And I love it.

Snagged Me and My Katamari for PSP last night at Toys’R'Us (we were looking for a swingset/play structure thing, now that we have a back yard). Haven’t played more than a hour or so, but starting from the introduction video, I can say that this is the most cracked out game that I’ve ever played. The music, characters, and dialog just scream “weird Japanese game”, and I love it. The theme song is permanently stuck in my head, I’m afraid.

First gameplay impression? The controls are REALLY hard to get used to (at least, for someone like me who never played either of the PS2 incarnations). More after I’ve played for a while.

The concept of car sharing is becoming more and more popular, We have previously featured several companies on TreeHugger such as Flex-Car in the US, GoGet in Australia, Streetcar in London and we recently came across another company operating across the UK called City Car Club. However the concept of car sharing is not only related to these car pick-up schemes, but also the old-fashioned idea of the car-pool where people share the cars they already own. This used to usually be a neighbourly thing, but with the help of the Internet new widespread communities are being created. National Carshare is one such network in the UK where you can register to share your commute to work. Even the UK government has taken note of the car-sharing trend and has given the go ahead for a separate car-share lane to be opened on a motorway in West Yorkshire.

What a good ride today. There was almost no wind, and I felt a little late this morning leaving the house, so I pedaled hard, and it paid off; I got to work quicker than I have in a while.

Here’s a picture of me with City Hall in the background:

pretty cloudy skies, aren’t they?

So I got to work 10 minutes early, part of which was the added speed from not having to ride into a strong wind, part of which was that I was pedaling hard, but I also hit a lot of green lights. I think I only hit one or maybe two red lights the whole way to work, and I usually hit a lot of red lights.

Too bad I have so much work to do today, because it feels like a nice day to go for a long ride.

ride distance: 7.5 miles

Buy on

Buy on cd baby

"instant hooks, rubber-banded synth melodies and mid-tempo beats set one bare foot in the early Reagan years and the other in the less naive '00s." -Cameron Macdonald (Grooves Magazine, Sacramento News and Review):

Eschewing the simplistic, 'cut-and-paste' aesthetic of current digital electronic music, Junobot uses his motley band of vintage synthesizers and drum machines to channel a solid update to the synthpop genre. The way Junobot idolizes 80's synthpop, you might expect a mash of Vicious Pink and Naked Eyes. Instead, he promises a style all his own with The Nature of Technology; electropop with meat on it's bones, electroclash without the irony, industrial with feelings.

Taking the pulsing one-finger basslines of Erasure's Vince Clark and the minor-key despair of Depeche Mode's Martin Gore, Junobot moves deftly between dancy melodies that lodge in your head and darker song subjects.

On "Plastic", he sings "...just give me something/something to live for/just give me something/but don't give me plastic..." The line rings out like a plea for substance in the often tasteless sea of modern electroclash- which is not to say he isn't a fan himself, indicated by the track "Love Me." Dressed up with an eighth-note octave bassline and moog-y melody to boot, the track is a plaintive robotic cry to a lover-to-be with analog chirps in the chorus.

"U R Not Me" rocks the hardest here with a vocodered request for understanding trembling above the dark layers of synth pulses and driving early industrial-like bass drums. Other standout tracks are the remixes by Lemans Electro and the Duke from Freezepop (whose 'Radiant Sun' remix of Smile delivers airy vocals conjuring warm spring days with "...the cute one in the corner..")

Hot dog! They’re doing it with cell phones, and now they’re doing it with WiFi access points. Brilliant.

Loki is the first application to combine the physical with the digital to make the Internet a truly personal and local experience. We let you harness the World Wide Web by automatically identifying your exact physical location and then making the web revolve around you.

With one click, instantly find the nearest jazz band, directions to the closest Thai restaurant, the cheapest gas prices in town…or even pinpoint your exact location on a map. You can even share that location with others.

It is going to be real interesting as the Mobile Virtual Network Operators such as Ampd start to offer seemless coverage from cell to wifi spots.

Here is another version of the ticket for poor vehicle choice, like the one that riled readers in February. Its from the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s, a UK based group whose goals are "to make driving a big 4x4 in town as socially unacceptable as drink-driving, and to increase taxes on the most polluting vehicles, including increases in road tax and a higher congestion charge in London." London Mayor Ken Livingstone agrees: "When you see someone trying to manoeuvre it round the school gates, you have to think, you are a complete idiot." Before everyone starts writing about how useful 4x4's are, we point out that a) the Alliance is against Urban 4x4's and b) this treehugger drives a lovely 4 cylinder powered Subaru 4x4 that is very useful for getting through snow and carrying lots of stuff that we need for our day job. It is all about scale. ::Alliance Against Urban SUV's via Bonnie in London

Is your closet full of mid-century board game titles like Monopoly and Sorry!? Are you still answering questions about 1980's science and technology questions from a dusty version of Trivial Pursuit? The staff at www.CriticalGamers.com can help move you from the drab repetitive gameplay of yester-year into the entertaining world of modern Eurogames and social card games.

Blogpire Productions is pleased to announce the addition of www.CriticalGamers.com to our growing family of product- and category-specific Web logs. CriticalGamers.com will provide news and reviews of social board games, Eurogames, and card games. Critcal Gamer's goal is to weed-out the mediocre from the slew of modern table top game titles, and to keep readers posted on what's new and popular in the world of social gaming.

At CriticalGamers

Sore back and knees do not have to typify the produce-grower's life. And, family organic farmers don't have to make their kids and employees dislike their jobs either. All it takes is a bike mod like this one to pick those berries in comfort (second view here). The Healthy Farmers, Healthy Profits Project at the UW-Madison,( Wisconsin, USA) came up with the manually powered wheeled cart design shown, along with other tools along a similar line. If you have Power Point or a PPT viewer we highly recommend you take five minutes to download and view the slide show. Solar variations are practically begging to be incorporated into some of the devices, but, the project certainly deserves credit for "getting the bike rolling". The site offers plans for the do-it-yourself builder.

We've shown you how to make your own biodiesel before, and now there's a way to make oil, too (sort of). Bio-oil, more specifically, made from sawdust, wood chips, or just about any organic matter. Wired has a story about some researchers who, hoping to ease America's addiction to oil, have developed a process to create bio-oil that can be processed into fuels and chemicals. Bio-oil is produced through a process called pyrolysis, in which organic scrap materials are finely ground and heated at 400 to 500 degrees Celsius, without oxygen. In just two seconds, about 70 percent of the material vaporizes and is condensed into bio-oil; the end result looks surprisingly similar to petroleum. Though bio-oil is chemically very different from petroleum crude, it can be converted into a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen known as "syngas," which can be processed into a high-grade hydrocarbon fuel, such as automotive diesel. Alternatively, the syngas can be combined with steam to produce pure hydrogen, which could be a handy helping hand for the burgeoning hydrogen economy. Looks a little complicated for a typical DIY, weekend project, but cool nonetheless. Much more at ::Wired via ::Make and ::Jalopnik

voxefx posted a photo:

z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/3/4/bush_pilot_button.jpg

Want to see what the new MapGuide Open Source AJAX and DWF viewers look like? The Open Source Geospatial Foundation has a webpage with a couple examples for you to check out. Maybe Digg or Slashdot have linked to them because at least on my end they are pretty slow. I was talking about how ESRI could sell (or give away) the Web ADF so developers could use it in other applications, but maybe MapGuide Open Source could fit that bill also.

Tags: mapguide, opensource, ajax

They probably didn’t know about it. I didn’t even know about it at the time! (I think it got buried in the war news, at least for me.) It did get some media coverage, though.

Yep, PETA sucks. Actually, that’s putting it mildly.

Appropriate words from St. Augustine, quoted by writer Graeme Gibson.The statement, which translated means it is solved by walking, captures Gibson’s firm belief that personal solutions to the climate change threat can be as simple, practical, and economical as choosing to walk rather than drive – and that everyone can help. Gibson and partner Booker Prize winning author Margaret Atwood are passionate environmentalists- read more in Jo Coombe's article in the ::Bullfrog Buzz.

Read Margaret Atwood on Green Roofs. from ReadingToronto.

I didn’t think we’d be seeing it this soon, but it appears that ArcWeb Labs at least has a webpage. I tried to get into the SVG Viewer, but I’m getting a java error on access. At least this is something to add to your bookmarks or del.icio.us.

Tags: esri, arcweblabs

Loki is a killer idea and a precursor to the rise of location-based contextual advertising. So what does it do? In short, Loki is a Firefox/IE plugin that detects your current location based on the Wifi access point you are using - it then allows you to conduct searches in your local area. And this isn’t just a search for businesses and services - you can find news about local sports teams, events, local bloggers, gas prices, traffic reports, weather forecasts and more. All in all, an impressive tool.

What this really hints at - and more so than Plazes - is the new brand of location-based advertising that will presumably be part of Google’s free wifi efforts. The least invasive way to deliver these ads is through an Adwords-style system, although other systems (personalized alerts of local deals, for instance) are a possibility. I’m sure some people will find this advertising invasive, but no one can deny that it’s on the way.

PS. Living outside of a metropolitan area, Loki isn’t doing much for me. Let me know if you have more luck.

Update: On a related topic, Shimon Sandler has a post today about GeoAds for Google Local.

