American Folk Art Museum: ‘Eugene Von Bruenchenhein: Freelance Artist — Poet and Sculptor — Inovator — Arrow maker and Plant man — Bone artifacts constructor — Photographer and Architect — Philosopher,’ through Oct. 9. Whether photographing his wife as a sweetly chaste pinup girl; fashioning plant forms from scrounged clay or little thrones from salvaged turkey bones; or making delicate ballpoint-pen drawings or hallucinatory paintings rife with intimations of exotic undersea or sci-fi worlds, this self-taught, self-proclaimed multitasker (as made clear in the show’s subtitle) never wavered in his sense of his own greatness. Mounted 27 years after his death, his first American museum survey doesn’t quite do him justice and especially shortchanges the paintings, but it presents the fruits of his ceaseless labors with a clarity that makes them feel of a piece, and like a gift.
Bronx Museum of the Arts: ‘Stargazers: Elizabeth Catlett in Conversation with 21 Contemporary Artists,’ through May 29. This celebration of the artist Elizabeth Catlett, 96, includes contributions by a stellar array of younger colleagues from two generations. But Ms. Catlett herself, with her formally assured and expressively commanding art, is the life of the party just by being the quietest, wisest voice in the room. (An exhibition titled “Digame: Elizabeth Catlett’s Forever Love” is on view in the Neil L. and Angelica Zander Rudenstine Gallery, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University, through May 26.)
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum: ‘Color Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay,’ through June 19. Examining the more practical side of Delaunay’s pioneering achievement, this beautiful, enlightening exhibition offers some alluring artworks, garments and accessories, especially a passel of radiant scarves. But it bets most of the house on fabric swatches — Delaunay’s textile designs — and succeeds with a display of some 90 gouache studies for textiles and their equally vibrant commercial results: more than 120 hand-printed silks, velvets and cottons laid out in large vitrines. Patterns ranging from geometric to floral variously revisit, amplify and presage much of the history of modern painting and may even deserve a place in that history.
2011年4月28日星期四
Game Review: ‘Portal 2′ for XBox 360
“How do you expand on Portal?” “How many different test rooms can you come up with using gravity and portal physics?” “What can be created to make the sequel a full retail game instead of being a part of a value packed disc like the Orange Box?”
These were all questions people came up with when they heard about Portal 2 as they were likely to be the same questions that the developers at Valve knew would be thrown their way.
After creating a completely original and satisfying experience with the original Portal, there was tons of pressure on the developers to bring back the magic that made the original Portal so special and at the same time bring about new experiences to prove the value of making the sequel. The result is a satisfying puzzle experience that builds on what Portal set out to do but continues innovating in the way gamers must think and play in order to progress either in the solo or cooperative modes.
Gameplay:
Broken down to its most basic sense, Portal 2 has players using a special gun from a first person perspective that shoots entry portals on select surfaces. Players can use these portals to instantaneously travel from one location to the next by walking, jumping or falling through them.
In addition, players can use these portals to transport items like the weighted Companion Cube or the Redirection Cube around test chambers as well. Various new gameplay elements such as Excursion Funnels (tractor beams), Hard Light Bridges, Repulsion gel, Propulsion gel and Conversion Gel can also be transported through the portals.
All of these new elements work great separately in creating new gameplay tasks for players to accomplish. Having to position Repulsion gel along various surfaces in order for players to bounce through levels or using the Redirection Cube to aim Thermal Discouragement laser beams at turret guns adds tons of new level possibilities to the “simple” portal concept. What is most amazing is when levels combine various combinations of these new abilities in to puzzles that are no simple feat to figure out without really thinking outside the box and understanding what the developers meant when they first said it was time for people to start thinking in portals.
New to Portal 2 is a cooperative mode, where players can join up either over split screen or online and solve puzzles that no single person could accomplish alone. These puzzles include a whole new level of timing and depth as some require twitch timing abilities and some creative thinking to coordinate four portals at once.
The developers were also very aware that not all players would have microphones and included tools for players to communicate specific instructions to their companion. The result is the most unique multiplayer puzzle experience seen to date. Sometimes, the most fun comes from a solution beginning to crumble out from underneath a player and the moments of chaos following it as turrets are unleashed, portals accidentally close, light bridges or excursion funnels disappear and the two robots fall to their deaths.
Story and Presentation:
When people hear about a puzzle game, story is almost always the secondary concern. Portal 2 is the exception however as the driving force to progress in the game doesn’t solely come from the curiosity to see what puzzle lies beyond the next testing chamber. While most games are forced to rely on either being driven by gameplay or by story, Portal 2 may be the best example of a perfect fifty-fifty split in enjoyment of the two.
During Portal (Spoiler for those who haven’t played it yet), players took the role of Chell and escaped the lunacy of a heartless computer core named GLaDOS who was using them to test the abilities of humans with the Portal Gun “in the name of science.” Players who completed the game would escape GLaDOS’s death traps and eventually “kill” her. Portal 2 starts off with players again in the role of Chell being awoken in what looks like a motel room by another core named Wheatley. Players quickly find out they are in a storage crate in the middle of the Aperture Science Facility as it begins collapsing. With Wheatley’s help, the players survive only to accidentally reawaken GLaDOS as they try and escape the facility. This results in Chell being dropped back in the testing facility where they are constantly mocked by GLaDOS as they complete tests, including GLaDOS’s newfound infatuation with backhandedly calling the player fat and insinuating they are a terrible person for trying to kill her in the first game.
Along the way, players experience a whole new side of GLaDOS, delve further into Wheatley and why he was created and eventually find out about the history of Aperture Science and its CEO Cave Johnson. What is amazing is the level of depth that these characters all receive as the origins of GLaDOS and Wheatley are revealed and the mindset behind the Aperture testing facility comes in to view. Additional characters are revealed, if only momentarily like the malfunctioning Turret Guns or a corrupted CPU core similar to that of GLaDOS and Wheatley who is obsessed with space.
In the cooperative campaign, there is not as much of an emphasis on story as in the single player game but it is still ever-present. Upon seeing how well players work together, GLaDOS quickly begins planting seeds of dissent with various “Can you believe Blue would say that about you Orange?” type comments.
The dialogue writing in Portal 2 is some of the best and most creative of any game on the market today. The personalities of GLaDOS and Wheatley specifically will be remembered by players with some of the most memorable game quotes of the year. Even out of context, gamers will be tossing these out to each other to laugh out loud results. Hearing an eerily calm female computer spout lines like, “We’re a lot alike, you and I. You tested me. I tested you. You killed me. I—oh, no, wait. I guess I haven’t killed you yet. Well. Food for thought.” or the machismo fueled Cave Johnson saying, “Oh, in case you get covered in that Repulsion Gel, here’s some advice the lab boys gave me: [sound of rustling pages] “Do not get covered in the Repulsion Gel.” We haven’t entirely nailed down what element it is yet, but I’ll tell you this: It’s a lively one and it does not like the human skeleton,” makes for laugh out loud moments throughout the entire experience, even when a player’s life is at risk from GLaDOS’s traps.
These were all questions people came up with when they heard about Portal 2 as they were likely to be the same questions that the developers at Valve knew would be thrown their way.
After creating a completely original and satisfying experience with the original Portal, there was tons of pressure on the developers to bring back the magic that made the original Portal so special and at the same time bring about new experiences to prove the value of making the sequel. The result is a satisfying puzzle experience that builds on what Portal set out to do but continues innovating in the way gamers must think and play in order to progress either in the solo or cooperative modes.
Gameplay:
Broken down to its most basic sense, Portal 2 has players using a special gun from a first person perspective that shoots entry portals on select surfaces. Players can use these portals to instantaneously travel from one location to the next by walking, jumping or falling through them.
In addition, players can use these portals to transport items like the weighted Companion Cube or the Redirection Cube around test chambers as well. Various new gameplay elements such as Excursion Funnels (tractor beams), Hard Light Bridges, Repulsion gel, Propulsion gel and Conversion Gel can also be transported through the portals.
All of these new elements work great separately in creating new gameplay tasks for players to accomplish. Having to position Repulsion gel along various surfaces in order for players to bounce through levels or using the Redirection Cube to aim Thermal Discouragement laser beams at turret guns adds tons of new level possibilities to the “simple” portal concept. What is most amazing is when levels combine various combinations of these new abilities in to puzzles that are no simple feat to figure out without really thinking outside the box and understanding what the developers meant when they first said it was time for people to start thinking in portals.
New to Portal 2 is a cooperative mode, where players can join up either over split screen or online and solve puzzles that no single person could accomplish alone. These puzzles include a whole new level of timing and depth as some require twitch timing abilities and some creative thinking to coordinate four portals at once.
The developers were also very aware that not all players would have microphones and included tools for players to communicate specific instructions to their companion. The result is the most unique multiplayer puzzle experience seen to date. Sometimes, the most fun comes from a solution beginning to crumble out from underneath a player and the moments of chaos following it as turrets are unleashed, portals accidentally close, light bridges or excursion funnels disappear and the two robots fall to their deaths.
Story and Presentation:
When people hear about a puzzle game, story is almost always the secondary concern. Portal 2 is the exception however as the driving force to progress in the game doesn’t solely come from the curiosity to see what puzzle lies beyond the next testing chamber. While most games are forced to rely on either being driven by gameplay or by story, Portal 2 may be the best example of a perfect fifty-fifty split in enjoyment of the two.
During Portal (Spoiler for those who haven’t played it yet), players took the role of Chell and escaped the lunacy of a heartless computer core named GLaDOS who was using them to test the abilities of humans with the Portal Gun “in the name of science.” Players who completed the game would escape GLaDOS’s death traps and eventually “kill” her. Portal 2 starts off with players again in the role of Chell being awoken in what looks like a motel room by another core named Wheatley. Players quickly find out they are in a storage crate in the middle of the Aperture Science Facility as it begins collapsing. With Wheatley’s help, the players survive only to accidentally reawaken GLaDOS as they try and escape the facility. This results in Chell being dropped back in the testing facility where they are constantly mocked by GLaDOS as they complete tests, including GLaDOS’s newfound infatuation with backhandedly calling the player fat and insinuating they are a terrible person for trying to kill her in the first game.
Along the way, players experience a whole new side of GLaDOS, delve further into Wheatley and why he was created and eventually find out about the history of Aperture Science and its CEO Cave Johnson. What is amazing is the level of depth that these characters all receive as the origins of GLaDOS and Wheatley are revealed and the mindset behind the Aperture testing facility comes in to view. Additional characters are revealed, if only momentarily like the malfunctioning Turret Guns or a corrupted CPU core similar to that of GLaDOS and Wheatley who is obsessed with space.
