Clipmarks | enbar's Comments

40 Unusual Websites you should Bookmark

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 15:03:10 GMT

clipped by: tabsey

If you’re a long time makeuseof reader, at one point or another you may have seen several of these websites before. We have covered lots of lists and round-ups but this one is quite different: it lists undiscovered webservices that are original, rather unique, unusual, useful, free, and must-be bookmarked type. You won’t find any collaboration, storage or ToDo service here. Enjoy!

1. BugMeNot - instantly get disposable login details for any popular website that forces you to register.

2. DailyLit - read your favorite books by email (on your PC, mobile, etc.).

3. FranceRadio - neat MP3 Search Engine that lets you Find, Play and Download favorite MP3s for FREE.

4. Google SMS - provides mobile users with a quick access (via SMS) to a wide range of practical information and tools (i.e. business listings (pizzerias, shops, etc.), weather, movie listings, driving directions, currency converter and lots more.

Tags: computers

Fred Phelps's organization (the "God Hates Fags" pastor) has decided God hates Jews, too

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:55:50 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: I find this choice of photo pretty curious. "Some Jews Will Repent" is a pretty tame slogan compared to the other ones quoted in the article, such as "Rabbis Rape Kids" and "God Hates Jews."

Clip Source: www.usatoday.com

Anti-gay church sets its sights on Jews

In Washington, Margie Phelps balanced several signs targeting Jews, Israel and the Obama administration. One read "Rabbis Rape Kids," another said "God Hates Jews." Margie Phelps' T-shirt read "Jews Killed Jesus." She argued with men and women passing by, warning them that God will soon send the Jews to hell.

"I don't care what you claim, chosen wise," she said. "Obedience is the standard."

Taking a break from yelling at passersby and singing homophobic lyrics to the tune of the Jewish celebratory song "Hava Nagila," Margie Phelps explained the change in tactic. "We've protested this nation's love of f**s for 20 years," she said. "And Jews have been carrying the water for the homosexual agenda."

Westboro members targeted several Jewish organizations last month on a statewide tour of New Jersey. Their visit to Washington included a protest in front of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Tags: christianity, disturbing, evangelicalism, extremism, judaism, news, pluralism, religion, rels327

Hanged Census Worker likely Insurance Fraud/Suicide

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:20:40 GMT

clipped by: billpar
clipper's remarks: There were no defensive wounds on Bill Sparkman's body, and while his hands were bound with duct tape, they still were somewhat mobile, suggesting he could have manipulated the rope, the officials said. He was found hanging from the tree yet was in contact with the ground.

Clip Source: www.google.com

WASHINGTON — Investigators trying to solve the mystery of a census taker found hanging from a tree with the word "fed" scrawled on his chest are examining whether he manipulated the scene in order to conceal a suicide and make a life insurance claim possible for his son, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.

Two law enforcement officials, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said investigators were trying to determine whether Bill Sparkman committed suicide but altered the scene to make it look like a homicide, allowing his son to collect.

Life insurance policies typically do not cover suicides within a certain time period after the policy begins.

law enforcement officials

were looking closely at that possibility and increasingly doubted he was killed because of his government job, as was first feared.

Tags: news, politics

Evangelical oil company drilling in Israel

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 03:23:09 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: Zion Oil, owned by a wealthy American "Christian Zionist" evangelical, has gone public and is drilling for oil in Israel, guided by an idiosyncratic interpretation of prophecies from Deuteronomy, Ezekiel and elsewhere.

Clip Source: blogs.salon.com

Zion Oil Opens AMEX for 2007

President claims spiritual beliefs “have been confirmed by the science”

From dBusiness:

NEW YORK -- Eugene A. Soltero, Chief Executive Officer of Zion Oil & Gas, Inc., of Dallas, Texas and Caesarea, Israel, announced today that the company has issued 436,907 shares of common stock in the first round of its initial public offering. Mr. Soltero and Richard Rinberg, Zion’s President, rang the AMEX opening bell today to commence trading as the first new listing of 2007. Zion’s ticker symbol is “ZN.” Zion’s offering is being underwritten on a best efforts basis by Network 1 Financial Securities, Inc. of Red Bank, New Jersey. The shares were issued at $7 per share, and the amount raised in this initial round was $3,058,349.

