Headlines: December 2003 - The Morning News

‘It was sculpture. It was beautiful. It was a work of art. It was all this wood, and cloth —cloud white cloth and glistening, golden wood…That’s the airplane I wanted to build.’ Man builds replica of Wright brothers’ Flyer for cross-country flight.

Flour: never. Making lobster chowder in Maine.

In my experience, songs that try to recreate the experience of bells are as annoying as, well, bells. Critiques of Christmas carols.

Photos with Santa, holiday collars, many toys: Christmas more popular than ever with housepets.

‘I am aware of the tendency of writers to list all of their Hard Jobs while metaphorically standing against a locker with a toothpick in their mouth.’ Ben Greenman interviews George Saunders.

Headlines for Tuesday, December 16, 2003

New York’s currently: going out on a limb let’s say

EU constitution chucked in the trash.

Needing wiggle room, Bush avoids endorsing Iraqi Governing Council’s plan for war court.

Sorrow in the village of Saddam Hussein, Sri Lanka.

New era of baseball embraces sabermetrics to pursue truth and pennants.

Free, online music lessons from Berklee Shares, e.g., ‘How to Double Pick for Better Guitar Shredding.’

Strom Thurmond’s family acknowledges 78-year-old teacher as the senator’s mixed-race daughter.

Two years running, New York is the nation’s safest big city.

Give: Coalition for the Homeless.

WSJ Survey of online made-to-measure shirt makers.

Modern spends $40 million on new art for new museum.

104-year-old applies for American citizenship.

Film: Time-lapse movie of the Toronto skyline, ‘Jus’ A Rascal’ by Dizzee Rascal.

Wondering how much gold from Wagner’s Ring made it into Tolkien’s.

Graveyard commemoration of dead logotypes.

The era was marked by an invasion of ill-digested French or quasi-French terms. Brief history of Italian food.

‘The Heaviness of Being Human’ by Jack Walters.

Headlines for Monday, December 15, 2003

New York’s currently: an urban slushee

Saddam Hussein captured near Tikrit in raid by U.S. troops. Related: Description of how he was apprehended; Found through tip-off by a member of his tribal clan; New Iraqi leaders meet with Hussein; Hussein could be tried within the next few weeks, and if convicted could be executed.

Gunmen cross from Chechnya into Dagestan, kill at least three border guards, take hostages from village school.

DNA tests like the one used to confirm Saddam Hussein’s identity can be done in as little as 12 hours.

Iraqi town declares it will continue to fight for Hussein.

Loyalty, terrain, and currency make tracking, capturing Osama bin Laden more difficult.

‘Well, if I take that glass of water I will have to urinate, and if I have to urinate, I will have to go to the bathroom, and how can I possibly go to the bathroom when my people are enslaved?’ Hussein proves a difficult interrogatee.

1993 vs. 2003: New York then and now.

Heterosexual couples who boycott marriage because gay couples can’t.

Give: New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.

The dangerous, deadly flu pandemic that everyone’s worried about.

He deep-fries an entire turkey, prepares a potato soufflé, braises a few cardoons, whips up a spicy tomato sorbet, and flips and flips again a platter-sized Reuben’s apple pancake. Food writer and playwright Jonathan Reynolds cooks and acts in his play ‘Dinner With Demons.’

Winter stories: George Saunders, ‘Chicago Christmas, 1984’; David Sedaris, ‘Let it Snow’; Ian Frazier, ‘By the Road.’

Kittens discuss the Hussein capture.

Fun without mittens: snowball fight.

Headlines for Friday, December 12, 2003

New York’s currently: greeted as the natural noise of good

Fascinating U.S. News report finds Saudi Arabia the single greatest force in spreading Islamic fundamentalism for the last 25 years.

Halliburton subsidiary overcharged the government $61 million for fuel, though Halliburton didn’t profit.

Suicide bomber infiltrates heavily guarded U.S. base, kills one solider, wounds 14.

French report recommends banning ‘conspicuous’ religions symbols in public schools (e.g., head scarves, yarmulkes, large crosses).

Government doesn’t know how terrorists move their money.

Bicycling in New York slowly becoming more European, better planned and more popular.

In the world as a whole, according to the WHO, more people are obese than malnourished. Consumers may want to be healthy, but they also want their cheeseburgers.

Debt forgiveness and reconstruction contracts: Krugman calls sabotage; the Journal says good policy, bad timing.

Was Mugabe’s defeat at the Commonwealth summit also Mbeki’s?

