2012年12月28日 星期五

Author with local roots writes what she likes to read

Sounds like an artist defeating a cynical industry by circumventing it altogether, right? That narrative is a little too simple.Find detailed product information for Low price howo tipper truck and other products.

Vinduska still works in the confines of a genre. The title romantic-suspense carries built-in expectations from readers. Vinduska knows this because she was a reader first, a fan of Nora Roberts and Katherine Colter. She said she feels tied to the romantic-suspense style. She does not want to write any other way.

Those expectations include a balance between the realistic aspects of a story and stretching the boundaries. It’s a simultaneous tightrope of readers losing themselves in a story real enough to draw them in, yet it provides the vehicle for escapism they are craving.

“Reflections” opens with her male main character, Lash Brogan, receiving the Academy Award for best actor, only the audience at the Kodak Theater witnesses the statue going to an empty seat. Brogan – a ruggedly handsome, blue-eyed Irish actor – is hundreds of miles away being tortured in a basement in Colorado. Using his captors’ carelessness against them, Brogan attacks an armed goon. He is able to knock the pistol to the floor, secure it in the struggle, and then kill both guards. He escapes into the mountainous wilderness and trudges through miles of snow before falling on the property of Justine McBride, a beautiful physical therapist for the nearby small-town hospital. McBride nurses Brogan back to health and in the process, they fall hopelessly in love.

“What if a normal woman ends up rescuing and falling in love with a celebrity?” Vinduska said of the premise of “Reflections.”

The story sounds a little farfetched and that’s the point. Vinduska strode the line between tightly researched circumstances and the scenes that are over the top. She said she studied the Hollywood film making process to give Brogan a more accurate vocabulary. When McBride gives a description of her job at the hospital, it smacks of realism. Vinduska said she writes out of order, a self-described seat-of-the-panster. It was scenes like Brogan’s escape or the romantic encounter in Brogan’s wine cellar that Vinduska wrote first.

There’s also the balance between writing what you know but also including the unfamiliar to give a work a more exotic feel. Georgetown, Colo., is not much different than Sandpoint, Idaho, where Vinduska lives. She was originally a Marion County resident, the daughter of Terry and Cindy Vinduska. Brogan’s encounter in the small-town grocery clerk could have easily happened at Carlsons’.

However, the scene where FBI agents visit the mansion of a Los Angeles Mafia tough is a little less sharp.

McBride has a career much like Vinduska’s. Vinduska is an assistant branch manager for Bank of America. The reader could picture McBride making natural soap or practicing yoga, two of Vinduska’s preferred hobbies. The descriptions of FBI agents and ex-Navy Seal bodyguards seem a little less reliable.

It’s the combination of realism and fantasy that makes books fun for Vinduska.

Back to those agents, Vinduska said she has tried to match the Harlequin mold, but that’s not her style.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability.Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products. She feels the writers that bend those constraints are the most successful authors anyway.

“For me personally, I write the story I want to write,” she said. “I write what I like to read.”

She does not want to be a one-book wonder. The writing process for “Reflections started seven years ago. She has another book that almost complete. She has several more installments using the characters from “Reflections” in the works. She has been keeping files of ideas for each character that have gradually grown into prospective books.

With Nick Foles breaking a bone in his right hand, Mike Vick will step in and take the reigns to lead this abysmal Eagles season to its merciful conclusion. So it seems like now is as good a time as any to put a final comparison out there between the precocious rookie and the electric vet.

With skill sets as different as these two possess, you’d think by now that there would be a clear consensus as to which the Eagles should move forward with. But with inevitable coaching changes on the horizon, fans and the media are as confused as ever as to what attributes these two quarterbacks show that should be praised, and which should be looked down on.

Foles, right now as a rookie, is better at certain things than Vick is. Pre-snap reads, post-snap reads, audibles, pocket mobility. And the fact that as a rookie, he’s better than Vick at those things is pretty sad for Vick. Vick’s been in the league a long time. He should have honed those skills by now.

But, (and this is a big but) Foles does not now, nor will he ever possess the “skill” that Vick does. Vick is faster, stronger, and more athletic. If Vick had better pocket presence/mobility and the ability to process his reads better, he could be the greatest QB the league has ever seen. He really could fulfill Marty Mornhinweg’s ill-fated preseason boast that he could be a latter day Steve Young.

Foles on the other hand has no chance to be that guy because he’s simply not as athletically gifted as Vick. At best, and I mean absolute hands down, million to one chance, best, the hope for myself at least, is that Foles can become Tom Brady-light.

At worst, and honestly most likely, he’s Bobby Hoying 2.0. Either way, he needs lots of work on his mechanics, recognition skills (Better than Vick’s, though they may be) and overall strength to become even a quality NFL starter in the mold of a Matt Schaub.

I think where most people involved in this discussion tend to differ is in what they see as his ceiling based on attributes we’ve gotten glimpses of so far. I really think it’s as simple as whether you’re coming at it from the angle of brains, or if you’re coming at it from the angle of athleticism.

A truly great QB, like Aaron Rodgers, of course has a fantastic combination of both. In my view, Foles has enough athleticism, that if he augments that “mediocre” athleticism with quality reads, quality audibles, intelligent decision-making, leadership skills, guts, work ethic, etcetera, etcetera, then he has a pretty good chance of being a quality starter in this league.

Vick on the other hand, has all the athleticism in the world, but couldn’t consistently audible his way out of a paper bag. Many obviously disagree.

Now, that being said, if there were an Andrew Luck or RGIII in this draft class, would anyone in Eagles Nation be banking on Foles? Of course we wouldn’t. And that’s an important aspect of all this.

I want Foles to maybe be the guy going forward because he’s got room to improve from where he’s at, and I don’t think Vick does, and there don’t seem to me to be any other worthwhile options in the draft or free agency.

I loved Vick when he was putting up 50 points on Monday night in 2010 and things were golden. I was hopeful he’d continue his upward trend. But that’s in the past. What has he done for us lately,Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile, besides fumble the ball and throw interceptions?

Many fundamentally disagree on whether or not Vick is a “quality” starter at this point in his career. But don’t mistake it. He’s insanely talented still, and if we had a run heavy offense with quick reads, he’d probably play well.

But what concerns me most about him is now that his talent has started to wane, he hasn’t developed or honed the necessary skills to continue to survive as a quarterback in the NFL. Nothing else about his ability to play QB has improved. He’s the same player he was when he took the Falcons to the NFCCG, but with decreasing athleticism. Thus I don’t think he’s an elite QB anymore, and when his decline really starts to set in, it will be precipitous.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele ,

Will he start somewhere in the league next year? Yes. Will it be with the Eagles? Only the new coach will know that, but it won’t be at the price tag he currently carries.

I just like certain attributes that I see out of Foles mentally (and to a lesser extent physically), and am cautiously optimistic that he continues to develop those, while simultaneously developing his weaknesses enough that he can become a good or, if we’re really, really, really lucky, great QB.

The 2012 draft has, in hindsight, turned out to have a really amazing amount of Quarterback talent. In the end, what’s most important for the Eagles is that they evaluate Foles on who he is. Not who he isn’t. Comparing him incessantly to Andrew Luck, RGIII or Russell Wilson is pointless.

Walrus tusk poachers on Round Island preserve charged by feds

What began as a curious poaching incident last May on a remote Alaska island game sanctuary has evolved from a state-level investigation into a full-blown federal case, with two Alaska Native hunters accused in the wasteful killing and facing a quartet of federal charges.

One Monday in early May, 2011, Sixty Arkanakyak and Jessie Arnariak decided to motor their way from the village of Togiak 30 miles across Togiak Bay, located north of the pristine and world-class fishing waters of Bristol Bay. Their destination was Round Island, a massive summer haul out for male Pacific walrus who use the rocky beaches as resting spots between food binges.We have a wide selection of dry cabinet to choose from for your storage needs. What the men did next – slaughtering a walrus for nothing more than its tusks and injuring other massive mammals in a spray of bullets – could land them in jail for a decade.

On Thursday, Arkanakyak told a federal judge during his arraignment that he was innocent, pleading not guilty to four charges: three misdemeanors related to an illegal, wasteful kill of a walrus and the removal of its tusks, and one felony for being a convicted felon in possession of firearms. Arnariak faces identical charges, stemming from an indictment against both men handed up in mid-December. The misdemeanors – violations of the Lacey Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act – carry a possible jail term of up to one year. The weapons charge has a maximum sentence of 10 years. According to prosecutors, Arkanakyak has a previous felony conviction for theft; while Arnariak has a prior assault conviction.

Deeply disappointed in and angered by the mens' behavior, Togiak's village council has aligned itself with the prosecutors. Reached by phone at his village office,High quality stone mosaic tiles. Council President Frank Logusak says he personally told the men if it ever happens again he'd encourage law enforcement “to put them in jail and throw the key away.” He'd also contemplated how he could take their boat, motor and guns away.

He said he has personally worked long and hard to restore his people’s traditional hunting rights to the walrus of Round Island, and he worries that abuses similar to what Arkanakyak and Arnariak are accused of doing could erode the tribe's rights.

There also seems to be community ire at the foolishness and recklessness of the poaching incident, rooted in not in the practice of culture, tradition or the quest for food, but in grabbing the valuable ivory for trade and personal gain unrelated to feeding their families or use in artwork, according to Jonathan Forsling, the council's tribal administrator.China plastic moulds manufacturers directory.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. Even had they used the tusks for personal use or for crafts, the hunt was out of season, in violation of the negotiated terms the tribe had come to with sanctuary regulators.

