Monday, July 09, 2007

Its a Shame - The Spinners

"Its a Shame"
The Spinners


It's a shame, the way you mess around with your man
It's a shame the way you hurt me
It's a shame, the way you mess around with your man
I'm sitting all alone, by the telephone
Waiting for your call, when you don't call at all

It's a shame (shame) the way you mess around with your man
It's a shame (shame) the way you play with my emotions
It's a shame (shame) the way you mess around with your man
You're like a child at play, on a sunny day
But you play with love, and then you throw it away

Why do you use me, try to confuse me
How can you stand, to be so cruel
Why don't you free me, from this prison
Where I serve my time as your fool

It's a shame (shame) the way you mess around with your man
It's a shame (shame) the way you hurt me
It's a shame (shame) the way you mess around with your man
I try to stay with you, show you love so true
But you won't appreciate, the love we try to make

Oh, it's got to be a shame

Why do you use me, try to confuse me
How can you stand, to be so cruel
Why don't you free me, from this prison
Where I serve my time as your fool

Got to be a shame (shame) the way you mess around with your man
Ohhh, it's a shame (shame) the way you hurt me
It's a shame (shame) the way you mess around with your man
You've got my heart in chains, and I must complain
I just can't be content, oh look at (muttering)

Got to, got to, be a shame


The Spinners


Monday, June 25, 2007

Frontline: Endgame



Frontline: Endgame
PBS.org, June 19, 2007



Endgame is the fifth film in a series of Iraq war stories from FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk, including Rumsfeld's War, The Torture Question, The Dark Side, and The Lost Year in Iraq.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Inogashira Park; Kichijoji, Tokyo



The whole area to the west of the pond in Inogahshira Park is called "Goten-yama" (palace hill). In this area, the ruins of Japan's Stone Age of 10,000 years ago, together with stone spears from the Non-Earthen period, have been found. The remains of pit dwellings from the mid-Jomon (4,000 years ago) to the latter Jomon period ("Jomon" means "rope-marking patterns") and ruins of paved stone dwellings have also been found. These findings, together with discoveries of various stoneware and Jomon earthenware, prove that people began to gather in the area to form a village in the Jomon period.



Benzaiten (a shrine dedicated to one of the Seven Gods of Fortune), which stands in the middle of the pond, is believed to have been built by Minamoto-no-Yoritomo (the found of the Kamakura Shogunate) to symbolize his intention to defeat the Heike clan. However, others believe that the shrine is a legacy from a much older era than Yoritomo.



"Inogashira-Ike" (Inogashira pond) is thought to have been named by the third general of the Edo Shogunate, Iemitsu. Traditionally, the name converys the meanings of "the source of water" and "the well that produces the world's best water." Thick water-retaining woods used to cover the banks around the pond, creating picturesque scenery. With time, the species of trees and the character of the wodds have changed, and the suburban image of the park is gradually beginning to face. However, it remains a most popular place to relax for the people of Tokyo.



The park is divied into four areas: Inogashira-Ike and the surrounding area; palace hill with its natural beauty of various species of small trees as well as cultural facilities; the western area with sporting facilities; and the second park to the southeast of the western area.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston


The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States, and contains the second largest permanent museum collection in the Western Hemisphere, after the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The museum was founded in 1870 and its current location dates to 1909. In addition to its curatorial undertakings, the museum is affiliated with an art academy, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and a sister museum, the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in Nagoya, Japan.

The Museum was founded in 1870 and opened in 1876, with a large portion of its collection taken from the Boston Athenaeum Art Gallery. Originally located in a red Gothic Revival building on Copley Square in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, it moved to its current location on Huntington Avenue, Boston's "Avenue of the Arts," in 1909. The museum's present building was commenced in 1907, when museum trustees hired architect Guy Lowell to create a master plan for a museum that could be built in stages as funding was obtained for each phase. The first section of Lowell’s neoclassical design was completed in 1909, and featured a 500-foot facade of cut granite along Huntington Avenue, the grand rotunda, and the associated exhibition galleries.