Give: NY Cares.

Trial begins for 14 accused of orgy-mongering for group sex with 400 Japanese men and 500 Chinese women.

Les Enquêtes de Dick Spader and other French cartoons.

It is the pitfalls of punctuation that fascinate. Bolshevik printers, greengrocer’s apostrophes, and how not to render extra-marital sex as coconuts.

Small drawings by Witold Riedel.

Punchy case by the great, unpronounceable Schjeldahl for seeing the mid-career Currin solo show.

Backgammon: A Platonic Dialogue.

Headlines for Thursday, December 11, 2003

New York’s currently: a dark and stormy night

CIA said to be enlisting Hussein agents for espionage within Iraq.

Explosion in Israel kills 3, wounds 12, in likely underworld-related incident.

Timing gets out of whack when Pentagon excludes France, Germany, and Russia from Iraqi reconstruction bids, then White House asks the same countries to forgive Iraq debts.

Supreme Court upholds campaign finance law, limits contributions.

French commission recommends ban on ‘conspicuous’ religious signs.

Was the red sky in Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’ actually debris from a volcanic eruption?

Iran’s Shirin Ebadi receives Nobel Peace Prize, accuses West of using Sept. 11 attacks to violate human rights.

Are different colors of jelly bracelets like the mythological right-ear-gay earring of today? Related: The perspective on those earrings in Tanzania.

Ben Greenman interviews Tony Kushner.

‘I personally wish I would have written that Smiths’ song ‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me.’ Genius song.’ What Are Outkast Listening To?

Give: Advocates for Children of New York.

Danceteria flyers from 1982 to 1986.

School administrators begin editing the Amityville High School newspaper.

Man goes into police station to see if he’s on their wanted list, arrested when officers spot a small amount of heroin in his ear. Related: Writer turns weird news stories into calendar.

‘Watch him. He ain’t looking at that magazine.’ Real-life stories from working at Barnes & Noble.

Customized Classics, where you’re the star of well-known novels.

Headlines for Wednesday, December 10, 2003

New York’s currently: able to harbor a few million Richard Curtis fans

Pentagon forbids French, German, Canadian, and Russian companies from touching $18.6 billion in reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

Bow-tied Illinois senator Paul Simon dies at 75, a day after heart surgery.

Seymour Hersh on new Special Forces in Iraq, the Pentagon leaders who love them, and the troubles found in trusting former enemies.

Hundreds of articles in medical journals, signed by doctors or academics, are ghostwritten by agencies for big cash from drug-makers.

Reputation of famed mountaineer Reinhold Messner threatened by 30-year-old stories about the death of his brother.

Rumsfeld endorses our worries about troop rotations early next year.

Fed paying Haliburton more than twice what others are paying to import Kurwaiti gasoline and other fuel.

Give: Bread & Life.

TMN’s Choire Sicha on the troubling wryness of the Believer staff.

Only $1 for snowballs in Times Square.

Corby Kummer with good advice on this year’s best cooking books.

Holiday song for epidemiologists.

Every person…at death has a weight loss of 21 grams, the weight of a nightingale. Some believe it is the weight of the departing soul. Not so. The cadaver loses control of sphincters and our fluids dribble out. Ed Koch reviews films.

Grandma got run over by a big cow.

Wondering whether art matters, when the FBI and Homeland Security Agency investigate Mark Lombardi’s drawings. (See older drawings.)

Trailer for Marc Craste’s JoJo in the Stars.

It’s that time of year again! Advent calendars, and pretend-kicking Santas.

Headlines for Tuesday, December 9, 2003

New York’s currently: keeping the bench warm for you

Suicide bomber blows up car filled with explosives, injures 41 U.S. troops.

Gore to endorse Howard Dean in a move that may assure Dean the Democratic frontrunner position, leaving Lieberman ‘blindsided.’

On the first day of the bear hunting moratorium in New Jersey, 61 bears were killed.

Bush signs legislation for prescription drug benefit for Medicare.

Human-rights activist, lawyer, and author Samantha Power describes how things got so bad in Zimbabwe.

83-year-old Uptown Theatre in downtown Toronto collapses, kills at least one, injures 14.

‘A lot of places have nuts in bread, but there are restaurants, like Le Cirque and Daniel, that are very sympathetic to this…’ Food allergies among the rich and powerful.

Seattle cabbies can now dress like Elvis.

Give: Harlem School of the Arts

Who’d have thought it would come to this? Love John. Ringo digs up some postcards from his old bandmates.

