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Immediate reaction to the VP debate: Everyone heard
what they wanted to hear
Joe Biden won the VP debate. He
was intelligent, knowledgeable, and answered the questions. Palin
did better than her Katie Couric interviews, but that's about the
best you can say for her. She did okay, but she was dead wrong on
several issues (such as McCain's position on closing the loophole
that let's him keep his 2nd through seventh house during bankruptcy
while most people would lose their primary residence) and went out of
her way not to answer the tough questions. Joe Biden had the more
touching, Main Street, moment, describing his time as a single
parent. Palin was cold and aloof. She barely spoke in complete
sentences. She might have reassured the ultra-right "base" that
she's not a complete ditz, but she convinced very few others. Her
cloying and petulant behavior should send her back to her small town.
She's clearly out of her league on the national level. Joe Biden
nailed the issues again and again. I don't think he changed many
minds either, but he reassured the audience that he was ready to step
into the presidency now..
Palin did okay, but she was evasive
and cloying. She had her talking points (the ones where she was
looking right into the camera) and got them in no matter what. She
utterly blew off the last question (about changing the tone in
Washington) to say "tax cuts" a few more times.
Still, some
things stood out.
How can you be for change when you're
desperately trying to forget the past? Palin can try to stop
"fingerpointing" all she wants, but we're in the mess we are now
because her party screwed up bigtime. If she really wants change,
she would for the Democratic candidate.
Palin was well
rehearsed in a few areas, but she seemed more like a Tupperware
saleslady than someone aspiring to higher office, doncha know.
"Folksy" is all well and good. I remember "Jimmy" Carter. But you
have to have the chops to back it up, and Palin is well out of her
league. Even Alaskans are ashamed.
Picking good people is
important: McCain learned as a prisoner, not as a soldier, and
forgot his lessons when he became a politician
By his own
admission, at his RNC acceptance speech, John McCain was a poor
soldier, the privileged son and grandson of admirals who was a
reckless pilot and lost five planes. As a POW he forged a new,
stronger, sense of identity. I admire him for that. I don't admire
his infidelities when he came home, abandoning a wife and three kids
to go off gallivanting in Washington. (The "values voters" have an
enormous double standard for the sexual peccadilloes of Republicans
and Democrats.) Running for Senate, he said he would never use his
time as a POW for political purposes. Well, that was then and this
is now. A family forgotten, a campaign promise in the dust. Maybe
he was a maverick once, but now he's just another right wing
Washington insider. The selection of Sarah Palin as VP shows just
how bad he will be at appointing people to important posts. John, go
back to the Senate where you can vote with your party almost all the
time and raise money from gullible Republicans.
The adulterer and the
flirt
The more I went over the debates and the punditry
afterwards, the worse it was for both McCain and Palin
The
Presidential debate was between the steady and intelligent Barack
Obama and the emotional yet sometimes lost John McCain. McCain did
okay. I notice that the GOP has stopped making "family values" such
an issue. That's what happens when your candidate is a philandering
fornicator. McCain, like Rudy Giuliani, may sling a good sound bite,
but his personal life is not one that anyone would want to emulate.
He distinguished himself as a prisoner, not a leader. He can claim
to be a "maverick", but his voting record says otherwise. He can
claim to be a conservative, but he can't speak to the sphincter
conservatives who want to control your sex life.
The VP
debate was between the winking and stumbling Sarah Palin and the
confident and experienced Joe Biden. Biden continually praised
Barack Obama and proudly shared his long record in the Senate. Palin
stumbled over names (such as the general in charge of the war in
Afghanistan), was dead wrong about major aspects of her short terms
as mayor and governor and couldn't speak in coherent sentences unless
it was one of her memorized set pieces. Biden would make a great VP;
he would make a great president if it comes to that. Palin wants to
continue the shameful actions of Dick Cheney, and is insecure when
she has nothing to fall back on. Cynical conservatives can try to
foist their version of reality on Minnesotans, but we're too smart.
