He wins!

In a stunning decision – designed to encourage initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation – President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday the ninth of October.

Read the rest HERE  …

Filed under: Current Events, Barack Obama, Nobel Prize 2009

MAMA MTV Awards 2009

These will be held in Nairobi (Kenya!) at the Indoor Arena, Moi International Sports Centre, on October 10, 2009. My “tweet friend” the artist Wyclef Jean will be hosting and is in Nairobi now and giving us followers the blow for report. The MAMA’s will air to a potential TV audience of 1 billion viewers around the world. It’s unclear to me whether the billion will include viewers in the US but hopefully as with the MTV VMA’s they’ll post videos of the performances on the MAMA website and we can watch them that way.

UPDATE: 10/10/2009 – Livestream is available on Wyclef Jean’s website – http://wyclefjean.wordpress.com/ (I’m on crappy satellite so doesn’t work for me but a good option if you have quality internet service).

Filed under: Current Events, Music, MAMA MTV 2009, Nairobi, Wyclef Jean

Twitter a fad?

Apparently so think 1/3 of respondents to a recent “60 Minutes”-Vanity Fair Poll. I’ll bet these respondents are the children, grand children and great grands (so on so forth) of people who said the same thing about rap, rock n roll, and … those smoke belching hossless carriages.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090928/ap_on_re_us/us_tv60_minutes_vanity_fair_poll

Nearly half think walmart as the institution that best symbolizes America. I’m not a Walmart basher or a Walmart lover. They’re just a place where I shop – sometimes. However, I gotta say, there’s something ever so slightly askew when people think that a chain megalomart symbolizes their nation.

Filed under: Current Events, twitter, vanity fair, walmart

Admin by day, King for the rest of her life

This is the story of how one DC area admin became an African monarch.

Life is fascinating.

In the humdrum of ordinary life, people periodically yearn for something unexpected, some kind of gilded escape, delivered, perhaps, by an unanticipated inheritance or a winning lottery ticket.

In Bartels’s case, that moment arrived 15 months ago. The phone in her condominium awoke her at 4 a.m.

“Hello, Nana,” said the overseas caller — a relative, as it turned out — employing a title Ghanaians use to refer to people of stature, from kings and queens to grandparents.

“What you mean, ‘Nana?’ ” answered Bartels, 55, who has no grandchildren — or children, for that matter. Her husband lives overseas. She thought the call was a prank.

Read the rest of the Washington Post story HERE.

Filed under: Current Events, from secretary to queen, ghana, Peggielene Bartels

Patrick Swayze, 1952-2009

A nice career retrospective pictorial of Patrick Swayze.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2009/09/14/GA2009091403019.html

In this article written for the Washington Post in February 2009, he advocated for maximum congressional funding for the NIH for cancer research.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/06/AR2009020602850.html

Here is a quote from his Washpost obituary:

Most of the action films met with critical disappointment. So did his attempts for a more daring career, from the drag queen Vida Boheme he played in “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar” (1995) to the suicidally forlorn American doctor who finds redemption in Calcutta in “City of Joy” (1992).

Ironically of all his movies, I think those two were his best and I enjoyed watching them. So whoever these disappointed critics are/were bottom line is that there are plenty of other people who thought otherwise and a handful of critics don’t make or break anyone’s legacy.

Here’s the rest of the obit:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/14/AR2009091403090_2.html?hpid=topnews&sub=AR&sid=ST2009091403176

Filed under: Current Events, Obituary, Patrick Swazye

On 9-11

TheRevAlWhere were you and what were you doing on September 11th 8 years ago? What does this day mean to you?

Woke up that a.m., turned on tv and saw that the first tower had been hit. Didn’t realize that “hit” meant that it was going to come down. Breakfast and got ready to go shopping at Potomac Mills mall with familia. At the gas station just before the Dulles toll road people were acting funny and avoiding eye contact. Then as we approached the exit to the toll road aaaallll the traffic was going the wrong way – i.e. heading back from DC when it was supposed to be late rush hour flow towards DC. In short it was like coming up to a river and realizing it was flowing backwards. So that’s how we realized it was something big and we’d better go back home. So we did and turned on the tv. The sky was perfectly blue and since flights were banned it was silent – unusual for DC. Later that afternoon we strolled around the neighborhood and the cafes were full (because everyone was home for the day) but no one was talking.

