I first read Roots when I was in taking my college major. I was already familiar with American history and the genesis of the journey of the Blacks in the Americas. This book however, never failed to stir strong emotions inside me despite the fact that I do not even have the slightest associations with Blacks, on top of the fact that I live all my life in the Philippines. For me, this is one of the best indications that this book has something special in it that can touch anyone regardless of race, color, geography, nationality, and perception of the world. I was academically aware of the struggles of black Americans in the early years of slaver but there was no genuine feeling of sympathy for them. This book simply changed everything. It reversed by outlook towards the struggles of the blacks before and at the present. In other words, this book is worth every penny you can save to buy and read it.

The book is about the true story of a black family spanning six generations. The opening part of the story revolves around the life of a young boy somewhere in Africa. His name was Kunta Kinte and he lived in a typical Muslim African village. During the boy’s normal wandering in the nearby woods, he was captured by slave traders and was eventually sold to plantation owners in America. There he met Bell, his future wife. Together they produced a daughter in the name of Kizzy. The book in this part shows in gruesome details how families are broken up and separated by a simple misdemeanor or crime. In this case, Kizzy committed a crime and was punished by her owner by raping her and afterwards selling her to another owner. Kizzy was able to get through with her difficult situation and married another slave. The story continues until it reached the generation of Mathilda who gave birth to Tom. Tom turned himself into a fine blacksmith until the civil war released all slaves as free citizens. Tom married Irene and they had several children. One of them is Cynthia who marries Simon Haley. They are the parents of the author, Alex Haley.

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Movie reviews have a direct influence on the business of a movie. With the coming of the internet, you have the critics out with the movie reviews and the music reviews. People know what they can expect when they buy a ticket and go inside a theater. The critics may pan a good movie sometimes and that is really unfortunate. In general movie reviews work big time for how well the movie does in the theater. The audience has a habit of trusting the opinion of the critics because they think the critic knows it all. There are other reasons as well by which a movie can attract attention. And that is celebrity gossip.

To the readers who are not conversant with the ways of the glamour business, it may seem odd that celebrity gossip, which is generally looked down upon as idle pastime, can actually help the business of a movie. But that is the hard fact. Celeb gossip does help in generating publicity. Sometimes the PR machinery working to promote the movie plant Hollywood rumors among the tabloids and newspapers so that people talk about the actors and other aspects related to the movie. The presence of the actors on the pages of other forms of media, in praise or flak, always helps in grabbing eyeballs towards the movie.

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Recording, playing and listening to music has never been more fun that it is today. Through the Internet, you can easily download songs and listen to your favorite music anytime of the day and wherever you are. Portable players that have access to Internet or those that can store large number of digital music files are now very affordable, fun to use and designed just right to fit the modern generation’s lifestyle.

What is MP3?

MP3, an acronym for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, is one of the most popular digital audio encoding and compression formats being used nowadays and is apparently making an enormous impact on how people store, listen and share music of different genres. It is even now regarded as a standard technology used in greatly reducing the amount of data used to represent audio without altering the uncompressed audio’s sound quality when played.

Compressing Audio into MP3 Digital Music

The compression ratio of MP3 is 12:1, which means that a typical audio file that is 1200 KB big can be converted into a 100 KB MP3 digital music file without corrupting the sound quality of the original. In fact, some MP3 digital music are clearer and sound better since the compression process eliminates portions of the original music that are not too significant to human hearing. There are three ways through which the unwanted portions of the music are determined; among them is psychoacoustics, which is a study of how people subjectively perceive sounds.

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