Arts Entertainments

Your caveman brain

Why are you so afraid of one-in-a-million events like shark attacks, kidnapping of children, or dying in a plane crash? Why are you so willing to believe elaborate scenarios about possible future weather events from the same people that they can’t even accurately predict tomorrow’s weather? Have you ever stopped to realize that many of the almost hysterical fears of “Pop” also once alarmed you (fears such as BSE, acid rain, dangerous silicone breast implants, road rage, SARS? or bird flu) miraculously disappeared in one spot be replaced by others that have now disappeared or will soon disappear in the same mysterious way? Why are you so afraid? Simply put, it’s because of your caveman brain.

Consider this: psychological testing has shown that you have a brain that somehow believes that a piece of fudge shaped like dog poop really is dog poop. You have a brain that will use the first suggested available number to estimate something that has absolutely nothing to do with that number. You have a brain that concludes that elaborate predictions about the future are more likely to come true than simple ones. You have a brain that concludes that things that are easier to remember are more likely to happen again. And, most importantly, you have a brain that is constantly subject to the machinations of stakeholders and fears traders who have a vested interest in keeping you scared.

As Daniel Gardner explains in his book The science of fearWhen it comes to evolutionary psychology, try to imagine the development of the human brain by comparing the last 2,000,000 years of human development to a 201-page book. Two hundred pages would cover the entire time our species spent as nomadic hunter-gatherers in the Stone Age. The last page would cover our time in agrarian society, a period that began just 12,000 years ago (the first settlement appeared about 4,600 years ago). The last paragraphs of that final page would cover the last two centuries of the world we live in now. We are cavemen.

Now take a look around you. How could a cavewoman, at a lower but decisive level of her brain, not be frightened by everything she sees in this strange and complex world of bears? Her head was designed to roam the savannah, not to deal with most of what bombards her here. That is why your instinct remains the dominant force in decision making. And that is the force that skews our perception of the world around us. The gut reacts instinctively and lights up fast and lives in lightning-fast time that we do it, the head just can’t keep up or can’t get through. That is why we now live in a nation of worry, in a society obsessed with risk. No matter that our head is trying to tell us that we live in a much safer and healthier time than previous generations enjoyed, our instincts block this out and only fixate on what it sees to be the opposite on the evening news. You eagerly await the next fear to cling to, real or imagined. Needless to say, Gut never has to wait long.

There are many complex psychological mechanisms at play during this ongoing conflict between Gut and Head. Three that can be highlighted here are:

The availability heuristic. If examples of something can be easily remembered, Gut tells us that it must be common. If there is a brutal murder in City X, Gut convinces you that you are also at high risk because you can easily remember it. After all, you “saw” it on television. It doesn’t matter that Head is trying to tell you how small the chances are that you are in danger. And memory is skewed; The more recent, emotional, and vivid the events, the more likely they are to be remembered, and therefore, according to Gut, the more likely they are to happen.

Confirmation of bias. Once a fear is in place, we filter what we see and hear in a biased way that ensures that our fears are “proven” justified. Gut doesn’t want to be misled by reasonable arguments or reassuring statistics to the contrary. The gut is bad with numbers. He likes a good story.

Group polarization. When people who share fears come together in groups, they become more convinced that their fears are correct and they become even more extreme in their views. Once a fear is generalized, so to speak, the distortion about what should be scary and what should not be insurmountable. We are social animals and what others think matters to us. That is why we do not need reasons to believe in risks and problems that “everyone knows” to be true. We don’t want them.

Seen in this context, we deceive ourselves when we think that we evaluate evidence and make decisions about risks by calculating rationally. Experts are wrong to think that they can alleviate risk fears simply by making the facts public. Gut doesn’t listen to reasons. And, as we will see, the experts cannot be trusted.

We overestimate the likelihood of being killed by things that appear on the evening news and underestimate things that don’t. It does not matter that diseases related to smoking or obesity kill far greater numbers than catastrophic events, accidents, terrorism, and murders. Gut watches them over and over again on TV (or other media), becomes obsessed with the stories related to them, and thus indirectly contributes to what then becomes a fear feedback loop. Our biased perception is easy to explain once we understand that Gut is in control while Head is asleep at the wheel. The head cannot erase the intuition. It cannot change how we feel. And how we feel is the essential part of the calculation here: fear sells. Instinct buys.

Is there something sinister or conspiratorial about selling fear? Not really. After all, self-interest is the natural state of humanity. The news industry and new media do not hide their desire to make money, nor do they need it. And it doesn’t stop here. Fear is also a fantastic marketing tool for companies, consultants, politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, activists, and NGOs, all of whom are competing with each other, fighting for influence, and selling in fear. For example, it is standard practice for companies selling cleaning products or alarm systems to increase your awareness of the risks you take by not using their products. What politician has not seized the opportunity to exaggerate a real or imagined danger regarding an issue that his political opponent has not addressed? Law enforcement and security officials are naturally averse to risking your funding by minimizing security risks to you. Scientists also need funding and, well, no problem, no funding. NGOs and other groups have political agendas to promote. Would you hesitate to spread fear if it helped you achieve your goals?

What can Head do to help alleviate this bear bias problem? Not much really. Many of the problems we face today are so complex that we, as individuals, are not in a position to adequately understand them. Since we simply don’t have enough time or energy to research them ourselves, we must rely on the experts to do it for us. And these experts are generally biased, probably belonging to one of the various groups mentioned above. And we are often as biased as the experts. Interestingly, showing fear on particular issues has become a way of expressing cultural identity or making a political statement. I find it amusing that looking to the future and imagining what can go wrong has become a kind of parlor game for intellectuals, for example. And sadly, another problem is that questioning things that “everyone knows to be true” takes a lot of effort and stamina that many of us just don’t have.

So why are you so scared? Your caveman brain wouldn’t do it any other way. It’s too bad too many of your inner caveman’s risk perception buttons are being pushed by someone else.

