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Read on for the latest installment in UFC.com's weekly series of articles on proper nutrition from the biggest names in mixed martial arts...this week, Jake Ellenberger
More than anything, what unfolds at UFC 154 will shape the 170-pound hierarchy headed into 2013 and perhaps put Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva on a "catch weight" collision course.
While four other welterweights will have their chance to shine in the limelight Saturday night in Montreal, no one should forget about Jake Ellenberger, who will have the night off, watching the pay-per-view broadcast in Orange County, Calif. The 27-year-old U.S. Marine Corps veteran is a tireless worker, has won seven of his past eight UFC contests and 17 KOs prove that he owns arguably the heaviest hands in the division.
Precisely because he's not fighting this weekend (and thusly not burdened by more important matters, such as the misery of weight cutting), Ellenberger (28-5) found time to share the nutritional habits and philosophies that have made him a force to be reckoned with.
Ellenberger: I eat a lot of eggs, chicken, and fish. I might eat 3-4 scrambled eggs each day, though sometimes I eat 6-8 eggs in a day. I always eat the egg yolks, too. I'm not a fan of egg whites; egg whites are for bodybuilders. It's good fat and I need the energy so I eat the yolks.
And some steak. I'm a big meat eater. You know, I'm from Nebraska and we eat a lot of beef. I also love seafood. I usually stay away from steak and red meat as I get close to weigh-ins.
I can't go without eating. I don't go anywhere without eating. During a fight camp, inside of six to eight weeks, I'll have oatmeal in the morning before a high-intensity workout.
On my off days, I might eat scrambled eggs and two pieces of Ezekiel toast. My favorite is the cinnamon raisin. Sometimes I'll put almond butter and honey, or agave, over the toast.
I don't take a lot of supplements. Every once in a while, after a long, hard workout, I might have a protein shake. But I usually rely on fish or meat, brown rice or quinoa, beans, greens and cooked vegetables. I eat a lot of vegetables.
Something I like to cook is quinoa, peppers and eggs. Throw that together and you've got an awesome meal.
I eat five to six meals per day. I try not to eat after 9 p.m.
A good friend of mine, Mike Dolce, I've worked a lot with him on cutting weight. I've known him since 2006. I met him when I lived in Portland (Oregon) and we trained together. He knows what he's doing!
I'm a big griller, so if I'm not training for a fight then I'm grilling all the time: Red meat, steak, chicken, garlic, asparagus … I enjoy having backyard barbeques. Even now I can do that because the weather is pretty nice right now in (southern) California.
Ellenberger: I was raised drinking any kind of water, from the faucet or wherever. But when I'm training I usually drink reverse-osmosis and de-ionized water and then I'll add some trace minerals. I drink at least a couple gallons a day. I also love Iced Tea and lemonade – Arnold Palmer is my favorite. But I drink iced tea – green tea or black tea – with no sugar when I'm trying to lose weight.
UFC 300 Embedded | All Episodes


