The Facts of Life

The Facts of Life may refer to:

Nancy McKeon

Nancy Justine McKeon (born April 4, 1966) is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Jo Polniaczek on the NBC sitcom The Facts of Life.

Career

McKeon and her older brother Philip appeared in numerous commercials. McKeon also appeared on the soap operas The Secret Storm and Another World. The McKeons moved to Los Angeles in 1975, when Philip won the role and began appearing on the television series Alice with Linda Lavin.

In 1979, McKeon was discovered by a casting director for The Facts of Life on the basis of her performance in a Hallmark greeting cards advertisement, in which she was able to cry on cue.

She was cast as tomboy Jo Polniaczek in the fall of 1980 during the show's second season when she replaced most of the first season's cast, including Molly Ringwald. This is her most famous role and she portrayed the character throughout the series until the show was canceled in 1988. McKeon also provided the voice for many ABC Weekend Special cartoon characters, including the voice for Scruffy.

Fact

A fact is something that has really occurred or is actually the case. The usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability—that is, whether it can be demonstrated to correspond to experience. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement (by experiments or other means).

Etymology and usage

The word fact derives from the Latin factum, and was first used in English with the same meaning: a thing done or performed, a meaning now obsolete. The common usage of "something that has really occurred or is the case" dates from the middle of the sixteenth century.

Fact is sometimes used synonymously with truth, as distinct from opinions, falsehoods, or matters of taste. This use is found in such phrases as, "It is a fact that the cup is blue" or "Matter of fact", and "... not history, nor fact, but imagination." Filmmaker Werner Herzog distinguishes clearly between the two, claiming that "Fact creates norms, and truth illumination."

Life

Life is a characteristic distinguishing physical entities having biological processes (such as signaling and self-sustaining processes) from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased (death), or because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate. Various forms of life exist such as plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria. The criteria can at times be ambiguous and may or may not define viruses, viroids or potential artificial life as living. Biology is the primary science concerned with the study of life, although many other sciences are involved.

Throughout history there have been many theories about life including materialism, hylomorphism and vitalism. Even today it is a challenge for scientists and philosophers to define life. The smallest contiguous unit of life is called an organism. Organisms are composed of one or more cells, undergo metabolism, maintain homeostasis, can grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce (either sexually or asexually) and, through evolution, adapt to their environment in successive generations. A diverse array of living organisms can be found in the biosphere of Earth, and the properties common to these organisms are a carbon- and water-based cellular form with complex organization and heritable genetic information.