Smithsonian articles from March 2008

Smithsonian archives from March 2008

Game cats: Kanini and Quincy.(FROM THE EDITOR)(Editorial)
March 1, 2008... THE FIRST TIME GUY GUGLIOTTA met Laurie Marker she was teasing Kanini, her pet cheetah, with a rag attached by string to the end of a pole. Gugliotta, who wrote our cover story ("Rare Breed," p. 38), thought immediately of Felis catus....

What a great story ("1908"), but why did author Jim Rasenberger end it by dwelling on the negative consequences of the technologies first developed then?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... READERS RESPOND TO THE JANUARY ISSUE What a great story ("1908"), but why did author Jim Rasenberger end it by dwelling on the negative consequences of the technologies first developed then? I won't buy into that state of mind. I, for one,...

Defending Norman Mailer.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... FIRST, A DISCLOSURE: I am Norman Mailer's authorized biographer. When Lance Morrow speaks about Mailer's works ("Sound and Fury"), he is disingenuous, at best. Morrow says that Mailer's masterpiece, The Executioner's Song, was assembled from...

Bragging rights.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... I'VE BEEN LUCKY to have seen or been to all of the places you chose in "28 Places to See Before You Die." To round out your selections, I would add the Cappadocia region of Turkey and what for me is the most beautiful place on earth, Vietnam's...

Metric persuasion.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... AS A RETIRED science teacher, I was amazed to read "The Coldest Place" and find all the temperatures given in degrees Fahrenheit. Chemists, physicists and other scientists, not to mention the rest of the world that relies on the metric system,...

Corrections.(Correction notice)
March 1, 2008... The ships pictured on page 44 were not part of the Great White Fleet of 1908, as described. They were cruisers and gunboats from an earlier period. The Turkish ruins shown on page 91 are not Ephesus, but, rather, the Temple of Trajan at...

Thanks to grandma.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(feeding of young by female Seychelles warblers)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Doting grandparents are surprisingly rare, known mainly among baboons, lions, pilot whales and people. Now there's a bird: the Seychelles warbler. In a 24-year study, scientists in the Seychelles Islands found that when a female warbler loses...

Evolution by asteroid.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... What caused the massive proliferation of new sea life (right: clamlike brachiopod fossils) 470 million years ago? Scientists at the University of Lund in Sweden and elsewhere have a new suspect: asteroids. The "Ordovician biodiversification"...

Familiar turf.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(chimpanzees' foraging behavior)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... When times are tough, male chimpanzees go home, according to a study of more than 30 years' worth of records from Tanzania's Gombe National Park. Males abandon social groups when food is scarce and return to territories where they were reared...

How to keep whale sharks straight.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Ecocean's method of locating sharks)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... The spots on a whale shark look so much like constellations of stars that the Australian conservation group Ecocean adapted Hubble space telescope software to identify individual animals by their markings. The researchers found that the whale...

Observed.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(Neoscona punctigera spider)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... NAME: Neoscona punctigera, a nocturnal orb-weaving spider found in Asia. THE TRAP: N. punctigera hides till sundown, weaves its web and waits for a meal (usually a moth) to drop in. But why would prey do that? THE BAIT: Spots of color...

Two for the Rogues: Sparky and CowBoy were fast friends, but Danny Lyon was able to keep up with them.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)(Charles Ritter and Irvin P. Dunsdon of the Chicago Outlaws)
March 1, 2008... COWBOY AND SPARKY, two pals on bikes. They've just been to a motorcycle race in Schererville, Indiana, and their girlfriends will soon get off work from the Dairy Queen. It is November 1965, and CowBoy--Irvin P. Dunsdon, who uses the capital B...

March anniversaries: momentous or merely memorable.(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY)(Calendar)
March 1, 2008... 90 YEARS AGO TIME AND AGAIN Congress enacts daylight saving time on March 19, 1918. Backers herald benefits, from increased production of war materials to improved worker health and morals. But farmers cry foul, and with World War I's end,...

Tracking the bighorns: where do the elusive mountain climbers go? Researchers have finally learned some answers.(PHENOMENA)
March 1, 2008... AS THE FIVE OF US hiked around Rising Wolf Mountain, a monolith of ice-chewed rock in the southeast corner of Glacier National Park, we could hear clinking and rattling somewhere in the talus slopes above us--miniature rock slides unleashed by...

Tapestries.(FROM THE CASTLE)(Smithsonian offerings)
March 1, 2008... CULTURAL DIVERSITY FLOURISHES. Humans speak and sing in 6,000 languages and cook dishes made of every imaginable ingredient. At its best, America exemplifies that splendid diversity, and for 151 years the Smithsonian has collected artifacts,...

A neonatal niche: medical companies ignored the needs of premature infants, inspiring a nurse to become an entrepreneur.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Sharon Rogone of Small Beginnings Inc.)
March 1, 2008... SHARON ROGONE remembers her first days on the job in an intensive care unit for newborns in San Bernardino, California. Nurses cut tongue depressors in half, creating makeshift intravenous arm boards small enough for infants weighing as little...

Jukebox.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(songs to fight AIDS)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... SONGS TO LIVE BY In Uganda, a national awareness campaign has helped dramatically lower the percentage of the population infected by HIV over a period of 16 years. But grass-roots organizations aren't just telling Ugandans how to fight...

