Clipmarks | Nightshade's clips

Apple iPhone or Rogers iPhoney

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:32:50 GMT

clipped by: Nightshade
clipper's remarks: Canada is being ripped off by Rogers the only telecom-carrier in the country. The poor Canadians are being offered an inferior iPhone plan (with phoney alternative choices) for something even the people in Mexico can afford with better service.

Clip Source: www.ruinediphone.com

View Oilchange.com Official Statement

The average Canadian consumer is forced to accept cell phone plans that are unfair and over priced.

Rogers launch of the Apple iPhone 3G on July 11 comes with unfair pricing and stems way beyond a Rogers Communications issue. All of the Canadian cell phone companies overcharge for plans.

Tags: it, telecom, greed, monopoly

Driver Buckles Beer in Car- But not Child

Tue, 13 May 2008 11:05:35 GMT

clipped by: Nightshade
clipper's remarks: Speaks for itself. Sad.

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

DARWIN, Australia (AP) -- An Australian driver who secured a carton of beer in his car with a seat belt but left a 5-year-old child unrestrained was fined 750 Australian dollars ($710; €460), police said Tuesday.

Tags: humanity

Chemical in Plastic May Harm Human Growth

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:44:03 GMT

clipped by: Nightshade
clipper's remarks: Nice to see that the money-makers are still at it. They first gave us BSE, now we have BPA. When do we get to XYZ...?

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

BornFree glass baby bottles are seen on display in the foreground as a mother shops at Babies"R"Us, Tuesday, March 11, 2008 in Peabody, Mass. BornFree, a Florida company that started a few years ago with BPA-free bottles and cups, added glass bottles about a year ago.

A federal report finds 'some concern' that fetuses, babies and children are at risk from bisphenol A. But plastics industry officials see no serious risk.

A controversial, estrogen-like chemical in plastic could be harming the development of children's brains and reproductive organs, a federal health agency concluded in a report released Tuesday.

An ingredient of polycarbonate plastic, BPA is one of the most widely used synthetic chemicals in industry today. It can seep from hard plastic beverage containers such as baby bottles, as well as from liners in cans containing food and infant formula.

Tags: morality, science, profit motive

A Boy the Bullies Love to Beat Up, Repeatedly

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:26:46 GMT

clipped by: Nightshade
clipper's remarks: It is time that education authorities should aim for educating the character of the child and not leave it up to the parents or religion alone. IQ is rated too high, especially when looking for a job. CQ (Character Quotient) should be given more importance than IQ. Perhaps Columbine High could have been avoided

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

It began years ago when a boy called the house and asked Billy if he wanted to buy a certain sex toy, heh-heh. Billy told his mother, who informed the boy’s mother. The next day the boy showed Billy a list with the names of 20 boys who wanted to beat Billy up.

Not long after, a boy on the school bus pummeled Billy, but somehow Billy was the one suspended, despite his pleas that the bus’s security camera would prove his innocence. Days later, Ms. Wolfe recalls, the principal summoned her, presented a box of tissues, and played the bus video that clearly showed Billy was telling the truth.

Ms. Wolfe remembers the family dentist sewing up the inside of Billy’s cheek, and a school official refusing to call the police, saying it looked like Billy got what he deserved. Most of all, she remembers the sight of her son.

Tags: education, bullying, character, intelligence

Life must go on in Gaza and Sderot

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:08:38 GMT

clipped by: Nightshade
clipper's remarks: Amidst all the politico-moral posturizing in the UN and in the media, this blogspot shows that there are still 2 human beings left in this whole pile of international crap. These two people should get a Nobel Prize somehow for showing the rest of the world what it is really all about. A great blogspot. A great petition they have set up.

Clip Source: gaza-sderot.blogspot.com

This blog is written by 2 friends. One lives in Sajaia refugee camp in Gaza and the other lives in Sderot, a small town near Gaza on the Israeli side. There is ongoing violence between Israel and Gaza which has intensified greatly since October 2000. Many have been killed and many have been injured. The media coverage on both sides has been extremely biased. Our Blog is written by 2 real people living and communicating on both sides of the border.
[Your comments are welcome]

Tags: middle east, jihad, sword of gideon, religion, politics, morality

The Quasar that re-awakened the Universe.

