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As one of the most promising platforms to have appeared at the turn of the century, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was primarily greeted with widespread derision as a Johnny-Come-Lately to the nine billion-dollar videogaming sector (which is at present worth many multiples of billions more annually). Nowadays the Xbox is considered cutting-edge and competes directly with Sony’s similarly amazing Playstation, but just recently the stakes were elevated with Microsoft’s introduction of its Kinect technology that claims to do away with game controllers once and for all, using the player’s own body movements to direct all onscreen motion. The highly leading-edge motion-detection technology makes it possible to scan even facial gestures!

It’s hard buying educational toys because, well, how would you really measure whether something is educational, especially when it involves very young children even toddlers? In reality, numerous child psychologists believe that just about anything is “educational” for a child, particularly at very young ages when practically by definition anything they come into contact with teaches them something about the world, about which they know virtually nothing!

When you don’t know much to begin with, everything is educational, isn’t it? And so the world is full of educational toys as a result, as any object can be played with and, in the very playing with, help to develop the motor skills and cognitive abilities which toymakers claim their products foster in a child.

And yet clearly there are toys that do seem to somehow offer a lot more than entertainment value, for instance programmable robot kits. So perhaps a better way to think about educational toys is to not regard them as being completely educational or not, in which case it is arguable that a plaything could be made of almost anything and that play itself is an inherently educational activity.

The misunderstandings, as ever (according to most semanticists, anyway), concerns semantics, or meaning. If we mean by the term not merely something that can be played with such that skillsets of some kind are fostered, but instead those toys which are obviously more capable of fostering a skillset, particularly one which is not readily developed otherwise, then shopping becomes substantially easier!

Thus, it will turn out that puzzles like a Rubik’s Cube are very educational while alphabet blocks are significantly less so. And as parents, we want to encourage our kids to not only explore but push their intellectual envelope, so while good old-fashioned dolls and the like might stimulate the imagination, much more ingenious toys can also stimulate such higher-order faculties as pattern recognition and problem solving.

Arsène Lupin III is a formidable thief capable of cracking all the safes in the world. A fictional character introduced by the mangaka (Japanese for “comicbook artist”) Kazuhiko Kato, better known as Monkey Punch, in the 10 August 1967 issue of Weekly Manga Action, Lupin is meant to be the grandson of another fictional character, Arsène Lupin, a French gentleman thief and detective created by Maurice Leblanc, the best-selling early Twentieth Century pulp fiction writer. As the world’s number one thief, in addition to safes Lupin is also a master at disarming traps and alarms. His ventures have proved him quite a talented driver and pilot as well, and he is an expert shot – with a pistol, no less.

For all his skills, however, Lupin has a doltish, even idiotic look. Yet they belie his ferocious reasoning abilities and social charms; Lupin is able to get past folks with about the same ease as when negotiating safes, particularly booby-trapped ones.

When not practicing his art – he seems to steal more for the challenge than for any personal gain, frequently discarding treasures or not caring if he should lose them after first conquering the quest of acquiring them – Lupin enjoys fishing, gambling, and dating lovely women – not necessarily in that order!

Giving rigor to the dubious proverb about honor among thieves, Lupin will often foil other criminals who are engaged in activities of a violent, murderous nature. Actually, most of his adventures involve not only the police, epitomized by his nemesis Inspector Zenigata, but genuinely sinister characters of deep malice.

Immensely well-liked and voted among the Ten Most Iconic Anime Heroes, Arsène Lupin III has been ubiquitous in three television series, five feature films, nearly two dozen television specials, and several original video animations and videogames.

Stocking and providing medical office supplies has typically been one of the duties of a hospital dispensary, which is mainly dedicated to dispensing medication according to doctors’ prescriptions. These days, the term “dispensary” refers to a handful of different institutions around the world – or, even, within the country.

For instance, in California a dispensary is a specially designated store licensed to sell not medical office supplies but medical marijuana (which is also the case in the Canadian province of British Columbia), while in the states of Idaho and South Carolina a dispensary used to refer to the governmental agency that served as the only legal source of alcohol.

