Movies Tittle:COLOMBIANA(2011) Starring:Zoe Saldana, Lennie James, Michael Vartan, Marshall Warren, Callum Blue, Jordi Mollà, Max Martini, Sam Douglas, Monica Acosta
Directed by: Olivier Megaton
Release Date: September 2, 2011
A young woman grows up to be a stone-cold assassin after witnessing her parents’ murder as a child in Bogota. She works for her uncle as a hitman by day, but her personal time is spent engaging in vigilante murders that she hopes will lead her to her ultimate target – the mobster responsible for her parents’ death.
Production Status: In Production/Awaiting Release Genres: Action/Adventure, Art/Foreign, Drama and Thriller Release Date: September 2nd, 2011 (wide) Distributors: Sony Pictures Releasing Production Co.: EuropaCorp
Filming Locations: New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
New Mexico, USA
Paris, France
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Mexico
Produced in: France
Here isColombiana (2011) Video Trailer. Check it out!
New Fine Arts Center becomes the first public building constructed in a small Texas city for last thirty years. Local artists and active workers, parents and teachers, historians and collectors of national creativity participated in center building. All of them thought over what should be their place for public meetings
Hi-tech Audience
Project by Kell Muñoz Architects is almost 2000 sq.m., a hall 975 places and an audience completed with the hi-tech audio-visual equipment. The project budget has been limited enough, $5.7 million dollars. This building of time declaring a multicultural modernism, traditional for district (Rio Grande Valley), mixed with the international modernism associating with Mexico.
Art Center in Texas
To allocate a new public place, the construction facade has been raised. The front composition from the bright vertical strips organized according to a color spectrum, very brightly allocates a building in a silent and harmonious landscape.
Bureau Foster + Partners, the well-known British architect, will take part in the program on studying of prospects of building of buildings on the Moon. Details of the project do not disclose, but, according to edition Building Magazine, bureau Foster + Partners will be engaged in studying of the materials existing on the Moon and Mars and potentially suitable for building.
The project will be a part of the big program "Aurora" of the European Space Agency. The representative of a bureau has informed, that a certain tender is provided, but on details to make comments has refused.
Spaceport for Virgin Galactic
The Guardian reminds, that Foster + Partners is engaged in designing of the first-ever private spaceport by request of company Virgin Galactic. Spaceport should open in 2011 in desert in the State of New Mexico.
The well-known architectural bureau
Norman Foster — the winner of every possible architectural awards, architectural bureau Foster + Partners was engaged in the project such known constructions, as: a covered court yard of the British museum, reconstruction Reichstag in Berlin, Hurst's tower in New York, the London skyscraper.
A coalition of environmental groups filed suit in federal court on Wednesday to push back against Bureau of Land Management's permitting of hydraulic fracturing wells near Chaco Culture National Historical Park.An oil well is pictured in September 2012 off County Road 6480 at sunset [Credit: Daily Times]
The suit, which names the BLM and the U.S. Interior Department as defendants, argues that the federal government is putting the environment, public health and the region's cultural resources at sites like Chaco Culture at risk by allowing oil and gas development in the lower San Juan Basin, primarily the Lybrook area.
Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment, the San Juan Citizens Alliance, WildEarth Guardians and the Natural Resources Defense Council, with attorneys from the Western Environmental Law Center, collectively filed the complaint in New Mexico's U.S. District Court, arguing that the BLM's ongoing permitting of drilling in the area violates the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, and the National Historic Preservation Act, or NHPA.
The groups also took to the state Capitol Wednesday to try to convince legislators to support a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, production for Mancos Shale oil in the Gallup Play area. The drilling process involves injecting fluid into the ground at a high pressure to fracture shale rocks and release the natural gas or oil inside.
On Dec. 30, the BLM said it would defer issuing leases for five Navajo allotment parcels that represent 2,803 acres in response to a protest filed by environmental groups that demanded the agency suspend fracking on public lands near the Chaco park.
The BLM's Farmington Field Office is expected to finalize its amended resource management plan later this year, said Victoria Barr, the BLM Farmington Field Office district manager. Barr declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Jeremy Nichols, the climate energy program director at Santa Fe-based WildEarth Guardians, said the lawsuit was a last resort but a necessary one, given BLM's continued drilling permitting.
"The BLM has not fully analyzed the full impacts of horizontal hydraulic fracturing in the Mancos Shale area. Why are they approving all these permits? We wanted to take it to court and have a judge decide," Nichols said.
Groups like WildEarth Guardians complain that the BLM should cease approving all oil drilling permits in the Mancos area at least until its management plan is completed.
"They're leaping before looking because, at the same time, they're trying to update their (resource management) plan, and they've acknowledged that fracking wasn't something they'd thought hard about," Nichols said. "While they're doing that, they're approving dozens — over 100 permits. It doesn't add up to us."
Overall, Nichols said the groups' concern rests with the unknown implications of unchecked drilling in a culturally sensitive region.
"They are approving these permits and arguing that they're insignificant. It's unfortunate that we have to go to court," he said. "Maybe they should think more about the public resources that are at stake. These are public lands and minerals. It's not the oil and gas industry's lands and minerals. Hopefully, we can get BLM to realize that a little restraint is warranted."
Colleen Cooley with Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment said in the group's March 11 press release that the impacts of ongoing horizontal drilling pose dangers to Native communities who live in the region.
"The (BLM) is not taking serious consideration of the sacredness of the Greater Chaco region and the impacts on surrounding Diné communities as they continue to approve more drilling and fracking," Cooley said in the release. "It's time to account for what really matters, our health, our environment, and future generations."
