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Various and Sundry articles that I found interesting as I went through my email from the long holiday weekend:
Recycled Toys
August 29, 2007, Starwars.com (presentation by Ron Salvatore)
Toy "recycling" is a well-known practice in the toy industry. To keep production and tooling costs down, companies will occasionally borrow a figure, vehicle, or accessory from one of their previous lines to repurpose for a new line. Kenner Products, and later Hasbro, were certainly no strangers to this, and consequently repurposed many of the toys from properties such as Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Scout, Batman, and others to become part of their famed Star Wars lines. What's more, in the years since the original Star Wars toys were released, other toy properties like The Real West, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and the Batman movies have borrowed select pieces from our favorite galaxy to be re-imagined as a "sonic neutralizer", a Sherwood Forest, and a "Glamour Gals" stage, among others.
Collector Ron Salvatore recently discussed some of the toys recycled into or from the Star Wars lines as part of the Celebration IV and Celebration Europe collecting panels taking place last summer. Here is an overview of that panel...
( Read More... )
Cancer Society Focuses Its Ads on the Uninsured
By KEVIN SACK, The New York Times, August 31, 2007
ATLANTA, Aug. 30 — In a stark departure from past practice, the American Cancer Society plans to devote its entire $15 million advertising budget this year not to smoking cessation or colorectal screening but to the consequences of inadequate health coverage.
( Read More... )
Starting Over
By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER, The New York Times, September 2, 2007
THE WORLD WITHOUT US
By Alan Weisman. Illustrated. 324 pp. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press. $24.95.
When Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was published in 1963, the chemical giant Monsanto struck back with a parody called “Desolate Spring” that envisioned an America laid waste not by pesticides but by insects: “The bugs were everywhere. Unseen. Unheard. Unbelievably universal. ... On or under every square foot of land, every square yard, every acre, and county, and state and region in the entire sweep of the United States. In every home and barn and apartment house and chicken coop, and in their timbers and foundations and furnishings. Beneath the ground, beneath the waters, on and in limbs and twigs and stalks, under rocks, inside trees and animals and other insects — and yes, inside man.”
To Alan Weisman, this nightmare scenario would be merely a promising start. In his morbidly fascinating nonfiction eco-thriller, “The World Without Us,” Weisman imagines what would happen if the earth’s most invasive species — ourselves — were suddenly and completely wiped out. Writers from Carson to Al Gore have invoked the threat of environmental collapse in an effort to persuade us to change our careless ways. With similar intentions but a more devilish sense of entertainment values, Weisman turns the destruction of our civilization and the subsequent rewilding of the planet into a Hollywood-worthy, slow-motion disaster spectacular and feel-good movie rolled into one.
( Read More... )
The most touching "before and after" pictures I've ever seen:
Sean Fritz, left, and Timothy McQuillan, awaiting their marriage certificate at the Polk County Clerk’s Office.
Sean Fritz, 24, left, and Timothy McQuillan, 21, sealed their union in a ceremony performed by the Rev. Mark Stringer, right.
Iowa Permits Same-Sex Marriage, for 4 Hours, Anyway
By MONICA DAVEY, The New York Times, September 1, 2007
DES MOINES, Aug. 31 — From towns around the state, places like Cedar Falls, Ames and Cedar Rapids, same-sex couples converged on this city as early as dawn on Friday as word spread that a judge had overturned a state law banning gay marriage.
“Imagine this — right here in Iowa,” Amanda Duncan said as she and her partner of three years, Aleece Ramirez, filled out their application for a marriage license and put down $35. “Hopefully, this starts a fire that spreads to other places.”
The chance was fleeting. After four hours, Robert B. Hanson, the same county judge who had deemed the ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional, delayed further granting of licenses until the Iowa Supreme Court decided whether to consider an appeal.
( Read More... )
Recycled Toys
August 29, 2007, Starwars.com (presentation by Ron Salvatore)
Toy "recycling" is a well-known practice in the toy industry. To keep production and tooling costs down, companies will occasionally borrow a figure, vehicle, or accessory from one of their previous lines to repurpose for a new line. Kenner Products, and later Hasbro, were certainly no strangers to this, and consequently repurposed many of the toys from properties such as Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Scout, Batman, and others to become part of their famed Star Wars lines. What's more, in the years since the original Star Wars toys were released, other toy properties like The Real West, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and the Batman movies have borrowed select pieces from our favorite galaxy to be re-imagined as a "sonic neutralizer", a Sherwood Forest, and a "Glamour Gals" stage, among others.
Collector Ron Salvatore recently discussed some of the toys recycled into or from the Star Wars lines as part of the Celebration IV and Celebration Europe collecting panels taking place last summer. Here is an overview of that panel...
( Read More... )
Cancer Society Focuses Its Ads on the Uninsured
By KEVIN SACK, The New York Times, August 31, 2007
ATLANTA, Aug. 30 — In a stark departure from past practice, the American Cancer Society plans to devote its entire $15 million advertising budget this year not to smoking cessation or colorectal screening but to the consequences of inadequate health coverage.
( Read More... )
Starting Over
By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER, The New York Times, September 2, 2007
THE WORLD WITHOUT US
By Alan Weisman. Illustrated. 324 pp. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press. $24.95.
When Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was published in 1963, the chemical giant Monsanto struck back with a parody called “Desolate Spring” that envisioned an America laid waste not by pesticides but by insects: “The bugs were everywhere. Unseen. Unheard. Unbelievably universal. ... On or under every square foot of land, every square yard, every acre, and county, and state and region in the entire sweep of the United States. In every home and barn and apartment house and chicken coop, and in their timbers and foundations and furnishings. Beneath the ground, beneath the waters, on and in limbs and twigs and stalks, under rocks, inside trees and animals and other insects — and yes, inside man.”
To Alan Weisman, this nightmare scenario would be merely a promising start. In his morbidly fascinating nonfiction eco-thriller, “The World Without Us,” Weisman imagines what would happen if the earth’s most invasive species — ourselves — were suddenly and completely wiped out. Writers from Carson to Al Gore have invoked the threat of environmental collapse in an effort to persuade us to change our careless ways. With similar intentions but a more devilish sense of entertainment values, Weisman turns the destruction of our civilization and the subsequent rewilding of the planet into a Hollywood-worthy, slow-motion disaster spectacular and feel-good movie rolled into one.
( Read More... )
The most touching "before and after" pictures I've ever seen:
Sean Fritz, left, and Timothy McQuillan, awaiting their marriage certificate at the Polk County Clerk’s Office.
Sean Fritz, 24, left, and Timothy McQuillan, 21, sealed their union in a ceremony performed by the Rev. Mark Stringer, right.
Iowa Permits Same-Sex Marriage, for 4 Hours, Anyway
By MONICA DAVEY, The New York Times, September 1, 2007
DES MOINES, Aug. 31 — From towns around the state, places like Cedar Falls, Ames and Cedar Rapids, same-sex couples converged on this city as early as dawn on Friday as word spread that a judge had overturned a state law banning gay marriage.
“Imagine this — right here in Iowa,” Amanda Duncan said as she and her partner of three years, Aleece Ramirez, filled out their application for a marriage license and put down $35. “Hopefully, this starts a fire that spreads to other places.”
The chance was fleeting. After four hours, Robert B. Hanson, the same county judge who had deemed the ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional, delayed further granting of licenses until the Iowa Supreme Court decided whether to consider an appeal.
( Read More... )
