With a new infusion of money, the landmark documentary Eyes on the Prize is one step closer to educating a new generation of students.

The 14-part series, which chronicles the history of the civil rights movement in America, has been blocked from television rebroadcast and DVD release by a thicket of copyright restrictions on the hundreds of photos, music tracks and video clips used in its making. But thanks to a $600,000 grant from the Ford Foundation and a philanthropist's $250,000 donation, the process of re-licensing that material has begun.

"We're up and running and we're going to move forward with rights clearances and any production work we need to do to prepare the programs for public television broadcast and distribution in the education market," said Sandy Forman, a lawyer for Blackside, the production company that created the Eyes series.

AWESOME NEWS! Eyes on the Prize is an eye opener for those who haven't seen it.

WIRED: Cash Rescues Eyes on the Prize

flynn23 wrote:

skullaria wrote:
"They [the ads] expose the nasty inverse of "the beauty standard," which is the belief, held by some men, that women who don't look like fantasy material aren't just unworthy of their attention but are actually offensive, or even menacing. It's worth noting that none of the complainers goes so far as to call the Dove models ugly, yet they consider these women visual nuisances, annoying as litter, sour eye candy, gross. "

You've got to be kidding me. I first saw this campaign in Boston a few months ago and was just flabbergasted with it's genius and beauty! MORONS!!!

I'd take any one of the Dove women! They Rock. w00t!

RE: Men objecting to the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty

wilpig wrote:

It is noteworthy that a combination of features as depicted on these morphed photographs is impossible to find in any of living people. A human face can be wrinkless if only it is a digitalized picture. There are no perfect eyebrows, eyes or lips either. One may thus conclude that the woman on this picture is an absolutely unnatural, albeit a beautiful individual. Natural beauty cannot compete with digital perfection: the latter always wins, although it does not exist in reality. The top five of the computer pageant was made of only digital pictures. Furthermore, 79 percent of original male faces and 70 percent of original female faces were described as "not pretty" or even "ugly."

Western Civilization is indeed doomed to a very shallow and pathetic silicon and collagen filled end.

RE: Underestimating their own beauty, humans fall victims to glossy magazine covers

Classic!

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- A Kenyan says he offered Bill Clinton 40 goats and 20 cows for his daughter's hand in marriage five years ago -- and is still waiting for an answer.

Godwin Kipkemoi Chepkurgor told the East Africa Standard newspaper last week that he wrote to Clinton asking for Chelsea's hand in 2000 during the then-president's visit to Kenya.

Chepkurgor, a 36-year-old elected city councilor in Nakuru, recounted writing to the U.S president through the Kenyan government.

He described his plans for a grand wedding presided over by South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He named then-President Daniel arap Moi and the president of his university as references.

Goats, cows offered for Chelsea

Found this in the dictionary under irony...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A California prison inmate has sued a Florida food packager after biting into a human fingertip in one of its packaged vegetarian meals, his lawyer said on Friday.

Felipe Rocha, imprisoned on drug charges in California's maximum-security Pelican Bay State Prison, is seeking at least $75,000 in damages from G.A. Food Services after biting into the fingertip lost by one of the company's workers in an industrial accident, said attorney Jeffrey Schwarzschild.

The St. Petersburg, Florida-based food packager could not be reached for comment.

The company has apologized for the March incident but Rocha was not satisfied, said Schwarzschild.

"He suffered mental and physical injuries because of it because Mr. Rocha is a vegetarian," Schwarzschild said. "He became violently ill and couldn't eat because of the incident and he lost 15 pounds (7 kg)."

Inmate sues over finger in veggie meal

PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) -- Gerry Thomas, who changed the way Americans eat -- for better or worse -- with his invention of the TV Dinner during the baby boom years, has died at 83.

Thomas, who died in Paradise Valley on Monday after a bout with cancer, was a salesman for Omaha, Nebraska-based C.A. Swanson and Sons in 1954 when he got the idea of packaging frozen meals in a disposable aluminum-foil tray, divided into compartments to keep the foods from mixing. He also gave the product its singular name.

The first Swanson TV Dinner -- turkey with cornbread dressing and gravy, sweet potatoes and buttered peas -- sold for about $1 and could be cooked in 25 minutes at 425 degrees. Ten million sold in the first year of national distribution.

It was fast and convenient, and fit nicely on a TV tray in the living room, so that you didn't have to drag yourself away from your favorite television show.

Inventor of TV Dinner dies at 83

LONDON - Scientists are questioning the safety of a "Star Wars"-style ray gun due to be deployed in Iraq for riot control next year.

The Active Denial System weapon, classified as “less lethal” by the Pentagon, fires a 95-gigahertz microwave beam at rioters to cause heating and intolerable pain in less than five seconds.

The idea is that people caught in the beam will rapidly try to move out of it and therefore break up the crowd

But New Scientist magazine reported Wednesday that during tests carried out at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, participants playing the part of rioters were told to remove glasses and contact lenses to protect their eyes.

95 GHz? Damn... In free space, that frequency has a wavelength of 0.31 cm. A wavelength of 23 cm (60x longer @ ~1.3GHz) would be considered to be microwave. This seems very reminiscent of the MASER, a technology which predated LASERs later invented by Bell Labs in the late 50s.

Scientists worry about Pentagon’s new ray gun

The process requires putting a given amount of human or other animal waste into a "digester," which ferments it using bacteria to release methane gas that can be captured and then burned as fuel. Attached is a "compensating chamber" that replenishes the supply of bacteria to keep the operation self-sustaining.

The lead engineer on the project, Ainea Kimaro, says that within four weeks, 100 cubic meters of waste can be transformed into 50 cubic meters of fuel.

Biogas is being used around the world, including in homes in Nepal and to power trains in Sweden.

Kimaro said that while waste smells bad initially, the biogas that is produced has no foul odor. He added that the Rwandan prisoners are not put off by the idea of using the byproduct of human waste to cook.

"Our people are very adaptive," he said. "They see it working; they want to use it."

Once the methane is produced, the remaining waste is used as an odor-free fertilizer for the gardens at the prison.

WIRED: Human Feces Powers Rwandan Prison

Everybody Sing Along:
When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a Valentine,birthday greetings,
bottle of wine?
If I'd been out 'till quarter to three,would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?

Granny grows tired of prostitution at age 63

Imagine a fleet of yellow school buses speeding around the giant oval - Maybe it's the next NASCAR...

If bus drivers think they've got it bad hauling a load of squealing kids out of the parking lot gridlock after the school bell rings, they should try a Friday night at the Music City Motorplex, where eight "souped-up" (to use the term loosely) school buses crash and burn their way around the quarter-mile track.

Part short-track racing and part demolition derby, school bus racing is a sport in which bumping is encouraged and rolling someone is the ultimate challenge.

Since the 1980s, racetracks have been turning to school bus racing as a way to lure nontraditional fans to their stands.
...
"You go out there to have fun and get some aggression released," Bobo says. "You think about that little white Toyota that cut you off yesterday."

Despite the rivalries and vengeance played out monthly on the track, the drivers say injuries in the buses have been minimal.

"People worry about their kids being on a school bus and this and that," Vaughn says. "We've tried before to roll one, and there's no possible way. The only way you can do it is if you get hit by another bus.

"School buses are designed for safety, and you can tell when you take one out on the track. It takes a lot to tear one up."

School Bus Racing