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My Resignation As An Adult

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:55:08 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks:

I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, dreams, the imagination, the Tooth Fairy, a kiss that makes a boo-boo go away, making angels in the snow, and that my dad and G-d are the strongest people in the world.

There are a few more at the source. .

Clip Source: www.etni.org.il

My Resignation as an Adult

I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult. I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of a 5 year old again.

I want to think M&M's are better than money because you can eat them.

I want to lie under a big oak tree and watch the ants march up its trunk.

I want to think that a quarter is worth more than a dollar bill because it is prettier and weighs more.

I want to think that everyone is honest and good. I want to believe that anything is possible.

I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be overly excited by the little things in life again.

here's my checkbook and my car keys, my credit cards and the bills, my 401K statements, my stocks and bonds, my collections, my insurance premiums, my job, my house and the payments, my e-mail address, pager, cell phone, computer, and watch. I am officially resigning from adulthood. And if you want to discuss this with me further, you'll have to catch me
cause....

tag! You're it!

Tags: awww, lol, haha, sillyness

The Biggest Threat to the West Lies Within Itself, Not with Islam

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:32:52 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: Simon Jenkins on threats to peace and democracy.

This defeatism led the American Congress to allow its president to authorise torture and detention without trial in what Senator Robert Byrd called “the slow unravelling of the people’s liberties”. It enabled a British Home Office to curb free speech and habeas corpus. It arms police, fortifies buildings and impedes the free movement of citizens. It makes every Christian suspicious of every Muslim.

Clip Source: www.timesonline.co.uk

The biggest threat to the West lies within itself, not with Islam

The chief threat to world security at present lies in the capacity of tiny groups of political Islamists to goad the West into a rolling military retaliation.

Extremists on each side feed off the others’ frenzied scenarios so as to garner money and political support for their respective armies of the night. Each sees the other as a cosmic menace and abandons communal tolerance and peaceful diplomacy to counter it.

To portray Islam as a whole as a concerted threat to western security, and to imply that the West’s democratic institutions and freedoms are not proof against that threat, is absurd and close to treason. Then to demand that western freedoms be dismantled and stored away for the duration of a “war on terror” is to wave the flag of surrender.

I believe in the robustness of the democracies created in the West over the past half-century. I am not sure that our leaders do.

Tags: terrorism, islam, christianity, religion, freedom, war, peace, democracy, west, torture

Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 07:06:56 GMT

clipped by: skwirlinator

Clip Source: www.zuzafun.com

Tags: cats, kitty, pussy, animals, awww, cute

World's tiniest radio unveiled

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:24:54 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Small science has big potential, say scientists

The world's tiniest radio is a step closer to reality.

US scientists have unveiled a detector thousands of times smaller than the diameter of a human hair that can translate radio waves into sound.

According to a University of California team, the study marks the first time that a nano-sized detector has been demonstrated in a working radio system.

Made of carbon nanotubes a few atoms across, it is almost 1,000 times smaller than current radio technology.

Peter Burke and Chris Rutherglen incorporated the microscopic detector into a complete radio system.

They used it to transmit classical music wirelessly from an iPod to a speaker several metres away from the music player.

Full details of their findings will be published next month in the American Chemical Society's Nano Letters.

Tags: nano technology, radio, science

Why George Orwell wrote 1984

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:39:43 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Orwell served in Burma as a member of The Indian Imperial police, saw poverty and failure, but the Spanish Civil War and the rise of Hitler, and the NAZIs, gave him a political direction, and his work after 1936, was to warn against the establishment of a totalitarian state. There is more at the site, with more background. Orwell died Seven months after 1984 was published, due to the effects of tuberculosis, and an allergic reaction to a new medication.
While he was in Hospital, writing 1984 they took away his typewriter, but he continued to write longhand with a ballpoint pen, despite his failing health

Clip Source: www.orwelltoday.com

WHY ORWELL WROTE "1984"

Eric Blair, pseudonym George Orwell,

(born in 1903 - died in 1950) he wrote nine major books and 700 essays and articles.

