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1950’s costumes are a popular choice for halloween revelers every year, and with good reason. In many ways the 1950s were the beginning of modern fashion, and haute couture became more than just a realm of the uber-rich or uber-connected, or French. 1950’s costumes, then, reflect their importance down all the way to the clothes most people wear today, be it to work or to play, and this is something to keep in mind when picking out your own outfits not only for halloween, but for your day-to-day life in general.

One of the great things about 1950’s costumes is that they were so heavily influenced by the films of Alfred Hitchcock, probably the most stylish and stylized filmmaker ever to get behind the camera. Hitchcock used colors, patterns and lines in his films – not just the 1950’s costumes that his actors wore, but in the way he framed entire shots, the buildings he chose to stage his plots around, all the way down to waving, mazy fields of corn or wheat – in a way no one else had previously. Hitchcock’s films are unique, and the best of 1950’s costumes come from the master filmmaker himself, as does so much else in the world of art and cinema.

Take, for example, the film North By Northwest. It is one of Hitchcock’s later films, one of his greatest films, and one of his most famous films. In it Carey Grant plays a New Yorker caught up in international intrigue, theft and murder. And, since it is hitchcock, romance as well. Sex was always the subtext in Hitchcock’s films, and North By Northwest ends very famously with a shot of a train entering a tunnel as Grant climbs into bed with Eva Marie Saint (signifying, of course, that they’re about to have sex. A brilliant way to get around the censorship of the time).

Even better, though, is the opening shot of the United Nations building, perhaps the epitomy of modern architecture at the time. The United Nations building is slightly curved, made up of thousands of windows and bars that provide it a machine-like sameness. Hitchcock uses that shot to create a sense of individualism being lost in the machinery of the modern – 1950s modern – world. It’s stunning, and you can see 1950’s costumes and costumes of today reflecting that shot equally.

1950s clothing style was very diverse. There were conservative values spread across the country but many young people chose to rebel and express themselves by dressing as ‘greasers’ or pin-up girls. This decade was popular for exaggerating female and male attributes.

1950s clothing style is captured in a few pieces, some of them still widely used today including: the cashmere sweater, neck scarf, poodle skirt, leather jacket, cat eye glasses and pedal pushers. These clothes were fun to wear and kids took advantage of the easy access they had to them.

The poodle skirt was popular in 1950s clothing style. The skirt got its name not from the shape or design of it but from the poodle featured on each one. Whether embodied or patched, the iconic poodle could by seen toward the bottom of the hemline.

The cashmere sweater was a very luxurious item back in the 1950s. Cashmere, wool from a goat, and was imported to America. They could only be found in special boutiques and great care was taken to maintain them. Now, cashmere sweater, scarves and dresses are found in a variety of specialty and department stores and come in many colors and styles.

Cat eyeglasses were a huge part of women’s 1950s clothing style. Very fashion forward thinking women and some men wore the thick-framed glasses throughout the 1950’s. Even celebrities wore these glasses onstage and in films. They are still worn totally but the frames are more neutral, either black or tortoise, without the embellishments and bright colors.

Leather jackets will never go out of style. In 1950s clothing style, they were black and sometimes fitted. Most young men wore them with the collars turned up. Now leather is worn is a variety of colors and faux leather materials are available to cost the cost of high style.

Pedal pushers are iconic throughout the 1950s because the shorter pants originally used for cycling became a popular and comfortable fashion staple for many young women. Made from denim of cotton and often paired with flat shoes, they helped tie together a look that was very easy to wear.

America embraced materialism during the 1950’s and this shone through the clothing people chose to wear. In the 1940s, clothing had to be simple and useful but in the 1950s, with new homes being built and businesses expanding, it was acceptable for people to spend more time and money clothing themselves.

My grandmother is diabetic. Her doctor would not only like her to reduce her daily blood sugar medication, he would also like her to loose weight. He’s decided to put her on a 1200 calorie diabetic diet.

