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Post by katina2nd on Feb 12, 2018 20:55:13 GMT -6
Oooo, Katina, good choice! I love that movie! I saw it with a friend when it was first released in theaters, and then again with LX when she was home this Christmas. You're right on all counts - an excellent film about a group of extraordinary women whose intelligence is danged scary, and whose role in history largely went unnoticed by the general public until the film "Hidden Figures". Particularly like the lead actress in it (Taraji P. Henson) from the TV series "Person Of Interest" she has a somewhat different role in the upcoming film "Proud Mary" as a mob hit woman, should be worth a look (if ya like that sorta thing) It's a coincidence that after you posted this, I learned of another black woman who played a historical role in NASA: Nichelle Nicols I've only seen maybe two episodes of Star Trek in my entire life, but I'm sure any Star Trek fan knows Nichelle Nicols played the role of the communications officer on USS Enterprise in the original Star Trek series. The character "Lieutenant (later, Commander) Uhura" was groundbreaking in many ways. I wonder though how many fans know why Nichols continued to play the character, even after she wanted to quit, or went on to do some work for NASA after the Star Trek series was cancelled. I learned about Nichols on this week's episode of "Drunk History", one of my favorite shows. Say what you will about the show, but I always seem to learn stuff I probably would never otherwise know. Here's the segment about Nichelle Nichols' role in history (warning - drunk people swear a lot): Was never a real Star Trek fan myself, but remember having a bit of a thing for Michelle back then. The video won't play unfortunately, comes up with "the uploader has not authorised this in your country" maybe they think the language is a bit risque for us sensitive aussies.
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Post by Mini Mia on Feb 12, 2018 22:24:54 GMT -6
It's probably a copyright thing. They may plan on airing it in your country at a later date, and therefore don't want it seen before then. They'd lose money ... though I'd bet they make money off of YouTube, so ... .
You can try doing a search for the video title to see if someone copied it and posted it ... and it hasn't been discovered and removed yet. I've done that with a lot of movie clips. Then the ones I really liked and wanted to keep should they get deleted I used Real Player to download onto my computer.
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Post by Phalon on Feb 14, 2018 13:46:10 GMT -6
Oh! I wanna see that one! Sometimes you just want to watch an action show in which a female kicks some butt (hhhhmm....remind you of anyone?).
It might have been too new? It aired for the first time last week, and when looking for the video, Comedy Central's Youtube channel had it, but it was only the audio. Both audio and video are up now.
And now, for Valentine's Day (hugs and smoochies to you all), how about we show some love for The Queen? Some love and a little R E S P E C T!
"I don’t think it’s bold at all. I think it’s quite natural that we all want respect — and should get it." ~ Aretha Franklin, when asked by the Detroit Free Press about the "audacious stance" she takes in the song during the the feminist and Civil Rights Movement.
Otis Redding wrote the song "Respect" and had a hit recording with it, as kind of a working man's desperate plea for respect after he leaves the grind of the job for the day, and gets home.
Aretha took the song, and made it her own - she and her two sisters came up with the R.E.S.P.E.C.T., sock it to me (her sisters are singing back up), and the TCB part (taking care of business). With her vocals, it became a demand for respect...and an anthem for the increasingly large Civil Rights and Women's Rights movements of the time.
Aretha "The Queen of Soul" Franklin recorded Respect on February 14th, 1967.
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Post by katina2nd on Feb 18, 2018 20:36:33 GMT -6
Oh! I wanna see that one! Sometimes you just want to watch an action show in which a female kicks some butt ( hhhhmm....remind you of anyone?). Scrappy? It's probably a copyright thing. They may plan on airing it in your country at a later date, and therefore don't want it seen before then. They'd lose money ... though I'd bet they make money off of YouTube, so ... .
You can try doing a search for the video title to see if someone copied it and posted it ... and it hasn't been discovered and removed yet. I've done that with a lot of movie clips. Then the ones I really liked and wanted to keep should they get deleted I used Real Player to download onto my computer.
Finally found it thanks Jox, after getting plenty of knock backs.