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 13:49:19 GMT

clipped by: Nightshade
clipper's remarks: Unveiling the Big-Bang concept a bit more.

Clip Source: www.csmonitor.com

New measurements of a brilliant galactic beacon nearly 13 billion light-years away are unveiling a critical period in the evolution of the universe.

Astronomers are reporting Thursday that they've discovered surprisingly vast amounts of dust and carbon-monoxide gas in the active young galaxy, making its mass comparable to those of far larger galaxies in a much older universe. The results suggest that stars, planets, and, in particular, galaxies, formed faster and more furiously than was thought.

New research and a distant trace of dust converge to transform cosmic evolution.

Cosmos at Full Throttle

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 13:43:24 GMT

clipped by: Nightshade
clipper's remarks: A complication in the Big-Bang theory.

Clip Source: www.csmonitor.com

Will the universe eventually collapse in the "big crunch," expand forever in the "big loneliness," or be torn to bits in the "big rip"?

The key to answering those questions appears to lie in a mysterious form of energy that has been cracking the cosmic whip on the universe for the past 6 billion to 7 billion years. This "dark energy" appears to be causing the universe to grow at an accelerated rate rather than a rate scientists previously thought would slow forever.

If the quantity of dark energy is constant, astronomers say, the universe will continue to expand at an increasing rate. In about 20 billion years

only about 100 galaxies might be visible from Earth. Think of it as the "big lonely." If dark energy were to change with time, it could relax to let gravity once again dominate, prompting the universe to collapse in the "big crunch." Or if the pace speeds up, it could lead to the "big rip," in which the fabric of space-time stretches so rapidly that even atoms get torn apart.

Supernova may offer New View of early Universe.

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 13:32:11 GMT

clipped by: Nightshade
clipper's remarks: 100 times more violent than a "normal" supernova.

Clip Source: www.csmonitor.com

Dinosaurs were just beginning to thump across Earth when an enormous star exploded in a galaxy not too far away. Its light finally reached Robert Quimby's telescope last September in what researchers now call the brightest, most powerful supernova they have ever seen.

It also appears to be far different from any they have seen before. The team of researchers argues that they may have witnessed for the first time a stellar endgame similar to blasts that obliterated many of the universe's first stars more than 12.6 billion years ago.

They exploded so violently that, instead of collapsing upon themselves and creating neutron stars or black holes like most supernovae, these stars were annihilated. In the process, they jetted their star dust into the cosmos and seeded the young universe with a range of chemical elements forged in their furnaces. It's these elements that became the building blocks for new generations of stars, planets, and eventually, organic life.

Tags: cosmology, supernova, science

Rare Helen Keller Photo

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:39:46 GMT

clipped by: Nightshade
clipper's remarks: With two of her five senses gone Helen shows that personality and its strength still remains. I wonder how the materialist philosophers can explain this?

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

Rare Helen Keller photo with doll discovered

Researchers have uncovered a rare photograph of a young Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan, nearly 120 years after it was taken on Cape Cod and tucked inside a family album. The photograph, shot in July 1888 in Brewster, shows an 8-year-old Helen sitting outside in a light-colored dress, holding Sullivan's hand and cradling one of her beloved dolls. full story

Out of The Blue

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 04:15:41 GMT

clipped by: Nightshade

Clip Source: www.seedmagazine.com

Can a thinking, remembering, decision-making, biologically accurate brain be built from a supercomputer?

In the basement of a university in Lausanne, Switzerland sit four black boxes, each about the size of a refrigerator, and filled with 2,000 IBM microchips stacked in repeating rows. Together they form the processing core of a machine that can handle 22.8 trillion operations per second. It contains no moving parts and is eerily silent. When the computer is turned on, the only thing you can hear is the continuous sigh of the massive air conditioner

Each of its microchips has been programmed to act just like a real neuron in a real brain. The behavior of the computer replicates, with shocking precision, the cellular events unfolding inside a mind.

"There are lots of models out there, but this is the only one that is totally biologically accurate. We began with the most basic facts about the brain and just worked from there."

