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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – MIT's three leadings scorers, Molly Duffy (New Providence, N.J.), Kameron Klauber (Carlsbad, Calif.) and Kimberly Barker (Camden, N.Y.) all found the back of the net in the first half of a 4-2 win over Springfield College in New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) field hockey play Saturday. The Pride would get as close as two midway through the second half but were not able to complete the comeback, falling to 0-5 on the year and 0-1 in league play. The win was the first for the Engineers in the NEWMAC and they improve to 8-2 overall.
Barker put the Cardinal and Gray ahead early with her sixth tally of the year less than seven minutes into the contest. Duffy gathered a rebound near the right post and sent it toward the net where Barker was able to finish the job.
Duffy picked up her team leading 12th goal of the year just two minutes later, on a beautiful feed from Klauber. Klauber then got in on the act midway through the frame with an unassisted marker, to put Tech up 3-0, an advantage it would take into the locker room.
Elizabeth Dethy (Morristown, N.J.) extended the lead early in the second half, pushing one home after a frantic scramble in front of the Springfield goal.
The Pride would not go down without a fight, however, netting a pair of goals within five minutes to cut the deficit in half. Lynne Donoghue (Barnstable, Mass.) scored off her own rebound with 23:18 to go. Donoghue then assisted on Liz Hurley's (Holden, Mass.) marker with a hard blast into the circle that Hurley redirected past MIT goalkeeper Jenna Klein (Parma, Ohio).
The MIT defense stood tall down the stretch, negating a 10-minute penalty while Klein also made three huge stops in the final minutes.
The Engineers will be back in action on Tuesday, September 27 when they host Endicott College on Jack Barry Field at 6:00 p.m. in a non-conference tilt. Springfield will host Cortland St. tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 p.m.


text: An epic piece of piano-led romantic cinematic music. Starts off with a simple emotive broken – chord progression on the piano, but builds up to different chord progressions which gradually add drama and texture. Strings and horns fill out the piece, to something that really evokes a poignant feeling. Would be perfect for a romantic drama – either as a trailer or as part of a scene.

subset: commoncrawl


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Ever wondered what the difference is between meteorites, meteors and meteoroids? In this 12-minute ode to her astrophysicist sister, "Emily", Joanna Newsom attempts to explain:
"The meteorite is a source of the light / And the meteor's just what we see / And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee."
The only problem is that Joanna's got meteorites and meteoroids mixed up. Meteoroids are small chunks of rock and debris in the Solar System. In other words, they're the "source of the light" because they glow if they fall through a planet's atmosphere. If a meteoroid reaches the Earth's surface and survives impact, it becomes known as a meteorite – a dull stone, "devoid of fire". A meteor is just the visible path of a meteoroid as it passes through a planet's atmosphere (a shooting star), so she got that one right.
But does anyone really care about this little mix-up? Probably not. And in any case, a small amount of artistic license is quickly forgiven when the song's as beautiful as this one.


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Rights activists raise concerns over arrests in Egypt
CAIRO – The detentions of an Egyptian labor lawyer and a journalist raised concerns among rights activists Friday that the military-backed government's crackdown on Islamists is expanding to silence other critics of its policies.
Authorities have been carrying out a wave of arrests for weeks against Islamist backers of ousted President Mohammed Morsi, who was removed in a July 3 coup. Still, his supporters have pushed ahead with protests organized by his Muslim Brotherhood denouncing the military and demanding Morsi's return to office.
In the latest rallies, thousands flowed from mosques Friday, chanting "down with military rule" and waving Egyptian flags.
Authorities have depicted the crackdown against Islamists as part of a "fight against terror." At least 2,000 Brotherhood members have been arrested, most on allegations of inciting violence.
A low-intensity militant insurgency has hit the Sinai peninsula and other areas in the south, where Islamist radicals have a strong base. A failed attempt to assassinate the interior minister Thursday with a car bomb has raised fears of an escalating Islamic militant campaign of revenge over the coup.
Along with the arrests, there has also been a heavy blanket of intimidation against criticism from within the non-Islamist camp against the military's actions.
Officials frequently urge the public to unite in the face of the terror threat. Rights lawyer Gamal Eid noted how pro-military TV stations and other media smear critics of the crackdown or other policies, including branding them as a "fifth column" for the Brotherhood. Private citizens have filed legal suits against activists, accusing them of serving foreign agendas or espionage.
The detentions of labor lawyer Haitham Mohammadain and journalist Ahmed Abu-Draa raised further alarm among activists.
Mohammadain was detained from a bus Thursday at a checkpoint in the port city of Suez. He belongs to the Revolutionary Socialists, a well-known leftist group which took part in the 2011 uprising against autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak and protests against Morsi and is now critical of the military.
His lawyer, Maha Youssef, said Mohammedain was first asked by the policeman at the checkpoint why he has a beard, which is seen as a sign of an Islamist. When he objected to the question, the policeman asked him to step out of the bus for more frisking, a power granted to police under the current emergency laws.
When the officer found papers on him identifying him as a member of the Revolutionary Socialists, the officer detained Mohammadain and wrote a police report accusing him of belonging to a secret group, according to Youssef.
She said Mohammadain has yet to be formally charged or questioned.
Journalist Abu-Draa, who reports from the volatile northern Sinai, has been under arrest since Wednesday, a military official said. He faces military investigation on allegations of publishing wrong information about an ongoing security operation, taking photos of military installations without a permit and spreading rumors about the armed forces.
The official spoke on condition anonymity because he isn't authorized to brief reporters.
Abu-Draa, a resident of Sinai, questioned the military's statements about its operations against militant groups in Sinai. During military airstrikes on a village that is a militant stronghold, Abu Draa wrote on Facebook that the strikes hit civilian areas and accused military officials of misinforming the public.
Few journalists have direct access to what is happening in Sinai because of security concerns, forcing many to rely on statement by officials. Abu Draa, an award-winning reporter who has done investigation stories in Sinai, freelances for multiple Egyptian and foreign newspapers and television channels.
A picture of the detained Abu Draa alongside militant suspects appeared in at least one newspaper with a caption identifying those arrested as "terrorists." The military official later said the joint photo was an unintended mistake.
Five journalists have been killed since Morsi's removal and 80 have been arbitrarily detained, Reporters Without Borders said Monday. Seven — most from outlets that authorities accuse of being pro-Islamist — remain in detention.
Eid, the rights lawyer, said Mubarak-era policies on dealing with dissent have remained the same, whether under subsequent interim military rulers or Morsi, who was Egypt's first freely elected president.
"We are before a tyrannical authority with interests very far from the revolution," he said, adding that while the Brotherhood's leaders and supporters are "on the top" of the security's list of arrests, "they are not at its end."
He ridiculed the police report against Mohammadain, saying most activist groups that arose since the uprising against Mubarak are not registered — including Tamarod, or Rebel, which spearheaded the campaign against Morsi and is a strong backer of the military.
"I think the issue is that the Revolutionary Socialists are not among those who are cheering the current authority," he said.
The current interim president was the head of Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court and created a ministry to deal with transitional justice, referring to rights abuses by police and other authorities. But he also reinstated emergency laws that give sweeping powers to arrest and strip citizens of due process.
So far, non-Islamist dissent has been muted. Millions joined the anti-Morsi protests that led to the coup, and there is widespread sentiment among the public that the Islamists are a danger to the country that must be stopped.
But tempers are sharp.
A wedding party in the southern city of Qena turned into a fight Thursday night when the DJ played a popular new song thanking and praising the military. Three bearded men among the guests got furious and damaged the loudspeakers, sparking a fight with sticks that left seven people injured and led to the non-Islamist guests closing off a nearby highway for several hours, security officials in Qena said.
Under the crackdown, pro-Morsi protests have been smaller in recent weeks. Still, the Brotherhood has remained able to rally its base to the streets.
Many of Friday's protesters raised yellow signs depicting "four fingers," the symbol commemorating Rabaah el-Adawiya, the name of a Brotherhood-organized protest encampment that security forces violently broke up last month. The attack sparked several days of violence that killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Morsi supporters.
On Friday, two people were killed during clashes between protesters and anti-Brotherhood residents in the Mediterranean port cities of Alexandria and Damietta, security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.
Pro-military protesters took to the streets in several Cairo neighborhoods, cheering the army chief and denouncing Thursday's car bombing against the interior minister's convoy.
Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim, who heads the police forces carrying out the crackdown, narrowly escaped the blast, but 22 police and civilians were wounded. Health Ministry official Ahmed el-Ansari said one of the wounded civilians died of his wounds on Friday.


text: > in such crash scenarios. Are they competitors? Is one better / easier > than the other? they're different. and I've never actually seen kdump in use. but logging (remote syslog, syslog-ng, netconsole, ipmi-sol, etc) is something everyone does to varying degrees and more is better. >> 2) Monitoring. Temp, fan speeds, power supply state, events. Answers >> the "why is the little red light on the front of the case lit?" >> question. You can get some of this via other software (lm_sensors), >> but I find ipmitool to suck less, and ipmitool accurately answers the >> red light question -- lm_sensors can only guess. > > I see. Yes, you read me correctly: I was putting full faith in > lm_sensors to do this. Currently I have lm_sensors feedign > Temperatures to my nagios monitoring setup and has been working fine. lm_sensors is in-band, in that it consumes cycles on your node, and doesn't help you if your node isn't working right. IPMI is OOB, has no performance effect and works regardless of power state, panic, etc. > But I didn't grasp a practical point about lm_sensors sucking more > than IPMI. THat's interesting again: Aren't they taking data from the > same bus or counters? Or is this because the sensor details tend to be > proprietary so lm_sensors lags behind the Vendor implementations of > IPMI? lm_sensors is _more_ flexible because it can, for instance, probe components that the BMC doesn't know about. I'm thinking of SPD on dimms, which is gettable over the I2C bus, but I've never seen an IPMI mess with it. there are other I2C devices too (some video cards?). the more your monitoring can be OOB, the better. not just from a perturbation standpoint, but also fragility.


