Smithsonian articles from October 2006

Smithsonian archives from October 2006

Celestial navigations: searching the heavens for new worlds far away.(FROM THE EDITOR)
October 1, 2006... GROWING UP IN NORTHERN VERMONT, Robert Irion loved visiting New York City and stepping on the scales at the old Hayden Planetarium to see how much he would weigh on Jupiter and Mars. Inspired by "Cosmos," Carl Sagan's public television series,...

As a relative of an airman missing in action in North Korea since the Korean War, I read "Lost Over Laos" with great emotion.(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2006... READERS RESPOND TO THE AUGUST ISSUE As a relative of an airman missing in action in North Korea since the Korean War, I read "Lost Over Laos" with great emotion. It details the scenario thousands of families of missing soldiers hope to...

Homecoming wish.(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2006... THE JOINT POW/MIA Accounting Command has a budget of $50 million to recover remains from all over the world. Meanwhile, those wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan are facing Veterans Affairs budget cuts that might affect their treatment and...

Skeptical in Montana.(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2006... MONTANANS ("Cowboys and Realtors") get a big chuckle out of guys who live in places like Seattle thinking they have us all figured out, and who write about how we're so gullible and ignorant that we're hoodwinked into electing anyone for public...

Package deal.(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2006... CORN PLASTIC--the future of plastic in a post-petroleum world? ("Corn Plastic to the Rescue?") Whoa! As an article in the July issue ("What's Eating America") points out, growing corn requires prodigious amounts of nitrogen fertilizer, which...

A superfluous battle?(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2006... ONE MIGHT WONDER how history ("Saving New Orleans") would have played out if communications in the War of 1812 had been as instant as they are today To wit, the "supposed" decisive Battle of New Orleans was fought two weeks after the Treaty of...

Corrections.(Correction notice)
October 1, 2006... The first athlete to win four gold medals at a single Olympics was not Jesse Owens ("This Month in History") but Alvin Kraenzlein, an American track-and-field star at the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris. In "Wild Things, "a caption for an...

Flight of the bumblebee.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(body warm)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... When biologists presented bumblebees with a mixture of artificial blooms--some heated and marked with purple, others slightly cooler and pink--most of the bees returned to the purple ones. The study, from the University of Cambridge and the...

Taking the low road.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(elephants avoid hill)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... Where do elephants roam? Tracking 54 African elephants equipped with GPS-transmitter collars in northern Kenya, scientists working with the Save the Elephants foundation clearly documented that the animals avoided hills. Why? The scientists...

Contagious.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(contagious cancer found in dogs discovered by University College London )(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... Researchers at University College London have discovered a unique contagious cancer. The genital tumor, found only in dogs, is not caused by an infectious agent (as some human cancers are) but by the transmission of cancerous cells during sex....

Endless summer.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(shearwater crosses the longest migration record\)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... A small seabird has logged the longest annual migration ever recorded. Scientists from the University of California at Santa Cruz attached monitors to 19 sooty shearwaters and found they covered some 39,000 miles over 262 days, tracing "figure...

Observed.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(behavior of elephants during mating)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... NAME: Praying mantis PRAYING FOR WHAT? Probably protection, among the males. The females occasionally bite the males' heads off during mating. TALK ABOUT HIGH-RISK SEX: The question has been whether males resist this cannibalism or...

When he said "jump ...": Philippe Halsman defied gravitas.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)(Biography)
October 1, 2006... THE FREEZING OF MOTION has a long and fascinating history in photography, whether of sports, fashion or war. But rarely has stop-action been used in the unlikely, whimsical and often mischievous ways that Philippe Halsman employed it. ...

October anniversaries: momentous or merely memorable.(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY)
October 1, 2006... 75 YEARS AGO GANGSTA RAP Al Capone, Chicago's most notorious gangster, has reason to smile as the verdict is read: guilty of only 5 of 23 counts of income tax evasion. The decision, handed down October 17, 1931, disappoints federal...

Genesis.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(exhibition of old bibles )
October 1, 2006... While the Bible's content has obviously had a major impact on the world, what's less well known is how its format would alter publishing forever. A new exhibition, "In the Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000," at the Arthur M. Sackler...

Miracles and murals.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(sketches by Diego Rivera exhibited)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... Diego Rivera's 15- by 32-foot sketch might be the official star of the show, but numerous folk art pieces steal the spotlight, from vibrant "miracle" paintings that honor saints to a portrait made out of feathers. The exhibition of Mexican...

Wanted! Our fossil collection is already the world's largest. But we're in search of a complete T. rex.(FROM THE SECRETARY)( Jack Horner of National Museum of Natural History)
October 1, 2006... FOR MOST 4- to 8-year-olds and for adventurers of all ages, Jack Horner has a dream job with max cool assignments--like being helicoptered into Montana's badlands to hunt for a Tyrannosaurus rex, the toothsome terror also known as T. rex. Dr....

