Random Access

Wednesday – 24 February 2010
Happy Birthday to :

Today would ordinarily be Comics and Sushi Wednesday, but I’m in the south office again today. So, I’m just going to combine things and make tomorrow NBN Comics (and maybe Sushi) Thursday. Win-Win(-Win).

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today, we shine the spotlight on Malcolm X:

Malcolm X – born Malcolm Little, and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz – was an African-American Muslim minister, public speaker, and human rights activist.

Born in Nebraska, while an infant Malcolm moved with his family to Lansing, Mich. When Malcolm was six years old, his father, the Rev. Earl Little, a Baptist minister and former supporter of the early black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, died after being hit by a streetcar; his father’s lessons concerning black pride and self-reliance and his own experiences concerning race, played a significant role in Malcolm’s adult life. After his mother was committed to an insane asylum in 1939, Malcolm and his siblings were sent to foster homes or to live with family members.

Malcolm attended school in Lansing, Mich., but dropped out in the eighth grade when one of his teachers told him that he should become a carpenter instead of a lawyer. Years later, Malcolm would laugh about the incident, but at the time it was humiliating — It made him feel that there was no place in the white world for a career-oriented black man, no matter how smart he was. Malcolm  became involved in hustling and other criminal activities in Boston and New York.

In 1943, the U.S. draft board ordered Little to register for military service. He later recalled that he put on a display to avoid the draft. Military physicians classified him as “mentally disqualified for military service”. He was issued a 4-F card, relieving him of his service obligations.

In 1946, Malcolm  was sentenced to eight to ten years in prison. While in prison for robbery from 1946 to 1952, he underwent a conversion that eventually led him to join the Nation of Islam, an African American movement that combined elements of Islam with black nationalism. Following Nation tradition, he replaced his surname, “Little,” with an “X,” a custom among Nation of Islam followers who considered their family names to have originated with white slaveholders. On August 7, 1952, Malcolm X was paroled and was released from prison. He later reflected on the time he spent in prison after his conversion: “Months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I had never been so truly free in my life.

After his release from prison Malcolm helped to lead the Nation of Islam during the period of its greatest growth and influence. He met Elijah Muhammad in Chicago in 1952 and then began organizing temples for the Nation in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston and in cities in the South. For nearly a dozen years, he was the public face of the Nation of Islam; Malcolm X promoted the Nation’s teachings – he taught that black people were the original people of the world, and that white people were a race of devils. In his speeches, Malcolm X said that black people were superior to white people, and that the demise of the white race was imminent.

While the civil rights movement fought against racial segregation, Malcolm X advocated the complete separation of African Americans from white people. He proposed the establishment of a separate country for black people as an interim measure until African Americans could return to Africa. Malcolm X also rejected the civil rights movement’s strategy of nonviolence and instead advocated that black people use any necessary means of self-defense to protect themselves. Many white people, and some blacks, were alarmed by Malcolm X and the things he said. He and the Nation of Islam were described as hatemongers, black segregationists, violence-seekers, and a threat to improved race relations. Civil rights organizations denounced Malcolm X and the Nation as irresponsible extremists whose views were not representative of African Americans.

Malcolm X was equally critical of the civil rights movement. He described its leaders as “stooges” for the white establishment and said that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a “chump”. He criticized the 1963 March on Washington, which he called “the farce on Washington”. He said he did not know why black people were excited over a demonstration “run by whites in front of a statue of a president who has been dead for a hundred years and who didn’t like us when he was alive”.

In 1963 there were deep tensions between Malcolm and Eiljah Muhammad over the political direction of the Nation. Malcolm urged that the Nation become more active in the widespread civil rights protests instead of just being a critic on the sidelines. Muhammad’s violations of the moral code of the Nation further worsened his relations with Malcolm.

Malcolm left the Nation in March 1964 and in the next month founded Muslim Mosque, Inc. During his pilgrimage to Mecca that same year, he experienced a second conversion and embraced Sunni Islam, adopting the Muslim name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. Renouncing the separatist beliefs of the Nation, he claimed that the solution to racial problems in the United States lay in orthodox Islam.

The growing hostility between Malcolm and the Nation led to death threats and open violence against him. On Feb. 21, 1965, Malcolm was assassinated while delivering a lecture at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem; three members of the Nation of Islam were convicted of the murder.

Stray Toasters

• It’s snowing outside. It seems to be warm enough that nothing’s sticking, though.
• US Navy moves to let women serve on submarines
• It’s Doodle Time!
• I have peanut M&M’s.
• New York Fashion Week 2010
• Writers’ Advice for Writers
• The Unbelievable World of Warcraft, courtesy of
• 
• Trial date set for South Africa ‘racist’ student video
• Hacker Arrested in Billboard Porn Stunt

Experience slips away…
Experience slips away…
The innocence slips away.

Namaste.

Monday – 22 February 2010
“Ugh.”

That, literally, was my first thought upon waking up this morning. It was immediately followed by a line from the chorus of L.T.D.’s Back in Love Again:

Every time I move, I lose

I attribute all of this to the fact that my sides and thighs are achy from yesterday’s workout. Good for me? Yes. Good training? Yes. Builds character? Sure thing.  But, no matter how you spin it, there’s still that pesky “sore from working out” factor to be dealt with. “That which does not kill me,” I guess…

Last night, SaraRules and I (finally) finished off the last two features on the Planet Earth DVDs. Both were pieces about conservation and sustainability. Both were, as with the entire series, done quite well.

Logan and Sanaz came over for a while after dinner. We had coffee and chatted – including a video-chat with Melissa – for a while. It was a nice way to wind down the evening. I also chatted with last night. He regaled me with tales of his excursion with Bot, Bit and Pixel to an Olympic curling event yesterday; I was laughing so much that I was crying. Trying to explain to SaraRules”why” I was laughing so hard was nigh-impossible for a couple of minutes.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s profile: James Van Der Zee

James Van Der Zee, a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance, was an African American photographer best known for his portraits of black New Yorkers.

After attending schools in Lenox, he went to New York City (c.1906). Arriving in Harlem as an aspiring violinist, he formed—and performed with—the Harlem Orchestra. From 1909 to 1915 he played in Fletcher Henderson’s band and the John Wanamaker Orchestra (and in an orchestra that accompanied silent films).

On regular return visits from Harlem to his hometown of Lenox, Massachusetts, VanDerZee found himself shooting pictures of the beloved place as a hobby. In 1915 he landed a job as a darkroom technician, and after learning the fundamentals of photography he opened his own studio in Harlem (1916). In 1932, he outgrew his first studio and went on to open the larger GGG Studio, with his second wife as his assistant (since closed, but the building with its original sign can still be seen on the east side of Lenox Avenue between 123rd and 124th Streets in Harlem).

VanDerZee’s work exhibited artistic as well as technical mastery. Thanks to his genius for darkroom experimentation — retouching negatives, for example, and creating double exposures — the demand for his portraiture soon skyrocketed.

Aside from the artistic merits of his work, Van Der Zee produced the most comprehensive documentation of the period.

Although Van Der Zee photographed many of the African American celebrities who passed through Harlem, most of his work was of the straightforward commercial studio variety – weddings and funerals (including pictures of the dead for grieving families), family groups, teams, lodges, clubs, or people simply wanting to have a record of themselves in fine clothes. Many of VanDerZee’s photographs celebrate the life of the emergent black middle class. Using the conventions of studio portrait photography, he composed images that reflected his clients’ dignity, independence, and material comfort, characterizing the time as one of achievement, idealism, and success. VanDerZee’s photographs portray the Harlem of the 1920s and 1930s as a community that managed to be simultaneously talented, spiritual, and prosperous.

National recognition was given to him at age 82, when his collection of 75,000 photographs spanning a period of six decades of African-American life was discovered by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His photos were featured in 1969 as part of the Harlem on my Mind exhibition. From the 1970s until his death in 1983, Van Der Zee photographed the many celebrities who had come across his work and promoted him throughout the country.

