African Americans and Oscar®

By Reference Librarian Anne R.
 
Viola Davis
 
At the Screen Actors Guild Award ceremony last month, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, who both appeared in the movie adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s popular novel The Help, made history together. They were the first pair of African American actresses to win both the Best Actress and the Best Supporting Actress   awards.
 
Hattie McDaniel was the first African American to win an Oscar®
 
When the Academy Awards event airs on Sunday, Feb. 26, this milestone may be repeated. That’s an encouraging sign, since the history of African Americans and the Oscar® is a troubling one. In 1940, Hattie McDaniel was the first African American to win, taking home the Best Supporting Actress award for her performance as housemaid Mammy in Gone with the Wind. It would be an astonishing 23 years before another African American actor took home an Oscar®.

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Aboutthatcar.com Mercedes-Benz SLK350 

By Frank S. Washington
 
DETROIT, MI – I think consumers see the Mercedes-Benz SLK and don’t realize what they’re looking at. Now entering its third generation, the SLK was the first car to have a successful retracting roof. That’s right, just like its predecessor the 2012 Mercedes-Benz SLK350 is a hardtop convertible.
 
My test vehicle featured the panorama (glass) roof but it did not feature the option that lets you change the color of the tint. Still, my tester did have the optional neck-level heating system, as Mercedes said, that blew warm air from the driver and passenger-seat head restraints.

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Editorial: Closure of Collins Road Post Office Would be Detrimental to Lansing Region

By Andy Schor
 
Few Michigan residents are strangers to the fallout that comes with state and federal budget cuts. With many lawmakers reluctant to embrace sustainable solutions to our budget problems, vital services that our area families and businesses rely on continue to be slashed (and in some cases eliminated completely) at every level of government.  
 
One of the most alarming possibilities currently being discussed in Washington is the closure of the United States Postal Service Processing and Distribution Center on Collins Road in Lansing and subsequent transfer of that facility’s services to Grand Rapids. This is being justified by a feasibility study conducted by the U.S. Postal Service which is being called into question by a number of regional leaders. 

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Ancient Nubians: A hard life

Making bones speak:  Students analyze a Nubian skeleton from the Middle Ages. More than 400 ancient skeletons from Africa are on loan to MSU from the British Museum. Photo by G.L. Kohuth
 
E. LANSING, MI — In a narrow, modest laboratory in Michigan State University’s Giltner Hall, students pore over African skeletons from the Middle Ages in an effort to make the bones speak.
 
Little is known about these Nubians, meaning the information collected by graduate and undergraduate students in MSU’s Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Program will help shed light on this unexplored culture.
 
From what has already been gathered, life in ancient Nubia could be brutal. Residents of Mis Island – a remote area along the Fourth Cataract of the Nile River in present day Sudan – were plagued by meager diets, high infant mortality and diseases such as scurvy and tuberculosis.

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Ask Tamara: My Sister Wants My Kidney and My Wife Says “No!”

Dear Tamara:
 
My wife and I have been having an ongoing argument about whether I should give my sister a kidney. My sister has been sick for awhile and is now in need of a transplant. Out of our eight siblings, I am the only match. Of course everyone in my family is encouraging me to help my sister and at first I thought it was a no-brainer.
 
I come from a close-knit family and helping each other is what we do. But now my wife has a problem with it and doesn’t want me to go through with the surgery. She has always had an issue with how close I am to my family, especially my mother and my sisters. 

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Your Other 8 Hours: When You Shouldn’t Listen to Experts: 5 Must-Ask Questions

By Robert Pagliarini,
Tribune Media Services
 
Experts can be dangerous.
 
I’m the number-one proponent of using the other eight hours to learn from others, grow and advance, but whenever you find yourself seeking information, guidance or answers from an authority figure such as an expert or doctor, watch out! You just might save your life.

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Comcast Announces Agreements With Four New Minority-Owned Independent Networks

Tom and Lupe Izzo (left) and Magic Johnson (right) at an event in East Lansing, MI, where Magic played basketball at Michigan State University. TNCP photo
 
Selected Networks Were Proposed By Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Robert Rodriguez, and Constantino “Said” Schwarz
 
PHILADELPHIA, PA  -  Comcast Corporation, one of the world’s leading media, entertainment and communications companies, today announced it has selected four new minority-owned independent networks to be broadly distributed on Comcast Cable systems between April 2012 and January 2014.  After a thorough evaluation of more than 100 proposals, Comcast selected four networks – two of which are majority African-American owned and two that are majority American Hispanic owned and operated and programmed in English.

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Sleep Apnea: Understanding the Signs and Symptoms

By Robert C. Robinson III, MD
 
Recently the wife of the late Reggie White, football legend and NFL Hall of Famer, has been bringing attention to the medical condition that plagued her husband, obstructive sleep apnea.  As the obesity epidemic proves to be more of an issue in our community, so
too does sleep apnea.  Here are a few points that you and your loved ones need to know about sleep apnea, its symptoms, side effects and treatment.

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Interpersonal EDGE: Dealing with Emotional Terrorists

By Dr. Daneen Skube
Tribune Media Services

Q. Our organization is considering promoting a current vice president to CEO. She is prejudicial and overbearing, has no people skills, calls employees stupid, belittles them many times, resulting in tears, is always right, and yells in public at employees. 

How do we deal with the situation if she becomes our permanent CEO? 

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Retire Smart: After the Super Committee, what next for Social Security, Medicare?

 

By Mark Miller
Tribune Media Services
 
 Older Americans might be thinking they dodged a bullet when the deficit cutting supercommittee process ground to a halt this week without an agreement. Many were watching the negotiations warily, worried that Social Security or Medicare benefits might be cut as part of a grand bargain on the deficit. 

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