Traditional 1200 calorie diets can be adapted to meet the needs of people like my grandmother who suffer from diabetes. With a few simple dietary considerations, a diabetic can safely and easily embark upon a 1200 calorie diet.

Obesity and diabetes are conditions that are particularly onerous when twinned. Those who are diabetic and suffer from obesity are often encouraged by their doctors to take off the pounds. A 1200 calorie diabetic diet is more often than not an appropriate solution.

Curiously enough, the diet does not make much of a departure from the standard 1200 calories diet. The participant is simply encouraged to seriously limit their sugar intake while staying at a consumption rate of 1200 calories. Each meal should consist of around four hundred calories.

The following are examples of the kind of foods that compose a four hundred calorie meal. If you can eat these types of meal plans three times a day, you should be able to follow a 1200 calorie diabetic diet.

Here is a list of things that should be considered when embarking upon such a program:

Watch your intake of sugars
Refined sugars should obviously be discouraged. However, fresh fruit eaten in small quantities eaten is encouraged. Keep in mind that sugar substitutes like Splenda may also be utilized.

Watch your intake of refined flour products
Refined flour products elevate blood sugar levels. Make certain that the limited amount of bread you do consume are whole grain as opposed to white breads.

Consider skim milk, whole grain cereals for breakfast or even whole grain muffins. For lunch: baked chicken, fish and ham in combination with a salad and some other vegetable. For dinner turkey, two to three kinds of vegetables (based on how heavy your lunch was), and a small whole wheat roll.

Keep in mind that small snacks are encouraged on 1200 calorie diets. Especially for those who suffer from diabetes. Small protein additions like various nuts and even low-calorie protein bars are encouraged.

Here are some other things to take into consideration

Substitutions and variety are often the key to sticking to any diet, especially a diabetic diet. Remember to vary your fruits, grapes in place of apples, or peaches in place of bananas. Use variety. Experiment. Make sure to avoid dried fruits on 1200 calorie diabetic diet, as they have a higher sugar content than fresh fruits.

1200 calorie diabetic diets are excellent promoters of both health and weight loss for diabetics needing to reduce and manage their weight. When followed according to your doctor’s recommendations, utilizing the same strict portion controls advocated in the standard 1200 calorie diet, the 1200 calorie diabetic diet is a safe and efficient diet for weight loss.

Today, wireless networks seem to be the standard rather than an option. Many home and business networkers will usually go for wireless networks as opposed to wired networks. In order to establish harmony in the wireless field, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer in 1997 created a WLAN standard. The first of this standard was the 802.11 a. The 802.11 a standard of networking has however long been replaced by other faster standards starting with the 802.11b and going all the way to 802.11n. However a look at the foundation standard will help us understand the principles that govern the other later protocols.

However, do not let the letters ‘a’ and ‘b’ deceive you. The truth is both the 802.11 a and the 802.11 b standards were created at the same time. The former was simply an extension of the original 802.11, and while it was in the cooking, the 802.11 b was also already in development. What is more, 802.11b seemed to have gained more popularity than the ‘a’ standard and hence the assumption that it was created later. Its resulting cost however made it quite unaffordable to many home users who opted for the cheaper 802.11 b while the business networks favored the 802.11 a standard.

The ‘a’ standard operates under the regulated frequency that falls in the 5GHz spectrum and has a maximum bandwidth of up to 54Mbps. This has come with several disadvantages. For one, 802.11 a networks have shorter ranges compared to the ‘b’ networks. Since a higher frequency has a problem with obstructions. The ‘a’ signals also have problems with walls and obstructions. You may wonder though, why can’t the two standards, ‘a’ and ‘b’ work together? The truth is, both of these networks utilize different frequencies and as a result, they are incompatible. Hybrid networks of the two still retain the limitations of individual standards.

