With the way art history is being written and rewritten these days,
Neo-Expressionism is pretty much the odd man out. For one thing, its
perpetrators were mostly painters and mostly male. For another, they
tended to approach their work without the obvious Conceptual
underpinnings that are now so de rigueur. Among the Germans, only the
consistently subversive and innovative Sigmar Polke,Where you can
create a custom lanyard
from our wide selection of styles and materials. never really a
card-carrying Neo-Expressionist, has genuine street cred right now,
while Anselm Kiefer has settled into a particularly overbearing style
and a gassy form of art stardom.
Their brethren, artists like
Georg Baselitz, J?rg Immendorff and A. R. Penck, slip in and out of
view, at least in this country. Now is a good time to look at Mr.
Penck, in many ways the most visionary and accessible of this cohort.
The best paintings he’s made in years are at the Upper East Side gallery
of Michael Werner, the German art dealer who gave him his first solo
show, in West Berlin in 1969. This display is fleshed out by “A.R.
Penck, Before the West,” a fascinatingly scrappy show of early work at
the Leo Koenig gallery in Chelsea: paintings, sculpture and collages
from the ’70s, when Mr. Penck was something of a dissident artist in
East Berlin, smuggling paintings out and art materials (and
Deutschmarks) in.
Born Ralf Winkler in Dresden in 1939, Mr.
Penck chose to stay in East Germany when the Berlin Wall went up in
1961, while others (Mr. Baselitz, for example) headed to the West. He
had, for a while, a certain faith in Socialism. (To disguise paintings
being smuggled to the West, he signed them with different names,
including Theodore Marx.) Mr. Werner saw to it that there were Penck
shows all over West Germany, and also Switzerland, in the 1970s, so Mr.
Penck was protected by a certain amount of fame; this meant that the
secret police, the Stasi, didn’t touch him; its agents just watched and
harassed.
There is symmetry to these two shows because of
their openness, the kind that customarily comes at the beginning and
toward the end of long artistic careers.They manufacture custom rubber
and silicone bracelet
and bracelets. These may be the points when artists are most open to
anything because, in very different ways, they have less to lose.
At
Koenig we see Mr. Penck experimenting with different styles and
subjects. He moves toward the hieroglyphic, so-called neo-primitive
pictographs, symbols and patterns, usually in black on white, that
would become his signature style; this scheme’s noticeably male stick
figures seem at once powerful and hapless, as if they caused the chaos
that swirls around them. The compact “Structure” of 1974 is a wonderful
example of this strain.Online shopping for luggage tag
from a great selection of Clothing. (It also exemplifies the uncanny
skill with which Mr. Penck intuited where the stretchers — which the
paintings acquired only once they were in the West — would eventually
crop the images. His fields of paint are almost always perfectly haloed
by a narrow, unruled margin of bare ground.)
But more often at
Koenig, Mr. Penck is far afield of his pictographs, rifling through
pop culture and art history for ideas. In “Jutta” (1977) he layers
random images in ways that bring to mind Polke or David Salle. In “Ali
Alpha Tor” (1975) he wrestles German Expressionism and Abstract
Expressionism into a jagged, allover truce.
And he riffs on
older styles. The 1973 “Russian Painting,” with its
propeller-searchlight composition in red, yellow, green and blue
suggests something Malevich might have made, after much vodka, to
glorify the Soviet Air Force. Mr. Penck’s passion for jazz is evident in
the jumbled faces and instruments in a work in red, yellow, green and
black that could be scrawled on the wall of a club.
The
continual scrounging for materials is evident too. (Art supplies were
doled out only to approved artists; Mr. Penck had failed even to get
into art school.) Tablecloths, bedsheets and felt substitute for
canvas; exceptional sculptures are fashioned from wadded aluminum foil,
tied-together tin cans and cardboard boxes, which sometimes occasion
witty drawings.Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh.
There
are rough-surfaced collages. One marshals a field of postcard and
magazine images beside the heads of two Cézanne card players, as if
considering alternatives. Another scoffs at Social Realism by amassing
newspaper images of East German Olympic athletes and crossing each out
with a big black X. A third slaps together big scraps of cut and torn
corrugated cardboard with results that would inform the Cubist displays
at the Museum of Modern Art in revealing ways.
Things are not
nearly as hand-to-mouth at the Werner gallery, where Mr. Penck, who
moved to West Germany in 1980, has clearly had all the supplies he
could wish for. In 10 canvases from 2010 and 2011, the pictographs and
their fields of symbols return, but in altered states.
They are
simply re-energized in black-on-white paintings, like “The Flow of
Events,” which remind us that Mr. Penck’s cosmos is a precursor to
Keith Haring’s antic renderings. They’re seen in magnified, abstracted
close-up in “Advance” and “Opening,” two works in gray that neatly
evoke cave painting, Constructivism and Morse code. They’re softened
and upholstered in the red and blue of “System — Problem — Abstract,”
which veers toward the compartmentalized pictographs of Joaquín Torres
García.
And they are relegated in simplified form to the hide
of a prowling tiger in a work that, recalling Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,
points to Mr. Penck’s German Expressionist roots. Two of the strongest
works are semi-abstract landscapes that give the pictographs a
geological setting, embedding them in sediment of yellow,The USB flash drives wholesale
is our flagship product. red or green (day) or blue and brown (night,
with rats). The nocturnal “Landscape — Remote,” with its cohabiting
dinosaurs and rodents, is especially strong. Humans have left the scene;
chaos reigns. Americans may be reminded of Stuart Davis, a different
kind of cosmos-conjurer, who left other artists so much to do.
At
this point, Mr. Penck and the Neo-Expressionists, German and
otherwise, seem to be mostly out of fashion. But certain artists and
styles are inevitably left out of the prevailing vision of the past or
the present. This happens for whatever reason — shortness of attention
span, lack of tolerance or narrowness of taste. But history is always
in flux. Each rewriting, like each writing, will be reworked by
subsequent generations.
2013年2月16日 星期六
2013年2月5日 星期二
For Valentine’s Day, a creamy dessert straight from the heart
Making dessert for Valentine’s Day is challenging at best. We are
bombarded with lip-smacking photographs of miniature tarts, sweet cakes,
hand-formed truffles. Everything is so precious and terrifying. There’s
the chocolate — will it need tempering? There are raspberries and
strawberries — out of season, yet frequent flavors of mid-February
desserts. And then there is the time. Valentine’s Day may fall on any
day of the week, yet the hope for sweet goodness will not wait for a
conveniently empty Saturday, when tinkering in the kitchen is possible.
Voila, coeur a la creme. A heart of cream. This incredibly easy dessert has all the earmarks of a perfect valentine. It is heart-shaped and mixes with fruits and chocolates perfectly. Or in this case, with in-season oranges. A small effort, even days in advance, produces a creamy sweet cheese that is impossibly romantic.
Two serendipitous events spurred this recipe. First, I found the perforated heart-shaped mold stashed in the back of a frightening drawer of kitchen “stuff.” I’m sure my mother purchased this porcelain beauty with Julia Child’s encouragement, as I recall coeur a la creme dinner party desserts in the mid-’60s. If your mother had a similar love affair with Julia, there may be one, or a set of smaller molds, lurking in a cabinet.
If your kitchen collection does not include a heart-shaped mold, a simple sieve will create a perfect dome of cheese. Either presentation is equally appealing, particularly when festooned with sprightly curd and garnished with toasted almonds.
But really, it was the curd that got me going. I’ve been on a curd kick. I’ve juiced every manner of citrus to find the perfect recipe for citrus curd, finally landing on a happy balance of egg, sugar, zest and juice to produce a creamy, stable, tangy spread for scones, an add-in for yogurt, or a topping for angel food cake. Pink grapefruit was leading as my personal favorite until blood oranges came into the market. There was something so familiar and friendly about the scent of the deeply colored flesh and the charming, bright flavor. Blood oranges are sweeter than navels, not quite as sweet as a satsuma, and make a beautiful, pale apricot-colored curd.
Because this dessert is so very simple and requires only a few ingredients, every element must be the very best. Use excellent cream; the type bottled in glass is my choice because it is just that much more delicious. Make your own mascarpone; you’ll never go back to store-bought. It takes only half a lemon, a few minutes at the stove and an overnight in the refrigerator. Find the freshest eggs, an excellent sweet cream butter and glorious citrus, ripe and ready.Where you can create a custom lanyard from our wide selection of styles and materials.
When the curd is served alongside the sweet cheese, the dessert reminds me of a Good Humor Creamsicle and possibly that favorite of 1970s mall dwellers, the Orange Julius. If your sacred childhood memories include either of those items, with coeur a la cremesicle, you are sure to fall in love all over again.
Surrounded, outnumbered, and faced with a brainwashed Swoop, Grimlock challenges Ser-Ket to a one-on-one battle. In exchange for Swoop's restoration, Grimlock wagers the freedom and free will of the rest of the Dinobots, and the battle begins. The leader of the Forged proves herself faster and stronger than Grimlock expected, and he's presented with a choice: lose the fight and surrender his team to Ser-Ket, or risk converting to Beast Mode and potentially cost everyone their lives?
