Clipmarks | kelvin273's Pops

The Price of Beauty

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:11:14 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Dr. Donald Richey, a dermatologist in Chico, Calif., has two office telephone numbers: calls to the number for patients seeking an appointment for skin conditions like acne and psoriasis often go straight to voice mail, but a full-time staff member fields calls on the dedicated line for cosmetic patients seeking beauty treatments like Botox.

Dr. Richey has two waiting rooms. The medical patients’ waiting room is comfortable, but the lounge for cosmetic clients is luxurious, with soft music and flowers.

And he has two kinds of treatment rooms: clinical-looking for skin disease patients, soothing for cosmetic laser patients.

“We are a little bit more sensitive to their needs.”

“The message is that the cosmetic patient is more important than the medical patient, and that’s not a good message,” Dr. Pariser said.

Sexuality Bias Seen

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:05:09 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: "Banks said she believed the rumors were started by other attorneys in the Grand Rapids office who eventually landed jobs at the Justice Department in Washington. She declined to identify them.
Monday's report also said that Goodling used an Internet search that included the words "gay" and "homosexual" to screen candidates and their backgrounds."

Well now! We used to play a game in school called "Gossip". We'd line up several people and start a sentence and everyone changed it a little while whispering into each other's ear. Of course it was unrecognizable at the end and we would all laugh. The point of the game was to show the social implications of pettiness.

So why would anyone care about sexual orientation at the Justice Department in the first place? Ah, back to that wicked game of gossip and backstabbing to get ahead eh? No better way than to call them lesbians.

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

WASHINGTON -- When Bush administration officials at the Justice Department dismissed nine U.S. attorneys in 2006, there were various theories as to why the prosecutors were being let go.

They were too soft on the death penalty. They did not prosecute enough illegal immigrants. They did not go after enough Democrats.

On Monday, the Justice Department's internal watchdog hinted at perhaps the most sensational justification yet -- perceived homosexuality.

The report describes an alleged "sexual relationship" between a career prosecutor and a U.S. attorney, who were not named.

Justice officials said after her firing that Chiara was let go because of mismanagement and because she had caused morale in her office to sink. Chiara said Monday she believed those concerns were raised by the same people who spread rumors about her and Hagen.

"I guess now I am persuaded with deep regret that this is what was the basis," she added. "There is nothing else."

Tags: no, justice, here

Facebook Never Forgets

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:43:17 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: "The Internet's anonymity, long memory and free-for-all gossip culture may yet prove a poisonous cocktail. But as our generation grows older and enters public life -- thankfully, we have some time -- we'll find ourselves in a political culture that increasingly views these "gotcha" moments in context and with an eye toward forgiveness. After all, the incriminating photo, the offensive blog post, that drunken 3 a.m. e-mail -- it could have been any of us."

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

Imagine if the current crop of public figures had grown up during the Facebook era. We might have photos of John McCain in Florida slurping body shots off his stripper girlfriend. Barack Obama rolling a joint on a beach in Hawaii. George W. Bush passed out at a Yale frat party, 40-ounce beer bottles duct-taped to his hands. Hillary Rodham Clinton at a Wellesley peace rally, locking lips with her husband's future secretary of Labor, Robert Reich.

It's one thing to hear that your elected representative had a wild time in college. It's entirely different to have pictorial proof. Would you still vote for someone after viewing a photograph of him passed out in his own vomit?

This isn't just a thought experiment. The next generation of political leaders is coming of age right now -- and it's unlikely that any one of them will escape digital documentation of their college-era foibles.

Love More Powerful Than Sex

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:40:15 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: Ok, I am the world's most hopeful romantic! I've never had sex with anyone I wasn't emotionally attracted to, so even though this is an older article, I believe it's true, especially for me, but maybe it's just my addiction to dopamine *LOL*

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

Sex and romance may seem inextricably linked, but the human brain clearly distinguishes between the two, according to a new study. The upshot: Love is the more powerful emotion.

The results of brain scans speak to longstanding questions of whether the pursuit of love and sex are different emotional endeavors or whether romance is just warmed over sexual arousal.

Romance seems to steep in parts of the brain that are rich in dopamine, a chemical known to affect emotions. These brain regions are also linked by other studies to the motivation for rewards.

The study also revealed that as a romance matures, so does the mind.

"Romantic love is one of the most powerful of all human experiences," said study member Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University. "It is definitely more powerful than the sex drive."

Tags: i, will, always, believe, in, love

Wild Wild Web being fenced in?

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 03:52:32 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.firstamendmentcenter.org

At some point in history, America’s Wild West became the Less-Wild West — with the rule of law taking over from the justice of the six-shooter, with codified norms of society replacing the often-unbridled ethics of frontier life.