The 802.11 a seems to have certain advantages that other networks do not seem to offer. Despite the overall slightly less range, these forms of networks have fundamental propagation advantages. This is especially important in a high multipath environment like an indoor office. This means that smaller antennas can be build around these networks that produce higher radio frequencies. This also means that 802.11 a will be less prone to interference from microwave ovens, cell phones and baby monitors. This ability gives these types of networks a significant aggregate bandwidth and makes them more reliable than other networks.

Everyone remembers the film 300 I presume, correct? Released several years ago – I want to say at the beginning of 2007, but I could be off by a few months give or take – it fictionalized the story of the warriors of Sparta – 300 of them of course – stopping the mighty Persian army of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, at a narrow pass on the Greek coast. It’s a very stylized imagining and telling of the story, shot with a unique lens that lent the film an other-worldy quality that many fans found appealing (and many cineasts found to be laughable, but that’s an issue for another day).

The film itself was an adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel of the same name. Miller is of course famous for reinventing Batman with his 80s series The Dark Knight, which itself was adapted into a wildly successful eponymous film.

One of the more commented upon issues with the film version of 300 are the 300 costumes. The Spartans are all portrayed as hulking, almost grotesque versions of masculinity. Their abdominal muscles in particular attracted great notice, as they looked quite cartoonish. The reality is that they in fact were cartoonish, as they had been enhanced by computer generated images, or CGI, in post-production. Combine the graphically enhanced abs with the Spartans’ uniform – nothing but sandals, a loincloth, a shield and a cape – and you had on your hands 300 costumes that were postiively homoerotic. As a result, the gay community in particular took great notice of the film and applauded its glorification of male sexuality as a landmark moment in gay cinema.

There are of course other 300 costumes worty of mention in the film. The Spartan who betrays his fellows to the dastardly Persians is rendered as a grotesque, hunchbacked figure of scorn, ridicule and pity. Even in such a state he is dressed as the fellow Spartans are, even given his own grotesque CGI abs and muscles. The interpretation from the cinema theory community was, of course, immediate and nearly unanimous: Only those fitting the highest ideals of male masculine sexuality could be perceived as honorable and worthy.

Another of the 300 costumes that gained much notice was that of Xerxes, the Persian emperor. Rendered as an impossibly tall demigod of dubious sexuality and gender, Xerxes sported piercings just about everywhere and seemed an affront to the transgender community. All of these made for some serious debate about just what, exactly, the film was trying to get across.

Everyone seems to understand a few things about cholesterol. Certainly, just by reading the newspaper, watching TV or browsing the Internet, you’ve learned that cholesterol is bad for you. But how much do you really know about cholesterol? Perhaps you’ve heard of good and bad cholesterol, but do you really know what that means? And while you might know that cholesterol is bad for you, do you happen to know why? And how to reduce the amount of cholesterol in your diet? Here is a primer about cholesterol that will help improve your knowledge, and hopefully your health, immediately.

Cholesterol is bad because it hardens and clogs your arteries, the main pathways that your heart uses to distribute blood throughout your body. An abundance of cholesterol in your diet will stay in your blood, blocking the arteries and making it difficult to pump blood through. This is actually how strokes happen; the cholesterol build-up blocks the oxygen that blood carries to your brain. Similarly, this is how heart attacks happen.

But what is cholesterol exactly? It is a waxy, fat-based substance that is found in a variety of high-fat foods. Some examples of food that is high in cholesterol include butter (the highest per serving), other diary products, such as ice cream and whole milk, and red meats. What most people aren’t aware about cholesterol is that your main source of cholesterol is… you. Your liver produces most of the cholesterol in your body, which is needed to create cell membranes. However, your liver more or less produces the perfect amount, and so a diet that is out of control with cholesterol will quickly cause problems in your blood.

So what is good and bad cholesterol all about? Good cholesterol will actually remove the levels of bad cholesterol in your blood. Some example of food rich in this good/HDL cholesterol include oils, such as olive oils and a variety of nuts. Also, your body produces more HDL cholesterol when you exercise, so this is crucial in lowering the amount of cholesterol in your body.