The entire issue here is based around the fight, and in narrative terms it's a good and well-used device: make the hero's only chance to defeat his adversary to do something he doesn't want to do, something that will have consequences he can't predict. As it is,Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh. the consequences here are very light, as what Ser-Ket is goading Grimlock into doing is exactly what he needed to do to fix everything. Including Swoop. In all honesty, the concept of defeating brainwashing through blunt force trauma works a lot better in the Avengers movie: yes it's entirely a contrivance, but Joss Whedon hangs a lampshade on it, halfway makes a joke out of it, and writes himself out of a corner in the process. Here, it just happens, and Swoop is all better. Ta-dah! On the other hand, Grimlock is done very well here in the Simon Furman mold of a vicious but effective commander who feels an intense amount of responsibility for his troops above all else: despite coming on this rescue mission more or less to free Ultra Magnus, absolutely nothing takes priority over Swoop's well-being.
Writing-wise, there's not a lot else to say about this issue. The phrase "All Hail Shockwave!" wears out its welcome quickly, and "All Hail (Name)" on the whole is well on its way to becoming 2013's "One shall stand, one shall fall." Now that Grimlock spends some time speaking in Beast Mode, we get a better idea of how the writers are handling Grimlockian syntax: when in Robot Mode he has the occasional slip, but it's in Beast Mode, as a berserker, where he speaks in the "Me Grimlock" fashion.Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet? It makes a lot of sense for this version of the character, and I like the idea. Other than that, my only comment is that there's some dialogue during the fight that could've been placed more effectively to help the action flow a bit better. And the flow of the fight is a major problem.
I'm thinking the schedule has gotten to Agustin Padilla,Online shopping for luggage tag from a great selection of Clothing. as the art continues to become more fluid than is ideal for angular metallic lifeforms, once again particularly in the case of Grimlock. But far more crucial than off-model characters is the staging of the fight between Grimlock and Ser-Ket. Nearly every panel is at medium range or closer, with very few full figures- and most of those in silhouette -making it extremely difficult to follow the action.Ein innovativer und moderner Werkzeugbau Formenbau. Long full-body shots are perhaps less dynamic, but it's more important to be able to tell what's actually happening in the fight and be able to follow it. There's a shield-bash on Grimlock's part that has absolutely no force behind it at all, and in the following panel I needed the dialogue to tell me what Ser-Ket was actually doing. The action doesn't flow from panel to panel logically in any way- no two moves seem to connect to one another. In the end, there is not a single panel of this fight that could not have been made more clear and in the process made the fight- which is practically the entire issue -more exciting.
The single most telling part of the layout problems for this issue are present in a single splash panel where Ser-Ket, in Dragon Mode, has taken hold of Grimlock and risen into the air. We get a medium range shot- again -which cuts off the edges of both figures and doesn't leave enough room to show the distance between the pair and the ground. If you pulled back a bit, you could get the scope of the action, show the other Dinobots on the tower and show the full figures of Ser-Ket and Grimlock in a way that has some impact, maybe even breaking out of the edges of the panel dramatically. The splash in question was more than half a page, and having seen Padilla do much better work in the first two issues, I'm certain that he'd have used the space more effectively if he had time.
The issue ends on pretty much the only note it could, and one more confrontation clearly remains. The next issue of Rage of the Dinobots is the last, and will not only be the conclusion of the story but the last piece of Prime fiction we get prior to the premiere of Beast Hunters. There's a lot of potential here- as well as a modern take on a classic battle in the offing -and it's my hope that Johnson, Scott, and Padilla are saving their best for last.
Voila, coeur a la creme. A heart of cream. This incredibly easy dessert has all the earmarks of a perfect valentine. It is heart-shaped and mixes with fruits and chocolates perfectly. Or in this case, with in-season oranges. A small effort, even days in advance, produces a creamy sweet cheese that is impossibly romantic.
Two serendipitous events spurred this recipe. First, I found the perforated heart-shaped mold stashed in the back of a frightening drawer of kitchen “stuff.” I’m sure my mother purchased this porcelain beauty with Julia Child’s encouragement, as I recall coeur a la creme dinner party desserts in the mid-’60s. If your mother had a similar love affair with Julia, there may be one, or a set of smaller molds, lurking in a cabinet.
If your kitchen collection does not include a heart-shaped mold, a simple sieve will create a perfect dome of cheese. Either presentation is equally appealing, particularly when festooned with sprightly curd and garnished with toasted almonds.
But really, it was the curd that got me going. I’ve been on a curd kick. I’ve juiced every manner of citrus to find the perfect recipe for citrus curd, finally landing on a happy balance of egg, sugar, zest and juice to produce a creamy, stable, tangy spread for scones, an add-in for yogurt, or a topping for angel food cake. Pink grapefruit was leading as my personal favorite until blood oranges came into the market. There was something so familiar and friendly about the scent of the deeply colored flesh and the charming, bright flavor. Blood oranges are sweeter than navels, not quite as sweet as a satsuma, and make a beautiful, pale apricot-colored curd.
Because this dessert is so very simple and requires only a few ingredients, every element must be the very best. Use excellent cream; the type bottled in glass is my choice because it is just that much more delicious. Make your own mascarpone; you’ll never go back to store-bought. It takes only half a lemon, a few minutes at the stove and an overnight in the refrigerator. Find the freshest eggs, an excellent sweet cream butter and glorious citrus, ripe and ready.Where you can create a custom lanyard from our wide selection of styles and materials.
When the curd is served alongside the sweet cheese, the dessert reminds me of a Good Humor Creamsicle and possibly that favorite of 1970s mall dwellers, the Orange Julius. If your sacred childhood memories include either of those items, with coeur a la cremesicle, you are sure to fall in love all over again.
Surrounded, outnumbered, and faced with a brainwashed Swoop, Grimlock challenges Ser-Ket to a one-on-one battle. In exchange for Swoop's restoration, Grimlock wagers the freedom and free will of the rest of the Dinobots, and the battle begins. The leader of the Forged proves herself faster and stronger than Grimlock expected, and he's presented with a choice: lose the fight and surrender his team to Ser-Ket, or risk converting to Beast Mode and potentially cost everyone their lives?
The entire issue here is based around the fight, and in narrative terms it's a good and well-used device: make the hero's only chance to defeat his adversary to do something he doesn't want to do, something that will have consequences he can't predict. As it is,Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh. the consequences here are very light, as what Ser-Ket is goading Grimlock into doing is exactly what he needed to do to fix everything. Including Swoop. In all honesty, the concept of defeating brainwashing through blunt force trauma works a lot better in the Avengers movie: yes it's entirely a contrivance, but Joss Whedon hangs a lampshade on it, halfway makes a joke out of it, and writes himself out of a corner in the process. Here, it just happens, and Swoop is all better. Ta-dah! On the other hand, Grimlock is done very well here in the Simon Furman mold of a vicious but effective commander who feels an intense amount of responsibility for his troops above all else: despite coming on this rescue mission more or less to free Ultra Magnus, absolutely nothing takes priority over Swoop's well-being.
Writing-wise, there's not a lot else to say about this issue. The phrase "All Hail Shockwave!" wears out its welcome quickly, and "All Hail (Name)" on the whole is well on its way to becoming 2013's "One shall stand, one shall fall." Now that Grimlock spends some time speaking in Beast Mode, we get a better idea of how the writers are handling Grimlockian syntax: when in Robot Mode he has the occasional slip, but it's in Beast Mode, as a berserker, where he speaks in the "Me Grimlock" fashion.Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet? It makes a lot of sense for this version of the character, and I like the idea. Other than that, my only comment is that there's some dialogue during the fight that could've been placed more effectively to help the action flow a bit better. And the flow of the fight is a major problem.
I'm thinking the schedule has gotten to Agustin Padilla,Online shopping for luggage tag from a great selection of Clothing. as the art continues to become more fluid than is ideal for angular metallic lifeforms, once again particularly in the case of Grimlock. But far more crucial than off-model characters is the staging of the fight between Grimlock and Ser-Ket. Nearly every panel is at medium range or closer, with very few full figures- and most of those in silhouette -making it extremely difficult to follow the action.Ein innovativer und moderner Werkzeugbau Formenbau. Long full-body shots are perhaps less dynamic, but it's more important to be able to tell what's actually happening in the fight and be able to follow it. There's a shield-bash on Grimlock's part that has absolutely no force behind it at all, and in the following panel I needed the dialogue to tell me what Ser-Ket was actually doing. The action doesn't flow from panel to panel logically in any way- no two moves seem to connect to one another. In the end, there is not a single panel of this fight that could not have been made more clear and in the process made the fight- which is practically the entire issue -more exciting.
The single most telling part of the layout problems for this issue are present in a single splash panel where Ser-Ket, in Dragon Mode, has taken hold of Grimlock and risen into the air. We get a medium range shot- again -which cuts off the edges of both figures and doesn't leave enough room to show the distance between the pair and the ground. If you pulled back a bit, you could get the scope of the action, show the other Dinobots on the tower and show the full figures of Ser-Ket and Grimlock in a way that has some impact, maybe even breaking out of the edges of the panel dramatically. The splash in question was more than half a page, and having seen Padilla do much better work in the first two issues, I'm certain that he'd have used the space more effectively if he had time.