We just may be seeing something of that kind of change beginning in the Wild West of the 21st century — the World Wide Web, with its Cyber Age pioneers who have been communicating freely for nearly 15 years. Such change would have dramatic implications for free speech, privacy and copyright laws.

The signs are there, like the spread of barbed wire that ultimately fenced in the open range.

Nostalgia and romantic notions didn’t stop the fencing in of that idealized vision of a wild, open country. For good or bad, a combination of legislation, court decisions, self-imposed restrictions and private vendor rules are creating limits in and around the Web’s wide-open speech country in much the same fashion.

Tags: internet, free speech, cyberspace, legal, privacy

Ivan Illich - Deschooling Society

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 04:10:48 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad
clipper's remarks: Most of what passes for education is merely training

Albeit sophisticated training that for the most part serves the interests of those who profit from the status quo

Clip Source: www.infed.org

Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends

Cost Of Living

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:12:48 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad

Clip Source: www.caglepost.com

Stephen Colbert - A Joke

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:37:28 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad
clipper's remarks: Well maybe not.

Clip Source: www.pastpeak.com

Today's Joke

This morning, in a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court overturned Washington, DC's ban on handguns! Wooo! Finally, the residents of Washington, DC have the right to defend themselves. From each other, one assumes. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said, "It is not the role of this court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct." He is right. Killing the Constitution is the president's job. The court's job is to overturn elections. — Stephen Colbert

Revive Your Struggling Campaign By Using Gay-Bashing As A Wedge»

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 22:55:34 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad

Clip Source: thinkprogress.org

Fred Barnes’s Advice To McCain: Revive Your Struggling Campaign By Using Gay-Bashing As A Wedge»

Discussing Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) struggling campaign on Fox News Sunday today, Weekly Standard Executive Editor Fred Barnes argued that McCain “needs to pay attention to the right.” “Here’s what he needs to do, he needs to touch on some of the social issues which energize the right,” declared Barnes.

Barnes specifically said that McCain is “going to have use” gays in the military and gay marriage as wedge issues:

BARNES: In particular, gays in the military for one. We know Barack Obama is for allowing gays in the military, and Bill Clinton tried to do, but backed off. This is not a popular issue. Gay marriage is another one. These are both issues that I think McCain’s going to have to use. You can’t ignore the right. If he does, he’ll lose.

Free speech not guaranteed in 'public' online spaces

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:47:30 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

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.

While mindful of free speech and other rights, Yahoo and other companies say they must craft and enforce guidelines that go beyond legal requirements to protect their brands and foster safe, enjoyable communities — ones where minors may be roaming.

Tags: free speech, internet

Rove's Third Term

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:02:34 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Al Gore never claimed that he invented the Internet. Howard Dean didn’t scream. Hillary Clinton didn’t say she was staying in the race because Barack Obama might be assassinated. And Wesley Clark didn’t impugn John McCain’s military service.

Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary, titled his tell-all memoir “What Happened.” But a true account of modern American politics should be titled “What Didn’t Happen.” Again and again we’ve had media firestorms over supposedly revealing incidents that never actually took place.

Yet the Clark affair did reveal something important — not about General Clark, but about Mr. McCain. Now we know what a McCain administration would represent: namely, a third term for Karl Rove.

Will Rovian tactics work this year?

In 2002 and 2004, Republicans were so successful at playing the patriotism card thanks to a combination of compliant media and cowering Democrats.

New fears of Anglican schism over homosexuality

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:25:07 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad
clipper's remarks: About 280 bishops and 750 lay people, including bishops' spouses, are expected to meet in Jerusalem from June 22 to 29 for what they are calling the "Global Anglican Future Conference," organizers said.

They include a majority of the bishops from Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and parts of Tanzania, who plan to boycott the Lambeth Conference this year. The rest of those at the Jerusalem Conference are from England, the United States, Australia and some countries in Asia and Latin America.

Clip Source: www.iht.com

New fears of Anglican schism over homosexuality

Once a decade, hundreds of bishops of the international Anglican Communion meet in Canterbury, England, for the Lambeth Conference.

This summer, in the most tangible demonstration yet of the church's divide over homosexuality, hundreds of bishops are boycotting the Lambeth Conference and attending a rival meeting for conservative Anglicans in Jerusalem.

After five years of hinting at the possibility of schism, this is the most explicit threat that some conservatives are prepared to break from the Anglican Communion, the world's third-largest affiliation of Christian churches, with 77 million members.

They say they see a "parallel between contemporary events and events in England in the 16th century," when the Church of England broke from the Roman Catholic Church.