In the cooperative campaign, there is not as much of an emphasis on story as in the single player game but it is still ever-present. Upon seeing how well players work together, GLaDOS quickly begins planting seeds of dissent with various “Can you believe Blue would say that about you Orange?” type comments.
The dialogue writing in Portal 2 is some of the best and most creative of any game on the market today. The personalities of GLaDOS and Wheatley specifically will be remembered by players with some of the most memorable game quotes of the year. Even out of context, gamers will be tossing these out to each other to laugh out loud results. Hearing an eerily calm female computer spout lines like, “We’re a lot alike, you and I. You tested me. I tested you. You killed me. I—oh, no, wait. I guess I haven’t killed you yet. Well. Food for thought.” or the machismo fueled Cave Johnson saying, “Oh, in case you get covered in that Repulsion Gel, here’s some advice the lab boys gave me: [sound of rustling pages] “Do not get covered in the Repulsion Gel.” We haven’t entirely nailed down what element it is yet, but I’ll tell you this: It’s a lively one and it does not like the human skeleton,” makes for laugh out loud moments throughout the entire experience, even when a player’s life is at risk from GLaDOS’s traps.
2011年4月26日星期二
A Review of Thor
After the hype surrounding Thor, I was expecting the film not to meet expectations. I was expecting a totally de-powered, diluted comic Rip-Off where original fans wouldn't recognise the story, the characters and that the newer fans who have just been introduced to the Marvel Universe wouldn't get it.
The film...confounded every fear I had. It was MARVEL-ous. Chris Hemsworth portrays Thor so perfectly it's astonishing. After his Star Trek exploits, I thought perhaps that it was a one off performance, to be able to make you feel so emotionally invested in a character who had little screen time seemed like lightning in a bottle. He couldn't make you feel for a character for over 2 hours right? WRONG.
He is perfect. His acting skills are immense. Such a range. Cocky, arrogant, vengeful, powerful, carefree, manly to boyish, vulnerable, loving and caring, protective and humble. in one film. Class.
Thor's scenes on earth again show a range of emotion. Either exceedingly funny while still being of a service to the film and not being a slight on the characters or comic. Something I myself was happy about. I truly believed they would make fun of the history of Thor and of the story. They didn't. It really was good fish out of water scenes.
From that comedy came really emtional scenes with Jane Foster, but not like gushy or over the top. Nicely done, touching moments. subtle. Eg. Jane looks at Thor when he's been gazing at her and he turns away sharply as if he wasn't looking. Sort of classroom love when you were at school, very real.
His "de-powered" fight scenes on the SHIELD built structure, while put down by many on this site, were great and extremely real. Raw I think describes it best. Hawkeye makes an extended cameo and already shows that Jeremy Renner is going to do the character a great service.
I have heard people complaining about the amount of time it takes Thor to learn to be a better person. It does not in anyway feel rushed. I can assure you. It is of course a 2hour movie but it really does feel like he has learned the lessons Odin demands he learn.
Tom Hiddleston embodies Loki respectively. You can almost see the machinations of evil, the whirring of his brain as he looks to what moves he will play 3 steps ahead of where he is at. Always planning schemeing and yet it's not obvious, he isn't running about with the big arrow pointing at him saying "bad guy". It is a really pure performance. One of the most accurate portrayals of a character ever seen on film.
Odin - Anthony Hopkins. Perfect. Nuff said.
Warriors 3 and Sif do not get alot of screen time so their respective personalities are not fleshed out. However, you do understand immediately that Thor loves and trusts them and that they love and trust Thor. They also look pretty much like their comic counterparts.
Natalie Portman - another class act. Her gradual enchantment with Thor is very believeable and true to her chracter. She portrays an Astro-physicist who doesn't get out much and her ex boyfriend Dr. Donald Blake seemed to have more interest in his patients than her. Yes the fans will get that reference to Dr Blake.
The score - Me, being not a pretentious person, cannot critique the score other than to say, it helped me feel the right emotions at the right time. Indeed at some parts of the script I could've cried. HOWEVER, being the manly man that I am I held back...also more accurately... so my girlfriend wouldn't think I was more of a girl than her. But yes, my emotions towards the situations and characters were definitely molded by the score. So a thumbs up on that front.
SHIELD is an unobtrusive plot device. Marvel has learnt the lessons and made sure that SHIELD is an agency with real menaing this time and not airy-fairy men in black.
Stan Lee's cameo is great, quite funny. Darcy - played by Kat Dennings is actually quite funny but not over-used and isn't annoying like I for one thought she would be. However she is literally comic relief.
I want to express again that the component pieces of the film - actors, direction, score, performances, make this a truly great film. There were alot of people at the showing I was at who had not liked sci-fi-esque movies before, or fanstasy but absolutely enjoyed the film and it's obvious why. I read the tag "Shakespeare in Space" was applied to this film and this should be enough to mark it as a true great anyway :)
In conclusion, I am struggling to find negatives about this film. In other reviews the fact that Thor has powers and magic etc seem to be the only negatives, but it's a comic book movie for godsake. It is meant to be a little bit of escape-ism, an adventure. Yes it is contained within a "real" world setting but how can you think a man in a metal suit (Ironman) can fall from orbital heights and not die but accept he doesnt yet find Thor as being somewhat too much??
No, this is a truly outstanding film. Ironman while a huge hit, doesn't have the depth of story and wealth of acting talent as this film.
The film in my opinion is a masterpiece in CBM terms. Definitely the best film Marvel has made. The Dark Knight being "probably" the pinncale of CBM achievement definitely has this film to contend with for the title of best CBM. "And that is a scientific fact :P "
The film...confounded every fear I had. It was MARVEL-ous. Chris Hemsworth portrays Thor so perfectly it's astonishing. After his Star Trek exploits, I thought perhaps that it was a one off performance, to be able to make you feel so emotionally invested in a character who had little screen time seemed like lightning in a bottle. He couldn't make you feel for a character for over 2 hours right? WRONG.
He is perfect. His acting skills are immense. Such a range. Cocky, arrogant, vengeful, powerful, carefree, manly to boyish, vulnerable, loving and caring, protective and humble. in one film. Class.
Thor's scenes on earth again show a range of emotion. Either exceedingly funny while still being of a service to the film and not being a slight on the characters or comic. Something I myself was happy about. I truly believed they would make fun of the history of Thor and of the story. They didn't. It really was good fish out of water scenes.
From that comedy came really emtional scenes with Jane Foster, but not like gushy or over the top. Nicely done, touching moments. subtle. Eg. Jane looks at Thor when he's been gazing at her and he turns away sharply as if he wasn't looking. Sort of classroom love when you were at school, very real.
His "de-powered" fight scenes on the SHIELD built structure, while put down by many on this site, were great and extremely real. Raw I think describes it best. Hawkeye makes an extended cameo and already shows that Jeremy Renner is going to do the character a great service.
I have heard people complaining about the amount of time it takes Thor to learn to be a better person. It does not in anyway feel rushed. I can assure you. It is of course a 2hour movie but it really does feel like he has learned the lessons Odin demands he learn.
Tom Hiddleston embodies Loki respectively. You can almost see the machinations of evil, the whirring of his brain as he looks to what moves he will play 3 steps ahead of where he is at. Always planning schemeing and yet it's not obvious, he isn't running about with the big arrow pointing at him saying "bad guy". It is a really pure performance. One of the most accurate portrayals of a character ever seen on film.
Odin - Anthony Hopkins. Perfect. Nuff said.
Warriors 3 and Sif do not get alot of screen time so their respective personalities are not fleshed out. However, you do understand immediately that Thor loves and trusts them and that they love and trust Thor. They also look pretty much like their comic counterparts.
Natalie Portman - another class act. Her gradual enchantment with Thor is very believeable and true to her chracter. She portrays an Astro-physicist who doesn't get out much and her ex boyfriend Dr. Donald Blake seemed to have more interest in his patients than her. Yes the fans will get that reference to Dr Blake.
The score - Me, being not a pretentious person, cannot critique the score other than to say, it helped me feel the right emotions at the right time. Indeed at some parts of the script I could've cried. HOWEVER, being the manly man that I am I held back...also more accurately... so my girlfriend wouldn't think I was more of a girl than her. But yes, my emotions towards the situations and characters were definitely molded by the score. So a thumbs up on that front.
SHIELD is an unobtrusive plot device. Marvel has learnt the lessons and made sure that SHIELD is an agency with real menaing this time and not airy-fairy men in black.
Stan Lee's cameo is great, quite funny. Darcy - played by Kat Dennings is actually quite funny but not over-used and isn't annoying like I for one thought she would be. However she is literally comic relief.
I want to express again that the component pieces of the film - actors, direction, score, performances, make this a truly great film. There were alot of people at the showing I was at who had not liked sci-fi-esque movies before, or fanstasy but absolutely enjoyed the film and it's obvious why. I read the tag "Shakespeare in Space" was applied to this film and this should be enough to mark it as a true great anyway :)
In conclusion, I am struggling to find negatives about this film. In other reviews the fact that Thor has powers and magic etc seem to be the only negatives, but it's a comic book movie for godsake. It is meant to be a little bit of escape-ism, an adventure. Yes it is contained within a "real" world setting but how can you think a man in a metal suit (Ironman) can fall from orbital heights and not die but accept he doesnt yet find Thor as being somewhat too much??
No, this is a truly outstanding film. Ironman while a huge hit, doesn't have the depth of story and wealth of acting talent as this film.
The film in my opinion is a masterpiece in CBM terms. Definitely the best film Marvel has made. The Dark Knight being "probably" the pinncale of CBM achievement definitely has this film to contend with for the title of best CBM. "And that is a scientific fact :P "
2011年4月24日星期日
Rubik's Cube art
Michaelango's masterpiece The Hand of God has been recreated by 12,090 Rubik's Cubes.
Eleven puzzle buffs took more than 400 hours to create the artist’s famed Sistine Chapel in their record-breaking feat.
The team had to adjust every single Rubik’s Cube by hand in order to get the exact colors in the masterpiece.
The rest of the time was spent by the team twisting the cubes into place.
Josh Chalom, the creative director of the studio, said it was just the first part of a project to mimic the entire Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Once completed, it will be hung from a roof, weighing around 50 tonnes and using a hefty 250,000 Rubik’s Cubes.