Monday, April 09, 2007

Boston Public Library, Copley (Main) Branch


The Boston Public Library is the largest municipal public library in the United States and was established in 1848. It was the first publicly supported municipal library in the United States and the first public library to allow people to borrow books and other materials. The Boston Public Library is also the library of last recourse of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; all adult residents of the state are entitled to borrowing and research privileges, and the library receives state funding.


With 14.9 million volumes, the Boston Public Library is the third largest library in the United States. In addition to its extensive circulating library, which includes works in many languages, the Boston Public Library's collection has special strengths in art and art history (available on the third floor of the McKim building) and American history (including significant research material), and maintains a depository of governmental documents. There are large collections of prints, works on paper, photographs, and maps, rare books, incunabula, and medieval manuscripts.


In 1888, Charles Follen McKim, of the architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White, was engaged to design the new building, opened in 1895. This building included a children's room, the first in the nation, and a sculpture garden in its central courtyard surrounded by an arcaded gallery in the manner of a Renaissance cloister. To Copley Square the library presents a facade reminiscent of a sixteenth century Italian palazzo (illustration, top). The arcaded windows of its facade owe a debt to the side elevations of Alberti's Tempio Malatestiana, Rimini, the first fully Renaissance building. McKim also drew on the Bibliotheque Ste. Genevieve in Paris (1845 to 1851). McKim did not simply imitate his models, however; the three central bays are subtly emphasized without breaking the rhythm. The library also represents one of the first major applications in the United States of thin tile vaults by the Catalan master builder Rafael Guastavino. Seven different types of Guastavino vaulting can be seen in the Boston Public Library.




Architect Charles Follen McKim chose to have inscribed monumental inscriptions, similar to those found on basilicas and monuments in ancient Rome, in the entablature on each of the main building's three facades.

On the south is inscribed: "MDCCCLII * FOUNDED THROUGH THE MUNIFICENCE AND PUBLIC SPIRIT OF CITIZENS;"

On the east: "THE PUBLIC LIBRARY OF THE CITY OF BOSTON * BUILT BY THE PEOPLE AND DEDICATED TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING * A.D. MDCCCLXXXVIII"

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

U.S. National Register of Historic Places

Isabella Stewart Gardner first welcomed visitors to her museum on New Year's Day, 1903. On that evening guests listened to the music of Bach, Mozart, and Schumann, gazed in wonder at the courtyard full of flowers, and viewed one of the nation's finest collections of art. Today, visitors experience much the same thing.

In 1898, Mrs. Gardner began work on her museum. Completed in 1903, the museum was named "Fenway Court" and constructed in the reclaimed swamplands of Boston's Fenway area. Modeled on the Renaissance palaces of Venice, Italy, it was designed by Willard T. Sears, with much direct involvement from Mrs. Gardner, to accommodate the art and architectural artifacts Mrs. Gardner had collected with her husband over many years. The building completely surrounds a glass-covered garden courtyard. The first through third floors were designed to be galleries. The fourth floor of the building was used as living quarters by Isabella Gardner until 1924, and is now used for offices. Mrs. Gardner insisted that the galleries be designed as a palatial home, not a museum, and in the early years after the building was completed she used those floors as such, opening them to the public just 20 days a year.


Monday, March 12, 2007

Half-Life 2, Episode Two: Team Fortress 2


Half-Life 2: Episode Two


Valve, developer of the blockbuster series Half-Life and Counter-StrikeTM, unveiled Team Fortress 2 to be included in its next release, Half-Life 2: Episode Two. In addition, the studio announced its plans to deliver it for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.



Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2, an all-new version of the title that spawned team based multiplayer action games, features the most advanced graphics of any Source-based game released to date. Players choose from a range of unique character classes such as medic, spy, sniper, or engineer and must work together to complete a variety of tactical objectives.



Team Fortress 2 and Portal will be included with all retail and Steam versions of Episode Two for the PC. In addition, these products plus Half-Life 2 and Episode One will be available in one tremendous offering for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. New videos from Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 will be released next week.



