Clipmarks | debbyski's 'the' clips

Bisexual Species: Unorthodox Sex in the Animal Kingdom

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:13:03 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Having seen drakes in action with chooks, this seems a much more amicable way.

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

Two penguins native to Antarctica met one spring day in 1998 in a tank at the Central Park Zoo in midtown Manhattan. They perched atop stones and took turns diving in and out of the clear water below. They entwined necks, called to each other and mated. They then built a nest together to prepare for an egg. But no egg was forthcoming: Roy and Silo were both male.

Robert Gramzay, a keeper at the zoo, watched the chinstrap penguin pair roll a rock into their nest and sit on it, according to newspaper reports. Gramzay found an egg from another pair of penguins that was having difficulty hatching it and slipped it into Roy and Silo’s nest. Roy and Silo took turns warming the egg with their blubbery underbellies until, after 34 days, a female chick pecked her way into the world. Roy and Silo kept the gray, fuzzy chick warm and regurgitated food into her tiny black beak.

Tags: the, penguin, who, waves, may, also, be, gay

D-Day

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:58:18 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: "Because lying is the problem, truth-telling has become our national cure. Not surprisingly, all this makes recovery a long and often unhealthy process. A woman in Tennessee told me that she had gained 60 pounds since her husband found out she had been sleeping with a co-worker, in part because the couple now spends most of their free time on the couch rehashing the affair. “Neither of us cries as much as we used to, because of the antidepressants,” her husband said. The fact is that many couples, like this one, end up staying together. The Patersons did. The Spitzers might, too, if we give them a chance. Whatever Eliot Spitzer’s and David Paterson’s sins, just surviving infidelity in America may be punishment enough."

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

AS Eliot Spitzer and his wife, Silda, rattle around their Fifth Avenue apartment, it’s a pretty safe guess that their life as a couple is hell.

In the parlance of American couples recovering from adultery, “D-Day” is the day you discover your spouse has been cheating on you. And as with the birth of Jesus, time is reset from there.

The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy has warned, “The reactions of the betrayed spouse resemble the post-traumatic stress symptoms of the victims of traumatic events.”

No comparison seems big enough. “9/11 always reminds me of how it felt — one floor collapsing into another,” said a woman in her 40s who lives near Seattle. Another woman, writing in an Internet chat room, compared her husband’s affair to the Asian tsunami of 2004, which killed a quarter of a million people.

America is also the only place I found that has a one-strike rule on fidelity: if someone cheats, the marriage is kaput.

Tags: men, aren't, the, only, dawgs

Soft Shoe In Hard Times

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:54:02 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Everyone here is flummoxed about why the president is in such a fine mood.

“You know, I guess the best way to describe government policy is like a person trying to drive a car in a rough patch,” he said. “If you ever get stuck in a situation like that, you know full well it’s important not to overcorrect, because when you overcorrect you end up in the ditch.”

Dude, you’re already in the ditch.

Boy George crashed the family station wagon into the globe and now the global economy. Yet the more terrified Americans get, the more bizarrely carefree he seems. The former oilman reacted with cocky ignorance a couple of weeks ago when a reporter informed him that gas was barreling toward $4 a gallon.

If only they could see things as the president does. Bush, who used his family connections to avoid Vietnam, told troops serving in Afghanistan on Thursday that he is “a little envious” of their adventure there, saying it was “in some ways romantic.”

Tags: he, laughs, all, on, the way, to, the, bank

Rebate Letters To Cost 42 million

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:10:27 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: Oh shut the f*** up and just get the check out in the mail will ya??

Clip Source: www.sfgate.com

At a cost of nearly $42 million, the IRS wants you to know: Your check is almost in the mail.

That works out to about 32 cents to print, process and mail each letter. It doesn't include the tab for another round of mailings planned for those who didn't file tax returns last year but may still qualify for a rebate.

Democrats accused the Bush administration of wasting time and postage.

"There are countless better uses for $42 million than a self-congratulatory mailer that gives the president a pat on the back for an idea that wasn't even his," Sen. Charles Schumer said Friday, arguing the IRS could more effectively spend the money to catch tax cheats.

Keith Hennessey, director of the president's National Economic Council, said the letters are being sent to explain how the tax rebates will work.

Tags: the, only, damn, thing, you, ever, did, for me, you asshole

Time Out Of Mind

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:37:11 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

IN 1784, Benjamin Franklin composed a satire, “Essay on Daylight Saving,” proposing a law that would oblige Parisians to get up an hour earlier in summer. By putting the daylight to better use, he reasoned, they’d save a good deal of money — 96 million livres tournois — that might otherwise go to buying candles.

The brain creates its own time, and it is this inner time, not clock time, that guides our actions.

Inner time is linked to activity.

Time seems to expand when our senses are aroused

The brain’s inclination to distort time is one reason we so often feel we have too little of it

Who among us has not been locked out of an apartment or lost a wallet when in a great hurry?