Eleven puzzle buffs took more than 400 hours to create the artist’s famed Sistine Chapel in their record-breaking feat.
The team had to adjust every single Rubik’s Cube by hand in order to get the exact colors in the masterpiece.
The rest of the time was spent by the team twisting the cubes into place.
Josh Chalom, the creative director of the studio, said it was just the first part of a project to mimic the entire Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Once completed, it will be hung from a roof, weighing around 50 tonnes and using a hefty 250,000 Rubik’s Cubes.
Bringing Back Fond Memories Of The Incredible Brian Scott Case
In order to understand the complex nature of the UFO mystery you cannot approach the phenomenon from a short term point of view.
The best prospectus would be as an alien astronaut hovering far above the earth looking down at its multitude of rivers, streams, inlets and tributaries. Likewise, only a veteran of the "UFO wars" can hope to understand the dozens and dozens of twists and turns that this mystery has confronted us with since the first modern day "flying saucer" sighting by Kenneth Arnold. There is no single -- or simple -- answer to this puzzle, and so the jigsaw eludes us as we continue to move the pieces about on the matrix board someone, or something else, has constructed for us. A neophyte can easily get lost in the maze of reports, landings, abductions, men in black encounters, cattle mutilations, trips to Mars, and government cover-ups. Its overwhelming, time consuming, and seems to lead to nowhere. You need more than a compass let me tell you that from years of experience as editor of UFO Universe and other nationally sold magazines on the topic.
Brad Steiger is that veteran, the General Patton of these "UFO Wars," who from his lofty position of forty plus years of UFO research, can manage to sort out at least some of the riff from the raff, the hoi from the polloi, and give us various answers that elude the most sincere but undereducated younger UFOlogist. This is best shown throughout the pages of Real Aliens, Space Beings, And Creatures From Other Worlds (Visible Ink, May, 2011)
I must admit in true disclosure fashion that I have been friends with Brad Steiger since we first shook hands at the largest indoor UFO convention every held. Organized by another “ole timer,” Jim Moseley managed to gather together over ten thousand of the faithful at the Hotel Commodore in Manhattan to hear some of the most popular UFO researchers of the era (i.e. John Keel, Dr Frank Stranges, Vi Venus, and special guest Roy Thinnes of the popular tv series The Invaders). Since than Steiger and I have consulted and shared information on numerous UFO and paranormal incidents. One of the first we worked on as a team was the case of Brian Scott who had, he claimed, been abducted along with a friend in the Superstition Mountain range outside Phoenix. The case remains unusual in that it was on going for many years and offered a bit more in the way of evidence than your typical UFO abduction episode (if there is such a thing as “typical” in this arena of research). The case also was ‘substantial” in that it l involved the participating of a number of high profile parapsychologists from the world of academia.
Let’s pass through one of Bob Lazar’s worm holes and go back to that point in time when Brad and I were need deep involved with the Bryan Scott abduction as excerpted from the Steiger’s most recent work...
In February 1976, UFO researcher Timothy Green Beckley conducted an extensive series of interviews with the contactee/abductee Brian Scott. At that time Scott was a thirty-two-year-old draftsman for a Mission Bejo firm and the father of two, who stated that he had been repeatedly taken aboard a strange craft piloted by beings from an alien planet.
Scott's first abduction reportedly occurred in the Arizona desert near Phoenix in 1971, and he claimed that another had just occurred on December 22, 1975, in Garden Grove, California. In between, Scott said, there were three other terrifying sessions with the aliens and repeated visits to his home by balls of light and a transparent being that called itself the Host.
Scott believed that his involvement with the alien beings began on his sixteenth birthday, October 12, 1959. He had been coming home from celebrating when he observed a ball of light hovering over his dog. The ball was oval shaped, semisolid, becoming more solid toward the center. It was six to eight inches in diameter and reddish-orange.
The ball of light came right at his head until it was just a few inches from his face--then it shot straight up. Scott believed that at that time he had received some sort of communication from the ball through thoughts and pictures that were apparently transmitted directly into his mind.
The best prospectus would be as an alien astronaut hovering far above the earth looking down at its multitude of rivers, streams, inlets and tributaries. Likewise, only a veteran of the "UFO wars" can hope to understand the dozens and dozens of twists and turns that this mystery has confronted us with since the first modern day "flying saucer" sighting by Kenneth Arnold. There is no single -- or simple -- answer to this puzzle, and so the jigsaw eludes us as we continue to move the pieces about on the matrix board someone, or something else, has constructed for us. A neophyte can easily get lost in the maze of reports, landings, abductions, men in black encounters, cattle mutilations, trips to Mars, and government cover-ups. Its overwhelming, time consuming, and seems to lead to nowhere. You need more than a compass let me tell you that from years of experience as editor of UFO Universe and other nationally sold magazines on the topic.
Brad Steiger is that veteran, the General Patton of these "UFO Wars," who from his lofty position of forty plus years of UFO research, can manage to sort out at least some of the riff from the raff, the hoi from the polloi, and give us various answers that elude the most sincere but undereducated younger UFOlogist. This is best shown throughout the pages of Real Aliens, Space Beings, And Creatures From Other Worlds (Visible Ink, May, 2011)
I must admit in true disclosure fashion that I have been friends with Brad Steiger since we first shook hands at the largest indoor UFO convention every held. Organized by another “ole timer,” Jim Moseley managed to gather together over ten thousand of the faithful at the Hotel Commodore in Manhattan to hear some of the most popular UFO researchers of the era (i.e. John Keel, Dr Frank Stranges, Vi Venus, and special guest Roy Thinnes of the popular tv series The Invaders). Since than Steiger and I have consulted and shared information on numerous UFO and paranormal incidents. One of the first we worked on as a team was the case of Brian Scott who had, he claimed, been abducted along with a friend in the Superstition Mountain range outside Phoenix. The case remains unusual in that it was on going for many years and offered a bit more in the way of evidence than your typical UFO abduction episode (if there is such a thing as “typical” in this arena of research). The case also was ‘substantial” in that it l involved the participating of a number of high profile parapsychologists from the world of academia.
Let’s pass through one of Bob Lazar’s worm holes and go back to that point in time when Brad and I were need deep involved with the Bryan Scott abduction as excerpted from the Steiger’s most recent work...
In February 1976, UFO researcher Timothy Green Beckley conducted an extensive series of interviews with the contactee/abductee Brian Scott. At that time Scott was a thirty-two-year-old draftsman for a Mission Bejo firm and the father of two, who stated that he had been repeatedly taken aboard a strange craft piloted by beings from an alien planet.
Scott's first abduction reportedly occurred in the Arizona desert near Phoenix in 1971, and he claimed that another had just occurred on December 22, 1975, in Garden Grove, California. In between, Scott said, there were three other terrifying sessions with the aliens and repeated visits to his home by balls of light and a transparent being that called itself the Host.
Scott believed that his involvement with the alien beings began on his sixteenth birthday, October 12, 1959. He had been coming home from celebrating when he observed a ball of light hovering over his dog. The ball was oval shaped, semisolid, becoming more solid toward the center. It was six to eight inches in diameter and reddish-orange.
The ball of light came right at his head until it was just a few inches from his face--then it shot straight up. Scott believed that at that time he had received some sort of communication from the ball through thoughts and pictures that were apparently transmitted directly into his mind.
2011年4月21日星期四
Debunking Anti-Gold Propaganda
A meme is now circulating that gold is in a bubble and that it's time for the wise investor to sell. To me, that’s a ridiculous notion. Certainly a premature one.
It pays to remain as objective as you can be when analyzing any investment. People have a tendency to fall in love with an asset class, usually because it’s treated them so well. We saw that happen, most recently, with Internet stocks in the late ‘90s and houses up to 2007. Investment bubbles are driven primarily by emotion, although there's always some rationale for the emotion to latch on to. Perversely, when it comes to investing, reason is recruited mainly to provide cover for passion and preconception.
In the same way, people tend to hate certain investments unreasonably, usually at the bottom of a bear market, after they've lost a lot of money and thinking about the asset means reliving the pain and loss. Love-and-hate cycles occur for all investment classes.
But there’s only one investment I can think of that many people either love or hate reflexively, almost without regard to market performance: gold. And, to a lesser degree, silver. It’s strange that these two metals provoke such powerful psychological reactions – especially among people who dislike them. Nobody has an instinctive hatred of iron, copper, aluminum or cobalt. The reason, of course, is that the main use of gold has always been as money. And people have strong feelings about money. Let’s spend a moment looking at how gold’s fundamentals fit in with the psychology of the current market.
What Gold Is – and Why It’s Hated
Let me first disclose that I’ve always been favorably inclined toward gold, simply because I think money is a good thing. Not everyone feels that way, however. Some, with a Platonic view, think that money and commercial activity in general are degrading and beneath the “better” sort of people – although they’re a little hazy about how mankind rose above the level of living hand-to-mouth, grubbing for roots and berries. Some think it’s “the root of all evil,” a view that reflects a certain attitude toward the material world in general. Some (who have actually read St. Paul) think it’s just the love of money that’s the root of all evil. Some others see the utility of money but think it should be controlled somehow – as if only the proper authorities knew how to manage the dangerous substance.
From an economic viewpoint, however, money is just a medium of exchange and a store of value. Efforts to turn it into a political football invariably are a sign of a hidden agenda or perhaps a psychological aberration. But, that said, money does have a moral as well as an economic significance. And it’s important to get that out in the open and have it understood. My view is that money is a high moral good. It represents all the good things you hope to have, do and provide in the future. In a manner of speaking, it’s distilled life. That’s why it’s important to have a sound money, one that isn’t subject to political manipulation.
It pays to remain as objective as you can be when analyzing any investment. People have a tendency to fall in love with an asset class, usually because it’s treated them so well. We saw that happen, most recently, with Internet stocks in the late ‘90s and houses up to 2007. Investment bubbles are driven primarily by emotion, although there's always some rationale for the emotion to latch on to. Perversely, when it comes to investing, reason is recruited mainly to provide cover for passion and preconception.
In the same way, people tend to hate certain investments unreasonably, usually at the bottom of a bear market, after they've lost a lot of money and thinking about the asset means reliving the pain and loss. Love-and-hate cycles occur for all investment classes.
But there’s only one investment I can think of that many people either love or hate reflexively, almost without regard to market performance: gold. And, to a lesser degree, silver. It’s strange that these two metals provoke such powerful psychological reactions – especially among people who dislike them. Nobody has an instinctive hatred of iron, copper, aluminum or cobalt. The reason, of course, is that the main use of gold has always been as money. And people have strong feelings about money. Let’s spend a moment looking at how gold’s fundamentals fit in with the psychology of the current market.
