What do Electrical and Computer engineers do? Here’s a quick sample of some things the BYU engineers do.

http://www.pct.edu/schools/iet/electronics/ Jorgette Grosso loves tackling challenges. That’s why the electronics and computer engineering technology bachelo…

Fine Art America http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/heidi-bjork.html is a high quality website for artists and photographers. It allows artists and photograp…
Video Rating: 5 / 5

Theater on the Lake Announces Eclectic 61st Season
When Lula, a lonely adolescent girl, discovers a soulful country music duo on the radio, she leaves home and enters a world of danger and deception to find them in this mythic reinvention of a classic coming-of-age story. … One is given by a middle …
Read more on Chicago Sun-Times (blog)

Border Patrol chief: DHS doesn't have a 'scientific method' for securing border
Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher said today that he will never “feel comfortable” telling Congress that the border has been secured or that the government has a “scientific method” for tracking how many people attempt to enter the country illegally.
Read more on Washington Examiner

9/11: Launching the War of Ideas (September 11, 2011 / 12 Elul 5771) …item 2.. We Are Spartacus –- and act on it every day in small ways (June 21, 2012 / 1 Tammuz 5772) …


Image by marsmet542
I believe much of the divisiveness in the world is caused by religious fanaticism, even in the time of Spartacus when they worshipped many gods. As you study history, you find that millions of people have been killed because of religious divisions based on false orthodoxy, not genuine spirituality.

After 95 years on this planet, I have come to the conclusion that the human spirit can never be crushed, no matter how cruel the oppressor or fanatic the belief. If we remember that simple truth–and act on it every day in small ways and sometimes in large movements–then freedom will ultimately win.

And then we are all Spartacus.
.

…….***** All images are copyrighted by their respective authors …….
.

America’s war on terror was launched when the heroes of United Flight 93 rushed the hijackers over Shanksville, Pa., aborting what would have been al-Qaeda’s fourth 9/11 attack. In the decade that began on that terrible day, the goal of disrupting and crushing the Islamist terror network has been pursued with remarkable versatility:

The United States has fought this conflict with military, diplomatic, and financial weapons; it has relied on aggressive intelligence-gathering and sensitive counterinsurgency; it has reshaped airline security and rewritten civil-liberties law.

Jihadists have been killed with Predator drones abroad, detained as enemy combatants at Guantanamo, and thwarted in undercover stings at home.
.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
.
…..item 1)…. aish.com … HOME CURRENT ISSUES SEPTEMBER 11

9/11: Launching the War of Ideas

Radical Islam could be weakened by deploying the moral force of liberal democracy and equality.

www.aish.com/ci/sept11/911_Launching_the_War_of_Ideas.html

America’s war on terror was launched when the heroes of United Flight 93 rushed the hijackers over Shanksville, Pa., aborting what would have been al-Qaeda’s fourth 9/11 attack. In the decade that began on that terrible day, the goal of disrupting and crushing the Islamist terror network has been pursued with remarkable versatility: The United States has fought this conflict with military, diplomatic, and financial weapons; it has relied on aggressive intelligence-gathering and sensitive counterinsurgency; it has reshaped airline security and rewritten civil-liberties law. Jihadists have been killed with Predator drones abroad, detained as enemy combatants at Guantanamo, and thwarted in undercover stings at home.

Yet in the long run it may turn out that more significant than any of these was the war of ideas that followed 9/11.

Almost from the outset, President George W. Bush recognized that the United States was engaged in an ideological struggle. During the Cold War two decades earlier, Ronald Reagan had argued that the promotion of freedom should be a key priority in American foreign policy. By advancing the ideals of liberty and human dignity, Reagan told the British Parliament in 1982, America and its allies would undermine the Soviet Union and eventually relegate Communist totalitarianism to "the ash-heap of history." In much the same way, Bush saw, radical Islam could be weakened by deploying the moral force of liberal democracy and equality.

Related Articles: Remembering 9/11

Just nine days after 9/11, addressing a joint session of Congress, Bush began to lay out an ideological strategy for defeating the jihadist threat.

"Al Qaeda is to terror what the mafia is to crime, but its goal is not making money," Bush said. "Its goal is remaking the world — and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere." Terrorism was not caused by the religion of Islam but by the Islamists’ political fanaticism. "They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions — by abandoning every value except the will to power — they follow in the path of fascism and Nazism and totalitarianism."

The only way to prevent al-Qaeda and its allies from imposing an "age of terror" was for America to sustain an "age of liberty, here and across the world."