It's not the killing of the walrus that has the men -- Native Alaskan hunters -- in trouble with the law. The federal Marine Mammal Protection Act specifically protects the hunting privileges of Alaska Natives. But they are required to take the walrus meat for food. Arnariak and Arkanakyak are accused of taking only the animal's highly valuable ivory tusks. That they drifted into state sanctuary waters out of season and without the required permits added to the slew of state charges lodged against them.

Indigenous hunters are the only Alaskans allowed to hunt and kill marine mammals, but some standards apply to all Alaska hunters. State law requires the meat of a killed animal be salvaged and it limits hunters to approved harvest times.

After the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, it stood to reason that perpetually underpaid, overworked, and shat upon teachers in other parts of the country might try to imagine what they'd do if a similar situation arose in their workplaces. In some places, they're reviewing safety procedures. In others, educators are encouraging their students to respond to the deaths of 26 people in Sandy Hook with 26 acts of kindness. In Utah, they're flocking to shooting ranges and buying guns for themselves, so they can magically become Neo from The Matrix if someone decides to target their classroom. This is not going to end well.

A few states,High quality stone mosaic tiles. including Utah, have laws that allow teachers to carry concealed weapons in their classrooms. And following the Newtown attacks, one gun club offered to take advantage of both heightened fear and the state's lax gun laws in a wrong-headed attempt to more guns in school classrooms — by offering free weapons classes to educators.

Other states are responding to Newtown in a similarly shooty manner — Ohio's Buckeye Firearms Association has started a pilot program that aims to arm 24 teachers and train them in gun use before sending them skipping off on their merry way to their classrooms, and Arizona's Attorney General has proposed to amend state law to allow one teacher per school to carry a gun. Arizona, just to refresh your memory, has a Republican supermajority in both Houses as well as a nutbag Republican governor, so if actual legislation like this were introduced, you can bet your illegal high capacity magazines that it will pass.

The logic here echoes that of NRA Spokesperson and Actual Crazy Guy Wayne LaPierre, who remarked in the world's tackiest press conference that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." Because if a good guy has a gun and a bad guy has a gun, it's sort of like nobody has a gun. Unless a bad guy has a bigger gun. Then the good guy is extra for sure going to die.

Not everyone is on board with this Oprah-style YOU ALL GET GUNS! approach to violence prevention. The Utah's State Board of Education's director of law and school legislation called the free firearms training a "horrible, no good, rotton idea."

A few important questions: how would an armed teachers program assure that the only person with access to the gun was the teacher? And does a place exist to store a gun in a classroom that is both immediately accessible in the event of an emergency and completely inaccessible to kids in the classroom?

Aquatic Centre “Fantastic”

The huge stainless steel swimming pool at the heart of Windsor’s new aquatic centre is only 19 weeks away from being filled with 1.4 million gallons of water.

The chaotic work site doesn’t look close to completion, but construction of Windsor’s $77.6-million indoor water park is about to move into the home stretch, city officials were told during a tour before the project shut down for Christmas.

Both concrete dive towers have been poured, and the balcony around the two-storey glass lobby facing north to Detroit is taking shape.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. Installers have finished torquing 30,000 bolts into place on the custom-built competition pool, and the final structural steel for the fun park side of the seven-pool complex will spring up over the next two weeks.

On Jan. 7, give or take a day, contractors will turn on the centre’s gas furnaces for the first time to warm up the recently enclosed western half of the structure. Tile installers need the heat to lay a few acres of ceramic flooring in time for the 47th International Children’s Summer Games scheduled for Aug. 14.

The cost of all that ceramic will be about $1.3 million, says contractor Max De Angelis. It will take a crew of eight people weeks to lay all that flooring as the project rockets toward its hand-over deadline of June 21.

The water park side of the building to the east, which will house a half dozen amusement park water features when it opens six months later, will be floored with “soft walk” material to protect children’s feet. The floor of the big pool will be vinyl.

Five city councillors, Windsor’s top administrators and parks officials charged with bringing the project in on time and on budget were wowed during a tour of the building on Dec. 20.

“Fantastic. Just fantastic,” Coun. Hilary Payne murmured to himself 30 minutes into an inspection of the three-storey structure. Payne became an early proponent of building a world-class aquatic centre in Windsor after touring a similar installation in his native Ireland.

It may be just starting to look big from the outside, but from the inside the place is impressively huge, from its 1,600-spectator capacity to the spacious health club overlooking the fun park and the rentable activity rooms.

The basement, which most visitors will never see, is a Borg-like maze of pumps, filter tanks, cisterns and electrical controls. It’s lined with miles and miles of PVC water pipe and 10-inch steel heating and cooling lines from Windsor’s downtown district energy system.

In the centre of the basement is a massive concrete bunker the size of a small bungalow – a surge tank to keep water levels properly balanced in the main pool. Designed by Myrtha Pools,Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. the three-bay swimming hole (diving, laps, and recreation) has special gutters designed to keep the waves, or “chop” levels down, to help swimmers post Olympic competition times.High quality stone mosaic tiles.

Two moveable bulkheads will keep the three bays separate, so that different groups can use the pool at the same time for different purposes; competitive swimmers prefer cooler water temperatures of 78 F, while seniors taking some exercise will want the water at 80 F and up. Practising divers like it up to 82.

“This will be the only pool in Canada with that feature,” says Don Sadler,This is my favourite sites to purchase those special pieces of buy mosaic materials from. Windsor’s retired parks and rec boss who is supervising the project on contract for taxpayers. While still on staff, he also oversaw construction of the WFCU arena complex.

They’ve made some changes to the original plans for the aquatic centre, and the kids and competitors who are expected to be the centre’s main customers will probably benefit the most from them.

For instance, while there will be no windows on the competition pool for safety reasons, extra windows have been added on the building’s eastern side. That’s so people waiting for a ride at the downtown bus station on a wintry day can gaze in with envy upon those cavorting on the double FlowRider surfing machine.

There are only 50 double FlowRiders in use worldwide, and none yet in Canada. The other features on the amusement side of the building will include a wave pool, toddler pools, huge slides and a lazy river float ride.

There are no windows on the big pool because glare on the water can cause deadly or crippling accidents for divers plunging off the high tower. “We were told by the experts to be very careful about how much light gets in,” says Onorio Colucci, the city’s treasurer and a member of the executive committee overseeing construction of the pool centre.

Windsor has consulted widely to get the project right: showers and infrared heaters will be installed underneath the dive towers, because divers must carefully balance their body temperatures during competition. A fully connected media room has been added, for international meets which Mayor Eddie Francis is pushing to become a regular occurrence in the building.

The project is still on budget, the executive committee was told. But there are plans for some last-minute upgrades similar to those made at the WFCU Centre that could improve public enjoyment of the building. They’re trying to make it perfect.

“There are no more surprises,” Sadler told the committee about costs. While engineers had contingency plans to cope with the usual bad soil and other underground horrors often encountered on Windsor’s soggy construction sites, they found none. That saved hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“We discovered that the site had very good soil – in Windsor, who woulda thunk? So what we have now is the opportunity for some enhancements” with the savings, Sadler said.

Among the other unbudgeted extras being considered, the building committee is debating spending an extra $100,We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory.000 to upgrade the centre’s hallway floors with a coating of non-slip epoxy to keep running kids safe from falls. They are also looking at installing a giant video screen on the eastern exterior of the building to promote events inside, and a sign on Riverside Drive.

Fulvio Valentinis, one of five councillors on the steering committee, has been demanding some kind of design change to break up the monotony of a two-block-long stretch of blue siding. Neighbours are already complaining about its bleak western face, he said.

Colucci, the money man, vetoed all of the extras last week. “Let’s put these (suggestions) on the back burner until the last possible moment until we see how the budget goes,” he told the committee.

Naming rights have yet to be determined for the building, which will also affect the final price tag. Unusually for a major government project anywhere in the world today, the aquatic centre is being paid for entirely in cash rather than public debt. About $21 million has already been paid to contractors so far, Colucci said, and the project will be paid off during the fiscal year it opens.

Francis says the new energy-wise aquatic centre will also be much cheaper to staff and to operate than the recreation centres that are being closed or partially closed to help pay for it.

De Angelis, who has spent most of his waking moments on site for the last half year, says he thinks the centrepiece of the project is something that employees were just unwrapping from its concrete formwork last week as the City Hall suits were touring the site: the 10-metre-high diving tower at the south end of the big pool.

2012年12月26日 星期三

Strong ties still bind to Florida Gators football team

University of Florida football players who were around when Charlie Strong coached his final season as the Gators’ defensive coordinator in 2009 talk about him more like a favorite uncle than as the Louisville head coach that is facing UF in the Jan. 2 Sugar Bowl.

Of all the teams Florida could have faced, the Cardinals pose perhaps the strangest of all matchups. Strong actually served as the Gators’ head coach for one bowl game while the program was in transition following the 2004 season with Ron Zook fired and Urban Meyer taking over.

Meyer was still at Utah, Zook was long gone. It was Strong who held the program together — Meyer immediately retaining him and asking him to serve as the interim head of the program while he was finishing his obligations in his own bowl game with the Utes.

How deep do the ties go in Gainesville? Many of the morning workers — from custodians to professors — around campus used to wave at Strong, call him by his first name and ask him how the football team was going to do that weekend during his 5:30 a.m. jogs around campus.

He knew almost all of them by name, as well.

And when the Gators lost? Those same workers were there at 5:30 a.m. waiting for him on Monday to ask what went wrong, Strong giving his evaluation as he ran on by in the dark.

Players were always seen after games hugging his wife and two daughters, and they were close to them, often visiting his house just to hang out. Gainesville wasn’t a stopover for this assistant coach. It was about as close to home as a college football assistant coach can get, spending more than a dozen years in north central Florida over several different stops.

His next-door neighbor? Former Florida assistant basketball coach and current UCF head coach Donnie Jones. His wife? Met her on campus, a Lakeland native.