Also no source of medical office supplies is the Kenyan dispensary, a small outpatient health facility generally managed by a registered nurse. These nurses report to clinical officers at a health centre, which is also where patients are referred to for treatment in cases a lot more complicated than a typical ailment like cold or malaria. Modeled on the British system, this sort of medical dispensary is no basic storehouse of supplies but what Americans would call a community clinic.

This kind of clinic or dispensary got its start up in London, England back in the 1700s, and is credited with aquainting physicians with the problems of the poor because unlike the case with hospitals or a private practice, this dispensary service actually brought doctors into their patients’ homes. Their social consciences shocked, thus were the first dispensaries set up – free healthcare for the poor.

Indeed, young aspiring doctors of the day had been very eager to serve as honorary physicians to the dispensaries, though such an appointment was normally voluntary (with no more than a small honorarium at best) and not as prestigious as a hospital posting. It was nothing short of a medical revolution: for the first time since the Hippocratic Oath, altruistic motivations were the norm.

Welcome to another edition of Isaac Toussie’s real estate insights. Today Isaac Toussie will be talking about an upstate town that once rivaled New York for industry and commerce. Taken from from the native term “Uppu-qui-ipis-in” which means “reed-covered hut by the water,” Poughkeepsie today has grown beyond huts into a permanent city of some forty-three thousand souls. Poughkeepsie is in fact the name of both a town and a city, both municipalities right next to one another because the city actually used to be the western part of the town (and, incidentally, was an independent village in its own right before that). Except for legal purposes, and such services as fire and police, the two communities are often viewed as one, with a combined population in excess of seventy-five thousand people. The town is actually home to much more people than the city, which counts only some thirty-thousand-plus inhabitants.

As a result, it’s expected that their respective real estate markets will be quite different. A closer examination of the latest demographical figures shows that the town is much more affluent than the city, with a median income of over fifty-five thousand dollars a year as opposed to well under thirty-thousand for the city. Indeed, the Town of Poughkeepsie is able to provide for its own emergency services, which are staffed by fully paid civil servants, and not volunteers as is the case with many a suburban community.

As for the City of Poughkeepsie, it’s been severely battered by the economic malaise afflicting the rest of the state and the country as a whole. Average listing price in the two-week period between January 20, 2010 and February 3, 2010 fell almost thirty thousand dollars, to two hundred and fifty-one thousand dollars, though almost five thousand of that has been “recovered” as of February 10. However, the actual median selling price, based on two hundred and thirty-four homes sold, is almost thirty-three thousand dollars short of the median listing price, at barely two hundred and twenty thousand. Average price per square foot in the city is one hundred and thirty-two dollars.

Poughkeepsie was once the “Queen City of the Hudson,” but has suffered economic setbacks for the past twenty-plus years and was just beginning to recover in fits and starts when the recent recessionary woes struck. This has obvious implications for local realty, both residential and commercial. The Town of Poughkeepsie, however, seems rather more vibrant in comparison. International Business Machines, Incorporated, was once the most notable employer around, and while the company still maintains a campus in town, most of its production has been moved elsewhere. Vassar College in the City of Poughkeepsie is arguably the most notable employer now.

Should you purchase any Poughkeepsie property? Well, there’s no way it’s reclaiming its glory days, so the local real estate market is never going to be a hot one. But if your goals are more modest, and especially if you live in the city yourself, then certainly, Poughkeepsie property can be a solid investment.

Now even with all that said, however, we must end on this note, that of the legal disclaimer: Neither the author nor the publisher shall be deemed liable for the contents of this article, which constitute mere opinion only and should never in any way be misconstrued as professional advice of any kind whatsoever! Always consult the relevant professionals, properly licensed and/or otherwise qualified, when making business decisions of any financial consequence.

New York City is a great place to live if you have the income to live in a great neighborhood. However, while rents are very high, industry experts like Isaac Toussie say that it is still possible to find fair honest deals where you get a lot of space in return, among other things. Many factors go into any consideration, such as convenience and access, look and feel, and noise levels. Here is a survey of some nabes that offer a good balance of all these factors in relation to typical prices.