What Gold Is – and Why It’s Hated
Let me first disclose that I’ve always been favorably inclined toward gold, simply because I think money is a good thing. Not everyone feels that way, however. Some, with a Platonic view, think that money and commercial activity in general are degrading and beneath the “better” sort of people – although they’re a little hazy about how mankind rose above the level of living hand-to-mouth, grubbing for roots and berries. Some think it’s “the root of all evil,” a view that reflects a certain attitude toward the material world in general. Some (who have actually read St. Paul) think it’s just the love of money that’s the root of all evil. Some others see the utility of money but think it should be controlled somehow – as if only the proper authorities knew how to manage the dangerous substance.
From an economic viewpoint, however, money is just a medium of exchange and a store of value. Efforts to turn it into a political football invariably are a sign of a hidden agenda or perhaps a psychological aberration. But, that said, money does have a moral as well as an economic significance. And it’s important to get that out in the open and have it understood. My view is that money is a high moral good. It represents all the good things you hope to have, do and provide in the future. In a manner of speaking, it’s distilled life. That’s why it’s important to have a sound money, one that isn’t subject to political manipulation.
2011年4月20日星期三
The science of the tandem draft
Sir Isaac Newton died 220 years before Bill France sat down with a group of race car owners at the Streamline Hotel and founded NASCAR in 1948. But Newton's laws of motion -- three physical laws that describe the relationship between the forces acting on an object and its motion due to those forces -- are behind almost every decision made when engineers look for mechanical competitive advantages in today's NASCAR.
To explain what's happening to a Cup car at high rates of speed, particularly with the recent phenomenon of two-car bump drafting, I turned to three NASCAR engineers to help explain the physics behind the performance.
-- Steve Hallam is executive vice president of competition for Michael Waltrip Racing. A graduate of Loughborough University in England, Hallam previously worked in Formula 1, first as the track engineer for Team Lotus and then heading up McLaren's F1 efforts. After three decades and six world championships in open-wheel racing, Hallam moved to NASCAR in 2009 as director of race engineering for MWR.
-- Travis Geisler is competition director for Penske Racing. A former go kart racer who earned his degree in mechanical engineering from Vanderbilt University, Geisler drove in both the ARCA Series and the Nationwide Series. He joined Robert Yates Racing as a race engineer, and has worked as team engineer and crew chief at Penske.
-- Steve Hoegler is team engineer for Clint Bowyer's No. 33 Chevrolet as part of Richard Childress Racing, A native of Cleveland, Hoegler earned his mechanical engineering degree from Ohio University. After working for Petty Enterprises and Hall of Fame Racing, Hoegler joined RCR three seasons ago and works hand-in-hand with crew chief Shane Wilson.
"Everything can be traced back to Newton's three laws of motion, which basically define how we operate today," Hallam said. "You can reduce pretty well everything back to force equals mass times acceleration."
And it's especially true when engineers try to determine the physics behind the push drafting now prevalent at superspeedways such as Daytona and Talladega. It's all about fluid dynamics: moving air out of the way in an effort to get through it as cleanly as possible, while keeping enough air around to provide sufficient thrust while cooling the engine.
To explain what's happening to a Cup car at high rates of speed, particularly with the recent phenomenon of two-car bump drafting, I turned to three NASCAR engineers to help explain the physics behind the performance.
-- Steve Hallam is executive vice president of competition for Michael Waltrip Racing. A graduate of Loughborough University in England, Hallam previously worked in Formula 1, first as the track engineer for Team Lotus and then heading up McLaren's F1 efforts. After three decades and six world championships in open-wheel racing, Hallam moved to NASCAR in 2009 as director of race engineering for MWR.
-- Travis Geisler is competition director for Penske Racing. A former go kart racer who earned his degree in mechanical engineering from Vanderbilt University, Geisler drove in both the ARCA Series and the Nationwide Series. He joined Robert Yates Racing as a race engineer, and has worked as team engineer and crew chief at Penske.
-- Steve Hoegler is team engineer for Clint Bowyer's No. 33 Chevrolet as part of Richard Childress Racing, A native of Cleveland, Hoegler earned his mechanical engineering degree from Ohio University. After working for Petty Enterprises and Hall of Fame Racing, Hoegler joined RCR three seasons ago and works hand-in-hand with crew chief Shane Wilson.
"Everything can be traced back to Newton's three laws of motion, which basically define how we operate today," Hallam said. "You can reduce pretty well everything back to force equals mass times acceleration."
And it's especially true when engineers try to determine the physics behind the push drafting now prevalent at superspeedways such as Daytona and Talladega. It's all about fluid dynamics: moving air out of the way in an effort to get through it as cleanly as possible, while keeping enough air around to provide sufficient thrust while cooling the engine.
2011年4月19日星期二
Appreciate jazz at Littleton Museum
It’s Jazz Appreciation Month. The Littleton Museum will present the After Midnight Jazz Band, led by clarinetist Roger Campbell of Highlands Ranch, at 7 p.m. April 27. This sextet, formed in 1997, will perform a tribute to Lionel Hampton. Instrumentalists featured: Campbell, clarinet; Rick Weingarten Vibraphone and vocals; Jerry Weiss, piano; Herrick “Ced” Forsyth, bass; Mike McCullough, guitar and vocals; Jim Moore, drums. (A vibraphone is similar to a marimba, but with metal bars that have vibrato. Free tickets are available at the museum, 6028 S. Gallup St. Seating is limited.
Englewood Presents Mozart — “Gran Partita” Serenade No. 10 for Winds in B-flat major at 2 p.m. April 23, with Colorado Symphony wind players. The concert will be at Hampden Hall in Englewood Civic Center, 1000 Englewood Parkway.
Artist Pat Dall of Littleton has an exhibit of her work at the Highlands Ranch Library, 9292 Ridgeline Blvd., through April. Dall also won Best in Show at the “Mixed Bag” show at the Depot Art Center in Littleton. Her paintings reflect travels and an interest in relationships between people.
“An Affair of the Heart,” presented at 7 p.m. April 26 at Bemis Library, 6014 S. Datura St., Littleton, is a dramatic presentation about the close relationships Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the U.S,, had with several women. It draws on letters and personal documents.
Englewood Presents Mozart — “Gran Partita” Serenade No. 10 for Winds in B-flat major at 2 p.m. April 23, with Colorado Symphony wind players. The concert will be at Hampden Hall in Englewood Civic Center, 1000 Englewood Parkway.
Artist Pat Dall of Littleton has an exhibit of her work at the Highlands Ranch Library, 9292 Ridgeline Blvd., through April. Dall also won Best in Show at the “Mixed Bag” show at the Depot Art Center in Littleton. Her paintings reflect travels and an interest in relationships between people.
“An Affair of the Heart,” presented at 7 p.m. April 26 at Bemis Library, 6014 S. Datura St., Littleton, is a dramatic presentation about the close relationships Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the U.S,, had with several women. It draws on letters and personal documents.
2011年4月18日星期一
Notional Significance: Disinterment
The entry to Bolton St cemetery is unremarkable: a gap in a white fence off a respectable street, a canopy of pines, plain crosses against a corrugated iron fence. But I know that I’m passing into a territory that would have the earth-magic wing of the psychogeographical movement panting with occult excitement. Iain Sinclair or Peter Ackroyd would have a field day with the plethora of obelisks, resonant names and eroded inscriptions, but wouldn’t that be the case with any cemetery? It’s like shooting mystical fish in a semiotic barrel. Nevertheless, certain monuments catch my attention, so I decide to play along.
Broken Pillar
There’s a broken marble column near the entrance, and at first I file this away as a symptom of vandalism or neglect, but a closer examination of the carving shows the break to be too clean. A shattered pillar seems like an obvious signifier (a life cut short; the futility and imperfection of human endeavour; all that Ozymandian sort of thing), but a little research unearths other connections. The Broken Column is an important symbol in Freemasonry, though perhaps a relatively recent one. What’s more, it seems that some Masons map the Three Great Pillars of Masonry to the Kabbalistic Sephiroth, and when the central column of Beauty is broken, it represents Man’s separation from divine knowledge: the severed pathway between Beauty and the Infinite. But in this place it was the act of building a pathway that caused a severance, tearing the cemetery in two when the motorway smashed its way through. Beauty and the Divine were certainly not on the Ministry of Works’ agenda.
As the path winds down into a severed gully, past other broken columns, I remember back to one of my first walks in Wellington, what seems like many decades ago. It was a gloomy, misty Sunday, with low cloud whipping through the treetops and fine rain drifting down through the dark foliage. The graves seemed shattered, lonely and abandoned, overgrown by indifferent vegetation, and my (shamefully Eurocentric) imagination turned this into a science fiction movie: a doomed colony on an alien world, the last remaining settlers burying their dwindling colleagues as the host planet erased their hubristic attempts at replicating home. Even today, in the brightness of late summer, the drooping aerial pohutukawa roots can seem monstrous, and by the time that I realise that they are also invaders here, I know it’s time to move on before my allegories tangle themselves into total incoherence.
But first, I come across a grave that even I can see is explicitly Masonic. The compass and set-square make that clear, even if I had to go back and look up the capital G (for God and Geometry, and perhaps for Gnosis), the stone ashlar, the tessellated pavement and the uneven columns topped with terrestrial and celestial globes. This lavish memorial to Captain Henry Tucker was erected by Captain Edwin Stafford, who later completed their pact by joining him in the grave. Such dedication would seem unusual today without a more intimate connection, and I wonder whether a different interpretation could be put upon the two upstanding columns than the Boaz and Jachin of Masonic lore. But it would be prurient and pointless to speculate about what the Herald called “the fine feelings, and the rare sentiment” between these two men. The pillars have been toppled in the past by falling trees and ‘60s yobbos (“because there’s nothing else to do in Wellington on a Sunday”), but they escaped the bulldozers. Their friendship can stand on its own terms.