From Bonnie in London- Off to “ Well Fashioned Eco Style in the UK” , an exhibition of new green fashions (see Petz's post here) to see if this clothing is wearable and how serious these designers really are. The answer to both questions: very. Obviously the exhibiting designers are small traders whose volume will make very little impact in contrast to the main stream, big designer companies. But they are making use of alternative fabrics like hemp, bamboo and wild silk and recycled materials in novel ways.

According to the Mozilla/Firefox crew, extensions are…

Extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to Firefox. They can add anything from a toolbar button to a completely new feature. They allow the application to be customized to fit the personal needs of each user if they need additional features, while keeping Firefox small to download.

I’m going to discuss my favorite extensions here with you. I’ll be starting with the extensions I feel nobody browsing the web today should be without and then move onto some extensions that are a bit more specialized in their application.

Advertisements

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I get very tired of looking at all the various advertisements plastered over the internet. Fortunately, there are extensions for Firefox which help to clean up the web. To block advertisements, I start off with Adblock Plus. This extension lets you setup filters to block just the ads you want to block. The “Plus” version of Adblock also allows you to setup whitelists so you can view ads on the sites you want to support. The only downside, to Adblock Plus, is the time it takes to setup all the filters you want. This is where Adblock Filterset.G Updater comes in. The FiltersetG.Updater grabs a set of preconstructed filters designed to eliminate the majority of Internet advertisements for you. Using these filters alone kills 85-90% of the advertisements out there. But even those two combined don’t catch everything, so I’ve also added in NoScript to the mix.

Actually, I added in NoScript originally because so many sites were using crappy javascripts to add “features” to their pages. Features I did not need or want. But since installing NoScript, I’ve noticed it helps to block a lot of advertisements that are inserted into webpages via javascript. Bonus! Also in NoScript’s options, there is a checkbox to have NoScript block Macromedia Flash and other plugins for untrusted sites. I recommend turning these options on as it will catch & block even more advertisements.

Annoyances

Especially if you don’t use NoScript to block a site’s javascript, you should consider installing Allow Right-Click. A number of websites with cool images will use some lousy javascript to prevent you from right-clicking on the image to save it. This is ridiculous as the image has already been downloaded to your browsers cache and is on your computer already. Plus with some of the other extensions I have installed, I like to right-click on webpages to get more info or whatever and to have a site try to block me is a great annoyance. Allow Right-Click specifically blocks scripts that try to prevent right-clicks.

Another annoying thing some websites do is to link to file you want to download but setup the link in such a way that clicking on it will spawn a new browser window. *grrr* This is something that really pisses me off. Fortunately, there’s the Disable Targets For Downloads extension for Firefox to take care of that problem.

Then there are sites that will write out a URL but not make it a clickable link. Linkification fixes that annoyance for you. It can also color code those links it fixes to let you know when a site is being naughty.

And let’s not forget the annoyance of PDF Files. For whatever reason, some sites will put up content as a PDF file and then your browser will¹ load the Acrobat plugin to view the PDF in the browser. ARRRRGGGGHHHH! When I want to view a PDF file, I’ll use a proper PDF viewer and not this plugin crap. PDF Download changes Firefox’s behavior so it asks you what you want to do with a PDF fileL Download, View as PDF, View as HTML or Cancel. The View as HTML feature hasn’t worked for me in a long time, but it’s nice to force Firefox to download the file while still having the option to go insane and want to view it as a PDF file in my browser.

The last of my annoyances with the internet are sites requiring you to register to view their content. I run across this the most when trying to view news articles linked to by Google News. Fortunately, there is BugMeNot to take care of that for me. BugMeNot is both an extension and a service. They maintain lists of usercodes/passwords for various registration only websites to allow people to view the content without filling out yet another registration form and giving out their email yet again. It’s very convenient though I’m sure the sites requiring registration hate it.

Web Development

In my spare time², I like to do small amounts of webdevelopment and for that there’s one Firefox extension which is an absolute MUST HAVE, Web Developer. This extension has tons of features to aid you in your webdev work. The features I use the most are: Live CSS editing (let’s you see your changes as you make them), W3C Validation (submits your HTML/CSS to W3C to see if your code is valid) and Resize (resizes Firefox so you have an idea of what people see of your site at various screen resolutions). While those 3 functions don’t even begin to scratch the surface of what this extension can do; they do give you an idea of how useful this extension is in webdevelopment.

Next up is ColorZilla. This extension is great for helping me decide on color schemes. It let’s me visit a website or look at a photo and find the hexcode I need to use in my CSS to have that color. Current versions also have some other functionality (e.g. full page zoom) but I’ve not really looked into those.

When you’re working on a new design and times are not lining up correctly, it can be handy to see how wide something is. MeasureIt helps you get that info.

If the design you are developing is based off some ideas you got from another site, it can be handy to look at a copy of that site’s source code. But sometimes their source code is very confusing and it is difficult to figure out how they accomplished specific effects. The X-Ray extension shows you the HTML tags of a webpage while you’re still viewing the page.

And of course, if you’re working on a website, you are going to be concerned with how well your site is showing up on the various search engines. SEOpen lets you track your site’s ranking (amoung other things).

Foreign Langauge Tools

I only read English and speak a small smattering of other tongues. But I do have a variety of interests including some that tend to get reported online more by non-English speakers. So it’s handy to have the ability to translate the other langauges back to English. Moji is an integrated Japanese dictionary (including kanji). I’m sure when I get ready to start studying to read kanji, this extension will prove very helpful. In the meantime, there’s Translate Page for all my foreign langauge needs.

Cool Tools

These extensions either improve on the basic functionality in Firefox and/or add something new to Firefox that trips my trigger. They’re cool, but I’m getting tired of coming up with something to say about all of the extensions I use, so here’s just a list of the remaining ones:

• Ext2Abc
• Header Monitor
• ListZilla
• mozcc
• Nearby
• Nightly Tester Tools
• Popup ALT Attribute
• Reveal
• Tabbrowser Preferences
• del.icio.us
• Google Pagerank Status

Themes

I find the default theme for Firefox a bit dull. Fortunately, there’s a wide number of different themes available out there. I generally use the Mostly Crystal theme for Firefox. However there are some other interesting themes out there and below is a short list of ones I like:

• Mostly Crystal
• iPox

¹ If you have Adobe Acrobat installed.
² Which is to say very rarely these days.

Tags: Firefox, Extensions, Themes

It's not only in India that the caste system is causing suffering. The caste system was one of the practices that the Buddha stood against. Saddening to find it here:

by Stanzin Dawa, The Times of Tibet, March 23, 2006

Leh, Ladakh (India) -- The sugar coated perspective of Ladakh need to be broken if we really want to know the different aspects of peaceful, pristine land. Unless we know the whole truth, we will continue to hold many prejudices, and to know the whole truth we need to unlearn many things which have conditioned our mind to be stereotyped and judgmental.

Behind the serenity of this pristine land,  beneath the Buddhist banner, lurks the ugly demeanor of a segretative caste system

The truth is that there are certain practices in Ladakhi culture which are neither culturally appropriate and religiously relevant nor legally legitimate. Despite the Constitutional guarantee of "Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth" under Article-15 of the Indian constitution and "Abolition of untouchability" under article-17.

Garba (the smiths), Mon (musician) and Beda are victims of many violations in Ladakh. They have separate cups and glasses for drinking local beer (Chang) or tea at the village gatherings or ceremonies. They are not allowed to eat or drink from the utensils of others as they fear that they would pollute them. Normally they are deprived of becoming the head of the village (Goba) and head of the monastery (Lobon) irrespective of their proficiency due to their caste identity. Atrocities against them basically arise in the context of 'keeping them' in their place within the social hierarchy, mediated by caste and untouchability.

The land is known for Buddhism & it is truly known that Buddhism is a casteless religion. Ladakh is known as land of lamas, each village has got a monastery treasured with statues and Thankas, but we have miles to go to lead a true Buddhist life.
read more

Eric Muse submits: Last November, Nabi Biopharmaceuticals (ticker: NABI) announced that the confirmatory Phase 3 study of StaphVax failed to meet its primary endpoint. Because the results were contrary to what the company predicted would occur, they formed an outside advisory panel to determine what caused the “unexpected results.” Two conclusions were reached: 1) the quality of the antibodies generated by the vaccine was inferior to that generated by previous lots, and 2) kidney dialysis patients had impaired immune response and stronger virulence of bacteria.

Although this is a plausible explanation for the poor trial results, it raises questions about the manufacturing of StaphVax given the inter-lot variability. The ability to consistently manufacture a biological product is paramount when evaluating efficacy and safety. Even if a subsequent study does show efficacy, the company is going to have to convince the FDA they have a handle on lot-to-lot consistency. The company said in its press release that they have “defined subtle, but what are now understood to be significant changes in elements of the manufacturing process for the lot used in the confirmatory Phase III study,” which only highlights the complexity and nuances of the StaphVax manufacturing process. Given Nabi is going to develop a next generation StaphVax with additional antigens to improve the immune response, this process is only going to become more complex. This is probably not lost on the Nabi management as they intend to partner with another company with vaccine experience.

The bottom-line: StaphVax still has a ways to go before getting to market

NABI 1-Yr Price Performance:

I think that while it is wrong, I echo the comment above, where were they when PETA was comparing the slaughter of animals to the Holocaust?

PETA sucks. I think I’m going to eat a steak for lunch!

