Newsvine - Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Holds that the Second Amendment Applies to the States

A "gun" or "arms" at the time of the writing of the Second Amendment prior to the percussion cap as developed at Harper's Ferry Federal Arsenal, now in West Virginia, a strategic position on the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers fought over numerous times in the American Civil War, then required a piece of "flint" or stone to strike an iron hinged pan that hopefully would cause the powder held there, mostly by gravity, to ignite the main gunpowder charge behind a ball through a small "touch hole" bored into the barrel. When discharged the powder in the pan flashed and burned producing smoke as well as the powder in the barrel, before "smokeless" powder, filling the shooter's face and field of view.

Did they actually mean to protect the citizen in their respective state from the illegal usurpation by "rogue" federal guard or other state militias? I think so. Did they imagine that one someday one shooter could fire hundreds of killing rounds a minute at the People? I don't think so. I realize a major gun producer, Beretta, makes guns in Washington, D.C. which have interchangeable barrels for smaller caliber, a passed over choice for the Glock 9mm in my opinion by the NYC police. Regulate them, I think the amendment was written for. The days of the NYC Bowery's "Steuben Rifles" are long past though perhaps not a review of the courts martial after the so-called Civil War "Draft Riots" thought over paid-off conscriptions.

Reply#24 - Tue Apr 28, 2009 7:30 PM EDT

Newsvine - Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Holds that the Second Amendment Applies to the States

The amendment developed out of the American Revolutionary War, in it some were surprised and "massacred" i.e., September 28, 1778 "The Massacre of Baylor's Dragoons" in New Jersey. In an archaeological perspective however, that could be characterized as an "atrocity" bludgeoned with the end of muskets in tannery vats. The right to bear arms was also apparently a "private" matter as in "privateer". What I meant was not so much the evidence as regards to the "antiquity" of firearms as the spirit of the Second Amendment which allows that those matters, shall be regulated. Consider this "private" matter that has been in the press. A man from Vermont developed the so-called "dynamite gun" which from research was first developed at the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, NY across the river from the academy. In Cold Spring, said named by George Washington, guns were cast there for the US Congress before there was even a national military academy across the Hudson River, and also in part the system of "great chains" iron founded that stretched below the river to stop the larger "divide and conquer" operations by the British Navy and military had focusing on the Hudson River. This later led to the development of the rifled cannon patented by R. P. Parrott, in a "private" foundry until the declaration of "civil war" changed operations, which "labor" "fought" in the first of its kind in the then "new" Federal control. After the many cannons, shells and caissons of the later American Civil War, similar to the then building "cast-iron columns" produced and run by the offices in NYC of the West Point Foundry, were bolted together on a barge loaded with dynamite and fired a wooden piece 2.5 miles up the Hudson River. This was after the war and civilian manufactory was restored. The builder of the Vermont-tested "dynamite gun" is thought was assassinated in Holland and sections of a similar "super-gun" were thought found on vessels looking like pipeline, and one was being dismantled as part of the terms in Iraq after the 1993 invasion which he may helped design. These I think gave the Congress, by stating the existence of such matters, the ability to regulate it, beyond the individual and/or his or her state militia. I think there are semantics problems with "state militia" and "National Guard" which is what I thought is/was called out to defend the Capital. Here online it says the Marquis de Lafayette in his return visit caused the term "National Guard" to be used, though I would have thought military units were used to protect the government in NYC, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., still not a state of the Union.

Effect Measure : Swine flu: Saturday night mind boggling factoid edition

When I saw the Bloomberg article earlier today about Obama and the museum director, Solis, I googled and found this source's different account of events. I'm having trouble capturing the link and I know nothing about this source...but it says:

"U.S. President Barack Obama was in contact with a man who died April 23 from the swine flu, Reforma reported April 25. Felipe Solis, a museum director, met Obama on April 16 in Mexico City, and began to suffer from flu-like symptoms the following day. On April 18 he was admitted to a hospital, where he was diagnosed with a case of pneumonia, which was aggravated by his diabetes. Solis’ glucose levels could not be stabilized, and he died on April 23 from cardiac arrest."

http://www.stratfor.com/sitrep/20090425_mexico_u_s_man_swine_flu_met_obama

Posted by: Cheetos | April 25, 2009 10:51 PM 

The first case was seen in Mexico on April 13. The outbreak coincided with the President Barack Obama’s trip to Mexico City on April 16. Obama was received at Mexico’s anthropology museum in Mexico City by Felipe Solis, a distinguished archeologist who died the following day from symptoms similar to flu, Reforma newspaper reported. The newspaper didn’t confirm if Solis had swine flu or not. (Thomas Black, Bloomberg)

Without Superfund Tax, Stimulus Money Helps Pay for Cleanups - NYTimes.com

This is a good look at what happened back in 1995, when the politicians and others decided no more EPA Superfund cleanups. A break from "multi-tasking" NY/NJ sites on new desktops. The way I heard it lending institutions were going to be liable for cleanup, having lent the business money.