Tags: brain, supercomputer

Did Saddam Figure's Millions Influence Obama?

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:41:33 GMT

clipped by: Nightshade
clipper's remarks: The more interesting question is whether this is the tip of an "iceberg"?

Clip Source: www.captainsquartersblog.com

The Times of London follows the money in the journalistic tradition of Watergate and finds a strange connection between Tony Rezko, Barack Obama, and Nadhmi Auchi. The latter, one of Britain's richest men, has a long history of shady financial dealings as well as numerous connections to Saddam Hussein, who he helped to power. According to the Times, Auchi sent a lot of money to Rezko just before his wife bought property adjacent to the Obamas in a land deal that has already raised a lot of eyebrows:

A British-Iraqi billionaire lent millions of dollars to Barack Obama's fundraiser just weeks before an imprudent land deal that has returned to haunt the presidential contender, an investigation by The Times discloses.

The money transfer raises the question of whether funds from Nadhmi Auchi, one of Britain’s wealthiest men, helped Mr Obama buy his mock Georgian mansion in Chicago.

Tags: obama, politics, islam, muslims

EU Fines Microsoft $1.3 Billion

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:32:10 GMT

clipped by: Nightshade
clipper's remarks: Right from the start (DOS version 3 - 6.2) I have always maintained that Microsoft is the worst that's ever happened to the free world. It has done nothing but to programme its profits all the way down the line. Who needs Osama Bin Laden when we have Microsoft!! (Shades of the Matrix....). A pity that this decree only pertains to Europe. The rest of the world still has to bear the excesses of this "ugly" American.

Clip Source: www.time.com

BRUSSELS, Belgium) — The European Union fined Microsoft Corp. a record $1.3 billion on Wednesday for charging rivals too much for software information.

E.U. regulators said the company charged "unreasonable prices" until last October to software developers who wanted to make products compatible with the Windows desktop operating system.

The E.U. alleged that Microsoft withheld crucial interoperability information for desktop PC software — where it is the world's leading supplier — to squeeze into a new market and damage rivals that make programs for workgroup servers that help office computers connect to each other and to printers and faxes.

The E.U. complained last March that these rates were unfair. Under threat of fines, Microsoft two months later reduced the patent rate to 0.7% and the information license to 0.5% — but only in Europe, leaving the worldwide rates unchanged.

Lucid Dreams

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:50:16 GMT

clipped by: Nightshade

Clip Source: itotd.com

A lucid dream is simply one in which you realize that you are dreaming

What’s so great about lucid dreaming? For one thing, it’s lots of fun. If you’re aware that you’re dreaming, you can do things that are impossible in waking life, such as flying, becoming invisible, or traveling to distant times or places. But on a more practical note, interacting with dream characters in a lucid state can help the dreamer to interpret the meanings of dreams in real time. Lucid dreams can also enable the dreamer to find creative solutions to problems, work through difficult emotional issues, and promote physical and mental healing. Many people believe lucid dreaming is a path to, or at least a necessary step toward, a form of enlightenment, and it also forms part of the training for some forms of shamanism.

The End of the World

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:09:09 GMT

clipped by: Nightshade
clipper's remarks: Real scary count-down. At least "Omega Point" (#4) gives some kind of hope.

Clip Source: www.botw.org

End of the World: 10 Disasters that could end it all at any given second.

Eye Language

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 11:09:12 GMT

clipped by: Nightshade
clipper's remarks: So, guys, try to look not too shifty. She/he may have read this article.

Clip Source: itotd.com

A while back, someone remarked in passing that a mutual friend had “such beautiful blue eyes.” I was surprised—and a bit embarrassed—to realize that in all the years I’d known the woman in question, I had never noticed the color of her eyes.

But if I can be forgiven for ignoring the iris, the pupil is something that clearly deserves a great deal of attention, because it can tell us much more than the words someone speaks.

Can pupillometrics help you to find true love? A number of books and articles suggest you can determine if the person you’re dating is truly interested in you by paying attention to his or her pupils while talking. If they’re consistently large, take it as a good sign.

Pupil size isn’t the only way your eyes communicate. The direction in which someone looks while talking can also speak volumes