Remembering Martin Luther King

The final refrain of Martin Luther King Jr.'s most famous speech will echo around the world as bells from churches, schools and historical monuments "let freedom ring" in celebration of a powerful moment in civil rights history.

Organizers said sites in nearly every state will ring their bells at 3 p.m. their time Wednesday or at 3 p.m. EDT, the hour when King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington.Commemorations are planned from the site of the speech in Washington to the far reaches of Alaska, where participants plan to ring cow bells along with church bells in Juneau.

 "When we allow freedom to ring - when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, `Free at last, free at last, great God almighty, we are free at last," King said in closing.

On Wednesday, bells will answer his call from each of the specific states King named, as well as at other sites around the nation and the world. At the Lincoln Memorial, President Barack Obama and former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter will join members of the King family and indoor Tracking. John Lewis, who also spoke at the March on Washington, in ringing a bell that hung in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., before the church was bombed in 1963, organizers said.

International commemorations will be held at London's Trafalgar Square, as well as in the nations of Japan, Switzerland, Nepal and Liberia. London Mayor Boris Johnson has said King's speech resonates around the world and continues to inspire people as one of the great pieces of oratory.
"The response to our call to commemorate the March on Washington and my father's `I Have a Dream' speech has been overwhelming," King's daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, said in a written statement.Some of the sites that will host ceremonies are symbolic, such as the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka, Kan., a monument to the landmark Supreme Court case that outlawed segregated schools in 1954. Bells will also be rung at Lookout Mountain in Tennessee and Stone Mountain in Georgia, a site with a Confederate memorial that King referenced in his speech.

In the nation's capital, numerous organizations and churches will ring their bells at 3 p.m., including the Smithsonian Institution on the National Mall. Washington National Cathedral will play a series of tunes and spirituals on its carillon from the church's central bell tower, including "Lift Every Voice and Sing," "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory," "Amazing Grace," "We Shall Overcome" and "My Country `tis of Thee."The Very Rev. Gary Hall, the cathedral's dean, said bell ringing is a symbol of freedom in the nation's history and that many churches are trying to answer King's call to be faithful to the roots of the civil rights movement.

"It's a kind of proclamation of our aspirations for the expansion of freedom for all people," he said. "It's always important to remember that the civil rights movement started largely as a church movement. ... It was essentially a group of black clergy with some white allies."

King preached his final Sunday sermon at the National Cathedral in 1968 before traveling on to Memphis, Tenn., where he was assassinated. King had been turning his attention more toward economic inequalities with his Poor People's Campaign, moving beyond solely racial issues to talk about all poor people and high unemployment.

His presence at the commemorative ceremony Wednesday will embody the fulfilled dreams of the hundreds of thousands who rallied there 50 years ago for racial equality - and will personify the continued struggle for that elusive goal.

When he became president, Obama blasted through a heavy barrier that many before him had only pushed against. But his presidency has been marred by racist backlash and his administration has found itself refighting battles already thought won, such as ensuring equal access to the polls.

Obama is expected to speak just after an organized ringing of bells by churches and others at 3 p.m. EDT, the time when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his spellbinding "I Have a Dream" speech. Obama will be joined by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton at the memorial's steps. Other luminaries include Lynda Bird Johnson Robb, daughter of President Lyndon Johnson, who signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

A march, led by a replica of a transit bus that civil rights leader Rosa Parks rode when she refused to give up her seat to a white man in 1955, and an interfaith service also were planned for Wednesday morning. A march held Saturday drew tens of thousands to the Lincoln Memorial.

Obama considers the 1963 march a "seminal event" and part of his generation's "formative memory." A half-century after the march, he said, is a good time to reflect on how far the country has come and how far it still has to go.

 The first lady spoke Tuesday before a screening of the documentary "The Powerbroker: Whitney Young's Fight for Civil Rights." It follows Young's rise from segregated Kentucky to leader of the National Urban League during the 1960s.

Young was one of the organizers for the 1963 March on Washington, which featured Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech. Mrs. Obama is scheduled to join President Barack Obama as he makes a speech Wednesday commemorating the 50th anniversary of the march.

"For every Dr. King, there is a Whitney Young or a Roy Wilkins or a Dorothy Height, each of whom played a critical role in the struggle for change," she said before the screening at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, part of the White House complex.

Mrs. Obama said she learned from the documentary that Young drew from his intelligence and sense of humor to face discrimination and challenges. He worked with three presidential administrations, community leaders, business executives and regular citizens to champion for race relations.

