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Top 10 Things Girls Do Wrong When Dating

To girls, dating might be one of the most important things. Some women seem to date more than they sleep. While that probably isn’t true, if you’re a girl or you have a close female friend, you have probably heard her talk about dating or her lack there of. In any case, women date in order to find “the one.” Some give up easily, some don’t. Some women will spend days preparing ahead of time for a set date with a possible fling.

While some women will prepare ahead of time, others won’t prepare at all. No matter how much or how little time you spend preparing yourself for the big night (or day, some men slack off on a nice evening meal,) it’s almost positive that you will make a mistake during some part of the dating process. Whether it’s before, during, or after the date, rest assured that you’ve made a mistake; just don’t dwell on it for too long! Here are the top 10 things us females do wrong, sometimes without knowing.

10. Honesty is the Best Policy

Dating isn’t always the easiest thing to do. Sometimes you think that you know the person you’re on a date with, but maybe something unexpected comes up and you’re completely thrown off by the guy. If this is the case, honesty is the best policy. Women often like to pretend that they are still interested in the guy even though they really aren’t. Telling the truth during the dating stage is very important. Remember, be honest.

9. Date One Guy at a Time

This mistake may not be as common, but I’ve definitely heard my share of girls that have done it. Generally you hear it most from men in the form of bragging. Some girls decide to date multiple guys at the same time. While these guys may not be considered “boyfriends,” dating many guys at once can cause an issue. Try to stick to dates with one guy. Once you realize that he isn’t “the one” or you just aren’t interested in him, you can move on to the next one and wish for better luck.

8. Only Trust Reliable Resources for Advice

If you’re one of those females that has a lot of female friends, it is very likely that you have run into this mistake. Say its Saturday night, you’re at a friend’s house with all of your other girlfriends. The conversation switches to advice about dating and men and without thinking, you probably let your mind soak in all of this “advice” that is thrown around. Hello, mistake! Asking advice from people who know nothing about dating is a very common mistake. Maybe it’s just me, but girls with boyfriends generally aren’t spending a nice Saturday night with a bunch of their girlfriends. If you want dating advice, ask someone who knows about men and relationships. (This excludes ex-boyfriends, and parents!) Photo credit Effloresco

7. Stay Sober

If you’ve been on enough dates, your date has probably invited to take you to a bar or offered to buy you drinks for the night. Though it may not seem like one, this is most definitely a mistake. While it may be nice to have someone else pay your alcohol tab for the night, allowing your date to buy you unlimited drinks is a mistake! As great as it may be, by the end of the night, especially if you don’t know your limits, you might just find yourself drunk. If your date wants to meet at a bar, try to pick a new location. Drinking may be nice, but ending a date drunk and waking up the next day without remembering much isn’t fun.

6. Dress Appropriately

A few days before the date, you and a friend are at the mall shopping. You realize that you have money to spend, so you decide to put it towards an outfit that you think will make you look the best on the day of your date. While clothes may look good on the mannequin, don’t assume that they look good on you. The mistake here is buying the wrong clothes and not trying on what you buy. Though you might think your date will enjoy all of the leg that you are showing off, try to dress “classy” as they put it. Don’t go all out, your date isn’t looking for you to be wearing Cinderella’s dress, but don’t under-dress either. Photo credit ukdavew

5. Be Conversational, but Keep it Interesting

During a date, talking is probably one of the most important yet nerve-racking (for some) things to do. Some women prefer that the guy lead the conversation and ask the questions, some prefer that they lead the conversation, and others want a fine balance between the two. If you’re on a date, keep in mind what you’re talking about. It’s safe to say that your date doesn’t care to hear about your first pet, you’re entire life story, or stories that you and your friends find funny. Sparking boring conversation is a big mistake that girls make while on a date. If the guy asks you a question, answer it and make sure that you don’t find yourself going off on a tangent. Keep it simple and understandable yet interesting.

