Food Chain Paper Cups

Here's a clever way to teach kids about the food chain.

http://eisforexplore.blogspot.com/2012/10/food-chain-stacking-cups.html

Black Pioneer Stuntmen

An excerpt from NPR -

For 2 Black Stuntmen Breaking Into Hollywood, 'You Were Subject To Get Hurt'

Willie Harris and Alex Brown, photographed in Stockton, Calif.

For some African-Americans who have been in Hollywood for decades, though, this is a familiar story. Willie Harris and Alex Brown, two black stuntmen who first tried to break into the movie business in the 1960s, quickly realized that studios wouldn't hire black stuntmen.

"When we were starting, anytime they had a stunt to do with a black actor in them, they would paint these white guys in blackface," Brown recalls, on a recent visit to StoryCorps with Harris.

"We wanted to prove that black guys can do stunts," Harris says. "But we couldn't get anyone to train us."

So they trained themselves. After their day jobs, they set about perfecting their craft in public parks. On Wednesday nights, they'd practice falling onto donated mattresses and throwing punches while Los Angeles police watched from a parked car nearby.

http://www.npr.org/2016/02/26/468157462/for-2-black-stuntmen-breaking-into-hollywood-you-were-subject-to-get-hurt

Afrofuturism Mixes Sci-Fi and Social Justice. Here’s How It Works.

Jason Ikeem Rodgers conducts The Orchestra Di Toscana Classica Part 1

This Kid - UGH!

From USA Today - (bold is mine)

A student breaks into his teacher's phone and distributes nude photo of her, and she's forced out.

(Photo: WYFF (Greenville, S.C.) News-4, via AP)

When we were kids, the teacher’s desk was a fearsome island, a place you didn’t approach unless you absolutely had to.

Clearly, things have changed.

Take what happened when a South Carolina high school teacher left her cell phone on her desk last week to, she says, do her hall monitoring duties for a few minutes.

That phone was swiped by a 16-year-old male student, who then opened her photo library, went through the teacher’s photos, found a picture of her nude that she had taken for her husband (as she would later freely admit) for Valentine’s Day. The student took a snapshot of that photo with his phone, then sent it around to anyone and everyone he chose.

According to the teacher in an interview with a South Carolina CBS affiliate, that student later told her, “Your day of reckoning is coming.”

Now, I would like to state, proudly, how old I am. I am old enough that 1) If I took something from my teacher’s desk 2) If I dared to leaf through it 3) If I ever uttered the words, “Your day of reckoning is coming” to ANY ADULT IN THE WORLD — my day of reckoning would have already arrived.

I would have been thrown out of school, no questions asked, which would not have mattered, since my parents would have grounded me for life.

Instead, last week, the only day of reckoning was for the teacher, a 13-year veteran named Leigh Anne Arthur. Thanks to this kid’s antics, she was pressured to resign, she said.

And, until Friday, after the public outcry had grown loud, the student had not been punished or charged.

Like I said, things have changed.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/nation-now/2016/03/09/south-carolina-high-school-fires-teacher-nude-selfie-student-thief-column/81541862/

The Blind Leading the Blind

Ben Carson has just announced he's supporting Trump for President.

It goes to show you that even smart people can be stupid.

Unlikely Business Partners

From The Root -

2 Former Los Angeles Gang Rivals Created a Catering Business

Trap Kitchen LA is the brainchild of  former Bloods and Crips members.

http://www.theroot.com/blogs/the_grapevine/2016/03/_2_former_los_angeles_gang_rivals_created_a_catering_business.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26

The New Footlong

From Salon - 

“Size queens take note”: Chicago hot dog stand creates the “Trump footlong” and “it’s yuuuuge” 

The description of these 3-inch long dogs is as honest as the man whose name they bear — so, not at all 

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/11/size_queens_take_note_chicago_hot_dog_stand_creates_the_trump_footlong_and_its_yuuuuge/?source=newsletter

