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Mortgage calculator (Calculate your payment and more)
Moon and planets
The Moon is the most noticeable object in the night sky, and it is then no wonder that it has fascinated mankind since antiquity. If you observe it for several days, you will no doubt notice that its appearance changes: most of the time only part of it is illuminated, and this part seems to grow until it covers the whole moon (full moon) and then decrease until nothing is illuminated (new moon), and then grow again, in a cycle that repeats about every month.
One possible explanation that comes to mind is that the dark part we see on the Moon is the shadow that the Earth casts on it. But there are problems with this explanation. For one, if this were true, the Moon should be in its new phase when it at its farther from the Sun. We know when this happens, because then the Moon rises at the same time as the Sun sets; and we can observe that at this point the Moon is full, not new! Besides, if the Moon passes through the Earth's shadow every month, then when it is at the opposite side of its orbit it should get directly in between the Sun and the Earth, producing a solar eclipse much more often than it actually happens. No, this explanation cannot be the right one.
One possible explanation that comes to mind is that the dark part we see on the Moon is the shadow that the Earth casts on it. But there are problems with this explanation. For one, if this were true, the Moon should be in its new phase when it at its farther from the Sun. We know when this happens, because then the Moon rises at the same time as the Sun sets; and we can observe that at this point the Moon is full, not new! Besides, if the Moon passes through the Earth's shadow every month, then when it is at the opposite side of its orbit it should get directly in between the Sun and the Earth, producing a solar eclipse much more often than it actually happens. No, this explanation cannot be the right one.
Rhodium
Rhodium is a hard silvery white and durable metal that has a high reflectance. Rhodium metal does not normally form an oxide, even when heated. Oxygen is absorbed from the atmosphere at the melting point of rhodium, but on solidification the oxygen is released.[4]
Rhodium has both a higher melting point and lower density than platinum. It is not attacked by acids: it is completely insoluble in nitric acid and dissolves slightly in aqua regia.
Rhodium has both a higher melting point and lower density than platinum. It is not attacked by acids: it is completely insoluble in nitric acid and dissolves slightly in aqua regia.
PS3 update 2.53
PS3 Update 2.53 available to download today. Download PS3 Update 2.53 firmware for you Play Station 3. It always suggested to download the latest PS3 firmware update. Here is the list of PS3 2.53 update.
PS3 Update 2.53 Features
thanks to PlayStation Universe
PS3 Update 2.53 Features
thanks to PlayStation Universe
- Full-screen mode playability on PS3
- Live movie (using RTMP format) playability
- With this PS3 update 2.53, you will be able to browse internet with full screen mode.
- Download PS3 update now and get the latest PlayStation 3 update 2.53.
Popcorn Palace
What it does: Produces 27 flavors of gourmet popcorn and custom mail-order tins.
Why it's growing: Gift recipients often become buyers theselves; 90 percent retention rate for corporate accounts.
What's noteworthy: Original Popcorn Palace (an Inc. 500 honoree in 1988) went bankrupt; Heitmann bought the company's customer list and name but increased prices and switched emphasis to mail order and corporate gifts instead of retail stores.
Why it's growing: Gift recipients often become buyers theselves; 90 percent retention rate for corporate accounts.
What's noteworthy: Original Popcorn Palace (an Inc. 500 honoree in 1988) went bankrupt; Heitmann bought the company's customer list and name but increased prices and switched emphasis to mail order and corporate gifts instead of retail stores.
Drew Rosenhaus
Drew Rosenhaus was born on October 29, 1966 in South Orange, New Jersey. Four years later his family moved to Miami Beach, Florida. Drew attended and graduated in 1987 from the University of Miami and, in 1990, obtained a law degree from Duke University School of Law. Drawing heavily from his college connections, twenty-four of Rosenhaus' 100-plus NFL clients are fellow University of Miami alumni. In 1989, at the age of 22, Drew became the youngest registered sports agent. In 2008, Rosenhaus has negotiated over one billion dollars in NFL contracts.
Rosenhaus sports
Rosenhaus' company is called Rosenhaus Sports Representation, which is abbreviated by RSR. The logo for Rosenhaus Sports are the letters RSR with the S similar to the Superman logo. In addition to Rosenhaus, other principals in the firm include Vice President Jason Rosenhaus (vice president), director of marketing Robert Bailey and director of client services Daniel F. Martoe.