The remedy is to liberate ourselves from Franklin’s equation. Time is not money but “the element in which we exist,” as Joyce Carol Oates put it more than two decades ago (in a relatively leisurely era). “We are either borne along by it or drowned in it.”

Tags: i, make, time, for, the, important, things

If A Tree's Owner Falls . . .

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 09:45:22 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: "That's how big, bad business plays. Put the loopholes and fine print and asterisks into law. And when you can't make the rules, break them -- or break the rule makers."

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

When John D. Rockefeller visited the redwoods nearly 80 years ago, he saw a natural treasure. He put up $2 million to spare 10,000 acres. Wheeler-dealer Charles Hurwitz saw a different kind of treasure. In a 1986 hostile takeover -- financial-speak for date rape -- his firm, Maxxam, got Pacific Lumber for nearly $900 million, financed by junk bonds.

The thunder of clear-cutting roused enviros and politicians. Twelve years of wrangling ended in 1999 with the Headwaters forest -- 7,500 acres of ancient redwood "cathedrals" in public hands -- new rules on logging the other 210,000 acres and a government check for nearly half a billion bucks in Hurwitz's corporate wallet.

Did he use it to pay down Pacific Lumber's humongous debt? No. He still owes almost as much on it as he did 22 years ago.

When the rules don't suit him, he's found ways around them.

Tags: the, big, boys, play

The Only Way To True Peace

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 23:50:52 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: "But we’ve traded the security, which God intended and Jesus revealed, for a pact with the devil offering protection through guns and bombs, walls and separation. This hostility-based mode of relationships, rooted in fear, greed and blame, is managed in today’s world by nation states and corporations. They perpetuate history’s greatest protection racket, the false promise of protection from our enemies for the price of our unquestioned loyalty, blind support of military force and uninterrupted shopping at the mall."

Clip Source: www.opednews.com

I truly believe that America’s churches could turn the world toward peace if every church lived and taught as Jesus lived and taught.

How to deal with people who threaten us (in the serious, hard cases called enemies), individually and collectively, is the most difficult and enduring question of human existence. Do we overpower and destroy them by whatever means necessary? Do we flee from them in fear? Or is there another way, a third way, of dealing with seriously threatening people? According to Jesus, there is. He lived and taught another way, the way of non-violence, and the church could well be expected to understand and demonstrate that way with its own life and teaching. But does it? Has it, over the centuries, shown anything better than the fight or flight responses to enemies?

Tags: if, you, live, by, the, sword

Lame Duck Budget

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:27:34 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: hahahahahahaha, King George is gonna balance the budget, huh?

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

President Bush’s 2009 budget is a grim guided tour through his misplaced priorities, failed fiscal policies and the disastrous legacy that he will leave for the next president. And even that requires you to accept the White House’s optimistic accounting, which seven years of experience tells us would be foolish in the extreme.

What will definitely outlast Mr. Bush for years to come are big deficits, a military so battered by the Iraq war that it will take hundreds of billions of dollars to repair it and stunted social programs that have been squeezed to pay for Mr. Bush’s misguided military adventure and his misguided tax cuts for the wealthy.

The president claimed on Monday that his plan would put the country on the path to balancing the budget by 2012. That is nonsense

Mr. Bush, of course, inherited a surplus from the Clinton administration, which he quickly used up on his tax cuts.

Tags: the, first, sip, of, kool, aid, tastes, great

What Is Like To Be Beautiful?

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 23:07:50 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: I've often wondered what it felt like to be so beautiful that people look at you with admiration, heads turn, and I've wondered about the satisfaction that must come from looking in the mirror. I do know this: Physical beauty fades.

Clip Source: www.evanbailyn.com

Even though most of us recognize the fallacy of placing too great a value on appearance, our desire for physical beauty is so ingrained in us that we cannot disassociate ourselves from it. Why is physical beauty so important?

I discard the easy answer that the media has branded the idea on our minds. While magazines and television certainly heighten our consciousness of looks, they are merely harping on insecurities that already exist. Our desire for physical beauty, while shaped and polished by the superficial media culture, actually has deeper roots in who we are.

Because of the natural role of appearance in human courtship, I can say with certainty that physical beauty does have some objective importance. However, this conclusion does not justify our society’s obsession with looks, for appearance is only the first layer of attractiveness.

Tags: time, is, the, great, equalizer

We Can't Handle The Truth

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:02:38 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: "They don’t mention that we spend almost a trillion dollars a year on a protracted war in Iraq, money that we must borrow from China and Japan. We spend 51% of our discretionary budget on our military. No nation on the globe spends more than 6%. Maybe this could be a reason our economy is faltering?"

Clip Source: www.opednews.com

When this nation finds itself between two paths, republic or empire, we are slowly realizing that we have no moral compass to find our way home.