The war on terror, Bush accurately foretold, would be a long struggle fought on many fronts. But ultimately the only way to prevent al-Qaeda and its allies from imposing an "age of terror" was for America to sustain an "age of liberty, here and across the world." While Bush would get plenty of things wrong after 9/11, this ideological insight — that the root of Islamist terrorism was the lack of freedom in the Middle East — was one of the big things he got right.

There were plenty who didn’t. Many voices insisted that terrorism was fueled by poverty or lack of education. Other analysts rushed to explain 9/11 as the fruit of US "arrogance," or as a reaction to Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In reality, as Princeton economist Alan Krueger demonstrated in a 2007 book, What Makes A Terrorist?, the best predictors of terrorism are "the suppression of civil liberties and political rights, including freedom of the press, the freedom to assemble, and democratic rights."

Bush’s campaign to democratize the Middle East — what came to be known as the "freedom agenda" — was rooted in the conviction that the way to break the back of jihadist hatred was to drain the swamps in which it breeds: the dictatorships and theocracies of the Muslim Middle East.
"Terrorists thrive on the support of tyrants and the resentments of oppressed peoples," he said in 2003. "When tyrants fall, and resentment gives way to hope, men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror, and turn to the pursuits of peace."

For decades, foreign-policy "realists" argued that stability in the Arab world was more important than liberty, and so it was better to tolerate oppressive regimes than to risk the upheaval that democratic change might bring. That was the roadmap that led to 9/11.

Today, 10 years after 9/11, the region is more unstable than it has been in generations. Iraq’s dictator is dead, Libya’s is on the run, and demands for freedom and democratic reform have shaken regimes from Tunisia to Syria to Iran. Yet who wouldn’t prefer today’s churn and ferment to the illusory stability of 2001?

No, Islamist terror hasn’t been eradicated. Liberal Muslim democracy has a long way to go. But we have engaged the struggle of ideas. And as we fight not just the terrorists, but the poisoned ideas that motivate them, we are slowly winning the war that began on 9/11.

This article original appeared in The Boston Globe.
.
.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
.
…..item 2)…. aish.com … www.aish.com/j/as … HOME JEWLARIOUS ART SMARTS …

You do not need to be a movie star to stand up for basic human freedom.
.
…………………………………

img code photo … We Are Spartacus

media.aish.com/images/WeAreSpartacus230x150-EN.jpg

…………………………………
.

June 21, 2012 / 1 Tammuz 5772
by Kirk Douglas

www.aish.com/j/as/We_Are_Spartacus.html

Kirk Douglas’ recently published his tenth book, "I Am Spartacus! Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist."
When you reach 95, after you get over your surprise, you start looking back. I’ve been thinking a lot about my parents, Russian immigrants who came to this country in 1912 – exactly one hundred years ago.

For them, the United States was a dream beyond description. They couldn’t read or write, but they saw a better life for their children in a new country half a world away from their tiny shtetl.

Against all odds they crossed the Atlantic. And like millions of people before and after, they passed close to the Statue of Liberty as they entered New York Harbor. Perhaps someone who could read English translated the beautiful words of Emma Lazarus, etched in bronze on the pedestal:
.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

.

What would my parents think about America if they arrived here today? Would they even want to come? I wonder.

A century ago, America was a beacon of hope to the world. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were ideals not clichés. Any boy could still grow up to be president. Today, few boys–or girls, for that matter–dream of that. The American dream has become about quick fame and easy fortune, not public service and hard work.

Click here to receive Aish.com’s free weekly email.

I know something about this. I have been an actor for most of my life. When I started out, I didn’t think about anything except what was good for me. Like many movie stars, I became all wrapped up in myself. When I threw off the wrappings, I wrapped myself in the character I was playing.

Related Article: Touching Bedrock

My change came suddenly when I heard these words spoken by President Kennedy in his Inaugural Address in 1961:
.

"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
.

It was a moment of clarity for me – like somebody had flipped a switch and the lights came on.

I had been lucky. Fame is as much about luck as it is about talent, perhaps more. My luck hadn’t come without a lot of hard work, but I now realized that it carried a responsibility along with it. JFK’s call to conscience made me understand that.

His words also reminded me of something my mother taught me.

For years we lived in a little town called Amsterdam, New York. We had a house near the carpet mills and the railroad tracks. We were very poor and often didn’t have enough to eat. Although we had nothing to spare, the hobos from the trains still came knocking on our door in the evening, asking for food. It scared me to look at them–disheveled, dirty. My mother was never frightened. Somehow she always found a little extra food to give them.

