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Steve McQueen

June 24th 2008 23:09
The King of Cool
The Thomas Crown Affair
The Thomas Crown Affair

Terence Steve McQueen was born March 24, 1930, in Beech Gove, Indiana.
The early years were difficult. His father, a stunt pilot for a circus, abandoned his wife and child. His mother drank so heaviliy that she sent her son to live with his Uncle Claude. Claude lived on a farm in Slater, Missouri.


When Steve was 12 his mother returned for him, accompanied by her new husband, and they all moved to Los Angeles.

The Uncle who had given Steve McQueen a stable and happy life gave him a watch as they parted. It said, “To Steve – who has been a son to me.”

Life in Los Angeles was neither happy nor stable. Reportedly the step father was violent. Steve had friends in street gangs, and his mother and step father sent him to a facility located in Chino, California called the California Junior Boys Republic. (Rumor in Hollywood has it that Steve McQueen always demanded additional perks on his movies, from jeans to shaving gear. Reportedly, the additional items were always passed on to the Chino facility, as well as a two hundred thousand dollar legacy from his estate after his death)

After leaving that institution McQueen joined the Marine Corps for three years. The G.I. Bill paid McQueen's tuition at Lee Strasberg's Actor's Studio where he was accepted in 1952. Three years later he performed in a supporting role on Broadway in A Hatful of Rain.


From 1958 until1961 McQueen played the starring role in the television series Wantedead or Alive. Lead character, Josh Randall, earned his living as a bounty hunter.
Wanted: Dead or Alive
Wanted: Dead or Alive
Those who saw the series said that the character was an anti-hero, a style of character that was to be very popular in the 1960's and 1970's.
The Magnificent Seven, with Yul Brynner
The Magnificent Seven

He was part of what made watching the original version of The Blob (1958) so enjoyable. In 1960 The Magnificent Seven was released, followed by films like The Great Escape
The Great Escape
The Great Escape

The Great Escape
The Great Escape

(1963), Love with the Proper Stranger (1963), The Cincinnatti Kid (1965), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Bullitt (1968), and The Getaway (1972).
Bullit
Bullit

In 2006 Paul Cullum in the Los Angeles Times reported on McQueen's hopes for making a movie he wrote, called Yucutan, before he died. But, Steve McQueen died of cancer in Juarez, Mexico on Novemeber 7, 1980, only 50 years old.
with Jacqueline Bisset
with Jacqueline Bisset

“... McQueen closed his final mediatation on Yucutan:

He was parting the curtains on tomorrow
A commando on the liquid frontier...
The inheritors of that emerald planet
That jewel on the finger of the firmament
Ringed by its creator with sapphire seas

For the exaltation and the ultimate salvation of the Dominion of Man”

.
Sources: wikipedia, Internet Movie Database,
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The Butterfly Effect

May 3rd 2008 23:15
butterfly
one butterfly

“Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”
A Tornado
A Tornado


Edward Lorenz was an MIT professor, as well as a meteorologist, and in 1961 he accidentally came to the conclusion that weather forecasting was never going to be an exact science.

As the New York Times recently noted, while using a computer program to simulate weather conditions, Dr. Lorenz started a second simulation,
“...One day he wanted to repeat one of the simulations for a longer time, but instead of repeating the whole simulation, he started the second run in the middle, typing in numbers from the first run for the initial conditions.

“The computer program was the same, so the weather patterns of the second run should have exactly followed those of the first. Instead, the two weather trajectories quickly diverged on completely separate paths.

“At first, he thought the computer was malfunctioning. Then he realized that he had not entered the initial conditions exactly. The computer stored numbers to an accuracy of six decimal places, like 0.506127, while, to save space, the printout of results shortened the numbers to three decimal places, 0.506.

“When typing in the new conditons, Dr. Lorenz had entered the rounded-off numbers, and even this small discrepancy, of less than 0.1 percent, completely changed the end result.
Even though his model was vastly simplified, Dr. Lorenz realized that this meant perfect weather prediction was a fantasy. “
NYT
Edward Lorenz
Edward Lorenz

He wrote a paper on the effect titled “Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?

The theory of Edward Lorenz was popularized in a Ray Bradbury Bradbury's Sound of Thunder
The eminent scientist recently passed away at age 90.