When Meyer was hired, Strong was also being pursued by Charlie Weis to join him at Notre Dame. Weis, then the New England Patriots’ offensive coordinator, called him the day of the Super Bowl to try one final time to get him to come to South Bend.The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag.

As the years rolled on,Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. the controversy grew louder about the lack of minority head coaches, and Strong’s credentials made it almost a must that he was hired somewhere. Finally, it was Louisville that took a chance. Jan. 2 will make it three bowl trips in three years.

While still an assistant at Florida, one of Strong’s mottos was, if a minority coach is given a chance, don’t let everyone else down. Strong, who grew up in the South and remembers watching men in white sheets walking down the street during rallies when he was a boy, said the key for other black coaches was for the chosen few to win.

Now everyone in college football knows about Charlie Strong and what he can do. He didn’t let anyone down. Tennessee was in hot pursuit in December. As a result, he got a bump in his contract. And Strong figures to be a name that will come up with each successful season he has, based not only on his current success but his reputation as a recruiter and a defensive wizard.

“He does it the right way,” Florida coach Will Muschamp said, perhaps the ultimate compliment. “I’ve just got a lot of respect for him, and a guy that is one of the good guys in this profession.”

Ironically, the last time Strong coached in a BCS bowl game was after the 2009 season, a 51-24 win against Cincinnati. He’d already been hired by the Cardinals and said it seems like “just yesterday.”

“I’m very familiar with them because at the time I left they were young, so now they are in their fourth or fifth year,” Strong said of all the current Gators he will face. “So it’s a large amount of them.”

He checks the scores every weekend to see how Florida is doing. He keeps an eye on the players he recruited. It’s not home any more, but he can’t help but try to keep up.

“I recruited a lot of those guys, and you don’t ever, anyone that you’ve ever recruited like wherever you are, you like to watch them and just watch their success and see how well they are doing,” Strong said. “That’s why I pay so much attention to that program.

“Plus, I was a part of it, and I know that Will has done a great job of coming in and making those players better football players, and not only that,Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products. just making them grow up into top-quality men.”

A breakdown of Strong’s coaching ability from current Gators, now that they are across the field? Nothing but love.

“Man, he’s a great coach, man,” Florida senior safety Josh Evans said. “It’s a guy who knows his stuff, so it was fun. I mean I’m pretty sure it is going to be a great game. He’s a great coach. He’s got a good defense coming into this game and a good offense,Whether you are installing a floor tiles or a shower wall, so it’ll be very competitive.”

"We know the way he coach and the way he gets after it with his players that he was going to push them and motivate them to be the best they can be,Find detailed product information for startup stone mosaic and other products.'' Evans said.

One of Strong’s all-time classics? He’s laughed many times about the day he showed up after an early-morning run wearing tight jogging pants. Players who saw the display rode him relentlessly about his “man tights.” Word spread around the team. Soon, the defensive coordinator was hearing it from everyone about his “frightening” display.

Strong almost always jogged in shorts after that — even when it was almost unbearably cold. But he did relent every now and then ... and slid some baggy sweats on.

Strong’s family lived in the Haile Plantation area of town. They were careful to pick out a location where, on some mornings, he was able to walk his kids to the nearby elementary school — especially when they were much smaller and had no idea the defensive coordinator of a national championship team was taking a few hours away from his job to hold their hands and stroll with them through the neighborhood.

Meet the brains behind Grand Theft Auto

When I arrive at the luxurious Soho apartment that's been rented for the demo of new game Grand Theft Auto V and my interview with Dan Houser, co-founder and creative director of Rockstar Games, I'm told Houser won't answer any questions about his personal life.

I should especially avoid any mention of his recent purchase of a Brooklyn Heights mansion formerly owned by Truman Capote, which made news in New York as the most expensive non-Manhattan real-estate purchase in the city's history.

Houser's Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series of crime-focused titles is now the foundation of Rockstar Games, and as well regarded by gamers as it is hated by religious groups.

GTA IV, released in 2008 for a new generation of consoles (PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360), told the story of Niko Bellic, a veteran of an unspecified Eastern European war who comes to the US to eliminate a rival soldier living in a crime-filled version of New York called Liberty City.

In the first week of its release it generated more revenue than any entertainment product, ever - and everyone assumed a sequel would quickly follow. But Rockstar and its two principals, brothers Dan and Sam Houser (38 and 41, respectively), have a reputation for doing things differently.

In 1990 Sam Houser got a job at BMG Music in London, then one of the "big four" music companies, working closely with Pop Idol creator Simon Fuller. He directed in-house music videos for bands such as Take That and the Spice Girls before settling at BMG Interactive Entertainment, an arm of the business that had been established in 1994 to hitch the company wagon to the video-game boom.

When Dan graduated from university with a degree in geography, he joined him there.

"My brother offered me a job testing CD-ROMs," he tells me. "Virtual tours were big at the time and I did a virtual of the Musée d'Orsay. I wanted to be a writer and a job came up on a trivia game and they had joke questions, and they needed someone to write that. Then they wanted to do a soccer game and they needed someone who knew about soccer, so I did that. And then all of sudden I had a full-time job in video games,Find detailed product information for Low price howo tipper truck and other products. which I didn't really mean to have. I always thought I'd do something serious.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele ,"

By 1998, BMG hadn't made much impact in the interactive space and the decision was made to sell BMG Interactive to Take-Two Interactive, a burgeoning American gaming company owned by the then 24-year-old publishing heir Ryan Brant, for a little over $14 million.

During the negotiations, Sam and Dan convinced Brant to let them keep the company alive as a largely independent imprint that would work as an outlier in the games industry.

Neither brother had any coding experience, but they perceived a gap in the gaming market for "cool titles".

They envisioned gaming products informed by music-industry attitude,One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. featuring protagonists who resembled movie heroes. While Take-Two was producing cut-priced games in volume, the new imprint planned to produce high-end offerings for young-adult gamers.

The pair moved from London to New York to set up the new imprint, Rockstar Games - a name its new president, Sam Houser, believed to be representative of what the company would be all about: "High-end, glamorous games that we wanted to play," summarises Dan.

Certainly, the location of our meeting today - a $20,000-a-night SoHo apartment filled with Japanese food and stylishly dressed employees - is very "rock star".

Initially, it was a police simulator, with the player controlling a squad car tasked with chasing criminals around two-dimensional American cities filled with traffic and pedestrians. Deadening the game somewhat, though, was the fact that the player had to observe road rules and avoid hitting pedestrians.

In fact, in the new version points were awarded if the player did hit a pedestrian (who'd explode into a smear of red with a satisfying "pop") or committed other crimes, such as carjackings.

In 1995, the company presented the game to Sam Houser, then working in a commissioning role at BMG Interactive. Not only was he enamoured of the fuzzy morality of the game,One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. he also loved that play wasn't bound by the normal gaming parameters: if one task was too hard, the player didn't see a "game over" screen. Instead,Directory ofchina glass mosaic Tile Manufacturers, he had the option of going somewhere else within the game.

"Graphically, it wasn't nearly as sharp as Tomb Raider, but it was deeply immersive," Sam Houser recalled in a Rolling Stone interview in 2006. "Once we made it possible to kill policemen, we knew we had something that would turn heads."

The game was bought by BMG Interactive, which released it as Grand Theft Auto (it soon became known just as GTA), a title deemed to be more in keeping with its adult content. It became a minor hit in 1997. Take-Two also bought DMA Design, which was then rebranded as Rockstar North.

After moving to New York, Rockstar started work on GTA II, released in 1999. It was only a minimal improvement on its prequel, though, and sales were disappointing. It wasn't until the development of GTA III began for the then very powerful PlayStation 2 console that the Housers saw the opportunity to make the high-end, technologically advanced adult game they'd always envisioned.

That said, the demo I saw didn't end with a town hall meeting about tax policy but rather with the kidnapping - by Michael, Trevor and Franklin - of a man from a heavily defended skyscraper in downtown Los Santos. The trio kill black-suited federal agents, cause helicopters to explode and plunge the city into chaos.

"The job is to present action," says Houser. "Everything else is on top of that. Your first job is to make the game fun."

Even if that means inviting controversy. In GTA III, the player could make use of the services of a prostitute to bolster his health - and then kill her afterwards to get his money back.

There was an immediate chorus of disapproval from concerned groups, but Rockstar refused to engage them after pointing out that its games are for adults, not children.

The company had a point - last year, a report from Bond University in Queensland found that the average age of gamers in Australia is 32.

"We were always an easy target," says Houser. "Even when our most violent and antisocial game, Manhunt [where the player has to commit a series of increasingly gruesome murders], came out in 2003, the film Saw 3, which is far more violent, was being lauded as a slasher classic.

"Interacting with a system, as one does in a game, is no better or worse than looking at pictures or reading words in a book. I don't think society is in great shape, but I don't think video games have caused the problems."

In Australia, GTA III was refused an MA15+ classification due to its "sexualised violence"; with no R18+ rating for video games available here, copies were pulled from shelves.

Summit to assess state’s efforts to reform development

How do upstate employers feel about Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s efforts to reshape economic development across upstate New York?

The Buffalo Niagara Partnership, through its upcoming Accelerate Upstate summit in Buffalo, aims to find out.

The half-day conference, set for Jan. 29 in the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center, will be a follow-up gathering to the initiative’s first summit in August 2011 that focused on ways to strengthen the upstate workforce, expand the state’s ties to Canada and bridge the divide between upstate and downstate.

This time, the summit will examine the changes that have been made in the state’s economic development efforts during the first two years of the Cuomo administration and what employers want to see from the state going forward.

“A lot has happened over the last two years, and a lot of it has been very good,” said Craig Turner, the Partnership’s vice president of government relations. “We want to get a snapshot of how employers feel about it and how they feel going forward.”