Team Fortress 2 Trailer: (xboxyde.com)

http://www.xboxyde.com/stream_2943_en.html



Wikipedia - Team Fortress 2:

Just like its predecessor, Team Fortress 2 players will be able to choose to play as one of several archetypal classes at the start of a match, each with its own unique strengths and weaknesses. While it is unknown if the abilities of each class will be similar to the original Team Fortress, all indications so far are that the basic elements will remain the same: Heavy Weapons characters will have huge guns with incredible firepower but will have a slow walking speed, scouts will be able to move very quickly, but are lightly armoured, and so on. While it is unclear at this time what sort of game types will be included upon release, capture the flag and control point matches are likely to return.

Team Fortress 2 will not opt for the realistic graphical approaches taken by the official Valve games Day of Defeat and Counter-Strike. Rather, it will use a more stylized, cartoon-like approach. The effect seems to have been achieved using a special Valve in-house rendering and lighting technique making extensive use of Phong shading [3]. The game will debut the Source engine's new dynamic lighting, shadowing and soft particle technologies, among many other unannounced features, alongside Half-Life 2: Episode Two. It should be noted however, that the depth of field and motion blur effects seen in the game's trailers cannot feasibly be rendered during gameplay[4] unless inferior approximations, such as vector motion blur or image -space depth of field, were to be used.




A collage of the Team Fortress 2 player classes in action. Top row: (left to right) Demoman, Engineer, Heavy; Middle row: (left to right) Medic, Pyro, Scout; Bottom row: (left to right) Sniper, Soldier, Spy.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

The Message



The Message

It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under

Broken glass everywhere
People pissin' on the stairs, you know they just don't care
I can't take the smell, can't take the noise
Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice
Rats in the front room, roaches in the back
Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat
I tried to get away but I couldn't get far
'cuz a man with a tow truck repossessed my car

Don't push me 'cuz I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to lose my head
Uh huh ha ha ha
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under




Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Year: 2007

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five fomented the musical revolution known as hip-hop. Theirs was a pioneering union between one DJ and five rapping MCs. Grandmaster Flash (born Joseph Saddler) not only devised various techniques but also designed turntable and mixing equipment. Formed in the South Bronx, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were one of the first rap posses, responsible for such masterpieces as “The Message,” “Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel” and “White Lines.” The combination of Grandmaster Flash’s turntable mastery and the Furious Five’s raps, which ranged from socially conscious to frivolously fun, made for a series of 12-inch records that forever altered the musical landscape.

Flash, along with DJ Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa, pioneered the art of break-beat deejaying—the process of remixing and thereby creating a new piece of music by playing vinyl records and turntables as if they were musical instruments. Disco-era deejays like Pete “DJ” Jones, an early influence on Grandmaster Flash, spun records so that people could dance. Turntablists took it a step further by scratching and cutting records, focusing on “breaks”—what Flash described as “the short, climactic parts of the records that really grabbed me”—as a way of heightening musical excitement and creating something new.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees:

A permanent Museum exhibit that celebrates the lives and work of Hall of Fame inductees.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame honors the legendary performers, producers, songwriters, disc jockeys and others who have made rock and roll the force that it is in our culture.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

American Experience: Citizen King


Citizen King
American Experience, PBS.org

About the film

President Johnson Meeting With Civil Rights Leaders The story begins on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963, when a 34-year-old preacher galvanized millions with his dream for an America free of racism. It comes to a bloody end almost five years later, on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee.

In the years since those events unfolded, the man at their center, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has become a mythic figure, a minister whose oratory is etched into the minds of millions of Americans, a civil rights activist whose words and image are more hotly contested, negotiated and sold than almost anyone else's in American history.







Video: Three Perspectives: Dr. King, Malcolm X and James Baldwin talk about race relations

Boston public television producer Henry Morgenthau III's "The Negro and the American Promise," featuring interviews with Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin, made headlines in spring 1963. The program aired in a climate of racial conflict, just months after Alabama governor George Wallace's defiant support of "segregation forever," and before the March on Washington.

The New York Times described the James Baldwin segment as "a television experience that seared the conscience." A viewer wrote of the Malcolm X segment that he was shocked "that such a blatant display of racial prejudice could be aired."