Stray Toasters

• Guess who gets to work in “the other office,” at least for a while, today…
  Since loonybin88 and Minion #2 are both on vacation, someone has to cover IT for that office. Hopefully, the monkeys will be (relatively) well-behaved.
• 
• Today is apparently National Margarita Day.
• Does the Space Shuttle’s Computer Really Run on Just One Megabyte of RAM?, by way of
• In “Upset of the Century” news: USA beats Canada 5-3, gains top seed in quarterfinals
• 
• Detroiters press for real renaissance — online
• I’m ready to get back to work on my Static custom ‘Clix figure again. I had a bit of an epiphany yesterday in how to deal with a piece that I wasn’t sure how to make.
• U Wisconsin symphony concert based on fantasy novels, video games, manga, anime

Hi-ho, hi-ho…

Namaste.

Saturday – 20 February 2010
Today has been a good day… and it’s not even all over yet.

The morning started off a little earlier than I had planned – 0830 – with a text message from loonybin88. Correction: That should have been – “The vacationing loonybin88.” He and his wife (and a couple of coworkers and their wives) are either about to board or have already boarded a cruise ship for a week in the western Caribbean. Nice. But, this morning, he sent the following text:

It is 78 degrees and sunny!
🙂
Just thougtht I would share.

My response:

It’s 8:30 on a Saturday. I have no children. I have no tournament today. I got to bed after 2:00.  Guess what I was doing.

I’m assuming that it was a multi-recipient text and that – in his… exhuberance… of being on vacation and getting his cruise under way – he neglected to take one tiny (almost insignificant) detail into account: Time zones. He texted me an apology; I told him that it was fine and understandable, but to stop texting and to go have some well-deserved fun! (The man has been busting a serious hump at work; he’s earned this vacation… many times over.)

The morning was kind of lazy. After breakfast, I started work on turning the office into a usable space once again. Oddly, this has had the effect of me making an even larger mess in the name of progress. I interrupted working in the office to go with SaraRules, lj user=”suzie_lightning,” lj user=”everydave”, Mary and Chris to see Shutter Island. Excellent movie… except for some of the editing in “a few” places.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s profile is of Jean Toomer:

Jean Toomer was an American poet and novelist and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance.

Born, Nathan Pinchuback Toomer in Washington, D.C., Toomer was of mixed racial and ethnic descent. (His maternal grandfather was Louisiana Governor P. B. S. Pinchback, the first African American to become Governor of a U.S. state.) He spent his childhood attending both all-white and all-black segregated schools. In his early years, Toomer resisted racial classifications and wished to be identified only as an American after going to an all-black school in Washington D.C., then an all-white school in New Rochelle N.Y., then an all-black school in Washington D.C. again. Toomer attended six institutions of higher education between 1914 and 1917, studying agriculture, fitness, biology, sociology, and history, but he never completed a degree. After leaving college, Toomer published some short stories, devoted several months to the study of Eastern philosophies and took a job as a principal in Sparta, Georgia. The segregation Toomer experienced in the South led him to identify more strongly as an African American.

Toomer inherited wonderlust from his parents and grandparents:

“I have lived by turn in Washington, New York, Chicago, and Sparta (Georgia)… I have worked, it seems to me, at everything: selling papers, delivery boy, soda clerk, salesman, shipyard worker, librarian-assistant, physical director, school teacher, grocery clerk, and God knows what all. Neither the universities of Wisconsin or New York gave me what I wanted, so I quit them.”

It was in Chicago that Jean Toomer began to broaden his interest in literature: William Shakespeare, George Santayana, Charles Baudelaire, William Blake, Sherwood Anderson, Leo Tolstoy, and all the major American poets, especially the imagists. Although evidence shows that, in addition to Dante’s Inferno , Toomer was affected by Herman Melville’s Moby Dick to such a degree that he actually compared himself to Ishmael by having “mentally turned failure to triumph.” One of the most prominent literary characters with whom he became enthralled was Victor Hugo’s character Jean Valjean; Toomer claimed he felt “acquainted with … Valjean.”

Three articles, Ghouls (June 15, 1919), Reflections on the Race Riots (August 2, 1919), and Americans and Mary Austin (October 10, 1920), Jean Toomer wrote for The New York Call in 1919 and 1920 represent his background of political and economic thinking. They remain his most militant public statements about racial matters in the United States. In …Race Riots he prophesies movements of the 1960s, and in …Mary Austin he shows a subtle understanding of how American prejudice spilled over lines of race or class identity or political party or regional affiliation.

His southern sojourn as a school principal in Sparta, Georgia (1922) found in him the belief that he had located his ancestral roots (from Toomer’s experience and influence, Sparta was popularized as an ancestral root source by many of the Harlem Renaissance intelligensia; e.g., Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes both traveled there in the summer of 1927). Thus, he began to write poems, stories, and sketches, especially about southern women whose stretch towards self-realization forced them into conflict with American societal moral attitudes. Upon return to Washington, he repeated his efforts, this time focusing on inhibited Negroes in the North. He made friends with Waldo Frank published in the most important journals. The result, for Toomer, was a book, Cane, published in 1923 and included many of the aforementioned short stories and poems.

Toomer found it harder and harder to get published throughout the 1930s and in 1940 moved with his second wife to Doylestown, Pennsylvania where he joined the Religious Society of Friends and began to withdraw from society. Toomer wrote a small amount of fiction and published essays in Quaker publications during this time, but devoted most of his time to serving on Quaker committees. Toomer stopped writing literary works after 1950. He died in 1967 after several years of poor health.

Stray Toasters

• Alexander Haig, former US Secretary of State, dies
• By way of comes: Mixing Cocktails: When to Shake and When to Stir
• I’m looking forward to the release of Thoumont’s: TLX Edition, as it will bring TerrainLinX modular buildings to the WorldWorksGame terrain family.
• There have been intermittent flurries today. Nothing has stuck to the ground, though… yet.

Namaste.

Friday – 19 February 2010
9/80 Friday off. Selah.

Of course, the big thing at this point is to decide what I want to do with my day…

Last night, Sararules and I watched The Hangover. I never really had an inclination to see it when it was in theatres, but SaraRules rented it, as Logan was supposed to come over and watch it. He didn’t; we did. It wasn’t as bad as I had feared and it was pretty funny.

sdfs

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
SaraRules brings us today’s profile of William Grant Still:

William Grant Still (May 11, 1895 – December 3, 1978) was an African-American classical composer. He was the first African-American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, the first to have a symphony of his own (his first symphony) performed by a leading orchestra, the first to have an opera performed by a major opera company, and the first to have an opera performed on national television. He is often referred to as “the dean” of African-American composers.

William Grant Still was born in Woodville, Mississippi. His father, William Grant Still Sr., died when William was 3 months old and his mother, Carrie Lena Fambro Still, took him to Little Rock, Arkansas where she married Charles B. Shepperson and taught high school English for 33 years. Shepperson, his stepfather, nurtured his musical interests by taking him to operettas and buying Red Seal recordings of classical music which the boy greatly enjoyed. The two attended a number of performances by musicians on tour. William Still grew up in Little Rock, and there started violin lessons at age 14. He also taught himself how to play the clarinet, saxophone, oboe, double bass, cello and viola, and showed a great interest in music. His maternal grandmother introduced him to African American spirituals by singing them to him.

His mother wanted him to go to medical school, so Still pursued a Bachelor of Science degree program at Wilberforce University, founded as an African-American school, in Ohio. He conducted the university band, learned to play various instruments and started to compose and to do orchestrations. He also studied with Friedrich Lehmann at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music on scholarship. He later studied with George Whitefield Chadwick at the New England Conservatory again on scholarship, and then with the ultra-modern composer, Edgard Varèse.

Still initially composed in the modernist style, but later merged musical aspects of his African-American heritage with traditional European classical forms to form a unique style. In 1931 his Symphony No. 1 was performed by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Howard Hanson, making him the first African-American composer to receive such attention. In 1936, Still conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and became the first African-American to conduct a major American orchestra.

William Grant Still received two Guggenheim Fellowships. He also was awarded honorary doctorates from Oberlin College, Wilberforce University, Howard University, Bates College, the University of Arkansas, Pepperdine University, the New England Conservatory of Music, the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and the University of Southern California.

Still married Verna Arvey, a journalist and concert pianist, in 1939. They remained together until he died of heart failure in Los Angeles, California, in 1978.

