Clipmarks | Antara's Comments

Lililth in the Darkness East of Eden

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:26:52 GMT

clipped by: bakancs
clipper's remarks: Lililth in the Darkness East of Eden

Lililth in the Darkness East of Eden

Phelps Makes Reading About Swimming Exciting

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:31:50 GMT

clipped by: Andrew Farrell
clipper's remarks: He's that good. Michael Phelps, the guy that won eight gold medals in the Olympics, just got a $1.6 million book advance.

Clip Source: www.nypost.com

OLYMPIAN STROKES HIS WAY TO $1.6M BOOK ADVANCE

EVEN before landing back in the US, Olympic swimming champ Michael Phelps, winner of eight gold medals in Beijing and the man being hailed as the greatest Olympian of all time, was converting his fame into a big pool of Yankee dollars.

Phelps snagged an estimated $1.6 million advance from the Free Press imprint of Simon & Schuster for his latest book, to be called "Built to Succeed."

Little things you can do to boost your mental agility

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:16:23 GMT

clipped by: Lexica

Clip Source: www.sfgate.com

Dr. Karen Francis, a behavioral neuroscientist at USF and author of "Physical Dimensions of Aging," urges people to do at least one new thing every day to challenge the mind and body. She believes that mental and physical agility can be enhanced by even the smallest of changes in one's routine.

Here are some of her suggestions:

-- Take your first step up a flight of stairs with the "other" leg, the less dominant one.

-- Control your computer mouse with your "other" hand.

-- Brush your teeth with your "other" hand.

-- Stand up while you read or work.

-- Hike on a new trail instead of walking your usual route.

-- Do a crossword puzzle with a friend and read the questions out loud. Don't always do a crossword puzzle from the same source.

-- Read an article in the paper out loud while walking around the house.

-- Walk 20 minutes from your house or office, taking as many turns as possible.

-- Learn a new language.

Tags: aging, brain-science, research

Obama: Know where it’s really great to do business?

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:39:56 GMT

clipped by: Smoke TNT

Clip Source: hotair.com

Well, as long as you forget about the oppressive Communist government and the lack of freedom and the Internet filtering and the re-education camps … China sounds really groovy:

[Video]

Does Barack Obama understand the nature of the Beijing regime? The reason that the government can afford all of this spending is that they control the means of production and the wealth of the nation. They can confiscate what they want at will and spend it where they like. And in Beijing, they spent it where the cameras would be pointed.

The Chinese infrastructure that so enthralls Obama remains decades behind that of the US. What infrastructure China manages to build, however, gets its energy from oil and coal, not from wind and solar.

iTunes doesn’t think China’s such a great place to do business today:

Customers in China of Apple Inc.’s iTunes online music store were unable to download songs this week, and an activist group said Beijing was trying to block access to a new Tibet-themed album.

Tags: obama, communism, china

how could you ever win though?

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:38:48 GMT

clipped by: kroqben

Clip Source: www.explosm.net

New evidence for prayer: gas prices

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:43:30 GMT

clipped by: laceym
clipper's remarks: Obviously the fluctuation of prices are due to mixed prayers. You see, every few minutes, an Arab prays, “Allah, raise the price of oil!” And Allah answers their prayer. Then an American prays, “Jesus, lower the price of oil!” And Jesus does it. And so on and so forth, thus the fluctuation.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

A prayer group in Washington DC is claiming the credit for the recent sharp drop in the US price of petrol.

Rocky Twyman says God, not market forces, brought prices down

"We were down in Huntsville, Alabama. We finished praying," Mr Twyman said. "Immediately the owners came out and changed the gas prices. They brought it down. We had marvellous success down in St Louis, Missouri."

Clip Source: unreasonablefaith.com

Well this changes everything. Here I thought there was no evidence for prayer being effective, but this is so utterly convincing! Who needs scientific prayer studies? This anecdotal evidence should be more than enough to convince the unfaithful of the power of prayer.