In two debates, we know what we saw. Obama/Biden is a great team,
and will do extremely well in the White House.I don't know what
debate the writer was watching, but it wasn't the VP debate between
the winking and stumbling Sarah Palin and the confident and
experienced Joe Biden. Biden continually praised Barack Obama and
proudly shared his long record in the Senate. Palin stumbled over
names (such as the general in charge of the war in Afghanistan), was
dead wrong about major aspects of her short terms as mayor and
governor and couldn't speak in coherent sentences unless it was one
of her memorized set pieces. Biden would make a great VP; he would
make a great president if it comes to that. Palin wants to continue
the shameful actions of Dick Cheney, and is insecure when she has
nothing to fall back on. Cynical conservatives can try to foist
their version of reality on Minnesotans, but we're too smart. In two
debates, we know what we saw. Obama is intelligent and pioneering.
McCain abandoned a wife and three kids. Biden was a single parent
who has been on the world stage for decades. Palin shamelessly
flirted with her "base" but has no substance or integrity.
Obama/Biden is a great team, and will do extremely well in the White
House.
The selection of Vice President is important. Many
VP's have gone on to be president, sometimes suddenly. Republicans
consistently have chosen poorly. They pick VPs for starkly political
reasons without thinking about the country. Calvin Coolidge was a
disaster, and his administration set in motion the Great Depression.
Richard Nixon was needed by Eisenhower to reach out to the
conservative "base" and he turned out to be the most corrupt and
wicked person ever to assume the presidency... up to that time. Ford
was a nothing. Poppy Bush was weighed down by the failed Reagan
policies and when he tried to do the right thing was pilloried by the
"base".
Fact checking the flirt
Here are a few
checks on the remarks of Sarah Palin during the debate, via Daily
Kos.
126
Mistakes or lies Palin made in the debate. Partisan and
subjective but thorough listing of Palin's statements in 10/2 debate.
davefromqueens DKos diary 10/3/08. A brief example, after quoting
one of Palin's remarks from the debate:
Mistake 27 - The
"tax thing" makes her sound childish.
Mistake 28 - She actually
admits that she may not answer the questions.
Mistake 29 - "John
McCain's adherence to rules and regulations" Ah does she know what
she is talking about?
Mistake 30 - She raised food taxes as Mayor
of Wasilla. She's lying.
When I and others in the legislature
found out that we had some millions of dollars [of Permanent Fund
investments] in Sudan, we called for divestment through legislation
of those dollars,"
So said Governor Sarah Palin during
Thursday night's debate. One problem - it's a complete lie. Les Gara
(D) an Alaska State Representative from Anchorage co-sponsored a
resolution early in the year to force the Alaska Permanent Fund to
divest all funds with ties to the Sudanese government. Apparently
this numbered in the millions of dollars. The Alaska Permanent Fund
for those that do not know is a 40 Billion dollar investment fund
which distributes dividends to all Alaskan residents on a yearly
basis (with exclusions for felons and habitation requirements). This
is mainly oil money of course.
But a search of news clips and
transcripts from the first three months of this year did not turn up
an instance in which Palin mentioned the Sudanese crisis or concerns
about Alaska's investments tied to the ruling regime. Moreover,
Palin's administration openly opposed the bill, and stated its
opposition in a public hearing on the
measure.
Hatemongering then and
now
McCain/Palin, losing badly because their
message got out, now desperately needs to go negative. This will
clench the sphincters of the "base" while annoying everyone else and
setting the tone for the next four (or eight) years. Much like they
just randomly made shit up about Clinton until they finally got
something that turned out to be true, sort of. The next month will
not be pleasant.
McCain
sat on the board of ultra-right racist group. Tirge Caps DKos
Diary from 10/5/08 (why aren't all Bartcop-E people on DailyKos?).
The Swiftboaters are going negative and are hammering home very
tenuous connections between Obama and an unsavory character from long
before Obama's time. (Note how they say he has no experience but
insist he's been in politics for for decades...) Meanwhile, McCain
is beholden to some very evil people.
Go pick whatever
right-wing journals or polemicists you want and (with some isolated
exceptions) what you will find is this simultaneously self-loving and
self-pitying worldview permeating virtually everything they say,
think and believe. You can reduce most of their arguments, and all of
their group-based drives, to a rudimentary logical proposition: "I am
X, and X is both superior and treated with deep unfairness." It
doesn't matter what "X" happens to be for any one of them --
conservative, male, Republican, Christian, Jewish, religious, white,
Western, American -- that is the formula that expresses how they
perceive the world and their role in it.