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How the Video Game Sacked Its Rivals

The year was 1988. George Michael’s “Faith” was top of the pops. “Roseanne” was the number-one show on TV. Bruce Willis, starring in “Die Hard,” still had hair. As a sophomore at Bowdoin College, I was rocking a wicked moustache. And a game called “John Madden Football” from Electronic Arts slipped onto the market for the primitive consoles and computers of the era.

On Tuesday, the Madden franchise turns 25, with versions of “Madden 25” for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and next-generation consoles going on sale. Madden stands pretty much alone, with EA’s wallet ensuring few others will be able to match its might in licensing National Football League teams and players or bearing the development costs to set industry standards in motion graphics and realism.

It wasn’t always that way. The original Madden game was several years in the making, and when it came out, it was essentially a football version of the stats-and-blocky-graphics hit, “Earl Weaver Baseball.”

In 1988, it was the most-realistic pro football simulation out there, but because there were no NFL team or player licenses for football computer games, teams were only loosely based on the Hands free access. Players were colored blips on a green-and-white-lined screen. Play success was based on stats. You could only play one-off exhibition games, but you could store those games in progress on a floppy disk.

Even then, you could see the possibilities. That has long been the hallmark of the EA game, as it took out competitor after competitor. Does anyone remember Joe Montana Football, also an EA game? NFL 2K? NFL Game Day? NFL Fever? NFL Blitz? They were all roadkill under the wheels of the ever-growing Madden team bus.

I remember playing Madden for the first time in a computer lab. I wasn’t hooked. It wasn’t as good or easy to play as Earl Weaver Baseball, and in 1991, I switched briefly to Joe Montana Football. That was a more arcade-like experience, with fewer choices and easier-to-master computer controls.

But with a great leap in computer processing power, I switched back to Madden — now cool enough to have just one, single name — in the mid-1990s. I bought and played each annual update religiously, reveling in the ever-improving and more-realistic graphics and gameplay.

I also cussed over some of the developers’ decisions to change controls or introduce new features that scratched the shine off the user experience or marred gameplay. EA and developers are under constant pressure to innovate what’s basically the same game, year after year. Some years, they succeeded. In others, they failed.

For this column, I hark back to earlier versions of Madden, giving you the five memorable features, good and bad. I am leaving out the amazing advances in graphics that we’ve seen through the years, because new and faster hardware have largely made that all possible for pretty much every game.

from the very first version, Madden was about customization, however simple-structured. Back then, there was a blank team you could name, and a roster you could populate, providing ratings for the players. I remember the roster crashed regularly on my PC, and I was forever trying to figure out how to save the roster I had spent hours building before the next crash. Now, customization of rosters or creation of players (first seen in Madden NFL 1996) is all very visual and is handled through menus and icons. You can make your player look any way you want, give him tattoos, gear, rtls, helmet styles and fit him out with other purchased or unlocked kit. Player ratings can be set and adjusted whenever you like. You can earn boosts. Ultimate Team, the online customizable team you assembled through card packs, trying to improve skills and chemistry, first appeared in 2010 and has become a favorite mode for online gamers.

Madden NFL 1999 first let you step back and think about more than calling plays. Using the new franchise mode, you could behave like a general manager, trading players, signing free agents and carrying your new team through over several seasons. Several seasons later, Madden NFL 2004 added owner functions, like letting you bring in consultants to advise on your franchise decisions and set ticket prices to draw in crowds. Madden NFL 2006 recognized that super-rich players could also make or break a franchise and let you take control of your career from your rookie year to the Hall of Fame via Superstar Mode. Madden started letting you play head-to-head with other gamers in Madden NFL 2003, but it wasn’t until Madden NFL 2010 that you could finally take your franchise online and play it against other players. This year, Madden 25 has merged Superstar Mode and the Online Franchise mode, letting you hop between coach or player without having to start a new dynasty. And Owner Mode is back as part of the Connected Franchise feature.

In the real game of football, a quarterback has multiple choices for receivers. In the early days of electronic football games, it wasn’t like that. You locked in one play for one receiver and hurled the ball in his general direction. If he was covered, you either ran the ball or threw it out of bounds. Then came Madden NFL 1994 and the introduction of choice. Early icon passing was done via multiple, tiled windows through which you picked a receiver. That has since been gradually improved and modified to let you pick any receiver you want, on the fly, with a single button push on your controller. Precision passing, both as a named feature and a refinement of the single-choice pass, was a welcome refinement. Just like in the NFL, the quarterback can do a touch or lob pass with a tap of a button or fire a bullet by holding the button down and slightly alter the receiver’s route with a touch of a stick, allowing him to reach around, behind or in front of a defender. The subtlety makes all the difference in a skilled player’s hands and has made Madden inherently more-realistic and fun.