Arts Entertainments

Scary Movie Trivia Questions and Answers

1. If you are a teenager living on Elm Street, what should you never do?

A. Go to sleep

B. Play with dolls

C. Go to prom

D. have sex

A. Go to sleep

TOPICS: We all know from “Nightmare on Elm Street” that your dreams can make Freddy Krueger kill you. Written by Craven, a former English teacher, the premise of the film is the question of where the line lies between dreams and reality. The villain, Freddy Krueger, exists in the “dream world” and yet can kill in the “real world”.

2. If you are aware of your movie lore, then you also know that you should never accept what job on Halloween.

A. Hotel clerk

B. Nanny

C. Camp Counselor

D. Street vendor

B. Nanny

TOPICS: Halloween (aka John Carpenter’s Halloween) is a 1978 American independent horror film set in the fictional Midwestern town of Haddonfield, Illinois on Halloween. Originally titled The Babysitter Murders, the film centers on Michael Myers ‘escape from a mental hospital, his murder as teenagers, and Dr. Loomis’ attempts to track down and stop him.

3. What should alert you to a bad motel to check in?

A. No one else has signed up for weeks.

B. The employee talks too much about his mother.

C. The secretary’s name is Norman

D. you are a thief

B. The employee talks too much about his mother.

TOPICS: At the end of the film, a forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Fred Richmond (Oakland), explains to Lila, Sam and the authorities that Bates’s mother, although dead, lives in Norman’s psyche. Norman was so dominated by his mother while she lived, and so full of guilt for having murdered her eight years earlier, that he tried to erase the crime from his mind by bringing his mother back to life.

4. If you are looking for work in Crystal Lake, what offer should you not accept?

A. postman

B. Truck driver

C. Camp Cook

D. Camp Counselor

D. Camp Counselor

TOPICS: On Friday the 13th, we learned that it is a bad job to be a counselor at Camp Crystal Lake, where counselors die extremely bloody deaths at the hands of an invisible killer who turns out to be the cook whose son Jason drowned 25 years earlier. while romantic counselors neglect it.

5. British actor Boris Karloff created a movie icon when he played the role of which monster?

A. Dracula

B. Werewolf

C. Frankenstein

D. Foreigner

C. Frankenstein

TOPICS: British actor Boris Karloff played the role of the monster in the 1931 film “Frankenstein.” The ghoulish makeup she wore and the wobbly gait she adopted in the film have become conventions, even clichés, of horror movies. And beyond the individual techniques that Karloff used when playing the role of the monster, he created a feeling of sympathy for the character, a technique that has since become a more general feature of successful horror films, whose monsters often They also gain intensity by fascinating the public. how to repel them.

6. Béla Lugosi was a Hungarian / American actor best known for his portrayal of what monster?

A. Dracula

B. Werewolf

C. Frankenstein

D. Foreigner

A. Dracula

TOPICS: Béla Ferenc Dezso Blaskó, better known as Béla Lugosi, was best known for his portrayal of Count Dracula in the American Broadway theater production, and the later film, of Bram Stoker’s classic vampire story.

7. In this book and novel from the 1970s, a mother thinks her son (played by Linda Blair in the movie) is what?

A. An alien

B. The devil

C. Possessed by a demon

D. Carrying the Devil’s Baby

C. Possessed by a demon

TOPICS: Novelist William Peter Blatty based his 1971 best-seller on the last Catholic-sanctioned exorcism in the United States. Blatty transformed the boy from the 1949 incident into a girl named Regan, played by 14-year-old Linda Blair in the 1973 film. Regan, suddenly prone to seizures and strange behaviors, turns out to be quite difficult for her actress mother, Chris MacNeil (played by Ellen Burstyn, although Blatty based the character on her neighbor Shirley MacLaine). When Regan gets completely out of control, Chris calls the young priest, Father Karras (Jason Miller), who becomes convinced that the girl is possessed by the devil and that they must summon an exorcist: Father Merrin (Max von Sydow). ). His enemy proves not to be an ordinary demon, and both the priest and the girl suffer numerous horrors during their fights.

8. In a horror movie, you have to worry if you come across a doll named what?

A. smiley

B. Bonnie

C. Chucky

D. Dolly

C. Chucky

TOPICS: Charles Lee Ray, or Chucky for short is a fictional character from the Child’s Play horror film series, the original script was credited as being written by Don Mancini, John Lafia, and Tom Holland. He is the main villain that appears in the series. Chucky is a doll that was possessed by voodoo magic by serial killer Charles Lee Ray, the famous Lakeshore Strangler. For most of his time as a doll, Chucky pursued a boy named Andy Barclay because Andy was the first person he told his real name to when he was a doll.

9. Movies also teach us that if your child warns of “redrum” it is better that she distance herself from her husband soon. But in “The Shining” the only thing that worries the husband is what?

A. Working too hard

B. Playing too hard

C. Become a murderer

D. Being killed

A. Working too hard

TOPICS: “All work and no play make Jack a dull kid,” or rather, a homicidal kid in Stanley Kubrick’s lurid 1980 adaptation of Stephen King’s horror novel. With his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and psychic son Danny (Danny Lloyd) in tow, frustrated writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a job as a winter caretaker at the opulent and ominous Overlook Hotel, surrounded by mountains, so he can write in peace. . Before the Overlook is free for the Torrances, the manager (Barry Nelson) informs Jack that a previous caretaker has gone mad and killed his family. Settling into his routine, Jack settles into a cavernous room with strict orders not to be disturbed. Danny’s alter ego “Tony”, however, begins to warn of “redrum” when Danny is plagued with more blood-soaked visions of the past, and a blocked Jack begins visiting the hotel bar to get some visions of his own. Scared by her husband’s behavior, Wendy soon discovers what Jack has really been up to in his study all day and what the hotel has done to Jack.