Quote

From Very Smart Brothas - 

MARIA SHARAPOVA MUST’VE HAD SOME SHITTY DRUGS IF THEY MADE HER LOSE TO SERENA 18 STRAIGHT TIMES

~~~~~~~~~~

Now, I’m not sure what meldonium is or what it does, but I do know that performance enhancing drugs are called performance enhancing drugs because they are drugs that presumably enhance performance. I also know that Maria Sharapova, the world’s highest paid tennis player, has lost 18 consecutive times to Serena Williams. The most recent being Jan 26th, the day she was drug tested. Which makes me wonder which performance these drugs were enhancing. Did her hair get more blonde? Did she get better at typing? Did her guacamole improve? Is she doing a better job responding to emails and text messages in a timely manner? Can she drink a whole Hennessy fifth? (Some call that a problem, but I consider it a gift.) Did she receive an especially cruel version of the same powers as Bradley Cooper in Limitless, with tennis courts being her only kryptonite? Can she Wobble without forgetting her steps? Or learn how to summarize shows to friends without spoiling them? (An underrated great quality to have.) Did she become a crocheting maven? Like, the best motherfucking crocheter in the history of crocheting? Can this chick loop the shit out of some yarn now?

http://verysmartbrothas.com/maria-sharapova-mustve-had-some-shitty-drugs-if-they-made-her-lose-to-serena-18-straight-times/

You're Never Too Old to Twist & Shout

To My Irish Friends . . .

From The Associated Press - 

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, genealogical research website Ancestry.com is making 10 million Catholic parish records from Ireland — some dating to 1655 — available online for free to help people trace their Irish heritage.

http://bigstory.ap.org/urn:publicid:ap.org:b6c1df6496f64070a59e8b4fbd702551

Real or Fake?

From USA Today -

How to spot fake product reviews.  Just copy the URL of the product onto the page, and wait for the analysis of reviews.

http://fakespot.com/top-fake-reviews

This Dude Should Rot in Hell!

Great News!

An excerpt from The New York Times -

New Procedure Allows Kidney Transplants From Any Donor

In the anguishing wait for a new kidney, tens of thousands of patients on waiting lists may never find a match because their immune systems will reject almost any transplanted organ. Now, in a large national study that experts are calling revolutionary, researchers have found a way to get them the desperately needed procedure.

In the new study, published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, doctors successfully altered patients’ immune systems to allow them to accept kidneys from incompatible donors. Significantly more of those patients were still alive after eight years than patients who had remained on waiting lists or received a kidney transplanted from a deceased donor.

The method, known as desensitization, “has the potential to save many lives,” said Dr. Jeffery Berns, a kidney specialist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and the president of the National Kidney Foundation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/health/kidney-transplant-desensitization-immune-system.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%203/10/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All&_r=0

Daylight Saving Time Explained

Texas. Texas. Texas. Part 3

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lawn-mower-dog-texas_us_56e0e731e4b0b25c9180d662

Bionic Fingertips May Be Medical BreakThrough

Meet 15 Black Tech Innovators Diversifying SXSW

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/03/meet_15_black_tech_innovators_who_are_bringing_diversity_to_south_by_southwest.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26

A Touching Moment

From The Root -

Photo of Baltimore Teen Praying Over Homeless Man Goes Viral

The unidentified teen was walking to the bus when he saw a sleeping homeless man. He stopped, knelt, touched the man's foot, and prayed over him.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2016/03/photo_of_baltimore_teen_praying_over_homeless_man_goes_viral.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26

School Janitor Singing Sam Cooke

The Return of the Black Panther

An excerpt from The Atlantic -

The Return of the Black Panther
A behind-the-scenes look at the revival of Marvel’s first black-superhero series—and an exclusive preview of the first issue

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

~~~~~~~~~~

Some of the best days of my life were spent poring over the back issues of The Uncanny X-Men and The Amazing Spider-Man. As a child of the crack-riddled West Baltimore of the 1980s, I found the tales of comic books to be an escape, another reality where, very often, the weak and mocked could transform their fallibility into fantastic power. That is the premise behind the wimpy Steve Rogers mutating into Captain America, behind the nerdy Bruce Banner needing only to grow angry to make his enemies take flight, behind the bespectacled Peter Parker being transfigured by a banal spider bite into something more.

