"What Is Internet?"

Here's a blast from the past. Rather amusing, don't you think? ~~GHC

View other funny videos at Very Funny Downloads

National Tortilla Chip Day

February 24 is National Tortilla Chip Day. I love tortilla chips, especially the hot hand-made ones we enjoy at Miguel's Rio Grande in Nitro, West Virginia. If you're in the area, make a point to eat at Miguel's.

Henry T. Sampson, Ph.D.

What do this man and Henry T. Sampson have in common?

Neither invented the cellular phone; both have an interest in blacks' roles in film.

My fifth-grader was assigned to do a report on Henry T. Sampson for Black History Month. The teacher's list declares Dr. Sampson invented the cellular phone. Um, nope.

According to Dr. Sampson, his invention -- the Gamma Electric Cell, patented July 6, 1971, Patent No. 3,591,860 -- produces stable high-voltage output and current to detect radiation in the ground. He also holds three patents concerning solid rocket motors and one on the direct conversion of nuclear energy into electricity. Dr. Sampson has written more than ten technical papers in rocket propulsion, direct conversion of nuclear energy to electricity and computer simulation of electrical systems. He also pioneered a study of internal ballistics of solid rocket motors using high-speed photography -- not to mention several books on the history of blacks in film (hence my contrived connection to Sherman Hemsley).

Dr. Sampson was born in 1934 in Jackson, Mississippi. Jackson State University is the home of the Henry J. Sampson Library. Over 150,000 square feet, The Henry T. Sampson Library houses in excess of one million resource items including several specialized collections.

This amazing gentleman earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering, two master's degrees (engineering and nuclear engineering), and a doctorate degree in Nuclear Engineering from UCLA. He is also a producer of documentary films on early black filmmakers and films, a member of the board of directors of Los Angeles Southwest College Foundation, and a technical consultant to Historical Black Colleges and Universities Program.

Books written by Dr. Sampson include:

• Blacks in Blackface: A Source Book on Early Black Musical Shows


• Ghost Walks: A Chronological History of Blacks in Show Business, 1865-1910 - An impressive assortment of theatrical reviews and articles culled from the African-American press of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, carefully arranged and thoroughly indexed, with countless photographs and reproductions.


• Blacks in Black and White Traces the history of the black film industry from its beginnings around 1910 to its demise in 1950.


• That's Enough Folks (Hardcover - June 25, 1998) The first and only book to detail the history of Black images in animated cartoons.


• Swingin on the Ether Waves (Hardcover - July 2005) - Documents the historical contributions of African American to broadcasting in The United States over a period beginning with the birth of commercial radio in the 1920s and ending in 1955. (2528 pages) (list price $395.00)

Henry T. Sampson's name belongs on every list of black accomplishments. He's a brilliant scientist, engineer, and much more. What a shame that American children are erroneously taught that Dr. Sampson invented the cellular phone when his real contributions are so much more noteworthy.

Don't Date Him Girl dot Com

Someone turned me on to this site. At first I just wandered around and laughed. Then I realized not all these reports are from scorned women complaining about "his other baby's momma." There are actually reports from women who've discovered kiddie porn on their guy's computer -- and worse.

Although there's no guarantee that what you read is the truth, with the dating world being as complex as it is nowadays I'd say you can't be too careful.

If he sounds too good to be true, he well may be. See if he's been listed at http://www.dontdatehimgirl.com/ and if he's not and needs to be -- well? What are you waiting for, girl?

Real-Life Horror Story

File this under truth is stranger than fiction. ~~GHC

February 08, 2006
Army blasted over soldier’s body armor

Sympathizers raise nearly $6,000 to repay Army for missing item


By Eric Eyre
Staff writer

West Virginia’s two U.S. senators asked top military leaders Tuesday to explain why 1st Lt. William “Eddie” Rebrook IV had to reimburse the U.S. Army $700 last week for body armor and other gear damaged after he was seriously wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq.