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Manicure Monday: Essie Chinchilly
11:31 PMHey guys! Today I wanted to share a polish that I've loved for a long time and only recently purchased: Essie Chinchilly. In my opinion, Chinchilly was one of the first and most quintessential "greige" polishes out there that runs a perfect line between cool, warm, light, and dark. The neutral tones are classy and work-appropriate, but somehow still has an interesting, edgy look to it. The one downside (maybe) is that it changes colors over time. Check out what I mean below.
I picked up this polish from a recent Urban Outfitters (who also carry polishes from less-typical brands like Anna Sui, Paul & Joe, and Butter London) haul and was so excited since I remember lusting after it in drugstores before it disappeared for a period of time. Thankfully, Chinchilly seems to have made a comeback as a permanent polish in Essie's line which is much easier to obtain now than before.
As you can see here, the initial polish color runs quite true to the bottle color which is a beautiful milky cool grey which is flattering on my skintone. This is a base of Seche Clear, 3 coats of Essie Chinchilly, and Seche Vite top coat.
After several days of wearing this color, my friend Amy noticed her freshly painted Chinchilly nails looked different than mine. Sure enough, after comparing side-by-side, we saw they looked like completely different colors! It had significantly darkened and turned into a more chocolate milk-mink than before. Here, my index and ring fingers are my current nails while the middle and pinkie fingers have one coat of freshly painted polish.
Something about it reminds me of my university days playing with "warm grey" and "cool grey" Tria and Prismacolor markers in the dungeons of our design department. Any art students know what I'm talking about? It's not that I don't like the second-stage color, it's more that I really love the first color and wish it stayed that way for the entirety of wear. I've had this same effect happen with a blue-grey polish in the past and felt the exact same way.
Readers, have you had an unintentionally color-changing polish before? Which shade do you like better? Let me know in the comments!
34 comments
I love the color! Apparently grey is said to be one of the most inspiring colors so hopefully wearing this nail polish will bring you some positivity and inspiration!
http://lexyinspired.wordpress.comthis is one of my fave colours! I love that it has a tinge of purple :)
Steph // fun size beautyI like the cool toned grey, the other one not so much. That's really bad that it changes colours, it shouldn't do that. Maybe it was a bad batch : / xx
ReplyDeleteThis has been one of my go-to shades for a very long time, and I've really never experienced the change in color. I always use Seche Vite top-coat, but have used various names for my base. Never tried it with Seche Clear tho...
ReplyDeleteThis happened to me with two of my Essie nail polishes too! From what I remember, I used to wear one of my Essie polishes without a base coat, and I remember that it didn't color change/oxidize on me. Perhaps it's the base coat that's causing the color to darken? I am currently in the process of figuring this out as well, ha.
ReplyDeleteThe colour looks really pretty and so versatile that you can match it with anything. A bit strange how it changed colours though... don't think that should happen and I've never experienced it before.
dreamdustx- AnonymousFebruary 19, 2013 at 10:19 AM
I do love the color but it is indeed disappointing to have turn into another color after a while :S
ReplyDelete i love Essie finishes so much. I prefer the freshly painted color more also : /
www.msjess.comI've had a bottle of Chincilly for over a year now and it hasn't changed colors when I wore it. I wonder if it's reacting badly with your brand of topcoat.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how many guys are following this blog, but I declare myself your biggest guy fan... not so much on the products, well, not most of the time, but I like you a lot. Perhaps super superficial to say, since I just watched your film with WF Productions, but I like you. Keep up the good work, and looking forward to watching more of your videos. The makeup video with Victor was super hilarious. I busted out laughing and shaking in the library. Hope you read this.
ReplyDeleteI'm wearing this right now! Such a great neutral color, goes well with different looks, and Essie has such a great finish, in terms of gloss and staying power.
ReplyDeleteI have had my eye on this color for awhile. It is so strange that it changes colors though. I like the freshly painted color much better. Hmmm...that discourages me a bit. I don't hate the browner tone though...
http://laurenzie.comMy Essie Mint Candy Apple does that too. It gets darker after awhile (more blue-ish/darker and less minty/bright). It's a shame too since I loveeee mint.
ReplyDelete- AnonymousFebruary 22, 2013 at 6:26 PM
Hm I've never had the colour-changing problem with my Chinchilly. I use a Sally Hansen top coat... maybe the top coat is the difference? Should do a post with different top coats on each nail to test out what actually changes the Chinchilly colour :)
ReplyDelete I don't think I've ever had the color change problem, but I don't have a lot of polishes so odds are I wouldn't. I see what you mean- the brown is okay but the grey is beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI've been in love with this colour since I got it - sometimes I top it off with Essie's As Gold As It Gets which gives off a great effect. I haven't noticed any colour changes on mine, I usually leave it on for at least 3-5 days, but I don't put on a top coat over it. Maybe it could be the top coat or base coat that's changing the colour?
ReplyDeletel'oreal eiffel for you is an exact dupe of this! i have it and i think its only $6, plus in my experience it doesn't turn brown over time. this pic i found shows them both:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uPCuxglBIaQ/T6rukeGjb4I/AAAAAAAAAME/Ip-7nZcLO4A/s1600/Essie+Chinchilly+Dupe.jpgJen, I want to purchase chinchilly, can you use the polish alone and let me know if its changes color still? I would greatly appreciate it, your fan, Jenny :D.
ReplyDeleteI have noticed that my Mint Candy Apply, Marshmallow, Chinchilly and Adore-a-ball all by Essie have changed colour on me after about 3-4 days of wearing it. The most noticeable is the Marshmallow because it turns from a nice transparent white to a yellowish creamy colour. Thanks for posting this! I thought it was just me!

subset: commoncrawl


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The journey from Victor to Ankleshwar is very smoothly covered by a bus in 9 hours. For bus booking on Victor to Ankleshwar route, customers can check the buses based on travel time and sort the buses based on less duration. There are operators running their buses between Victor to Ankleshwar bringing necessary travel convenience for several people in India. Usually, 205 buses are plying from Victor to Ankleshwar. All buses are driven by proficient drivers ensuring safety during the journey.
A number of prominent operators ply buses from Victor to Ankleshwar ensuring punctuality and safety for its passengers. Major operators offering various kinds of bus services are:
If you're looking to travel from Victor to Ankleshwar and worried about safe travel, you can choose the Primo service launched by redBus. Primo is where passengers can enjoy travelling in high-rated buses with best-in-class services. While looking for bus tickets booking on Victor to Ankleshwar route, customers can check Primo tag in order to choose this wonderful service. From hygiene standards to on-time service and comfort, there are many benefits that passengers can get from Primo bus booking.
redDeals are discounts offered by top bus operators exclusively on redBus. The redDeal discount amount which ranges from a minimum of 5% to a maximum of 25% is in addition to any other discount applicable at the time of booking your online bus ticket. So with redDeals you can be assured of not just safe & comfortable travel but also of the cheapest travel option at any time. Different types of redDeals offered by operators include Return trip offer, Early bird offer, Last minute offer, Trial offer, Festive/Holiday offer and more
Various types of buses serving passengers from Victor to Ankleshwar ensuring safety and comfort. A few bus services are:
Donned with several pick-up points at convenient locations, Victor is a popular city to board a bus when traveling to Ankleshwar. There are a number of eateries that are located close to the pick-up points in case passengers would like to get something to eat before the commencement of their journey. If a passenger has some time to kill before boarding their bus, they can take some time to explore Victor and it's beautiful sites
Ankleshwar has a lot to offer to anybody who visits this place. Apart from conveniently located drop-off points, Ankleshwar has a lot to offer that would entice anyone who visits this place. With a number of sites to visit and restaurants to raid, Ankleshwar has it all. There are a ton of buses that run through Ankleshwar and this ensures that Ankleshwar is well-connected to the rest of the country. Don't think twice, book your bus ticket online today


