Monday, December 3, 2012

Romney's loss creates GOP leadership vacuum

BOSTON (AP) ? Mitt Romney's shadow looms over a Republican Party in disarray.

The face of the GOP for much of the last year, the failed presidential candidate has been a virtual ghost since his defeat Nov. 6. He has quietly weathered the fallout of the campaign from the seclusion of his Southern California home, emerging only momentarily for a private lunch at the White House with President Barack Obama on Thursday.

His loss and immediate withdrawal from politics, while welcomed by most, has created a leadership vacuum within his party. It's left the GOP rudderless, lacking an overarching agenda and mired in infighting, with competing visions for the way ahead, during what may be the most important policy debate in a generation.

In his final meeting with campaign staffers at his Boston headquarters, Romney promised to remain "a strong voice for the party," according to those in attendance. But so far he has offered little to the Capitol Hill negotiations over potential tax increases and entitlement program changes that could affect virtually every American.

He declined to comment on the Treasury Department's recent refusal to declare China a currency manipulator, which was one of his signature issues over the past 18 months. He made no public remarks after his meeting with Obama, quickly fading away, again.

"If I had to tell you somebody who is the leader of the party right now, I couldn't," said Amy Kremer, chairman of the Tea Party Express, which is among the conservative factions vying for increased influence. "There's a void right now."

There's no shortage of Republicans maneuvering to fill it, from House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio to a number of high-profile politicians looking to boost their national profiles, if not position themselves for a 2016 presidential run. That group could include former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, son and brother of presidents, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Republican officials acknowledge party tensions between the moderate and conservative wings, as well as the tea party and evangelical constituencies. But they dismiss the leadership vacuum as a standard political reality for the losing party in the presidential race. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, never had a strong relationship with the conservative base, given his more moderate past.

Party officials are optimistic that a team of younger and more diverse leaders, drawn from the ranks of governors and Congress, will emerge in the coming months to help strengthen and unify what is now a party grappling with its identity. That list includes Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Nikki Haley of South Carolina.

The GOP was in disarray following its 2006 showing, searching for a new path and leader at a time when President George W. Bush was deeply unpopular.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 presidential nominee, briefly assumed control of a party that he long had criticized, but it never really warmed to him. He lost to Obama, and shortly after that, the party turned to an African-American official, Michael Steele, to serve as its chief spokesman. But the decision was widely seen as a mistake, as Steele, a former Maryland lieutenant governor, presided over major financial problems as head of the Republican National Committee.

All that created a leadership vacuum that helped give rise to the tea party movement in 2009 and sparked rounds of internal battles between party pragmatists and more extreme conservatives.

Republican strategist Phil Musser is among those suggesting that the current void presents a breakout opportunity for the party chairman, Reince Priebus. The 40-year-old Midwesterner largely played a supporting administrative role in his first two years on the job.

"To some degree it's a challenge in as much you don't have a standard bearer to rally behind that unifies central themes of the conservative movement," Musser said. "The bottom line is that a little bit of messiness and frank family discussion is not a terrible thing after an election like this."

But Democrats are emboldened, both by their Election Day successes and the subsequent Republican discord.

GOP factions are fighting over multiple issues: the "fiscal cliff," which will dominate the debate on Capitol Hill at least through the end of the year; blame for Romney's defeat; and how to appeal to a shifting and more diverse electorate and unify its message.

The party's most passionate voters are reluctant to abandon hard-line immigration policies that have dominated their thinking for years. But Washington-based strategists describe a dire need to win over more Hispanic voters and other minorities who overwhelmingly supported Obama in the swing states that decided the election.

At the same time, rank-and-file Republicans on Capitol Hill are struggling to coalesce behind a single message during fiscal cliff negotiations that have exposed a new rift with fiscal conservative guru Grover Norquist and his anti-tax pledge.

There's also evidence that the fight isn't over between the conservative and pragmatic wings of the party in Senate primaries.

Conservatives wasted little time signaling that they would work to defeat Shelley Moore Capito, a popular congresswoman from a storied West Virginia political family, as she seeks the nomination for the chance to challenge Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller in 2014. Within an hour of Capito's announcing her candidacy, the deep-pocketed conservative Club for Growth branded her as the "establishment candidate" whose record in Congress of supporting prominent bailouts has led to bigger government.