To summerize about cholesterol, bad/LDL cholesterol will clog your arteries and lead to a myriad of health problems, many of them fatal. While your body produces cholesterol, health problems result in eating foods with high LDL cholesterol, such as fried foods, processed foods, and red meat and diary products. You can ingest more HDL cholesterol to help lower cholesterol levels by eating more oils and nuts and, most importantly, regular exercise.

It probably wouldn’t surprise you to hear this, but we spend nearly one-third of our lives at our jobs. Having a satisfying career is one of the most important moves you can make for a happy and fulfilling life. The more important thing to acknowledge about careers is that there are several factors that will decide whether you enjoy a particular career or not.

The main determinant about careers and their satisfaction levels might surprise you. It isn’t money, which is an important consideration, but not the ultimate factor. In fact, the greatest factor to career satisfaction is the relationship between effort and reward. This is not to say that career satisfaction is about a fixed level of effort, but rather the correlation between effort and reward. Virtually everyone wants a job that correlates effort and reward together: the harder one works, the more one is rewarded. This means that extra effort is rewarded – we have a feeling of fairness to this as employees or freelance workers. We should be rewarded for working harder. This is a much more important factor for people when talking about careers and satisfaction levels, because, while rewards are nice, they feel better when they are earned.

Rewards aren’t necessarily money. Many people when talking about careers mention that, in addition to monetary compensation, having different benefits for high job performances is key as well. For many people, the simple recognition of a well-done job goes a long way into enjoying your career.

Their are other smaller effects about careers that you might expect. Most people neglect commute time and, obviously, time spent at the work place. Some people don’t mind jobs that require 12 or 15 hours of day of work. Others shudder at the thought of 8. It depends a lot on personal preference.

Finally, there is an old saying that if you choose a career you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. While the sentiment behind is true, it’s a misleading axiom. Even if you love your job, you will have bad days. It will happen. The real key to knowing about careers and whether you enjoy them or not, is if the good days sufficiently outnumber the bad. Spend plenty of time learning about careers and the different pluses and minuses and that third of your life dedicated to earning a pay check will not be considered a loss. A good career is an integral part of a happy life.

You can bury your head in sand, or try to look the other way, but only foolish people wouldn’t admit that young people are sexually active in ways that previous generations weren’t. In addition to the rise of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies are a major issue facing today’s young people and teenagers. Giving them information about birth control is crucial – and, more to the point, giving them completely comprehensive information about birth control is not just practical, but, otherwise nearly tyrannical.

Not all measures of birth control are effective. Of course, it is important when talking about birth control options, to make it very clear that the only 100% guaranteed effective birth control method is abstinence. Most young people don’t understand this completely when talking about birth control; they assume that different methods have similar prevention rates. On the flip side, it is completely impractical to consider abstinence as the only birth control option. Realistically, young people will explore sexuality, especially if you tell them not to. From my experience, I know that the surest way to get a teenager to do something is to tell them not to.

That said, talking about birth control options other than abstinence is not only appropriate, it is irresponsible not to. Condoms are a simple and inexpensive way to practice birth control and, while not 100%, is very effective. The pill (though now there are a wide variety of different pills) is also an effective choice, though it has a wide range of side effects. Sponges and other diaphragm devices vary widely, and can be costly. While some are very effective, not all of them are, and few if any of them actually prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. IUD is a strangely effective form of birth control, but is associated with numerous health side effects for the uterus and reproductive system. Exploring all the different birth control options allows young people to understand the different risks.

Having conversations about birth control, and the different benefits or negatives and risks in using them is not the same as giving your son or daughter permission to have sexual relationships. However, not giving them this information puts them at high risk for unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Don’t assume that others have given them this information or that they already know things, or that they will figure it out as they go. Talking about birth control in a straightforward and all-encompassing way is critical to the sexual health of young people.