Then she said something I never forgot: "Issur,"–that was my name then–"even a beggar must give to another beggar who needs it more than he does."

The fight against oppression and tyranny depicted in Spartacus is still going on all over the globe from Syria to Egypt to Iran.

I was an American movie star whose pictures were seen all around the world. This gave me the opportunity to do something for my country that most Americans couldn’t do. So I became an Ambassador of Goodwill for the State Department and traveled to 40 countries talking about America. I wasn’t viewed as a Democrat or a Republican. They only saw me as an American. By the way, I paid all my own expenses–I didn’t want anyone to say that Kirk Douglas traveled abroad on the taxpayers’ dime.

But you do not need to be a movie star to stand up for basic human freedom. The fight against oppression and tyranny depicted in Spartacus is still going on all over the globe from Syria to Egypt to Iran. Even the Russians are once again facing the threat of a popular uprising.

Related Article: I Am Issur

I believe much of the divisiveness in the world is caused by religious fanaticism, even in the time of Spartacus when they worshipped many gods. As you study history, you find that millions of people have been killed because of religious divisions based on false orthodoxy, not genuine spirituality.

After 95 years on this planet, I have come to the conclusion that the human spirit can never be crushed, no matter how cruel the oppressor or fanatic the belief. If we remember that simple truth–and act on it every day in small ways and sometimes in large movements–then freedom will ultimately win.

And then we are all Spartacus.
.
.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
.
.

SPT 24th Jan: women’s studies history


Image by ebbandflo_pomomama
standing in front of history – SFU women’s studies history

Mannheim High School Art Class


Image by heraldpost
An art student from the Mannheim High School art class shows off his colorful work of art. (Photo by Steve King)

Mannheim High School Art Class


Image by heraldpost
An art student from the Mannheim High School art class shows off his colorful work of art. (Photo by Steve King)

What scientists say and what the public hears


Image by thebadastronomer
This table, which I found on the AGU blog (link below) lists words commonly used by scientists, their definition as scientists mean them, and then what the public hears.

Reference 1: blogs.agu.org/mountainbeltway/2011/10/17/words-matter/

Reference 2: “Communicating the Science of Climate Change,” by Richard C. J. Somerville and Susan Joy Hassol, from the October 2011 issue of Physics Today, page 48
Original: blogs.agu.org/mountainbeltway/2011/10/17/words-matter/

Ray Bradbury – The Martian Chronicles … Sci-Fi Scribes on Ray Bradbury: ‘Storyteller, Showman and Alchemist’ (Jun 6th 2012, 22:59) …item 2.. Ray Bradbury dies at 91 (June 06, 2012) …


Image by marsmet521
With books like Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury made a lasting mark on pop culture by taking readers to strange new worlds. And talk about changing the future: His fantastic, mind-expanding tales also shaped the storytelling of a generation of scribes who came after him.
.

…….***** All images are copyrighted by their respective authors …….

.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
.
…..item 1)… Anymes Anymes … anymesanymes.koolcentre.in … Underwire … Taking the Pulse of Pop Culture

Sci-Fi Scribes on Ray Bradbury: ‘Storyteller, Showman and Alchemist’
Jun 6th 2012, 22:59

anymesanymes.koolcentre.in/2012/06/underwire-sci-fi-scrib…

Ray Bradbury in a previously unpublished photo from 1966. Photo: Ralph Nelson

With books like Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury made a lasting mark on pop culture by taking readers to strange new worlds. And talk about changing the future: His fantastic, mind-expanding tales also shaped the storytelling of a generation of scribes who came after him.

All of us who were fans of Bradbury mourn his loss, but perhaps none so much as his colleagues in the field of science fiction and fantasy, many of whom saw him and his work as a guiding light, and took a life-long dose of inspiration from him.

As word of Bradbury’s death spread Wednesday, Wired contacted some of the greatest authors in sci-fi and fantasy to hear how the legend influenced their own work.

Ray Bradbury, 1920 – 2012:

• How Ray Bradbury Brought the West to Science Fiction

• Ray Bradbury on Sci-Fi, God and Robots: The Late Author’s Biggest Ideas

• Remembering Ray Bradbury: A Roundup of Tributes and Memorable Clips

—–Ursula K. Le Guin, author of A Wizard of Earthsea

My mother and I read and loved The Martian Chronicles in the early ’50s, when it was new. It was newer than new, because there’d never been anything quite like it, nor has there been since. SF is so often a control freak’s genre, and Ray Bradbury was never under control — his own or anybody else’s. He took risks in his writing that could send him over into incoherence and sentimentality or take him straight to beauty, which is always new and always rare. And then with Fahrenheit 451 he gave us the rarest thing of all: a genuine, inescapable Myth for Our Time. His was a courageous heart and a generous soul. May his memory be blessed.

