Smithsonian articles from January 2008

Smithsonian archives from January 2008

Pulled by bears: in 1908, anything was possible.(FROM THE EDITOR)
January 1, 2008... IN RESEARCHING A BOOK about ironworkers and skyscrapers, Jim Rasenberger was struck by the energy and zany optimism of Americans living in the first decade of the 20th century There was explorer Roald Amundsen, for example, who told the New...

David Halberstam ("Command Performance") was obviously an admirer of Gen Matthew B.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... READERS RESPOND TO THE NOVEMBER ISSUE David Halberstam ("Command Performance") was obviously an admirer of Gen Matthew B. Ridgway and had little regard for Gen Douglas MacArthur. Korea was one of our political wars Generals did not fight...

Ridgway's due.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... HALBERSTAM'S ARTICLE about Ridgway's turnaround of the Korean War was long overdue. For too many years all the credit (and none of the blame) went to Douglas MacArthur, by far the most overrated Army commander since McClellan. WILLIAM F....

Other gates to paradise.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... ARTHUR LUBOW'S article on sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti's gilded doors ("The Gates of Paradise") did not point out that the original doors, which stood at the ancient Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence, were removed and hidden in a railway...

Save the corn.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... RICHARD CONNIFF'S article about the trade-offs of ethanol and other biofuels ("Who's Fueling Whom?") mentioned the possibility of converting cornstalks into engine fuels. Please keep in mind that this approach, too, has a downside. Cornstalks...

Against innovation.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... I HOPE MY not being enamored of your special issue (37 Under 36: America's Young Innovators) doesn't make me a boorish oaf, but I suggest you mail it instead to the friends and relatives of those who appeared in the issue, not to subscribers...

Big news: in matters of sheer magnitude, Robert Howlett got the picture.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)
January 1, 2008... IT WAS ORIGINALLY CALLED Leviathan, and it was supposed to be a monster of the deep seas. Nearly 700 feet long and 60 feet high, the double-hulled iron steamer renamed Great Eastern was twice the length and triple the tonnage of any other ship...

Our unlikely next of kin.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(colugo)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... The colugo, a foot-long nocturnal glider from Southeast Asia, is the closest living relative of primates. Researchers from Texas A & M University and elsewhere compared genes from colugos, tree shrews and 30 other mammals with genes from...

Nowhere to hide.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... Orcas are even more cunning than their nickname--killer whales--suggests. A new analysis of field observations in Antarctica made over nearly 30 years shows that orcas, which are dolphins rather than true whales, can hunt down seals and...

Fate of the flower.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(bellflower )(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... The American bellflower can live for either one year or two. Which strategy does a seed adopt? It takes a cue from its parent. Scientists from Virginia and Minnesota say bellflowers grown in sunny spots produce seeds that are likely to become...

Mating in desperation.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... In the Southwest, spadefoot toads start life in desert ponds that can dry out while they're still tadpoles. Now Karin Pfennig of the University of North Carolina has discovered an unusual strategy in a species called the plains spadefoot. In...

Observed.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... NAME: Zonotrichia leucophrys gambelii, or the white-crowned sparrow. SUMMERS IN: Alaska. WINTERS IN: Mexico and the southwestern United States. NAVIGATES BY: Map. MAP? Yes. And they create it themselves. HOW CAN YOU TELL?...

The coldest place in the universe; Physicists in Massachusetts come to grips with the lowest possible temperature: absolute zero.(PHENOMENA)
January 1, 2008... WHERE'S THE COLDEST SPOT in the universe? Not on the moon, where the temperature plunges to a mere minus 378 Fahrenheit. Not even in deepest outer space, which has an estimated background temperature of about minus 455 F. As far as scientists...

Among the spires: between medieval and modern, Oxford seeks equilibrium.(MY KIND OF TOWN)(University of Oxford)
January 1, 2008... THE PREMIER BELL OF OXFORD is Great Tom. Since 1684 it has hung in the tower of Christ Church, the most monumental constituent college within the University of Oxford, and every evening at five minutes past nine precisely it strikes 101 times,...

January anniversaries: momentous or merely memorable.(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY)
January 1, 2008... 190 YEARS AGO FELLOW TRAVELER Eight years after beginning his narrative poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Lord Byron sends the fourth and final canto to his publisher in January 1818. "It has been to me a source of pleasure in the...