Under Cuomo, the state has made significant changes to its economic development apparatus, launching regional development councils, creating a single funding application for companies seeking various forms of state aid, and pledging $1 billion in economic support for the long struggling Buffalo Niagara economy.

“The question, two years into this, is whether this is working, or are there other things that need to be addressed,” Turner said.

The conference is expected to attract about 150 people, about half the number that attended the inaugural summit. But the upcoming event also will be webcast through cable news network YNN, potentially creating an even broader audience, Turner said.

Accelerate Upstate has commissioned John Zogby to conduct a poll of upstate employers, the results of which will be delivered during a lunchtime address. The results could help shape the initiative’s advocacy efforts, Turner said.

The event will feature a panel discussion on the year-old regional development council initiative, as well as a presentation by James McConeghy, the chief financial officer of Chobani Inc., about the Greek-style yogurt maker’s experiences doing business in New York, including its recently announced plans to expand its upstate operations, which currently employ more than 1,200 workers.

Joan Snyder Kohl, a workplace talent developer, will discuss ways to recruit and retain younger workers, while a second panel discussion will focus on ways upstate can capitalize on its location between New York City and major Canadian markets.

The Socorro Police Department prevented bloodshed the night of Dec. 1 when they answered a call to clear a pack of troublemakers out of a resident’s yard.

SPD detective Sgt. Richard Lopez said although the men have gang ties, the victim, a Socorro man who lives on Main Street, was not afraid of them. Lopez said most people are intimidated by these kind of people, but the victim — whom Lopez has known a long time and who is “armed to the teeth” — is not one.

“He actually told our dispatcher, ‘Your officers better get over here and get these guys off my property or I’m going to start taking them out,’” Lopez said. “And he probably would have. It was just a matter of time.”

Lopez said the victim considered the men “punks” and probably would have killed a few of them if police hadn’t shown up — “and they went down there asking for it.” Instead, four Socorro men were arrested for unlawful assembly,High quality stone mosaic tiles. disorderly conduct and resisting officers.

He said many of the people trying to fight the victim that night have ties with Sure?os 13, one of the largest criminal street gangs in the nation. The gang has been featured on the History Channel’s “Gangland” cable television series. Lopez said they often refer to themselves as SUR 13, which stands for “Southern United Race.” He added police can’t say all of the men picking a fight with the victim are gang members, but all are affiliated with the Sure?os.

Police reports state officers were dispatched to the victim’s Main Street residence about 10:35 p.m. regarding people starting a fight over an earlier fight that happened at El Camino Bar. The first officer at the scene noticed several men in front of the home,Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. along with a white SUV and a brown pickup.Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. As the officer left his patrol unit, the men took off running. The officer identified two of the runners as Lawrence Silva and Scott Chew.

The officer pursued the man in the white muscle shirt on foot, according to the report. The man ran behind a residence and jumped a fence, falling to the ground. The officer told the man to stay on the ground, but the man jumped up and to flee again. That was when the officer deployed his OC spray, or pepper spray, and told the man to get on the ground.

Once more the man defied the officer, the report states, so the officer sprayed the man with the pepper spray. The man then started to turn in circles.The MaxSonar ultrasonic sensor offers very short to long-range detection and ranging. The officer took the man to the ground and placed him in handcuffs, then escorted him back to the police car and called for an ambulance to treat him for the pepper spray. Medics arrived and treated the man, who was identified as Adan Lujan.

The officer read Lujan his Miranda rights, then asked him what was going on. According to the police report, Lujan told the officer he was going for a ride with his friends and they went to the victim’s residence to see what had happened between the victim and the other man who was fighting with him at the bar, to see what was up between them. The officer asked if it was related to gangs or any biker gangs, and Lujan allegedly replied, “Yup, I’m from Southside.”

Detective Lopez explained the Sure?os, or “southerners,” are the most common gang members found in the Socorro area and in the Southwest. He said very seldom are members of other major gangs seen here. He said there are also Norte?os, or “northerners,” in New Mexico, but they generally flock farther north. He said the last two victims murdered within the city limits of Socorro were Norte?os members.

The police report states that after his Southside comment, no further questions were asked of Lujan and the officer called for a tow of the white SUV. While doing the tow inventory for the SUV, the officer found a leather Poor Boy jacket with the name “Thirteen” in the vehicle, along with a sledge hammer. The officer transported Lujan to SPD to complete paperwork, then on to the Socorro County Detention Center where Lujan was booked.

Two other officers assisted in apprehending the running suspects. The second officer dispatched to the victim’s Main Street residence was advised en route that the group took off running when the first officer showed up. According to the second officer’s report, when he arrived on scene the first officer had Lujan in custody and said the rest of the group ran toward the railroad tracks.

The second officer began patrolling the area to find the other running suspects. He was joined by a third officer, and they found three men walking north on the ditch bank above Lemitar Lane not far from the scene at the victim’s home. The officers met with them, according to police reports, and identified them as Lawrence Silva, Scott Chew and Henry Padilla.

The second officer knew that Silva had a warrant for his arrest stemming from an incident earlier that night, so the officer handcuffed Silva to detain him and ran his information through the National Crime Information Center database to confirm it. According to police blotters, a Socorro woman reported about 7:10 p.m. that Silva allegedly broke the window on the front door to her residence, causing $200 worth of damage.

The NCIC check confirmed Silva’s warrant. According to the police report, the officer searched Silva and found four Baggies of green stuff in the left inside pocket of his jacket. Silva was arrested and taken to SPD for paperwork, then booked into jail.Find detailed product information for howo spareparts and other products.

2012年12月24日 星期一

Spend Some Time During The Holidays With Marilyn In New York

It was Christmas Eve, 1959, in New York City, when a 33-year-old blonde business woman took one of her company checks, placed her signature onto it, and then, most likely with a smile, wished her personal secretary a "Merry Christmas," and sent her on her merry way to take her check to the bank before the holiday officially kicked off.

This business woman was none other than one of the most famous movie stars of all time, Marilyn Monroe, and the transaction took place with her personal secretary, May Reis, who, was likely to have typed the $104.72 check up for Marilyn on a Marilyn Monroe Productions check, before Marilyn autographed it into infamy.

And my items are part of a larger display in New York through New Year's Eve at a free Marilyn Monroe Exhibition, "To Marilyn, With Love," from the collection of Ted Stampfer/Brentwood, GmbH, at Erno Laszlo's The Institute, located at 382 West Broadway, between Spring and Broome Streets.

Dr. Erno Laszlo, a dermatologist, first launched his institute in Hungary in 1927, where he hailed from, catering to the European rich and famous. In 1939, he brought his expertise to New York, where he guided American elites in a private atmosphere, how to care best for their skin. Known as "the hands that launched a thousand famous faces," Dr. Laszlo provided counsel and care to the likes of Grace Kelly, Katharine Hepburn, Jackie Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn (who said she owed 50 percent of her beauty as coming from her mother,The oreck XL professional air purifier, and 50 percent to Erno Laszlo), and of course, Marilyn Monroe.

This year, Dr. Laszlo's brand has experienced a rebirth, with the new "The Institute," where clients can find the Erno Laszlo Brand, and, the personal, private, and individualized attention to skincare that he specialized in. Here at The Institute, clients can find year-round consultations, and treatments, with The Institute Membership, from a Skin Therapist.

Marilyn Monroe was naturally beautiful, and she believed in the importance of good skincare, even in her youth before she was famous.

The Erno Laszlo Brand was an important part of her skincare routine, obviously so integral to it, that a jar is seen in photos taken of her bedside at a devastating time; when the iconic beauty was found lifeless in her bed at age 36 in 1962. Click here for Erno Laszlo's page, and look in 1962, to learn more.

Ted Stampfer, who is a well-known Marilyn Monroe collector, and friend of mine for a number of years (I have also collaborated with him on a number of projects with him already, and studied a prescription that is in his collection, and was a focal point of an article I wrote: the article I wrote, which is featured in The Alternative Press, "Was Phenergan Marilyn Monroe's Silent Killer...". click here for the article in its entirety) is the main collector whose items are featured at this event. This is the United States premiere of The Ted Stampfer/Brentwood GmbH Collection.

Ted has items on display from all facets of Marilyn Monroe's private life, from clothing and accessories, to books, and mementos, and more. You will see such famous items as Marilyn Monroe's black checkered pants and black sweater (which she was photographed in frequently), her sunglasses, her bathrobe, some of her fan mail, her hats, and more.

Ted is from Germany, and, one of the other collectors, Christine Krogull, is from there as well. Christine has some unique items of Marilyn's, including an item from before she was famous, a gift to a young Norma Jeane, her given name, her Christian Science Hymnal. This cherished item has an inscription in it in the star's own childhood handwriting.

As I mentioned, I have a check of mine in there, and I also have a book of Robert Burns' poetry, that had once been in Marilyn's personal library, and a receipt for Dom Perignon, her favorite brand of champagne.

Anyone who has a chance to visit the exhibition will be wowed by the items on display, which give a honest glimpse into the real Marilyn Monroe, who held dear many of life's simple things, like her books, some special trinkets, or a pair of black checkered pants, which she wore as a starlet, and later as a great movie star.

Although not noted in the exhibit under my items, I have also entered my items in in honor of Marilyn Monroe Family, in tribute to the legacy of Marilyn Monroe left behind through her relatives. Her cousin, Jason Kennedy, I had the chance to get to know as a result of writing the article about her. Little did I realize, he was on a similar quest for truth about Marilyn Monroe, and especially her sudden and untimely death, as I researched from my end about the Phenergan prescription from Ted Stampfer's collection. I found Jason's Marilyn Monroe Family Facebook Page, and learned of his research into her death with the "Surgeon Story," something he was the first to interpret as something very sinister behind his cousin's death.

