Random Access

Monday – 07 March 2011
Today was one of those “Do I really have to get up and go to work today…?” days. Not that there was anything overly ominous waiting at the office. It was more of a “Monday…blah,” kind of thing.

The weekend was good. On Friday, I had brunch with at Gourmandise. The food and the company were both excellent. Later in the day, and I made our way to the Hostler’s Train Festival, in Ogden. It was a good show; it may have even had a better turnout than last year’s show. While wandering, I saw something that I have been pondering for a while – an MTH gas station. This one was a Shell station and the seller had a really good price on it. So… I bought it:

The only difference is that mine has a VW minibus, rather than a Beetle. I also bought a/another USPS rail car:

Friday night, after work, I changed the layout again, as I mentioned in Saturday’s quick post. I like it. I may take a spur or two out of the long end… and run some SuperStreets track up there, giving me the possibility of having road traffic moving alongside rail traffic. We’ll see.

Saturday, I judged another HeroClix event at Dr. Volt’s Comic Connection. It was a themed event – “Science vs. Magic” – and had a good turnout. After the game, I headed back home for a quiet evening in.

Yesterday was also rather low-key. I woke up to a grey day, which didn’t do much for motivation. I spent the morning watching TV for a couple of hours, before moving on to Call of Duty. After brunch with SaraRules, I played DCUO until it was time to do some errand-running. We had dinner-and-a-movie night with the in-laws. Last night’s fare was Unstoppable, which the in-laws hadn’t seen. Back at home, we watched a little television and then I met a coworker online for more CoD action. I wrapped up the night/early morning with a Skype call to the Vancouver branch of the family. I didn’t get to talk with Bit or Pixel, as it was well past their bedtimes… but I might do that this evening.

Stray Toasters

• If you haven’t taken a look at Utah Symphony’s new website, why not take a few moments and check it out?
• Piano Jazz Presents: The Women of Song
• Tight Budgets Mean Squeeze in Classrooms
• Wingsuit Formation Flying
• 
• Hello Kitty’s Identity Crisis
• More Women Opt for Less Invasive Breast Biopsies
• Utah G.O.P. Adopts Immigration Alternative
• 
• Microchip Paintings
• LVMH to Take Control of Italy’s Bulgari
• NFL, players’ union settle in for another week of labor talks
• Improv Everywhere: King Philip IV

Namaste.

Somehow, this didn’t wind up posting yesterday. *shrug* Well… here it is.

Friday – 04 March 2011
It’s my 9/80 day off.  Earlier, my friend, Peggy, made a comment about it being (almost) the weekend and looking forward to it. With that in mind, these were the first two songs/videos that came to mind:

…and…

And equally – if not more – importantly: Today is also the first day of the Hostler’s Model Railroad 2011 Festival. Amen. and I are heading up there this afternoon. We might even squeeze in a visit to Wonderful World of Trains, too.

Last night was another low-key night around the house.  I made dinner: Spaghetti. SaraRules! and I watched a little TV before I joined a coworker online for some Call of Duty: Black Ops action. Next, I read this week’s four-color haul.

Stray Toasters

• Unemployment Rate Ticks Below 9% in February
• Women Who Inspire: Share Your Photos
• Va. group creating slave name database
• Are whites racially oppressed?
• 
• Muslim student sues FBI over GPS tracking device placed on his car without a warrant
• The new van that I ordered for my model railroad shipped this morning.
• …and in a related note: I’m think of tearing out my rail yard (at least in it’s current configuration) and replacing it with a dog-bone, for that “train-passing-train” look.
• How Did Mike Make Out?
• 
• NFL negotiators close to another extension of talks
• Home prices falling to level of 1890s

And with that, it’s time to finish getting ready so that I can meet Sib-4 for breakfast.

Namaste.

Tuesday – 01 March 2011
A new month begins.
Today also marks the beginning of Women’s History Month.

T minus three days to the train show.
T minus sixteen days until Green Lantern/St. Patrick’s Day.

Last night was very low-key around the house. SaraRules! fixed soft-shelled tacos and rice for dinner. While eating, we knocked out the last two episodes of NCIS: Los Angeles on the DVR and watched an episode of House Hunters about a couple in Texas. (They were almost as finicky as the couple I posted about a few days ago who were looking for the one-level home.) But, they found a spot they liked.

Tonight, SaraRules! and I are attending Utah Symphony‘s 2011-12 Season Announcement Reception at Abravanel Hall. (Yeah, I get some pretty swank fringe benefits of having a wife with a cool job.) After that, I’ll be dashing off to join ‘ D&D game. No rest for the wicked, I guess.

Stray Toasters

• Women Have a Right to Talk About… Everything
• Drinking Soda May Increase Your Blood Pressure
• I finally got robandsara.org back up and running… only to realize that we never posted much after (read: “anything”) after the wedding. There’s still some fine-tuning to be done, but the pages are there. I’m thinking that I’ll be adding content from here (and from some photo galleries) over the next little while to bring it a little more up-to-date.
• 
• “BlackHole” malware, in beta, aims for Mac users
• Screen legend Jane Russell dead at 89
• lj user=”gazehound”: You’ll want to check out some of the images on this page. (Particularly, the third one.)
• What’s behind home-sales-scuttling low appraisals?
• Egypt’s nostalgia and ancient civilizations
• The following ‘toon came from this page on Let’s Be Friends Again:

  

  • The notes on that page also referencedThe Racial Politics of Regressive Storytelling, a very good commentary from Comics Alliance’s Chris Sims (1, 2)
• I bought a new van for my railroad layout’s Superstreets last night. I should have it in-hand sometime next week, God willin’ and the creek don’t rise.
• This ad…

  

  …somehow reminded me of this:

  

• Remapping Computer Circuitry to Avoid Impending Bottlenecks
• Dance! Dance! Dance! (And, by the way, Ms. , you might want to check some of these out, as well…)
• Famous, With Foot in Mouth
• NYC’s Last Chinatown Arcade Shuts Its Doors
• 
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Union Pacific Railroad Billboard Campaign Reminds Truckers to Stop for Trains
  Really…? You have to remind drivers of this? Even for non-rocket scientists, the concept of “crash” should be fairly easy to grasp.
• The Art of Video Games

She would waste not, not in struggle
No other shall there ever be
And what she is to love, listen oh my brother
Is as the wind to Mercury

Namaste.

Sunday – 27 February 2011
This morning started off as a grey, drab-looking day… but the sun has  put in an appearance. I’m good with that. After a quiet start to the day, we’ve done a little errand-running and shopping.

Yesterday was a low-key and fairly quiet day. We did a little errand-running in the late afternoon/early evening. I also put in a stop at The Train Shoppe; I picked up some more Superstreets. I have no idea where I’m going to use all of it, at this point, but I have it. I also fixed dinner last night: Baked teriyaki-marinated chicken and homemade macaroni-and-cheese, with a side salad. After that, we watched some shows on DIY and Food Networks and cleared a few more things off the DVR.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s item is The Apollo Theater (1, 2, 3)

The world famous Apollo Theater is so much more than a historic landmark – it is a source of pride and a symbol of the brilliance of American artistic accomplishment. With its rich history and continued significance, the Apollo Theater, considered the bastion of African-American culture and achievement, is one of the most fascinating chronicles in American history. It is one of the most famous music halls in the United States, and the most famous club associated almost exclusively with Negro performers. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and was the home of Showtime at the Apollo, a nationally syndicated television variety show consisting of new talent.

An Apollo Hall was founded in the mid-19th century by former Civil War General Edward Ferrero as a dance hall and ballroom. Upon the expiration of his lease in 1872, the building was converted to a theater, which closed shortly before the turn of the 20th century.