The issue ends on pretty much the only note it could, and one more confrontation clearly remains. The next issue of Rage of the Dinobots is the last, and will not only be the conclusion of the story but the last piece of Prime fiction we get prior to the premiere of Beast Hunters. There's a lot of potential here- as well as a modern take on a classic battle in the offing -and it's my hope that Johnson, Scott, and Padilla are saving their best for last.
Deciphering an Ancient People and Their Language
It’s difficult to recognize and understand the meaning of ancient
texts, words, symbols and the messages they contain. This is not only
due to the very complexity of systems of communication, but mostly
because we often don’t see them. During the holidays, I had the
opportunity to go to the field with with Marlon Escamilla, a Salvadoran
archaeologist and Ph.D. candidate from Vanderbilt University, who’s
thesis focuses on the archaeology of the people who inhabited the
Balsamo Mountain Range in coastal western El Salvador.Online shopping
for luggage tag
from a great selection of Clothing. While Escamilla focuses mostly on
the Pre-Columbian structures that were built on the very ridges of the
jagged mountain tops, the valleys and small canyons may hold clues to
the very nature of the people who once lived in this region.
Ancient writing systems vary from simple ideographs to complex iconography. Finding these symbols requires looking at rocks as canvases used by time travelers. I consider them time travelers, because although the artists have been dead for centuries if not thousands of years, their messages remain on the rock surface. A second level of complexity is understanding the meaning of these fragmented “texts”, and this is limited by the information we have on the culture that created them. In many cases there is a historical break, the loss of a language or the vanishing of a people and their traditions, which limits us from knowing. We are certain, however, that people dedicated time, effort and energy in developing symbols that conveyed their thoughts and experiences on earth, these symbols on the rocks are signposts to their world.
Marlon: Perhaps one of the reasons is related with a defensive necessity, they were looking for places that allowed them to have visual control of the landscape. But at the same time, maybe these ancient groups decided to live on this particular landscape because there was a symbolic implication as well, one that allowed them to practice their rituals on the top of the mountains.
You have probably been able to discover various symbols. Archaeologists use systematic recording methods in order to make sense of what is left of this human record. The site where the images were found is quite large and it took three stitched panels to capture the entire surface. You have also probably noted that the symbols have been painted in Red, White and Pink. This was not our doing, but rather some visitor who thought that painting them would make them more visible, but the fact is that the best way to preserve this fragile record is “not to touch it”. Perhaps you can make a list of all the symbols visible on the rock.Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet? If you do, point to their location and then use a simple tracing/drawing program to copy image. Leave comments below and I will follow up with the names of the contributors in a future blog.
I think yes. Although we cannot read the petroglyphs, at least at this moment, there is a carved figure depicting Tlaloc (principal rain god), one of the main deities of the Nahua-Pipil groups during the Postclassic period (850 – 1524 AD). During this period, the Nahua-Pipil groups were living on the mountain ridges and Tlaloc veneration was a very common ritual, usually practiced at hilltop places and next to rivers or lagoons, and the rock art site is located just next to a narrow river.
We all have different ways of seeing and that’s why we feel that this method of collaboration is a powerful one. We are interested in creating knowledge for all the citizens of the world. This is humanity’s past, this is their experience, this is their art. This is our heritage. It may be possible to discover something new, make sense of things. I believe in the notion that we create our own identity, and so, your contribution will go directly into the reconstruction of history and cultural identity for this region in Central America.
The development of archaeological research in the area will allow understanding about the daily life practices and ancient rituals, how the Nahua-Pipil lived, communicated and understood their world. Also, we can learn about the use and appropriation of space, landscape and other sources. Archaeology is a science that allows us to travel back in time, opening a wide window in order to learn about ancient ways of life and understand the complexity of human behavior.
I see a very positive future. El Salvador is such a rich country in cultural resources located in both contexts, terrestrial and underwater. In the recent past,Ein innovativer und moderner Werkzeugbau Formenbau. archaeology was only practiced by a few foreign archaeologists; nowadays we have an academic program in archaeology at the Universidad Tecnológica (Technological University), and every year the number of students is increasing. At the same time some Salvadoran archaeologists are obtaining higher degrees. Still, there are a lot of things to do, however the archaeology of El Salvador is on the right track,Where you can create a custom lanyard from our wide selection of styles and materials. the idea is to develop more archaeological research involving Salvadorans and foreign archaeologist in order to build a solid interpretation about the past.Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh. El Salvador is an archaeological treasure where you can explore different cultures, different periods and also you can practice underwater archaeology on Pacific Coast and volcanic lagoons.
Ancient writing systems vary from simple ideographs to complex iconography. Finding these symbols requires looking at rocks as canvases used by time travelers. I consider them time travelers, because although the artists have been dead for centuries if not thousands of years, their messages remain on the rock surface. A second level of complexity is understanding the meaning of these fragmented “texts”, and this is limited by the information we have on the culture that created them. In many cases there is a historical break, the loss of a language or the vanishing of a people and their traditions, which limits us from knowing. We are certain, however, that people dedicated time, effort and energy in developing symbols that conveyed their thoughts and experiences on earth, these symbols on the rocks are signposts to their world.
Marlon: Perhaps one of the reasons is related with a defensive necessity, they were looking for places that allowed them to have visual control of the landscape. But at the same time, maybe these ancient groups decided to live on this particular landscape because there was a symbolic implication as well, one that allowed them to practice their rituals on the top of the mountains.
You have probably been able to discover various symbols. Archaeologists use systematic recording methods in order to make sense of what is left of this human record. The site where the images were found is quite large and it took three stitched panels to capture the entire surface. You have also probably noted that the symbols have been painted in Red, White and Pink. This was not our doing, but rather some visitor who thought that painting them would make them more visible, but the fact is that the best way to preserve this fragile record is “not to touch it”. Perhaps you can make a list of all the symbols visible on the rock.Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet? If you do, point to their location and then use a simple tracing/drawing program to copy image. Leave comments below and I will follow up with the names of the contributors in a future blog.
I think yes. Although we cannot read the petroglyphs, at least at this moment, there is a carved figure depicting Tlaloc (principal rain god), one of the main deities of the Nahua-Pipil groups during the Postclassic period (850 – 1524 AD). During this period, the Nahua-Pipil groups were living on the mountain ridges and Tlaloc veneration was a very common ritual, usually practiced at hilltop places and next to rivers or lagoons, and the rock art site is located just next to a narrow river.
We all have different ways of seeing and that’s why we feel that this method of collaboration is a powerful one. We are interested in creating knowledge for all the citizens of the world. This is humanity’s past, this is their experience, this is their art. This is our heritage. It may be possible to discover something new, make sense of things. I believe in the notion that we create our own identity, and so, your contribution will go directly into the reconstruction of history and cultural identity for this region in Central America.
The development of archaeological research in the area will allow understanding about the daily life practices and ancient rituals, how the Nahua-Pipil lived, communicated and understood their world. Also, we can learn about the use and appropriation of space, landscape and other sources. Archaeology is a science that allows us to travel back in time, opening a wide window in order to learn about ancient ways of life and understand the complexity of human behavior.
I see a very positive future. El Salvador is such a rich country in cultural resources located in both contexts, terrestrial and underwater. In the recent past,Ein innovativer und moderner Werkzeugbau Formenbau. archaeology was only practiced by a few foreign archaeologists; nowadays we have an academic program in archaeology at the Universidad Tecnológica (Technological University), and every year the number of students is increasing. At the same time some Salvadoran archaeologists are obtaining higher degrees. Still, there are a lot of things to do, however the archaeology of El Salvador is on the right track,Where you can create a custom lanyard from our wide selection of styles and materials. the idea is to develop more archaeological research involving Salvadorans and foreign archaeologist in order to build a solid interpretation about the past.Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh. El Salvador is an archaeological treasure where you can explore different cultures, different periods and also you can practice underwater archaeology on Pacific Coast and volcanic lagoons.
This Is Why Your Kickstarter Project Is Late
Twine is exactly the type of sensor-stuffed, Wi-Fi-connected gadget
you would expect to take off in Kickstarter's tech section. The device
promises to make your washing machine tweet when the laundry is done and
your basement send an email when it floods. Blogs called it “the
future” within a week after debuting. Nobody was surprised when it
raised more than half-a-million dollars--except for its creators.
When John Kestner and David Carr posted Twine on Kickstarter in November 2011, they had set their fundraising goal at $35,000. Their plan was to produce about 200 units using the same process that created the prototype. But six weeks later, having raised $556,541, they were now committed to shipping almost 4,000 units. The homemade wax mold used to create Twine's prototype was no longer going to cut it, and there wasn't another plan. “We were definitely not thinking of the risk of being too successful,” Kestner tells Fast Company.
In scaling their manufacturing process, tasks the team of two hadn't considered--customizing a $15,000 set of tooling, designing packaging, communicating with backers, and searching for components--added up to an unmanageable number of full-time jobs. Twine’s estimated delivery date of March quickly became unrealistic.