4. Don’t Jump Ahead

Once you’ve gotten over the bump of the first date, many girls like to pick up the phone and yap about how special and nice this new guy is. Before you know it, and without even realizing it, you’re calling this man your boyfriend. Wrong! Not only is this a bad mistake, it could really ruin the “relationship” that the two of you had made in the course of a day. To put it easily, going on one date and calling a guy your boyfriend is just crazy. It just makes you look clingy and way to into the relationship. You can at least save all of that for when the relationship really starts!

3. Don’t Become Infatuated

Another mistake that many women make is jumping the gun and thinking that a guy automatically likes them. The date is over, you’re feeling the butterflies still, and all you can think about is the “look” that he gave you. You call your best friend and the “OMGs” and “perfects” seem to spew out of your mouth. Mistake! Maybe he just had something in his eye, or maybe he was just being nice and trying to make eye contact with you. No matter what, it’s fatal (not really) to jump the gun and assume that the guy automatically likes you. As much as we all want to believe in the lovey-dovey “love at first sight” thing, it’s very doubtful that a man has his mind made up right after the first date. Don’t assume anything, for you are dating a man, and for the simple reason that you don’t want your hopes to come crashing down. Photo credit elisabethsarah

2. Know Where to Find a Date

A common mistake that girls make is simply looking in the wrong places for men. That’s right, this mistake takes place way before the dating even begins. Really, do you think that you’ll find your dream man at the mall, the grocery store, or the local town festival? I’d say no, but I guess it’s all personal opinion. Though looking in the wrong places are generally the easiest places to find men, try stepping outside of the box (the box being a mile away from your home.)

1.Be Patient

Right before the date is over, maybe he asks, or maybe you offer to give your phone number to him. In your head fireworks are going off, your heart is pounding and you’re excited. Once he has the number and the date has ended, you keep tabs on your phone as if it was your source of oxygen. You wait and wait until your ringtone goes off. Big mistake. Even though he might have asked for your number or accepted it, it doesn’t mean that he is going to call you in an hour, four hours, or even the next day. Don’t expect or even assume that he is going to call you; it’s definitely way too much stress! Fact is most men won’t call when you want them to. Photo credit Missiz Beasley

Top 10 Movies That Changed The World

While most movies are mass-produced entertainment and escapism, there are some that have had a profound impact on culture. Whether intentionally or not, some films have brought social issues to light, affected laws, forwarded ideologies both good and bad, and generally changed the course of history through their impact on society. Here are ten films that, for better or worse, made their mark.

10. Super Size Me

Morgan Spurlock’s debut documentary finds its director undertaking an experiment to see what will happen if he eats only food from McDonald’s for an entire month. Along with this stunt, which results in Spurlock gaining more than twenty pounds and experiencing depression and liver damage, the movie also investigates the ways that fast food is marketed, and the culture of poor nutrition and addiction that the restaurants promote. The film was wildly successful, and immediately helped to re-ignite public concern over the obesity epidemic. Less than six weeks after its release, McDonald’s discontinued the “Super Size” option at all of its locations (though the restaurant would later deny that this move had anything to do with the film), and since then they have made steps to include healthier alternatives on their menu.

9. Rosetta

Although it’s not that well known, this small film from directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne caused quite a stir upon its release in 1999, and won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes film festival. It tells the story of a teenaged girl named Rosetta, who after leaving home to escape her alcoholic mother, tries to find any work she can to survive on her own. The film’s portrayal of the character’s struggle was so realistic and moving that it was able to inspire a new law in Belgium that prohibited employers from paying teenage workers anything less than the minimum wage.

8. 2001: A Space Odyssey

It may be hard to imagine now, but when it was released in 1968, 2001 was one of the most groundbreaking, imaginative, and downright puzzling movies to have ever been made. The film, which in part follows a space mission to Saturn, was praised for its attention to detail and scientific realism, and a number of the technologies it predicted, like flat screen TVs and voice recognition software, have since come to pass. Its influence on later films is immeasurable, but most importantly, it captured the public imagination about the possibilities of space travel, and inspired many of the NASA scientists who would put a man on the moon a year later. With this in mind, it’s little surprise that when they landed on the moon the Apollo 11 astronauts described the scenery as being “exactly like 2001.”