However, the name “Apollo Theater” lived on. In 1913 or 1914, a new building, designed by the architect George Keister, opened at 253 West 125th Street as Hurtig and Seamon’s New (Burlesque) Theater. In 1933 Fiorello La Guardia, who would later become New York City’s Mayor, began a campaign against burlesque.  Hurtig & Seamon’s was one of many theaters that would close down. Sidney Cohen reopened the building as the 125th Street Apollo Theatre in 1934 with his partner, Morris Sussman serving as manager. Cohen and Sussman changed the format of the shows from burlesque to variety revues and redirected their marketing attention to the growing African-American community in Harlem.

Ella Fitzgerald made her singing debut at 17 at the Apollo, on November 21, 1934. Fitzgerald’s performances pulled in a weekly audience at the Apollo and she won the opportunity to compete in one of the earliest of its “Amateur Nights”. She had originally intended to go on stage and dance, but intimidated by the Edwards Sisters, a local dance duo, she opted to sing instead.

The Apollo grew to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance of the pre-World War II years. In 1934, it introduced its regular Amateur Night shows hosted by Ralph Cooper. Billing itself as a place “where stars are born and legends are made,” the Apollo became famous for launching the careers of artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, James Brown, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Gladys Knight & the Pips, The Jackson 5, Patti LaBelle, Marvin Gaye, Luther Vandross, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Ben E. King, Mariah Carey, The Isley Brothers, Lauryn Hill, and Sarah Vaughan. The Apollo also featured the performances of old-time vaudeville favorites like Tim Moore, Stepin Fetchit, Dewey “Pigmeat” Markham, Clinton “Dusty” Fletcher, John “Spider Bruce” Mason, and Johnny Lee, as well as younger comics like Godfrey Cambridge. One unique feature of the Apollo was “the executioner” a man with a broom who would sweep performers off the stage if the highly vocal and opinionated audiences began to call for their removal. Jimi Hendrix won the first place prize in an amateur musician contest at the Apollo in 1964. The Jazz Foundation of America has celebrated its annual benefit concert, “A Great Night in Harlem”, at the Apollo Theater every year since 2001.

The club fell into decline in the 1960s and 1970s, and was converted into a movie theater in 1975. The Apollo was revived in 1983, when Inner City Broadcasting, a firm owned by former Manhattan borough president Percy E. Sutton purchased the building. It obtained federal, state, and city landmark status, and fully reopened in 1985. In 1991, the Apollo was purchased by the State of New York.

On December 15, 2005, the Apollo Theater launched the first phase of its refurbishment, costing an estimated $65 million. The first phase included the facade and the new light-emitting diode (LED) marquee. Attendees and speakers at the launch event included President Bill Clinton, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons.

As of 2009 it is run by the nonprofit Apollo Theater Foundation Inc., and draws an estimated 1.3 million visitors annually.

Stray Toasters

• Train show in T minus five days and counting…
• Why are America’s largest corporations paying no tax?
• I have found a ring maker who might just have an item that needs to go on The Covet List…
• Two planets found sharing same orbit
• Sword of Fargoal — addictive dungeon crawler for iOS
• The Likability of Angry Birds (from The Oatmeal):
  
  
• HIPAA Bares Its Teeth: $4.3M Fine for Privacy Violation
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Zimbabwe Professor Arrested, Tortured for Watching Viral Vids
• Articulated cardboard Cthulhu

Namaste.

Friday – 25 February 2011
It’s Friday. Amen. Aside from the whole “end of the work week” thing, it also means that it’s only a week until the Hostler’s Train Show in Ogden.

Last night, I made dinner: Teriyaki chicken stir-fry over rice. It turned out pretty well. SaraRules and I caught up on NCIS over dinner; now, we just need to do the same for NCIS: Los Angeles. We also caught a bit of Dawn of the Dead, by Zach Snyder. I am very curious as to how his new vision for Superman shapes up.

After that, I spent a little time in Gotham City, chasing down Harley Quinn – saving Robin in the process – and beating on some of Bane’s thugs.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note is Bessie Coleman (1, 2, 3)

Elizabeth Coleman was an American civil aviator. She was the first female pilot of African American descent and the first person of African American descent to hold an international pilot license.

Coleman was born on January 26, 1892 in Atlanta, Texas, the tenth of thirteen children to sharecroppers George and Susan Coleman. Coleman began school at age six and had to walk four miles each day to her all-black, one-room school. Despite sometimes lacking such materials as chalk and pencils, Coleman was an excellent student. She loved to read and established herself as an outstanding math student.

When she turned eighteen, Coleman took all of her savings and enrolled in the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University (now called Langston University) in Langston, Oklahoma. She completed only one term before she ran out of money and was forced to return home. Coleman knew there was no future for her in her home town, so she went to live with two of her brothers in Chicago while she looked for a job.

In 1915, Coleman moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she lived with her brothers and worked at the White Sox Barber Shop as a manicurist. There she heard tales of the world from pilots who were returning home from World War I. They told stories about flying in the war, and Coleman started to fantasize about being a pilot. She could not gain admission to American flight schools because she was black and a woman. No black U.S. aviator would train her either. Robert S. Abbott, founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender, encouraged her to study abroad. Coleman received financial backing from Jesse Binga (a banker) and the Defender, which capitalized on her flamboyant personality and her beauty to promote the newspaper, and to promote her cause.

Coleman attended the well-known Caudron Brothers’ School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, France. There she learned to fly using French Nieuport airplanes. On June 15, 1921, Coleman obtained her pilot’s license from Federation Aeronautique Internationale after only seven months. She was the first black woman in the world to earn an aviator’s license. After some additional training in Paris, Coleman returned to the United States in September 1921.

Coleman’s main goals when she returned to America were to make a living flying and to establish the first African American flight school. Because of her color and gender, however, she was somewhat limited in her first goal. Barnstorming seemed to be the only way for her to make money, but to become an aerial daredevil, Coleman needed more training. Once again, Bessie applied to American flight schools, and once again they rejected her. So in February 1922, she returned to Europe. After learning most of the standard barnstorming tricks, Coleman returned to the United States.

When Bessie returned to the United States to pursue her new flying career, she knew she must have publicity to attract paying audiences. She created an exciting image of herself with a military style uniform and an eloquence that belied her background. Her first appearance was in an air show on September 3, 1922 at Curtiss Field near New York City. The show, sponsored by Robert Abbott and the Chicago Defender, billed Bessie as “the world’s greatest woman flyer.” More shows followed around the country including Memphis and Chicago. On June 19, 1925, Bessie made her flying debut in Texas at a Houston auto racetrack renamed Houston Aerial Transport Field in honor of the occasion.

In the time between her 1922 flying debut in New York and her 1925 Texas debut, Bessie never lost sight of her goal of opening a school for aviators. She flirted briefly with a movie career, traveled to California to earn money for a plane of her own, crashed that plane once she bought it and then returned to Chicago to formulate a new plan. It was another two years before she finally succeeded in lining up a series of lectures and exhibition flights in Texas. Once there, she defied not only racial barriers but gender barriers as well. She appeared in San Antonio, Richmond, Waxahachie, Wharton,Dallas and numerous unreported small towns and fields. At Love Field in Dallas, she made a down payment on a plane from the Curtiss Southwestern Airplane and Motor Company.

Coleman’s aviation career ended tragically in 1926. On April 30, she died while preparing for a show in Jacksonville, Florida. Coleman was riding in the passenger seat of her “Jenny” airplane while her mechanic William Wills was piloting the aircraft. Bessie was not wearing her seat belt at the time so that she could lean over the edge of the cockpit and scout potential parachute landing spots (she had recently added parachute-jumping to her repetorie and was planning to perform the feat the next day). But while Bessie was scouting from the back seat, the plane suddenly dropped into a steep nosedive and then flipped over and catapulted her to her death. Wills, who was still strapped into his seat, struggled to regain control of the aircraft, but died when he crashed in a nearby field. After the accident, investigators discovered that Wills, who was Coleman’s mechanic, had lost control of the aircraft because a loose wrench had jammed the plane’s instruments.