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Post by Mini Mia on Feb 18, 2018 20:38:25 GMT -6
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Post by Mini Mia on Feb 20, 2018 2:21:43 GMT -6
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Post by Phalon on Feb 20, 2018 9:11:30 GMT -6
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Post by Mini Mia on Feb 20, 2018 19:20:01 GMT -6
Thanks. I was on my phone, and it's harder to have a lot of tabs open to copy/paste links, etc. I thought you might add to what I posted, and if you didn't I'd do a more thorough job when I got online.
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Post by Phalon on Feb 21, 2018 9:44:31 GMT -6
I've never gotten used to looking up stuff on my phone; I find it hard to navigate sometimes.
"Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and thereby increase self-respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today. ~ Malcolm X
Human rights activist, Malcolm X is considered one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history. From Wikipedia: "To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans; detractors accused him of preaching racism and violence."
He was assassinated on this day - February 21 - in 1965.
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Post by Mini Mia on Feb 21, 2018 18:57:56 GMT -6
I don't do a lot of internet stuff on my phone, other than the social media apps. Mostly if I Google something, I email the link to myself to check up on it when I get on the laptop. It's so I don't forget.
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Post by Phalon on Feb 26, 2018 12:27:56 GMT -6
"I have had one goal in my life - that of playing some role in making life a little easier for the persons who come after me." ~ Percy Lavon Julian, shortly before his death.
Percy Lavon Julian (1899-1975) was the chemist who gave us such things as cortisone, birth control, fire-extinguishing chemicals, and drugs to treat glaucoma, along with 130 other chemical innovations. Despite facing discrimination and segregation all throughout his education and career, he became the first African American to be named director of research at a white-owned firm (Glidden), and he eventually founded his own Julian Laboratories and Julian Research Institute, where he continued as director until his death.
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Post by Phalon on Mar 6, 2018 7:13:37 GMT -6
We're a week into March already - Women's History Month - and I never got around to finishing February's Black History Month. So let's kick off Women's History Month with some intersectionality... "I was denied employment at least 50 times, only — only — because I was black. As soon as I'd walk through the door, and the employer would see me, I would be told that the job had already been filled, or I probably wouldn't like the job anyway, or they need to reschedule something. And it was just obvious in the few people that I could see in the office. ... I never saw African-American women in those positions." ~ Edith Lee-Payne Edith Lee-Payne is the executive director of a organ and tissue donation non-profit organization, political strategist, and community and civil rights activist. But as a 12-year old girl, she became an iconic face of the civil rights movement of the sixties...and she didn't realize it until more than three decades later... www.freep.com/story/life/2016/09/11/edith-lee-payne-smithsonian-african-american-museum-washington-dc/90008106/
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Post by Phalon on May 28, 2018 6:56:28 GMT -6
Memorial Day - a day to honor all who sacrificed for our country, and be grateful for the freedoms and liberties they fought to preserve.
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Post by Mini Mia on May 29, 2018 0:03:47 GMT -6
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Post by Mini Mia on Sept 30, 2018 20:44:08 GMT -6
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Post by Phalon on Sept 30, 2018 23:36:44 GMT -6
Interesting article, and as the opening sentence states - "Just in time for the autumn theme of ghouls and ghosts" - it's that time again, the most gloriously creepy time of year:
The 31 Days of Halloween!!!
Starting off with a little ghoulish quote...
