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Monday, March 31, 2008

A Dude's Guide To Female English

What She Says What She Means
We need I want
It's your decision The correct decision should be obvious by now
Do what you want You'll pay for this later
We need to talk I need to complain
You're...so manly You need a shave and you sweat a lot
You're certainly attentive tonight! Is sex all you ever think about?
I'm not emotional! And I'm not overreacting! I've got my period
This kitchen is so inconvenient I want a new house
I want new curtains and carpeting, and furniture, and wallpaper...
I need wedding shoes the other 40 pairs are the wrong shade of white
Hang the picture there No, I mean hang it there!
I heard a noise I noticed you were almost asleep
Do you love me? I'm going to ask for something expensive
How much do you love me? I did something today you're not going to like
I'll be ready in a minute kick off your shoes and find a good game on TV
Is my butt too big? Tell me I'm beautiful
You have to learn to communicate Just agree with me
Yes No
No No
Maybe No
I'm sorry You'll be sorry
Do you like this recipe? It's easy to fix so you'd better get used to it
I'm not yelling! Yes I'm yelling because I think it's important
All we're going to buy is a soap dish It goes without saying that we're stopping at the cosmetics department, the shoe department, I need to look at a few purses, and those sheets would look great in the bedroom and did you bring your checkbook?


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You Better Believe in Rebirth - Funny Pics


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Super Huge Crystal Cave - Superman's Fortress of Soliture

Mexico Crystal Cave Travel-Best-Destinations.Com

Buried a thousand feet (300 meters) below Naica mountain in the Chihuahuan Desert, this astonishing cave was discovered by two miners only in the year 2000.

A sort of south-of-the-border Fortress of Solitude, Mexico's Cueva de los Cristales (Cave of Crystals) contains some of the world's largest known natural crystals - translucent beams of gypsum as long as 36 feet (11 meters).

Mexico Crystal Cave Travel-Best-Destinations.Com

New studies report that for millennia the crystals thrived in the cave's extremely rare and stable natural environment. Temperatures hovered consistently around a steamy 136 degrees Fahrenheit (58 degrees Celsius), and the cave was filled with mineral-rich water that drove the crystals' growth.

Modern-day mining operations exposed the natural wonder by pumping water out of the cave, which eventualy was found near the town of Delicias.

Mexico Crystal Cave Travel-Best-Destinations.Com

The Cave of Crystals is a horseshoe-shaped cavity in limestone rock about 30 feet (10 meters) wide and 90 feet (30 meters) long.

The volcanic activity that began about 26 million years ago created Naica mountain and filled it with high-temperature anhydrite.

Mexico Crystal Cave Travel-Best-Destinations.Com

When magma underneath the mountain cooled and the temperature dropped, the anhydrite began to dissolve. The anhydrite slowly enriched the waters with sulfate and calcium molecules, which for millions of years have been deposited in the caves in the form of huge selenite gypsum crystals.

Mexico Crystal Cave Travel-Best-Destinations.Com

The 400-foot-deep (120-meter-deep) Cave of Swords is closer to the surface than the Cave of Crystals.While there are more crystals in the Cave of Swords, they are far smaller, typically about a yard (a meter) long. Their relative compactness is likely due to a rapid temperature decline, as opposed to the far more gradual change that is believed to have encouraged the megacrystals in the deeper cave.

There is a debate today about what to do with the caves – to close the mine and make the cave available so future generations may admire the crystals, or to stop pumping the water and let the scenario to the natural origin – allowing the crystals to regrow...

Mexico Crystal Cave Travel-Best-Destinations.Com

More At: www.travel-best-destinations.com
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US$ 10 Million Mile-High Tower to be Built in Saudi Arabia

By BARRY WIGMORE

On a clear day, the view from the top will take in the Middle East, North Africa and the Indian Ocean - providing you've a head for heights.

Plans for a mile-high tower in the Saudi Arabian desert have been unveiled by the billionaire owner of London's Savoy Hotel.

At 5,250ft, the £5billion project, masterminded by two British engineering consultancies, will be twice as high as its nearest rivals, skyscrapers under construction in Dubai and Kuwait, and almost seven times as high as the Canary Wharf tower in London's Docklands.

Little brother: The Dubai Tower and Prince al-Walid bin Talal, who is behind the scheme

It is being planned for a new city near the Red Sea port of Jeddah. Behind the scheme is 51-year-old Prince al-Walid bin Talal, who bought the Savoy for £1.25billion in 2005.

