Major League Baseball

From Wikipedia

Major League Baseball
Current season or competition: 2009 Major League Baseball season
Sport	Baseball
Founded	1876
Commissioner	Bud Selig [1]
No. of teams	30 [2]
Country(ies)	United States Canada
Most recent champion(s)	Philadelphia Phillies
Most championships	New York Yankees (26) [3]
TV partner(s)	FOX, ESPN, TBS, and MLB Network
Official website	MLB.com

Major League Baseball (MLB) is the highest level of play in American professional baseball. Specifically, Major League Baseball refers to the organization that operates the National League and the American League, by means of a joint organizational structure that has developed gradually between them since 1903 (the National League having been in existence since 1876). In 2000, the two leagues were officially disbanded as separate legal entities with all rights and functions consolidated in the commissioner's office.^[4] MLB effectively operates as a single league and as such it constitutes one of the major professional sports leagues of North America. It is currently composed of 30 teams—29 in the United States and one in Canada.

Each season consists of 162 games (or 163 in the event of a tie breaker) which generally begins on the first Sunday in April and ends on the first Sunday in October, with the playoffs played in October and sometimes in early November. The same rules and regulations are played between the two leagues with one exception: the American League operates under the Designated Hitter Rule, while the National League does not. Utilization of the DH Rule in interleague play, the All-Star and World Series games is determined by the home team's league rules.

MLB is controlled by the Major League Baseball Constitution that has undergone several incarnations since 1876 with the most recent revisions being made in 2005. Under the direction of Commissioner of Baseball (currently Bud Selig), Major League Baseball hires and maintains the sport's umpiring crews, and negotiates marketing, labor, and television contracts. As is the case for most of the sports leagues in the United States and Canada, the "closed shop" aspect of MLB effectively prevents the yearly promotion and relegation of teams into and out of the Major League by virtue of their performance. Major League Baseball maintains a unique, controlling relationship over the sport, including most aspects of minor league baseball. This is due in large part to a 1922 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Federal Baseball Club v. National League, which held that baseball is not interstate commerce and therefore not subject to federal antitrust law. This ruling has been weakened only slightly in subsequent years.^[5][6]

The production/multimedia wing of MLB is New York-based MLB Advanced Media, which oversees MLB.com and all 30 of the individual teams' websites. Its charter states that MLB Advanced Media holds editorial independence from the League itself, but it is indeed under the same ownership group and revenue-sharing plan. MLB Productions is a similarly-structured wing of the league, focusing on video and traditional broadcast media.

George Soros

From Wikipedia

George Soros
George Soros speaking in Malaysia
Born	August 12, 1930 (1930-08-12) (age 78) Budapest, Hungary
Occupation	speculator, investor, philosopher, philanthropist, political activist
Net worth	▲ $9.0 billion (Forbes)[1]
Spouse(s)	Twice divorced (Annaliese Witschak and Susan Weber Soros)
Children	Robert, Andrea, Jonathan, Alexander, Gregory
Website www.georgesoros.com

George Soros (pronounced /ˈsɔroʊs/ or /ˈsɔrəs/,^[2] Hungarian IPA: [ˈʃoroʃ]) (born August 12, 1930, in Budapest, Hungary, as György Schwartz) is a Hungarian-born Jewish American financial speculator, stock investor, philanthropist, and political activist.^[3]

Soros is estimated currently^[update] to be worth around $9 billion in net worth; he is ranked by Forbes as the 101st-richest person in the world.^[1]

Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute and is also a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also one of three initial funders of Center for American Progress, and is represented on the board.^[4] His funding and organization of Georgia's Rose Revolution was considered by Russian and Western observers to have been crucial to its success, although Soros said his role has been greatly exaggerated. In the United States, he is known for having donated large sums of money in a failed effort to defeat President George W. Bush's bid for re-election in 2004.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker wrote in 2003 in the foreword of Soros' book The Alchemy of Finance:

George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become 'open societies,' open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but—more important—tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior.

Taiperi Times

Taipei Times

From Wikipedia

Taipei Times
Traditional Chinese:	臺北時報
Simplified Chinese:	台北时报
[show]Transliterations Mandarin - Hanyu Pinyin: Táiběi Shíbào

Taipei Times (臺北時報)

Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner	The Liberty Times Group
Publisher	The Liberty Times Group
Founded	1999
Headquarters	Taipei, Republic of China (Taiwan)
Circulation	over 285,000
Website: http://www.taipeitimes.com

The Taipei Times is one of the three major English-language newspapers in the Republic of China (Taiwan), the other two being the Taiwan News and The China Post. Established in 1999, the Taipei Times is published by the Liberty Times Group, which publishes the Chinese language newspaper the Liberty Times.