Aggressive tactics
Rosenhaus is famously known for his aggressive approach to the representation of his NFL clients, and also for often generating large contracts for them. He represents some of the best-known and most flamboyant personalities in professional football. Early in his career he convinced NFL general managers to allow cameras to document negotiations.
Due to his aggressive dealings, some of Rosenhaus' competitors claim Rosenhaus sometimes violates NFL Player's Association (NFLPA) rules by illegally contacting clients signed with other agents. Rosenhaus and his clients deny this charge. His competitors also claim that Rosenhaus uses players to vigorously recruit other NFL players and prospects, which, if true, also would represent a violation of NFLPA policies. According to the NFLPA, however, there have been no formal findings of violations of their policies by Rosenhaus, though Rosenhaus' approach to client representation are considered some of the most controversial in professional football.
Rosenhaus sports
Rosenhaus' company is called Rosenhaus Sports Representation, which is abbreviated by RSR. The logo for Rosenhaus Sports are the letters RSR with the S similar to the Superman logo. In addition to Rosenhaus, other principals in the firm include Vice President Jason Rosenhaus (vice president), director of marketing Robert Bailey and director of client services Daniel F. Martoe.
Aggressive tactics
Rosenhaus is famously known for his aggressive approach to the representation of his NFL clients, and also for often generating large contracts for them. He represents some of the best-known and most flamboyant personalities in professional football. Early in his career he convinced NFL general managers to allow cameras to document negotiations.
Due to his aggressive dealings, some of Rosenhaus' competitors claim Rosenhaus sometimes violates NFL Player's Association (NFLPA) rules by illegally contacting clients signed with other agents. Rosenhaus and his clients deny this charge. His competitors also claim that Rosenhaus uses players to vigorously recruit other NFL players and prospects, which, if true, also would represent a violation of NFLPA policies. According to the NFLPA, however, there have been no formal findings of violations of their policies by Rosenhaus, though Rosenhaus' approach to client representation are considered some of the most controversial in professional football.
HyperVRE
HyperVRE is a software which gives you the possibility to create Virtual Real Estate websites. This means you use public articles to create a portal on a curtain subject.
Also look at: HyperVRE user experiences
Also look at: HyperVRE user experiences
Bromance
In a 2007 episode of NBC’s hospital-based comedy Scrubs, the show’s two main characters, J.D. and Turk, break into a musical duet proclaiming their mutual affection. "Guy love. That’s all it is,” the song goes. "Guy love, he’s mine, I’m his. There’s nothing gay about it in our eyes."
Turk and J.D. are two straight male doctors who are, without a doubt, in a bromance, a relationship defined as "the complicated love and affection shared by two straight males,” according to urbandictionary.com.
From Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to Good Will Hunting, popular culture is filled with examples of straight guy love. The sitcom "Friends” often crafted jokes around the ultra-tight nature of Joey and Chandler’s relationship, and in the 2005 film "Wedding Crashers,” Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson seemed to have something more like a tortured love affair than a friendship.
But close male friendship isn’t just a quirky television fantasy or a running gag in the movies. Real-life bromances are everywhere. Kevin Collier, 26, a construction manager living in Hillsdale, N.J., has lots of manly things in common with his best friend, including but not limited to, "tattoos, motorcycles and chicks,” as Collier put it. But that hasn’t stopped his friends from accusing him of having a "man crush” on his best friend Don Carlo-Clauss, 28, of Rochester, N.Y., a semi-professional fighter whose day job is in marketing.
They first met on the wrestling team at the University of Virginia. It was a bromance founded on shared misery. "When you spend six months out of the year being miserable together, you wind up with a lot of close relationships with your teammates,” said Collier.