7. Harlan County, USA

Director Barbara Kopple’s documentary Harlan County, USA is unique in that its production may have made just as much of an impact as its eventual release. The film, made over the course of many months in the early seventies, followed 180 coal miners in rural Kentucky on strike for safer working conditions and better pay, and the struggle that ensued when they tried to stand up to the Duke Power Company. The strike was a long and bitter affair, with a number of acts of violence, and it was only after one of the miners was shot dead that some compromise was finally reached. Kopple’s camera was there to document it all, and there’s little doubt that several incidences of violence were averted simply because she and her film crew were present as witnesses. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1976, and its success helped the miners in Harlan County as well as other parts of the country gain the public awareness they needed to secure safer working conditions.

6. JFK

Oliver Stone’s film about the assassination of John F. Kennedy instantly became one of the most controversial films ever made when it premiered in 1991. Before it was even released, critics and historians were attacking its theory about a possible government conspiracy behind the murder of the President, with many saying that Stone played fast and loose with the facts and that the film dishonored Kennedy’s legacy. Stone received countless death threats, and the President of the MPAA even wrote an article comparing the film to Nazi war propaganda. All of this media attention only contributed to the film’s success, and helped to restart the debate over what really happened in Dallas in 1963. As a result, The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 was signed into law, and the Assassination Records Review Board was formed. The Board collected all of the material and historical records related to the assassination in order to make it available to the public. Since then, this material has been slowly doled out, but all remaining records will not be released until 2017.

5. An Inconvenient Truth

Whether or not you agree with his premise, there’s no denying that former Vice President Al Gore’s film about the possible dangers of global warming became a cultural phenomenon. In addition to being the fourth highest grossing documentary in U.S. history, An Inconvenient Truth is credited with raising awareness of the issue around the world and helping to make climate change a major subject of debate in subsequent political campaigns. In the years since its release, the film has become required viewing for government officials in a number of different European countries, and has even been used—to much controversy–as a part of the science curriculum in some American high schools.

4. The Battle of Algiers

One of the very best films that no one’s ever heard of, 1966’s The Battle of Algiers charts the struggles of the Algerian War of Independence in the 1950s, when revolutionary cells of freedom fighters began a campaign of guerilla warfare against French colonialists. Because of its incendiary content, the film was banned in France for five years after its release, and was condemned by a number of government officials. The 60s were a time of massive de-colonization around the world, and many have claimed that The Battle of Algiers emerged as a kind of manual for how to conduct urban and guerilla warfare, and it has been said that groups like the Black Panthers and the Irish Republican Army implemented some of the tactics used in the film. The movie’s influence was so far reaching that it has since been used as a teaching tool for counterinsurgency teams, and it was even screened at the Pentagon in 2003 as an example of the problems faced by the U.S. military in Iraq.

3. Triumph Of The Will

The prototypical propaganda film, Triumph Of The Will is the prime example of the ways that art can be used for evil purposes. Ostensibly a documentary about the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremburg, Triumph Of The Will is in actuality a carefully constructed piece of propaganda designed to champion the ideology of Adolf Hitler. It begins with the dictator arriving in the city to fanatical cheering and celebration, and goes on to show a number of speeches by Nazi leaders, parades of SS soldiers, and footage of the many ways that the people of Germany were uniting in support of the Third Reich. The film was not highly promoted outside of Germany, and historical opinions on its impact vary, but it is widely accepted that Triumph of the Will contributed in large part to helping build a cult of personality around Hitler, as well as creating the illusion of unanimous support for his policies. The film’s technical style is as brilliant as its message is sinister, and to this day many recognize its director, Leni Riefenstahl, as one of the preeminent female filmmakers of the twentieth century.

