Clipmarks | sohil's clips

Kurt Vonnegut: How to Write with Style

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:43:24 GMT

clipped by: maquser
clipper's remarks: Thanks, Kurt!

How to Write With Style

by Kurt Vonnegut

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don't you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.

In Sum:

1. Find a subject you care about

2. Do not ramble, though

3. Keep it simple

4. Have guts to cut

5. Sound like yourself

6. Say what you mean

7. Pity the readers

Tags: reference, writing, creative writing, instruction, help, useful, language

Buddha

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:52:11 GMT

clipped by: JenniferStewart

Clip Source: api.msappspace.com

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

Make Your Own Bush Speech

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:55:52 GMT

clipped by: sohil

Clip Source: www.geocities.com

Tags: bush, politics, speech, funny, fun, humor, humour

Who is more likely to end up as VP? Second favourites

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:47:42 GMT

clipped by: sohil

Clip Source: www.economist.com

Second favourites

BEFORE the candidates for America's presidential election have even been decided, hardened gamblers and political junkies can still take a flutter on who will take the vice-presidency. Punters reckon Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are in close contention to become the Democrats' second-in-command, according to fast-changing odds offered on Betfair, a British online-gambling exchange. Mike Huckabee is the Republican with the shortest odds. But if you think John McCain might somehow blow his chances of securing the Republican nomination and instead walk into the White House alongside President Huckabee, you can expect very attractive odds indeed.

Tags: huckabee, clinton, obama, edwards, mccain, democrats, republicans, elections, news

Gandhi 'never existed', Churchill 'made up'

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:41:32 GMT

clipped by: sohil

Clip Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Mahatma Gandhi never existed while Britain's wartime Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill was a fictional character. Don't fret. This is only what most Britons think about the great leaders.

According to a survey carried out in Britain, many believe that Mahatma Gandhi and Churchill are just mythical figures like Florence Nightingale, popularly known as the 'Lady with the Lamp'.

Moreover, despite his celebrated military reputation, 47 per cent of respondents feel the 12th-century English King Richard the Lionheart is fictional, according to the survey of 3,000 British teens.

In contrast, a number of fictitious characters like Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur and Eleanor Rigby were given real life status.

While almost 65 per cent of respondents believe that mythical figure King Arthur existed and led a round table of knights at Camelot, 58 per cent of teens think that Holmes really lived at 221B Baker Street.

Tags: gandhi, peace, war, churchill, britain, uk, survey, fiction, via:timesofindia

'Promiscuity leads to lower grades'

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 22:34:53 GMT

clipped by: sohil
clipper's remarks:

The poll comes only months after it was claimed Cambridge students were working as prostitutes, strippers and escorts to earn extra money. According to reports, some female students work as call girls and lapdancers while others are said to be signed up to a local escort agency.

Clip Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

promiscuity adversely

effects a person's ability to score good grades

It was also found that Christ's had the highest number of virgins, with more than a quarter of respondents saying that they had never had sex.

The surveyors say that students studying certain subjects were more promiscuous than others. Writing about their online poll, published in the student magazine Varsity, they said that pupils studying medicine had the most number of sexual partners, while students of theology had the fewest.

Students of social political science came second, followed by pupils studying history and modern and medieval languages. The survey also revealed that many students were putting their health at stake by not getting tests for sexually transmitted diseases performed on them.

Forty per cent of the students surveyed admitted having a one-night stand, while over 60% said that they had never been tested for HIV, chlamydia or other sexually transmitted diseases.

Tags: survey, medicine, grades, social, life, college, via:timesofindia, theology

Gates calls for a new form of capitalism

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:01:48 GMT

clipped by: sohil

Clip Source: online.wsj.com

In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the software tycoon plans to call for a "creative capitalism" that uses market forces to address poor-country needs that he feels are being ignored.

In particular, he said, he's troubled that advances in technology, health care and education tend to help the rich and bypass the poor. "The rate of improvement for the third that is better off is pretty rapid," he said. "The part that's unsatisfactory is for the bottom third -- two billion of six billion."

But Mr. Gates's argument for the potential profitability of serving the poor is certain to raise skepticism. "There's a lot of people at the bottom of the pyramid but the size of the transactions is so small it is not worth it for private business most of the time," says William Easterly, a New York University professor and former World Bank economist.