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Superstorm Sandy may give fresh ammunition to critics of the federal government's flood-insurance program who have long wanted it to operate more like private-sector insurance.
Currently, the debt-strapped National Flood Insurance Program has a $20.8 billion cap in the amount of money it can borrow from the U.S. Treasury to pay flood-loss claims. But the program has already borrowed around $18 billion, mainly to pay for Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Losses from Sandy, as we write today, could easily push the program over its current borrowing limit.
If that happens, the Department of Homeland Security would have to ask Congress for the ability to borrow more money. That could trigger a debate in Congress, where Republicans in the House and Senate might pursue changes to the program.
The program is run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A spokesman for FEMA said the agency has about $4 billion in cash and borrowing authority left, and that no decision has been made on whether to ask Congress for more money.
One critic has been Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) who successfully earlier this year won a gradual elimination of premium subsidies for vacation homes.
Ray Lehmann, senior fellow at the R Street Institute, a free-market think tank focused on insurance issues, said Congress should require FEMA to use reinsurance or sell catastrophe bonds to offload some risk to the private sector. A bill passed over the summer allows the agency to do so but doesn't require it.
Mr. Lehmann added the government in the long run should phase in market rates for all consumers who buy flood policies, eliminating subsidies for properties before the mid-1970s. Doing so would gradually allow the private sector to provide flood insurance, he said.
"That creates the conditions that, over the longer term, can make a full privatization of the (flood insurance program) a real possibility," he said.


text: Take a look at this video. It was filmed at our spot, it could be use to prove the superiority of any kite and say it was a very LW session but it is NOT, wind was around 16-18knots and it is quite frequent at our spot. No wind at all except in higher altitude, one of the two riders was using a 13m kite with two set of lines and the other guys 14m line extension! A LOT of guys do not understand this correctly and will just think we use more powerful kite or huge board but look how powered the guys is


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High-performance snowmobile racers from Canada, New York and New England will compete over a course of jumps, bumps and table tops in the first event of the International Triple Crown Series planned for Jan. 12 and 13. The competition will be held at Airborne Speedway, Broderick Road, just off Rte 22 in South Plattsburgh, one mile south of I-87 exit 36.
The three-race series includes Pro and Pro-Lite riders from East Coast Snocross presented by Amsoil and Woody's Traction and the Quebec-based Super Competition Motorsport Tour.
The Airborne event is sponsored by Akwesasne Mohawk Casino, Econo Lodge, Della Motorsports, Liquor & Wine Warehouse, WOKO, WIZN and KOOL105. Round two of the Triple Crown Series will take place in Louiseville, QC, Feb. 2 and 3. The finale is set for Valcourt, QC Feb. 15 through 17. Over $7,500 in purse monies has been posted to date.
"We had two successful events at the Crete Civic Center," promoter Mike Perrotte said. "We just wanted to try something different. All the room we have in the infield and on the front straightaway should allow for an excellent track. I think with our grandstands and ample parking for both competitors and fans, Airborne should be a good fit for a big snowmobile race."
Corin Todd of Polaris and Danny Poirier of Ski-doo, were Pro Open winners at the East Coast Snocross opener at Burke Mountain.
Pro racing begins at 12:30 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday, January 12 through 13. Daily admission is $12/adults, $5/kids 6-12, ages five and under admitted free.
AFor additional information, visit www.eastcoastsnocross.com or www.airborneparkspeedway.com or call Tom Herzig (802) 882-8131.


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Lots of pink macaroons with light orange buttercream are being baked around here! This has become my favorite dessert to make and eat!
Our little assembly line for these goodies:
We are getting ready for our Sweet Nest Booth this weekend. I love to receive goodies in nice packages so that's what we are working on today.
Madi has been working on these and they are turning out sooo cute! Brownie pops dipped in Vanilla Candy…some have little worms for our Halloween theme.
You can find both the macaroon and brownie truffles under the baking section on the right. Next post I will give you a sneak peak at what Abby is doing with Art for our booth!