“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.” ~ Robert Bloch
Robert Bloch (April 5, 1917 – September 23, 1994) was a prolific crime, horror, fantasy and science fiction writer, writing hundreds of short stories and novels with titles such as "Tales in a Jugular Vein", "Such Stuff as Screams Are Made Of", "Out of the Mouths of Graves", and of course, "Pyscho", the novel that was adapted into Alfred Hitchcock film.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 2, 2018 6:03:34 GMT -6
“The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!” ~ Emily Bronte It seems Emily Bronte might be wandering the earth as a ghost herself... (Taken from "A Haunting at Haworth". anilbalan.com/2012/05/06/a-haunting-at-howarth/ ) "Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights contains perhaps the most memorable ghostly image in all of English literature. The novel’s unforgettable opening features Lockwood, the tenant of Thrushcross Grange, having a nightmare in which he sees Catherine as a ghost trying to enter through the window of the eponymous remote moorland farmhouse. It is speculated at several points during the story that the anti-hero Heathcliff might be a demon or at the very least that he sold his soul to the devil in return for his latter-day riches. The supernatural theme extends far beyond Heathcliff, however, for the moors, the people and Wuthering Heights itself are all infused with supernatural elements. Not even the local chapel is exempt, for it is said that ‘No clergyman will undertake the duties of pastor’ there. The book ends with the suggestion that together Heathcliff and Catherine will haunt the moors for ever after. In real life there are persistent rumours to this day that Emily’s ghost continues to haunt Haworth, perhaps as a Will o’ the Wisp flitting around the moors. There are even stories that, after Emily’s death in 1848, she appeared to her last remaining sister Charlotte with her last unpublished work. This so-called ‘lost Brontë’ is said to still be out there somewhere, perhaps buried in the churchyard at Haworth. Emily’s ghost is doomed to wander the moors – much like her heroine Catherine – until this is found and published."
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Post by Phalon on Oct 3, 2018 5:01:43 GMT -6
When we were talking about the starting of new seasons of television shows, American Horror Story was brought up - I like the little nuggets of truth about people, places, and things that go bump in the night that appear throughout the series. American Horror Story: Roanoke, of course, is based on the Lost Colony. Everyone knows the history of Roanoke and the disappearance of the settlers; I remember doing a report on it in third or fourth grade. I didn't know though, that "Croatoan", the name of the native American tribe that helped the settlers, and the word (and partial word) carved into the trees when it was discovered the settlement was abandoned, oddly appears multiple times in the centuries since the disappearance of the Lost Colony. from the same site I found yesterday's Emily Bronte's haunting of Haworth: "But none of this really explains the significance of the carving of the word “Croatoan” on that post or the fact that the same word has accompanied inexplicable disappearances in North America in the last few centuries, often in places far away from Roanoke Island. A few days before his death, and following a disappearance that remains unexplained to this day, Edgar Allan Poe was brought to his death bed in a state of delirium whispering the word “Croatoan”. The same word was found in other places at other times: scribbled in the journal of Amelia Earhart after her disappearance in 1937, carved into the post of the last bed that the celebrated horror author Ambrose Bierce slept in before he vanished in Mexico in 1913, scratched on the wall of the cell that the notorious stagecoach robber Black Bart inhabited before he was released from prison in 1888 never to be seen again, and, most disturbingly of all, written on the last page of the logbook of the ship Carroll A. Deering when it ran aground with no one aboard on Cape Hatteras in 1921 (not that far from what was once known as Croatoan Island)." anilbalan.com/2011/10/17/the-croatoan-mystery/?wref=tp
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 3, 2018 13:51:13 GMT -6
Oooh! You know what would be cool? If the DNA sites connected descendants of these people to their family’s ancestors. They’ve been used to find killers, so why not lost people?
