Clipmarks | arifsali's clips

Now, an Indian film on Apostle Thomas

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:22:25 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

The Rs.500-million ($12 million) project is being supported by the St. Thomas Apostle of India Trust, set up by the Catholic Archdiocese of Mylapore.

Biblical stories identify Thomas as the disciple who doubted the resurrection of Christ. According to several edicts, Kushan king Vasudeva sent Thomas' remains to Syria in 232 AD.

The Roman Catholic and Anglican calendars honour Thomas July 3, the day on which his relics are believed taken from Mylapore, on India's east coast, to Edessa, Syria, where his remains are worshipped as that of the Apostle of India. Then it was taken to the Greek island of Chios in 1258 AD and then to Ortona, Italy, where it rests now.

In the 'Acts of Thomas', written in 200 AD, the original key text to identify St. Thomas with India, historians agree that two people, followers of Jesus Christ, arrived first in Sandaruk (one of the ancient Alexandrias) in Balochistan.

Tags: india, christianity

What's John McCain's Technology Policy?

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:32:14 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: "Should I double click here?"

No, do a single left click, you [moron].

Clip Source: www.motherjones.com

Washington Dispatch: Surprise—he doesn't have one. And how does that compare to Barack Obama?

Political observers have made much of John McCain's admission that he cannot use a computer without assistance. In a campaign where McCain's opponent is 25 years younger than him, the factoid is potent ammunition for those who argue McCain is out of touch and too old for the presidency. But not knowing your way around a MacBook doesn't mean you can't be president. And McCain's personal Ludditism isn't a deal breaker for tech leaders. "I don't give a damn if McCain ever turns on a computer or not," Michael Arrington, coeditor of the blog TechCrunch wrote in January. "I just want a president who has the right top-down polices to support the information economy."

Tags: united states, politics, technology

E-Verify's accuracy rate is too low!

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:29:18 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.csmonitor.com

New York - Two hours after Fernando Tinoco started his new job at a meatpacking plant in Chicago, he was escorted by security guards to the office and fired.

The reason: Company officials had entered his Social Security number into the Department of Homeland Security's E-Verify system. It's a mostly voluntary program designed to give employers a fast, easy way to check a person's immigration status. Mr. Tinoco's information came back as a "tentative non-confirmation," meaning that he may not be a citizen. He was shown the door.

But Tinoco is a citizen and has been since 1989. Immediately after his firing a few months ago, he went to a Social Security office and got a letter confirming his legal status. It was too late.

"I went back and the security guard chased me away, told me not to come back to the company because I was fired," he says in a phone interview.

Tags: united states, immigration

U.S. employers challenge crackdown on illegal immigrants

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:13:02 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.iht.com

Under pressure from the toughest crackdown on illegal immigration in two decades, employers across the United States are fighting back in state legislatures, U.S. courts and city halls.

Business groups have resisted measures that would revoke the licenses of employers of illegal immigrants. They are proposing alternatives that would revise U.S. rules for verifying the identity documents of new hires and would expand programs to bring in legal immigrant laborers.

Although the pushback is coming from both Democrats and Republicans, in many places it is reopening the rift over immigration that troubled the Republican Party last year. Businesses, generally Republican stalwarts, are standing up to others within the party who accuse them of undercutting border enforcement and jeopardizing U.S. jobs by hiring illegal immigrants as cheap labor.

Tags: united states, immigration

Hebrew tablet suggests tradition of resurrected messiah predates Jesus

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:10:19 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.iht.com

JERUSALEM: A 3-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

When David Jeselsohn bought an ancient tablet, above, he was unaware of its significance.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, because it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era - in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.

Tags: christianity, history

Kabul: A city where war is never far away

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:08:42 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.iht.com

My first trip to Kabul was in 2001. I arrived as Northern Alliance soldiers were fighting Taliban gunmen in and around the Afghan capital. Those who resisted were killed, and those captured were more likely to be executed than taken prisoner.

There was a power vacuum in Kabul, a brief moment when one set of rulers had fled and the next had not yet taken over. This can be a liberating time for a photographer. There were no clear rules, no central authority that might restrict you from taking pictures. I've returned to Afghanistan nearly every year since then.

Today, at first glance, the dusty stalls and kebab joints of Kabul, with their bearded men and covered women, look much the same - in at least one important way - as they did when the Taliban were forced to flee.

A woman begging on the side of the road in Kabul, her sick son sleeping beside her. (Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)

Tags: afghanistan

Buddha's caves

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:07:01 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.iht.com

DUNHUANG, China: Sand is implacable here in far western China. It blows and shifts and eats away at everything, erasing boundaries, scouring graves, leaving farmers in despair.

A hunting scene, painted in a cave at Dunhuang. (Dunhuang Academy, courtesy of the Getty Conservation Institute)

It's one of many threats to the major tourist draw of this oasis city on the lip of the Gobi desert: the hundreds of rock-cut Buddhist grottoes that pepper a cliff face outside town. Known as Mogaoku — "peerless caves" — and filled with paradisiacal frescos and hand-molded clay sculptures of savior-gods and saints, they are, in size and historical breadth, like nothing else in the Chinese Buddhist world.

And Mogaoku is in trouble. Thrown open to visitors in recent decades, the site has been swamped by tourists in the past few years. The caves now suffer from high levels of carbon dioxide and humidity, which are severely undermining conservation efforts.