The Microcap Speculator submits: Medical device company BSD Medical (ticker: BSM) announced this morning that it has finally filed for FDA approval of its BSD-2000 cancer treatment system. The BSD-2000 uses focused RF energy (also known as hyperthermia) to attack tumors, and allows treatment of cancer located deep in the body. According to the company, the system borrows cutting edge technology from deep-space radio telescopes and advanced phased-array communications. The PreMarket Approval Application (PMAA) is a full filing, covering 24 volumes and 7,243 pages. This is very different than the abbreviated filings we often see for medical devices under section 510(k).

In 2005, business consulting group Frost and Sullivan gave the BSD-2000 its “Technology Innovation of the Year Award.” The BSD-2000 has also received favorable mention in articles appearing in prestigious journals such as Cancer, Journal of Clinical Oncology, and Radiology Today.

I don’t know much about this company, and thankfully don’t know much about cancer. That said, I think the stock is an interesting speculation at this point. The market cap is only $92M and the company has roughly $18M in cash. As a development stage company, earnings are far off. However, the technology looks promising and the potential application is very broad. I have taken taken a small position and may add more.

DISCLOSURE: I am long BSM. Not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. For informational and educational purposes only.

BSM 1-Yr Price Performance:

Piper Jaffray’s Safa Rashtchy released a note on wireless value added service provider KongZhong (ticker: KONG) yesterday. Key extracts:

We continue to believe that KongZhong is well positioned for the transition to 3G and that the incremental investment on the WAP portal will solidify its position when 3G licenses are granted. We would be buyers of KONG at these levels. We maintain our Outperform rating and a price target of $15 (16x 2006 EBITDA plus cash).

KONG 1-Yr Price Performance:

The Joy of Tech is just about my favorite tech cartoon site. They have done it again with another great cartoon about Apple possibly not holding a 30th Anniversary event. Check it out.

Tags: joy of tech, apple, 30, birthday, cartoon, 30th anniversary, apple event, video ipod, iPod video

Nomura Holdings Inc (NMR) issued a press release following the market’s close in Tokyo regarding its forthcoming wholly-owned subsidiary, Joinvest Securities. Originally I had heard Joinvest would launch in April but it will now be launching its website on May 14th and start receiving orders May 28th. In the press release it says Joinvest “aims to have 500,000 customer accounts by the end of March 2007 and plans to be profitable by the year ending March 31, 2008.”

Despite already having an on-line trading service and offering personal brokerage services, Nomura management doesn’t believe Joinvest will cannibalize commissions. A key strategy nonetheless of Joinvest is to be the low-cost leader in commissions and offer the widest variety of tradable products. I question Nomura’s optimism on avoiding cannibalization but I do believe that it faces little threat of customers switching, especially if it can match or beat E*Trade Japan’s commissions.

NMR 1-yr chart:

Nikko-Citi Securities increased its target share price on Kirin Brewery (KNBWY) to 1,780 yen from 1,480 yen while maintaining a “buy” rating. Although I haven’t been able to find any comments from Nikko-Citi, it’s safe to say that Kirin is gaining ground on rival Asahi Breweries.

From what I understand, Kirin has a broader product selection and is doing well in attracting both price conscious drinkers and those willing to pay extra for premium beer. Beer sales are expected to be strong in Japan (despite a trend towards declining popularity in favor of wine), especially during the first half of the year given higher consumer spending, the Winter Olympics in which Japanese figure skater Shizuka Arakawa won gold, Japan winning the World Baseball Classic, and the upcoming World Cup Soccer tournament. Lastly, it is also hanami (cherry blossom viewing) season now, meaning a lot of beer is being consumed as Japanese gather to sit under the cherry blossoms and welcome in spring.

Kirin Brewery’s ordinary shares (Tokyo: 2503) closed .82% higher at 1,601 yen. The news of the target price increase seems to have come in after market. Kirin’s ADRs closed yesterday down 1.39% at $13.45. A 1,780 yen target converted at Y118/US$1 equals approximately $15.10. The USD value should increase as the yen is expected to strengthen in the second half of the year.

KNBWY 1-yr chart:

Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," said cleric Abdul Raoulf, regarding Christian convert Abdul Rahman.

The only thing more repulsive to me than this statement is probably a burning bag of dung on my doorstep. As a matter of fact that is a terrific metaphor for this situation. As a student of spirituality and God, I sometimes compare the different religious texts about God in an attempt to understand Him better through the ways humanity has been experiencing Him.

One of my favorite sources, outside of the Bible is the Upanishads. These hindu texts try to narrow down the experience of God the eternal to it's most profound contemplative level. I find that many of the great mystics of the Christian faith, Julian of Norwich, Teresa Of Avila, and John of the Cross, have a similar experience in their deepest contemplation as the hindu mystics. The similarity? When one enters into God's presence and goes beyond word and image (the human constructs of our understanding) God remains incomprehensible and thouroughly MORE than our concepts can explain.

In our experience NOONE can claim to know God's thoughts, outside of the revelation He gives in the scriptures. These scriptures are man's way of making sense of the incomprehensible, within the limited expressions of word and image.

This is all to say that I believe no man can speak for God in the way this cleric is speaking. I do not believe the Koran is a revelation from God. I believe it is a conquerors handbook disguised as a holy book. It, like the Book of Mormon, is an example of a text whose origin and experience is shared by only one person, it's author. The other religious texts fall into a catagory where their development is shared by numerous people and drawn togther by scholarship.

If God were so insulted it would not take a cleric or a fascist religion of murder to right the wrong. Just ask the folks of Sodom, Lot's wife, or Ananias and Sapphira.

God handles his own "bid'ness" just fine. He doesn't need any meddling Mullahs in there confusing things.

Mails an Toni [at] spreeblick [punkt] com.

YouTube-Direktlink
iPod-Version (MP4, 5:07, 25,6 MB)
Handy-Version (3gp, 5:07, 2,8 MB)

don’t know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation.
You were born somewhere in the territory of modern North Japan around the year 1025.
Your profession was that of a monk (nun), bee-keeper or lone gunman.
Your brief psychological profile in your past life:
Such people are always involved with all new. You have always loved changes, especially in art, music, cooking.
The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation:
Your lesson is to learn discretion and moderation and then to teach others to do the same. Your life will be happier if you help those who lack reasoning.
Do you remember now?

Consider this. After the recent James Frey controversy over his book, “A Few Million Pieces”, where people assumed, and he didn’t discourage their assumption, that his book was true and auto-biographical, USA Today claims “Writers Watch Out”.

One first-time memoirist says she had to answer a lot of questions about her experiences but doesn’t think the publisher checked them out. Another hired an investigator to be sure she had her facts straight.

In the wake of the James Frey fiasco, the ripple effect on other writers is, if anything, making them more cautious, though not very worried.

Janice Erlbaum, whose memoir of her life as a homeless teen, Girlbomb, has just been published by Villard, says she had “an extensive legal review with the Random House legal department, but I don’t think they followed up.”

“They asked me a lot of questions like, ‘What were the dates that this happened?’ They really wanted to know who was who. I don’t think they did any independent verification, but they certainly did ask me about every person and every detail in the book.”

…Jenny Frost, president of Crown, Brown’s publisher, says Crown didn’t fact-check Brown but says of life after Frey: “I would like to think that we’ve always been intelligent about our authors and good judges of character…”

But, she adds, “we’ll never be quite as innocent as we were before.”

Has this issue of truthfulness in book publishing crossed over to the blogging world? Many people have their blogs turned into books, or write their blog as an online book, so the line between book and blog blurs.

Do you think that you have to “watch out” and be honest with your readers? If you are blogging about your personal life, do you now feel a responsibility to “stick to the truth” with your stories, and be able to prove them? Should an auto-biographical blog be held to the same inquisition for truthfulness as a book? What do you think about this?

Site Search Tags: honest, honesty, blogger, james, frey, million, pieces, writer, writing, truth, biography, autobiography, journal, personal
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen

C’est vrai c’est un vrai test web 1.0 mais le référencement sur les moteurs de recherche reste le référencement de base. Petite comparaison avec 3 autres bloggeurs lyonnais…

C’est fou le nombre d’url sur Yahoo versus les autres moteurs! Seraient ils moins sélectif?

C’est le site de Marketleap qui propose ce service de popularité.

Un autre outil intéressant c’est la conservation de l’historique des données… Voici mon graphique depuis 347 jours! J’ai progressé, cool :

Heute nachmittag werden wir die Ergebnisse der schriftlichen Prüungen bekommen. Also entweder schon direkt die Note, die auf das Zeugnis kommt oder aber die Prüfungsnote mit dem Hinweis am nächsten Montag eine mündliche Prüfung zu absolvieren. Ich wünsche mir, das ich nicht in die mündliche muß und meine Vornoten mit der schriftlichen Klausur bestätigt habe.

Seit einigen Stunden schon lag ich im Bett und konnte einfach nicht mehr schlafen. Jetzt, eine halbe Stunde bevor ich eh aufstehen muß, brauch ich mich auch nicht mehr weiter rumquälen und nutze die zusätzliche Zeit eben anderweitig.

Gleich werde ich mich wieder in Richtung Bahnhof begeben und einen Zug in unsere Hauptstadt besteigen, um dort einen Termin wahrzunehmen, der sehr vielversprechend klingt.