Democrats already are working to exploit the GOP divisions to strengthen their own political standing.

Obama has taken his party's message directly to voters. He visited a Pennsylvania toy manufacturer on Friday, calling for Republicans to embrace the immediate extension of tax cuts for all but the top 2 percent of wealthiest Americans.

Though Boehner has taken the lead in negotiations with the White House, Republicans generally did not have a standard-bearer to counter that message. Instead, they're relying on familiar Capitol Hill leaders to guide party doctrine during his debate.

"We don't have one person out there carrying that torch. You'll have (South Carolina Sen.) Lindsey Graham, Speaker Boehner, (Wisconsin Rep.) Paul Ryan, John McCain ? same old, same old," said Republican strategist Hogan Gidley, a senior official on former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's unsuccessful presidential bid. "Void of a singular leader, we're going to have to rely on some of the younger more dynamic speakers to go out and make our argument."

No one, it seems, is talking about Romney assuming any sort of leadership role.

"I don't think that we need to be looking toward Mitt Romney to articulate our principles," said Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder and national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots.

It appears Romney may cooperate, choosing business over politics in defeat.

The former businessman is subletting office space at the Boston-area venture capital firm, Solamere Capital, which was founded by his oldest son. Former aides expect Romney to stay out of the spotlight for the foreseeable future ? spending colder months at his California home and warmer months at his New Hampshire lake house.

"It might be better for him, better for the party, to start fresh," Gidley said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mitt-romneys-loss-creates-gop-leadership-vacuum-131523774--election.html

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Sunday, December 2, 2012

DanielTheFast(Sharingan_User) vs Omega Celion Hunter(Lobos)

This battle took place in the Arena of the Multiverse Chat. Victor was Lobos.

Lobos:
Celion stood in the precise center of the arena, motionless as a statue. The machine was as he was, abyssal black frame with exotic alien curves. The rendition of the human Reaper standing out in bone white against his armor, the hellish crimson of his optics shut away behind shutters over his optic ports. Points of azure light shone softly against his armor, creating a strangely dark rainbow effect against his plates. His stance was one of focus, of meditation.

The mechanoid was armed. Heavily. In his right hand was clutched the hilt of a whip, its metal coils lying in a spiral around him. His left held a a short, wide bored gun, lines of energy glowing faintly along its length. Large shoulder pauldrons hummed quietly, and a medium, compact cannon pointed the heavens over his left shoulder.

"Come get some." The words were broadcast quietly, but one could hear the undertone of anticipation. The desire to loose himself to the power of the fight. The wish to remove all constraints and simply battle.

The will...to kill.

Sharingan_User:
Everywhere Daniel travels he's accompanied by his older brother and the Magician named Jacob; their not around because he asked them to stay away from the Arena. "This is personal." he said as he made his way towards the Arena. Seeing the aged dome which has grime growing from the cracks of the ceiling from his point of view is quite high and no one could get hurt because no one's in there. Crouching down, Daniel springs upward so he could become air bourne and overlook the Arena. Unbuttoning his plaid shirt to show his white shirt underneath, Daniel descends into the hole of the ceiling and lands onto the Arena's floor only to see Celion.

The metal piece of junk that he fought months ago. Standing slowly after landing, his plaid shirt blew with the wind that whistled pass his body, fluttering his open shirt and brown lion mane-like hair. "Let's get this started!" he said from the back of his throat, giving him the raspy tone.

Lobos:
Two dozen of points of fire ignited on Celion's head, every single optic the machine possessed. Sensors went active, the power of the machine's power plants thrummed to life as his frame started shifting. His systems confirmed his foe's identity, his tactical planning subroutines accessing the incomplete predictive profile that he had begun. Shields flickered into focus as they came to full power before fading from sight.

He was ready.

Cannon panned smoothly on its mount to directly target Daniel before firing, magnetic coils hurtling a large grenade at super-ballistic speed for his foe's feet. The contact-triggered grenade had a blast radius of 5 meters, filling that space with a bubble of incandescent plasma.