But comic books provided something beyond escapism. Indeed, aside from hip-hop and Dungeons & Dragons, comics were my earliest influences. In the way that past writers had been shaped by the canon of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wharton, I was formed by the canon of Claremont, DeFalco, and Simonson. Some of this was personal. All of the comics I loved made use of two seemingly dueling forces—fantastic grandiosity and ruthless efficiency. Comic books are absurd. At any moment, the Avengers might include a hero drawn from Norse mythology (Thor), a monstrous realization of our nuclear-age nightmares (the Hulk), a creation of science fiction (Wasp), and an allegory for the experience of minorities in human society (Beast). But the absurdities of comics are, in part, made possible by a cold-eyed approach to sentence-craft. Even when the language tips toward bombast, space is at a premium; every word has to count. This big/small approach to literature, the absurd and surreal married to the concrete and tangible, has undergirded much of my approach to writing. In my journalism here at The Atlantic, I try to ground my arguments not just in reporting but also in astute attention to every sentence. It may not always work, but I am really trying to make every one of those 18,000 words count.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-return-of-the-black-panther/471516/?utm_source=atl-daily-newsletter

Texas. Texas. Texas. Part 2

Last week Dorothy Patton Barrera, who is white, approached her hometown cemetery, seeking to bury the ashes of her husband, who was cremated. Barrera later said that she was turned away because her husband, Pedro, was Hispanic and the plot was for “whites only.”

http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2016/03/_white_s_only_texas_cemetery_reverses_decision_after_denying_widow_place.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26

Severe Weather

Here's hoping you can access these video clips of the storm we experienced here in the UAE this week.

First, as a point of reference, the official rainfall for this country is four days per year.  

It has rained four days this week!  

Now granted, some days were not more than a hard drizzle, but it rained nonetheless.

However, on Tuesday, we expereinced a real rainstorm with downpours, 75 mph winds, and hail.  

In my little town, there was some thunder and lightning, but not much more, thank God.

Other parts of Abu Dhabi were not so lucky.

This is the majlis (sitting area) in someone-s home.

Window blowing into office.

Rain falling inside of school - not mine.

Glass doors blowing into building.

Painkillers Kill More Than Pain

Texas. Texas. Texas.

https://youtu.be/qgoypDIHKAQ

Cat Attacks Mail Man || KARMA

Ooops

I just reread "Gratitude," an earlier post from today and caught several errors.

Like I've said many times over these almost five years of blogging, I do proofread before hitting "send," but many times I just can't see the errors.

Isn't that same thing oftentimes true with life?

We can't see the error of our ways until some time has passed away, or someone has brought it to our attention?

So, here's to always striving for error-free posts and an error-free life.

Who thinks there might be slip ups?

Yeah, me too.

"A" for effort though.

The Carmichael Show - Successful People Cheat (Sneak Peek)

Get More Sleep People!