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This week's giveaway is this very fine Nobel Prize Library set, which contains "...for each laureate, the presentation address, any acceptance speech, a work of the laureate significant to the judge's decision, bibliography, and a brief explanation of the reasons for the laureate's selection."
You can read about the works included here.
Contest closed, winner will be announced in a moment.
-Click to enlarge photos-


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Water Damage Cleanup in Decatur, GA
We provide water damage cleanup in Decatur, GA.
Whether it is a river that has overflowed, an unrelenting storm, or a broken water line flooding your home or office, the results can be devastating. The water cleanup response must be immediate to minimize further damage to contents as well as to the structure. Our technicians are on call 24 hours a day to help you recover from a disaster caused by water. When water damage is handled properly with a controlled structure drying process, the entire restoration project is both faster and more cost-effective. Our goal is to make every client's water damage cleanup experience with Level Creek Property Restoration one of complete satisfaction.


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Why is there a Sam Eagle cupcake? Because AMERICA, that's why.
Now on to the "cakes you want to cuddle" section of today's post:
These guys look like little beanie baby versions of themselves:
I promise I *did* look for Sweets from some of Henson's other work - the Dark Crystal, Fraggle Rock, and my personal favorite, Labyrinth - but all I found worth mentioning (and that I haven't posted before) was this doorknocker from Labyrinth:
Yes, it's really cake! I actually have the matching set of Labyrinth knockers on the closet doors in my office (photo here) so I was especially smitten to see one rendered so well in cake.
Beaker and Dr. Honeydew! The baker calls this a "baby shower cake for a mom-to-be who is more into science than babies." (Note the H2O molecule on the border.) Brilliant!
And finally, since I don't have a cake version of him for you, here's the Swedish Chef demonstrating the proper use of the "cäkenschmööscher."
You're feeling veeeery inclined to purchase a funny holiday book. This holiday book:
Pre-order now at Amazon or Barnes & Noble and save up to 33% off the $14.99 cover price! (Prices may fluctuate.)


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Ultra-robust athletic shirt in a classic design made from twisted fine-knit fabric.
95° machine wash
Premium cotton in top CALIDA quality. This fabric is characterised by a refined, smooth appearance and a supple feel. Its premium fibres also make it especially easy to care for, durable and long-wearing. Naturally beautiful.
For 75 years, CALIDA has been synonymous with long-lasting quality. Now, the Swiss company is taking another step on this path with the introduction of MADE IN GREEN by OEKO-TEX®. The Made in Green product label is not only issued based on compliance with strict social responsibility and ecological criteria; it also certifies that the textiles carrying the label have been tested for harmful substances. Made in Green by OEKO-TEX® is currently the most transparent and stringent label available. It allows consumers to trace production details along the delivery chain, all the way back to the raw materials. Made in Green by OEKO-TEX® is a product label for safe and sustainably produced ready-made garments. It combines certification requirements from OEKO-TEX® Standard 100 and STeP by OEKO-TEX®. Any item with the Made in Green label has a unique product ID or QR code that can be traced transparently by the consumer.
CALIDA Twisted Cotton Athletic shirt, ITEM No. 12010-680 - Large is backordered and will ship as soon as it is back in stock.
Sign up for fashion shows, auctions, sip & shop, and VIP Garden events.


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A NASA photo
CAPE CANAVERAL (AP): NASA has ordered up a series of urgent spacewalks to fix a broken cooling line at the International Space Station, a massive repair job that could stretch to Christmas Day.
Station managers decided on Tuesday to send two American astronauts out as soon as possible to replace a pump with a bad valve. The task will require two and possibly three spacewalks on Saturday, Monday and next Wednesday Christmas Day.
"The next week will be busy with space walks so not much tweeting from here," NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio said from space via Twitter soon after the decision was announced.
The spacewalks are taking priority over the launch of a supply ship from Virginia. The commercial delivery had been scheduled for this week, but is now delayed until at least mid-January.
US-led spacewalks have been on hold since July, when an Italian astronaut almost drowned because of water that leaked into his helmet.
NASA hopes to wrap up the pump swap in two spacewalks and not have to do a third on Christmas Day. Astronauts have ventured outside of their spaceship on Dec 25 only once, way back in 1973 during Skylab, America's first space station.
Shuttle astronauts finished a series of spacewalks on the Hubble Space Telescope on Christmas Eve 1999.
Half of the space station's cooling system shut down last Wednesday, forcing the six-man crew to turn off all nonessential equipment, including some science experiments.
Because of the valve failure, one of the two cooling lines became too cold.
The cooling system, which runs ammonia through the lines, is critical for dispelling heat generated by on-board equipment.
While the astronauts are safe and comfortable, NASA wants the system back up to full strength, in case of another failure that could leave the orbiting outpost even more vulnerable than it is right now.
Flight controllers tried in vain to fix the valve remotely, then came up with a plan to use another valve to regulate the temperature. Some success was reported, and for a while, engineers thought the space station could limp along with this short-term solution. But on Monday, managers opted for spacewalks right now. Spare pumps are on board.
This is the same pump a bulky 780-pound (354-kilogram) bundle that was replaced by spacewalking astronauts in 2010.
Three spacewalks were needed then. The lessons learned may enable Mastracchio and astronaut Michael Hopkins to finish the job more quickly.