Masonic Pillars
Other monuments were not so lucky. Mass graves are not something one expects in New Zealand — they seem to belong to another world, a world of pogroms and plague pits — but the remains of 3,693 people are crammed into a “memorial vault” on the other side of the highway, their original tombstones scattered through the remainder of the cemetery. Time is a commodity that we can only value when it’s in our grasp: we’ll willingly mangle or erase the past to save a few seconds in the present, all the while burning through the resources of the future. Whole books could be written on the saga of the Foothill Motorway, but for the moment I’ll just mention that in 1965 a Councillor Morrison was reported as saying that “although some other transport system might be technically preferable the important consideration was that the National Roads Board had the money and was prepared to spend it.” Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
But the catastrophic changes wrought by the motorway construction were not the only reason why Margaret H. Alington called her history of the cemetery Unquiet Earth. From the start, this burial ground was fraught with contention, chaos and perturbation. Even before the land was granted, the plans were beset by sectarian squabbles and high moral dudgeon, and the land was frequently assaulted by encroachments, road-building and park construction as well as the natural hazards of fire, wind and landslides. Exhumation is nothing new, since overcrowding often resulted in the accidental unearthing of unmarked remains when new graves were being dug. It was alleged that some of these were quietly and unceremoniously dumped, and in one disturbing instance a child’s coffin lay in the adjacent stream for years. On many occasions the Inspector of Nuisances was called in to investigate “putrefactive fermentation”, “human corruption” and “foul miasmata”, and the sextons often had to battle vandalism, rubbish dumping from opportunistic neighbours and the nocturnal occurrence of what were decorously described as “improprieties”. Some of those activities may still be popular, if the infamous Wellingtonista “Spot the Dog” post is anything to go by, and perhaps the incongruous amphitheatre that overlooks the mass grave sometimes attracts an audience keen on improvised erotic theatre. Today, the only action is a pair of conservatively-dressed men practicing Tai Chi moves, their graceful movements tracing slow arcs above the restless resting place of thousands.
Broken Pillar
There’s a broken marble column near the entrance, and at first I file this away as a symptom of vandalism or neglect, but a closer examination of the carving shows the break to be too clean. A shattered pillar seems like an obvious signifier (a life cut short; the futility and imperfection of human endeavour; all that Ozymandian sort of thing), but a little research unearths other connections. The Broken Column is an important symbol in Freemasonry, though perhaps a relatively recent one. What’s more, it seems that some Masons map the Three Great Pillars of Masonry to the Kabbalistic Sephiroth, and when the central column of Beauty is broken, it represents Man’s separation from divine knowledge: the severed pathway between Beauty and the Infinite. But in this place it was the act of building a pathway that caused a severance, tearing the cemetery in two when the motorway smashed its way through. Beauty and the Divine were certainly not on the Ministry of Works’ agenda.
As the path winds down into a severed gully, past other broken columns, I remember back to one of my first walks in Wellington, what seems like many decades ago. It was a gloomy, misty Sunday, with low cloud whipping through the treetops and fine rain drifting down through the dark foliage. The graves seemed shattered, lonely and abandoned, overgrown by indifferent vegetation, and my (shamefully Eurocentric) imagination turned this into a science fiction movie: a doomed colony on an alien world, the last remaining settlers burying their dwindling colleagues as the host planet erased their hubristic attempts at replicating home. Even today, in the brightness of late summer, the drooping aerial pohutukawa roots can seem monstrous, and by the time that I realise that they are also invaders here, I know it’s time to move on before my allegories tangle themselves into total incoherence.
But first, I come across a grave that even I can see is explicitly Masonic. The compass and set-square make that clear, even if I had to go back and look up the capital G (for God and Geometry, and perhaps for Gnosis), the stone ashlar, the tessellated pavement and the uneven columns topped with terrestrial and celestial globes. This lavish memorial to Captain Henry Tucker was erected by Captain Edwin Stafford, who later completed their pact by joining him in the grave. Such dedication would seem unusual today without a more intimate connection, and I wonder whether a different interpretation could be put upon the two upstanding columns than the Boaz and Jachin of Masonic lore. But it would be prurient and pointless to speculate about what the Herald called “the fine feelings, and the rare sentiment” between these two men. The pillars have been toppled in the past by falling trees and ‘60s yobbos (“because there’s nothing else to do in Wellington on a Sunday”), but they escaped the bulldozers. Their friendship can stand on its own terms.
Masonic Pillars
Other monuments were not so lucky. Mass graves are not something one expects in New Zealand — they seem to belong to another world, a world of pogroms and plague pits — but the remains of 3,693 people are crammed into a “memorial vault” on the other side of the highway, their original tombstones scattered through the remainder of the cemetery. Time is a commodity that we can only value when it’s in our grasp: we’ll willingly mangle or erase the past to save a few seconds in the present, all the while burning through the resources of the future. Whole books could be written on the saga of the Foothill Motorway, but for the moment I’ll just mention that in 1965 a Councillor Morrison was reported as saying that “although some other transport system might be technically preferable the important consideration was that the National Roads Board had the money and was prepared to spend it.” Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
But the catastrophic changes wrought by the motorway construction were not the only reason why Margaret H. Alington called her history of the cemetery Unquiet Earth. From the start, this burial ground was fraught with contention, chaos and perturbation. Even before the land was granted, the plans were beset by sectarian squabbles and high moral dudgeon, and the land was frequently assaulted by encroachments, road-building and park construction as well as the natural hazards of fire, wind and landslides. Exhumation is nothing new, since overcrowding often resulted in the accidental unearthing of unmarked remains when new graves were being dug. It was alleged that some of these were quietly and unceremoniously dumped, and in one disturbing instance a child’s coffin lay in the adjacent stream for years. On many occasions the Inspector of Nuisances was called in to investigate “putrefactive fermentation”, “human corruption” and “foul miasmata”, and the sextons often had to battle vandalism, rubbish dumping from opportunistic neighbours and the nocturnal occurrence of what were decorously described as “improprieties”. Some of those activities may still be popular, if the infamous Wellingtonista “Spot the Dog” post is anything to go by, and perhaps the incongruous amphitheatre that overlooks the mass grave sometimes attracts an audience keen on improvised erotic theatre. Today, the only action is a pair of conservatively-dressed men practicing Tai Chi moves, their graceful movements tracing slow arcs above the restless resting place of thousands.
2011年4月17日星期日
Spread the Smile
A love for dance keeps a memory alive.
A dance workshop - "Spread the Smile: A Day of Dance to Connect the World One Smile at a Time" - will be Saturday in Decker Auditorium at Iowa Central Community College.
The workshop is offered by the Katie Lunn Memorial Fund, created in memory of the 26-year-old woman who was killed April 16, 2010, in a car-train accident in Chicago. She was the daughter of Julie and Jerry Lunn, of Manson.
"Katie's love for dance began when our family returned to Fort Dodge," Julie Lunn said. "She was in fifth grade and began taking dance at Hollingsworth Dance studio. Her love for people and teaching came early in life - she had a passion for the art of dance and decided in her senior year of high school that she wanted to pursue this as her career.
"She auditioned for Oklahoma City University in Oklahoma and was accepted into the program. She was so excited. After completing her four-year degree, she was offered a job at The School Of Performing Arts in Napperville, Ill. She accepted the position and began her passion. She also told Jerry and me, 'I am so lucky to be doing what I love.'"
Julie Lunn said one her daughter's favorite sayings was "Live. Always do what you love."
Then she added, "The great thing about Katie was she shared her love with others and truly did want to make a difference in the world and teach young students the passion she had for the art of dance."
Saturday's workshop will bring dance masters Kelly Beamish and Nick Drago to Fort Dodge.
Beamish, also a graduate of Oklahoma City University, is a featured perform in Ice Cube's comeback video and performed in Disney's "The High School Musical." She also has toured with the "Curtis Adams Magic that Rocks Show."
Drago, another graduate of Oklahoma City University, has appeared in music videos with Jessica Simpson, Duran Duran and Melody Gardot and has many acting credits and appearances in dance companies nationwide. He teaches and choreographs.
The day will include hip hop and jazz classes for students followed by a performance featuring those students both in the morning and in the afternoon. Morning sessions are for student ages 5 to 12, and afternoon sessions are for student 13 and older.
Cost of the workshop is $15. All proceeds will benefit the Katie Lunn Memorial Fund.
Julie Lunn said her daughter's message to everyone was to "fulfill our dreams and never forget to pay it forward" and this memorial fund has been established to do that.
A dance workshop - "Spread the Smile: A Day of Dance to Connect the World One Smile at a Time" - will be Saturday in Decker Auditorium at Iowa Central Community College.
The workshop is offered by the Katie Lunn Memorial Fund, created in memory of the 26-year-old woman who was killed April 16, 2010, in a car-train accident in Chicago. She was the daughter of Julie and Jerry Lunn, of Manson.
"Katie's love for dance began when our family returned to Fort Dodge," Julie Lunn said. "She was in fifth grade and began taking dance at Hollingsworth Dance studio. Her love for people and teaching came early in life - she had a passion for the art of dance and decided in her senior year of high school that she wanted to pursue this as her career.
"She auditioned for Oklahoma City University in Oklahoma and was accepted into the program. She was so excited. After completing her four-year degree, she was offered a job at The School Of Performing Arts in Napperville, Ill. She accepted the position and began her passion. She also told Jerry and me, 'I am so lucky to be doing what I love.'"
Julie Lunn said one her daughter's favorite sayings was "Live. Always do what you love."
Then she added, "The great thing about Katie was she shared her love with others and truly did want to make a difference in the world and teach young students the passion she had for the art of dance."
Saturday's workshop will bring dance masters Kelly Beamish and Nick Drago to Fort Dodge.
Beamish, also a graduate of Oklahoma City University, is a featured perform in Ice Cube's comeback video and performed in Disney's "The High School Musical." She also has toured with the "Curtis Adams Magic that Rocks Show."
Drago, another graduate of Oklahoma City University, has appeared in music videos with Jessica Simpson, Duran Duran and Melody Gardot and has many acting credits and appearances in dance companies nationwide. He teaches and choreographs.
The day will include hip hop and jazz classes for students followed by a performance featuring those students both in the morning and in the afternoon. Morning sessions are for student ages 5 to 12, and afternoon sessions are for student 13 and older.
Cost of the workshop is $15. All proceeds will benefit the Katie Lunn Memorial Fund.
Julie Lunn said her daughter's message to everyone was to "fulfill our dreams and never forget to pay it forward" and this memorial fund has been established to do that.
2011年4月14日星期四
The Robfather and Chief Featherbrain
In his "Previously on Survivor" opening spiel, Jeff Probst said of Matt, aka, Dr. Jesus: "Matt's time on Redemption Island finally came to an end," when he should have said: "Dr. Jesus's time on Zombie Island finally came to a momentary pause."