Here is an excerpt from his most famous work, his Afro-American Symphony, written in 1935.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3JnMapsJMo

Stray Toasters

• I may set up a games-related blog today. Whether or not it happens depends on how motivated I’m feeling.
• Final Canadian WWI Veteran Dies
• In New York City, Skee-Ball for Grown-Ups
• Tiger Woods held a press conference this morning. In it he apologized for his behavior and asked the media to stop hounding his wife, kids and mother. Here’s another idea: Why don’t people leave the man alone and let him handle his business?!  Oh, wait… Dirty Laundry.  Right.
• My friend, Janie, wrote a good piece about “The Kevin Smith issue” in her blog.
• School District Is Accused of Webcam Spying
• 
• The Science Channel is featuring the construction of the new bridge across the Colorado River at Hoover Dam on MegaBuilders. Having seen the structure last year when SaraRules and I were on our honeymoon, I don’t envy the workmen on this project.
• If you are a pirate, this is what you get…
• After giving Four-Color Coverage a theme facelift, I added the WordBook plugin to it; hopefully, it won’t conflict with the WordBook plugin on this blog.
• Doctor Learns a Lesson in Care from 6-Year-Old
• RACE Cards — These amuse me to the point of considering getting some.
• Lenticular LEGO

Time to figure out what I’m doing today…

Namaste.

Tuesday – 16 February 2010
This morning has started off better than yesterday in a number of ways. I’m going to take that as a good omen.

Today is also apparently International Pancake Day.

Last night was rather quiet and low-key: After dinner, and a little TV-watching, SaraRules went to the gym for a swim and I decided that it was an ideal time to take a relaxing soak and do a little reading. Great way to wind down the evening. Later in the evening, I unwrapped LEGO Batman and played through a level. That game is more fun than I expected. (Thanks, SaraRules!)

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s notable person is Satchel Paige:

Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige was an American baseball player whose pitching in the Negro leagues and in Major League Baseball made him a legend.

Satchel was born Leroy Robert Page to John Page, a gardener, and Lula Page (née Coleman), a domestic worker, in a section of Mobile, Alabama known as Down the Bay. Many ages and birthdates, ranging from 1900 to 1908, were reported for Paige’s birthday. Paige himself was the source of many of these dates. His actual birthdate, July 7, 1906, however, has been known since 1948 when Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck traveled to Mobile, Alabama and went with Paige’s family to the County Health Department to obtain his birth certificate.

Two weeks before his twelfth birthday, Paige was arrested for shoplifting. Because this incident followed several earlier incidents of theft and truancy, he was committed to the state reform school, the Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs, Alabama, until the age of eighteen. During more than five years he spent at the Industrial School, he developed his pitching skills under the guidance of Edward Byrd.

After his release, Paige played for several Mobile semi-pro teams. He joined the semi-pro Mobile Tigers where his brother Wilson was already pitching. He also pitched for a semi-pro team named the Down the Bay Boys. A former friend from the Mobile slums, Alex Herman, was the player/manager for the Chattanooga White Sox of the minor Negro Southern League. In 1926 he discovered Paige and offered to pay him $250 per month, of which Paige would collect $50 with the rest going to his mother. Partway through the 1927 season, Paige’s contract was sold to the Birmingham Black Barons of the major Negro National League (NNL). From 1926 until 1947, Paige played for many teams across the U.S. and in Cuba.

When Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson, a teammate of Paige, Paige realized that it was for the better that he himself was not the first black in major league baseball. Robinson started in the minors, an insult that Paige would not have tolerated. By integrating baseball in the minor leagues first, the white major league players got the chance to “get used to” the idea of playing alongside black players. Understanding that, Paige said in his autobiography:

“Signing Jackie like they did still hurt me deep down. I’d been the guy who’d started all that big talk about letting us in the big time. I’d been the one who’d opened up the major league parks to colored teams. I’d been the one who the white boys wanted to go barnstorming against.”

Paige, and all other black players, knew that quibbling about the choice of the first black player in the major leagues would do nothing productive, so, despite his inner feelings, Paige said of Robinson, “He’s the greatest colored player I’ve ever seen.”

Finally, on July 7, 1948, with his Cleveland Indians in a pennant race and in desperate need of pitching, Indians owner Bill Veeck brought Paige in to try out with Indians player/manager Lou Boudreau. On that same day, his 42nd birthday, Paige signed his first major league contract, for $40,000 for the three months remaining in the season, becoming the first Negro pitcher in the American League and the seventh Negro big leaguer overall.

Paige played in as many as 2,500 games and is credited with more than 50 no-hitters. He pitched for six seasons in the majors and was the first star of the Negro leagues to be inducted (1971) into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Stray Toasters

• I’m apparently conducting an unplanned experiment this morning…
• I Think, Therefore ‘I Zombie’
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: TSA forces travelling policeman to remove his disabled four-year-old’s leg braces
• Device on Sandy (UT) gas pump helps crooks steal credit card number, by way of
• Since discovering Downtown Philly Cheesesteaks, I have been reacquainted with a drink I used to love: Birch Beer. This morning, DPC posted a “What Is Birch Beer?” message on their Facebook page:
  

  Have you ever wondered what on earth “Birch Beer” is? You may have seen it in our stores, but never bothered to ask. Well here is your answer: Birch Beer is a carbonated soft drink made from herbal extracts, usually from birch bark. It has a taste similar to root beer (only 20x better). Various types of Birch Beer are available, distinguished by color. The color of the drink depends on the species of the birch tree from which the sap is extracted. Popular colors are brown, red, and clear.

• SportsCenter Goes Up, Up and Away with Superman Ad
• 365 Bears
• Hanging rock at Utah’s Timpanogos Cave raises safety concern
• I miss Dunkin Donuts.

Namaste.

Monday – 15 February 2010
Welcome to the work week.

Yesterday afternoon/evening wound up being a lot of fun. SaraRules and I went to Rodizio Grill for dinner. Or, as we are fond of referring to it: “Meat o’clock.” Among their meat choices were rattlesnake sausage, elk and chicken hearts. And, of course, there was grilled pineapple – probably the only cooked fruit that I like. We also both indulged in capirinhas. It was all very tasty.

On the way home from dinner, we stopped at the in-laws’ for a few. Then we headed home for end-of-the-weekend relaxing. We watched Starship Troopers and Rocky Balboa. We both like Troopers (despite the fact that it only has tenuous ties to the book by Robert Heinlein) and Rocky Balboa, which I’d never seen, is one of SaraRules’ favorites. It was a good movie and wrapped up the Rocky franchise rather well.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s spotlight person is Jesse Owens

James Cleveland “Jesse” Owens was an American track and field athlete. The seventh child of Henry and Emma Alexander Owens was born in Alabama on September 12, 1913. “J.C.”, as he was called, was nine when the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where his new schoolteacher gave him the name that was to become known around the world. The teacher was told “J.C.” when she asked his name to enter in her roll book, but she thought he said “Jesse”. The name stuck and he would be known as Jesse Owens for the rest of his life.

Throughout his life Owens attributed the success of his athletic career to the encouragement of Charles Riley, his junior-high track coach at Fairmount Junior High, who had put him on the track team. Since Owens worked in a shoe repair shop after school, Riley allowed him to practice before school instead. His promising athletic career began in 1928 in Cleveland, Ohio where he set Junior High School records by clearing 6 feet in the high jump, and leaping 22 feet 11 3/4 inches in the broad jump. During his high school days, he won all of the major track events, including the Ohio state championship three consecutive years.

At the National Interscholastic meet in Chicago, during his senior year, he set a new high school world record by running the 100 yard dash in 9.4 seconds to tie the accepted world record, and he created a new high school world record in the 220 yard dash by running the distance in 20.7 seconds. A week earlier he had set a new world record in the broad jump by jumping 24 feet 11 3/4 inches. Owens’ sensational high school track career resulted in him being recruited by dozens of colleges. Owens chose the Ohio State University, even though OSU could not offer a track scholarship at the time. He worked a number of jobs to support himself and his young wife, Ruth. He worked as a night elevator operator, a waiter, he pumped gas, worked in the library stacks, and served a stint as a page in the Ohio Statehouse, all of this in between practice and record setting on the field in intercollegiate competition.