—–Joe Hill, author of 20th Century Ghosts (and recipient of a Ray Bradbury fellowship)

Think about what a shock it must’ve been the first time moviegoers saw a picture with sound; the first time those giants on the screen opened their mouths and sang. That kind of describes the shock I felt when I first discovered the stories of Ray Bradbury. Everything I read before that was a silent movie. Bradbury provided a vast library of melodies, shouts and sound effects to jolt my timid 11-year-old imagination into full wakefulness and attention. His dreadful merry-go-rounds spun to the vertiginous shriek of the Wurlitzer; his trees whispered bleak secrets in the brisk October breezes; his rockets scaled the skies in a chorus of grinding roars; his children ran through libraries, refusing to be shushed.

Maybe that’s all too lyrical. Here it is, more simply: I didn’t know, until Bradbury, that a book could make you feel so much. To this day, I cannot think about certain subjects without using Bradbury as a reference point — subjects like Halloween and circuses and sea monsters and the word “wonder” in both noun and verb form.

I met him in San Diego a few years ago. He was being pushed along in a wheelchair, surrounded by people who were in glory to see him, and hear his voice. We were at Comic-Con, marooned among booths selling ray guns and comic books and maps of Martian worlds. Every third person who walked by wore a cape.

“All this,” I said, pointing around us, “is your fault.” I had to shout to be heard. His hearing wasn’t good.

He laughed — it was one hell of a laugh — and nodded and said, “You know, some of it probably is.”

He was pleased to be found guilty of inspiring a whole country to imagine more, better, louder, crazier. I got to put a kiss on his shaggy white hair. He didn’t seem to mind. Then he was pushed away, at the head of a parade of giddy, euphoric followers. Hey: He led that parade most of his life. I was goddamn glad to be part of it.

Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is beloved by sci-fi fans.

—–Daniel H. Wilson, author of Robopocalypse

Bradbury honed his craft for a long time. By the time I was a kid, the used bookstore that I hit up with my dad every weekend was full of Bradbury’s dog-eared masterpieces. His short stories were spread like pearls throughout countless dense anthologies. I never thought of these stories as science fiction. Instead, Bradbury’s name reminded me of fireflies on a hot Oklahoma night, or the cold wind that would fall through dead leaves as we ran through the neighborhood on Halloween.

Somehow, he captured the feeling of being a child — the new raw mystery lurking in the seams of what soon becomes the pedestrian background scenery of our lives. As a child, I recognized and dismissed this remarkable authenticity. The way he wrote was simply the way I felt.

Bradbury was not about the shiny gadgets provided to me by the more technically oriented minds of Clarke and Asimov. Instead, it was the emotion and atmosphere of his writing that sank into my psyche and eventually began to resonate. The sweet, haunting futility of our robotic creations after we are gone in “There Will Come Soft Rains.” Or the sick, ash-mouthed dread that pervades “The Scythe.” As an adult, I came to appreciate Bradbury for holding onto the feel of childhood long after mine had faded. And if I’ve taken anything away from his work, it’s that writing should not be about the gadgets, especially not science fiction.

—–Jonathan Maberry, author of Rot & Ruin

I met Bradbury when I was 14; it was amazing. He took so much time to talk with me and offer advice about writing. That Christmas he gave me a signed copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes. That copy is put away safe, but I buy a new copy every year and read it on Halloween. Bradbury is one of a small group of writers whose books will be read forever.

—–Mort Castle, co-editor of Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury

For me, the first Bradbury hit came when I was 13 or so and that was Something Wicked This Way Comes, showing me poetic language was not something removed from life and story, something that had to be interpreted according to rules established by a high school teacher and Cliff Note Coercion.

Not long thereafter came the short stories: “I See You Never,” with its perfect depiction of regret and inevitability that any Zennist would understand — even without being called a Zennist — and “There Will Come Soft Rains,” because, hey, this baby boomer grew up waiting for the A blast.

But perhaps most significant for me as a writer, well … here is the afterword to “Light,” my story in Shadow Show:

I was fourteen or fifteen, reading like the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil set loose at the Olde Country Book Buffet, and couldn’t help noting that too many artists and writers died young and often not well. Then Ray Bradbury came along on this glutton’s word menu and showed me with his “Forever and the Earth” that no, Thomas Wolfe did not have to stay dead — not when we needed him.

