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The technique of martial artists and full contact sport buffs build on offensive and defensive moves for scoring points and prevent the opponent from scoring. Skills of offensive and defensive nature are useful for self defense. It will give you a sense of self confidence when you will know how to defend against hostile attacks.

Tip 1: Anticipate the attack
When you expect an attack, you can switch from defense into offense. There are kicks, punches, and takedown maneuvers that will leave the attacker wide open for you to counter. On seeing the coming attack and using the short window of reaction time to think of a way self protection will be helpful in protecting yourself in times of danger.

Tip 2: Block and avoid
You can block an attack taking the force of the blow. Although there are also attacks that have very strong force which can cause injuries if they are tried to block.

Avoiding an attack is more effective to defend oneself from an oncoming attack. This is helpful to make another offense while staying away from the effective range of an offensive blow directed at you. Straight pinches and high can be used. Tackles, takedowns, and attacks to your

Rhinestones have a glittering past.  Originally rhinestones where referred to Czechoslovakian or Bohemian glass dating as far back as the 13th century in Bohemia and the Czech Republic.  Both have a history steeped in beautiful hand blown glass as well as molded and cut glass.  

By 1918 glass was no longer limited to functional items.  Czechoslovakian glass began to make its appearance in dazzling and brilliant jewelry.  This Czech glass became known as rhinestones.

Rhinestones were manmade gems from highly refined glass.  By using various metals the glass was colored to the desired shade.  It was then pressed into molds.  Each stone was then ground and polished by machine, resulting in a brilliant glass stone.  Often the stones were foiled on the back which increased their brilliance.  

Today, the same refining process is still used.  You will often here rhinestones referred to as paste.   Originally paste was referred to a glass stone that made of ground glass which was molded and then melted, producing an opaque dense glass frosted stone.  Paste had many air bubbles and swirl marks.   The high lead content glass was then polished and faceted, and set on either copper or silver resulting in a brilliant stone.  Today

Sympathy, Knowledge and Poise seem to be the three ingredients that are most needed in forming the Gentle Man. I place these elements according to their value. No man is great who does not have Sympathy plus, and the greatness of men can be safely gauged by their sympathies. Sympathy and imagination are twin sisters. Your heart must go out to all men, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the learned, the unlearned, the good, the bad, the wise and the foolish it is necessary to be one with them all, else you can never comprehend them. Sympathy! it is the touchstone to every secret, the key to all knowledge, the open sesame of all hearts. Put yourself in the other man’s place and then you will know why he thinks certain things and does certain deeds. Put yourself in his place and your blame will dissolve itself into pity, and your tears will wipe out the record of his misdeeds. The saviors of the world have simply been men with wondrous sympathy.

But Knowledge must go with Sympathy, else the emotions will become maudlin and pity may be wasted on a poodle instead of a child; on a

Copyright (c) 2010 Bryan Beckstead

One of the values of a good Time Management System is that it helps you separate the good use of your time from the less effective uses. This comes into play when we have to deal with days where we are busy, but not productive. From the onset, being busy is not what we want; running around working hard, at whatever comes across our desk is not a recipe for success.

Being Busy

The days where we worked hard, ran hard, accomplished things, and still ended up dissatisfied at the end of the days were the days that were busy for us, but did nothing or very little to move our Agenda along. That is why we have an Agenda; to help us plan and organizes our day, so we can move closer to achieving what we want to do and when we feel it should be done. The purpose of adhering to a good Time Management system is that we want to have a plan, and then work that plan.

Being frantic and hectic does nothing in the long run to help us achieve and realize our goals. We want to achieve the following: being productive. What is

My mother used to accompany me whenever I had to give a speech out of town. On one such occasion, as we were registering at the front desk, we heard quite a commotion in the lobby. Curious, we looked to see the cause of the commotion and saw him–this blonde Greek-god-like creature, surrounded by a gaggle of giggling girls. It was none other than the fabulous Fabio, he of television margarine-advertisement fame.

Even the pragmatist, I turned back to the clerk to finish registering. Not so my mother, the opportunist. She being Italian and Fabio the same, she waddled over to where he stood, gently pushing the young women out of her way. Of course, she gave her his attention–she was a sweet ravioli of a woman, white-haired and arthritic, and clearly hug-gable.

When she reached him, she tapped him on the shoulder and announced she wanted her picture taken with him. By this time, I was right behind her with the camera. Just as I was about to snap the two of them, I actually heard my 80-year-old mother coo. “Oh, Fabio,” she purred in a voice sultry enough to match Marilyn Monroe’s. “You’re better than butter!”

As laughter erupted throughout the