Celion didn't pause. The snubby rifle in his left hand screamed before shooting bolts of plasma downrange, the semi-automatic fire directed on predictive choice lines estimating where Daniel would evade to. The incomplete algorithm did not ensure a hit, but it did allow the machine to make it hazardous to evade without thinking.

Simultaneously, the whip in his right hand ignited, burning plasma roiling down its coils, lifting the twenty foot length from the ground to writhe and twist in the air. Subtle shifts of the machine's wrist articulation kept the weapon clear of himself, weaving it slowly around his frame in readiness for the man to close.

Sharingan_User:
DanieltheFast first saw the optics of Celion become activated then saw Celion's frame shift as it came to life; Daniel shifted also. Crouching at his knees a few inches from his standing point and holding his arms out as if there was an earthquake and he's keeping his balance, bent at the elbows slightly. Daniel squinted his green eyes at the shield that the robot had shown before and made that a target. "That shield isn't breakable, but, there has to be somewhere I can hit to effect it."?

Daniel set his mind on what he was aiming for. After deciding what he was going to do, he saw a large grenade being shot towards his feet. Immediately Daniel evaded that several cartwheels because he didn't know the range on that explosion. The explosion occured and Daniel is going to use his wind to deflect the next object back to Celion.

"I got it!" Daniel's shirt fluttered as he scrambled away from the plasma blasts.?

Daniel dashes towards Celion as he zig-zagged around the blasts "I'm coming to get cha.." he said as he kept in the back of his mind that Celion had a whip for his close ranged offense. Landing within a meter away from the robot, the wind user uses a wind attack which he believes that he won't effect him with; he'll use it anyways.?

Spinning slowly he gradually picks up speed as he rotates, gathering wind chi in the process. Since Kisa, his ex-girlfriend, gave him the power to use fire he does at this time. Releasing flames from within, the tornado turned into a flame tornado. "FLAAAME...TORNADOOOOO!!" he yells as he shifted his hips the opposite direction which sends the tornado directly at him and in a fast rate of motion.

Lobos:
Maintaining Raiga Cannon fire through the approach, Celion's predictive programming refined with each movement, his shots beginning to miss by gradually lesser margins. Occassionally he put bolts right where Daniel had been a split instant before, but these were so far anomalies in his algorithm.

Still, it wasn't hard to guess the overall goal. Directly into the teeth of his weapons. Very well, he would oblige.

Celion devoted a fraction of his processing power to trigger the powering up of his translocation array. It would be a few moments before it was charged enough to use, but in the interim he had plenty of power to counter.

Rapid acceleration combined with rotation of target. Wind currents altering to match. Momentum not enough to cause significant damage.?The instant dialogue of his sensors against his AI was clinical. His defensive tactical choices altered when the fire was introduced, his offensive did not.

The energy layer of his shields took the fury of the spinning flames even as the machine surged towards Daniel, his whip flickering around his frame to scythe a multiple axis attack at the boy. Even as he absorbed the energy of the fires, snuffing them out and bolstering his own power, his whip sailed past his foe and arced around, stabbing directly in towards him while the arcing ring sliced inwards from his left. The waves in the coils of the whips made any movement to the left, above or below, extremely hazardous, as navigating actively burning plasma and a sharp admantium coil was tricky.

However, the machine also made his attack a double. Small missiles roared free of his shoulder pauldrons' silos, arcing back and away on their boosters, before counter-grav drives kicked in. Six missiles held their position to see which way Daniel would dodge before streaking in on homing trajectories, the power blast wave warheads set to proximity for detonation. And set to attack one at a time in a row.

Sharingan_User:
Once Daniel sent the massive tornado in Celion's direction at blazing speeds, leaving behind trails of flames, he became horizontal; idle in mid-air. Flipping backward, Daniel lands his palms onto the floor beneath and swung his legs in a crescent moon shape, sending twin, sharp currents of wind from each foot that was swung in that direction. Completing his flip, his green eyes feasted upon the fact that Celion is coming forth to attack; manually. He went saw the whip ever since he entered the Arena so he knew that he would have to face it sooner or later, in this case sooner.?

Daniel was trained that if you evade an attack at the last second it's a better chance you can counter-attack on your opponent, so, that's what he's doing. With each flip, somersault, cartwheel Daniel did to avoid contact with the whip, he sent several wind blasts from his mouth, the swing of his arms and legs. These currents is at speeds up to three-hundred and sixty mph.

