Black Light Posters

How Black Lights Work: You have probably seen black lights at amusement parts, science museums and Halloween displays. Black light makes fluorescent colors "glow in the dark." For example, if you have a fluorescent poster and shine a black light on it in a dark room, the poster will glow brightly. You may have also seen pieces of paper that look blank in regular light but spell out a glowing message under a black light. Many amusement parks use hand-stamps that are invisible until you view them under black light.
So what is going on here? A black light bulb produces "black light." If you turn on a black light bulb in a dark room, what you can see from the bulb is a purplish glow. What you cannot see is the ultraviolet light that the bulb is also producing.

Our eyes can see visible light in a spectrum ranging from red through orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. Above violet is ultraviolet light, which we cannot see. How Sun Tans and Sunburns Work discusses ultraviolet light and its effects on our skin. A black light bulb produces UVA light (as opposed to UVB light, which is much more harmful). What you see glowing under a black light, whether it is a fluorescent poster or an invisible hand stamp or a newly-washed white T-shirt, is phosphors. A phosphor, as described in How Television Works, is any substance that emits visible light in response to some sort of radiation. In other words, a phosphor converts the energy in the radiation into visible light. So a fluorescent paint on a fluorescent poster contains a phosphor that converts UV radiation into a specific color of visible light. Normal colors simply reflect light, but a fluorescent color absorbs the radiation and re-emits it in the visible spectrum (sort of like a light bulb emits light), so it looks much brighter than a normal color. White T-shirts and socks normally glow under a black light because modern detergents contain phosphors that convert UV light into white light. This makes whites look "whiter than white" in normal sunlight. What you are seeing in sunlight is the normal reflection of visible white light from the cloth, as well as the emission of white light that the phosphors create from UV light in sunlight. The T-shirt really is whiter than white! Many other substances fluoresce naturally under black light, including liquid detergents (as we already talked about), quinine (in tonic water), urine (!) and some types of paper money.

Sororities and Fraternities are part of a long held social system on university campuses known as "the Greek System".
Sororities are generally for females, and Fraternities generally for males - some "sororities" are actually "female fraternities" as defined by their charter. The difference is negligible today although in the past there were differences.
Sexism is rampant in the Greek System; the unofficial attitude that many (not all) fraternities take toward women is notoriously misogynistic and is demonstrated in some of the practices of the groups (from taking pledges to strip clubs to "tagging" female guests at parties to label them as available or off limits to other members) - there are even cases of institutional sexism, some schools have banned Sorority houses as "bawdy house" since all the residents are female and live under an organized title.
Hazing in the early 1980's and 1990's gave Fraternities and Sororities a bad name, currently most major Fraternities and Sororities have an active anti-hazing policy in place with penalties ranging from expulsion of individual members to absolute discharge of an entire chapter.
Drugs and alcohol are technically banned in all Fraternity and Sorority sponsored functions - but the "Keg Party" is still synonymous with Fraternity on most campuses.
You have to "Rush" in order to get a chance to get in to both Fraternities and Sororities; next you must pledge, be accepted and finally initiated.
A "Legacy" is somebody who "automatically" is accepted because a family member such as; mother, father, brother or sister, was a member first - not all Fraternities and Sororities still honor the legacy system.
Fraternities and Sororities are not all bad - they are excellent networking groups for later life, give college students a second "family", and are very philathropic giving hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours and millions of dollars to worthy causes every year.
Fraternities and Sororities are still elitist, although some newer, "left of center" Greek Organizations are shaking up the centuries old foundation of snobbery and selectivity (namely, openly gay Fraternities and Sororities).
No matter what their reputation, Fraternities and Sororities are here to stay and can be a wonderful part of your university experience, the trick is finding the one that best suits you.

Movie Posters

Movie Posters: A very enjoyable pastime is to collect concert posters and concert t-shirts. Some regions even have swap meets that are focused on nothing but collectable's: Movie Posters are some of the most popular. Did you see the Lord of the Rings? I know a lot of people saw all three movies, and many people enjoy a Lord of the Rings Poster or a Lord of the Ring T-Shirt. It is amazing just how many people like to collect the movie memorabilia. Another movie poster that is really popular is Shrek and Shrek 2 Posters. Shrek 2 was one of the most popular animated movies of all time. Some kids have seen many, many times, and would beg for the Shrek 2 licensed products. Christmas this past year did not have any one "Hot" toy, but the Shrek 2 items did sell very well.

