charlemagne

About Tracy Chapman

charlemagne — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 05:00:03 +0000

Why Is She Famous?

Talented singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman will best be remembered for timeless classics like "Talkin’ Bout a Revolution," "Give Me One Reason," and the hit that first put Tracy Chapman on the musical map, "Fast Car."

Tracy Chapman isn’t in the category of artists with a lot of hit songs, but the handful of tracks she’s known for are considered classics and instantly recognizable. Despite her hit-and-miss resume of recordings, Chapman has more importantly charted a career that is highly individualistic and not a product of what the media corporations dictate as "marketable."

Talking With Kids About Sex

charlemagne — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:04:56 +0000

Most parents want to do their best in talking with their kids about sex and sexuality, but we’re often not sure how to begin. Here’s our advice:

Explore your own attitudes

Studies show that kids who feel they can talk with their parents about sex — because their moms and dads speak openly and listen carefully to them — are less likely to engage in high-risk behavior as teens than kids who do not feel they can talk with their parents about the subject. So explore your feelings about sex. If you are very uncomfortable with the subject, read some books (see Readings for Parents) and discuss your feelings with a trusted friend, relative, physician, or clergy member. The more you examine the subject, the more confident you’ll feel discussing it.

Even if you can’t quite overcome your discomfort, don’t worry about admitting it to your kids. It’s okay to say something like, "You know, I’m uncomfortable talking about sex because my parents never talked with me about it. But I want us to be able to talk about anything — including sex — so please come to me if you have any questions. And if I don’t know the answer, I’ll find out."

Start early

Teaching your children about sex demands a gentle, continuous flow of information that should begin as early as possible — for instance, when teaching your toddler where his nose and toes are, include "this is your penis" or "this is your vagina" in your talks. As your child grows, you can continue her education by adding more materials gradually until she understands the subject well.

Take the initiative

If your child hasn’t started asking questions about sex, look for a good opportunity to bring it up. Say, for instance, the mother of an 8-year-old’s best friend is pregnant. You can say, "Did you notice that David’s mommy’s tummy is getting bigger? That’s because she’s going to have a baby and she’s carrying it inside her. Do you know how the baby got inside her?" then let the conversation move from there.

Talk about more than the "Birds and the Bees"

While our children need to know the biological facts about sex, they also need to understand that sexual relationships involve caring, concern and responsibility. By discussing the emotional aspect of a sexual relationship with your child, she will be better informed to make decisions later on and to resist peer pressure. If your child is a pre-teen, you need to include some message about the responsibilities and consequences of sexual activity. Conversations with 11 and 12-year-olds, for example, should include talks about unwanted pregnancy and how they can protect themselves.

One aspect that many parents overlook when discussing sex with their child is dating. As opposed to movies, where two people meet and later end up in bed together, in real life there is time to get to know each other — time to hold hands, go bowling, see a movie, or just talk. Children need to know that this is an important part of a caring relationship.

Give accurate, age-appropriate information

Talk about sex in a way that fits the age and stage of your child. If your 8-year-old asks why boys and girls change so much physically as they grow, you can say something like, "The body has special chemicals called hormones that tell it whether to become a boy or a girl. A boy has a penis and testicles, and when he grows older his voice gets lower and he gets more hair on his body. A girl has a vulva and vagina, and when she gets older she grows breasts and her hips grow rounder."

Anticipate the next stage of development

Children can get frightened and confused by the sudden changes their bodies begin to go through as they reach puberty. To help stop any anxiety, talk with your kids not only about their current stage of development but about the next stage, too. An 8-year-old girl is old enough to learn about menstruation, just as a boy that age is ready to learn how his body will change.

Communicate your values

It’s our responsibility to let our children know our values about sex. Although they may not adopt these values as they mature, at least they’ll be aware of them as they struggle to figure out how they feel and want to behave.

Talk with your child of the opposite sex

Some parents feel uncomfortable talking with their child about topics like sex if the youngster is of the opposite gender. While that’s certainly understandable, don’t let it become an excuse to close off conversation. If you’re a single mother of a son, for example, you can turn to books to help guide you or ask your doctor for some advice on how to bring up the topic with your child. You could also recruit an uncle or other close male friend or relative to discuss the subject with your child, provided there is already good, open communication between them. If there are two parents in the household, it might feel less awkward to have the dad talk with the boy and the mom with the girl. That’s not a hard and fast rule, though. If you’re comfortable talking with either sons or daughters, go right ahead. Just make sure that gender differences don’t make subjects like sex taboo.

Relax

Don’t worry about knowing all the answers to your children’s questions; what you know is a lot less important than how you respond. If you can convey the message that no subject, including sex, is forbidden in your home, you’ll be doing just fine.

DAP for increasing download up to 400% hayaaa!!!

charlemagne — Fri, 23 May 2008 08:46:09 +0000

Download Accelerator Plus (DAP) leverages patented technology, easy management of downloads and rich features and includes an enhanced Search Tab, improved download mechanism for faster downloads, ZoneAlarm Download Security; Alert Messages and Private Download for Premium users. Available in 10 languages.

Version 8.6.5 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.