Tags: faith, gas, gasoline, prayer, fail

Muslim backlash

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:07:23 GMT

clipped by: sillysam
clipper's remarks: We are so afraid of Muslims blowing us up that we are afraid to publish books about Islam.

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

NEW YORK — A racy, historical novel based on the Prophet Muhammad's child bride A'isha was supposed to hit book stores in the U.S. Tuesday.

But in a rare case of self-censorship to preempt possible violent reaction by Muslims, one of the world's largest publishing houses pulled the plug on the book just before its release date.

Sherry Jones, author of The Jewel of Medina, said she received word from Random House Inc. that the book's release would be "postponed indefinitely." The decision came after copies of her book were sent to stores, her book tour was scheduled and her work of fiction was accepted by the Book of the Month Club (it was scheduled to be in the August selection).

"My book is a respectful portrayal of Islam, of A'isha, of Muhammad. And anyone who reads it with [an] open mind will come away with an understanding of Islam as a peaceful religion," said the American author.

The Hollow Lives of the Happy

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:45:37 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: <<<Who wouldn't question this apparently hollow form of American happiness? Aren't all of us late at night, when we're honest with ourselves, opposed to shallow happiness? Most likely we are, but isn't it possible that many of us fall into superficiality without knowing it? Aren't some of us so smitten with the American dream that we have become brainwashed into believing that our sole purpose on this earth is to be happy? Doesn't this unwitting affection for happiness over sadness lead us to a one-sided life, to bliss without discomfort, bright noon with no night?

My sense is that most of us have been duped by the American craze for happiness. We might think that we're leading a truly honest existence, when we're really just behaving as predictably and artificially as robots, falling easily into well-worn "happy" behaviors, into the conventions of contentment.>>>

Clip Source: chronicle.com

Why are most Americans so utterly willing to have an essential part of their hearts sliced away and discarded like so much waste?

Surely all this happiness can't be for real. How can so many people be happy in the midst of all the problems that beset our globe — not only the collective and apocalyptic ills but also those particular irritations that bedevil our everyday existences, those money issues and marital spats, those stifling vocations and lonely dawns?

Doctors offer a wide array of drugs that might eradicate depression forever. It seems truly an age of almost perfect contentment, a brave new world of persistent good fortune, joy without trouble, felicity with no penalty.

Don't we fear that this rabid focus on exuberance leads to half-lives, to bland existences, to wastelands of mechanistic behavior?

This brand of supposed joy, moreover, seems to foster an ignorance of life's enduring and vital polarity between agony and ecstasy, dejection and ebullience.

Tags: happiness, melancholy, depression

Should technology be allowed to tumble records?

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:50:47 GMT

clipped by: A53GG4

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Should technology be allowed to tumble records?

Spectators at Beijing's Olympic swimming pool have witnessed some outlandish goings-on over the last couple of weeks: 25 world records have fallen, compared with eight at the Athens Olympics four years ago. Seven of them were broken by one swimmer, Michael Phelps of the US, while the UK's Rebecca Adlington improved on the 800 metres freestyle record - unchallenged for 19 years - by more than two seconds.

The Beijing pool is 3 metres deep, a metre deeper than standard competitive pools. As explained in this week's issue of New Scientist magazine, the extra depth helps dissipate the turbulence caused by the swimmer's movement, causing less resistance. In other words, they are being helped by the architecture.

You could argue that technological "fixes" like this diminish the value of modern sporting records, making it unfair to compare the performances of this year's athletes with those through history.

Tags: tech

Breakfast of a Champion?

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:48:58 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: The announcement yesterday that Phelps, 23, winner of a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics, would grace Frosted Flakes and Corn Flakes boxes instead of the traditional athlete's choice of Wheaties left many perplexed.

Frosted Flakes has three times the amount of sugar as Wheaties and 1/3rd the fiber.

This doesn't matter much to a virtuoso swimmer who consumes 12,000 calories a day.