Bustler: Governors Island Park and Public Space Master Plan: On the Drawing Board

Where:  New York, NY
When:   Friday, April 24, 2009

If Shakespeare were alive today..... - Telegraph

I would show him the archaeology of his theatre recently found, and the Globe reproduction helped to fruition by once "black-listed" American film director and actor, credited as the person most responsible for the modern recreation of it Sam Wanamaker. Also, take him to Governors Island in NYC to show him Fort Williams where it's proposed a theater in the round like the Globe be made of the circular brick fortress, where prisoners in the American Civil War were once held and later Walt Disney, AWOL, having just missed the steamboat. It's thought to be a wonderful place to put on Shakespeare's plays, a similar space Castle Clinton, across the harbor, it's "twin" already used in musical performance, it once the port of entry for very early immigrants in NYC once an island now in Battery Park. Then I'd take him to the Statue of Liberty where my grandmother Miss Gregory was once a nanny to the caretaker's kids, the first electrically lit lighthouse in the world.

Then I'd take him to "Guild Hall" in East Hampton out on Long Island where one of three plays "God" by Woody Allen is being read at the "Naked Stage Marathon" recently modernized this Sunday.

Petition to fire the Chevron lawyer behind Bush torture

Our former US Ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick was also one of the authors of the research studies in "Mass Behavior in Battle and Captivity: The Communist Soldier in the Korean War" a war still with no treaty, and I feel the misuse of that research and Haynes' authorization to be in defiance of the results of the Nuremberg trials, causing a quandary for our troops, and a travesty of American ethics. In our "eye for and eye" mentality it places our own at risk for suicide bombings and other acts. Our house-to-house searches should also be stopped as a mockery of the "Bill of Rights" which I thought the founders thought valid for all people, not just Americans when the first US Congress met in its first capital, here in NYC.   Credo: petition location

The Russell Crowe Hotel Puzzle - TierneyLab Blog - NYTimes.com

He drove off on his cycle but fell in a Riemann manifold
hole n+1 dimensional,
that Flatland had left unrepairable,
and lo and behold found there was room in the
unintentional,
end of the line, infinitesimal, ad infinitum.

Clinton Says Iran Process on ‘Dual Tracks’ - Washington Wire - WSJ

The Israeli pilot who flew in the doomed NASA shuttle flight was part of an elite group of fighter jets who flew through international air-space as an errant jetliner on radar, to bomb the French built nuclear power plant in Iraq years ago. I am not sure how that has solved anything after the years, two “coalition” operations, the first my country the US as mercenaries for pay, the second under false pretenses, has solved anything? Until the students, mad at the Shah’ s Savak (secret police) spying on them at schools in the US, where by the way Israeli students have been expelled for spying since, and the Islamic clergy were allowed back in, after all the US put the shah system in in the 1930s, we had many US interests in Iran, for example the Grumman Corp. had 80 F-15 and over 3000 of its own employees there teaching the Shah’s air force how to fly and maintain what were once the US fleets mainstay fighter-bombers, the so-called “Tomcat”. The US did with it’s Aegis system, shoot down an Iranian commercial jetliner full of pilgrims for Mecca. We should try to find common ground before the whole area goes up in oil smoke again.

U.H.O. – Where Stanley Kubrick once lived in the Bronx (Wikipedia)

 UNITED HOMELESS ORGANIZATION INCORPORATED

2160 Clinton Ave
Ste 5K
Bronx, NY 10457

Subject: Re: Effects of cannonballs - sub-arch discussion list

Don't know of any per se. The first naval cannons were ordered by the US Congress for the US Navy were perhaps also made at the Federal "licensed" West Point Foundry and subsequent ordnance there was proofed and fired, also used shipboard, i.e., a small Parrott cannon fired the first shot at the C.S.S. Alabama and struck below its waterline, fired from the U.S.S. Kearsarge off the French coast of Cherbourg, where some of the Confederate crew are still buried.

I once heard that the un-indexed documents to the West Point Foundry, Cold Spring, NY described by Edward Rutsch, an industrial archeologist, as taking 100+ linear feet of shelf that had then yet to be indexed for research, in Washington, D.C. Also reported as "Classified". I'm not sure what type of scientific proofing went on as there was very little left of the "iron age" in my recollection from the EPA ordered "Marathon Battery Superfund National Priority" cleanup of cadmium once for the NIKE missiles that ringed many cities that impacted the periphery of the National Register foundry that I worked on. One large artifact was the "Swamp Angel" gun platform, or it's prototype.