Over the years, recognition of Coleman’s accomplishments has grown. Coleman’s impact on aviation history, and particularly African Americans in aviation, quickly became apparent following her death. In 1927, Bessie Coleman Aero Clubs sprang up throughout the country. In 1989, First Flight Society inducted Coleman into their shrine that honors those individuals and groups that have achieved significant “firsts” in aviation’s development. A second-floor conference room at the Federal Aviation Administration, Washington, DC, is named after Coleman. In 1990, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley renamed Old Mannheim Road at O’Hare International Airport “Bessie Coleman Drive.” In 1992, he proclaimed May 2 “Bessie Coleman Day in Chicago.”

Mae Jemison, physician and former NASA astronaut, wrote in the book, Queen Bess: Daredevil Aviator (1993): “I point to Bessie Coleman and say without hesitation that here is a woman, a being, who exemplifies and serves as a model to all humanity: the very definition of strength, dignity, courage, integrity, and beauty. It looks like a good day for flying.”

Stray Toasters

• Geeksoap: The Cleaning Agent for the Everyfan
• It’s the Inequality, Stupid
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file:
  • Cab driver throws out dark-skinned opera singer
  • A Woman Almost Died in Her Burning House Because of Verizon’s Dropped 911 Calls
• The Supreme Court’s Failure to Protect Blacks’ Rights
• 

• Have We Grown Too Fond of Technology?
• MarknTyme sent me a couple of links:
  • An entertaining and amusing short: Schizofredric
  • Concert for George, which is streaming all day
• How Photography Shifted the Balance of the Civil Rights Movement
• Enlisting Prison Labor to Close Budget Gaps
• 
• Gangster’s daughter has beef with a new Vegas mob exhibit
  • Hard times don’t stop Las Vegas influx
• California’s Tax Aversion Complicates Budget
• Seven Simple Ways to Fix Air Travel for Everyone
• US cities original names

Namaste.

Thursday – 24 February 2011
Let’s try this… again… after WordPress decided to eat (and apparently thoroughly digest) my last post. Fortunately, I wasn’t too far into it and the miscellany is all fairly easily recoverable.

Happy birthday to :

Last night was D&D 4.0 night with and company. The encounter was a little different than our usual ones: We got into a bar fight. But, it wasn’t our fault. (This time.) And by “we got into a bar fight,” I mean that “we got beat on by a hero from the Forgotten Realms” (read: “ever-so-slightly out of our league”).

Correction: We got beat on by a drunken hero (read: “still ever-so-slightly out of our league”) from the Forgotten Realms.

It was a good encounter. We all survived, though some of our group had a few new lumps. And, we left the bar in one piece (more or less) and not on fire. I’d consider that a minor feat for our party.

Chew on This : Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note is: Charles Young (1, 2, 3, 4)

Charles Young was the third African American graduate of West Point, the first black U.S. national park superintendent, first black military attaché, first black to achieve the rank of colonel, and highest-ranking black officer in the United States Army until his death in 1922.

Charles Young was born in 1864 into slavery to Gabriel Young and Arminta Bruen in May’s Lick, Kentucky, a small village near Maysville, but he grew up a free person. His father Gabriel escaped from slavery, in 1865 going across the Ohio River to Ripley, Ohio to enlist as a private in the Fifth Regiment of the Colored Artillery (Heavy) Volunteers during the American Civil War. After the war, the entire family migrated to Ripley in 1866, where the parents decided opportunities were better than in postwar Kentucky. As a youth, Charles Young attended the all-white high school in Ripley, the only one available. He graduated at age 16 at the top of his class. Following graduation, he taught school for a few years at the newly established black high school of Ripley.

While teaching, Young took a competitive examination for appointment as a cadet at United States Military Academy at West Point. He achieved the second highest score in the district in 1883, and after the primary candidate dropped out, Young reported to the academy in 1884. He was not the only black student in the academy,(John Hanks Alexander entered West Point Military Academy in 1883 and graduated in 1887, Alexander and Young shared a room for three years at West Point). He had to repeat his first year because of failing mathematics. Young’s strength was in languages, and he learned several. Young graduated with his commission as a second lieutenant in 1889, the third black man to do so at the time. Young began his service with the Ninth Cavalry in the American West: from 1889-1890 he served at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, and from 1890-1894 at Fort Duchesne, Utah.

Beginning in 1894 as a lieutenant, Young was assigned to Wilberforce College in Ohio, a historically black college, to lead the new military sciences department, which was established under a special federal grant. As a professor for four years, he was one of a number of outstanding men on the staff, including W.E.B. Du Bois, with whom he became friends.

In 1903, Young served as Captain of a black company at the Presidio of San Francisco. When appointed acting superintendent of Sequoia and General Grant national parks, he was the first black superintendent of a national park. At the time the military supervised the parks. Because of limited funding, the Army assigned personnel for short-term assignments during the summers, making it difficult for the officers to accomplish longer term goals, such as construction of infrastructure. Young supervised payroll accounts and directed the activities of rangers. Young’s greatest impact on the park was managing road construction, which helped to improve the underdeveloped park and enable more visitors to travel within it. Young and his troops accomplished more that summer than had teams under the three military officers who had been assigned the previous three summers.

With the Army’s founding of the Military Intelligence Department, in 1904 it assigned Young as one the first military attachés, serving in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He was to collect intelligence on different groups in Haiti, to help identify forces that might destabilize the government. He served there for three years.

In 1908 Young was sent to the Philippines to join his Ninth Regiment and command a squadron of two troops.

In 1912 Young was assigned as military attaché in Liberia, the first African American to hold that post. For three years, he served as an expert adviser to the Liberian Government and also took a direct role, supervising construction of the country’s infrastructure. For his achievements, in 1916 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) awarded Young the Spingarn Medal, given annually to the African American demonstrating the highest achievement and contributions.

He returned to Wilberforce University, where he was a Professor of Military Science through most of 1918. On November 6, 1918, after Young traveled by horseback from Wilberforce, Ohio to Washington, D.C. to prove his physical fitness, he was reinstated on active duty in the Army and promoted to full Colonel. In 1919, he was assigned again as military attaché to Liberia.

Young died January 8, 1922 of a kidney infection while on a reconnaissance mission in Nigeria. His body was returned to the United States, where he was given a full military funeral and buried at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, DC.

Stray Toasters

• From KUER’s RadioWest: The Creativity Crisis
  

  Researchers say creativity – the ability to generate new ideas and rearrange those ideas into the best possible outcomes – is declining sharply among America’s school children. And experts say the consequences for innovation, the economy and public policy are sweeping. Tuesday, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman join guest host Jennifer Napier-Pearce on why creativity is waning and how to turn the trend around.

• T Minus Zero: Discovery to Blast Off on Final Flight
• Paul McCartney Composes Work for City Ballet
• For Meliko: Dinosaur named “thunder-thighs”
• For (among others): 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Batman
  • Scathing Reviews of The Dark Knight Returns, by Frank Miller
• 
• Who Buys These Clothes? They Do
• Holograms could soon give virtual meetings new life
• Trojan steals session IDs, bypasses logout requests
• From Esquire: The 75 Books Every Man Should Read

Namaste.

Tuesday – 22 February 2011
Work Week: Day Two. The sun’s out, but the temps are still kind of low. (Although we might actually break 40F today…)

On the “up” side, I am definitely feeling better. I also no longer sound (completely) like a reject from the old Budweiser frogs commercials. I’m still a bit congested, but I can breathe… for the most part.