In the essay WHY I WRITE, published in 1947, Orwell says:

First I spent five years in an unsuitable profession (The Indian Imperial Police, in Burma), and then I underwent poverty and the sense of failure. This increased my natural hatred of authority and made me for the first time fully aware of the existence of the working classes, and the job in Burma had given me some understanding of the nature of imperialism

Every line of serious work that I have

has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it

Orwell wrote "1984" for us, the future, in the hope we would recognize the signs and symptoms of tyrannical world government and prevent its establishment in our world. Let's make sure he did not write in vain. ~ Jackie Jura

ALL ABOUT ORWELL and HOMAGE TO ORWELL and PILGRIMAGE TO ORWELL

Tags: george orwell, burma, 1984, animal farm, totalitarianism, authority

The Problem with Solar Energy

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:33:33 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

A couple of weks ago, we had a colloquium talk by Peter Persans of RPI, who is working on developing new types of solar cells using amorphous silicon and "quantum dots."

In order to meet the energy needs of the US entirely with solar power, we would need to cover 0.2% of the land area of the United States with photovoltaic cells, roughly equal to the area of paved roads in the US. And that's using solar cells with an efficiency of 50%, not too far below the theoretical maximum for a single-layer device.

But efficiency isn't the only problem: He pointed out that in order to build that sort of solar energy infrastructure, we would need to produce and install 2,000 square kilometers of solar cells a year for twenty years.

it wasn't entirely downbeat: he did note that great strides have been made in the production of solar cells, and described some intriguing possibilites using "quantum dots" embedded in silicon as a means of increasing the bandwidth of light that produces useful electricity.

Tags: energy, solar power, alternative energy, science

LEDs to replace city street lights

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 07:49:12 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: The city near Detroit Ann Arbour, is replacing traditional bulbs with white LEDs,
which last an average of five times as long, and the energy saving will be the equivalent of taking 400 cars of the road.

Clip Source: www.mail.com

By JEFF KAROUB

How many Ann Arbor city workers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Soon, none.

Instead, they will be installing light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, to replace about 1,400 street lights.

The eco-friendly city about 30 miles west of Detroit says it will be the nation's first to convert all downtown street lights to LED technology, which uses less than half the energy of traditional bulbs and could save the community $100,000 a year.

"LEDs pay for themselves in four years," said Mayor John Hieftje, who announced the city's plans this week as it joined Raleigh, N.C., and Toronto in the LED City initiative, an industry-government

group working to evaluate, deploy and promote LED lighting.

"They provide the same light, but they last 10 years. We had to replace the old ones every two years."

LEDs, small chips usually encased in a glass dome

usually gave off red or green light

a scientific breakthrough in the 1990s paved the way for LEDs that produce white light

Tags: led, light, emitting diode, ann arbour, street, power, energy

Photo of Kitten Looking at Bubble

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 04:31:20 GMT

clipped by: AndreaJoRush
clipper's remarks: Adorable!

Clip Source: www.aaskolnick.com

Tags: cats

Bearly, Just Bearly Beautiful

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 07:03:30 GMT

clipped by: skwirlinator

Clip Source: www.zuzafun.com

Tags: bear, animal, cuteness factor, awwww, tease me

Second Chance?

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:47:24 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — In December, the United Nations took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1, with the United States the lone dissenter.

Indeed, the United States stands alone in the world in convicting young adolescents as adults and sentencing them to live out their lives in prison. According to a new report, there are 73 Americans serving such sentences for crimes they committed at 13 or 14.

Mary Nalls, an 81-year-old retired social worker here, has some thoughts about the matter. Her granddaughter Ashley Jones was 14 when she helped her boyfriend kill her grandfather and aunt — Mrs. Nalls’s husband and daughter — by stabbing and shooting them and then setting them on fire. Ms. Jones also tried to kill her 10-year-old sister.