I also read the British "ships-of-the-line" were painted red on the gun-deck interiors to keep the crews from over-reacting when blood was spilled in the exchange of cannon fire, so perhaps memory of it might be different than reality.

Bronx Senator Organizing Protest of Marriage Bill - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com

Will a sex change annul a marriage? What if they still loved each other will the state find it “null and void”? What about the rare people with “different” sets of genitals? Are we all now “pop stars” photographed below the waist to have legally defensible differences? New Drivers License photos going to be a little lower? The senator should get certain Dot Coms turned into Dot XXXs I think instead of tampering with what people keep in their private lives along with their religion.

Palin Calls on Sen. Begich to Resign - Washington Wire - WSJ

6:47 pm April 20, 2009

• "Soapy" Smith wrote:

If Mark Begich had been the mayor of Skagway, even I’d agree. But how can you justify it when he was mayor of the great city of Anchorage? Does the governor want to throw the anchor out with the bilge water?

Snow Rollers, The Fannichs, Loch Bhraoin, Wester Ross, Scottish Highlands on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The only time I've heard of them was on the hill in Huntington, NY on Long Island at the British Revolutionary War Fort Golgotha, commanded by Benjamin Thompson later known as the physicist Count Rumford in Europe. A French observer noted that it blew in the winter storm there so hard the snow rolled up hill into "snow rolls" like these on the side of the hill where the fort had been built in the local cemetery on top. Nearby Nathan Hale captured as a spy posing as a Dutch schoolteacher was landed and perhaps taken to Fort Golgotha before taken to Manhattan where he stated that his only regret was to have one life to lose for his country. His remains have not been located. I worked on a small archaeology project there and we recovered a "QR" "Queens Ranger" pin in the plowed over remains in a Saturday "gifted and talented" elementary school children's class. Perhaps Nathan Hale was laid to rest in the "First Almshouse" cemetery inside today's City Hall Park in NYC, below today's statue of Horace Greeley and monument of Joseph Pulitzer, which was examined in 1999 by archaeologists. His statue was moved to the front of City Hall about then from its former corner across from the location of the Civil War photographer, Mathew Brady. Now he faces Benjamin Franklin across the street. Thanks for the "snow rollers"! I have some relations I think on the Black Isle, Urquharts you may have heard of.

Iran Convicts US Journalist Roxana Saberi Of Spying: Lawyer

In 1979, Iranian students in the US said they were being spied on by Savak, the "secret police" with consequences at home for their families. One asked Henry Kissinger what might be done who answered there was nothing he could do. What is the causal "link" to the taking of the US Embassy in Tehran, the "October surprise" and the "arms for hostages" scandal resulting in the return of Islamic clergy to power? General Schwarzkopf's father in the American Expeditionary forces of the 1930s had placed in power secular rulers. That Schwarzkopf was later put in charge of the investigation of the "Lindbergh baby kidnapping" according to newspapers.

About thirty (30) years ago, the Grumman Corporation had a compound of over 3000 employees outside Tehran, training them to service and fly the F-14 "Tomcat" of which they had 80 (today 77) to have been 100 aircraft, built where Grumman once was the island's single largest employer.

Sitting with the test pilot of the F-14, his wife and anthropologist who'd been in Iran, it was announced on major TV, in "prime time" that the US would blow them up if USSR had any military sent to their border. He said that the plane was well known to them, probably over the air-to-air missile tech which would upset the balance of power in the world if obtained.

It seems a shame that this woman would be held for spying, when what started it all, Savak in the US. (250 words or less)

Iran Convicts US Journalist Roxana Saberi Of Spying: Lawyer

"The United States severed diplomatic relations with Iran after its 1979 Islamic revolution and takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Relations deteriorated further under the former President George W. Bush, who labeled Iran as part of the so-called "Axis of Evil" along with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and North Korea."

I'm objecting to this "transformational grammar" construct. As I recall the students took over the US Embassy first, then Khomeini was called up in Paris, France and later, not much however, there was a picture of Khomeini with the Reagan family Bible shown in the US press. I might have to ask Mrs. Reagan or one of the kids if it's missing! As I recall it, it was them first the Islamic revolution followed. As to the event I was watching "Ishi the last California Indian" or something part of the anthropologist A.L. Kroeber and Ursula LaGuine, his daughter's legacy. They I believe had both known Ishi, last native who never met us, whose head was clandestinely taken and returned after death.

