Clipmarks | hitchhiker08's Comments

Pollster.com: Electoral Vote Map, 9-29

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:19:12 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: "Obama's lead is widening basically everywhere, except PA and FL. He continues to maintain a lead in solid electoral votes." Somewhat satisfying, because the primary-days pitch was that O couldn't win big states. I count, though (check me here), in states with 10 or more votes: McCain, 6; Obama, 10; toss-up, 5.

Clip Source: www.pollster.com

LCG Electoral Vote Map

Below is our updated map. Obama's lead is widening basically everywhere, except PA and FL. He continues to maintain a lead in solid electoral votes.

Tags: election, electoral votes, politics

12 Greek Words You Should Know

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:01:36 GMT

clipped by: hitchhiker08

Clip Source: www.dailywritingtips.com

12 Greek Words You Should Know

Along with Latin, Greek is probably the language that most influenced other languages around the world. Many English words derive directly from Greek ones

knowing their origin and meaning is important.

1. Acme

The highest point of a structure.

2. Acropolis

Acro means edge or extremity, while polis means city.

The word Acropolis is commonly associated with Greece’s capital Athens

3. Agora

was an open market place, present in most cities of the ancient Greece.

4. Anathema

a noun and it means a formal ban

riginal Greek meaning for this word was “something offered to the gods.”

5. Anemia

a condition characterized by a qualitative or quantitative deficiency of the red blood cells (or of the hemoglobin)

6. Ethos

accustomed place

7. Dogma

belief or set of principles held by a religion,

8. Eureka

is used to celebrate a discovery

9. Genesis

means birth or origin

10. Phobia

phobia is a fear

11. Plethora

when you go beyond what is needed or appropriate

12. Kudos

means fame or glory

Tags: greek, language, english

Sarah Palin Can't Name a Newspaper She Reads

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:00:51 GMT

clipped by: rmowery
clipper's remarks: WTF - this just proves she is clueless. Between her and McCain, it is like tweedle-dee and tweedle-dumb.

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

Sarah Palin Can't Name a Newspaper She Reads

[Video]

Tags: sarah palin, mccain, curic, newspaper

I Can't Believe I Ate Ants For You

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:58:11 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: Deeply.

Clip Source: www.craigslist.org

I can't believe I ate ants for you - w4m

When you had a small group over for bbq at your place I pretended I didn't notice the tortilla chips had ants all over them and ate them anyway. I didn't want to cause a scene in front of your friends and make them question the sanitary quality of the food they were about to eat. Now that I have gotten absolutely nowhere with you I deeply regret this decision.

Insane Indian Human Powered Ferris Wheel

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:15:07 GMT

clipped by: LoPhatt
clipper's remarks: I think I'll wait...

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

How do you explain to a Palestinian child he must ration his drinking water so an Israeli can swim?

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:20:47 GMT

clipped by: lifecyce1898

Clip Source: english.pnn.ps

How do you explain to a young Palestinian that his father is being kept in Israeli jail because he was born Palestinian? How do you explain to a young Palestinian that his sibling was shot because he or she wanted to look out of the window? How do you explain to a young Palestinian that he has to ration his drinking water so an Israeli youngster can swim? How do you explain to a young Palestinian that all of the countries in the world are against you because you keep saying no to occupation, corruption and imperialism?

One-third of all the world's wealth is in the USA

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:32:29 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Although North America has only 6% of the world adult population, it accounts for 34% of household wealth. Read the text below the graph for details.

Clip Source: www.gizmag.com

How the world's wealth is distributed

The most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken

The UNU-WIDER study is the first of its kind to cover all countries in the world and all major components of household wealth, including financial assets and debts, land, buildings and other tangible property.

Wealth is heavily concentrated in North America, Europe, and high income Asia-Pacific countries. People in these countries collectively hold almost 90% of total world wealth. (Figure 2: Regional Wealth Shares) Although North America has only 6% of the world adult population, it accounts for 34% of household wealth. Europe and high income Asia-Pacific countries also own disproportionate amounts of wealth. In contrast, the overall share of wealth owned by people in Africa, China, India, and other lower income countries in Asia is considerably less than their population share, sometimes by a factor of more than ten.