Years later when the story of Marilyn Monroe seized me — she was “the saddest woman in the world,” said her short-term husband Arthur Miller — I set out to give her something a little better than what foolish choices, DNA tics and the Wheel of Cosmic Fortune handed her. This is my third Marilyn story. There will likely be more in the future. Perhaps one day I’ll get it completely right.

But for now, I’ll borrow Mr. Stan Laurel’s derby and tip it to his very good friend and advocate Mr. Ray Douglas Bradbury: He showed me the way.

—–Gordon Van Gelder, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

Ray Bradbury had some of the world’s best nightmares and I’m eternally grateful to him for sharing them with us.

He did a lot of other things, too — showed us that dreams of the future are compatible with nostalgia for youth, taught us the poetry of rocketry, and gave us many smiles — but it’s the nightmares I value most. Some of them came with the carnival, some lurked in the sea. One of them was just about being locked in a closet.

“I don’t try to describe the future,” said Ray Bradbury. “I try to prevent it.” For me, that one comment defined an entire style of science fiction, an approach that will always be valid as long as we have a future. I’m glad to live in a world where people learned from Bradbury’s nightmares.

—–Robin Hobb, author of The Farseer Trilogy

The work of Ray Bradbury that resonated with me the most was Dandelion Wine. The imagery he wrought in that tale comes back to me in the blink of an eye, even though it has been years since I’ve read it. The new hi-top sneakers, the sound of the push mower, the smells of the cooking…. It’s a door to a world that I cherish.

My other favorite is The Martian Chronicles. Each of those stories is like a carefully cut gem, shining in its own individual way, but when they are combined in the one book, they form a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts.

Most inspiring to me was that Bradbury’s writing spans such a broad spectrum. It defies the limits of genre and “literature” to become something that annihilates all boundaries. His books and stories are simply the Bradbury works. Don’t try to fence them in; it’s just as hopeless to exclude them from any classification.

Fahrenheit 451 was probably Bradbury’s most well-known novel.

—–Elizabeth Bear, author of Range of Ghosts

My first conscious memory of reading a Bradbury story is not, as it was for so many, Fahrenheit 451. Instead, it was “All Summer in a Day,” a story of life on Venus and the cruelty of children that must have been assigned to us in a grade-school reader. I’ve written about that story, and I remember being impressed by how thoroughly this grownup understood and could demonstrate the casual cruelty of children and the way they’ll gang up on any kid who seems different, who doesn’t fit in.

It remains my favorite Bradbury to this day, although rereading it as an adult what I see in it is the craftsmanship, the terrible pellucid language, the way Bradbury takes a tiny domestic dilemma set on a fantastical Venus and forges it into a commentary on human nature and the eternal tension between science and superstition. We hammerers-out of sweeping epics could learn a few tricks from Bradbury’s detail work, his precision.

But I’m pretty sure I’d read Bradbury before then — I grew up in an SF-reading household, being a second-generation fan on either side of the family. I was encouraged to read things far beyond my putative grade level, and I know we had paperback copies of The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles. I can’t remember ever having not read them. Bradbury’s work is part of the Zeitgeist.

And that is the thing that strikes me most about Bradbury. More than any other science fiction writer — by his craft, his humaneness, his skill — he’s permeated the world we live in with his vision.

Like Shakespeare, Bradbury is quoted by people who have never read his work.

Ray Bradbury was very good at his job.

—–Kim Stanley Robinson, author of 2312

I felt a bond with Ray Bradbury, because we were both born in Waukegan, Illinois, then were moved by our parents to Southern California when we were children. I feel that we both ended up as science fiction writers partly because of this childhood history; southern California has been a science fictional place for a very long time.

Bradbury was one of the first break-out stars from the science fiction community into mainstream American culture, and this was no coincidence but because of his open and welcoming style, and the way his science fiction always focused on the human side of things, adding strong emotions to what had previously been perhaps drier or simpler. He was a great ambassador to the world for science fiction, and was beloved in the science fiction community as well. He was a truly inspirational figure to many, because of his positive nature and his boundless enthusiasm for reading, which he conveyed so well, and for life in general. His fiction always reminds us that no matter what strange future we move into, human emotions will stay central to our story. His best stories and books will be a permanent part of American literature. We were lucky to have him and I’m sorry he’s gone.

