Category Archives: Ballet

Brooke Double R – Sports Car That Looks Like A Racer

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Sneaking into the group of small but incredibly fast sports cars is the Brooke Double R. It was launched a while ago, but has been updated and improved by a couple of experienced engineers, and this lovely and tiny car is now in production. You get tremendous acceleration and cornering for your money.

Performance is sensational, and depends how much power you want. The most powerful Brooke Double R – 300 bhp – has a claimed 0-60 mph time of 3.2 seconds, while 260 bhp will get you to 60 mph in less than 4 seconds, and all the excitement that goes with that performance. To match it you will need a Noble M400 or Porsche 911 Turbo.

Clearly, the Brooke Double R is a real firecracker. The fact that the top speed is only about 155 mph – the same speed that many a supercar is limited to electronically – is not what it’s about. It is acceleration, braking and cornering that gives the real thrill of driving fast, and you will get it here.

Most of these open wheelers have front engines, but the Brooke Double R has a mid-mounted 2.3 liter Cosworth Ford engine, which develops 190, 260 or 300 bhp according to your choice. It is just like a mini version of a mid-engined racing car, just made a bit wider to get two people in.

Optimum weight distribution

To get near ideal weight distribution, the engine is mounted fore and aft instead of crosswise. With the engine mounted across the frame in unit with its transaxle, you get at bit too much weight at the back. On the other hand, with the engine in front of the transaxle, you get better weight distribution and a slimmer body – which is what the guys that designed the Brook Double R wanted.

Five-speed transaxle

To make this work, they had to find a good transaxle at a realistic price. Brooke has opted for a Renault five-speed unit, as a six-speeder would have cost a lot more. You might think a six-speed box was obligatory these days, but this is not the case for road use. With five well-chosen ratios you can get the same performance as with six-speeds, which often have too high gearing on the top two or even three ratios.

The car is clothed in an elegant and simple body with a tiny wraparound windshield, and cycle-type fenders – it looks just like a racing car for the sixties. The headlamps are concealed, and you raise them up manually. All nice and simple.

Cockpit like a racer, too

The cockpit is also simplicity itself – absolutely not a frill in site! You sit behind a small Momo steering wheel, with a flattened bottom rim section, and a big rev-counter set in an instrument binnacle off to one side. The gear lever is on the opposite side to normal – like on those old racing cars – which is to the right on right-hand drive cars and vice versa.

There is a neat pedal box with floor mounted pedals – as on the best cars – and a simple moulded seat.

You can have either a very low windscreen, or a slightly taller one. Both are still low with no room for wipers – they are really wind deflectors which you look over. Choose the lower one, and you will want a helmet on at speeds over 75 mph, despite the twin headrests.

Cosworth-Ford up to 300 bhp

In choosing a Cosworth- Ford engine Brooke has gone for quality and ease of obtaining parts needed for servicing. Cosworth provides a range of tuned Ford engines, modified to give the necessary durability for the power output, and as they are four-cylinder in-line units they are compact.

The base model comes with 190 bhp, then you can go to 260 bhp at 7,500 rpm with 200 lb ft (271 lb ft) torque at 6,100 rpm, or you can go for all-out power with the 300 bhp unit.

Suspension and steering are on classic lines, with double wishbones front and rear, of airfoil section because they need to slip through the air, with aluminum alloy suspension uprights. Coil springs and adjustable dampers are fitted front and rear.

Buy a Brooke Double R with 190 bhp and you will spend about $50,000 (£27,995) but if you want a manic, likely-to-lose-your-licence 300 bhp version you will need to fork out around $70,000 (£36,995). It will help if you live where there is plenty of sunshine and not much rain!

Ballet Dancer Health, Blood Sugar Balance, Depression And Hypoglycemia

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Young ballet dancers often drop comments in a casual way, referring to their self esteem problems. Whether it is a body image issue, a perfection issue, a weight control problem, or a slightly depressed lack of energy issue, they either don’t come out and say it, or they really cannot articulate what the problem is. Recently when I started reading about hypoglycemia, and blood sugar balance, I began to relate its symptoms to many of the statements I have heard.

I became more interested in hypoglycemia and its sometimes subtle symptoms, due to a conversation I had with a non-dancer, a talented performer, in another field. This person has performed in many countries, is pushed forward by all her teachers, and yet cannot accept the accolades from teachers or peers, or the enthusiasm of fans, because – she just can’t.

The lack of self-esteem in this person confuses me. A person who won the number one state award for acting while still in high school? That’s like winning the ballet competition performing the Blue Bird or Swan Lake pas de deux.

Disorder eating is most broadly defined as, the behavior that results in an emotional outcome by controlling what you eat. This does not necessarily mean anorexia or bulimia, but may refer to a practice of self control or self approval in regards to the food you eat, the caloric content, and this does not only apply to dancers.

It may involve an extreme situation like a teenager who insists on being a vegan, in which I have personally witnessed the result causing stress fractures in this dancer who still thought that she was going to be able to get stronger on pointe and have a professional career in ballet, while she looked at her x-rays.