The devastating thing about Alzheimer’s Disease is the amount of suffering in not just those afflicted, but also in those that care for them. That is not to say that there is anything easy about Alzheimer’s when it affects you, but that it also is a very trying mental and emotional toil for the caregivers and loved ones as well. What is worse is when the disease hits and people don’t know enough about Alzheimer’s. So here is some basic information about Alzheimer’s to help you prepare if this unfortunate disease ever appears with you or your loved ones.

The first thing to understand about Alzheimer’s is that it is a lethal brain disease without a cure. Everyone, currently, that has Alzheimer’s does pass away; in the United States, it is the seventh leading cause of death in adults. It is also a progressive disease. This means that, unlike an illness such as cancer, which has improvements and declines in health, Alzheimer’s is a relatively steady descent towards death; as time progresses, the disease invariably worsens.

The most prominent fact about Alzheimer’s is, of course, the dementia that follows. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia. This severe form of memory loss is usually the most tragic thing about Alzheimer’s; patients forget who they are, and who they people are around them. This is painful, as many patients are elderly and have been involved with their loved ones or family members for decades.

While scientists are not clear what exactly causes Alzheimer’s, there are a few risk factors that you can control. While the exact cause of Alzheimer’s isn’t known, medical experts agree that brain health is of paramount importance. Taking precautions against head injuries, such as wearing a helmet during any appropriate activity and always wearing a safety belt in moving vehicles are a couple of steps that will prevent serious head injuries, which have been linked to cases of Alzheimer’s. Scientists have also found a strong link between heart health and brain health. Taking appropriate dietary and exercise measures to promote healthy heart function can help reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s. Finally, Alzheimer’s is a disease that is found most often in the elderly, so healthy aging strategies such as minimizing alcohol and eliminating tobacco and drug use as well as a healthy diet and weight should go a long way to preventing Alzheimer’s.

Knowing more about Alzheimer’s is crucial for those either diagnosed or close to someone that has succumb to this life-altering and life-ending disease. While there is no cure, there is a lot of treatment available and with the medical attention about Alzheimer’s at its highest levels ever, the cure for the disease may be right around the corner.

Abnormal psychology is the study of thoughts and behavior that deviate from the norm. This usually refers to mental disorders that distort the way people think and act. The field primarily consists of psychologists who research abnormal psychology, and counselors and psychiatrists who treat the conditions that arise from it. The standard manual for abnormal psychology is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) which is released by the American Psychiatric Association. Currently, the DSM is in its 4th edition (DSM-IV).

Currently the DSM-IV is what is used to make a diagnosis of mental illness in a patient. The patient is assessed on 5 axes. Axis I is for clinical syndromes the patient has like schizophrenia or generalized anxiety disorder. This is the main diagnosis. Axis II is for developmental and personality disorders that affected or currently affect the life of the patient pervasively. Examples are mental retardation and antisocial personality disorder. Axis III is for physical medical conditions the patient has that might worsen the symptoms of the disorder, like diabetes or HIV. Axis IV is for psychosocial and environmental factors that might contribute, like abuse or divorce. Axis V is for the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) which rates the functioning of the patient on a scale of 0 to 100, 0 being the most impaired.

Sometimes the DSM is controversial and its validity is questioned. Critics have found fault with some of the disorders listed to begin with. For example, prior to DSM III homosexuality was considered a mental illness and currently transsexualism is listed as Gender Identity Disorder (GID). Other issues are the nature of the DSM’s categorizations. The criteria might not distinguish certain disorders from others sufficiently and patients might not always fall so neatly into the criteria. A diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD) requires the presence of a major depressive episode lasting 2 weeks, and a patient who experienced an episode 1 day less than 2 weeks would not qualify, but it would likely be fallible to conclude that this patient wasn’t suffering from depression.

There’s no doubt that abnormal psychology is a valid field-no one can deny that mental illness exists, but defining the nature of abnormal psychology is a challenge that isn’t always adequately met. However, abnormal psychology is also a dynamic field that continues to progress, discovering new perspectives on the recognition and treatment of mental illness over time. The DSM-V is due sometime in the future, and DSM-VI or possibly a different manual entirely after that.