Clipmarks | arifsali's Pops

MJ's death slows down web

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:39:08 GMT

clipped by: mona

The internet suffered a number of slowdowns as people the world over rushed to verify accounts of Michael Jackson's death.

Search giant Google confirmed to the BBC that when the news first broke it feared it was under attack.

Millions of people who Googled the star's name were greeted with an error page rather than a list of results.

"It's true that between approximately 2.40PM Pacific and 3.15PM Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page," said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker.

It was around this time that the singer was officially pronounced dead.

Google's trends page showed that searches for Michael Jackson had reached such a volume that in its so called "hotness" gauge the topic was rated "volcanic".

Robt Reich: What you can do

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:02:58 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Excellent advice. Let's go for it.

Clip Source: tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com

"What Can I Do?"

Someone recently approached me

asking "what can I do?"

I soon realized the question was

what can I do about the way things are going in Washington?

People who voted for Barack Obama tend to fall into one of two camps: Trusters

and cynics

both positions are wrong. A new president -- even one as talented and well-motivated as Obama -- can't get a thing done in Washington unless the public is actively behind him. As FDR said

"Maam, I want to do those things, but you must make me."

We must make Obama do the right things. Email, write, and phone the White House. Do the same with your members of Congress. Round up others to do so. Also: Find friends and family members in red states who agree with you, and get them fired up to do the same. For example, if you happen to have a good friend or family member in Montana, you might ask him or her to write Max Baucus and tell him they want a public option included in any healthcare bill.

Tags: politics, activism

Rangoli - Floor art in India

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:20:36 GMT

clipped by: chestnut501

Clip Source: www.yeeta.com

Rangoli is one of the most popular art forms in India. It is a form of sandpainting decoration that uses finely ground white powder and colours, and is used commonly outside homes in India.

Rangoli can be wall art as well as floor art. The term rangoli is derived from words rang (colour) and aavalli ('coloured creepers' or 'row of colours').

Tags: india, art, sandpainting, colors, culture

Michael Jackson Life and Times: Photos from LIFE

digg it

Michael

Clip Source: www.life.com

Tags: rest in peace

Remote Group Has No Dads, And Never Did

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 07:33:00 GMT

clipped by: Deepti
clipper's remarks: "If you [father] a child with another woman, you can never be absolutely sure that the child really shares your genes," he said. "But if your sister has a child, you can be 100 percent sure that the kid shares some of your genes."

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

The women of this matrilineal society shun marriage and raise their kids in homes with their entire extended families—but no dads.

Men of the Mosuo, who live around Lugu Lake on the border between Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces, do help to raise kids—just not their own, with whom the men typically have only limited relationships.

Instead the men help look after all the children born to their own sisters, aunts, and other women of the family.

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

In the unique Mosuo tradition called the walking marriage, women invite men to visit their rooms at night—and to leave in the morning.

Women may also change partners as often as they like, and promiscuity carries no social stigma.

In fact, most Mosuo women don't change walking-marriage partners very frequently. And they rarely carry on more than one romantic relationship at a time.

Extended families of siblings, uncles, aunts, and others are said to be extremely stable

Tags: children, china, family, fathers, men, women

Outrageous!

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:35:36 GMT

clipped by: darkeforce
clipper's remarks: The Republicans would rather spend your money killing foreigners than improving the healthcare system for their fellow Americans.

The sickest part of it is that those very Republicans are on a single-payer healthcare plan themselves, yet they fight tooth and nail to keep you from getting what they already have.

Clip Source: www.caglecartoons.com

The Magic of Dew Drops - Photography

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:42:33 GMT

clipped by: celestialdancer

Clip Source: www.webphemera.com

In his poem Hyperion, Longfellow said, “Every dew-drop and rain-drop had a whole heaven within it." What would he make of today’s world of micro and macrophotography? To say his words had an element of truth in them might be assuming that the camera never lies. However it can hardly be doubted that he would find joy in this collection of outstanding photographs. Perhaps he would feel that they represented the inner peace for which he was searching.

“Earth's liquid jewelry wrought of air.” Philip James Bailey

Tags: dew drops, photography

PHOTO: Dreamscape Redux - Amazing View from Empire State Bldg.

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:31:44 GMT

clipped by: clip-on-tie

Clip Source: bighugelabs.com

Tags: by mudpig

Backing Iranian demonstrators could prompt crackdown

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 02:52:51 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Republicans turn up the heat on Obama to come down hard on Iran; Administration knows that American support could be just the excuse Iran's govt needs to touch off a crackdown and kill the reform movement. Wake up, GOP, how many times will you undermine reform in Iran?

Clip Source: www.google.com

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The White House Thursday defended President Barack Obama's stance on Iran's political crisis, amid fresh Republican demands for him to strongly back demonstrators in Tehran.

Obama has warned that US "meddling" in Iran's internal politics would be counterproductive, downplayed policy differences between the two rivals in the disputed poll and vowed to push forward his engagement policy with Iran.

Officials appear concerned that a vehement intervention in the crisis could give Iranian authorities the chance to portray demonstrators as agents of the United States and prompt a crackdown.

