Clipmarks | arifsali's clips

The Role Models!

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 02:45:23 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

And it's too bad those "countless Tiger faithfuls" are in such a bind, but maybe now they will gain a little insight and start to look at the real role models--the people in their daily lives who go about quietly getting amazing things done, people who, regardless of their golf swing or the size of their bank account, put their values into action to make the lives of those around them better. These are real people, not images on a TV screen who will never interact with the foolish fans who worship them as "role models." Just what "role" has Tiger Woods modelled?

The distinction between admiring someone from afar for his or her athletic ability, acting talent or singing voice, and calling that individual a hero because of it, has become so blurred as to be pathological. You want role models? Look around you. They're everywhere. Ordinary people are the heroes and the role models, but they go unnoticed because they're not rich or glamorous and no cameras are trained on them.

Tags: celebrities, heroes

Pew Survey: Pakistan scores very low in American's view

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 23:29:38 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: The most negatively affected country by terrorism in the world scores very low with Americans. Amazing.

Clip Source: lynch.foreignpolicy.com

The two most interesting findings in this section have to do with Pakistan and Israel. Only 16% of the public has a favorable view of Pakistan, our essential partner in the new AfPak strategy -- barely more than have a favorable view of Iran (11%) -- and unfavorable views of Pakistan have gone from 39% to 68% since last year.

Tags: american, pakistan

A Lost European Culture, Pulled From Obscurity

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:11:40 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Dr. Bagnall, a specialist in Egyptian archaeology, remarked that at the time “Egyptians were certainly not making pottery like this.”

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Before the glory that was Greece and Rome, even before the first cities of Mesopotamia or temples along the Nile, there lived in the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills people who were ahead of their time in art, technology and long-distance trade.

Writing had yet to be invented, and so no one knows what the people called themselves. To some scholars, the people and the region are simply Old Europe.

The little-known culture is being rescued from obscurity in an exhibition, “The Lost World of Old Europe: the Danube Valley, 5000-3500 B.C.,” which opened last month at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University.

Tags: europe, history

Minaret ban unreasonable, understandable

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:31:50 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: newsweek.washingtonpost.com

In a world of 24/7 imaging and sound bites, big public acts get noticed, whether for good or for bad, and they shape public consciousness. That is why it is important for all people to speak out against the Swiss ban, and equally important for all Muslims to act as big and speak as loudly in defense of the rights of others as they do in defense of their own. In a globalized world, we are all connected and failure to do so will simply empower the haters and the xenophobes everywhere.

Tags: muslims, religion, swiss

Islam's warrior prophet shrouded by myth, devotion

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:58:01 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.chron.com

Yet for detractors, Islam's Prophet Muhammad is a polygamist who spawned a religion that subjugates women, condones violence, and was, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “spread by the sword.”

In short, when his best-known modern portrait is a 2005 Danish cartoon that depicts a surly bearded man with a bomb hidden in his turban, Muhammad has an image problem.

Enter Omid Safi, a scholar of Islam at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill whose new biography, Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters, attempts to discover the true Muhammad obscured by both hagiography and militant extremism.

“I'm trying to help non-Muslims learn things about Muhammad that they've never known,” Safi said over a pot of Ethiopian coffee, “and help Muslims remember things they've forgotten.”

Tags: books, history, islam, religion

U.S. Muslims are Americans too

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:02:49 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Americans are Christians, Jews, Hindus, agnostics, atheists, and anything else in between -- but Americans are also Muslims, millions of them, and Islam has now become integral to what the distinguished American sociologist Robert Bellah termed our "civil religion."

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

The distinguished New York Times columnist David Brooks, one of the most consistently militant warriors in his take on American involvements in Afghanistan and Iraq, takes Islam -- and Islam alone -- to task for having a diabolic roughness on its fringes.

The same Hinduism that produced Mahatma Gandhi and his non-violent theory of civil disobedience has also produced Hindu fundamentalists who sliced and skewered pregnant Muslim women alive in Gujarat.

The same Christianity that produced Saint Francis of Assisi and Mother Theresa also produced children's crusades and Spanish conquistadors who burned native Americans alive 13 at a time

The same Judaism that produced Martin Buber, Emanuel Levinas, or Primo Levi also produced the Stern Gang, Meir Kahane and Baruch Goldstein.

But the knee jerk reaction of blaming Islam and Muslims, in general, or looking for delusional links to "al Qaeda," for the horrific murders at Fort Hood points to something far more fundamental

Tags: islam, muslims, united states

Islam and Thanksgiving

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:13:51 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.connectionnewspapers.com

The national holiday of Thanksgiving is a special holiday which has a beautiful message and is celebrated by all faiths and denominations. In Islam the Quranic term of giving thanks is "Shukr", the recognition of a favor and its acknowledgement. It is mentioned several times in the Quran, and all Muslims are required to apply this attribute of giving thanks in their daily lives.