Thomas Hopkins and Peter Varellas, both 23, had a similar experience playing for Stanford University’s water polo team. As freshman, Hopkins convinced Varellas to pursue the same major as his so they could take classes together. "I was like dude, we can hang out all the time,” recalled Hopkins. They quickly became known by the rest of the team as the "ambiguously gay duo,” after the "Saturday Night Live” cartoon. They remain close, both playing water polo for the U.S.A. National Team and training for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Experts say the prevalence of these friendships can in part be explained by the delay in major life milestones. Fifty years ago, a man could graduate from college, get a job and get married all within a couple of months. But today’s men are drifting, as opposed to jumping, into the traditional notion of adulthood.
"The transition to adulthood is now taking about a decade longer than it used to,” said Michael Kimmel, a sociology professor at Stony Brook University in New York whose upcoming book is called "Guy Land: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men.” One set of men Kimmel interviewed for the book were fraternity brothers at Dartmouth College. Following graduation, seven of them squeezed into a two-bedroom apartment in Boston.
Financial pressures help fuel bromances because they make living with a roommate a sensible option. In addition, men are getting married later--an average age of 27, according to a 2007 report by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, up from the average marrying age in 1960, which was 23. Men with more education are marrying even later, in their 30s.
David Popenoe, director of the marriage project and an emeritus professor of sociology at Rutgers, cited the acceptance of premarital sex and the greater numbers of men and women who live together as reasons for the delay in marriage. Half of today’s first marriages start out with people living together, as opposed to fifty years ago when there were next to no cohabitation, according to the report.
Men in bromances agree that when singlehood abounds, male friendships flourish. "Being single as opposed to married allows us to do things like go on these random excursions,” said Joe Tipograph, 27, a graduate student at Emory University who recently spent a week in Key West with his two best friends from high school.
Tipograph, David Abrams and Greg Kopstein have a triangular bromance of sorts that began when they were kids growing up as neighbors in Rockville, Md. They went to separate colleges but reunited one summer to work as camp counselors in New Hampshire.
"Greg and I would always get in trouble, but they knew if they fired either one of us, Dave would quit,” said Tipograph of how the three became a package deal. Recently Tipograph wouldn’t join in a football gambling pool unless he could do so with Kopstein. Their friends promptly dubbed them "Team Brokeback,” referring the 2006 tale of cowboy romance between Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Since graduating college, they’ve played a game of musical apartments, each having lived with the other, in one city or another, over the years. The 2000 census found that the number of nonfamily households, which includes people living with roommates and unmarried partners, had gone up by 23 percent since 1990.
Ted Mariner, a 27-year-old in advertising sales, moved into an apartment in Boston four years ago with his best friend since childhood, Jamie Gerrity, also 27. They spent every summer together with their families in Maine and even their fathers are close friends. Gerrity found that he could afford a nicer apartment by living with Mariner.
The speculation of their bromance began long ago but was solidified when the two mused that they were inching towards qualifying for a common-law marriage. "We joked about it because if you live together for seven years you can claim spouse by association and you can file your taxes jointly,” said Gerrity. They started referring to themselves as "hetero-life partners” shortly thereafter.
According to Peter Nardi, a sociologist at Pitzer College who specializes in male friendships, all these phrases are safer than they used to be because men are less afraid of being perceived as gay. It has become more acceptable for them to show some emotion. Al Gore and Bill Clinton hugged when they won the 1992 election and sports figures cry on camera when they’re busted for steroids, Nardi pointed out.
There seems to be little worry about perceptions of homosexuality in a bromance filled with macho pursuits like drinking beer, watching sports and playing video games. But rifts can occur when serious girlfriends enter the picture or someone moves to another city. Tipograph and Kopstein both have girlfriends and make it work.
Bromancers say they keep the spark alive by making an extra effort to see one another and keeping an open and honest communication. Collier and Carlo-Clauss rode Harleys from San Diego to Las Vegas together. Varellas is temporarily playing water polo professionally in Italy, while Hopkins trains just north of Los Angeles, but the two talk on the phone once a week.
Gerrity will be moving out of Mariner’s apartment come fall when he heads to graduate school, and they’ll be trying long distance. "We had a long talk about it,” said Gerrity. "I won’t see him every day,” said Mariner. "But I don’t think we’re going to break up our bromance.”
Turk and J.D. are two straight male doctors who are, without a doubt, in a bromance, a relationship defined as "the complicated love and affection shared by two straight males,” according to urbandictionary.com.
From Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to Good Will Hunting, popular culture is filled with examples of straight guy love. The sitcom "Friends” often crafted jokes around the ultra-tight nature of Joey and Chandler’s relationship, and in the 2005 film "Wedding Crashers,” Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson seemed to have something more like a tortured love affair than a friendship.
But close male friendship isn’t just a quirky television fantasy or a running gag in the movies. Real-life bromances are everywhere. Kevin Collier, 26, a construction manager living in Hillsdale, N.J., has lots of manly things in common with his best friend, including but not limited to, "tattoos, motorcycles and chicks,” as Collier put it. But that hasn’t stopped his friends from accusing him of having a "man crush” on his best friend Don Carlo-Clauss, 28, of Rochester, N.Y., a semi-professional fighter whose day job is in marketing.
They first met on the wrestling team at the University of Virginia. It was a bromance founded on shared misery. "When you spend six months out of the year being miserable together, you wind up with a lot of close relationships with your teammates,” said Collier.
Thomas Hopkins and Peter Varellas, both 23, had a similar experience playing for Stanford University’s water polo team. As freshman, Hopkins convinced Varellas to pursue the same major as his so they could take classes together. "I was like dude, we can hang out all the time,” recalled Hopkins. They quickly became known by the rest of the team as the "ambiguously gay duo,” after the "Saturday Night Live” cartoon. They remain close, both playing water polo for the U.S.A. National Team and training for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Experts say the prevalence of these friendships can in part be explained by the delay in major life milestones. Fifty years ago, a man could graduate from college, get a job and get married all within a couple of months. But today’s men are drifting, as opposed to jumping, into the traditional notion of adulthood.
"The transition to adulthood is now taking about a decade longer than it used to,” said Michael Kimmel, a sociology professor at Stony Brook University in New York whose upcoming book is called "Guy Land: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men.” One set of men Kimmel interviewed for the book were fraternity brothers at Dartmouth College. Following graduation, seven of them squeezed into a two-bedroom apartment in Boston.
Financial pressures help fuel bromances because they make living with a roommate a sensible option. In addition, men are getting married later--an average age of 27, according to a 2007 report by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, up from the average marrying age in 1960, which was 23. Men with more education are marrying even later, in their 30s.
David Popenoe, director of the marriage project and an emeritus professor of sociology at Rutgers, cited the acceptance of premarital sex and the greater numbers of men and women who live together as reasons for the delay in marriage. Half of today’s first marriages start out with people living together, as opposed to fifty years ago when there were next to no cohabitation, according to the report.
Men in bromances agree that when singlehood abounds, male friendships flourish. "Being single as opposed to married allows us to do things like go on these random excursions,” said Joe Tipograph, 27, a graduate student at Emory University who recently spent a week in Key West with his two best friends from high school.
Tipograph, David Abrams and Greg Kopstein have a triangular bromance of sorts that began when they were kids growing up as neighbors in Rockville, Md. They went to separate colleges but reunited one summer to work as camp counselors in New Hampshire.
"Greg and I would always get in trouble, but they knew if they fired either one of us, Dave would quit,” said Tipograph of how the three became a package deal. Recently Tipograph wouldn’t join in a football gambling pool unless he could do so with Kopstein. Their friends promptly dubbed them "Team Brokeback,” referring the 2006 tale of cowboy romance between Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Since graduating college, they’ve played a game of musical apartments, each having lived with the other, in one city or another, over the years. The 2000 census found that the number of nonfamily households, which includes people living with roommates and unmarried partners, had gone up by 23 percent since 1990.
Ted Mariner, a 27-year-old in advertising sales, moved into an apartment in Boston four years ago with his best friend since childhood, Jamie Gerrity, also 27. They spent every summer together with their families in Maine and even their fathers are close friends. Gerrity found that he could afford a nicer apartment by living with Mariner.
The speculation of their bromance began long ago but was solidified when the two mused that they were inching towards qualifying for a common-law marriage. "We joked about it because if you live together for seven years you can claim spouse by association and you can file your taxes jointly,” said Gerrity. They started referring to themselves as "hetero-life partners” shortly thereafter.