10. Will you never really be able to return home, or at least you shouldn’t if your neighbors belong to this profession?

A. Slaughterhouse workers

B. Funerals

C. Heads

D. Veterinarians

A. Slaughterhouse workers

TOPICS: Tobe Hooper’s influential cult classic, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, continues the subgenre of horror films based on the life and “career” of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein. When Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) learns that the Texas cemetery where her grandfather is buried has been vandalized, she gathers her brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain) in a wheelchair and several other friends to see if the remains Grandpa’s are still in one piece. . While in the area, Sally and her friends decide to visit Grandpa’s old farm. Unfortunately, a family of murderous slaughterhouse workers who take their work home have taken over the house next door. The hatchling includes Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), a human horror show featuring a chainsaw wearing a face mask made from human skin. Sally’s friends are quickly exterminated one by one by the next door neighbors, leaving Sally alone to fight Leatherface and his clan.

Arts Entertainments

Cirque du Soleil – Zumanity

The fascinating experience of watching Cirque du Soleil shows has always captured a wide audience, but their Zumanity show is something else entirely. It is a beautiful and fascinating exploration of sensuality created just for adults.

The main reason to witness humanity

  • Sensual movements abound in this feast of delights. There are twists, cartwheels, twists, stretches, and sexy touches. It is a feast for the eyes.
  • Those with an open mind and a free heart can enjoy the beauty of the human form, whether male or female, in all its glory.
  • Zumanity has such visual variety that it keeps all the attention focused on the stage. This is an experience in which the audience concentrates and completely loses track of the outside world. It is so attractive.

Zumanity is not your grandmother’s show. That is, not unless your grandmother is a free spirit who enjoys the world of sensual visions and fantasies. The performance is intended for people who are relaxed enough with the human body to enjoy watching it with emotion, color, design, and movement.

The shyness often fades as the viewer experiences the sheer power and electricity of watching the dances and acrobatics of this show.

The Zumanity Show Las Vegas – Most Popular Attractions

  • Stylized characters give focus points to the busy show. One of the characters is Marcela, Queen of the Wind. She takes center stage when drama is imminent. Other characters add their own contributions to the show.
  • The costumes are incredibly varied, especially considering that the dancers and acrobats appear to be wearing very little. However, it is what they are wearing that creates great interest and fascination for the public. The costumes can be a cape of golden hula hoops that revolve around an acrobat’s body or a red cape so large that it must be held up with supports. The variety of styles keeps the audience mesmerized.
  • Many people enjoy audience engagement opportunities. People get on stage before and during the show to participate in the show and participate in the show.

Zumanity offers a gift for people who want to experience a sensual fantasy that can be enjoyed in a reality of sights and sounds. Creators have created wonderful and powerful characters, designers have created sensual outfits for performers, and dancers and acrobats have used their skills to create a potent blend of beauty and sensuality.

Where to find Zumanity discount tickets

Tickets for Cirque du Soleil shows in Las Vegas can be found at all participating hotels and resorts. Among these are The Mirage, Luxor, The Bellagio, and MGM Grand.

If you want to know where the show will take place, take a trip to the New York – New York Hotel and Casino to buy your Zumanity tickets at the box office there. Otherwise, you can order great tickets over the phone or find them online.

Reviews of the show’s audience

Because Zumanity is such an unconventional show, it’s not surprising that the reviews are somewhat mixed. Some shy or conservative people may find the program too overwhelming and bold. Sometimes they feel that it is too bad or inappropriate.

At the same time, open-minded theater, show and beauty lovers can’t seem to get enough. They recognize the unique experience for what it is and enjoy the ride. Even those who have been to various Cirque du Soleil shows will enjoy this sensual experience if they are open to it.

Zumanity – Discovering Merchandise

Zumanity’s online boutique offers CDs of the show’s music and rhythms, as well as unique show-related skins. Posters are popping up all over the internet. The iPhone app store also has a Zumanity app. The Zumanity experience is exciting, and with the right benefits, you can keep your memory strong for a long time.

Arts Entertainments

Gangsters in America – Louis "Lepke" Buchalter: the only mob boss executed by the government

He was bad to the bone since he was born. He swindled, armed himself strong, and killed men with delight. In the end, for his many crimes, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter became a toast in Sing Sing’s electric chair.

Louis Buchalter was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on February 12, 1897. His parents were Russian Jews and his father owned a hardware store on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Buchalter led a quiet life as a child. He often walked through the Williamsburg Bride with his father to accompany him to work. His mother affectionately called him “Lepkeleh”, which is Yiddish for “Little Louis”. His childhood friends shortened him to Lepke, a name that stuck with him for the rest of his life.

Lepke’s life took a turn for the worse when he was 13 years old. Her father died unexpectedly and her mother was so distraught over her husband’s death that her health began to seriously deteriorate. Doctors told him that he needed a change of weather to regain his health, so Lepke’s mother left for Arizona, leaving Lepke in charge of his older sister. Lepke, deeply resentful of being abandoned, was impossible for his sister to control. He soon dropped out of school and started walking the streets of the Lower East Side, looking for problems and mostly finding them. He connected with older gangsters, who taught him how to rob and rob, and how to kidnap old women for their valuables. In 1915, Lepke was caught robbing a store and sent to live with an uncle in Bridgeport, Connecticut. There he continued his thieving ways and was eventually sent to a children’s reformatory in Cheshire.

A few months later, Lepke, now just 16 years old, was back wandering the streets of the Lower East Side. He started stealing handcars and one day, he tried to steal a handcart that was already being stolen by another street thug named Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro. The two quickly became friends and began a relationship that would last for the rest of their natural lives. Lepke and Shapiro teamed up and were the threat from the downtown pushcart owners. They tried to scale the latter to higher scores, but in 1918, Lepke was caught robbing a loft downtown and was sent to Sing Sing Prison with a five-year sentence as a result.

Lepke’s time in prison was the equivalent of a college education for criminals. When he was released in 1923, at the age of 25, he was now a hardened bully, with the knowledge to succeed in a life of crime. He teamed up again with his old friend Shapiro and they decided they could make a mint by selling “protection” to bakeries throughout New York City. Other criminals called them “The Gorilla Boys,” and Lepke and Shapiro convinced big names like Gottfried’s, Levy’s, Fink’s, and California Pies that they could stop “crazy immigrants” from setting their bakeries on fire. Of course, the crazy immigrants were the “Gorilla Boys” themselves, and those who didn’t pay protection actually set their bakeries on fire.

