Archives
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Fatima Jinnah (July 30, 1893 — July 8, 1967) was the sister of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan and an active political figure in movement for independence from the British Raj. She is commonly known in Pakistan as Khatoon-e-Pakistan (Urdu: — "Lady of Pakistan") and Madar-e-Millat ("Mother of the Nation.") She was born in Karachi, Pakistan, then a part of British India. She was admitted to the Dr. R. Ahmed Dental College in the University of Calcutta in 1919 and went on to open her dental clinic in Bombay in 1923. She was an instrumental figure in the Pakistan movement and the primary organiser of All India Muslim Women Students Federation. After the formation of Pakistan and the death of her brother, she remained a part of politics. In 1965, Miss Fatima Jinnah ran for President as a candidate of the Combined Opposition Party (COP) however she did not win. She continued to work for the welfare of the Pakistani people until she died in Karachi on July 8, 1967.
Read My Brother by Fatima Jinnah, provided in pdf format free by the government of Pakistan.
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Friday, July 29, 2011
From wikipedia:
Theda Bara was the stage name of Theodosia Burr Goodman (July 29, 1885 - April 7, 1955), a silent film actress.
Bara was one of the most popular screen actresses of her era, and was one of cinema's earliest sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp" (short for vampire). The term "vamp" soon became a popular slang term for a sexually predatory woman. Bara, along with the French film actress Musidora, popularized the vamp persona in the early years of silent film and was soon imitated by rival actresses such as Nita Naldi and Pola Negri.
Watch Theda Bara's in the silent film, A Fool There Was, free from YouTube.
Bara was one of the most popular screen actresses of her era, and was one of cinema's earliest sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp" (short for vampire). The term "vamp" soon became a popular slang term for a sexually predatory woman. Bara, along with the French film actress Musidora, popularized the vamp persona in the early years of silent film and was soon imitated by rival actresses such as Nita Naldi and Pola Negri.
Watch Theda Bara's in the silent film, A Fool There Was, free from YouTube.
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Thursday, July 28, 2011
From wikipedia:
Ballington Booth (July 28, 1857 – October 5, 1940) was a Salvation Army Officer and a co-founder of Volunteers of America.
Born in Brighouse, England, Ballington Booth was the second child of William and Catherine Booth. As a teenager, he began preaching at Salvation Army open-air meetings, where he would often end by singing and playing his concertina. He became a Colonel in The Salvation Army at the age of 23, when he was positioned as a Training Officer. He was later moved to Australia, followed by the United States and Canada.
Read a letter from Ballington Booth to his father, free from the New York Times.
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Tuesday, July 26, 2011
From wikipedia:
Jan Berenstain and her husband, Stan, (often called The Berenstains) were American writers and illustrators best known for creating the children's book series the Berenstain Bears.
Janice "Jan" Berenstain (née Grant) (born July 26, 1923) was born in Philadelphia and was raised in west Philadelphia and the suburb of Radnor. Stanley "Stan" Berenstain (September 29, 1923 – November 26, 2005) was born in a neighborhood of west Philadelphia and died of cancer in Solebury Township, Pennsylvania.They met on their first day of class at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art in 1941 and married five years later, on April 13, 1946. They had two sons, Leo and Mike.
Read more about Jan Berenstain and her work, free from the Toledo Blade.
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Monday, July 25, 2011
From wikipedia:
Eric Hoffer (July 25, 1902 – May 21, 1983) was an American social writer and philosopher. He was the author of ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that his book The Ordeal of Change was his finest work. In 2001, the Eric Hoffer Award was established in his honor with permission granted by the Eric Hoffer Estate in 2005.
Read more about Eric Hoffer, free from Hoover.org.
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Sunday, July 24, 2011
From wikipedia:
Chief Dan George (1899–September 23, 1981) was a chief of the Tsleil-Waututh, a Salish First Nations people located in Burrard Inlet, British Columbia. Chief George was also an Academy Award-nominated actor.
Early years
Dan George was born as Geswanouth Slahoot on a First Nations reserve in North Vancouver. His English name originally was Dan Slaholt. His last name was changed to George when he entered a residential school at the age of 5. George worked at a number of different jobs, including as a longshoreman, construction worker and school bus driver. He was chief of the Tsleil-Waututh from 1951 to 1963.
