Clipmarks | wiccantexan's clips

10 humor sites sure to make you LOL

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:16:31 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Click away from the cats and replenish your list of favorite bookmarks with these 10 new or lesser-known humor sites:

Logging on to Facebook, one is bombarded these days with pointless quizzes, embarrassing photos and a friend request from ... Mom? The inevitable has happened -- your parents are on Facebook. Using submissions from users, this site highlights just what a foreign place Facebook is to parents. If you think associating with them in person is uncomfortable, this blog highlights the awkwardness that comes when your mom takes a "What porn star are you?" quiz.

Garfield Minus Garfield

Laser Portraits

Historical Tweets

Safety Graphics

Someecards

Graph Jam

This is Why You're Fat

Tags: website, humor

Courts Face New Challenge In Faith Healing Cases

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:42:03 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

Most U.S. states have child abuse laws allowing some religious exemptions for parents who shun medicine for their sick children, but a few recent cases highlight thorny legal issues for parents following less-recognized faiths.

Existing laws have gradually accounted for more well-known and established faiths, such as Pentecostalism, Christian Science and Jehovah's Witnesses.

But recent cases in the news have judges and child care advocates dealing with parents who claim adherence to lesser-known faiths, such as the Minnesota family following an Internet-based group's American Indian beliefs, and an independent church in the western state of Oregon that has been investigated in the past for the deaths of members' sick children.

Legal and religious scholars say it's becoming more difficult for courts to decide when to honor the religious beliefs of parents and when to order conventional medical treatment for extremely sick children.

Tags: religion, faith, belief, legal, children, health, medical

Giant Naked Goddess To Be Carved Into Hillside

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:40:33 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Dubbed the "Goddess of the North", Northumberlandia will be made from two million tonnes of earth dug out from an open cast mine in Cramlington, and tower 112ft into the northern sky.

The Goddess, designed by artist Charles Jencks, will recline over the Shotton open-cast mine and form the centre piece of a new public park at the site.

"It will take around 20 minutes just to walk all the way around her, and the design has been enhanced with more paths to allow visitors to the park to easily ascend the figure.

"As well as the artwork itself, the surrounding landform park will offer important nature conservation and public health benefits, giving both local people and visitors an ideal place to exercise, picnic and enjoy themselves."

Tags: goddess, nature, sculpture, art, earth

Obama Quakes as Tweens Invade Camp David

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:39:17 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

Finally, something that intimidates President Barack Obama: a bunch of tween girls.

The president talked about his family's plans for the July Fourth holiday during an AP interview Thursday, and revealed that Camp David had been invaded by about 20 girls there to celebrate daughter Malia's 11th birthday on Saturday.

"There are 24 double-X chromosomes up in Camp David as we speak," Obama said. "It's a little intimidating."

That's not the only confession from the president: He also dished about pie.

Asked to reveal a White House secret, Obama waxed eloquent about executive pastry chef Bill Yosses' to-die-for pie.

"The pastry chef here makes the best pie I've ever tasted, and that is causing big problems for Michelle and myself," he said.

Obama also came clean about one of his pet peeves -- the "shine police."

The president said that before his interviews, aides "constantly want to powder my nose and forehead, and it's never enough."

Tags: obama, family, tweens

Debbie Rowe: "I want my children"

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:57:41 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: abcnews.go.com

"I want my children," Debbie Rowe, Michael Jackson's ex-wife and the estranged mother of his two oldest children, told KNBC-TV in Los Angeles today.

Though in the last decade she has had very little contact with the two children she had while married to Jackson, the former nurse vowed to fight for custody, defying Jackson's last wishes that the children be cared for by their grandmother.

A source close to Rowe told ABC News that she is worried about the guardians Jackson named for the children in his will and believes the "kids would be receptive to her."

"[Rowe] is looking at a situation where the primary guardian is now 80 years old, the back up is Diana Ross who the children do not know," said a source close to Rowe who was not authorized to speak for attribution.

