Clipmarks | jleealex's Comments

NS's Anti-tobacco legislation will be strongest in Canada as of December 1, 2006

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 02:01:40 GMT

clipped by: TheCatWhisperer
clipper's remarks: YAY!!!!

Starting Dec 1, 2006, smoking is one of them.

The new Nova Scotia smoking legislation means smoking will no longer be allowed in bars and restaurants, on restaurant and bar patios, and at events held in private clubs, community centres, arenas and fire halls, to name a few. Workplace smoking rooms will be eliminated too. These amendments to the provincial Smoke-Free Places Act make Nova Scotia’s legislation the strongest in Canada. The goal - to protect Nova Scotians from tobacco smoke.

Nova Scotians have asked for a 100 per cent ban – and that’s what they’re getting. This is just one part of the province’s Tobacco Control Strategy.

For more information on the Smoke Free Places Act,
please call 1-800-565-3611.

Smokers’ Helpline 1-877-513-5333
To read more about the act click here (PDF)

Tags: smoking, tobacco, anti-smoking, health, nova scotia, canada, legislation

Schools Offer Cars For Good Attendance

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 21:49:09 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad
clipper's remarks: WTF! This really boggles my mind!

What next, a motorcycle or trip to Europe just for getting out of bed?

Clip Source: www.newsvine.com

Schools Offer Cars for Good Attendance

Thu Nov 30, 2006 2:04 PM EST

CASPER, WYO. — Sixteen-year-old Kaytie Christopherson was getting ready to do her homework on a Friday when she got a call that made a big improvement in her life: She had won a brand-new pickup truck for near-perfect school attendance. And not just any truck, but a $28,000 Chevrolet Colorado crew cab, in red, with an MP3 player. Freedom comes standard.

"I take it everywhere. To work, school. I don't know, anything I do, I have it out with me," the high school junior said. "I pay attention to where I park it, though."

Public schools commonly reward excellent attendance with movie tickets, gas vouchers and iPods. But some diligent students like Kaytie are now hitting the ultimate teenage jackpot for going to school: They have won cars or trucks.

School districts in Hartford, Conn.; Pueblo, Colo.; South Lake Tahoe, Calif.; and Wickenburg and Yuma, Ariz., are also giving away vehicles this school year.

In most cases the car or truck is donated by a local dealership, and the prizes typically are awarded through drawings open only to students with good attendance.

So does bribing students with the possibility of winning a car or truck actually get them to think twice about staying home from school? Some educators think so, and say their giveaways have boosted attendance. But the evidence is not clear-cut.

Katyie — who has a 4.0 average at Natrona County High, Dick Cheney's alma mater — won her truck last spring, in the school system's first such drawing. But she said that was not what motivated her to keep up her attendance; she just didn't want to fall behind.

District attendance officer Gary Somerville said he hopes to raise attendance and also reduce the district's 29 percent dropout rate, which he blames in part on Wyoming's booming gas-and-oil industry.

"These kids can go out and earn $15, $16, $17 an hour swinging a hammer. It's kind of hard to keep them in school past their 16th birthday," he said.

Tags: schools, bribe, cars, attendance

A Morality Test

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 02:13:55 GMT

clipped by: Malhablada

Clip Source: www.peskylittlepagan.com

From an e-mail...

This test only has one question, but it's a very important one. By giving an honest answer, you will discover where you stand morally.

The test features an unlikely, fictional situation in which you will have to make a decision. Remember that your answer needs to be honest, and spontaneous.

Please scroll down slowly and give due consideration to each line.

-------------------------

THE SITUATION

You are in New Orleans, There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding. You are a photo journalist working for a major newspaper and you're caught in the middle of this epic disaster.

You're trying to shoot career-making photos. There are houses and people swirling around you, and disappearing under the water.

===============================================

THE TEST

Suddenly you see a man in the water. He is fighting for his life, trying not to be taken down with the debris. You move closer. Somehow the man looks familiar. You suddenly realize who it is. It's the President, George W. Bush. At the same time you notice that the raging waters are about to take him under forever. You have two options- you can save the life of the President, or you can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize winning photo, documenting the death of one of the world's most famous men.

===============================================

THE QUESTION

Here's the question, and please give an honest answer.......