Belief in Technology

Tags: bill gates, microsoft, technology, science, poverty, tech, economics, capitalism, via:wsj

Organ Transplants without Rejection?

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 01:21:18 GMT

clipped by: sohil
clipper's remarks: One of the greatest medical advances of our time? I certainly think so...

Clip Source: www.nature.com

Three independent research teams have successfully performed organ transplantations that do not require the recipient to face a lifetime of immunosuppressant drugs to prevent rejection. Instead, the new techniques prevent rejection by training the immune system to recognize the new organ as its own.

Thousands of kidney transplantations are performed every year, and nearly 99% of patients in the United States are still alive a year after the surgery. But even when the organ donor is a close relative, the transplant recipient often needs to take immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of their lives to guard against organ rejection. But although the drugs help to prevent rejection, they also increase the risk of infection and are very pricey.

Previous work in animals has suggested ways to avoid taking these drugs. Mice and monkeys given an organ transplant coupled with an infusion of blood stem cells could sometimes be weaned off the immunosuppressant drugs

Tags: science, research, technology, medical, transplantations, via:nature

Democracy won't die with Benazir

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:21:26 GMT

clipped by: sohil
clipper's remarks: Shashi Tharoor presents amazing insight (as always)...more at the source

Clip Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Benazir Bhutto has never looked this good. This week has seen the international press posthumously apotheosising the telegenic Pakistani politician. But the widely-expressed view that Benazir epitomised Pakistan’s hopes for democracy, which have now perished with her, seriously overstates both what she represented and the implications of her demise.

The former chief martial law administrator had to doff his uniform - long overdue, since he was three years past the retirement age for any general - and find a credible civilian partner to help make a plausible case for democratisation. Benazir - well-spoken, well-networked in Washington and London, and passionate in her avowals of secular moderation, however self-serving - was the chosen one.

Her first two stints had, however, been inglorious. From 1988-90 she had been overawed by the military, whose appointed president duly dismissed her from office on plausible charges of corruption

Tags: pakistan, democracy, military, bhutto, dictatorship, usa, south asia

Head of the Anglican Church praises colonialism in the Indian Sub-Continent!

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 14:40:50 GMT

clipped by: sohil
clipper's remarks: Any comments?

Clip Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

The spiritual head of the Church of England has launched an extraordinary defence of the British Raj

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who officially leads nearly 80 million Anglicans worldwide, told a British Muslim lifestyle magazine that the British experiment in India was an example of caring colonialism.

On Sunday, the comments were criticised by observers as a patronising justification of imperial Britain's grip on India.

Sources said it was surprising that Williams, a long-term critic of the Anglo-American 2003 invasion of Iraq, was getting into dangerous historical territory such as the British Raj.

It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it

He added that "it is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together – Iraq, for example".

Tags: britain, colonialism, imperialism, controversial statements, india, usa, uk, iraq, religion, church of england

Why women find doctors so irresistible... (Scientific Study)

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 14:44:51 GMT

clipped by: sohil

Clip Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

The study conducted by Dr Brendan Kelly, of University College Dublin found that people get attracted to GPs, nurses and surgeons because they expect them to be more caring than the average professional.

The study was carried out after researching medical romance stories to see what got readers so hot under the collar.

In the study, at random 20 novels were selected with a medical theme and the recurrence of “brilliant, tall, muscular, male doctors with chiseled features, working in emergency medicine” was noticed.

"These novels suggest there is an urgent need to include instruction in the arts of romance in training programmes for doctors and nurses who intend working in these settings,” the Sun quoted him, as saying in a tongue in cheek manner.

"It gives a good insight into how people think medicine should be. If you were to take these novels literally, one would think uncontrolled passion is an inevitable consequence of working in the emergency room,” he said.

Tags: doctors, medicine, survey, science, interesting, romance

POLL: Most men wouldn't get naked with Beyonce

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 20:07:30 GMT

clipped by: sohil

Clip Source: lifestyle.indiatimes.com

Men may lust after the woman with the perfect body, but most would be too nervous to drop their clothes in front of her, a new poll has found

The poll also found that most men think that their bodies look more like Ricky Gervais than David Beckham. As it turns out, most men prefer a small waist and big bottom on their woman.