But Mrs. Nalls thinks her granddaughter, now 22, deserves the possibility of a second chance.

Tags: no, possibility, of, parole

Many in US Military: Bush & Cheney Out of Control

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:04:41 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks:

CENTCOM Admiral William Fallon reportedly thwarted Cheney's wish to sent a third additional aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf. One paper wrote that he "vowed privately there would be no war against Iran as long as he was chief of CENTCOM."

The whole article is worth a read.

Clip Source: www.spiegel.de

'Many in the US Military Think Bush and Cheney Are Out of Control'

Amsterdam-based military historian Gabriel Kolko

The American military is stretched to the limit. They are losing both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Everything is being sacrificed for these wars: money, equipment in Asia, American military power globally, etc. Where and how can they fight yet another? The Pentagon is short of money for procurement, and that is what so many people in the military bureaucracy live for. The situation will be far worse in the event of a war with Iran.

Many in the American military have learned the fundamental dilemma of modern warfare: More money and better weapons don't mean that you win.

Many in the US military think Bush and Cheney are out of control. They are rebelling against Bush and Cheney. Washington Post reporter Dana Priest recently said in an interview that she believed the US military would revolt and refuse to fly missions against Iran if the White House issued such orders.

Tags: war, usa, europe, iraq, iran, cheney, military

Offical: Ireland ranked Friendlist Place in World-Lonely Planet

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:56:17 GMT

clipped by: righthand
clipper's remarks: "The British have rarely been complimentary about the Irish down the centuries. There have been the Irish jokes, insulting nicknames and the attitude that much that went on the neighbouring island was simply beyond the pale. Perhaps the greatest insult of all was that the Whigs called their political rivals Tories, after a type of 17th-century Irish rebel."

"The Irish have further reason to smile after claiming a place in the Lonely Planet list of the world's 10 best brewery headquarters, thanks to the St James's Gate building in Dublin, leased by Arthur Guinness in 1759. "If you don't know what it is that makes the Guinness brewery Ireland's number one visitor attraction, you must be under 18," the book says. "The syrupy black nectar is so good the Guinness executives are almost forgiven for touting a brewery tour that does not actually let you into where Guinness is brewed."

...Independent

Clip Source: travel.independent.co.uk

Ireland is ranked friendliest place in the world

By

Now it turns out that the friendliest country in the world is Ireland.

The prestigious British travel guide Lonely Planet reckons that, now the Troubles are over and the streets of Northern Ireland are safe again, the island's inhabitants have reverted to what they do best – drinking good liquor, making strangers feel at home and having fun.

2008 edition of The Lonely Planet Bluelist

guide to places you should think about visiting – says:

"Centuries of turmoil, conquest, famine and subsequent immigration have certainly taken their toll on the Irish. It has left them with a deliciously dark sense of humour and a welcoming attitude towards strangers.

"That famous ability of the Irish – to find craic (fun times with convivial company) in boom or bust times – means you're always in for a treat. These days, after the end of the Troubles, a cautious optimism reigns supreme, infecting the land once again with the sense that anything is possible."

Tags: irish

Faking Faith to Avoid Vaccines

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:49:18 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

BOSTON - Sabrina Rahim doesn't practice any particular faith, but she had no problem signing a letter declaring that because of her deeply held religious beliefs, her 4-year-old son should be exempt from the vaccinations required to enter preschool.

She is among a small but growing number of parents around the country who are claiming religious exemptions to avoid vaccinating their children when the real reason may be skepticism of the shots or concern they can cause other illnesses. Some of these parents say they are being forced to lie because of the way the vaccination laws are written in their states.

"It's misleading," Rahim admitted, but she said she fears that earlier vaccinations may be to blame for her son's autism. "I find it very troubling, but for my son's safety, I feel this is the only option we have."

Tags: just, state, your, religious, belief