More than 200 people —from West Virginia and across the country — donated more than $5,700 to Rebrook after reading about his body armor payment to the Army.

Rebrook, 25, who was medically discharged from an army base in Fort Hood, Texas, last week, said he wouldn’t keep the donations. He’s passing along the money to charity and a Louisiana woman who lost her home in Hurricane Katrina. He said the woman’s son helped save his life in Iraq.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., sent a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Tuesday, demanding that the Army refund Rebrook’s money immediately.

“I was outraged this morning when I read the story about what happened to Eddie,” said Rockefeller, who nominated Rebrook for admission to the US. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., when Rebrook attended George Washington High School in Charleston. “I’m heartbroken that he can’t continue his career, and I’m shocked that he has been treated this way by our military.”

At a U.S. Senate hearing Tuesday, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-WVa., asked why Rebrook was forced to pay for body armor damaged when he was wounded in Iraq.

“How can it be that the Army is charging wounded soldiers for replacing damaged body armor? Is this standard practice?” Byrd asked during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Department of Defense’s 2007 budget.

Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army’s chief of staff, attended the hearing.

“That is a very unusual story,” Schoomaker responded. “I have no idea why we would ever do something like that. We have issued body armor, the very best that exists in the world. Every soldier has it.

“We certainly have procedures that account for battle loss, and I just find it a highly unusual story. But we’ll certainly follow up and correct it if there’s any truth to it.”

“First Cavalry Division leadership is going to do everything to ensure this issue is brought to a conclusion that is both in line with procedures that apply to all its soldiers and in the best interest of our veterans who have served so proudly and honorably in Iraq,” Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, the division's spokesman at Fort Hood, told the Killeen Daily Herald for today’s edition.

Bleichwehl said soldiers are not held financially responsible for any equipment lost, damaged or destroyed in combat.

Rebrook said he borrowed $700 from his buddies to pay back the U.S. Army for the destroyed body armor and gear. He plans to pay them back out of his own pocket.

A Charleston radio station, WKWS-FM 96.1, raised $700 for Rebrook in less than an hour Tuesday morning. One woman hand-delivered a check for $350 to the radio station Tuesday.

“We read the story on the air, and the phones started ringing,” said the station’s Mike Fitzgerald.

The bulk of money for Rebrook was raised Tuesday after the soldier’s story was posted on americablog.com, a popular liberal political blog.

Donations ranged from $1 to $400, said John Aravosis, who runs the Internet blog. More than 187 people gave money. About 200 people posted to the blog.

“Everybody thinks liberals hate soldiers,” Aravosis said. “But the majority of people get that it’s not right to abuse our troops.”

Rebrook’s right arm was shattered in an explosion while he was standing in the turret of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle in January 2005. Field medics removed his body armor, and it was later incinerated, Rebrook said. A Black Hawk helicopter airlifted him to a combat support hospital in Baghdad

Rebrook, who graduated with honors from West Point, said he was never given any records that documented the body armor loss.

When he turned in his gear last week, Rebrook said he was told to pay nearly $700 or face not being discharged for weeks. The bill included a $570 charge for his Kevlar vest and gear destroyed in battle, and $130 for other lost items.

Rebrook said he was asked to provide statements from witnesses that he lost his body armor in battle.

He said he thought he could write a memo, explaining that the body armor was stripped from him after he was injured. But that wasn’t sufficient, he learned last week.

“I understand what they were saying, but from my perspective it was a hard pill to swallow,” Rebrook said Tuesday.

Despite the “bureaucratic snafu,” as Rebrook calls it, he holds no grudges “I love the Army,” Rebrook said. “I love my soldiers. I loved being in it.”

Dozens of Charleston Gazette readers called the newspaper and sent e-mails, criticizing the Army and praising Rebrook for his service in Iraq. Some readers offered to pay Rebrook for the entire cost of his body armor.