Read Chief Dan George's poem, Lament for Confederation, free from Buffalo Spirit, the website of the Aboriginal Multi-Media Society.
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Saturday, July 23, 2011
From wikipedia:
Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American novelist and screenwriter.
In 1932 after losing his job as an oil company executive, Chandler at age forty-five and during the Depression decided to become a writer. In 1933 his first story was published in a pulp magazine called Black Mask. His first novel, The Big Sleep was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published only seven novels during his life. In the year before he died, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died on March 26, 1959 in La Jolla California.
Read more about Raymond Chandler, free from thrillingdetective.com.
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Thursday, July 21, 2011
From wikipedia:
Roy Rothschild Neuberger (July 21, 1903 – December 24, 2010) was an American financier who contributed money to raise public awareness of modern art through his acquisition of pieces he deemed worthy. He was a co-founder of the investment firm Neuberger Berman.
Roy Rothschild Neuberger was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and spent his childhood in New York. Born into a wealthy Jewish family, he was orphaned at the age of 12. He describes himself as having been interested during high school in tennis and "the ladies." He matriculated at New York University, originally to study journalism, but grew restless and dropped out without obtaining a degree.
Learn more about Roy Neuberger at the website of Neuberger Berman.
Visit the Neuberger Museum of Art.
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Wednesday, July 20, 2011
From wikipedia:
Gregor Johann Mendel (July 20, 1822 – January 6, 1884) was an Augustinian friar and scientist, who gained posthumous fame as the founder of the new science of genetics for his study of the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants. Mendel showed that the inheritance of these traits follows particular laws, which were later named after him. The significance of Mendel's work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century. The independent rediscovery of these laws formed the foundation of the modern science of genetics.
Read Experiments in Plant Hybridization by Gregor Mendel, free from mendelweb.org.
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Tuesday, July 19, 2011
By Alex Pham
Los Angeles Times (MCT)
LOS ANGELES — Sweden's Spotify digital music service arrived in the U.S. with its catalog of 15 million songs and an operation that is primed to shake up the world's largest and most lucrative music market.
With 10 million registered users in Europe, Spotify offers limited hours of music for free or streams unlimited songs for a small fee to computers and mobile phones. That model has analysts wondering if its U.S. debut Thursday spells the beginning of the end for the 99-cent download market dominated by Apple Inc.'s iTunes store.
"The download business is basically over," said Aram Sinnreich, an assistant media professor at Rutgers University.
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Dead Block
For: Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade)
and Playstation 3 (via Playstation Network)
From: Candygun Games/Digital Reality
ESRB Rating: Teen (violence, blood, crude humor)
Price: $10
By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)
If you've grown tired of the tower defense status quo, "Dead Block" might interest you. Because while this, too, is a tower defense game at heart, it's also a third-person action game in which you directly control multiple survivors (either solo or via four-player splitscreen co-op) under attack from zombies. "Block's" mechanics are simple: You have to destroy furniture to gather wood for boarding up windows, scour through other objects to find keys and parts with which to make traps, and manually attack zombies who break through your defenses.
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Posted by courier at 05:55 PM. Filed under: Entertainment
From wikipedia:
Charles Horace Mayo (July 19, 1865 – May 26, 1939) was an American medical practitioner and was one of the founders of the Mayo Clinic along with his brother, William James Mayo, Drs. Augustus Stinchfield, Christopher Graham, E. Star Judd, Henry Stanley Plummer, Melvin Millet and Donald Balfour.
Career
Charles graduated from the medical school of Northwestern University in 1888 and joined his father, William Worrall Mayo, and older brother, William James Mayo, in their private medical practice in Rochester, Minnesota.
Visit the website of the Mayo Clinic.
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Monday, July 18, 2011
From wikipedia:
Jerome "Jerry" Hal Lemelson (July 18, 1923 Staten Island, New York - October 1, 1997), famous for his submarine patents, was a prolific American engineer, inventor and patent holder. In 2004, Lemelson's most famous submarine patent was overturned in a notable court case involving Symbol Technologies and Cognex Corporation, which sought (and received) a ruling that 76 claims under Lemelson's machine vision patents were unenforceable. The ruling was upheld on September 9, 2005 by a three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit because Lemelson appeared to have delayed the patent issuance intentionally or as the court put it, due to "unreasonably long … delays in prosecution."