Owens’s performance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics has become legend, both for his brilliant gold-medal efforts in the 100-metre run (10.3 sec, an Olympic record), the 200-metre run (20.7 sec, a world record), the long jump (8.06 metres [26.4 feet]), and the 4 100-metre relay (39.8 sec) and for events away from the track. One popular tale that arose from Owens’s victories was that of the “snub,” the notion that Hitler refused to shake hands with Owens because he was an African American. In truth, by the second day of competition, when Owens won the 100-metre final, Hitler had decided to no longer publicly congratulate any of the athletes. The previous day the International Olympic Committee president, angry that Hitler had publicly congratulated only a few German and Finnish winners before leaving the stadium after the German competitors were eliminated from the day’s final event, insisted that the German chancellor congratulate all or none of the victors. Unaware of the situation, American papers reported the “snub,” and the myth grew over the years.

Just before the competitions Owens was visited in the Olympic village by Adi Dassler, the founder of Adidas. He persuaded Owens to use Adidas shoes and it was the first sponsorship for a male African-American athlete.

On the first day, Hitler shook hands only with the German victors and then left the stadium. Olympic committee officials then insisted Hitler greet each and every medalist or none at all. Hitler opted for the latter and skipped all further medal presentations. On reports that Hitler had deliberately avoided acknowledging his victories, and had refused to shake his hand, Owens recounted:

When I passed the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him. I think the writers showed bad taste in criticizing the man of the hour in Germany.

He also stated: “Hitler didn’t snub me—it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.” Jesse Owens was never invited to the White House nor bestowed any honors by Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) or Harry S. Truman during their terms. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower acknowledged Owens’s accomplishments, naming him an “Ambassador of Sports.”

After the games had finished, Owens was invited, along with the rest of the team, to compete in Sweden. However he decided to capitalize on his success by returning to the United States to take up some of the lucrative commercial offers he was receiving. American athletic officials were furious and withdrew his amateur status, ending his career immediately. Owens was livid: “A fellow desires something for himself,” he said.

With no sporting appearances to bolster his profile, the lucrative offers never quite materialized. Instead he was forced to try to make a living as a sports promoter, essentially an entertainer. He soon found himself running a dry-cleaning business and then even working as a gas station attendant. He eventually filed for bankruptcy but, even then, his problems were not over and in 1966 he was successfully prosecuted for tax evasion. At rock bottom, the rehabilitation began and he started work as a U.S. “goodwill ambassador.”

Jesse Owens died from complications due to lung cancer on March 31, 1980 in Tucson, Arizona. Although words of sorrow, sympathy and admiration poured in from all over the world, perhaps President Carter said it best when he stated: “Perhaps no athlete better symbolized the human struggle against tyranny, poverty and racial bigotry. His personal triumphs as a world-class athlete and record holder were the prelude to a career devoted to helping others. His work with young athletes, as an unofficial ambassador overseas, and a spokesman for freedom are a rich legacy to his fellow Americans.”

Stray Toasters

• I just finished writing the technical equivalent of Skippy’s List for an employee.
• Fashion Week’s Latest Trend? Plus-Size Models
• Washington to Give Microsoft a $100 Million Annual Tax Cut… and Possible Amnesty on Past Tax Evasion
• 
• LEGO Launches 10 Board Games
• By way of : Would You Have Spotted the Fraud?
• Old sweaters reborn as mittens
• Top 10 Google Settings You Should Know About
• Four-Color Coverage now has its first “real” post.

Namaste.

Sunday – 14 February 2010
Happy Valentine’s Day.

…or Single Awareness Day.
…or Anti-Green Lantern Day.

Take your pick.

SaraRules got me a two cards, LEGO Batman for the 360 and Fringe (Season 1). Of the cards, one was your standard greeting card, the other was this:

“Very sweet,” indeed.

Yesterday’s HeroClix tournament not only had a good turnout – three or four new participants and a young man who came to learn what the game was and how to play. After the game I ran up to Woods Cross to pick up one of SaraRules’ gift items:

…a cake that my friend Julie made.  (The cake ends at the bottom row of flowers, but the fondant matches the paper used on the base.) We should be tackling part of it tonight after dinner.

After picking up the cake and running a couple of other errands, I came home and had dinner with SaraRules before she headed to the symphony hall. (Yes, she had to work for a bit last night.) Shortly after she left, Darillyn and Stephanie arrived. We sat and chatted for a couple of hours until SaraRules got home; then Darillyn and Stephanie headed out to go dancing.  SaraRules and I watched Tales of the Black Freighter and Zombieland.

This morning, we all slept in. Very in. 1130 – 1200 in. And it was good. I fixed coffee; SaraRules made waffles. We sat around and ate and then showed D and S the wedding, engagement and bridal photos. After they got showered and dressed, D and S headed off for more adventures before heading back to southern Utah.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today, there will again be two entries:

The Nicholas Brothers
The Nicholas Brothers were a famous African-American team of dancing brothers, Fayard (1914–2006) and Harold Nicholas (1921–2000).

The Nicholas Brothers grew up in Philadelphia, the sons of musicians who played in their own band at the old Standard Theater He was completely fascinated by the black Vaudeville acts and imitated their acrobatics and clowning for the kids in his neighborhood. Harold watched and imitated Fayard until he was able to dance too, then apparently, he worked his own ideas into mimicry.

It seems that the Nicholas Brothers were immediately successful. Word soon spread through the city about their ingenuity and unique dancing abilities, and they were first hired for a radio program, “The Horn and Hardart Kiddie Hour”, and then by local theaters, like the Standard and the Pearl.  While at the Pearl Theater, the manager of the famous New York Vaudeville Showcase, The Lafayette, saw them. Overwhelmed by what he saw, he immediately signed them up for his theater.

From the Lafayette, the Nicolas Brothers opened at the Cotton Club  in 1932 and astonished their white audiences just as much as the residents of Harlem, slipping into their series of spins, twists, flips, and tap dancing to the jazz tempos of “Bugle Call Rag”. They were the only entertainers in the African American cast allowed to mingle with white patrons. They performed at the Cotton Club for two years, working with the orchestras of  Lucky Millinder, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington and Jimmy Lunceford. The Nicholas Brothers then journeyed to Hollywood in 1934 to appear in the films “Kid Millions”, “The Big Broadcast” (1936), and “Black Network”.

By 1940, they were in Hollywood and for several decades alternated between movies, nightclubs, concerts, Broadway, television, and extensive tours of Latin America, Africa, and Europe.

The Nicholas Brothers taught master classes in tap dance as teachers-in-residence at Harvard University and Radcliffe as Ruth Page Visiting Artists. Among their known students are Debbie Allen, Janet Jackson, and Michael Jackson. Several of today’s master tap dancers have performed with or been taught by the brothers.

N.A.A.C.P.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.) is one of the oldest and most influential civil rights organizations in the United States.

The NAACP is the nation’s oldest, largest and most widely recognized grassroots–based civil rights organization. Its mission is “to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination”. The organization was founded on February 12, 1909 by a diverse group composed of W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Archibald Grimké, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villard, William English Walling (the last son of a former slave-holding family), and Florence Kelley, a social reformer and friend of Du Bois.

The Race Riot of 1908 in Lincoln’s hometown of Springfield, Illinois had highlighted the urgent need for an effective civil rights organization in the U.S. This event is often cited as the catalyst for the formation of the NAACP. Mary White Ovington, journalist William English Walling and Henry Moscowitz met in New York City in January 1909 and the NAACP was born. Solicitations for support went out to more than 60 prominent Americans, and a meeting date was set for February 12, 1909. This was intended to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln, who emancipated enslaved African Americans. While the meeting did not take place until three months later, this date is often cited as the founding date of the organization.

The NAACP’s headquarters are in Baltimore, Maryland, with additional regional offices in California, New York, Michigan, Missouri, Georgia and Texas. Each regional office is responsible for coordinating the efforts of state conferences in the states included in that region. Local, youth, and college chapters organize activities for individual members. The NAACP is run nationally by a 64-member board led by a chair. The board elects one person as the President and chief executive officer for the organization.

Its more than half-million members and supporters throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.