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What's it going to take to make Sox a consistent playoff team?
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Lip Man 1
WSI Guru
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Chubbuck, Idaho
Posts: 33,302
Great question...one there isn't an easy answer for. I'd say it's a combination of things:
In no particular order:
1. A better farm system. Getting better prospects
regardless of who the agent is
, hiring the best scouts and minor league coaches to develop the prospects to reach their potential.
2. Change in organizational attitude. It's not enough anymore to "contend" in a garbage division. Let's talk about contending for the pennant on a regular basis. That requires acquiring talent by any and all means. Getting it in depth to protect against injuries and slumps.
3. Aggressively looking to 'take back' Chicago (as it was in the 1950's). No more of this, "we don't compete with the Cubs nonsense."
Of course you do
, you are in competition for the casual fans money, not the die hard's. That money goes a long way to getting done the first two points in this post.
4. A new TV contract. It comes open in 2016, now is the time to position the franchise to get the best possible deal.
5. Time for new ownership. This is not a slam at JR, after 20 years of major, serious, poor decisions that cost the franchise dearly on and off the field he has changed many (not all) of his ways...but it's simply the fact that after 31 years the organization has become stale and rigid in it's mindset. Time for new blood, new faces,
new ideas
Lip Man 1
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» Obsession, Compulsions, and the Pursuit of Excellence - a Landmark Post
Topic: Obsession, Compulsions, and the Pursuit of Excellence - a Landmark Post
Member # 2199
February 08, 2010
I have wanted to start this topic for a while now, but I wasn't sure how much of this I wanted to share here. I am still a little unsure, but it's not like this is anything to be ashamed of, or worried about from a professional standpoint, and I am interested in what people here think about this topic.
I play pool. I am pretty good at it, and at one time I played about the semi-pro level, meaning that I played people who made a living at it on a regular basis, and did fairly well against them. I gave beginning lessons at a pool hall, and private lessons to lower level players who wanted to improve their fundamentals. I usually placed in the money at most of the pool tournaments I played in, and quite often I won them outright.
But this topic isn't just about pool. Pool is what I know, and what I most often relate to because it is, or was at least, my area of excellence. It is about trying to be the best at anything, in a measurable sense. Not just "the best you can be", but actually reaching a pro, or near pro, level at a sport or profession.
It's funny how much effort, time, and money it takes to try and get there. But worse than the money it takes is the amount of concentration, dedication, and practice it takes.
When I played regularly I played 6-7 days a week, at least 3-4 hours a day. I am not one of those players who could play 5 times a month then go win a competition, I always had to be playing. Which was fine at the time, as I had sucky jobs, no relationships, and loved playing pool. All I had going for me often was this game, this pastime. All my friends were pool friends, for the most part, and even the women I dated were pool players. When I dated, which was rarely.
I have a history of becoming obsessed with pastimes. I LOVE music, and when I was learning flute, my first (and best) instrument, I literally walked around with my flute attached to my lips as I walked around the house for hours at a time. I became first chair flute in a nationally ranked music program in MI, and my senior year I learned literally 7 new instruments in beginning band. Half my day my senior year was spent in the band room.
I took up swimming, but after some interpersonal stuff between a coach and me, and several of the players, I quit swimming, which I was quite good at, and started playing tennis. I sucked, but I loved it. I started playing daily, for 4-5 hours a day. I liked a girl who played for the womens team, and we became close. We would go out to the community college and play under the lights until 10-11 pm, then go home. On the weekends my friends and I played for 3-4 hours, went and ate, then played more. Sometimes for 12-14 hours a day.
I never got good, but I did improve, and I loved it.
But when I moved suddenly to MA, up in the hill towns, I let both my music and tennis go. It was actually almost physically painful to do so, and I swear I almost had physical withdrawal pains from it. I got moody, had trouble sleeping, and basically because very depressed. Not just because of giving up my habits, although I am sure that is part of it. I wanted to stop doing anything that reminded me of MI, and so I forced myself to stop doing the things I loved. Talk about stupid....
I began playing pool as a way to kill time between classes at the local college. Soon I was working at the campus center, and playing almost daily. I was horrible, and my hand eye coordination was horrible as well, but I loved the head to head competition. I came in 4th college wide the very first time I played in a tournament, and became hooked.
In order to actually be good at pool, or I imagine at any competitive sport or game, you have to have the ability to focus on minute details for long periods of time. I struggled with this, as pool for me was a social thing. I loved meeting new people and playing them, but the parts of your brain that deal with speech and those that deal with spacial relations are opposites in many ways. If you are talking, you are basically getting in your own way.
About 2001 I read a small book about the mental game that changed the way I practiced, and made me easily 3 times a better player. It was written by someone with an actual background in psychology....he had written textbooks on psychology that the Ivy League schools used....and he explained a lot of things that I had wondered about for years, off and on. It was about the mental aspects of the game, and it explained why a lot of the "common knowledge" about the mental game of pool was utter bullcrap.
I began playing at a semi-pro level, winning hundreds (and a few times thousands) of dollars. I went undefeated 32 matches in a row in my pool league, and had the highest level of difficulties in opponents in New England during those matches. I won head to head matches against people who had been house pros for years, and despite my aversion to the seedier aspects of pool I began to dominate almost everyone I could play locally. Not everyone, but most of the players who would play me.
The best players all wanted to play for money, something I usually avoided. Too many bad situations, involving God knows who's cash and interests always accompanied those type of matches so I didn't like playing for money heads up. It wasn;t the pressure....I would pay $125 to enter a tournament, pand end up playing those same players for as much as $3500, and beat them fairly often. Not all the time, but enough to feel like I was always in the game. The more I played the more I won, which made me tougher and tougher to play against.
But I rarely played head to head for cash, and that limited some of my matches too. I didn't like that because I had seen too many friends end up hating each other over $100 bets. I had seen too many dirtbags get pissy over losing cash, and I wanted nothing to do with that side of the game. I once beat a guy out of $500, then afterwards I found out he sold drugs for a living. I donated the cash to a local charity, but it still felt dirty. The worst part was he paid up right away, and wanted to play me more and more the more I beat him. I had to make excuses NOT to play him. But a part of me wanted to, because it was easy money.
Eventually, I hit a wall. I stopped improving.
I am sure a lot of you are familiar with the "point of diminishing returns". It's an economic law, and the simplified explanation of it, at least as it applies to physical pursuits, is that the better you become at a game or sport the harder it is to move to the next level of proficiency. A beginner can spend 2 hours practicing a shot and see a huge improvement in his game, particularly in his odds of making that particular shot. After 4 hours of shooting it, over a few days even, he might see his chance of making that shot go from 30% to 70%. However, to go from 70% to 80, it takes just as much time as it too to go from 30% to 70%.
It takes 3 times the effort to move from 90% to 95% than it does to move from 30% to 90%. It takes an equal amount of effort to move from 95% to 96%..... No joke. But at that level, you HAVE to be 95% or more on most common shots. Hundreds of shots. No joke.
We are talking 6 hours of practice a day, minimum, 5-6 days a week. Practice....not play. 6 hours of focused, non-social drills. Banks, long shots, cuts, reverse banks, caroms, combo's, safety plays, spot shots, multi rail kick shots, spin banks, and position play. To start.
At this time I was spending at least 30 hours a week playing. Often times more than that. About 1/3 of that was practice time, where I would work on specific shots or situations. Probably 1/3 of it was devoted to casual playing with friends. And the other 1/3 was serious shooting against high caliber players. As high as I could get to play without betting my paycheck, anyways.
I was good, far better than most people, but I couldn't seem to break into the next level of consistency. To be honest, I had hoped one day that pool/billards would become an Olympic sport, and that I would play well enough to try out for the team. Barring that, I always wanted to come up with the cash to enter the US Open, and play in it. I didn't expect to make the Olympic team, or win the US Open, but I wanted to be good enough that I could make a try for it. After all, once you get to a certain level you CAN run a table, and anything can happen if you get hot.
I stayed at that level, or close to it, for 2 years. I never got any better, and after a while I got worse. I started to get pissed off, and I had trouble focusing.
Then I met my wife, and it was all over.
Within 3 weeks of starting to dat her, my game fell apart. Not so bad that other people could tell, but I could. I wasn't worried though.....I still played well enough for league, and I had fun. And I knew that Jenni wasn't just another date.
She even joined my pool team, and got a friend of hers to join, and we had a blast. But I still was expecting myself to play at a high level, and I couldn't. I still played 20 hours a week, but I rarely practiced, and a lot of my play was social.
It's amazing how much effort it took to get where I was, and how easily I lost it all once something else became my priority.
I took almost 5 years off, only playing occasionally with friends. Then about a year and a half ago I took it back up, and joined a team down here in Ocala. Despite being really rusty, I played well enough to go undefeated in both 8-ball and 9-ball, although not in both at the same session.
But once I was in school, I played more. I used it as a relief valve to let off steam. I found myself beginning to do things I swore I wouldn't even do again. Losing my temper, getting down on myself, and playing more than once or twice a week.
Now, a year later, I am playing 3-4 times a week, almost 20 hours a weeks again. I am not very good by my standards, probably a level 3 (B-) player. (level 1 are beginners, level 2 are fair league players, level 3 are good league players, and 4 and 5's are semi pro and pro level players. They can also be called A-E players, with A's being basically pro level).
And I want to play more, and become better.
I wonder how many players/athletes are borderline personalities with compulsive tendencies. I have a hard time NOT playing at times, and if I miss a day at the pool hall I feel almost guilty.
Yet I also feel guilty for wanting to do this all over again. For spending the money on it when I am not working, for wanting to play in tournaments when I should be studying, for not spending more time with my wife, who wants little to nothing to do with pool here in FL. (Smoking in public is legal here, when it wasn't in MA, and she HATES that).
Part of it is that the only people I knew here in Ocala used to be the people who worked for me. We knew no one here in town when we moved, and right now we only know some of our neighbors. Part of it is that Jenni doesn't even want to go out and do anything because smoking in public is legal here. She doesn't have any problem wiht pool, or me playing it, but she doesn't even want to do it herself, and I can't blame her. It's MY obsession, not hers.
I got to know pool players because we did something in common, and now many of my friends here are people I play pool with these days.
But part of it is an obsession. Not a bad one, and not something out of control. But where does a fascination with something end and an obsession with it begin? I know dozens of people who play league on 3-4 nights a week. I play on one.....but I also play non-league at least 2 other times a week, sometimes more.
To succeed at something at a pro or semi-pro level, you almost HAVE to be obsessed. The amount of time, effort, and focus needed to succeed at that level demands it. But at what point does it stop being constructive?
Where is YOUR point of diminishing return, where the amount of effort and desire is so great for even an incremental improvement that it ceases to become worth the effort?
I remember playing so much City of Heroes that I became the 12th player anywhere to reach level 40. I met a guy who played during the day, just like I did, and we played every day for about 3-4 hours before I went to work. Then I would come home and play again, for 6 hours almost every night. I had just gotten a computer, and I found the game to be fascinating.
We made it to level 40 so fast that the game developers raised the level cap on the entire game to 50, and in game they mentioned that they did it because of our group, mentioning 4 of our players by character names. Turns out the guy I was palying with daily was a game developer for a competing project, and he and the rest of the gang were playing for 2-4 hours a day as part of their JOB, for heaven's sake. No WONDER they knew all the tricks, and had the time to play.
How did I? LOL
I realized I was spending too much time on it, and quit. But quitting was hard. I mean that I felt jittery, and hated not playing for weeks.
I play a lot of games now, but I don't go nuts over them. Even though sometimes I really, really feel an urge to.
So I wonder how much of this is social, how much is a desire to win, and how much of it is my compulsion to play......
Disclaimer: I play a lot, but not like I did, and I never will. But this topic facinates me for personal reasons, and for professional ones as well. Addictive personality disorders allow people to become addicted to a lot of things that you would never guess.......games, video games, food, and other, usually very specific activities. I wonder how much I have in common with those people a lot, and I think it's more than I would like to admit, although fortunately not so much that I have anything like the problems those people often do.
I have a cousin who is autistic, and he gets into grooves with specific topics. He becomes obsessed with them, and it's amazing the amount of effort and focus he puts into these obscure things. Yet they matter VERY much to him, so he has to try and balance his obsessions with the rest of his life, and sometimes he struggles with it.
At times, I can relate, I think.
[ February 15, 2010, 04:11 AM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
| Registered:
Jul 2001
Member # 4709
February 08, 2010
I believe that there are social evolutionary traits that while being evolutionary dangers on the individual level, allow for racial growth. Much like some pine trees only release their seeds after a fire, I believe that OCD behavior has helped the human race continue. Most early scientific discoveries that lifted man from being hunter-gatherer limited societies to cities full of flourishing and conquering nature with their excess and tools, are due to the OCD behavior of a few individuals.
The guy who first thought to measure the seasons when the rest of the tribe was running around chasing mammoths was OCD.
The gal who measured how much tin and how much copper should be mixed to make bronze, while the rest of the tribe was pounding out flint was probably OCD.
The master craftsman who pounded out a sword blade 2000 times on each edge to make the greatest swords was definitely OCD.
So using your compulsion to improve your pool game is not a waste or a danger. Using it on your music might be better for society in general, but enjoying the hand dealt is good.
| Registered:
Feb 2003
Member # 124
February 08, 2010
I have almost the opposite problem: when I notice that I am becoming obsessed with any one thing, I immediately lose all interest in it.
| Registered:
May 1999
The White Whale
Member # 6594
February 08, 2010
This type of focused compulsion can be good from time to time. I tend to do it in waves. Last spring, I really got into birdwatching. It took me a few weeks to get familiar with the common birds, and from then on I listened and watched birds everywhere I went. I walked around with my binoculars for awhile. I listed to CDs of birdsong while I washed dishes. I read several books and watched several documentaries. I learned a hell of a lot about the local birds during that time, but as soon as the spring migration season ended, I lost interest. I then got obsessed with clouds, but that's another story.
I do, however, feel another wave of bird-obsession coming on with the end of this winter.
Maybe I have seasonal obsession disorder (SOD)
And thanks for the landmark, btw.
| Registered:
Jun 2004
Member # 2199
February 08, 2010
I am not trying to compare myself completely to Olympic athletes, as what I do is a pale shadow of what they do, but the fact is that a lot of people are not capable of training that way for anything. Think about spending years, maybe even decades, training for 6-8 hours a day for a single event. How many things we take for granted do they have to sacrifice for it?
It's not normal, by definition. In a non-athlete it would most certainly be considered not healthy, maybe even dangerous.
Tom, when I am DONE with something, for whatever reason, I leave it that way. Completely.
That's part of the problem I am having right now. I tried to play pool half way, socially, but it just isn't working for me. I keep trying shots I know, but can't execute any more, and it frustrates me. So I get mad, which makes me play worse. So I start practicing, and trying to focus.....and the next thing I know I've played 5 times that week.
[ February 08, 2010, 11:42 AM: Message edited by: Kwea ]
| Registered:
Jul 2001
Member # 6645
February 08, 2010
This doesn't just apply to sports, but to just about everything. I'm the same way you are - but with computer programming. I go nuts if I don't have a programming project. Or if I have to go a while with out working on my projects. I feel guilty as all hell and start wanting nothing more than to sit down and work on the project.
It's almost worse when I
working on the project. The list of things to do on it gets longer and longer the more I work on it. I come up with more and more ideas for things I could do to it. And I get more and more stressed out the more that list gets longer. The more I work on it the longer it gets. But I don't want to stop working, because when I sit back and see what I've accomplished - nothing feels better.
It's bad though. I program computers for my job. It isn't the same as my projects. I'm not in control of the project. I don't get to choose what I write. I have to write someone else's dream - not my own. But it's still programming. I still spend forty hours a week sitting in front of a computer writing code.
Then I go home and I want nothing more than to sit right back down in front of that computer and work on my own projects. I mean, I'll want to spend time with Shelly, of course. But I also desperately want to go right back to work. She'll want to go out on the weekend. As in anywhere out of the house. And I'll have to force myself. Force myself to do something that isn't just sitting down in front of the computer to work on my projects.
She works on the weekend, and as soon as I drop her off I race back home to plug myself right back in. I often forget to do chores because there was some problem in the program I couldn't solve and I just couldn't get up until I did. I'll have to drag myself back away from the screen to go pick her up.
an obsession in every single sense of the word. It
an addiction. The only difference between this addiction and the more harmful ones is that this addiction could make me "successful" in the eyes of our society.
I'm really glad I found Shelly. She balances my obsessive personality. With out her I don't doubt I'd be spending every minute of every day in front of the computer screen. But it definitely places a strain on our relationship - at least for me.
I recently finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's