The next step for “The Gorilla Boys” was as slammers or legbreakers for the unions. Under their boss, Little Augie Orgen, Lepke and Shapiro made a living by keeping union members from the garment district at bay. Orgen was upset by the competition from Dopey Benny Fein, who was entering Orgen’s union territories. So Orgen sent Lepke and Shapiro to right Fein with bullets. The duo cornered Fein in a Bowery bar, but were only able to wound him, while Shapiro was shot in the back. Orgen himself took over Fein shortly after, consolidating his control over the unions. But then Lepke and Shapiro had the brilliant idea to take care of their boss the same way Orgen did Fein. And that’s what they did, filling Orgen with lead on a Lower East Side street, while Orgen’s bodyguard, Jack “Legs” Diamond, was around, not doing much to protect his boss.

Orgen’s murder propelled “The Gorilla Boys” in a big way. They instantly became stars in the underworld, hooking up with mob greats like Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia, Dutch Schultz, Tommy Lucchese, and Lucky Luciano. His specialty was working on both ends of union agreements; blackmailing homeowners into paying protection and charging union members high fees, while squeezing out a good chunk of the top of a growing pot of union cash. Industries like the poultry business, the garment center, restaurants, and cleaning and dieting businesses, paid Lepke and Shapiro, who had more than 250 thugs working for them, an estimated $ 10 million a year just to stay in the business. deal. To show the government some legitimate income to justify their lavish lifestyles, Lepke and Shapiro, no longer called the “Gorilla Boys” but the “Gold Dust Twins,” acquired legitimate businesses such as Raleigh Manufacturing, Pioneer Coat Factory, and Greenberg and Shapiro.

Lepke, along with Luciano, Schultz, Lansky, Siegel, Costello, Anastasia, and Lucchese formed a national crime syndicate, which controlled all illegal activities in the Northeast and even the Midwest. Of course, for such an operation to continue to prosper and grow, sometimes dissidents, inside and outside the group, need to be “straightened out” or, in other words, killed. The syndicate put Lepke in charge of the murder department, with mad Anastasia as his deputy chief. They expertly ran what the press called “Murder Incorporated.” Lepke employed gunmen like Abe “Kid Twist” Reles, Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss, Happy Maione, and Dasher Abbandando, among others, to travel where needed, to straighten out anyone in need of grooming.

Trouble came for Lepke on behalf of special counsel Thomas E. Dewey, who had already incarcerated Luciano on a fabricated prostitution charge. Dewey went after Lepke for his extortion deals at the bakery, but Dewey took the hammer harder when he got the Federal Narcotics Bureau to build a case involving Lepke in a massive drug smuggling operation. Assuming he was facing a big moment in the slammer, Lepke ran away. Anastasia hid it in various Brooklyn hideouts, while another union member tended his rackets.

Lepke’s actions had an adverse effect on the rest of his friends. J. Edgar Hoover, obviously unaware that Hitler and Mussolini were wreaking havoc around the world, said that Lepke was “the most dangerous man in the world.” As a result, a $ 50,000 reward was offered on Lepke’s head. New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia added to the heat when he ordered his police commissioner Lewis J. Valentine to start a “war against the bullies.” Things got so bad that a message was sent to Luciano, who was cooling his heels on the can, for sage advice on how to handle the Lepke affair. Luciano decided that for the common good, Lepke, after almost four years on the run, had to give himself up and face the music.

The trick was to convince a man, who was facing 30 years in life in prison, to turn himself in and take his medicine like a man. Luciano, always the cunning fox, came up with a plan whereby Moe “Dimples” Wolensky, a man Lepke trusted, convinced Lepke that a deal had been made with Hoover, that he would only be tried for narcotics and They would put him in jail for five years, tops. And if Lepke were to surrender directly to Hoover, Dewey would be completely out of the picture. Lepke had his doubts, and when he asked Anastasia for advice, Anastasia, who was obviously not in the deal, told Lepke, “This deal sounds crazy. As long as they can’t catch you, they can’t hurt you.”

On August 5, 1940, gossip columnist and radio host Walter Winchell received a phone call at his nightly lot, the Stork Club, at 3 East Fifty-Third Street. A hoarse voice on the other end of the line said, “Don’t ask who I am, but Lepke wants to come in. Contact Hoover and tell him that Lepke wants a guarantee that he won’t be harmed if he surrenders to Hoover.”

The next day, Winchell got on the radio. He said, in his usual choppy speech, like a machine gun fired from the mouth: “Your reporter is reliably informed that Lepke the fugitive is on the brink of surrender, possibly this week. If Lepke can find someone in whom you can trust, I am told you will come in. I am authorized by the G-men that Lepke is assured of safe delivery. “

On August 24, 1940, Winchell received a phone call telling him to go to a pharmacy on Eighth Avenue and Nineteenth Street and to sit in a phone booth in the back. At 9 p.m., a customer casually approached Winchell and told him to call Hoover and tell Hoover to be at Fifth Avenue and Twenty Ninth Street at 10:20 p.m. Winchell himself was told to drive immediately to Madison Avenue and Twenty Third Street. Winchell did as he was told, and at 10:15, Lepke, wearing a mustache as part of his costume, got into Winchell’s car. Minutes later, the two men got out of Winchell’s car and headed for a black limousine. Hoover was sitting alone in the back seat.

Winchell opened the back door of the limo and said, “Mr. Hoover, this is Lepke.”

Hoover said to Lepke, “How are you?”

Lepke said to Hoover, “Nice to meet you. Come on.”

