Freedom of Speech

Exercise Your Right!

Different Energy Source

I'm so sorry for not posting in a while. Posts may never be on schedule, but always on time...This is an article I saw on CNN's website about a new concept on how to capture energy from ocean currents--thought it was pretty interesting. CHECK IT OUT

Africa's Role in the U.S. Slave Trade

I thought this was a very accurate response to Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s Op-Ed on Africa's role in the U.S. slave trade. Both this response and Gates' original Op-Ed were featured in the NYTimes.

Published: April 25, 2010
To the Editor:

In “Ending the Slavery Blame-Game” (Op-Ed, April 23), Henry Louis Gates Jr. notes that African rulers and merchants were deeply complicit in the Atlantic slave trade. Despite Mr. Gates’s contention that “there is very little discussion” of this fact, it hardly qualifies as news; today, virtually every history of slavery and every American history textbook includes this information.

Mr. Gates’s point is that the African role complicates the process of assigning blame for slavery and thus discussion of apologies and reparations by the United States. I believe that apologies serve little purpose and that reparations are unworkable. But the great growth of slavery in this country occurred after the closing of the Atlantic slave trade in 1808.

It was Americans, not Africans, who created in the South the largest, most powerful slave system the modern world has known, a system whose profits accrued not only to slaveholders but also to factory owners and merchants in the North. Africans had nothing to do with the slave trade within the United States, in which an estimated two million men, women and children were sold between 1820 and 1860.

Identifying Africa’s part in the history of slavery does not negate Americans’ responsibility to confront the institution’s central role in our own history.

Eric Foner
New York, April 23, 2010

The writer is a professor of history at Columbia University.

The Future of Travel?

There are some really interesting designs and concepts for different modes of travel out there. Let's just see how long they take to be considered, let a lone implemented.

Here's a New York Times blog post on the topic!

Sexual Frustration - Dali

After going to The Met last year, I never seemed to forget Salvador Dali's piece on sexual anxiety. This doesn't mean I've been battling my own sexual anxieties since I saw the painting! I just appreciate how he was able to depict such a specific desire. About this painting, The Met's website says,

"Painted in the summer of 1929, The Accommodations of Desire is a small gem that deals with the twenty-five-year-old Dalí's sexual anxieties... In this picture, he included seven enlarged pebbles on which he envisioned what lay ahead for him: "terrorizing" lions' heads (not so "accommodating" to his "desire" as the title of the painting facetiously suggests), as well as a toupee, various vessels (one in the shape of a woman's head), three figures embracing on a platform, and a colony of ants (a symbol of decay). Dalí did not paint the lions' heads but, rather, cut them out from what must have been an illustrated children's book, slyly matching the latter's detailed style with his own. These collaged elements are virtually indistinguishable from the super-saturated color and painstaking realism of the rest of the composition, startling the viewer into questioning the existence of the phenomena recorded and of the representation as a whole."

Blame It on the Boogie!

One of the most innovative music videos to date! lol

Some of the Entertainers Who Inspired MJ

It's really interesting how we build upon what we all ready know to help inform something new and innovative. This obviously applies to the hard sciences and to a certain extent the social sciences as well, but this is also visible in the arts. I often like to watch the artists and entertainers who are the inspiration for newer acts, as sometimes the originators are the ones who can do it best. MJ was obviously innovative in many ways, but remembering those who inspired him is equally, if not more important. James Brown, Jackie Wilson and Fred Astaire were entertainers who were influential for him. These clips clearly show how many of their moves and style were reenacted by MJ...enjoy!

P.S. These entertainers were also inspired by people that came before them. For example, Fred Astaire was influenced by Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and John "Bubbles Sublett