Last night, SaraRules! made a tasty chicken pot pie for dinner. We ate and watched a couple of episodes of NCIS: Los Angeles and then a couple of episodes of House Hunters.

Generally speaking, I enjoy House Hunters, but last night’s episodes contained a couple of families who the Logic Fairy seemed to overlook – or at least skimp on – when she was doling out common sense:

1. A family in the suburbs of Louisville, KY decided that they wanted to purchase a vacation home.
   (So far, so good.)Let me reparse the above with the kicker: “…they wanted to buy a vacation home, twenty minutes from their current home.” Yeah, we were dumbstruck. They wanted to take out a second mortgage ($250, 000) on a “vacation condo” in downtown Louisville. Twenty minutes away. That doesn’t even make good crazy people sense.
2. The second family wanted to buy a new home in which to raise their 18-month-old daughter. Their main “wants” were:
   • One level.
   • Three or more bedrooms.
   • A yard for their daughter to play in.

   All-in-all, their wants weren’t too outrageous… especially when compared to some of the things that people have sought on this show. The “one level” requirement was because they saw stairs as a safety hazard. (I guess they’d never heard of a child safety gate. *shrug*) They saw three houses:

   1. One level, but the “back yard” was largely taken over by a large, in-ground swimming pool.
   2. Multi-level house, with a couple of notable potential hazards.
   3. Two-level house with a loft.

   They chose House #1, despite the wife’s early – and quite vocal – objections to having no back yard and the giant water hole. I can understand some of their reasons for avoiding the second house, but the third house’s stair “problem” could have easily been handled with a gate.

I also spent a little time in Metropolis before bed. I started off just flying around, exploring parts of the city that I hadn’t yet visited. I decided to tackle a mission that I’d let languish for a couple of levels.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s personality is: Carter G. Woodson (1, 2, 3)

Carter Godwin Woodson was an African-American historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. He was one of the first scholars to value and study Black History. He recognized and acted upon the importance of a people having an awareness and knowledge of their contributions to humanity, and left behind an impressive legacy. A founder of Journal of Negro History, Dr. Woodson is known as the “Father of Black History.”

The son of freed slaves, Woodson worked as a sharecropper and a miner to help his family. He began high school in his late teens and proved to be an excellent student. Woodson went on to college and earned several degrees. He received a doctorate from Harvard University in 1912—becoming one of the first African Americans to earn a Ph.D. at the prestigious institution. His doctoral dissertation,The Disruption of Virginia, was based on research he did at the Library of Congress while teaching high school in Washington, D.C. After earning the doctoral degree, he continued teaching in the public schools, later joining the faculty at Howard University as a professor and served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Convinced that the role of his own people in American history and in the history of other cultures was either being ignored or misrepresented among scholars, Woodson realized the need for research into the neglected past of African Americans. Along with Alexander L. Jackson and three associates, he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History September 9, 1915, in Chicago. That was also the year Woodson published The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861. His other books followed: A Century of Negro Migration (1918) and The History of the Negro Church (1927).

After leaving Howard University, Dr. Woodson devoted the rest of his life to historical research. He worked to preserve the history of African Americans and accumulated a collection of thousands of artifacts and publications. He noted that African American contributions “were overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who use them.” Race prejudice, he concluded, “is merely the logical result of tradition, the inevitable outcome of thorough instruction to the effect that the Negro has never contributed anything to the progress of mankind.” In 1926, Woodson single-handedly pioneered the celebration of “Negro History Week”, for the second week in February, to coincide with marking the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. The week was later extended to the full month of February and renamed Black History Month.

Dr. Woodson’s most cherished ambition, a six-volume Encyclopedia Africana, lay incomplete at his death on April 3, 1950 at the age of 74. He is buried at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Suitland-Silver Hill, Maryland.

Stray Toasters

• I took “a few” new pictures of my railroad layout.
• Datamining Hip-Hop’s History
• I’m not an Indians fan, but I found this story interesting: Straight Down the Middle, the Long Way
• Free Trove of Music Scores on Web Hits Sensitive Copyright Note
  
• Rafting for Rocks
• “Tonight I’m Frakking You” is your new sci-fi dance single
• 
  
• Will Michael Bay’s NASCAR Transformers Be the Skids and Mudflap of Transformers 3?
• Hundreds of Tourist Photos Weaved into One
• Child-Product Makers Seek to Soften New Rules
• Apple in talks to improve the sound quality of music downloads

Namaste.

Sunday – 20 February 2011
Today is my friend, Perry’s, birthday:

This morning, I was up before 0800. That in itself wasn’t so bad. I made my way to the living room, to see what the world outside the windows looked like. Opening the blinds, I discovered the world was grey and white: Snow was falling. (Why can’t it be Spring now…?)

Yesterday’s main excitement, so to speak, was the HeroClix tournament at Dr. Volt’s Comic Connection. I was curious as to how it would go, as the store layout had changed last week, and I didn’t know how it would affect gamers’ ability to move about. Turns out that it wasn’t bad at all. We had a decent turnout – 10 players – which provided a good litmus test. We’ve had a number of close tournaments over the past few months, many of them decided by less than five (5) points. Yesterday’s event was not of that mold: The winner came in over 300 points above his nearest competitor.

On the way home from the game, I stopped to pick up late lunch/early dinner for SaraRules! and myself. (Guess who had Chinese food.) We wound down the evening with Machete. Somehow, I never got around to seeing it last year. Pity. It was a fun flick that, in many places, tossed “suspension of disbelief” right out the window… and that was just fine.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note is Dr. DeNorval Unthank.

Unthank was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania. His mother died when he was nine, leaving eight children. Unthank’s father, a cook unable to support him, sent him to live with his aunt and uncle in Kansas City. After completing high school, Unthank attended the University of Michigan where he received his B.A. He received his medical degree in 1926 from Howard University in Washington, D.C. Unthank returned to Kansas City to complete advanced medical training before moving to Portland in 1929 to start his own practice.

Dr. Unthank was recruited to Portland in 1929 because the city needed a black doctor.  He was quickly tested as his white neighbors greeted his first attempt to move into a previously all white residential area with broken windows, threatening phone calls, and general harassment.  Unthank had to move his family four times before finding a place to settle down peacefully.

Throughout the 1930s, Dr. Unthank was Portland’s only black medical practitioner.  He was a dedicated doctor and a friend to any minority group in the city as well.  Black families could not receive treatment in hospitals – house calls were necessary, and Dr. Unthank made himself available day and night.  He served African Americans, Asians and many whites as well.

Dr. Unthank was politically active and was outspoken in his support of civil rights and equal opportunity.  In 1940, Dr. Unthank was elected head of the Advisory Council, an organization that hoped to pressure local leaders into providing equal access to economic opportunities related to WWII jobs.  The Council documented incidents of discrimination in the workplace around Portland despite raised expectations following President Franklin Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 8802.  On Dec. 5, 1941, the Council organized a mass meeting to promote an official letter of protest to federal authorities about Portland’s situation.

During and after World War II, Dr. Unthank worked tirelessly to build his medical practice and promote civil rights.  He became the first black member of Portland’s City Club in 1943.  He encouraged the club to publish a significant 1945 study called “The Negro in Portland,” which opened the eyes of many citizens to ongoing discriminatory practices.  Dr. Unthank also served as president of the local chapter of the NAACP, and was a cofounder of the Portland Urban League.  He played a strong role in the passing of Oregon’s 1953 Civil Rights Bill, which among many issues, overturned a law banning interracial marriages in the state.

