From Ablestmage.com:
This is the original release post (at ablestmage.com) for the 1989 VHS Promo reel regarding the Newton personal household robot. My uncle was owner/CEO/etc of SynPet at the time (also inventer/creator of the Bottomline technology, the fisherman’s depth detector.
(via Waxy)
From Yahoo! News:
RICHMOND, Va. – Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday.
Peggy Fortune said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.
“I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble — and believed in love,” Fortune told The Associated Press.
Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.
“There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause,” the court ruled in a unanimous decision.
Her husband died in 1975. Shy and soft-spoken, Loving shunned publicity and in a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, insisted she never wanted to be a hero — just a bride.
(via Shakesville)
Related:
Wikipedia’s entry on Loving vs. Virginia.
The plaintiffs, Mildred Jeter (a woman of African and Rappahannock Indian descent)[2][3] and Richard Perry Loving (a white man), were residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia who had been married in June of 1958 in the District of Columbia, having left Virginia to evade the Racial Integrity Act, a state law banning marriages between any white person and a black person (there was no law banning marriage with other ethnicities as they were not seen to represent a significant enough population to be a problem). Upon their return to Caroline County, Virginia, they were charged with violation of the ban. They were charged under Section 20-58 of the Virginia Code, which prohibited interracial couples from being married out of state and then returning to Virginia, and Section 20-59, which defined “miscegenation” as a felony punishable by a prison sentence of between one and five years. On 6 January 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on condition that the couple leave the state of Virginia.
Safe for work.
(via Blame it on the Voices)
Wizards have somehow become teachers in the state of Florida.
Land ‘O Lakes, Florida — The stories in the news about inappropriate relationships between teachers and students have been overwhelming. There was even a substitute teacher in New Port Richey who got in trouble after investigators say she had a relationship with an underage student.
Well, another Pasco County substitute teacher’s job is on the line, but this time it’s because of a magic trick.
The charge from the school district — Wizardry!
Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.
But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land ‘O Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own.
“I get a call the middle of the day from head of supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, ‘Jim, we have a huge issue, you can’t take any more assignments you need to come in right away,'” he said.
When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell and went much farther than he’d hoped.
“I said, ‘Well Pat, can you explain this to me?’ ‘You’ve been accused of wizardry,’ [he said]. Wizardry?” he asked.
This is outrageous. You don’t fire someone for doing magic. You burn them at the stake. Everybody knows this.
Tampa Bay’s 10 talked to the assistant superintendent with the Pasco County School District who said it wasn’t just the wizardry and that Picular had other performance issues, including “not following lesson plans” and allowing students to play on unapproved computers.”
I guess by itself the black magic wouldn’t have been a justifiable reason to fire the wizard. For shame…
(via Pharyngula)
This will only be of interest for cellists but this YouTuber is making videos of himself playing etudes from Schroeder’s 170 Foundation Studies.
From SFGate:
In Houston, a Texan protesting amnesty for illegal immigrants argues that anyone who can’t master English doesn’t deserve to live in America.
(via PCL Linkdump)