" /> Stylized Facts: June 2012 Archives

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June 30, 2012

Mental strength


Mental strength can be broken down into two key components, U.S. Olympic Committee Sport Psychologist Sean McCann said. The first is an unyielding desire for victory and superiority in competition regardless of the pressure, which is known as an offensive mental aptitude, he said.

This allows an athlete to use the energy surges or adrenaline produced from high-pressure situations to enhance concentration, strength and execution -- rather than to produce nervousness, panic, muscle tightening or over-exertion.

The second component, McCann said, is a defensive skill, a resilience that allows an athlete to roll with unforeseen circumstances such as a bad lane assignment, a poor night's sleep -- or a head-to-head collision just before racetime

June 15, 2012

Pictures of ladies

MUCH fanfare greeted the $388m made by Christie's post-war and contemporary evening sale in New York earlier this month--its highest total ever. Few seemed to notice that the auction was unprecedented in another way: it had ten lots by eight women artists, amounting to a male-to-female ratio of five-to-one. (Sotheby's evening sale offered a more typical display of male-domination with an 11-to-one ratio.) Yet proceeds on all the works by women artists in the Christie's sale tallied up to a mere $17m--less than 5% of the total and not even half the price achieved that night by a single picture of two naked women by Yves Klein. Indeed, depictions of women often command the highest prices, whereas works by them do not.

June 1, 2012

Alberta Highway 63


They cannot just say, 'Call police, change the roads.' All that may be true, but the immediate control for their safety rests with the drivers themselves. That has to be impressed up-on them. That culture has to be established.

-- Grande Prairie Mayor Bill Given