—–David Morrell, author of Creepers

Ray Bradbury is a permanent monument in my imagination. I can’t think of another writer who wrote so many fascinating, evocative, meaningful novels. To me, he was a triple master. He not only created stories that extended the boundaries of what I imagined was possible, but he also gave them a hypnotic atmosphere that gripped me as much as his plots. And they were about something. They had meaning and texture and importance. Some writers can do one or two. But not all three. If Bradbury had written only one book, Fahrenheit 451, he would have been a permanent part of our culture. But he wrote so many other wonders. I felt honored to contribute a story to an upcoming anthology, Shadow Show, in celebration of his work. But of course, in celebrating him, no one could equal him. Now the man from the October country has regrettably returned home.

The short story collection A Medicine for Melancholy contains Bradbury’s short story ‘Dark They Were, And Golden-Eyed.’

—–Greg Bear, author of Darwin’s Radio

Ray Bradbury is, for many reasons, the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship, Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be, should be, and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible, willing to tolerate and to teach, happy to inspire but also to be inspired, happy to share and even re-live a youngster’s awkward joy at discovery. We first met in 1967 and immediately began a lifelong correspondence. My friends and I attended so many Bradbury lectures and events in Southern California that he would spot our grinning faces in the audience and tell us, with a wag of his beefy finger, “I’m not changing a word just because you’ve heard it already!” Throughout my high school years, my classmates and friends were happy to inform our English teachers that we had the straight scoop on one of Ray’s stories, direct from the man himself. I wonder if they actually believed us!

In 1969, Ray took three of us and my Grandmother, who drove (Ray did not drive and we had neither car nor license), out to lunch in Beverly Hills – hamburgers and shakes at Frascati. There, he told us about eating his first steak in Mexico. He was in his mid-twenties, very poor – and from that cross-border odyssey, neither entirely happy nor sane, came so many stories, including “The Life Work of Juan Diaz,” where he tried to exorcize the horror of descending into the catacombs of Guanajuato. He concluded our memorable meal by telling us, “When you’re rich, you can take me out to lunch!” And so we did – but before we were rich.

In 1970, we invited Ray to be our guest at the first Comic-Con in San Diego, and the fact that he agreed (along with Jack Kirby and a select group of other luminaries) made all of us, the fledgling committee, believe we were creating something real and glorious. He attended every single Comic-Con until just a couple of years ago, when his health would no longer permit it, and drew huge crowds for his talks and interviews.

From the beginning, Ray enthusiastically supported my artwork and writing. As I sold more stories, and finally bundled them into collections, I would deliver freshly printed books to him and he would cry out, “Wonderful! Wonderful!” and encourage me to do more. He never treated me as anything other than a colleague – and for us, he was always that amazing, miraculous kid we got to hang out with. You know, the kid who told his readers they could send him letters care of Life magazine, or spin stories of hanging out with Walt Disney, or of having Ray Harryhausen as the best man at his wedding.

Ray expressed his admiration for Nikos Kazantzakis and his “The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises.” Later, I relayed Ray’s enthusiasm for Kazantzakis to the translator, Kimon Friar, and helped them exchange addresses. When Ray produced his own play of “Leviathan 99″ at the old MGM studios in LA, I posted fliers at my college, went to LA, met him after the performance – and commiserated when it folded a week later, leaving him tens of thousands of dollars in the hole. I still have a few of those fliers – and his letter announcing he was back to another round of lectures to pay it all off. He dearly loved theater, and to this day, his plays are performed in Los Angeles and around the world.

It was my privilege to arrange for the Science Fiction Writers of America to present Ray with his Grand Master Nebula in 1989. Nowhere near full payback.

“Ray was storyteller, showman and alchemist — a master who remixed his own life and made it the stuff of legend.”
So I spent a lot of fine times with the man. But behind it all was the genuine love I have for Ray’s fiction. To this day, I can’t begin a Bradbury story without feeling his immediate presence, his amazing ability to make me nostalgic for a place I’ve never been, or recognize an emotion or a connection I may not have experienced. Ray was storyteller, showman and alchemist — a master who remixed his own life and made it the stuff of legend, the core within much of the myth of The Twilight Zone and modern American fantasy in general.

For our last visit, just a couple of months ago, my wife and I drove out to the Bradbury family home in the Cheviot Hills of Los Angeles, as we had so many times before. Ray was bedridden, but sitting up, receiving visitors, cheerful, as always, it seems now – and we spent a good hour talking about movies, about work, about new books and writing. As always. I noticed a hefty volume of the collected Buck Rogers newspaper strips, left on the floor by staff or family or previous visitors, and held it for Ray to see — “You did the intro for this, Ray!” “I did?” “Here’s your name. A great intro.” “Read it to me!” Ray could no longer read much, and friends would come by to read to him…

But I’m drifting again into that awkward tense. This story has to end.