"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"

Mahatma Gandhi

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Buffalo Soldiers



Buffalo Soldiers


The nickname originally applied to the members of the U.S. 10th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army, which was formed on September 21, 1866 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.



The term eventually encompassed these units:

* U.S. 9th Cavalry Regiment
* U.S. 10th Cavalry Regiment
* U.S. 24th Infantry Regiment
* U.S. 25th Infantry Regiment

Although several black regiments were raised during the Civil War to fight alongside the Union Army (including the famous 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and the many United States Colored Troops Regiments), the "Buffalo Soldiers" were established by Congress as the first peacetime all-black regiments in the regular U.S. Army.

On September 6, 2005, Mark Matthews, who was the oldest living Buffalo Soldier, died at the age of 111. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.



Buffalo Soldier History
Buffalo Solider National Museum
Buffalo Solider Monument

Colonel Benjamin Grierson formed the 10th Cavalry on 21 September 1866 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It, along with the 9th Cavalry, 24th and 25th Infantry, formed the first all-black regiments in the Regular United States Army. In western Kansas, the Kiowa encountered the soldiers of the 10th as valiant opponents and termed them the "Buffalo Soldiers." In time, the term designated all of the black soldiers in all four regiments. The Buffalo Solders left Fort Leavenworth to win repeated honors on the plains and in the west. In 1898 the Buffalo Soldiers fought in Cuba winning praise from Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders for their critical role in the battle for Santiago. The Buffalo Soldiers also served on the Mexican border before the American entry into the First World War.




Buffalo Soldier
Bob Marley

Buffalo Soldier, dreadlock rasta
There was a Buffalo Soldier in the heart of America,
Stolen from Africa, brought to America,
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival.

If you know your history,
Then you would know where you coming from,
Then you wouldn't have to ask me,
Who the 'eck do I think I am.

I'm just a Buffalo Soldier in the heart of America,
Stolen from Africa, brought to America,
Said he was fighting on arrival, fighting for survival;
Said he was a Buffalo Soldier in the war for America.

Dreadie, woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy,
Woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy!

Buffalo Soldier troddin' through the land, wo-ho-ooh!
Said he wanna ran, then you wanna hand,
Troddin' through the land, yea-hea, yea-ea.

Said he was a Buffalo Soldier win the war for America;
Buffalo Soldier, dreadlock rasta,
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival;
Driven from the mainland to the heart of the Caribbean.

Dreadie, woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy,
Woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy!

Monday, January 01, 2007

Poincaré conjecture


In mathematics, the Poincaré conjecture is a conjecture about the characterization of the three-dimensional sphere amongst three-dimensional manifolds. The conjecture concerns a space that locally looks like ordinary three dimensional space but is finite in size and lacks any boundary (a closed 3-manifold). The conjecture claims that if such a space has the additional property that each loop in the space can be continuously tightened to a point, then it is just a three-dimensional sphere. An analogous result has been known in higher dimensions for some time.

If we stretch a rubber band around the surface of an apple, then we can shrink it down to a point by moving it slowly, without tearing it and without allowing it to leave the surface. On the other hand, if we imagine that the same rubber band has somehow been stretched in the appropriate direction around a doughnut, then there is no way of shrinking it to a point without breaking either the rubber band or the doughnut. We say the surface of the apple is "simply connected," but that the surface of the doughnut is not. Poincare, almost a hundred years ago, knew that a two dimensional sphere is essentially characterized by this property of simple connectivity, and asked the corresponding question for the three dimensional sphere (the set of points in four dimensional space at unit distance from the origin). This question turned out to be extraordinarily difficult, and mathematicians have been struggling with it ever since.