Once Celion shot missiles from his shoulders Daniel immediately crouched, evading the last whip attack, and did one large backflip. Separating the distance between him and Celion five meters. "These....*huff* missiles....*huff*" catching his breath, he stands upright and says "are heat seekers..."?

Daniel then keeps a good eye on the missiles and Celion.

Lobos:
Celion's shield took the punishment of wind strikes and broke them, albeit at the cost of three plates. The gaps rotated away from his foe, randomly placed in the assembly as they faded away, and Celion fired his plasma boosters towards Daniel, rocketing away from the man to gain distance.

The machine, however, stopped his missiles before they hurtled towards Daniel. His translocation system powered up, he had a better use for them.

The thrums, hums, and hisses of his weapons died as Celion leeched the power from them, flooding his system before shunting the armaments back to nano-storage, bolstering his power even more. He drew his shields in close, overlapping their scales...

And the missiles turned around and launched for him, detonating early to let the blast waves roil into that field of energy. Alarms screamed, plates shattered under the storm and were replaced. But Celion's overall power levels had risen drastically, the fury of the blast warheads absorbed and redistributed.

Wherein Celion triggered his translocator. "Crystal Armor."

Blinding light blazed from his shield projectors, lightning arced and spat from his frame as portals rent open, his advanced power armor pulled from his depot. The exotic, glass like plates latched onto his frame, powering to life and syncing their feeds with his systems.

As the light died, Omega Celion Hunter deployed his now armored Wyrm Wing Systems, hovering modules that now held the appearance of black gems. His own appearance was fiercesome, that of smoky glass and gems filled with fire. But what caught the eye and stopped the heart was the glittering forms of hundreds, thousands of mirrored plates of energy, hovering around him like a great dome. Shield plates one and all, they were at once a virtually impregnable armor...and a devastating weapon.

The hovering plates projected by the advanced shield generators of the Crystal Armor began to shift, many settling into an intricate representation of Celion's form around him, but yet more spreading across the open space of the arena, seemingly no pattern or intentional placement to their alignment. So strange and majestic was the dance that most would miss a key to the grand strategy.

That of the long, menacing cannons that his arms had become. The obscenely powerful Aurora Laser Projectors, they were the weapon that used the shield plates now spread about the Arena as mirrors, splitting and reflecting the beams.

Celion triggered his projectors, and two beams struck splitting gem formations, each sending dozens of smaller beams scything in every direction. They began to rotate, the high power of the beams carving lines into everything they touched: floors, walls, stands, ceilings.

Sharingan_User:
DanieltheFast's eyes were multitasking at the time because he didn't know which one would come first, Celion or his missiles. "I broke the shields. That's your weakness." Cracking his knuckles with a challenging smirk on his face, he says "You can't take a punch can ya?" The next the he knew it, he saw Celion moving back to get range. He saw and heard the missiles die out next. Daniel's arms swung down to his sides and he was in astonishment once seeing this because he didn't know what's going to happen next but he knew to keep an eye on it.

Once he heard the loud screaming alarm, Daniel slammed his hands on his ears and closed his eyes tightly as he tried to keep the noise from bursting his eardrums. Subsequently, the noise died out and Daniel took his hands off his ears, opened his eyes and his mouth dropped. The green optics of Daniel's eyes shrunk but his eyes grew as he saw the robot transform right before his eyes. The portals of it opened and which looked as if he was regaining his armor, Daniel makes that a target. Fire filled gems and smoky glass is a part of his very appearance then the glitter-like, mirror plates of energy was suspended from touching it's body.?

"This thing is serious... I'll have to test this strength out for a few until I raise my chi-levels."

Watching it's finishing touches and the shifting of his Crystal Armor, Daniel crouches and begins to stretch his muscles out, loosening himself, getting his blood going and breathing sharp and small breaths. Daniel doesn't have any portals or machine guns or built in armor so getting ready isn't that hard to do. Concentrating on the chi which is on his main arteries, Daniel powers up and releases chi from his pores with an extremely loud yell. "AAAHH!!!" Open plaid shirt waving rapidly and his brown hair dances with the wind that temporarily enters until it goes back down the normal way. "Ready!"