Zion Oil & Gas, as readers of this blog may recall, was founded by an American businessman named John Brown, who believes that the Bible prophesises that he personally will be the man to discover huge oil reserves in Israel. Brown also claims that that Bible contains the information needed to find the oil; Christian Zionist supremo Hal Lindsey agreed, and

[Genesis 49] predicts [Jacob’s] great blessing [to Joseph] will come from "the deep that lies beneath" his land. And specifically on "crown of his head." The land that was allotted to Joseph's two sons forms the profile of a man's head.

Now listen to another prophecy about the blessing of another of Jacob's sons whose land adjoins Joseph's.

Moses proclaimed blessings on Jacob's sons just before he died. He predicted concerning Asher:

Asher is most blessed of sons; let him be favored by his brothers, and let him dip his foot in OIL.

What Lindsey didn’t mention when puffing the company (and which was revealed exclusively on this blog), was that his cousin Ralph DeVore was a major shareholder. However, a few months later DeVore left Zion in acrimonious circumstances, and Hal has been quiet about the subject since then.

Tags: energy, religion, weird, christianity, evangelicalism

Human Body Halloween

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 03:59:47 GMT

clipped by: clipette
clipper's remarks: Adam and I saw Bodies: The Exhibition and decided to be bodies for Halloween. The little skeleton guy in the background wasn't too thrilled about having his picture taken.

Clip Source: flickr.com

Tags: body, organs, halloween, internal organs, anatomy

Kent Couch, the amazing balloon-and-lawn-chair pilot (July 2008)

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:51:01 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: I'm clipping this because until today I thought this was an urban legend. Apparently a guy pulled it off in 1982 too. Years on the Internet has made me doubt everything.

Clip Source: news.sky.com

US Man Flies By Party Balloons

An American has flown 235 miles on a garden chair using 150 helium-filled party balloons to lift him.

Kent Couch rose into the sky from his home in Oregon, clutching a mug of coffee,

He travelled around 20mph and nine hours later ended his journey in Idaho after shooting some of the balloons with a ball-bearing gun.

Mr Couch, who navigated with a GPS satellite-guided tracking device, said: "If I had the time and money and people, I'd do this every weekend."

"Things just look different from up there. You've moving so slowly. The best thing is the peace, the serenity.

"You can hear a dog bark at 15,000 feet.

Couch was inspired by a TV show about the 1982 garden chair flight over Los Angeles by truck driver Larry Walters, who gained folk hero fame but was fined £750 for violating air traffic rules.

Tags: aviation, cool, news, random_sh!t

Glenn Greenwald comments on Sue Myrick's calls for an investigation of CAIR

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:18:29 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: I don't know the full context of this, but it's something I'd like to learn more about.

Clip Source: www.salon.com

Glenn Greenwald

GOP House members call for investigation of Muslim political activity

A group of House Republicans is calling for an investigation into whether a leading American Muslim advocacy group tried to "spy" on congressional offices by placing interns on key security committees.

Rep. Sue Myrick, North Carolina Republican, cited an internal January 2007 memo in which the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) discussed placing Muslim interns on Capitol Hill to "focus on influencing congressmen responsible for policy that directly impacts the American Muslim community."

That's consistent with what virtually every political advocacy group in the nation does; it's normally called activism and democracy. But because, in this case, it's a group of Muslims who are doing this, these House Republicans are depicting it as some sort of nefarious espionage plot against the U.S. that demands a criminal investigation.

Tags: activism, conservatives, gwot, islam, pluralism, politics, possible_blog_post, religion

Top 10 Reasons Gay Marriage Should Be Illegal

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 04:47:34 GMT

clipped by: OhBlaDi

Clip Source: stopgeek.com

Top 10 Reasons Gay Marriage Should Be Illegal

12 Nov, 2006 General, -Funneh

Top Ten Reasons to Make Gay Marriage Illegal

01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

03) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

04) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all like many of the principles on which this great country was founded; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of marriages like Britney Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

06) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.

07) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

08) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.

09) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans. .

Tags: politics, idiots, gay marriage

David Grann, "Trial by Fire: Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?" (on Todd Willingham's execution, Feb. 2005), The New Yorker (Sept. 7, 2009)

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:55:06 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: A damning piece by The New Yorker on the story of Todd Willingham. Willingham was executed in 2005 for triple homicide after being convicted of killing his three children by setting their room on fire. Texas officials ignored reports by fire scientists, whose investigations showed that there had been no solid evidence that the fire was arson. The arson investigators who testified in Willingham's case relied on traditional methods whose scientific validity had long ago been disproven, and the parole board apparently did not even bother to read the exonerating information provided to them by Willingham's lawyer.