Tags: children, michael jackson, family

Vegetarian diet 'weakens bones'

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:42:35 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

People who live on vegetarian diets have slightly weaker bones than their meat-eating counterparts, Australian researchers said Thursday.

A joint Australian-Vietnamese study of links between the bones and diet of more than 2,700 people found that vegetarians had bones five percent less dense than meat-eaters, said lead researcher Tuan Nguyen.

The issue was most pronounced in vegans, who excluded all animal products from their diet and whose bones were six percent weaker, Nguyen said.

There was "practically no difference" between the bones of meat-eaters and ovolactovegetarians, who excluded meat and seafood but ate eggs and dairy products, he said.

"The results suggest that vegetarian diets, particularly vegan diets, are associated with lower bone mineral density," Nguyen wrote in the study, which was published Thursday in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

the question of whether the lower density bones translated to increased fracture risk was yet to be answered.

Tags: vegetarian, vegan, carnivore, bones, health

Missing Moon-Landing Videotapes May Have Been Found

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:43:54 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

Just in time for the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, NASA may have found the long-lost original Apollo 11 videotapes.

If true, as Britain's Sunday Express reports, the high-quality tapes may give us a whole new view of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's lunar strolls.

Back on July 20, 1969, the raw video feed from the moon was beamed to the Parkes Observatory radio telescope in southeastern Australia, and then compressed and sent to Mission Control in Houston.

Because of technical issues, NASA's images couldn't be fed directly to the TV networks.

Those images survive, and anyone can see them on YouTube. But the original, sharp, black-and-white tapes that were recorded at Parkes vanished.

Around the same time, though, a cache of tapes containing data from moon-surface experiments from the entire Apollo program was discovered in a university basement in Perth, Western Australia, on the other side of the country from Parkes.

Tags: history, moon, video

When The Majority Writes The Rules

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:40:48 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.firstamendmentcenter.org

When people complain about the growing list of requests for accommodation in public schools from students and parents from minority faiths, I like to remind them that the majority faith wrote the rules.

Founded as Protestant-dominated institutions in the 19th century, public schools never open on Sunday, close for Christmas, and in other ways institutionalize accommodations for the majority faith.

That’s why I applaud New York City Chancellor Joe Klein for arranging a special ceremony for a teenager who can’t attend her graduation because it’s being held on the Jewish Sabbath. With only one Jewish graduate, it is not surprising that Li Morse’s school didn’t try harder to find another day. Truth be told, America’s expanding religious diversity is making it harder and harder to find any day that will accommodate everyone.

Tags: religion, culture, faith

In what sense is America a 'Christian nation'?

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:38:44 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.kentucky.com

Iran's appeal to religious authorities for a binding decision on a national election struck me as odd. Or quaint. Or ominous.

As an American, I've never had to worry about a religious potentate or a group of ministers deciding for all of us who our next president would be.

Somehow, though, the developments in Iran made me think of my recent appearance on Jack Pattie's radio call-in program on WVLK-590 AM.

The question that morning was whether the United States is a "Christian nation." Quite a few callers had strong opinions, pro and con.

I find that whole issue thorny.

Iran, for instance, obviously is a Muslim nation; it's a theocracy.

But in what sense is America "Christian"? Here are a few thoughts:

The people who argue that America was founded as a Christian nation rarely define what they mean. They might be right; they might be wrong. It depends entirely on how you use the words "Christian nation."

Tags: america, christian, nation, religion

First Atheist Summer Camp for Children

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:36:16 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

When schoolchildren break up for their summer holidays at the end of July, India Jago, aged 12, and her brother Peter, 11, will be taking a vacation with a twist.

While their friends jet off to Spain or the Greek islands, the siblings will be hunting for imaginary unicorns in Somerset, southwestern England, while learning about moral philosophy.

The Jagos, from Basingstoke, Hampshire, are among 24 children who will be taking part in Britain's first summer camp for atheists.

