“Awards for Chinese-language science fictions announced - Xinhua News Agency” plus 3 more

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• Awards for Chinese-language science fictions announced - Xinhua News Agency
• David Barton's revisionist claim on Founders Friday is bogus - Examiner
• Jessica Szohr and Jane Fonda at the Premiere of "The Tillman Story" - Associated Content
• It came from outer space - Boston Globe

Awards for Chinese-language science fictions announced - Xinhua News Agency Posted: 08 Aug 2010 08:47 AM PDT Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content. Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

David Barton's revisionist claim on Founders Friday is bogus - Examiner Posted: 10 Aug 2010 01:09 PM PDT Those who know exactly what historical revisionism can skip down to barely over half way  to: David Barton's own words.    n. 1. Advocacy of the revision of an accepted, usually long-standing view, theory, or doctrine, especially a revision of historical events and movements. 2. A recurrent tendency within the Communist movement to revise Marxist theory in such a way as to provide justification for a retreat from the revolutionary to the reformist position.     As the word implies, historical revisionism is the exercise whereby historians revise their opinions on historical events in the face of new evidence. It is an essential part of the history writing process. "Revisionism" (with quotes) is a distortion of history practiced by persons, usually inspired by antisemitism or a desire to rehabilitate the Nazis, or both. They deny that the Holocaust -- the attempted extermination of the Jews by Nazi Germany -- took place. The more accurate description of "revisionists", is "deniers". They describe themselves as revisionists because they think it gives them an air of respectability.   ...is the reexamination and reviewing of the stories told as history, with an eye to updating them with more recently discovered, more unbiased, or more accurate information. Broadly, it is the approach that history as it has been traditionally told may not be entirely accurate and may be subject to review.   The term historical revisionism is also, however, used by propagandists who wish to rewrite history to better support an ideological (and often less accurate) position. The term in this sense is most strongly associated with Holocaust denial.   So far there is a tie to Communist movement, but it's internal to the Communist movement. There's also an idea that revisionism is tied to propagandists, but are there any references to American Marxists revising history as Barton claimed?   Revisionist history is complicated by the fact that people's identities are strongly linked to their histories; challenging long-held claims about past events draws criticism and controversy. The field itself isn't cut and dry -- revisionist historians work from angle s. Often, revisio nist history is from one of three major perspectives: Social or theoretical perspective to re-examine the past through different lenses Fact-checking perspe ctive to correct the record of past events Negative perspective that views revisionism as an intentional effort to falsify or skew past events for specific motives Since the days of ancient Greek and Roman scholars, such as Plutarch and Tacitus, people have been editing recorded history. But modern historical revisionism originated in the 20th century, after the first global military conflict that shocked the world: World War I. [Emphasis added] The aftermath of the war would alter the way scholars and laymen alike viewed historical preservation. There was more on this from the same website:   Just like a journalist must report events devoid of bias, so must the historian. But complete objectivity is nearly impossible since history often takes the form of a continuous, chronological narrative. That sense of continuity helps us grasp concepts, but in reality, events don't happen always in perfect sequence like a trail of dominos. The roots of modern revisionism sprang from that theoretical struggle for objectivity. [Emphasis added] Once the dust settled to some degree after World War I, historians were left with the enormous task of sorting through the rubble. How would the military conflict be depicted in the years to come? How did the countries involved contribute to the war? Attempting to answer such questions, historians realized that complete objectivity was impossible. Even choosing what to include and omit about the war felt subjective. This was an issue scholars had wrestled with since the late 19th century.   Many historians have wanted to secularize our founders. Take this quote from W.E. Woodward. He wrote that "The name of Jesus Christ is not mentioned even once in the vast collection of Washington's published letters."   At the bottom of that article was: Suggested Reading,  David Barton, Original Intent (Aledo, TX: WallBuilders Press, 1996), Chapter 16.   David Barton's own words.    