Almanacs “The Almanac - Dec. 14 - Post Chronicle” plus 4 more |
- The Almanac - Dec. 14 - Post Chronicle
- The Pioneer Press newsroom in 'It's a Wonderful Job' - Minnpost.com
- The almanac - United Press International
- Daily almanac - Columbus Dispatch
- Live free or die trying to enjoy a weekday getaway - New Haven Register
| The Almanac - Dec. 14 - Post Chronicle Posted: 14 Dec 2009 04:36 AM PST Today is Monday, Dec. 14, the 348th day of 2009 with 17 to follow. The moon is waning. The morning stars are Venus, Mars, Saturn and Mercury. The evening stars are Neptune, Jupiter and Uranus. Those born on this date are under the sign of Sagittarius. They include French astrologer and prophet Nostradamus in 1503; Danish astronomer and mathematician Tycho Brahe in 1546; World War II U.S. air ace Jimmy Doolittle in 1896; former U.S. Sen. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine in 1897; slapstick bandleader Spike Jones in 1911; comedian Morey Amsterdam in 1914; horror novelist Shirley Jackson in 1919; TV news producer Don Hewitt in 1922; country singer Charlie Rich in 1932; and actresses Lee Remick in 1935, Patty Duke in 1946 (age 63) and Dee Wallace Stone in 1948 (age 61). On this date in history: In 1799, George Washington, war for independence military leader and first president of the United States, died at his Mount Vernon home in Virginia. In 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first person to reach the South Pole. In 1986, Nicaragua announced the arrest of American Sam Hall as a spy. Hall, a former Ohio state lawmaker, was freed less than seven weeks later. In 1988, the United States announced the start of a "substantive dialogue" with the Palestine Liberation Organization for the first time. In 1989, Andrei Sakharov, father of the Soviet H-bomb, dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner for defending human rights, died at age 68. Also in 1989, opposition candidate Patricio Aylwin easily won Chile's first democratic presidential election since the 1973 coup that brought military leader Augusto Pinochet to power. In 1993, Israel and the Vatican agreed to establish full diplomatic relations. In 1995, in a ceremony in Paris, the four-year civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina officially came to an end with the signing of a peace treaty. In 1997, with an eye to the planned visit to Cuba by Pope John Paul II in early 1998, President Fidel Castro announced that Christmas would be an official holiday for the first time since 1968. In 2002, some 330 members of 50 opposition groups in Iraq met in London to discuss a new government in the event Saddam Hussein was overthrown. In 2004, two passenger trains in India's Punjab district collided at high speed, killing at least 27 people and injuring scores of others. In 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush acknowledged flawed intelligence led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq but said the decision to remove Saddam Hussein was right. Also in 2005, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed the Holocaust was a "myth" and called for Israel to be moved to Europe or North America. In 2006, the official British police investigation into the 1997 death of Princess Diana in a Paris car crash concluded that it was an accident and no conspiracy or foul play was involved. Also in 2006, the New Jersey Legislature approved civil unions for same-sex couples. In 2007, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf ended six weeks of emergency rule amid widespread political turmoil, restoring the constitution and resigning his dual role as army chief but barred a return of the high court judges he had fired in a dispute over re-election. Also in 2007, Tropical Storm Olga dissipated northwest of Jamaica after leaving 22 people dead in its wake in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Puerto Rico. In 2008, federal bailout plans for U.S. automakers in Detroit stirred resentment among some non-union car workers in the U.S. South who make less, observers say. Also in 2008, Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed fired Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein for "failure to accomplish his duties." A thought for the day: William James said, "The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." (c) UPI fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger |
| The Pioneer Press newsroom in 'It's a Wonderful Job' - Minnpost.com Posted: 14 Dec 2009 04:14 AM PST CAST: Narrator — Fred Melo FRED calls people to order, standing to side of main stage area. Three REPORTERS wearing trenchcoats and press passes, carrying notepads, cell phones and blackberrys, stand in center. FRED: Welcome to tonight's performance. In honor of the season, and recognizing the state of our business, we offer you a new take on an old story. We call our piece: "IT'S A WONDERFUL JOB." We begin with three honest, hard-working news reporters who are … wringing their hands in dismay. REPORTERS wringing hands in dismay, perhaps ripping sheets from notebooks, moaning as Fred continues. FRED: In the last holiday season in the first decade of the 21st century, journalists were under siege. They began to question their very existence. The world, it seemed, did not have a place for them any more. RAGS: I'm sick of the endless cutbacks. Another pay cut is being proposed. We're not going to even have a theatre critic. And I hear the newspaper may eliminate all adverbs. OTHER REPORTERS: No!!! EMILY: Our building is becoming a used office furniture mart. Have you been to the 7th floor? It's a ghost town. There's graffiti on the walls and drug dealers in the men's room. OTHERS: Horrors! No!!! CHRIS: Nobody cares about us. Nobody wants to pay for our content. Our loyal readers are so old they call us the "Dispatch." The new ones all want it for free. I live-tweeted a breaking story and the only followers were