Lemelson was an advocate for the rights of independent inventors; he served on a federal advisory committee on patent issues from 1976 to 1979. A series of patent litigations and subsequent licensing negotiations made him a controversial figure, seen as a champion by the community of independent inventors, while criticized by patent attorneys and directors of some of the companies with whom he was involved in litigation.
Visit the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Instutionsion.
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Sunday, July 17, 2011
From wikipedia:
Shmuel Yosef Agnon, (July 17, 1888 – February 17, 1970) was a Nobel Prize laureate writer and was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew fiction. In Hebrew, he is known by the acronym Shai Agnon. In English, his works are published under the name S. Y. Agnon.
Agnon was born in Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Empire (today Ukraine), later immigrated to the British mandate of Palestine, and died in Jerusalem. His works deal with the conflict between the traditional Jewish life and language and the modern world. They also attempt to recapture the fading traditions of the European shtetl (village). In a wider context, he also contributed to broadening the characteristic conception of the narrator's role in literature. Agnon shared the Nobel Prize with the poet Nelly Sachs in 1966.
Read Shmuel Yosef Agnon's Nobel Prize speech, free from Nobelprize.org.
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Saturday, July 16, 2011
From wikipedia:
Frances Rappaport Horwich (born Frances Rappaport, 16 July 1907–22 July 2001) was the host of the popular children's television program Ding Dong School.
Horwich was born in Ottawa, Ohio. She earned her Master's degree in education from Columbia University and received her Doctorate at Northwestern University. She became the head of the department of education at Chicago's Roosevelt College.
Read Dr. Frances Horwich's obituary, free from the New York Times.
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Friday, July 15, 2011
From wikipedia:
Lloyd Estel Copas (July 15, 1913 – March 5, 1963), known by his stage name Cowboy Copas, was an American country music singer popular from the 1940s until his death in the 1963 plane crash that also killed country stars Patsy Cline and Hawkshaw Hawkins. He was a member of the Grand Ole Opry.
Copas was born in 1913 in Jefferson Township in Adams County, Ohio. He began performing locally at age 14, and appeared on WLW-AM and WKRC-AM in Cincinnati during the 1930s. In 1940 he moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he performed on WNOX-AM with his band, the Gold Star Rangers.
Watch Cowboy Copas perform "Alabam," free from YouTube.
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Thursday, July 14, 2011
From wikipedia:
Bell, aged 41, before her tent during
archeological excavations in Babylon .Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell (July 14, 1868 – July 12, 1926) was a British writer, traveller, political analyst, administrator in Arabia, and an archaeologist who found Mesopotamian ruins. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1917.
Bell and T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) are recognized as almost wholly responsible for creating the Hashimite dynasty in Jordan and the modern state of Iraq. During her life, she was an unrecognised force behind the success of the Arab revolt in World War I. At the conclusion of the war, she drew up borders within Mesopotamia to include the three Ottoman Empire vilayets that later became Iraq.
Read Syria: The Desert and the Sown, by Gertrude Bell, free from Google Books.
Bell, aged 41, before her tent during
archeological excavations in Babylon .
Bell and T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) are recognized as almost wholly responsible for creating the Hashimite dynasty in Jordan and the modern state of Iraq. During her life, she was an unrecognised force behind the success of the Arab revolt in World War I. At the conclusion of the war, she drew up borders within Mesopotamia to include the three Ottoman Empire vilayets that later became Iraq.
Read Syria: The Desert and the Sown, by Gertrude Bell, free from Google Books.
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Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Come Together: The Business Wisdom of The Beatles
by Richard Courtney and George Cassidy
Hardcover: 300 pages
Publisher: Turner Pub Co; (March 22, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9781596528086
ISBN-13: 978-1596528086
Faiza Elmasry, VOA News
Business advice is available from many sources - books, workshops, the Internet but - the Beatles?
Authors George Cassidy and Richard Courtney believe the Fab Four followed a classic business model on their way to success. For example, Cassidy says, in any enterprise, you have to be careful about picking your business partners. That’s what young John Lennon and Paul McCartney did when they started a band in Liverpool.