Would you select high contrast colour film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?

Tags: humor, politics

Psychology Art Gallery

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 01:50:29 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.gerardkeegan.co.uk

Psychology Art Gallery

How many Deer?

Tags: psychology, art, brain

This should be on every bible...

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 03:18:40 GMT

clipped by: nvt2125

Clip Source: blog.lernziel.de

Tags: bible, disclaimer, fiction

Insurer Sued for Refusing to Pay Costs of Anorexia – NYTimes

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 21:45:57 GMT

clipped by: nohobot
clipper's remarks: This important lawsuit may well change the way insurance companies deal with mental illness in general.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Insurer Sued for Refusing to Pay Costs of Anorexia

NEWARK, Nov. 8 — A New Jersey couple filed suit against Aetna Inc., the Hartford-based insurance company, on Wednesday, claiming that it refused to fully cover their daughter’s treatment for anorexia.

The suit was filed in United States District Court here. The couple, Cliff and Maria DeAnna of Mountainside, N.J., said Aetna refused to pay for nearly 10 weeks of their daughter’s inpatient treatment, saying her eating disorder was not “biologically based.” Insurers have balked at covering mental illnesses that they say do not have a proven physiological basis.

While many lawmakers and insurance companies have struggled to define anorexia, some medical experts question the usefulness of the term “biologically based” to describe a disease. Ms. Grefe said that Thomas R. Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, has said research has established that the disease is a brain disorder.

“While the symptoms are behavioral, this illness has a biological core, with genetic components, changes in brain activity and neural pathways currently under study,” he wrote in an Oct. 5 letter to her.

Tags: biology, science, genetics, anorexia, anorexia nervosa, eating disorders, insurance, aetna, nytimes, new york times, new jersey, new york, new york city, lawsuit, health, healthcare, mental illness, psychology, psychiatry

This should be on every bible...

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 03:18:40 GMT

clipped by: nvt2125

Clip Source: blog.lernziel.de

Tags: bible, disclaimer, fiction

This should be on every bible...

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 03:18:40 GMT

clipped by: nvt2125

Clip Source: blog.lernziel.de

Tags: bible, disclaimer, fiction

Bushfeld: the new sitcom about nothing (except destroying the planet) (Satirical Political)

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 19:14:46 GMT

clipped by: anonymology
clipper's remarks: A rather current (in more ways than one) satire on the White House.

Please no one get on my case about how this is Actually Really Serious. It's not. It's satire. Read it as such.

Clip Source: satiricalpolitical.com

SCENE: THE OVAL OFFICE

CHENEY: I think I can sum up the Iraq War for you with one word: NOTHING.

BUSH: Nothing?

CHENEY: (Smiling) Nothing.

BUSH: What does that mean?

CHENEY: The war is about nothing.

COLIN POWELL: (To Cheney) Well, it’s not about nothing.

CHENEY: (To Colin) No, it’s about nothing.

POWELL: Well, maybe in philosophy. But, even nothing is something.

CONDOLEEZZA: What’s the war’s premise?

POWELL: Well, I would go to the U.N., and make a presentation about mobile biological labs and we would pretend there are threats of mushroom clouds, yellow cake and apocalypse.

CHENEY: Yeah, but nothing happens to trigger the war. You see, it’s just like life. You know, you eat, you go shopping, you read. You eat, you read, you invade Iraq.

BUSH: You read? You read about Iraq?

CHENEY: Well, forget the reading; we don’t want to learn about 1300 years of Sunni-Shia fighting.

BUSH: All right, tell me, tell me about the rationale for war. What kind of rationale?

CHENEY: Oh, no. No rationale.

BUSH: No rationale? So, what is it?

CHENEY: What’d you do today?

BUSH: I got up and worked out.

CHENEY: There’s a rationale. That’s a rationale for war.

BUSH: (Confused) How is that a rationale?

POWELL: Well, uh, maybe something happens on the way to your workout, like you find out Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, or his aides met with Mohammed Atta in Prague.

CHENEY: No, no, no. Nothing happens.

POWELL: Well, something happens.

BUSH: Well, why am I starting a war?

ROVE: Because it’ll be on TV, and help your re-election.

BUSH: By the way, where the hell is Rummy?