Speaking of the subway, while in New York, Marilyn Monroe photos can be found on display at the 42nd Street, Bryant Park Station at the B, D, F, M, and 7 subway lines, for a MTA's Arts For Transit program, of photos taken by photographer Sam Shaw. One of Shaw's images on display is the famous photo of her taken over the subway grate on Lexington Avenue during the filming of "The Seven Year Itch.Find detailed product information for startup stone mosaic and other products." The other photos by Shaw show Marilyn enjoying her time in New York City. Although Marilyn Monroe died in California, she maintained a residence at 444 East 57th Street by Sutton Place and Sutton Park, was officially a New York resident at the time of her death,Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. and said she planned to retire in Brooklyn. Some of the photos on display were taken by her home, in Central Park, and other places throughout the city. The exhibit at the Bryant Park Station are said to be on display for the next year.

Owner Ed Pottinger and his wife, Lily, promised to sell their jerk chicken and rotis at a new spot, but that’s now stalled over a liquor licence dispute.The oreck XL professional air purifier,

The Pottingers want to sign a lease to move into the ground floor of a stylish six-storey condo a few blocks west of their former stand-alone building at Queen St. E.High quality stone mosaic tiles. and Broadview Ave.

Their plans to sell alcohol, as they did at their former location, are on hold because 40 residents in the condo are challenging the licence application. The condo has nearly 70 units.

The Pottingers have building permits to fix up the empty 2,000-square-foot space, which would hold as many as 92 customers.

But the residents have written to the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario claiming the sale of alcohol will cause problems for the building, primarily noise.

The province’s Licence Appeal Tribunal must now decide whether permitting the Real Jerk to sell booze is “in the public interest.’’

Why is Stephen Harper afraid to look this woman in the eye?

After nearly two weeks without food, Chief Theresa Spence is finding out that there is nothing in an alleged democracy as ugly as oligarchy.

In a democracy, the political leadership is responsible to the people. In an oligarchy, it is responsible to the few — the elite who own most of the assets and wield the real power.

In Canada, those are the people who wanted the Nexen deal, who want the Northern Gateway pipeline, and who want Canadians to believe that what’s good for corporate CEOs is good for them. In an oligarchy, there are a lot of people who simply don’t matter.

This is a political disorder that rode in on a south wind. In the United States, “we the people” has been replaced by “we the peons.”

Lloyd Blankfein,Installers and distributors of solar panel, top banana at Goldman Sachs, put it up in neon for everyone to see in a recent conversation with CBS News. Blankfein said that someone should tell middle-class Americans they need to lower their expectations of government-provided social security.

Blankfein, who made $16 million last year as a Wall Street banker, thinks it’s time for the guy making $14,000 a year to trim the beer budget.

Yes, he was referring to the same middle class that bailed out the big, fat ass of the financial sector after it nearly wrecked the planet with its fraudulent trading in worthless financial instruments, including collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).

Goldman sold this junk to its own customers — then, knowing values would drop, shorted the very same CDOs and made money on both ends of the deal. Enterprising, if you don’t mind me complimenting high-functioning psychopaths. Forget about Mayan predictions; the end nearly came in 2008 — and not because Joe the Plumber spent too much on Budweiser.

People like Blankfein, who sufficiently tightened his own belt to buy a $30 million home in the Hamptons, and Sheldon Adelson, personal ATM to Mitt Romney during his doomed presidential run, tried to buy the recent U.S. election. They tried to prop up a venal Republican party built on the idea that making the wealthy even wealthier was good for America.

Sadly for the ten or so rich, old, white guys who thought the Oval Office was just another hostile takeover,Whether you are installing a floor tiles or a shower wall, they backed a candidate so plastic he looked like he was lying even when he was telling the truth.

The late, great novelist Gore Vidal said that “democracy” had become a “nonsense word” in the American vocabulary. I suppose when the eventual winner of the last presidential election had to spend $2 billion to get elected, the point is delivered. That’s a lot of cheese to become Big Cheese.

Lewis Lapham, author and twice editor of Harper’s Magazine in the United States, made the same point. Democracy, he wrote, announces itself in three fundamental ways: an honest public discussion about issues; accountability of the governors to the governed; and equal protection under the law.

By Lapham’s measure, Stephen Harper’s Canada is not a democracy, let alone a parliamentary democracy. It is an oligarchy with a few well chosen friends and millions upon millions of people to ignore, vilify or bamboozle.

Consider the issue of honest public discussion about issues. For several years, the Conservative government lied its brains out about the F-35 program. They lied about whether there had been a competition, about whether there was a contract, and most spectacularly, about how much these jet fighters would cost the poor saps who have to pay for them.

But contrition is for little people. Oligarchs never say they’re sorry.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , After being outed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, by the auditor general and then by independent accounting firm KPMG, the prime minister told a national TV audience that the accounting firm’s report “validated” the government figures for the F-35, and that an “assumption was just made” that Canada would buy these aircraft. This, of course, is the stuff that makes the grass turn green.

It’s just that he believes that the government’s lying about all these things is far less important than the fact that it is the government. Incumbency is a magic potion. Under its influence, people are supposed to swoon. All too often, they do. That’s the way oligarchs think. Richard Nixon put it in a nutshell when he famously said that if the president did it, then it wasn’t a crime.

Stephen Harper has arrived at the exalted position of Tricky Dick. He thinks that the necessity to tell the truth binds other people, not him. He doesn’t adjust to facts, he manufactures them, and when that doesn’t work, he defies them. The F-35 doesn’t just prove his gross incompetence in the expenditure of mountains of tax dollars — it also shows the arrogant belief that he doesn’t have to explain himself to people he believes would be baffled by an elevated game of checkers.

At least former Liberal cabinet minister David Dingwall just thought he was entitled to his entitlements. Stephen Harper thinks he is entitled to everything — including ongoing financial fictions about the F-35 and the overthrow of a professional and transparent procurement policy. Even his most loyal trolls must realize that this guy is just making stuff up and people really aren’t that stupid.

So there was no public discussion of the most expensive military acquisition Canada has ever made/not made. What about Lewis Lapham’s second sign of democracy — accountability to the governed?

The Harper government has just finished passing a second omnibus bill that continued the plastic surgery being performed on the face of the nation. Bill C-45, like Bill C-38 before it, was passed with virtually no debate. It did, however, almost produce a fistfight. Luckily for Peter Van Loan, Justin Trudeau was not involved.

Jim Flaherty’s last budget, the Agatha Christie budget, brought down billions in cuts. But the mystery of what was cut — where, and by how much — endures. The lion’s share of federal departments haven’t responded to requests by Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page for the precise nature of the Harper government’s slashing.

If opposition MPs and parliamentary officers don’t know the details, it is impossible to debate the cuts — which is, of course, pretty much the idea.

So what about Lapham’s third sign of democracy — equal treatment before the courts? This is a very important question because as the Harper oligarchy suppresses the rights of the political opposition, unions, officers of parliament, environmentalists, scientists and aboriginals, it finds itself more and more before judges.

The PM’s view is that you win some, you lose some. Actually, he’s lost quite a few and will probably lose more in 2013 because of the alleged unconstitutionality of much of his justice legislation as contained in poorly-debated omnibus bills. And that is a universe the prime minister is comfortable in — the winner-take-all world of expensive court rulings and a grinding process — life as an elitist joust where he with the longest lance usually prevails.

Which is why Stephen Harper can’t understand Chief Theresa Spence. She is trying to get things done in the old way, using a habit of liberty not well understood by oligarchs or by people who are demoralized by the state of Canadian politics.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. She is asking for a face-to-face meeting with the man who is supposed to be working for her, for the people, not just his chosen people. She is asking for something Stephen Harper is not much good at giving — personal answers.

Chief Spence’s request might be the fatigue of a front-line respondent to the worst poverty in the country.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. It might be dismay at how Harper’s promise to forge a new relationship with Canada’s aboriginals has utterly failed to materialize. It might be the Harper government’s statutory war on the environment without bothering to get aboriginal approval for profound legislative change. It might be cuts to native health care or the abominable state of reserve education. Whatever it is, it has put Stephen Harper in an unfamiliar place — on the defensive.

In a hunger strike, most of the phases are well known. When glycogen is used up and no food is taken, the body begins consuming fat stocks. When they are gone, muscles and organ tissue are consumed to produce energy. But there is not much information about when a hunger strike begins to consume politicians.

When Machines Know What You're Feeling

Affectiva has developed a way for computers to recognize human emotions based on facial cues or physiological responses, and then use that emotion-recognition technology to help brands improve their advertising and marketing messages.The MaxSonar ultrasonic sensor offers very short to long-range detection and ranging.

For example, Affectiva might train a webcam on users while they watch ads, tracking their smirks, smiles, frowns and furrows to measure their levels of surprise, amusement or confusion throughout a commercial and compare them to other viewers across different demographics. Affectiva also makes a wearable biosensor that can monitor the user's emotional state via her skin.

For HuffPost Tech's "Life as..." series, Affectiva’s co-founder and chief technology officer Rana El Kaliouby offered a glimpse at what happens when machines know we're amused and the future of computers with a sense for feelings.

Affectiva’s technology allows brands to not only listen in on what we say about what we’re feeling, but to actually see for themselves what we're feeling. Which industries are interested in applying Affectiva’s emotion-recognition technology to their work?

The closest use case is measuring responses to media -- whether you’re watching an advertisement,Directory ofchina glass mosaic Tile Manufacturers, movie trailer, movie, TV show or online video. If an ad is supposed to be funny, but we look at 100 participants and none laugh, then we know it’s not really effective. The idea is to enable media creators to optimize their content.

