Okay already, not sure if anybody is really reading this, but I’m going to try to do better. Just got really busy! Hey, somebody make a comment or two!
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Thanksgiving nuggets
In Lincoln’s original declaration of the last Thursday in November as a National holiday, he designated it as a “Day of Thanksgiving and Praise.”
In 1939, FDR changed Thanksgiving to the next to last Thursday. Roosevelt hoped that the lengthened Christmas shopping season would lift the nation out of it’s economic slump. The declaration was not compulsory and only about half the states went along with his recommendation.
In 1941, Congress voted that Thanksgiving would occur annually on the fourth Thursday in November.
According to author David Hackett Fischer, in his book Washingtons Crossing
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South Carolina Barbecue’s birthplace?
Author John Waldrop contends that South Carolina is the birthplace of American barbecue. In 1539, the Spanish introduced pigs to North America. Indians, in turn, introduced the Europeans to a method of true slow cooking with lots of smoke.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s first incarnation of the search engine Google was called BackRub, “named for its unique ability to analyze the “back links” pointing to a given website.” Would the brand be as popular with that name?
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Fashion photography and Real Life.
This little movie illustrates the fantasy that is fashion photography. The old adage, “Don’t believe everything you read,” should be expanded to include “see and hear.”
For some reason I was reminded of this video, must have spotted a reference to it again. It’s one of those internet phenomena, virally transmitted throughout cyberspace.
For those who’ve never heard of it, it was an opening to a poorly translated Sega Genesis video game from way back in the 80’s. The phrase “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” was picked up as particularly funny and inserted into various still images, thus a video with music was created with the opening of the game and these images. I still find it pretty funny.
I just discovered a new one that’s called Zero Wing Rhapsody, a parody of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody on the Official All Your Base web site.
While listening to Washingtons Crossing
The painting is huge, 20 feet wide and 12 feet high.
Painted in 1851 by a German-born Emanuel Leutze.
The first copy was damaged by a fire, restored then destroyed by a bombing raid by the British during WWII.
A second copy was completed in 1851 and sent to the US, and is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.
Read the introduction to the above book about the painting here:
http://blog.oup.com/oupblog/2006/02/washingtons_cro.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_crossing_the_delaware
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Sport Stacking?
I saw these plastic cups being sold in a Toys-R-Us store billed as some sort of game. Sure enough, it’s all the rage with kids, stacking plastic cups, who’d a thunk it? And of course it originated in California. Here’s a video of a world record stacker.
Reading an industry mag the other day this one opening paragraph blew me away. So much in just a few sentences, it really intrigued me. Here it is:
At this year’s NAB, I finally heard the bugle sounding “Taps†for tape, that thin ribbon of oxide-coated polyester first descended from Nazi-era paper audiotape used to broadcast German propaganda; then ferreted in a duffel bag by an American serviceman after the fall of Berlin to an LA company called Ampex, then re-engineered in 1948 with Bing Crosby’s money as a U.S. radio recording medium, and then transformed by means of rotary recording into a TV recording medium by NAB 1956, again with Der Bingle’s loot.
Digitial Content Producer June 2006
Here’s the entire article, but probably boring reading for non-industry types.