Sometimes the road has been difficult and we have made many mistakes as a nation.

There have been times when we as a people have seemingly lost our way, succumbing to excess and greed. We have interfered with other nation’s right of self-determination when it was in our own interests to do so.

At this point in time, America seems to be lost. We engage in “faith-based principles” instead of the rule of law. No longer are the principles and the law, as stated in our constitution, being followed

We have evolved a system of corporate influence in Washington that is unparalleled.

We are engaged in a war in Iraq that is costing us $970,000,000 a day. Our trade deficit is roughly $800 Billion dollars.

Why aren’t Americans demanding answers from the people that seek the highest office in this land?

Tags: the, way, and, the light

A Dying Breed

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:54:32 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: This REALLY concerns me. I watched a video called "The Future of Food" a few years back and my concerns are only growing. Granted, I'm just a good old coal miner's daughter from WV baby, and no scientist for sure, but I've got enough people smarts to know that this isn't good.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

GERSHOM MUGIRA COMES from a long line of cattle-keepers. His people, the Bahima, are thought to have migrated into the hilly grasslands of western Uganda more than a thousand years ago, alongside a hardy breed of longhorns known as the Ankole. For centuries, man and beast subsisted there in a tight symbiotic embrace.

In recent decades, global trade, sophisticated marketing, artificial insemination and the demands of agricultural economics have transformed the Holstein into the world’s predominant dairy breed. Indigenous animals like East Africa’s sinewy Ankole, the product of centuries of selection for traits adapted to harsh conditions, are struggling to compete with foreign imports bred for maximal production. This worries some scientists. The world’s food supply is increasingly dependent on a small and narrowing list of highly engineered breeds: the Holstein, the Large White pig and the Rhode Island Red and Leghorn chickens.

Tags: please, watch, the, future, of food

A Chance To Walk On The Wild Side

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:35:32 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

In some quarters, the needled look, or even its approximation, the temporary press-on tattoo, still sends a subversive message, doubtless part of its appeal. For the young, or sometimes the not so young, a new proliferation of decal-like ink transfer designs offer a groovier-than-thou form of self-customization — and a chance to walk on the wild side, if only for a night.

The cost varies, from about $10 for a packet of do-it-yourself ink transfers, to several thousand dollars for a custom design applied by a pro.

Mock tattoos, like the authentic designs that inspire them, are fast becoming a pop culture staple, cropping up in films and on the playing field, in advertising campaigns and on the pages of fashion magazines.

Unlike the genuine versions, which may mark the wearer as a misfit for all time, the water-based paints of mock tattoos can be washed off at will.

Tags: hey, babe, take, a, walk, on, the, wild, side

Women Are Never Front Runners

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 13:26:55 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: "If the lawyer described above had been just as charismatic but named, say, Achola Obama instead of Barack Obama, her goose would have been cooked long ago"

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

THE woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father — in this race-conscious country, she is considered black — she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity.

Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth?

If you answered no to either question, you’re not alone. Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy.

Tags: the, truth, hurts

The Downside Of Living Longer

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 19:13:05 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: Does the alternative stink?

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

CHICAGO — John Holloway received a diagnosis of AIDS nearly two decades ago, when the disease was a speedy death sentence and treatment a distant dream.

Yet at 59 he is alive, thanks to a cocktail of drugs that changed the course of an epidemic.

The drugs gave Mr. Holloway back his future.

But at what cost?

That is the question, heretical to some, that is now being voiced by scientists, doctors and patients encountering a constellation of ailments showing up prematurely or in disproportionate numbers among the first wave of AIDS survivors to reach late middle age.

Instead, experts are coming to believe that the immune system and organs of long-term survivors took an irreversible beating before the advent of lifesaving drugs and that those very drugs then produced additional complications because of their toxicity — a one-two punch.

Tags: is, the, cost, too, high

Finding Redemption

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 16:43:24 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks:
Now, at age 49, dressed in sensible shoes and a dark polo shirt, he is back on the streets of skid row -- this time as a lawyer for the kind of person he once was. "

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

Legal aid lawyer Louis Rafti was leading a group of law students on a tour of skid row when he saw it in the corner of a homeless shelter.

The cot. The very one, he could swear it was, that he had slept on during his last night on the row a few years before.

Rafti froze. He didn't say a word, but a sense of wonder overwhelmed him.

Wonder that he did not have a crack pipe in his hand. Or a needle in his arm. That he had a home, a job, a life.

These days, Rafti is a pugnacious housing rights lawyer for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, known for his take-no-prisoners advocacy on behalf of the poor and disabled.

What many of his clients and colleagues don't know is that until six years ago, Rafti was a homeless cocaine addict. He contracted HIV from dirty needles. He watched friends die. He would get cleaned up, only to relapse and return to the streets.

Tags: the, truth, will, set, you, free