Lobos:
Celion's armor synced fully with his systems, the resulting flow of power doubling his output. His lasers beams burned far more brightly, shield plates intercepting the powered beams and splitting them in half, each half hitting a splitter gem assembly. Four gems gave off 16 beams each, the grand total of 64 beams lancing out in every direction.

They were beginning to burn holes into the walls and ceilings when other plates intercepted the lines, redirecting them like a vast mirror array to reflect the lines around the room. The intricate weaving of the deadly focused light was quite distracting...so much so that it might be difficult to notice how the beams were being redirected to cover the space to the edges of the Arena around Daniel...or that plates were moving into position within that area.

All at once plates slid into position, and 64 high energy lasers were suddenly spearing towards Daniel and the area around him. 6 beams actually targeted the boy, while 20 maintained a three foot spacing, hemming him into a six foot box. Another 18 kept another foot spacing, covering half of the gaps of the first layer, while 19 more beams maintained a six inch spacing to cover 90% of the gaps in the grand laser box.

The last beam was poised to be redirected to strike the gap, simply waiting for Dan to take the opening to redirect into the center of the hole in his laser death trap.

Sharingan_User:
DanieltheFast took note onto the plates that surrounded the Arena and understood immediately. "This is a robot, robots shoots beams, beams reflect off of the plates and those were the plates that I broke with my wind. They aren't that strong.." Looking up, his eyes bounced from one plate to the other quicker than normal because this could spell out disaster. As he tried to locate each plate, Celion began to shoot beams and split those beams in half so they could bounce off of the mirrors of the plates that's encircled the Arena. Daniel started to hear the eerie scream of the beams and looked to the Arena walls, he became evident to the strength that these beams hold, but everything has a weakness.

Being unable to move at the time, Daniel shoots concentrated blasts of wind towards several plates that surrounded the inside of the Arena, hoping to break them. Six beams were then shot towards Daniel so he goes to evade them and other beams scratched his arm then his leg and his neck also, leaving him bleeding from those streaks of light. Landing, he winced in pain, but that isn't going to stop him from shooting more blasts at the shielded plates. "Turbo crashing!" he exclaimed as he vanished by pushing wind chi from the heels of his feet and appearing to each plate and punching them with brute force; it's only so many time that he could do that until he runs low so he appears back to the ground with more scratches from the beams. Their inching closer and closer but even if they hit him directly, he'll keep going. "*huff* *huff* this has to be the strongest thing I've ever fought..." he said as he knelt but soon has to jump again because of the ruthless beams.?

"I have to get each one of these plates!" he said as he went to hit more.

Lobos:
The bait in the trap was taken. Plates began taken the places of the broken ones, but ultimately the beams were actually reflecting back and forth off a pair of plates at either end. No power loss unless the beams were lost, but almost impossible to detect.

Which is why amidst Daniel's frantic assault on the plates holding beams against him, Celion's ending assault would likely go unnoticed. The plates he'd held against himself shifted and slid, the slight change in alignment hiding the new, perfect system around him. He had not been firing, charging his weapons with the full force of his fusion plants.

He fired both weapons into the maze of shield plates before him, the beams reflecting off of hundreds of the improvised mirrors, splitting, bouncing, arcing around. In scant seconds two became 40, 40 became 80, 80 became 160...

Within ten seconds 2 beams had split into over 600, the many far less powerful than the original, but charged as his weapons had been, more than enough to slice flesh apart. And with equal care as Celion had arranged his system of mirror plates to split the beams, so had he to redirect them. En masse.

They came all at once, covering a fifty foot cone at and around Daniel. Intersecting, filling the air with a lethal lightshow that would completely fill the trap that Celion had set.

As human's liked to say it. Game.
Set.
Match.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/Nwvw7AgiUaI/viewtopic.php

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Verizon And Redbox Reveal December Launch For ... - internet TV

The latest competitor to Netflix?s American online streaming dominance in an ever-expanding?market has been revealed, with broadband/telecommunications giant Verizon teaming up with famed ?kiosk DVD rental? business Redbox to release Redbox?Instant,?a?video streaming service now confirmed to be launching within a month and by the end of 2012.