Gestern hab ich übrigens einen Anruf eines b.i.b. Dozenten bekommen, der mir eine sehr freudige Mitteilung gemacht hat. Über den Inhalt dieser werde ich aber noch ein paar Tage Stillschweigen bewahren und zu gegebener Zeit ein paar Worte dazu verlieren…

Übrigens: Leise, still und heimlich hat mein Blog vor 12 Tagen, seinen zweiten Geburtstag gefeiert und ich hab es dank Prüfungsvorbereitung völlig verschwitzt…

Bin grad wieder nach Haus gekommen und froh, das jetzt Wochenende ist… Die vergangene Woche war doch sehr arbeits- und ereignisreich. Spannend, interessant und anstrengend zugleich. Bonn, Frankfurt und Berlin waren die Stationen der letzten Tage und zwischendrin musste auch noch eine Prüfung geschrieben werden… Ich bin so gespannt, was daraus wird…

Aber jetzt geh ich direkt ins Bettchen, denn ich todmüde. Seit heute morgen um 5 Uhr wach und den ganzen Tag unterwegs. PB -> B -> PB, das fordert seinen Tribut

Achja und ich hab ein neues Suchtmittel für mich entdeckt… Da ich heute direkt an der Filale in der Friedrichstr. vorbeikam, hab ich dort eine kleine Kaffeepause gemacht und einen sündhaft leckeren Caramel Macchiato genossen… Schade das es hier kein Starbucks gibt

Komme grad aus dem bib zurück und ich hab es geschafft. Ganz nach dem Motto “Für Sie gibt es hier nix mehr zu tun!” hab ich meine Noten überreicht bekommen und muss keine mündliche Prüfung absolvieren… Jetzt heißt es nur noch am 31. mein Zeugnis in Empfang nehmen und verabschiedet werden. Und das beste ist, ich hab mein selbstgestecktes Ziel eindeutig erreicht, da ich das bib mit einem Notenschnitt von 1,5 abschließe. Ich glaub das grinsen, welches ich vor heute vor Erleichterung im Gesicht hab, das müsste man mir operativ entfernen…

A new french PR blog entered the blogosphere yesterday, PRojetZ, authored by Philippe Cherel.
If you can read french, I fully recomend it to you as he is a very smart writer and I am sure you'll find his blog a great daily RDV while drinking your first coffee in the morning...;o)

Welcome Philippe !

Tags: philippe cherel, projetz, projet z

NewsGator has been a roll lately. They've just released updated versions of Netnewswire (mac desktop RSS feed aggregator) and FeedDemon (PC desktop RSS aggregator). Steve Rubel now reports NewsGator is upgrading it's web based aggregator. Take a look.

Using RSS feeds for reading the content you want, from who you want and when you want it is nothing short of life changing. Just ask lawyers or other business professionals who've mastered the use of RSS feeds.

The problem in advancing the use of RSS to more lawyers and other professionals has been the lack of easy to set up and use aggregators. Netnewsire and FeedDemon are good but they require downloads. Netnewsire downloads on a mac were not a problem. But most business folks are using PC's locked down by IT to prevent them from installing new software like FeedDemon. Bloglines has been okay, but there are shortcomings when trying to monitor keywords and key phrases by RSS.

I've found Newsgator's user interface till now to be among the most confusing on the net. If these guys can master an easy to use web based aggregator of selected blog RSS feeds combined with getting RSS feeds by selected keywords, game's on. And NewsGator will have 10 to 20 new law firms and professional business firms a month in the form of LexBlog clients using NewsGator. We'll include it part and parcel in our RSS training.

On Sunday, I had a brilliant idea. I was going to CPK on Sunday with Pete and some other friends, and knowing I’d use my ATM card, I decided that I didn’t want to worry the waiter about how much money goes with what card. So, I stuck a Post-it on the card, folded it over, and stuck it in my wallet. When it came time to pay, I just wrote the amount on the Post-it and handed it over.

This’ll definitely come in handy when you’re with a big group of people and you’re not the only one using a card.

I’m very impressed at your grasp of Islam and the Muslim world. Very impressive. It is crucial for people to be aware of these issues. Great blog!

Chicagoist is a sucker for a deal. Marketers know they can wow people like us with anything that can be purchased for a dollar, be it a Buffalo Snacker or a can of PBR. So when we heard about Megabus.com, the discount bus line that will begin offering $1 fares from Chicago to eight Midwestern cities next month, we could hardly believe it. We can’t even get across town for $3.

But, to our amazement, it seems to be true. Well, at least mostly true. Megabus.com will begin daily service on April 10 with express runs to Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and St. Louis.

Here’s how it works: Travelers must book their rides on the company’s Web site up to 45 days in advance. Fares start at $1 each way, plus a 50-cent reservation fee. For each trip, three or four $1 seats are reserved, and the remaining seats can range from $9 to $27. In other words, you’ll have to book early to get the super-cheap fares.

Megabus.com has operated in the UK for three years and charges an average of $10 for a 200-mile trip. Reviews of the UK service seem to be generally positive, but several reviewers noted that introductory fares became scarce once the line became more popular, and that buses don’t always leave on time.

But really, for a dollar, it's not going to be first class.

Click here to receive an important message about e-mail.

No está uno acostumbrado a estas cosas… El otro día publiqué un post hablando de la magia del Hombrecillo Indomable, y Netdancer me lo meneó.

Y vino el caos :) No solo las visitas a este blog se han duplicado dos o tres días por lo curioso de la historia (lo lógico es pensar que ya van volviendo a la normalidad), sino que ha servido para que alguna gente se reencuentre con aquel Hombrecillo, igual que en el comentario que originó el post (la historia se repite, como en el libro), y han enlazado la página que preparé con el flash… Si tenemos en cuenta que el librito pesaba unos dos megas (quizá hubiera podido hacerlo más pequeño, pero fue una cosa así rápida), está claro: el ancho de banda consumido se ha disparado.

De modo que he tenido que tirar de lista de hosting gratuitos para archivos hasta encontrar algo medio decente para un flash. Y allí se ha quedado, en directupload, que te muestra el flash en pantalla, no para descargarlo.

Si no, este mes palmábamos con exceso de tráfico, y no está la economía pa muchos aires…

Por cierto, me ha encantado que le haya gustado tanto a la gente la historia, y el libro. Una pequeñesisísima aportación a difundir el gran trabajo de Hanz Traxler (con la traducción de Miguel Azaola). Que ilu.

Le habló un arkángel casi muriendo de éxito :P

• They're always so cute when they're asleep. But when they wake they can be nightmares. Take this little chihuahua, for example. Please. (t/y Louise)
• The Indian Shankar Drum Ganesh Machine. Sometimes a sitar is just a sitar.
• Turban Outfitters. Turban-wearers we have known and loved.
• The Chronicles of Nianhua. They say posters of fat children make for happy Chinese communists.

Watch her spred that yummy butter all over my hard buns.

Author: RabidToasters
Keywords: Devon Butter Bread Erica
Added: March 20, 2006

Ce soir à lieu la soirée de lancement de mon livre pour présenter les nouvelles technologies au grand public.

Vous pouvez feuilleter un aperçu ici : http://www.fannysparty.com/livretq.swf

et l'acheter ici : http://www.fnac.com/Shelf/article.asp?PRID=1799178&OrderInSession=1&Mn=1&SID=1f74e076-2015-d126-77c5-5f5d7acfdc1c&TTL=210320061709&Origin=FnacAff&Ra=-1&To=0&Nu=1&UID=1ED4E5371-AB84-12C3-9845-519D28B8B26B&Fr=3

Perso, je déteste la couv, mais la maquette intérieure est très chouette.

Den Clip habe ich lange vermisst, nun hat ihn Scott wieder aufgetan: Die Bibliothekspolizistin in Overdue ist auf der Jagd nach fälligen Büchern…

Thanks Matt, I’ll do my best not to sound like Inspecteur Clouzeau. Oui d’accord ?

[via]

We have indeed some very exciting news for AllPeers and I will talk about them next week. Hey sorry but I don’t do major announcement on Fridays afternoons.

Meanwhile, I’ll be flying to London next week for the OPA ’06 London: Forum for the Future conference. If you happen to be there too and want to talk about AllPeers, feel free to send me an email to cedric *at* allpeers.com

Had made this for Clifford Lee and have decided to release it to everyone since it has been highly requested.

You can now download the header for Connections Reloaded in .psd. You will need Photoshop to open the .psd file.

The .psd contains three layers, viz. BG, header and topnav.

header is the image of the car in the tunnel you see above.
topnav is the top navigation bar just above the header.
BG is the rest of the image.

BG has been placed above both, followed by header and topnav.

If you want to change the colour of the top navigation bar, all you need to do fill the topnav layer with the desired colour.

Fill the header layer with whatever colour or image you want. It has to be a minimum of 741×143 pixels in order to fill the rectangular area. Ensure that the image doesn’t go too high up or it will cover the top navigation area.

Note that this psd can be used even if you are using the original Connections theme and would like to customize the header. I have created the psd using the top.jpg file.

Download: CRHeader.zip.

If you find the file useful, please do consider a donation.
Thanks

Geoff Zeiss has started a new Autodesk blog: “Between the Poles”  http://blogs.autodesk.com/between_the_poles

Маниакальный Веблог » Подсветка автора в комментариях 2:

Я уже писал о том, что придумал, как подсвечивать реальные комментарии автора, и обещал сделать плагин соответствующий.

