. If it would bring any closure, according to a Forbes report the company that usually screened passengers was bought a short time before 9/11/2001, and perhaps in the changing adjustment it might not have happened.

The Tick Tock Man, Jellybean.

Years ago I was treated for the "bullseye" rash that appeared around a tick bite that had gotten under my belt-line while doing a walkover survey for archaeology evaluation in North Bellport, NY on Long Island, where I once won a summer parks job in 1976 in a lottery to show the Republicans were not practicing a "nepotism" for summer jobs. In other archaeology work I have momentarily sat down in the earliest of spring in nearby East Patchogue, no foliage had yet appeared, to write a note and walked away with 20 or so ticks, picked off on the way to lunch by the crew. It is a growing problem on Long Island, one photographer for the National Geographic mag actually died from and so too a young boy here in the Bronx, NY a number of years ago. I have watched some of the activities around it, one of five tick borne illnesses, my neighbor, later a science teacher in the schools, had Rocky Mountain spotted fever which laid him up for a year as a youth. His father said he thought it was from the last cattle drive that used to stop nearby, a local saddlery "Whitey's" then in Centereach, NY in Suffolk County, which by the way has a steer on its seal and a book of cattle brands that stretches back to the 1600s. It's also where the "ranch system" started it's stated. Recently one of its first murder cases ever to have happened on Shelter Island, on the east end of Long Island, is attributed to "Lyme disease" in the defense.

One alarming development reported in New Jersey by an active organization, was the report from an autopsy, the subject volunteered his body for its study, found that though it was thought to have been treated and "cured" a large number of the spirochetes were found in the 50s year old male's heart muscle where they were "hidden" from normal testing as used. It was almost like the scary "heartworm" that sometimes attacks pets, though those are much much larger, if you've ever seen the examples at the veterinarians. Which by the way thanks to a courageous woman who collected "Lyme disease" symptoms from animal vets went on to show that it is also present in California.

It's thought that it's vector had come from the raising of sheep on the then cleared off Nantucket Island, MA and had been known to locals as a sheep carried illness in Scandinavia. The sheep landed in Connecticut are thought to have been the carriers. An experiment with tiny parasitic wasps, natural predators of ticks, was conducted in the 1930s on "No-mans Island" and showed a reduction of the tick population of 50%.

My own personal reaction was to show the interns at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital ER, where a flower arrangement is placed every day in memory of George Balanchine, American choreographer as a favor to my doctor and later experience an extreme case of itching that a saw a dermatologist for and hope I have gotten it out of my system now twenty years later. It helped explain a previous "we don't know some sort of blood infection" I was treated for twenty years before 1989 while in high school on Long Island. Others have voiced their multiple contacts with it in prior contacts. I have also read that they think native Americans have developed an immunity to it evidenced in the study of very old bones found in Louisiana.

Ticking Time Bomb (Literally): Man who Murdered Pastor Was Profiled by Paper Last Summer as Lyme Disease Victim Greg Mitchell Huffington Post

Greg Laden's Blog : Maddow Talks With SEIU's Andy Stern about the Lying GOP

I thought the largest union in the US was the teachers union. My father's local in NYC 804 of the Teamsters produced the last president Ron Carey a former United Parcel Service driver. James P. Hoffa is currently the president after there were aspersions provided by government accusations of Mr. Carey that reflected people inside his organization. Mr. Carey passed on recently. Mr. Hoffa's sister is a judge. I work in "contract" archaeology required by various agencies and circumstances and there was a brief attempt to organize part of the Operating Engineers who run many of the backhoes and excavation equipment. It was to be called Local 141 after the length of the hypotenuse of a diagonal used to lay-out 1 meter by 1 meter squares for example, using two tapes. It was supposed to protect federal stated wages from misuse by employers who low-bid on federal projects but did not follow the federal contract requirements for payroll. I wonder if the FBI used union operators looking for the current Teamsters president's father, Jimmy Hoffa, whose release conditions, no return to politics, agreed to with President Nixon, he violated. I hope so, Teamsters also drive backhoes. My dad used to say the government ruined unions when they found mandatory meeting attendance "unconstitutional" and allowed the representative government structure into them, open to the same type of corruption the US government is susceptible to.

Two "Missing" Romanov Children Found by Archaeology Identified Using DNA Analysis

Museum reveals engraving hidden in Lincoln watch

"I did EPA mandated archeology work at the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, NY that would later produce the patented muzzle-loaded, rifled R.P. Parrot cannon that pulverized Fort Sumter, SC at end of the war, but not before 'Swamp Angel' bombarded Charleston, SC with incendiaries in 1863 from miles away. There is a monument to cadets that were killed in artillery practice at West Point, where I was after 9/11 testing areas to be cleared from Hurricane Floyd. I have heard that the person(s) who fired on Fort Sumter were shooting at their former artillery professor recently put in charge there, and there are records of the two, a student and teacher in heated exchanges while in class together over artillery. Ni-Cad battery production of the NIKE missile ABM system had contaminated Foundry Cove a part of Constitution Island on the east shore of the Hudson River celebrating its 400 year 'discovery' this year. It's just a short way away from the Academy and you can hear the 'Pointer's Echo'. I wonder if President Lincoln had that watch when he observed the huge R.P. Parrott cannon firing 200 pound shells across the river? We found a 'Swamp Angel' gun platform under the fill on grillage."