Petulance and
self-pitying grievance is what fuels them. This endless need to
self-victimize would be one thing if the groups to which they
belonged were small minorities targeted by a hostile and more
powerful majority. But the exact opposite is true. By and large, the
groups to which they belong (and therefore see as oppressed and
treated with unparalleled unfairness) are the most numerous and the
most powerful in the country and always have been. Yet still --
nothing is their fault; they face hopeless obstacles imposed by Evil
and Omnipotent Forces which hate them; "I am X, and X is both
superior and treated with deep unfairness."
They have
run the country for the entire decade. For the last 14 years, they've
controlled the House for all but 20 months. They spent substantial
parts of the last eight years in control of all branches of
government simultaneously. They've won 7 out of the last 10
presidential elections. The country's largest and richest
corporations -- including the ones owning the most powerful media
outlets -- pour money into their party and perceive, correctly, that
their interests are served by the Right's agenda. But still -- they
can't get a fair shake; everything is deeply oppressive to them; it's
all so unfair.
As they've ruled the country, it's been
driven into the ground on every level. The President they revered and
endlessly glorified is the most unpopular in modern American history.
They've ushered in disastrous wars, virtual economic panic,
state-sanctioned torture andastonishing debt. Their leaders have been
exposed as bloated, corrupted criminals and hypocrites. Their current
candidate chose as his Vice President someone who can barely string
together a complete sentence or opine on the simplest of matters, and
himself acknowledges that he's been joined at the hip with the failed
Bush Presidency on virtually all key issues.
This week's poll is... the Paul Newman 'Tribute' edition
What are your favorite Paul Newman movies and why?
I'd list them all for you to choose from, but why? You know what they are! You relish the memories of seeing them for the first time. You've looked forward to seeing them again and again since then... So, unload... Let it out... Let us remember a man who was not only a great actor, but a marvelous philanthropist and loyal husband, as well.
"Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth about the American Voter" by Rick Shenkman: A Review by Gerry Donaghy
During the fourth season of "The Simpsons," there was an episode where the residents of Springfield gathered in a contest to see who could kill the largest number of snakes on what is called Whacking Day. After Bart and Lisa (with the help of Barry White) show the townspeople the error of state-sanctioned snake slaughter, Springfield's Kennedy-esque mayor arrives with an armload of pre-killed snakes, inciting boos and hisses from the now-enlightened crowd. Mayor Quimby hollers back, "You're all a bunch of fickle mush heads," to which the crowd responds, "He's right. Give us hell, Quimby."
Tom McBride: Brought Low by the List (thecommonreview.org)
Academics, of which I am one, are meant to be serious persons. Once known for their tweeds with patches and their dignified mien at marching ceremonies, they are now serious in other ways. Stanley Fish has commented on how Volvo boxcars are an expression of academic plain living and high thinking. A faculty member once told another that he disliked the Marx Brothers because they were "vulgar" and was shocked when his colleague replied that they were supposed to be. Today's academics are concerned with child rearing, the ecology of foodstuffs, and constructions of social identities. They speak in long paragraphs.
Rosanna Greenstreet: Q&A with Ronnie Corbett, comedian (guardian.co.uk)
Q: What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
A: It's loosely based on the Scout motto. In our business you have to have your armoury ready before the chance of a break. You've got to be able to sing a bit, dance a bit, perhaps play the piano and remember lines. If someone says, 'We've got a job for you', you don't want to say, 'Bugger, I can't do that.' You have to be prepared.
Rick Bentley: Amanda Tapping of 'Stargate' lands in another science fiction series (McClatchy Newspapers)
Network and cable television shows are filled with actresses from other countries using American accents to play their roles. Lena Headey hides her British accent as she battles robots from the future on "Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles." And both Yvonne Strahovski on "Chuck" and Anna Torv on "Fringe," who play hard-hitting American government agents, are Australians.