Не вышло . К сожалению, то место текста, в котором надо вставлять код, генерируется не непосредствено движком Wordpress’а, а берется из шаблона. И плагин вызвать в том месте, судя по всему, нельзя (если кто знает, как - подскажите).

Однако, для тех, кто не поленится залезть в шаблон, привожу хак. Пишу для стандартного “Кубрика”, для остальных поставьте по смыслу […]

Dans son message, le roi du Maroc souhaite avoir le soutien de l'Algérie "compte tenu des solides relations de fraternité qui unissent nos deux pays et du rôle prépondérant de votre pays au sein du Bureau international des expositions et au regard de la considération dont il jouit auprès des autres pays membres". "Le soutien de votre pays à cette candidature est un soutien à tous les pays arabes", écrit le roi du Maroc.

Les retombées de l'organisation par le Maroc de cette événement, si il la peut, "seront bénéfiques non seulement pour le Maroc, mais également pour l'ensemble des Etats arabes", conclut le roi du Maroc dans son message. Les relations entre l'Algérie et le Maroc piétinent pour raison entre autres leurs différends sur la question du Sahara occidental. Les deux pays tentent de briser la glace dans leurs rapports bilatéraux en faveur des peuples du Maghreb.

Bruce Willis in a thriller called "16 Blocks"

OS-sajten för vinterspelen i Turin som pågår just nu har fler besökare än vad motsvarande sida för Athen-OS hade förra året. För mig känns det självklart, Vinter-OS är det “riktiga” OS numer. Sommar OS är helt enkelt inte lika kul att följa.

Vinter OS i Turin är populärare på nätet än sommaspelen i Athen var. Vinter OS-sajten hade över 50 miljoner träffar under onsdagen vilket är 10 procent mer än sajten för Athen OS hade motsvarande dag, rapporterar Cnet.

Vinter-OS kanske mestadels har i-länder som medverkar och internet används mer i dessa i-länder? Eller så är det helt enkelt så att fler och fler börjar använda internet i vardagen…

(Från Internetworld och News.com)

Dans une tribune datée de Marrakech, le chroniqueur du quotidien washingtonien souligne que dans cette terre hospitalière, les retraités étrangers peuvent acquérir des résidences abordables et se payer les services d'aides soignantes et autre personnel de maison.

"Le Maroc est pour un nombre grandissant d'Européens ce qu'est le Mexique pour de plus en plus d'Américains", estime-t-il, poursuivant que les Européens qui ne peuvent plus s'offrir une maison de weekend dans les campagnes françaises ou belges peuvent acquérir ou construire une résidence au Maroc et qu'un grand complexe pour retraités avec installations médicales est en construction aux pieds des montagnes de l'Atlas.

Des Parisiens ou Lyonnais font un voyage de quelque heures pour venir passer un weekend dans la campagne de ce pays nord-africain, indique le chroniqueur, faisant remarquer que les vols à destination du Maroc sont fréquents et que certains ressortissants français choisissent même de passer trois semaines au Maroc et une semaine en France.

Le chroniqueur qui indique par ailleurs que sa visite au Maroc a coïncidé avec l'introduction en France d'une législation ''clairement destinée à réduire le nombre des Arabes et des Africains'' vivant dans l'hexagone, cite la ministre déléguée chargée des Marocains résidant à l'étranger, Mme Nouzha Chekrouni, expliquant que ''si l'Europe et l'Amérique du Nord ferment leurs portes à l'immigration, la conséquence sera probablement la délocalisation des entreprises là où se trouvent les travailleurs''.

Après avoir fait remarquer que durant la seconde moitié du siècle dernier le courant de l'immigration allait du sud vers le nord, et qu'actuellement on assiste à un inversement de cette tendance avec un nombre petit mais grandissant de retraités européens qui viennent s'installer dans les pays du sud, Jim Hoagland estime ''que l'immigration nord-sud est une petite vaguelette de bon sens dans une mer agitée, polarisée par les troubles internationaux'' ''C'est une réponse instructive, intuitive aux grands défis démographiques de l'avenir qui sont généralement négligés par les gouvernements, aux prises avec des problèmes qui leur semblent plus urgents'', fait remarquer le chroniqueur.

Map

çekim aşamasına dair haberler ilk kez gazetelere yansıdıktan sonra, merakla bu filmi beklemeye başladım.
nasıl bir film ortaya çıkacağına ilişkin merakımı ancak seyredince giderebildim. gölge tiyatrosunun iki baş aktörünün zeka ve incelik isteyen esprilerle osmanlı'dan günümüze tüm türk toplumunu etkisi altına alması başlı başına bir inceleme konusu zaten. film gösterime girmeden evvel yaptığı söyleşilerde yönetmen ezel akay yıllarca bu konu ile ilgili araştırmalar yaptığını söyledi. filmi izleyince verilen emeğin hakkını iade ediyorsunuz zaten.

tags: ezel akay,film,hacivat,karagöz,orhan gazi,osmanlı,sinema

munich, steven spielberg yapımı bir oscar adayı olmasının etkisiyle son günlerde en çok konuşulan filmlerden. en çok beklenen de diyebiliriz. önce tom cruise'nin ajandası nedeniyle yapımı 2 yıl ertelenmişti.

film george jonas'ın "intikam" adlı kitabından uyarlandı. spielberg film için 3 farklı kişiye 3 senaryo yazdırdı ve eric roth'unki seçildi. senaryoyu sonradan tony kushner ("angels in america" mini dizisinin senaryo yazarı bol ödüllü yazar şahsiyet) elden geçirdi. spielberg'e kalsa senaryo kushner tarafından yazılmalıymış ama ilk filmi için fazla kompleks bir hikayeye sahip olduğu için teklifi kabul edememiş.

filmde oynayan guri winburg'un canlandırdığı karakterin gerçek hayattaki guri 1 aylık iken ölen babası ayrı bir ilginçlik...

terrörü hedef alan bu filmin bir özelliği de yapılacağı haberinden itibaren spielberg'in terrör örgütlerinden ciddi ölüm tehtitleri alması. hatta almanya'dan ithal ettirilen cephane yüklü asker kamyonu malta'da çekimler sırasında fazla ısınma nedeniyle patlayınca yerel polis alarma geçmiş ve bunun bir saldırı olduğu sanılmıştı.

sürprizlerle karşılaşmayı sevenlerin tadını kaçırmadan konudan da bir cümle ile bahsedelim. film, 1972 yılında münich olimpiyatlarında gerçekleşen ölümleri ve terrörü ele alıyor.

munich oscar alır mı?

tags: film,munich,oscar,sinema,steven spielberg,tom cruise,tony kushner

Les consultants en immigration se sont enrichis sur le dos des Marocains, et pourtant, on peut consulter simplement le site du gouvernement du Québec pour évaluer nos chances d'être acceptés comme immigrants au Canada.

Les gens, en arrivant au Canada, pensent à améliorer leur situation mais malheureusement la réalité est tout autre. Les statistiques montrent que cela prend en moyenne deux ans et demi pour qu'un Maghrébin trouve son premier emploi au Québec. Il y a 28 % de chômage chez les immigrants maghrébins.

Plusieurs professionnels marocains se trouvent au volant d'un taxi. Combien de familles sont brisées à leur arrivée au Canada, même chez ces riches marocains qui rentrent en tant qu'immigrants investisseurs finissent par perdre leur femme et leurs enfants et retournent au Maroc en laissant toute une histoire derrière eux. Il n'en demeure pas moins que cette réalité ne s'applique pas à la totalité, il y a quand même certains Marocains qui ont très bien réussi même si on peut les compter sur le bout des doigts.

J'aimerais vous parler d'un Marocain de Tétouan, entré au Canada en 1987, d'une famille très modeste, s'exprimant plus en espagnol qu'en français. Il est rentré au Canada avec un peu moins de cinq cents dollars dans ses poches, trouvant un travail comme représentant dans une compagnie d'informatique. Aujourd'hui, son ex-employeur est devenu son employé et sa compagnie fait 40 millions de dollars de chiffre d'affaires. Une des personnalités les plus respectées dans le milieu politique autant qu'économique.

M. Mohamed El Khayat n'est pas resté au Maroc, il a choisi de s'expatrier. Aujourd'hui ce Québécois d'origine marocaine est un bel exemple d'intégration réussie dans la société québécoise pour ses compatriotes.

Bien qu'il se considère aujourd'hui comme un Québécois et un Canadien à part entière, il se rappelle les difficultés qu'il a connues à son arrivée. En effet, le premier hiver lui a presque fait regretter d'avoir choisi le Québec, mais le plus difficile a été de trouver un emploi. Avec son diplôme en informatique, obtenu à Grenade en Espagne, il voulait à tout prix devenir vendeur de produit Apple. Il a dû utiliser bien des arguments pour convaincre le directeur commercial de Micro-contact, Gilles Tanguay, de l'embaucher. "M. Tanguay m'a fait confiance."

Il a reçu le titre de "Grand bâtisseur" en 2000, remis par le Bloc Québécois et le prix Immigrant du monde 2001, décerné par la Chambre de commerce et d'industrie du Québec métropolitain. Mohamed El Khayat réside dans la ville de Québec depuis 1987, après avoir transité par l'Espagne, le temps d'une formation en informatique de gestion.