And so here’s my ending, and it’s all true: I read aloud to Ray his own words, the story of his first love for science fiction, the wonder and joy of discovering Buck Rogers at age 10. One of his literary sons sits by his bedside, reading that fine introduction, and then lifts up, brings close to his pale, difficult eyes, the first page of 1920s-era strips, and Ray is suddenly 10 years old, he’s Ray Douglas Bradbury, starting all over, and he beams and cries, “Wonderful! Wonderful! It’s all still wonderful!”

And it is.

—–R. A. Salvatore, author of Charon’s Claw

The beauty of Ray Bradbury is that you can’t classify him as a science-fiction writer or a fantasy writer or any other (insert genre here) writer. Leave out the qualifier, please, unless that adjective is “brilliant.” So brilliant that he could subtly terrify a reader with softly apocalyptic views of the future, or stun a reader with shocking twists (“The Small Assassin,” a truly devilish short story). Few other writers of the last century could stand beside him; when he showed up at San Diego for Comic-Con a few years ago, his name was whispered with somber reverence throughout the hall. So now he is gone, and the world is diminished. But we still have his work, so much of it, and so good is that work that you can read each piece over and over again and come away with different and profound insights each time.

Rest well, Mr. Bradbury. You’re already missed.

—–Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians

Bradbury is one of the few writers who can crush you – casually – with just a title. Something Wicked This Way Comes — I had nightmares about it before I even read it, just seeing its spine on the shelf of my grade-school library was enough. “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed.” “The Day It Rained Forever.” “The Million Year Picnic.” (My adolescence was ruled – as was every nerd’s adolescence in the Boston area – by the comic shop of that name in Cambridge, Massachusetts.) Even before you read them those titles open up spaces inside you, where strange things can start happening. And that’s before the show even starts.

Bradbury was the writer who broke me out of the child’s understanding of science fiction – which is, more or less: I’m getting information about the future! – and made me understand that I was getting information on another axis, from a different dimension entirely, not ahead but underneath. It is not true that you can breathe the air on Mars, the way they do in The Martian Chronicles; I understand that now. What is true, however, is that there are aliens living in our unconscious, and we meet them every day, we can’t escape them, whatever planet we’re on. Because they are us.

Bradbury was not a soul-mate for me. His home planet was the American Midwest, which to a kid growing up in Massachusetts was as weird a place as Mars. He was also tougher than me: he wrote horror, and I was a wuss. As a child I wasn’t ready to face those dark places that Bradbury moved through apparently fearlessly and with impunity. (Like the air on Mars, he found the atmosphere there perfectly breathable.) They freaked me out too much. I was like those astronauts at the end of “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed”: I couldn’t accept what was right in front of me.

But as I get older and I slowly learn to accept those truths, and I remember and think, yes, Bradbury was right. He warned me about this a long time ago. I should have seen it coming. The Martians were the colonists, all along.

- – -

Other prominent authors posted lengthier articles elsewhere on the web Wednesday, including Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book), John Scalzi (Redshirts), Carrie Vaughn (the Kitty Norville series) and David Brin (The Uplift series).
.
.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
.
…..item 2)…. Los Angeles Times … articles.latimes.com/2012 … (Page 3 of 4)

Ray Bradbury dies at 91; author lifted fantasy to literary heights

Ray Bradbury’s more than 27 novels and 600 short stories helped give stylistic heft to fantasy and science fiction. In ‘The Martian Chronicles’ and other works, the L.A.-based Bradbury mixed small-town familiarity with otherworldly settings.

June 06, 2012|By Lynell George, Special to the Los Angeles Times

articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/06/local/la-me-ray-bradbury…

Bradbury married Marguerite McClure in 1947, the same year he published his first collection of short stories — "Dark Carnival" (Arkham House) — a series of vignettes that revisited his childhood hauntings.

His first big break came in 1950, when Doubleday collected some new and previously published Martian stories in a volume titled "The Martian Chronicles." A progression of pieces that were at once adventures and allegories taking on such freighted issues as censorship, racism and technology, the book established him as an author of particular insight and note. And a rave review from novelist Christopher Isherwood in Tomorrow magazine helped Bradbury step over the threshold from genre writer to mainstream visionary.

"The Martian Chronicles" incorporated themes that Bradbury would continue to revisit for the rest of his life. "Lost love. Love interrupted by the vicissitudes of time and space. Human condition in the large perspective and definition of what is human," said Benford. "He saw … the problems that the new technologies presented — from robots to the super-intelligent house to the time machine — that called into question our comfy definitions of human."