An excerpt from FastCompany - 

Why Six Hours Of Sleep Is As Bad As None At All

Getting six hours of sleep a night simply isn't enough for you to be your most productive. In fact, it's just as bad as not sleeping at all.

~~~~~~~~~~

WHY SIX HOURS OF SLEEP ISN'T ENOUGH

As you can imagine, the subjects who were allowed to sleep eight hours per night had the highest performance on average. Subjects who got only four hours a night did worse each day. The group who got six hours of sleep seemed to be holding their own, until around day 10 of the study.

In the last few days of the experiment, the subjects who were restricted to a maximum of six hours of sleep per night showed cognitive performance that was as bad as the people who weren't allowed to sleep at all. Getting only six hours of shut-eye was as bad as not sleeping for two days straight. The group who got only four hours of sleep each night performed just as poorly, but they hit their low sooner.

One of the most alarming results from the sleep study is that the six-hour sleep group didn't rate their sleepiness as being all that bad, even as their cognitive performance was going downhill. The no-sleep group progressively rated their sleepiness level higher and higher. By the end of the experiment, their sleepiness had jumped by two levels. But the six-hour group only jumped one level. Those findings raise the question about how people cope when they get insufficient sleep, perhaps suggesting that they're in denial (willful or otherwise) about their present state.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3057465/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/why-six-hours-of-sleep-is-as-bad-as-none-at-all

Personality Test

These are always fun.

https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test/ba7699efa9f803dc2545edc3903ef4f1

H/T Alisha

Gratitude

As most of you know, I was married for twenty years and have been divorced now for seventeen.

I spent the first twelve of those years after my divorce being angry and bitter and resentful.  I couldn't see past the hurt and pain, to recognize the gift of freedom that I had been given.

It was only when I decided to forgive my ex for the wrongs, real or perceived, that I was truly able to move on and live life to the fullest.

It was only when I could honestly see him for the flawed man that he is, that I was able to see and understand that he was doing the best he could.  He was working at capacity.

So, I've replaced those feelings of betrayal and resentment, with feelings of gratitude and peace.

This is why I appreciated this open letter a woman sent to her ex.

And like her, I wish my ex only the best.

http://matadornetwork.com/life/dear-ex-boyfriend-open-letter-wrong-one/?utm_source=Traverse&utm_campaign=aea42ada05-Tuesday_Traverse_March_8_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c4e20459d5-aea42ada05-80146797

Bernie & Blacks

 An excerpt from VerySmartBrothas - 

MAYBE BLACK PEOPLE AREN’T FEELING BERNIE SANDERS BECAUSE WE’RE TIRED OF PEOPLE SAYING WE SHOULD BE

Damon Young, 3/8/16

This — Sanders’s standing with Black voters — has spawned myriad incredulous articles, segments, blogs, status messages, tweets, and annoyingly millennial emojis from Sanders supporters; all wondering aloud why Sanders struggles with Blacks when he should be the Black person’s BFF.

“Yes, Sanders might not be perfect on race” the piece will assert “but they should realize he’s a much better candidate for them than the others.” 

“He’s progressive on crime” another piece might state “and he looks just like Larry David. And Larry David had Wanda Sykes and J.B. Smoove on his show, so you know he loves the Blacks!”

And while I get it — Sanders’s political views do seem like they’d be more favorable for Black Americans than the other candidate’s — these people are ultimately treating Black voters like we’re sick toddlers refusing to take our Bernietussin.

“This will be good for you, Little Jahiem. Trust me. A spoonful of Bernietussin will stop your sniffles.”

This bit of parental admonishment is even implied in many of the “Why don’t Black people support Sanders?” pieces that don’t outright condescend. Because just the act of crafting a piece around that premise implies that Black people should be supporting Sanders, but there’s some mysterious reason preventing us from doing so. And not only is this infantilizing, it has the potential to actively turn potential Black voters away. Because White people — and yes, liberal White people too — convincing Black people to do something with “Trust me. It’s for your own good” has never really worked out very well for us, historically.