Inventive Abe: in 1849, a future president patented an ingenious addition to transportation technology.(THE OBJECT AT HAND)(Abraham Lincoln)
October 1, 2006... UPON HEARING the name Abraham Lincoln, many images may come to mind: rail-splitter, country lawyer, young congressman, embattled president, Great Emancipator, assassin's victim, even the colossal face carved into Mount Rushmore. One aspect of...

Q & A.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Thom Mayne wins Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt Museum award)(Interview)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... THOM MAYNE, a progressive architect in Santa Monica, California, has won a National Design Award, to be presented this month by the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt Museum. He spoke with Katy June-Friesen. DESCRIBE THE NEW ORLEANS JAZZ PARK...

Who's counting?(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(works by Pablo Picasso at Smithsonian Institution. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... 211 works of art by Pablo Picasso are in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (his 1934 Woman in a Hat). The artist was born in Malaga, Spain, 125 years ago this month.

What's up.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Brief article)(Calendar)
October 1, 2006... BODY LANGUAGE New York City-based photographer Ike Ude puts a modern stamp on uli, body-painting motifs of the Igbo people of his native Nigeria. Recent works by Ude and others are at the Museum of African Art until April 6. ...

The planet hunters: nevermind the demotion of Pluto to a dwarf planet. Astronomers have found about 200 planets orbiting other stars, and they say it's only a matter of time before they discover another Earth.
October 1, 2006... IT'S A CHALLENGING NIGHT for astronomy at Lick Observatory near San Jose, California. The lights of Silicon Valley shimmer below the 4,200-foot summit of Mount Hamilton, washing out the faintest stars. Clouds drift closer from the north with a...

Return to the marsh: the effort to restore the Marsh Arabs' traditional way of life in southern Iraq--virtually eradicated by Saddam Hussein--faces new threats.
October 1, 2006... THE BRITISH ROYAL AIR FORCE helicopter sweeps low over a sea of marsh grass, then banks sharply to the left, hurling me off my seat and onto the chopper's rough metal floor. Fifty feet below, pools of silver water speckled with rust-colored...

Cricket, anyone? The game is both very British and, to Americans, very confusing. But it was once our national pastime, and it's gaining fans on these shores.
October 1, 2006... "Good shot, Mouse!" comes a voice from a small crowd of spectators under an awning at the edge of a softball field in suburban Atlanta. It's a semifinal playoff between the Tropical Sports Club and North Atlanta on a hot afternoon in early...

Fabric of their lives: there's a new exhibition of works by the quilters of Gee's Bend, Alabama, whose lives have been transformed by worldwide acclaim for their artistry.
October 1, 2006... ANNIE MAE YOUNG is looking at a photograph of a quilt she pieced together out of strips torn from well-worn cotton shirts and polyester pants. "I was doing this quilt at the time of the civil rights movement," she says, contemplating its jazzy,...

Neanderthal man: Svante Paabo has probed the DNA of Egyptian mummies and extinct animals. Now he hopes to learn more about what makes us tick by decoding the DNA of our evolutionary cousins.(PROFILE)
October 1, 2006... AS A BOY IN SWEDEN, Svante Paabo read everything he could about ancient civilizations. After powerful North Sea storms uprooted trees, he begged his parents to take him to archaeological sites to look for potsherds and other artifacts. When he...

Say what? In an era of global communications, regional dialects are hanging in there, y'all.
October 1, 2006... EXPERTS HAVE BEEN PREDICTING the imminent demise of American dialects for decades, arguing that universal literacy and mass media would deaden local speech patterns. No more "Hahvahd Yahd" in Boston or "goin' for a raad" in Birmingham. Everyone...

The painter who hated Picasso: sporting artist Alfred Munnings loved horses, the English countryside and a good stiff drink. What he didn't like was modern art.(Biography)
October 1, 2006... "YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, Your Excellencies, Your Graces, My Lords and Gentlemen, pray silence for the President of the Royal Academy of Arts, Sir Alfred Munnings." When Sir Alfred rose to address Britain's most influential arbiters of art that...

300 million and counting: the United States reaches a demographic milestone, thanks largely to immigration.(PRESENCE OF MIND)
October 1, 2006... PEOPLE IN THE demographics business like to think of themselves as the only futurists you can trust. They've got a point: if you want to know how many 21-year-olds there will be in 2027, just count the number of infants living today Absent a...

Moonstruck: you can't believe everything you think.
October 1, 2006... I WENT TO A PARTY A WHILE AGO. In the course of otherwise reasonable conversation, one of the guests said, "Oh, everybody knows the moon landings were faked." I started laughing at what I assumed was sarcasm--maybe a riff on NASA's recent...