For the most part, we will consider only Queens and Brooklyn neighborhoods, as these are the ones that best fit our criteria for all-around value. The other boroughs are either too expensive or too run-down, as in the case of Manhattan and the Bronx, respectively, or just too remote and isolated, as with the case of Staten Island. Of course, the Bronx does have nice neighborhoods, too, but these are going to be expensive, and you’ll have to avoid the rest of your borough if you want to see something civilized. Industry observers like Isaac Toussie note that while Manhattan also has its pockets of urban blight, anything decent is going to be astronomically priced. Staten Island is just another world altogether and you might as well not bother living in New York City, in that case!

So Queens and Brooklyn it is. Brooklyn is by far the more storied of the two, with more offerings of high-brow culture if that’s important to you. Queens offers culinary adventurers the best possibilities outside Manhattan, and the most authentic tastes at any price. Queens also tends to be much more diverse, whereas Brooklyn practically invented the ethnic enclave. Finally, Queens schools are better on average, whereas Brooklyn’s, while good, trails far behind in general comparison.

So what are these great “nabes” and where are they? Well, in Brooklyn you will want Williamsburg and Greenpoint for the bohemian scene. Good, authentic middle-class areas include Bensonhurst, Gravesend, Bath Beach, Bay Ridge, Fort Hamilton, and Midwood. Canarsie would have once made the cut but has been on its way down. Borough Park seems like an “in-between” situation and can still swing either way. Your basically upper middle-class places are Dyker Heights, Marine Park, Brighton Beach, and Sheepshead Bay.

In Queens the toniest nabes are Forest Hills and Kew Gardens. Almost as good are Flushing (and East Flushing) and Bayside. Astoria is known for its night life. Sunnyside, Woodside, Ridgewood, and Elmhurst (but avoid East Elmhurst) are more working-class but still often quite civilized to live in. Middle Village, Queens Village, Maspeth, and Juniper Valley are demographically between the working and (true) middle classes.

Outside these areas, you’ll probably want to steer clear of. We’ll cover those in another article. But suffice it to say, even the areas mentioned here can be undesirable on their “border areas,” where they abut the urban blight of the next neighborhood over, as implied in the case of Elmhurst and East Elmhurst mentioned earlier. So exercise all due diligence and thoroughly investigate a neighborhood with first-hand experience!

A webinar is really a webcast that provides for limited interactivity, for instance audience polling or a brief Q&A session afterwards. If you think about it, however, the state of today’s webinars are not that much removed from something such as amusement rides like Oztrek by New York entrepreneur Zalman Silber. These are IMAX-like experiences that are passive, with no audience interaction, the only difference from a traditional movie screening being the synchronized motion seating effects involved.

But a webinar is more an online workshop than multimedia entertainment. Something like the Army Virtual Experience, or VAE, however, works to combine both aspects, possibly portending the future.

The VAE is a mobile infantry combat simulator that allows participants to get a small taste of soldiering under extremely hostile environments. Created by the United States Army in conjunction with American software developer Zombie Studios, full-sized Blackhawk helicopter and full-sized Humvee vehicle simulators are employed to further develop the sense of realistic immersion. It is a mobile infantry combat simulator, available in a handful of different versions from full-sized to traveling packages suitable for indoor or outdoor installations. It was developed as a response to the increased appetite of young American males for electronic forms of entertainment, augmenting traditional advertising efforts on television. In two years and at a cost of almost twenty million dollars, the VAE has been hosted at a variety of sites throughout forty states at venues ranging from NASCAR races to music festivals.

