Nothing New Under the Sun

Rene Marie's unexpected choice at a mayor's event where she was asked to sing the more traditional song has prompted a chorus of criticism. By DeeDee Correll DENVER — The jazz singer, invited to perform the national anthem before the Denver mayor's annual state of the city address, stood at the microphone and let loose her voice. What came out were the lyrics of the song known as the black national ...

Offensive image on hot-selling item doesn't reflect positively on city BY GORDON WITTENMYER gwittenmyer@suntimes.com Kosuke Fukudome didn't have to wait long for the ugly American part of his welcome to Wrigleyville. A Fukudome T-shirt with a racist image is the hottest-selling item at a souvenir stand that sells unlicensed Cubs-related merchandise across Addison Street from the ballpark, according to Mark Kolbusz, who's in his fourth season operating the stand. On the front ...

from the Cape Cod Times. By JOHN HEILPRIN and KEVIN S. VINEYS BALTIMORE — Scientists using federal grants spread fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether it might protect children from lead poisoning in the soil. Families were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about any harmful ingredients. Nine low-income families in Baltimore row houses agreed to let researchers till ...

By ADAM COHEN In 1993, the dawn of the Internet age, the liberating anonymity of the online world was captured in a well-known New Yorker cartoon. One dog, sitting at a computer, tells another: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Fifteen years later, that anonymity is gone. It’s not paranoia: they really are spying on you. Technology companies have long used “cookies,” little bits of tracking software slipped onto ...

By MIREYA NAVARRO Jenifer Bratter once wore a T-shirt in college that read “100 percent black woman.” Her African-American friends would not have it. “I remember getting a lot of flak because of the fact I wasn’t 100 percent black,” said Ms. Bratter, 34, recalling her years at Penn State. “I was very hurt by that,” said Ms. Bratter, whose mother is black and whose father is white. “I remember feeling ...

Slow down for three minutes to read this. It is so worth it. Touching words from the mouth of babes. A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds, "What does love mean?" The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined. See what you think: "When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. ...

Ron Mueck is a London-based photo-realist artist. Born in Melbourne , Australia, to parents who were toy makers, he labored on children's television shows for 15 years before working in special effects for such films as Labyrinth, a 1986 fantasy epic starring David Bowie. Eventually Mueck concluded that photography pretty much destroys the physical presence of the original object, and so he turned to fine art and sculpture. In ...

I rear-ended a car this morning. So there we are alongside the road and slowly the driver gets out of the car, and you know how you just-get-sooo-stressed and life-stuff seems to get funny? Yeah, well, I could NOT believe it . . . he was a DWARF! He storms over to my car, looks up at me and says, "I AM NOT HAPPY!" So, I look down ...