Born on November 23, 1923 in Chicago, Illinois, J. Ernest Wilkins, Jr. entered the University of Chicago to study mathematics at the age of 13. He received his B.S. degree as a Phi Beta Kappa graduate in 1940 at the age of 16, his M.S. degree in 1941 at the age of 17, and his Ph.D. degree in December 1942 at the age of 19. In 1942 he was also a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study. This was the beginning of one of the most exemplary careers of scholarship and application of an American mathematician/physicist/engineer in the 20th century.

A biological computer made entirely of biological molecules. Another WHODATHUNKIT, and now: who's going to write it?

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is the youngest Director in the history of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. Like most of us, he had a "price" to pay to get to where he is: he merely "paid the extra social tax." Go to 29:30 of the embed to listen to his remarkable story of perserverence and tenacity.

Does supersolidity exist? It is a quantum state of matter.

"Education was the secular god of the black community"(a quote I remember, but have no sources for it).

"Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.

"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions." Carter G. Woodson

Latin for "Not Alone." Apparently, an uprising against Elsevier, a massive online scientific journal. 2,400 academics have refused to publish anything, siting cost mostly. See details at link and link on the blog.

Dr. Mae C. Jemison, MD: not only was she an astronaut, not only a medical doctor, sister studied African and African American Studies. How more down could you be (and smart)?

The Limit as it Approaches...is a term from Calculus, that describes essentially the definition of a derivative. Sadly, it is how science is now: essentially dominated by white males with females of all cultures and minorities numerically...minorities.

Dr. Elvira Williams is featured on this post.

She believed in me and taught me General Physics II and Electromagnetic Field Theory. This is not my Diaspora post, but it is related. More of "other than" have to represent in science and speculative fiction.

"Living well is the best revenge." (George Herbert)

LETTER FROM A FREEDMAN TO HIS OLD MASTER.

[Written just as he dictated it.]

Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865.

To my old Master, Colonel P. H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee.

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

The rest of Jourdon Anderson's exquisite reply here.

Some data putting to rest the myth of the young entrepreneur, and that everyone over 35 is washed up (not!):

This concerns so-called 'hard-science fiction,' using current technologies to tell a story with a future focus:

I  used to love Republican politics. I have always admired the Republican primary process for the way its leaders and frontrunners, unlike the Democratic primary candidates, seem to draw energy, support and money by being less politically correct than the next guy. It's a damn-the-torpedoes attitude that has all but disappeared from our sanitized and boring political language. The more passionate and less socially acceptable a candidate becomes outside of their party, the stronger they become inside the base.It's an adherence to stroking the personalities of your faithful and not acknowledging the values of the outside that interests me so.

It's the American Way and probably why our politics skews rightward. The more passionate they are, though damaging to general election candidates, the more regarded they become within the right. Liberals are the opposite. The more politically correct, middle of the road, grounded and normal, the more support they garner. We want our candidates to be accepting, motherly figures who will console and hopefully (mostly in vain) bring the fickle moderates into the fold. I have envied the Republicans their brilliant and at the same time profoundly ignorant brand and execution. However, over the last several years, Republican political rhetoric has mutated into a kind of trickle-down insanity that has more and more translated itself in random acts of violence.

See more at: Grand Old Psychos, Steve King, Truthout

Donald E. Goodwin (no relation), representing...

Apparently, the driving beats of Rap Music can power a medical sensor implanted in the body. Suddenly, getting older looks a bit more interesting...associated embed at the link provided.

© 5 February 2012, the Griot Poet

He was “The Don”…Cornelius, who actually got along with “the blacks” since he was one!

“Diamond in the back, sunroof top, digging the scene with a gangster lean…”

And we like Sly and the Family Stone “Thanked him for letting us be ourselves” again and again as we ran downstairs, to neighbors’ homes with rabbit ear antennas for the best reception (back when we had three dial channels, UHF and LOW DEF snow)…

James Brown was our “Pappa who didn’t take no mess” as we formed our own Soul Train lines, we “said it loud, we were black…and proud.” Like Niecy, “we just wanted to be free” like “black butterflies” high in the sky of our cultural contentment.

Barry White maestro was responsible for more babies delivered than any singer in history (said it himself), and Marvin could have us sexing, rocking and thinking in one performance set.

“The Don” was photographed with Martin Luther King, but did his thing as the antithesis of American Bandstand,  we danced and sweated, learning the latest steps from TSOP – the sounds of Philly, suitable situated in the city of brotherly love…we’d lost our Medgar, Malcolm and King.

So we needed music and movement that reaffirmed our black selves in a harsh world that defined us well in step-in-fetch tragi-comedic caricatures of the kings and queens he treated us as. The Harlem Renaissance was as distant a cultural memory as New York from North Carolina, or Chi Town from California.

Yet, we were one culture every Saturday, “One Nation under a Groove” coast-to-coast, one language, one tribe before Babel, before network cable business suits confounded our language with market-based bywords and epithets.

We were afros and bell bottoms, cornrows and dashikis, hot pants and tied off and/or tube tops: we strutted like we were stars on red carpets after Sidney Poitier and before Denzel (Washington), Holly (Berry) and Jamie (Foxx)…

The Don “was a bad mother…shut yo mouth!”

I’m just talking about Don Cornelius,

Who on his passing I can only wish him finally:

“Come on and get with us next week on this same station, and you can bet your last money, it’s all going to be a stone gas, honey.”

In (sadly) parting, I wish you, Don “love, peace…and SOUL!”

Laser cooling, really. Dr. Steven Chu, on Obama's Science Advisory, won a Nobel Prize for it.

I was tempted to do a You Tube of the Isley Brothers song, but they're not "live" performances. However, please enjoy the Danger Sign:

Science solving poverty in South Africa: means they could do it here, too if they wanted...