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But they have to be set up correctly - something most of the advice I've gathered from articles on the web don't do.
- Let's cover some basics. 3-4% of the people you contact (or opt-in) will buy anything you put in front of them - so the bigger your list, the more income you will make.
- 80% of your total income will come from 20% of your public - more or less. (And this means 64% comes from 4%, 51% comes from .3% - at least on paper.)
- As people don't find things to be of value, they will drop off/opt-out.
- With a poor conversion factor, you will probably wind up with 50% or more of your list being that 3-4% and so this will skew your data. High opt-outs, few purchases will give you a steady income - as long as you keep creating new products for these "buy anything" public. You are then in maintain mode for this small niche - and your income is pegged.
Conversion is the key. You have to take that 80% of your public and convert them to buyers - if not big buyers, you want them to move up your funnel as fast as possible.
There are a couple of solutions to this: [Note that the below is new theory based on study of brick-and-mortar sales functions - but what works in the real world converts over to the virtual simply.]
1) Make your funnel look like an upside down champagne glass (the old-fashioned wide at the top, thin stem and then flattening out to a base as wide as the top - an hourglass that was sat on, more or less).
What you don't want is to have a shape like a grain silo - straight sides up and down with only one path to the top, take it or leave it.
Think champagne glassses - for the expensive varieties of that beverage you can celebrate with. You want to have lots of introductory services so that they can take cheap or free courses one after the other, while you continue to build relationships with them - plying them with various surveys until you know where they personally are coming from/looking for and also you have a better idea where your beginning list participants are at. Many don't buy right off, so give them more to do which builds trust so they will.
The top of your upside-down champagne-glass-funnel is wide again - but for those who have made it right on up with their Paypal account open to you at every offer. You have to keep them buying, so have a lot of new material up there, which they can use and benefit from. This doesn't just mean selling them more hours of personal coaching - which is expensive for you as well. New webinars on your latest research - on a reserved seat basis - is probably a more likely ticket.
2) Make people an affiliate at every level. This builds your community and allows participation. As well, you can offer rewards to top-performing affiliates, so that they work for you just to earn those top rewards (which other people buy outright). Regular training webinars at an affordable price also will keep them working for you. This is also a way for these people to get more exposure to your solutions and makes them more able to afford your higher-end services.
Now an interesting organizational point comes up. You are going to not just "segment" your list as some articles have pointed out, but you are going to have to subdivide it, stratify it, and then segment those stratas and divisions. Let's clarify those terms:
Division - part of the list by product line. You have an autoresponder service which should give you virtually unlimited email series. Set up your service so that you are servicing each different product line as itself.
Example: I have a list for people interested in self-help books and products. Another division would be the list of affiliates selling my self-help products. Affiliates wouldn't be excluded from taking services - they should be encouraged - but regular public wouldn't know what's in the affiliate division, unless they signed up for it. Now, in the self-help area, I have general self-help and a section just based on the Law of Attraction. These people can go back and forth through all the lower-level ecourses I offer (and I am planning about 5 or more, in addition to special reports, MP3's, etc.) Afterall, they are part of the self-help division, if not (yet) self-help affiliates.
Example: Suppose I start a blook on earning money through Internet marketing. This is a completely different division to self-help. Even the affiliate program is completely different. Now they could actually subscribe to my self-help division, but generally I wouldn't offer it in my email series - except perhaps at the very top end.
What this does is to enable you to have multiple income sources from the Internet, using the same autoresponder service for each source - but being able to keep them straight from each other. Note that each ecourse is its own series, as might be each special report. But at the end of each ecourse is the option to sign up for another ecourse - which continues until they buy something, where they are bumped upstairs. Your subscribers move seamlessly from segment to segment until they "graduate" to the next higher level through buying a higher-priced service.
Not to be cruel, they are able to complete their current ecourse, but ecourses after that will have a different set of emails, thought the material will be the same.
This opens up Stratas. Once a person has bought something, you want to sell them the next gradient material - although they might jump for your top-dollar item right off the bat, so you have to craft these carefully.
Example: person on a free ecourse buys your $47 item. Now you are going to work on getting them to buy your $147 or $197 item - but you can occasionally offer them a glimpse at webinars or personal coaching, just to tantalize them. If they don't buy, then get them in for another round of services at that level. More ecourses, with emails that offer them more $47 - $197 items of the same value are in order. As they trust you to deliver, they'll order from you. And the freebies you give out at this level (which are not widely available) are all valued at $47 or more.
Once they buy a $147 or greater level item, they are bumped upstairs to another strata. On that level, the freebies are proportionately greater in value, and they are being offered your $297 item. They may start racking up their credit cards at this point - if not, give them another high value service.
At the top strata, you can give them everything you have to offer for sale, since they trust you inplicitly with delivering high-quality items routinely. At this point, you also should have a sales record of them, as well as what courses they have taken - so you can personally suggest some items to them based on their experience. You now have developed a one-on-one relationship and can easily move into the per-hour coaching. Enough of these and you can reserve a suite of rooms and a meeting hall in some exotic locale so that they can all meet you in person and get their questions answered personally. A workshop - which they foot the bill for.
With the whole system in place, I can now talk to you about Segments. On the intro strata, the people who didn't buy right off got another intro service. Each intro service is a segment. On the next strata up, they could take more courses (segments), but the emails were tailored to their new status as a paid customer. Here they go again from segment to segment until they buy the next-higher course.
As you test and tweak your squeeze pages, you will be able to move them rapidly up to the highest levels where you can have them buy anything and everything. Your conversion rates will be much higher and your efficiency at turning newbies into trusting supporters will be high.
Why do I say to make affiliates at every strata/level? Because they can give their own testimonials about how your product has helped them change their own lives. If you set up your autoresponder properly, you can allow them to email that segment of your list with appropriate offers - or create a new segment just for joint ventures (and be able to shut it down if you have too many opt-outs happening from confusing cross-sales). But good affiliates can open up trusted lines with individuals on your funnel and help them take their next higher step - as the affiliate gets paid all the way.
The logical solution for Affiliates is to offer them personally segmented lists, available to them and to you only - in this way, they have a guaranteed percentage of all their sales to these individuals.
Yes, this would get complicated real fast - but around this time you are making so much income that you hire a person to chart this all out (and who is paid a percentage of the total gross, so constantly works to keep it efficient and come up with new ideas).
The above was based on studies of a multi-national organization and interviews with top sales personell on every level as well as their immediate managers through the course of several years.
What autoresponders do is allow you to have a multi-national sales force for your particular niche products - but automate them instead of having to deal with the massive HR headaches and meet that regular payroll. Start small and when you get past your first couple million in income, you can then contract someone to keep your ball rolling for your - freeing you to find more niches to invest your time in...
Now these are just notes at this point, a lot has to be fleshed out and tested. But I thought to break this to you early as I continue my research into this field.