Yan Engines

I ran into this site again. I wonder why it’s not being developed, NASA gave it a merit prize. I once bought a used rotary from the head of a psychological counseling unit my sister worked for. A Mazda RX-4, I drove it and replaced the engine, then one day fried wiring in traffic on the FDR in one of the “tunnels” did it in. Made in Hiroshima, years before I had a “Visible Wankel” model which has come back as the RX-8. I once saw a street side display window full of the various sizes and types of rotary engines in Buffalo, NY. I drove it to and around Fort Drum, NY some and elsewhere after selling a ‘65 VW bug to a natural gas researcher at Stony Brook University. I’d driven the VW to Mississippi, New Orleans, Buffalo, NY, Boston, MA and elsewhere.

Newsvine - Lawyer: Iran jails U.S. journalist for spying

In 1979, Iranian students attending colleges and universities in the US thought they were being spied on here in the US by Savak, the Shah's "secret police" which had untold consequences at home in Iran with their families over politics. One spokesperson asked Henry Kissinger no less what might be done who answered he thought there was nothing that could be done. He was out of office then also. I am not sure of the causal "link" to their taking of the US Embassy in Teheran (old spelling then) and the "October surprise" that resulted along with the "arms for hostages" scandal which resulted in the return of the Islamic clergy where before, led by General Schwarzkopf's father in the American Expeditionary forces of the 1930s there had been placed in power secular rulers, which however lead to a very large "secret police". That Schwarzkopf was later put in charge of the Federal investigation of the "Lindbergh baby kidnapping" I read in the newspapers.

Just prior to these events of the past, the more recent now about thirty (30) years ago, the Grumman Corporation (now Northrop-Grumman) had a compound of over 3000 employees just outside Tehran, training them to service and fly the F-14 "Tomcat" of which they had 80 (reported to be 77 recently Washington Post) which I thought I read back then in Newsday, the Long Island, NY paper, was to have been 100 aircraft, mostly built where Grumman was once that island's single largest employer (Apollo LEM, aircraft, computers, etc.) I was sitting with the test pilot of the F-14, Tom Gwynne, his wife and anthropologist had been in Iran, when during the crisis it was announced on a major television station during "prime time" we would blow them all up if the USSR made any military movement for it's own shared border. He said, now with the "Cradle of Aviation Museum" that the plane was well known to them it was probably over the air-to-air missile tech which would upset the balance of power in the world if obtained.

It seems a shame that this woman would be held for spying, which to my mind seems to be what started it all, Savak in the US and perhaps if the details were better known both sides might agree to put the past aside and let her come home. After all Grumman was not the only company there making money, though perhaps the only one with a large compound, according to Newsday.

Bloomberg Says No to Gowanus Cleanup

I worked on EPA Superfund National Priority sites for archaeology in 1989-1994 after HAZMAT training at Bellevue and in Elmsford, NY. One in particular, the Marathon Battery site in nearby Cold Spring, NY was contaminated by nickel-cadmium heavy metals from the production of batteries for the NIKE missile ABM system that once ringed many cities around the world. The historic West Point Foundry Cove marsh was earthen dammed removed processed with concrete and taken out on the historic rail-bed that once carried the cast iron rifled Parrott cannons in the Civil War and latter steel assemblies used elsewhere to build bridges and skyscrapers in the NY/NJ area:"In 1896/97 J. B. & J. M. Cornell took over the iron foundry at Cold Spring, N. Y. on the Hudson River. The foundry was known as the West Point Foundry Works. These facilities are discussed in the magazine, The Successful American, Vol. III, No. 4, April 1901, p. 202, which also illustrates the extensive works at this location until about 1913 (newspaper reports Bridge Shop fire) across from the West Point Military Academy. The operations went apparently quite smoothly and today the marsh, monitored is returning to its prior natural state. I think the federal clean-up of Gowanus Canal would be the best option, though there were contentious levels of acceptable clean-up in Cold Spring, i.e., the State had a cleaner standard in parts per million than the Federal government did at the time.

The Hollywood Happening a Motorcycle Event - Enchanted Mountains - Cattaraugus County in Western New York State

I once used to spend some time down there on Cattaraugus Creek what became “Deer Lick” a large Nature Conservancy holding. What I heard was that species usually found further south were in this niche and trees grow very large. Can’t say I’ve ever been to the Hollywood though, interesting history. I wonder if the former projectionist, Mr. Eastwood was related to Clint Eastwood. Directors Paul Morrissey and Andy Warhol left one to them out in Montauk, Long Island.

NY Daily News - Discussions - Big water tunnel and big price tag ...

I followed this in its "public comments" stage of the underground filtration plant design, when it was proposed a choice of three locations: next to a prison in Westchester County, arguably there more served by it; along the Harlem River, piped north then back south; and this location, to be about $100 million cheaper than the Westchester one. At $1 billion vs. $1.1 billion, instead of in the historic neighborhood of Jerome Park reservoir, it seemed the solution. It may have set a precedent though, taking a public park and is being built next to a well-known children's hospital, with over-runs that make the original decision look suspect, almost a crime.