“They were fortunate in that they had an enormous personal charm; their personalities seemed to work together well. They were also extremely gifted in several areas. You have great singers and you have great song writers and great performers.”
Once they found each other, they set a goal.
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By Larry Gordon
Los Angeles Times (MCT)
LOS ANGELES — The University of California at San Diego faced a losing battle recently when it tried to hang on to three star scientists being wooed by Rice University for cutting-edge cancer research. The recruiting package from the private Houston university included 40 percent pay raises, new labs and a healthy flow of research money from a Texas state bond fund.
Another factor, unrelated to Rice, helped close the deal: The professors' sense that declining state funding for the University of California makes it a good time to pack their bags.
"What's happening now is that the UC and most of the public schools are getting in a much weaker position to play this game," said physicist Jose Onuchic, who has taught at UC San Diego for 22 years but will head to Texas this month, along with fellow physicist Herbert Levine and biochemist Peter Wolynes.
Los Angeles Times (MCT)
LOS ANGELES — The University of California at San Diego faced a losing battle recently when it tried to hang on to three star scientists being wooed by Rice University for cutting-edge cancer research. The recruiting package from the private Houston university included 40 percent pay raises, new labs and a healthy flow of research money from a Texas state bond fund.
Another factor, unrelated to Rice, helped close the deal: The professors' sense that declining state funding for the University of California makes it a good time to pack their bags.
"What's happening now is that the UC and most of the public schools are getting in a much weaker position to play this game," said physicist Jose Onuchic, who has taught at UC San Diego for 22 years but will head to Texas this month, along with fellow physicist Herbert Levine and biochemist Peter Wolynes.
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From wikipedia:
Stewart Culin (July 13, 1858 - 1929) was an ethnographer and author interested in games, art and dress. He believed that similarity in gaming demonstrated similarity and contact among cultures across the world.
Born Robert Stewart Culin, a son of Mina Barrett Daniel Culin and John Culin, in Philadelphia, Culin was schooled at Nazareth Hall, a well-regarded boy's school in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. While he had no formal education in anthropology, Culin played a role in the development of the field. His interest began with the Asian-American population of Philadelphia, then composed chiefly of Chinese-American laborers. His first published work was an 1887 article entitled The Practice of Medicine by the Chinese in America. In 1889 Culin published a report about Chinese games, an 1890 article about Italian marionettes was inspired by a visit to a marionette theater in New York.
Read Street Games of Boys in Brooklyn, New York, by Stewart Culin, free from the Elliott Avedon Virtual Museum of Games at the University of Waterloo.
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Tuesday, July 12, 2011
"F.E.A.R. 3"
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
From: Day 1 Studios/WB Games
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense
violence, partial nudity, strong language)
Price: $60
By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)
Is it possible to be both a mostly excellent game and a big letdown? It sure is, and "F.E.A.R. 3" — the arguably misnamed fruits of a game in development since before "F.E.A.R. 2" released — stands as enjoyable, aggravating proof.
First things first: the story. Because of "F3's" unusual development experience — look it up if you're curious about the reasons and means — it feels more like a continuation of the original "F.E.A.R." than its sequel. The game opens a big window into the tormented origins of the first game's chief protagonist and antagonist, but if you're hoping for a payoff on the second game's cliffhanger, you'll mostly be stifled until the very end.
Far more jarring than any of this, though, are the changes new developer Day 1 Studios has made to the core "F.E.A.R." gameplay, which is known as much for its pristine enemy intelligence and creepy atmosphere as its unique storyline.
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Posted by courier at 07:17 AM. Filed under: Entertainment
From wikipedia:
Beah Richards (July 12, 1920 – September 14, 2000) was an American actress of stage, screen and television. She was a poet, playwright and author.
Born Beulah Richardson in Vicksburg, Mississippi, her mother was a seamstress and PTA advocate and her father was a Baptist minister. In 1948, she graduated from Dillard University in New Orleans and two years later moved to New York City. Her career started to take off in 1955 when she portrayed an eighty-four-year-old-grandmother in the off-Broadway show Take a Giant Step. She often played the role of a mother or grandmother, and continued acting her entire life. She appeared in the original Broadway productions of Purlie Victorious, The Miracle Worker, and A Raisin in the Sun.