Missing kids found via Facebook

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 02:49:28 GMT

clipped by: gingembre
clipper's remarks: Good news in the struggle to find missing children: Facebook. As of February 2008 Facebook had about 734,000 South African members. As the Missing Children SA group founder noted, the chance of finding more kids will grow as the group grows bigger.

I don't know how many other countries are using social networking sites like Facebook to look for missing children, but since this is an effective means of finding them I hope that it is widely adopted.

Clip Source: www.news24.com

Cape Town - An organisation that finds missing children has found a new weapon in their war against child abductions: Facebook.

Three missing children have been spotted and found since Missing Children SA launched a group on popular social networking site, Facebook, at the beginning of the year.

On Thursday 14-year-old Rodwin Van der Westhuizen, who disappeared from Grassy Park, was found just a day after a poster went up on the group's page thanks to Linzi Thomas.

Thomas, one of the groups 1 118 members, received a message from the group's founder, Pieter Boshoff, on Thursday morning and immediately recognised the boy from street children programmes she was involved in.

"He was living on the streets," she said of Van der Westhuizen, who ran away from his home in Grassy Park.

The boy was taken to the police and reunited with his parents on Thursday.

"This was the third child that was found because of the Facebook group," said Boshoff

Click here to visit the Facebook group.

Tags: facebook, social networking, children, south africa

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 23:08:47 GMT

clipped by: gingembre
clipper's remarks: Does surfing the Internet trigger attention deficit disorder in our brains, so that we have to struggle to focus enough to read in depth or for longer than a couple of minutes at a time?

Must we flip through the Internet as quickly as some people flip through TV channels, afraid, or unable, to pause long enough to read more than a few paragraphs--if that much?

The author of this article (which you should read in its entirety if you can concentrate that long) relates how difficult he found it to sit down and read a book again, and notes:

"In an era in which everyone has a truth and the means to fling it around the world, an era in which knowledge is increasingly broad but seldom deep, maybe that's the ultimate act of sedition: to pick up a single book and read it."

I still read books, but not as many as I used to prior to being caught up in the world wide web life. Lately I haven't even read the free e-book that I receive in emailed installments. Blame it on Google--

Clip Source: www.caglepost.com

I am finding it increasingly difficult to read deeply, to muster the focus and concentration necessary to wrestle any text longer than a paragraph or more intellectually demanding than a TV listing

More and more, I have to do my reading in short bursts; anything longer and I start drowsing over the page even though I'm not sleepy, or fidgeting about checking e-mail, visiting that favorite Web site, even though I checked the one and visited the other just minutes ago

author Nicholas Carr posits a new theory. In "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" he notes that he and many of his

literary friends report the same experience, leading him to wonder if the Internet is not rewiring our very brains

The culture of hyperlinks, blogs and search engines that return more results than you could read in a lifetime is, he argues, changing the way we read and, indeed, think

what if

the very fact of so much out there to know and so little time to know it in, requires a tradeoff in concentration and focus?

Tags: google, internet, psychology, sociology

Why do displays of compassion differ between East and West?

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:28:18 GMT

clipped by: gingembre
clipper's remarks: I am trying to understand

A bit more: "In many Asian countries, favors invariably create obligations, which is perhaps why people are sometimes disinclined to interfere in the problems of others. You are obliged to take care of your family, your friends, or even your fellow countrymen. But the idea of universal charity is too abstract, and smacks of the kind of unwelcome interference that Western imperialists — and the Christian missionaries who followed them — practiced in the East for too long.

The notion of "Asian values," promoted mostly by Singaporean official scribes, was partly a critique of universalist Western claims. Asians, according to this theory, have their own values, which include thrift, deference to authority, the sacrifice of individual to collective interests, and the belief that countries should not stick their noses into others' affairs. Hence, the hesitant response of Southeast Asian governments — and public opinion — to the Burmese disaster."

see source

Clip Source: search.japantimes.co.jp

Why are French, British and American warships, but not Chinese or Malaysian warships, sitting near the Burmese coast loaded with food and other necessities for the victims of Cyclone Nargis?

Why has the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) been so slow and weak in its response to a natural calamity that ravaged one of its own members?

are Europeans and Americans simply more compassionate than Asians?

Given the West's record of horrendous warfare and often brutal imperialism, this seems unlikely

Buddhism stresses compassion and mercy as much as Christianity does. Indifference to suffering is not inherent to any Asian culture.

there may be cultural differences in understanding how compassion should be applied

The ideal of universal equality and rights does owe something to the history of Western civilization

There is, so far, no Asia-wide institution to protect the human rights of Asians, let alone mankind

In many Asian countries, favors invariably create obligations

Tags: asia, values, humanitarian aid, asean