POWELL: I don’t know, but it seems the raisins are missing … along with a coupla’ hundred thousand troops.

Tags: satire

Ten Ways to Make Sure That Peace Stays Dead

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:41:24 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

Too many people on each side see the other as wholly culpable. Too many people on each side see themselves as wholly innocent, wholly victimized, ill-served by the well-meaning, abandoned by former allies, betrayed by the media, misunderstood by people who should know better, forgotten by the world.

Too many people on each side see only the suffering that has been caused them. Too many people have learned to wall themselves off from the suffering that they have caused.

Clip Source: www.haaretz.com

Ten ways to make sure that peace stays dead

By Bradley Burston

1. There is only one side to any story. My side.

2. The people on the other side, children included, are undeserving of sympathy.

3. Even the maimed and the dead on the other side are undeserving of sympathy.

4. The term massacre may only be used to describe casualties on my side.

5. The automatic fire, bombing, shelling or other lethal action taken by my side are acts of self-defense. If there are fatalities as a result of fire by my side, whether intentional or incidental, they deserved to die.

6. The concept of drawing comparisons of moral equivalency or mutual responsibility for violence is, in all cases, obscene, disgraceful, artificial, mendacious.

All political, military, social and religious modalities can be reduced to pure victims and pure villains, which is to say, Us and Them, which is to say, Us and animals/murderers/mass-murderers/racist genocidalists/Nazis/Hitler.

Option 7A: The goal of the left, the center, this newspaper, its writers, even some of its readers, is the destruction of the State of Israel.

Option 7B: The destruction of Israel is a worthwhile goal.

8. If I am a pro-Israel extremist, responding to a pro-Israel moderate, I should attack and dismiss the writer as a whiner, a crybaby, a defeatist, a moron, a wimp, an imbecile, a self-hater, an extreme leftist, naïve, brainwashed, a pipe-dreamer, duped by the pro-Arab bias of the mass media, a traitor.

9. If I am a pro-Palestinian extremist, responding to a pro-Palestinian moderate, I should immediately dismiss the writer as a sell-out, a fool, misguided, an Uncle Tom, unaware of the real facts, duped by a the pro-Israel bias of the mass media, a traitor.

10. The depth of my conviction, that is, the degree of my extremism, is directly proportional to the distance from my home to the Holy Land. The farther away, the more foaming-at-the-mouth my fanaticism.

Tags: israel, palestine, palestinians, israelis, middle east, war, terrorism, peace, list, suffering, victimization, vengeance, revenge, compromise, enemy, sympathy, fanatacism, extremism, dead, politics

Sick Of Michael Richards

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:58:47 GMT

clipped by: lorisknight1219

Clip Source: www.arabisto.com

I'm totally sick of the Michael Richards story. It was, and still is, all over the news this past weekend. So Richards, a comedian, made racist remarks during his performance in a Los Angeles club? WHO CARES?

A racist comedian? how shocking could that be? Most comedians are racist and derive a lot of their humor from racist stereotypes. Remember Lenny Bruce? Richard Pryor? They all made us laugh with jokes based on horrible racist remarks.

The Wayan Brothers, Carlos Mencia and others have made horrible

and extremely racist remarks about Arabs, and no one seems to give a shit. Not a week goes by without at least one horrible anti-Arab joke on the late night shows and no one cares.

So, why now? why this? of course Richards was wrong to go on a racist rant, but does this story really belong on CNN and the evening news? Doesn't Jesse Jackson have anything better to do than go after a fading comedian?

Frankly, it seems to me the only one benefiting from this "story" is Richards himself. As they say, there is no such thing as bad publicity, and right now, Richards is getting almost as much attention as his earlier days on the Seinfeld show.

Tags: entertainment

Good Description of Cdn Conservative Gov't

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:06:13 GMT

clipped by: jleealex

Clip Source: www.theglobeandmail.com

In a press conference Tuesday, Mr. Goodale, who also serves as house leader for the Opposition, described Mr. Rae as the person to best confront the Conservative government, which he said was the “most rigidly ideological government in Canadian history”.

“This government is also too mean and vindictive, too Republican in its values and they never let the truth stand in the way of taking partisan advantage,” Mr. Goodale said.

Tags: politics, canada, goodale, conservative, harper, rae