Dr. Unthank died on September 20, 1977. His impact on racial integration and institutional recognition of minority groups was eulogized in many newspaper articles and obituaries by people from both the medical profession and the civic organizations he helped form and influence.

Stray Toasters

• I had weird and disturbing dreams involving a zombie apocalypse situation last night. That’s a new one for me.
• The Life of Edward Gorey, Told by an Old Friend
• I had no idea, until a few minutes ago, that Danny Trejo did the voice for Bane on Young Justice.
• “C” is for “cookie”
  
• For Kids, Self-Control Factors into Future Success
• For Tyranist: Producing a Book, the Analog Way

That’s good enough for me.

Namaste.

Saturday – 19 February 2011
It’s a grey day here… and there’s the possibility of snow in the forecast. Yay.

Last night was the beginning of the end of an era. The local Borders, where we spend the “coffee” portion of our Clitorati gathering,  is one of the nearly 300 stores that is slated to close. I’ve been going to that store for close to ten years; I started going there on Friday evenings because that was where and I would meet so that she could coach me at drawing. In fact, the entire Clitorati gathering came about from me telling people that they should come and hang out with us while we were there. And now, nearly ten years down the road, we find ourselves looking for a new home-away-from-home.

We knew that the stor was closing. What we didn’t know, until we arrived last night, was that the Seattle’s Best Coffee franchise/sublet that ran the cafe closed – for the last time – on Thursday night. This means that for the next two months (or however long it takes to liquidate their inventory), there will be no cafe service. At all. I spoke with Brandi, one of the sales associates about the closing: She said that she and the other employees found out about it on Wednesday… from The Wall Street Journal article. According to her, employees:

• …had no advance warning.
• …haven’t been offered any kind of relocation/transfer package to the Orem/Provo store.
• …will be officially unemployed when the closeout sale is over.

While Borders has been on the rocks financially for a long time, I think that it’s poor form to let your employees be blindsided by the closure news and have to find out from mass media.

Since the list of closing stores came out on Wednesday, there’s been chatter among the group as to where we should now meet. We bandied about a few places and decided that we’d test drive the new location when the time came. Funny, we weren’t quite expecting it to be so soon. We had eight people show up for coffee last night, which made for a decent litmus test. I think that our new choice fared decently; we’ll have to see how it stands up over time.

After coffee and dinner, I came home and played DCUO for a bit. I’ve decided that I don’t necessarily want to plow through the game. Instead, I’m enjoying just roaming around the city (I haven’t even left Metropolis yet) and enjoying the view. Jim Lee and his crew did an amazing job of bringing Metropolis to life. I’m looking forward to seeing the other settings the game has to offer.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note is: Wallace Thurman (1, 2, 3)

Wallace Henry Thurman was an American novelist during the Harlem Renaissance. He is best known for his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life, which explores discrimination among black people based on skin color.

Thurman was born in Salt Lake City, UT to Beulah and Oscar Thurman. Between his mother’s many marriages, Wallace and his mother lived with Emma Jackson, his maternal grandmother. His grandmother’s home doubled as a saloon where alcohol was served without a license.

Thurman’s early life was marked by loneliness, family instability and illness. He began grade school at age six in Boise, Idaho, but his poor health eventually led to a two-year absence from school, during which he returned to Salt Lake City. From 1910 to 1914, Thurman lived in Chicago, but he would have to finish grammar school in Omaha, Nebraska.^[2] During this time, he suffered from persistent heart attacks. While living in Pasadena, California’s lower altitude in the winter of 1918, Thurman came down with influenza during the worldwide Influenza Pandemic. Considering his history of illness, he surprisingly recovered and then returned to Salt Lake City, where he finished high school.

Thurman studied at the University of Utah and the University of Southern California, although he did not receive a degree. He moved to Harlem in 1925, and by the time he became managing editor of the black periodical Messenger in 1926, he had immersed himself in the Harlem literary scene and encouraged such writers as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston to contribute to his publication. That summer, Hughes asked Thurman to edit Fire!! , a literary magazine conceived as a forum for young black writers and artists. Despite outstanding contributors, who included Hughes, Hurston, and Gwendolyn Bennett, the publication folded after one issue. Two years later Thurman published Harlem, again with work by the younger writers of the Harlem Renaissance, but it too survived only one issue.

Thurman was lauded as a satirist and often used satire to accuse blacks of prejudice against darker-skinned member of their race. He also rejected the belief that the Harlem Renaissance was a substantial literary movement, claiming that the 1920s produced no outstanding writers and that those who were famous exploited, and allowed themselves to be patronized by, whites. He claimed, as did a number of authors of the decade, that white critics judged black works by lower standards than they judged white efforts. Thurman maintained that black writers were held back from making any great contribution to the canon of Negro literature by their race-consciousness and decadent lifestyles.

Thurman and others of the “Niggerati” (the deliberately ironic name Thurman used for the young African American artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance) wanted to show the real lives of African Americans, both the good and the bad. Thurman believed that black artists should be more objective in their writings and not so self-conscious that they failed to acknowledge and celebrate the arduous conditions of African American lives. As Singh and Scott put it, “Thurman’s Harlem Renaissance is, thus, staunch and revolutionary in its commitment to individuality and critical objectivity: the black writer need not pander to the aesthetic preferences of the black middle class, nor should he or she write for an easy and patronizing white approval.”

Thurman died at the age of 32 from tuberculosis, which many suspect was exacerbated by his long fight with alcoholism.

Stray Toasters

• What Watson Might Do After Crushing Humanity on Jeopardy!
• By way of MarknTyme: Superhero Organizations and Business Entities
• Best Art Ever (This Week)
  
• (Can’t You) Trip Like I Do – Filter and The Crystal Method
• Ever wondered what the X-Men would look like as an anime-style cartoon? Wonder no more.

And with that, it’s time to finish getting ready for today’s HeroClix tournament at Dr. Volt’s.

Namaste.

Friday – 18 February 2011
It’s my day off. Unfortunately, it’s not a four-day weekend for me, as our robot overlords protectors don’t give us President’s Day as a holiday. Oh, well.

Last night, SaraRules! and I attended Ballet West‘s performance of

It was very enjoyable. The dancers for Aurora, Prince Desire (“Prince Philip” for the Disney-ites out there), the Lilac Fairy and the Male Bluebird were all excellent. My only real complain about the performance came in Act III, with the court dances of the fairy-tale characters in attendance — It seemed to be a never-ending cavalcade of dance. Granted, the performers were all talented and acquitted themselves nicely, but it just seemed to make the production drag on and on. (NOTE: The dances were written into the original production by Tchaikovsky, so it’s the way the ballet is supposed to be performed.)

After we returned home, I played a little CoD: Black Ops before calling it a night.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s personality of note is: Nina Simone (1, 2)

Eunice Kathleen Waymon, also known by her stage name Nina Simone, was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music. Simone aspired to become a classical pianist while working in a broad range of styles including classical, jazz, blues, soul, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop.

She took to music at an early age, learning to play piano at the age of 4, and singing in her church’s choir. The sixth of seven children, Simone grew up poor. Her music teacher helped establish a special fund to pay for Simone’s education and, after finishing high school, Simone won a scholarship to New York City’s famed Julliard School of Music to train as a classical pianist, but she eventually had to leave school after she ran out of funds. Moving to Philadelphia, Simone lived with her family there in order to save money and go to a more affordable music program. Her career took an unexpected turn, however, when she was rejected from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia; she later claimed the school denied her admittance because she was African-American. Turning away from classical music, she started playing American standards, jazz and blues in clubs in the 1950s. Her original style arose from a fusion of gospel and pop songs with classical music, in particular her first inspiration, classical composer Bach, and accompanied with her expressive jazz-like singing in characteristic low tenor. She injected as much of her classical background into her music as possible to give it more depth and quality, and as she felt that pop music was inferior. She took the stage name Nina Simone—”Nina” came from a nickname meaning “little one” and “Simone” after the actress Simone Signoret.