Tags: wealth, economy

Child bodies found in freezer

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:15:54 GMT

clipped by: kkcapricorn
clipper's remarks: What kind of comment can I possibly make about such an obscene tragedy?
~~~~
She is going to jail for a long time and will live with women, many of whom likely have children of their own -- in foster care(?). That about sums it up.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Police in the US state of Maryland say they have found the frozen bodies of two children in the freezer of a house in Calvert County.

A 43-year-old woman told police the children were her adopted daughters and had been frozen since February

The authorities visited the house, in Lusby, on Saturday to investigate reports of abuse against a third child, a seven-year-old girl, who showed "signs of extreme abuse and neglect", the sheriff's department said.

When police arrived at her house to look for evidence of the alleged abuse, they found the children's remains in a chest-style freezer.

Police confirmed that the woman had adopted three children but that they had not yet been able to examine and identify the bodies.

The woman has been charged with first degree child abuse and is being held in a county jail without bail.

Tags: child abuse

A Cure For Greed

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:53:43 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

If greed is to blame, the question is whether we can line up a reasonable array of alternative incentives — and disincentives — to do away with greed for good.

This will be no easy task. From populist opprobrium to elitist disdain — standard social behavioral devices have proved unable to dent humanity’s greedy nature.

Even religion’s not insubstantial powers of persuasion (think Hell) and coercion (think Inquisition) have proved insufficient to blot out this insidious sin.

Capitalism, in all its cleverness, decided that what you can’t beat, you should use. It worked to harness greed.

Yet despite the consistent failure to temper our greedy nature, I still have hopes

That piece is fear.

My suggestion, then, is to put fear back in the picture. When the banker who loses his or her bank also loses his or her shirt, greed will be tempered. At least for a while.

Istanbul skyline gets woman's touch

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 04:09:46 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

When I met designer Zeynep Fadillioglu, she was giving instructions to her team of architects on the installation of a cutting-edge water feature.

The metal sphere created by British designer William Pye will dominate the entrance of the Sakirin Mosque.

"Designing everything we tried to be contemporary, but not, let's say, too futuristic or avant garde," Ms Fadillioglu says.

"We don't want the public to reject the place. We want the public to feel part of the place, rather than watching it as an incredible art object. I think it should be their own place."

We wanted to go with the flow of Islam, while at the same time creating something contemporary

The dome is one of many that make Istanbul's skyline special

"I think this mosque has all the Western and Eastern values nicely blended.

Tags: mosque, architecture, turkey

Put $700 billion in the bag and no one gets hurt

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 03:54:58 GMT

clipped by: Maxwell_Smart

Clip Source: www.informationclearinghouse.info

The situation reminds me of a portion of the Douglas Adams novel "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy," in which the leaders of the planet Golgafrincham decided to get rid of the least useful third of their population. This was accomplished by making up a story about a giant space goat coming to eat their planet and convincing all of the people they wanted to get rid of to board Ark-B, the first of three giant spaceships that would take them all to a new planet. The other two-thirds of the population, of course, did not follow.

The way that Paulson and Bernanke have described the problem, I cannot shake the feeling that my wife, daughter and I are being told to board Ark-B. Tell me again what the problem is that is so severe that it justifies taking $2,000 from every man, woman and child in the country?

I am insulted that they think they can scare the money out of me without offering a good explanation.

Palin Is Ready? Please.

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:27:27 GMT

clipped by: hitchhiker08
clipper's remarks: Fareed Zakaria - plain n simply speakin' Palin

Clip Source: www.newsweek.com

Palin Is Ready? Please.

McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, that is simply not true.

Fareed Zakaria

Will someone please put out of her agony?

CBS's questioned her in her trademark sympathetic style. It didn't help. When asked how living in the state closest to gave her foreign-policy experience, Palin responded thus:

"It's very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America. Where—where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to—to our state."

Clip Source: www.newsweek.com

Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska.

Tags: sarah palin, mccain, fareed zakaria, time, vp, us

The Dinosaurs Dancefloor

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 18:19:41 GMT

clipped by: hitchhiker08
clipper's remarks: Wow!

Clip Source: fogonazos2.blogspot.com

Imagine a wall with more than 5,000 dinosaur tracks: they call it the dinosaurs dancefloor

In 1994, while walking around a cement factory in southern Bolivia, Klaus Schütt discovered a limestone wall with a shear size of 25'000 square meters literally covered by dinosaur tracks. A few years later, in 1998, a scientific team lead by Swiss paleontologist Christian Meyer investigated the wall, and proved it was "the largest site of dinosaur tracks found so far".

There are more than 5,000 tracks of 294 different dinosaurs made during the second half of the Cretaceous period.

There is such an impressive amount of tracks that some of the researchers said this place seemed to be a dinosaurs’ dancefloor.

Perhaps, the most special track is a 347 meters footpath, the longest dinosaur trackway ever known, made by a baby Tyrannosaurus rex nicknamed “Johnny Wallker” by researchers.

Tags: bolivia, dinosaur, pre-historic, jurassic, bizarre, discovery

WaMu CEO bags $13M after 18 days on the job

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 01:03:45 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Largest bank failure in history gives new CEO a pretty good year.

Clip Source: www.dailykos.com

WaMu CEO Could Bag $13 Million After 18 Days on the Job

While Bloomberg this morning is reporting that Washington Mutual's holding company has filed for bankruptcy, one clear winner emerged from the financial giant's meltdown.

Meet Alan Fishman, Washington Mutual's CEO, who's been on the job less than three weeks:

As should be no surprise, he signed a juicy contract: a $7.5 million signing bonus and a lump-sum payment for severance that comes to $6.15 million. In other words, if he leaves the company, he'll walk away with $13.65 million.

That's a pretty good deal in light of the fact that WaMu is the biggest bank collapse ever.

And Wall Street wonders why the peasants are getting a tad restless.

Tags: wamu, economy, ceo

Anonymity online can turn nice people nasty

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 23:21:05 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

One minute, they’re nice, normal people. The next, they’re frothing at the mouse.

“It’s mind-boggling the things people will say and even the things I will say,” says Catherine McIntyre, a 38-year-old medical billing specialist from Houston. “People who’d never say something horrible in real life will do it again and again and again online. It’s like the behavior of crowds, or those mass beatings where no one gets blamed because everyone’s at fault.”

Hello. You have reached the split personality zone. Press 1 to melt down. Press 2 to hang up and act like a normal person again.

not only have we developed an abrupt, abbreviated way to chat (IMHO), but our technological advances have spawned new psychological terms such as “online disinhibition effect” to explain our tendency to open up — in both good ways and bad — when we’re sitting in front of a screen.

Tags: online, internet, social, social networking, behavior