Features

According to SpeedBit, Download Accelerator Plus has approximately 150 million users worldwide. A free version and a premium version exist. It has a number of features like scheduled download and auto Internet disconnection and/or shutting down of computer upon download completion. DAP also provides auto antivirus scanning of downloaded contents by integrating with the antivirus software (such as Norton AntiVirus, McAfee VirusScan or AVG Anti-Virus) present in the OS, though this feature may not work properly with some antivirus applications. DAP integrates very well with Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape, and Opera. It pops up a small message box by the notification area with "Open/Play" commands upon completion of download. It also has a password manager for websites. There is a commercial version, which is ad-free, and has some extra functions, such as "Always Resume" and DAP drive (a virtual download storage). DAP 8.5 has a file security check, provided by ZoneAlarm, which will alert the user that he/she is about to download or run a potentially dangerous file.

Limitations and issues

Sometimes DAP will not uninstall. This problem is known to SpeedBit.^{[citation needed]} A known cause is uninstalling an older version of DAP and then installing a newer version of DAP without rebooting, which causes the removal files from the newer version by accident during the next reboot, since they are given the same name and placed in the same location as the older files that are scheduled to be deleted. The advertisements that appear in the faulty uninstall, in Windows’ Add or Remove Programs, gives off the impression the uninstall was purposely removed and replaced with ads^[1]. The fix is to reinstall the newer version of DAP and then uninstall it, rebooting before and after each install and uninstall.
The Windows 98 version seems to have exorbitantly large memory leaks.^{[citation needed]} The result being that in Windows 98, DAP is more resource intensive, forcing one to close most other running applications even on a PC with well over 256MB of RAM.
Some older versions creates dynamically expanding temporary files during download, which makes the completed file very fragmented. This error is fixed in current versions.

David Cook: “American Idol” Winner

charlemagne — Thu, 22 May 2008 11:58:34 +0000

07:13 PM PT, May 21 2008
When David Cook was announced as the winner of American Idol Wednesday night at the Nokia theater, it was just another twist in a season that has tested the still-vibrant franchise.

The 25 year old became the first performer in the rock music mold to win, amassing 56% of 96 million votes, to 44% for 17 year old prodigy David Archuleta, who sings in the pop balladeer style that has dominated “Idol" to date. For much of the season, Archuleta seemed almost destined to take the crown, and the judges Tuesday night had announced him as the victor. A native of Blue Springs, Missouri, the low-key and good-natured Cook was overlooked in the early stages of the competition.

At one point, Cook was told by judge Simon Cowell that he was without charisma. Yet Cook surged with a string of rock reimaginations of pop standards such as “Billie Jean" that drew massive ovations from audiences at the tapings.

Cook became the standard bearer for a broad-based popular culture in America today. With network television and the music industry both up against a fractured audience and new forms of media, Idol in all its manifestations remains the only show able to consistently deliver vast numbers of viewers.

It’s managed to achieve this success with a G-rated strategy that reaches across cultural divides of all types - ethnic, economic, generational, even musical.

However, after a season in which the show came under fire for various offstage controversies and suffered a mid-season sag in its ratings, television’s titan stands at a crossroads. It remains to be seen whether this year’s ratings dip is a one year phenomenon or the first step on the inevitable downward spiral all successful shows must eventually face.

For the moment, Fox network brass are sufficiently concerned that they have made public statements promising major, though as yet unspecified, changes when the show returns in January. With broad-based musical hits becoming harder and harder to generate, the Idol machine’s ability to fulfill its original mission of creating “the next pop star" has also been called into question.

Season seven also saw “Idol" seemingly struggle at times to control its own storyline. With legions of reporters from the entertainment press, not to mention the Internet, covering every on screen and off utterance of the judges, producers, contestants and their families, American Idol has been subjected to the sharp news lens normally reserved for Presidential candidates or jail-bound starlets.

In past years the show has been remarkably successful at framing the terms of the debate, bringing its hiccups onto the screen and showing a willingness to poke fun at itself. This year however, with the internet-driven media ever more unleashed, the show has had to grapple with sensitive storylines from rumors of a stage dad out of control to eyebrows raised by judge Paula Abdul’s seemingly off-kilter performance.

Yet Season seven also showcased the show’s continuing strengths. Its young contestants reflected the new, multi-ethnic face of America: Three of the four finalists — Jason Castro, Syesha Mercado and David Archuleta — had at least partly Latino origins, yet the huge differences in their styles (laidback hippie crooning for Castro, cerebral jazz for Mercado and soulful ballads for Archuleta) also revealed the great diversity within this demographic.

Ratings wise, the season seems in the finale to have rebounded from its mid-season dip. The show premiered to an audience of 33.5 million total viewers, according to figures from Nielsen Media Research — putting it ahead of the Oscars telecast to become the season’s number two rated program, trailing only the Superbowl — the ratings subsequently tumbled, falling as low as 21.8 million for one show - the lowest figure in three years.

Still, that’s a number most TV shows would kill for. And the bigger audiences returned for what was billed as the strongest finals match-up in years.