But senior Republicans have started to squeeze Obama on the issue, accusing him of treating a regime with long record of antipathy to Washington and opposition demonstrators with moral equivalence.

Obama's vanquished 2008 Republican election foe John McCain has also been hammering the president on his stance on Iran.

Tags: iran, obama, reform

ram das, universe,

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 04:02:36 GMT

clipped by: fivment

Clip Source: www.xing.com

"I honor the place in you in which the entire Universe dwells,
I honor the place in you which is of Love, of Integrity, of Wisdom and of Peace.
When you are in that place in you,
and I am in that place in me,
we are One."

(Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill)

Pixar grants girl's dying wish to see 'Up'

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:12:50 GMT

clipped by: milmufmas

Clip Source: www.wwmt.com

HUNTINGTON BEACH - Colby Curtin, a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer, was staying alive for one thing - a movie.

From the minute Colby saw the previews to the Disney-Pixar movie Up, she was desperate to see it. Colby had been diagnosed with vascular cancer about three years ago, said her mother, Lisa Curtin, and at the beginning of this month it became apparent that she would die soon and was too ill to be moved to a theater to see the film.

After a family friend made frantic calls to Pixar to help grant Colby her dying wish, Pixar came to the rescue.

The company flew an employee with a DVD of Up, which is only in theaters, to the Curtins' Huntington Beach home on June 10 for a private viewing of the movie.

Colby died about seven hours after seeing the film.

Pixar grants girl's dying wish to see 'Up'

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:37:05 GMT

clipped by: Efrain Alvarado

Clip Source: www.ocregister.com

HUNTINGTON BEACH – Colby Curtin, a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer, was staying alive for one thing – a movie.

After a family friend made frantic calls to Pixar to help grant Colby her dying wish, Pixar came to the rescue.

The company flew an employee with a DVD of Up, which is only in theaters, to the Curtins’ Huntington Beach home on June 10 for a private viewing of the movie.

Tags: girls last wish

Huge Prehistoric Complex Mistaken as "Crop Circles"

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:05:09 GMT

clipped by: chestnut501
clipper's remarks: For Full Story: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090615-stonehenge-tombs-crop-circles.html

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

Etched into crops, the outlines of Bronze Age burial mounds surround a roughly 190-foot (57-meter) circular Stone Age temple site about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Stonehenge in southern England in an undated aerial photo.

Discovered during a routine aerial survey by English Heritage, the U.K. government's historic-preservation agency, the "crop circles" are the results of buried archaeological structures interfering with plant growth. True crop circles are vast designs created by flattening crops.

The features are part of a newfound 500-acre (200-hectare) prehistoric ceremonial site which was unknown until the aerial survey, archaeologists announced in June 2009.

Tags: science, archaeology, england, prehistoric, ceremonial, temples, tombs, crop, circles

Got $100? Welcome to your new Detroit home

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:43:56 GMT

clipped by: sincitykitty

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

Got $100? Welcome to your new Detroit home

(CNN) -- If an e-mail popped up in your inbox promising a house for $100, you'd expect to see it sent from a guy in Nigeria asking you to wire him several thousand dollars first.

But this depressed housing market dream is real. And Detroit, Michigan, artist Jon Brumit and his wife, Sarah, are living it.

The couple never counted on owning a home.

"It's not that we have a little money," Jon Brumit said, laughing. "I'm saying we have no money."

But the couple began entertaining the idea of a permanent nest when their friends Mitch Cope and Gina Reichert, also artists, started taking advantage of foreclosures in the city, where the average home price dipped to $11,533 in April, according to the Detroit Association of Realtors.

Why the outrage over Iran?

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:29:28 GMT

clipped by: deb2012
clipper's remarks: Election fraud is common in much of the world-why is Iran in this moment more important than other countries? Why the whipping up of outrage at this moment? The US has a long history or meddling in the election process of other nations. The world has a long history of suppressing democracy. The conservatives in the US were appalled that citizens of other nations were so vocal on the American election with their preference. Do you really think you understand the whole picture enough to be speaking in favor of the seemingly more progressive party in Iran, and that the US government should meddle in their election affairs? Stop meddling America-it makes us less safe.

Clip Source: 123realchange.blogspot.com

Human Rights Watch in 2006

Egyptian authorities should drop threats to dismiss two senior judges protesting election fraud and investigate the violence and fraud that plagued elections last year

2003 presidential election results in Azerbaijan

The government clearly stole the election, and then brutally beat hundreds of people who poured out in the streets in protest.

Click here

to watch a protest against election fraud in Agri, Turkey.

the dictator government of Uzbekistan (supported by us)

was (and probably still is) engaged in atrocious human right abuses

we certainly were closely courting a dictator regime where the dissenters were/are boiled alive.

remember Black Friday

of 1978 in Iran?

Clip Source: 123realchange.blogspot.com

Are allegations of election fraud designed to further isolate Iran? Are they meant to be used to massage and shape domestic and international public opinion to lead the way for ‘further action’ on Iran?

Tags: iran, politics, democracy