Despite the disproportionate attention that superstar Kickstarter projects like Twine get, they're rare. Most projects raise less than $10,000, and until last year, none had raised more than $1 million. But as Kickstarter's scale rockets, breakaway projects like Twine are becoming not only more visible but more common. Seventeen Kickstarter projects passed the $1 million (or euro equivalent) milestone last year. Six of them, like Twine, were gadget projects, which are arguably left in the most awkward position after breakout success. When a Kickstarter project involving hardware takes off, what started as a dream and a prototype can morph into a mass-manufacturing commitment within a couple of weeks. It’s something of a Cinderella story--but one in which Cinderella must learn how to navigate mass manufacturing overnight. Here is how it worked out for Twine.
Prototyping Twine cost a few hundred dollars. Recently graduated from MIT’s Media Lab, Kestner and Carr “squirreled away” a space to work in the basement of a Harvard dorm. Carr already owned a soldering iron and the electronics equipment for Twine’s circuit board, and he carved a wax mold for Twine's blue outer casing using a milling machine that he had built himself. Silicone and urethane cost about $100 at a local supply shop, and the toaster oven where Twine's first casing baked for six hours cost another $20.
It wasn't until the third day of the Kickstarter project, when Twine's funding passed three times the original goal, that the pair of inventors realized Twine had scaled past this manufacturing process. “If we had done 4,000,” Kestner says, “it would have taken months just to physically manufacture them. That’s not including all of the development time.”
3-D printing, Github-type sites for creating hardware such as Upverter, and makerspaces like Boston-based Artisan Aylum have all made the path to creating a functional prototype or a small batch of gadgets easier. “But the big gotchya,” says Scott Miller, the CEO of a production consultancy called Dragon Innovation that has about 20 Kickstarter projects as clients, “is that is really just the beginning, and there’s a tremendous amount of work to do after that. Because the entrepreneurs have a lot of unknown unknowns, they don’t really know how far along the timeline they are. And typically they will think they’re a lot closer to getting volume on the shelf or e-commerce than they actually are.”
All of Twine’s manufacturing partners and most of its component sources are located in the United States, which successfully avoided the problems with language, time, and cultural barriers that Kickstarter projects such as Pebble and LIFX have dealt with while manufacturing their products in China. Even without overseas manufacturing, however, there were plenty of unanticipated challenges.
The company that manufactured Twine’s outer casing, for instance, didn’t design the tooling it used to shape them. Kestner did. Whether or not his designs ended up being functional, they each would cost $15,000. Twine’s gut, the part that holds its circuit board, is made of hard plastic and was easy to test with a 3-D printer before putting money down for the real deal. But only one 3-D printer would prototype the tooling for Twine’s rubber casing, and the results weren’t nearly as accurate as the gut prototypes. When the actual metal tooling arrived, it was a disaster. The case was too tight,Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh. and it looked terrible. Problems with the manufacturer’s preview software got the team a refund, but the lost cost could have killed the project. Even with the refund, it cost time. All together, it took five months to just design Twine’s outer casing.Ein innovativer und moderner Werkzeugbau Formenbau.
Meanwhile, Twine’s first employee coordinated the delivery of 100 components to the factory that assembled Twine’s circuit boards--a job that was part scavenger hunt and part logistical Olympics. Kestner worked on a design for Twine’s packaging and put together a website for managing Twine backers’ new addresses and international shipping costs.
By the time the casing and circuit boards began arriving in June, the team had moved to Austin. Boxes started piling up in their new workspace. The casing arrived from an injection molding plant in Minnesota. Circuit boards came from a manufacturer in New Hampshire. And the 8-piece boxes that Kestner designed himself came from North Carolina in large flats. Supermechanical, the company behind Twine, had already spent nearly all of its Kickstarter money. It had overshot its estimated shipping date by three months,Online shopping for luggage tag from a great selection of Clothing. and it hadn’t even started putting devices together.
It isn't just first-time hardware entrepreneurs that struggle with the manufacturing demands of surprise scaling via Kickstarter. Pebble Technology's CEO, Eric Migicovsky,Where you can create a custom lanyard from our wide selection of styles and materials. has been working on smartwatches for four years. The company manufactured about 1,500 units of its first product, InPulse, at a Bay Area manufacturer. But the 85,000 Pebble smartwatches the company owes Kickstarter backers after raising $10 million on the site required a shift to an overseas manufacturing process, and--though Migicovsky says this plan B existed in advance--the company missed its September estimated delivery date.
In fact, most breakaway hardware projects have missed their deadlines. iPhone station Elevation Dock shipped about six months late. Virtual reality headset Oculus Rift initially set its expected delivery date for October, but announced recently that it now expects to be delivering developer kits by March 2013. By one estimate, only 25% of Kickstarter’s design and technology products deliver on time.Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet?
Being late is not necessarily a big deal. Kickstarter is, after all, designed to support unfinished projects. A bigger problem is reaching a Kickstarter funding goal only to realize that the funding can’t come close to covering your costs. Twine, for instance, set its goal at $35,000—aiming as low as possible in order to avoid missing it.
“If we had gotten less than we did, but still met our goal, that would have really hurt us; we would have lost money,” Kestner says. “There’s an uncomfortable valley between hand-making stuff and being able to have the capital to invest in tooling and all the stuff that goes into mass manufacturing that you just can’t get good prices on without mass production. So what do you do? You can’t afford to hand-make 1,000 of something.”
When John Kestner and David Carr posted Twine on Kickstarter in November 2011, they had set their fundraising goal at $35,000. Their plan was to produce about 200 units using the same process that created the prototype. But six weeks later, having raised $556,541, they were now committed to shipping almost 4,000 units. The homemade wax mold used to create Twine's prototype was no longer going to cut it, and there wasn't another plan. “We were definitely not thinking of the risk of being too successful,” Kestner tells Fast Company.
In scaling their manufacturing process, tasks the team of two hadn't considered--customizing a $15,000 set of tooling, designing packaging, communicating with backers, and searching for components--added up to an unmanageable number of full-time jobs. Twine’s estimated delivery date of March quickly became unrealistic.
Despite the disproportionate attention that superstar Kickstarter projects like Twine get, they're rare. Most projects raise less than $10,000, and until last year, none had raised more than $1 million. But as Kickstarter's scale rockets, breakaway projects like Twine are becoming not only more visible but more common. Seventeen Kickstarter projects passed the $1 million (or euro equivalent) milestone last year. Six of them, like Twine, were gadget projects, which are arguably left in the most awkward position after breakout success. When a Kickstarter project involving hardware takes off, what started as a dream and a prototype can morph into a mass-manufacturing commitment within a couple of weeks. It’s something of a Cinderella story--but one in which Cinderella must learn how to navigate mass manufacturing overnight. Here is how it worked out for Twine.
Prototyping Twine cost a few hundred dollars. Recently graduated from MIT’s Media Lab, Kestner and Carr “squirreled away” a space to work in the basement of a Harvard dorm. Carr already owned a soldering iron and the electronics equipment for Twine’s circuit board, and he carved a wax mold for Twine's blue outer casing using a milling machine that he had built himself. Silicone and urethane cost about $100 at a local supply shop, and the toaster oven where Twine's first casing baked for six hours cost another $20.
It wasn't until the third day of the Kickstarter project, when Twine's funding passed three times the original goal, that the pair of inventors realized Twine had scaled past this manufacturing process. “If we had done 4,000,” Kestner says, “it would have taken months just to physically manufacture them. That’s not including all of the development time.”
3-D printing, Github-type sites for creating hardware such as Upverter, and makerspaces like Boston-based Artisan Aylum have all made the path to creating a functional prototype or a small batch of gadgets easier. “But the big gotchya,” says Scott Miller, the CEO of a production consultancy called Dragon Innovation that has about 20 Kickstarter projects as clients, “is that is really just the beginning, and there’s a tremendous amount of work to do after that. Because the entrepreneurs have a lot of unknown unknowns, they don’t really know how far along the timeline they are. And typically they will think they’re a lot closer to getting volume on the shelf or e-commerce than they actually are.”
All of Twine’s manufacturing partners and most of its component sources are located in the United States, which successfully avoided the problems with language, time, and cultural barriers that Kickstarter projects such as Pebble and LIFX have dealt with while manufacturing their products in China. Even without overseas manufacturing, however, there were plenty of unanticipated challenges.
The company that manufactured Twine’s outer casing, for instance, didn’t design the tooling it used to shape them. Kestner did. Whether or not his designs ended up being functional, they each would cost $15,000. Twine’s gut, the part that holds its circuit board, is made of hard plastic and was easy to test with a 3-D printer before putting money down for the real deal. But only one 3-D printer would prototype the tooling for Twine’s rubber casing, and the results weren’t nearly as accurate as the gut prototypes. When the actual metal tooling arrived, it was a disaster. The case was too tight,Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh. and it looked terrible. Problems with the manufacturer’s preview software got the team a refund, but the lost cost could have killed the project. Even with the refund, it cost time. All together, it took five months to just design Twine’s outer casing.Ein innovativer und moderner Werkzeugbau Formenbau.