. It's an examination of what makes people successful. Really successful. What makes them outliers in society. People like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Bill Joy, Warren Buffet. It turns out it's a wide, wide range of things. And not all of them things that are in a person's control. But one of those things is practice. Not just a little practice - a lot of practice. Consistently the level of practice required to create an outlier at something is at least 10,000 hours. It takes about 10 years of practicing 20 - 40 hours a week to acquire that much practice at something. So all outliers are obsessive in this way. If you're interested in this sort of thing,
is a great read and extraordinarily illuminating.
| Registered:
Jun 2004
Member # 2199
February 08, 2010
I have seen that book, but not read it yet, so I will have to check it out.
| Registered:
Jul 2001
Member # 9144
February 08, 2010
See, people like you make me jealous. I wish I could devote that much time to something and watch myself improve at it, but I guess my problem is that I enjoy doing nothing a lot and as a result I just rely on my natural ability to get by without ever honing it into something better or useful. You're the type of person that gets ahead in life because of their drive to better themselves. Imagine a scientist searching for a cure for aids or cancer with that kind of drive, not that there aren't any. My dad's the same way. In college it was ping pong lol, and now its his job.
| Registered:
Feb 2006
Member # 2199
February 08, 2010
It's weird though. I love to read, and to play pool, but I have trouble spending any amount of real time on other things. I swear I am almost ADD.
I really think I might have an issue with that, actually. I self medicate with sleep deprivation.....I only sleep about 5 hours a night....so I don't have the nervous energy or the jitters, and so my mind will slow down a little bit. When I get too much sleep I actually talk even faster, and skip around from subject to subject like a hummingbird.
It's not fun for me, or for whomever I am talking to.
I've learned to manage fairly well, but it worries me sometimes. I don't think it is normal for people to act this way, all or nothing almost all of the time. Most people seems to find a happy medium.
I am lucky. I read well enough to make up for all the time I slack off, and smart enough to process information and extrapolate well, so I test very well most of the time. Not everyone can do that the way I do.
But that doesn't mean that I don't wish I could slow down and focus on things sometimes. I have learned to force myself to do it somewhat, but it is always (and probably always will be for me) a constant struggle.
| Registered:
Jul 2001
Member # 8037
February 08, 2010
I can absolutely relate to this post. I am the same way. I can't do hobbies halfway. When I do get commited to a hobby I feel the need to work at it unitl I'm the best. I did competitive debate in college. I am sure I put in more time than 99% of other debaters and it was a fairly time intensive activity to begin with. I read everything I could get my hands on and would practice every spare minute. I also tend to have friends mostly that are involved with my obsession of the moment.
Since having a daughter, I have really tried to not pick up an obsessive habit. I know I can't do competitive activities without them taking up way too much of my time or the flip side is I don't enjoy doing them. Its the competitive aspect that drives me. I don't get obsessed with pasttimes that don't have measurable winners and losers at the moment because I really want to focus on being a great mom while my daugher is young.
I don't really consider it a negative personality trait. I think it is something a lot of really successful people have. I too have watched olympic profiles and thought that I would likely have been the sort of person who couuld spend 8 hours a day training and not feel like it was a burden. However, knowing this about myself, I make sure I don't let it develop into bad addictions. Its one of the reasons I don't gamble. I know I could get obsessed and addicted way to easily.
| Registered:
May 2005
Member # 2199
February 08, 2010
Yeah, and that is one of the reasons I don't like to gamble while playing pool. If I am going to gamble, I like to do it on things I have at least a little control over, so you would think that pool would be perfect for this. Compared to cards, or most other things, at least there is a large element of skill involved.
I'll play some of the older guys $5 one-pocket, but I count that as paying for lessons. I mean, 10 years ago people were paying me $25 an hour for lessons. If I play Jimmy, who is borderline pro level at one-pocket, for 3 hours and he wins $15 dollars, that's cheaper than paying for the time.
But I KNOW I could get in over my head playing head to head for cash, so I refuse to do it. I won't say I never have, or never will, but not compared to most players, and really not this time around. I don't have any disposable income, and I refuse to be playing for money I don't really have.
There IS a HUGE rush when you win a large amount of cash though. The best I have ever done was $3,600 in 2 days. I won $360 of it playing Keno (the first and ONLY time I ever payed it, lol), so I figured I'd let it roll. I won 3 tournaments, including one for $1,800, one for $1,200, and the last for about $200. The rest I won head to head.
I used part of that to pay off a car, and eventually lost the rest of it playing in expensive matches and tournaments over the next 6 months.
| Registered:
Jul 2001
Member # 3734
February 08, 2010
Like soapinureye, I too am jealous. I remember seeing your pool cue when we meet, by the way- one of those mental images that always spring to mind when I play pool; quite beautiful. Whenever I try to start up a new hobby, it generally takes me a LOT of effort to move to the next step, and when I don't it bugs me.
Thanks for sharing, Kwea. Good to read about you and your experiences, as always.
| Registered:
Jul 2002
Member # 8376
February 08, 2010
That was a very interesting read Kwea. I enjoy knowing that much more about you.
T_Smith: Hey it's nice to see you around again!
| Registered:
Jul 2005
Member # 3734
February 08, 2010
Heya BlackBlade,
Good to pop in again. Probably will do so more often.
| Registered:
Jul 2002
Member # 2199
February 09, 2010
Yeah....that cue was stolen.
I have a new one now, not as nice but it plays good. Good enough for now, anyways.
My mental image of that day? Lots of juggling, fencing, and the look on my parents face when they saw it all.
| Registered:
Jul 2001
Member # 2199
February 15, 2010
Well, talking about this and putting it down in words seems to have helped a little bit. I have been playing decent, but haven't been running tables lately. Just messing up simple things, mostly.
Well, since I wrote this I began practicing a bit more. Not playing more, but being smart about it and running some of my old drills. While I am no where near what I used to be, I am playing a little better.
It helps that there is new cloth on the tables, as the owner recovered his tables. With the new cloth I am drawing the ball 1.5 to 2 table lengths again, something I haven't been able to do in years.
I came in 3rd in a local tourny, losing to the number one and two seeds by a hair. As I should, really....they are both better than I am. But I played well enough to win, just got a couple of bad rolls.
Then I played a money player, one who is working on his game. He was taking it fairly serious, with his headphones in and trying to focus. I played better than he expected, and better than I had a right to expect to be honest. Not great, but pretty good.
I beat him 22 to 17 over all, although had money been on the line I am sure he would have found another gear.
Still, not bad at all. There is a league called the Masters that involves playing heads up games of 8-ball and 9-ball with other good players. No handicaps, no spots, just heads up play between 3 people once a week. If I am going to stay playing in the league which is still a decision I have to make before next session, I think I am switching over to the Masters league.
They use the same format as the U.S. Amateur, which means each match is a race to 8, and each match is a combination of 8-ball and 9-ball. If you win the flip, you get to either pick which game is played first, or decide who breaks first. You play 5 games of 8-ball and 8 games of 9-ball, and the first person to 8 games won combined wins the match. It is possible to go all out and win just playing 9-ball first, but if you choose to play 8-ball first it means you HAVE to play at least a few games of 9-ball.
You can have up to 5 people on your team, with 3 people playing each week.
This sounds MUCH more exciting and interesting than regular league play to me. I am tired of sandbaggers who try to ruin the league for everyone. When I play them I make sure they know they are sandbaggers, then I whip them hard, but a lot of players, even higher level players, can't manage that. They let the spot get into their heads, and give the match away. Usually because they try and run everything out all the time.
I played some pros a few weeks back, and they were much better than I was.....but they didn't try and run out most of the time. They played me tight, and left me hard shots with no real payoff. I made some shots, but couldn't finish out the racks.....as they intended.
| Registered:
Jul 2001
Member # 6776
February 18, 2010
This was a great landmark! I've gotten obsessed with things a lot in my life too. I went through a dinosaur phase in my 20s when I was reading every book I could find about dinosaurs, and buying all these scale models, and so on.
I read compulsively in general, reading everything by one author I find I like, or reading tons on the same subject, or whatever.
I got into knitting for a while and learned hundreds of knit stitch patterns, made scarves, sweaters, hats, an so on for everyone, then got over it.
For a while I'll be obsessed with making my house look good, cleaning and decorating and so on, buying stuff for it, particularly dishes but also blankets, furniture, pictures, kitchen gadgets, etc. Then I get completely over that and my house looks a wreck for 5 years, then I'll suddenly get the fever again and go nuts, etc.
Music I go through times like that with as well. Sometimes playing guitar or piano and singing, other times just listening compulsively to bands I like. It drives me nuts that so many people my age still listen to the same 500 songs from high school and college that they liked way back then and I can't bear to have something like classic rock playing in the background because I'm not able to shut it out and not hear it. There are some stores I just don't go in because the music they play annoys me too badly. I once had a job in a building that played Muzak all the time and nearly went mad. I would wake up in the morning with the realization that schmaltzy music had been playing in my mind all night.
Then for years I'll listen to no music whatsoever, and only put on NPR on the car radio when I drive.
For a while I was painting a whole lot, and buying art supplies.
Another time I was totally into water skiing for several years, and spent my time looking at and trying out various expensive skis.
Gearing up, in general, is a whole lot of fun, and at various times I've geared up for camping (though rarely done any actual camping), gardening (ditto), and other hobbies.
Running, yoga, exercise in general (cross training) have been obsessions at various times.
Cooking! I love to buy cookbooks and read them and mark recipes that sound good that I'd like to make. I actually do cook quite a bit now, and love to try new things and learn new techniques.
Animals in general and cats in particular I love. I bought huge medical books about cats and read them straight through.
I read the American Heritage Dictionary all the time for a while. It's actually a fun read, and I'd stay up all night reading it, at times. The regional notes are the greatest. =)
Computers were an obsession for me like in the late 70s early 80s. There was a time when I would stay up all night working on programs, but I burned out on computers and now I only program the industrial type (called PLCs), and other industrial controllers for work.
I decided to learn to sew once and made a great Hawaiian shirt that I wore for years but used up my sewing obsession quickly and moved on.
Astronomy: I have several telescopes and spent many hours watching the sky at night but got over that because it's too darn cold out there or else hot and buggy or whatever. Still love reading about astronomy but my skyviewing is limited now to occasional eclipses or comets or other fun rare sky events.
Building things in general is something I always find fun, even after doing it for years as an engineer. I got my son a cool skyrail toy for making marble roller-coasters but he had little interest and I ended up building the thing and having the time of my life doing it. I love models and so on, particularly if they do something cool and not just sit there. I built a handmade electric motor with hand-wound coils once, etc.
Some of these passions last for years and others drop quickly as my interest may suddenly dissipate. It's been like that all my life. I enjoy it as I think it makes life more fun and interesting. And I don't worry about dropping things along the way and not following through. Sometimes I pick them back up and sometimes not but it's all good. I think lifelong learning including sharpening skills is a good thing, as long as it doesn't interfere with relationships and job and so on.
I totally concur about gambling. I saw some friends lose more money than they could afford one night on a penny-ante game, and it stuck with me for life. They kept doubling the pot to win back all they'd lost and losing more until it went way beyond wise and a lot of feelings got hurt. I realized from that and from reading Dostoyevsky's novel The Gambler that I could easily become a compulsive gambler if I ever really won anything and so I just choose never to gamble (except on the stock market or whatever... non-zero-sum games ... and never put at risk more than I can afford to lose).
I think if I were you I might try to branch out and find what other interests might grab you for a while besides pool. You've already gone down that road farther than you're willing to go again, so it might be fun to try something new, mightn't it?
Learn how to control that anger, by the way. =) It's totally doable. That's my latest new thing is mind training and meditation, as described in the TED talk by the French Biochemist and Buddhist monk Mathieu Ricard. I want to see how far I can go toward being a kinder better person. One thing I've learned so far is how to be in complete control of my anger and other emotions. I mean, I'm not perfect at it yet but it's getting easier all the time with practice.
Good luck with whatever you get obsessed about next and be sure and post to tell us all about it. I love hearing about other people's interests and passions too.
| Registered:
Aug 2004
Member # 2199
February 19, 2010
Yeah, a lot of the anger is self-directed, but I am not really mad at pool, or myself. I sometimes go into matches thinking that I "should" win, but any time you go into a match thinking about that rather than playing you are treading on dangerous ground.
Pool tells YOU how good you actually are in competition. It doesn't even listen when you tel IT how good you think you are before a match. LOL
I sold my main pool cue today. I kept a few others...then playing $5 8-ball after a tourney I won some guys cue. LOL
Even when I win I can't win.
| Registered:
Jul 2001
Member # 2199
July 13, 2010
I found a great cue a few months ago, about a $700 cue considering it had a high tech shaft that lowers deflection. Trust me, it works....about 80% of the pros use a low deflection shaft these days.
I paid $300 for it, and won $275 in a tournament the same day it came in. In the past 3 months I've won about $1000, all heads up in tourneys. If I play for anything outside of them, it's cheap, and only with guys I can learn something from.
But I have been spending more and more of my off time playing, and while in some ways I am playing better, I am getting frustrated again.
I am playing too good to play against medium low players, but not good enough to hang with the big dogs.
To top it off I am in a slump now. I played twice last weekend, and played hands down the worst pool I've played in years. It was embarrassing, it really was, and not just because I played badly. I started to lose my temper again, something that hasn't been a problem in years. I didn't do anything stupid, but I was so angry at one point that I almost blew up at myself.
It's funny......I'd never even consider getting mad at a friend for missing a shot, but I get so down on myself, particularly when I am tired or worn out, that is stops being fun sometimes.
Sleep deprivation (because of the weird shifts I was working, not because of anything pool related) sure makes an impact on both your game and on your attitude.
I think it's time to take some time off.
| Registered:
Jul 2001
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Need to Know "America By The Numbers with Maria Hinojosa: Clarkston, Georgia" MARIA HINOJOSA ANCHORS. This week, Need to Know airs a special edition titled, "America By The Numbers with Maria Hinojosa: Clarkston, Georgia." In the shadow of Stone Mountain, GA (once a gathering place for Ku Klux Klan cross burnings), Clarkston is a town of 7,500 that has gone from 90% white in the 1980s to less than 14% white and over a third foreign born today. D
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Surprised this topic hasn't been restarted yet considering the media circus currently going on. I posted a long reply to a different thread in a different forum where they were talking about the typical stuff. Below is my response to the topics they brought up. You should be able to get the jist of it even without their initial comments. Feel free to discuss your thoughts.
"As far as car and gun comparisons go, driving a car is a priviledge. Owning a gun is a right. Thats a pretty significant difference. More people are killed in car related accidents than firearm related accidents. It's really not even a close comparison.
As far as waiting periods go. What difference do you really think it makes? Absolutely none. Most people that do these types of things don't just wake up one day and think "Gee, I want to kill some people today. Just need to stop by the gun shop and buy the gun and some ammo...Oh gee, I can't do it today. Guess I have to wait 10 days." Most of them already have access to guns. Or they have been planning the attack for quite some time. A lot longer than 10 days.
And for the record, an AR15 is not an assault rifle. An assault rifle is capable of select fire aka burst or full auto. And calling it an "assault weapon" is just a term meant to demonize it. Only ignorant hypocritical c**ts like Feinstein and Bloomberg call them "deadly assault weapons with high capacity clips capable of holding more than 10 bullets". All the while they themselves have CCW permits or 24/7 armed police protecting them. An AR15 is a semi-automatic rifle that is no different than most hunting rifles except it "looks scary". It's also a smaller caliber than most hunting rifles. The only advantage it has over most hunting rifles are the standard 30 round magazines. Yes, standard 30 round magazines. Not "high capacity clips". The real high capacity magazines and drums are mostly junk and can't even go through one cycle without jammimg. Only a moron would actually use one to try and effectively kill as many people as possible. Pretty sure the Aurora shooter had a 50 or 100 round drum that jammed on him.
Training. I'm all for proper safety training. It can teach people to properly handle their firearms and help prevent NDs and people accidently being shot. Won't do jack sh*t for mass murderers though. You think someone that is shooting at people is going to care if his finger is on the trigger? Or what is behind his target? Nope.
Are people really still blaming video games, movies and music for mass murderers? Same sh*t was said about Columbine. Marilyn Manson didn't make them do it. His devil music didn't speak to them. They didn't train with Grand Theft Auto. Thats a bullsh*t excuse and a scapegoat.
No gun control is going to stop people from killing people. No spoon control is going to stop people from getting fat. No law is going to stop criminals from breaking the law. You want to prevent these kinds of attacks? Then find out what makes these people tick. What makes these people do what they do. But there is no answer to those questions. There wasn't when this guy killed 20 kids and 7 adults. There wasn't any answers for the Aurora shooter. None for Columbine. 85 years later there is still no answer for why Andrew Kehoe killed his wife, set his house on fire and blew up a school killing 38 kids, 6 adults and injuring 58 others. Insane people doing insane acts of violence is nothing new. People have been killing people since the beginning of time. And people will continue to kill until the end of time. No feel good laws are going to change that. Maybe if people would properly parent and discipline their kids they wouldn't grow up to be evil little shitheads. But today if you spank your kid you're an evil bad person. We give everyone a trophy because handling dissapointment is just too hard. And people wonder why society is filled with a bunch of emo cry babies that feel like they should have everything handed to them in life and have no sense of personal responsibility.
If I get back from this deployment and can't build the AR15 I was planning on building i'm going to be pissed."