In a time when ever edgier reality television shows dominate the network airwaves, American Idol almost seems today like a pristine throwback to a gentler time. While other competition shows are routinely driven by the spectacle of contestants who are at each others’ throats- often quite literally - with hair pulling and name calling being the norm, the two Idol finalists took the stage Tuesday gushing with good will for each other. Cook even declared that “the competition is over. It’s all about having fun now."

The atmosphere of camaraderie amidst the weekly deathblows is certainly an intentional part of the Idol universe, with a crew that seems much more like a happily family relishing their work than the typical TV production staff. It may be this spirit of fun yet gentle competition that has helped Idol retain its status as the one show on television that still attracts entire families, across the generational divide.

However, as producers look ahead and consider the ratings sag of this year, part of their calculation must be: How much do viewers want fights and freak-shows instead of a face off of pure talent?

While this year’s group was considered by many commentators to be the most talented overall in the show’s history, the uniformity of talent deprived the show of the train-wreck interest summoned, for example, by last year’s contestant Sanjaya Malakar, who drew viewers enjoying the spectacle of his weekly public belly flops.

Nonetheless, with an end of the year ratings rebound and a handful of talents - including the two finalists - with seemingly very strong commercial potential, Idol obituaries may soon look extremely premature.

Ju-Jitsu For All

charlemagne — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:11:10 +0000

Jujitsu, also known as Ju Jitsu, Ju Jutsu, and Jiu-Jitsu, is an ancient martial art used by the Samurai warriors of war-torn Japan. The art itself consists of punches, kicks, throws, ground-grappling, and weapons. Jujitsu techniques rely heavily on leverage, so you don’t have to be extremely strong to train.

Tell Your Friends…

We think this this is a great resource for martial artists (well let’s face it, we would!), especially those just starting out in the martial arts, no matter what style.

If you think we’re doing a good job, the biggest compliment you can pay is by telling your friends. Not by email or anything too technical, but simply by talking about us to your friends, recommending them to our site so they can find out more for themselves.

Traditional Jujitsu or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu?

This site provides you with the chance to learn traditional Jujitsu moves in the form of pictures and full descriptions.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) is a slightly modified version of the art, developed in Brazil by Helio Gracie where more emphasis is placed on takedowns and ground-grappling. We also have a whole section of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu techniques, but still in the same format as our traditional jujitsu techniques.

Love:

charlemagne — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:47:32 +0000

Love is a word used everywhere
You will find it here you will find it there
Some people like it but others don’t care
But to find a true love comes very rare

People love people in different ways
All kinds of love so people do say
The love people share each and everyday
True loves are the best love no one will take away

apple mac book air

charlemagne — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:18:12 +0000

The MacBook Air is a thin Apple Macintos MacBook notebook computer featuring an optional solid-state hard drive. The MBA has a 13.3-inch, widescreen LED backlit display, with 1280 x 800 screen resolution. The MBA weighs 3.0 pounds (1.36 kg), is 0.76 inches (1.93 cm) at its thickest point and 0.16 inches (0.4 cm) at its thinnest.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs revealed the MacBook Air at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 15, 2008. Apple describes it as the "world’s thinnest notebook",^[1] although there have been thinner models in the past

What makes the Air so thin?

MacBook Air is nearly as thin as your index finger. Practically every detail that could be streamlined has been. Yet it still has a 13.3-inch widescreen LED display, full-size keyboard, and large multi-touch trackpad. It’s incomparably portable without the usual ultraportable screen and keyboard compromises.

So many innovations. So little space.

The incredible thinness of MacBook Air is the result of numerous size- and weight-shaving innovations. From a slimmer hard drive to strategically hidden I/O ports to a lower-profile battery, everything has been considered and reconsidered with thinness in mind.

Yael Naim - New Soul lyrics

charlemagne — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:01:00 +0000

I’m a new soul
I came to this strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit bout how to give and take.
But since I came here,
Felt the joy and the fear
Finding myself making every possible mistake

la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la…

I’m a young soul
In this very strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit bout what is true and fake
But why all this hate?
Try to communicate
Finding trust and love is not always easy to make

la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la…

. . . . . .

This is a happy end
‘Cause you don’t understand
Everything you have done
Why’s everything so wrong?
This is a happy end
Come and give me your hand
I’ll take you far away

I’m a new soul
I came to this strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit bout how to give and take.
But since I came here,
Felt the joy and the fear
Finding myself making every possible mistake

I’m a new soul… (la, la, la, la,…)
In this very strange world…
Every possible mistake
Possible mistake
Every possible mistake
Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes…
Take take take take take… take a mistake
Take, take a mistake
Take, take a mistake
(oh oh oh oh…)
[fade out]
(oh oh oh oh…)

Cabal Online

charlemagne — Wed, 21 May 2008 13:57:29 +0000

the newest online game Cabal online is a free massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), created by ESTsoft. It was released from open Beta Testing in Europe on December 21, 2006. In North America, OGPlanet has picked up the license for the game and open beta testing began February 1, 2008.^[1] It had also been stated by IGN that the full release would most likely be by the end of February. On March 3, 2008, the game officially launched in North America and the open beta also began in South-East Asia.