Almost immediately, Lepke knew he had been misled. Within days, Hoover told Lepke that there had been no conditional agreement for his surrender. Lepke was tried for narcotics and sentenced to 14 years. But then the roof fell on Lepke, when, after his first trial, Hoover turned Lepke over to Dewey to stand trial for the murder of an innocent idiot named Joe Rosen, whom Lepke ordered killed in 1936. Rosen was killed because he threatened Going to Dewey and telling him that Lepke had stolen Rosen’s trucking business. As a result, the Lepke boys fired 17 bullets at Rosen. At Lepke’s murder trial, a rat bitten, including Abe “Kid Twist” Reles, testified that Rosen was killed on Lepke’s orders. After a brief jury deliberation, Lepke was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Lepke lost appeal after appeal for a full four years, and was scheduled to be executed on March 2, 1944. Then suddenly, on the day he was to be executed, Lepke dropped a bomb when he requested a meeting with the city’s district. from New York. Attorney Frank Hogan. Lepke told Hogan that he had information on political corruption reaching the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Lepke obtained a 48-hour clemency and Hogan went to see Dewey, who was now Governor of New York and the only one who could stop Lepke’s execution. Hoover told the story of Dewey Lepke. Dewey, who would later run unsuccessfully for president, turned a deaf ear to Lepke, sealing his fate.

On March 4, 1944, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, knowing that his best friends had toughened him up and without a trace of emotion or remorse, was executed in the electric chair in Sing Sing Prison.

Arts Entertainments

Bright lipstick trends 2010

When fashion design is in the air, it’s everywhere and not just on your clothes. If you want the ultimate head-to-toe look to finish off every look, you have to think beyond mere clothing. You have to dive deep into the world of accessories, hair, nails, makeup, and many other beautifying forces. One of those specifics is lipstick. Sporting a hot and unique lipstick color is super on trend right now, and guess what? It could be just the added touch you need to really set your outfit on fire and set you apart from all the other fierce women on the scene. One thing’s for sure, all of the hottest style stars and icons are indulging in the lipstick phenomenon, and some have even gone so far as to unveil their own personal lipstick styles. Take a look at three of the hottest lipstick trends right now, and the stars behind their smash hit … Maybe take some inspiration from these glossy lip beauties and add some lip color to your own taste buds. pucker. Who knows ?!

The chic goth lips of Taylor Momsen. Deep purple, black and burgundy lipsticks are back and paired with a black ensemble there is hardly a fiercer look right now. The dark lip trend can be largely attributed to Taylor Momsen, the seventeen-year-old Gossip Girl actress and frontman of the band, The Pretty Reckless. Only she pairs it with all black, lace, ripped stockings, tousled locks, and mounds and lots of matching dark eyeshadow. You can go all the way with the goth trend like Ms. Momsen or you can tone it down to your personal style needs, rock burgundy lipstick, and call it a day.

The Nicki Minaj Pink lips barbie. The newest female MC signed to rapper Lil ‘Wayne’s Young Money Crew is more than just a singing, dancing and rap sensation. She is also a style guru. New York City rapper Nicki Minaj has caused a sensation on the fashion scene with her stick-straight hair, bubble pops, idiosyncratic and futuristic outfits, and bright, hot pink Barbie doll lips. While not everyone can walk around looking like Nicki, you can definitely snag her pretty pink lip color and add it as the perfect finishing touch to a perky, feminine look. Grab a page from Nicki’s book and you’ll be in shape for a hot night on the town.

The Gwen Stefani Classic red seductive lips. Nothing screams feminine or sexy like the red lips of a fire engine. While there are many new lipstick trends that are turning heads right now, the classic red lipstick style has been around forever, but its timeless sophistication has proven to be a fashion staple now, and probably forever. If you want to rock like Gwen Stefani, lead singer of the 90s hit band No Doubt, pair your bright red lipstick with lighter makeup on the rest of your face. Don’t go overboard with blush and stick with subtle black eyeliner and full mascara for a seductive mermaid look. While a hot new trend is often irresistible, it’s important to pay tribute to iconic looks that never seem to go out of style.

Remember, true beauty is in the eye of the beholder … but once you’ve accepted that, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t indulge your inner fashionista every now and then!

Arts Entertainments

What is the Mediaverse Meme?

What is a mediaverse? A mediaverse is an immersive group of media platforms focused on a brand. The purpose is to continue expanding a popular idea / brand by diversifying with more platforms to further involve the user in the rabbit hole.

Ok, let’s see if we can clear that up with an example. One of the best examples of mediaverse cases is NBC’s Heroes brand. The world started with the TV show itself, but quickly after the launch reached the proof-of-concept metric, a variety of supporting platforms were launched. As the show progressed, the platform cluster has evolved, grown and become more interconnected. Here’s a dissection of the Heroes mediaverse:

Feel free to explore in Heroes | NBC

oThe main TV show of Heroes.

Obviously, this is the cornerstone of the entire cluster. All episodes are available online so that people who miss the show or are more web-oriented can be drawn into the gravity of the show. The great additional benefit of the ability to rewatch online is that

-gave fans a reason to visit the website

-Made the program be shared with friends

-Reinforced loading dock for all future rigs

– additional ad revenue channel provided

o Graphic novels: the website offers users free access to serialized graphic novels about the program. The novels began to bridge the gap between the weekly episodes. This gave eager viewers, eager to see what’s next, the ability to delve into the middle story lines and gain additional information about the characters. Again, this provided an additional revenue stream by having Nissan Versa sponsored ads across all downloadable content.

* Side note * Nissan in Season 1 was its own key player in the Heroes media verse and did a brilliant job of picking the right horse at the right time. The rented Nissan that Hiro uses on the show became an accepted product endorsement that was echoed on several of the channels in the Heroes mediaverse.

oBlogs and websites

This is really where the immersive factor of the Heroes world started to spread in more directions. The brand launched a number of related websites and blogs around the world. Many of the characters are represented just like influential companies. Here is a list:

Primatech’s role

Vote for Petrelli

Yamagato Scholarship

Activating Evolutions

Corithian Casino

Hana’s Blog

Primatech Video Surveillance

Claire’s Myspace

And I can’t find it now, but there was a Hiro blog.

The point here is that the mediaverse grew out of updating the fictional world. Also, they chose channels that were relevant and made logical sense. For example, the Vote Petrelli site was perfect both for this year’s media election climate and the fact that Nathan Petrelli would obviously have a political website. Like a myspace page for teenage superhero Claire, it fit the bill perfectly. The site’s collections provided more ways to deeply participate in the program.