Québec, capitale de la province de Québec, ville où siège le gouvernement provincial, attire peu d'immigrants. Si Montréal accueille 38.000 immigrants, Québec n'en reçoit que 1300 à 1400. Depuis quelques années, le gouvernement encourage les immigrants à s'installer.

D'après M. El Khayat, "il faudrait sensibiliser la population et les entreprises pour faciliter l'enracinement des nouveaux arrivants dans la ville de Québec", et pourtant il est très fier d'être Marocain. Il disait même que "lorsque nous étions jeunes, nous n'avions rien à manger. Ma mère, la nuit, réchauffait de l'eau nous faisant croire qu'elle nous cuisinait une soupe, mais elle ne faisait ça que pour gagner du temps en attendant que nous nous endormions."

Pour recevoir ses parents, Mohammed ne se contente pas de les attendre à l'aéroport mais il se déplace jusqu'au Maroc pour aller les chercher.

Aujourd'hui, il préside l'événement : un monde des affaires dont le président d'honneur n'est pas moins que le Premier ministre du Québec, Jean Charest.

Dans la ville de Québec, tout le monde l'appelle et le connaît par son prénom Mohammed. Il fait souvent les premières pages des journaux au Québec et comme disent certains, c'est le seul arabe qui fait la première page des journaux sans être accusé de terrorisme.

Abderrahim Khouibaba - Libération

La portée historique et pédagogique de ces deux rapports, les méthodes d'investigation employées pour rechercher la vérité et établir l'équité, leurs conclusions et leurs recommandations constituent indéniablement un pas décisif dans ce long et difficile combat mené pour la défense et la promotion de la justice et la dignité humaine.

En France, les Consulats généraux du Royaume du Maroc se sont mobilisés afin de relayer cet événement sans précédent dans notre histoire afin de lui donner l'impact local voulu.

Le Consulat général de Colombes (Hauts de Seine), qui représente l'une des Circonscriptions Consulaires les plus importantes de France (plus de 140.000 marocains) et qui s'est engagé dans un véritable processus d'amélioration de ses services et ses structures, a entrepris une vaste campagne d'information et de sensibilisation centrée sur les deux rapports.

Dès le début du mois de janvier 2006, une campagne d'information soutenue et préparée avec soin, a été lancée à destination des hommes politiques, des magistrats, des journalistes, des universitaires et des associations des départements des Hauts de Seine (92) et de l'Essonne (91).

L'objectif étant de mettre à la disposition de ces personnalités le rapport de l'IER et leur présenter dans une lettre succincte son contenu et ses finalités.

Les réactions à cette communication ciblée furent très favorables. Les lettres reçues par M. le Consul Général de Colombes, Abdelmalek CHIHEB, témoignent de l'impact que cette campagne de communication et d'information a produit.

Des sénateurs, des députés, des maires, des conseillers régionaux et généraux de tous les horizons politiques, ainsi que des personnalités du monde des média et de la culture ont exprimé leur admiration et leur soutien à cette initiative marocaine qui inscrit notre pays dans le sens de l'histoire : instauration de l'Etat de droit, promotion des principes de l'équité, de la réconciliation, du développement humain et de l'égalité économique et sociale.

C'est avec le même souci d'efficacité que le Consulat général de Colombes a poursuivi sa campagne d'information et de sensibilisation en organisant le Samedi 11 février une rencontre-débat sur cette même thématique.

De nombreuses associations culturelles et cultuelles, des universitaires, des juristes, des élus et des médecins ont été conviés à cette rencontre pour exprimer leurs opinions et réfléchir ensemble sur la meilleure manière de relayer cet effort de communication et de capitaliser les conclusions et les recommandations des deux rapports. La présentation des deux rapports a donné à cette occasion libre cour à une discussion ouverte qui a mis en évidence les dimensions essentielles de ce travail historique et ses vertus pédagogiques sans oublier de signaler ses lacunes et ses omissions. Les recommandations du rapport de l'IER ont suscité de nombreux commentaires :

Comment éviter que de telles exactions et atteintes à la liberté et à la dignité humaine ne se reproduisent dans notre pays ?
Peut-on accepter le principe de la réparation physique et morale des victimes sans régler la question de la sanction et de la condamnation des coupables ?
Quel rôle pourra jouer la communauté marocaine établie à l'étranger dans la concrétisation des recommandations des deux rapports en matière de solidarité nationale, de justice sociale, de promotion des droits de l'Homme, de développement économique et démocratique du Maroc ?

D'autres thèmes ont été discutés au cours de cette rencontre telle que la problématique de la responsabilité historique des Amicales dans la fragilisation du tissu associatif et leur rôle dans la division de la communauté marocaine depuis le début des années 80 (rôle dénoncé par le rapport final de l'IER)

Mais, quelles que soient leurs opinions sur les deux rapports les intervenants ont tous souligné l'importance de ce genre de rencontre initiée par M. le consul Général Abdelmalek CHIHEB qui est de nature à favoriser l'instauration d'une nouvelle relation de confiance entre l'administration consulaire et les membres de notre communauté.

C'est dans ce sens que les associations présentes ont été invitées à jouer pleinement et utilement leur rôle de relais en organisant dans leurs communes et régions respectives des rencontres similaires afin de favoriser la compréhension et la diffusion des deux rapports.

Le Consulat Général de Colombes fort de ces deux expériences a prévu l'organisation de colloques et séminaires consacrés à l'IER et aux "50 ans de Développement Humain et Perspectives 2025" assurant ainsi une promotion efficace aux deux rapports qui symbolisent le nouveau élan de modernisation de nos institutions conduit sous la Haute Autorité de SM le Roi Mohamed VI et qui consiste à instaurer dans notre pays un Etat de droit et à construire un Maroc tourné vers l'avenir, soucieux de l'équité, de la justice et de l'égalité économique et sociale entre tous ses citoyens.

Mohammed MRAIZIKA , universitaire
Président de l'Association Almohagir
E-mail : m.mraizika@laposte.net

Professor Akeel Bilgrami has kindly given 3 Quarks Daily permission to publish the text of a speech he gave at a memorial service for Edward W. Said on September 29, 2003. Professor Bilgrami is the Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Heyman Center for the Humanties at Columbia University.

Professor Bilgrami went to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and got a Bachelor's degree there in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. In 1983 he got his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He has published a book in the Philosophy of Language and Mind in 1992 called Belief and Meaning (Blackwell). He has two forthcoming books from Harvard University Press -- Self-Knowledge and Intentionality and Politics and The Moral Psychology of Identity. He has published various articles in Philosophy of Mind as well as in Political and Moral Philosophy and Moral Psychology.

Edward Said: A Personal and Intellectual Tribute

There are a very few intellectuals --–Bertrand Russell, E.P. Thompson, and Noam Chomsky come to mind in the English-speaking world--- whose writings and whose lives provide a kind of pole that thousands of people look toward so as to feel that they are not wholly lost or marginal for possessing instincts for justice and humanity, and for thinking that some small steps might be taken towards their achievement. Edward Said was, without a doubt, such a man. The daze and despair so many of us here at Columbia feel, now that we have taken in that he has gone, is only a very local sign of what is a global loss without measure. And to think of what it must be like for his own brutalized people to lose him, is unbearable.

I.

Edward was, as they say, ‘many things to many people’, and though he was too vast to be contained by a mere university, even one as uncloistered as Columbia, he was a teacher and took great pride in being one. So let me say something about that first.

To put it seemingly frivolously, he was deeply ‘cool’. I say ‘deeply’ and mean it. One day, the best undergraduate I have ever taught and my very favourite student, said to me “Prof. Said is really cool”. Now I, who have been trying to be cool for decades, was mildly annoyed by this, and said, “Look, I can understand that you think he is a great scholar and intellectual and a peerless public figure, but why ‘cool’? He doesn’t wear black, he despises popular music, he hangs out with well-heeled professors and other rich and famous people, and he is preposterously handsome --how uncool can you get!” She looked at me dismissively and said, “All that’s really not a big deal. It’s –like-- really on the surface.”

Edward’s influence on the young came from his refusal to allow literature to offer merely self-standing pleasures. The connections he made in even our most canonical works, between the narrations of novels and the tellings of national histories, between the assertions of an author and the assertion of power by states, between the unconscious attitudes of a seemingly high-minded writer and some subtle illiberal tendency of social or national prejudice, drew to the study of literature numberless students who, out of a quest for worldly engagement, or more simply out of a cosmopolitan curiosity, demanded just such an integrity of words with morals,. Not long ago while giving a lecture in Honkong, I found that students were passing around a faint and barely readable photographed parchment of one of his unpublished manuscripts -- a contribution to a symposium held ten thousand miles away -- as though it were a handwritten poem by a Renaissance courtier. No other literary critic has had such a, literally, planetary influence.

And he achieved this without any of the heart-sinking, charmless, prose of the literary avant-garde, nor the natural, unaffected dullness of the old guard. His writing, like his speech, had the voltage of dramatization and (it has to be said) self-dramatization, which no young person could find anything but cool.

II.