Clip Source: www.newyorker.com

Trial by Fire

Did Texas execute an innocent man?

by David Grann

In mid-August, the noted fire scientist Craig Beyler, who was hired by the commission, completed his investigation. In a scathing report, he concluded that investigators in the Willingham case had no scientific basis for claiming that the fire was arson, ignored evidence that contradicted their theory, had no comprehension of flashover and fire dynamics, relied on discredited folklore, and failed to eliminate potential accidental or alternative causes of the fire. He said that Vasquez’s approach seemed to deny “rational reasoning” and was more “characteristic of mystics or psychics.” What’s more, Beyler determined that the investigation violated, as he put it to me, “not only the standards of today but even of the time period.”

Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the “execution of a legally and factually innocent person.”

Tags: capital_punishment, crime, death_penalty, investigative_journalism, law

Right, so tell me again how the "free market" is the best way to manage health-care delivery

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:10:12 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: An editorial from 2007 shows how research into three promising anticancer drugs has been abandoned. The reason is that the compounds on which the drugs are based cannot be patented (melatonin, for example), which means that pharma companies are unlikely to turn a profit. Understandable, from the perspective of the pharma companies, but unconscionable, from the perspective of cancer patients.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Patents Over Patients

By RALPH W. MOSS

WE could make faster progress against cancer by changing the way drugs are developed. In the current system, if a promising compound can’t be patented, it is highly unlikely ever to make it to market — no matter how well it performs in the laboratory. The development of new cancer drugs is crippled as a result.

Early this year, another readily available industrial chemical, dichloroacetate, was found by researchers at the University of Alberta to shrink tumors in laboratory animals by up to 75 percent. However, as a university news release explained, dichloroacetate is not patentable, and the lead researcher is concerned that it may be difficult to find funding from private investors to test the chemical. So the university is soliciting public donations to finance a clinical trial.

Potential anticancer drugs should be judged on their scientific merit, not on their patentability.

Tags: economics, healthcare, medicine, opinion, research, science

"Why I threw the shoe," by Muntazer al-Zaidi

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:06:32 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: From the piece: "When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, George Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora."

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Why I threw the shoe

Muntazer al-Zaidi

We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shia would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ. This despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than a decade.

Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. But the invasion divided brother from brother, neighbour from neighbour. It turned our homes into funeral tents.

I am not a hero. But I have a point of view. I have a stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated; and to see my Baghdad burned, my people killed.

I travelled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain of the victims, and heard with my own ears the screams of the orphans and the bereaved. And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I was powerless.

Tags: bush, iraq, opinion, violence, war

Why good teachers quit (hint: it's not just "burnout")

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:36:07 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: This is a point I've made over and over again -- we live in a society that does not value education, period. We might pay lip service to the work teachers do, but at the same time, Americans tend to look down on teaching as a profession for "nice" people without a lot of ambition. They're not respected by students, by parents, by school administrators, or by the culture at large, and teachers are frequently used as convenient scapegoats for a whole range of societal failures. No wonder good people decide not to stay.

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Schools Need Teachers Like Me. I Just Can't Stay.

So why am I leaving?

When people ask, I tend to cite the usual suspect -- burnout. I just couldn't take it anymore, I explain.

Nationally, half of all new teachers leave the profession within five years, and in urban schools, especially the much-lauded "no excuses" charter schools, turnover is often much higher.

But there is more to those numbers than "burnout."

Another friend describes her struggle to make peace with the fact that a portion of the American public sees teaching as a second-rate profession. "I want to be able to do big things and be recognized for them," she says. "In the world we live in, teaching doesn't cut it."

I often feel the same way. Teaching is a grueling job, and without the kind of social recognition that accompanies professions such as medicine and law, it is even harder for ambitious young people like me to stick with it.

We are not used to feeling consistently defeated and systemically undervalued.