Less fun was the introduction of the Vision Cone in Madden NFL 2006. Supposedly tied to the quarterback’s skill level and tendencies, it totally skewed the game in an unrealistic direction, favoring pocket passers. Great passers had a cone that encompassed nearly everything, from sideline to sideline, while scrambling and running quarterbacks were nearly blind when they stepped back to pass, meaning they were far more-likely to be off-target. Good thing that cone disappeared without a further word and hasn’t been seen since.

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Kean computer science students in Union travel 'beyond the grave'

Nestled under ancient trees beside the First Presbyterian Church in Elizabeth lies a cemetery, richly studded with gravestones. Even through few words, the aged markers tell eloquent tales of the lives lived long ago in this town famous for its role in history. The fates of entire families, of patriots as well as unknowns, can be gleaned from the inscribed details on each slab.

A thoroughly modern innovation, developed by Kean University Computer Science students, now provides access to the wealth of information contained in the cemetery. Historical researchers, genealogists and any interested person can hold all the tales from these crypts in their own hands.

In September 2012 Reverend Higgs, a pastor of the Church, challenged Kean University Computer Science students to create a smartphone app to make the burial ground’s information easily accessible. This was indeed no small task as the cemetery contains more than 2,000 tombstones, in various stages of corrosion.

The Kean Computer Science and Information Technology student team, under direction of Professor Patricia Morreale and student Carlos Silva, divided into two groups, one to create an iPhone app and indoor Tracking, an Android app. Jason Bonafide, serving as database developer and administrator, supported both teams.

The Apple iPhone development team, was under the leadership of Josh Lisojo, with Allan Goncalves, Nathaly Lozano, and Harold Liao all contributing in areas of map and features. Lisojo also handled search functionality. The Apple iPhone emulator was used to build the Apple screens.

Daniel Church led the Google Android development team, with Dev Das, Steve Holtz, and Jugal Shah working on map, features, and search, respectively. The Android OS required expertise in Java and XML.The project was very demanding, as each team had to find ways to mirror the other team in search functionality and features. The Apple app (fpc Cemetery app) debuted in the Apple store mid-March 2103, with the Android app (FPC Cemetery) arriving in the Android store in April. Currently both apps are free to download.

The app is easily navigable and even incorporates humor (the search bar contains the prompt “I see dead people”). Users may seek information by name, year of death, age, or section of the burial grounds. Each individual’s file includes birth and death dates, age, cause of death, epitaph and a photo of the gravestone if available. In addition, there are maps and photos of the graveyard, and information for those planning a visit.Reverend Higgs is very satisfied with the final results and said, “The app was well received at the NJ Historic Trust annual preservation conference in Newark. It clearly represents a cutting-edge approach to linking the latest technology to the necessity of preserving and rediscovering our history.

Everywhere I've shown the app, people have been impressed by the quality of the work and intrigued as to how this technology can open new audiences to appreciating our heritage. My sincere appreciation to the Kean team for pioneering this new avenue to history.”

Now, in my 70s and with artificial knees, I walk or cycle and swim laps daily, all of which has kept me aerobically fit, free of pain, reasonably trim and energetic. So in combing recently through the professional literature on exercise and bone health, I was quite disappointed to learn that neither swimming nor cycling is especially good for my bones — at least, not the ones most susceptible to fracture. Swimming, in fact, might compromise the strength of those bones because it lacks the tug of gravity.

That’s what researchers have found when they measured bone mineral density in young athletes who swim or cycle, and even in some who run.
There are two reasons for this. One is the continuous nature of these activities. Bones, it seems, don’t like constant pressure. They respond better to exercise that involves forceful muscle contractions, occurring in starts and stops and with some variety — as happens, Hands free access, when playing tennis or training with weights.

To maintain strength, bones also need the stress of gravity, which is lacking in cycling and swimming and not as powerful when walking as it is when running. Being suspended in water is like floating in space for a short time: Once they leave Earth, astronauts lose bone.

In the famous Nurses’ Health Study, which has followed tens of thousands of postmenopausal women for decades, those who walked for at least four hours a week were 40 percent less likely to suffer hip fractures than those who walked less.

