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Or Nikolai Yezhov.

Dear Virginia......... http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/

Interesting that you should mention a vanished newspaper article that criticised Mandelson.

A while back I tried to find a quotation from Mandelson in which he said that "we now live in the post-democratic age". It was reported in a newspaper. He said it while working as a European Commissioner.

Weirdly, the original quotation is nowhere to be found. It turns up on blogs and so on, but there's no source.

I guess I must have been mistaken in ever believing that it existed. The Commissar vanishes. The lie becomes truth and the erasure is forgotten.

http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/

Yes, AC, there is a Santa Claus.

http://www.newseum.org/berlinwall/commissar_vanish es/vanishes.htm

Fixed that link for ya.

http://www.newseum.org/berlinwall/commissar_vanish es/vanishes.htm

Fixed that link for ya.

"This technology could render very visually-convincing (but not computer/analytically convincing) image censorship or alteration. I am strongly reminded of this example of photo-editing from the 1940s:

http://www.newseum.org/berlinwall/commissar_vanish es/vanishes.htm "

Need I remind you, komerade, kommisar Nikolai Yezhov was originally ADDED to pikture, and that our Ministery of Truth only restored the photo to original kondition? Everyone knows that in Soviet Russia, photo alters YOU! Now, your papers, please. And remember to smile for the kamera, komerad.

This technology could render very visually-convincing (but not computer/analytically convincing) image censorship or alteration. I am strongly reminded of this example of photo-editing from the 1940s:

http://www.newseum.org/berlinwall/commissar_vanish es/vanishes.htm

I don't mean to instigate a knee-jerk, authoritarian censorship discussion. I think it's obvious that this technique is just plain cool and has great potential for beneficial use, even if it might be used for ill. That's just an intersting historical example that it might have made easier in execution (har-har; gallows humor and pun 2-for-1!).

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Possibly the best reply ever from the then editor of the New York Sun.

A few months back the "Newseum" held a seminar on the relevance of blogging, and how it affected professional journalism. One guy stood up and berated Wikipedia for a half hour, stating he saw no value in any media that could so easily be altered by the average user.

Bloggers have to keep in mind that professional journalism is a multi-billion dollar industry, with owners and investors willing to defend the status quo with the same aggression as big oil attacks global warming.

Just ask yourself: why would an organization like the Newseum even exist? To influence public perception of the media in general, and defend traditional journalism from threats such as the Internet.

I guess, once again, you just have to follow the money...

Not the least revolutionary change was the astounding drop in newsprint prices that advances in papermaking technology afforded - newsprint prices that were 28 cents per pound in 1864 had plunged to two cents or less per pound by 1897. -- ConservATree

Industry history can be found at Freedom Foundation's Newseum, the Museum of Printing Boston/N.Andover (disclosure: my name appears on that site less often now than in the past), APHA and similar.

(See other postings for the well-known use of yellow ink in certain cartoons which lent the name to the editorial style of those papers.)

The Eugene Register-Guard of Oregon and Managing Editor William L.K. Wasmann call the landing "a triumph made possible by men of vision in every race and time." His front-page editorial continues: "If Sunday's Moonwalk shows enough men the nobility man is capable of, then we may have hope for mankind yet."

Apollo 11 enacted the story of an audacious purpose, its execution, its triumph, and the means that achieved it - the story and the demonstration of man's highest potential... an achievement of man in his capacity as a rational being - an achievement of reason, of logic, of mathematics, of total dedication to the absolutism of reality... The mission was a moral code enacted in space.- Ayn Rand

The Newseum has hundrets of digitized frontpages of real newspapers. It's kinda better than that.

While you're in DC, go to the basement of the American History museum.

Also of geekly interest in/around DC are the Spy Museum (easy to get to; a couple blocks from the Metro) and the NSA museum (annoying to get to; about a 2-hour bicycle ride from downtown DC or half an hour from Greenbelt Metro).

The FBI tour is a total waste of time. The Bureau of Engraving & Printing (where they make the paper money) was a bit interesting (though a poor ratio of standing in queues to actually seeing stuff) but I believe the tours have been suspended. The Newseum was good but it's now closed until 2006.

The Newseum has a couple examples of their exhibit based on this book available on their website -- it's pretty fascinating!
http://www.newseum.org/cybernewseum/exhibits/berli n_wall/censorship.htm

At the newseum I saw an exhibit (link sadly doesn't have item I'm goint to mention) where they had the cell phone of a reporter in the gulf war. It was an expensive sony phone, using new-at-the-time lithium batteries. The phone is shattered; you can see where the bullet entered and was stopped by the dense battery. The battery didn't violently explode with the damage.

That gives me an idea... can you have an antibiotic and/or steriliazation suit? Not that it would help a whole lot...

This is a great improvement over the old days, when it took a lot of inking, cutting, and retouching to convert someone into a non-person.

There are some interesting low-tech examples documented in The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs in Stalin's Russia .
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