Roger Ebert: RELIGULOUS (R; 3 1/2 stars)
I'm going to try to review Bill Maher's "Religulous" without getting into religion. Is that OK with everybody? Good. I don't want to fan the flames of a holy war. The movie is about organized religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, TV evangelism and even Scientology, with detours into pagan cults and ancient Egypt. Bill Maher, host, writer and debater, believes they are all crazy.
The ancestry of all 43 presidents is limited to how many heritages?
and
Since the beginning of the 20th century, how many Presidents would be considered "Washington outsiders" (defined as never having served in Congress)?
:
:
:
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Today's Contest
For the duration of this contest, there will be multiple questions and no provided answers.
The contest ends whenever 5 readers have responded correctly.
The Prizes - Five sets of 11 books have been supplied by Hachette Book Group USA for a special election-focused giveaway!
Each winner will receive one copy of ALL 11 books!
At the height of its power, the Greek City of Sparta had 25,000 citizens. and 500,000 slaves. This amounted to a ratio of 20 slaves per citizen.
Source
mj was first, but wrong, with:
Since there just weren't that many people, period
And because we've had two Bs in a row, I'll go with A, 5.
Alan J replied:
A: 5
joe b responded:
I'm going with 5 slaves, it seems we always treated the little
people badly.
Charlie answered:
I'm finding a variety of estimates for this one, but I don't want to disappoint Sally. I'm using
this source, which claims 8000 citizens ruling 400,000 "slaves," giving a figure of
E: 50
Even the lower estimates don't paint a very pretty picture.
Marian the Teacher responded:
20
Sally said:
Boy, this is a tough one today. While some believe at least a third of ancient Greeks were slaves, Actually, it is difficult to estimate the number of slaves in ancient Greece, given the lack of a precise census and variations in definitions during that era. What we do know is that all early civilizations were built on slave labor (Mesopotamia, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Central America, Africa) The slave trade was an accepted way of life, legal, respected, recognized by all societies - and, in "Ancient Greece" it was extremely common for every household to own a slave. Three-hundred some years after the era to which you query, Herodotus (a Greek historian who lived in the 5th century BC) tells us, "Sparta is the most slave-dependent culture in the history of the world, having seven slaves for each Spartan citizen..."
So, I am going to guess 5 (A) but I really am unsure here.
PS: Now had you gone into Greek Mythology, I could have told you that the Greek God, Lacedaemon (a son of Zeus) was married to Sparta and named his capital after his wife. Sparta occupied a vast triangular area on the right bank of the Eurotas River in the Peloponnese. The Spartans occupied two-fifths of the Peloponnese and stood at the head not only of the whole Peloponnese itself, but also of numerous allies beyond its frontiers. Since, however, the city is not regularly planned and contained no temples or monuments of great magnificence, it was simply a collection of villages, in the ancient Hellenic way, its appearance was not impressive.
PPS: I hope this is not a sample of what is to come contest-wise...
And, Joe S ("The issue isn't just jobs. Even slaves had jobs. The issue is wages."
~ Jim Hightower) wrote:
I can't find the answer and I don't know it off the top of my head, so I'm making an educated guess. I did find on the Googles, that Athens averaged one slave per person so I'm guessing the number for Sparta is low. I'm guessing A: 5 and that's still a lot of slaves. The Spartans probably needed a lot of slaves to do the everyday labors so the citizens could concentrate on the important things, like sports and killing their neighbors.
I want to contribute to keeping your site up and running, but I was
burned once by Pay Pal and am reluctant to use it. Are there any
alternatives? Can I send a check directly to you?
jjw
Thanks, Jim!
Checks are gratefully accepted. Will send you my addy.
Thanks for asking!
CBS opens the night with a FRESH'Big Bang Theory', followed by a FRESH'How I Met Your Mother', then a FRESH'2½ Men', followed by a FRESH'Worst Week', then a FRESH'CSI: The 2nd One'.
Scheduled on a FRESHDave are Russell Crowe, Sarah Vowell, and the Pretenders.
Scheduled on a FRESHCraig are Seth Green and the Smothers Brothers.
NBC begins the night with a FRESH'Chuck', followed by a FRESH'Heroes', then a FRESH'Life'.