Because of his great political courage, because he repeatedly broke his lion’s heart in the cause of Palestinian freedom, because so much of his most familiar and famous writing was intellectually continuous with those political themes and struggles, and because it was expressed with a ceaseless flow of political ardour, Edward’s intellectual legacy will be primarily political, not just among the young, nor just in the popular image, but also in the eyes of academic research. There is no gainsaying this. And it must be so. It will be right to be so. This side of him was of course manifest to his own people, but it was also central to so many others for whom the Palestinian struggle is a reminder that the fight for the most elementary of freedoms is not yet over. Since so much has rightly been written about it, I want to briefly situate that most vital part of his life and thought in the larger setting of his humanism, of which we often spoke in our conversations inside and outside the classes we taught together, and on which he had just completed a book, when he died. It was perhaps the only ‘ism’ he avowed (he was, despite being in the midst of an anti-colonial struggle, consistently critical of nationalism), and he avowed it with a stubborn idealism, in the face of its having been made to seem pious and sentimental by the recent developments in literary theory.

Underlying the civic passions and the charged impressionism of his political and literary writing was a deep and structured argument of greater generality than anything that is usually attributed to him. (He was always impatient with arguments, and would tell me that it was a philosopher’s obsession, keen to find philosophers as bad as lawyers on this score. But he was wrong about this, and came around to saying that something like this argument was indeed a thread in his work.)

Two elements of frameworking breadth have abided through the diverse doctrinal formulations of humanism, from its earliest classical hints to the most subtle surviving versions of our own time. They can, in retrospect, be seen as its defining poles.

One is its aspiration to find some feature or features which sets what is human apart --apart from both nature, as the natural sciences study it, and from what is super-nature and transcendental, as these are pursued by the outreach of theology and metaphysics.

The other is the yearning to show regard for all that is human, for what is human wherever it may be found, and however remote it may be from the more vivid presence of the parochial. The dictum, ‘Nothing human is alien to me’, still moving despite its great familiarity (and despite the legend about its trivial origin), conveys something of that yearning.

These two familiar poles framed the argument that Edward presented throughout his life as a writer.

At one pole, to explore what sets the human apart, he invoked early on in his work a principle of Vico’s, that we know best what we ourselves make –history. Self-knowledge thus becomes special, standing apart from other forms of knowledge. And only human beings, so far as we know, are capable of that self-knowledge.

At the other pole, to make urgent the Senecan dictum, he plunged into the topical, warning us of the disasters that will follow, and which indeed are already upon us, if we conduct our public lives as intellectuals with an indifference to the concerns and the suffering of people in places distant from our Western, metropolitan sites of self-interest.

Relatively fixed poles though they may be in a highly changeable set of ideas we call ‘humanistic’, these two features are not ‘poles apart’. They are not merely unrelated and contingent elements of humanism. They must be brought together in a coherent view. And Edward tried to do just that.

To bridge the distance between them, he started first at one pole by completing Vico’s insight with a striking philosophical addition. What Vico brought to light was the especially human ability for self-knowledge, and the special character possessed by self-knowledge among all the other knowledges we have. This special character which has affected our paths of study in ways that we have, since Vico’s time, taken to describing with such terms as ‘Verstehen’, “Geisteswissenschaften”, or as we like to say in America,‘ the Social Sciences’, still gives no particular hint of the role and centrality of the Humanities. It is Said’s claim, I think, that until we supplement self-knowledge with, in fact until we understand self-knowledge as being constituted by, self-criticism, humanism and its disciplinary manifestations (‘the Humanities’) are still not visible on the horizon. What makes that supplement and that new understanding possible is the study of literature. To put it schematically, the study of literature, that is to say ‘Criticism’, his own life-long pursuit, when it supplements self-knowledge gives us the truly unique human capacity, the capacity to be self-critical.

Turning then to the other pole, how can a concern for all that is human be linked, not just contingently but necessarily, to this capacity for self-criticism? Why are these not simply two disparate elements in our understanding of humanism? Said’s answer is that when criticism at our universities is not parochial, when it studies the traditions and concepts of other cultures, it opens itself up to resources by which it may become self-criticism, resources not present while the focus is cozy and insular. The “Other’, therefore, is the source and resource for a better, more critical understanding of the ‘Self’. It is important to see, then, that the appeal of the Senecan ideal for Said cannot degenerate into a fetishization of ‘diversity’ for its own sake or into a glib and ‘correct’ embrace of current multiculturalist tendency. It is strictly a step in an argument that starts with Vico and ends with the relevance of humanism in American intellectual life and politics. Multiculturalism has not had a more learned and lofty defence. It may in the end be the only defence it deserves.

James Clifford in a now famous review of Orientalism had chastised Edward, saying that he cannot possibly reconcile the denial of the human subject in his appeal to Foucault in that work, with his own humanist intellectual urges, reconcile, that is, his historicist theoretical vision with the agency essential to the humanist ideal. But if the argument I have just presented is effective, if the methodical link between the two poles I mentioned really exists, it goes a long way in easing these tensions. It allows one not simply to assert but to claim with some right, as Edward did, that criticism is both of two seemingly inconsistent things: it is philology, the ‘history’ of words, the ‘reception’ of a tradition, at the same time as it allows for a ‘resistance’ to that tradition and to the repository of custom that words accumulate.

The argument, thus, gives literary humanism a rigour and intellectual muscle, as well as a topicality and political relevance, that makes it unrecognizable from the musty doctrine it had become earlier in the last century --and it gives those disillusioned with or just simply bored with that doctrine, something more lively and important to turn to than the arid formalisms and relativisms of recent years. For this, we must all be grateful.

III.

I first met Edward twenty years ago when I noticed an incongruously well-dressed man at a luncheon talk I gave as a fresh recruit at the Society of Fellows, on some theme in the Philosophy of History. With a single question, asked without a trace of condescension, he made me see why the issues of substance and urgency lay elsewhere than where I was labouring them. I knew immediately that he was a good thing, though I did not know then that I would never change my mind. One had heard so much about him. No person I knew had more political enemies. They did not find it enough to hate him, they wanted the whole world to hate him, and they weaved fantastications and myths in order to try and make it happen. For those who admired his indomitable political will, these scurrilous attacks against him made him seem even more iconic, and for those who knew him well, his seductive, self-pitying responses to them, made him even more dear.

An essential part of his great and natural charm was that friendship with him was not without difficulty, nor without steep demand. He would do his best sometimes to appear a credible swine, if for no other reason than to raise a spark in the conversation. I recall when we were on the stage together at some public meeting, after the idiotic fuss that was made about his having thrown a stone in the air at a site in Lebanon which had just been evacuated by the Israeli army. The person who introduced us began with me, and gave me the modest introduction I deserved, and then went on to poetic heights about him, and concluded by saying that he was the author of over twenty books. As she finished, I leaned into my microphone and said “Over twenty books! Somebody has to stop this terrorist! First he throws stones! Now he is cutting down trees!” He immediately leaned into his own microphone, and said, “My dear fellow, you should worry just a bit that for a man who has not written that much, that remark will come off as bitter rather than funny.” On another occasion, we were sitting in his flat last New Year’s Eve for dinner, with a gathering of his friends from the Modern Languages Association, which had just had its annual meeting in New York City. The talk that evening had had much to do with feminism in the academy, the usual drill about the feminine pronoun, and all of us had self-consciously displayed our impeccable commitments. The conversation came around to whether my wife and I would be moving our daughter from Brearley to the newly started school for the children of faculty at Columbia University, a subject of vexed indecision for us. Edward asked us impatiently, “So are you bringing her to the Columbia School? What the hell is holding you up?” And I said, “Well, I am not sure, she is very happy at Brearley”. And he said, throwing a glance around at the women, “Who cares, she’s a GIRL!!!” This teasing sometimes became willfully, even if delightfully, dangerous. Charlie Rose once asked him on television, if he had read a recent book on Wagner, which had come to the extraordinary conclusion that his music was so infused with anti-Semitism that if someone who was not anti-Semitic heard his operas, he or she would become anti-Semitic by the end of it. What, Rose asked, do you think of that conclusion? Edward, who despised anti-Semitism as much as anyone I know, but perfectly aware of the obvious dangers of the subject for a person with his political commitments, leaned forward and said, as if in earnest: “You know, I tried it. I got all my Wagner out and heard it all day and half into the night.” He then paused, allowing the menace to build up, and then, shaking his head, “ It didn’t work.”

Yes, he was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”, and he was a great and good and inspiring and beloved man. It is very hard to bear the loss of someone, so large of heart and mind.

As I wrote those last words, I was reminded that that heart and mind were lodged in a body, which, for all its robustness, was cursed with a wretched illness that he fought with such heroism for a dozen years. Reminded too of that more muted and less recognized form of heroism -forbearing and endlessly giving- with which his remarkable wife Mariam stood by his side each day for all those years, and of that obscure and nameless thing she will need now that he is gone, to be without the presence of the most present person she, and his children, and his friends, have known. I wish her vast reserves of it, whatever it is, and of every other good thing.

[See also this remembrance of Edward Said by S. Asad Raza.]

Une vraquerie de chez ZeuBeuBeu. Comme j’ignore la licence, ais autant la flemme de demander que de faire le HTML pour chaque image (je ponds ça à la main, c’est chiant à la longue), je ne donne que les liens (direct, parce que l’opérateur link: chez Google ne donne rien et que je ne veux pas lancer Firefox avec Customize Google, qui me permettrait des recherches plus larges).

Photos grasses

• Oui, vraiment grasses.
• Si c’est un vraie pub Manix, elle est osée.
• Mets-moi-la.
• Un ado en pleine action.
• Sans commentaire.