Heroes Wiki

The Wiki was another well structured idea. A good chunk of superhero fans love learning about the show’s dark details, and the wiki provides a way for all of that information to be compiled. In addition, anyone who wants to obtain summaries and relevant production information can go in and acquire those details. And since the wiki platform is open source and free, comparatively few resources were needed to put this piece together.

* Note: Heroes Wiki is a fan-created site that is gaining enough popularity to be listed on the official NBC site. See the explanation in the comments of this article.

oWalkthroughs

The site offers a series of weekly tours of all seasons. The tutorials interconnect many of the other platforms and provide a place for users to comment and ask questions. This resource is great because it creates a timeline blog that lists the world’s top week-by-week events.

ohhistory

The Istory feature is an interactive storytelling platform for the brand that allows users to make decisions that affect the storytelling provided. This is a solid reworking of the classic turn-by-page books that used to be very popular. Everyone speculates during movies and shows about what they would do in a certain situation and now fans have that opportunity. All the characters are specific to Istory, so again, fans are given another means to engage more deeply with the brand and producers are given feedback on what kinds of things they would like to see happen.

oWebisodes

Yes, the platforms keep coming. Web episodes in their own right are becoming a marketing meme. I love this idea as web episodes are cheaper to produce and provide valuable testing and data collection opportunities to leverage concepts through other channels. Another example I know of that went from the web to television is the Sanctuary series on SciFi. In any case, the Heroes web episode re-creates another avenue for users to get involved. Even web episodes fade as users can access platform-related videos, photos, and wallpapers.

o Create your own hero

This platform directly pinged users to give their opinion on the character they would like to see in the world of Heroes. I love it, try and launch with the advantage of hooking the users who voted for the character in the first place with the option of attracting the finalists. It looks like the selected character will have their own spinoff show or web episode.

oMicroseries

Santiago, the winner of the platform Create your own hero, gets a microseries. I think by now you’re starting to see the pattern here of how one platform stimulates another and creates interconnection between other platforms in a self-supporting mechanism.

or interactive SMS

The SMS tricks that many brands have used generally don’t count towards building a mediaverse, but live, during broadcast polls, quizzes, and trivia they do. The $ 5000 giveaway is a good incentive and of course the brand acquires phone numbers and text messaging privileges for numerous fans.

OHeroes Magazine

This is a web-only edition, but since so much is happening in the world, it makes sense to have magazine angle coverage of all the interactions. The magazine also fills the void of getting cast interviews that are strangely lacking on all other platforms. I suppose this is because most platforms are working to create a fiction with reality effect and the cast interviews break the fictional dream, so to speak.

oGames

As if you didn’t see it coming … All kinds of games and quizzes to immerse yourself in. This has been done poorly by many brands, but games and superheroes certainly fit well into the world of Heroes.

o Message boards

Some of the above platforms provide the opportunity to interact with fans, but the message boards focus on this. The speculation and all the wonderful fan activity that happens on the message boards adds to the world. And again, you see the pattern. This is yet another platform to interact more deeply with the brand. And what are they talking about on the boards? All other platforms and elements of the Heroes mediaverse.

oTake It – Widgets and Icons

After all of the above, one would think that the mediaverse would be complete, but new platforms are constantly emerging. Countdown widgets, AIM icons, wallpapers, and ecards galore. This platform spreads the brand through the distribution of fans and has a small user space on several channels.

orShop

Okay, you get an idea with the store, I hope …

Phew! So by looking at the long list of platforms that are bundled together in the Heroes mediaverse, you can see how it helped stabilize the brand and provide consistent content in a medium that typically thrives on enthusiastic anticipation.

Okay, if you’ve made it this far, you may be wondering, how does this apply to more traditional brands? Can it work with anything other than TV and movies? Certainly the idea of ​​a mediaverse leans toward entertainment channels. It could also include books, like the massive Harry Potter franchise, which has spawned a world of its own.

I think we’ve seen a lot of attempts and poor execution in this area without having an overall strategy in place. The closest I’ve seen are some of the viral campaigns from movies like the latest Batman release.

So here is the challenge:

Choose a non-entertainment industry or brand (not movies, TV, or books) and explain your vision for a mediaverse brand or point out that it currently exists

My choice is Nikon. Nikon has taken advantage of photo-sharing technology like Flickr to tag images taken with a Nikon camera and launched its own site that displays user-created content. Photo contests have long been a good marketing arm of camera companies. I think I could extend this with deviant art-like sites to produce a lot of user-generated content from Nikon cameras. Plus, the exclusivity marketing would be huge, like buying key photography spots at events like celebrity awards or sporting events and only allowing Nikon cameras in the area. There are tons of mini blogging possibilities here for comic images or any other emotionally engaging topic. Just think how clever it would have been for Nikon to have released something as meme-inducing as Ihaschzburger or the like.

Let me know what you think.

Arts Entertainments

The Crime and Punishment of The Machinist and Dostoevsky

‘The Machinist’ is a film about a man whose subconscious makes him thinner and thinner. Although he committed a terrible crime, he cannot see himself as a criminal; in fact, he does not remember the fact that he committed a terrible crime. However, deep down in his memory he remembers his crime, and this prompts him to make him thinner and thinner in order to physically eliminate his existence in time. ‘The Machinist’ is apparently heavily influenced by Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’. In fact, there are quite a few specific similarities between ‘The Machinist’ and ‘Crime and Punishment’.

i) Similarities in two stories

1. ‘Crime and Punishment’ has three parts. Part 1 is the murder that the main character commits, Part 2 is his discovery and acceptance of the crime, and Part 3 is the rebirth of the main character. ‘The Machinist’ basically takes out Part 1 and Part 3 and only focuses on Part 2. The main character of ‘The Machinist’, Trevor Reznik played by Christian Bale is unable to discover and accept the fact that he killed a boy; He has no physical defects, but he is so psychologically tormented that he cannot connect his life with the murder he committed. Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment also experiences a similar difficulty in accepting the fact that he murdered a person.