Scheduled on a FRESHLeno are Gerard Butler, Natasha Leggero, and Katy Perry
Scheduled on a FRESHConan are Felicity Huffman, Jason Sudeikis, and Jenny Lewis.
Scheduled on a FRESHCarson 'The Scab' Daly is Matt Iseman.
ABC starts the night with a FRESH 2-hour 'Dancing With The Stars', followed by a FRESH'Boston Legal'.
On a RERUNJimmy Kimmel (from 9/10/08) are Martin Short and Solange Knowles.
The CW offers a RERUN'Gossip Girl', followed by a RERUN'One Tree Hill'.
Faux has a FRESH'Sarah Connor Chronicles', followed by a FRESH'Prison Break'.
MY has 'Celebrity Expose', followed by the FRESH'Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed'.
A&E has 'CSI: The 2nd One', 'Intervention', another 'Intervention', and still another 'Intervention'.
AMC offers the movie 'Psycho', followed by the movie 'Troy'.
BBC -
[12:00 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 7
[12:30 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 9
[1:00 PM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Revisited - Ep 1 La Riviera
[2:00 PM] Cash in the Attic - Ep. 7 Pile
[3:00 PM] Bargain Hunt - Ep. 13 Shepton Mallet 9
[3:30 PM] Bargain Hunt - Ep. 14 Wetherby 20
[4:00 PM] You Are What You Eat - Episode 10
[4:30 PM] You Are What You Eat - Episode 11
[5:00 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 11
[5:30 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 12
[6:00 PM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 2 Piccolo Teatro
[7:00 PM] BBC World News America
[8:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 2
[9:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 1
[10:00 PM] BBC World News America - Episode 10
[11:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 2
[12:00 AM] Top Gear - Episode 1
[1:00 AM] Top Gear - Episode 7
[2:00 AM] Top Gear - Episode 8
[3:00 AM] The Graham Norton Show - Ep 1 Courtney Love, Louis Walsh and Katie Melua
[4:00 AM] Bargain Hunt - Ep. 13 Shepton Mallet 9
[4:30 AM] Bargain Hunt - Ep. 14 Wetherby 20
[5:00 AM] Cash in the Attic - Ep. 21 Innes
[5:30 AM] Cash in the Attic - Ep. 22 Crawley
[6:00 AM] BBC World News (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'Inside The Actor's Studiio' (Robert Downey, Jr), 'Project Runway', and the movie 'Be Cool'.
Comedy Central has 'Scrubs', another 'Scrubs', an old 'Jon Stewart', an old 'Colbert Report', 'Futurama', 'South Park', 'Futurama', and another 'Futurama'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJon Stewart is Tim Robbins.
Scheduled on a FRESHColbert Report it's TBA.
FX has the movie 'Ray', followed by the movie 'Walk The Line'.
History has 'Modern Marvels', another 'Modern Marvels', and 'Fort Knox: Secrets Revealed'.
IFC -
[7:00 AM] Waiting for Guffman
[8:30 AM] The Importance of Being Earnest
[10:05 AM] Mansfield Park
[12:05 PM] Waiting for Guffman
[1:35 PM] The Importance of Being Earnest
[3:15 PM] Mansfield Park
[5:15 PM] Waiting for Guffman
[6:45 PM] Kissing Jessica Stein
[8:30 PM] The Whitest Kids U'Know
[9:00 PM] Bruce Lee: His Last Days, His Last Nights
[10:30 PM] Dust to Glory
[12:15 AM] IFC News Special
[12:30 AM] The Whitest Kids U'Know
[1:00 AM] Bruce Lee: His Last Days, His Last Nights
[2:30 AM] Dust to Glory
[4:15 AM] Kissing Jessica Stein (ALL TIMES EST)
Sundance -
[05:00 AM] Commune
[06:30 AM] Dopamine
[08:00 AM] House of Boateng: Episode 2
[08:30 AM] Big Girl's Blouse: Episode 5
[09:00 AM] The Page Turner
[10:45 AM] Eco Documentaries - Season 1: The Forest for the Trees
[11:45 AM] The Making of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
[12:30 PM] Emir Kusturica, A Tender Barbarian
[01:30 PM] Linda & Ali: Two Worlds Within Four Walls
[03:15 PM] The Grace Lee Project
[04:30 PM] Commune
[06:00 PM] The Sci Fi Boys
[07:30 PM] Heavy Metal Jr.