Still, in a country where childhood obesity is an alarming issue, Phelps' iconic image sharing space with Tony the Tiger sends the wrong message, experts say.

"For a guy like Michael Phelps who isn't worried about obesity because he's burning thousands of calories as an athlete...eating Corn Flakes and Frosted Flakes every so often is not an issue," Solomon said.

The Phelps-emblazoned cereal boxes hit supermarket shelves in mid-September

Clip Source: www.nydailynews.com

After winning a record eight Olympic gold medals in Beijing, American swimming superstar Michael Phelps signs on with sugar-loaded cereal.

You better eat your . . . Frosted Flakes?

Olympic legend Michael Phelps will appear on boxes of the Kellogg's brand sugar cereal, drawing sharp criticism from health experts worried about the message he'll be sending to children across America.

"I would not consider Frosted Flakes the food of an Olympian," said nutritionist Rebecca Solomon of Mount Sinai Medical Center.

"I would rather see him promoting Fiber One. I would rather see him promoting oatmeal. I would even rather see him promoting Cheerios."

Tags: michael phelps, kellogg, frosted flakes and corn flakes

Jennifer Love Hewitt: I Wish I'd Spent More Time Naked

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 04:02:09 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.people.com

Jennifer Love Hewitt is looking forward to turning 30 – but if she could turn back the clock, she would have spent more time showing off her figure.

"I wish I had been nude from the time I was 12 until I was 28. I looked great!" the Ghost Whisperer actress, 29, tells Health magazine in its September issue.

"I so wish I had listened to my mom and grandma when I was 18 and would complain about some little tiny bump or feeling bloated," says the star, who is engaged to Scottish actor Ross McCall. "I used to scoff and say, 'No, I feel fat today!' Now the joke's on me."

The next milestone for the actress is turning 30 this February – and she can barely wait. "I'm so excited! It's my dream age," she says. "I don't know why but, literally since my 12th birthday I've wanted to turn 30."

Tags: actress, hollywood, celebrity, body, woman, image

Buttock-clenching at the bus stop

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 14:43:41 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead
clipper's remarks: Tory MP Philip Davies lashed out at the move. He asked: ‘Is this April 1st? The Government is virtually bankrupt and yet it is spending its last few pounds encouraging people to do Pilates at bus stops.

‘It is the nanny state gone completely mad and a shocking waste of taxpayers’ money.’

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

A bizarre Government-funded campaign is being launched to encourage people to exercise while they’re waiting for a bus.

According to the campaign’s organisers, those minutes spent at the bus stop watching the traffic go by could be spent more usefully – by standing on one leg, pointing your toes or clenching your buttocks.

But the latest attempt to get Britain fit has been slammed by an MP as ‘a shocking waste of taxpayers’ money’.

And one angry passenger said last night: ‘Fares are ridiculously high as it is. So why don’t they use the money they’re spending on this nonsense to cut the cost of bus travel?’

Leaflets and posters setting out six Pilates-style exercise moves to do at the bus stop are being distributed to passengers travelling on buses between Blackburn and Manchester.

Organisers claim it will help people with busy lives to fit exercise into their day and avoid health problems such as heart disease and obesity.

Tags: politics, humour, humor, weird, idiots

Elderly Chinese Women Ordered into Re-Education After Protest Applications Are Ignored

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:42:02 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: It is the toughest penalty to be reported against any of those who followed up a government announcement that it would allow protests in three Beijing parks during the August 8-24 Olympics. So far, the police said they have received 77 applications and none has been approved.

On August 17, the two elderly women each received a document from the city authorities ordering them to serve one year of re-education through labour – an administrative punishment that does not require any judicial process – from July 30 this year to July 29, 2009 for “disturbing public order”. Li Xuehui, son of of Mrs Wu, said: ”Wang Xiuying is almost blind and crippled. What sort of re-education through labour can she serve? But they can also be taken away at any time.” The two women had remained at home but were under observation of a neighbourhood watch group, he said…

Clip Source: sweetness-light.com

From the UK’s Times

Two elderly women who applied five times to demonstrate in China’s Olympic protest parks against the demolition of their homes have been ordered to serve one year of re-education through labour, a human rights group said.