Stray Toasters

• SaraRules and I are continuing our nominal tradition of eating dinner at Brazilian steakhouses on Valentine’s Day with a trip to Rodizio Grill.
• I’ve missed doing Four-Color Coverage over the past few months, but haven’t wanted to load up Random Access with all of my rants and raves about comics and all things comic-related. So, last night, I finally came up with solution: Four-Color Coverage.
• In setting up the new blog for FCC, I placed a call to my hosting provider, Powweb. I’ve been with them for… five or six years, I believe. I wanted to verify a pricing and data plan issue that I didn’t quite grok.  The CSR explained where I had misunderstood something in the setup and was quite helpful in making sure that I was satisfied with my service… even to the point of offering to change my payment plan, if necessary.  I assured him that it wasn’t necessary, but appreciated the willingness to go that extra mile. If you’re looking for a decently-priced host with good features, give them a look.

Time to head to dinner!

Namaste.

Saturday – 13 February 2010
Saturday. Thank Heaven.

This morning, I’m heading off to run another tournament in a bit. But, first… coffee with Chris and Perry.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s spotlighted person is: Hattie McDaniel

Hattie McDaniel was born June 10, 1895, in Wichita, Kansas, to former slaves. She was the youngest of 13 children. In 1900, the family moved to Colorado, living first in Fort Collins and then in Denver, where Hattie grew up and graduated from Denver East High School.

In addition to performing, Hattie was also a songwriter, a skill she honed while working with her father’s minstrel show. After the death of her brother Otis in 1916, the troupe began to lose money, and it wasn’t until 1920 that Hattie received another big opportunity. During 1920–25, she appeared with Professor George Morrison’s Melony Hounds, a touring black ensemble, and in the mid-1920s she embarked on a radio career, singing with the Melony Hounds on station KOA in Denver. In 1927–1929 she also recorded many of her songs on Okeh Records and Paramount Records in Chicago.

Two years after McDaniel’s film debut in 1932, she landed her first major part in John Ford’s Judge Priest (1934), in which she had an opportunity to sing a duet with humorist Will Rogers. Her role as a happy Southern servant in The Little Colonel (1935) made her a controversial figure in the liberal black community, which sought to end Hollywood’s stereotyping. When criticized for taking such roles, McDaniel responded that she would rather play a maid in the movies than be one in real life; and during the 1930s she played the role of maid or cook in nearly 40 films, including Alice Adams (1935), in which her comic characterization of a grumbling, far-from-submissive maid made the dinner party scene one of the best remembered from the film. She is probably most often associated with the supporting role of Mammy in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind, a role for which she became the first African American to win an Academy Award.

It was her role as the sassy servant who repeatedly scolds her mistress, Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh), and scoffs at Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), that won McDaniel the 1940 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, making her the first African American to win an Oscar. She was also the first African American ever to be nominated. “I loved Mammy,” McDaniel said. “I think I understood her because my own grandmother worked on a plantation not unlike Tara.” Her role in Gone with the Wind had scared some in the Southern audience; there were complaints that in the film she had been too familiar with her white employer.

At the end of World War II, during which McDaniel organized entertainment for black troops, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and other liberal black groups lobbied Hollywood for an end to the stereotyped roles in which McDaniel had become typecast, and consequently her Hollywood opportunities declined. Radio, however, was slower to respond, and in 1947 she became the first African American to star in a weekly radio program aimed at a general audience when she agreed to play the role of a maid on The Beulah Show. In 1951, while filming the first six segments of a television version of the popular show, she had a heart attack. She recovered sufficiently to tape a number of radio shows in 1952 but died soon thereafter of breast cancer.

McDaniel has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood: one for her contributions to radio at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard, and one for motion pictures at 1719 Vine Street. In 1975, she was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and in 2006 became the first black Oscar winner honored with a US postage stamp.

Stray Toasters

• WizKids is doing a Watchmen HeroClix set this summer. Yep… that’s on The Covet List.
• Tuskegee airmen to be buried at Arlington

I may do more later. Right now, I’ve got to get ready to get my game on!

Namaste.

Friday – 12 February 2010
Thank God it’s Friday… even if it’s my “on” Friday. For some reason, I woke up with Rockapella’s Daisy Simone running through my head. It wasn’t a problem, just really an unexpected selection.

Tonight, Darillyn and Stephanie(2) are coming up for a couple of days.  We haven’t seen D since the wedding; and I don’t think that I’ve seen Steph2 since SaraRules lived in Cedar City. It should be a good weekend.

Last night, SaraRules fixed a Thai shrimp curry. It was very tasty. Three guesses what I have for lunch today.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s spotlight person is: Spike Lee

Shelton Jackson “Spike” Lee is an American film director, producer, writer, and actor. He was born in Atlanta, but moved with his family to Brooklyn, New York when he was a small child. Lee enrolled in Morehouse College where he made his first student film, Last Hustle in Brooklyn. He took film courses at Clark Atlanta University and graduated with a B.A. in Mass Communication from Morehouse College. He then enrolled in New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He graduated in 1978 with a Master of Fine Arts in Film & Television.

Lee became a director of promise with his first feature film, She’s Gotta Have It, in 1986. The film was shot in two weeks on a budget of $160,000 and grossed over $700,000 in the U.S.  (The reception of She’s Gotta Have It led Lee down a second career avenue. Marketing executives from Nike offered Lee a job directing commercials for the company. They wanted to pair Lee’s character from She’s Gotta Have It, the Michael Jordan-loving Mars Blackmon, and Jordan himself in their marketing campaign for the Air Jordan line.)

Lee often takes a critical look at race relations, political issues and urban crime and violence. His next film, 1989’s Do The Right Thing examined all of the above and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1989. Subsequent films, including Malcolm X, Mo’ Better Blues, Summer of Sam and She Hate Me, continued to explore social and political issues. 4 Little Girls, a piece about the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary in 1997.

In 2006, Lee directed and produced a four-hour documentary for television, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, about life in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

His most recent feature film release, Miracle at St. Anna (2008), tells the story of four African American soldiers trapped in an Italian village during World War II. This movie was praised for bringing the often overlooked experience of black infantrymen — known as buffalo soldiers — to the big screen.

Lee has never shied away from controversial statements and actions involving race relations:

• In 2002, after headline-grabbing remarks made by Mississippi Senator Trent Lott regarding Senator Strom Thurmond’s failed presidential bid, Lee charged that Lott was a “card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan” on ABC’s Good Morning America.
• After the 1990 release of Mo’ Better Blues, Lee was accused of antisemitism by the Anti-Defamation League and several film critics.
• Lee was the executive producer of the 1995 film New Jersey Drive, which depicted young African-American auto thieves in northern New Jersey.
• In May 1999 The New York Post reported that Lee said of National Rifle Association President Charlton Heston, “Shoot him with a .44 Bulldog.” Lee contended, “I intended it as ironic, as a joke to show how violence begets more violence,” Lee said.
• In 2003, Lee filed suit against the Spike TV television network claiming that they were capitalizing on his fame by using his name for their network. The injunction order filed by Spike Lee was eventually lifted.
• In October 2005, Lee commented on the federal government’s response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina catastrophe:
  

  “It’s not too far-fetched. I don’t put anything past the United States government. I don’t find it too far-fetched that they tried to displace all the black people out of New Orleans.”

• Lee sparked controversy on a March 28, 2004 segment on ABC when he said that basketball player Larry Bird was overrated because of his race:
  

  “The most overrated player of all time, I would say it’d be Larry Bird. Now, Larry Bird is one of the greatest players of all time, but listen to the white media, it’s like this guy was like nobody ever played basketball before him–Larry Bird, Larry Bird, Larry Bird, Larry Bird, Larry Bird.”

• At the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, Lee, who was then making Miracle at St. Anna, about an all-black U.S. division fighting in Italy during World War II, criticized director Clint Eastwood for not depicting black Marines in his own WWII film, Flags of Our Fathers.
• During a lecture at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada on February 11, 2009, Lee criticized how some in the black community wrongfully associate “intelligence with acting white, and ignorance with acting black”, admonishing students and parents to maintain more positive attitudes in order to follow their dreams and achieving their goals.

Lee’s production company, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, is located in his childhood neighborhood of Fort Green in Brooklyn.