Recently I took a look at hypoglycemia and its symptoms. Now this is tricky. Symptoms are almost unique to the individual. But the dominating symptoms, according to what I have read, are:

  • sadness
  • self criticism
  • hopelessness
  • feelings of absolutely no self worth
  • periodic complete failure of energy, dizziness, mental confusion
  • thoughts of suicide, though not enough energy to think further than that

Hypoglycemia is…drum roll…too low blood sugar!

It is caused by a nutritional deficiency of protein, or just lack of food.

Hypoglycemia does not mean you are diabetic, or almost diabetic. More concisely called Reactive Hypoglycemia, this is a condition that results from a poor diet, or not eating often enough for whatever reason. Or eating too many carbohydrates with not enough protein.

The most common recommendation for hypoglycemics, is to eat some protein every two hours.

Also, I would like to mention the rule of nutritionists, that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Why? Proteins set your brain chemicals for the day. Skip those, and your brain chemicals will not be properly functioning until the next day IF you happen to eat protein for breakfast.

Dance parents reading this – how often does your dancing daughter or dancing son run out of the house and skip breakfast because they slept late?

And what will they eat when they get to the food dispensers at school? Or will they go hungry until they get to the school cafeteria for lunch? This is a miserable situation for a non-athlete student, not to mention a ballet dancer or any other athlete.

And later when they run off to their ballet academy? Are you one of those ballet parents who have to suffer hearing “I’m not that good”…”I’m not good enough”… and worse? While the ballet teacher is telling you your child should be aiming higher – auditioning for professional summer intensives?

Confused yet? Let me give you some relief. Hypoglycemia-without-Diabetes at http://benjimester.hubpages.com is an eye-opening discussion. It is worth reading the entire thread.

Personally, I believe that hypoglycemia is caused by:

  • lack of education about nutrition
  • processed, fast-food, frozen food products
  • not enough time to serve fresh food indicating what nutritious food is
  • addiction to sugar (nutritional ignorance)
  • ignorance about grains, GMO grains, glutin and GMO sugars

And, sadly much more I cannot cover here. BUT please, if your dancing child or anyone in your family has any energy or depression issues – but not severe enough to consult your physician (who probably will not have any nutritional education) or therapist, please investigate hypoglycemia. It is an insidious condition – but can be reversed with a good diet!

It is not that difficult. I would love to never hear from again, a ballet dancer, or any other kind of performing artist, who feels morose, depressed, sad, or hopeless about their talent or potential, when they have no idea where all this negativity comes from. And they skip meals, eat nutrition-free snacks, and have low blood sugar…

I would love to never hear from again, a sad, depressed ballet parent, whose amazing talented child is failing, sinking, not even treading water, suffering from body image problems, or self esteem problems, and contemplating quitting ballet, or even suicide. For the want of nutritional balance.

This may take a lot of extra food preparation for ballet parents! If you’re still reading this post, I bet you’re O.K. with that.

Logistics At Wal-Mart

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Many people wonder how Wal-Mart is able to charge such low prices and continue to make a profit. There are several factors in their business model that contribute to this ability, but a big one is their ability to adapt to an ever-changing global marketplace. Some criticize Wal-Mart’s efforts to deliver to their customers a quality product at low prices, but in reality, Wal-Mart has been able to deliver low prices by being efficient. This efficiency is present in several areas but one of the most important places is how they are able to manufacture products all over the world and get them to retail outlets, which are also all over the world. This ability requires a flawless logistical system that allows product to be shipped anywhere at a moments notice.

One of the keys to Wal-Mart’s effective logistical system is the flexibility that it has when choosing suppliers. When Wal-Mart negotiates with suppliers and the suppliers know that Wal-Mart will only pay the most competitive prices. This is because it is very easy for them to find another supplier of that particular material with a lower price and very few logistical problems. This gives Wal-Mart a huge amount of leverage when dealing with suppliers. If a particular supplier knows that a company has found a lower price, it will lower its price accordingly. However, if the supplier also knows that it will be incredibly difficult for the company to make the proper adjustments to ensure a smooth transition to a different supplier, then they will be less inclined to lower their price as much. This is not how existing suppliers deal with Wal-Mart; when they see that Wal-Mart has found a supplier that will give them a lower price, the current suppliers lower their prices accordingly. They know that Wal-Mart’s logistical system can handle transition seamlessly and therefore they gain no additional leverage since it won’t be difficult or costly for Wal-Mart to choose another supplier.

Another reason that Wal-Mart’s prices are so competitive is because they buy in such large quantities that transportation from one end of the supply chain to another is not as costly for additional units. This aspect of the logistical system does not come from skill or expertise it simply comes from the sheer size of the company, but this is still a factor. Wal-Mart buys so many supplies from different places throughout the world, that they have the luxury of using bigger trucks and using less fuel to go back and forth. Also if by chance they have to use shipping services to transport material from one location to another, Wal-Mart will give them so much business that they will get huge discounts.

The logistical system that Wal-Mart uses is so effective because it is so flexible. This is why Wal-Mart is able to offer things much cheaper than other companies can. Wal-Mart has a reputation for being able to offer these things in a cheap manner because of low employee pay and human rights violations but this is simply not the case.