Speaking of which, my involvement with this is from an archaeological perspective: the water tunnel was to come up in Manhattan in only two locations that would provide sufficient benefit to the water system there: either in what was to be a larger "Cabrini Park" at 1 Police Plaza or in the parking lot of the South Street Seaport Historic District, a proposed block to be developed as "250 Water Street" with the National Register 251 Water St. across the street to the south from it. I still haven't heard where it will surface. The former Dinkin's administration was once considering condemning the 250 Water St. site for it, last known to be owned by the Milstein's who have also developed property at Times Square. When I did research on the block I found it very significant in NYC history, for example a Quaker Mayor of NYC Bowne, lived there as did an early merchant, Isaac Allerton, a Puritan who came over on the Mayflower, a Bronx street named after him I think.

Lab feud began with 9/11: Suit charged Helath dept. in harassment

Hello. "Helath dept." in the headline should be "Health dept." This is not good we need better technicians who help us in detecting what is more common in the straw and hay of the Eastern hemisphere that arrives with our new trading ventures, i.e., pallets. Reusable plastic ones could be washed and save trees and stop the spread of anthrax. Recall the pallet of skins from Africa as a vector, maybe skins maybe pallet.

Ask About the History of Manhattan - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com

When asked to research the Bowery near it and Houston for archaeology we found that two cemeteries were removed, the Quaker one, usually unmarked, to what is now Prospect Park and Westbury and a Methodist one to the Queens/Brooklyn border created to circumvent the NY State legislature which insisted none be more than 250 acres in any one county. The two non-denominational marble vault cemeteries however are still there. My question is, just a block or two below Houston on one map is the toponym “Negroe Cemetery”. Was it moved? Does someone know the history of it? I worked on the research and archaeology as crew of the “First Almshouse” cemetery inside City Hall Park prior in 1999, near the statue of Horace Greeley and the monument to Joseph Pulitzer, most left where they lie.

Brunswick Town excavation unearths window on past | StarNewsOnline.com | Wilmington, NC

Archeologists excavate a section of the Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson Historic Site on Thursday after a 147-year-old wooden gun platform was discovered. The gun platform once supported a cannon that weighed nearly 12,000 pounds. Thursday, April 9, 2009, was the final day of a four-day excavation at the site.

"Coronet" yacht like "Wanderer"

The yacht "Coronet" which to my recollection looks like the "Wanderer" more than not, though that's from an old memory of the painting. The basics are there, very large with triangle sails aloft and a low waterline. Notice the scale of the person standing near the stern to get an idea of its size. Later "J" size yachts, with stainless steel wire for rigging were even larger, well so it seems looking at the model in the now Long Island Maritime Museum.

It's Number 9-9-9 for Beatles: Rock Band, Digital Remasters | The Underwire from Wired.com

A one time cameo, sitting at a cafe table, was reported for Ian Fleming in "The Prisoner" I read in supplied credits written and directed by Patrick McGoohan ("Longshanks" in "Braveheart"). I saw a fan club "Six of One" (from "six of one, half dozen of another") online. I missed attending Anthony Burgess' "creative writing" course at Buffalo, NY university by a year or two, who I read his brother was a prisoner of sorts thought "a clockwork orange" and I wonder if he and Mr. McGoohan knew each other.

My question might be how litigious can we get? Mick Jagger on the stand in the Bronx County courthouse over a song, George Harrison's guitar filched on Staten Island by a doctor, Jim Carey leaving a Howard Stern interview say he had a jet that took George Harrison to Switzerland for treatment. Looking forward to the remastered music, and Muzak's bankruptcy, boy could those guys get Beatles songs up in the air fast. Reminds me of an old 78 rpm Al Jolson singing "I've Got My Captain Working For Me Now" and the flip side "Wait 'till You Get Them Up In the Air Boys". (1919)

Turkana Basin Institute - Seventh Human Evolution Workshop

Hobbits in the Haystack: Homo floresiensis and Human Evolution

Stony Brook University, New York

Woody Allen Deems American Apparel "Sleazy" - Gothamist: New York City News, Food, Arts & Events

They've maybe upset his wife who went to Drew University, where former NJ Governor Keane was it's president. It was started by a once famous Methodist who had a well known tavern in New York City. Known as the "College in the Forest" in Madison, NJ it's very pretty. The Roebling Chapter of the Society for Industrial Archeology meets there every year. I once mapped its trees around Mead Hall and the archaeology of it after a fire. I was told it was the first place roses were cultivated in America. Good to have him back.