http://verysmartbrothas.com/maybe-black-people-arent-feeling-bernie-sanders-because-were-tired-of-people-saying-we-should-be/

H/T Ben

Incarcerated Women Perform "The Wiz" At Bedford Hills Maximum Security P...

Why Voting in 2016 Could Be Nearly Impossible For Some Americans

What a Cutie Pie!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/serious-grumpy-baby-mood-changes-jackson-5_us_56dda726e4b03a4056792f0a

Playing Dead For a Living

Got the Right Stuff?

http://www.wired.com/2016/03/watch-us-epically-fail-nasas-astronaut-test/?mbid=nl_3716

Mavis

Guilty as Charged

Quote from Salon - 

I hate to have to say it, but the conclusion stares us in the face: We’re a stupid country, full of loud, illiterate and credulous people. Trump has marched straight to the nomination without offering anything like a platform or a plan. With a vocabulary of roughly a dozen words – wall, Mexicans, low-energy, loser, Muslims, stupid, China, negotiate, deals, America, great, again – he’s bamboozled millions of Americans. And it’s not just splenetic conservatives supporting Trump or your garden-variety bigots (although that’s the center of his coalition), it’s also independents, pro-choice Republicans, and a subset of Reagan Democrats.

http://www.salon.com/2016/02/24/america_youre_stupid_donald_trumps_political_triumph_makes_it_official_were_a_nation_of_idiots/

Another Reason to Vaccinate

From Now I Know -

The Measles Mystery

In the 1960s, children throughout the America began receiving a vaccination for measles. And as the chart above (via Wikipedia) shows, the vaccine, by and large, made the disease history. But that's not all that happened.  As NPR reported, after widespread use of the vaccine began, "childhood deaths from all infectious diseases plummeted. Even deaths from diseases like pneumonia and diarrhea were cut by half." Somehow, the measles vaccine was keeping other diseases at bay, too.

And until recently, no one knew why. 

The measles vaccine, like most others, is designed to inoculate the patient against a specific disease. The modern measles vaccine (the "MMR"), as the UK's National Health Service explains, "contains weakened versions of live measles, mumps and rubella viruses. The vaccine works by triggering the immune system to produce antibodies against measles, mumps and rubella." Those antibodies, though, aren't useful against other diseases -- the MMR shot won't prevent a child from getting anything else.

But, as noted above, that's exactly what was happening. Children who were inoculated against the measles were significantly less likely to die from other diseases than children who hadn't received the vaccine.

At first, the medical community thought this was simply because those receiving vaccinations had better access to medical care than those who didn't. But when the vaccine made its way to other nations -- often poorer nations -- the same thing happened: the incidence of measles fell, but so did the incidence of other diseases. So scientists looked for other explanations. And as it turns out, the most likely reason is that measles is more dangerous than we originally thought.

In a paper published in the May 8th issue of Science, a team lead by a Princeton biology postdoc and Emory medical student named Michael Mina explained why: the measles virus didn't just cause measles, but also weakened the immune system overall. How? As the New York Times reported, "studies suggest that measles infection depletes B and T lymphocytes, specialized white blood cells that produce antibodies that 'remember' the measles virus, providing immunity against further attacks." Mina compared this to amnesia, as he told NPR in the above-linked article: 

Well, say you get the chicken pox when you're 4 years old. Your immune system figures out how to fight it. So you don't get it again. But if you get measles when you're 5 years old, it could wipe out the memory of how to beat back the chicken pox.

That's been known for a while, but the effects were believed to be short-lived, perhaps only as long as the measles virus was active in a person's system. Mina and team came to a different conclusion. Per their research, this "immune amnesia" can last two or three years -- long enough where children are exposed to lots of different diseases to which they have become once again vulnerable. 

Avoiding the measles, therefore, also avoids this eradication of the immune system. So while the measles vaccine itself doesn't increase the body's ability to fight non-measles disease, the net result is the same: for years after inoculation, the measles shot reduces the spread and effect of other, unrelated childhood diseases.

http://nowiknow.com/the-measles-mystery/

