Mini-Con

Mini-Cons are a human-sized race and faction of power-enhancing transforming robots first introduced in various Transformers series. Pioneered for the Transformers: Armada toy line, Mini-Cons have since been sold under the Transformers: Energon, Transformers: Universe, Transformers: Cybertron and Transformers: Classic lines. In some cases, the word may also be spelled "Minicon" and they are known as "Microns" in Japan.

Unicron Trilogy

Mini-Cons are a race of small, roughly human-sized Transformers capable of powerlinxing with a larger Transformer to impart extra abilities or greatly increase their strength. Their origins vary depending on the continuity in which they appear. Sometimes, they are creations of Unicron and other times they are creations of the Last Autobot or the descendants of Micronus Prime. However, there are times where their origins are not explained and are portrayed in different characterizations.

Throughout the different incarnations of the Transformers franchise, the Mini-Cons origins, characteristics and personalities vary, depending on continuity. For example, in the original Armada cartoon, Unicron created the Mini-Cons to be mindless tools, sent to Cybertron as an agitating element to the Transformers' civil war. The power-enhancing "smart tools" would be unleashed upon the populace, who would snap them up and bond with them, and the war would only get more destructive, as Unicron drank in the negative psychic energies from the death and destruction. As the Mini-Cons had been designed to form mental bonds with other life forms, when the human Rad touched the Mini-Con who he knew from the future as High Wire, High Wire apparently formed his bond then, with Rad and through the Mini-Cons' shared "soul dimension", the Linkage, sentience and free will spread throughout the Mini-Cons, forming "souls", and crippling Unicron's plans drastically. Most Mini-Cons had limited verbal capabilities, causing much controversy among fandom.

Greeks (finance)

In mathematical finance, the Greeks are the quantities representing the sensitivity of the price of derivatives such as options to a change in underlying parameters on which the value of an instrument or portfolio of financial instruments is dependent. The name is used because the most common of these sensitivities are denoted by Greek letters (as are some other finance measures). Collectively these have also been called the risk sensitivities,risk measures or hedge parameters.

Use of the Greeks

The Greeks are vital tools in risk management. Each Greek measures the sensitivity of the value of a portfolio to a small change in a given underlying parameter, so that component risks may be treated in isolation, and the portfolio rebalanced accordingly to achieve a desired exposure; see for example delta hedging.

The Greeks in the Black–Scholes model are relatively easy to calculate, a desirable property of financial models, and are very useful for derivatives traders, especially those who seek to hedge their portfolios from adverse changes in market conditions. For this reason, those Greeks which are particularly useful for hedging—such as delta, theta, and vega—are well-defined for measuring changes in Price, Time and Volatility. Although rho is a primary input into the Black–Scholes model, the overall impact on the value of an option corresponding to changes in the risk-free interest rate is generally insignificant and therefore higher-order derivatives involving the risk-free interest rate are not common.

Lotna

Lotna is a Polish war film released in 1959 and directed by Andrzej Wajda.

Overview

This highly symbolic movie is both the director's tribute to the long and glorious history of the Polish cavalry, as well as a more ambiguous portrait of the passing of an era. Wajda was the son of a Polish Cavalry officer who was murdered by the Soviets during the Katyn massacre.

The horse Lotna represents the entire Romantic tradition in culture, a tradition that had a huge influence in the course of Polish history and the formation of Polish literature. Lotna is Wajda's meditation on the historical breaking point that was 1939, as well as a reflection on the ending of an entire era for literature and culture in Poland and in Europe as a whole. Writing of the film, Wajda states that it "held great hopes for him, perhaps more than any other." Sadly, Wajda came to think of Lotna "a failure as a film."

The film remains highly controversial, as Wajda includes a mythical scene in which Polish horsemen suicidally charge a unit of German tanks, an event that never actually happened.

Speed (Montgomery Gentry song)

"Speed" is a song written by Jeffrey Steele and Chris Wallin, and recorded by American country music duo Montgomery Gentry. It was released in December 2002 as the second single from their album My Town. The title from the cover of this single borrows its font from Speed Racer.

"She Couldn't Change Me" was included as a B-side.

Music video

The music video was directed by Trey Fanjoy. A young man trades his old truck for a car with speed as his truck just brings back memories of his ex-lover. He buys the car, then he drives the car really fast, but as he keeps seeing the memory of his ex-lover on the road, he jumps out of the car, and then he heads out running into the field. The duo is performing the song in the middle of a two-lane road at a night time setting.

Chart positions

"Speed" debuted at #57 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs for the week of December 28, 2002.

Year-end charts

References

External links