Rumours from GigaOM suggest the earliest possible release date as?17 December, and that the monthly cost of the platform could be as low as $6 a month. For a slight;y raised price, the venture is thought to be seriously undercutting Netflix?s offering by including kiosk DVD rentals along with streaming as part of a combined package deal.

The deal to launch the service was originally announced in February by Verizon and Coinstar (owners of Redbox), though few details are?currently revealed, aside from a launch announcement that the service will feature ?on a variety of devices? (including portable products, computers, and games consoles).

According to GigaOM?s private beta research of the service, the subscription structure will be grouped into $6 (online streaming only) and?$8 (streaming + four ?DVD rental credits? per month), while less committed customers will be likely to be?able to stream ?video on demand? content at a rate of $0.99 each. Meanwhile the rumoured device compatibility list?so far includes Android and iOS devices, Samsung Smart TV sets, featured Blu-ray players, and?Xbox 360.

With a strong business model on paper, will Redbox Instant make an impact in the streaming market, or does their entry come too little too late to be seen as an immediate competitor?

Welcome to WorldTVPC Blog dedicated to bringing the latest news from the world of online tv, streaming services and TV hardware. We have news, links and a comprehensive review section. Hope you enjoy and we welcome all constructive comments

Steve Sanger

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Source: http://www.worldtvpc.com/blog/verizon-and-redbox-reveal-december-launch-for-combined-streaming-service/

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Help Yourself Today - Self Help Tips And Techniques Anyone Can ...

If you are considering an effort of personal development, doing a little research first would benefit you. Read on for some great tips on developing yourself to become a better person.

You cannot provide care for others unless you care for yourself. Whatever point you may be at on your journey, it is important to properly care for yourself.

Have a special account for emergencies. It?s common for us to add even more charges to our already overtaxed credit cards whenever an unforeseen expense arises, no matter how large or small. Putting back a few dollars weekly can build an emergency fund quickly. This fund can be crucial in both your immediate and distant future as you work toward decreasing debt, rather than accumulating it.

Always try do do the best you can at whatever you do. Follow your passions to decide what to excel at. No one can be perfect at everything, but we all aspire to provide inspiration to others. Increase your professional skillset, and you will feel a lot better about yourself.

Remembering to listen is as important as speaking your mind. This is particularly true when you are talking about self-development. Many people talk to themselves, and this is something you should be doing as well. In addition, listen to yourself very carefully. You will not be able to understand your needs or desires without truly listening to your own words.

Compliment other people. Instead, do the exact opposite and treat others with kindness and respect. This kindness will make you feel better and help you to treat yourself nicely as well.

An important part of self improvement is bettering your health. If you want to build healthy habits, you need to be motivated to eat better and exercise more. If your health is a priority, you have a better chance of feeling your best and therefore being a better contributor in other aspects of your life.

Always be ready to write down any ideas that you may have at any time or location. Pack some paper with you when you go out. Write down your thoughts in detail, and be sure to put it into action.

You should always want a higher level of self restraint when working hard for personal development. Learn not to give in every time your body craves something that may not be good for it. Try and curb your desires to overindulge on harmful items. Not only will you learn restraint, you will also keep your body healthy by refusing to participate in these harmful activities.

Sit down and uncover what has become the barrier between you and your goals. Many people have problems doing this. Once you can pinpoint your own weaknesses, it is easier to accept them, act on them, and change them. By eliminating things that stand in your way, you can walk on the path to your future with less stumbling blocks on the way.

Research different individuals who are currently, or have been successful in the past, and see how they got to that point of success. Find out what other people have done to become more successful in their careers. Finding out how other people did things will make your own journey toward success that much easier.

If you are feeling angry, allow yourself ten seconds before opening your mouth to say anything. Take a long, slow breath while thinking of peaceful things. Focus on remaining calm and think about what you want to say before you speak.

Many people starting on a personal development journey struggle because their goal is too vague and unspecific. Try to set a goal that is specific. If you create a clear goal, you will achieve the results you want.

Write down your goals to help you grow on the inside. For example, should you want a greater amount of confidence, write about it. Next, you?ll want to give some thought to what you?ve done in the past and could do in the future to be more confident. Picture everyday situations that allow you to work toward that goal. This method will increase the likelihood of your success.