Tags: holiday, islam, thanksgiving

The Secret Political Reach Of 'The Family'

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:41:10 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.wbur.org

You may recognize these names from recent headlines: Sen. John Ensign, Rep. Bart Stupak and Rep. Joe Pitts. Stupak and Pitts have become familiar names through the media's health care overhaul coverage; their abortion funding amendment introduced an 11th-hour twist as the House of Representatives approached a vote on a landmark health care bill.

Ensign was the focus of media attention over his affair with a campaign staffer. Just last night, a Nevada man disclosed that he found out about his wife's affair with the state's junior senator — his best friend — via a text message.

The common factor among these political players is their involvement with the Family, a secretive fellowship of powerful Christian politicians that centers on a Washington, D.C., townhouse. Investigative journalist Jeff Sharlet has written extensively about the influential group in his book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

Tags: politics, religion

Google to Put Iraqi Artifacts Online

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:57:04 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: “I can think of no better use of our time and our resources than to make the images and the ideas of your civilization available to all the people of the world,” Mr. Schmidt said.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

BAGHDAD — Amira Edan, the director of Iraq’s National Museum, says that soon she will no longer have to worry so much that the famous institution remains closed to the public for fear of violence.

People will just be able to Google it. “It’s really wonderful,” she said Tuesday.

Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, had just made a presentation inside the museum, announcing that his company would create a virtual copy of the museum’s collections at its own expense, and make images of four millennia of archaeological treasures available online, free, by early next year.

Tags: google, iraq, museum, technology

Interfaith amigos

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:03:45 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Three Clergymen, Three Faiths, One Friendship

NASHVILLE — It sounds like the start of a joke: a rabbi, a minister and a Muslim sheik walk into a restaurant.

But there they were, Rabbi Ted Falcon, the Rev. Don Mackenzie and Sheik Jamal Rahman, walking into an Indian restaurant, and afterward a Presbyterian church. The sanctuary was full of 250 people who came to hear them talk about how they had wrestled with their religious differences and emerged as friends.

Tags: christianity, islam, judaism, religion

Huston Smith's painful spiritual odyssey

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:18:41 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: It's a good read.

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

"Religion," Smith once wrote, is "the call to confront reality; to master the self." Smith had strived to answer that call for much of his life.

He had trained with Zen masters in Japan, camped with aborigines in Australia and dropped peyote with Native American shamans. He didn't just study religions; he lived them.

In time, Smith became known as the sage of world religion. He introduced the Dalai Lama to the West; befriended mythologist Joseph Campbell and was the subject of a five-part PBS series hosted by Bill Moyers called "Wisdom of the Ages."

But as Smith sat at his daughter's bedside, the wisdom of the ages offered little consolation. "I would sob uncontrollably, crying in anguish," he said.

Tags: life, religion

What Earth Would Look Like With Rings Like Saturn

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:34:43 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

What the rings would look like from different cities and latitudes accross the world.

[Video]

Tags: astronomy, earth

SpongeBob is a good neighbor!

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:53:23 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: journalwatch.conservationmagazine.org

A new study could explain how vibrant coral reefs live in nutrient-poor tropical waters, or the aquatic versions of deserts. The answers, it appears, may lie in sponges.

Marine sponges line the walls of coral cavities and can filter huge amounts of water, which contains dissolved organic carbon produced by the reef’s corals and algae.

Researchers monitored a sponge species, Halisarca caerulea, in a natural coral reef environment in the Netherlands Antilles and in aquariums. They found that 46.6 percent of certain sponge cells called choanocytes were rapidly dividing and creating new cells. But the sponge was also shedding old cells as debris, keeping the organism from growing any larger. The cell turnover seen in these sponges appears to be the fastest ever

Tags: marine, science

Why sadness is good for you

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:54:18 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: There are examples from studies in this detailed article.

Clip Source: www.ft.com

In a society where the quest for happiness has never been more intense, there are powerful questions to contemplate. None of us wants to be sad, but as science becomes more adept at manipulating the chemistry of our mind, we need to ask ourselves, do we want to eliminate normal sadness from our lives? Or can we somehow embrace it as an integral, and potentially useful, part of our selves?

Tags: humans, psychology, science

The Ungrateful Sarah Palin

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:36:35 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

the most sustained and vehement barbs in this book are directed not at Democrats or liberals or the press, but at the McCain campaign. The very campaign that plucked her out of Alaska, anointed her the Republican vice-presidential nominee and made her one of the most talked about women on the planet — someone who could command a reported $5 million for writing this book.

Tags: politics, united states