Workout
Yesterday, Wes and I made an attempt at getting back into the swing of things at the gym. And guess who did his first 300 pound bench press of the year! Mm-hmm, that’s right. Me. Sho’nuff!

• Elliptical: random/8 minutes
• Sit-ups (incline): 3 sets/20 reps
• Reverse Punches: 2 sets/10 reps, 10 lbs
• Bench Press: 1 set/1 rep, 300 lbs (!)
• Bench Press: 3 sets/8 reps, 205 lbs
• Flys: 3 sets/10 reps, 110 lbs
• Shoulder Press: 3 sets/10 reps, 60 lbs

Post-workout weight (in gym clothes): 189.8 lbs

Stray Toasters

• I got into the office this morning… and the alarm was going off.

  *grblsnrksx*

  On top of that, I didn’t see anyone else in the office.

  ::: braincramp :::

  I checked the office, turned off the alarm and called corporate security. The best answer that we came up with was that someone on the cleaning crew tripped the alarm this morning and didn’t know how to turn it off. Heckuva way to kick off a Friday morning.

• 10 Style Resolutions You Should Make for 2010
• I don’t think that I need to explain why this image makes me grin like a fiend…

  

• From NPR Music: Bumpin’ Beats for Pumpin’ Iron
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Old Nintendo NES system and five games sell for $13,105 on eBay
• Top 10 Tragic Love Stories in Geek Fiction
• Facebook Now Supports Jabber/XMPP
• For Some Jobs, Asperger’s Syndrome Can Be An Asset
  
• 
  If only he were a little shorter (and had a goatee… and/or was wearing a GL or a Legion t-shirt) and she was a little taller… and didn’t have the red streak in her hair, it would be just about perfect!
• 5 Most Incompetent Alien Invaders in Movie History
• Comics That Have a Nice Beat and Are Easy To Dance To
• Windows patch cripples XP with blue screen, users claim

Namaste.

Thursday – 11 February 2010
It’s snowing outside.

That’s not as radical a statement as “It’s snowing inside,” but considering that we were sunny and relatively clear-skied yesterday, it is a decided change. It’s cold enough that the snow is sticking to the ground, but warm enough that it’s not sticking to the roadways. Thus, the morning commute – and the commutes of those passing below our office windows – was relatively easy. Even so, the Council for Better Driving: Utah would like to remind drivers to be careful on the roads today.

Last night, SaraRules and I went to dinner at Outback Steakhouse. I was having a craving for their oh-so-tasty-yet-so-very-bad-for-you Aussie Cheese Fries. After dinner – a very filling, very satisfied dinner – we headed home for couch time: Human Target, Fringe and 24. When I’d had my fill of things going all ‘splodey, I called it a night.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today, there will not be a “Famous Person of the Day.” Instead, there will be two (2) of them:

Maulana Karenga
Ron Karenga (born Ronald McKinley Everett and also known as Maulana Karenga) is an African American author, political activist, and college professor best known as the creator of Kwanzaa.

Karenga was born on a poultry farm in Parsonsburg, Maryland, the fourteenth child of a Baptist minister. He moved to California in the late 1950s to attend Los Angeles City College, where he became the first African-American president of the student body. He was admitted to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as part of a federal program for students who had dropped out of high school, and received his master’s degree in political science and African studies.

At the beginning of the 1960s, Karenga met Malcolm X and began to embrace black nationalism. Following the Watts riots in 1965, he interrupted his doctoral studies at UCLA and joined the Black Power movement. During this time, he took on the title “maulana”, an Arabic word literally meaning “our lord” or “our master” and has been borrowed into the Swahili language, where it is used also as a title of respect for revered members of a community, religious or secular, roughly equivalent to the English “Sir”. “Karenga” meant “nationalist.” Earlier, he had called himself Ron Ndabezitha Everett-Karenga; Ndabezitha being Zulu for “your majesty.” He formed the US Organization, an outspoken Black nationalist group.

He was awarded his first Ph.D. in 1976 from United States International University (now known as Alliant International University) for a 170-page dissertation entitled Afro-American Nationalism: Social Strategy and Struggle for Community. Later in his career, in 1994, he was awarded a second PhD, in social ethics, from the University of Southern California (USC), for an 803-page dissertation entitled “Maat, the moral ideal in ancient Egypt: A study in classical African ethics.”

Karenga is the former Chairman of the Black Studies Department at California State University, Long Beach, a position he held from 1989 to 2002. He is the director of the Kawaida Institute for Pan African Studies and the author of several books, including his Introduction to Black Studies, a comprehensive black/African studies textbook now in its third edition.

Karenga founded the Organization Us, a Cultural Black Nationalist group, in 1965. He is also known for having co-hosted, in 1984, a conference that gave rise to the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, and in 1995, he sat on the organizing committee and authored the mission statement of the Million Man March.

Anna Kingsley
Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley (c. 1793 – April or May 1870) was a West African slave turned slaveholder and plantation owner in early 19th century Florida.

Anna Kingsley was born Anta Majigeen Ndiaye in 1793, in a portion of West Africa that was going through a tumultuous war between the majority Wolof people and the minority Fula. Slave raids were frequent occurrences among incessant violence that left many small villages deserted as people were either abducted for the purpose of selling into slavery or they fled in fear for their lives. Following an intensifying of the crisis in 1790, Anta was captured in 1806 when she was about 13 years old; she was  sent to Cuba where she was purchased by and married to Zephaniah Kingsley, a slave trader and plantation owner.

Kingsley freed Anna in 1811 and put her in charge of his plantations in East Florida. For 25 years, Kingsley’s unique family lived on Fort George Island in modern-day Jacksonville, where Anna managed a large and successful planting operation, owning slaves of her own.

After Spain handed control of Florida over to the U.S. in 1822, the new government progressively enacted stricter ordinances separating the races. The mixed-race Kingsley family was directly and negatively affected by these “illiberal and inequitable laws”, as Kingsley stated in his will. Kingsley transferred all their holdings to the three older children and moved to Haiti in 1835. Anna and their youngest son followed in 1838. In all, 60 slaves, family members, and freed employees moved with Kingsley to Haiti to start a plantation called Mayorasgo de Koka; Zephaniah Kingsley died soon after.

Anna returned to Florida in 1846 to participate in the Kingsley estate defense, despite the increasingly tense racial climate in Duval County. The court, however, upheld a previous treaty signed between the U.S. and Spain stipulating that all free blacks born before 1822 in Florida enjoyed the same legal privileges as they had when Spain controlled East Florida. Anna furthermore asked for and was granted the transfer of ownership of slaves who had been sent to the San Jose plantation when the family had moved to Haiti, but her request to rent her slaves to other plantations to maximize her profits was rejected by the courts.

The National Park Service protects Kingsley Plantation, where Anna and Kingsley lived on Fort George Island, as part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve.

Stray Toasters

• Thanks to telecommuting, snow days are no longer fun
• Michelle Obama on Sarah Palin: ‘I don’t know her’
• 
• Fashion designer Alexander McQueen found dead
• Where Microsoft’s Money Really Comes From
• His Name Is Khan (And It’s One You Might Know)
  

  What the movie has in common with many Bollywood fantasies is this: Khan’s character comes to America.

  “I say this to everyone: Our fantasies are about earning a good living,” he says. “Having maybe a car — not two. Getting an education for your kids. Our fantasies are not about getting to be president of the country, to sit in a rocket and go and break a meteor. Our fantasies are very real.

  “As a matter of fact,” he continues, “I find the Western cinema very fantastic. You’ve got aliens. And you’ve got things we don’t know about. Blue creatures. You have Batman, you have Superman. I remember the first time I was here — someone was interviewing me in a hotel, and they said, ‘Your films are such fantasies.'”

  “And I’m like, We are fantasies? Our guys just want to sing and dance on the roads. Our guys just want to drive a big car. Our guys just want to come to America. You know, we don’t want to go to Pandora. America is our Pandora.”

• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: American Airlines to charge $50 to fly standby
  • This comes on the heels of their announcement that they will start charging $8 (USD) for a blanket and pillow pack in May
• HALO Legends comes out Tuesday.
  That reminds me: I should fire up X-Men Legends again…
• LEGO landmarks taken in $6,500 vehicle burglary
• 
• MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta steps down

Namaste.