Solving an Old Math Problem Nets Award, Trouble (audio)
NPR All Things Considered December 26, 2006



In our time (audio)
BBC.org November 2, 2006

The Mathematical Genius Behind the Problem
NPR.org, August 22, 2006

Not Feeling the Fields

Grisha Perelman becomes the first person ever to turn down math's top prize.
seedmagazine.com August 25, 2006

Mathematician Declines Top Prize (audio)
Morning Edition, August 22, 2006



Mathematician May Have Solved 100-Year-Old Problem (audio)
Weekend Edition Saturday, July 29, 2006





Thursday, December 21, 2006

Rebel Music: The Bob Marley Story



Rebel Music The Bob Marley Story home - PBS.org

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amazon.com

This video offers a portrait of a musician, who, in reality, was much more than that. The first third-world figure to achieve lasting musical fame, Robert Nesta Marley was as much prophet and politician as he was a musician. This video traces the course of this man's remarkable career, liberally sprinkled with interviews with the man himself and the people who knew him. Much archival footage of Marley's performances is included, including some never before seen. ~ Rob Ferrier, All Movie Guide

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams



Dreams - en.wikipedia.org

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en.wikipedia.org

Dreams — aka Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, Yume (夢), I Saw a Dream Like This, Konna yume wo mita, or Such Dreams I Have Dreamed — is a 1990 portmanteau film based on actual dreams of the film's director, Akira Kurosawa at different stages of his life. The film is based more on imagery than on dialogue.

Grave of the Fireflies



Grave of the Fireflies - en.wikipedia.org

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en.wikipedia.org

Grave of the Fireflies (火垂るの墓, Hotaru no Haka?) is a 1988 anime movie written and directed by Isao Takahata for Shinchosha. This is the first film produced by Shinchosha, who hired Studio Ghibli to do the animation production work. It is an adaptation of the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Akiyuki Nosaka, intended as a personal apology to the author's own sister.

Some critics—most notably Roger Ebert—consider it to be one of the most powerful anti-war movies ever made. Animation historian Ernest Rister compares the film to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List and says, "it is the most profoundly human animated film I've ever seen."

American Experience - Summer of Love






pbs.org

American Experience presents Summer of Love, a striking picture of San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district during the summer of 1967 -- from the utopian beginnings, when peace and love prevailed, to the chaos, unsanitary conditions, and widespread drug use that ultimately signaled the end. Academy Award-nominated filmmakers Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco (Daughter from Danang) examine the social and cultural forces that sparked the largest migration of young people in America's history.

"Many of these idealistic youth were products of the 1950s with its confusing mix of post-war affluence and the threat of nuclear annihilation," says Dolgin. "San Francisco, in 1967, seemed like mecca, the center of a visionary new society, one that rejected war, hatred, conformity and money. The Haight Ashbury, for a brief period, was the playing field for a new way of life."


American Experience - Summer of Love home - PBS.org

Frontline: Jesus to Christ: The First Christians



This FRONTLINE series is an intellectual and visual guide to the new and controversial historical evidence which challenges familiar assumptions about the life of Jesus and the epic rise of Christianity.

For an overview of the series read the Synopsis. It includes links to some of the stories and material on this web site which expand the narrative.

This site is anchored by the testimony of New Testament theologians, archaeologists and historians who serve as both critics and storytellers. They address dozens of key issues, disagreements and critical problems relating to Jesus' life and the evolution of Christianity. Throughout the site, maps, charts (for example, the fortress of Masada), ancient texts (including Perpetua's diary), pictures of the archaeological discoveries, ancient imagery, and audio excerpts from the television program complement and illuminate the scholars' commentary.

A new addition to this site is the edited transcript of a two-day symposium at Harvard University. This symposium was a follow-up to the FRONTLINE broadcast and featured scholars' presentations, workshops and audience discussion.

Part 1


Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Part 2


Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

American Experience - Fidel Castro






Amazon.com

Fidel Castro has survived U.S. hostility, an invasion, several CIA assassination attempts and an economic embargo. His face has become an iconic image worldwide, yet the man himself remains an enigma to all but a few. Through interviews with relatives, childhood friends, fellow rebel leaders, Bay of Pigs veterans, human rights activists and journalists, this program constructs an intimate portrait of the most resilient of leaders.


