By Mood Dude
The SSC Aero is an American-built mid-engine sports car by Shelby Super Cars. Its higher-performance limited production version, the SSC Ultimate Aero TT, is currently the fastest production car in the world, with a fastest recorded speed of 413 km/h (257 mph).
Previous contenders included the McLaren F1 at 240mph and it had gold plated heat shield over the engine bay. Ostentatious but cool to brag to friend. The Aero only has carbon fibre. Hmpph! Everyone has carbon fibre these days.
The Aeros speed is mighty faster than the previous king of the top speed ozone depleter, the mighty Bugatti Veyrons which recorded a top speed of at 253.81 mph. Boggles the mind that someone went to such lengths to go 4mph faster. Things people will do for bragging rights. This speed was reportedly achieved during tests on September 13, 2007 in West Richland, Washington, United States and verified by Guinness World Records on October 9, 2007.
The Aero and the Shelby Super Cars company are the brainchildren of Jerod Shelby, who spent over seven years designing the car. Once again we say, all those years for 4mpoh extra. And this kind of speed will be yours for roughly $650,000.
6.35 L twin-turbocharged V8 pumps out 1046horsepower. Styling of the Aero includes the use of butterfly doors for style. Everything for comfort is gone though. Carbon fibre and titanium are used throughout the car, helping to limit the weight to 2,640 lb (1,197 kg) by removing the air conditioning, audio, navigation. That's crazy. For that kind of money I want a jacuzzi to sit in while reaching top speed.
After the last Spiderman-wants-to-be-Emo disaster, superhero movies were a bleak prospect in terms of plot. But Ironman showed that good stories can be had along with greta action. Or course, the fact that Marvel's own writers took over the script writing had something to do with it.
Here's a rundown of all the best superhero flicks out.
Dark Knight
No superhero is cooler than Batman. Striking out from his Batman origin story, director Nolan cuts through to a deeper dimension. The Dark Knight creates a place where good and evil expected to do battle decide instead to get it on and dance. "I don't want to kill you," Heath Ledger's psycho Joker tells Christian Bale's stalwart Batman. "You complete me."
The trouble is that Batman, a.k.a. playboy Bruce Wayne, has had it up to here with being the white knight. He's pissed that the public sees him as a vigilante. He'll leave the hero stuff to district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and stop the DA from moving in on Rachel Dawes (feisty Maggie Gyllenhaal, in for sweetie Katie Holmes), the lady love who is Batman's only hope for a normal life.
Pros: Great storyline. Deft dialogues. One of the most villainous villains of all time. Greta chase scenes. Introduction of a new bat vehicle.
Scene to see: The aforementioned bat vehicle.
Hancock
Superheroes can do anything to save the world. They can even destroy the world. And nothing happens to them. Nothing is ever shown of what happens to us poor people who lived on said destroyed planet. Hancock is a superhero movie where the actions of the superheroes have consequences in the real world. They always leave a wake of crashed cars, bursting fire hydrants, exploding gas stations and toppling bridges behind them and never go back to clean up. But John Hancock, the hero of “Hancock,” doesn't get away with anything. One heroic stunt ran up a cost price tag of $7 million, he's got hundreds of lawsuits pending, and when he saves a stranded whale by throwing it back into the sea, you can bet he gets billed for the yacht it lands on.
He appeared some 80 years ago in Miami, as far as he knows. He doesn't know very far. He has no idea where his powers came from, or why he never grows any older. He can fly at supersonic speeds, stop a speeding locomotive, toss cars around, and in general, do everything Superman could do, but not as cleanly, neatly or politely. Part of his reform involves turning himself in to the law and serving a prison term, although the chief of police has to summon him from prison to help with a bank hostage crisis.
Pros: Smith avoids playing Hancock as a goofball and shapes him as serious, thoughtful and depressed. And his wife Mary (Charlize Theron) serves up a great plot twist.
Cons: The funny stuff goes down a few notches after a while. Damn!
The Incredible Hulk
The last Hulk was terrible plastic and too much high flying bouncy rubber ball action. Well, he DID look like a green rubber ball. This time around Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) struggles to keep his heart rate below 200 bpm so that he doesn't turn into the mean green destruction machine. That transformation is the reason he split from Betty Ross (Liv Tyler) and the reason her military father (William Hurt) enlists a determined soldier (Tim Roth) to hunt down the Hulk, in hopes of corralling and replicating his power to use it as a weapon.
Pros: Big toys, loud explosions loud and a mad bad Hulk. It has action and acting good enough to clean your memory of the past fiasco.
Cons: Ummm, none so far. Although they could have gone a little slow on the dialogue-driven scenes.
Wanted
Wanted is an action film loosely based on the comic book miniseries Wanted by Mark Millar. Starring James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie, the story is the opposite of the Spider-Man movie, the idea of someone getting powers and realizing they can do what they want, then choosing the dark path.
Pros: Wanted includes free running and parkour in addition to fantastic car chases and gunfights. Here's an action picture that's exhausting in its relentless violence and its ingenuity in inventing new ways to attack, defend, ambush and annihilate.
Scenes to see: There's a scene involving a Viper, 360 degree spins and gun fights. The car chases are good enough to be in an al time top 10.