Simone had always included songs in her repertoire that hinted about her African-American origins (such as “Brown Baby” and “Zungo” on Nina at the Village Gate during 1962). But on her debut album for Philips, Nina Simone In Concert (live recording, 1964), Simone for the first time openly addresses the racial inequality that was prevalent in the United States with the song “Mississippi Goddam”. It was her response to the murder of Medgar Evers and the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four black children. The song was released as a single, being boycotted in certain southern states. With “Old Jim Crow” on the same album she reacts to the Jim Crow Laws. From then on, a civil rights message was standard in Simone’s recording repertoire, where it had already become a part of her live performances. Simone performed and spoke at many civil rights meetings, such as at the Selma to Montgomery marches. Simone advocated violent revolution during the civil rights period as opposed to Martin Luther King’s non-violent approach, and hoped that African Americans could, by armed combat, form a separate state.

In 1987, the original 1958 recording of “My Baby Just Cares For Me” was used in an advert for Chanel No. 5 perfume in the UK. This led to a re-release which stormed to number 5 in the UK singles chart giving her a brief surge in popularity in the UK. Her autobiography, I Put a Spell on You, was published during 1992 and she recorded her last album, A Single Woman, in 1993.

In 1993, Simone settled near Aix-en-Provence in Southern France. She had been ill with breast cancer for several years before she died in her sleep at her home in Carry-le-Rouet, Bouches-du-Rhône on April 21, 2003. Simone’s ashes were scattered in several African countries.

Stray Toasters

• Women Cover War: Dodging Bullets, Sexual Assault
• My CSX water tower (for my railroad) was just delivered. It’s been… 10 days… since it was shipped.
  • CSX is the product of the Chessie System and Seaboard System Railroads, along with a couple of other lines.
• Driver Sued for Updating Facebook in Fatal Crash
• There’s a new trailer for Thor that’s hit the Internet:
• The Line It Is Drawn #28 – Album Cover Homages
• Digital Age Is Slow to Arrive in Rural America
• With ’21,’ British singer Adele opens her heart to the world
• 
  
• Planned Parenthood Financing Is Caught in Budget Feud
• I just had a random craving for gummy cola bottles…
  
• Our new Superman on the cover of Entertainment Weekly
• This did not come from my workplace. I don’t recall who posted the link to it yesterday (or two days ago):
  



• A Car You Can Drive With Your Thoughts

That’s it for now.
Time to find some trouble to get into…

Namaste.

Thursday – 17 February 2011
It’s another NBN Thursday in the valley. The sun is shining. The sky is blue. And the mountains (and a fair portion of the valley) is covered in white. That’s right: It snowed last night. Of course, that also means that the air is clear and one can see the west side of the valley clearly.

Last night, after work, I ran up to Dr. Volt’s to pick up this week’s four-color goodness before dashing back home to grab a quick bite to eat. SaraRules! had a Justice Junior League meeting and I had coffee with my friend, Frankie.  While out, I had thought to kill multiple avians with a single piece of silicate and get the batteries in a couple of my watches replaced. The snow made me decide to deal with that tomorrow, on my day off.

After coffee, I headed back home – time for comfy pants and comics! – to wait for the missus to get in. I even had the presence of mind to throw in a load of laundry. When she got in, we finished watching Prince of Persia. I swear that movie had more gratuitous slow-motion scenes than The Matrix, Dhoom and Resident Evil: Afterlife combined. On the whole, it was an entertaining movie — it was kind of like a live-action Aladdin. I also found it amusing that “foreign” (or at least “non-American”) still seems to mean “just speak with an (affected) British accent” to most people. *shrug*

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s personality is Paul Robeson (1, 2).

Paul Leroy Robeson was an African American concert singer (bass-baritone), recording artist, athlete and actor who became noted for his political radicalism and activism in the civil rights movement. Robeson was the first major concert star to popularize the performance of Negro spirituals and was the first black actor of the 20th century to portray Shakespeare’s Othello alongside an all white cast.

The son of a former slave turned preacher, Robeson attended Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., where he was an All-America football player. Upon graduating from Rutgers at the head of his class, he rejected a career as a professional athlete and instead entered Columbia University. He obtained a law degree in 1923, but, because of the lack of opportunity for blacks in the legal profession, he drifted to the stage, making a London debut in 1922.

At the height of his career, Paul Robeson chose to become primarily a political artist. Increasing political awareness impelled Robeson to visit the Soviet Union in 1934, and from that year he became increasingly identified with strong left-wing commitments, while continuing his success in concerts, recordings, and theatre.

During World War II, Robeson’s support for the Allied War effort had made him the world’s most famous African-American and his previous statements and advocacy for socialism had been ignored by both the media and the white establishment. The start of the Cold war led to a social climate in which most civil rights and anti-imperialist groups in the United States were considered “Communist affiliated.”

In 1950, Robeson’s passport was revoked under the McCarran Act over his work in the anti-imperialism movement and what the U.S. State Department called Robeson’s “frequent criticism while abroad of the treatment of blacks in the US.” Under heavy and daily surveillance by both the FBI and the CIA and publicly condemned for his beliefs, Robeson was blacklisted, his income fell dramatically and he became very nearly a non-person.

Robeson’s autobiography, Here I Stand, was published by a British publishing company in 1958. As part of his “comeback”, he gave two sold-out recitals that month in Carnegie Hall, which were released on LP and later on CD. They were his only stereo recordings.

Also that year, Robeson’s 60th birthday was celebrated in several US cities and twenty-seven countries across Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa, as well as in the Soviet Union. Later, in May 1958, his passport was finally restored and he was able to travel again, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Kent vs. Dulles, that the Secretary of State had no right to deny a passport or require any citizen to sign an affidavit because of his political beliefs.

By 1965, he was forced into permanent retirement. He spent his final years in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, unapologetic about his political views and career.

Stray Toasters

• Created Equal
• Jim Lee on the Beginning of DC Universe Online
  • Retired Superheroes (courtesy of )
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Goldfish killer “didn’t want to leave witnesses”
• 
• International Pillow Fight Day
  • Pillow Fight Flash Mob
• The Hard Luck and Beautiful Life of Liam Neeson
• U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’
• Detroit Will PAY You to Take One of These 100 Abandoned Houses

Back to it.

Namaste.

Wednesday – 16 February 2011
It’s Midweek. Which also means that it’s new comics day and D&D 4.0 night. Win-Win-Win.

Last night was D&D 3.5 night, but it was also “The Game Night That Almost Didn’t Happen.” Of the six (6) players in our campaign, only and I made it. Fortunately, had a small side adventure ready to go. We ran through it, picked up some “free” XP and have something new for our characters that the others don’t/didn’t get. (Neener neener neeeeeeeener!)

After the game, I went home and watched the first half of Prince of Persia with SaraRules!.  It’s not the greatest movie ever made, but it has been entertaining. We will most likely finish it tonight.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s item is the Plessy v. Ferguson court case.

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in private businesses (particularly railroads), under the doctrine of “separate but equal”.

After the American Civil War (1861–1865), during the period known as Reconstruction, the government was able to provide some protection for the civil rights of the newly freed slaves. But when Reconstruction ended with the Compromise of 1877 and federal troops were withdrawn from the south, southern state governments began passing Jim Crow laws that prohibited blacks from using the same public accommodations as whites.