“It’s a disgrace to humanity for our military to do that to a young boy who graduated from West Point,” said William Crouch of St. Albans. “I’m so mad now I can’t stand it.”

To contact staff writer Eric Eyre, use e-mail or call 348-4869.

Happy Valentine's Day; Only Love Is Real

Only Love Is Real - Carole King

As I bask in the glow of a just-lit fire
Feeling the warmth as the flame grows higher
I think it's true that nothing is really new under the sun
Watching a new love grow from old love's embers
Yesterday's gone but today remembers
Doesn't it seem to come down the same for everyone

Only love is real
Everything else illusion
Adding to the confusion of the way we connive
At being alive
Tracing a line till we can define
The thing that allows us to feel
Only love is real

Childhood dreams like muddy waters
Flowing through me to my son and daughters
Everything I ever thought is confirmed as truth to me
Even as I see the way that I want to go now
Still I wish I had known what I know now
Maybe I could have spared you giving your youth to me

Only love is real
Everything else illusion
Adding to the confusion of the way we contrive
To just stay alive
Tracing a line till we can define
The thing that allows us to feel
Only love is real

The Keys to Your Heart

You are attracted to those who are unbridled, untrammeled, and free. In love, you feel the most alive when things are straight-forward, and you're told that you're loved. You'd like to your lover to think you are stylish and alluring. You would be forced to break up with someone who was ruthless, cold-blooded, and sarcastic. Your ideal relationship is lasting. You want a relationship that looks to the future... one you can grow with. Your risk of cheating is zero. You care about society and morality. You would never break a commitment. You think of marriage as something precious. You'll treasure marriage and treat it as sacred. In this moment, you think of love as commitment. Love only works when both people are totally devoted.

What Are The Keys To Your Heart?

Story Idea Prompt

Imagine you're a millionaire attorney. A close friend of the vice president, you recently piss him off by [insert activity]. He invites you along for a quail hunting trip; you readily agree. Somehow, he "accidentally" shoots you in the face.

If you need more ideas, read this.

Here's a link to a game based on this "story prompt" idea.

Link

P.S. R.I.P. Peter Benchley, author of Jaws.

P.P.S. The Campbell's Soup dress on eBay is up to $2,550.00 now. I didn't know Richard was that wealthy!

Drifting in Time With Music

Music affects me deeply. It can take me back to a time in my life as surely as a time machine.

Here's what I'm listening to this evening: The Best of Santana

My favorite tune on this CD: Hold On 1982

Lyrics:

Don't rush me just this once
I want to make this moment last
Slow down the pace, there's no hurry
I can't let another pass me by again
Let me be the one to say when I've had enough

Just let me close my eyes -- memorize
The way things are this minute
So when you're gone I can go on
If memory can hold within it what I'm feeling
Should time try fading or stealing something away...

Chorus:
Hold on, nothing's the same
Tell me why I feel this way
Life wouldn't be worth living without you
All along I've been the pretender
But now that's gone forever
Nobody's ever loved me like you do
Nobody's broken through

Got to concentrate, file away
Every last detail
Don't want to lose what's going down
I want to remember everything I'm feeling
Should time try fading or stealing something away

(Repeat chorus)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

P.S. The Campbell's Soup Label dress auction ends Sunday. The reserve has been met; the current bid is $1500. (Richard, I expect a photo posted in your Zoe office!) ~~GHC

Deformed M&M on eBay

As of the time of this post there've been no further bids for the Campbell's Soup Dress on eBay. (Yes, Richard, I'm sure if you paid the reserve price for this dress, you could eat crackers while wearing it. Some of us on Zoetrope would surely pitch in for a box of saltines if you promised a photo).

I wondered if any other strange items were being auctioned. The strangest one I found so far was a deformed M&M that an eleven-year-old boy is selling to earn enough money for a new pair of Boy Scout pants. A bargain at 99 cents...

If you'd rather read a strange story, check out Clara Chandler's Dead People's Things For Sale over at The Horror Library. Lots of weird things over there, and they won't cost you one red cent! ~~GHC

No Soup For... Who?

