The scion of a Cincinnati political dynasty is starting to make it big in Hollywood.
Jesse Luken, the grandson of ex-Congressman Tom Luken and the nephew of former Mayor Charlie Luken, has recently landed notable roles on TV and film.
Luken recently had a recurring role on the third season of Justified on the FX cable network. He played Jimmy, a Mohawk-wearing young thug in the gang led by Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins).
Now Luken has been cast in 42, the big-screen biopic about Jackie Robinson, the first African-American player in Major League Baseball. Luken will portray Brooklyn Dodgers second baseman Eddie Stanky in the film, which is due to be released on April 12, 2013. The release is timed to coincide with MLB's Jackie Robinson Day, held every April 15 to commemorate the date in 1947 when Robinson played his first game with the Dodgers.
The film, named after the number worn by Robinson, also features Chadwick Boseman in the title role; Harrison Ford as Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey, who signed Robinson; and Christopher Meloni as Dodgers manager Leo Durocher.
Luken is a Colorado Springs, Colo., native who previously had guest roles on the TV series NCIS, Law and Order: L.A. and Greek.
Voter turnout for Tuesday’s Ohio primary was a disappointing 13.9 percent but the turnout among young people — those aged 30 and under — was even lower.
Although the Republican primary in Ohio was highly contested, youth turnout was far below the amount that voted in the 2008 primary. Just 7 percent of Ohio youth turned out Tuesday to vote in the Republican primary, compared to 25 percent four years ago when there was both a contested Democratic and Republican primary.
An analysis by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) found that about 131,000 young people voted Tuesday, with 37 percent choosing Rick Santorum, 28 percent choosing Mitt Romney and 25 percent choosing Ron Paul.
Despite the dismal number, Ohio still was above the overall youth turnout for the 10 contests on Super Tuesday. CIRCLE found that youth turnout was 5 percent in the seven primaries and three caucuses.
Combining the five Super Tuesday states in which exit polls were conducted with adequate youth samples, CIRCLE estimates that 88,000 total youth voted for Paul, with nearly 88,000 who voted for Santorum, about 86,000 for Romney, and about 43,000 for Newt Gingrich.
The candidates performed differently in each state: Paul came in first among youth voters in Virginia; Santorum, in Ohio and Tennessee; Romney, in Massachusetts; and Gingrich, in Georgia.
In all of the primaries and caucuses so far — excluding states where there were no exit or entrance polls about youth vote choice — youth vote tallies stand at approximately 201,000 for Romney, 200,000 for Paul, 162,000 for Santorum, and 87,000 for Gingrich.
By this point in the 2008 primary campaign, Democrat Barack Obama had drawn more than six times as many youth votes as any of the Republican 2012 candidates, with about 1.36 million youth votes, although more primaries were contested on or before Super Tuesday in 2008.
Political observers have theorized there is an “enthusiasm gap” among Republican voters based on lower overall voter turnout in most of the states that have held presidential primaries so far. Turnout has been lower in eight of the 13 states when compared to the 2008 primaries — although Ohio isn’t among them.
Ohio’s overall voter turnout this year was 13.9 percent, higher than the 12.8 percent who voted in 2008, but lower than the 16.8 percent who voted in 2000, according to a review by the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Center for the Study of the American Electorate.
Based on final and official results from the six states whose primaries preceded Super Tuesday and near final and unofficial results from the seven Super Tuesday primaries, 7.85 million people voted out of 68.13 million eligible citizens, or 11.5 percent.
Turnout was 13.2 percent of eligible citizens in 2008, and it was 12.2 percent in 2000.
Founded in 2001, CIRCLE conducts research on young Americans’ voting and political participation, along with other forms of civic engagement. It is based at Tufts University in Massachusetts.
Founded in 2007 by former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and George Mitchell, the Bipartisan Policy Center is a think tank that seeks to create policy solutions through “reasoned negotiation and respectful dialogue.” It is based in Washington, D.C.
A survey of more than 1,000 technology experts, critics and students has revealed a split about how the Internet and other technological advances are affecting “Generation Y.”
The Pew Research Center’s survey, released today, found a majority of respondents believed the technology would create a generation of nimble decision-makers, while almost as many feared it would cause young people to become easily distracted and lack deep thinking skills.
Wait. What were we talking about?
The survey found 55 percent of respondents agreed with a statement that “in 2020 the brains of young people would be ‘wired’ differently from those over 35, with good results for finding answers quickly and without shortcomings in their mental processes."
But it also found 45 percent who agreed with a second statement “in 2020 young technology users would be easily distracted, would lack deep thinking skills and would thirst only for instant gratification.”
“A number of the survey respondents argued that it is vital to reform education and emphasize digital literacy,” a Pew summary stated. “A notable number expressed concerns that trends are leading to a future in which most people are shallow consumers of information, and some mentioned George Orwell’s 1984 or expressed their fears of control by powerful interests in an age of entertaining distractions.”
Generation Y, also known as the Millennial Generation, are generally considered to be composed of people born between the late 1970s and the early '90s.
Pew’s online survey questioned 1,021 people involved with technology and was conducted from Aug. 28 to Oct. 31, 2011, as part of Pew's ongoing project on the Internet and American life.
Respondents included industry insiders like Bruce Nordman, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Hal Varian, Google's top economist, along with university and high school students.
The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County has been selected as one of the Top 10 Children’s Libraries in the United States by a national website.
Livability.com chose the main library as No. 10 on its list partially because of its Children's Learning Center, which features child-sized tables and chairs, a saltwater aquarium and multiple rooms for programs, along with a 9,200-square-foot children's garden.
Cincinnati City Council is set to approve $960,000 to fund this year’s Summer Youth Employment Program, but the councilwoman overseeing the process wants to begin collecting data to track outcomes and increase efficiency.
Council’s Budget and Finance Committee this afternoon heard a presentation from city staffers about plans for the 2012 program, which is designed to provide employment and training for low-income youth.