The Thirteenth Amendment (1, 2)served to abolish slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime. Under the meaning of the Thirteenth Amendment, the term “slavery” implies involuntary servitude or bondage and the ownership by human beings of other human beings as property. According to the Slaughterhouse Cases, the Thirteenth Amendment was intended primarily to abolish slavery as it had been known in the United States, and that it equally forbade involuntary servitude.

In 1890, the State of Louisiana passed Act 111 that required separate accommodations for African Americans and Whites on railroads, including separate railway cars, though it specified that the accommodations must be kept “equal”. Concerned, several African Americans (including Louisiana’s former governor P.B.S. Pinchback) and Whites in New Orleans formed an association, the Citizens’ Committee to Test the Separate Car Act, dedicated to the repeal of that law. They raised $1412.70 ($33716.44 in 2008 USD) which they offered to the then-famous author and Radical Republican jurist, Albion W. Tourgée, to serve as lead counsel for their test case. Tourgée agreed to do it for free. Later, they enlisted Homer Plessy, who was one-eighth black (an octoroon in the now-antiquated parlance), to take part in an act of planned civil disobedience. The plan was for Plessy to be thrown off the railway car and arrested not for vagrancy, which would not have led to a challenge that could reach the Supreme Court, but for violating the Separate Car Act, which could and did lead to a challenge with the high court.

The Committee hired a detective to ensure that Plessy was arrested for violating the Separate Car Act, which the Citizen’s Committee wanted to challenge with the goal of having it overturned. They chose Plessy because, with his light skin color, he could buy a first class train ticket and, at the same time, be arrested when he announced, while sitting on board the train, that he had an African-American ancestor. For the Committee, this was a deliberate attempt to exploit the lack of clear racial definition in either science or law so as to argue that segregation by race was an “unreasonable” use of state power.

The decision was handed down by a vote of 7 to 1 with the majority opinion written by Justice Henry Billings Brown and the dissent written by Justice John Marshall Harlan. “Separate but equal” remained standard doctrine in U.S. law until its repudiation in the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education.

Stray Toasters

• Why is it that most people elide the first “r” in “February?”
• It’s Fashion Week 2011
• Borders files for bankruptcy, plans to close 192 stores
  • According to this article, from The Wall Street Journal, our favorite Clitorati spot is officially on the chopping block.
• By way of my friend, Anne: A Missing Piece in the Economic Stimulus: Hobbling Arts Hobbles Innovation
• 
• Role for Teachers Is Seen in Solving Schools’ Crises
• United Grounds Its Boeing 757 Fleet
• For MarknTyme and :
  • For those of you to whom that sounded “somewhat familiar,” see if this version helps to jog your memories.
• Prisoners stole millions from the IRS in 2009
• 3D Comes to Met Opera, but Without Those Undignified Glasses
• Apparently, tonight’s D&D game is being postponed. Oh, well… at least there are still new comics to which I can look forward.

Quote of the Day
Today’s quote comes from Sib-4’s Foursquare status update:

Melissa just became the mayor of Eighth Circle Of Hell!

It was one of the first things that I read this morning, post-email, and (as a fan of Dante’s Inferno) it made me laugh.

And, that’s a wrap.

Namaste.

Monday – 14 February 2011
It’s Monday, which means that it’s the start of another work week.

It’s also Valentine’s Day

or, as Neil Gaiman put it:

Happy Valentine’s Day. Or take pride in Being Single Day. Or join me in the newly-created Why Is My Wife In Australia Day (people who live in Australia are not eligible to join).

or, as I was just reminded: It’s Anti-Green Lantern Day. (Look at a color wheel, it will make sense then.) I wasn’t thinking about it when I got dressed this morning, but I selected a green shirt, white turtleneck and black slacks for today’s fashion fare. It wasn’t until Julie came into the office, in red-and-black that I thought about it being Anti-GL Day, too.

Yesterday, I finally picked up a six-car hopper set that I’ve been eying at a local hobby shop. It’s an older set – and showed no signs of moving any time soon – so they cut me a rather nice deal. (That didn’t hurt my feelings.) After that, I headed home and saved the world (DCUO-style) for a bit before heading over to the in-laws’ for dinner and a movie. Last night’s feature was Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note is: Huey Newton (1, 2).

Huey Percy Newton was a political and urban activist who founded the Afro-American Association and co-founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.

Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana, the youngest of seven children to Armelia Johnson and Walter Newton, a sharecropper and Baptist lay preacher. In 1945, the family settled in Oakland, California. The Newton family was destitute, and often relocated throughout the San Francisco Bay Area throughout Newton’s childhood. Despite this, he contended that his family was close-knit and that he never went without food and shelter as a child. Growing up in Oakland, Newton claimed that “[he] was made to feel ashamed of being black.” In his autobiography Revolutionary Suicide, he wrote, “During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire.”

Although he graduated at Oakland Technical High School in 1960, Newton was illiterate. During his course of autodidacticism, he struggled to read Republic by Plato. He read it five times to better understand it, and it was this success that inspired him to become a political leader.

In the mid-1960s Newton decided to pursue his education at Merritt College where he met Bobby Seale. The two were briefly involved with political groups at the school before they set out to create one of their own. Founded in 1966, they called their group The Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Unlike many of the other social and political organizers of the time, they took a militant stance, advocating the ownership of guns by African Americans, and were often seen brandishing weapons. The group believed that violence—or the threat of violence—might be needed to bring about social change. They set forth their political goals in a document called the Ten-Point Program, which included better housing, jobs, and education for African Americans. It also called for an end to economic exploitation of black communities.

The Black Panthers wanted to improve life in black communities and established social programs to help those in need. They also fought against police brutality in black neighborhoods by mostly white cops. Members of the group would go to arrests in progress and watch for abuse.

Newton earned a bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Cruz in 1974. He was enrolled as a graduate student in History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz in 1978, when he arranged to take a reading course from famed evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, while in prison. He and Trivers became close friends. Trivers and Newton published an influential analysis of the role of flight crew self-deception in the crash of Air Florida Flight 90. Newton earned a Ph.D. in social philosophy at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1980. His doctoral dissertation was entitled War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America.

On August 22, 1989, Newton was fatally shot on the 1400 block of 9th street in West Oakland by a 24-year-old Black Guerilla Family member Tyrone Robinson during an attempt by Newton to obtain crack cocaine.

Stray Toasters

• Valentine’s Day dating tips from lovestruck scientists
  • The Valentine’s Day Survival Guide
    
• In Spokane, a Mystery with No Good Solution
• Back to the Future (not the movie)
• 
• I’m not sure that I’m overly fond of the new UI on Gizmodo.
• NYC gives Optimus Prime a parking ticket
• States Aim Ax at Health Cost of Retirement
• 
• Yay for problems with the locks on the doors to two of our storage rooms!
• Watch IBM’s Watson on Jeopardy! Tonight

That’s good for now.

Namaste.

Sunday – 13 February 2011
It’s my sister, Rana’s, birthday:

So far, today has been rather quiet and lazy. I slept in, which was quite the treat.

Yesterday, I headed over to Dr. Volt’s Comic Connection to play HeroClix with a few of the guys.  We wound up playing a 3-on-3 game, themed “Science vs. Magic.” Chris, Andrew and I played figures with the “Mystical” and “Psychic” keywords, while Jeremiah and the two Johns played “Science,” “Robot” and “Armor” keyworded figures. It was a good game. We beat science to a pulp… with the very notable exception of Jeremiah’s Dr. Manhattan figure.

After I got home, SaraRules! and I ate dinner and watched The Hurt Locker and Iron Man. We’d not seen The Hurt Locker before. It was a very good and well-done movie; it was easy to see why the Academy lavished so much attention on it last year. And, Iron Man – which was SaraRules!’ choice, not mine by the way- well, that was just fun.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s personality is Wynton Marsalis:

Wynton Learson Marsalis is a trumpeter, composer, bandleader, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of Classical and Jazz music often to young audiences. Marsalis has been awarded nine Grammys in both genres, and was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Music for a jazz recording.