Daredevil: Evel Knievel took risky behavior (and showboating) to new heights.(THE OBJECT AT HAND)
March 1, 2008... IN HIS RED, white and blue leathers, motorcycle stunt rider Evel Knievel was an accident waiting to happen, and his audiences rarely had to wait long. For almost two decades, from the mid-1960s until 1981, the man on the flying two-wheelers...

Q & A.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(questions and answers with John Alexander)(Interview)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... A retrospective of artist JOHN ALEXANDER's work debuted at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in December and travels next to Houston's Museum of Fine Arts. The artist spoke with the magazine's Jess Blumberg. YOUR WORK HAS BEEN DESCRIBED...

Making history.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(measuring the Hope Diamond's emitted light )(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... MYSTERY ILLUMINATED The Hope Diamond is one of the most-viewed museum pieces in the world, but visitors never witness the mysterious red glow it emits when exposed to ultraviolet light. Although researchers have long known about the fiery...

What's up.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Brief article)(Calendar)
March 1, 2008... BUT IS IT COMFORTABLE? Brazil's Campana brothers dreamed up a chair woven from 1,600 feet of rope (Vermelba Chair, 1993). The design duo are guest curators for a Cooper-Hewitt exhibit showcasing "fantasies of daily life" through September 28....

Interview Doug Fine, journalist, New Mexico: how an ambitious experiment in ecological living led to a goat pen.(Interview)
March 1, 2008... TWO YEARS AGO, PUBLIC RADIO REPORTER DOUG FINE bought a 41-acre ranch in southwestern New Mexico to live off the land--and off the grid. In his book Farewell, My Subaru, due out this month, he says he raised his own food, cut his dependence on...

Rare breed: can Laurie Marker help the world's fastest mammal outrun its fate?(Cheetah Conservation Fund)
March 1, 2008... YOU CAN SEE WHY THE PHARAOHS of Egypt revered cheetahs, why they fascinated William the Conqueror and why Kublai Khan supposedly kept a thousand of them for hunting. Nothing in this world--absolutely nothing--moves like a cheetah. The sprint is...

The arranger: he picked up a trumpet at age 13 and is still a musical force. From bebop to hip-hop, from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson, nobody alive has done more for American music than Quincy Jones, who turns 75 this month.(Interview)
March 1, 2008... His house stands atop a hill in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, at the end of a gated, guarded driveway, nestled among citrus trees and bougainvillea and caressed by Pacific breezes. It's a grand stone structure, both a monument to Quincy...

Revolutionary road: efforts to turn the Vietnam War's notorious Ho Chi Minh Trail into a major highway have uncovered battle scars from the past while paving a way to a brighter future.(DESTINATION ASIA)(Travel narrative)
March 1, 2008... THE OLD HO CHI MINH TRAIL passes right by Bui Thi Duyen's doorstep in the hamlet of Doi. The hamlet, quiet and isolated, is of no consequence today, but during what the Vietnamese call the "American War," many thousands of northern soldiers...

Springs eternal: in rural Japan, stressed workers and tourists seek geothermal ease.(DESTINATION ASIA)(Travel narrative)
March 1, 2008... IT'S SAID THAT A CULTURE is reflected in its vocabulary. The Japanese onsen tradition is a case in point: the word means "hot springs" but involves a whole range of experiences. There are indoor baths (notenburo), outdoor baths (rotenburo),...

The changing face of Bhutan: as the last Himalayan Buddhist kingdom cautiously opens itself the world, traditionalists fear for its unique culture.(DESTINATION ASIA)
March 1, 2008... ON RURAL HIGHWAYS IN Bhutan, trucks hauling huge pine logs rush past women bowed beneath bundles of firewood strapped to their backs. In the capital of Thimphu, teenagers in jeans and hooded sweat shirts hang out smoking cigarettes in a...

Forbidden no more: as Beijing gets ready to host its first Olympics, a veteran journalist returns to its once-restricted palace complex.(DESTINATION ASIA)(Paul Raffaele in the Forbidden City)(Travel narrative)
March 1, 2008... I HAD EXPECTED TO FEEL AWE AS I approached the Meridian Gate guarding what most Chinese call the Great Within--Beijing's Forbidden City--but I'm surprised to feel apprehension, too. After all, it's been a while since the emperors who ruled from...

Highlights & hotspots: celebrations, ceremonies and competitions sure to delight even the most seasoned traveler.(Calendar)
March 1, 2008... BHUTAN OCT. 9-11 Dzongs (temple-fortress compounds) in the capital of Thimphu come to life with music and dance during the tshechu festival. Monks wearing masks (below) perform dances venerating Buddhist saints. CAMBODIA NOV....

A record find: how The Phantom of the Opera led me to a long-lost musical treasure in Paris.(PRESENCE OF MIND)
March 1, 2008... WITH 20 YEARS' HINDSIGHT, it's easy to see that it was right there on the page, hiding in plain sight: "It will be remembered that, later, when digging in the substructure of the Opera, before burying the phonographic records of the artist's...

Electrocybertronics: marketing through pseudoscience.(THE LAST PAGE)
March 1, 2008... WANT TO PUT your company or product on the cutting edge of science? Simple. Add a trendy prefix or suffix to its name. But beware: what linguistic fashion raises up, it can also bring down. Electric. In the 19th century, electricity...