~~~~~~~~~~

Moral of the story - vaccinate your kids!

Turning the Tables on the Typical Soup Kitchen

http://www.upworthy.com/a-soup-kitchen-disguised-as-a-restaurant-is-making-a-big-difference-in-kansas-city?c=upw1

Unlikely Volunteer Mourners

An excerpt from NPR -

'Today We Are His Family': Teen Volunteers Mourn Those Who Died Alone

On the drive to Fairview Cemetery in the Boston neighborhood of Hyde Park, six seniors from Roxbury Latin boys' school sit in silent reflection. Mike Pojman, the school's assistant headmaster and senior adviser, says the trip is a massive contrast to the rest of their school day, and to their lives as a whole right now.

Today the teens have volunteered to be pallbearers for a man who died alone in September, and for whom no next of kin was found. He's being buried in a grave with no tombstone, in a city cemetery.

"To reflect on the fact that there are people, like this gentleman, who probably knew hundreds or thousands of people through his life, and at the end of it there's nobody there — I think that gets to all of them," Pojman says. "Some have said, 'I just gotta make sure that never happens to me.' "

The students, dressed in jackets and ties, carry the plain wooden coffin, and take part in a short memorial. They read together, as a group:

"Dear Lord, thank you for opening our hearts and minds to this corporal work of mercy. We are here to bear witness to the life and passing of Nicholas Miller.

"He died alone with no family to comfort him.

"But today we are his family, we are here as his sons


"We are honored to stand together before him now, to commemorate his life, and to remember him in death, as we commend his soul to his eternal rest."

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/25/463567685/today-we-are-his-family-teen-volunteers-mourn-those-who-died-alone

The Afterlife of a Subway Car

Fascinating!

Be sure to go all the way to the end of the article.  What you see might surprise you.

http://www.viralforest.com/subway-cars-dumped-coral-reef/

Sound Familiar?

An excerpt from The Root - 

Why Successful Black Men in Brazil Won’t Marry Black Women

“Black is a slave. Black is not good,” said black Brazilian actress Polly Marinho, in explaining the thinking behind why interracial marriage is more common the higher up the socioeconomic ladder a black Brazilian goes.

~~~~~~~~~~

The 2010 census in Brazil showed that out of all the women over 50 who had never had a spouse, a majority of them were “pretas,” a term commonly used to refer to dark-skinned black women. It’s also obvious to all Brazilians that once black Brazilian men attain a certain social status, they choose white women as their life partners. Brazil’s most famous soccer player, Pelé, has been married three times, but never to a black woman. Nearly all of Brazil’s top male samba singers are married to white women. A study conducted of high-level black Brazilian businessmen in 2011 found that out of the 50 interviewed, 49 were married to white women (pdf).

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/03/why_successful_black_men_in_brazil_won_t_marry_black_women.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26

Introducing Open eBooks

I know first hand the power of reading and how books can transport you to another world and help to transform you into the person you are destined to be.

You know my story.

I was raised in the tiny town of China, Texas, where thank God, my Mom somehow found the money to buy books and magazines, so that I always had something to read.  She understood too well the limitations that home presented, but she found a way for me to see the world through literature.

I will forever be grateful to her for that.

So, this initiative to get books into the hands of children everywhere is monumental.

Life changing.

Please join me in spreading the word about this incredible opportunity of discovery and adventure for kids through books.

http://openebooks.net/index.html

Wintergatan - Marble Machine (Music Instrument Using 2000 Marbles)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/martin-molin-marble-machine-music_us_56d74bade4b0bf0dab3454b1

Fido vs Spot — Animal vs Robot

Dumb and Proud of It

An excerpt from Rolling Stone - (Bold is mine)

Revenge of the Simple: How George W. Bush Gave Rise to Trump

Bush was just an appetizer — Trump would be the main course

By Matt Taibbi March 1, 2016

People forget what an extraordinary thing it was that Bush was president. Dubya wasn't merely ignorant when compared with other politicians or other famous people. No, he would have stood out as dumb in just about any setting.

If you could somehow run simulations where Bush was repeatedly shipwrecked on a desert island with 20 other adults chosen at random, he would be the last person listened to by the group every single time. He knew absolutely nothing about anything. He wouldn't have been able to make fire, find water, build shelter or raise morale. It would have taken him days to get over the shock of no room service.

Bush went to the best schools but was totally ignorant of history, philosophy, science, geography, languages and the arts. Asked by a child in South Carolina in 1999 what his favorite book had been growing up, Bush replied, “I can’t remember any specific books.”

Bush showed no interest in learning and angrily rejected the idea that a president ought to be able to think his way through problems. As Mark Crispin Miller wrote in The Bush Dyslexicon, Bush's main rhetorical tool was the tautology — i.e., saying the same thing, only twice. 

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/revenge-of-the-simple-how-george-w-bush-gave-rise-to-trump-20160301#ixzz41o85VGwj
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

Take This Test

Can You Guess Which of These Books Are Banned in Prison?

See if you have what it takes to be a prison censor.

By Bill Keller

For this week’s Quizzical, here’s a quiz from the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering criminal justice reform. The original quiz is here and is republished below with permission.

For those doing time in prison, books and magazines can be a refuge, a civilizing influence and a source of skills that might help make them employable citizens when they get out. To those who run the prisons, the wrong books and magazines can seem a source of disorder and danger.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/quizzical/2016/03/quiz_can_you_guess_which_of_these_books_are_banned_in_prison.html?sid=554654ea10defb39638b510d&wpsrc=newsletter_tis

Yes, But . . .

From The Root - 

11 Actresses Who Could Play Nina Simone Without Blackface

For colored girls whose dark skin ain’t enough ...

Colorism is real. It's the reason women like Jennifer Lopez and Sofía Vergara represent Hispanic culture in Hollywood. It's the reason darker skin is mostly celebrated by black people. There's a melanin comfort zone or a threshold in Hollywood that is rarely disturbed.

So when the powers that be decided that they would create a biopic for the troubled, yet extremely talented and dark-skinned songstress Nina Simone, we were excited. This meant that Hollywood was confronting that threshold. But not so fast—because they cast Zoe Saldana as the leading lady.

The trailer for Nina, the Simone biopic that shockingly stars a medium-complected Saldana as the late singer, has been released. The film was heavily criticized in production when several photos of a painted-on Saldana were leaked. And it seems that the film will still be getting the side eye from many of us because Saldana is fully painted in blackface, black body—I bet they even painted her toes.

