The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Italian: Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo), is a 1966 Italian epic spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in the title roles. The screenplay was written by Age & Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni and Leone, based on a story by Vincenzoni and Leone. Director of photography Tonino Delli Colli, was responsible for the film's sweeping widescreen cinematography and Ennio Morricone composed the famous film score, including its main theme. It is the third and final film in the Dollars trilogy following A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965). The plot centers around three gunslingers competing to find a fortune in buried Confederate gold amid the violent chaos of gunfights, hangings, Civil War battles and prison camps.[2]
Opening on December 15, 1966 in Italy and in the United States on December 23, 1967, the film grossed $6.1 million,[2] but was criticized for its depiction of violence.[3] Leone explains that "the killings in my films are exaggerated because I wanted to make a tongue-in-cheek satire on run-of-the-mill westerns... The west was made by violent, uncomplicated men, and it is this strength and simplicity that I try to recapture in my pictures."[4] To this day, Leone's effort to reinvigorate the timeworn Western is widely acknowledged:[5] The Good, the Bad and the Ugly has been described as European cinema's best representation of the Western genre film,[6] and Quentin Tarantino has called it "the best-directed film of all time."[7]

Rodeo organizers hope Mother Nature will be kind opening weekend

Rodeo organizers hope Mother Nature will be kind opening weekend
by Andrea Lucia/ 11 News
Posted on February 21, 2010 at 6:39 PM******
HOUSTON—Ominous clouds hanging over the Reliant Center are about the only thing worrying organizers at Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo this year.
After a $4 million drop in income last year, they believe the 2010 rodeo could be their biggest moneymaker yet.
”We are extremely confident we’re going to beat last year,” said Larry Shafer, the rodeo’s COO.
As workers rush to prepare for opening day, organizers say ticket sales are up four percent, with several shows already sold out.
Advance ticket sales for the carnival and livestock show are also up, as much as 12 percent.
Commercial sales are seeing an increase, too.
Organizers now say it all depends on Mother Nature.
"We’re watching the weather with bated breath,” said Shafer.
The rodeo can sell as many as 40,000 tickets the day of a big weekend show, but only if there are pleasant skies to greet the crowds.
"If it’s raining, they’re not gonna’ come out,” said Shafer.
But, rain or shine, there’s work to be done – and the show will go on.

Halley's Comet

Halley's Comet or Comet Halley (officially designated 1P/Halley)[1] is the best-known of the short-period comets, and is visible from Earth every 75 to 76 years.[1][10] Halley is the only short-period comet that is clearly visible to the naked eye, and thus, the only naked-eye comet that might appear twice in a human lifetime.[11] Other naked-eye comets may be brighter and more spectacular, but will appear only once in thousands of years. Halley's returns to the inner solar system have been observed by astronomers since at least 240 BC, and recorded by Chinese, Babylonian, and mediaeval European chroniclers, but were not recognised as reappearances of the same object. The comet's periodicity was first determined in 1705 by English astronomer Edmond Halley, after whom it is now named. It last appeared in the inner Solar System in 1986 and will next appear in mid-2061.[12]
During its 1986 apparition, Halley's Comet became the first to be observed in detail by spacecraft, providing the first observational data on the structure of the comet nucleus and the mechanism of coma and tail formation.[13][14] These observations supported a number of longstanding hypotheses about comet construction, particularly Fred Whipple's "dirty snowball" model, which correctly surmised that Halley would be composed of a mixture of volatile ices, such as water, carbon dioxide and ammonia, and dust. However, the missions also provided data which substantially reformed and reconfigured these ideas; for instance it is now understood that Halley's surface is largely composed of dusty, non-volatile materials, and that only a small portion of it is icy.

My Habit

I have a bad habit of screaming at my kids when I am upset. It has gotten so bad that when I talk to them with my normal tone of voice, they think I'm angry at them. I come from a family of screamers. Let me back track for a little bit: My maternal grandmother was from Spain. My paternal grandmother was from Portugal. They both married Filipinos from the Philippines. Both my grandmothers were fiesty people and their spouses came from a lineage of tribal warriors in the 1500's. So, whenever they spoke to each other, not that they like speaking to each other, they sounded like they were fighting. That conversation style was brought down to the next generations.
One day I brought a friend home and introduced her to my mom. She thought my mother and my uncle were fighting after she heard them talking to each other. Because I didn't want to have to explain to her the history of our family, I assured her that they were just talking and that was how they spoke to each other in their own loving tone of voices.
So now, here I am inheriting my family's tone of voice. I want to break that habit because sometimes I don't realize I offend people. I recorded myself, one day, and heard myself speaking so harshly with no gentle and calm tone on my voice. I sounded like one of Hitler's sidekicks, so demanding and bossy. I felt so embarrassed that that tone of voice spoke to a million people in my lifetime that I had to ask favors from. No wonder, some of them frowned at me. Now, I try to slow down whem I'm speaking and remind myself to taper down my tone of voice and remember how uncaring my voice sounded over the recorder, or maybe not speak at all whem I'm upset. It's not easy because I grew up with a family of fiesty people and that blood of tribal warriors is in me. I am still working on trying to speak in a melodious voice so as not to sound too harsh.

Introduction

Hello, my name is Maria. Like all the other sites I've opened, I want to let you know that I'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing here.

I am taking up online classes (3) and 1 on-campus class to cover this semester's pre-requisites for my nursing school. I come from a family of nurses but didn't pursue nursing in my younger years because I was undecided and didn't actually know what I wanted until I found an accounting job that I really liked. At first, I planned to take up my masters in Accountancy but with the turn of the economy, I decided to shift careers. So here I am, taking up my very first time in online classes. I hope I can get help with my classmates and teachers as I am new to this field.