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José Eduardo Caramuta was born February 24, 1943 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires in 1965. He started his professional career in 1961, when he created the comical character 'El Pequeño Trovador'. From 1963 to 1971, he worked for Editorial Edmal drawing western and war stories for the magazines Fuego and Impacto, and he collaborated with Editorial Yago as well, working on, among others, the character 'Wapiti' with Carlos Cartago as a writer.
For a minor publisher, he drew 'El Puma' and 'Agente de la CIA', and he also made several works for Editorial Dante Quinterno's Patoruzito. For Cielosur Editora, he drew episodes of 'Ernie Pike' based on scripts by Héctor Germán Oesterheld. From 1971 he also worked for the American Charlton Group, providing art for war and romance comics. In 1972 began to collaborate with Editorial Columba and British D.C. Thomson, working on several war stories.
He settled in Milan, Italy in 1974, and he started a collaboration with the Italian publishers Mondadori (stories in varying genres for Audax, as well as the 'Magnum' series), Dardo (stories in Super Eroica and Uomini e Guerra), Edizioni San Paolo (Il Giornalino) and Rizzoli (Corrier Boy). Since 1987, he works for editor Bonelli on the 'Nick Raider' series.


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Posted 09 August 2007 at 22:58.
What is "Bored in Brno"? a) the best Czech movie of 2003, b) a blog about Brno (the Czech Republic's second largest city) and my adventures in and observations of south and east Moravia. I usually post about music, arts, culture, and stuff in Brno; or, I talk about whatever; or, I may bore you.
There's a Czech saying about how you are a new person for every language you learn. Here's your chance to experience Czech vicariously and to become your new self, now conveniently available in English translation. (Or at least something reasonably close to English.)
If you have questions, suggestions, like what you see, or you're just plain bored, don't hesitate to leave a comment or e-mail me.
A graduate student in music and anthropology writing a dissertation about music in Moravia, the eastern third of the Czech Republic. At some point, the Czech Republic's "second city" (that would be Brno) captured my attention, and I've since been blogging about events, arts, music, and other stuff—basically whatever interests me in and around the cityscape. I'm not living in Brno now, but I keep up with the cultural pulse from afar as best I can.
Since October 2005 NvB: Bored in Brno? | modified Blogger template from Gecko & Fly.
This blog is best viewed with Mozilla Firefox.
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Endress+Hauser (Yamanashi) Co. Ltd.
Dedicated product center for tank gauging products
The dedicated product center is responsible for research and development and production of instruments for tank gauging and temperature measurement as well as display devices for Inventory Management Solutions.
|Yasuyuki Inoue
|Ano da fundação
|Número de funcionários
Close to our customer
Research and development as well as the production of equipment for Inventory
Management Solutions: servo gauges, float and tape gauges, temperature measurement
and comprehensive LNG solution package.
Certified to ISO 9001, 14001 and OHSAS 18001 standards
Test equipment and references used for all measurements and tests conducted during the production process traceable to national or international standards (PTB, NIST, NIM etc.)
Servo gauge calibration test rig complying to OIML Recommendation R85 (2008) accredited by NMi
- Produção