Filed under: Current Events

Morning tweets

guardiantechPoll: Will you be buying an ebook and ditching your dead tree editions? http://bit.ly/QCGSS

I’m a grad student and have nothing against electronic books (heck I’ve worked in e-publishing) however not every book is available electronically or available in a way that is useful to the reader. e.g. In the case where there are multiple versions of the same book, sometimes the e-book is not the best version. For my last paper the print version of the english translation of the novel was better than the english translation of the e-book version so I went with the print version. Sometimes the choice between media is that simple.

So my answer to the poll is don’t believe the e-book hype. There’s nothing more useless to a student than an electronic book offered without full rights as many publishers are doing so you can’t copy and paste quotes and sometimes you can’t even highlight or mark passages when needed which defeats the convenience and purpose of having an e-book. I use e-books sometimes if they’re available, and sometimes I use them simultaneously with print books. But it’s not time to chuck the print yet – and I’m not sure that time will ever be.

JacksonSourceWill Jacksons reunion one of Vienna surprises? http://bit.ly/HGOUQ

That would be nice.

Filed under: Current Events, The Jacksons

Et voila – Tyra’s real hair

The long awaited “real hair” pic. This is the “I just spent years protecting my hair in weaves to get this pic and if I want to keep the length I gotta go back into protective styling stet!” photo. Ironically Tyra kept reiterating that wigs and weaves, etc. are “just an option”. Maybe so but if you need to blow dry, flat iron, and hot curl everyday for ready for the camera hair (or if you do this anyway even if your job isn’t on camera) well truthfully a lot of black hair isn’t meant to be handled that way and it’s gonna break off, thin out, burn off then you’re back to square one.

Tyra also encouraged the naturally curly look by featuring a biracial girl who says she flat irons her hair compulsively so that her family and the kids at school won’t know that she’s black. I’m not sure if she meant this literally because straightened hair never made anyone look less of who they are so I don’t know who she thinks she’s fooling. Tyra’s audience is largely composed of young girls so maybe the message to them is you don’t need to obsessively flat iron your hair or spend 2000 dollars on weave hair (as one of her show guests said she does) to be acceptable. But on the other hand if you want Tyra’s look over the long term I don’t think it’s possible for someone in her position to keep it up over the long term and for that reason wigs,  weaves and extensions, etc., are the only realistic option.

I’ll give Tyra big props for never being some one who fronts. For being willing to share who she is underneath the super model glitz and glam. She imparts the message time and again that you can be glam and still be you. When I was growing up there was so much out there which indicated that this was an either/or proposition. So this is a good thing.

Click HERE to see more pics and Tyra’s hair story.

Filed under: Current Events, Tyra's real hair

Obama inspires American schoolchildren (and the rest of us too)

The text follows below and what a great speech. Is that not the kind of talk that EVERY kid needs to hear on the first day of school?? Now the haters can go head and pull their kids out of school and go illiterate out of protest because that’s what cha do when your president is born in IndoKenyanesia or someplace like that. As long as they stay away from local ER’s (no school, no job, no health insurance but hey it’s okay coz I got my lipton tea bag earrings, we’re copacetic – I guess).

Read the whole speech below or Follow this LINK to watch video.

THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. All right, everybody go ahead and have a seat. How is everybody doing today? (Applause.) How about Tim Spicer? (Applause.) I am here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, from kindergarten through 12th grade. And I am just so glad that all could join us today. And I want to thank Wakefield for being such an outstanding host. Give yourselves a big round of applause. (Applause.)

Filed under: Current Events, back-to-school speech, Obama

Jackson tribute in Vienna

MY blog ate my original post!

WTH??!!

Anyway here’s the story sans my editorializing.

VIENNA – Mary J. Blige, Chris Brown and Natalie Cole will be among the top artists performing at a Sept. 26 Michael Jackson tribute concert in Vienna, organizers said Tuesday. Read more HERE ….

Filed under: Current Events, Music, Jermaine Jackson, Michael Jackson tribute, Vienna