Political polling is another big area for us -- measuring people’s responses to a political debate.High quality stone mosaic tiles. There are applications in games, in all things social,The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. and in health, too. We can read your heart rate from a webcam without you wearing anything -- we can just use the reflection of your face, which shows blood flow. Imagine having a camera on all the time monitoring your heart rate so that it can tell you if something’s wrong, if you need to get more fit, or if you’re furrowing your brow all the time and you need to relax.

In some cultures, like Middle Eastern, Egyptian or Asian cultures, people are often hesitant to give any negative feedback. There was an ad in India for body lotion, and there was one particular scene where a husband is being playful with his wife, whose tummy is showing, and he touches her tummy. We recorded women watching the video, then asked them whether they liked the ad.

Some didn’t bring up the scene at all, and others said the ad was really offensive -– “How could you do that?” and so forth. But when we looked at the data, for 100 percent of the women, there was always an “enjoyment” smile when they watched that scene. They clearly enjoyed it.

It could show you not just happy profiles, but also offer affect-based recommendations for things to do or people to talk to or things to watch. Or games can even adapt to your emotional experience, or your emotional state. There’s definitely a lot of stuff that can be done once you figure out that person’s moods.

If we’re all watching a YouTube video, it would be really cool if you could get a sense for how that YouTube video affected people’s emotional states. Say it makes you happy and you laugh your head off. We’d also know a million other people who saw that video and at that same scene also laughed. It’s very intriguing to be able to take something very human, like an expression of emotion, and share that globally.

Anywhere from laptops to mobile phones. There’s a large percentage of mobile phones that now have a camera that’s with you a lot of the time, and there’s a lot of interest around those cameras as a data collection mechanism. And cars: we’ve done a number of projects with various car manufacturers looking at drowsy driving, distracted driving, and how to measure when people are getting angry, frustrated or bothered. There’s a lot of interest from the car people.

Eden Hazard made a brilliant impact in the Premier League at the start of the season, but since then his form has slowly deteriorated. The 21-year-old attacking midfielder is fighting to regain lost form, but he doesn’t see playing for Chelsea in the long run.

Aston Villa forward Christian Benteke, who is a close friend of Eden Hazard and plays with him for Belgium, has revealed that Eden Hazard is plotting an away move two year down the road.Find detailed product information for howo spareparts and other products. Christian Benteke’s statements have come as a huge surprise to the Chelsea board, who were thinking about making Eden Hazard the new face of the club.

After recording exceptional performances with Lille for five years Eden Hazard has made a promising start with Chelsea. The versatile forward is easily one of the most deadly players in the Premier League, which is why Chelsea would fight tooth and nail to renew his contract when it nears its expiration date.

“I am not surprised at Eden’s success with Chelsea, and he can do even better,” Christian Benteke told The Sun in a recent interview. “He has the qualities needed to become an even greater player. His dream is to join Real Madrid, so I don’t see why he can’t join them in a year or two.”

Christian Benteke further revealed that Eden Hazard was feeling pressure because of high levels of expectations. Well, Chelsea is dreaming of finding him to be of the same mold as Frank Lampard. The highest goal scoring midfielder in the Premier League, Frank Lampard is on the verge of making a move out of Chelsea.

This means Eden Hazard will be burdened by more responsibility next season. Christian Benteke explained that Eden Hazard was the kind of player who relished challenges and wanted to test himself at every turn.

2012年12月19日 星期三

Daphne Todd, Mall Galleries, London

Daphne Todd OBE was originally approached to paint Prince Charles’s portrait, but “royal hands were flung up in horror” when she revealed how long he would have to sit for.

Instead, she was invited to accompany Charles and Camilla on an official tour of South Africa and Tanzania in 2011. The results of that ten-day excursion are displayed here: small, quick oil paintings of jacarandas, palm trees, Kilimanjaro,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , cloudy skies, and busy people trying to survive.

There is no indication that these paintings have got anything whatsoever to do with the monarchy, except in their aura of tweeness. English artist Todd, 65, acknowledges the Prince’s “gentle and civilised form of patronage”.

But she also gives some hint of the kind of satire-worthy bizarreness that ensues when an artist attempts to paint poverty in short bursts between royal engagements (there are apparently seven a day) in blisteringly hot weather before the royal tour bus packs up and moves on for more waving.

Todd came to prominence in 2010 for painting a portrait of her 100-year-old mother’s corpse at the undertakers shortly after her death. That “devotional” study won the BP Portrait award, for which she had already been a runner-up in 1984. She has drawn and painted such illustrious sitters as sir Tom Stoppard, Spike Milligan,Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products. and a range of Lords.

Across the Tracks is a painting of Soweto. It shows train tracks running below houses that appear to float together, ambushed on all sides by grey mist. Despite the “view from below” implied by the title, the artist has positioned her easel somewhere above; she is looking down on this sentimentalised but not particularly offensive scene.

It is an odd choice to juxtapose these royal works with Spanish landscape paintings that were first exhibited at the RA in the 1970s.

The latter make this exhibition worth seeing. They show arid pale yellow terrains and vacant blue skies interrupted by the ugly stuff of industry: pipes snaking through the desert, telephone poles, unsightly cranes. Bare Hill and Valcara: Abandoned Dock are beautiful. The inclusion of still-lifes doesn’t work. Two small paintings of tangerines and apples bear the strange metaphysical title Trying to Pin Things Down – a yba-esque tactic of adding depth where there is little. still, Todd undercuts the oldschool colonial flavour of this mission with a (very well concealed) kind of wryness.

THE GALLERY AT FIREHOUSE SQUARE is bringing the outdoors inside during “Echoes of Nature – Reflections of the Natural World” by artists Dianne Gorrick of East Hampton and Jacqueline White of Glastonbury. This colorful environmental art exhibit will run from January 12-27, and feature both picturesque scenes of nature, as well as thought-provoking narratives of nature’s struggles under human’s abuse of the planet.

Gorrick’s masterpieces “Frozen Beauties,” “Harkness Memorial State Park,” “River of Dreams,” and others that will be on display at THE GALLERY depict the beauty of nature through peaceful landscapes that are invigorated by bright colors and impasto painting. Art lovers will marvel at the thick application of paint that gives the paintings a three dimensional quality, enhancing the sense of depth within the compositions.

“My style is romanticized realism, where I want the viewer to be drawn into the scene and enjoy looking at the painting,” said Gorrick. “My current body of work depicts scenes from New England and Norway painted on location and in my studio from small scale plein air studies. To fill a space in a beautiful way is my goal.”

White’s masterworks “Mourning,” “The Sorrow of the Salmon,” “Carpe Diem,” “Apple Lady at Ferry Landing,” among others that will be on display at THE GALLERY summon ephemeral moments and emotions that are conceived in nature. Through her narratives, nature is used symbolically; butterflies, dragonflies, and plants might represent a lost loved one while many animals admonish us for the abuse of our planet. These are carefully orchestrated and nature is drawn upon from memory. Dipping her homemade reed pen in thinned, earth-toned oil paint, White pushes, pulls,Largest gemstone beads and jewelry making supplies at wholesale prices. jabs and scrapes onto sized-unprimed canvas with only a preliminary thumb-nail sketch to go by.

“I paint to explore the unspoken dialogues that exist between time and space to reveal what is sensed and not heard. The goal of my work is to more fully express a living connection to nature and the past,” said White. “There is a sheer joy in responding to the rhythms of the landscape; exercising intuition and intellect to record the graceful lines of trees, the rush of water, wind, and warmth. There is a sense of giving and receiving.”

Neil Armstrong would always be taking that first step onto the moon, and Dick Clark was forever "the world's oldest teenager." Some of the notables who died in 2012 created images in our minds that remained unchanged over decades.

Sadly, for others an established image was shattered by a fall from grace. Whitney Houston ruled as a queen of pop music, but years of hard living harmed her voice while erratic behavior and a troubled marriage took a toll on her image. And Joe Paterno, Penn State's longtime coach, won more games than anyone in major college football, but was ultimately fired amid a molestation scandal involving an assistant coach that scarred his reputation.

Some whose deaths we noted weren't known by image or even name but by contributions that changed our lives — like Eugene Polley, inventor of the first wireless TV remote control, and Norman Joseph Woodland,Quickparts builds injection molds using aluminum or steel to meet your program. co-inventor of the bar code that labels nearly every product in stores. Other scientists who died in 2012 included Lowell Randall, Martin Fleischmann,Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products. F. Sherwood Rowland, George Cowan and Bernard Lovell.

Among the political figures who died were George McGovern, Democrat presidential nominee who lost to Richard Nixon in a historic landslide, and ex-Sen. Arlen Specter, the outspoken Pennsylvania centrist. Others from the world of politics: Bill Janklow, Norodom Sihanouk, Charles "Chuck" Colson, Warren B. Rudman, Andrew Breitbart and Miguel de la Madrid.

The year also saw the deaths of a number of TV stars including Larry Hagman, who played oil baron J.R. Ewing on "Dallas."

Others in entertainment and the arts who died included: Etta James, Andy Griffith, Ernest Borgnine, Sherman Hemsley, Maurice Sendak, Donna Summer, Robin Gibb, Doc Watson, Richard Dawson, Nora Ephron, Phyllis Diller, Michael Clarke Duncan, Don Cornelius, Jan Berenstain, Ravi Shankar and Dave Brubeck.

Hague takes the helm at MAN

An additional 2m contract haul and growth in three key sectors is the aim of the new Chairman of the Midlands Assembly Network (MAN) it was announced today.

Tony Hague will head up the eight-strong collaboration of world class engineering businesses as it enters its seventh year and believes there has never been a better time for the group to secure more work.