[08:00 PM] 14 Women
[09:30 PM] The Hill: Episode 1: Fighting the Good Fight
[10:00 PM] On the Road in America: Episode 6 - Los Angeles, Part 1
[10:30 PM] Architecture School: Episode 1
[11:00 PM] Iconoclasts - Season 2: Episode 4: Isabella Rossellini + Dean Kamen
[12:00 AM] Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers
[01:30 AM] Love
[03:00 AM] Flying: Confessions...: Part 1
[04:00 AM] Dopamine
[05:30 AM] Binta and the Great Idea (ALL TIMES EST)
In this image released by the New Yorker Festival, Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central's 'The Colbert Report,' is shown during an interview at The 2008 New Yorker Festival, Saturday, Oct. 4, 2008, in New York.
Photo by Alex Oliveira
Bob Dylan has revealed his source of greatest inspiration - the Scottish poet Robert Burns.
The music legend was asked to name the lyric or verse that has had the biggest effect on his life. He selected the 1794 song A Red, Red Rose, which is often published as a poem, by the man regarded as Scotland's national poet.
Dylan revealed the verse to HMV, as part of the music retailer's My Inspiration campaign.
David Bowie kicked off My Inspiration two years ago when he selected lyrics by the late Pink Floyd star Syd Barrett.
Actress Cicely Tyson arrives at the unveiling of director and producer Tyler Perry's new motion picture and television studio in Atlanta on Saturday Oct. 4, 2008.
Photo by W.A.Harewood
Hollywood directing legend Steven Spielberg is leaving his longtime partner Paramount Pictures to form a new Hollywood-based film venture worth 1.5 billion dollars with India's Reliance ADA Group, Paramount announced Sunday.
Spielberg, director of such legendary works as "Jaws," "Raiders of the Lost Ark, "ET the Extraterrestial" and the "Indiana Jones" franchise, will hold a CEO position in the new venture alongside current Dreamworks' CEO and co-chairman Stacey Snider.
The deal was finalized by David Geffen, co-founder with Spielberg of the Dreamworks film studio, and Reliance CEO Anil Ambani, ranked the world's sixth-richest man in 2008 by Forbes Magazine.
Geffen will not be joining the new company, but the majority of existing Dreamworks staff is expected to be offered positions at the new company, according to a statement from Paramount.
With the colour fading from his hair and lines wrinkling his face, Myanmar's newly freed political prisoner, Win Tin, still manages to defy his 79 years.
Despite suffering numerous serious ailments while locked away for 19 years in Yangon's notorious Insein prison, the former journalist remains spry and said he has never regretted his move into politics.
Win Tin was Myanmar's longest serving political prisoner when the military junta released more than 9,000 inmates from its jails on September 23 in an amnesty ahead of elections promised for 2010.
Win Tin was one of the founders of the pro-democracy opposition National League for Democracy party together with Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains detained at her lakeside home.
At 19, Rachel Maddow shared a house with friends in Philadelphia and wasn't paying much attention to the 1992 Republican National Convention on television until Pat Buchanan took to the podium.
She was transfixed. Buchanan's combative conservative speech, which denounced gay rights, was a milestone for people on two sides of a political divide. Either a call to arms or intolerant, depending on your point of view, it couldn't be ignored.
"Pat's culture war speech at the Republican convention hit me right between the eyes," said Maddow, MSNBC's new star and a lesbian. "He was, without euphemism, declaring that my own country was at war with me. I get it intellectually and strategically now, but at 19, I only got it emotionally."
So there's a certain irony that Maddow and Buchanan have a prime-time date many nights now on television.
TV show host Thomas Gottschalk is pulled out of a huge pot filled with mustard after he lost the so-called city bet during the German television show 'Wetten dass...?' (Bet that ...?) in Nuremberg, on Saturday evening, Oct. 4, 2008.
Photo by Alexandra Beier
Translucent images of long ago, of black men and women, backs bent, picking cotton under an unforgiving sun, are artistically displayed on standing glass panels in a museum carved out of an old brick gin mill in the Mississippi Delta.