2. The Birth Of A Nation

Still credited as one of the most influential films ever made, director D.W. Griffith’s silent film The Birth of a Nation was first released in 1915. The film’s sweeping narrative follows events surrounding the American Civil War, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and the formation of the Ku Klux Klan. The film was a huge success, but it immediately came under scrutiny for its historical inaccuracies and blatant racism. It was condemned by a number of organizations, including the NAACP, and several major cities banned its release. In the places it was released, including Boston and Philadelphia, riots often broke out, and at least one white man murdered a black teenager after seeing it. According to one journalist, The Birth of a Nation contributed in large part to the reformation of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, and it is said that the Klan used the film as a recruiting tool for a number of years. Despite its bigoted ideology, the film is regarded by a number of film scholars as one of the greatest movies ever made due to the number of technical breakthroughs it provided. Not only did it establish that films could be longer than an hour and still hold the audience’s attention, but Griffith’s direction is commonly regarded as having given rise to the “visual language” of modern film, and many of the editing and shooting techniques pioneered in the film are still utilized today.

1. The Thin Blue Line

While the actual impact of some of the films on this list is hard to calculate, there’s no denying that director Errol Morris’ famed documentary The Thin Blue Line actually made a difference, if only in the life of one man. Originally released in 1988, the film tells the story of Randall Dale Adams, a man who was incorrectly sentenced to death for the murder of a Dallas police officer. Using extensive research and a number of stylized reenactments, Morris used his film to illustrate that eyewitness testimonies of the crime were unreliable, and that a number of other witnesses in the trial had committed perjury. As a result of the publicity that surrounded the release of The Thin Blue Line, Adams was eventually given a chance at a retrial, acquitted of the murder charge, and given back his freedom. The film is now regarded as a classic of the documentary genre, and its style of crime scene reenactments was hugely influential on subsequent films and television shows.

Top 10 Strangest Musical Instruments

When most of us think of a musical instrument, we might think of a guitar, a piano or even a set of drums. All normal enough instruments to be sure, but there are stranger musical instruments out there. These strange instruments may not produce a melodious quality we would expect, but certainly they will make you look, if not listen, twice.

10. Nano Guitar

Musical instruments don’t get any smaller than this. Coming in at a whopping 10 micrometers long, this little guitar, created by researchers at Cornell University, is no larger than a human cell. The nano guitar has six strings, each only about one hundred atoms wide, which can be played only by an atomic force microscope. You won’t be hearing any new music groups claiming nano guitar fame, however, as the sound produced by the nano guitar’s silicon strings would be much too slight to be heard by human ears. Also, tuning can be a pain.

9. Sea Organ

This musical instrument, built on the edge of the Adriatic Sea in Zadar, Croatia, is the world’s first sea-powered organ. The wind and waves from the sea play this organ’s diatonic tones endlessly, allowing a visitor to sit inside single chords of sound as they look out into the sea and watch what Alfred Hitchcock called “the most beautiful sunset in the world.” Created by architect Nikola Basic in 2005, this unpredictable musical instrument plays itself into the top 10 strangest musical instruments.

8. The Great Stalacpipe Organ

Created by a mathematical and electronic scientist from the Pentagon in 1954 in the caverns of Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, this organ takes its place as the world’s largest musical instrument at 3 ½ acres in size. Leland W. Sprinkle carefully selected stalactites throughout the Luray caverns which resonated at specific pitches and tones, and attached rubber mallets which would play these stalactites when keys were pressed at the central organ mechanism. An incredibly unique instrument.

7. The Symphonic House

These days a person can live in their musical instrument. The Wege house sits on a beach on Lake Michigan, and serves as both a home to the Wege family and as their favorite instrument. Long strings run throughout the house and can be played by running one’s fingers along any string with a gloved hand. The sound produced by the house is something akin to a very deep, powerful viola or cello. Wind harps also sit outside the house, creating their own tones as they are played by nature itself.

