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Showing posts from May, 2008

Obama has lost women 'with sexist campaign'

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This has got to be one of the most absurd things I've read recently. Some women are, not surprisingly, pissed that Hillary Clinton is on the road the lose the US presidential nomination. They are so pissed however, that they are willing to turn to John McCain, instead of Obama, in the coming election, and charging Obama of running a sexist campaign. Chief among female Obama-haters, is Geraldine Ferraro -- a woman perhaps more insane than Clinton. Ferraro forwards the following evidence of Obama's sexist campaign: His response to Mrs Clinton's reminiscences about learning to shoot as a girl at her grandfather's summer cabin in Pennsylvania. Miss Ferraro said: "He walked up and down the stage with his microphone like a stand-up comic and ridiculed her as an Annie Oakley," she said, quoting his reference to the legendary female sharpshooter. "Would he have ridiculed a man by comparing him to John Wayne? Of course not." His apparently dismissive de

Canada sponsoring terrorism

Canada and the US, state sponsors of terrorism? Yes, if you believe Lieutenant-General Roméo Alain Dallaire. As reported on chycho.com , Dallaire told a parliamentary subcommittee meeting that in failing to protect Omar Khadr from the US, Canada, and the US, both broke international law -- not to mention many domestic laws -- and if we're not prepared to obey the law, then we're no different from those that have no respect for the law. Well said, Mr. Dallaire. Whether we feel someone is guilty or not, doesn't make them guilty or not guilty -- only evidence does that -- and without evidence, there is no guilt. That premise mostly works -- and has been a foundation of our society. When we start making exceptions, we tamper with the foundations of our society.

19.20.21.

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19.20.21. -- 19 cities in the world with 20 million people in the 21st century , is a cool project, collecting data to gain a better understanding of how supercities are redefining the future -- culturally and economically (and if I may add, also environmentally). The 19 supercities chosen for this study may be surprising. Only two are in America, and in total, nine reside in the developed nations of the world. The others are in developing countries. The cities: Los Angeles, New York City, London, Berlin, France, Tokyo, Osaka-Kobe, Seoul-Incheon, Moscow, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Bueno Aires, Istanbul, Cairo, Tehran, Karachi, Beijing, Shenzhen, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta, and Lagos. The mission of 19.20.21. is a multi-year, multimedia initiative to collect, organize and better understand population's effect regarding urban and business planning and its impact on consumers around the world. This 5+ year initiative will deliver results via 5 chann

Cool Web Development Tools

Jacob Gube over at Six Revisions , has published a list of useful tools to make web development more efficient -- 20 tools to be exact. This list should be filed for future reference, especially the tools to make CSS development easy. I'm going to need a couple of those for when I finally get around to redesigning my site.

Can't see the forest for the trees

I was just reading a BusinessWeek article, The Wal-Mart Sisterhood , in the second floor library at home, and when a quote from one of the sisters jumped off the page, grabbed me by the throat and tried to kill me. As she finished shopping at a Wal-Mart on the outskirts of Charlotte, N.C., with two of her four daughters in tow, Jennifer Brouillet, a 36-year-old teacher's aide who voted twice for Bush, says she won't consider either Democrat. She's put off by their plans for universal health care. "I'm afraid we're going to turn into Canada. I don't want to end up in a line, waiting six months to get a procedure," Brouillet says. Besides, she asks: "How are they going to pay for it?" Backstory: the article is about the lower-middle class women of America, their influence in the coming US election -- and their courting by both the Democrats and Republicans. To fit into this demographic, these women have to duck under the following bar: Some

Troopergate Strikes Again

When Hillary Clinton screws up, she really screws up. In a new ad campaign to discredit Obama, the Clinton video shows a fly through of a newspaper clipping. The clipping is titled, "Obama attacks Clinton's gas tax plan." Berni McCoy downloaded a high resolution copy of the video from Clinton's site, because he was curious as to what the article said. Of course, the newspaper clipping wasn't real. Some genius making the ad, actually put those words over an older newspaper article about "troopergate." What's troopergate ? A reference to allegations from the past, of Governor Bill Clinton using state troopers to arrange sexual liaisons with women. American politics is nothing, if not entertaining.

Things younger than John McCain

This is a funny site !

13 Year Old Steals Dad's Credit Card to Buy Hookers

The above headline is a quote from an article . The title leads an article that's disturbing on many levels, but I was floored by the last sentence: Ralph's [the 13-year-old boy] ambition is to one day become a politician. The boy's father is a lawyer from Texas, and he was apparently too busy to notice his son going on a $30,000 spending spree.

An oil-addicted ex-superpower

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Michael T. Klare writes in Asia Times Online , of the demise of the US as the world's only remaining superpower, due to the ridiculously high price of oil. Klare paints a picture of America's economic and military might that is heavily dependent on cheap and abundant oil, and suggests that America's oil addiction is spelling its doom. It's an interesting read, but I don't buy it. What Klare fails to point out is that America's adventure in the Middle East has the stench of colonialism -- and rather than the demise of a superpower, it may actually spell the resurgence of the good ole days.

In Basra, there is no love for women

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17-year-old Iraqi student, Rand Abdel-Qader, was beaten to death by her father and her two brothers for falling in love with a British soldier. The police arrested Abdel-Qader Ali for the murder, but released him two hours later, with congratulations for restoring his family honour. I can't comment further on this story. I don't have the words to respond coherently. These actions ... these animals ... they need another Saddam Hussein. You can read the interview of the murderer at the Guardian's site . Note that the details are horrifying.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

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Astrobiologists at the Cardiff Centre have built a model of our solar system travels through our galaxy. Our solar system is on the outer edges of one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way, taking its sweet ole time to complete a complete revolution (around 250 million years, if I remember correctly). But that's not the only movement of the solar system. Apparently, it bounces up and down through the plane of the Milky Way every 35-40 million years -- and with each bounce through the plane, the solar system is exposed to a denser region of the galaxy -- the plane has much more stuff. A bounce through that stuff could lead to catastrophic events -- such as comets colliding with Earth. In fact, the 35-40 million year cycle coincides quite well with mass extinction events on Earth. Now here's the bad news. We're up for another bounce through the galactic plane -- tomorrow in fact -- so place your head firmly between your knees, it's going to be a rough ride.

Pioneers of the Pacific

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History tells us that Captain James Cook conquered the Pacific back in the late 18th century. Of course, the peoples he discovered were not really people, so they just didn't count. What was completely lost on Cook was that he was over 3,000 years too late. The Lapita , a people originating from somewhere in the Pacific, conquered the Pacific Ocean in their day, spreading their language, culture and customs to most of the Pacific islands, including Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, New Zealand, Easter Island, and Tahiti -- where their influences can still be seen today. Unfortunately, no one knows who they were, how they sailed the Pacific, and why they ventured so far. Read more at the National Geographic site .