Aero dynamic.(FROM THE CASTLE)
January 1, 2008... UNTIL YOU'VE STOOD at the front landing gear, right beneath the nose of a Boeing 747, you don't realize how colossal the first "jumbo jet" is. Now you can do just that, then go up a long escalator and walk into the cockpit, thanks to Northwest...

Rasta revealed: a reclamation of African identity evolved into a worldwide cultural, religious and political movement.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)
January 1, 2008... THE MOST recognizable face of the Rastafari movement is the late musician Bob Marley, immortalized on T-shirts and posters wearing a crocheted red, gold and green cap over natty dreadlocks in a cloud of marijuana smoke. Yet the movement, which...

Making history.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... GIVING BACK More than a century after Sitting Bull's death, some of his last possessions are going home. As of press time, the National Museum of Natural History announced plans to repatriate a lock of the famed Sioux chief's hair and his wool...

Space race: in 1958, Explorer 1 launched America's response to the USSR's Sputnik.(THE OBJECT AT HAND)(Union of Soviet Socialist Republics )
January 1, 2008... IT WAS, QUITE LITERALLY, the beep heard round the world. The sound, mildly annoying and profoundly unnerving, was beamed to earth from a small metal sphere called Sputnik, launched into space by Russia on October 4, 1957. As the satellite...

Q & A.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(questions and answers)(Interview)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... Architect NORMAN FOSTER designed the glass canopy at the Smithsonian's Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture. He spoke with Jess Blumberg. THE COURTYARD AT THE REYNOLDS CENTER APPEARS BRIGHTER THAN EVER. I'm intrigued that you...

Jukebox.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... SEEGER SINGALONG The legendary folk singer Pete Seeger once said he wanted to "put a song on people's lips, instead of just in their ear." During the dawning years of the urban folk revival (1957-62), Folkways Records released Seeger's...

What's up.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Brief article)(Calendar)
January 1, 2008... GOLD DIGGING Vani, in modern-day Georgia, was a rich metropolis between the sixth and first centuries B.C. The lavish contents (such as this gold necklace) of a grave site excavated in 2004 are at the Sackler through February 24. SPANISH...

Danger zones; Warning: David Maisel's aerial landscapes may be hazardous to your assumptions.(Interview)
January 1, 2008... DAVID MAISEL DOESN'T CONSIDER HIMSELF AN ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST. Yet his large-scale aerial photographs of strip mines, a bone-dry lake bed and manmade evaporation ponds can be viewed as indictments of our indifference to the planet that...

Thinking like a monkey: what do our primate cousins know and when do they know it? Researcher Laurie Santos is trying to read their minds.
January 1, 2008... ON A HOT MORNING in early August, the primate census of Cayo Santiago, a 38-acre island just off the coast of Puerto Rico, numbers approximately 875. Of those, 861 are resident Macaca mulatta, commonly known as rhesus macaques, the descendants...

Letters from Vincent: never-before-exhibited correspondence from van Gogh to a protege displays a thoughtful, exacting side of the artist.(Emile Bernard)
January 1, 2008... The image of Vincent van Gogh daubing paint onto canvas to record the ecstatic visions of his untutored mind is so entrenched that perhaps no amount of contradictory evidence can dislodge it. But in an unusual exhibition at the Morgan Library &...

The lost fort of Columbus: on his voyage to the Americas in 1492, the explorer built a small fort somewhere in the Caribbean. A construction contractor from Washington State has spent decades trying to find it.(Clark Moore, Villa de la Navidad)
January 1, 2008... Christopher Columbus, anchored somewhere along the island's Atlantic coast, upped sails to begin the long voyage back to Spain with news he had discovered a western route to the Orient. The next day--Christmas, 1492--his flagship, the Santa...

28 places to see before you die: with so many wonderful places to visit, how can one choose? Keeping our readers' interests in mind, we've traveled the globe in search of destinations certain to inspire.(THE SMITHSONIAN LIFE LIST)
January 1, 2008... "WE ARE ALL OF US resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to," novelist Graham Greene once wrote. A growing number of Americans of all ages are embracing that idea by renewing a resolve to live life to its fullest. Exhibit A is the...

Sound and fury: Norman Mailer's anger and towering ego propelled--and undermined--his prodigious output.(PRESENCE OF MIND)
January 1, 2008... A BE ROSENTHAL of the New York Times and Norman Mailer stood talking at Carl Bernstein's 50th birthday party. It was Valentine's Day, 1994. The room in Bernstein's apartment in the meatpacking district of Manhattan was illuminated with votive...