Meanwhile, Twine’s first employee coordinated the delivery of 100 components to the factory that assembled Twine’s circuit boards--a job that was part scavenger hunt and part logistical Olympics. Kestner worked on a design for Twine’s packaging and put together a website for managing Twine backers’ new addresses and international shipping costs.
By the time the casing and circuit boards began arriving in June, the team had moved to Austin. Boxes started piling up in their new workspace. The casing arrived from an injection molding plant in Minnesota. Circuit boards came from a manufacturer in New Hampshire. And the 8-piece boxes that Kestner designed himself came from North Carolina in large flats. Supermechanical, the company behind Twine, had already spent nearly all of its Kickstarter money. It had overshot its estimated shipping date by three months,Online shopping for luggage tag from a great selection of Clothing. and it hadn’t even started putting devices together.
It isn't just first-time hardware entrepreneurs that struggle with the manufacturing demands of surprise scaling via Kickstarter. Pebble Technology's CEO, Eric Migicovsky,Where you can create a custom lanyard from our wide selection of styles and materials. has been working on smartwatches for four years. The company manufactured about 1,500 units of its first product, InPulse, at a Bay Area manufacturer. But the 85,000 Pebble smartwatches the company owes Kickstarter backers after raising $10 million on the site required a shift to an overseas manufacturing process, and--though Migicovsky says this plan B existed in advance--the company missed its September estimated delivery date.
In fact, most breakaway hardware projects have missed their deadlines. iPhone station Elevation Dock shipped about six months late. Virtual reality headset Oculus Rift initially set its expected delivery date for October, but announced recently that it now expects to be delivering developer kits by March 2013. By one estimate, only 25% of Kickstarter’s design and technology products deliver on time.Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet?
Being late is not necessarily a big deal. Kickstarter is, after all, designed to support unfinished projects. A bigger problem is reaching a Kickstarter funding goal only to realize that the funding can’t come close to covering your costs. Twine, for instance, set its goal at $35,000—aiming as low as possible in order to avoid missing it.
“If we had gotten less than we did, but still met our goal, that would have really hurt us; we would have lost money,” Kestner says. “There’s an uncomfortable valley between hand-making stuff and being able to have the capital to invest in tooling and all the stuff that goes into mass manufacturing that you just can’t get good prices on without mass production. So what do you do? You can’t afford to hand-make 1,000 of something.”
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' recap
You know how last week "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" didn't
have even a smidgen of fighting, and it was kind of like watching Wonder
Woman without her magic lasso or John Travolta without his hairpiece?
Well, never fear. Everything's back to normal, which means the women are
screaming hysterically at one another, not everyone's making sense, and
a very expensive dinner is completely ruined in the process. Yay.
We pick up where we left off last week, which was with Brandi leading the other housewives in a pole dancing class for Night School 4 Girls. Of course, Adrienne isn't there and Taylor is boring unlucky women who've already been abused,We've got a plastic card to suit you. which leaves Marisa, Brandi's friend Jennifer and Camille to fill in the gaps.
First on the pole? Kyle and Camille! Kyle is torn. This could be really fun, or she'll make a big ass of herself. I'm going to go with both, as Kyle seems to have a great deal of fun being the center of attention, and most of the time she looks like an ass when she is. Camille, of course, was a Club MTV dancer, so even though she worries she'll look ridiculous, she doesn't.Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet?
Next, Yolanda and Jennifer get their shot at the poles. Can I just say that this may be an excellent workout, but beginners tend to look like spastic spider monkeys? Anyway, Yolanda wants everyone to know she has three kids.Where you can create a custom lanyard from our wide selection of styles and materials. She can't dance dirty, SHE HAS THREE KIDS! She doesn't want to hurt her pee-pee, because SHE HAS THREE KIDS! I'm guessing she's waiting for someone to look at her, slap their face "Home Alone" style, and marvel that such a perfect physical specimen has actually HAD THREE KIDS!
Finally, Yolanda stops worrying about her pee-pee and Marisa and Jennifer get a turn. Jennifer, who's already had a run at reality TV on "Sober House," is thrilled. No one's threatening to beat her up to go do heroin in a back alley, so this is awesome! Marisa, however, is appalled. After she has someone clean her pole (which actually isn't a bad idea), she pouts. She doesn't do sexy, she doesn't do poles, she does YOGA, dammit, while avoiding her husband and, I guess, his pee-pee. Poor Marisa. Actually, poor Marisa's husband.
Back in Los Angeles, Adrienne gets the rundown on her new collection of ugly handbags. They have her name plastered all over them! But it's cool, because the letters are mixed up so you don't even mind that you're walking around with a bag that says ADRIENNE MALOOF in block print on the side, which will forever make me think of hooves for reasons that have nothing to do with Lisa's comments. It just doesn't have much of a ring to it, unless you're writing a song about roofs and spoofs and being aloof. Anyway, Adrienne hopes Brandi is having fun pretending to be a stripper in Vegas. SHE has a business to run, sniff, sniff!
In Vegas, the girls pile into one of those monster limos and Kyle takes a call from her sister Kim. She wants to talk to her, but it doesn't have to be privately. You know, she'd be fine if Kyle was in the middle of an MTA station with her on speaker, because some of those complete strangers (some of whom might be homeless and wearing black plastic bags and tin foil hats) might have some valuable input into her personal life. God knows Kyle won't! Thus, she happily announces to Kyle and everyone that she's thinking about getting her nose done.
Kyle brightens up, thinking Kim wants some advice. No, Kim is thinking about getting her nose done later that day, as in, she's done all the paperwork, checked in with the doctor, and is about to go put on a little gown that ties in the back. Kyle is hurt. Kim makes some strange mewling noises about wanting to do it but being scared to do it and Kyle (along with everyone else) just tells her to have a great time getting her nose broken and they'll pray for her. I mean, come on, this is plastic surgery in Beverly Hills! That's like getting your nails done in Omaha!
Yolanda can't understand why Kyle's brushing this off so easily. But then, Yolanda doesn't seem to know what the hell is going on with the other girls, not that that's stopping her from butting in with her opinions. I can't decide whether Yolanda is perfect for this show or is just completely out of her depth.
Anyway, despite the mewling, Kim goes to get her nose fixed, as we expected (like she cared what Kyle had to say! Pfft!). She's always felt she should be grateful for what God gave her… but she suspects God would be totally okay with this particular tweak, as she thinks it will make her happier. I think Kim may want to go to church more often, whatever church that may be.
For the record? I think Kim had a perfectly nice nose. Worse, I can't really tell the difference between the before nose and the after nose, which seems like a lot of suffering for little benefit. The only good thing is that the doctor is fixing her deviated septum, so it wasn't a total waste of time.
Because we must work Adrienne into this part of the show somehow, we watch as she sits at Paul's desk and does her damn nails for no other reason than to piss him off, it seems. Seriously, Adrienne does her own nails? I find this so hard to believe. Anyway, his patient care coordinator wants to talk about an upcoming surgery, but he has no time! He's having laser hair removal on his back in a few minutes; let him focus! I am thinking this is the most inappropriate use of office time ever as he waddles into a spare room to get his back hair zapped off. Also disturbing? Adrienne's little grin every time he yelps in pain. Yeah, I'm starting to see why they got divorced.
In Las Vegas, the girls gather for a quiet, intimate dinner in a private room so no one will hear the shrieking and cursing. Of course, things don't start out so poorly. It's just a fun gals' night out! Yolanda is drinking tequila, which is always a good capper for a master cleanse, and Camille talks about doing soft porn back before she had a sugar daddy.
Oh,Online shopping for luggage tag from a great selection of Clothing. oh they haven't. Never mind. Camille has to say that she feels bad about Adrienne. Lisa jumps in with a cryptic comment about how you should alway remember that people aren't interested in what you have to say; they're interested in what you have to hide. Huh?
Brandi has a story, but she can't tell it! She makes Jennifer tell it, as she was there. Jennifer heard Brandi talking to Camille on speaker phone, and somehow we get this long, twisted story about how Adrienne kept calling Brandi prior to the reunion show, and Camille had told Brandi that everyone knew the plan was to attack Lisa.
Camille doesn't remember that, though. "She was upset about the hoof," she says, then starts getting upset. "I will not be thrown under the bus! I can handle you, but I will not stand for it!" She turns to Brandi, whose eyes are becoming anime big in confusion at what's happening, and snaps, "Stop lying!" before storming out.
Kyle begs Camille to come back. Camille reluctantly agrees, and seemingly takes a few deep breaks before sitting down. She concedes that perception is always problematic. Everyone at the table could hear the same thing, and yet all come away with different understandings. Really? I just thought all these women were certifiable. But she does understand that Adrienne was very upset that Lisa's daughter didn't have her bachelorette party at the Palms.
Brandi then volunteers the factoid that Adrienne only owns two percent of the Palms, which everyone reacts to as if Brandi said that Adrienne is really a man or Paul likes to have sex with little boys. I don't get it. Two percent of a Vega strip casino is probably still worth a considerable sum of money, right? I mean, the woman and her family own a sports team; we don't think of the Maloofs as Vegas titans. No one is suggesting that Adrienne is eating out of dumpsters. Sigh.
