Sunday, January 6, 2008

The WRIGHT TIMES

THE WRIGHT TIMES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page. 1-3 News of 2007

Page 4-5Videos

Page 5-8 Great Ads

Page 9- thats just my opinion

Page 10- The Reviews







TOP NFL STORIES 2007

taken from YAHOO SPORTS

1. The new center of the NFL universe

For the Patriots, 2007 began with a couple of playoff victories and an AFC championship game collapse at Indianapolis. Everything that followed was geared toward avoiding a repeat.

So there were the Patriots in March, signing Donte' Stallworth and Adalius Thomas and trading for Wes Welker. There they were in April -- on the second day of the draft, mind you -- trading a fourth-rounder for Randy Moss. Suddenly, a team that might have won its fourth Super Bowl in six years if not for coughing up a 21-3 lead over Indy was looking darn near unbeatable.

Well, that's not entirely true. Nobody was thinking perfection entering the season. Super Bowl, sure, but not 19-0.

nter the Jets.

Coached by former Bill Belichick protege Eric Mangini, the Jets blew the whistle on the Patriots for videotaping their defensive signals on the sideline in Week 1. A petty crime? Not according to the NFL, which fined Belichick $500,000 and the team another quarter-mil and snatched away a first-round draft pick to boot. Outrage! Even Don Shula joined the chorus of critics who assailed the Reigning Genius.

Just what the league needed -- a ticked-off Belichick. Pity the team that faced New England in its first 10 games, when the Patriots outscored opponents by an average of 39-17. Only Indianapolis, Philadelphia and Baltimore have made New England look vulnerable, but they, too, fell to a Patriots juggernaut powered by Tom Brady-to-Moss TD passes.

Let's face it: It's the Patriots' world, and everyone else is just living in it.

2. The league police blotter.

Michael Vick, a former No. 1 overall draft pick, was incarcerated for his role in a dogfighting ring, and Roger Goodell picked up where the law left off with a few other players. The commissioner's get-tough policy cost Pacman Jones his season and Tank Johnson and Chris Henry parts of theirs.

3. With this ring ...

Peyton Manning and Tony Dungy won the big one. And yes, so did the rest of the Colts when they beat the Bears in Super Bowl 41. But only one Colt took his place as one of the all-time greatest quarterbacks by grabbing what had been an elusive ring -- and then hosting Saturday Night Live and making, by conservative estimates, 287 commercials. And Dungy -- perhaps the nicest guy in the NFL -- became the first African American head coach to win a Super Bowl.

4. The NFC's old guard fights back

Dallas? We saw it coming, although maybe not to the tune of 12-2. But Green Bay? That came out of nowhere.

5. Gunmen take the lives of Sean Taylor and Darrent Williams

Only a few hours into the new year, Williams, a Broncos second-year cornerback, was killed in a drive-by shooting. The year ends with still-vivid memories of the thousands of mourners at the funeral of Redskins safety Sean Taylor, shot to death last month during a burglary at his home. Both men were 24.


5 great commercials

My favorite commercials of the year is coming from ESPN
heres a few.

1) http://youtube.com/watch?v=TH1lqY3TFp8

2) http://youtube.com/watch?v=wHloJGO0NoY

3) http://youtube.com/watch?v=wHloJGO0NoY

4) http://youtube.com/watch?v=bhXYfCykkIc

5) http://youtube.com/watch?v=bga4vLTOJ4U


5 amazing ADS

#1 PC Vs Mac


#2 IPHONE Ad


# 3 Lexus Christmas Gift Ad


# 4 Nintendo Wii posters


#5 Geico Ad



So much for the HEAT. Hello COld
January 03, 2008

Top Russian scientist: global cooling coming

Randall Hoven
These pages recently said goodbye to global warming. Ironically, the current spell of global warming, such as it is, can be expected to end just as the Kyoto treaty ends in 2012, but having nothing to do with reduced emissions from fossil fuels. For the remainder of this century, it will be global cooling we'll have to worry about, according to highly credentialed Russian scientist, Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin.
Dr. Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute. He explains the recent warming as a natural trend.
"Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases."
So what will happen in the future?
"Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer. "Physical and mathematical calculations predict a new Ice Age. It will come in 100,000 years, at the earliest, and will be much worse than the previous. Europe will be ice-bound, with glaciers reaching south of Moscow." The high standing of Dr. Sorkhtin and the inherent plausibility of his argument that climate will continue to follow the same basic causal factor, solar activity, make this another heavy blow to the heavy breathing of the global warming alarmists, who insist there is no argument at all.