Bradbury’s follow-up bestseller, 1953′s "Fahrenheit 451," was based on two earlier short stories and written in the basement of the UCLA library, where he fed the typewriter 10 cents every half-hour. "You’d type like hell," he often recalled. "I spent .80 and in nine days I had ‘Fahrenheit 451.’ "

Books like "Fahrenheit 451," in which interactive TV spans three walls, and "The Illustrated Man" — the 1951 collection in which "The Veldt" appeared — not only became bestsellers and ultimately films but cautionary tales that became part of the American vernacular.

"The whole problem in ‘Fahrenheit’ centers around the debate whether technology will destroy us," said George Slusser, curator emeritus of the J. Lloyd Eaton Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Utopia at UC Riverside. "But there will always be a spirit that keeps things alive. In the case of ‘Fahrenheit,’ even though this totalitarian government is destroying the books, the people have memorized them. There are people who love the written word. That is true in most of his stories. He has deep faith in human culture."

Besides books and short stories, Bradbury wrote poetry, plays, teleplays, even songs. In 1956, he was tapped by John Huston to write the screenplay for "Moby Dick." In 1966, the French auteur director Francois Truffaut brought "Fahrenheit 451" to the screen. And in 1969 "The Illustrated Man" became a film starring Rod Steiger.

Bradbury’s profile soared.

But as he garnered respect in the mainstream, he lost some standing among science fiction purists. In these circles, Bradbury was often criticized for being "anti-science." Instead of celebrating scientific breakthroughs, he was reserved, even cautious.

Bradbury had very strong opinions about what the future had become. In the drive to make their lives smart and efficient, humans, he feared, had lost touch with their souls. "We’ve got to dumb America up again," he said.

Over the years he amassed a mantel full of honors. Among them: the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (2000), the Los Angeles Times’ Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award (1998), the Nebula Award (1988), the Science Fiction Hall of Fame (1970), O. Henry Memorial Award (1947-48) and a special distinguished-career citation from the Pulitzer Prize board in 2007, which was "an enormous nod of respect from the mainstream media," Lou Anders, editorial director of the science fiction and fantasy imprint PYR, told the New York Times.

Bradbury helped plan the Spaceship Earth at Disney’s Epcot Center in Orlando, Fla., as well as projects at Euro Disney in France. He was a creative consultant on architect Jerde’s projects, helping to design several Southern California shopping malls including the Glendale Galleria, Horton Plaza in San Diego and the Westside Pavilion in Los Angeles.

Even in his later years, Bradbury kept up his 1,000-words-a-day writing schedule, working on an electric typewriter even when technology had passed it by. "Why do I need a computer … all a computer is is a typewriter."

Though he didn’t drive, Bradbury could often be spotted out and about Los Angeles. A familiar figure with a wind-blown mane of white hair and heavy black-framed glasses, he’d browse the stacks of libraries and bookstores, his bicycle leaning against a store front or pole just outside.

A stroke in late 1999 slowed him but didn’t stop him.

He began dictating his work over the phone to one of his daughters, who helped to transcribe and edit. In 2007 he began pulling rare or unfinished pieces from his archives. "Now and Forever," a collection of "Leviathan ’99" and "Somewhere a Band Is Playing," was published in 2007 and "We’ll Always Have Paris Stories" in 2009.
.
.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
.
.

This is a presentation on the World War Two Simulation Lesson Plans. This History Simulation is for teachers in grades 7-12. If your looking for an exciting …
Video Rating: 0 / 5

African art


Image by valza46

African Art for sale


Image by noodlepie
Tourist shop on the streets in central Kigali. From www.noodlepie.com

AFRICAN ART VENDOR


Image by Lulu Vision

New Speculation [17/08/07 135]


Image by The Happy Robot
Went to the Pub, I actually took this copy of New Scientist with my to show Rich, the main article "Mystery of the Boltzmann Brains" was such a massive work of speculation I actually felt quite annoyed that it was published at all!

Beyond


Image by ruSSeLL hiGGs
… via WHSmith @ Homerton Hospital … New Scientist … 17 July 2012 …

… 17th July 2012: 6th anniversary of the start of … russellhiggs.shutterchance.com/archive.php …
… VIDEO: 999 DAYS in 3 minutes … youtu.be/1e0O6OWUL3k …

PREVIOUSLY … "Higgsteria" … www.23hq.com/russell-higgs/photo/8001042 …