Kim Basinger winning Best Supporting Actress

Cuba Gooding, Jr. presenting Kim Basinger with the Best Supporting Actress Oscar® for her performance in “LA Confidential” at the 70th Academy Awards® in 1998.

THE HURT LOCKER WINS BIG AT OSCARS, BULLOCK & BRIDGES FETED AS WELL

The Hurt Locker took home 6 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Sandra Bullock took home Best Actress while Jeff Bridges took home Best Actor.

James Cameron on The View / Avatar – February 17, 2010

bit.ly The View is ABC Daytime’s morning chat fest, featuring a team of five dynamic women of different ages, experiences and backgrounds discussing the most exciting events of the day. The show consists of the five co-anchors debating topics in the news. Throughout each show they are joined by the best experts in their field and celebrtiy guests. The show is currently in it’s twelfth season. February 17, 2010 – Victoria Beckham Co-Hosts & James Cameron Victoria Beckham co-hosts! 2010 Oscar® nominees James Cameron and Carey Mulligan visit.

Best Actress – Sandra Bullock Acceptance Speech 2010

82nd Academy Awards Best Actress of 2010 Sandra Bullock – The Blind Side.

Poker Rules and Variations

Game variations
Recently the popularity of poker has exploded in all forms; Online gaming, land-based casinos, television tournaments, and impromptu games in dining rooms across the country. Texas Hold’em has enjoyed the majority of the attention but there are many classic and new versions that deliver the same excitement.

Texas Hold’em is played with 3-10 players. Each player is dealt two cards, followed by a round of betting. Three table cards are flipped followed by another round of betting. A fourth table card is turned with more betting. Finally the fifth card (the river card) is flipped accompanied with the final round of betting. Your hand consists of the best 5 card hand composed of any 5 of your 2 cards and the 5 table cards.

Omaha Hold’em is the same as Texas Hold’em except each player receives 4 cards on the deal. Also, the final hand must use 2 of the 4 personal cards and 3 of the 5 table cards.

Caribbean Stud can be played with 3-8 players. All players are dealt 5 cards and put up an ante. The dealer shows 1 of her cards. You now have the option to fold; If you decide to stay in, bet twice the ante. The dealer must have A, K or better to qualify. If she doesn’t qualify and you stayed in, you get the ante back. Should the dealer qualify and you have a better hand, you get paid a multiple of your bet on a scale from 2x – 200x depending on the strength of your hand. And of course if the dealer has a better hand, you help them pay the light bill.

7-Card Stud begins with each player being dealt two cards face-down and one face-up then a round of betting. After the bets, each player gets 3 cards face-up, then more betting. Finally, everyone gets a 7th card face-down and a last round of wagering. The best poker hand wins.
(5-Card Stud differs in that it progresses 1 card up & 1 down – bet – 3 up – bet.)

There are numerous alternate versions of poker; however, these are among the most common. Most games follow a similar premise as the games mentioned above.

Poker Hand Ranks (in descending order)

Individual cards are ranked A,K,Q,J,10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2. No one suit is any more powerful than another.

Royal Flush

Straight Flush

Four of a Kind

Full House

Flush

Straight

Three of a Kind

Two Pair

Calculating odds
In order to play successfully you need a method for play decisions. Going on instinct or ‘a feeling’ typically isn’t a good idea. You have two channels of information to help with decisions in a sit down game with other people: Statistics and Player tells. When playing online your only friends are the cold hard numbers. To calculate odds you need to know what it is you are calculating:

Outs => number of cards which would complete your hand. (I have 4 hearts, 9 cards would complete the hand.)

You do not consider cards you think another player may have or cards that have been discarded in the burn stack. That is purely speculation and will have a negative effect on the statistical result.

Visit CrackTheCasino.com today, break the house tonight.

Avoid These 4 Roulette Myths and Play Like a Pro!

Roulette is a fun exciting and simple game to play, requiring no skill. This makes it very popular.

With its popularity a number of roulette myths have grown up and players who believe them cut their chances of success dramatically. Here are the most common ones:

Roulette Myth 1: All Roulette Wheels Are the Same

The first roulette myth is that all roulette wheels are the same – they are not.

For example, you have the European and American wheels to choose from and the European is the best one to play, as your odds of success are better.

Why? Quite simply, you have 37 slots rather than 38; this means the house advantage is just 2.70% on European wheels, whereas it is 5.25% on American wheels on all bets.

So it’s obvious, get the odds in your favour from the start and play European roulette wheels only.

Roulette Myth 2: Each spin of the roulette wheel is not random

The second and perhaps the most common of the roulette myths is: The history of previous spins has an affect on the outcome of the next spin.

For example, if the ball falls on red 10 times in a row players feel that black has a higher chance of coming up next – this is not true.

