Reagan Charles Cook

Jennifer in January, Reagan Charles Cook

Thu, 09 May 2013 16:23:56 -0700

Jennifer in January, Reagan Charles Cook

In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt was the first sitting president to...

Wed, 08 May 2013 21:25:00 -0700

In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt was the first sitting president to travel internationally when he visited Panama. The first six presidents to travel went by ship, including President Woodrow Wilson on his seven month tour of Europe following of Word War One. The first trip on an airplane was by Franklin D. Roosevelt for a war conference in Morocco.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first to travel by jet and the first to travel via helicopter. Richard Nixon was a prolific traveller and set a number of firsts, including his historic weeklong visit to China.

International travel has increased dramatically since the military version of the Boeing 747 was introduced for the use of the president in 1990. The planes have over 4,000 square feet (372 m²) of floor space, a bedroom and a shower, and enough secure communications to allow the plane to be a reasonable place to run the country. The plane is accompanied by a heavy lift aircraft that carries the helicopters and the limousines.

Population distribution of the United States in Units of Canada...

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:31:05 -0700

Population distribution of the United States in Units of Canada (34 million)

Submitted by Gabriel Shapiro

The Youngest Person Executed in the United States

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:33:00 -0700

George Junius Stinney Jr. was, at age 14, the youngest person executed in the United States in the...

McLaren MP4-12C, Reagan Charles Cook

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:48:11 -0700

McLaren MP4-12C, Reagan Charles Cook

Miss Beazley, George W. Bush His technique is unschooled, not...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:34:00 -0700

Miss Beazley, George W. Bush

His technique is unschooled, not self-consciously trying to emulate any identifiable painter; and his references don’t seem to be any paintings at all. Just what he’s seeing. They look the way they do precisely because he doesn’t have the illusory/representational painting techniques that have been developed over the centuries. They show someone doing the best he can with almost no natural gifts — except the desire to do this. These are pictures of someone dissembling without knowing it, unprotected and on display, but split between the promptings of his own inner drives and limited by his abilities. They reflect the pleasures of disinterestedness.

HOOP DREAMS Excerpts from Roger Ebert’s 1994 Review A...

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:16:00 -0700

HOOP DREAMS

Excerpts from Roger Ebert’s 1994 Review

A film like “Hoop Dreams” is what the movies are for. It takes us, shakes us, and make us think in new ways about the world around us. It gives us the impression of having touched life itself.

Hoop Dreams is, on one level, a documentary about two African-American kids named William Gates and Arthur Agee, from Chicago’s inner city, who are gifted basketball players and dream of someday starring in the NBA. On another level, it is about much larger subjects: about ambition, competition, race and class in our society. About our value structures. And about the daily lives of people like the Agee and Gates families, who are usually invisible in the mass media, but have a determination and resiliency that is a cause for hope.  

The movie spans six years in the lives of William and Arthur, starting when they are in the eighth grade, and continuing through the first year of college. It was intended originally to be a 30-minute short, but as the filmmakers followed their two subjects, they realized this was a much larger, and longer story. And so we are allowed to watch the subjects grow up during the movie, and this palpable sense of the passage of time is like walking for a time in their shoes.  

Hoop Dreams is not simply about basketball. It is about the texture and reality of daily existence in a big American city. And as the film follows Agee and Gates through high school and into their first year of college, we understand all of the human dimensions behind the easy media images of life in the “ghetto.”   

The film contains more actual information about life as it is lived in poor black city neighborhoods than any other film I have ever seen.  Because we see where William and Arthur come from, we understand how deeply they hope to transcend - to use their gifts to become pro athletes. We follow their steps along the path that will lead, they hope, from grade school to the NBA.  

The filmmakers (Steve James, Frederick Marx and Peter Gilbert) shot miles of film, 250 hours in all, and that means they were there for several of the dramatic turning-points in the lives of the two young men. For both, there are reversals of fortune - life seems bleak, and then is redeemed by hope and sometimes even triumph. I was caught up in their destinies as I rarely am in a fiction thriller, because real life can be a cliff-hanger, too.  

Many filmgoers are reluctant to see documentaries, for reasons I’ve never understood; the good ones are frequently more absorbing and entertaining than fiction. “Hoop Dreams,” however, is not only a documentary. It is also poetry and prose, muckraking and expose, journalism and polemic. It is one of the great moviegoing experiences of my lifetime.

Re-Writing The Hobbit

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:46:00 -0700

In the original 1937 edition of “The Hobbit” Gollum was genuinely willing to bet his...

Why is the alphabet in alphabetical order?