This could have been Legendary

I Am Legend (2007)

SOLITARY MAN As a postapocalyptic survivor navigating New York's empty streets with his canine companion, Will Smith carries I Am Legend, a dated yet diverting sci-fi thriller

In I Am Legend, Will Smith, as a U.S. Army officer who may be the last man on earth, drives at top speeds through the concrete valleys of Manhattan, which have been deserted for so long that the cracks in the roads now sprout scruffy green weeds. For sheer eeriness, that effect — the metropolis as vacant lot — far outdoes the desolate Times Square of Vanilla Sky, and Smith is the perfect actor (maybe almost too perfect) to play a survivor who has no one to talk to but his dog and himself. Smith has always worn his self-sufficiency like a suit of armor, often treating costars as sounding boards; he brings that jaunty insularity to the abandoned canyons of a trashed Twilight Zone New York. Here, though, he also draws on the vulnerability he showed last year in The Pursuit of Happyness, suggesting a man whose sanity is beginning to fray.

Based on Richard Matheson's 1954 novel, I Am Legend is a spooky-hokey postapocalyptic thriller built around our fear of contagion (the premise is that a ''miracle'' cancer cure has wiped out the earth's population). It's a movie that might have fit snugly into the zeitgeist had it been made in the early '90s, or maybe 1971 — when, in fact, it was made as The Omega Man, a somber but colossally silly Charlton Heston thriller. Let's be honest: The peril of infectious disease, while quite real, is hardly the anxiety of the moment. In spirit, I Am Legend is caught in some abstractly doom-laden sci-fi past. For what it is, though, the film is well-done, a case of suspenseful competence trumping questionable relevance.

There's one scary sequence in which Smith follows his dog into a warehouse, but as soon as you see the prancing, gnashing, veiny mutant humanoids who have taken up refuge there, you think, ''Okay, it's a fake-demon CGI movie.'' And so it is, though at least it never becomes a soulless monster-hunt videogame like Resident Evil. Smith, who keeps the movie grounded, isn't just surviving — he's on a mission. In The Omega Man, Heston faced a cult of white-faced hippie mutants in sunglasses and medieval monks' robes. Sometimes, CGI really is an advance. B

By Owen Gleiberman



MUSIC REVIEWS


Iron and Wine first appealed to me because of its sole member's incredibly understated arrangements and intelligent lyrics on songs like "Jesus the Mexican Boy," "Naked as We Came," and "Sunset Soon Forgotten." The minimal instrumentation served as an asset—not an easy task to pull off. A solo artist playing one instrument can very easily sound like something important is missing, or as if they're simply strumming along to lyrics.

The Shepherd's Dog Hits

Then he teamed up with Calexico for a much more upbeat alt.country-ish record. Now, back to his own devices, Iron and Wine (a.k.a. Sam Beam) returns with The Shepherd's Dog, which falls somewhere in between. Although this time, Beam has decidedly beefed up his arrangements. There is a lot going on in this record. What sometimes feels like soft spoken sonic chaos occasionally manages to order itself enough to not turn into overload.

On "White Tooth Man," the song spins away, though, taken over by so many contrapuntal electric guitars and a distant repetitive keyboard section. Luckily, it's followed by "Lovesong of the Buzzard"—much easier on the ears. It’s this level of balance that carries the record through to its ultimate apex. "Noone is the savior they would like to be," he sings, followed by a nearly well-buried Rhodes organ. Eventually, the chaotic organ glides up and down arpeggios behind a strolling, melodic slide guitar line.

And It Strikes a Balance

This delicate balance between chaos and order continues on songs like "Carousel." This tune sounds like its spinning underwater, and the effect almost serves to drown out Beam's intensely lovely lyrics, but not quite. Then, in contrast, we get "House By the Sea," a less chaotic tune dripping with oceanic imagery, and mimicking musically the moody changing of tides.

"Innocent Bones" is a nicely arranged tune, wherein the piano enters at the perfect time. Here, Beam's intelligent, biting lyrics return with lines like, "There ain’t a penthouse Christian wants the pain of the scab / but they all want the scar."

Another Collaboration With Calexico

"Wolves (Song of the Shepherd's Dog)" features former collaborators Calexico, and stands out as one of the most shining tracks on the disc, probably hence the album title. The tune's stuttery percussion set against decending, easy flowing harmonies show off some of Iron and Wine's finest songwriting skills.

Then, suddenly, "Resurrection Fern" appears like what can only be called old school Iron and Wine. Simple, soft, scant instrumentation, a shaker instead of drums, a repetitive guitar part full of hammer-on bass lines, a little harmony and audible narrative lyrics. "Like stubborn boys with big green eyes, we'll see everything / in the timid shade of the autumn leaves and the buzzard’s wing."

The Bottom Line

Still, there's so much music going on in this record that even Beam’s great, somewhat mythical lyrics fall into the background. Some of the sounds he pulled out for this record could be deleted without losing any artistic merit, though I suppose it's easy for someone who isn't the artist to make that call. That said, none of the instrumentation ever breaches the arena of the overkill. I'm not entirely sure that it's necessary, but really, who cares? It works.

By Kim Ruehl, About.com









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