Tags: art, china

71% of Americans say U.S. gov't shouldn't take sides in Mideast conflict

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:57:07 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.haaretz.com

A public opinion poll released by a research institute at the University of Maryland shows that 71 percent of Americans believe that the United States government should not take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The survey, which measured attitudes of nearly 19,000 respondents in countries around the world, found that in 14 of the 18 nations studied, a large majority favored an even-handed approach to the conflict.

In none of the countries did a majority support taking Israel's side. Of American respondents, 21 percent said the United States should take Israel's side, and only 3 percent, the Palestinians.

Tags: united states, world, survey

Love blooms in Baghdad

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:51:08 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.usatoday.com

BAGHDAD — A riverside park closely guarded by a U.S. security company has become the hottest make-out spot in town for young Iraqi lovers who would otherwise be harassed — or worse — by Islamic extremists.

Many of the couples sneak away from university lectures and sit arm-in-arm, whispering and kissing under the shade of eucalyptus trees each morning. On many days, there's not a single empty bench.

Four checkpoints manned by guards from the Sandi Group security company control access to Abu Nawas Park. Every car is searched. Anyone with a gun, including Iraqi police, is kept out.

For some of Iraq's conservatives, the park is a symbol of the poisonous effect the U.S. occupation is having on Iraq. For young Iraqis, it's a unique refuge in a society that has become more restrictive in recent years.

"This is the safest single place in Baghdad," said Enas Saleh, 26, a schoolteacher who lied to her family and ditched her computer training class to sneak off to the park with her boyfriend.

Tags: iraq, love

'Public' online spaces don't carry speech, rights

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:55:39 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

NEW YORK - Rant all you want in a public park. A police officer generally won't eject you for your remarks alone, however unpopular or provocative.

Say it on the Internet, and you'll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed.

Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that's controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.

Tags: free speech, online

Einstein was right, McGill astrophysicists say

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:30:45 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.mcgill.ca

Observations of unique twin-pulsar star system show effects of general relativity

Researchers at McGill University’s Department of Physics - along with colleagues from several countries - have confirmed a long-held prediction of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, via observations of a binary-pulsar star system. Their results will be published July 3 in the journal Science.

Pulsars are small, ultradense stellar objects left behind after massive stars die and explode as supernovae. They typically have a mass greater than that of our Sun, but compressed to the size of a city like Montreal. They spin at staggering speeds, generate huge gravity fields and emit powerful beams of radio waves along their magnetic poles. These illuminate Earth-based radio-telescopes like rotating lighthouse beacons as the pulsar spins. More than 1,700 pulsars have been discovered in our galaxy

Tags: science, einstein

Enlisting your email client to help fight email overload

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:12:38 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: This is very helpful article from the Zenbe team (for those who may be using Zenbe).

Clip Source: blog.zenbe.com

There are many articles being written about email overload these days, and as many articles on how to deal it. Most productivity experts generally agree there are two solutions: 1. Don’t get interrupted so often; deal with emails in scheduled time blocks. 2. Handle email in a systematic way, like using GTD. But they don’t talk much about what email clients can do to help. In fact, many recommend against using the automation features found in most email clients.

Why should we not use the computer in front of us to help? After all, computers are supposed to be productivity tools. I think the main reason is because email clients were designed long ago, in an era when people got far fewer emails in a day. Not much has changed in email client designs in decades and they simply lack the features. We need modern tools to deal with modern problems.

Today I will introduce you to the first set of tools we have in Zenbe to help with the battle against email overload.

Tags: email, information

Doctors Find Meditation Affects Your Body

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:44:51 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: A Preliminary Study Shows Meditating Turns off Stress-Related Genes

Clip Source: abcnews.go.com

It turns out peaceful thoughts really can influence our bodies, right down to the instructions we receive from our DNA, according to a new study.

Researchers for the study, published in the Public Library of Science, took blood samples from a group of 19 people who habitually meditated or prayed for years, and 19 others who never meditated.

The researchers ran genomic analyses of the blood and found that the meditating group suppressed more than twice the number of stress-related genes -- about 1,000 of them -- than the nonmeditating group.

The more these stress-related genes are expressed, the more the body will have a stress response like high blood pressure or inflammation. Over long periods of time, these stress responses can worsen high blood pressure, pain syndromes and other conditions.

By the end of the training, the novice meditating group was also suppressing stress-related genes, although at lower levels than those of the long-term meditating people.

Tags: meditation, science, research

Dinner in the Sky

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:37:58 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: wvs.topleftpixel.com

Dinner in the Sky is a great event brought to Toronto's Dundas Square by AMEX. 24 people get lifted about 50 meters to enjoy their food in the sky. Flickr set here.

Tags: canada

Hitler wax figure unveiled in Berlin

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:31:10 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.haaretz.com

Berlin's new waxwork museum on Thursday unveiled a figure of a glum-looking Adolf Hitler in a mock bunker during the last days of his life, an exhibit that has been criticised as in bad taste.

The row over the figure overshadowed the media preview of the new branch of Madame Tussauds which opens its doors to the public on Saturday.

Critics say it is inappropriate to display the Nazi dictator, who started World War Two and ordered the extermination of Europe's Jews and other minorities, in a museum alongside celebrities, pop stars, world statesmen and sporting heroes.

"Of course the figure will arouse interest but we hope people will realise he is part of an exhibition with a range of attractions," said Meike Schulze, head of Midway Attractions in Germany which is responsible for Madame Tussauds here. "It will be a shame if he dominates everything." Her plea appeared to be falling on deaf ears.

Tags: hitler, germany