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1/* Display series section if at least one series exists. */?>by Yang, J., Bouzerdoum, A., Tivive, F. H. C., Amin, M. G.Get full text
Published 2011In collection: Amin Moeness
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This annual event was actually once rated as one of the 100 greatest things about America (Reader's Digest magazine, 2006). I can only assume that the author had never been involved in one, or that in 2006 the country had absolutely gone to hell.
The point of this "friendly competition" is to build little cars and race them down a slanted track. Each 8-11 year old is given a standardized block of wood and 4 wheels, and can do what they want with them. Since the stakes are so high (winner gets a plastic trophy from Big Lots), the cars are carefully examined, weighed, and locked away 3 days before the race. This is to make sure that illegal modifications, like adding a jet engine, aren't carried out.
The whole part about this being a competition among the boys is absolute BS. It's between their testosterone charged fathers, living vicariously through the kids. Dads build the cars, and (occasionally) let junior make a few finishing touches (like putting a Pokemon decal on).
Of course, no one actually admits to this. So at each derby one of the finest moments is when the person in charge brings in the cars from the nuclear-bomb proof hiding location, and boys go ask dad which car is theirs. "Oh! That's mine? Cool job, Dad!"
(In our family, it's actually Mrs. Grumpy who does all this. I'm just a shill).
You can always tell the ones that the boys actually made themselves because they have uneven paint jobs, strange angles, and an odd number of wheels. Of course, they never win a race, because they're no match for the ones that some dad, who by day designs jet fighters for Lockheed, built (and claimed his kid did, using a wind tunnel testing facility that's coincidentally in the basement).
They ask you to arrive at 6:00 p.m. SHARP, which is a joke. The races never start on time.
So we arrived at the Wingnut Elementary School cafeteria at exactly 6:00, to find they'd just started setting up. To lend atmosphere (and help us forget that we were in a school cafeteria) some guys were hanging racing posters and pennants everywhere. A bunch of moms were off in one corner setting up a bake sale. And, most importantly, several dads were putting up the racing track, grading it with a computerized angle & level measuring device, as if it were made of gold.
While this is going on, to get you in a cheerful mood, they show fun racing moments on a large screen: cars and drivers in gory high-speed wrecks, flaming rocket boats hurtling out-of-control into screaming crowds, Indy cars exploding as they fuel up, and other humorous stuff.
Finally the races begin. This is kicked off by them blasting early 90's dance music. So if you've had a burning desire to hear C & C Music Factory, M.C. Hammer, and (not early 90's) ENDLESS replays of "The History of Rock & Roll, part 2"*, this is the place to be.
Each race features 4 cars, and they run them 3-4 times each, changing lanes each time. The race itself takes 5-10 seconds. Then they hand-carry the cars back to the starting point. Each is then reinspected (to make sure their owner didn't, say, use a blowgun to secretly attach a V8 engine while they were going down the track), carefully returned to the starting gate, and we begin again. And in the background 2 guys are still busy putting up racing poster decorations.
The race results are presented on a constantly-changing computerized time sheet, projected on the wall. This, I swear, measures finishing times TO SIX DECIMAL PLACES (i.e. 5.756381 seconds). Because, you know, that kind of space-travel level of precision is absolutely necessary when small wooden blocks are rolling down a track. And the dads obsessively stare at this like it's a topless dancer, while the kids play their Nintendo DS.
At some point your kids come to you asking for money. Why? Because they're selling pizza and various other junk food. They even asked you to bring something, because it's "for a good cause" (they never tell you what the good cause is. For all I know it's Botox for the counter lady). So you stop at Costco, pick up a HUGE box of Oreos, and give them to her. The Oreos are then marked up to 50 cents each, and the box is now worth more than an equivalent amount of plutonium. We discovered it was best to feed the kids before leaving our house, and making sure we have nothing but credit cards when we get there. "They only take cash? Sorry, kids."
This insanity goes on for 3-4 freakin' hours. Most people start to leave as soon as their kid is disqualified from the finals, but some parents (due to, say, their wives secretly signing them up to be involved in taking apart the damn track and not telling you about it until you ask if you can leave yet, for example) are stuck there until the bitter end. So you tap your feet and watch 2 guys continue to heroically put up racing posters.
Toward the end you start looking for something to do. Like helping the school janitor put away the folding chairs (he wants to go home, too). So if anyone stands up, you grab their chair and toss it in the closet, hoping they weren't planning on sitting down again. I figured if anyone fell and hurt themselves, I could hand out business cards.
Finally, it's over. If your kid didn't win, you don't care who did. As you're leaving, you notice the 2 guys are finally finishing putting up the last racing poster.
*Kind of ironic considering how Gary Glitter ended up, eh?


