This is all mostly background and the bulk of the movie takes place after Earl’s mother (the one who raised him) passes away and leaves him a letter telling him the truth and asking him to get to know his brother. Of course the two don’t get along at first but both end up getting to know each other and sharing a kinship that breaks down their perceived racial barriers. It sounds a bit cliche as I write this, but it really was pulled off well and both characters were multi-dimensional in their roles.

The poignant speech I remembered from when I originally saw the movie comes just over half way through when Earl is having a heart to heart talk with Raymond’s son, Virgil. Virgil was a former college football star whose career was ended by injury before realizing his full potential. Earl told him a story about one of the residents of his hometown who had gone through some major setbacks in his life but managed to maintain a positive outlook. It boiled down to something this simple man told him one day. “Being happy is as simple as having something to look forward to.” Earl ended his little talk by telling Virgil that he needs to find something to look forward to and that he needs to give his family something to look forward to. If you haven’t seen this movie yet, pay attention to this scene. I’m afraid I’m not doing the scene justice by trying to describe in here, but I thought it was pretty powerful to watch. In fact, powerful enough that I haven’t forgotten it in the 12 years since I first saw the movie.

Overall, I think this was a great movie and any fans of James Earl Jones or Robert Duvall will find their characters both real and memorable.

Reviewed by Matt, posting for the educational and science best selling toys of 2008.

But anyway, back to why I’m loving Netflix right now. We decided to pick a monthly movie theme and watch movies in particular genres, or by particular actors, or any other common thread that we feel like. So I picked the first month, September 2008, and decided I want to watch movies starring Robert Duvall, as he’s been one of my favorite actors for the last few years. And Netflix made it easy by listing all the movies he’s been in and all I had to do was click their little “add now” button and my queue is instantly updated with my picks.

I added eight movies. I’m not sure how many we’ll be able to get through in the month but we’ll give it a shot and since we’re starting a week early we might have a chance. Here’s what we hope to watch:

1. A Family Thing, 1995
2. To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962
3. The Great Santani, 1979
4. Colors, 1988
5. The Scarlet Letter, 1995
6. Gods and Generals, 2003
7. Outbreak, 1995
8. Deep Impact, 1998

That’s all for now. I plan to write brief reviews as we watch them so stay tuned for some more of my stellar writing. And as usual, if you’re looking for educational and science toys, check out my store’s list of the best selling toys of 2008 here.

Okay, so I think we can all guess the top two, and probably guess the correct order. The tricky part of this one is coming up with the next few. I’ve only read the subject line and haven’t looked at the list yet so here are my guesses. Coke and Pepsi, obvious choices for number one and two. For the next three I’m going to say Dr. Pepper, 7-Up and Mountain Dew. Now I’m about to look at the list. Here they are, in gallons sold in 2005…

1. Coca-Cola, 4,848,200,000
2. Pepsi, 3,124,900,000
3. Mountain Dew, 1,301,300,000
4. Dr. Pepper, 1,168,200,000
5. Sprite, 993,700,000
6. Gatorade, 958,000,000
7. Minute Maid, 672,000,000
8. Tropicana, 632,000,000
9. Aquafina, 506,100,000
10. Dasani, 448,000,000

So I guess neither of the main diet brands showed up, unless they are considering diet Coke and diet Pepsi to be variants of Coke and Pepsi. And I forgot about Sprite which looks to be in the top 5, with 7-Up nowhere to be seen. And I don’t consider Gatorade and the two waters on the list to be classified as soft drinks anyway. Oh well, the source of this list is the Beverage Marketing Corporation and who am I to say what should or shouldn’t be considered a soft drink brand.

Posted by admin for science and educational best selling toys of 2008.

The GeoSafari line of educational toys by Educational Insights is really one of the best lines around. After Tedco Toys’ line of Ein-O Science Kits and the SmartLab books and kits, the Geosafari line is probably one of my favorites. I tried out this one a couple of months ago (and the Talking Globe Jr.) and was pleasantly surprised with how much fun I had learning about the world. I was afraid the sound quality wouldn’t be very good (as is often the case with electronic toys that try to synthesize the human voice), but in this case it was actually very good.

One of my favorite points about the GeoSafari Talking Globe is the trivia game. It claims to have over 10,000 questions, but to be honest, I didn’t play with it long enough to hear but maybe a few dozen. But the ones I did try to answer were pretty clever and really made me think. Another great thing about this one is the cool sound effects and lights. I can see kids playing with this one for hours at a time, for days and even weeks, and not even realize how much they’re learning.

Overall, I’ll give this toy two thumbs up, even with the steep price tag of about $80 US. In my opinion, it’s well worth it.

Okay, I’ve got about five minutes to get a post off and I just saw this story on Baseball Tonight. I don’t know much about Fielder (other than what I remember about his daddy), but my general impression is that he’s a little bit of a diva. How could someone who has gone through their life with the name “Prince” not get a big head and be a little too full of himself. He reminds me of one of those guys who can hit a lot of home runs because he weighs about 600 pounds. That’s all for tonight.

Posted by admin for science kits and educational toys.

