It's 1988. Workers building a road in Mt. Vernon, Ind. damage an ancient burial mound, causing a treasure trove of silver and copper to pour from the ground. A bulldozer operator decides to grab some of the treasure. He ends up in prison for looting. It sounds like the plot of an Indiana Jones film, only it's not a movie. The treasure belonged to a mysterious and advanced culture that flourished in the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. nearly 2,000 years ago. Because it predates the written record, this prehistoric culture doesn't have a Native American name but in the 1800s, archaeologists dubbed it the Hopewell Tradition. An exhibit of artifacts from the Hopewell site, curated by the Indiana State Museum and on display at the Angel Mounds State Historic Site in Evansville, Ind. through Jan. 14, is raising some fresh questions about these ancient Americans. "What you're seeing here is a complex of earthen structures that were very purposefully and very specifically built along this cultural landscape," says Michele Greenan, an archaeologist and curator at the Indiana State Museum. "There's a number of mounds here — probably 20, maybe even more mounds, earthen architectural features that were built for different purposes," like ceremonies or burial, she says. The fields are called the Mann Hopewell Site, after the farmer who owned their sprawling 500 acres. Two of site's earthen structures are among the biggest mounds built anywhere by the Hopewell, which was not a tribe so much as a way of life that flourished in the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. between about A.D. 100 and 500. "It's a sleeping giant," says museum curator Greenan, "and it's going to take its place as one of the most important archaeological sites in North America." See more of the story plus pictures at: http://www.npr.org/2011/01/03/132412112/the-prehistoric-treasure-in-the-fields-of-indiana

If you are a member of the House and you plan to read the text of the Constitution on the floor, it’s probably a good idea to have already taken the oath to support and defend it first. One new member, Representative Mike Fitzpatrick, a Republican from Pennsylvania who failed to be officially sworn in Wednesday, proceeded nonetheless to participate in the reading, one of the first official acts of House members in the 112th Congress. At the time of the oath-taking, both Mr. Fitzpatrick and Representative Pete Sessions of Texas were elsewhere, watching the proceedings on television. They raised their respective right hands as the oath was administered, but that was not enough to make them official. Both men were sworn in for real on Thursday afternoon. But before that happened, a Rules Committee hearing had to be halted because Mr. Sessions was taking part in it, and both men had cast votes on the floor The oath-taking foul-up was not the only opening week boo-boo. During the reading of the Constitution, because of an inadvertent double page turn, Section 4 of Article IV was skipped, as was a part of Article V. (It was entered into the record later.) The proceeding was interrupted by a protester questioning President Obama’s place of birth. And an argument began on the floor over the version of the Constitution being read, before a word of the preamble was uttered. In consultation with the Congressional Research Service and others, the leaders of the House had decided to read a version of the Constitution that was edited to exclude those portions superseded by amendments — including amendments themselves — preventing lawmakers from having to make references to slaves, referred to in Article I, Section 2 as “three fifths of all other Persons” or to failed experiments like Prohibition. Members were not provided with the version before the reading began. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/us/politics/07constitution.html

Q. Who owns United Press International?
A. News World Communications, Inc. You will find more information plus access to what other major media companies own at: http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php?c=newsworld
United Press International (UPI) is a news agency headquartered in the United States with roots dating back to 1907. Once a mainstay in the newswire service along with Associated Press (AP) and Reuters, it began to decline as afternoon newspapers, its chief client category, began to fail with the rising popularity of television news. This decline accelerated after the sale of UPI by the founding Scripps family culminating in two bankruptcies. In 2000, UPI was purchased by News World Communications, an international media company founded by Sun Myung Moon the leader of the Unification Church which publishes newspapers in South America, Africa, and Asia, and formerly published The Washington Times in Washington DC. Shortly after this sale, UPI greatly downsized, eliminating many of its departments such as its Science Writing department. The news wire's daily coverage today includes domestic and international top news, business, entertainment, sports, science, health and "Quirks in the News" through its traditional NewsTrack newswire, as well as coverage and analysis of emerging threats, the security industry and energy resources through its "premium" service. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Press_International