1.2. While both characters have great difficulty accepting their crimes, both choose to suffer to seek salvation subconsciously. Trevor Reznik continues to lose weight; he suffers physically and continues to raise the level of suffering as time passes. Raskolnikov also chooses to suffer; you choose to suffer psychologically more than physically, but the extent to which you both choose to suffer is quite extreme, and this is where we find similarities.

2. Both the woman who comforts the main character Trevor Reznik in ‘The Machinist’ and Stevie, and the woman who comforts the main character Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment are prostitutes, although they know their women in different circumstances. Trevor Reznik meets Stevie as a client, but Raskolnikov meets Sofya through Sofya’s father; Raskolnikov is not a client of Sonya. There are many similarities in how these two women comfort their men and guide them to free their soul.

ii) Similarities in symbolism

Trevor Reznik becomes so thin that he hardly exists physically. This symbolizes the state of your mind, which is that it does not want to exist. More specifically, he wishes that a part of him that killed a child does not exist. Raskolnikov does not restrain himself or physically torture himself, but he spends a lot of time in his apartment. You also want to keep a low profile; He’s not someone who wants everyone in town to know about him. Although he is a very intelligent man and has a strong will, his actions do not say that he wants to increase his visibility.

‘The Machinist’ is a well-crafted movie; the story has depth and is like a classic literature. If you like to read classic (dark) literature like Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’, you will probably enjoy watching this movie.

Arts Entertainments

Top 50 Quotes From Women

  1. “There are three easy ways to lose money: careers are the fastest, women are the most enjoyable, and farming is the safest.”
    – Lord Amherst
  2. “I married below me. All women do.”
    – Lady Nancy Astor
  3. “Women love the lie that saves their pride, but never an unfavorable truth.”
    – Gertrude Atherton
  4. “Good girls keep diaries; bad girls never have time.”
    – Tallulah Bankhead
  5. “If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving the life of a baby, she will choose to save the life of the baby without even considering whether there are men on the base.”
    – Dave Barry
  6. “Sixteen the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who said goodbye to the dessert cart.”
    –Erma Bombeck
  7. “I’m the type of woman who, when she walks into a party, all the other women leave the room … I think people are scared of me … I’m a bad girl.”
    –Lara Flynn Boyle
  8. “Boys are like dogs. They keep coming back. Women are like cats. Yelling at a cat once … they are gone.”
    – Lenny Bruce
  9. “Bandits demand your money or your life; women require both.”
    – Samuel Butler
  10. “What a strange thing man is; and what a strange thing woman is.”
    – Lord Byron
  11. “Most great men and women do not have perfect personalities, but are people whose enthusiasm is so great that it makes their flaws seem insignificant.”
    –Charles A. Cerami
  12. “The problem with some women is that they get excited about nothing ~ and then marry him.”
    — Dear
  13. “Heaven has no rage like love turned into hatred, nor hell a fury like a despised woman.”
    – William Congreve
  14. “Women want men, careers, money, children, friends, luxury, comfort, independence, freedom, respect, love, and three-dollar pantyhose that don’t work.”
    – Phyllis Diller
  15. “A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. ~ An optimist is someone who hopes they are.”
    – Senator Chauncey Depew
  16. “Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract and then accepts it deserves all the consequences.”
    – Isadora Duncan
  17. “Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real. Maybe they are.”
    –Ralph Waldo Emerson
  18. “The feminist agenda is basic: it asks that women not be forced to choose between public justice and private happiness.”
    –Susan Faludi

  19. “A woman can look moral and exciting, if she also looks like it’s a great fight.”
    – Edna Ferber
  20. “The big question ~ that I haven’t been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research on the female soul, is ‘What does a woman want?'”
    – Sigmund Freud
  21. “There is nothing so bad in this world that a sensitive woman cannot fix it in the course of an afternoon.”
    – Giraudoux
  22. “Instead of getting married again, I’m going to find a woman I don’t like and just give her a house.”
    – Lewis Grizzard
  23. “A woman’s mind is cleaner than a man’s. She changes it more often.”
    – Oliver Herford
  24. “The man has a will, but the woman gets her way.”
    – Oliver Wendell Holmes
  25. “One of the hardest things in the world is convincing a woman that even a bargain costs money.”
    – Edgar Watson Howe
  26. “A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman is as bad as she dares.”
    – Elbert Hubbard
  27. “The whole life of a woman is a story of affections.”
    – Washington Irving
  28. “You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.”
    – Erica Jong
  29. “A woman’s assumption is much more accurate than a man’s certainty.”
    – Rudyard Kipling
  30. “Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, ‘She doesn’t have what it takes.’ ~ ‘They will say,’ Women don’t have what it takes. ‘
    – Clare Boothe Luce
  31. “Behind every successful man there is a woman, behind her is his wife.”
    – Groucho Marx
  32. “A woman will always sacrifice if you give her the chance. It’s her favorite form of complacency.”
    –W. Somerset Maugham
  33. “High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead.”
    – Christopher Darlington Morley
  34. “I wonder why young men are always warned against bad girls. Anyone can handle a bad girl. They are the good girls that men should be warned against.”
    – David Niven
  35. “If women didn’t exist, all the money in the world would be meaningless.”
    – Aristotle Onassis
  36. “Women are like tea bags; put them in hot water and they get stronger.”
    – Eleanor Roosevelt
  37. “Not being there when a man wants her is a woman’s greatest sin, except being there when he doesn’t want her.”
    – Helen Rowland
  38. “Men forget everything; women remember everything. That is why men need instant replay in sports. They have already forgotten what happened.”
    –Rita Rudner
  39. “Someone once asked me why women don’t play as much as men and I replied with common sense that we don’t have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, the total instinct of women for the game is satisfied . by marriage “.
    – Gloria Steinem
  40. “Given the expectations of society in general, men are generally correct in their assumption that it is important for a woman to have a man. What they don’t understand is how pathetically little difference WHAT man makes.”
    – Gloria Steinen
  41. “There are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman’s pulse.”
    – Laurence Sterne
  42. “Why does a woman work for ten years to change a man’s clothes and then complain that he is not the man she married?”
    – Barbara Streisand
  43. “Men at most differ like heaven and earth, but women, the worst and the best, like heaven and hell.”
    – Alfred Lord Tennyson
  44. “It’s strange what a man can do, and a woman still considers him an angel.”
    – William Makepeace Thackeray
  45. “I hate women because they always know where things are.”
    – James Thurber
  46. “From birth to 18, a girl needs good parents; from 18 to 35, she needs good looks. From 35 to 55, good personality. Starting at 55, she needs a lot of cash. I’m saving my money.”
    – Sophie Tucker
  47. “Women are like stars, there are millions of them, but only one can make your dreams come true.”
    –A stranger
  48. “When women make mistakes, men persecute them.”
    – Mae West
  49. “I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express feelings that differentiate me from a doormat.”
    – Rebecca West
  50. “Whatever women have to do, they have to do twice as well as men to be considered half as good. Fortunately, this is not difficult.”
    –Charlotte Whitton
  51. “I would dare to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
    – Virginia Woolf
Arts Entertainments