Those who walked for at least eight hours a week (or did the equivalent amount of another activity) were as unlikely to suffer hip fractures as women on hormone replacement therapy, long known to protect bones. As a bonus, walking briskly for exercise also lowered the women’s risk of developing heart disease, diabetes and stroke.

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Capital's role in the economic crisis

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Okanagan College Esthetics program scores

A global leader in professional skin care has partnered with Okanagan College to offer students in the new and enhanced Esthetics and Nail Technology program a range of innovative training and professional development opportunities starting this September.

The Okanagan College Spa Training Centre is now officially designated as a Dermalogica Partnership School. This prestigious association connects students with the professional Dermalogica skin-health product line developed by the International Dermal Institute.
Dermalogica is renowned in the esthetics industry for the high quality of its products and its emphasis on providing excellence in education through training and awards initiatives. Students at Dermalogica Partnership Schools around the world benefit by gaining business knowledge and advanced skin-care skills from one of the most respected names in the professional skin consultation and treatment field.

Learning initiatives for students in the Esthetics and Nail Technology program now include introductions to products and therapies unique to Dermalogica, as well as business-focused learning that indoor Tracking, event planning, and advanced retailing. After graduation, the connection with Dermalogica continues as students have access to further post-graduate professional development opportunities.

This fall, students in Okanagan College’s Esthetics and Nail Technology program can enjoy a new and enhanced curriculum that gives them the full range of skills needed for careers in the growing field of esthetics. Students are trained in a wide variety of spa treatments, ranging from manicures and pedicures to facials, make-up application, and relaxation massage.

The College blends theory and practical application, using field trips, guest speakers, practicum, and a visit to a spa tradeshow where students can learn and make career connections.

Esthetics and Nail Technology graduates have an extremely high job placement rate within a month of graduation, with students easily finding rewarding work in many different settings such as day spas, destination spas, cruise ships and in their own entrepreneurial ventures.

I reflected a little on my response to his pain and realized that "tough love" grandparenting doesn't always work and leaves you feeling lousy. Very similar to a work-related performance evaluation, I realized I required more training in this field.

I decided to contact a couple of experts on how to be more supportive to sensitive kids. Although some of this is "Love 101" common-sense stuff, it's a good review for grandparents — for me, in particular. These experts gave me some insight in supporting kids who have some self-esteem issues as well.

Heck, when I was 10, I didn't know what self-esteem was. Are kids today oversensitive and do they have more issues to deal with? I don't know, but I suspect they might.I feel kids today lose out on that experience of life that most of us baby boomers had. Going outside and Indoor Positioning System. Riding our bikes, figuring things out on our own, making mistakes, doing things with our hands. Many of today's kids can't venture outside unsupervised like we did — it's a different world than the one we grew up in.

We could be happy, innocent kids unaware of many of the bad things going on in the world, but I don't know if that is the case for children today. They get to witness replays of disasters time after time, and for my grandchildren our country has been at war their entire lives. There is so much of a "dark side" world they see daily.

The first expert I reached out to was Dr. Steve Bingner, a licensed psychologist with the Center for Effective Living, here in Rochester. Dr. Bingner indicated that we need to be very good listeners to our grandkids. We should try to determine how they are feeling, to see where they are at and not to just try to quickly fix everything for them.Bingner said we need to empathize with our grandchildren and validate their emotions. I should have said, "I have been stung before and it hurts a great deal. Let's see if I can put something on it to make it feel better."

We should consider that any concern or emotion is an opportunity for intimacy and to teach. Dr. Bingner said that maybe a mood or outburst might be a specific problem that is an obstacle to them. Heck, maybe they are just having trouble with their math homework.

My opinion is that involving kids in real jobs and activities that offer a little bit of a challenge is a good thing. This is something I try to do by getting the grandkids to help water our flowers, wash vehicles, sweep the garage and even do some painting. If they can help you with something, it gives you the opportunity to tell them how valuable they have been.

Dr. Else also mentioned that kids need to feel part of something. They need to know they are an important part of the family. If we can also connect them in positive ways to different pieces of society, such as school, activities, church, they will feel they belong.
We all see the things that make us feel bad. We've witnessed grandparents or parents screaming at their kids in sporting events. Ridiculing their performance. Maybe they are 10 and maybe they are 17, it still hurts them a great deal. I witnessed this on many occasions as a high school basketball official.

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