There’s been a book list going around Facebook for some time now that purports to be a list of 100 books of which most people will have read only six. I’ve been tagged a few times, and have seen the note pop up when other friends have passed it on. I’ll go ahead and toss my list in this post, but there’s one thing about this that’s been bugging me. The list has nothing to do with the BBC — the closest the BBC gets is The Big Read, a 2003 list of Britain’s 100 most popular books as determined by BBC viewer nominations — and actually appears to be taken from a 2007 article in The Guardian, reporting on the results of a poll of 2,000 people by the World Book Day website. In this context, whether looking at the BBC list or the World Book Day list, the claim that most people will have read only six of the books on the list makes little to no sense. Both lists were of the most popular books as selected by the people who took the survey, which carries a strong implication that these are generally well-read books. Furthermore, according to the Guardian article, the “2,000 people who took part in the poll online at worldbookday.com nominated their top 10 titles that they could not live without. http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2010/12/03/that-100-book-list-thats-not-actually-from-the-bbc/ Remember: Do not forward mass messages to anyone unless you ask them if they want to receive them.

A battle to reshape the way airline tickets are sold escalated January 5, in what could become an industry-wide showdown between carriers and middlemen. In a retaliatory move against American Airlines, Sabre Holdings Corp., a middleman for many carriers' seats, said it is raising the fees it charges American to distribute its fare information and sell its seats through thousands of travel agents. Sabre also said it will display American's flights less prominently than rival airlines in its vast booking system. The jab follows efforts by American, the third-largest U.S. airline by traffic, to sell more of its tickets directly to consumers, a strategy designed to cut costs and give the airline more opportunities to court customers. As a result, the carrier, a unit of AMR Corp., has been butting heads with online travel agents as well. Sabre is a breed of intermediary known as a "global distribution system," or GDS, which consolidates fare offerings from hundreds of airlines to share with travel agencies. For years, many airlines have paid these intermediaries to channel the bulk of their tickets to customers. Closely held Sabre, based in Southlake, Texas, owns the largest GDS. The dust-up could spread to other airlines and intermediaries in the coming months as more third-party contracts come up for renewal and carriers seek to gain more control to boost profit margins. "There's going to be a shoot-out in the airline distribution corral," predicted Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at Forrester Research. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704405704576063670807756068.html

A spilled cup of coffee left 241 passengers grounded on a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Frankfurt when it created communications and navigation problems on a Boeing 777. Flight 940 diverted to Toronto on January 3, according to a report from Transport Canada, the nation's civil aviation authority, after one of the plane's pilots spilled coffee in the cockpit. A United spokesman said flight turbulence prompted the mishap. Cockpit spills are a fairly common hazard in airplanes, but typically lead to corrosion in floors and sidewalls over the years rather than the immediate malfunction of radio systems. The airline said the spill sparked problems in one radio system, and while pilots were switching to backups they attempted to enter a "No Radio" code—7600—into the plane's transponder to alert air-traffic controllers they were out of radio contact. Instead, the pilot mistakenly entered 7500, the international distress code for hijacking or unlawful interference. Transport Canada said Canada's Department of National Defense was notified after the hijacking code was transmitted. But with the help of United's dispatch staff in Chicago, which can send and receive text messages with pilots, the flight crew confirmed it was a communication issue and not a hijacking. In addition to the radio problems, navigation anomalies related to the spill prompted the pilots to fly the plane to Toronto rather than heading out across the Atlantic, the airline said. The United spokesman said the airline flew another 777 to Toronto that night to pick up the passengers and bring them back to Chicago, where the airline put them up in a hotel overnight. An extra 777 flight to Frankfurt was added the next afternoon for the stranded passengers. The coffee-compromised plane was ferried without passengers to Washington, D.C., for repairs on January 4, United said, and reentered service the next day. United said it offered passengers the choice of vouchers for discounts on future flights or extra frequent flier miles because of the disruption. Such mishaps are rare because cockpits must pass spill tests before aircraft are certified, Boeing said. "The test must confirm that no liquid will penetrate the equipment whatsoever," a spokesman, Bret Jensen, said. Airplanes have long been designed with seals, drain paths and special moisture-controlling finishes to prevent corrosion from the occasional cockpit spill. The incident was reminiscent of the 1964 movie "Fate is the Hunter,'' based on a book by pilot Ernest K. Gann, who flew for American Airlines. A mysterious crash is ultimately found to be have caused by coffee spilled on the console between two pilots.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703675904576064112406869284.html?mod=googlenews_wsj