Learn what habits successful people do and try practicing them and applying them to your life. Concentrate on practicing some vital core habits at first, and keep at it until they become second nature to you. People say that it takes 21 days for a habit to stick, so have confidence in yourself and keep working on it.

As you have read in the beginning of this article, part of self improvement is expanding your knowledge. You must also be able to apply that knowledge. There are perhaps limitless ways in which one can grow as a person. Once you have started to apply this knowledge, you will begin to feel more confident in yourself and your abilities.

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Source: http://lifecoachnet.com/help-yourself-today-self-help-tips-and-techniques-anyone-can-use/

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Saturday, December 1, 2012

NBA fines Spurs $250,000 for sending starters home

Gregg Popovich sent his best players home, deciding they reached the end of the road before the trip was over.

For that, and for keeping it a secret, the San Antonio Spurs were fined $250,000 by the NBA on Friday.

Commissioner David Stern said the Spurs "did a disservice to the league and our fans" when they didn't bring Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili or Danny Green to Miami for the final game of the six-game trip.

"The result here is dictated by the totality of the facts in this case," Stern said in a statement. "The Spurs decided to make four of their top players unavailable for an early-season game that was the team's only regular-season visit to Miami. The team also did this without informing the Heat, the media, or the league office in a timely way. Under these circumstances, I have concluded that the Spurs did a disservice to the league and our fans."

Teams are required to report as soon as they know a player will not travel because of injury.

The league's statement said the Spurs were in violation of league policy reviewed with the board of governors in April 2010 against resting players in a manner "contrary to the best interests of the NBA."

The Spurs didn't comment on the penalty.

The issue of resting healthy players has been debated before, though usually at the end of the season, not a month into it. And the Spurs have been right at the center of it, Popovich using the rest strategy for an aging team that could use more time off than the NBA schedule often allows.

They even made a joke out of it last season, the box score listing "OLD" next to the 36-year-old Duncan's name as the reason he didn't play.

Stern wasn't laughing Thursday.

He has a nearly $5 billion a year industry to protect and can't like it when teams aren't willing to put their best product on display in a marquee game televised by national TV partner TNT. Fans and viewers were excited about seeing the Spurs try to complete an unbeaten road trip against LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and the NBA champions, so there was an understandable letdown when they learned of the absences.

But there's never a guarantee that any players are going to play, and Stern himself has previously made it clear he wasn't going to impose rules to change that.

The Cleveland Cavaliers rested a healthy James for four straight games at the end of the 2009-10 regular season. Owners discussed the issue later that week at a meeting in New York, and Stern reported that there was "no conclusion reached, other than a number of teams thought it should be at the sole discretion of the team, the coach, the general manager, and I think it's fair to say I agree with that, unless that discretion is abused."

In the NFL, the Indianapolis Colts rested a healthy Peyton Manning even with an undefeated record late in the 2009 season, and the league eventually started trying to schedule as many division matchups as possible for the final two weeks of the season in an effort to make late-season games matter.

Popovich doesn't wait until the end of the season to start resting players.

He was both praised and ripped for the way he navigated the lockout schedule last season, twice surrendering 11-game winning streaks by playing without his Big Three. Even those who didn't like it conceded that a coach who had won four championships with what's long been considered the NBA's model organization probably knew what he was doing, and more defense came Thursday night.

"Popovich has done this before and he knows what's best for his team," former NBA star Shaquille O'Neal said on TNT. "It's his job to manage his players and do whatever he'd like. He's thinking about the big picture."

Another former player turned TNT analyst, Steve Kerr ? who played for Popovich ? also defended the franchise's actions.

"If the NBA punishes the Spurs for sitting players, it opens up a huge can of worms," he wrote on Twitter. "This is a serious legal challenge for the league."

That San Antonio ? largely unloved in its championship days but suddenly a plucky underdog cheered by those who felt Stern overstepped his bounds ? nearly won the game before the Heat rallied for a 105-100 victory didn't sway the commissioner.