The odds remain 50% – 50% and this would be the same if the ball had fallen on red 20, or even 30 times. The reason for this is that every spin is an independent event and previous history is irrelevant to predicting future spins.

Many players also like to look for and bet on ’sleeping numbers’ – numbers that has not been hit for a long time.

There is no logic behind such a bet as we have seen – the chances of that number coming up is 1 out of 36 numbers on every spin.

Just because one number has been ’sleeping’ does not make it more likely that the number picked will come up on the next spin.

Roulette Myth 3: You can beat roulette with a mathematical system

This leads on from myth 2 and sees many people buying mathematical systems to beat roulette consistently.

They can’t work by their very nature. Why? Quite simply if there is no past data that can analysed – so how can you have a mathematical system with no reliable past data? You can’t!

Roulette is a game of pure chance and a system that claims to make money consistently from such a game is a contradiction in terms.

Roulette Myth 4: Money management systems

Money management cannot affect the house advantage on any bet, nor guarantee that you will win more money.

The house has an advantage before you apply a money management system and has that same advantage after you apply money management systems, the house edge does not change.

If the house always has this advantage, you cannot change it, or manage it.

So How Do You Make Money?

Well you are half way there by not falling for the above roulette myths!

Furthermore, while roulette is a game of chance you can take certain steps to put the odds in your favour as much as possible and you can find a variety of roulette strategies, tips and ways to increase your profit potential on our website at: online-roulette-strategies.com

This original article may be placed on your own web site, or included in your ezine or newsletter, provided you display the following live link:

online-roulette-strategies.com/roulette-articles.html online roulette strategies and articles.

Which Photographer Are You?

To apply Plato’s suggestion: If you know where you fit, in the vast spectrum of the world of photography, you’ll have easy sledding when it comes to marketing your pictures.

Why? First of all, there’s no one quite like you. You have a treasure of experiences: knowledge, know-how, and interests. Plus, you are a talented photographer. When you know your own strengths and select your markets accordingly, you’ll find that photobuyers like to work with photographers whose files of stock photos match their layout needs. In other words, you speak their language.

Know thyself. You are an important resource to photo editors, if you do your homework and find the photobuyers whose photo needs match the photos you like to take.

‘SERVICE’ PHOTOGRAPHY:

Many newcomers to the field of stock photography initially set their goals toward advertising, PR, industrial, fashion, and assignment photography. These and similar “work for hire” areas are what we call “service” photography. Clients pay for your services – at your day rate – to shoot their visual needs.

There are drawbacks, however. Assignments don’t come easy. Service photography is a fast-paced existence. (“We need the picture yesterday.”) Your pictures rarely belong to you. (Work-for-hire means in most cases that the client owns the copyright.) Your pictures are often “art-directed.” (“We want a girl with blonde hair and a 1960’s red dress.”) The resulting photographs have limited “lasting value.” (Have you ever looked at a graphic-design annual of the year’s best photographs? –from 1995?) However, the large fees you receive may make the service photography area attractive to you.

STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY:

Stock photography, on the other hand, is at the other end of the spectrum. Stock photographers deal via the Internet, FedEx, and the postal service, selling photos they like to take, on their own timetable, which they direct to selected photobuyers who welcome fresh new talent to add to their select list of photo suppliers.

Know thyself. Are you more interested in selling yourself (service photography) or your photos (stock photography)? Do you prefer the glamour of a whirlwind lifestyle or the rewards of the quietude of living at a self-directed pace?

Rohn Engh, veteran stock photographer and best-selling author of “Sell & ReSell Your Photos” and “ sellphotos.com sellphotos.com,” has helped scores of photographers launch their careers. For access to great information on making money from pictures you like to take, and to receive this free report: “8 Steps to Becoming a Published Photographer,” visit sellphotos.com sellphotos.com

Digital Music; Home Studio Music Recording

Home recording has come a long way in the last few decades. Many people do not realize that much of what they hear on T.V. and in commercials is electric.

Many people still have a negative connotation about how electric music sounds. They think that it must always have a cheesy sound.

Part of this stigma is the confusion over midi. and wav. sound files. Simply put, midi is a signal that is sent to a sound card and triggers a note on a preset instrument sound. Therefore, the sound you get from a midi. sound file will only be as good as the sound card you are using.

Even if you record a midi file with a good sound card, if someone else plays it back using an inferior sound card, the result will be inferior sounds.

Now there are very excellent sound cards available and also software synthesizers. The thing to do is to convert your midi. file to wav. The way to do this is to play your midi file through the desired sound card and record it at the same time, using the recording application that comes with your sound card.