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|Remove Year: 2006
|Publication type:
|Remove Publication type: Perspectives
|Energy topic:
|Social equity
|Remove Energy topic: Social equity
Our ad hoc World Energy Perspectives reports and studies are based on the expert insights from our network of leaders and practitioners and provide a bottom up assessment of key issues and technologies impacting the energy sector.
Alleviating Urban Energy Poverty in Latin America
This regional study entitled Alleviating Urban Energy Poverty in Latin America is comprised of three case studies, which concentrate on Greater Buenos Aires, Caracas and Rio de Janeiro – Cajú. Each case focuses on the analysis of specific aspects of urban poverty, energy availability and policies to improve living conditions from the energy point of view. Unlike […]
Published in February 2006


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Community Building
Community Building
Do you need a place to hold your party, reception or business meeting? The Community Building can be rented at low hourly rates. Call Lynn Martin at (352) 753-2957 for more information.
Community Building
237 W. Guava Street
Lady Lake, Florida 32159
The Gazebo at Heritage Park
This is a great place for pictures, birthday parties, wedding reception, family reunion, meeting and much more!
Contact Mike Burske, Town of Lady Lake Parks & Recreation Director at (352) 430-0451 or [email protected] to schedule your event.
Copyright 2010 Lady Lake. All rights reserved.


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By ,
Published January 13, 2015
Colombian authorities say at least seven soldiers have been killed and five others have been wounded in fighting with rebels.
Army Gen. Emiro Barrios say the gunbattle erupted on Wednesday in the southern state of Caqueta when rebels tried to seize the town of Milan and were repelled by dozens of troops.
It was the deadliest clash between Colombian troops and rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia so far this year. On Jan. 29, four soldiers were killed in fighting with rebels elsewhere in the country.
The violence came while the Colombian government and FARC rebels are pursuing peace talks in Cuba.


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Today ONLY you can grab a 1yr subscription to Marie Claire Magazine for only $4.50 using promo code 3914
About Marie Claire Magazine
Marie Claire is the magazine subscription for fashion-minded women. Every issue is filled with style tips, beauty secrets, relationship and career advice, and entertainment guides. Special features focus on celebrity news, world events and social issues, shopping tips, and questions & answers from stylist professionals. Marie Claire is one of the most popular magazines for women.


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D.C. follies threaten Stonington student trips to Washington
Stonington - The federal government shutdown has forced Pine Point School to postpone a student trip to Washington, and has prompted Mystic Middle School to decide today whether to delay its trip next week until spring.
Both schools were to be among many from across the country to descend on the nation's capital in October to tour the monuments and museums, most of which are now closed because of the impasse over the budget and the Affordable Care Act.
Some teachers, though, have turned their students' disappointment into "teachable moments" by having them learn about how government's actions affect people's lives.
That's exactly what's happening at Pine Point, where 29 eighth-graders had researched the sites they planned to visit in the nation's capital and were prepared to make presentations when they arrived.
"Boy, I got some heat when I had to tell them last Friday," English and history teacher Gretchen Federici said of the postponement. "They were really disappointed."
So she and art teacher Maria Iacoi decided to come up with a way for the students to channel their disappointment in order to better understand the issue.
Students researched how the shutdown has affected programs and agencies such as the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program, Head Start and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and wrote letters their congressmen, including U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, as well as his Rhode Island colleagues. They also created artwork to accompany their letters.
"So it wasn't just about their own disappointment but how it has affected other people," Federici said. "I wanted them to take it beyond themselves, and they did."
Earlier this week, the students visited Courtney's Norwich office, where they talked to him in Washington via a webcam. They also left behind their artwork.
"This is very much a case where as educators, we recognized a teachable moment," she said.
Federici said it also shows students that as citizens, they can have an impact.
"It gives them a sense of empowerment," she said.
Federici said the plan is to reschedule the trip for March.
"They are so excited to see these things in person that they have been studying," she said.
Mystic Middle School teacher Lauren McGugan, who is one of the teachers organizing that school's trip, said that 92 eighth-graders along with teacher and parent chaperones are planning to visit Washington Oct. 22-25. The school has been making the trip for more than 25 years.
"We've been keeping our fingers crossed that it ends," she said of the shutdown Thursday morning.
She said if the shutdown is not over by this morning, the school will postpone the trip until March. She said hotels, bus companies and other businesses have been very accommodating about the need to reschedule.
McGugan said students have been taking the news well because the trip is being postponed, not canceled.
"If it was canceled, they would have been devastated," she said.
In October 2001, Mystic Middle School postponed its Washington trip because of post-9/11 fears. The next year, the trip was postponed again to the following March because of the sniper attacks in Washington that had killed seven people in the week before the students were set to leave.
Most of state's congressional delegation will forgo pay during shutdown
Waterford's Ella Dyjak - The Day's All-Area Swimmer of the Year