I love the Ein-O science toys and kits. I played with this one recently and was surprised at the number of cool science projects and experiments you can do with it. The experiments are: making a hoverball, creating a sticky beaker, magic jumping beans, building a simple water filtering, twin rings, connecting water, paper kite, can roller, frequency match, and a suspended paperclip. It’s available wherever great educational toys are sold.

Or you can find it at Atomic Elephant Toy: Ein-O Top Test Tube Cool Experiments.

The answer is actually an interesting study in physics. If you recall, the acceleration of a falling body (gravity) is 9.8 meters per second squared, or 32 feet per second squared. A quick conversion tells us that a falling mass is increasing its speed about 22 miles per hour for every second it falls. So a cat (assuming he started at zero mph when he fell off the balcony) will be traveling about 22 mph after one second, 44 mph after two seconds, 66 mph after three seconds, etc, etc.  But… any falling mass in the Earth’s atmosphere will reach a terminal velocity (Vt) depending on its weight, mass and shape. Its shape will determine air resistance, hence, a spherical cat will have a higher terminal velocity than a rectangular one.

Well, since there are no spherical or rectangular cats, we have to estimate this terminal velocity for cats. I just read that an actual cat’s Vt is about 60 mph. I guess a group of rogue scientists calculated this by throwing a few cats off a building and timing their descent until they hit the ground. Or maybe they’re just estimating.

So why is a cat’s terminal velocity only 60 mph whereas a fat human’s would be about 120 mph? The answer here is more of a study in biology than physics. A cat has a very sophisticated inner ear and sense of balance. That’s why they usually land on their feet after a fall. But this same sense that innately tells a cat that it’s falling also tells it that it is accelerating — and then when it’s stopped acccelerating (reached its Vt). When this happens, a cat will flatten itself out, thus creating a much higher air drag (almost like a parachute or flying squirrel). Then it’s velocity will actually decrease to such a speed that may allow it to survive the fall.

I think this has been proven (or hypothesized) by studies after the fact from vets in big cities reporting incidents of falling cats surviving. An interesting result is that falling cats have a 10% chance of being killed in falls from two to six stories but their chances of survival are increased twofold when falling from 7-32 stories. I don’t think there has been enough data collected from cats falling more than 32 stories to be statistically significant.

How about that? Cool, huh? If you enjoyed this little scientific rambling, check out my list of best selling toys when you get a chance. I’m still trying to plug my store selling educational and science toys.

So here’s something cool. I love browsing the bargain books at Barnes & Noble for the occasional great find. Last weekend I came across a book called “Top 10 of Everything 2008.” Originally it was about $25 but wow, it was in the bargain rack for $6.98. “What a deal!” I said to myself. Anyway I bought it and just randomly flipped to a page. I’m going to create a category here called my Random Top 10 Lists. So here’s my first entry. Behold, the Top 10 Animated Movies of all time…

1. Shrek 2, 2004, $921 million
2. Finding Nemo, 2003, $865 million
3. The Lion King, 1994, $784 million
4. Ice Age: The Meltdown, 2006, $652 million
5. The Incredibles, 2004, $634 million
6. Monsters, Inc., 2001, $529 million
7. Madagascar, 2005, $529 million
8. Aladdin, 1992,$504 million
9. Toy Story 2, 1999, $485 million
10.  Shrek, 2001, $484 million

Now my question after looking at this list is– is it really fair? If someone compiled a normalized list, and maybe based everything on a standardized year, say 1990, would the results still be the same? Ie., how would the money Aladdin made in 1992 ($504 million) compare to the $528 million Madagascar made in 2005? Based on a normalized scale, I would think that Aladdin was a much more successful movie. And what about Snow White? Adjusted for inflation, Disney’s 1937 classic is often hailed as one of the top 10 moneymaking films of all time. So the several million that film grossed in 1937 dollars would probably top a billion today. And oh yeah, since I’m always plugging my store, check out our list of best selling toys.

I have a fictional friend who likes to stop by her local Starbucks on her way to work in the morning. I haven’t been to a Starbucks Coffee store in a while so I’m not sure what the going rate for fancy coffee is, but I think she pays about $37 a day for her latte cappuccino frappuccino mucho grande drink. She only makes about twelve cents an hour - did I mention she works in a sweat shop in a third-world East Asian country and writes blog reviews in bad English to supplement her income? Anyway, she really wanted her coffee one day last week but she didn’t quite have the $37 needed. Another fictional friend recommended she get a payday loan. She was afraid she would get fired if she used the fax machine at her sweat shop to send in the paperwork, but her friend told her about this new company that will offer a no faxing payday loan.

What a great solution! She went to this company called Personal Cash Advance and found just what she needed. As she’s a pretty savvy blogger, she noticed this site had a decent page rank and fairly high Alexa ranking so she knew it was a reputable organization. After a few minutes of browsing their website, she was easily able to apply for a no faxing payday loan and get enough money to support her Starbucks habit for the next two weeks! “Wow,” my fictional friend said. “I’m going to recommend them to all my blogging friends who work in sweat shops.”