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Post by Phalon on Oct 5, 2018 5:16:24 GMT -6
Interesting, and it would be cool....but how would it work? To link DNA, there'd have to be remains of the ancestors. Today's topic: costumes. Looking for something more unusual than your typical Halloween get-up for this year's costume party? Take a trip back to Germany in the 1920s for inspiration. "Never a one that has been seen before. Inhuman, or humanoid, but always new. You may see monstrously tall shapes stumbling about, colorful mechanical figures that yield not the slightest clue as to where the head is. Sweet girls inside a red cube. Here comes a witch and they are hoisted high up into the air; lights flash and scents are sprayed." ~ Farkas Molnár, Hungarian architect In the early 20s, Molnar (deceased) was a student at Bauhaus, the most influential modernist art school of the 20th century, one whose approach to teaching and understanding art's relationship to society and technology, had a major impact both in Europe and the United States long after it closed. And a school that took its costume parties seriously. Not just a house party with a gathering of students, Bauhaus costume parties were large-scale productions with sets and stages. These aren't scary costumes, but they definitely are inventive, and are creepy in the way that old grainy black and white photos make things appear: www.curbed.com/2017/10/25/16547486/bauhaus-design-style-school-costumes-parties
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 5, 2018 7:12:21 GMT -6
The lost people have ancestors, and family they left behind when they came to America. Their relatives have descendants. Anyone connected to those descendants through DNA would/could be descendants of the lost. There would be missing links in their line. The only way they could be linked is through the lost.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 6, 2018 5:15:44 GMT -6
Oh, I get that. I think I misunderstood what you meant - I thought you meant DNA could be used to find out what happened to the people of the settlement. Hhmmmm..I suppose it could - or at least prove or disprove one of the more plausible theories - that the settlers were assimilated into the Croatoan tribe (which is a lot more likely than there being some sort of Bermuda Triangle type thing that revolves around "Croatoan"). If a number of people with known Croatoan ancestry were DNA tested, and the tests found some of those people also had a direct bloodline back to the ancestors of the Roanoke settlers, than it would seem like a good bet that the missing people were assimilated into the tribe, yes? Ooooo. <Remembers something....Goes back to the link posted> It seems there was some kind of DNA project being conducted, but it had stalled, or the findings were inclusive: www.lost-colony.com/DNAproj.html
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Post by Phalon on Oct 7, 2018 6:32:52 GMT -6
"Are you a witch or are you a fairy, Or are you the wife of Michael Cleary?" ~ Tipperary, Ireland children's nursery rhyme Michael Cleary's wife was 26-year old Bridget; I came across the strange story of her 1895 murder when I was searching for the Imp's artist. Buried in clay, under thorn bushes, police found her with a sack covering her head, and parts of naked body burned down to her bones. She was killed by her husband (with witnesses to her torture and horrific death) - because after becoming ill after a 2-3 mile in the snow, her husband thought she appeared "too fine" and "two inches taller" than the woman who was his wife. Michael Cleary did not torture and burn his wife Bridget - even after he disposed of the body, he was convinced Bridget would return to him. Michael, in his own mind, killed the fairy changeling who had replaced Bridget. www.msn.com/en-ie/news/offbeat/the-bizarre-death-of-bridget-cleary-the-irish-fairy-wife/ar-AAvZAnz
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Post by Phalon on Oct 10, 2018 5:11:54 GMT -6
A Star is Born with Lady Gaga is playing in our little movie theater - I definitely want to see it while it's here. BP and her friends went last night, and loved it. Yes, this is another AHS reference - Gaga's first acting role, of course, was the vampiric Countess Elizabeth in American Horror Story: Hotel. Gaga's Countess was based on an actual bloodthirsty, murderous woman - Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who lived during the mid-1500s to the early 1600s in Transylvania, and centuries later still holds the Guinness Book of World Records for the Most Prolific Serial Killer, and her thirst for blood gives her the title of one of the first vampires in history (A century after Vlad, kinda makes you wonder WTF was going on in Transylvania): www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bathorys-torturous-escapades-are-exposed
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 14, 2018 21:17:50 GMT -6
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Post by Phalon on Oct 15, 2018 5:45:05 GMT -6
OMG, that reminds me so much of something that happened when I was a senior in high-school!
I was driving Dad's Suburban, a mammoth of a vehicle we called "The Beast"; which comfortably sat nine, and counting on my fingers who I remember being in the Beast that night, it was filled to capacity. It had to be around this time of year because I was with all my swim team friends, and the girls swim season was during the fall; some of the younger girls we only hung out with during the season - the juniors had their own set of friends; us seniors had ours.
My hometown was an island of suburbia surrounded by rural countryside - a tiny city smack-dab in the middle of farmland and forest. It's what our swim team rivals from other schools called 'The Sticks', and our high school, which was huge, was referred to as 'The Country Club'. Being in the Sticks - which is now so built up it's on the fringes of Metro Detroit - there was a network of dirt roads, which weren't really "dirt" - they were oiled to keep the dust down, but there always seemed be a layer of loose gravel that rose to the top. There was no reason for a group of high-school girls to travel down these unlit roads - they didn't really lead anywhere that a person couldn't get to on the main roads, but it was fun as hell to barrel down them without paying attention to speed limits which may or may not have been posted, using them as a short-cut to get to wherever it was we might be going. Or the long way - it didn't really matter; sometimes 'the need for speed' and adventure was the only excuse needed take the less traveled routes.