The plan gives the Middle East a clear lead over Asian countries and the U.S., who have vied in the past to construct the world's tallest buildings.

None of the other skyscrapers under construction, including New York's Freedom Tower on the World Trade Centre site, will exceed 2,296ft.

The prince's company, Riyadh-based Kingdom Holdings, has set up a joint venture with the London firms Hyder Consulting and Arup.

Experts say the technical challenges are enormous. Much of the lifting will be carried out by helicopters, which will also be used as commuter transport for builders.

The tower will have to be capable of withstanding a wide range of temperatures, with its top baking in the desert sun by day but dropping to well below freezing at night.

To resist the strong winds prevalent in the area and stop it swaying, giving its occupants a form of high-rise seasickness, it will be fitted with a giant computer-operated damper.

Two "mini-towers" - both taller than Canary Wharf - will be built on either side of the main tower.

Linked to it by elevated walkways, they will anchor it and act as stabilisers.

Until recently, the still-under-construction Dubai Tower was expected to be the world's tallest building.

Plans have changed several times to make it higher, but the final version is expected to be 2,300ft with 160 storeys.

From: www.dailymail.co.uk


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Taco Time - SNL

A more real than life surreal TV commercial parody will make you laugh!!


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Crazy Household Item Chain Reaction!!


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Remains of long-missing Sgt. Keith 'Matt' Maupin Finally Identified



BATAVIA, Ohio - The father of a soldier listed as missing-captured in Iraq since 2004 said Sunday that the military had informed him that his son's remains had been found.

Keith Maupin said an Army general told him DNA testing had identified the remains of his son, Sgt. Keith Matthew Maupin, or "Matt" as he was commonly known. He said the Army didn't say how or where in Iraq his son's remains were discovered, only that officials found a shirt similar to the one his son was wearing at the time of his disappearance.

"My heart sinks, but I know they can't hurt him anymore," Maupin said, speaking in the soldier's hometown near suburban Cincinnati.

The Army was continuing its investigation, he said.

Lt. Lee Packnett, an Army public affairs officer in Washington, confirmed that the Maupins were notified Sunday that their son's remains had been identified. Packnett said an official statement about the identification would be released Monday.

Matt Maupin was a 20-year-old private first class when he was captured April 9, 2004, after his fuel convoy, part of the 724th Transportation Company, was ambushed west of Baghdad.

A week later, the Arab television network Al-Jazeera aired a videotape showing Maupin sitting on the floor surrounded by five masked men holding automatic rifles.

That June, Al-Jazeera aired another tape purporting to show a U.S. soldier being shot. But the dark and grainy tape showed only the back of the victim's head and not the actual shooting.

The Maupins refused to believe it was their son, and the Army had listed him as missing-captured. The Maupins lobbied hard for the Army to continue listing their son as missing-captured, fearing that another designation would undermine efforts to find him.

Parents kept pressure on military
Keith Maupin said the Army told him early on that there was only a 50 percent chance his son would be found alive. He said he doesn't hold the Army responsible for his son's death, but that he did hold the Army responsible for bringing his son home.

"I told them when we'd go up to the Pentagon, whether he walks off a plane or is carried off, you're not going to leave him in Iraq like you did those guys in Vietnam," Maupin said.

Keith Maupin and his ex-wife, Carolyn, held a candlelight vigil Sunday night outside the Yellow Ribbon Support Center in Batavia, an office they used to package thousands of boxes of donated snacks and toiletries for shipment to soldiers in Iraq.

"It hurts," Carolyn Maupin said of her son's death. "After you go through almost four years of hope, and this is what happens, it's like a let down, so I'm trying to get through that right now."

Two others still MIA
Two U.S. soldiers remain missing in action in Iraq. Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie, a 41-year-old Iraqi-born reserve soldier from Ann Arbor, Mich., was abducted while visiting his Iraqi wife on Oct. 23, 2006, in Baghdad. Capt. Michael Speicher, a Navy pilot, has been missing since the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Matt Maupin graduated from Glen Este High School, just east of Cincinnati, in 2001 and attended the University of Cincinnati for a year before joining the Army Reserves.

Dan Simmons, the athletic director at Glen Este, remembered Maupin as a quiet but hardworking backup player on the school's football team.