~~~~~~~~~~

Check out the gallery at the link below.

http://www.theroot.com/blogs/the_grapevine/2016/03/_11_actresses_who_could_play_nina_simone_without_blackface.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Donald Trump (HBO)

This is twenty minutes of truth.

I wasn't going to share this, but in light of this train wreck that keeps plowing on, here's a "balanced" perspective.

Zootopia Official US Trailer #2

http://www.vox.com/2016/3/2/11147378/zootopia-review-disney

How Architecture Changes For the Deaf

Heading North?

Does It Tastes Better If It Cost More?

From NOW I KNOW - 

You Can Taste the Price

The hamburger pictured above is from a fancy restaurant. It costs $17. And it probably tastes good. No, it has to -- who would pay $17 for a burger and fries which didn't? No one, at least not twice.

That makes sense: in order to stay in business with an expensive menu, whatever your selling better make for a good dining experience. But at some point, our palates can't really discern between foods. When that happens, other signals take over. And at times, those signals can be so powerful that it overwhelms the rest of the experience. For example, would the same burger and fries above taste as good if it cost, say, $4? Maybe not.

In the fall of 2014, the Journal of Sensory Studies published a paper which investigated the effect on a meal's price on a diner's experience, and specifically, on how the diners rated their meals. The researchers teamed up with an of all-you-can-eat buffet Italian buffet which offered unlimited pizza to its customers, and invited a bunch of people -- 139, to be exact -- to partake in a chow down. Afterward, each of the 139 customers was asked to rate their experience. There was only one wrinkle: some of the customers paid $4 for the privilege while others paid $8. And no, the former group didn't know that they were getting a 50%-off deal. (Similarly, the latter didn't know that they were paying twice as much as the other group.)