Wynton was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to Dolores and Ellis Marsalis, the second of six sons. At an early age he exhibited an aptitude for music. At age eight, Wynton performed traditional New Orleans music in the Fairview Baptist Church band led by banjoist Danny Barker, and at 14, he performed with the New Orleans Philharmonic. During high school, Wynton performed with the New Orleans Symphony Brass Quintet, New Orleans Community Concert Band, New Orleans Youth Orchestra, New Orleans Symphony, various jazz bands and with a local funk band, the Creators.

At age 17, Wynton was the youngest musician admitted to Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center, where he won the school’s Harvey Shapiro Award for outstanding brass student. Wynton moved to New York City to attend Juilliard in 1979, and picked up gigs around town. In 1980, Wynton joined the Jazz Messengers led by Art Blakey. In the years that followed, Wynton performed with Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Sweets Edison, Clark Terry, Sonny Rollins, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams and countless other jazz legends.

In 1987, Wynton Marsalis co-founded a jazz program at Lincoln Center. In July 1996, Jazz at Lincoln Center was installed as new constituent of Lincoln Center. In October 2004, Marsalis opened Frederick P. Rose Hall, the world’s first institution for jazz containing three performance spaces (including the first concert hall designed specifically for jazz) along with recording, broadcast, rehearsal and educational facilities. Wynton presently serves as Artistic Director for Jazz at Lincoln Center and Music Director for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Stray Toasters

• 4-Star General, 5-Star Grace
• If you’re in the San Francisco area – and are a fan of movies and sci-fi – you might want to check out this event, coming up on Wednesday.
  • If you’re not familiar with Sandy Collora’s work, check out the trailer he made for Batman: Dead End:

• A Point of View: Why books do not prepare us for real love
• Waltham, MA becomes Steampunkville
  
• 
• By way of Lish: Mystery Surrounds Cyber Missile That Crippled Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Ambitions
  • When I countered that this was an article from Faux News, he backed it up with this corroborating article from The New York Times
• Ebooks Finally Included on the NYT Bestsellers List

Namaste.

Saturday – 12 February 2011
It’s the weekend, baby! Surprisingly, I’ve even managed to be… productive… this morning. I folded a bunch of laundry, started a new load, started cleaning the bathroom. And all of this before 1100. (Yeah, I know! I’m a little shocked, too.)

Last night, after hanging out with the Clitorati crowd, I played a little CoD: Black Ops with a few of my coworkers for a couple of hours. After that, I took a spin through Metropolis with Nefer-Tem and beat on some bad guys in DC Universe Online.

Today, I’m hanging out with some of the usual suspects at Dr. Volt’s and playing ‘Clix. It’s not a tournament, so I should be able to just hang out, relax and play. Oh, and trash talk… of course.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s personality is “Sugar” Ray Leonard

Sugar Ray Leonard is an American retired professional boxer. He was named Ray Charles Leonard, after his mother’s favorite singer, Ray Charles. Leonard was the first boxer to earn more than $100 million in purses, and he is widely considered to be one of the best boxers of all time, winning world titles in five weight divisions and defeating future fellow International Boxing Hall of Fame inductees Wilfred Benítez, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Durán and Marvin Hagler. Leonard was named “Boxer of the Decade” for the 1980s, due to his accomplishments.

Leonard started boxing at the recreation center in Palmer Park in 1969. His older brother Roger started boxing first. Roger had helped start the boxing program, urging Ollie Dunlap, the center’s director, to form a team. Dave Jacobs, a former boxer, and Janks Morton volunteered as the boxing coaches. Roger won some trophies and showed them off in front of Ray, goading him to start boxing.

In 1972, Leonard boxed in the featherweight quarterfinals of the National AAU Tournament, losing by decision to Jerome Artis. It was his first defeat. Later that year, he boxed in the Eastern Olympic Trials. The rules stated that a boxer had to be seventeen to box in international competition, so Leonard, only sixteen, lied about his age. He made it to the lightweight semifinals, losing a disputed decision to Greg Whaley, who took such a beating that he wasn’t allowed to continue in the trials. Whaley never boxed again.

Sarge Johnson, assistant coach of the U.S. Olympic Boxing Team, said to Dave Jacobs, “That kid you got is sweet as sugar.” The nickname stuck. However, given his style and first name, it was probably only a matter of time before people started calling him Sugar Ray, after the man many consider to be the best boxer of all time, Sugar Ray Robinson.

In 1976, Leonard made the U.S. Olympic Team as the light welterweight representative. The team also included Leon and Michael Spinks, Howard Davis, Jr., Leo Randolph, Charles Mooney and John Tate. Many consider the 1976 U.S. team to be the greatest boxing team in the history of the Olympics. Leonard won his first four Olympic bouts by 5–0 decisions. In the final, he boxed the great Cuban knockout artist Andrés Aldama, who scored five straight knockouts to reach the final.

In the second, he dropped Aldama with a left to the chin. Late in the final round, he again hurt Aldama, which brought a standing eight count from the referee. With only a few seconds left in the fight, a Leonard combination forced another standing eight count. Leonard was awarded a 5–0 decision and the Olympic Gold Medal.

He finished his amateur career with a record of 145–5 and 75 KO’s.

When Leonard decided to turn professional, Janks Morton introduced him to Mike Trainer. Trainer talked twenty-four of his friends and clients into underwriting Leonard’s career with an investment of $21,000, to be repaid within four years at 8% interest. Trainer then made Leonard the sole stockholder in Sugar Ray Leonard, Inc. Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali’s trainer, was brought in to be Leonard’s trainer and manager.

Leonard made his professional debut on February 5, 1977 before a crowd of 10,270 at the Civic Center in Baltimore, Maryland. He was paid $40,044 for the fight. His opponent was Luis “The Bull” Vega, whom he defeated by a six-round unanimous decision. After the fight, Leonard paid back his $21,000 loan to the investors.

In his fourteenth professional fight, Leonard fought his first world-ranked opponent, Floyd Mayweather, who was ranked seventeenth. The fight took place on September 9, 1978. Leonard won by a tenth-round knockout.

Leonard fought Wilfred Benitez for the WBC Welterweight Championship on November 30, 1979 at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. Leonard received $1 million and Benitez, a two-division champion with a record of 38–0–1, received $1.2 million. Going into the final round, Leonard led by scores of 137–130, 137–133, and 136–134. The two went toe-to-toe in the fifteenth. Late in the round, Leonard dropped Benitez with a left. He got up, but after a few more punches, the referee stopped the fight. The time was 2:54 of round fifteen.

In October 1996, the 40-year-old Leonard announced that he was coming out of retirement to fight Héctor Camacho for the lightly regarded IBC Middleweight Championship. Camacho, a quick southpaw, had a record of 62–3–1. The fight with Camacho took place on March 1, 1997 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Leonard held his own in the first two rounds, but Camacho, who applied pressure from the opening bell, started to score well in the third. He continued to score well in the fourth and opened a cut above Leonard’s right eye. In the fifth, Camacho dropped Leonard with a right followed by two left uppercuts. Leonard got up, but was unable to ward off Camacho. The referee stopped the fight with Leonard taking punishment on the ropes.

The Camacho fight was Leonard’s last. He finished his career with a record of 36–3–1 with 25 knockouts.

Stray Toasters

• My father took me to see a Sugar Ray Leonard fight, when I was a kid.
• Neil Gaiman explains why he doesn’t sweat “piracy”
• Inherently Funny Words
• 
• Book uses colored thread between pages to make hyperlinks

Up. Out.

Namaste.