15 Years Ago Today: Kurt Cobain Died - Gothamist: New York City News, Food, Arts & Events

Now I see the doors the forensic scientist Dr. Lee complained about. It was assumed that since they were locked Mr Cobain committed suicide, but according to toxicology, it Dr. Lee's opinion, a person with that much heroine in him could not have pulled the trigger. The doors were never analyzed, i.e., a pane of glass could have been removed and replaced after an alleged homicide, and setup to look like what was expected. Dr. Lee, of Connecticut, also testified at the "OJ trial" thought the crime scene was mishandled.

Other recent forensics also show that Jimi Hendrix may have had a switched sleeping pill available at the time from Germany that was four-times as powerful as expected, and to this day many insist he died from a heroine overdose.

I've worked with a forensic anthropologist on a rare occasion in public archaeology, Marilyn London with the Smithsonian, on call with the state of Rhode Island, in the "First Almshouse" cemetery remains inside NYC City Hall Park in 1999 and also on the previous research that placed that there. Thanks for the graphic.

Newsvine - U.S. WWII shipwreck found off Australia's coast

The first Japanese vessel was a small submarine in Hawaii sunk just before the aerial attack on Pearl Harbor manned by two or three. It was found by underwater archaeologists testing their new equipment and found the "war grave" with a shell hole through the base of it's conning tower at great depth and upright on the bottom.

Incidentally a researcher who chastises both sides for the lack of research by both into the events that led up to the war, stated at Mainichi a mainstream Nippon newspaper (I think where I read it online by a westerner) that there was to be a "declaration of war" but on an unusually warm December day, attending a funeral eulogy for someone stretched into hours at the cemetery outside Washington, D.C., the minister took the opportunity to expound at great length, and the document was not translated until after the events according to him or her or both.

- Wed Apr 8, 2009 10:19 AM EDT I say that in memory of Leman Chapman Urquhart, Master Mariner, born on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada who left NYC for Savannah, Georgia at the helm of the "City of Atlanta" then torpedoed by U-123 in January of 1942 off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina in the "Battle of the Atlantic" with only three survivors of the 47 on-board rescued by Sea Train Texas, one of the first in our waters to be sunk in "Operation Drumbeat" (Paukenschlag) by the German U-boat and its captain Reinhard Hardegen. Leman Urquhart, also a Savannah harbor pilot, was my grandfather's brother, and he served for many years in the Merchant Services on convoys to Russia and as an officer on the troop carrier USS Gen Simon B. Buckner. He once joked they had run out of Navy admirals and had to start using Army generals for ship names. - - Wed Apr 8, 2009 10:45 AM EDT

Talking about Newsvine - An Open Question To The People Of New York........

I'm not sure, maybe it's suspicion. I worked for the environmental division of a Texas based power plant designer in the upper floors of a World Trade tower and surveyed Fort Drum, NY for the relocation of the US Army's 10th Mountain Division way back in 1983 when A-10s were using it for target practice. After 9/11 I read, across the street from where I once worked (since demolished on Trinity Place) that the power plant designer had threatened to leave and former Mayor Koch gave them rent free for three years floors 79 to the top of one of the WTC towers, according to a sad secretary's report the day after the tragedy here on-line. They left though way before 9/11/01, for New Jersey, at least that division I and my significant other worked for, that evaluated the permanent cantonment of 7000 where there had been some iron foundries and cheese factories, about 10,000 people moved off after WWII, for live-fire exercises, NY National Guard activities and US Army winter training.

My point might be that it seems perhaps in the past that often some sort of trade is made over staying in NYC by large firms with elected officials, many we might not have voted for on our 1960s voting machines. Why should they get big tax breaks, apparently free rent and what anywhere else would look like "personal" favors from civil servants. Maybe that's why, they're subject sometimes to ridicule, along with the politicians, lumped together. Wall Street moving to New Jersey? You're going to hear from people about it.

- Mon Apr 6, 2009 6:02 PM EDT

To clarify: archaeological survey. I am not a licensed surveyor but was part of a crew of three women and three men in a Ford Bronco digging screened shovel-test units at predetermined intervals on a in-field located grid in various places to create a small sampling of the various areas of the 110,000 acres or so at Fort Drum, NY just east of Watertown, NY for archaeological resource management in the then future occupation of the facility. It was work reviewed by federal agencies and incorporated into a management plan. Out of it I heard came a five-year plan for archaeology conducted by other firms. Recently at Fort Drum a "pseudo" Iraq with archaeology sites were created to train troops to recognize their cultural resources when engaged there after misdirected occupation in "ancient" Babylon by the US Marine Corps caused damages to what we might consider civilization's heritage located on the "Fertile Crescent" between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers - Wed Apr 8, 2009 10:59 AM EDT

Why We Need the New York Times - Alec Baldwin - Huffington Post

I understand that we lost most of the old printing machines that used to flank New York's City Hall Park on "Newspaper Row". Some cities have managed to save an example for exhibit. Today the statue of Horace Greeley and the small monument to Joseph Pulitzer stand in the City Hall Park near the site of first exhibit space, a circular panorama of the city that once stood in the City Commons and the where the remains of the "First Almshouse" cemetery are. Nearby I imagine reporters would clamber for the stories coming out of City Hall.