Hooray For Hollywood!
In the middle of a sun-drenched nowhere, a sober, God-fearing man and woman settled in to create a like-minded community. But the future would be determined by powerful stars and Machiavellian moguls.
There is a certain sort of place in America that is often referred to as a "state of mind." Cape Cod, New Orleans, the Florida Keys. They are both real and imaginary; they transcend. They exist on the ground and in the head. But however fanciful these other enclaves may be, there is one that surpasses all: Hollywood. The word conjures images of sound stage and Sunset Strip, of nightclubs and all sorts of naughtiness, of movie palaces and extraordinary people — stars of the gaudiest illumination.

Yes, there is an actual Hollywood, a segment of Los Angeles. There, beginning a century ago, the American dream burst out bigger than life, ultimately touching everyone, everywhere. The industry that transformed this relatively barren place into a land as mystical and intoxicating as Xanadu or Bali Hai was the motion picture business. Of course, movies were then, and still are, made in locales other than Hollywood, some quite nearby and some far-flung. But nowhere and nothing else frees our fantasies and stirs our hopes and fears, our tears and our eternal romances, like that single incomparable word — Hollywood.

In the first decade of the 20th century, "movies" were like an irrepressible toddler, lunging in every which direction in France, Italy and England. The young medium was up and about in America, too, as New York City and Chicago hosted a slew of firms that produced fodder for the growing number of nickelodeons (five cents + [mel]odeon, or music hall). By the latter half of the decade there were thousands of these simple showplaces across the land, each of them displaying one- or two-reel films that lasted from a few minutes to a couple dozen. What may now seem a rather rudimentary product created a sensation: Viewers were mesmerized by these pictures that moved. The short dramas and comedies came from a number of production companies. In 1908, Thomas Edison, irate that others were horning in on "his" movie inventions but aware that compromise was his only option, united the 10 biggest operations as "the Trust." These 10 would control distribution, exhibition, pricing and everything else — in short, a monopoly. But in this wild and woolly time, independent distributors and exhibitors formed their own organization to fight back. Many of these freelancers migrated west to the Los Angeles area. For one thing, it was as far as you could get from New York, and although there were Trust members in California, the muscle was back East. And also, L.A., as it happened, was perfect for filmmaking. A great majority of the early flicks had been shot indoors, to satisfy lighting and temperature requirements. Southern California, with its ready labor market, mild climate and nonstop sunshine, opened the way to outdoor shooting, while providing an unrivaled variety of settings — mountains, deserts, beaches, villages and urban L. A.

Two decades earlier, near Los Angeles, a prohibitionist from Kansas by the name of Harvey Wilcox had bought a patch of land in quiet, nondescript Rancho La Brea. He thought it would be a perfect site for a community that would reflect his conservative beliefs, and he built his house smack in the middle of a fig orchard. Shortly thereafter his wife, Daeida, met a woman on a train who spoke of her summer home called Hollywood. Smitten with the name, Mrs. Wilcox decided to borrow it for their 120-acre tract. In 1903 the colony was incorporated as Hollywood, and in 1910, to take advantage of the water supply and sewer system, Hollywood became part of Los Angeles.

In that same year, the Trust suffered a serious blow when German-born Carl Laemmle introduced the star system to movies. Edison and his group had cloaked their performers in anonymity, rendering them mere cogs in the Trust's smooth operations. But many of the immigrants — mainly from central and eastern Europe — who were finding opportunities in this new, wide-open business had different ways of doing things, and weren't saddled with puritanical constraints that might keep them from using ribald tales and sensationalism to sell tickets. The most sensational idea belonged to Laemmle, who stole Florence Lawrence from Trust-member Biograph and launched a publicity campaign around her. From that moment on, there weren't just movies, there were movie stars, and they would soon attract, and hold, huge followings.

Another piece of the puzzle: In 1911, David Horsley came from New Jersey and purchased the Blondeau Tavern on Sunset Boulevard. There, he hung out the shingle of Hollywood's first studio, the Nestor Film Company. Before the year was out, 15 other firms had set up shop nearby. Three years later, Cecil B. DeMille, Jesse Lasky and Samuel Goldwyn took a giant cinematic step with the release of the first feature-length film, The Squaw Man. Made in a barn a block away from what became the corner of Hollywood and Vine, it was a box office hit and created a demand for longer movies. (The Squaw Man was visionary in a second way: In 1917, The Squaw Man's Son took in a good bit of wampum and began a hallowed Hollywood tradition, that of the sequel.) D.W. Griffith raised the bar immeasurably in 1915 with The Birth of a Nation, which, its repellent Ku Klux Klan sympathies aside, was the first motion picture piece of art. Weighing in at 190 minutes, it signaled the enormous possibilities of the feature film. Indeed, its very length was important: Nation made movies acceptable to a middle class that felt more at ease with a new medium that now provided the familiarity of theater-length shows. And these new devotees had higher standards, which meant more money would be sunk into the making of motion pictures.