There were many other significant issues that led to our original Fourth of July; so why aren't Americans familiar with the rest? Because in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, a group of secular-minded writers (including Charles and Mary Beard, W. E. Woodward, Fairfax Downey, and others) began penning works on American history that introduced a new paradigm. For this group, economics was the only issue of importance, so they began to write texts accordingly (their approach is now described as "the economic view of American history" and since the 1960s has been widely embraced throughout the education community). Consequently, since "taxation without representation" was the economic grievance in the Declaration, it became the sole clause that Americans studied. As a result, God is no longer visible in American history; and His absence is now construed as a mandate for secularism. [...] Americans have been subjected to "revisionism"? - defined by the dictionary as "the revision of an accepted, usually long-standing view; especially a revision of historical events and movements." Revisionism attempts to alter the way a people sees its history in order to cause a change in public policy. [...] I have spent years collecting thousands of original and priceless documents from American history in general and black history in particular; God's fingerprints are evident throughout.   A "historian" can determine that "God's fingerprints are evident" in American history has the gall to make claims on The Glenn Beck show that no one supports, not even David Barton himself! When Barton claimed that "The term revisionist actually became official in 1903 and is part of Marxian, socialist propaganda.," he would have been accurate if he's replaced "in 1903" with on the Glenn Beck Show and "Marxian, socialist" with reactionary Christian. As follows: The term revisionist actually became official on The Glenn Beck Show and is part of reactionary Christian propaganda. The facts of history do not support Beck's and Barton's revised version.    From Mother Jones magazine, Susan Jacoby wrote: "Revisionist rhetoric notwithstanding, the founders left God out of the Constitution?and it wasn't an oversight." From that report: For the 21st-century apostles of religious correctness, the godless Constitution—how could those framers have forgotten the most important three-letter word in the dictionary?—poses a formidable problem requiring the creation of tortuous historical fictions that include both subtle prevarication and bald-faced lies.   Religious reactionaries of the 18th century, by contrast, were honest in their attacks on the secularism of the new Constitution. One North Carolina minister observed with forthright disgust, during his state's ratification debate, that the abolition of religious tests for officeholders amounted to nothing less than "an invitation for Jews and pagans of every kind to come among us." The Reverend John M. Mason, a fire-breathing New York minister, declared the absence of God in the Constitution "an omission which no pretext whatever can palliate" and warned that Americans would "have every reason to tremble, lest the Governor of the universe, who will not be treated with indignity by a people more than by individuals, overturn from its foundation the fabric we have been rearing, and crush us to atoms in the wreck." The marvel of America's founders, even though nearly all of the new nation's citizens were not only Christian but Protestant, was that they possessed the foresight to avoid establishing a Christian or religious government and instead chose to create the first secular government in the world. That the new Constitution failed to acknowledge God's power and instead ceded governmental authority to "We the People…in order to form a more perfect Union" was a break not only with historically distant European precedents but with recent American precedents, most notably the 1781 Articles of Confederation, which did pay homage to "the Great Governor of the World," and the Declaration of Independence, with its majestic statement that "all men…are  statement that "all men…are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."   On Founders Fridays, Christian revisionist history is used for propaganda to make people wrongly believe that the framers created a Christian government. They do this to affect public policy. Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Jessica Szohr and Jane Fonda at the Premiere of "The Tillman Story" - Associated Content Posted: 10 Aug 2010 10:39 AM PDT Stepping out for a high-profile industry event, Jessica Szohr and Jane Fonda were spotted at the premiere of "The Tillman Story" in New York City last night (August 9). The "Gossip Girl" gal and the legendary Hollywood actress both looked amazing as they posed together outside the Museum of Modern Art. In related news, it seems Jessica's relationship with co-star Ed Westwick is back on after they spent the weekend together at Lollapalooza festival in Chicago. An eyewitness told press that Jess and Ed were seen getting a VIP suite at the Hard Rock Hotel. "They checked in together. They're definitely a couple. They were kissing and holding hands." Pictures of Jessica Szohr and Jane Fonda at the premiere of "The Tillman Story": PHOTO GALLERY ©2010, GossipCenter.com. All Rights Reserved Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