Still, Kyle is offended! Even though she doesn't own ANY of the Palms! She isn't going to call Brandi on her stuff, but she tells Brandi that she knows she does lie, because she had her nose done and never tells the truth about it. Okay, hold up. In what alternate universe are we operating in? Kyle is deeply offended that Brandi made a comment about someone who isn't even there,Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh. then says something of an even MORE private nature about Brandi, just to let her know she'd never do something like that? And I was thinking Kim was the nut job in that family!
Yolanda keeps reminding everyone that Adrienne chose not to be here, so who cares? WHO CARES? Yolanda is like a shipman on the Titanic, yelling for the captain to make a sharp turn while everyone laughs and digs into their salmon.
Then, Camille blurts out that Lisa doesn't own Sur. Lisa slow-mo blinks in that "maybe if I close my eyes really tightly I will wake up from this ridiculous nightmare I'm having," then informs Camille, who is owning less and less of everything she owned prior to divorcing Kelsey Grammar, that she owns 51 percent of Sur. So, she owns Sur. To her credit, Lisa does not tell Camille that she would understand this if she knew anything about business, had ever owned a business, and was not simply in the business of revealing really gross factoids about Kelsey Grammer on basic cable television.
We pick up where we left off last week, which was with Brandi leading the other housewives in a pole dancing class for Night School 4 Girls. Of course, Adrienne isn't there and Taylor is boring unlucky women who've already been abused,We've got a plastic card to suit you. which leaves Marisa, Brandi's friend Jennifer and Camille to fill in the gaps.
First on the pole? Kyle and Camille! Kyle is torn. This could be really fun, or she'll make a big ass of herself. I'm going to go with both, as Kyle seems to have a great deal of fun being the center of attention, and most of the time she looks like an ass when she is. Camille, of course, was a Club MTV dancer, so even though she worries she'll look ridiculous, she doesn't.Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet?
Next, Yolanda and Jennifer get their shot at the poles. Can I just say that this may be an excellent workout, but beginners tend to look like spastic spider monkeys? Anyway, Yolanda wants everyone to know she has three kids.Where you can create a custom lanyard from our wide selection of styles and materials. She can't dance dirty, SHE HAS THREE KIDS! She doesn't want to hurt her pee-pee, because SHE HAS THREE KIDS! I'm guessing she's waiting for someone to look at her, slap their face "Home Alone" style, and marvel that such a perfect physical specimen has actually HAD THREE KIDS!
Finally, Yolanda stops worrying about her pee-pee and Marisa and Jennifer get a turn. Jennifer, who's already had a run at reality TV on "Sober House," is thrilled. No one's threatening to beat her up to go do heroin in a back alley, so this is awesome! Marisa, however, is appalled. After she has someone clean her pole (which actually isn't a bad idea), she pouts. She doesn't do sexy, she doesn't do poles, she does YOGA, dammit, while avoiding her husband and, I guess, his pee-pee. Poor Marisa. Actually, poor Marisa's husband.
Back in Los Angeles, Adrienne gets the rundown on her new collection of ugly handbags. They have her name plastered all over them! But it's cool, because the letters are mixed up so you don't even mind that you're walking around with a bag that says ADRIENNE MALOOF in block print on the side, which will forever make me think of hooves for reasons that have nothing to do with Lisa's comments. It just doesn't have much of a ring to it, unless you're writing a song about roofs and spoofs and being aloof. Anyway, Adrienne hopes Brandi is having fun pretending to be a stripper in Vegas. SHE has a business to run, sniff, sniff!
In Vegas, the girls pile into one of those monster limos and Kyle takes a call from her sister Kim. She wants to talk to her, but it doesn't have to be privately. You know, she'd be fine if Kyle was in the middle of an MTA station with her on speaker, because some of those complete strangers (some of whom might be homeless and wearing black plastic bags and tin foil hats) might have some valuable input into her personal life. God knows Kyle won't! Thus, she happily announces to Kyle and everyone that she's thinking about getting her nose done.
Kyle brightens up, thinking Kim wants some advice. No, Kim is thinking about getting her nose done later that day, as in, she's done all the paperwork, checked in with the doctor, and is about to go put on a little gown that ties in the back. Kyle is hurt. Kim makes some strange mewling noises about wanting to do it but being scared to do it and Kyle (along with everyone else) just tells her to have a great time getting her nose broken and they'll pray for her. I mean, come on, this is plastic surgery in Beverly Hills! That's like getting your nails done in Omaha!
Yolanda can't understand why Kyle's brushing this off so easily. But then, Yolanda doesn't seem to know what the hell is going on with the other girls, not that that's stopping her from butting in with her opinions. I can't decide whether Yolanda is perfect for this show or is just completely out of her depth.
Anyway, despite the mewling, Kim goes to get her nose fixed, as we expected (like she cared what Kyle had to say! Pfft!). She's always felt she should be grateful for what God gave her… but she suspects God would be totally okay with this particular tweak, as she thinks it will make her happier. I think Kim may want to go to church more often, whatever church that may be.
For the record? I think Kim had a perfectly nice nose. Worse, I can't really tell the difference between the before nose and the after nose, which seems like a lot of suffering for little benefit. The only good thing is that the doctor is fixing her deviated septum, so it wasn't a total waste of time.
Because we must work Adrienne into this part of the show somehow, we watch as she sits at Paul's desk and does her damn nails for no other reason than to piss him off, it seems. Seriously, Adrienne does her own nails? I find this so hard to believe. Anyway, his patient care coordinator wants to talk about an upcoming surgery, but he has no time! He's having laser hair removal on his back in a few minutes; let him focus! I am thinking this is the most inappropriate use of office time ever as he waddles into a spare room to get his back hair zapped off. Also disturbing? Adrienne's little grin every time he yelps in pain. Yeah, I'm starting to see why they got divorced.
In Las Vegas, the girls gather for a quiet, intimate dinner in a private room so no one will hear the shrieking and cursing. Of course, things don't start out so poorly. It's just a fun gals' night out! Yolanda is drinking tequila, which is always a good capper for a master cleanse, and Camille talks about doing soft porn back before she had a sugar daddy.
Oh,Online shopping for luggage tag from a great selection of Clothing. oh they haven't. Never mind. Camille has to say that she feels bad about Adrienne. Lisa jumps in with a cryptic comment about how you should alway remember that people aren't interested in what you have to say; they're interested in what you have to hide. Huh?
Brandi has a story, but she can't tell it! She makes Jennifer tell it, as she was there. Jennifer heard Brandi talking to Camille on speaker phone, and somehow we get this long, twisted story about how Adrienne kept calling Brandi prior to the reunion show, and Camille had told Brandi that everyone knew the plan was to attack Lisa.
Camille doesn't remember that, though. "She was upset about the hoof," she says, then starts getting upset. "I will not be thrown under the bus! I can handle you, but I will not stand for it!" She turns to Brandi, whose eyes are becoming anime big in confusion at what's happening, and snaps, "Stop lying!" before storming out.
Kyle begs Camille to come back. Camille reluctantly agrees, and seemingly takes a few deep breaks before sitting down. She concedes that perception is always problematic. Everyone at the table could hear the same thing, and yet all come away with different understandings. Really? I just thought all these women were certifiable. But she does understand that Adrienne was very upset that Lisa's daughter didn't have her bachelorette party at the Palms.
Brandi then volunteers the factoid that Adrienne only owns two percent of the Palms, which everyone reacts to as if Brandi said that Adrienne is really a man or Paul likes to have sex with little boys. I don't get it. Two percent of a Vega strip casino is probably still worth a considerable sum of money, right? I mean, the woman and her family own a sports team; we don't think of the Maloofs as Vegas titans. No one is suggesting that Adrienne is eating out of dumpsters. Sigh.
Still, Kyle is offended! Even though she doesn't own ANY of the Palms! She isn't going to call Brandi on her stuff, but she tells Brandi that she knows she does lie, because she had her nose done and never tells the truth about it. Okay, hold up. In what alternate universe are we operating in? Kyle is deeply offended that Brandi made a comment about someone who isn't even there,Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh. then says something of an even MORE private nature about Brandi, just to let her know she'd never do something like that? And I was thinking Kim was the nut job in that family!
Yolanda keeps reminding everyone that Adrienne chose not to be here, so who cares? WHO CARES? Yolanda is like a shipman on the Titanic, yelling for the captain to make a sharp turn while everyone laughs and digs into their salmon.
Then, Camille blurts out that Lisa doesn't own Sur. Lisa slow-mo blinks in that "maybe if I close my eyes really tightly I will wake up from this ridiculous nightmare I'm having," then informs Camille, who is owning less and less of everything she owned prior to divorcing Kelsey Grammar, that she owns 51 percent of Sur. So, she owns Sur. To her credit, Lisa does not tell Camille that she would understand this if she knew anything about business, had ever owned a business, and was not simply in the business of revealing really gross factoids about Kelsey Grammer on basic cable television.
2013年2月4日 星期一
Is it too late to make money in REITS?
Most Canadians don’t need to be told the country’s real estate market has been a big money-maker over the past several years.