Wednesday – 10 February 2010

This morning started off with me slamming off the alarm and rolling over and falling back to sleep. (There’s a reason that I keep a secondary alarm set on my cell phone: Some mornings, I’m either really tired and/or lazy. This morning was one of those “tired” mornings. I woke up again at 0658, two minutes before the second alarm would go off. While I pondered whether to get up or to wait for the alarm, a couple of car alarms went off outside the window. I couldn’t tell if it one of them was my car or not, so up I got. By the time I got to the living room, both car alarms had stopped… and the cell phone alarm was starting. *sigh* Hell of a way to kick off Comics and Sushi Wednesday.

Last night, SaraRules fixed lasagna for dinner. Vegetarian lasagna. We had discussed adding a vegetarian meal or two to the week’s meals, so it wasn’t a total surprise… but I wasn’t expecting it last night. More importantly, though, it was good.

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

Mae Carol Jemison is an African American physician and NASA astronaut, born October 17, 1956, in Decatur, Alabama. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois, when Jemison was three to take advantage of better educational opportunities there. During her time at Morgan Park High School, she became convinced she wanted to pursue a career in biomedical engineering, and when she graduated in 1973 as a consistent honor student, she entered Stanford University on a National Achievement Scholarship. At Stanford, Jemison pursued a dual major and in 1977 received a B.S. in chemical engineering and a B.A. in African and African-American Studies. Upon graduation, she entered Cornell University Medical College to work toward a medical degree.

After completing her medical internship, Jemison joined the staff of the Peace Corps and served as a Peace Corps Medical Officer from 1983 to 1985 responsible for the health of Peace Corps Volunteers serving in Liberia and Sierra Leone.^[10] Jemison’s work in the Peace Corps included supervising the pharmacy, laboratory, medical staff as well as providing medical care, writing self-care manuals, and developing and implementing guidelines for health and safety issues. Jemison also worked with the Center for Disease Control (CDC) helping with research for various vaccines.^[13]

Following her return to the United States in 1985, she made a career change and decided to follow a dream she had nurtured for a long time. In October of that year she applied for admission to NASA’s astronaut training program. The Challenger disaster of January 1986 delayed the selection process, but when she reapplied a year later, Jemison was one of the 15 candidates chosen from a field of about 2,000. She became the first woman of recent African ancestry to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992.

After leaving the astronaut corps in March 1993, Jemison accepted a teaching fellowship at Dartmouth. She also established the Jemison Group, a company that seeks to research, develop, and market advanced technologies.

Stray Toasters

• Last night’s project was to paint my Lockheed (1, 2) figure for this weekend’s HeroClix tournament. I was successful:

  
  (click here for larger images)

  The pictures don’t really do the figure justice, as the varnish I coated the figure with reflected a lot of the camera flash.

• Neil Gaiman lands gig for Doctor Who episode
• Carrie Fisher was on The Late Late Show last night; she’s often quite entertaining – and a little frenetic – in interviews. Last night was no exception. Craig talked about being on Twitter (CraigyFerg) and she mentioned her Twitter feed, as well.
• 
• MarknTyme forwarded me a clip from Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.
• Alice Hill, from Real Tech News, has been… away… for a while. She reappeared yesterday and had news of what she’s been up to:
  

  Long story short, I have been working on a new startup company called Bizmore.com. Bizmore is a new online subsidiary of 50+ year old CEO leadership organization Vistage International. What Vistage does offline with small groups of members sharing advice and best practices, Bizmore does online for everyone. If you have a business question, are looking for advice or just want a sounding board, Bizmore is a free resource that ties a lot of what was scattered online in one place. We have experts, we have great content, and we have a pretty slick Q&A engine to tie it all together.

  Read more: http://www.realtechnews.com/#ixzz0f9I8nqZg

• To Get No Valentines… Would Be a Disaster!!!
• Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin added to Las Vegas Walk of Stars
• Security on Wheels: Kevin Beaver’s Security Blog

And now… meeting time.

Namaste.

Tuesday –  09 February 2010
In the words of the Indigo Girls, “I woke up with a headache, like my head against a board…” Not really sure “why” I had it, but it was there. So, I sprawled on the couch and dozed for a bit before getting ready. That seemed to help somewhat. That… and two Aleve. I’ve sent some coffee in as backup. We’ll see how the morning progresses.

Last night, SaraRules had a Junior League meeting, so I started in on this season’s Jack Bauer Kicks Ass, Growls and Takes Names 24. It was amusing to see Anil Kapoor, whom I last saw as the emcee in Slumdog Millionaire, as the president of an unnamed country in the Middle/Far East. It was good. Now, I just need to finish watching the other eleventy-seven other hours of this season’s episodes…

After SaraRules got home, we watched How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. I’d wanted to see this movie when it hit theatres, but I doubt that even The Flash could have caught it, as it was in and out of theatres so quickly. It starred Simon Pegg as the owner/writer/publisher of a small alternative magazine that lambasts the rich and famous. Through an odd bit of happenstance, he’s given the opportunity to work for the magazine that his idol created. To say that he has “a hard time” fitting in, would be a bit of an understatement, but it makes for some good comedy. While not as satirically biting as Shaun of the Dead (I just realized that I used “biting” to describe a zombie movie… I’m sorry), this movie was rather entertaining and fun.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note is Roy Innis

Civil rights activist Roy emile Alfredo Innis was born on June 6, 1934 in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. Emigrating to Harlem, New York City (1946), he dropped out of high school to join the U.S. Army, at 16; he received an honorable discharge at 18. He entered a four-year program in chemistry at the City College of New York. He subsequently held positions as a research chemist at Vick Chemical Company and Montefiore Hospital.

Innis joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1963 and advocated black separatism and community school boards. In 1964 he was elected Chairman of the chapter’s education committee and advocated community-controlled education and black empowerment. In 1965, he was elected Chairman of Harlem CORE, after which he campaigned for the establishment of an independent Board of Education for Harlem. Innis was elected National Chairman of CORE in 1968, and has held the position ever since. Initially Innis, headed the organization in a strong campaign of Black Nationalism. However, he subsequently became prominent as a conservative activist. CORE supported the presidential candidacy of Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972. Since taking over CORE, the organization’s politics have moved sharply to the right.

Never fully accepted by established African-American civil-rights leaders because of his unpredictable positions and personality, he was dogged by charges from associates of being too dictatorial. The New York attorney general’s office investigated him for alleged misuse of contributions and he was forced to pay back $35,000 to CORE (1981).

In the 1980s Innis twice ran unsuccessfully for the US House of Representatives. In 1988 he made controversial appearances on the Geraldo Rivera and Morton Downey Jr television shows that led to scuffles on camera. In 1993, he ran in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary but lost to incumbent David Dinkins.

Stray Toasters

• WizKids has released pictures the last of the “Blackest Night” figures: Wonder Woman (as a Star Sapphire)



• Guess who just signed up to (hopefully) get a Beta invite to LEGO Universe…
• The iPad Questions Apple Won’t Answer
• Sounds like the mid-Atlantic region is about to get belted with lots of snow. Again.
• ‘The Prisoner’ viewable online
• Office telephone system = *grblsnrkx* + *braincramp*
• 
• “Enter” key doormat
• Science of Cocktails

Tally-ho!

Namaste.

Monday – 08 February 2010
Another work week kicks off a little on the cold side, but there’s sun… so it can’t be all bad.

Loonybin88 just arrived in the office, decked out in his scouting finery. I asked what the occasion was; he informed me that today is the 100th Anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s entry also comes by way of SaraRules:

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes was an African-American poet and playwright, and one of the leading figures in the “Harlem Renaissance”, an explosion of African-American cultural life in the 1920s and ‘30s.

Hughes moved to New York at the age of 19 to attend Columbia University. He left after one year, and traveled to West Africa, Paris, and England.  He returned to the United States in 1925, and enrolled in Lincoln University, a historically black university in Pennsylvania. He earned his B.A. from Lincoln in 1929, and moved back to Harlem, which was his primary home for the rest of his life.

As an author, Hughes was focused on the strength, joy, music, and life of blacks living in America. His writing expresses a great pride in African-American identity, but goes beyond the big-city experience of Harlem and enjoys the diversity of the African-American culture throughout the nation.