Do you want to get together with The Morning News? Then help us start Third Thursdays.

Supreme Court rules Rosa Parks allowed to sue OutKast.

The rules: all the people must cross the river; only two people can be on the raft at a time; only the police officer, the mother, or the father can operate the raft; the father cannot be left with the girls without the mother; the mother cannot be left with the boys without the father; the prisoner cannot be left with anybody without the police officer present. A game of logic.

Now that he’s completed Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson wants to make The Hobbit. Related: The Mushroom House, inspired by a familiar Shire dwelling.

Headlines for Monday, December 8, 2003

New York’s currently: putting leg-warmers on the dancing girls

Putin’s party wins landslide in Russian parliament elections (with aid from state-controlled television, reporting on Putin’s dog instead of opposition parties).

U.S. drafts principles with South Korea and Japan for dealing with North Korea’s nuclear amibitions, though the White House’s script for action has many writers but few pens.

History of art in activism, change, and rage as AIDS continues its slaughter.

Is the U.S. the world’s boldest environmentalist?

Commanders from four U.S. Army divisions answer email wondering why they think they’re winning, and what’s being used as measures of success.

American love for lynching memorialized in Duluth, focusing on three young black men hung before a mob of thousands.

Give: AIDS Service Center.

Safire says: Want Hillary for President in 2008? Vote Bush.

Q&A on Mugabe’s decision to yank devastated Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth.

NYC Christmas: South Street Seaport’s Chorus Tree, Darlene Love’s Solid Gold, Train Show at the Botanical Garden.

Roy Cohn’s personal driver remembers tanning jaunts, tepid Barbara Walters, tides of fear.

Bruegel’s beguiling ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,’ and responses by Auden and Williams.

British films by the decade.

First column by Times laundrist/public editor Okrent.

They think that subliminally I was born in 1922, when my father was born. I nevertheless wrote Lucky Jim when I was seven and I am now in my eighties and yet I am only 54. Birnbaum interview with Martin Amis.

Photos of London by Matt Stuart.

Religious frothing for now fashionable-to-love Groundhog Day.

Headlines for Friday, December 5, 2003

New York’s currently: feeling fat when you run

Suicide bomber kills at least 37, injures 177 aboard Russian train near Chechen border.

Bush averts trade war with Europe by rescinding steel tariffs. Related: What was behind the decision, and what will it mean?

More than 6,300 sick, 10 children dead, from flu in Colorado.

Lieberman wants Federal Trade Commission to investigate junk-food companies’ marketing practices.

Palestinian groups agree to cease-fire —in principle.

Threats, death of a witness create fear at Brooklyn murder trial.

…Tall lamps are 27 inches or over, to be used on low tables like end tables, next to sofas or chairs. Medium-size lamps, 20 to 27 inches, are occasional pieces for sideboards and bureaus. Small lamps live in the bedroom, as reading lamps next to beds. Loving the right table lamps.

Is the U.S. considering another moon mission?

Give: Prospect Park Alliance.

MTA says 2nd Ave. subway line to be built in segments, not all at once.

Holiday songs about lawyering, from a lawyer.

The concern created when a high-profile blogger goes offline, even temporarily.

Type in your words, have them sung back to you.

World’s oldest penis is discovered on fossil, scientists get yet another chance to make endowment jokes.

The return of Marimekko.

Taking the test: an exam in writing fiction, by G.A. Ingersoll.

Headlines for Thursday, December 4, 2003

New York’s currently: sitting under 1,369 lights

International court convicts three Rwandans for encouraging genocide (see recent Rwandan history).

Dean now courting the same beltway insiders, i.e., cockroaches, that he pledged to send scurrying.

Putnam County supermarkets to allow shopping-monkeys for wheelchair-bound customers.

The fascinating, novel-worthy saga of Lt. John Withers, Peewee, Salomon, Nazis and reunions.

N.Y.U. film school keeps its students’ on-camera sex R-rated.

New York lawmakers want more bathrooms for women, attuned to ‘that anatomical difference.’

Details from the very personal fricca-fracas between Mayor Bloomberg and Tom DeLay.

TMN’s Choire Sicha on the very official naming ceremony for turning a spit of East Second Street into Joey Ramone Place.

Queens school founder shot 12 times.

Kofi Annan calls for U.N. to find new common ground among nations.

Give: God’s Love We Deliver.

Interesting customer recommendations if you enjoy Michael Jackson’s Number Ones.