For windows PC, I like the SoundBlaster cards, such as the Sound Blaster 16 PCI 4.1

There are many excellent software programs for recording on windows PCs. One I like in particular is Cakewalks Plasma recording program. You can record multiple tracks, just like a professional studio. Plasma has software synthesizers and will also mix down your midi tracks to wav.

Once you have converted your midi to wav., it is a simple matter to burn it to CD. You will want to use the 44100hz setting in the audio tools for this.

To create midi tracks, you can put the musical notes on a staff with the mouse, if you know music theory, or you can connect an electric keyboard to your PC and play the tracks, setting each track with the sound of the desired instrument.

Of course, these programs also allow you to record a wav. track(s) directly, singing or playing an instrument into a microphone. Recording wav. Requires a lot of memory and a fast PC, but most new PCs are more than up to the task.

If you’ve ever had a song you wished you could record, you might want to check-out these reasonably priced software programs. It’s a whole lot of fun!

If you have any questions about this topic, drop me an Email at dizzyobrian@excite.com

Brian is a graduate of the Peabody conservatory of music in Baltimore Md. He spent many years playing in groups, including his own; The Jabberwocky. They played at many venues including the CoachHouse in San Juan Capistrano. Drop by his website at dizzyobrian.com dizzyobrian.com

The Romantic Spirit of the Harlem Renaissance: Claude McKay

Claude McKay (1890-1948) was born in Jamaica to “relatively prosperous peasants” (Hathaway 489). In his youth he “studied classical and British literary figures and philosophers as well as science and theology” (Hathaway 489). McKay’s earliest poetry was written in traditional English forms, but later he was encouraged by his mentor Walter Jekyll to write “dialect poetry rooted in the island’s folk culture” (Hathaway 489). His first two volumes of poetry, Songs of Jamaica (1912) and Constab Ballads (1912), are primarily written in dialect. McKay immigrated to the United States in the fall of 1912, and after studying agriculture at Tuskegee Institute and Kansas State College, he moved to New York City in 1914 (Hathaway 490).

In New York, McKay became “increasingly involved with political and literary radicals” (Hathaway 490). His third volume of poetry, Spring in New Hampshire (1920), reflects his changing political stance; his previous use of dialect is gone, and the poems are divided between commentary of race relations in America and nostalgic images of life in Jamaica (Hathaway 490). Dissatisfied with American leftist efforts to combat racism, McKay escaped to the Soviet Union in 1922 and spent six months traveling throughout the country, attending Communist symposiums and lecturing on art and politics (Hathaway 490). While in Russia, McKay “republished a series of articles he had written for the Soviet press” under the title Negroes in America (1923), which delivers a “Marxist interpretation of the history of African Americans” (Hathaway 490).

In 1928, when McKay was recuperating from illness in France, he published his first novel, Home to Harlem, which is his most widely read work. Even though the novel describes the lower class culture of Harlem, rather than middle class values, Home to Harlem is inherently propagandistic. The central theme of the novel is the internal conflict undergone by an educated, intelligent African American (Stoff 133). Ray, through his friendship with Jack, the ‘natural, instinctive man’, realizes he has “been robbed by his ‘white’ education of the ability to act freely and impulsively” (Stoff 133).

According to Stoff’s interpretation of McKay’s work, “only the instinctive primitive can survive happily in white civilization, its dehumanizing tendencies are irrelevant to his innately free existence” (Stoff 134). While McKay’s politics and philosophy are at odds with most of the Renaissance elders, he still uses his art for propaganda purposes, in this case to condemn the African American intellectuals who have traded their own culture for the middle class values of white America. In his last novel Banana Bottom (1933), McKay offers a Jamaican heroine whom is adopted by white missionaries (Stoff 142). Unlike Ray, Bita Plant, “who rejects the civilized value system but not her intellect, can move easily from one world to another without impairing either instinct or intellect” (Stoff 142).

Like the characters in his novels, McKay himself was “forever seeking fulfillment of his desires to escape color-consciousness and recapture lost innocence” (Stoff 146). McKay, in his later life, stated that “As a child, I was never interested in different kinds of races or tribes. People were just people to me” (Stoff 128). It was in America that he became aware of his race consciousness through bigotry and discrimination. McKay, for the rest of his life, strove to transcend racial boundaries, but ultimately failed. Many other Renaissance writers, such as Jessie Fauset, would also explore racial boundaries.

Bibliography

Hathaway, Heather. “Claude McKay.” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Eds. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 489-90.

Stoff, Michael B. “Claude McKay and the Cult of Primitivism.” The Harlem Renaissance Remembered. Ed. Arna Bontemps. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1972. 126-146.

Mary Arnold holds a B.A. in literature and history. She is an author on Writing.Com/ Writing.Com/ which is a site for Writing.Com/ Writers.