Such it was that night; I don't remember that we had a destination in mind, but were probably just out cruising, and nothing seemed to be going on at any of the places high school kids gather on Friday or Saturday nights, so we ended up flying down a dirt road just for fun. The "thing" suddenly appeared in the headlights of the Suburban up ahead. It was a big animal - dog-like, but not a dog. Black, with pointed ears, and unkempt longish fur, it crawled across the road in a not quite animal, not quite human way - it's what I call "The Crawl" in horror movies and it freaks me out whenever I see it. Though it was doing the Crawl, it moved fast, but stopped to look straight at us and sort of smile before it disappeared into the underbrush. The image of it is still ingrained in my memory all these years later.
I slammed on the breaks, and with the weight of the Suburban, we skidded on the gravel for quite a way before the vehicle came to a stop. As you can imagine with a vehicle full of teenage girls, the Beast was full of commotion and screaming.
"OH, MY, GOD!!! WHAT IN THE HELL WAS THAT???!!!
Those of us in the front two rows of seats in the Beast saw the thing, but the third row had no clue what was happening. Except for Jill, who had been looking out the side window. "I saw where it went into the woods."
Holly, sitting next to me - and the most practical of any of us, calmly said "It was a werewolf."
"Go back, go back, go back", someone said.
"No! screamed someone else. Against multiple protests, I put the Beast into reverse, and sped backwards.
"Stop! said Jill, "This is the place."
I stopped, and we all piled onto the side of the vehicle where the thing disappeared, peering out the windows. Sitting there in the dark on a dirt road bordered by nothing but woods, and with something out there, possibly watching us, got real creepy real fast. After a few minutes, we hauled @ss out of there.
I haven't kept in touch with any of these girls since high-school except for my two best friends from back then; I don't even know where any of the others ended up after graduating. I don't know if any one of them would even remember this incident more than 35 years later. Except for Holly - she was completely convinced the thing we saw, whatever it was, was most definitely a werewolf. Myself - I have no idea what it was, except that it was creepy enough to remember seeing it.
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 15, 2018 16:29:52 GMT -6
It would be nice if they'd discover what this animal is.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 16, 2018 5:07:33 GMT -6
There are so many reports of these types of creatures, you'd almost have to think there is definitely something out there. Do I think what we saw was a werewolf? No. Some type of wolf/dog hybrid perhaps? Do I still, when driving down a country road alone at night, get an image in my head of that thing crossing the road in that creepy-@ss way, and stopping to "smile" at us. You betcha. I was driving; I know what I saw, and I know what was in the road was not just a dog or a black coyote, and we don't have wolves this far south in Michigan. Poking around on the Internet, I found a story of "The Michigan Dogman" - part radio station prank, part Native American legend, and a whole lot of sightings. Interestingly, its got ties to "The Beast of Bray Road" - the same woman has been investigating both stories for years. www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/25/michigan-dogman-upright-canine_n_2019442.html
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 16, 2018 19:48:08 GMT -6
I wonder just how many creatures could there be that we've never seen? Is it possible for something to stay hidden away even in this day and age?
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Post by Phalon on Oct 17, 2018 4:51:26 GMT -6
Scientists discover new species all the time; in the past year, lots of new insect and sea creature species have been discovered. As far as mammals go, there have been a couple of new bat species, an orangutan, a gibbon, rat, and flying squirrel species. I suppose it wouldn't be impossible for a new species of wild canine to be discovered that might account for these weird sightings.
Today, I'm going to revisit something I posted last Halloween season (basically because I've been too busy lately to do much drilling for anything new).
A bare bulb atop a rudimentary pole, it stands at center stage, lit by the last person to leave the theatre each night and extinguished by the first person to arrive in the morning. Though stark in statue and artless in form, the ghost light fulfills many functions…some practical, some supernatural.” ~ Jim Dougherty
The history of the ghost light prompted me last year to write a little ghost story revolving around it. I posted it in the Quill and Parchment forum - I think that's the right place?
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