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Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Friday made his first public comments on a recent military scandal as he condemned the behavior of a senior officer fired last month for allegedly cheating at the poker table.
Hagel criticized the bizarre episode surrounding Vice Adm. Tim Giardina, whom President Barack Obama removed last month from his post as deputy commander of U.S. Strategic Command.
Giardina was fired while being investigated by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service for his alleged use of counterfeit poker chips at the Horseshoe Council Bluffs Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
In condemning multiple lapses in conduct by military personnel, Hagel appeared also to be alluding to last month's separate firing of Maj. Gen. Michael Carey as commander of 20th Air Force, which oversees the Minuteman 3 nuclear missiles that are part of Strategic Command's arsenal. Officials haves said Carey's removal was tied to alcohol abuse.
Among other lapses first reported by the Associated Press, service members working at a nuclear missile base in Montana failed a safety and security inspection.
Hagel made the comments during a change-of-command ceremony at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, in which Adm. Cecil D. Haney replaced Air Force Gen. C. Robert Kehler as head of the command that runs U.S. air-, sea- and land-based nuclear weapons.
Without mentioning Giardina by name, Hagel made it clear that he had violated the high ethical standards required of the military and civilian men and women who help operate the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
"Perfection must be the standard for our nuclear forces," Hagel said. "And Gen. Kehler has vigorously enforced that standard throughout his tenure – reflecting his own background as an (intercontinental ballistic missile) officer. As you all know, this close scrutiny, and the most rigorous evaluations we have within the Department of Defense, have recently exposed some troubling lapses in maintaining this professionalism."
By praising Kehler's enforcement of ethical standards, Hagel appeared to be clearing him of any responsibility for his former deputy's behavior. Haney was head of U.S. Pacific Command before taking on his new assignment, which makes him the first African-American director of STRATCOM since President George H.W. Bush established it in 1992 as a successor to the Strategic Air Command.
Hagel also put the 2,700 people who work at U.S. Strategic Command on notice that breaches in professional or personal conduct will not be tolerated.
"To our STRATCOM professionals, I would say, you have chosen a profession where there is no room for error," Hagel said. "That's what the American people expect from you, and you must deliver. Americans trust you with their security. They count on you."
Hagel drove home the same point in a meeting after the ceremony with junior officers who work at the nuclear arms hub, which is one of three commands among nine altogether that is organized around function rather than geography.
"Secretary Hagel conveyed that Strategic Command is responsible for the military's most sensitive and important missions and the nation is counting on all personnel, at all levels, to maintain the highest standards of conduct in performing these duties," said Carl Woog, the Pentagon's assistant press secretary.
In addition to its critical nuclear mission, Strategic Command in recent years has expanded to oversee U.S. space-based systems and to protect the nation's crucial infrastructure against hacking or other cyber attacks.
The scandal surrounding the disgraced admiral, who allegedly played cards at a casino just across the Iowa state line from Offutt Air Force Base, is the second to engulf the Navy in recent months.
In the separate Navy scandal, at least three midlevel officers face criminal charges and two admirals are blocked from accessing classified materials because of their ties to a Singapore-based company that services Navy ships in Asia and beyond.
Hagel noted in his speech that stealth bombers operated by Strategic Command, responding to "a series of dangerous provocations" by North Korea, had conducted an unusual aerial sortie in March.
"To assure our Republic of Korea allies, a pair of B-2 bombers assigned to Strategic Command flew a nonstop mission from the United States to South Korea, sending a clear message of American resolve and helping to de-escalate the crisis," Hagel said.
The nuclear-capable, bat-winged planes soared through the skies over South Korea on March 28 to reassure South Korea and Japan after a series of threats from North Korea.


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Morning Five: 03.05.10 EditionPosted by jstevrtc on March 5th, 2010
- Eddie Sutton made his first public comments about the charges and the future of his son Sean Sutton in an interview with Tulsa World yesterday. Sean Sutton was arrested back on February 11th and charged with attempting to possess controlled substances, and soon after admitted an addiction to pain killers. The elder Sutton expressed confidence in his son, saying "He'll be all right because he's a strong person who just made a mistake."
- Santa Clara sophomore Troy Alexander is impressive. His stats this season: 1.1 PPG, 0.5 RPG, 0.7 APG in 30 games. Ah, but his most meaningful stat is found in the "Lives Saved" column. He's been raising awareness about the malaria epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa and has been raising money via Facebook and Twitter to buy mosquito-repellent nets for children's beds. The nets are draped over the beds so the kids don't get bitten and contract the disease while they sleep. The cost of one net? Ten lousy bucks. A life saved. If you don't think malaria is a big deal, there are some studies out there that say malaria has actually killed one out of every two people who has ever lived. Alexander initially wanted to raise $1,000, but has already tripled that. He does this through the Nothing But Nets campaign, an organization jump-started by everyone's favorite punching bag these days — Rick Reilly. We won't post Troy's Facebook page, but we will link his page at NothingButNets.net. Bravo, brother.
- According to the 49 responding journalists in AnnArbor.com's final player of the year poll, Evan Turner is widening his lead over John Wall. Interestingly, Turner was the only player named on every ballot. Three voters didn't have Wall ranked first, second, OR third, and 32 of them didn't name Wesley Johnson anywhere. Wow.
- The host schools — that is to say, the teams that automatically advance to the "championship rounds," win or lose — have been announced for next season's O'Reilly Auto Parts CBE Classic in Kansas City. Duke, Kansas State, Gonzaga, and Marquette will be the sites for the regional round games from November 14-17, and then will move on to the Sprint Center on November 22-23 to play each other in matchups to be determined later.
- Are referees working too much? It's been a big topic for some time, and especially this year. Conference bigwigs and coaches may think refs are overworked, but the referees seem to disagree. ACC referees' supervisor John Clougherty, though, feels the critics might have a point, saying of his refs, "They are independent contractors. I can't tell them how many times to work." Interesting piece by Ray Glier of the New York Times.


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2008 The Spaniard
Join the Twisted Few!
A wine that will leave you mostly dead! A Rioja-style blend of Tempranillo, Graciano, Garnacha
91 points! "It may just be that this 84% Tempranillo blend (plus 12% Graciano, 4% Garnacha) needs some more time in bottle to develop, in which case it will only get better. In the meantime it has undeniable juicy, red fruit, grippy tannins that are just starting to mellow and is overall a very savory and delicious wine. Fermented as a field blend, The Spaniard mingled for months in all-new French oak and would go gangbusters with lamb or other red meats." - Virginie Boone, Wine Enthusiast magazine
Made at Twisted Oak by Winemakers of Unusual Size, this swashbuckling Calaveras blend is so big you'll need six fingers to hold the bottle. It's inconceivable that one could resist these aromas and flavors as big as Fezzik himself. Share it with your special Buttercup, a Gentle Giant, or the entire Kingdom... as you wish.
40% Tempranillo, Sheep Shack Vineyard
44% Tempranillo, Spaniard block
12% Graciano, Willow block
4% Garnacha, Colina Roja block


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Julie (Jules),
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Comment Wall
I saw your post about the makeup used on Alice in New Moon. Is there a link where I can see the full breakdown and how everything was applied?
almost 10000 spots!!! :D
Amazing!! I have only spotted like 3 things but i just joined a few days ago:)
How do you get the message under your picture
Just wanted to say that I REALLY love ur profile pic! Did u draw it? It looks really nice!
Ur welcome so do u like one direction
In my earlier message I forgot to ask u what the app that u used was called for ur profile pic.
Who do u love in 1D? I really live Zayn
This is so funny,Niall Horan (Niall from 1D) took a picture of Louis Tomlinson's butt and tweeted it on twitter (Louis Tomlinson from 1D)
I know I was just board and I thought that what Niall did to Louis was crazy. What is Zayn Malik's phone number? I really need to call him
Go to YouTube and search Zayn singing Ne-yo So Sick. He really rocks
Just watched Little Mix as solo artists on YouTube and they sound good
Do you have a twitter?
I MIGHT SEE ONE DIRECTION IN WASHINGTON DC IN 2013! I MIGHT SEE MY BABY ZAYN MALIK (DJ Malik)
I know!!!!
I just wanted to let you know that you're the best!!!!! :)
my 16th birthday tomorrow!
Can't wait:3
Hey everyone:)
I wont be spotting in about the next 3-4 weeks, because i have 4 big examinations coming up-.-
Im almost done with all my examinations^.^
I have 2 left and one of them is tomorrow:> nervous!!!
Im able to get on a computer tomorrow, so i can finally spot some new things! Its been waaaay to long
bought a MacBook Air yesterday, so i'll be able to be on a computer anytime, as long as there's wifi :)
Hi!!! I don't know if you remember but I had an account and you followed me. It was DestinylovesZayn. I couldn't remember my password so I got this one a couple months ago. I thought I could talk to you and see how things are going??!!! Just keep replying or just send me messages. Don't matter. <3


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Ladybird GTX 285 Review
The world of video cards has taken quite an interesting turn these past few months. The focus has slowly shifted further and further toward ATI, as users are awed by the 5XXX series cards. The 5870 and 5970 are two of the cards that managed to rip a great deal of attention away from the green team, and with good reason. These DX 11 capable beasts are able to shred through most any game at insane framerates. Not only that, but it seems as though there is a 5XXX series card aimed at every user, which puts NVIDIA in quite a tight spot. The green team hopes to pull some of the focus back with the release of its new series of "Fermi" cards.
This is not a review for one of NVIDIA's new series of cards. Instead, this is a review for one of NVIDIA's GT200 graphical computing beasts, the GTX 285. It's been a long time since I've seen mention of this card in forums, or else where, but it can still hold its own in most benchmarks and it can still cripple many of ATI's offerings. This means the card should still be considered for any new gaming rig. That being said, it does have two very obvious downsides; the price, and the fact that it is not DX 11 capable, which may prove to be one of the cards biggest downsides!
Today, I'll be looking at a GTX 285 from a company that flies ever so slightly under the radar - Ladybird! No, I'm not talking about Hank Hill's dog, I'm talking about a company that sells NVIDIA GPUs. Many of you may have never heard of this company, but that doesn't necessarily mean you should stray away from its products. The Ladybird GTX 285 may perform extraordinarily well in benchmarks. In order to figure out whether or not this is the case, we'll need to put the card through OCC's benchmarking suite. How will it perform? Read on and let's find out!
Closer Look:
I can't count the number of times that I say this, but packaging is actually extremely important. Without it, the hardware you purchase would arrive in pieces. Ladybird's packaging did one hell of a job protecting its version of the GTX 285, because that box definitely got tossed around. The card was not shipped to me inside of a "Brown Box", but rather in the GPU's box itself. There were a few dents in the packaging, but much to my surprise, absolutely no damage to the card. The front of the box appears to be rather empty. The right side depicts a helmet with some of the cards specs beneath it. To the left of the helmet is the remains of the sticker labeling the card a GTX 285. The top left of the box features Ladybird's logo. The back of the box also features some of the card's specifications, but it goes into much greater detail. The sides of the box sport Ladybird's logo.
Upon opening the Ladybird GTX 285's box, you'll find a second box, only this one is shiny and black! Upon opening this second box, you'll find a driver CD sitting on top of a thin layer of protective foam. Removing the foam reveals both the GTX 285, and its accessories, very securely packed in more black foam. No wonder the card was not damaged during shipping!
Like many other GPU's, the Ladybird GTX 285 comes with a bunch of goodies. I was a little disappointed to not find a DVI to VGA adapter, however, there was a DVI to HDMI adapter, which in some ways is more important. Most enthusiasts now days are using a monitor that supports DVI. However, there are quite a few enthusiasts that would like to use their 70" HDTV's to game on. The card also comes with a molex to 6-pin connector, a component connector, an SPD/F audio cable, a driver CD, and a quick start guide.
Now let's take a look at the Ladybird GTX 285 itself!