Chronicles of Madness – Episode 23

In our Madness Chronicles episode 23, we’ll take a look at the insanity in the destruction of American history. Remember, insanity is an especially severe state of mental illness, extremely foolish behavior, and a state of frenzied or chaotic activity. Let’s take a look at the evidence for our maddening war on history coming from the left.

In the Big Apple, the New York City Council has voted to remove the Thomas Jefferson statue from City Hall. Why? It is racist. In Portland, Oregon, where they love Antifa, they brought down a statue of George Washington. Of course, they wrapped George in an American flag and burned it first. Can you imagine if these ‘oppressed’ people did that in a genuinely oppressed country?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has ordered all portraits of former House Speakers removed because, well, they’re all racist. The Berkeley (CA) school system is renaming the Jefferson and Washington elementary schools. They have decided that they should bear the name Black Lives Matter (BLM). Interestingly, one of the founders recently announced that “we are educated Marxists.”

Our acclaimed sports figures, of course, are offended by everything. Oklahoma State All American running back Chubba Hubbard refused to play unless coach Mike Gundy apologized for wearing, get this, a One America News Network jersey. What a terrible thing for Coach Gundy. Coaches, check with the players before dressing in the morning.

Loudmouth Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield, a millionaire in his twenties who has yet to meet on the football field, said, kneeling before every NFL game this year. He doesn’t care if he loses fans. Moving on to that fantastic utopia in Austin, Texas, we hear the University of Texas football players push their school. That would be the school giving them a free education to play with a ball. They say they will not play if their demands are not met. They just want a portion of the football proceeds turned over to BLM each year and stop chanting the Eyes of Texas after the games and let’s see, they want their football stadium to be renamed. What if you all go to a different school?

There is madness everywhere. NASCAR announced that there will be no more Confederate flags at NASCAR events. NASCAR leaders completely forget what gave them the millions they now enjoy and control. The country music group Lady Antebellum no longer exists. Call them Lady A because they are not going to be perceived as racist.

Left-wing mobs vandalizing our cities have attacked churches and synagogues across the country in recent weeks. But guess that? No mosques. Does it make you wonder who is supporting all this violence? These riots closely resemble the Arab Spring of 2010, which was actually an event organized with the backing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Not to be outdone, NFL commissioner Roger Goodall publicly apologized for not listening to Colin Kapernaek and supporting BLM’s cause. Of course, movie producer Spike Lee said it wasn’t an apology at all. Goodall went on to say that he would like Kapernaek to be part of the NFL organization and help direct the funding the league gives to the underdog. I will ask the question that most are thinking. Exactly how will that work from your $ 8 million home? And what exactly qualifies you to be the 2020 NFL Mr. Oppression? He was adopted, raised by a white family, has a college degree, and is a millionaire. Umm?

Let’s go back a bit in history. Who exactly goes in and erases the story? We know that Lenin did it, and Stalin behind him. We know that Pol Pot did. And, of course, Fidel, the Taliban, and Islam have been perfecting the art for centuries. Everything is insane.

May we wake up from this madness before it is too late. I wish you good health and until next time have fun, enjoy life and beware of the madness among us. It’s getting out of hand.

Arts Entertainments

The richest storage hunters in the world

Thanks to America’s blockbuster television show Storage Wars, personal storage has become a surprisingly popular topic. With bargain hunters blindly bidding on abandoned units in hopes of finding valuable treasure, viewers around the world have been hooked on the concept.

Believe it or not, some people have even decided to make a living out of it and, as crazy as it may sound, they earn a very decent salary doing it. Below are some of the richest storage hunters in the world.

Brandon and Lori Bernier

Brandon and Lori Bernier first became interested in personal storage over 13 years ago and haven’t looked back since. Infamous for being two of the toughest shoppers in the entire United States, the duo started with just $ 300 between them and now have a net worth of $ 1 million. Their tireless persistence has made them successful with many items, from rare antiques to more bizarre products such as resurfacing trucks.

Clinton ‘You’ Jones

Clinton ‘Ton’ Jones, an American reality star and auction collector, has gained notoriety as a cast member of the television show Auction Hunters and has secured a net worth of $ 1.5 million as a result. Having developed a passion for collecting antiques, jewelry, guns, and knives at a young age, Clinton’s move toward treasure hunting in abandoned storage units was a natural move. The Collector is now a highly respected storage hunter and has particular expertise with swords, rare coins, and other forms of weaponry.

Dave hester

Business owner and TV star of Storage Wars, Dave Hester has earned an impressive net worth of $ 3 million. Despite being the owner of Newport Consignment Gallery and Rags to Riches Thrift Store, Dave’s fortune is largely attributed to his appearance on the hit television show. His 25 years of experience as an auction hunter has certainly paid off because it is in his popular stores that he sells the items he wins at storage auctions.

Barry weiss

Pro storage treasure hunter, Barry Weiss has worked his way up the career ladder and is now worth a staggering $ 9 million. Barry has become famous for being the eccentric superstar of the television hit Storage Wars and is now fondly known as “The Collector” thanks to his vast collection of valuable antiques. Perhaps his unique techniques of wearing night vision goggles and bringing psychics to auctions with him are the reason for his success.