Watch an excerpt from Beah: A Black Woman Speaks, free from youtube.com
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Monday, July 11, 2011
From wikipedia:
James Larkin White (July 11, 1882 – April 26, 1946), better known as Jim White, was a cowboy, guano miner, cave explorer, and park ranger for the National Park Service. He is best remembered as the discoverer, early promoter and explorer of what is known today as Carlsbad Caverns in Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico.
Jim White was born on July 11, 1882, on a ranch in Mason County, Texas. He started working in the cattle business at a very early age and preferred it to the school his father forced him to attend. He preferred "bustin' broncos to books and blackboards". One day, when Jim had had enough of school, he begged his father to let him do something else. "I want to be a cowboy", he said. So, when he was 10 years old, his father agreed to take him to the southeastern corner of the New Mexico Territory. He left him at the ranch of John and Dan Lucas (XXX Ranch). His father bought land at Lonetree, just west of the developing town of Eddy (Carlsbad today), and moved the rest of the family there three years later. Jim occasionally stayed at his family's small horse farm, but mostly lived and worked at the Lucas ranch.
Learn more about Carlsbad Caverns National Park, free from the National Park Service.
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Sunday, July 10, 2011
From The Courier's Archives:
The Adventures of Lorisa Kidd Wonder: What to do With Leftover Grapes by Lorisa Salvatin, Courier Staff Artist
Always Listen to Your Mom! by Chyna Cunningham, Courier Staff Artist
It Came from My Head by Alejandro Samaniego, Courier Staff Writer
The Adventures of Lorisa Kidd Wonder: What to do With Leftover Grapes by Lorisa Salvatin, Courier Staff Artist
Always Listen to Your Mom! by Chyna Cunningham, Courier Staff Artist
It Came from My Head by Alejandro Samaniego, Courier Staff Writer
From wikipedia:
Robert Chambers FRSE FGS (10 July 1802 – 17 March 1871) was a Scottish publisher, geologist, proto-evolutionary thinker, author and journal editor who, like his elder brother and business partner William Chambers, was highly influential in mid-19th century scientific and political circles.
Chambers was an early phrenologist, and was the anonymous author of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, which was so controversial that his authorship was not acknowledged until after his death.
Read Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation by Robert Chambers, one of 89 on his works available free from Project Gutenberg.
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Saturday, July 09, 2011
From wikipedia:
Dame (Mary) Barbara Hamilton Cartland, DBE, CStJ (9 July 1901 – 21 May 2000), was an English author, one of the most prolific authors of the 20th century. As Barbara Cartland she is known for her numerous romantic novels, but she also wrote under her married name Barbara McCorquodale.
She also became one of London's most prominent society figures and one of Britain's most popular media personalities, appearing often at public events and on television, dressed in her trademark pink and discoursing on love, health, and social and political issues. She is widely regarded as having originated the phrase: "I'm bringing sexy back", as popularised by singer Justin Timberlake.
Cartland is the seventh most translated author in the world and published 723 books.
Visit BarbaraCartland.com.
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Friday, July 08, 2011
From wikipedia:
John Stith Pemberton (July 8, 1831 – August 16, 1888) was a Confederate veteran and an American druggist, and is best known for being the inventor of Coca-Cola.
Pemberton was born to James Clifford Pemberton (born 1803 in North Carolina) and Martha L. Gant (born 1803 in Virginia), both of English descent. Though born in nearby Knoxville, Georgia, Pemberton, as a young child, moved with his family to the larger city of Columbus, Georgia. His uncle, John C. Pemberton, was a Confederate lieutenant general during the U.S. Civil War.
Learn more about John Stith Pemberton, free from the Georgia Encyclopedia.
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Thursday, July 07, 2011
By Randall Roberts
Los Angeles Times (MCT)
LOS ANGELES — The process behind Brian Eno's new album, "Drums Between the Bells," a collaboration with the English poet Rick Holland, is based on a simple premise but one that could change the way you hear your next conversation.
"We are all singing. We call it speech, but we're singing to each other," Eno said (sang?) from London during a recent phone exchange. Eight years ago the British-born composer, producer, visual artist and sonic conceptualist began putting his belief to a test: "I thought, as soon as you put spoken word onto music, you start to hear it like singing anyway. You start to develop musical value and musical weight, and you start to notice how this word falls on that beat, and so on."