But of course there’s more to real estate than houses and condos. Retail, office and rental properties are also a huge part of the real estate scene – and these sectors have also been enjoying nearly a decade of strong growth. Not many individuals manage to participate directly in the sector – but investors have been able to tap into its growth through REITs – real estate investment trusts.
These investment vehicles own commercial real estate properties and are required by law to pay out a fixed portion of their taxable income to shareholders. They trade like individual stocks and typically pay a yield of 5 to10 per cent to their investors.
For the past few years REITs have been one of the best-performing investment classes in Canada. The number of firms on the S&P TSX REIT Index has more than tripled in the past four years – and that doesn’t take into account the income payouts the REIT holders have enjoyed.
However there have been signs the sector has lost momentum. The REIT index peaked last summer and has yet to return to that level.
So the question is: Is it too late to make money in REITS? The consensus seems to be that returns will be reduced – but the sector is still attractive.
“I think Canadian investors must brace themselves for lower returns in this asset class for the next two years,” says Ben Cheng,We offer a wide variety of high-quality standard ultrasonic sensor and controllers. president and chief investment officer at Aston Hill Financial in Toronto.
The firm manages portfolios for institutional investors, provides advisory services and offers a suite of mutual funds. Mr. Cheng is also lead manager of two income funds for IA Clarington.
While he sees returns dipping, Mr. Cheng remains a fan of the sector.
“Real estate still represents an attractive class with real diversification benefits. However it is subject to downturns just like any other asset class – but we do not see that happening in 2013.The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag.”
Paul Gardner, partner and portfolio manager at Avenue Investment Management, is a little more pessimistic.
“You won’t see much price appreciation from this sector,” he says. While he expects REIT units to continue trading around their current levels, he still thinks the sector has solid fundamentals.
“[Building] vacancies are at an all-time low, there’s been very little overbuilding of commercial and office properties, pension plans are aggressively buying in the sector. And even if the trading price of the REIT units doesn’t go up, the yield being paid is still competitive.”
Even the manager of the country’s largest REIT mutual fund acknowledges the days of runaway gains in the sector are over for now. But that doesn’t mean Dennis Mitchell thinks the sector should be avoided.
“For any investor looking for tax-efficient income, REITS make sense. Even now,” says Mr. Mitchell, chief investment officer at Sentry Investments, as well as the lead manager of the Sentry REIT fund.Like most of you, I'd seen the broken buy mosaic decorated pieces. The $1.4-billion fund is larger than all of its competitors combined, and raised its distributions 27 times last year.
“If interest rates rise you’ll see the sector correct. Market multiples for REITs will come down. But I would see that as a buying opportunity for most investors – especially because price drops would mean higher yields,” Mr. Mitchell says.
He says if economic growth retreated into recession it would be a “big concern” for the sector, since demand for commercial real estate would drop, and values would decline as well. But he feels it would have to be a “very deep, very long” recession to really upset REITs on an operational level, since their rental terms and rates are typically locked in for a period of several years, and tenants have no choice but to pay their rents before other expenses.
On the other hand there are also factors that may give the sector a boost, including merger and acquisition activity, such as the ongoing takeover battle for Primaris REIT. However, Mr. Mitchell doesn’t see mergers spurring a meaningful jump in the trading prices of REITs.Which Air purifier is right for you?
"We wanted to build a real-time spontaneous app where any night of the week you could go out and eat, because you need to eat anyway, and also have a social outing," said Eddy Lu, CEO and co-founder of Grubwithus Inc, an online community for group meals based in Los Angeles, California.
Users can browse group dinners through the app, which works with restaurants to fill open seats. Each night there are three prix-fixe group dinners available. Bookings for the meals, which average about $20, are made through the app. The meal includes a shared appetizer, entree and a drink.
GrubTonight is available in Los Angeles but the company's other app, Grubwithus, is worldwide and enables users to attend group dinners that are planned several days in advance and revolve around themes.
Users are also able to organize their own public or private group dinners using the app.
"When you want to create an event you just select one of our partner restaurants and the menu is already taken care of," said Lu.
"People need efficient ways just to meet people. It's a good social way to come together and you need to eat three times a day," he said, adding that most users are between 20 and 35 years old.
The company has organized meals in more than 50 cities worldwide but the app has been most popular in San Francisco, New York and Chicago.
The motivation for Grubwithus, according to Lu,We offer advanced technology products and services for parking guidance control. came from the difficulty he faced in meeting new friends and people to do things with in Chicago.
"When you go to dinner parties and meet friends of friends that's when you really connect with people because you're sitting beside them for an hour," he said. "We thought that dinner was just such a good way to connect with people and build meaningful friendships."
But of course there’s more to real estate than houses and condos. Retail, office and rental properties are also a huge part of the real estate scene – and these sectors have also been enjoying nearly a decade of strong growth. Not many individuals manage to participate directly in the sector – but investors have been able to tap into its growth through REITs – real estate investment trusts.
These investment vehicles own commercial real estate properties and are required by law to pay out a fixed portion of their taxable income to shareholders. They trade like individual stocks and typically pay a yield of 5 to10 per cent to their investors.
For the past few years REITs have been one of the best-performing investment classes in Canada. The number of firms on the S&P TSX REIT Index has more than tripled in the past four years – and that doesn’t take into account the income payouts the REIT holders have enjoyed.
However there have been signs the sector has lost momentum. The REIT index peaked last summer and has yet to return to that level.
So the question is: Is it too late to make money in REITS? The consensus seems to be that returns will be reduced – but the sector is still attractive.
“I think Canadian investors must brace themselves for lower returns in this asset class for the next two years,” says Ben Cheng,We offer a wide variety of high-quality standard ultrasonic sensor and controllers. president and chief investment officer at Aston Hill Financial in Toronto.
The firm manages portfolios for institutional investors, provides advisory services and offers a suite of mutual funds. Mr. Cheng is also lead manager of two income funds for IA Clarington.
While he sees returns dipping, Mr. Cheng remains a fan of the sector.
“Real estate still represents an attractive class with real diversification benefits. However it is subject to downturns just like any other asset class – but we do not see that happening in 2013.The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag.”
Paul Gardner, partner and portfolio manager at Avenue Investment Management, is a little more pessimistic.
“You won’t see much price appreciation from this sector,” he says. While he expects REIT units to continue trading around their current levels, he still thinks the sector has solid fundamentals.
“[Building] vacancies are at an all-time low, there’s been very little overbuilding of commercial and office properties, pension plans are aggressively buying in the sector. And even if the trading price of the REIT units doesn’t go up, the yield being paid is still competitive.”
Even the manager of the country’s largest REIT mutual fund acknowledges the days of runaway gains in the sector are over for now. But that doesn’t mean Dennis Mitchell thinks the sector should be avoided.
“For any investor looking for tax-efficient income, REITS make sense. Even now,” says Mr. Mitchell, chief investment officer at Sentry Investments, as well as the lead manager of the Sentry REIT fund.Like most of you, I'd seen the broken buy mosaic decorated pieces. The $1.4-billion fund is larger than all of its competitors combined, and raised its distributions 27 times last year.
“If interest rates rise you’ll see the sector correct. Market multiples for REITs will come down. But I would see that as a buying opportunity for most investors – especially because price drops would mean higher yields,” Mr. Mitchell says.
He says if economic growth retreated into recession it would be a “big concern” for the sector, since demand for commercial real estate would drop, and values would decline as well. But he feels it would have to be a “very deep, very long” recession to really upset REITs on an operational level, since their rental terms and rates are typically locked in for a period of several years, and tenants have no choice but to pay their rents before other expenses.
On the other hand there are also factors that may give the sector a boost, including merger and acquisition activity, such as the ongoing takeover battle for Primaris REIT. However, Mr. Mitchell doesn’t see mergers spurring a meaningful jump in the trading prices of REITs.Which Air purifier is right for you?
"We wanted to build a real-time spontaneous app where any night of the week you could go out and eat, because you need to eat anyway, and also have a social outing," said Eddy Lu, CEO and co-founder of Grubwithus Inc, an online community for group meals based in Los Angeles, California.
Users can browse group dinners through the app, which works with restaurants to fill open seats. Each night there are three prix-fixe group dinners available. Bookings for the meals, which average about $20, are made through the app. The meal includes a shared appetizer, entree and a drink.
GrubTonight is available in Los Angeles but the company's other app, Grubwithus, is worldwide and enables users to attend group dinners that are planned several days in advance and revolve around themes.
Users are also able to organize their own public or private group dinners using the app.
"When you want to create an event you just select one of our partner restaurants and the menu is already taken care of," said Lu.
"People need efficient ways just to meet people. It's a good social way to come together and you need to eat three times a day," he said, adding that most users are between 20 and 35 years old.
The company has organized meals in more than 50 cities worldwide but the app has been most popular in San Francisco, New York and Chicago.
The motivation for Grubwithus, according to Lu,We offer advanced technology products and services for parking guidance control. came from the difficulty he faced in meeting new friends and people to do things with in Chicago.
"When you go to dinner parties and meet friends of friends that's when you really connect with people because you're sitting beside them for an hour," he said. "We thought that dinner was just such a good way to connect with people and build meaningful friendships."