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Roll the Dice
In Dust
Instrumental albums are difficult to gauge. In the first instance, the constant beat of sounds has two possible outcomes. Outcome one: repetitious and boring. Outcome two: a rich soundscape full of emotion and possibility. Fortunately for Swedish duo, Roll the Dice, their album falls into the latter category.
Infused with rich sounds, the album's opener Iron Bridge sets the scene in motion (lasting for a full eight minutes). Although, you start to wonder if this is just two guys with laptops (that old stereotype), upon learning that the sounds are created with analogue synthesisers, you can hear a certain raw edge to the performance; moments of imperfection that remind us of what music used to sound like.
Having gained fans like Caribou and Kieran Hebden, Roll the Dice present an album that is intense and grand in its offering. Maelstrom is ferocious with a sound that gradually builds, culminating in an ultra-rich experience. As a whole the album has an overriding narrative; one of urban exploration and experimentation – an excellent marriage of sound and image.
Shirley Stevenson


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Ringing phones. Pinging e-mail. Co-workers' ringing phones and pinging e-mail. How is anyone supposed to get work done in this place?
The modern open office was designed for team building and camaraderie but is mostly distinguished by its high noise levels, lack of privacy and surfeit of both digital and human distractions. And indeed, several decades of research have confirmed that open-plan offices are generally associated with greater employee stress, poorer co-worker relations and reduced satisfaction with the physical environment. But there are some ways to combat those detrimental effects and still be productive.
(MORE: Paul: Can You Learn Everything 'on the Job'?)
The noise of the open office is one of employees' chief complaints about it, and research shows that the ceaseless hubbub can actually undermine our motivation. In a study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, 40 female clerical workers were subjected to three hours of "low-intensity noise" designed to simulate the sounds heard in a typical open office. A control group experienced three hours of blessed quiet. Afterward, both groups were given puzzles to solve; unbeknownst to them, the puzzles had no solution. The participants who'd been treated to a quiet work setting kept plugging away at the puzzles, while the subjects who'd endured the noisy conditions gave up after fewer attempts.
Look around any open-plan office today (especially one full of younger employees) and you'll see that many workers deal with this problem by wearing ear buds or headphones. Although it might seem that importing one's own noise wouldn't be much of a solution — and although we don't yet have research evidence on the use of private music in the office — experts say that this approach could be effective on at least one dimension. Part of the reason office noise reduces our motivation is that it's a factor out of our control, so the act of asserting control over our aural environment may lead us to try harder at our jobs.
(MORE: Workplace Bullying: The Problem — and the Costs — Are Worse than We Thought)
Another frequent complaint is the lack of privacy in an open office. In part, this is deliberate: designers and managers believed that once the walls came down, workers would be more likely to have the kind of casual or chance conversations that can inspire new ideas. This utopian plan may have backfired, however: research shows that while conversations are indeed frequent among employees in open offices, they tend to be short and superficial — precisely because there are so many other ears around to listen. To avoid self-consciousness and self-censoring, find private spaces to talk to your colleagues: go on a walk around the block or a trip to the coffee shop, or slip into an empty conference room.
The original promoters of open-plan offices also hoped that the setting would make co-workers available to help one another. That's great for the help seeker; not so great for the help giver who has her own work to do. In a study released last month by a group of German and Swiss researchers, participants who requested help with a task performed better, while those who supplied assistance did worse. Frequently alternating between helping others and doing one's own job imposes a heavy "cognitive load," the scientists concluded, as the help givers are forced to repeatedly reacquaint themselves with the details of their own task. They recommend that workers set aside a block of time each day when they are not to be disturbed. In order to minimize cognitive load, this period should last for a while — on the order of several hours. And if your co-workers still insist on calling to you across the cubicles, put in your ear buds and tune them out.
MORE: Paul: Lessons from the Lab: How to Make Group Projects Successful


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Nervous about buying pre-loved luxury items online? Don't be. At Lux Second Chance, trust is at the heart of what we do. We understand how inundated the resale industry can be with counterfeit products. That's why authenticating is our top priority for every piece we sell.
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What does this mean for you?
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- advocate
- A translation of the Greek 'Paraclete', used in the gospel and first epistle of John for the Spirit [[➝ spirit]] (e.g. John 14:16, NRSV, REB) who is to continue within the Church the teaching of Jesus—insights that were only possible to believers after the Resurrection [[➝ resurrection]] (John 16:13). The term is derived from the lawcourts and means the counsel for the defence, who stands alongside the accused, and to that extent the AV 'comforter' (John 14:16) conveys part of the meaning.
Dictionary of the Bible.