American Experience: Fidel Castro home - PBS.org


Slavery and the Making of America



Slavery and the Making of America home - PBS.org

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en.wikipedia.com

Underscoring how slavery impacted the growth of this country's Southern and Northern states; the series examines issues still relevant today. The variety of cultures from which the slaves originated provided the budding states with a multitude of skills that had a dramatic effect on the diverse communities. From joining the British in the Revolutionary War, to fleeing to Canada, to joining rebel communities in the U.S. the slaves sought freedom in many ways, ultimately having a far-reaching effect on the new hemisphere they were forced to inhabit.

Acclaimed actor Morgan Freeman narrates the series, which features a score by Michael Whalen.

NOVA - The Elegant Universe



The Elegant Universe home - PBS.org

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watch at PBS.org


The Elegant Universe was adapted for a three hour program in three parts for television broadcast in late 2003 on the PBS series NOVA.

Based on Brian Greene's book, this three-part Nova program should do for physics what Cosmos did for astronomy. Greene hosts the program on the relative new concept of String Theory, a potential (and explosive) answer to the Holy Grail of science: a single, ultimate theory for everything.

Jazz by Ken Burns


Jazz home - PBS.org

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10 Episodes - 20 hours




en.wikipedia.com

Jazz: A Film By Ken Burns is a documentary miniseries directed by Ken Burns.

Jazz is the last in a trilogy by Burns, following The Civil War and Baseball. It was broadcast on PBS in 2001, and was released on DVD later that year by the same company.

The film concerns the history of jazz music in the USA, from its origins at the turn of the twentieth century through to the present day. It is narrated by Keith David, and features interviews with present-day musicians and critics such as trumpeter Wynton Marsalis (also the artistic director and co-producer of Jazz) and noted critics Gary Giddins and Stanley Crouch. Music critic and African-American historian Gerald Early was also a consultant. Jazz is the longest jazz documentary yet produced, and it is rich in musical examples and classic, rare and unseen footage.

Visually, Jazz is very much in the same style as Ken Burns' previous works: panning and zooming shots of photographs are mixed with period movie sequences, accompanied by music of, and commentary on, the period being examined. Between these sequences, present-day jazz figures provide anecdotes and explain the defining features of the major musicians' styles. Duke Ellington's Lazy Rhapsody (1932) is a recurring motif at the opening and closing of individual episodes of the series.

The documentary focuses on a number of major musicians: Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington are the central figures, "providing the narrative thread around which the stories of other major figures turn", among them Sidney Bechet, Stan Levey, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

The Civil War by Ken Burns



The Civil War home - PBS.org

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9 Parts - 11 hours


The Civil War is an acclaimed documentary film created by Ken Burns about the American Civil War. It was broadcast on PBS in September 1990. Forty million viewers watched it during its initial broadcast, making it the most watched program ever to air on PBS, to this day remaining one of the most popular shows broadcast by PBS.

The documentary is 11 hours in length, consists of nine episodes and makes extensive use of more than 16,000 archival photographs, paintings, and newspaper images from the time of the war. These are intermixed with contemporary cinematography, music, narration by David McCullough, anecdotes and insights from authors such as Shelby Foote, historians Barbara J. Fields and Stephen B. Oates, and a chorus of voice acted characters such as Sam Waterston as Abraham Lincoln, Jason Robards as Ulysses S. Grant, Garrison Keillor as Walt Whitman, and Morgan Freeman as Frederick Douglass, who read quotes from the historic figures of the period. The film was remastered on the twelfth anniversary of its release, and a book following the movie has also been released.

The War by Ken Burns



The War home - PBS.org

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7 Parts - 14 hours




en.wikipedia.com

The film focuses on World War II in a "bottom up" fashion through the lenses of four "quintessentially American towns":

* Luverne, Minnesota
* Mobile, Alabama
* Sacramento, California
* Waterbury, Connecticut

The film recounts the experiences of a number of individuals from these communities as they move through the war in the Pacific, African and European theaters, and focuses on the effect of the war on them, their families and their communities.

A number of notable actors including Adam Arkin, Tom Hanks, Ernie Hudson, Samuel L. Jackson, and Eli Wallach are heard as voice actors reading contemporary newspaper articles, telegrams, letters from from the front, etc.