chickadees. RAGS: We have to do something dramatic. EMILY: You mean, like mass suicide? RAGS. I'm thinking of something worse. Let's all go into … (pause) … corporate communications. ALL: NOOOOO!!!!! They huddle into a group, wailing and gnashing teeth. FRED. EMILY: Did you hear the latest revenue-enhancing idea? The Pioneer Press put the newspaper's three Pulitizer Prize medals up for sale on eBay. CHRIS. My School Bell award is next! All continue swooning and caterwauling, whatever that is… FRED: Nothing happens. FRED CONTINUING BOB (in stupid sheet with wings), comes on; he has not been seen before. REPORTERS amazed at him, but remain wailing and gnashing. FRED (CONTINUING) CHRIS: I wish I'd listened to my mom and become a proctologist! BOB: You mustn't say that! You don't realize what St. Paul would be like without you! RAGS. Who are you? BOB: I'm the Angel of Journalism. I go around the country saving journalists from falling into perdition — and flackery. EMILY: You must be very busy. CHRIS. How'd you miss Nicole Garrison-Springer? BOB: I was in Detroit that week working with the Free Press. REPORTERS ALL TOGETHER: St. Paul would be better off if we'd never written a single news story! BOB: Hmmm. That might work. (Ruminates a second, turns to Fred.) Will you do the honors? Fred collects phones, press passes, Blackberry, notepads and gives them to the Angel. BOB (CONTINUING) They go rummaging through pockets and purses. RAGS. Where's my notepad? EMILY. I got no service on my cell? CHRIS. No blackberry! I can't breathe. BOB: No notebooks. No pens and pencils. You have no press passes. No connection to the rest of the world. No email — you never existed. EMILY. What will happen to the bloggers and radio-gabbers without content? BOB: All gone. Even the bloviators cannot manufacture opinions without the raw material of actual facts. As Fred speaks, REPORTERS gather around ANGEL. They walk in place as if he is showing them the sights. FRED: So the Angel of Journalism gathered these nonexistent journalists together and took them on a tour. He showed them what their community would be like without reporters, editors, photographers, circulation and advertising workers. RAGS What does that billboard say? Re-elect Jesse? BOB: Jesse Ventura became president of the United States … because you weren't there when he was governor. So nobody was there to follow him around and quote him fully and accurately … and the rest of the country didn't know what he was really like. RAGS What about my 14-part series showing all his flaws? It lost the Pulitzer Prize. BOB. It never ran because you weren't around to write it. REPORTERS: They resume "walk" with Angel. They walk to the 'northern' edge of our stage and look out. FRED: The Angel took them to the northern edge of their city. What once had been a comfortable surburb was now a smoking hole in the ground. EMILY: What happened to 3M and Maplewood Mall and Highway 36? BOB: Look around you. The place that used to be known as Maplewood is now one gigantic crater. Because there was no reporter to cover the City Hall's endless feuds, Diana Longrie's faction acquired WMDs and used them against the incumbents. EMILY: And not a single on-call firefighter to put it out! FRED: Bigger surprises awaited them, such as when they came to the city limits — what used to be the dividing line between St. Paul and Minneapolis. RAGS: Wait a minute! Why are the two towns renamed "Hecker-apolis" and "St. Petters"? BOB: Because good journalists weren't around to explain what Tom Petters and Denny Hecker were doing, the two city governments became centers of corporate fraud. Ponzi schemes replaced honest businesses FRED: And then they came to the ultimate insult… CHRIS: Why is University Avenue a dirt road, filled with bordellos, gambling halls and muffler shops? BOB: There were no journalists to keep an eye on $1 billion in funding for the Central Corridor. Minnesota Public Radio grabbed the money and used it to fund their non-profit, membership-based, radio porn site. REPORTERS: Rack and ruin!!!! No!!!! RAGS: Not the Central Corridor! It will provide a fast, safe, new transportation choice in one of our region's fastest-growing corridors! EMILY: It's going to carry 42,000 projected riders by 2030 with a travel time of 35 minutes! CHRIS: It will ease congestion and spur transit-friendly development! BOB: You've all been given a great gift. To see what your community would be like without journalism. You see — you really had a wonderful job. RAGS: Take us back, Angel. EMILY: Give us our beats back! CHRIS: We want to report again! As FRED speaks, ANGEL restores press passes, cell phones, notebooks, etc. to reporters. FRED: So The Angel of Journalism returned them to their community — and their beats. RAGS: Petters is in jail, Hecker is facing indictment and Jesse Ventura has a stupid cable show. I feel better already! EMILY: Maplewood is going to have a big fight at Council Monday night — aint it wonderful? CHRIS: The Central Corridor is bogged down in endless power plays — I'm on it! FRED: Thanks to the Angel of journalism, St. Paul and the East Metro was again a place that needed watching. It was a place that needed journalism. It was a place that needed the the beating heart of a newspaper every morning. It needed … All five cast members, as Fred holds up Friday's edition: … the St. Paul Pioneer Press! fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger |
| The almanac - United Press International Posted: 14 Dec 2009 12:25 AM PST Today is Monday, Dec. 14, the 348th day of 2009 with 17 to follow. The moon is waning. The morning stars are Venus, Mars, Saturn and Mercury. The evening stars are Neptune, Jupiter and Uranus. Those born on this date are under the sign of Sagittarius. They include French astrologer and prophet Nostradamus in 1503; Danish astronomer and mathematician Tycho Brahe in 1546; World War II U.S. air ace Jimmy Doolittle in 1896; former U.S. Sen. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine in 1897; slapstick bandleader Spike Jones in 1911; comedian Morey Amsterdam in 1914; horror novelist Shirley Jackson in 1919; TV news producer Don Hewitt in 1922; country singer Charlie Rich in 1932; and actresses Lee Remick in 1935, Patty Duke in 1946 (age 63) and Dee Wallace Stone in 1948 (age 61). On this date in history: In 1799, George Washington, war for independence military leader and first president of the United States, died at his Mount Vernon home in Virginia. In 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first person to reach the South Pole. In 1986, Nicaragua announced the arrest of American Sam Hall as a spy. Hall, a former Ohio state lawmaker, was freed less than seven weeks later. In 1988, the United States announced the start of a "substantive dialogue" with the Palestine Liberation Organization for the first time. In 1989, Andrei Sakharov, father of the Soviet H-bomb, dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner for defending human rights, died at age 68. Also in 1989, opposition candidate Patricio Aylwin easily won Chile's first democratic presidential election since the 1973 coup that brought military leader Augusto Pinochet to power. In 1993, Israel and the Vatican agreed to establish full diplomatic relations. In 1995, in a ceremony in Paris, the four-year civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina officially came to an end with the signing of a peace treaty. In 1997, with an eye to the planned visit to Cuba by Pope John Paul II in early 1998, President Fidel Castro announced that Christmas would be an official holiday for the first time since 1968. In 2002, some 330 members of 50 opposition groups in Iraq met in London to discuss a new government in the event Saddam Hussein was overthrown. In 2004, two passenger trains in India's Punjab district collided at high speed, killing at least 27 people and injuring scores of others. In 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush acknowledged flawed intelligence led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq but said the decision to remove Saddam Hussein was right. Also in 2005, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed the Holocaust was a "myth" and called for Israel to be moved to Europe or North America. In 2006, the official British police investigation into the 1997 death of Princess Diana in a Paris car crash concluded that it was an accident and no conspiracy or foul play was involved. Also in 2006, the New Jersey Legislature approved civil unions for same-sex couples. In 2007, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf ended six weeks of emergency rule amid widespread political turmoil, restoring the constitution and resigning his dual role as army chief but barred a return of the high court judges he had fired in a dispute over re-election. Also in 2007, Tropical Storm Olga dissipated northwest of Jamaica after leaving 22 people dead in its wake in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Puerto Rico. In 2008, federal bailout plans for U.S. automakers in Detroit stirred resentment among some non-union car workers in the U.S. South who make less, observers say. Also in 2008, Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed fired Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein for "failure to accomplish his duties." A thought for the day: William James said, "The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger |
| Daily almanac - Columbus Dispatch Posted: 14 Dec 2009 12:18 AM PST Today is Monday, Dec. 14, the 348th day of 2009. There are 17 days left in the year. Highlights in History• On Dec. 14, 1799, the first U.S. president, George Washington, died at his home in Mount Vernon, Va., at age 67. • In 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his group became the first men to reach the South Pole, beating out an expedition led by Robert F. Scott. • In 1962, the U.S. space probe Mariner 2 approached Venus, transmitting information about it. • In 1981, Israel annexed the Golan Heights, which it had seized from Syria in 1967. • In 1989, Nobel Peace laureate Andrei D. Sakharov died in Moscow at age 68. • In 1995, Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic signed the Bosnian peace treaty in Paris with the leaders of Croatia and Bosnia. • Ten years ago: Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian national, was arrested after authorities found nitroglycerin in the trunk of his car as he arrived from Canada by ferry at Port Angeles, Wash. (Ressam was convicted in April 2001 of terrorist conspiracy.) • Five years ago: President George W. Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former CIA Director George Tenet, former Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer and retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks. • One year ago: An Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at President Bush during a news conference in Baghdad. (Muntadhar al-Zeidi spent nine months in prison.) Thought for Today"True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality, the inequality of success; the glorious inequality of talent, of genius; for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the progress of the world." -- Felix Emmanuel Schelling, American educator and scholar (1858-1945) Source: Associated Press fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger |
| Live free or die trying to enjoy a weekday getaway - New Haven Register Posted: 14 Dec 2009 12:11 AM PST [fivefilters.org: unable to retrieve full-text content] Inexplicably, cans of Budweiser & Clamato Chelada are popular in the Southwest, I'm told. But more on Bud in a minute. Snow and cold aside, winter doesn't actually begin for more than a week. But it's been a pretty good fall for TV viewing ... |
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