They're a reminder of those who labored by day in a segregated society. But at night they escaped to Indianola's Church Street to be entertained by a young man later known as B.B. King, who would throw his hat on the ground to catch coins as he conjured devil's music from his guitar.
More than a half-century after King left Indianola in search of fame, the $15 million B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretative Center has opened in his hometown and is as much a tribute to him and his blues music as the culture that inspired it.
A Kuwaiti official says authorities abruptly ended a music concert by an Egyptian singer in this conservative Muslim country when a young female fan jumped on stage, hugged the male singer and gave him a kiss.
Qanas al-Adwani, who heads the government department that monitors public entertainment, says the girl's behavior at Friday's concert "defied the conservative traditions" of Kuwait.
Al-Adwani also said Sunday that the fan's behavior broke controls on public entertainment, which were imposed by influential Muslim fundamentalists after they failed in 1997 to ban concerts altogether. Concerts have to be licensed by the government, and monitors from the Information Ministry watch the crowd to make sure nobody stands up to dance.
The flying sculpture 'Plus legere que l`air' (Lighter than the air) by German artist Otto Piene is displayed during the 'Nuit Blanche' (White Night) festival in Paris October 4, 2008. The festival is an annual one-day cultural event.
Photo by Gonzalo Fuentes
After years of exposure to rot and mishandling, a US institution has been pulled back from the brink of collapse with the help of international experts who pooled their knowledge.
But this rescue package had nothing to do with Wall Street. Instead, it was about a massive 360-degree panorama depicting a key US Civil War battle fought in farmland in Pennsylvania, which was painted 125 years ago by French artist Paul Philippoteaux.
When the painting, called "The Battle of Gettysburg", was first unveiled in 1884, 21 years after the campaign it depicts, it was the total immersion experience of the era, a sort of 19th-century version of surround-sound-and-vision cinema.
But after more than 100 years of mishandling and exposure to moisture, rot and fire, the gigantic painting had not only lost some of its IMAX effect but also entire sections.
The father of a measurement known as the "Smoot" returned Saturday to be honored at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the school where he and his fraternity brothers invented it 50 years ago.
Oliver Smoot was the shortest pledge in the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity in 1958 when its members decided to lay him on the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge. After discovering Smoot measured 5 feet 7, they marked the bridge in those increments, with an eventually exhausted Smoot getting up and down for each new measurement.
They soon determined the bridge was 364.4 Smoots long.
Today, Google.com's calculator function can convert any measurement into Smoots.
A model displays the creations of Portuguese designer Fatima Lopes during her fashion show Saturday night Oct. 4 2008, in Lisbon.
Photo by Armando Franca
Laura Gadd pauses at the edge of a pristine savanna, delicately lifting her feet to avoid trampling any venus flytraps hidden underfoot.
Buried below wisps of wire grass, a few of the plants advertise their presence with a single white flower - perched atop a long stem like a flag of surrender. Gadd finds a half-dozen this day, enough to warrant a spray of glue and inconspicuous powder used to identify the plants and track down poachers who pluck them.
One of nature's most recognized wonders, the venus flytrap's ability to snatch living prey makes it a favorite of elementary school science classes everywhere. Yet the flytrap is falsely ferocious: It's hardly the man-eating Audrey Jr. from "The Little Shop of Horrors," but a tiny plant only a few inches tall with leaves no bigger than a thumbprint.
These days, the little plant is more vulnerable than ever. And despite its popularity, the people who could protect it seem focused on other problems.
"Beverly Hills Chihuahua" was barking up the right tree with movie-goers, who put the Disney comedy at No. 1 for the weekend with a $29 million debut, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The top-12 movies hauled in $95.4 million, up 42 percent from the same weekend a year ago, when "The Game Plan" was No. 1 with $16.6 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.
Thousands of lit jack-o-lanterns are shown during the Camp Sunshine Maine Pumpkins Festival, Saturday, Oct. 4, 2008 in Cumberland, Maine. Camp Sunshine is a Maine based national retreat for children with life threatening illnesses and their families.
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