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Posted by courier at 05:51 PM. Filed under: Entertainment
From wikipedia:
Eiji Tsuburaya (born Eiichi Tsumuraya on July 7, 1901 – died January 25, 1970, in Sukagawa, Fukushima) was the Japanese special effects director responsible for many Japanese science-fiction movies, including the Godzilla series. In the United States, he is also remembered as the creator of Urutoraman, known internationally by the title's literal translation, Ultraman.
Watch Atarashi Tsuchi, a 1937 film of which Eiji Tsuburaya was special effects director, free from YouTube.
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Wednesday, July 06, 2011
From wikipedia:
Frederica Sagor Maas (born July 6, 1900 as Frederica Alexandrina Sagor) is an American playwright, screenwriter, memoirist and author, the youngest daughter of Russian immigrants. Maas is best known for her incredibly detailed, tell-all memoir of her time spent in early Hollywood. She is also one of the rare supercentenarians known for reasons other than for longevity.
Frederica Sagor Maas's parents, Arnold and Agnessa Zagorsky, emigrated from Moscow, Russia and anglicized the name to Sagor. Her mother supported the family as a very successful midwife. One of four daughters, Maas was born on July 6, 1900 in a cold-water, railroad flat on 101st Street near Madison Ave. in New York City.
Read more about Frederica Maas, free from Salon.com.
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Tuesday, July 05, 2011
"Shadows of the Damned"
For: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
From: Grasshopper Manufacture/EA
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, nudity, sexual themes, strong language)
Price: $60
By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)
When a game lets style run completely wild over substance the way "Shadows of the Damned" does, it's usually because there really isn't a whole lot of substance in place to stop it from doing so.
But while "Damned" doubtlessly will be best remembered for its characters, setting, humor and overall audiovisual presentation, each of these headliners serves to complement rather than mask the actual gameplay, which is — while mostly conventional, save for a few hit-or-miss bits — quite good in its own right.
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Posted by courier at 08:07 AM. Filed under: Entertainment
From wikipedia:
The Reverend Sylvester Graham (July 5, 1794 – September 11, 1851) was an American dietary reformer. He was born in Suffield, Connecticut as the 17th child of Reverend John Graham. Sylvester Graham was ordained in 1826 as a Presbyterian minister. He entered Amherst College in 1823 but did not graduate. He was an early advocate of dietary reform in the United States and was most notable for his emphasis on vegetarianism and the temperance movement, as well as dietary habits.
Today, Graham is best known as the father of Graham crackers.
Read "A Treatise on Bread and Bread-Making," by Sylvester Graham, free from Google Books.
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Monday, July 04, 2011
By Maeve Reston and Seema Mehta
Los Angeles Times (MCT)
AMHERST, N.H. — In California and most other states, a Fourth of July parade may be just a parade. But here in New Hampshire and Iowa, the states that hold the first presidential contests, politicians with higher aspirations know parades are serious business.
More than an hour before Amherst's parade, volunteers for GOP presidential rivals Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman gathered at the route, ready to rumble.
Huntsman, a presidential campaign newcomer, had followed the parade organizer's rules and capped his group at 30 volunteers — leaving them stretched thinly across the parade route. He was trailed by a Jeep.
But with one presidential run under its belt, Romney's campaign left nothing to chance, ignoring the rules to marshal more than 130 blue-shirted volunteers. A massive float bearing the state seal trailed the candidate.
When it came to impressing voters Monday, no detail was too small — which parade the candidates would attend, their choice of clothing, their skill at skirting Amherst's candy-tossing ban (Romney's camp put small boys on scooters to ride the route offering sweets from blue buckets).
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From wikipedia:
Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970) was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor.
He is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complex gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. These devices, now known as Rube Goldberg machines, are similar to those drawn by W. Heath Robinson in the UK and Storm P in Denmark. Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning in 1948 and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award 1959.
Goldberg was a founding member and the first president of the National Cartoonists Society, and he is the namesake of the Reuben Award, which the organization awards to the Cartoonist of the Year. He is the inspiration for various international competitions, known as Rube Goldberg Machine Contests, which challenge participants to make a complex machine to perform a simple task.
Read an interview with Rube Goldberg, free from the Archives of American Art.