Tags: autobiography, commentary, education, opinion, schools, social_justice, teaching, via:friendfeed

The latest on Rifqa Bary, from the Orlando Sentinel (Sept. 4, 2009)

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:33:45 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: It appears that the legal issues surrounding Rifqa Bary's situation are getting more and more complicated. The judge has so far been dealing only with procedural questions. For the time being, most of the relevant documents are sealed, the attorneys are under a gag order, and the seventeen-year-old Bary, who is insisting on staying in Florida (her parents want her to return home to Ohio), remains in foster care under the guardianship of the state of Florida. In my opinion, the child's lawyers have been making some very unscrupulous and inflammatory public statements, such as the claim that the parents' Columbus mosque is a "haven for Islamic terrorists" (law enforcement officials say there is no evidence for this). From the perspective of the parents, this is a matter of family law; for their opponents, it's about Christianity versus Islam.

Clip Source: www.orlandosentinel.com

Fathima Rifqa Bary: Judge keeps girl in Florida, seals investigative findings

After sealing findings of a state investigation into Fathima Rifqa Bary, Circuit Judge Daniel Dawson on Thursday decided to keep the 17-year-old girl in Florida while putting the case into mediation

For an hour and a half Thursday, lawyers argued about how to handle the legal battle that has sprung up around Fathima Rifqa Bary, the tiny 17-year-old who ran away from her Muslim home in Ohio to the shelter of Christian evangelists in Orlando.

Never once, though, did they raise the core issue: Should she be returned to her parents?

They had ammunition to back up their argument: a report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement that says her family poses no threat to her.

In Columbus, the Franklin County Department of Children Services has come to the same conclusion.

Tags: christianity, family, islam, law, news, possible_blog_post, religion, rifqa_bary

Opponents of U.S. healthcare reform take on... the U.K.'s National Health Service

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 04:36:28 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: This is a good example of what happens when a political culture develops in which true facts no longer matter. In order to discredit the current plans for health-care reform, opponents are trying to tar it with the National Health Service's failures. Only problem is, most of the failures they describe are made up. I kind of like the super-glue story, though. I mean, hell, I pay for a group dental plan through my job, and my wife needs an implant, and I'm seriously considering a second mortgage to pay for it. And I have insurance. Somehow, these supposed British horror stories haven't convinced yet me that our current system is so wonderful that we shouldn't change it. Remember: the U.K. has the 18th-ranked healthcare system in the world; the U.S. has the 37th; and we spend plenty more than they do.

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

'Evil and Orwellian' – America's right turns its fire on NHS

Slickly produced television advertisements trumpet the alleged failures of the NHS's 61-year tradition of tax-funded healthcare. To the dismay of British healthcare professionals, US critics have accused the service of putting an "Orwellian" financial cap on the value on human life, of allowing elderly people to die untreated and, in one case, for driving a despairing dental patient to mend his teeth with superglue.

On Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel, the conservative commentator Sean Hannity recently alighted upon the case of Gordon Cook, a security manager from Merseyside, who used superglue to stick a loose crown into his gum because he was unable to find an NHS dentist. The cautionary tale, which was based on a Daily Mail report from 2006, prompted Hannity to warn his viewers: "If the Democrats have their way, get your superglue ready."

Tags: conservatives, heathcare, news, politics, ridiculousness, uk

Nick Cave on Mark: Jesus' anger, loneliness, and desperation

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:13:20 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: Nick Cave describes his fascination with and attraction to Mark in very sophisticated terms, identifying as key elements of Marcan theology a kind of pressured narrative urgency, a constant undercurrent of conflict, the isolation and anger that seem to characterize Jesus' own inner life, hopeless incomprehension on the part of his own family and followers, a looming, desperate awareness of the cross, and the restless activity of Jesus' "jewel-like imagination." Seen at Christopher Cocca's blog (bit.ly/11zhE6).

Clip Source: www.meetatthegate.com

Nick Cave
Writer

Gateposts:
1

On The Gospel According To Mark

He enters a wilderness of the soul, where all the outpourings of His brilliant, jewel-like imagination are in turns misunderstood, rebuffed, ignored, mocked and vilified and would eventually be the death of Him. Even His disciples, who we would hope would absorb some of Christ's brilliance, seem to be in a perpetual fog of misunderstanding, following Christ from scene to scene, with little or no comprehension of what is going on around them. So much of the frustration and anger that seems at times to almost consume Christ is directed at His disciples and it is against their persistent ignorance that Christ's isolation seems at its most complete

Throughout Mark, Christ is in deep conflict with the world He is trying to save, and the sense of aloneness that surrounds Him is at times unbearably intense. Christ's last howl from the cross is to a God He believes has forsaken Him, 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.'

Tags: bible, christianity, cool, essays, literature, mark, music, punk, religion, theology