Available in different versions, the full VAE requires just under twenty-thousand square-feet of room for all the various aspects of the simulation technology involved, from the aforementioned life-sized replicas of Army machinery to the various computers and networking equipment necessary for bringing it all together to life. It’s a far ways off from the kind of passive technology encountered at amusement rides like the Oztrek by serial entrepreneur Zalman Silber. Employing a huge IMAX-like screen with motion seating that is activated in synchronization with onscreen events and actions, this sort of immersive experience is purposefully safe and innocuous, suitable for the general family-oriented audiences it seeks. By contrast, the VAE leans heavily towards young males, with an emphasis on fire-and-forget gameplay. The full-version starts off in a traditional manner akin to something like the aforementioned Oztrek, with a twenty-minute ride in which video briefings are given by various soldiers of the United States Army explaining their areas of expertise and specialized duties as well as their personal goals outside of the military. But the similarity to yesteryear’s virtual tours soon ends as participants go on to engage in any number of war-fighting scenarios from inside life-sized Blackhawk and Humvee simulators.

Wine holders hold wine. They store and organize wine, and could be produced of any number of various materials in any number of various sizes. Also known as wine racks, large ones can be found in a professional wine cellar while a lot smaller styles might be wall-mounted in the kitchen to conveniently display an amateur collection.

These latter kinds will at times incorporate wine glasses for a combination rack that holds both drink and implement. Speaking of which, the truest wine holder of all is probably one’s own mouth! But for innovative aesthetics, nothing beats the man-made designs. Those constructed from metal are particularly imaginative.

The material itself provides for the greatest amount of creativity, allowing as it does fluid sinuous designs difficult or even impossible to achieve with any wooden or stone. Many are highly whimsical, such as a common favorite where thin metal spirals hold wine bottles upside-down in a haphazard manner suggestive of intoxication!

Many who take their wines, and thus their display, seriously enough to think about such devices (as opposed to just putting them on a shelf in the fridge or pantry) will usually favor wood because of the role it plays in formulating the flavor of many wines.

After all, wines are matured in wooden caskets for just that all-important reason, and numerous winemakers are even so careful as to factor in the species of wood used for their bottle corks! Therefore the bestselling styles are still wooden, even in the most modern of decors where chrome or stainless steel predominate.

Storing wine is really a serious affair if you care about taste. Ambient lighting and even the very angle at which bottles may be tilted during storage are said to help produce the flavor of a wine. Keeping your wine in a manner that both highlights the beauty of their bottling while protecting or aiding the creation of their flavors can be difficult, depending on how exacting your expectations.

Virtually all detox diet’s will permit for a slow re-introduction of foods (other than those that were restrained on the diet). A Detox Diet eliminates foods made up of anything reported to be harmful to your health. Now that you have completed a detox diet, it is a great point in time to bring more fruits and vegetables to your diet, and stay to that habit. Examples being to add some berries to your breakfast or a tomato at lunch, and them perhaps some broccoli with an evening meal. And you should not forget the drinks, say goodbye to the soda and drink some vegetable juice. A large number of people that complete a detox program will tell you that it is a perfect way to improve health and overall well being.

Surgical masks are most often worn by health professionals, but in many Asian countries they’re worn simply as a way of protecting oneself from the smog, a common issue in that part of the world. Asians also wear surgical masks when sick in order to not infect anyone else. Interestingly, such a simple everyday thing is involved in one of the most uncanny of popular legends in Japan.

Kuchisake Onna, or “slit-mouthed woman” in Japanese, was originally a very gorgeous woman whose jealous husband cut her mouth from ear to ear, taunting, “Who will think you are beautiful now!” Ever since then, on foggy nights, she can be seen roaming around in a surgical mask. When she encounters somebody, usually youth, she will shyly inquire whether the person thinks she is beautiful.

If the response is yes, Onna will take off her surgical mask and ask, “How about now?” Different versions of the legend give different outcomes if the answer remains affirmative, all bad: she will either cut the individual from ear to ear to resemble herself or kill the person – or both – or, inexplicably, give a large blood-soaked ruby and walk away.

Different versions of this tale offer for the same general set of choices even if the original answer had been negative – mutilation or murder. Basically, meeting Kuchisake Onna is bad luck. However, more modern versions these days advise that responding “You’re average” or “So-so” or even asking her what she thinks of one’s own beauty will turn the tables on her and confuse her, providing an opportunity to escape.

And, in one of those only-in-Japan kind of things, there’s even the tactic of basically informing her that you must be on your way, so as to embarrass her for forgetting her manners and making her excuse herself from your presence!