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:45:00 -0700

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z This may seem like a joke, but it is a fair...

8 facts about Martin Van Buren, 8th President of the United...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 21:10:00 -0700

8 facts about Martin Van Buren, 8th President of the United States

1. He was the first president to be born an American. All the other presidents had been British at birth.

2. He is considered by most historians to be the first ethnic president. His native language was Dutch, and to date, he has been the only U.S. President who has spoken English as a second language.

3. He is the first, and one of only two presidents elected without the benefit of a university degree or a military commission.

4. He was once criticized by Davy Crockett for wearing clothes that were too feminine.

5. His nicknames included “The Little Magician” “Red Fox” and “Old Kinderhook”.

6. When he was vice president, he presided over the Senate wearing a pair of pistols, as a precaution against the frequent outbursts of violence.

7. He was a key organizer of the Democratic Party, and dominant figure in the creation of the modern two party system.

8. After leaving office he received his four year salary in a single lump sum of $100,000. In his retirement he farmed potatoes and wrote an autobiography, which oddly does not mention his wife once.

Tityus, Damien Hirst Hirst began work on the ‘Entomology...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:08:41 -0700

Tityus, Damien Hirst

Hirst began work on the ‘Entomology Paintings’ in 2009. Each piece is made by placing hundreds of varieties of insect and beetle species into household gloss paint, in intricate geometric patterns. The series is reminiscent of Hirst’s iconic series of butterfly wing ‘Kaleidoscope’ pieces, which were originally inspired by Victorian tea trays. They also allude to Hirst’s long time interest in the nineteenth century fascination with natural history and the irony involved in having to kill something in order to look at it.

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THERE WERE NO MORE PLANTS? You would assume...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 22:02:24 -0700

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THERE WERE NO MORE PLANTS?

You would assume a scenario of mass suffocation based on the common knowledge that animals need plants in order to breathe because plants transform carbon dioxide into oxygen. However this is not accurate.

If every single plant disintegrated tomorrow, humans (and every other organism) would still have a few thousand years of good oxygen to breathe. This is possible because the annual oxygen consumption of animals is only a tiny fraction of the atmospheric oxygen supply. Earth has a current oxygen reserve of around 1 quintillion kilograms, which, considering the entire human race only uses about 6 trillion kilograms of oxygen every year, will take a very long time to deplete.

The convention that North is at the top of the map (and East on...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 22:11:00 -0700

The convention that North is at the top of the map (and East on the right) was established by Ptolemy around 1900 years ago and has been widely accepted since then. However, a reversed map, in which the Southern Hemisphere is at the top of the map instead of the bottom, is just as accurate as traditionally oriented maps because the position of North at the top of maps is arbitrary. (translational invariance)

A 2011 article published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, explored some of the psychological and behavioral consequences of consistently orienting maps such that north is up, and south is down (i.e. the north-south bias). Across four experiments, the authors demonstrated that due to affective associations between vertical position and valence (up = good, down = bad), participants tended to irrationally favor real estate positioned to the north (north=good, south=bad).

Why Doing a PhD is Often a Waste of Time

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:35:59 -0700

As this year’s new crop of PhD students bounce into their research, few will be willing to...

Amazing Re-designed United States by Neil Freeman “The...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 11:52:44 -0700

Amazing Re-designed United States by Neil Freeman

“The fundamental problem of the electoral college is that the states of the United States are too disparate in size and influence. The largest state is 66 times as populous as the smallest and has 18 times as many electoral votes. This allows for Electoral College results that don’t match the popular vote. To remedy this issue, the Electoral Reform Map redivides the fifty United States into 50 states of equal population. The 2010 Census records a population of 308,745,538 for the United States, which this map divides into 50 states, each with a population of about 6,175,000.”

Scientists Put Working Eyeball On Tadpole's Tail

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 16:35:00 -0700

It’s hard to say what’s crazier: the fact that Tufts University researchers spent a...

"Thought leaders often ask me: Aren’t innovation and entrepreneurship like the chicken and the..."

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 12:22:00 -0700

“Thought leaders often ask me: Aren’t innovation and entrepreneurship like the chicken...

Tea in the Garden, Henri Matisse

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 21:17:49 -0700

Tea in the Garden, Henri Matisse

When?

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:53:00 -0700

Here are ten interesting words related to particular relationships with time: 1. nudiustertianadj....

The number of Starbucks per state varies widely, from 2,010 in...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:28:26 -0700

The number of Starbucks per state varies widely, from 2,010 in California to only 4 in the state of Vermont.

Source: Statemaster.com