One US Cabinet Member, a former shorthand teacher in NYC and later a president of ConEdison, George B. Cortelyou, became the first "White House Press Secretary" when he invited them in to describe the condition of President McKinley after the assassination attempt in Buffalo, NY, the Spanish-American War, etc. Some historians say he has been overlooked, holding two Cabinet posts under McKinley and Postmaster General under Theodore Roosevelt after the death of McKinley. The Cortelyou family, long time residents of Brooklyn, had an ancestor Jacques who surveyed Brooklyn for the Dutch.

It would really be a shame to lose the City's newspaper that has managed to cover so much about so many and today actually seems even more useful where one can leave comments and exchange ideas with other readers online, providing a feedback to consumers a little more satisfying than the proverbial "wrapping the fish" with it.

"Eighteen hundred and froze to death"...1816

On Long Island, NY a "New Village" was started and a church now on the US National Register of Historic Places was constructed in the Federal Style in what is today Lake Grove, NY. It had been recorded that the 100 "mechanics" those that built ships in Setauket, had to wear their coats all summer. Some of the ship-building carpentry went into it but very subtle, perhaps its ornament not permitted, referring to a frugal time when "truck farming" began there and wood used for heating, in short supply after the War of 1812. Baltimore, Maryland became a "middleman" between the North, which had no crops and the South which did manage to avoid the frost which killed most crops. People seem to think global cooling resulting from volcanic dust spread high in the atmosphere is good. It causes death which requires rebirth. That "rebirth" from the American example I am familiar with, after Mount Tambora in Indonesia exploded in 1815 there came after a "Year Without Summer": "...Poverty Year or Eighteen hundred and froze to death, was 1816, in which severe summer climate abnormalities destroyed crops in Northern Europe, the American Northeast and eastern Canada. Historian John D. Post has called this "the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world." - Wikipedia Not an event to look forward to or it's opposite: crops "cooked" in the ground by rising temperatures. The national database has first built 1817, then 1815. The official Village of Lake Grove, NY online site states the First Congregational Church of New Village was built in 1812.

Newsvine - US law fights submarine-like boats hauling cocaine

To quote somewhat out of context, Walter Cronkite, distinguished television journalist and author, sailor and Overseer of the US National Maritime Historical Society:

In terms of lost lives, wasted money, and eroded civil liberties, the casualties of this war grow daily.

• Thousands of terminally ill patients are cruelly being denied the modicum of relief that medical marijuana could provide.

• Millions of Americans are wasting away in jail for non-violent drug offenses.

• Billions of dollars are being spent pursuing small time users...instead of treating addiction, reducing poverty, and targeting king pins and major traffickers.

From a renewal membership request from the Drug Policy Alliance.

- Sun Apr 5, 2009 1:29 PM EDT

Scotland Takes Center Stage at "Dressed to Kilt" Event - Gothamist: New York City News, Food, Arts & Events

Great! As an Urquhart descendant, (in "A Bridge Too Far" Mr. Connery plays one), and a bridge where Rob Roy almost hangs after jumping with a rope around his neck (played by Liam Neeson, our condolences to him and his loved ones) I once saw an interesting painting. Perhaps you've seen it. Very old, 17th century (?), and the gentleman is wearing plaid trousers? Maybe they invented them? I watched online George Whipple's report on NY,1 if you want to see these stills move a bit.

Newsvine - NEW Study: Scientists Discover Active Thermitic Material in WTC Dust - Route24 News

My Avira software won't go to that site over spam url's. The WTC were the first skyscrapers put up with nuts and bolts rather than rivets which allowed it to be completed in "record time" by comparison. It was for sale, and just prior to 9/11 a voting primary day in NYC candidates for Mayor were asked on a public local station, WABC I recall, what the prospective candidates would do with the "windfall" from the anticipated sale of the WTC. My favorite response was a to build the ?0,000 low and middle income housing units negotiated for the original "de-mapping" of the NYC streets to build the trade center, apparently never built according to the candidate. How many people were voting that day instead of in the WTC is a matter of conjecture, rarely ever raised.

Is there to be a "torque bolt-and-nut" study? That also did not seem to be an important enough matter, but one would hope it was also studied.

