Clipmarks | arifsali's clips

Dead Sea Scrolls go from parchment to the Internet

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:07:08 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- More than 2,000 years after they were written, the Dead Sea Scrolls are going digital as part of an effort to better preserve the ancient texts and let more people see them than ever before.

The high-tech initiative, announced Wednesday, will also reveal text that was not visible to the naked eye.

Over the next two years, the Israel Antiquities Authority will digitally photograph and scan every bit of crumbling parchment and papyrus that makes up the scrolls, which include the oldest written record of the Bible's Old Testament.

The images eventually will be posted on the Internet for anyone to see.

Tags: bible, internet

Can you find a single verse which specifically sanctions the use of violence

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:02:37 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Interesting article, at the source

Clip Source: blogs.guardian.co.uk

One of the peculiar features of the recent rise in Islamophobia is the manner in which so many opponents of the Muslim faith try to pass themselves off as experts on the Qur'an. In the wake of the Channel 4 Dispatches programme, It shouldn't happen to a Muslim, which I commissioned for Channel 4, numerous critics on Comment is free and on the channel4.com viewers' forum tried to convince me that the Qur'an preaches violence, terror and holy war. In my experience, such critics tend not to have actually read the Qur'an in its entirety, let alone in its original Arabic script, and prefer to rely on a rather disingenuous combination of mistranslation and misquotation.

A few years ago, the prominent Canadian-Muslim scholar, Dr Jamal Badawi, offered a prize of $1 million to anyone who could find any verses in the Qur'an which referred to "holy war". The prize remains unclaimed, as the Arabic translation of "holy war" - "harb muqaddasah" - appears nowhere in the Quran.

Tags: quran, islam

Four in 10 women sexually assaulted while in military

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:58:25 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A congresswoman said Thursday that her "jaw dropped" when military doctors told her that four in 10 women at a veterans hospital reported being sexually assaulted while in the military.

A government report indicates that the numbers could be even higher.

Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, spoke before a House panel investigating the way the military handles reports of sexual assault.

She said she recently visited a Veterans Affairs hospital in the Los Angeles area, where women told her horror stories of being raped in the military.

"My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41 percent of the female veterans seen there say they were victims of sexual assault while serving in the military," said Harman, who has long sought better protection of women in the military.

"Twenty-nine percent say they were raped during their military service. They spoke of their continued terror, feelings of helplessness and downward spirals many of their lives have taken since.

Tags: military, united states, women, rape

Sugar: The addictive Web site for women

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:40:00 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.mercurynews.com

Sugar: The addictive Web site for women

A husband and wife team with the serendipitous surname of "Sugar" may have found the recipe for successfully combining content, e-commerce and social networking on a site that attracts a most attractive demographic: women between the ages of 18 and 44.

Brian and Lisa Sugar are the founders of San Francisco-based www.sugarinc.com, an online media company with a network of channels focused on specific topics that draw women. The enterprise started as a hobby in 2005 with PopSugar, a blog devoted to celebrity news and gossip. The hobby became a business which then spawned FabSugar for fashionistas, YumSugar for foodies, BellaSugar for beauty addicts, GeekSugar for techies and CasaSugar for home decor devotees. In three years time, the brand built on a sweetly clever name play that has grown to encompass 17 live sites employing about 80 people, most of them content producers who write in a breezy, chatty style that's become the hallmark of blogging.

Tags: website, women

Download the book: Blue Planet Run

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:20:56 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: For free, from Amazon.

Amazing photographs.

Clip Source: www.amazon.com

Download a Free Copy of BLUE PLANET RUN
Spread the word on water conservation! Amazon.com is offering customers a free downloadable copy [.pdf] of Blue Planet Run: The Race to Provide Safe Drinking Water to the World.

› See more product promotions

From the creators of the highly acclaimed New York Times best-selling Day in the Life and America 24/7 series, Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt, Blue Planet Run provides readers with a fascinating and thought-provoking look at the water problems facing humanity on every continent, as well as some of the hopeful solutions and courageous “water heroes” focused on alleviating this crisis.

Tags: book, pdf, free, planet, photographs

Al-Qaeda in US invaded Iraq: Women cannot buy cucumbers!

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:19:06 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: You know what you can potentially do with cucumbers, don't you?

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Al-Qa'eda is losing support in Iraq because of a brutal crackdown on activities it regards as un-Islamic - including women buying cucumbers.

Besides the terrible killings inflicted by the fanatics on those who refuse to pledge allegiance to them, Al-Qa'eda has lost credibility for enforcing a series of rules imposing their way of thought on the most mundane aspects of everyday life.

They include a ban on women buying suggestively-shaped vegetables, according to one tribal leader in the western province of Anbar.

Sheikh Hameed al-Hayyes, a Sunni elder, told Reuters: "They even killed female goats because their private parts were not covered and their tails were pointed upward, which they said was haram.

"They regarded the cucumber as male and tomato as female. Women were not allowed to buy cucumbers, only men."