Automotive, aerospace and electronics have already been identified as the three main sectors that could benefit most from its capabilities in mechanical, electrical and electronic engineering solutions.

“This is going to be an important year for MAN and one that we want to adopt a more aggressive approach to sales,” explained Tony, who is currently Managing Director of PP Electrical Systems in Cheslyn Hay.

“We’ve already established a proven track record for world class quality and security of supply, with over 12m of contracts already delivered for a high profile global customer base.”

He continued: “However, I know we can do more. We just need to be more pro-active and this will start with the recruitment of a dedicated sales consultant to represent the group.

“We’ll also be looking to develop a more sales driven website and marketing material and actively take the MAN message out to potential customers.”

First established in 2006, the Midlands Assembly Network is made up of eight members including Advanced Chemical Etching, Alucast, Brandauer, Barkley Plastics, FW Cables, PP Electrical Systems, SMT Developments and Westley Engineering.

Each company offers a different engineering solution, ranging from high volume precision pressings, electrical control systems and tooling to PCB assembly, wire harnesses and injection moulding.

Together, they boast nine world class manufacturing facilities, employ over 650 highly skilled professionals and hold industry quality accreditations, such as TS16949, AS9100, UL508 and SC21.

“There’s over 3bn of opportunities currently available in the automotive industry at present so it seems like a natural sector to target, especially when you consider our experience in Quality Cost Delivery (QCD) performances,” added Tony.

“Then you have the next generation of aircraft currently being developed…this offers some great opportunities to get involved in the design and prototype stage. Similar again with the latest electronics.”

Tony Hague takes over from Westley Engineering’s Gerry Dunne as Chairman of MAN.

In addition to the sales drive, he is also expecting to increase the membership of the Group to 10 companies by the start of 2013, as well as creating closer working links with key educational establishments such as local Universities – all geared towards developing collaborative innovation in new engineering and manufacturing disciplines.

Machine tool builder Mitsui Seiki is due to open technical center next month, concentrating on machining systems and techniques for the turbo machinery sector. The new Turbine Technology Center is situated at the company’s Franklin Lakes, N.J. operation. Mitsui Seiki offers a range of cutting and turning capabilities,The howo truck is offered by Shiyan Great Man Automotive Industry, extending from jig boring machines, jig grinders, horizontal and vertical machining centers, to 5-axis machining centers and screw grinders.

“Our existing and potential OEM and supply-chain customers in the turbo machinery industry will be able to conduct test cuts, apply different processes,Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. experiment with cutting tool designs, and prove out CNC programs,” explained Mitsui Seiki vice president Tom Dolan.Find detailed product information for startup stone mosaic and other products. “They also will be able to try different integrated in-process quality control devices and software. The Center’s resources will help them determine the best strategies and solutions for their specific needs in their own factories.”

In addition, Mitsui Seiki will use the Center to further enhance its significant aerospace and power-generation turbine knowledge and applications expertise. Engineers will use the center like a lab to research and develop new, relevant technologies as they become available. The company will also use the Turbine Technology Center to refine its own machine designs.

“Our goal is to become our clients’ most responsive source to present, demonstrate, and evaluate new solutions so they can machine their turbine parts more efficiently and effectively,” according to Dolan.

The 3,000-sq. ft. Mitsui Seiki Turbine Technology Center will have three dedicated 5-axis machining centers that accommodate small and mid-size turbine components, including blades,We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. blisks, and impellers.

Additionally, other related work like fuel system, disks, vanes, and ancillary parts can be processed.

The new Technical Center will be staffed by senior applications engineers with several years of experience in turbine component machining. Mitsui Seiki noted it is in discussion with certain industry and academic collaborators too, aiming to have them participate at the Center and contribute to its knowledge base and systems approach to CAD/CAM, tooling, inspection, and productivity software.

“GPP is pleased to become partners with the State of Tennessee and the residents of Lincoln County,” Mike Tucker, general manager, General Products Partners Inc., said. “This is an excellent opportunity and a win-win situation for all concerned. The state and local leaders have been most helpful; this is the type of environment that creates success.”

“We continue to work to make Tennessee the No. 1 location in the Southeast for high quality jobs, and I want to congratulate General Products Partners Inc. and Lincoln County on this great announcement,” Gov. Bill Haslam said. “The area will certainly benefit from these new positions, and I know this is the beginning of a strong partnership between General Products Partners Inc. and the state of Tennessee.” Information on tax incentives for which the firm might be eligible was not immediately available.

“I am pleased to welcome General Products Partners Inc. to Tennessee,High quality stone mosaic tiles.” Bill Hagerty, Economic and Community Development Commissioner said. “Our business-friendly climate, central location and quality workforce will serve the company well. Under Gov. Haslam’s leadership, our department has worked hard to bring advanced manufacturing companies such as General Products Partners Inc. to our state.”

“We feel fortunate to have a growing company connected to NASA and Redstone Arsenal committed to making Lincoln County their home,” Lincoln County Mayor Peggy G. Bevels said. “They will bring new, good paying jobs with good benefits, and we look forward to adding them to our working family.”

Exhibit reveals the faces of Cambridge's homeless youth

Standing next to an image of himself staring out from behind a 3-foot poster, Ethan Stein said there was a lot that passersby don’t understand about the young people they see in the streets of Harvard Square.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles.

“It’s not that I wanted to be homeless, but that’s where I am right now, and I’m just taking it one day at a time,” Stein said. “It’s better than being some place where people are angry all the time.”

The 24-year-old is one of hundreds of homeless youth filling the streets of the square and as of last Saturday, lining the walls of the Palmer Street pedestrian arcade as part of a national “Outside In Project,” which launched in Cambridge over the weekend.

“We’re all homeless and we’re all really young,” said Youth on Fire member Jerrod “Biggie” Basuscci, 24. “We don’t have a direction, but we’re trying to make something of ourselves.”

The exhibit, a partnership between Youth on Fire – a drop-in center for homeless youth in Harvard Square and a prevention program of the AIDS Action Committee – and the Center for Social Innovation, features 35 photographs on three-by-four-and-a-half-foot posters by local artist Anthony Pira. Pira said the idea is to bring the faces of homeless youth to the forefront.

“When you put a face on homelessness, it becomes real and people see it as a real problem,” Pira said. “People think homelessness is just the old guy on the park bench or they have stereotypes they associate with guys getting drunk, or people being in jail, but they don’t understand youth homelessness. …When you put these faces up there and associate with words like homelessness, that becomes real to people.”

Pira said they chose the Harvard Square location not only because it’s a mere two blocks from the Youth of Fire center, but also because the participants frequent the square.

“It’s such an important part for not only the community to see the images and raise awareness but also for the kids to see themselves because for the first time they’ll be able to see themselves as part of the community,” Pira said. “For so long their mentality is that they’ve been ignored or degraded.”

A fine-art-photographer-turned-social-work student, Pira said he initially began working on the project, which he called Invisible Faces,A wide range of polished tiles for your tile flooring and walls. in March as part of an effort to raise awareness about funding needs for programs and organizations that serve homeless youth. Simultaneously, the Center for Social Innovation CEO Jeff Olivet said he was also beginning to work with French street artist JR, a photographer who won a TED Prize for pioneering the practice of plastering poster-sized portraits of vulnerable populations in public spaces.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability.

Olivet and JR envisioned a national campaign,Thank you for visiting! I have been cry stalmosaic since 1998. but wanted to start in Cambridge where Olivet has an office. He reached out to Youth on Fire in the fall when he was informed the work was already underway.

“They said we’ve also got a photographer who has this Invisible Faces project going on and could we merge the two projects,” Olivet said. “So basically, we said, ‘Sure.’ We let Anthony’s photographs drive the national Outside In Project and we dovetailed the two for the action in Harvard Square over the weekend.”

Olivet said the Outside In Project was initially conceived with a broad focus on homelessness but the organization became “enamored” with the more narrowly focused youth campaign. Olivet said the Center for Innovation plans to replicate the work in a dozen or so cities across the country that will eventually culminate in what he called a “Youth Homeless Congress” in Washington D.C. comprised of homeless youth.

“The primary need is housing. It’s access to a decent space and affordable housing to end youth homelessness,” Olivet said. “It’s possible to end homelessness if we target our resources in the right way. …There’s also more funding needed for youth job training, and in the wake of the Connecticut shootings, more access to mental health care.”

Youth on Fire program manager, Ayala Livny, said the organization is facing a $10,000 shortfall in funding its meals program after several years of budget cuts eroded state funding for the non-profit. Masucci said Youth on Fire helped him get back on track. He’s ready to “age out” of the organization in a few months when he turns 25.

“The services they provide are so helpful – whether it’s food stamps, housing, getting an ID, finding a job,” Masucci said,The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. adding the organization also takes the time to meet young people where they are in life. “A lot of people get too caught up in the homeless lifestyle to take time to go back to school. … But no matter what steps you take, however small, you’re still making progress and furthering your goals and they really get that.”

Although she said that raising awareness on a legislative level is important for Youth on Fire, Livny said the impetus behind the project was equally important.

“I say all the time that homeless youth are used to being invisible. People are rude or avoid making eye contact or looking them in the face. They’re used to people wishing they didn’t exist or pretending they didn’t exist and feeling small in the world,” Livny said. “To have those images writ large in the community is the opposite of being invisible; it’s being larger than life. It’s a really powerful and profound experience especially for people who are used to being marginalized.”

Olivet said the exhibit would be up as long as the wheat plaster holding up the portraits stays stuck, which he said could be anywhere from several weeks to several months.

2012年12月17日 星期一

The Best Movies of 2012

It’s possible that 2012 will be remembered not as the year of the auteur but as the year of inspired writer-director partnerships. The two strongest movies of the year—“Lincoln” and “Zero Dark Thirty”—would have been inconceivable without the extensive collaboration between a scribe and a helmer.

In Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” you can see a few sentimental touches and underlinings of the kind that Spielberg has indulged in the past; most of the movie is sombre and quietly fervent. Lincoln himself, I suppose, can be viewed as a redemptive figure in the mold of Oskar Schindler, though the two men couldn’t be farther apart in manner, body, tactics, and speech. Compared to every other Spielberg film, the use of the camera and color is remarkably restrained.The genius of “Lincoln,” as we all have said, is that it’s not an epic or a bio-pic but a charged account of one month in the President’s life—a film about democratic process and legislation, and thus, inevitably, about pressure, patronage, guilt-mongering, deception. All the elements of deal-making.High quality stone mosaic tiles.

In this conception, Tony Kushner is as important as Spielberg. What Kushner has done is theatricalize nineteenth-century political behavior—or, perhaps, bring out the theatrical elements that were already there. Spielberg has never directed a movie so rich in language and confrontation, eloquence and insult, as this one. And, in every case, he honors the script, honors the words, as servant and dramatist. “Lincoln” is a joint triumph. Nothing in the auteur theory could have predicted it or could account for it. Anyone who wants to hear more about the year’s movies should skip the following little polemic.

I would like to deal with a complaint that has emerged about “Lincoln”—that it embraces a “great man theory” of history, ascribing the end of slavery solely to the President and ignoring the tumultuous social movements churning the nation for years prior to the passage of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution. That is, ignoring the abolitionists and the outbreaks of revolt among the slaves themselves. The Columbia historian Eric Foner, after citing the abolitionists, continues as follows in a letter to the Times:

The film grossly exaggerates the possibility that by January 1865 the war might have ended with slavery still intact. The Emancipation Proclamation had already declared more than three million of the four million slaves free, and Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee and West Virginia, exempted in whole or part from the proclamation, had decreed abolition on their own.

Even as the House debated, Sherman’s army was marching into South Carolina, and slaves were sacking plantation homes and seizing land. Slavery died on the ground, not just in the White House and the House of Representatives. That would be a dramatic story for Hollywood.

I think Foner’s remarks are interesting but, as a judgment of “Lincoln,” beside the point. I suspect that Foner, while trying to expand the context, and speculate about what might have been, is engaging in the consoling pathos of counterfactualism rather than engaging the inexorability of what happened. After all, for all we know, President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln after the assassination, might not have been as eager to end slavery as Lincoln, or as adroit as Lincoln. As the South came back into the Congress under Johnson, wouldn’t Southern legislators have convinced some Northerners that they had been hurt enough and that they should keep their slaves? Certainly, some of the Northern Democrats thought so. Slavery might have survived for years, in which case the Civil War would have felt half-pointless. That wasn’t good enough for Lincoln.

Second, “Lincoln” doesn’t suggest that Lincoln alone ended slavery. The movie shows, in various comments by the radical Republicans, in comments by the Republican Party founder Preston Blair, in the debates in the House, that abolition as a movement has been going on for years. How can Foner not see the narrative brilliance of making the movie about a specific political process in one month of Lincoln’s life? The swirl of social movements outside the White House is repeatedly alluded to, but the movie doesn’t stop to explain all that; it drives forward, like any fine dramatic juggernaut. In a hundred-fifty-minute-long movie, you can’t have everything explained and put in its proper context at once. Foner’s suggested solution to the movie’s omissions would have left it without concentration, drive, focus, excitement. As it is, Spielberg and Kushner showed and implied a lot. What other historical movie is as detailed about a specific political process?

When Foner talks about blacks “sacking plantations,Klaus Multiparking is an industry leader in innovative parking system technology.” this is, of course, serious stuff, but if the implication is that African-Americans could have freed themselves, and that Lincoln was unnecessary, I think it’s extremely misleading—a kind of fantasy of slavery ending in a politically more appealing way than it did. But, some outbreaks of revolution apart, it didn’t happen, and it couldn’t have happened. Lincoln’s driving political goal in the movie is to make the amendment become national policy before the war ended. He wanted it in the Constitution before the war ended. He didn’t want slavery just to fade away or sputter out. It had to be put away for all time. That could best be accomplished by a constitutional amendment, not by sporadic outbreaks of revolt. Foner’s inclusiveness is oddly oblivious of this point.

Second writer-director triumph: a few years ago, the director Kathryn Bigelow and the screenwriter Mark Boal were ready to make a film about the failure to kill Bin Laden—a movie set in Tora Bora, the mountain-cave region of eastern Afghanistan, into whose mazy depths the Bush Administration allowed bin Laden to escape in 2001. When bin Laden was killed by the SEALs, in May, 2011, Bigelow and Boal dropped the Tora Bora project, and threw themselves, at a super-fast tempo, into recreating the manhunt. “Zero Dark Thirty” is a marvellous movie, now unfortunately enmeshed in controversy over its seeming endorsement of torture as a way of gaining scraps of useful information. I addressed this issue briefly in my review and in a podcast conversation with Dexter Filkins and Susan Morrison, and for now I will keep quiet about it and let others have their say.

What interests me here is how much Kathryn Bigelow’s visual style changed after she began working with Mark Boal. Early on, around the time of “Blue Steel” (1990), I had her pegged as a violence junkie.Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile, It turns out that I didn’t know the half of it. In 1978, after years of art school in San Francisco, work as a fellow at the Whitney Museum, and training in theory at Columbia, she had made a short film called “The Set Up” in which two men beat the crap out of each other while the semioticians Sylvère Lotringer and Marshall Blonsky, on the soundtrack, “deconstruct” the mayhem on the screen. In “Blue Steel” and the later “Strange Days,” Bigelow was still playing intellectual games with violence—slowing it down, lyricizing it, turning it into fantasy and didactic spectacle.

All this ended when she began working with the journalist Boal on “The Hurt Locker,” in which the violence is really spectacular but done as realistically as possible.Best howo concrete mixer manufacturer in China. I don’t mean that all the explosions were genuine. For all I know, they were digitally produced or enhanced. But they looked real and very dangerous. The movie’s trope was the wary tread of a bomb defuser toward a weapon that might blow up in his face. That repeated little journey made the movie a classic of bravery and fear.

And now Bigelow and Boal have made a much more complicated film about coercion, deduction, pursuit, and, again, the authority and tension of the movie, moment by moment, is obviously derived from how real it feels to us—how forceful and dangerous, yet unexaggerated. There are many scenes that expand one’s information but none that strain belief. Bigelow’s earlier movies were pretty and fanciful, and more than a little self-regarding. These two are utterly businesslike, frightening, and far more commanding. There’s a moral as well as aesthetic difference. You have to take seriously what you see. In brief, Boal’s contribution appears to have produced a new kind of visual imagination in Bigelow—a desire to find, if you will, the fantastic element in realism. The raid on Abbottabad in “Zero Dark Thirty” was shot with filters that reproduce the yellow-green look of figures seen in the dark through night-vision goggles. The effect is uncanny: the figures are shadowy and palpably weighted at the same time. Digital finishing was minimal or non-existent. You’re in the house with the SEALs. The force is deadly but never hyped.

I can’t think of a partnership in Hollywood history remotely like this one. Mark Boal, now thirty-nine, went to Oberlin, where he majored in philosophy. Kathryn Bigelow, sixty-one, was educated in San Francisco and New York, as I said, in art history and theory. These humanists, a man and a woman widely spaced in age, wound up making the two toughest movies about intelligence and military men in American movie history. Among other things, the two movies are a de-facto critique of the kind of pixellated bullshit films that have ruled big moviemaking for over twenty years. Realism can be radical, too.

The independent film “Beasts of the Southern Wild” moved with a fierce, abrasive joy that left one a little stunned. “Beasts” was also a collaboration. It began as a play, “Juicy and Delicious,” by Lucy Alibar, set in Georgia and devoted to a ten-year-old boy whose entire world seems to be collapsing as his father comes close to death. Alibar joined up with an old pal, Benh Zeitlin, who had directed only shorts before, and who said of his interests, “When you look at the map, you can see America kind of crumble off into the sinews down in the gulf where the land is getting eaten up. I was really interested in these roads that go all the way down to the bottom of America and what was at the end of them.” After a lot of exploring, he and Alibar shifted the setting to the bayous, changed the protagonist to a girl, cast it locally, immersed themselves in the tones of the culture, and built some houses and boats out of cast-off materials. “Beasts” looks like nothing else on this earth. Everything in it feels used, junked, bent, battered, ignored. Yet the people, living way off the grid among trash, possessed an exuberant happiness in their independence, a raffish, often alcoholic self-sufficiency that shreds most notions of what the good life consists of. Or, more to the point, what the poor life consists of. The charge against the movie—that it was an example of liberal condescension—makes no sense to me. That charge reflects some notion—which itself may be condescending—of how poor people are supposed to behave. Unhappily, perhaps; not riotously, as they do here.

What of other films? In “Argo,” Ben Affleck used crosscutting and standard Hollywood mechanisms to juice and prolong the suspense; his movie is a fine, boisterous entertainment, and I enjoyed it very much. “Zero Dark Thirty” blows it away, but it’s an example of Affleck’s increasing confidence and humor and drive. Judd Apatow’s “This Is Forty” takes his twin obsessions—time’s march toward death and the saving grace of family life—farther into both comedy and sadness; the movie is stocked with comics, each of whom gets their moment. Apatow’s family has grown, and now includes some of the more talented people in Los Angeles. Richard Gere gave a shrewd, likeable performance as a manipulative,The oreck XL professional air purifier, lying S.O.B. in the little-seen “Arbitrage,” Nicholas Jarecki’s sure-handed film about how to cover up the death of a girlfriend and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars when you’re a one-per-center.