There's a current eBay auction for a vintage paper dress made of Campbell's soup labels. The bidding's above $800 and the reserve hasn't been met! Check it out!

One Woman's Journey

One Woman’s Journey

As a child, Coretta Scott walked five miles to attend a one-room segregated school in Marion, Alabama while white children rode buses to the closer, all-white school. She earned a B.A. in music and education from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, followed by a post-graduate degree in voice and violin from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston where she met and married young theology student Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1953.

Coretta and Martin’s earthly marriage lasted just two months’ shy of fourteen years, during which they traveled to Africa in 1957 to celebrate Ghana’s independence, and to India in 1959 to honor the memory of Mahatma Gandhi. In 1964, Mrs. King accompanied her husband to Oslo, Norway to accept the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Far more than a great and famous man’s appendage, Coretta Scott King was a sought-after public speaker in her own right. She was the first woman to deliver the Class Day address at Harvard and the first woman to preach at a statutory service at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. She served as a Women's Strike for Peace delegate to the 17-nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva in 1962. Mrs. King was a liaison to international peace and justice organizations even before Dr. King took a public stand in 1967 against United States intervention in the Vietnam War.

Following Dr. King’s murder, Coretta continued to serve the cause of justice and human rights. In 1969, she published the first volume of her autobiography, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr. The Coretta Scott King Award, created in her honor and established by the American Library Association in 1969, is presented annually to an African American author and an African American illustrator for an outstandingly inspirational and educational contribution published during the previous year.

In 1974, she formed a broad coalition of religious, business, labor, civil and women’s rights organizations which were dedicated to a national policy of full employment and equal economic opportunities. Named the Full Employment Action Council, Mrs. King served as Co-Chair.

Mrs. King built The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change as a living memorial to her husband's life and dream. Opened to the public in 1981, the King Center is part of a 23-acre national historic site. The first institution built in memory of an African American leader, its library and archives house the largest collection of documents from the Civil Rights era.

Coretta King was instrumental in establishing Dr. King's birthday as a national holiday. In 1983, an act of Congress instituted the Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday Commission, which she chaired for its duration.

She campaigned on goodwill missions to Africa, Latin America, Europe and Asia. In 1983, she commemorated the 20th Anniversary of the historic March on Washington by leading the Coalition of Conscience, a gathering of more than 800 human rights organizations, in the largest demonstration Washington, D.C. had seen up to that time.

Finally in January 1986, Mrs. King oversaw the first legal holiday in honor of her husband. In 1987, she co-led a national Mobilization Against Fear and Intimidation in Forsyth County, Georgia. In 1988, she re-convened the Coalition of Conscience for the 25th anniversary of the March on Washington, and served as head of the U.S. delegation of Women for a Meaningful Summit in Athens, Greece. In 1990, as the USSR was redefining itself, Mrs. King was co-convener of the Soviet-American Women's Summit in Washington, DC.

This black woman from Perry County, Alabama witnessed, at the invitation of President Clinton, the historic handshake between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman Yassir Arafat at the signing of the Middle East Peace Accords in 1993. In 1985 Mrs. King was arrested outside the South African embassy for protesting against their apartheid system of racial segregation and disenfranchisement. A decade later she stood with Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg when he was sworn in as President of South Africa.

One of the most influential African-American leaders of our time, Mrs. King received honorary doctorates from over 60 colleges and universities; authored three books and a nationally-syndicated column; and helped found dozens of organizations, including the Black Leadership Forum, the National Black Coalition for Voter Participation, and the Black Leadership Roundtable. Though physically limited in her last decade, Coretta Scott King continued to actively promote racial and economic justice, AIDS education, and advocated curbing gun violence.

Coretta Scott King traveled a long way for a young girl raised in Perry County, Alabama; the world is a far better place because of her journey.

© 2006 Ginger Hamilton Caudill