Speak Up For Wildlife

Show Your Support for Environmental Education
-Urge Congress to Pass the No Child Left Inside Act-

Getting hands-on environmental education back in America's classrooms is an important part of building an environmentally literate citizenry to face the challenges posed in the 21st Century.

The No Child Left Inside Act will provide much-needed new funding to help states provide teacher training and expand high-quality environmental education programs, engaging kids with the great outdoors and fostering a lifelong appreciation of the environment!

Petition location.

Archaeological Institute of America Benefit Gala - Archaeology Magazine 60th Anniversary - April 28, 2009

Join us on April 28 at a Gala celebrating the 130th anniversary of the Archaeological Institute of America and the 60th anniversary of ARCHAEOLOGY Magazine as we honor Harrison Ford and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

The Gala will take place at Capitale, a former bank building in Manhattan's Lower East Side designed by Stanford White. James Delgado, a renowned archaeologist, author, and television host, who has led many of the most important shipwreck expeditions of the last four decades, will host this extraordinary evening as our Master of Ceremonies.

For further information click title. 

Times Archive Blog: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, still in the news

Needs a quick edit: "Yanaguchi" (2nd paragraph) should be "Yamaguchi" the name of the local doctor once in Ronkonkoma, NY who made a house-call to save my fevered cousin back in the 1960s. I've read there were 12 American POW's at Hiroshima when the bomb exploded.

The Emperor's white samurai sword, surrendered at the end of the war, has been recently returned to the Kings Point Merchant Marine Academy Museum, on Long Island, NY, stolen in the 1970s and said to draw attention to veterans mistreatment, the "thief" wrote who died of cancer, whose representative left it there with the note. It was placed back on exhibit at the museum. I saw it at a yearly meeting of the US National Maritime Historical Society.

The first U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, in Kings Point, on Long Island, NY, it was officially commissioned by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Re: Yes We Can - Bianca Jagger - About Climate Change - Huffington Post

Caliban: "The day when I begin to feel that everything is lost, just let me get hold of a, few barrels of your [Ariel's] infernal powder and as you fly around up there in your blue skies you'll see this island, my inheritance, my work, all blown to smithereens . . . and, I trust, Prospero and me with it" The Tempest - William Shakespeare Noted author and scientist Aldous Huxley gave a lecture on his deathbed. In it he states the "The Tempest" was actually Shakespeare's first play and preceded all the others though added to the list at the end due to its controversial descriptions.

Bianca Jagger: Yes We Can

People seem to think global cooling resulting from volcanic dust spread high in the atmosphere is good. It causes death which requires rebirth. That "rebirth" from the American example I am familiar with, after Mount Tambora in Indonesia exploded in 1815 there came after a "Year Without Summer" ("...Poverty Year or Eighteen hundred and froze to death, was 1816, in which severe summer climate abnormalities destroyed crops in Northern Europe, the American Northeast and eastern Canada. Historian John D. Post has called this "the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world." - Wikipedia)

On Long Island, NY a "New Village" was started and a church now on the US National Register of Historic Places was constructed in the Federal Style in what is today Centereach. It had been recorded that the 100 "mechanics" those that built ships in Setauket, had to wear their coats all summer. Some of the ship-building carpentry went into it but very subtle, perhaps its ornament not permitted, referring to a frugal time when "truck farming" began there and wood used for heating, in short supply after the War of 1812. Baltimore, Maryland became a "middleman" between the North, which had no crops and the South which did manage to avoid the frost which killed most crops.

Not an event I'm looking forward to or it's opposite: crops "cooked" in the ground by rising temperatures.

Miss Universe Visits Guantanamo: 'A Loooot Of Fun!' - Huffington Post

Maybe they should have took her to Cape Maisi (Columbus wrote it then Maysi) "around the corner" where in 1871 "Wanderer" sunk in a storm. It had been built as a luxury yacht in Setauket, NY sold to a Louisiana cotton merchant's broker, outfitted with trans-Atlantic crossing water tanks in Port Jefferson, NY was intercepted by the British Navy Anti-Slavery Blockade, thought too luxurious, then landed with a slave cargo, of which 1/3 were lost in the crossing, on Jekyll Island, Georgia in 1858. Later captured by the Union it was used as a very fast mail packet after used as a blockade runner by the Confederacy, a "chess piece" in the War Between the States. I find a parallel between the Executive Branch buying over a score of jets, flying them into other countries, using countries on the way that would object if told, and drugging confining and in "extraordinary rendition" delivered to countries that have no qualms about torture. Oh yeah, and some were taken to Guantanamo, Cuba.who upon release become the "terrorist cadre" we thought to avert."Wanderer" sank in the "fruit trade".