"Matt was a selfless kid on the football field," Simmons said. "He did whatever the coaches told him. He wasn't a starter, but he made the other kids play harder."

A month after his capture, Maupin was promoted to the rank of specialist. In April 2005, he was promoted to sergeant.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com
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Seth Tobias: News Update


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White House: Wall Street overhaul

Plan to move more oversight to the Federal Reserve

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration Monday proposed the most far-ranging overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression.

The plan would change how the government regulates thousands of businesses from the nation’s biggest banks and investment houses down to the local insurance agent and mortgage broker.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unveiled the 218-page plan in a speech in Treasury’s ornate Cash Room, declaring, “A strong financial system is vitally important — not for Wall Street, not for bankers, but for working Americans.”

The administration’s plan drew criticism, however, from Democrats who said it did not go far enough to deal with abuses in mortgage lending and securities trading that were exposed by the current credit crisis. Some state officials criticized what they saw as unwanted federal intrusion on their turf.

Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin blasted Paulson’s approach as “a disastrous backward step that would put the investor in jeopardy” because it would pre-empt state regulation of securities and insurance.

The administration said that it planned to work with Congress to have constructive conversations, but officials would not predict when any aspects of the proposal could be enacted into law.

Asked if Bush’s goal was to get the overhaul approved before he leaves office, presidential press secretary Dana Perino told reporters aboard Air Force One, “We’ll have to see. It is a big attempt.”

The plan, which would require congressional approval for its biggest changes, seeks to trim a hodge-podge collection of overlapping jurisdictions that date back to the Civil War.

It would give the Federal Reserve more power to protect the stability of the entire financial system while merging day-to-day bank supervision into one agency, down from five at present.

It also would create one super agency in charge of business conduct and consumer protection, performing many of the functions of the current Securities and Exchange Commission.

It would propose eliminating the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, merging their functions into other agencies.

It would ask Congress to establish a federal Mortgage Origination Commission to set recommended minimum licensing standards for mortgage brokers, many of whom now operate outside of federal regulation, and it would also take a first step toward federal regulation of the insurance industry by asking Congress to establish an Office of Insurance Oversight inside the Treasury Department.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com



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Iraq: Green Zone

Muqtada Sadr's call for his followers to halt fighting with government forces is having a positive effect, U.S. military says. Three rockets or mortar shells strike fortified area; no one is hurt.

By Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
9:36 AM PDT, March 31, 2008

BAGHDAD -- At least three rockets or mortar rounds were fired at Baghdad's fortified Green Zone today, U.S. officials said, despite an order by radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr to his followers to end weeklong clashes that have killed more than 350 people in the capital and across southern Iraq.

But a spokesman for the U.S. military said Sadr's declaration, broadcast by mosques Sunday afternoon, had an almost immediate impact. Gunmen pulled off the streets, and the number of attacks dropped 20% nationwide Sunday compared to the previous day, Navy Rear Adm. Gregory Smith said.

No casualties were reported in the attack today on the U.S.-guarded enclave, which houses the American Embassy and Iraqi government offices.

The fighting erupted Tuesday when more than 28,000 Iraqi police and soldiers began a crackdown against the armed Shiite Muslim factions and criminal gangs that compete for influence in the southern oil hub of Basra.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki described the offensive as an attempt to restore government authority in a lawless and frequently violent city. But Sadr's followers accused Maliki's Islamic Dawa party and its allies in the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council of using the national security forces to weaken the cleric's movement before provincial elections in the fall.

Sadr's followers poured into the streets in parts of Baghdad and across the southern Shiite heartland, and bombarded the Green Zone with rocket and mortar fire. The ferociousness of the response appeared to take Maliki's government by surprise and forced the U.S. and British military to step up support, including repeated airstrikes that killed dozens of suspected fighters.

Two senior Shiite lawmakers allied with Maliki met with Sadr on Saturday night to negotiate an end to the impasse. In return for pulling his followers off the streets, Sadr demanded that the government end what he described as random arrests of supporters and release those detained without cause. But a member of Sadr's parliamentary bloc, Bahaa Araji, complained on state-run television today that "hundreds" of the cleric's followers had been rounded up in raids since the declaration.

Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz, the Iraqi Defense Ministry chief of staff, said the government would continue to pursue wanted "criminals" who had flouted a unilateral cease-fire declared by Sadr in August. But he said the cleric's instructions Sunday would help isolate the "outlaws," and predicted that the security forces would quickly wrap up operations in Basra.

U.S. commanders credit the truce with helping to bring down violence across Iraq since a troop buildup ordered by President Bush reached its height in June. But they say rogue elements of Sadr's militia have continued to wage attacks, allegedly with the backing of Iran - charges denied by Tehran.

By this morning, a tense calm had settled over Basra and most other areas of Iraq under the control of Sadr's Mahdi militia. Shops and markets opened, and the city's frightened residents emerged from their homes, in many cases for the first time in a week.

"Thank God, I see people and cars moving in the streets and the Iraqi army standing there," said one resident, who asked to be identified by the traditional nickname Abu Raed for safety reasons. "The only side that was hurt [by all this] was me and you, I mean the hopeless people."

Groups of Mahdi militiamen also appeared periodically in the streets, keeping a lookout for possible raids, but they left their weapons inside, residents said.

"In spite of my need to rest, I will sleep with one eye open," said one of the militiamen, Thair Abu Sajad. "Because we are not sure what the government might do later."

http://www.latimes.com/
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Wizagra



Click on the image to enlarge it!
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Sunday, March 30, 2008

U.S Box Office Results

Estimated ticket sales for March 28-30

1. “21,” $23.7 million.
2. “Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!”, $17.4 million.
3. “Superhero Movie,” $9.5 million.
4. “Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns,” $7.8 million.
5. “Drillbit Taylor,” $5.8 million.
6. “Shutter,” $5.3 million.
7. “10,000 B.C.”, $4.9 million.
8. “Stop-Loss,” $4.5 million.
9. “College Road Trip,” $3.5 million.
10. “The Bank Job,” $2.8 million.


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Sir Paul McCartney is enjoying a romantic Caribbean holiday with a millionairess.

As published by England's The Sun tabloid.

She is Nancy Shevell, 47 — the American he was spotted kissing last November.

Just two weeks after his bitter divorce battle with ex-porn star Heather Mills, 40, Macca and Nancy are at the exclusive resort of Jumby Bay, Antigua.

And a friend said: “It’s great. They are really happy together and are very close.

"It’s a blossoming friendship and Nancy really cheers him up.

“Paul deserves some happiness after everything he’s been through.”

Flashback ... Sir Paul McCartney and Nancy Shevell share a kiss

Flashback ... Sir Paul McCartney and Nancy Shevell share a kiss

The ex-Beatle and businesswoman Nancy, a breast cancer survivor, have been spotted laughing, joking and riding bikes.


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Pokémon – a friend or a foe inside your house?

Duke cultural anthropologist in Japan studying the Pokemon phenomenon says the children's game that has exploded into a mass merchandising success is viewed differently in Japan than it is in the United States.

"I've seen almost no reporting [in Japan] of the hysteria and worry over trading cards and their potential for promoting gambling or a New York stock exchange mentality that you have seen in the U.S.," Anne Allison says. "Rather, the general view is that Pokemon is innocuous or even positive. [People say] it encourages intellectual skills in learning how to distinguish all the Pokemon, that it helps kids in forming friendships. Mothers say that it fosters communication at home."

Allison, an associate professor of cultural anthropology, is a specialist on mass culture in contemporary urban Japan. In Japan on Fulbright and Social Science Research Council senior fellowships, she is researching popular Japanese heroes and super heroes that get circulated through comics and television programs, are mass marketed through toys and other merchandising, and are exported around the world as global commodities. She has now turned her attention to Pokemon.

Pokemon began as a game and has exploded into a mass merchandising opportunity, she says. The game was picked up as a serialized comic, or manga. Next came an animated television show, a movie, trading cards, and associated merchandise--everything from Pokemon toys to Pokemon curry. Rather than regard Pokemon with suspicion, Allison says the Japanese embrace the fad.

She calls the marketing of Pokemon brilliant, a campaign that crosses media and products to create an interdependency. Children watch the TV program to get hints on how to play the game, for example. "One form of Pokemon bleeds into another so kids are surrounded by Pokemon in their everyday lives."

http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Brief and to the Point:

Pókemon is far from being the foe. The real foe is surely hidden in other kids-oriented products you are not aware of.....


