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In much the same way Nike signed Michael Jordan in the 80s to save their company, MLS signed David Beckham to do just the same. The question is will Beckham display the same dominance which Jordan displayed during the 90s and take MLS to the level of brand recognition that a $250 million dollar deal should buy.

David Beckham is fresh from winning the National Championship in Spain. He played for the Real Madrid team, the most dominant team in all of Spain. They have won La Liga championship 30 times. La Liga is the highest rated soccer league in all of Europe. But winning titles isnt anything new to Beckham who has won more than 10 major championships with teams during his professional career.

But now Beckham is on the biggest stage of them all. Real Madrid paid Beckham 41 million USD over 5 years to play for their club. But their deal is mere scraps in comparison to the $250 million dollar deal on the table which David Beckham accepted to play for the Los Angeles Galaxy. He has had a star studded welcome since his arrival state side. But why shouldnt he? He is a bonified superstar. Hes a certified champion. It is the hopes of MLS and the Los Angeles Galaxy that David Beckham and continue his winning ways and create a dynastic cult like following with the Los Angeles Galaxy.

If Beckham can bring multiple championships to the Los Angeles Galaxy he will be a modern day Pele. But if he doesnt win multiple championships he will have failed in the eyes of MLS. He is being welcomed into MLS to catapult it to the fever of NFL or NBA status. Tiger Woods did it in golf for the PGA Tour. So maybe Beckham can do it in soccer for MLS.

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In my previous article on motivating a student who dislikes writing, I talked about my experiences with my son and how we overcame his dislike of writing through his interest in writing product and book reviews at Amazon.com and dreaming up writing ideas that combined his love of drawing and sketching with writing assignments.

Some other ideas we have used which were also fun and effective (the teacher learns what's effective after the fact, but fun was always the essential element in the beginning) included the following:

In teaching basic writing, once the idea of parts of speech were taught and understood, we found two highly effective and enjoyable methods of mastering the knowledge of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. and, from there, learning to write better sentences. The Mad-Libs pads of crazy stories with blanks to be filled in for various parts of speech are found in most bookstores. Our family had many evenings full of laughter with one of us asking for words that filled the criteria of being certain parts of speech and then reading back the silly stories which resulted from those suggested words. Boys of a certain age seem to really get a certain pleasure out of using gory adjectives and somewhat violent verbs, but you can set the rules in advance. Sometimes, so the stories wouldn't end up so outlandish, the reader who was asking for the parts of speech would narrow down the topics on which words could be offered so that the resulting stories actually made some kind of weird sense. For encouraging creativity, after you've bought your first Mad-Libs book, you can save the money and have you or your children write your own stories with blanks and ask for the appropriate parts of speech.

The second method, once parts of speech are totally mastered, is to simply create a basic subject-verb sentence, such as "A dog ran" and then, step by step, have your child add an adjective, then an adverb, then a prepositional phrase, in order to learn how more complex sentences are built and how detail makes a sentence more interesting. This is a major step in becoming a better writer. It is also a lot more fun than diagramming sentences. If you do one of these "build more complex sentences" activities each day with a different subject and verb, your child will become a masterful sentence composer in very little time.

Once your child is proficient in writing complex sentences, you will find that he or she still may not like to write a requested paragraph or essay on a specific assigned topic. Especially if the child is a visual learner, I have found it to be more effective to give him a picture...an old photograph, a scene from a wall calendar, a page from a magazine...and ask him to write either about what he sees or to make up a story about what is happening in the picture.

As I wrote in my previous article, the main thing is to find out what appeals to your specific child and run with it until his comfort level with writing improves to the point that he is ready to write on an assigned topic not of his choice. But first, like me, you will probably have to endure a lot of stories about aliens, other planets, strange creatures, and bizarre situations. However, if your student kept the pen to the paper, enjoyed the process, and is proud of his final product, you are on the way to changing writing reluctance into writing pleasure.

Linda Popolano is a homeschooling mom and an Independent Consultant for BRIGHT MINDS/The Critical Thinking at Home. Please visit her website at http://www.inspirethinking.com to learn more about BRIGHT MINDS workshops and the BRIGHT MINDS business opportunity.

Stallions are very dominant by nature, and full of energy. Nipping, rearing, prancing, calling and other high jinx and horsing around are normal behavior. Geldings are generally more placid & predictable and much easier to handle and this is why many male horses are gelded. The gelding tends to be more suitable for a wider range of today's equine activities than the stallion. Although the stallion's extra testosterone enables him to perform with more muscle definition, energy and flashiness, it also tends to distract him from the task at hand with mating and defence impulses. In times past, only stallions were considered suitable for real riders. That is, riders that went to war on horseback, where it was important that the horse would join in the battle with hoofs and teeth. Enough said!

While your colt is little and cute, it can be tempting to want to keep him entire. It's when he has turned into a full blown display of horse testosterone with special handling and housing requirements that castration looks attractive. The reality is that only the very best horses should be kept entire for breeding. If you are worried about the procedure, be reassured that gelding is the most common surgical procedure performed on horses.

So how will castration affect your colts behavior? That depends on how old he is and what he has already learned. Gelding a colt will remove the underlying drives for unwanted behaviors but it will probably not stop these behaviors if these undesirable habits have already formed. Once bad manners have become established, it is a matter of re-training. Clearly it is much easier to geld before your colt starts acting out than after.

A horse goes through puberty between 18 and 24 months. There is a difference in how your colt will develop which depends on when he is gelded. A colt gelded before puberty is much less likely to develop the mating related behaviors of the stallion. He will end up taller by up to 10cm or 4 inches than if he were left entire. The younger a colt is gelded the more likely he is to end up with finer features, less muscle mass and a thinner neck than as a stallion. Furthermore, the younger a colt is gelded, the easier he may be to handle and if gelded very young the incision required is very small and can be sutured closed and very little scarring results.

For horses gelded late, or after puberty, there is no way to 'turn back time' and remove any stallion-like body shape or mating related behavior. And if he has learned he can get his way with people by being aggressive, gelding will not cause him to unlearn this, only retraining will.

When to geld depends on the horse in question. Young colts that become obsessed with mares or their privates, or who start to develop the cresty, thick stallion neck are better to be gelded sooner. Some colts will show very little interest in mares and no muscular thickening and can be left (behavior notwithstanding) until older if so wished.

After the operation, it will take some time for your colt to forget what he was. It can take a month. It can even take 6 months. When his testosterone levels drop, so will his stallion-like behavior. His metabolism will slow down and he will require less food and more exercise to maintain condition.

After gelding, some horses will retain all of the mating behaviors. These are known as 'proud cut'. While it used to be thought that this was due to a failed surgery, todays surgical skill level suggests that other factors are at work. It may be that the adrenal gland (near the kidney) is producing excess testosterone. It may be that gelding happened well after the mating behaviors became established. Other bad horse-human manners are the result of bad training.

Phil is compiler of the comprehensive book 'Horse Training Success', full of answers to the most asked horse training questions. Stop by http://www.horsetrainingsuccess.com for a huge selection of information regarding common problems, training of horses, equine psychology, how to get the best behavior and so much more!