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Sunday, July 03, 2011
From The Courier's Archives:
It''s a Lulu, by Lulu Zhong, Courier Comics Editor
Daily Life by Angelica Ramos, Courier Staff Artist
Bubble Jim by Sabrina Singh, Courier Comics Editor
It''s a Lulu, by Lulu Zhong, Courier Comics Editor
Daily Life by Angelica Ramos, Courier Staff Artist
Bubble Jim by Sabrina Singh, Courier Comics Editor
From wikipedia:
George Michael Cohan (July 3, 1878 – November 5, 1942), known professionally as George M. Cohan, was a major American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer, and producer.
Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents and sister in vaudeville as one of the "The Four Cohans." Before long, he was writing songs and sketches, and he went on to write some 500 songs during his lifetime. He also wrote, produced, and starred in many Broadway musicals. Cohan's many popular songs include "Over There", "Give My Regards to Broadway", "The Yankee Doodle Boy", and "You're a Grand Old Flag". Beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote and appeared in more than three dozen shows that were produced on Broadway. He displayed remarkable theatrical longevity, continuing to perform as a headline artist until 1940. Cohan also appeared in films, including The Phantom President in 1932. Off stage, he was one of the founders of ASCAP.
Learn more about George M. Cohan, free from Musicals101.com.
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Saturday, July 02, 2011
From wikipedia:
Jean Craighead George (b. July 2, 1919) is an American author. She currently lives in Chappaqua, New York.
George has written over one hundred popular books for young adults, including the Newbery Medal and Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis-winning Julie of the Wolves and the Newbery Honor book My Side of the Mountain and the sequel, On the Far Side of the Mountain. Most of her books deal with topics related to the environment and the natural world. While mostly writing children's fiction, she has also written at least two guides to cooking with wild foods, and an autobiography, Journey Inward.
Visit Jean Craighead George's website.
[ Read More... ]
Friday, July 01, 2011
By Steven Zeitchik
Los Angeles Times (MCT)
LOS ANGELES — "The Undefeated," Stephen Bannon's documentary about the emergence of Sarah Palin on the national political scene, aims to show what the filmmaker calls a "pop-culture beat-down" of the former Alaska governor.
Although the film has been tagged with only a PG-13 rating for "brief strong language" by the Motion Picture Assn. of America, Bannon said he has created an explicit cut of the film that demonstrates that beat-down in more graphic terms. "I took out all sorts of violence and masked the vulgarity for the theatrical release because I wanted families to be able to see the film," Bannon said Wednesday.
In the cut that will be shown in AMC movie theaters beginning July 15, Madonna, Louis C.K. and Pamela Anderson are among those shown in public appearances to be using epithets about the former vice presidential candidate.
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By Dan DeLuca
The Philadelphia Inquirer (MCT)
PHILADELPHIA — "Rejoice & Shout," filmmaker Don McGlynn's raucous new documentary about gospel music in America, reaches all the way back to 1902, when Virginia's Dinwiddie Colored Quartet made the first African-American religious recordings, almost two decades before the first jazz and blues records.
Listening in on the music that came out of black Baptist and Pentecostal churches in the century since, "Rejoice & Shout" focuses attention on big-name and not-so-big-name gospel greats, from Mahalia Jackson and the Staple Singers to the Golden Gate Quartet and Swan Silvertones.
"These are people who really believe in God and are expressing themselves, body and soul, though this music," McGlynn said in an interview from Los Angeles last week.
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Posted by courier at 08:23 AM. Filed under: Entertainment
From wikipedia:
Geneviève Bujold (born July 1, 1942) is a Canadian actress best known for her portrayal of Anne Boleyn in the 1969 film Anne of the Thousand Days, for which she won a Golden Globe Award for best actress and was nominated for an Academy Award.
Bujold was born in Montreal, Quebec, the daughter of Laurette (née Cavanaugh) and Joseph Firmin Bujold, a bus driver. She is of French Canadian and Irish ancestry. Bujold received a strict convent education for twelve years, before entering the Montreal's Conservatory of Dramatic Art, where she was trained in the great classics of French theatre. She made her stage debut as Rosine in Le Barbier de Séville.
Learn more about Geneviève Bujold, free from the Canadian Film Encyclopedia.
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