According to Peter Nardi, a sociologist at Pitzer College who specializes in male friendships, all these phrases are safer than they used to be because men are less afraid of being perceived as gay. It has become more acceptable for them to show some emotion. Al Gore and Bill Clinton hugged when they won the 1992 election and sports figures cry on camera when they’re busted for steroids, Nardi pointed out.
There seems to be little worry about perceptions of homosexuality in a bromance filled with macho pursuits like drinking beer, watching sports and playing video games. But rifts can occur when serious girlfriends enter the picture or someone moves to another city. Tipograph and Kopstein both have girlfriends and make it work.
Bromancers say they keep the spark alive by making an extra effort to see one another and keeping an open and honest communication. Collier and Carlo-Clauss rode Harleys from San Diego to Las Vegas together. Varellas is temporarily playing water polo professionally in Italy, while Hopkins trains just north of Los Angeles, but the two talk on the phone once a week.
Gerrity will be moving out of Mariner’s apartment come fall when he heads to graduate school, and they’ll be trying long distance. "We had a long talk about it,” said Gerrity. "I won’t see him every day,” said Mariner. "But I don’t think we’re going to break up our bromance.”
Next nostradamus
What are you watching?
I'm tuned to the History Channel's "Next Nostradamus":
Two men sharing startling visions of the future possess distinctly different backgrounds: Michel de Nostradamus was a French apothecary and healer in the 16th century; he would become the most famous seer in history. His 21st century counterpart is Dr. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a renowned political scientist who teaches game theory at New York University and Stanford. While Nostradamus looked to the stars and mysticism to divine his apocalyptic revelations, Dr. Bueno de Mesquita relies on the most omnipotent tool ever designed by man to predict future events: the computer.
This special explores not only the commonalities of these men's visions about World War III, famine and the coming of the Anti-Christ, but it also traces the evolution from mysticism to hard math, and determines whether science has always existed in prophecy, manifesting itself in different forms through the ages.
I was on the phone and watched most of the first hour with the sound off.
However, in addition to Bueno de Mesquita, I know the program also features John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and at least one on-screen appearance each by Ethan Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. Historian Pamela Smith and a few other scholars are also interviewed.
If you missed the program, it is on again at 1 am ET and Saturday December 6 at 5 pm ET. Check it out. You can also buy it.
I'm tuned to the History Channel's "Next Nostradamus":
Two men sharing startling visions of the future possess distinctly different backgrounds: Michel de Nostradamus was a French apothecary and healer in the 16th century; he would become the most famous seer in history. His 21st century counterpart is Dr. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a renowned political scientist who teaches game theory at New York University and Stanford. While Nostradamus looked to the stars and mysticism to divine his apocalyptic revelations, Dr. Bueno de Mesquita relies on the most omnipotent tool ever designed by man to predict future events: the computer.
This special explores not only the commonalities of these men's visions about World War III, famine and the coming of the Anti-Christ, but it also traces the evolution from mysticism to hard math, and determines whether science has always existed in prophecy, manifesting itself in different forms through the ages.
I was on the phone and watched most of the first hour with the sound off.
However, in addition to Bueno de Mesquita, I know the program also features John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and at least one on-screen appearance each by Ethan Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. Historian Pamela Smith and a few other scholars are also interviewed.
If you missed the program, it is on again at 1 am ET and Saturday December 6 at 5 pm ET. Check it out. You can also buy it.
Supergator
Supergator is a 2007 horror film from Roger Corman starring Brad Johnson and Kelly McGillis. The music was by Damon Ebner.
Scott Kinney (Johnson) is an American geologist monitoring a local volcano when the Supergator, a prehistoric alligator recreated from fossilized DNA escapes from a secret bio-engineering research center.
Kinney joins forces with another scientist (McGillis) and a Texan alligator hunter (Colton). They pursue the monster as it heads down river intent on destroying a luxurious resort packed with tourists.
Scott Kinney (Johnson) is an American geologist monitoring a local volcano when the Supergator, a prehistoric alligator recreated from fossilized DNA escapes from a secret bio-engineering research center.
Kinney joins forces with another scientist (McGillis) and a Texan alligator hunter (Colton). They pursue the monster as it heads down river intent on destroying a luxurious resort packed with tourists.
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