It came from outer space - Boston Globe Posted: 07 Aug 2010 10:53 PM PDT There's an odd moment almost halfway through Rick Moody's new novel, "The Four Fingers of Death.'' The narrator (that is, the first narrator we encounter, for there are several populating this hulking, sprawling, unwieldy book) interrupts the story with a long footnote: "Astute fans of the genre in whose field I am plowing,'' Moody writes, "will notice I have already taken liberties.'' The genre in question is science fiction-horror schlock, but it's not Moody per se departing from the script, it's Montese Crandall, the teller of the first and last portions of this four-part novel. Crandall is a down-on-his-luck writer whose wife is expiring from respiratory failure. He lands a freelance assignment to write the novelization of a remake of "The Crawling Hand,'' a 1963 B-movie classic about a space capsule exploding upon its return to Earth. His reimagined version includes details about the doomed US space mission to Mars and a subsequent accidental release of deadly bacteria picked up on the Red Planet. In the film, the astronaut's severed arm survives and reanimates to embark on a wanton rampage of strangulation. In Moody's mock novelization, a fusion of genre fiction and existential musing set in 2025 called "The Four Fingers of Death,'' we get ample back stories of myriad characters of the main and subplots. But because the book is ostensibly written by wannabe novelist Crandall, what we read is either A) intentionally stilted, bloated, and digressive because that reflects Crandall's particular style and talents, or B) ditto, because that reflects Moody's particular style and talents. The joke? You get to decide. The entire premise feels as hermetic as a set of Russian-Martian nesting dolls. Book One recounts the botched mission to Mars and the fates of the landing party, told by one of its leaders, a certain Colonel Jed Richards. In Book Two, while we're introduced to a dozen characters — including a Korean primate researcher, his horny teenage son and his girlfriend, various NASA bureaucrats, a talking chimpanzee — the central protagonist is, in effect, the flesh-eating bacteria M. thanatobacillus, unleashed on our planet when Richards's arm survives re-entry. The first and last sections comprise Crandall's superfluous narrative within the narrative, where we're told, "The first person is tiresome and confining. It is the voice of narcissists and borderline personalities.'' This, our narrator complains, in first-person narration. (Get it?) The America-of-the-future subject matter set into a Hollywood frame are territories Moody has explored in his last two offerings, "Right Livelihoods: Three Novellas'' (2007) and "The Diviners'' (2005). Both invoke the oeuvre of John Barth, Don DeLillo, and the oft-overlooked Robert Coover, particularly the latter's "A Night at the Movies,'' and offer similar pleasures or pains, depending on one's stomach for metafictional scaffolding and preposterous satire. Fans of "The Ice Storm,'' comparatively modest in scope and slim in page count, may wistfully wonder what has happened to the less ambitious and less inflated Moody of old. Moody is no meek minimalist. He's a showy stylist. Never satisfied with the single bon mot, his prose blossoms with lists and litanies. Moody dispatches 100 examples when one will do, hammering home his ideas with repetitive blows. Stunned, they meander the grounds of their literary asylum like mental patients until their caretaker comes to retrieve them. (Sometimes Moody doesn't.) And what are Moody's ideas? The dystopian world of "Four Fingers'' imagines NASA spinning off a reality TV show about the astronauts to fund its Mars mission, a Futures Betting Syndicate "organized around current events, around a host of possible outcomes'' like political assassinations and environmental disasters, and NAFTA operating as a sovereign power with its own military. Along the border, "there were no authorities any longer, just men with nicer outfits.'' Moody revels in decorating his quirky future with jet packs, a National League of X-treme Lacrosse, paling (not tanning) booths, and recurring references to OxyContin inhalers. He's interested in what remains of humanity in a world of cryogenically preserved bodies and surgically implanted digital assistants. But the flashes of wry cultural criticism get lost amid innumerable characters who speak to each other (and think) more or less identically. The voices don't attract our sympathies, and their labyrinths of redundant verbiage are essentially the fat of plot exposition the reader has long since grasped. The distended prose obscures the best parts, like the captain's blog of the "Lord of the Flies''-like Mars voyage, and the side plot of Morton, the chimp, coming into human consciousness. Both threads might have made compelling stand-alone speculative fictions. But Moody's too in love with the jargon of science and public relations, which is to say, the language of equivocation. Which is to say, we got the thigh-slapper 300 pages ago. The book is at least 50 percent too long. So, back to Crandall's footnote. He goes on to admit that his editors have "asked me to cut the first section,'' which of course has not happened. Then Crandall suggests readers "buy two copies of the book, and you can take the second one and just lop off the first half.'' Or just read the bits about Crandall "unencumbered by all this futurist stuff'' and skip the bulk of the book. This wink-wink, nudge-nudge footnote would seem to excuse Moody from the task of responsible, engaging storytelling, but it doesn't. Rather, "The Four Fingers of Death'' clutches at our throats with overkill. What left is there to say, when Moody says it all for you? Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks.'' He can be reached through his website, www.ethangilsdorf.com. © Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company. Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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