Movies, said Griffith at the time, will change the world. "The human race will think more rapidly, more intelligently, more comprehensively than it ever did . . . We don't 'talk' about things happening, or describe how a thing 'looks'; we actually show it — vividly, completely, convincingly. It is the ever-present, realistic, actual now that 'gets' the great American public, and nothing ever devised by the mind of man can show it like moving pictures."

Nation was made during World War I, which, while derailing the European cinema, left American moviemaking as the leader of the pack. Hollywood boasted famous names like Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charles Chaplin, and, as much as anything, the star system defined the American movie. Certainly the great dream factories like MGM, Warners and Fox were the disseminators of the celluloid champagne, but then, as now, people usually chose what they would pay to see by whose name was on the marquee. And then, as now, the cult of celebrity was in full swing. Actors lived in fantasy homes in Hollywood (and later Beverly Hills). People were thrilled simply to drive by these castles, hoping beyond hope they might catch sight of a Theda Bara or a Tom Mix. The stars held gala bashes to die for — Harvey Wilcox's dream of a nice temperate village in the fig grove had given way to a pretty good replica of Gomorrah — and wore clothes that were more swell than a bee's knees. There were magazines and books devoted to them, photos of them to cut out and kiss. They were, truly, American royalty.

What we think of as Hollywood quickly became much too colossal to be contained within a section of the City of Angels. It spread across the nation and around the world. Hollywood taught girls and boys, gangsters and decent folk, how to walk and talk and dress. It rescued us from the rigors of the Depression and assured us that we could topple our savage foes in battle. It gave us music and dancing, violence and sex. Movies would later "grow up," but they would always be about laughing and crying, about learning how to live and how to die.

Hollywood can never disappear. We and it are as one.

Nature Poster

A nature poster has always been a favorite of the Poster Collector. Nature Posters are great for the classroom, office, or guest bedroom. There are many successful Nature Photographers; to have an image made into a poster is a benchmark for some wildlife artists. These inages are also popular to be made into Nature T-Shirts, which we also carry. Wolf Posters are the most popular animal poster. The reason is because the wolf image is a powerful and mysterious symbol.Quotations from Edward Abbey:

For I am not a naturalist...If a label is required say that I am one who loves unfenced country. The open range. Call me a ranger...The only higher honor I’ve ever heard of is to be called a man. –The Journey Home am—really am—an extremist, one who lives and loves by choice far out on the very verge of things, on the edge of the abyss, where this world falls off into the depths of another. That’s the way I like it. –The Journey Home The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders. –The Journey Home We would guard and defend and save it [wilderness] as a place for all who wish to discover the nearly lost pleasures of adventure, adventure not only in the physical sense, but also mental, spiritual, moral, aesthetic, and intellectual adventure. A place for the free. –The Journey Home Come on in.

The earth, like the sun, like the air, belongs to everyone—and to no one. The Journey Home We must save the city. It is essence and substance of us all—we cannot lose it without diminishing our stature as a nation, without a fatal wound. –The Journey Home (100)One wishes to go on. On this great river [the Colorado River] one could glide forever—and here we discover the definition of bliss, salvation, Heaven, all the old Mediterranean dreams: a journey from wonder to wonder, drifting through eternity into ever deeper, always changing grandeur, through beauty continually surpassing itself: the ultimate Homeric voyage. –The Journey Home The longest journey begins with a single step, not with the turn of an ignition key. –The Journey Home That’s the best thing about walking, the journey itself. It doesn’t matter much whether you get where you’re going or not. You’ll get there anyway. Every good hike brings you eventually back home. Right where you started. –The Journey Home I understand and sympathize with the reasonable needs of a reasonable number of people on a finite continent. All life depends upon other life. But what is happening today, in North America, is not rational use but irrational massacre. Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of forests on a field of grain

The Journey Home ...unless the need were urgent, I could no more sink the blade of an ax into the tissues of a living tree than I could drive it into the flesh of a fellow human. –The Journey Home The earth is not a mechanism but an organism, a being with its own life and its own reasons, where the support and sustenance of the human animal is incidental. –The Journey Home All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires. –The Journey Home I’d sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelguese. –Desert Solitaire

We are obliged, therefore, to spread the news, painful and bitter though it may be for some to hear, that all living things on earth are kindred. –Desert Solitaire But the love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need—if only we had the eyes to see. –Desert Solitaire I am not an atheist but an earthiest. Be true to the earth. –Desert Solitaire ...the itch for naming things is almost as bad as the itch for possessing things. –Desert Solitaire The finest quality of this stone, these plants and animals, this desert landscape is the indifference to our presence, our absence, our coming, our staying or our going. Whether we live or die is a matter of absolutely no concern to the desert. –Desert Solitaire Yes. Feet on earth. Knock on wood. Touch stone. Good luck to all. –Desert Solitaire