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With 20 years hindsight, the V&A's autumn blockbuster is the first major show to survey the visual products from the postmodern era.
Deliberately vague, postmodernism emerged in the 1970s in literature, design, music and art, both as a moment in time and as a rejection of the shackles of ideologies before it. For many on this cusp of change, the restraints and restrictions of the prevailing modernist ideology had become elitist and idealised. The uncertainty of the post-war years was no longer conducive to creating harmony through modernism, and an acknowledgement of the fractured nature of our existence suddenly seemed a more apt way to move forward across visual, literary and philosophical arenas.
This autumn, the V&A will address this cultural epoch with the benefit of 20 years' hindsight. The first major in-depth survey of the visual products of the 1970s and 1980s will reference the postmodernism from which they began, and lay bare the contentious term for a new round of discussion and interrogation. Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990 addresses architecture, design, popular culture, film and fashion and the manner in which they challenged the singular narrative of modernism, to create a multiplicity of influences that pervaded culture for two decades.
Curated by Glenn Adamson, Head of Graduate Studies at the V&A and Jane Pavitt, Head of Department of History of Design at the Royal College of Art, the V&A has chosen this autumn as an appropriate time for the exhibition because of the hindsight offered, but also the opportunity for collaboration and consultancy with the movement's leading proponents. Broadly chronological, Postmodernism: Style and Subversion focuses on three key areas – architecture, aspects of popular culture, and finally the movement's hybridisation with commodity culture of the 1980s. In creating a fairly rigid structure and focus to each segment, Adamson and Pavitt begin to make sense of a notoriously slippery term. Defining postmodernism as "a set of radical strategies that emerged in the 1970s … which had in common an antipathy to modernism," Adamson argues that in place of the "certainties, progressive narratives and claims to objective quality," postmodernists offered "historicism, self-referentialilty, bricolage, and, in general, a freedom of choice in design."
This duplicity between the modern and the postmodern is arguably most apparent in the field of architecture, and it is here that the exhibition takes its starting point. With architects such as Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer creating not only buildings, but whole cities in their vision of how the modern citizen should live, modernist architecture began to represent the dictation of an influential, idealist elite. The "cities in the sky" and towering concrete blocks became representative of the failed Le Corbusian experiment, and architects including Charles Moore and James Stirling began to recognise this, creating new designs based on a pastiche of past and present, high and low, and providing a freedom of interpretation for the user himself.
In exhibiting designs of the AT&T building, devised by Philip Johnson in 1978, the exhibition also acknowledges postmodernism's return to historical references and emphasis on ornament over simplicity. The building provides an early precursor to the movement's later conflation with commodification in the way it was implicitly associated with the company logo, and perhaps best represents the break with modernism because of the way Johnson himself had been so closely related to the earlier movement. In so whole-heartedly rejecting the modernist advance to futurist design and materials, Johnson illustrated postmodernism in this astonishing rejection of the rules of modernist good taste.
In choosing architecture as its starting point, the V&A is firmly grounding its focus on postmodernism in the museum's visual tradition. Although the ideas were seen simultaneously in literature, Anderson argues: "Our show really is about postmodernism as a visual repertoire, not a literary framework or a body of theoretical writings … the use of 'postmodernism' as a common term was instigated by Charles Jencks' 1977 book The Language of Post-modern Architecture. This text was a reaction to the activities of architects in the USA, UK, Japan and Europe over the preceding decade. So it makes sense to ground the narrative within that field." With a full-scale reconstruction of a Hans Hollein façade from the 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale, the exhibition opens in a suitably large-scale, overwhelming, and flamboyant style. In fact Jencks' idea of "double coding" (which Anderson describes as "a building or other work that speaks both directly and indirectly about itself"), became hugely appealing to "a generation sick to death with modernist certainty: the meta-structures of postmodernism, its tendency to comment on itself, was a way to introduce 'complexity and contradiction' (Robert Venturi's phrase) to the design process."
Popular culture itself became the focus of the postmodernist movement and served as the natural vehicle to express the often complicated and occasionally contradictory ideas to the public. Anderson observes: "Popular culture (especially music and other performance) was an effective distribution system for postmodern style and ideas – in this case, you have not just a situation of radical poses influencing vernacular culture, but a more complex interaction between performers and their subcultural fans."
In mimicking the club-like spaces of contemporary sub-cultures, the V&A explicitly highlights the importance of difference and multiplicity of postmodern times. Saturated with audio-visual installations, the exhibition's second section is Baudrillard's Simulacra manifest – a hyperreality of pulsating, over-styled images and landscapes populated by the eccentrics and caricatures of 1980s music and entertainment. Anderson references this section as his personal highlight, with the outrageous parody of the overstated character who took the starring role in Stop Making Sense, the 1980s mockumentary based around the band Talking Heads. Represented by David Byrne's "Big Suit" Anderson is drawn to its "deadpan humour, exaggeration, and the way it literally performs the idea of larger-than-life celebrity." This section looks at the subversive stage personas that dominated contemporary stage and screen. From the knowing androgyny of Grace Jones, to the deliberately fetishist Leigh Bowery, the icons of the time referenced an irrational and impossible world. Eventually these influences extended beyond the underground, with both Bowery and Jones becoming prominent figures in the worlds of art and music, with fashion photography from Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton referencing this parallel world of gender-bending, sex and death.