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Syd Barret + Brian Wilson = "Meet Arnaldo Baptista"

What can be said about Arnaldo Baptista?

Perhaps we could say that his brother Sergio Dias and himself were the two Brazilian teenage boys to introduce the electric guitar to brazilian music in the mid-60's, or we could stick to the fact that after not being able to cope with a broken heart (Rita Lee - extremely popular Brazilian rock star to date, aka the Mutante's flower child back then!), and the excessive consumption of drugs, led him to a naive Flight of Icarus from a mental institution in early '82.


The two scenes having been described, will certainly lead us to the beginning of this album's comprehension.

In the history of Brazilian music, nothing quite compares to the depth of a depressed mind, the sadness of a human being Arnaldo in his naked mind was able to convey in sheer despair of being heard by the world, by the universe (not as a multi-million bucks musician, but as a man in need of expressing his feelings!

The full "Loki" (Kind of like a slang for "Crazy" in Portuguese) album was recorded in no more than 2 weeks, which included "unthinkable" horns arrangements (written by Rogério Duprat, a man that was there to be Arnaldo's spokesman at this moment of extreme urgency), for his mind was overflowing, his loving and need to show it could not wait.

The whole album was recorded live in studio in late 1974, with Arnaldo taking turns among voice, piano, keyboads, synth and whatever should be played to give birth to this master piece as quickly as possible.

Time was short in his mind, his feelings had to let go, who knows? Reach other minds and hearts other than his own, for he just could not put up with them any longer!

Just listen to Arnaldo singing or crying (that amounts to the same!), regretting for enjoying material things and in the following verse, asking himself whether he'd be bound to turn into mold, or willing to go back to his old house in the mountains, where "the whole Mutantes" framework got a body of its own or even at moments of perfect plastic scenery when he sings: "I don't care about death/I don't care about luck/I just wanna take off (like a plane) every morning"!!!

His mind was reaching dizzy heights - one might say he was anticipating his fate!

It is important to mention that whoever intends to get hold of this master piece has to understand that this is no ordinary mind whatsoever.

This man is the one who can be addressed as "the mind of Syd Barrett and Brian Wilson" in only one person.

Noteworthy: "The American band "Wondermints" pay tribute to him on their "Bali" album - "Arnaldo said" track".

They sure know Arnaldo is still around despite living recluse in a country house where he paints, plants, plays his instruments to his own entertainment and lives life like a child being the man who's always been pure at heart, bound to live as pure as a child to the end of his days in this planet.

Listen to Arnaldo if you have the notion of what depression is about, of what true love is about, of what resistance to accepting that love is gone is all about.

Arnaldo rules! And shall always rule!
He offered his life one day! And isn't life funny after all? The greatest love of his life, Rita Lee, a 62-year-old respected rock musician and singer(undeniable!) who still has gets her kicks off by playing her music to large audiences (perhaps the only "successfull" survivor from "The Mutantes"), with a solid career (though refusing to talk about the past!).

Arnaldo's brother, Sergio Dias, is "supposed to be" a worldwide recognized guitar hero "somewhere" (though he plays wonderfully! - like it has been mentioned before - having introduced the "electric" guitar to the Brazilian music), but the real story is locked up inside the mind of this "Loki" - Arnaldo Baptista, who will certainly not be remembered by this "ever-crushing" music industry!

A story is interesting, but history itself does not always live up to those who "really" made history, and Arnaldo is no "story", he is history, and those who were around him one day, will be part of the story !!!

Long live Arnaldo even after he leaves this planet!!!


Loki Re-recording in 2003

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Saturday, March 29, 2008

Escher Aesthetics in Photoshop












Escher Blowout 2 Photoshop Contest
See credits at: www.worth1000.com
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Last Supper Collection





iam8bit

Asado Criollo Cordoba Argentina2001

French court bans Christ fashion advertisement

Bricktestament

David LaChapelle

 Cui Xiuwen 乬Sanjie乭photo, 2003

pascal

Last Supper happened at my wedding

KIMBERLY BROWER

The Snares Last Supper

the Anchorage Presbyterian Church

designed by Neal Elias

2004 Easter Program

Anthony Goicolea

rob.rubberfee

FRANK HERHOLDT | Last Supper

 Picture is 1996 Aubrey Hallis

Mao Zedong -thanx MASARU

President -thanx TAKE

From: wtbw.net
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