Hellboy
The last Hellboy was undoubtedly cool. The sequel is a blast of wit, style, imagination, and lots of loud action. You don't need to have read the comics or seen 2004's "Hellboy" to play along, but here's the FAQ: Hellboy is actor Ron Perlman under a ton of makeup. He is a demon raised from childhood by humans and currently employed by the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. It's supposed to be top secret, but Hellboy has a bad habit of turning up on YouTube.
Pros: He's short-tempered and sardonic but basically a good sort. Buddies include girlfriend/human torch Liz (Selma Blair) and an aquatic empath - sort of a Creature From the Psychic Friends Network - named Abe Sapien (Doug Jones). Their job is to keep the occult legions (goblins, trolls, balrogs, you name it) from infesting the human world.
Pros: While the plot sounds silly its also so damn charming. It's so cool to see mythologies spring to life.
Scene to see: In one scene a gargantuan, plant-like "elemental" stalks lower Manhattan.
Cons: The hot Liz, though, has less to do than in the first film.
By beb-E
Cell phones are now an integral part of our lives- out with the old days of choicelessness and in with the new ones of confounded dilemmas. With so many new models coming out month after month, there are bound to be people who frequently change their cell phones, for whatever purposes, be it fashion or usefulness. And what do they do with their previous cell phone? If they can escape the multiple tenacious tentacles of their relative, they sell it off. Selling cell-phones as second hand products has become widely popular in Bangladesh thanks to websites such as clickbd.com, or cellbazaar.com. There are offers from all over Bangladesh. Interestingly, outer-Dhaka offers are sometimes very cheap. Maybe, even cheap enough to cover the transport costs.
The cellphones sold are usually not in a mint condition. In some cases, there's a bit of trouble with the display, or the battery, or the mic, or whatever. Sometimes, the casing looks as if the phone went through World War I & II, tried to initiate WWIII, failed, was locked in a concentration camp for several years, and finally escaped thanks to its ingenious microprocessor. These conditions play a crucial in the price factor. The seller would give assurance that everything is simply a-okay, and all you have to do is fix the particular problem, and you'd be very good to go. Usually, it is that simple. Be calculative, buy a cell phone for a good enough price, and fix whatever's wrong with it, and you'd be the proud owner of a brand new second-hand set. The theory's simple enough… But, what about the practicality of it?
There's only a handful of people who understand and know about the inner workings and about the inner hardware of a cellphone, and more importantly, what they might cost. You don't know how much a SE microphone costs, or how much it differs from that of a Nokia one, or whether it differs at all! All this makes for some kick-ass difficult time when you're fixing that cool precious second-hand phone you bought. Cellphone servicers will try and rip you off on your every last paisa. They'll cut off your knee caps, extract your stomach, and serve it on a silver platter, with chopped livers as a side dish, perhaps with a bit of Chianti.
You'll sometimes find that something is wrong with your display. Perhaps, the backlight's turned off permanently, or masybe there's no display at all… More often than not, the solution is a simple plug-in-the-cable. Take it to a servicer, and he'll try whatever it takes to make sure that you are nowhere in sight of their operation, that you have no idea what's up, and then charge you something in the four digit amount. All's fair in love, war and electronics, I suppose. It helps if you are fore-warned and have pre-hand information, such as prices of certain parts of a cell phone, like a mic, an lcd, the speaker, and so on. However, I doubt that such information will be obtainable very easily, but it's not impossible. In the long run, a little research and hard work will save you much trouble and misery.
Never rush into a fix. Something else that servicers will try to do with zeal is try to be the one to do the servicing rather than the numerous others scattered throughout the market(s) (Bashundhara City, Eastern Plaza, Motalib Plaza, etc). After you've handed over your cell phone in order for the guy behind the counter to take a look, he'll let out a verdict, and before you know it will reach for his tools, automatically assuming that you're yet another techno-crippled dumb-ass and that you're okay with the quad-digit fee he'll ask. Act smart, look knowing, and be confident, even if you aren't any of those things. It helps to look the part.
Do some recon work. Go to the market with a bit of time on your hands, and wander about the whole market, checking out each servicing center. Prices asked vary vastly even among the stores. I laugh at a particular memory where I took my precious Sony Ericsson K750 to fix the network antenna or something. The creep behind the counter took my cell, and started fiddling with the features like camera, sms, organizer list, media player, and so on. And then he goes on to say that, yes, he can indeed fix the phone, if I'd kindly give him 2000 taka. Awestruck and dumbfounded, I asked upon finding my voice, why the insane rate? He goes on to ridiculously state that SE phones are very hard to work on. I pft and leave the store, while the person's associate shouts at me that they'll do it for 500 bucks less. I pft again, never stopping. The store right opposite to that one however asked for a more reasonable amount of 750. Case in point regarding the silver platter bit.
Remember, it's a capitalist world, and everybody's out to get you. Or rather your wallet. Same thing, though. You can never be completely prepared for it, but take hints from other people who've gone through the process and perhaps you'll be able to avoid disasters. It's not uncommon for the servicer to fix one function only to disrupt another, accident or otherwise. The only solid advice one can be given on such perilous quests as fixing cellular troubles is this: Research, research, and more research- take notes if necessary, tread warily, and be careful. Unless you're rich, in which case you can just throw away your malfunctioned cell phone and get a new one…