Another highlight, because like the very idea of postmodernism it is constructed from samples of different aspects of visual and literary history, is the Proust Chair from Alessandro Mendini: "A classic example of postmodern quotation and pastiche. The title is taken from literature, the form adapted from 18thcentury Baroque furniture, and the decoration swiped from a Pointillist painting by Paul Signac. This surface treatment was achieved through the ingenious means of projecting a slide of the painting onto the chair, and daubing paint onto its surface to match the dots. So it bespeaks its own mediated, parasitic design status on multiple levels."
Arguably this section of the exhibition, and the impact of popular culture on postmodernism as a whole, is understated by Postmodernism: Style and Subversion. The meta-narratives, and very self-referential comedy that we see weekly on our TV screens illustrates the arena where we still, by stealth, witness the postmodern in action. And while postmodernism was for many seen as a tearing down of the elitist barriers and ideals of modernism and a merging of high and low culture, is this omission of these later, populist works perhaps representative of a failure of postmodernism in this regard, or at least of the V&A's interpretation of it? Anderson counters that the Museum's remit lies in visual culture: "We do look at TV but only in the context of music video – for two reasons: first, this was a very early and sophisticated example of the kind of self-referentiality; and second it's a visual and designed medium, whereas narrative TV shows that are thematically postmodern aren't particularly notable for their style." As such the exhibition rejects the idea of an overall retrospective of something that is often still in action, and deliberately maintains its focus to allow a thorough representation, and a coherence within the huge variety of areas where the postmodern came to dominate.
The final element of the exhibition most explicitly acknowledges the cynicism and commodification which to an extent became postmodernism's legacy. Examining the "money talks" attitude and culture of 1980s Britain, the show displays the products of contemporary artists', architects' and designers' fascination with the transformative powers of cold hard cash. Anderson argues: "By the late 1980s, there was exhaustion around the term – for the corporate use of postmodern imagery and techniques as a form of marketing. The end of our show tracks this development, framing 1980s postmodernism as a contest between critical and commercial strategies." Including Andy Warhol's Dollar Signs and evidence of the corporate king, Disney's, foray into contemporary architecture and design, this final section illustrates the demise of postmodernism and its dismissal as a part of the avaricious, right-wing establishment. On this transformation Anderson references Peter Saville in saying, "as he puts it, if you were listening to New Order in 1982 you might well be helping to run the government now, so this issue of generational shift is crucial in tracking the 'loosening' and liberating aspects of postmodernism into mass culture now."
While continually focusing on its traditional design remit, the influences of fine art and its critique of contemporary culture are seen strongly here: "What we were particularly interested to include was work that lay at the intersection between the autonomous art object and the designed commodity – which includes the positioning of art statements in a commercial sphere." These include its centrepiece, Jenny Holzer's giant billboard Protect Me From What I Want, and Robert Longo's Bizarre Love Triangle video for New Order.
As Anderson attributes the demise of postmodernism to this conflation with commercialisation there's also the difficult fact of its evolving reputation. From a present-day perspective you would argue that, where modernism focuses on functionality and truth, postmodernism emphasises its own falsehoods, cynicism and duplicity of meanings, removing the term from its democratic beginnings. Anderson however directly relates the commercialisation of its leading proponents with the movement's demise: "I would date postmodernism's association with cynicism to its latter stages in the 1980s – for me, the first phases are extremely positive, in the sense that they concern themes of liberation, diversity and embrace of vernacular context. The interest in falsehood (or more accurately perhaps, relativism) and the sense of paralysis brought on by self-critique is to me more of an 1980s phenomenon, at least in architecture and design – and it's brought about primarily because of the corporatisation and mediation of postmodern technique."
What's most apparent when studying the postmodern 20 years later is the fact that it remains relevant today. "Postmodernism's greatest success was in fracturing expectations about period style – so we no longer think of ourselves as working to a single shared 'look'." In welcoming this multiplicity of influences and forms, the postmodern had defined what comes after it as "not so much stylistic coherence, but by other issues such as technology (the internet), ethical imperatives (environmentalism), and perhaps production strategies (as in the Chinese economic boom)." While in many ways the postmodern was about a fractured existence, there hasn't been a defining moment after the postmodern, but rather a variety of new ideas that, in being so many, also reflect the fractured nature of postmodernity itself. Even after its demise it's returning to us in this very fluctuating indecisiveness.
Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990 was showing at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London from 24 September 2011
Ruby Beesley


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TWS Wireless Bluetooth Earphone 5.3 Sports Headset in-ear Earbuds 0.06' Low Latency ENC HD Call Noise Reduction Game Headphones
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