The documentary is 14 hours and was broadcast in seven parts on PBS over two weeks, starting on Sunday, September 23, 2007 and continuing four nights the first week and three nights the second week, from 8 to 10 p.m. (8 to 10:30 p.m. on three nights).

Powers of Ten



Power of Ten home

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en.wikipedia.com

A short documentary film written and directed by Charles Eames and his wife, Ray. The film depicts the relative scale of the Universe in factors of ten (see also logarithmic scale and order of magnitude). The film is a modern adaptation of the 1957 book Cosmic View by Kees Boeke---and more recently is the basis of a new book version. Both adaptations, film and book, follow the the form of the Boeke original, adding color and photography to the black and white drawings employed by Boeke in his seminal work. (Boeke's original concept and visual treatment is all too often uncredited or insufficiently credited in contemporary accounts.)

The film begins with an aerial image of a man reclining on a blanket; the view is that of one metre across. The viewpoint, accompanied by expository voiceover by Philip Morrison, then slowly zooms out to a view ten metres across ( or 101 m in standard form), revealing that the man is picnicking in a park with a female companion. The zoom-out continues, to a view of 100 metres (10² m), then 1 kilometre (10³ m), and so on, increasing the perspective—the picnic is revealed to be taking place near Soldier Field on Chicago's lakefront—and continuing to zoom out to a field of view of 1024 metres, or the size of the observable universe. The camera then zooms back in to the picnic, and then to views of negative powers of ten—10-1 m (10 centimetres), and so forth, until we are viewing a carbon nucleus inside the man's hand at a range of 10-18 metre.

The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1998.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Summertime



Summertime and the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin' and the cottons are high
Oh your Daddy's rich and your ma is good lookin'
So hush little baby, don't you cry

One of these mornings
You're gonna to rise up singing
Spread your wings
And take to the sky
But till that morning
There's nothin' can harm you
With daddy and mammy standin' by

---
Billie Holiday
Summertime

Monday, October 23, 2006

Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)



Rockets, moon shots
Spend it on the have nots
Money, we make it
Fore we see it you take it

Oh, make you wanna holler
The way they do my life
Make me wanna holler
The way they do my life
This ain't livin', This ain't livin'
No, no baby, this ain't livin'
No, no, no

Inflation no chance
To increase finance
Bills pile up sky high
Send that boy off to die

Make me wanna holler
The way they do my life
Make me wanna holler
The way they do my life

Dah, dah, dah
Dah, dah, dah

Hang ups, let downs
Bad breaks, set backs
Natural fact is
I can't pay my taxes

Oh, make me wanna holler
And throw up both my hands
Yea, it makes me wanna holler
And throw up both my hands

Crime is increasing
Trigger happy policing
Panic is spreading
God know where we're heading

Oh, make me wanna holler
They don't understand

Dah, dah, dah
Dah, dah, dah
Dah, dah, dah

Mother, mother
Everybody thinks we're wrong
Who are they to judge us
Simply cause we wear our hair long


Rolling Stone - biography
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - Inductee



Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Frontline: Lost Year in Iraq, Enemy Within, Return of the Taliban



The Lost Year in Iraq
10/17/2006

Today, as America looks for an exit strategy, FRONTLINE examines the initial, critical decisions of the U.S.-led regime in Baghdad in The Lost Year in Iraq. From the same team that produced Rumsfeld's War, The Torture Question and The Dark Side, the film is based on more than 30 interviews, most of them with the officials charged with building a new and democratic Iraq.

The Enemy Within
10/10/2006

However, a deeper look at the evidence creates uncertainty about what kind of threat actually did exist in Lodi and provides a case study of America's response to the threat of domestic terrorism. In "The Enemy Within," FRONTLINE and New York Times reporter Lowell Bergman examines the Lodi case and interviews FBI and Homeland Security officials to assess U.S. anti-terror efforts

Return of the Taliban
10/3/2006

After the fall of the Taliban five years ago, some experts warned of a nightmare scenario in which the Taliban and Al Qaeda would escape from Afghanistan into neighboring Pakistan and set up new command centers far out of America's reach.