The league has an expectation that fans paying hundreds of dollars should get what they paid for. On Friday, the Phoenix Suns announced a "satisfaction guaranteed night" next Thursday against Dallas, offering fans a rebate if they didn't enjoy their experience in what the team called a first-of-its-kind promotion in the league.

But nobody buying a ticket can be assured of seeing his favorite players. The Heat occasionally sat their superstars late last season for what the organization termed a "maintenance program," and a late-season matchup against the Celtics included the following DNPs: James, Wade, Bosh and Boston's Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett and Rajon Rondo.

Then there are the neutral-site preseason games the league stages in markets where fans rarely get to see the NBA live. Signs outside the Times Union Center in Albany, N.Y. before a Celtics-Knicks matchup in October featured pictures of Paul Pierce and Carmelo Anthony, although neither played despite being healthy.

With Stern reaching in now, does he reach that far? Or are there be a separate set of guidelines depending on the calendar?

The league wouldn't clear that up, not commenting beyond its statement. The Spurs were unavailable Friday after a long road trip.

They were resting.

___

Follow Brian Mahoney on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Briancmahoney

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nba-fines-spurs-250-000-sending-starters-home-232305807--spt.html

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Video: Shark goes airborne in pursuit of prey



>>> in a place called false bay off the coast of south africa . but it is in fact, real. and they set up rubber seals as bait, waited three days to capture the series of photos of a 13-foot great white leaning out of the water to get its catch.

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/50018731/

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Completely new method of manufacturing the smallest structures in electronics

Thursday, November 29, 2012

A completely new method of manufacturing the smallest structures in electronics could make their manufacture thousands of times quicker, allowing for cheaper semiconductors. The findings have been published in the latest issue of Nature.

Instead of starting from a silicon wafer or other substrate, as is usual today, researchers have made it possible for the structures to grow from freely suspended nanoparticles of gold in a flowing gas.

Behind the discovery is Lars Samuelson, Professor of Semiconductor Physics at Lund University, Sweden, and head of the University's Nanometre Structure Consortium. He believes the technology will be ready for commercialisation in two to four years' time. A prototype for solar cells is expected to be completed in two years.

"When I first suggested the idea of getting rid of the substrate, people around me said 'you're out of your mind, Lars; that would never work'. When we tested the principle in one of our converted ovens at 400?C, the results were better than we could have dreamt of", he says.

"The basic idea was to let nanoparticles of gold serve as a substrate from which the semiconductors grow. This means that the accepted concepts really were turned upside down!"

Since then, the technology has been refined, patents have been obtained and further studies have been conducted. In the article in Nature, the researchers show how the growth can be controlled using temperature, time and the size of the gold nanoparticles.

Recently, they have also built a prototype machine with a specially built oven. Using a series of ovens, the researchers expect to be able to 'bake' the nanowires, as the structures are called, and thereby develop multiple variants, such as p-n diodes.

A further advantage of the technology is avoiding the cost of expensive semiconductor wafers.

"In addition, the process is not only extremely quick, it is also continuous. Traditional manufacture of substrates is batch-based and is therefore much more time-consuming", adds Lars Samuelson.

At the moment, the researchers are working to develop a good method to capture the nanowires and make them self-assemble in an ordered manner on a specific surface. This could be glass, steel or another material suited to the purpose.

The reason why no one has tested this method before, in the view of Professor Samuelson, is that today's method is so basic and obvious. Such things tend to be difficult to question.

However, the Lund researchers have a head start thanks to their parallel research based on an innovative method in the manufacture of nanowires on semiconductor wafers, known as epitaxy ? consequently, the researchers have chosen to call the new method aerotaxy. Instead of sculpting structures out of silicon or another semiconductor material, the structures are instead allowed to develop, atomic layer by atomic layer, through controlled self-organisation.

The structures are referred to as nanowires or nanorods. The breakthrough for these semiconductor structures came in 2002 and research on them is primarily carried out at Lund, Berkeley and Harvard universities. The Lund researchers specialise in developing the physical and electrical properties of the wires, which helps create better and more energy-saving solar cells, LEDs, batteries and other electrical equipment that is now an integrated part of our lives.

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Lund University: http://www.lu.se

Thanks to Lund University for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/125582/Completely_new_method_of_manufacturing_the_smallest_structures_in_electronics

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