Dr. Jesus waxed philosophical about his second blindside. He shouldn't. He's not good at it. "First and Foremost, I'd like to congratulate myself on being the most naive person ever to play the game of Survivor." As always, he gives himself too much credit. Erik letting the girls talk him into giving away his Hidden Immunity Idol, and then instantly voting him out on Survivor: Micronesia, the time James got voted out while he had two Immunity Idol in his pocket (but he was also glad to see me), and of course, JT giving his idol to Russell a year ago, were all more naive than Dr. Jesus's boneheaded play last week. He gets, at best, 4th place. Or rather 5th, also behind Tyson, the idiot who managed to vote himself out in Survivor: Heroes vs Villains.
Dr. Jesus also said: "I am reaping the benefits of my shame." Actually Doc, you're reaping the shame of your stupidity.
Dr. Jesus had a chat with his imaginary god as he put on his socks. (It was a formal chat.) He blathered on about how it was God's Will that he return to Zombie Island, though he remains puzzled by his god's will. I remain puzzled as to how someone allegedly in pre-med could believe in an all-powerful being running the entire universe that nonetheless has time to plot out and micro-manage every tiny detail of Dr. Jesus's life for him. Man, he's stupid. The concept that who wins a TV game show is utterly unimportant in any "Great Scheme of Things" doesn't cross his tiny mind.
He summed it up with a lyrical bit of idiot reasoning: "I trust You. This is Your will, You using my stupidity for Your glory." I'll give his imaginary god props for using the only resource available to Her, Dr. Jesus's stupidity, though I can't help wondering about a few things:
1. Wouldn't it have reflected greater glory on Dr. Jesus's god if She had created The Doc as intelligent instead of hopelessly dumb?
2. Hasn't Dr. Jesus's imaginary god got any more worthwhile goals than just receiving greater and greater glory all the time? Why is the highest thing a human can do heaping further glory on this Divine Egomaniac? His god sounds like a Roman Emperor.
3. Is a god that is so utterly consumed by Her ego that She must seek "glory" all the time, and constantly be praised by her human minions, really worth worshiping? Wouldn't ending world hunger, or ending disease, or ending warfare be a more worthwhile goal than seeking glory through Dr. Jesus's admittedly abundant stupidity playing out on a TV game show?
4. I guess poor God is stuck having to employ the stupidity of Her followers, because smart people know better than to fall for The Christian Con.
Back at Camp Winnie-the-Pooh (Rob named it "Murlonio" after one of his wife's stuffed animals.), David and Mike had to congratulate Rob on the brilliance of his "mob hit" on Dr. Jesus. Rob smiled, thanked them, and kept them on his hit list.
Julie felt the voting out of Dr. Jesus was cold-blooded. "Do you not have any feeling at all for a human being?" Julie, what game are you playing? Nice Guy Island? Rob is playing Survivor. And if you don't start playing it too, you will be joining the jury.
Knowing they are in big trouble numbers-wise, the former Viva Zapatans were scrambling. Mansweater tried to pump Ashley-or-Andrea and Natalie, but hit a stone wall of "We don't know." I'll bet every teacher they ever had was used to hearing that sentence from them.
Mansweater tried offering a deal to them for final three votes, but they couldn't discuss betraying Rob without written permission from Rob and Major League Baseball.
Rob is playing a master's game. He's re-solidified his team, got them refusing to talk with the other tribe, encouraging them to be arrogant and rude to the other tribe, while he himself remains the soul of diplomacy and reasonableness. Brilliant. And he knows that Phillip, aka Agent Dumb Ass, needs little encouragement to be arrogant, superior, and insane.
Natalie reported Mansweater's approach back to Rob, and Ashley-or-Andrea didn't. Oops. Now Rob knows that Ashley-or-Andrea was given an offer that she didn't report back to The Robfather. Fredo, you broke my heart. All deal offers from Viva Zapatans must be reported to Rob in triplicate.a
Dr. Jesus waxed philosophical about his second blindside. He shouldn't. He's not good at it. "First and Foremost, I'd like to congratulate myself on being the most naive person ever to play the game of Survivor." As always, he gives himself too much credit. Erik letting the girls talk him into giving away his Hidden Immunity Idol, and then instantly voting him out on Survivor: Micronesia, the time James got voted out while he had two Immunity Idol in his pocket (but he was also glad to see me), and of course, JT giving his idol to Russell a year ago, were all more naive than Dr. Jesus's boneheaded play last week. He gets, at best, 4th place. Or rather 5th, also behind Tyson, the idiot who managed to vote himself out in Survivor: Heroes vs Villains.
Dr. Jesus also said: "I am reaping the benefits of my shame." Actually Doc, you're reaping the shame of your stupidity.
Dr. Jesus had a chat with his imaginary god as he put on his socks. (It was a formal chat.) He blathered on about how it was God's Will that he return to Zombie Island, though he remains puzzled by his god's will. I remain puzzled as to how someone allegedly in pre-med could believe in an all-powerful being running the entire universe that nonetheless has time to plot out and micro-manage every tiny detail of Dr. Jesus's life for him. Man, he's stupid. The concept that who wins a TV game show is utterly unimportant in any "Great Scheme of Things" doesn't cross his tiny mind.
He summed it up with a lyrical bit of idiot reasoning: "I trust You. This is Your will, You using my stupidity for Your glory." I'll give his imaginary god props for using the only resource available to Her, Dr. Jesus's stupidity, though I can't help wondering about a few things:
1. Wouldn't it have reflected greater glory on Dr. Jesus's god if She had created The Doc as intelligent instead of hopelessly dumb?
2. Hasn't Dr. Jesus's imaginary god got any more worthwhile goals than just receiving greater and greater glory all the time? Why is the highest thing a human can do heaping further glory on this Divine Egomaniac? His god sounds like a Roman Emperor.
3. Is a god that is so utterly consumed by Her ego that She must seek "glory" all the time, and constantly be praised by her human minions, really worth worshiping? Wouldn't ending world hunger, or ending disease, or ending warfare be a more worthwhile goal than seeking glory through Dr. Jesus's admittedly abundant stupidity playing out on a TV game show?
4. I guess poor God is stuck having to employ the stupidity of Her followers, because smart people know better than to fall for The Christian Con.
Back at Camp Winnie-the-Pooh (Rob named it "Murlonio" after one of his wife's stuffed animals.), David and Mike had to congratulate Rob on the brilliance of his "mob hit" on Dr. Jesus. Rob smiled, thanked them, and kept them on his hit list.
Julie felt the voting out of Dr. Jesus was cold-blooded. "Do you not have any feeling at all for a human being?" Julie, what game are you playing? Nice Guy Island? Rob is playing Survivor. And if you don't start playing it too, you will be joining the jury.
Knowing they are in big trouble numbers-wise, the former Viva Zapatans were scrambling. Mansweater tried to pump Ashley-or-Andrea and Natalie, but hit a stone wall of "We don't know." I'll bet every teacher they ever had was used to hearing that sentence from them.
Mansweater tried offering a deal to them for final three votes, but they couldn't discuss betraying Rob without written permission from Rob and Major League Baseball.
Rob is playing a master's game. He's re-solidified his team, got them refusing to talk with the other tribe, encouraging them to be arrogant and rude to the other tribe, while he himself remains the soul of diplomacy and reasonableness. Brilliant. And he knows that Phillip, aka Agent Dumb Ass, needs little encouragement to be arrogant, superior, and insane.
Natalie reported Mansweater's approach back to Rob, and Ashley-or-Andrea didn't. Oops. Now Rob knows that Ashley-or-Andrea was given an offer that she didn't report back to The Robfather. Fredo, you broke my heart. All deal offers from Viva Zapatans must be reported to Rob in triplicate.a
2011年4月13日星期三
Magic Coffee Beans Save you From Scalding Coffee
Young inventors Dave Petrillo and Dave Jackson may have solved a problem that has frustrated many an office warrior – the scalding cup of coffee. But It's not just their product that's innovative. The funding for their Coffee Joulies, a product that cools scalding drinks down to their optimal temperature and keeps the drink at its optimal drinking level, came from a social media site that facilitates crowd-sourced funding for entrepreneurs: Kickstarter.
So what is a Coffee Joulie, and why would I want it anywhere near my cup of Joe? The small bean-shaped stainless steel Joulies are each about the size of a large ice magic cube and are filled with a non-toxic material designed to regulate the temperature of hot beverages. "If you can deal with ice in your drink, you can deal with these in your drink," says Petrillo.
The liquid found inside the Joulies is the key ingredient that regulates a steaming cup of coffee. The substance (its formula is a trade secret) liquefies as it absorbs heat until it reaches 140 degrees Fahrenheit. At that point, the substance starts to harden again, releasing stored energy and keeping the temperature of the cup around 140 degrees.
The beans last a lifetime with proper care (think silverware), and are completely safe, according to the two Daves. "The mug you drink your coffee out of is probably made out of the same stainless steel [the beans are made from], so there is absolutely no problem there. The stuff that's inside is completely edible and food based. It's so non-toxic that you could drink it," Jackson told ABC News.
Social Kickstart
Kickstarter is a two-year-old company that has becoming the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. So far, 500,000 people have pledged over $50 million to start-ups just like Dave and Dave's Joulies, getting rewards like products for their investment (you won't get a piece of the new Facebook here).
"It's like a farmer's market where you're talking to the guy who is growing your food," Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler told ABC News.
The site allows people to post their ideas and concepts and ask for "pledges" from Kickstarter's user base. If the combined pledges reach the goal set by the entrepreneur (or surpasses it), they get the money, minus a 5 percent fee for Kickstarter. If funding does not hit the goal, no money changes hands, so it is for companies with products and/or hard start and end points.
So what is a Coffee Joulie, and why would I want it anywhere near my cup of Joe? The small bean-shaped stainless steel Joulies are each about the size of a large ice magic cube and are filled with a non-toxic material designed to regulate the temperature of hot beverages. "If you can deal with ice in your drink, you can deal with these in your drink," says Petrillo.
The liquid found inside the Joulies is the key ingredient that regulates a steaming cup of coffee. The substance (its formula is a trade secret) liquefies as it absorbs heat until it reaches 140 degrees Fahrenheit. At that point, the substance starts to harden again, releasing stored energy and keeping the temperature of the cup around 140 degrees.
The beans last a lifetime with proper care (think silverware), and are completely safe, according to the two Daves. "The mug you drink your coffee out of is probably made out of the same stainless steel [the beans are made from], so there is absolutely no problem there. The stuff that's inside is completely edible and food based. It's so non-toxic that you could drink it," Jackson told ABC News.