Tags: al qaeda, humor, iraq, united states

Say No To Terrorism

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:05:45 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.yehhumnaheen.org

The Yeh Hum Naheen Foundation is a Pakistan based non-profit organisation that was established under the Societies Act of Pakistan in October 2007, with the following key aims:

To reinforce the point that Islam is a peaceful faith that promotes tolerance and harmony.
To develop an awareness among people regarding the issues of the growing radicalization of Pakistani youth.
To promote better understanding and co-existence of Muslims around the world among non-Muslim communities.
To convey that the majority of Muslims do not support the rise in terrorism, and to deny Muslims the opportunity for involvement in terrorist activities.
To show the positive impact of Pakistan and Muslims around the world, and remove the distance between east and west through media education.

Tags: pakistan, terrorism, muslims

German minister says schools should teach Islam

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 03:52:13 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Offering Islam in schools will be "a very, very considerable contribution to integration and peaceful coexistence," said Bekir Alboga, a spokesman for the Muslim participants.

Clip Source: www.iht.com

Schools in Germany should offer Islam - along with Christianity and Judaism - as a required religion class in the future, the interior minister said Thursday, but he insisted that the courses be taught in German.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said that it would take a while before Muslim community leaders worked out a legally binding agreement with the state, but that an agreement on the issue had been reached.

"It will take some time, but we are moving ahead," Schäuble said after a third conference with representatives of Germany's estimated three million Muslims. Other participants said it would take several years before the classes became available.

Both sides have wrangled for years over the teaching Islam in state-run schools, where religion classes are required by law. Pupils now only have the choice of Roman Catholicism, Protestantism or Judaism. Many schools also offer ethics classes as an alternative.

Tags: germany, islam, schools

Egyptian woman gives birth to septuplets

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 14:54:19 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt (AP) -- A hospital director in the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria says a woman has successfully given birth to septuplets.

Emad Darwish, head of el-Shatbi hospital says the 27-year-old Ghazala Khamis is now in stable condition, though she did require a blood transfusion during the Caesarean section because of bleeding.

Darwish said Saturday that the newborns, four boys and three girls, had been placed in incubators in four different hospitals since they were premature.

The babies' weights range from 3.2 pounds (1.45 kilograms) to 2.8 kilograms (6.17 pounds).

Khamis, the wife of a farmer from the northern province of Beheira, is already the mother of three girls. She was admitted to the hospital two months earlier.

Tags: egypt, babies

Open Letter to Sean Hannity

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:40:17 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Actions prompted, as he testified in his own written notes, by the ideas contained in your words.

Clip Source: www.religiondispatches.org

“If the Left succeeds in gaining and retaining more power, the well-being of future generations will be at greater peril. I fear (our children) will inherit a nation that is less free and less secure than the nation we inherited from the last generation. It is therefore our job to stop them. Not just debate them, but defeat them.” — Sean Hannity

Dear Sean

I found these words on page 11 of your book Let Freedom Ring. This book, and similar ones from your conservative colleagues Bill O’Reilly and Michael Savage, was found in the home of a man who read those words, internalized those words, and then loaded his shotgun. He took 76 rounds of ammunition with him to a place of worship—a place where he knew he could do his job to stop and defeat some liberals. At the Unitarian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, Jim Adkisson, a fan of yours, killed two people, wounded five others, and left an entire congregation and country shaken by his actions.

Tags: conservatives, crime, liberals

Remains of children found in 'green Sahara'

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:58:20 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

A tiny woman and two children were laid to rest on a bed of flowers 5,000 years ago in what is now the barren Sahara Desert.

The slender arms of the youngsters were still extended to the woman in perpetual embrace when researchers discovered their skeletons in a remarkable cemetery that is providing clues to two civilizations who lived there, a thousand years apart, when the region was moist and green.

Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago and colleagues were searching for the remains of dinosaurs in the African country of Niger when they came across the startling find,

"Part of discovery is finding things that you least expect," he said. "When you come across something like that in the middle of the desert it sends a tingle down your spine."

"Everywhere you turned, there were bones belonging to animals that don't live in the desert," said Sereno. "I realized we were in the green Sahara."

Tags: discovery, desert

Life / Painting

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:31:50 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: There's some more good paintings at the source.

Clip Source: www.linkinn.com

Tags: painting, pictures

Humans cause climate change, US body accepts

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:10:32 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: environment.newscientist.com

AS THE Bush administration enters its final months, the US Climate Change Science Program has issued a report concluding that computer models do effectively simulate climate. It also accepts that the models show human activity was responsible for the rapid warming of the 20th century.

The report is the 10th of 21 due to be issued by the body, which the sceptical Bush administration set up late in 2002 to review the validity of climate-change science before making policy decisions. At the time, environmentalists accused the administration of using the programme as a way to drag its feet on the issue.

"The evidence is pretty convincing that the models give a good simulation of climate," lead author David Bader of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California told reporters last week. He concedes that the report did not examine predictions of future climate change. Nor did it address policy issues, which will be left to the next administration.

Tags: environment, bush administration

Watching the City

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:43:18 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: wvs.topleftpixel.com

Tags: picture

Beach Volleyball

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 16:56:26 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: U.S. President George W. Bush (R) talks with U.S. Women's Beach Volleyball team player Misty May-Treanor (L), and Kerri Walsh (C) while visiting the Chaoyang Park Beach Volleyball Grounds at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China, August 9, 2008.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Tags: olympics, bush, volleyball