The skinny trend doesn’t really appeal to men, the poll also found, for just six per cent fancied skinny women. Also, only three per cent of men said they wanted to see skinny Posh Spice in the buff. Top celebrity body was curvy Scarlett Johansson, followed by Beyonce.

90 per cent of men who took part in the poll admitted that they lusted after curves, and 35 per cent said they liked a rounded tummy.

Also putting women’s fears at rest was the fact that just one in ten men are turned off by love handles, and only 16 per cent hate flat chests and stretch marks, according to the poll.

they were more likely to be ‘intimidated’ by her super body

Tags: men, women, poll, research, london, sex, body

Beyond Wikipedia...reference sites you can''t do without

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 20:08:04 GMT

clipped by: Newfman

Clip Source: dailyrevolver.com

Encylopedia Britannica

Scholarpedia

JSTOR

Oxford English Dictionary

Wikiseek

WikiMindMap

Online Education Database - This is a strange site, and I’m not quite sure what to make of it - but this link lists over 100 specific search and research tools, often relevant to specific subjects.

MathWorld - if you have the great misfortune of having to take math, then this site can be of great help. Everything mathematics from Geometry to Calculus is covered by this site in great detail.

GeoHive and Fedstats - These are both statistics sites, so if you need to know how many people. Fedstats allows public access to public agency statistics. Geohive is a bit cooler, primarily providing global statistics (gender populations, coal reserves, etc). I know, it’s so exciting I can’t stand it.

Theoi and Encyclopedia of Mythology - Both excellent resources on the subject of mythology and ancient religions. This is useful information all across the humanities.

Tags: research

Why successive Pakistani leaders have not delivered

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 16:17:19 GMT

clipped by: sohil

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Senior government functionaries in Pakistan are fond of complaining, in private, that the nation they are serving is averse to following the dictates of law.

The laws are broken by those who made them

Lack of education, lack of discipline and lack of respect for the law are just some of the misdemeanours on the part of a populace that hampers the pace of progress.

It is the incompetence of the bureaucracy, the ignorance of lawmakers, the greed of the military for power and riches - combined with a glaring contempt for the law on the part of all three groups - that has created and then compounded the social anarchy that everyone is now forced to live in.

[Nawaz Sharif] was eager to please the Americans at any cost - in this case the cost was trashing the judicial system of his own country

Law-abiding Pakistanis see the law catching up with its breakers

Three times in the history of this young country, the army chief has led a coup against a civilian government

Tags: pakistan, politics, south asia, asia, rule, law, constitution, military, people, power

The Truth behind India's first female President

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 23:14:29 GMT

clipped by: sohil
clipper's remarks: Scroll down to find out what the real Patil's about!

India is going to elect a new President -- her 13th since 1952 -- on July 19, 2007 . It is an indirect election, insofar as the President is elected not by the general electorate but by an electoral college comprising 776 Members of Parliament and 4896 Members of State Legislatures.

If the content of the Clip is offending to anyone, I'll gladly remove it!

Clip Source: www.knowpratibhapatil.com

Indian presidential candidate Pratibha Patil says veil adopted to protect Indian women from Mughal invaders; historians say she's wrong.

Clip Source: www.knowpratibhapatil.com

In a classics case of UPA doublespeak, CPI General Secretary, A B Bardhan, tells television anchorman Karan Thapar: "Don't blame Pratibha for what her kin have done."

Clip Source: www.knowpratibhapatil.com

Text of the petition filed in the Bombay High Court by Smt. Rajani Patil seeking court-monitoring of the CBI investigation into the murder of her husband Prof. V.G. Patil. She has accused G.N. Patil, brother of Smt. Pratibha Patil, of being a conspirator in the crime. She has also alleged that Pratibha Patil has protected her brother from investigation by using her political clout.

Pratibha Patil is the Chairman of the Shrama Sadhana Trust

The fund was to be utilized for helping the poor students in their education. But year after year the money has gone to her relatives

these cheques are signed by Smt Patil herself

Tags: india, congress, bjp, nda, third front, politics, president, truth, news, patil