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Charlton Heston

April 17th 2008 01:59
Planet of the Apes
Planet of the Apes

Charlton Heston was born John Charles Carter on October 4,1923, in (or around) Evanston, Illinois. He chose his stage and screen name by combining his mother's and step-father's surnames.

He made his first Broadway appearance in Antony and Cleopatra, in 1947.
In Antony and Cleopatra
In Antony and Cleopatra

A few years later he was Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956).
The Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments
There is (at least) the rumor that Mr. Heston was cast as Moses because of his resemblance to the statue sculpted by Michelangelo. This rumor involves director Cecil B. DeMille, and he was not shy about promoting his films by any means...
Michelangelo's Moses
Michelangelo's Moses


Mr. Heston was then on to battling Roman oppressors, figuratively and literally, in Ben Hur (1959), for which he won the Best Actor Oscar.
Ben Hur
Ben Hur

Subsequent roles included, in part, El Cid (1961) Charles Gordon in Khartoum (1966) (with Laurence Olivier), the tender Will Penny (1967) and the classic sci-fi movie, Planet of the Apes.
Planet of the Apes
Planet of the Apes


He was an individual, not a boxed, pre-fab personality.
Touch of Evil
Touch of Evil
He marched with Dr. Martin Luther King in 1963, but contrary to that brave and peaceful position, he also served as president of the U. S. National Rifle Association from 1996 to 2003.
The Omega Man
The Omega Man

The Omega Man
The Omega Man (with Rosalind Cash)

It was in 2002 that Mr. Heston announced publicly that he was suffering from symptoms similar to Alzheimers. One of his last public statements was, “I must reconcile courage and surrender in equal measure.”

Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston

He passed on April 5, 2008, with his wife of 64 years, Lydia, at his side.
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Superhero embroidery

April 15th 2008 09:58
David Bowie in embroidery
Jared Brown does embroidery. It sounds dull and worthy of making your nephews a pair of socks, but he ramps it up a notch by doing embroidery of classic retro pictures.

Superheroes, Spock, David Bowie.... Brown must spend hours recreating his favourite memories in the medium of canvas and cross-stitch.

Check out his gallery here.

I found this on YesButNoButYes, which sent me to Craftzine. Everyone's raving about Brown's work, but the best part is obvious: Brown should be able to give hearty fans a copy of the embroidery pattern, allowing everyone to have their own Spock embroidery.

Actually, who would want a Spock embroidery?

Hmmm.... I guess the same person that'd want a Voltron embroidery...
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Desegregation; Hazel Bryant

March 10th 2008 01:44
Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryant in Little Rock
From the 100 Photographs that Changed the World in Life Magazine (and, I should point out, the 'world' from Life Magazine's eyes is really 'America and a little bit of Europe') - comes this historical photo that marked the conflict during the Civil Rights Movement.

Elizabeth Eckford was photographed in this incredible photo, walking to school in Arkansas after the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for the schools to be 'white-only


[ Click here to read more ]
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Indiana Jones

March 6th 2008 23:23
Indiana and Marion
Indiana and Marion

Marion: You're not the man I knew ten years ago.
Indiana: It's not the years, honey. It's the mileage.

[ Click here to read more ]
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I'll Be Back...

March 2nd 2008 00:13
Sorry to have been away. There's a nasty little bug, and I do mean nasty, going around.
One day you're just blogging away; the next day you're flat on your back for more than a week, till your husband hauls you off to the hospital....
Blogs are in the works


[ Click here to read more ]
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Jane Fonda

February 17th 2008 05:02
Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda

She was born in New York City on December 21, 1937, the daughter of Henry Fonda, Hollywood Royalty. Her parents named her Lady Jane Seymour Fonda, because of her mother's distant ancestor,
Lady Jane Seymour, the third wife of Henry the Eighth, King of England. Internetmoviedatabase
[ Click here to read more ]
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Elke Sommer

February 13th 2008 02:09
Elke Sommer
Elke Sommer


Elke Sommer was born on November 5, 1940 in Berlin


[ Click here to read more ]
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Aretha Franklin The Queen of Soul

February 9th 2008 20:20
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin

She was the first female inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
rockhall
[ Click here to read more ]
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