culture
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10 Kinda Fun Facts About 'The Cosby Show'
Think you know everything about The Cosby Show? As the show celebrates its 25th anniversary, here are some facts you may find surprising: 1. Phylicia Rashad is only 10 years older than Sabrina Le Beauf, who played her daughter, Sondra. 2. Speaking of Sondra, a 21-year-old Whitney Houston was in the early running for the…
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Stepping Up: Vince Young Takes McNair Boys to School's Dads' Breakfast
Vince Young may not be the Titans’ starting quarterback, but, for one day, he was a star in the life of Steve McNair’s sons. From ESPN: Young surprised 11-year-old Trenton and 5-year-old Tyler on Wednesday by showing up at their house and taking them to their school’s “Dear Dads Breakfast” at a local restaurant. “Those…
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Dozens Killed as Kenya Continues to Suffer from Drought
Kenya is going through one of its worst droughts in more than ten years and as the desperation increases, so does the violence, particularly in the north of the country. From Al Jazeera: Gunbattles between the Samburu and Pokot tribes began early on Tuesday, said Raphael Lentimao, a member of parliament in the Samburu East…
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An Exclusive Talk with Bill Cosby
For eight television seasons (NBC, 1984-92), the Emmy Award-winning The Cosby Show, written by and starring comedian Bill Cosby, beamed an unflinching, yet humorous black family portrait into living rooms across America. Cosby, as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, presided over this historic foray into black upper-middle class life. The sitcom was a window into a certain,…
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The President’s Own Tomato Patch
As co-director of FRESHFARM Markets, Bernadine Prince has 11 years of experience setting up farmer’s markets in the D.C. metro area. FRESHFARM just received a permit to open a farmers market blocks from the White House. The market is the latest in a series of White House-sponsored efforts to push local, fresh food. The first…
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'The Cosby Show' Had the Best Music of Any Sitcom Ever
The Huxtables loved jazz, rhythm and blues, classical, Latin funk and hip-hop. Cliff was a jazzhead. Clair sang along with Stevie Wonder. Rudy lip-synced Ray Charles’ “Night Time is the Right Time.” Theo, with his friend Cockroach, stepped up to the mic, as they spit a couple lines on Julius Caesar. Vanessa filled the house…
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Caster Semenya Placed on Suicide Watch
According to Med India and the Daily Star, South African track star Caster Semenya has been placed on suicide watch after tests claim to classify her as intersex: The Daily Star quoted officials as saying that psychologists are caring the 18-year-old round-the- clock after it was claimed tests had proved she was a hermaphrodite. Leaked…
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Lack of Black Techies, Web Redlining and That Darned Digital Divide
At last week’s Gov 2.0 gathering—dedicated to exploring the ways that the Internet can improve public policy—Silicon Valley and Washington came together to discuss biometric security, open-source policymaking, geo-targeting and other breakthrough technologies. Roaming the halls? Internet luminaries like Google vice president Vint Cerf, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and Vivek Kundra, chief information officer of…
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MySpace to Facebook = White Flight?
MySpace is no longer cool. As a matter of fact, its number of users is now one-half the size of rival Facebook. Is this because MySpace is too black for the rest of America? Teenage Internet users may hold the answer. High-schoolers report their use of the social-networking giants along racial lines—MySpace is seen as…
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The Facebook/MySpace Divide
The Facebook-versus-MySpace question has never been an important one for me. As much as I dislike digital dependency, Facebook is a necessity. How else would I find out who got dumped or who got drunk? How would I know what events are coming up? I hate to admit that I even use BlackBerry’s Facebook mobile…