In contrast to The China Post, it is widely regarded as taking an editorial line that leans toward the Pan-Green Coalition.

Along with such newspapers as The Guardian, it is a participant of Project Syndicate, established by George Soros. The Taipei Times sources articles from writers at The Guardian almost every day, including travel writers.

In March 2005, the Taipei Times web site incorporated a "Wikipedia feature" for its online articles. By following a link marked "wiki links", the reader can view a new version of the article with links to the Wikipedia pages about certain subjects mentioned in the news article.

Uncyclopedia

From Wikipedia

Uncyclopedia

The Main Page of Uncyclopedia.
URL	http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com
Slogan	The content-free encyclopedia that anyone can edit
Type of site	Satirical wiki
Registration	Optional
Owner	Wikia
Created by	Jonathan Huang and "Stillwaters"
Launched	January 5, 2005
Current status	Active

Uncyclopedia, "the content-free encyclopedia", is a satirically themed wiki. Founded in 2005, it is formatted as a humorous parody of Wikipedia and aims ultimately to parody all encyclopedic subjects.^[1] Originally an English-language wiki, the project currently spans over 50 languages. The English version has over 23,000 pages of content.^[2]

Various different forms of humour style are used as a vehicle for parody from sophisticated satire to the apparently random. Like Wikipedia, Uncyclopedia has guidelines regarding what is and is not acceptable content and these guidelines have become progressively more strict as the site has expanded over time. The site has gained negative attention due to its articles on places and people.

Its logo is a hollowed potato, named Sophia after the Gnostic deity, that serves as a spoof of Wikipedia's globe logo.^[3]

Napoleon Dynamite Trivia

• The name "Napoleon Dynamite" is a pseudonym used by Elvis Costello for his 1986 album, "Blood and Chocolate". Executive producer Jeremy Coon has stated that the similarity is a coincidence and that the producers were unaware of Costello's usage of the name until the film was in production.
  
  
• Every dish shown during the opening credits is eaten by a character later in the movie. The dishes presented in the opening credits were the work of the three people who present them.
  
  
• Due to the film's surprise success at festivals and in its limited release, Fox Searchlight re-edited the film to add a 5-minute epilogue at the end. This epilogue, which was filmed after the initial theatrical run, features a surprise "wedding scene", which cost about half of what the entire feature cost to make.
  
  

• Features one of the longest credited cast lists in movie history; all 181 student extras' names are listed in the closing credits.
  
  
• The movie was edited in producer Jeremy Coon's apartment using a $6,000 Macintosh with Final Cut Pro.
  
  
• Behind-the-scenes at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, Fox Searchlight engaged in a bidding war with Warner Independent Pictures over the distribution rights to this movie, until Fox Searchlight put in a last-minute bid of over $3 million, and won. They would later join forces with Paramount Pictures and MTV Films to distribute the film, a mere 17 days before its release.
  
  
• The "liger" is a real animal, created when a male lion mates with a female tiger. It does not, however, have "skills in magic", as Napoleon claims.
  
  
• The scene where Uncle Rico hits Napoleon in the face took four takes.
  
  
• Shot in 22 days.
  
  
• Jon Heder's big dance scene was the last scene scheduled and film ran out while shooting it. The sequence was edited together from less than 10 minutes of his dancing.
  
  
• The scene of the farmer shooting the cow in front of the school bus full of children is a true anecdote from the director's childhood.
  
  
• Aaron Ruell (Kip) had braces put on his teeth for this role (two dentists are thanked in the credits).
  
  
• Two houses were used for the filming of Napoleon's house: one for outdoor shots, and one for indoor shots.
  
  
• Deb's photo studio is actually the basement of the interior version of Napoleon Dynamite's house.
  
  
• Having the food plates spell out names in the opening credits was Aaron Ruell's idea. The rest of the sequence was designed and executed by 'Pablo Ferro'.
  
  
• In the second cafeteria scene, when Napoleon and Pedro discuss prospective dance dates, Napolean is wearing a Ricks College t-shirt. Ricks College was a junior college in Idaho that maintained close association with Brigham Young University up until 2000, when Ricks was formally named an official satellite of BYU, henceforth BYU-Idaho. Jared Hess and Jerusha Hess, the film's co-writers, both attended BYU.
  