The Cataclysm review
Berserk: The Cataclysm is a Facebook-based card-battle game from
Bytex. It’s been showing activity since October of 2011, but claims to
still be in open beta, and has also been receiving promotion through a
front-page module on Facebook’s App Center.
Card-battle games are immensely popular on mobile platforms right now, with titles like Rage of Bahamut making a lot of money for their creators despite, in many cases, rather shallow gameplay that is somewhat limited in true interactivity. The urge to “collect” is a powerful one, though, even when the collectible items are nothing more than pixels on a screen, and it is for this reason that these games have proven so popular and profitable. It is somewhat surprising, then, that there have been relatively few games like this on Facebook compared to iOS and Android.
Berserk: The Cataclysm is a collectible card game through and through, but it does not follow the text-based RPG style of Rage of Bahamut and its ilk. Instead,Which Air purifier is right for you? rather than focusing on “questing” that is ultimately irrelevant to the cards (save for the random chance to collect new ones), it focuses entirely on one-on-one battles between the player’s “squads” of cards and either computer- or human-controlled opponents.
The player starts with a single squad of cards and is introduced to the game’s basic concepts through a series of tutorial quests. Once this is over, the game continues to guide the player with quests, but they are free to ignore them as they see fit.
Card battles in the game unfolds as a face-off between two players. Each turn, players draw cards into their hand, and a countdown on any cards already in their hand ticks down to show how long before they will be played into the first available slot on the battlefield. Cards already on the battlefield will attack a card opposite them if there is one present, and deal direct damage to the opponent’s “Leadership Points” if there is not. The first player to run out of either Leadership Points or cards loses, and to the victor go the spoils — usually soft currency and occasionally additional cards.We offer a wide variety of high-quality standard ultrasonic sensor and controllers.
The battle mechanics are certainly a lot more interesting than the rather dull “numbers games” of most mobile card-battle titles, but the trouble is, as so often happens with this type of game, control is completely wrested away from the player, leaving them as a passive observer in the battle. This significantly diminishes the amount of strategy in the game, and most players used to physical collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering et al would probably have preferred the option to tactically play the cards from their hand as they saw fit rather than simply waiting for arbitrary timers to expire.Like most of you, I'd seen the broken buy mosaic decorated pieces.The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. The fully-automated nature of battles certainly helps the game be accessible to all — particularly those who are not particularly tactically-minded — but this is somewhat incongruous with the game’s target audience. Collectible card games are by their definition a niche interest rather than something which is universally appealing, and their players are, more often than not, willing to learn some complex rules to allow them to show off their custom deck’s full potential.
As with most card-battle games, cards which are not useful in battle may be used to enhance or evolve the player’s decks. Experience points collected in various elements can also be used to “research” new cards suitable for use in various squads.
The game features a few interesting multiplayer features, though the implementation is somewhat questionable at times. At its most basic level, players can challenge their friends or random opponents to asynchronous battles at any time — in this case, the opponent’s defending deck is chosen from any that they have previously set up. However, once the player reaches experience level 4, they gain access to “Portals,” which allow them to attack enemy islands. Each player gradually expands their island through normal play, and the hex-based territories they control allow them a particular amount of income per day. Attacking a player’s territory through a portal allows land to be captured and added to one’s own, but at present all the portals seem to open up either onto islands which have apparently already been conquered by other players, or those on which the game refuses to allow you to attack, instead saying that “you can conquer the lands from the outer ring only.” This message appears even when attempting to attack a territory on the outer ring of an opponent’s territory, and thus appears to prevent any attacks whatsoever — whether this is a bug or a game mechanic which is not clearly explained isn’t entirely obvious.
The game monetizes through sales of its hard currency, which can be used for a variety of purposes — most commonly,We offer advanced technology products and services for parking guidance control. the purchase of card booster packs. More expensive booster packs — many of which can also be purchased with soft currency — have a higher chance of carrying rare or promotional cards, which tend to be more powerful. As such, those who spend more money on the game will tend to be in a significantly superior position — but the same is true of physical collectible card games, too.
Berserk: The Cataclysm isn’t a bad game, but it feels unfinished and like it’s not entirely sure who its target audience is. It’s completely lacking in sound, for example, despite the presence of a “sound on/off” button on the interface, and the HTML-based interface looks sloppy and clumsy when it has to reload images piece by piece every time the player changes menu screens. Gameplay-wise, the fully-automated battles will probably be a turn-off to the most dedicated collectible card game players, though this does help with accessibility. As previously noted, though, the sort of person who will probably gravitate to this type of game is probably already familiar with how these games work and thus would probably prefer to take control of their forces. A banner ad that occasionally appears at the top of the screen promises that in a completely different Berserk-branded game players are able to “take full control of the battle,” but that is unfortunately not the case here.
Card-battle games are immensely popular on mobile platforms right now, with titles like Rage of Bahamut making a lot of money for their creators despite, in many cases, rather shallow gameplay that is somewhat limited in true interactivity. The urge to “collect” is a powerful one, though, even when the collectible items are nothing more than pixels on a screen, and it is for this reason that these games have proven so popular and profitable. It is somewhat surprising, then, that there have been relatively few games like this on Facebook compared to iOS and Android.
Berserk: The Cataclysm is a collectible card game through and through, but it does not follow the text-based RPG style of Rage of Bahamut and its ilk. Instead,Which Air purifier is right for you? rather than focusing on “questing” that is ultimately irrelevant to the cards (save for the random chance to collect new ones), it focuses entirely on one-on-one battles between the player’s “squads” of cards and either computer- or human-controlled opponents.
The player starts with a single squad of cards and is introduced to the game’s basic concepts through a series of tutorial quests. Once this is over, the game continues to guide the player with quests, but they are free to ignore them as they see fit.
Card battles in the game unfolds as a face-off between two players. Each turn, players draw cards into their hand, and a countdown on any cards already in their hand ticks down to show how long before they will be played into the first available slot on the battlefield. Cards already on the battlefield will attack a card opposite them if there is one present, and deal direct damage to the opponent’s “Leadership Points” if there is not. The first player to run out of either Leadership Points or cards loses, and to the victor go the spoils — usually soft currency and occasionally additional cards.We offer a wide variety of high-quality standard ultrasonic sensor and controllers.
The battle mechanics are certainly a lot more interesting than the rather dull “numbers games” of most mobile card-battle titles, but the trouble is, as so often happens with this type of game, control is completely wrested away from the player, leaving them as a passive observer in the battle. This significantly diminishes the amount of strategy in the game, and most players used to physical collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering et al would probably have preferred the option to tactically play the cards from their hand as they saw fit rather than simply waiting for arbitrary timers to expire.Like most of you, I'd seen the broken buy mosaic decorated pieces.The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. The fully-automated nature of battles certainly helps the game be accessible to all — particularly those who are not particularly tactically-minded — but this is somewhat incongruous with the game’s target audience. Collectible card games are by their definition a niche interest rather than something which is universally appealing, and their players are, more often than not, willing to learn some complex rules to allow them to show off their custom deck’s full potential.
As with most card-battle games, cards which are not useful in battle may be used to enhance or evolve the player’s decks. Experience points collected in various elements can also be used to “research” new cards suitable for use in various squads.
The game features a few interesting multiplayer features, though the implementation is somewhat questionable at times. At its most basic level, players can challenge their friends or random opponents to asynchronous battles at any time — in this case, the opponent’s defending deck is chosen from any that they have previously set up. However, once the player reaches experience level 4, they gain access to “Portals,” which allow them to attack enemy islands. Each player gradually expands their island through normal play, and the hex-based territories they control allow them a particular amount of income per day. Attacking a player’s territory through a portal allows land to be captured and added to one’s own, but at present all the portals seem to open up either onto islands which have apparently already been conquered by other players, or those on which the game refuses to allow you to attack, instead saying that “you can conquer the lands from the outer ring only.” This message appears even when attempting to attack a territory on the outer ring of an opponent’s territory, and thus appears to prevent any attacks whatsoever — whether this is a bug or a game mechanic which is not clearly explained isn’t entirely obvious.
The game monetizes through sales of its hard currency, which can be used for a variety of purposes — most commonly,We offer advanced technology products and services for parking guidance control. the purchase of card booster packs. More expensive booster packs — many of which can also be purchased with soft currency — have a higher chance of carrying rare or promotional cards, which tend to be more powerful. As such, those who spend more money on the game will tend to be in a significantly superior position — but the same is true of physical collectible card games, too.
Berserk: The Cataclysm isn’t a bad game, but it feels unfinished and like it’s not entirely sure who its target audience is. It’s completely lacking in sound, for example, despite the presence of a “sound on/off” button on the interface, and the HTML-based interface looks sloppy and clumsy when it has to reload images piece by piece every time the player changes menu screens. Gameplay-wise, the fully-automated battles will probably be a turn-off to the most dedicated collectible card game players, though this does help with accessibility. As previously noted, though, the sort of person who will probably gravitate to this type of game is probably already familiar with how these games work and thus would probably prefer to take control of their forces. A banner ad that occasionally appears at the top of the screen promises that in a completely different Berserk-branded game players are able to “take full control of the battle,” but that is unfortunately not the case here.
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