Social Kickstart
Kickstarter is a two-year-old company that has becoming the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. So far, 500,000 people have pledged over $50 million to start-ups just like Dave and Dave's Joulies, getting rewards like products for their investment (you won't get a piece of the new Facebook here).
"It's like a farmer's market where you're talking to the guy who is growing your food," Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler told ABC News.
The site allows people to post their ideas and concepts and ask for "pledges" from Kickstarter's user base. If the combined pledges reach the goal set by the entrepreneur (or surpasses it), they get the money, minus a 5 percent fee for Kickstarter. If funding does not hit the goal, no money changes hands, so it is for companies with products and/or hard start and end points.
2011年4月11日星期一
YouTube videos a profitable sideline for Temple student
Charming in a goofy way, Rob Homayoon, a 25-year-old dental student at Temple, has found a way to make money for himself by creating origami paper cranes and solving Rubik's Cube on YouTube.
"Hey, hey, what's going on," Homayoon begins, making a silly face in one of his most recent videos on YouTube, the Google-owned website that collects videos posted by individuals and companies.
"I made it a little bit easier for those of you who think you're funny and post your little comments below saying, 'Oh My God, pause at zero colon zero three, his face is sooo funny.'
"Just remember, you can't pause real life," he said.
But we can pause right here to let you know how Homayoon is making his money ($70,000 since 2008) and why.
YouTube's publicists are touting Homayoon as a success story in their partnership program, which could also be titled "Feeding the Beast," although YouTube doesn't call it that.
Kate Rose, a YouTube spokeswoman, explains: YouTube gets two billion video views a day, or 14 billion a week. Meanwhile, it has managed to monetize three billion video views a week and would love to monetize more.
Monetize is the magic word, meaning YouTube has been able to attract companies to pay to place their advertisements on various videos. Advertisers like good content, especially when it comes with a reliable and large audience.
The bigger and more reliable the audience, the more they are willing to pay in a process that works like an auction, as advertisers bid up for the best spots.
That's where Homayoon comes in.
His early videos on solving Rubik's Cube attracted enough of a following that he set up his own channel, "Rob's World."
As his audience grew, he applied to become a YouTube partner. He qualified because he had built an audience by producing his own top-quality videos using his own material. YouTube doesn't get much more specific about its partner threshold.
As of Friday morning, Rob's World had 24.9 million uploads and 64,525 subscribers wanting to be notified every time Homayoon posts a new video. That's quantity and reliability.
"Millions of viewers translates to thousands of dollars" for the video's creators, said Annie Baxter, another YouTube spokeswoman. "That's a rough guide."
The more the advertisers pay, the more both Homayoon and YouTube earn. YouTube wouldn't discuss the arrangement, but Homayoon said it was an 80-20 revenue split, with Homayoon getting the 80 percent share.
The money works as an incentive to keep creative people such as Homayoon producing quality videos "and to actually treat it like a job," Baxter said.
"The more people who treat it like a job and produce quality videos, the more people who will come back to YouTube," she said. "That's going to grow more quality programming to run advertising against."
Homayoon works to build views. His most successful video, now a year old, was an eight-minute, 37-second tutorial on making origami paper cranes. Now he's back with a new video that promotes making paper cranes as a way to raise money for tsunami victims in Japan.
Everything on his channel links to everything else, so every click around the channel adds to his statistics, making him more valuable. He constantly invites comments and responds to them, building his community - and his viewership.
The videos are shot in his apartment, nothing very elegant - a few bookshelves in the background. "I'm showing that I'm in my apartment and that I'm doing it all by myself," said Homayoon, who lives in Germantown.
"It is really hard to balance my life, school, and YouTube," he said. "This could be a full-time job, if I really wanted it to be."
His subscribers, he said, hound him if he doesn't produce. They comment, "When is your next video? Are you dead?"
"They get pretty funny on the comments," Homayoon said. "They want to know there is a person behind the video."
At first, he kept it simple, just posting whatever he could create in a few hours. But now, he said, it takes him days to produce a video and he has invested in a better camera. (Just the type of behavior YouTube wants.)
"When I first started, I got $100," he said, "and I thought, 'I can pay for my gas with this. I can go out to dinner.' Then it went up to $400 or $600 and eventually, I started into $1,000, then $2,000.
"Hey, hey, what's going on," Homayoon begins, making a silly face in one of his most recent videos on YouTube, the Google-owned website that collects videos posted by individuals and companies.
"I made it a little bit easier for those of you who think you're funny and post your little comments below saying, 'Oh My God, pause at zero colon zero three, his face is sooo funny.'
"Just remember, you can't pause real life," he said.
But we can pause right here to let you know how Homayoon is making his money ($70,000 since 2008) and why.
YouTube's publicists are touting Homayoon as a success story in their partnership program, which could also be titled "Feeding the Beast," although YouTube doesn't call it that.
Kate Rose, a YouTube spokeswoman, explains: YouTube gets two billion video views a day, or 14 billion a week. Meanwhile, it has managed to monetize three billion video views a week and would love to monetize more.
Monetize is the magic word, meaning YouTube has been able to attract companies to pay to place their advertisements on various videos. Advertisers like good content, especially when it comes with a reliable and large audience.
The bigger and more reliable the audience, the more they are willing to pay in a process that works like an auction, as advertisers bid up for the best spots.
That's where Homayoon comes in.
His early videos on solving Rubik's Cube attracted enough of a following that he set up his own channel, "Rob's World."
As his audience grew, he applied to become a YouTube partner. He qualified because he had built an audience by producing his own top-quality videos using his own material. YouTube doesn't get much more specific about its partner threshold.
As of Friday morning, Rob's World had 24.9 million uploads and 64,525 subscribers wanting to be notified every time Homayoon posts a new video. That's quantity and reliability.
"Millions of viewers translates to thousands of dollars" for the video's creators, said Annie Baxter, another YouTube spokeswoman. "That's a rough guide."
The more the advertisers pay, the more both Homayoon and YouTube earn. YouTube wouldn't discuss the arrangement, but Homayoon said it was an 80-20 revenue split, with Homayoon getting the 80 percent share.
The money works as an incentive to keep creative people such as Homayoon producing quality videos "and to actually treat it like a job," Baxter said.
"The more people who treat it like a job and produce quality videos, the more people who will come back to YouTube," she said. "That's going to grow more quality programming to run advertising against."
Homayoon works to build views. His most successful video, now a year old, was an eight-minute, 37-second tutorial on making origami paper cranes. Now he's back with a new video that promotes making paper cranes as a way to raise money for tsunami victims in Japan.
Everything on his channel links to everything else, so every click around the channel adds to his statistics, making him more valuable. He constantly invites comments and responds to them, building his community - and his viewership.
The videos are shot in his apartment, nothing very elegant - a few bookshelves in the background. "I'm showing that I'm in my apartment and that I'm doing it all by myself," said Homayoon, who lives in Germantown.
"It is really hard to balance my life, school, and YouTube," he said. "This could be a full-time job, if I really wanted it to be."
His subscribers, he said, hound him if he doesn't produce. They comment, "When is your next video? Are you dead?"
"They get pretty funny on the comments," Homayoon said. "They want to know there is a person behind the video."
At first, he kept it simple, just posting whatever he could create in a few hours. But now, he said, it takes him days to produce a video and he has invested in a better camera. (Just the type of behavior YouTube wants.)
"When I first started, I got $100," he said, "and I thought, 'I can pay for my gas with this. I can go out to dinner.' Then it went up to $400 or $600 and eventually, I started into $1,000, then $2,000.
YouTube videos a profitable sideline for Temple student
Charming in a goofy way, Rob Homayoon, a 25-year-old dental student at Temple, has found a way to make money for himself by creating origami paper cranes and solving Rubik's Cube on YouTube.
"Hey, hey, what's going on," Homayoon begins, making a silly face in one of his most recent videos on YouTube, the Google-owned website that collects videos posted by individuals and companies.
"I made it a little bit easier for those of you who think you're funny and post your little comments below saying, 'Oh My God, pause at zero colon zero three, his face is sooo funny.'
"Just remember, you can't pause real life," he said.
But we can pause right here to let you know how Homayoon is making his money ($70,000 since 2008) and why.
YouTube's publicists are touting Homayoon as a success story in their partnership program, which could also be titled "Feeding the Beast," although YouTube doesn't call it that.
Kate Rose, a YouTube spokeswoman, explains: YouTube gets two billion video views a day, or 14 billion a week. Meanwhile, it has managed to monetize three billion video views a week and would love to monetize more.
Monetize is the magic word, meaning YouTube has been able to attract companies to pay to place their advertisements on various videos. Advertisers like good content, especially when it comes with a reliable and large audience.
The bigger and more reliable the audience, the more they are willing to pay in a process that works like an auction, as advertisers bid up for the best spots.
That's where Homayoon comes in.
His early videos on solving Rubik's Cube attracted enough of a following that he set up his own channel, "Rob's World."
As his audience grew, he applied to become a YouTube partner. He qualified because he had built an audience by producing his own top-quality videos using his own material. YouTube doesn't get much more specific about its partner threshold.
As of Friday morning, Rob's World had 24.9 million uploads and 64,525 subscribers wanting to be notified every time Homayoon posts a new video. That's quantity and reliability.
"Millions of viewers translates to thousands of dollars" for the video's creators, said Annie Baxter, another YouTube spokeswoman. "That's a rough guide."
The more the advertisers pay, the more both Homayoon and YouTube earn. YouTube wouldn't discuss the arrangement, but Homayoon said it was an 80-20 revenue split, with Homayoon getting the 80 percent share.
The money works as an incentive to keep creative people such as Homayoon producing quality videos "and to actually treat it like a job," Baxter said.
"The more people who treat it like a job and produce quality videos, the more people who will come back to YouTube," she said. "That's going to grow more quality programming to run advertising against."
Homayoon works to build views. His most successful video, now a year old, was an eight-minute, 37-second tutorial on making origami paper cranes. Now he's back with a new video that promotes making paper cranes as a way to raise money for tsunami victims in Japan.
Everything on his channel links to everything else, so every click around the channel adds to his statistics, making him more valuable. He constantly invites comments and responds to them, building his community - and his viewership.
The videos are shot in his apartment, nothing very elegant - a few bookshelves in the background. "I'm showing that I'm in my apartment and that I'm doing it all by myself," said Homayoon, who lives in Germantown.
"It is really hard to balance my life, school, and YouTube," he said. "This could be a full-time job, if I really wanted it to be."