So, who liked their meal more? The ones who paid double, per the Atlantic: "Those who paid $8 rated the pizza 11 percent tastier than those who paid $4. Moreover, the latter group suffered from greater diminishing returns—each additional slice of pizza tasted worse than that of the $8 group." Yes, even though they paid twice as more for the exact same product, the $8 group had a better time -- and thought they got a better deal, even though objectively, it wasn't. 

What's going on here? In a press release about the study, one of the authors of the paper, a Cornell professor named Dr. David Just, explained that, basically, a quality experience at a $4 all-you-can-eat pizzafest is simply too good to be true: "People set their expectation of taste partially based on the price -- and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I didn't pay much it can't be that good." 

So that $17 burger? It may taste good because of its high quality ingredients, a superior recipe, and better preparation than a $5 burger at a less fancy joint. Or maybe you've just convinced yourself that it does because hey, you paid $17 for it, and you had to have gotten your money's worth... right? 

http://nowiknow.com/you-can-taste-the-price/
 

Blaxicans

An excerpt from CNN - 

'Blaxicans' photos explore Angelenos straddling two worlds

"Duality: Blaxicans of L.A." is a photo exhibit that explores multiracial identity among the city's two largest minority groups. The show is a Humans of New York-esque portrait series of Angelenos of African and Latino backgrounds accompanied by captions detailing family history, experiences with colorism and self-identity. 

The exhibit grew from an Instagram account of the same name started by Walter Thompson-Hernandez, who has a Mexican mother and an African-American father. He launched Blaxicans of L.A. while researching the topic as a graduate student at Stanford University's Center for Latin American Studies in response to what he saw as a gap in multiracial studies.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/01/living/blaxicans-of-los-angeles-photo-exhibit-feat/index.html

More Folks We Need to Know About

Book synopsis from Amazon - 

We Could Not Fail: The First African Americans in the Space Program

by Richard Paul (Author), Steven Moss (Author)

4.3 out of 5 stars   7 customer reviews

The Space Age began just as the struggle for civil rights forced Americans to confront the long and bitter legacy of slavery, discrimination, and violence against African Americans. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson utilized the space program as an agent for social change, using federal equal employment opportunity laws to open workplaces at NASA and NASA contractors to African Americans while creating thousands of research and technology jobs in the Deep South to ameliorate poverty. We Could Not Fail tells the inspiring, largely unknown story of how shooting for the stars helped to overcome segregation on earth.

Richard Paul and Steven Moss profile ten pioneer African American space workers whose stories illustrate the role NASA and the space program played in promoting civil rights. They recount how these technicians, mathematicians, engineers, and an astronaut candidate surmounted barriers to move, in some cases literally, from the cotton fields to the launching pad. The authors vividly describe what it was like to be the sole African American in a NASA work group and how these brave and determined men also helped to transform Southern society by integrating colleges, patenting new inventions, holding elective office, and reviving and governing defunct towns. Adding new names to the roster of civil rights heroes and a new chapter to the story of space exploration, We Could Not Fail demonstrates how African Americans broke the color barrier by competing successfully at the highest level of American intellectual and technological achievement.

Not Sure Why You'd Want To But . . .

It's good to see this young man charting a path in NASCAR.

From The Root -

Darrell Wallace Jr.

MIKE EHRMANN/GETTY IMAGES

For many, NASCAR is not a sport “for us.” But that stigma is slowly changing, especially with Darrell Wallace Jr. in the game.

Wallace, affectionately known as “Bubba” to family and friends, made history in 2013 when he became the second African American in history to win a NASCAR national series (the first was Wendell Scott, in 1963). Finally, we had someone we could root for. As a product of NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program, Wallace may be the second to make waves in the sport but, hopefully, won’t be the last.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/03/darrell_wallace_jr_continues_to_pave_new_roads_in_nascar.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26

Primary Voters Don't Really Look Like America

Black Geniuses, Part 2

These gifted folks with ingenious inventions were left out of my history books.

Just in case they were left out of yours too, check them out and please pass this on. Our kids need to see this.

http://blackinventor.com