For more information, please visit www.symphonichouse.com

6. The LEGO Harpsichord

If you build it, they will come. Well, maybe not, but they will certainly take note of your strange creation. Created by LEGO enthusiast Henry Lim, the LEGO Harpsichord is built entirely out of LEGOs, with the exception of the wire strings. His project took him two years of planning and building to create an instrument which would hold up to the 325 lbs of tensile pressure exerted on the LEGO blocks by the piano wire strings, but his ultimate triumph, built out of an estimated 100,000 LEGO pieces, stands as unique even among the world’s strangest instruments. Photo credit: pashasha

To see more of Henry Lim’s creations, please visit http://www.henrylim.org/Harpsichord.html. You can also hear the harpsichord.

5. The Fence

Australian Jon Rose has a mission, and that mission involves both breaking down the boundaries that separate people and playing a very unique and unusual musical instrument: a fence. Conceived as a metaphor for the regional boundaries and borders which separate and divide the human race, Jon Rose’s practice of playing fences reached its peak when he played a barbed wire fence with a bow at the New Music Festival in Vitasaari, Finland in 1995. His mission currently has him on a long trek across the Australian outback playing fences and writing about their history.

To learn more about Jon Rose’s mission and music, please visit jonroseweb.com.

4. Didgeridoo

While there are many “one of a kind” musical instruments that belong on this list of the top 10 strangest musical instruments, one instrument that is not completely unique deserves a place among them: the didgeridoo. This Australian wind instrument is believed to be the oldest wind instrument in the world. Each one can play only a single “drone,” however human voices incorporated into it can cerate a variety of musical uses. While the sound that this instrument makes is fairly common (you have heard it if you have ever seen any movie set in the Australian outback), it remains unique as an instrument type.

3. Bazantar

Mark Deutsch took the five-stringed bass to the next level with this stringed instrument. The bazantar is fitted with 29 strings more than its more common sister instrument, which all ring sympathetically when the original 5 strings are played with the bow. The resulting sound is a chorus of strings singing along with the tones of the played bass, beautiful and haunting when either plucked or bowed.

For more on this strange instrument, please visit Mark’s website at www.bazantar.com.

2. The Bowafridgeaphone

This instrument is exactly what it sounds like: an instrument made from parts of a refrigerator. To be more specific, the bowafridgeaphone is made from refrigerator grates, a bundt cake pan, and a salad bowl, among other things. Iner Souster, creator of experimental instruments that have been used by bands such as the Fembots, designed this instrument which creates a very industrial, interesting sound.

For more on Souster’s interesting instruments, please visit inersouster.blogspot.com.

1. The Bubble Organ

Yet another in the series of strange organ instruments, the bubble organ might be the most unexpected. Aaron Wendel created this instrument out of old rain drain pipes, PVC, pieces of old furniture, and even clothespins found around his apartment. Using two balloons as the source of air, the depressed keys create resonating tones in the PVC pipes that combine with the sound of bubbling water to create this organ’s one-of-a-kind sound. Blowing bubbles in your chocolate milk was never this cool.

Honorable Mention

Pencilina

A combination stringed and percussive instrument, this invention created by Bradford Reed is an incredibly complex instrument. Combining the sounds of electric guitars, drums, and bells, Mr. Reed is able to serve as a one man band of sorts, manipulating basic chords and keeping a regular, albeit unusual, beat. The unusual mechanism of the pencilina is comprised of two parallel boards fitted with strings and sliding mechanism that has to be seen and heard to be believed.

Optivideotone

Professor Scott F. Hall of Cogswell Polytechnical College has used modern technology to create a theremin-type instrument which is truly unique. The optivideotone projects video onto a ceiling from stock footage, movies, etc. and simultaneously responds to the light, color, and images it creates with loud tones, buzzes, and howls. Professor Hall can control the images to create his own music. The optivideotone might not create the most beautiful or symphonic music in the world, but it certainly deserves a spot on the strangest instruments list. Here is a music sample.