This poem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, was one of his first poems, originally published in 1921, and is his best-known work.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I danced in the Nile when I was old
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Stray Toasters

• Congrats, once again, to Sean Payton, (former Boilermaker) Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints on their victory over the Indianapolis Professional Football Club!
• The Planet Hulk DVD wasn’t bad. It followed the “Planet Hulk” storyline by Greg Pak, that ran through issues 88 – 95 of The Incredible Hulk in 2006. I was a bit surprised to see how violent they allowed the characters – not just the Hulk – to be. Of course, that’s why it was released directly to DVD as opposed to being “Saturday morning fare.” There were a number of Easter eggs thrown in – mostly cameo appearances – for longtime Marvel Comics fans. I’m curious to see if there will be a “World War Hulk” DVD that follows the aftermath of the “Planet Hulk” story.
  
• 10 Ways to a Geeky Girl’s Heart
• Art Tatum: The Musician’s Musician
• ‘Red Riding:’ Noir horror in Britain’s Grim Grey North
• Wizkids has released the new Atom figure from the upcoming Blackest Night set:



• Body found in plane’s landing gear bay in Japan
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Hello Kitty pancake shop

Namaste.

Sunday – 07 February 2010
It’s been a good day.

I woke up this morning (the second time) a little before 1100. It was nice to sleep in. SaraRules and I did some cleaning up before our little Super Bowl gathering. After that, I ran to Hastur Hobbies to pick up some purple paint – I have decided to go ahead with my Astonishing X-Men team for next weekend’s tournament… as such, I need a Lockheed figure. While at Hastur’s, I decided to see if I could find a “better” dragon than the one from Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures.  I did. Reaper Miniatures has a pack of figures that includes a dragon that’s just about the perfect size for Lockheed:

(the dragonling on the far left is the one I’m using)

Now, I just need to get him painted.

, Justin, Logan and Steve came over for the game around 3:30.  SaraRules fixed queso dip and some very tasty egg rolls; I fixed bratwurst. Justin brought over some shrimp. Ms. Lightning fixed some cherry bars. Steve and Logan brought over wings and rib tips from Sugarhouse Barbecue.

And then it was game time!
(More on that below.)

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s entry comes from guest writer, SaraRules.

Today’s people are the Golden Thirteen.

In January 1944 there were over 100,000 African-American’s enlisted in the United States Navy, however, they were only allowed to enter the messman’s branch, which was segregated from the rest of the Navy community, but also didn’t allow them to become commissioned officers.

President Roosevelt had signed legislation prohibiting discrimination in government agencies, but it was allegedly pressure from Eleanor Roosevelt that led the Navy to open up the first officer’s training class for African-Americans.  There were a total of 16 members of the class at Great Lakes Naval Training Station; they all passed the course, and thirteen were commissioned.

The U.S. military was officially desegregated by President Truman in 1948. For more information on the Golden Thirteen, check out Golden Thirteen: Recollections of the First Black Naval Officers, by Paul Stillwell.

Instant Replay: Football

New Orleans Saints at Indianapolis Colts
31 – 17
The Saints and the Indianapolis Professional Football Club met in Miami to battle for the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The Colts came out like gangbusters. The Saints – who I wanted to win – couldn’t seem to get their game in gear; they went into halftime down by four points, 10 – 6. I don’t know what Coach Payton told them in the locker room at halftime, but it seemed to get them back on their “A” game. Following an interception by Saints’ CB Tracy Porter jumped the route and intercepted a Peyton Manning pass to Reggie Wayne… and ran it back for a touchdown, putting the Saints ahead of the Colts, 31-17.

Stray Toasters

• The Who looked… a bit aged at the Super Bowl halftime show. They sounded “alright,” nothing to really write home about but, as put it: “At least they don’t sound like they phoned it in, like the Stones did.”
• By way of SaraRules: The Origins of 10 Winter Olympic Sports
• By way of SaraRules’ father, Steve:



• I finished my repaint of a Cyclops HeroClix figure last night. I’ve wanted one in the costume he wore when Astonishing X-Men first went to print. And, now, I have one.


(click here for more pictures)

• SaraRules and I are now watching Planet Hulk, based on the Marvel Comics story arc of the same name. It’s… interesting so far.

Okay… back to the movie.

Namaste.

Saturday – 06 February 2010
Today is Bit’s second birthday.

(taken at our wedding in October)

This morning, I got together with Perry and two of his kids and attended The Great Train Expo at South Towne Expo Center (pictures here). The show was smaller than I expected, but it was still a good bit of fun. I managed to find an O Scale Lionel “Maryland” box car, that I couldn’t leave without purchasing:

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person is Louis Farrakhan.

Louis Farrakhan, (born Louis Eugene Walcott; May 11, 1933) is the National Representative of the Nation of Islam. He is an advocate for black interests, and a critic of American society. Farrakhan has been both widely praised and criticized for his often controversial political views and rhetorical style.

As a child, he received training as a violinist. At the age of six, he was given his first violin and by the age of thirteen, he had played with the Boston College Orchestra and the Boston Civic Symphony. A year later, he went on to win national competitions, and was one of the first black performers to appear on Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour, where he also won an award. He graduated with honours from the prestigious Boston English High School, where he also played the violin and was a member of the track team. He attended the Winston-Salem Teachers College from 1951 to 1953 but dropped out to pursue a career in music. Known as “The Charmer,” he performed professionally on the Boston nightclub circuit as a singer of calypso and country songs.

In 1955, while headlining a show in Chicago entitled “Calypso Follies,” he first came in contact with the teachings of the Nation of Islam. A friend from Boston, sometime saxophonist Rodney Smith, introduced him to the NOI’s doctrine and he attended the annual Saviours’ Day address by Elijah Muhammad. He joined the Nation of Islam in July 1955, becoming Louis X. The “X” was a placeholder following the dropping of the slave name, referring to the loss of the unknown surname of his slave forefathers, and preceding the Islamic name some Nation members are given later in their conversion.

Louis X first proved himself at Temple No. 7 in Harlem, where he emerged as the protégé of Malcolm X, the minister of the temple and one of the most prominent members of the Nation of Islam. Louis X was given his Muslim name, Abdul Haleem Farrakhan, by Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. Farrakhan was appointed head minister of Boston Temple No. 11, which Malcolm had established earlier. After Malcolm X’s break with the Nation in 1964 over political and personal differences with Elijah Muhammad, Farrakhan replaced Malcolm as head minister of Harlem’s Temple No. 7 and as the National Representative of the Nation, the second in command of the organization.

Farrakhan has been the center of much controversy, and critics claim that some of his views and comments have been racist or homophobic. Farrakhan has categorically denied these charges, and has stated that much of America’s perception of him has been shaped by media sound bites. This defense is echoed by religion scholar Mattias Gardell, who argues that, when considered in the context of Farrakhan’s typically lengthy lectures, many of Farrakhan’s controversial comments take on a more nuanced or thoughtful meaning that cannot be conveyed in a sound bite.

Stray Toasters

• Chris came over yesterday to play an Asgardian battle of HeroClix.
  He totally pwned me… but it was still a good time.
• d°light Bubbles LED Squeezable Lights
• A couple of LEGO-riffic items:
  • Endor Bunker
  • Touchscreen-Controlled LEGO Airbus A380 Has Motherf*cking Snakes on Board
    
• Holy Smokes!
• Working Steampunk Firearms
• I’ve been thinking about putting together an Astonishing X-Men team for next Saturday’s tournament:
  • Cyclops (Danger Room)
  • Shadowcat (Sinister)
  • Beast (Mutations & Monsters)
  • Wolverine (Sinister)
  • Emma Frost (Mutations & Monsters)… and
  • Lockheed (Sinister) – I’m working on a figure mod and using the pog from Sinister for his stats.
• There Is Much Wrong with This Batman iPod Shirt
• How Oil-Filled Lenses Are Bringing Sight to Those in Need
• Cheshire Cat papercraft
• Microsoft Finally to Patch 17-Year Old Bug

Time to get ready for some pre-Super Bowl shopping and then to see Utah Symphony, with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy tonight.

Namaste.