This week in 1995 a famous personality whose real name was Robert Smith died from a heart attack at the age of 57. This person was much more famous under his stage name and will always be remembered (well… at least in my household) for a small but pivotal role in an early film by some guy named George Lucas. I know, I know, I haven’t heard much about him lately either but humor me. Can you name this famous person? And then while you are at it you might as well name the movie. When you have completed all of these tasks let me know.
Last week I wanted to know the not-as-famous-term-as-‘flying-saucer’ that was coined by World War II pilots for unexplainable airborne phenomena. Players also got brownie points if they knew the alternative band who used that name on themselves. I am of course referring to foo fighters and the Foo Fighters. The winners whose names as promised will not be reported to the government are –
Peter Erickson
Matthew Koenen
David Smith
Christine Wayne
The rest of you all…well…I’m sorry.
Thanks for playing!
Monthly Archives
June 2008
This week in 1995 a famous personality whose real name was Robert Smith died from a heart attack at the age of 57. This person was much more famous under his stage name and will always be remembered (well… at least in my household) for a small but pivotal role in an early film by some guy named George Lucas. I know, I know, I haven’t heard much about him lately either but humor me. Can you name this famous person? And then while you are at it you might as well name the movie. When you have completed all of these tasks let me know.
Last week I wanted to know the not-as-famous-term-as-‘flying-saucer’ that was coined by World War II pilots for unexplainable airborne phenomena. Players also got brownie points if they knew the alternative band who used that name on themselves. I am of course referring to foo fighters and the Foo Fighters. The winners whose names as promised will not be reported to the government are –
Peter Erickson
Matthew Koenen
David Smith
Christine Wayne
The rest of you all…well…I’m sorry.
Thanks for playing!
You are invited to stop by and browse our collection of New Books next time you are in the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library. Come to the southeast corner of the Reference Room on the main floor and you’ll find the space has been freshened with colorful paint, comfortable easy chairs, carpets and coffee tables. New books that have been recently added to our collection are on the nearby shelves and can be perused and sampled with ease.
To skim new titles before coming to the library, visit the library web page and click on New Titles in the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library.
Hope to see you soon! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call the Reference Desk at 651-962-5001.
You are invited to stop by and browse our collection of New Books next time you are in the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library. Come to the southeast corner of the Reference Room on the main floor and you’ll find the space has been freshened with colorful paint, comfortable easy chairs, carpets and coffee tables. New books that have been recently added to our collection are on the nearby shelves and can be perused and sampled with ease.
To skim new titles before coming to the library, visit the library web page and click on New Titles in the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library.
Hope to see you soon! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call the Reference Desk at 651-962-5001.
Have you assigned on-line materials in your classes? Have you accessed on-line materials placed on reserve to do your classwork for your instructors? What is fair use? Have you been in violation of copyright laws? Catch a glimpse of this complicated issue and read about a recent lawsuit described in the June 27 on-line Chronicle of Higher Education.
O’Shaughnessy-Frey reference librarian Marianne Hageman invites us to read about portable and collaborative uses of space developed by the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design. She points out that in two recent posts from The Shifted Librarian weblog, Jenny Levine writes:
“The point is to bring spaces into libraries that let people collaborate around the content that already exists in our buildings, add new content to the mix, mash it all up to create something new, and share it with the community. Rinse. Repeat. It’s a way to connect people with the physical world and help them make sense of it by interacting with and changing it. It’s another instance where the library adds value to the equation (the same way it does with books and now games), offering an experience you can’t replicate at home, borne of the community. TJ, the programming wizard behind the curtain, called it a “human interface environment,” rather than a “human computer interaction.” It takes the focus off technolgoy and puts it back onto the people.”
If you wish to read more, please see Thinkering Spaces in Libraries, part one and part two.
On June 24th 1997 the United States Air Force released a report on the 1947 Roswell Incident stating that the alleged UFO was in fact a military balloon and the alien bodies were life sized dummies. We may never know for sure what really happened on that day in 1947 but what we can be sure is that the incident still resonates through pop culture to this day.
While the term ‘flying saucer’ came into common parlance after that event there was another term for UFO’s that allied pilots coined during World War II that did not quite capture the collective imagination in the same way. Can you give me the two word phrase for a mysterious airborne phenomenon that I am looking for?
If you can let me know and the ‘prize’ for a correct answer is me not reporting your name to the government.
Last week I wanted to know the momentous event in Berlin on June 12th 1987 that Ronald Reagan made even more momentous with his challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev to ‘tear down this wall.’ The ‘official’ answer is Ronald Reagan was commemorating the 750th anniversary of Berlin. I thought I was being very clever to trick people into thinking that it was the anniversary of John Kennedy’s momentous ‘ich bin ein berliner’ speech, but the joke was on me. It turns out that Kennedy did make that speech on June 12th because he too was speaking on the anniversary date of Berlin. The campus historians who knew at least one of the correct answers last week were
Jan Pinkerton
Peter Erickson
Matthew Koenen
Long story short I need to take a little bit more of my own advice about conducting better research that I dish out to you all.
Thanks as always for playing!
On June 12th 1987 Ronald Reagan in Berlin famously called upon Mikhail Gorbachev to ‘tear down this wall.’ What has been forgotten is the original historic anniversary he was commemorating when he made that challenge. Do you know what the special occasion was? If you do let me know. As always there are no prizes, just the satisfaction that comes from conducting stellar research on this query or being old enough to remember this event first hand.
The last question I posed had to do with the very influential, yet very stuffy movie critic from the New York Times who was notoriously behind the times in understanding the newer, grittier films that Hollywood started to produce in the late 1960’s.
The answer is Bosley Crowther. The campus film critic experts are
Peter Erickson
Matthew Koenen
Thanks to all who played!