His subscribers, he said, hound him if he doesn't produce. They comment, "When is your next video? Are you dead?"
"They get pretty funny on the comments," Homayoon said. "They want to know there is a person behind the video."
At first, he kept it simple, just posting whatever he could create in a few hours. But now, he said, it takes him days to produce a video and he has invested in a better camera. (Just the type of behavior YouTube wants.)
"Hey, hey, what's going on," Homayoon begins, making a silly face in one of his most recent videos on YouTube, the Google-owned website that collects videos posted by individuals and companies.
"I made it a little bit easier for those of you who think you're funny and post your little comments below saying, 'Oh My God, pause at zero colon zero three, his face is sooo funny.'
"Just remember, you can't pause real life," he said.
But we can pause right here to let you know how Homayoon is making his money ($70,000 since 2008) and why.
YouTube's publicists are touting Homayoon as a success story in their partnership program, which could also be titled "Feeding the Beast," although YouTube doesn't call it that.
Kate Rose, a YouTube spokeswoman, explains: YouTube gets two billion video views a day, or 14 billion a week. Meanwhile, it has managed to monetize three billion video views a week and would love to monetize more.
Monetize is the magic word, meaning YouTube has been able to attract companies to pay to place their advertisements on various videos. Advertisers like good content, especially when it comes with a reliable and large audience.
The bigger and more reliable the audience, the more they are willing to pay in a process that works like an auction, as advertisers bid up for the best spots.
That's where Homayoon comes in.
His early videos on solving Rubik's Cube attracted enough of a following that he set up his own channel, "Rob's World."
As his audience grew, he applied to become a YouTube partner. He qualified because he had built an audience by producing his own top-quality videos using his own material. YouTube doesn't get much more specific about its partner threshold.
As of Friday morning, Rob's World had 24.9 million uploads and 64,525 subscribers wanting to be notified every time Homayoon posts a new video. That's quantity and reliability.
"Millions of viewers translates to thousands of dollars" for the video's creators, said Annie Baxter, another YouTube spokeswoman. "That's a rough guide."
The more the advertisers pay, the more both Homayoon and YouTube earn. YouTube wouldn't discuss the arrangement, but Homayoon said it was an 80-20 revenue split, with Homayoon getting the 80 percent share.
The money works as an incentive to keep creative people such as Homayoon producing quality videos "and to actually treat it like a job," Baxter said.
"The more people who treat it like a job and produce quality videos, the more people who will come back to YouTube," she said. "That's going to grow more quality programming to run advertising against."
Homayoon works to build views. His most successful video, now a year old, was an eight-minute, 37-second tutorial on making origami paper cranes. Now he's back with a new video that promotes making paper cranes as a way to raise money for tsunami victims in Japan.
Everything on his channel links to everything else, so every click around the channel adds to his statistics, making him more valuable. He constantly invites comments and responds to them, building his community - and his viewership.
The videos are shot in his apartment, nothing very elegant - a few bookshelves in the background. "I'm showing that I'm in my apartment and that I'm doing it all by myself," said Homayoon, who lives in Germantown.
"It is really hard to balance my life, school, and YouTube," he said. "This could be a full-time job, if I really wanted it to be."
His subscribers, he said, hound him if he doesn't produce. They comment, "When is your next video? Are you dead?"
"They get pretty funny on the comments," Homayoon said. "They want to know there is a person behind the video."
At first, he kept it simple, just posting whatever he could create in a few hours. But now, he said, it takes him days to produce a video and he has invested in a better camera. (Just the type of behavior YouTube wants.)
2011年4月7日星期四
Other significant moments in hip-hop haberdashery
The DMV's own Wale is wearing a suit on cover of Self Made, Vol. 1, the forthcoming project from the artists signed to Miami rapper Rick Ross' Maybach Music Group label, and it is freaking people out.
Wale fans are unaccustomed to seeing him so dressy, and they're also worried that the rapper may be abandoning the Nike Boots that made him "flyer than the rest of 'em," not to mention famous. Add to that the fact that when casually attired rappers don anything tailored, it's often a harbinger of a new watered down, less authentic sound, and it makes sense that people are concerned.
But, while the sight of Wale in a suit has a prompted a glut of Men's Wearhouse jokes on Twitter, it shouldn't necessarily be cause for alarm--wearing a suit doesn't always signal a sell-out.
There are many different types of hip-hop suits. Yes, there is the "shiny" suit immortalized in countless rap lyrics as a symbol of going pop, but there are also gangster/mobster suits (see late N.W.A, early Death Row Records), "mack" suits (see Big Daddy Kane, Pete Nice), and "court date" suits (see Murder was the Case-era Snoop, Tupac).
So, on the occasion of the debut of Wale's new grown-man style, let's revisit just a few of the great moments (and horrible embarrassments) in the history of the hip-hop suit.
1988: Big Daddy Kane releases Long Live the Kane; pretty much everyone in the video for "Ain't No Half Steppin'" is suited up.
Wale fans are unaccustomed to seeing him so dressy, and they're also worried that the rapper may be abandoning the Nike Boots that made him "flyer than the rest of 'em," not to mention famous. Add to that the fact that when casually attired rappers don anything tailored, it's often a harbinger of a new watered down, less authentic sound, and it makes sense that people are concerned.
But, while the sight of Wale in a suit has a prompted a glut of Men's Wearhouse jokes on Twitter, it shouldn't necessarily be cause for alarm--wearing a suit doesn't always signal a sell-out.
There are many different types of hip-hop suits. Yes, there is the "shiny" suit immortalized in countless rap lyrics as a symbol of going pop, but there are also gangster/mobster suits (see late N.W.A, early Death Row Records), "mack" suits (see Big Daddy Kane, Pete Nice), and "court date" suits (see Murder was the Case-era Snoop, Tupac).
So, on the occasion of the debut of Wale's new grown-man style, let's revisit just a few of the great moments (and horrible embarrassments) in the history of the hip-hop suit.
1988: Big Daddy Kane releases Long Live the Kane; pretty much everyone in the video for "Ain't No Half Steppin'" is suited up.
2011年4月6日星期三
HTC Desire Solves Dodecahedron Rubik's Cube
We have featured a number of different Rubik Cube solving devices here on Geeky Gadgets including the Android Lego creation that was able to solve the puzzle in under 25 seconds. But we have never seen a Dodecahedron Rubik's Cube solver before.
Megaminxer is probably the first robot in the world to solve a Megaminx puzzle or a Dodecahedron Rubik's Cube, which is made up of with 12 faces, each with 5 edges.
The Megaminxer robot is built from LEGO and uses a Mindstorms NXT kit for driving the mechanics, together with a HTC Desire smartphone running a custom Android app is the brain of the device. Watch the video after the jump to see the solver in action.
Megaminxer
The app uses the phone's camera to capture images of each face of the Megaminx which it then processes to determine the colors of the scrambled puzzle. After working out the solution, the app transmits the moves to the NXT controller via bluetooth to instruct it to solve the Magaminx.
Megaminxer is probably the first robot in the world to solve a Megaminx puzzle or a Dodecahedron Rubik's Cube, which is made up of with 12 faces, each with 5 edges.
The Megaminxer robot is built from LEGO and uses a Mindstorms NXT kit for driving the mechanics, together with a HTC Desire smartphone running a custom Android app is the brain of the device. Watch the video after the jump to see the solver in action.
Megaminxer
The app uses the phone's camera to capture images of each face of the Megaminx which it then processes to determine the colors of the scrambled puzzle. After working out the solution, the app transmits the moves to the NXT controller via bluetooth to instruct it to solve the Magaminx.
2011年4月5日星期二
Magic Cube projection keyboard arrives at the FCC
The FCC has taken a look at the Magic Cube projection keyboard – which is something
that isn't exactly new, since such an idea has been around for quite some time
already ever since smartphones had some semblance of desktop computing power.
Connecting via Bluetooth, this device will project an infrared keyboard on surfaces
below, letting you type on just about any flat surface – of course, the lack of a
tactile experience might be disconcerting to some, which is the equivalent of
"typing" on a virtual touchscreen. The Magic Cube is smart enough to detect finger
presses using infrared light, where it will register these keystrokes similar to a
normal keyboard. Capable of recognizing up to 350 characters per minute, it is a
decent mobile device keyboard but we would prefer something more tangible. No idea
on pricing or availability as at press time, but since it has arrived at the FCC,
then it goes without saying that a launch is imminent.
that isn't exactly new, since such an idea has been around for quite some time
already ever since smartphones had some semblance of desktop computing power.
Connecting via Bluetooth, this device will project an infrared keyboard on surfaces
below, letting you type on just about any flat surface – of course, the lack of a
tactile experience might be disconcerting to some, which is the equivalent of
"typing" on a virtual touchscreen. The Magic Cube is smart enough to detect finger
presses using infrared light, where it will register these keystrokes similar to a
normal keyboard. Capable of recognizing up to 350 characters per minute, it is a
decent mobile device keyboard but we would prefer something more tangible. No idea
on pricing or availability as at press time, but since it has arrived at the FCC,
then it goes without saying that a launch is imminent.
2011年4月1日星期五
One of Red Skull's Main Weapons in Captain America: TFA Revealed?
A new picture potentially reveals one of the Red Skull's primary weapons that he will use for world domination in the upcoming movie.
According to the very reliable source known as FakeIrOnMaN, the Red Skull will equip his Hydra minions in the new movie with a high-tech weapon known as the "Magic Bullet".
FakeIrOnMaN states that the Red Skull creates the Magic Bullet by taking a regular piece of ammunition and then using the mystical powers of the Cosmic Cube to enhance the bullet's overall power and destruction. The Magic Bullet will apparently allow Hydra forces to chop, grate, and shred Howling Commandoes without the sticky, smelly mess in just 10 seconds or less...
Here is a picture of the infamous device:
If you haven't figured it out already, this is an April Fools' joke.
According to the very reliable source known as FakeIrOnMaN, the Red Skull will equip his Hydra minions in the new movie with a high-tech weapon known as the "Magic Bullet".
FakeIrOnMaN states that the Red Skull creates the Magic Bullet by taking a regular piece of ammunition and then using the mystical powers of the Cosmic Cube to enhance the bullet's overall power and destruction. The Magic Bullet will apparently allow Hydra forces to chop, grate, and shred Howling Commandoes without the sticky, smelly mess in just 10 seconds or less...
Here is a picture of the infamous device:
If you haven't figured it out already, this is an April Fools' joke.
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