  
• Idaho unanimously passed a bill praising Jared Hess and Jerusha Hess for making the film, citing amongst their reasons that the Preston High School administration and staff, particularly the cafeteria staff, have enjoyed notoriety and worldwide attention. Tater tots figuring prominently in the film has promoted Idaho's most famous export.
  
  
• In real life, the llama belongs to director/co-writer Jared Hess's mother, and its name is Dolly.
  
  
• Uncle Rico's girlfriend who rides up to him on her bicycle at the end of the film, is Aaron Ruell's wife.
  
  
• Jon Heder was paid $1,000 to play Napoleon Dynamite. The movie grossed over $40,000,000 in the United States.
  
  
• Jon Heder drew all of the "drawings" in the movie except the unicorn.
  
  
• For Napoleon's dance routine, director Jared Hess had Jon Heder improvise and dance to three different songs. Hess then took the "best" moves from each song and put them in one routine, using one song.
  
  
• Jon Heder helped to make the boondoggle keychains between scenes.
  
  
• Jon Heder credits Tina Majorino (Deb) with helping to choreograph the dance scene. He also states that some of the dance moves were "borrowed" from Michael Jackson, Backstreet Boys, John Travolta, "Soul Train" (1971), as well as some of his own moves.
  
  
• Jon Heder permed his hair for the film.
  
  
• Jon Gries in real life is a vegetarian, so whenever he was required to eat the steak on camera (which was a lot) he would spit it out in his hand. You can see him do this in the scene where he hits Napoleon with the steak on his bike. As he goes to turn and sit you can watch him bring his hand up to his mouth, spit out the steak and then he drops it onto the plate behind him.
  

The llama

Llama

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Llama
A llama overlooking Machu Picchu, Peru
Conservation status
Domesticated
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Artiodactyla Family: Camelidae Genus: Lama Species: L. glama
Binomial name
Lama glama (Linnaeus, 1758)

Names of llama body parts: 1 Ears - 2 Poll - 3 Withers - 4 Back - 5 Hip - 6 Croup - 7 Base of tail - 8 Tail - 9 Buttock - 10 Hock - 11 Metatarsal gland - 12 Heel - 13 Cannon bone - 14 Gaskin - 15 Stifle joint - 16 Flank - 17 Barrel - 18 Elbow - 19 Pastern - 20 Fetlcok - 21 Knee - 22 Chest - 23 Point of shoulder - 24 Shoulder - 25 Throat - 26 cheek or jowl - 27 Muzzle

The llama (Lama glama) is a South American camelid, widely used as a pack animal by the Incas^[1] and other natives of the Andes mountains. In South America llamas are still used as beasts of burden, as well as for the production of fiber and meat.^[2]

The height of a full-grown, full-size llama is between 5.5 feet (1.6 meters) to 6 feet (1.8 m) tall at the top of the head. They can weigh between approximately 280 pounds (127 kilograms) and 450 pounds (204 kilograms). At birth, a baby llama (called a cria) can weigh between 20 pounds (9 kilograms) to 30 pounds (14 kilograms). Llamas are very social animals and like to live with other llamas as a herd. Overall, the fiber produced by a llama is very soft and is naturally lanolin free. Llamas are intelligent and can learn simple tasks after a few repetitions. When using a pack, llamas can carry about 25%–30% of their body weight for several miles.^[3]

Llamas appear to have originated from the central plains of North America about 40 million years ago. They migrated to South America and Asia about 3 million years ago. By the end of the last ice age (10,000–12,000 years ago) camelids were extinct in North America.^[3] As of 2007, there were over 7 million llamas and alpacas in South America and, due to importation from South America in the late 20^th century, there are now over 100,000 llamas and 6,500–7,000 alpacas in the US and Canada.^[4]

In popular culture

The name "llama" has been used for a wide variety of descriptions for people and items alike within general computing and gaming industries. Within some computing environments, the label "llama" has been derogatory indicating a person with little knowledge and new to the environment. Acronyms have been spelled similarly to llama and thus pronounced as llama. The llama has proved to be quite popular among some simulation games. Also the llama has been made popular in many movies as well, such as Napoleon Dynamite and the Disney film The Emperor's New Groove. The label "llama" is also used in game shows as a term for a contestant who leaves the game show with nothing.

Check wikipedia for other infos!