A very large amount of information on Vermeer. [ via cdl ]

Daniel Mendelsohn on the shocking lack of moving violence in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.

Step-by-step through the record-mastering process.

The American Package Museum.

Headlines for Wednesday, December 3, 2003

New York’s currently: officially cold

U.S. troops stage massive raids in Iraq in search of Hussein deputy.

Ralph Nader raising money for possible Presidential bid.

With the U.S. preoccupied with the war on terror, China takes the opportunity to expand influence across Asia.

Supreme Court rules employers can opt to refuse rehiring recovering addicts.

Single-engine plane crashes into homes in Long Island.

Oil spill off Staten Island.

Another possible MTA fare hike in 2005?

1971–1975: the golden age of the New York Times Book Review.

On discovering cold-process coffee (it takes eight hours to make).

No. 9 is the microphone that Mitchell first used to record Green, more than three decades ago. He hasn’t allowed anyone to sing into it since. Willie Mitchell, who produced ‘Let’s Stay Together’ and ‘Love and Happiness,’ records with Al Green again.

Serving only the finest canned foods…from Spain.

Sting named to present Britain’s ‘Bad Sex Award.’ Related: Sting lied about his Tantric sex abilities to Bob Geldof on a drunken night out.

‘The 3 by 5 Initiative’ is the World Health Organization’s effort to treat three-million people with HIV/AIDS by 2005.

‘Look, quick! North Korean soldiers!’ one excited South Korean yelled to other tourists on a bus after spotting an armed squad marching by. Tourism in North Korea.

Please allow me to introduce myself: Sir Mick Jagger.

Speak & Spell online.

Something that will just collect dust.

Headlines for Tuesday, December 2, 2003

New York’s currently: enjoying the season’s first semi-snow

Majority of Iraq’s Governing Council supports Bremer’s regional caucuses plan to make government, not Shiite leader’s call for national election.

Moment-by-moment account of Sunday’s four-hour battle in Samarra.

Thai politicians outraged at new ban on mistresses and whores.

In rare display of unity, Democrats vow to defeat Dean.

India plans free AIDS therapy for people in the six states with the highest rates of H.I.V. and AIDS. Related: Who cares about AIDS in Cambodia?

Black comic director Neil LaBute’s top 10 black comic films.

A novel method for foie gras under vacuum.

Fearing Manhattan, DeLay wants the Republican National Convention held entirely on a boat in the Hudson River.

All these decades on from raising consciousness, it seems that the vagina still needs a light shone on it. Jenny Diski on recent vagina research.

New York City crime at its lowest point in 35 years.

Archive of Julian Barnes’s cookery columns for the Guardian.

NYC citizens against car alarms! Related! Everything you want to know about the subway!

Three types of opinion, including one that drove Flaubert mad.

Large index of American folklore, also, a giant index of nurse books.

Headlines for Monday, December 1, 2003

New York’s currently: making lists

Ambushes, firefights create deadly weekend in Iraq.

Bush secretly travels to Iraq, surprises troops with Thanksgiving appearance, and asks Americans to volunteer to help military.

Japanese diplomats ambushed, killed in Iraq.

U.S. to release 100 prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, with more to follow.

Fixing potholes, eliminating street noise, and collecting data with New York’s 311.

British authorities may have thwarted holiday shoe-bomb terror plot.

‘With the pine trees, the antennas are placed outside the pole and are only partially disguised by the branches, but with the cactus, the antennas are actually hidden in the trunk.’ Hiding cell-phone towers.

A look into the world of smugglers who operate in radioactive, ‘dirty’ bombs.

The music industry would like to sell shorter albums.

At the expense of its own workers, Wal-Mart takes over the U.S. Related: Florida woman trampled in rush for $29 DVD players at Wal-Mart on the same day the corporation set a new one-day sales record.

Harpers.org completely redone (and pretty incredibly indexed) with the Ftrain source code.

You’re not getting that iPod: few gift-buyers check online wish lists.

The partnership between Song Airlines and Kate and Andy Spade came both from shared aesthetics and a shared P.R. agency.

‘Total Regency freakout. Why did she go to the country? Why?’ Designers discuss the sensibilities of Green Acres and other cable reruns.

People attribute quotes to Abraham Lincoln as they see fit.

Winners: Englishman learns he’s a Canadian tribal chief with thousands of acres of land, and Chicago family wins lottery, accidentally throws out winning ticket, retrieves it thanks to garbage workers’ strike.