The five-day retreat is being subsidized by Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and author of "The God Delusion," and is intended to provide an alternative to faith-based summer camps normally run by the Scouts and Christian groups.

Crispian Jago, an IT consultant, is hoping the experience will enrich his two children.

"I'm very keen on not indoctrinating them with religion or creeds," he said earlier this month. "I would rather equip them with the tools to learn how to think, not what to think."

Tags: atheism, children

Children of gay couples speak out

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:34:53 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

Jesse Levey is a Republican activist who says he believes in family values, small government and his lesbian mothers' right to marry.

Levey is part of the "gayby boom" generation. The 29-year-old management consultant is the son of a lesbian couple who chose to have a child through artificial insemination. He's their only child.

Critics of same-sex marriage say people such as Levey will grow up shunned and sexually confused. Yet he says he's a "well-adjusted heterosexual" whose upbringing proves that love, not gender, makes a family.

It damages the children, says Dale O'Leary, author of "One Man, One Woman: A Catholics Guide to Defending Marriage." She says that all children have a natural desire for a parent of each gender.

O'Leary says she doesn't personally know any same-sex parents or their children. That's the problem, some children of same-sex children say. So many people are talking about them; not enough are talking to them, they say.

Tags: gay, lesbian, gay marriage, family, children

Dumbest Moments in Business 2009...midyear edition

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:31:00 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: money.cnn.com

GM partners with Segway

It became clear this spring that General Motors was going to have to get smaller to survive, but this was ridiculous. A week after President Obama gave the company a 60 day deadline to avoid bankruptcy, GM took time out from its turnaround efforts to unveil the PUMA, a two-seat vehicle being developed with Segway that looked more like a rickshaw than a car.

NEXT: Tropicana's botched redesign

Tags: dumb, business

First $1 million find for U.S. Antiques Roadshow

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:29:31 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

A woman who inherited some Chinese carved jade from her father has scored the first $1 million (601,557 pounds) appraisal from experts on the U.S. television program "Antiques Roadshow," the producers said on Monday.

In a record for the show, four pieces of Chinese carved jade and celadon from the Chien Lung Dynasty (1736-1795), including a large bowl crafted for the Emperor, were given a conservative auction estimate of up to $1.07 million.

"For 13 years, we've been hoping to feature a million-dollar appraisal on 'Antiques Roadshow;' it's been our 'Great White Whale,'" executive producer Marsha Bemko said.

Asian arts appraiser James Callahan said the fine quality of the pieces indicated they were not made for tourists.

The appraisal of the jade items will be shown in the next series of "Antiques Roadshow" starting January 4 on PBS, the producers said.

Tags: antique, tv, television, china

Ron Paul Wins Support to Audit Fed Reserve

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:27:59 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

All of a sudden, Congress is paying close attention to Ron Paul.

The feisty congressman from Texas, whose insurgent "Ron Paul Revolution" presidential campaign rankled Republican leaders last year, now has the GOP House leadership on his side -- backing a measure that generated paltry support when he first introduced it 26 years ago.

Paul, as of Tuesday, has won 245 co-sponsors to a bill that would require a full-fledged audit of the Federal Reserve by the end of 2010.

"In the past, I never got much support, but I think it's the financial crisis obviously that's drawing so much attention to it, and people want to know more about the Federal Reserve," Paul told FOXNews.com.

The bill would call for the comptroller general in the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed and report those findings to Congress. The GAO's ability to conduct such audits now is severely restricted.

A slew of top Republicans are backing the bill, as are many Democrats.

Tags: ron paul, federal, economy

"Civility & False Tolerance"

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:35:58 GMT

clipped by: kris_tea

Clip Source: str.typepad.com

Civility & False Tolerance

"The right to believe anything is freedom of conscience; but the idea that anything anyone believes is right is just plain nonsense. Civility means I engage with them persuasively, but civility does not mean a false tolerance where anything goes."

Os Guinness, The Case for Civility