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No rigid rules, labels or dogmas.... just REAL food, for your body, mind & soul!
747 members29 Comments 25 Likes
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904 members75 Comments 38 Likes
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Thanks for adding me as a friend, Sean. This is one of my favorite combinations for making a green smoothie. Blend: Two oranges, huge handful of baby spinach, liquid Stevia to taste for sweetness, ½ teaspoon vanilla if you like, almond milk for my liquid and flavor. If you don't use Stevia, use what you enjoy. Add ice or serve over ice. Enjoy! It reminds me of the sugary Orange Julius my children would buy out at the Mall. Have a great day : )
Come take the RFR Mansion Tour!
Click here for each room's index!
Welcome to
our "Special Central Secret Place in Cyber Space"!
Make Yourself at HOME!! : )
Here is your Complimentary Green Smoothie and shot of Wheatgrass!!
Enjoy…It's on the House! : )
Hi Sean!
I'm so happy to welcome you to Raw Food Rehab! I have an orientation letter waiting for you HERE. This information will help you in navigating our virtual holistic retreat.
It is also very important that new members read our House Rules before posting anything to our site. I hope that you will make yourself at home, and please let me know if you have any questions!
Penni Shelton
Founder & Program Director
© 2018 Created by Penni. Powered by


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Hi there, me and my climbing partner are going to climb Mont blanc for the second time this June. We will be climbing from the 9th June onwards. The issue is the Tramway du mont blanc and cable car lifts within Les houches are closed until around the 15th. Is it possible to walk to Mont-Lachat from Les houches without getting the tramway or cable car?
Any help would be appreciated!


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C# .Net Developer Taunton - £30,000 - £35,000
- Recruiter
- Computer Futures
- Location
- Taunton
- Salary
- £30000 - £35000 per annum
- Posted
- 25 Feb 2013
- Closes
- 25 Mar 2013
- Ref
- Contact
- Thomas Rees
- Sector
- Travel, Leisure & Tourism
- Function
- Contract Type
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full Time
I am currently looking for a .Net developer in the Taunton area to join an expanding IT team.
The successful candidate will be joining a client who is a leader in their industry and offers excellent training and career progression.
The key skills required are:
C# or VB.Net
This is a fantastic opportunity for a candidate who wants to work their way up within an organisation. Ideally candidates should have a minimum of 1 year's commercial experience in a .Net role.
If this is something you are interested in, then please feel free to give me call on 0117 9103333 or send an up to date CV
To find out more about Computer Futures please visit www.computerfutures.com


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Health Management service center to create 500 jobs in Fort Smith
Health Management service center to create 500 jobs in Fort Smith
FORT SMITH, Ark. —
Health Management Associates to open regional service center in Fort Smith, creating 500 jobs for area, said representative Shannon White.
White said Fort Smith was chosen for its "dedicated, viable workforce."
Mayor Sandy Sanders says, "this nationally recognized company is bringing 500 excellent jobs to this city."
To apply for available positions with HMA, click here.
Officials from the Arkansas Economic Development Commission joined local company leaders for the job creation announcement.
To read the live updates from our Live Wire during the announcement, Click here for the link!


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6 Cool New Shelving Systems
We're always excited to see new developments in shelving and storage. Whether it's modular building blocks or a one-of-a-kind sculptural piece, these shelves had us looking twice (at least).
• 1 & 2 DesignMilk | Imeüble by Bjørn Jørund Blikstad — wall-mounted shelves from the recent Oslo National Academy of the Arts grad.
• 3 Nureyev bookshelf tower by Roderick Vos for Linteloo — available at M2L in Manhattan.
• 4 Contemporist | KONNEX by Florian Gross — 3 sizes of slotted cubes interlock for nearly endless storage possbilities!
• 5 Mimic Modular Cubes from Crate &Barrel — $80 each and available in walnut, black and white with a tempered glass top. Stackable up to 4 units high.
• 6 & 7 DesignMilk | Parallel World Shelving by Dzimitry Samal — wall-mounted shelves keep your floor free and clear! Debuting at April's Milan Design Week.
• 8 & 9 & 10 Deco-Design | BOOKIE from Targa Italia — this system from Targa Italia isn't new but it's new to us!


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The staff in the office of Communications, Community and Government Relations can answer all of these questions – and more.
Committed to upholding internal and external communications, we routinely work with entities both on and off campus to disseminate important information to target audiences ranging from our students, to local residents, to our alumni.
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They can be downloaded by clicking on the icons below.
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© 2011 Southwestern College, 900 Otay Lakes Road, Chula Vista, CA 91910. (619) 421-6700
The Southwestern College is not responsible for the content of external sites.
Thank you for visiting the Southwestern College website.


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France 0-1 Japan
Shinji Kagawa scored two minutes from time as Japan inflicted Didier Deschamps' first defeat as France coach.
The hosts dominated the first period, with Karim Benzema impressing, but failed to find a way past Eiji Kawashima. The encounter burst into life in the final 20 minutes after a raft of changes, with both sides creating numerous chances.
The visitors won it in the dying moments as Yasuyuki Konno led a counterattack, allowing Yuto Nagatomo to cross for Kagawa, who finished simply at the back post.
After a friendly draw with Uruguay and FIFA World Cup qualifying wins against Finland and Belarus, the result means a first loss for Deschamps. The coach is hoping for a response on Tuesday when his side face Spain.
"It's clearly a bad result," said the former France captain. "Japan got more chances in the second half; we failed to convert ours. Now we'll recover and prepare for Tuesday."
©UEFA.com 1998-2017. All rights reserved.


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Everything We're Excited About This May
Maybe you've got Mom on the mind (after all, Mother's Day isn't far off) or simply want to peruse a few stylish finds. No matter what you're looking for, our monthly installment of WWW Hearts won't disappoint. From Salvatore Ferragamo's bespoke shoe service to one of the year's most highly anticipated films, we've rounded up all the things you need to check out this May. Click through our slideshow to find out what they are.
Photo:Salvatore Ferragamo: taken by Claiborne Swanson Frank for L'Icona
Ferragamo's L'Icona, an exclusive online project in collaboration with photographer Claiborne Swanson Frank, launches today in celebration of the Vara shoes' 35th anniversary. After seeing how tastemakers like Olivia Palermo and Lauren Santo Domingo (on left, wearing Ferragamo's Cropped Trench Jacket ($2400) from the S/S 13 collection with the Vara ($550) in Black) style the shoes, which feature the iconic bow and a dainty heel, you'll get the chance to customize your own. We love the classic elegance of the Vara ($550) in Bisque and White, but the bespoke service allows you to choose the show, bow, heel, and hardware color, as well as add your initials to the bottom of the shoe.
LEVI's and Liberty of London's collaboration is a fine example of transatlantic teamwork. The all-American denim label partnered with the British print masters for a capsule collection of warm weather-appropriate pieces, available May 15th on Levi's.com. Everything from the Anorak ($250) and 501 Shorts ($90) to the 646 Shorts ($90) features garden floral prints based on Liberty of London's archive patterns that we'll wear all spring and summer long.
This year's Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute exhibition, PUNK: Chaos to Couture, will explore punk's impact on fashion since the '70s. If you can't make it to the exhibit, which runs from May 9th-August 14th, we suggest snagging its companion publication ($45). This coffee table-worthy tome features designers like Vivienne Westwood and Ann Demeulemeester, examining how punk's anti-establishment attitude has influenced their work.
We can't wait to watch director Baz Luhrmann's vision of The Great Gatsby starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan, in theaters May 10th. Look out for decadent '20s-inspired costumes from Miuccia Prada, who pulled pieces from the Prada and Miu Miu archives specifically for the movie, and opulent Tiffany & Co. jewels. And don't forget to download the film's soundtrack, which was executive produced by Jay-Z and The Bullitts, and will feature songs by the rapper himself, The xx, Lana Del Rey, and Florence and the Machine.
Matthew Williamson's rich colors and bold patterns have made their way into Benefit's Limited Edition The Rich Is Back ($34) palette, a feast for the eyes that's out later this month. Gold and teal eye shadows live alongside a mini-tube of mascara, blush, and lip gloss--all inspired by the '70s, the decade from which Williamson derives much of his inspiration and during which Benefit was founded in San Francisco. You don't need to be disco-bound to put this kit to good use!
We can always count on Miu Miu for the season's coolest pair of shades, and true to form, their Rasoir Sunglasses ($335 each) are already a favorite among stylesetters (Rihanna's already been spotted wearing them). Available in black, white, pink, and tortoiseshell, these striking, cat-eye sunglasses are abruptly cut off at the bottom of the frame, resulting in a cool, edgy look.


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- This Blingee scored 1634 points in the Best Anime Blingee competition. View the final rankings or Enter current competitions now!
fardilia says:3182 days ago
Wow!!! Amiga Me encaNta!!!! MUY BIEN combinados los Colores X3 5***** Para ti Amiga porK Te las Mereces!!
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