August 20, 2008

Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, have been petitioning the government ever since they were forcibly evicted from their homes in Beijing in 2001 as part of a series of huge renovation projects across the city.

The pair applied five times between August 5 and August 18 to the Beijing city Public Security Bureau for permission to demonstrate in the newly designated protest parks. The two women, formerly neighbours, wanted to protest against their forced eviction from their homes seven years ago. Their application was neither granted nor denied and on August 5 they were held for 10 hours for questioning by the police, the son of one of the women told Human Rights in China.

Tags: elderly chinese women, homes demolished, "protest applications", re-education through labor

Majority of Jailed Afghan Women Serving Time for Being Raped

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:50:35 GMT

clipped by: Smoke TNT
clipper's remarks: "As she was led away to her jail cell yesterday, Dorkhani lifted her burqa to reveal a sun-battered face streaked with tears and pleading eyes: "Please, please take our words somewhere where people will be kind and help us.""

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

Two-thirds of the women in Lashkar Gah's medieval-looking jail have been convicted of illegal sexual relations, but most are simply rape victims – mirroring the situation nationwide. The system does not distinguish between those who have been attacked and those who have chosen to run off with a man.

Sitting among the plastic flowers around his desk, where an optimistic United Nations scales of justice poster competed for space with images of Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, Colonel Ghulam Ali, a high-ranking regional security officer, explained sternly that he supported the authorities' right to convict victims of rape. "In Afghanistan whether it is forced or not forced it is a crime because the Islamic rules say that it is," he claimed. "I think it is good. There are many diseases that can be created in today's world, such as HIV, through illegal sexual relations."

Tags: islam, afghanistan, muslims, islamofascism, rape, women

Kremlin Unleashes "Mafia-on-Steroids" Style Chechen Thugs

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 05:44:20 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: ........continued........ to disband the unit.

The generals refused. At the time, their stubborn support for the outlaw Yamadaev Brothers seemed baffling - a quiet Chechnya was a longstanding Russian goal. But last week, it all made sense: Putin's military, which had been planning the invasion of Georgia for many months, intended to unleash the worst criminals in uniform it had on the Georgian people.

Why?

Two reasons: First, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wants the Georgians to suffer - to really suffer. And Chechens are the world's subject-matter experts in atrocities.

Second, this gives the Russian army itself a veil of deniability: When Putin's spokesmen insist that the Russian military isn't involved in the worst savagery in Georgia, they're technically telling the truth (if we don't count air attacks and artillery bombardments), since the Chechen thugs on their payroll are on the job.

Clip Source: www.nypost.com

OVER the weekend, photographic proof emerged that the Russians used mur derous Chechen mercenaries to do their dirtiest dirty work in Georgia

Amid photos of the horrors of war, grateful South Ossetians and triumphant Russian troops, one series leapt out at me as a former intel officer: Bearded irregulars riding atop Russian-built armored vehicles (old BMPs, for the military-hardware buffs). The vehicles had been splashed with white lettering.

What did the scrawls announce to the world? These thugs proudly proclaimed that they're Chechens serving in the Vostok ("East") Battalion commanded by Badrudin Yamadaev - who shares a reputation for gangland violence with his brother, Ruslan

Last spring, mercenaries from the Vostok Battalion indulged in a bloody gangland shoot-'em-up in the city of Gudermes, near their home turf. The mafia-on-steroids brutality was too much even for the Chechens (which is quite a standard).

The province's puppet president publicly begged the Kremlin and its generals

Tags: georgians, chechen mercenaries, putin, georgian military training, peacekeeping, anti-terrorism, small-unit tactics, antique us anti-tank weapons/gear