You Think What?

He is known as an engineer, entrepreneur, and later in life a medical doctor. He will forever be known as the designer of the first commercially successful personal computer the Altair 8080.

In 1975 Henry Edward Roberts, called “Ed” by friends, family and associates, through his company Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems or MITS; brought his computer to the public with the help of Bill Gates and Paul Allen who developed the language, BASIC, and wrote the program to operate the machine.

Ultimately  Roberts’ machine would become the PC we’re all using today. The BASIC language of the machine’s operating system (OS) has become the Microsoft Windows operating system we all know and some love to hate. (more…)

“Jessye Norman said not long ago that she simply “would like it to be that it made a difference to some people that I came and went, that I was here.” She has made a difference to anyone who loves music, and indeed it matters quite a lot that she is here: Jessye Norman, a great American singer.”~ from Kennedy Center: Biographical Information for Jessye Norman

We echo those sentiments. Ms Jessye Norman, is the youngest recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors

Norman’s vocal range is uncommonly wide, encompassing all female voice registers from contralto to high dramatic soprano.

When she was 16 years-old, Norman was entered in to the Marian Anderson Vocal Competition in Philadelphia. (more…)

Dr. Edmondo Robinson is medical doctor with an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an internist who completed residency at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. A 2003 graduate and Dean’s Merit Scholarship recipient of the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine,  Dr. Robinson participated in an AIDS Care Fellowship at the University of California-San Francisco AIDS Institute while attending UCLA. He also served as National Vice President for the Student National Medical Association and was an appointee to the National Board of Medical Examiners.

Dr. Robinson earned a master’s degree in business administration, with an emphasis in healthcare management, from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, during a two-year leave of absence from medical school. During his studies at Wharton, Dr. Robinson traveled as a member of a team of students and alumni to South Africa to make an assessment of state-sponsored, community clinic operations for the Director of Health Services for the Cape Town Metropolitan Region.

Dr. Robinson graduated from Wharton with honors in 2002. He completed his undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego, in 1997. His research interest involves the development of indicators to measure the value and quality of health care delivery to special populations. One can readily see Dr. Robinson’s credentials make him eminently qualified to be a member of the medical profession’s newest specialty. Dr. Robinson is a hospitalist. His practice is near Delaware’s Christiana Care Health System. (more…)

For the past year a documentary film, “Fresh”, has been  making the round in communities all across the country. If you are going to be in New York City beginning April 1st 2010 you don’t want to miss “Fresh Week”.

The documentary film by Ana Sophia Joanes takes on as its subject the inferior quality of our food, and the promising features of our national food system. (more…)

Once again we ask,  “Who let the dogs out?!”

For more information visit:
MySpace.com/BoilingFrogs101
FlexYourRights.org
Police Abuse.com~ Good Cops
RateMyCop.com
Google: Cop Watch

“Realistically, the only way to solve our problems at this point in our history is by planning our future, clearly and objectively, and then working to make that plan a reality.” Rev. Leon H. Sullivan, author Alternatives to Despair 1972

Back in 1972 the late Leon H. Sullivan, author and innovator of Philadelphia’s  Opportunities Industrialization Center, (OIC), was sounding the call to make definitive plans for our future.

“Strangely enough in Philadelphia, the big metropolitan city, you think people had work, but discrimination was still very strong . . . I decided to confront discrimination, again, because businesses were not employing blacks in Philadelphia, blacks couldn’t even get jobs as waiters in the good hotels.”~Rev. Leon Sullivan

Choosing to confront the racial discrimination he witnessed in hiring practices in Philadelphia, he organized 400 other ministers to implement a successful boycott of companies that did not support equal employment opportunity. This demonstration of  “selective patronage” resulted in more than 4000 jobs open to dark skinned African Americans. However many still lacked the necessary training to perform the jobs now available.

That is when in 1964 founded in an abandoned jailhouse, the OIC was born. (more…)

Everyone complains about the overload of news and information. Much of what we see and hear is just so much unnecessary baloney. If your source for news and information is one of those 24 hour cable news stations, then you’ll instantly recognize the characteristics and style of reporting made light of in the video. It’s tough to fill everyday 24 hours a day with valuable news you can use.

We want to thank our cleverly comic friends at The Onion for providing this wonderful, and on some level salient, video piece spoofing the news. They’re telling it like it T-I-S!

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“Failure is not a word I accept”~ John H. Johnson, Publisher

John H. Johnson was an American businessman, founder of the Johnson Publishing Company. He was the chairman of Johnson Publishing Company and he also chaired the Fashion Fair Cosmetics Company, a company created by his wife Eunice Walker Johnson.

Under his leadership both Jet and Ebony Magazines flourished. Readership and circulation grew every year from 1945 the year in which they were first published.

The magazines were named by his wife Eunice and the start-up money came from a $500 loan  from his mother. She allowed Johnson to use her furniture as collateral for the loan.

His business success is nothing short of meteoric. He rose from the depths of poverty, spending a short time on the welfare rolls to becoming the first Black African American to be included in the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. (more…)

If you are one of those who uses Twitter to tell the whole entire planet what you are doing every minute of the day, where you are, who you are with, when you are home and when you are not– we have a word of caution for you and a web site you have got to see.

The word of warning is DON’T! Do Not share everything about your life on the Internet…as fascinating as you may find it, or you believe others may find it so, some nefarious individuals may find it even more so…

We advise what is private must remain private.

It is said a word to the wise is sufficient and if you happen to be unwise then a picture is worth at least a thousand words…

Nina Simone the High Priestess of Soul, composer of more than 500 songs, the creator of a musical narrative for a generation for an era of Civil Rights demonstrations, is the featured artist celebrant  in Clark Dark’s Black History Month Entertainment Spotlight.

Celebrate Black History Month 2010