Author: James Fenton | Source: The Daily Times [March 11, 2015]
I got some wanderlust from my dad and I took a travel writing class last year, so I was really intrigued by Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World
, one of the few full length travel narratives I've seen written by a female. To add to my interest, one of my good friends from high school really liked the book so I knew it had to be pretty good. Rita Golden Gelman has reached a turning point in her life. She is living with her husband in California, but they no longer love each other and she hates their modern lifestyle. Her children are on their way to college and she doesn't feel like they need her anymore. Her career, a children's book author, doesn't require her to stay at home. When she and her husband decide to take a break she goes south of the border to Mexico for an intensive Spanish class and finds that she loves traveling. After that trip she changes her life and has no permanent address, she lives on a small amount of money, travels, and meets new people.
The bulk of this book takes place in Indonesia and in my opinion it could have only taken place in Indonesia. Her time in Mexico shows us where her nomadic journey began, but her random trips in the United States and Canada could have been much shorter. Indonesia was really the only place where Rita got to know the people around her and really participated in the culture. I really liked the places Rita went to in the book, but she didn't get to know hardly anyone so it was basically just a book about everywhere she went in this time span and everything she did.
I wanted to like this book a lot. I love the idea of just packing up your stuff, taking off, and seeing the world in your own way. Rita's voice got in the way though. The book is written in the present tense, which lends itself to "I did this, I see this, I hear this" writing. She spends so much time talking about what she did that you don't ever get a good feeling of what the culture is like. She spends at least 100 pages in Indonesia but I didn't come away from the book with any different perspective on it. And that's not totally necessary for me to enjoy a travel narrative. The Moon, Come to Earth didn't change my perspective on Portugal, but it did make me think about travel in a way that I wouldn't have without the book. That was not the case with Tales of a Female Nomad. Honestly, I thought Rita was a little self-centered and while I enjoyed reading about a few of the amazing things she did, there was always this nagging feeling in my head that the way she was telling them just wasn't right. This book could have been awesome, but it ended up just being okay.
I give this book a C.
I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.
Mexican architectural company Tatiana Bilbao has created the design project of a university building. The author has inspired on project creation — an ordinary tree.
Biological Penates
The building has received the name “Biotechnological Park Building”. The six-storied structure will shelter researchers and experimenters in the field of the new technologies applied in agriculture.
The project will take places on 8,000 sq.m. of a campus of the largest private university in Mexico (Tecnológico de Monterrey) in the city of Culiacan.
The university concept
The concept represents a complex of the blocks placed in chessboard order. On-opinion architects, such structure is similar to a live, growing tree.
The university education will be taught on the building ground floors — in "roots", and research and business programs — on top, in "crones".
The Best American 2009 series just came out this month, so in honor of that I thought I would say a bit about The Best American Travel Writing 2009 and in contrast The Best Travel Writing 2009. It's getting a bit cold in Iowa so I have travel on the brain right now anyway, although I do like the cold weather.
The Best American Travel Writing 2009 Edited by Simon Winchester
This is one of the better essay collections I have read. The transitions between the essays are quite good, I never felt like anything was out of place. There is a negative said that though, sometimes a few essays seemed like one really long boring essay just because I was disinterested. The best thing about essay collections though: you can pick and choose what you want to read.
My top three favorite pieces from this book were: 1. The Mecca of the Mouse by Seth Stevenson. The narrator traps himself on Disney property for five days and analyzes everything from Disney to American culture to architecture. It is quite funny, especially in regards to animatronics. "I'm sure 'audio-animatronic' creatures were nifty when Disney pioneered them in the 1960s." 2. A Mind Dismembered by Frank Bures. The piece takes place in Africa and is all about penis snatching. For those of you who don't know what that is (I sure didn't before I read this), there is an epidemic in Nigeria and other parts of Africa where men believe that people on the street, witches of some kind, steal their penises, but then when they go to the doctor the penis is still there. It's a really fascinating example of regional illness. 3. Who is America? by Chuck Klosterman. I am probably choosing this one out of bias, but this is generally the type of essay that I like. I am fairly certain that I would like this piece even if I hadn't know it was written by Klosterman (who I saw speak at my campus last year, he is even funnier in person). Klosterman was teaching a seminar on U.S. consumer culture in Germany. To get into the class he required the students to write about the most interesting 20th Century American. I won't give away who was chosen, but if you've read Klosterman before you know exactly how this is essay if functioning. (And if you haven't read him before, I suggest Killing Yourself to Live)
The Best Travel Writing 2009 Eidited by James O'Reilly, Larry Habegger, and Sean O'Reilly
While it is a less popular series I will admit that I enjoyed this essay collection more than The Best American one. These essays are less research essays and more travel narratives which was more enjoyable. If you're only going to read one of these books, I would suggest The Best Travel Writing.
My top three favorite pieces from this book were: 1. The Bamenda Syndrome by David Torrey Peters. This essay is a really fascinating account about psychological syndromes that travelers get. It questions if we can really trust what we see when we are traveling. Two such syndromes are the Florence Syndrome and The Jerusalem Syndrome. To find out more about the three syndromes mentioned in the piece, you should read the piece. 2. Officially a Woman by Stephanie Elizondo Griest. This takes place in Mexico and is a really honest account of quinceaneras, or a sort of coming of age party. My favorite part is when the daughter who is having the party is getting her nails done even though she has to take an exam the next day. "Yet her new nails are so unwieldy, she can barely grasp a pencil. No one seems to fret about this except me. What is an exam compared to womanhood?" 3. A Vast Difference by Deborah Fryer. The subtitle to his essay is, "Summer Camp is the first adventure for many a traveler" which kind of turned me off at first. Believe me, after you read the first paragraph you will not be able to stop. Deborah's summer camp experience is like no other, she is at a Jewish summer camp and her camp counselor has the children perform a pretend burial. If that isn't a hook, I don't know what is.
