Update: A complete transcript of the encounter with Wessel and Monckton can be found at the Guardian environment blog.

According to Kevin Grandia at DeSmogBlog, climate disruption denier Lord Monckton was talking with a number of youths when he was approached by a couple of other youths he recognized from the Americans for Prosperity event that was temporarily taken over by youth climate activists yesterday. When he was asked to shake one of the activists’ hand, he responded

No, no. I’m not going to shake the hand of Hitler Youth. I’m sorry.

The activist in question, Ben Wessel, is Jewish, and his grandparents escaped the Nazis. Furthermore, Monckton’s remarks yesterday could have been considered intemperate as they were made in the heat of the moment. That Monckton would repeat the charge today when he’s not being shouted over suggests that he truly believes the youth activists to be equal to the Hitler Youth. Full story »

No one saw this coming: The sudden demise of Editor & Publisher, the long-revered, trusted, occasionally insouciant, experienced watchdog of the newspaper industry. The Nielsen Company said Thursday it would shutter the publication. Some wags had thought financial considerations would kill off the monthly print edition but leave the vibrant online edition functioning.

But, no. After a tradition of reporting on the reporters dating back to 1884, E&P is done. And that’s sad, because the careful inspection of the media industries by a longtime, experienced staff led by editor Greg Mitchell has ended. Mitchell, who took over as editor in 2002, had revived a publication that had become moribund and almost irrelevant. To much criticism, he killed E&P as a print weekly and reintroduced it as a monthly. But his master stroke was diving headlong onto the Web, where E&P has prospered, at least in terms of timely analytical coverage of the industry.
Full story »

This would be Eya Pueri, by Discantus. Discantus is a French medieval babe group, and the only difference between them and Anonymous 4 is that there are more of them–eight singers, as compared with four. Same era, though, mostly songs from before the 15th century. And while they have toured the US and the rest of Europe, they still haven’t toured anywhere in the UK. But I’m hoping. The group was founded by Brigitte Lesne, who is involved in some other excellent French early music groups as well, particularly Alla Francesca, which is a mixed group, but sadly does not appear to have done a Christmas album yet.
Full story »

“Christmas tree a la mode.” That’s how my grandfather, Bill Mackowski, described it to his wife, LaVerne, back in December of 1944.

Bill was stationed in Belgium, part of the 330th infantry regiment of the 83rd Army Division. The world was embroiled in war and, at that 
time, the Battle of the Bulge had been raging for a week.

But the night of December 24 was quiet along the front. The men were sitting around, talking about their girls back home, missing their families. “I just kept thinking how foolish most of them were not be married or not to have someone like you,” Bill had written to Verne just a few days earlier, after a similar bout of homesickness had befallen him and his buddies.

It was Bill’s third Christmas in the army. Full story »