Blagues Carambar

• Avec et sans Flash. Pathétique, mais j’adore !
• Miss Belgique.

Environnement

• Réchauffement de la planète.
• Tri sélectif.

Abus d’informatique

• La question est : est-ce un gag ou y a-t-il des gars atteints à ce point ?
• Là encore, gag ou réalité ? On ne sait jamais, avec les nerds et les gamerz… En tout cas, ça a déclenché un rire impossible à arrêter (sensation bizarre).

Régis est un con

• Il prend une photo. Ce n’est pas le chat qu’il faut regarder, c’est la fenêtre.
• Il fait de la muscu (vidéo – WMV). Je suis sûr que l’ado a volontairement mis ça en ligne, pour faire marrer les copains.

Divers

• Cachez-moi ce miaou… Enki, le chat de ZeuBeuBeu, fait le pudique.
• Combien de fonctionnaires pour changer une ampoule. Le poids des mots, le choc de la photo !
• Arme de duplication massive. Wow.
• Le bac P. Vous passiez un bac P, un bac à bon marché… P pour pétanque. Si, si, c’est sérieux !
• Benoît va bien. Il a un vélo. C’est pris à Paris.
• Le Club Dorothée, sans le maquillage. C’est Jacky et Corbier qui s’en sortent le mieux et Dorothée le plus mal.
• Une étoile noire (blanche) comme boule de Noël.
• Mesdames, voici ce qu’on ne comprend pas chez vous.
• Suri Cat (jeu de mots sur chat et suricate).
• Météo nocturne. Évidemment, il faut remettre ça dans le contexte. Voir aussi Météo-sociologie.
• Toujours à remettre dans le contexte, la grippe aviaire en région parisienne.
• Êtes-vous ivre ? Mais heu ! Ça fait mal aux z’n’œils !
• Pas mal, le sac plastique.
• Anti-SMS. Je ne sais pas combien il y a d’images dans cette animation, mais j’adore !
• The show must go on. Rien ne peut arrêter un buveur.
• Ce n’est pas parce qu’on est un homme qu’on sait se servir d’une voiture.
• Tornade sur un terrain de foot (vidéo – WMV). Littéralement. Ça se passe au Japon, wow.
• Squares 2 (Flash). Un jeu Flash simple et amusant, basé sur les réflexes. J’ai attrapé 136 carrés, ce que je trouve pas mal avec un trackpad. Notez que vous pouvez désactiver la musique.

Lucky that i m not always this busy .. else i don’t think i have time for my other thing ..

yesterday was busy for work , this morning wake up on 6am , go to office on 7am and start the stock take on  8am … now i just feel like no energy in my body .. zzzzzzzzz

don’t really have any mood to do anything, just finish read up most of the feed, no mood to write 2 other blog, no mood to maintain the chinese blog aggregator… so i come here to hanging around ..

sigh better sleep early to recover argh when can i finish study my ruby ?

Hehe

(via Jo’s Jobwelt)

Apparement, la hausse de 12% du prix du gaz ne fait pas que des heureux.

Certains envoient même des lettres à Gaz de France pour leur signaler leur mécontentement.

Il est vrai que Gaz de France nous tiens un peu en otage dans cette affaire, un peu comme avec le pétrole, l'électricité, et autre... Il serait peut être temps de trouver de nouvelles sources d'énergies "renouvelables" comme on dit, bien qu'aucune énergie ne soit renouvelable en soit...

Tags : energies renouvelables gaz gaz de france lettre

Sucht man bei Google nach Big Rösti taucht dieser Blog ganz oben auf.

Okay, fein, schön, toll. Schmeckt ja auch gut, das Teil.

ABER:

Scrollt man weiter runter, taucht das Ergebnis hier auf:

Das ist ein Bild von mir, dass ich bei Flickr habe, aber was um alles in der Welt hat das mit nem Big Rösti zu tun und wieso taucht es so hoch (An 10. Stelle von über 48.000 Seiten) auf?

Was denkt sich Google da?
Wo kommt der Bezug her?
Ich bin verwirrt!

Lett å si, vanskelig å realisere:

• Interaktivit innhold: Lær av spill.
• Hyperlokalorientert innhold: Lær av blogger og “community journalists.”
• Kvalitetsinnhold: Om det er ens eget, eller andres - det beste skal på.

Det forekommer meg at mange redaktørers og deskmedarbeideres instinkter trekker dem i motsatt retning. Dette er selvfølgelig vanskelig å dokumentere, men på bakgrunn av de siste årenes pressedebatt mener jeg det er grunn til å tro at følgende holdninger gjør seg gjeldende i stor utstrekning:

• Vi trenger kvalitetskontrollert innhold, ikke interaktivt. Bare uavhengige journalister og redaktører kan tiltros rollen som sannhetens apostler. Ingen andre må få tukle med innholdet i vår publikasjon. Vi kan ikke tillate at ansvaret pulveriseres.
• Hyperlokale publikasjoner er for små til å interessere de viktigste annonsørene, og krever for mye ressurser i forhold til potensielle inntekter. Vi kan ha lokale merkevarer, men annonsene og det meste av stoffet må samkjøres sentralt, og så syndikeres.
• Vi trenger eksklusive saker for å bli foretrukket mediekanal. De sakene vi er alene om er de viktigste for oss, og derfor skal de promoteres sterkest. Det andre skriver kan i beste fall bli en notis hos oss.

Denne logikken vil leve i beste velgående inntil nye, hyperlokale og interaktive medier er opprettet som konkurrerer de etablerte ut av markedet. Bredbånd og gratisverktøy som gjør “community journalism"-nettsteder mulig er en disruptive technology som ennå ikke har gjort seg skikkelig gjeldende på hyperlokalplanet i norsk sammenheng. Men det vil komme.

Afternap.

this post enabled by airblogging.com.

Screw ‘em. When they stop printing/airing anti-semetic crap on their, government controlled, TV and in their, government controlled, newspapers, I’ll start worrying about what “offends” them.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00006IJWZ/resourceshost-20?dev-t=1S6YVA3VPF5PM5KCHDG2%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2

Have your christmas holiday spirits lifted with this cheerful christmas music. What is christmas without the christmas music? Enjoy the festive occasion and share your joy with others! I love a good holiday tune during the christmas season. It helps to put me in a place of relaxation and good will.

Christmas with the Rat Pack

Availability:Usually ships in 24 hours

Manufacturers)

Price: $13.99

さきほどの IE7 レビュー記事 の続きで、RSS リーダー機能に特化したレビューです。

※RSS とか RSS リーダーといっていますが、もちろん Atom にも対応しています。
※フィードというより RSS といったほうがまだ分かりやすいと思うので、RSS で統一しています。

●RSS 対応サイトの自動検出(auto discovery)

ついつい RSS リーダーの機能そのものに目がいきがちなのですが、まずはこの「自動検出」が非常に重要な役割を果たすと思います。

多くの人は「さぁ、RSS リーダー使ってみよう」ではなく、まずは「ん、なんか不思議なものがある」というところから入っていくはずなので、RSS の存在をブラウザユーザーに知らせるこの小さな機能が今後の普及にとても大きな鍵を握っていると考えます。

ということで、IE7 で RSS 対応サイトを表示させるとこんな感じです。

画面では小さくてわかりにくいのですが、ツールバーにオレンジのアイコンが表示されます。

おぉ、なかなかいい感じです。

●RSS の閲覧

オレンジのアイコンを押すと、RSS が表示されます。

スタイルを整えていますので、XML といってもきれいに表示されています。

ここで Subscribe リンクをクリックすると、RSS を購読することができます。

●RSS リーダーとしての機能

RSS を購読すると、こんな感じにツリー表示できます。

未読既読管理にもちゃんと対応しています。

※未読記事だけ表示させることも可能です。
　　また上の画面にあるように、カテゴリごとに表示することも可能になっています。

個々の RSS は一日一回自動巡回されます。この巡回間隔を設定することも可能になっています。

また、RSS 全体のオプションとして、新着があれば音を鳴らす、などの設定も可能になっています。

なお、フォルダ単位や全 RSS の一気読みはできないので、クリック（RSS選択）＋スクロール（一覧を購読）の繰り返しで閲覧することになります。

ちなみに、アイテム は無制限に蓄積できるので、自分のブログのバックアップ用に購読するなど、いろいろと用途は広がりそうです。
＃その他、Podcasting のデータをダウンロード保存することもできるようになっています。すばらしい。

●まとめ

ということで、RSS リーダーの機能としては

「自動的に新着記事があるかどうか調べてくれる、ちょっと便利なお気に入り（ブックマーク）」

という予想通りのものになっていますが、既読管理などをうまく使いこなせば、あまりたくさん RSS を購読しない人にとっては程よい便利ツールになると思います。

敢えて「自動更新されるお気に入り」というポジションを守ることで、一般的なユーザーへの敷居もかなり低いと思います（これとても重要）。

もちろん、200件くらい RSS を購読していたり、最新記事を職場や自宅でも読みたいといったヘビーユーザーにお薦めできる程の高機能なものではありませんが、RSS の普及を IE7 が後押ししてくれるのは間違いないと思いますので、今後の IE7 に期待したいと思います。

＃これがきちんとリリースされれば、それこそ街のパソコン教室でも使い方を教えるようになるでしょう（ほんとに？ ^^;）
＃まだ先の話しとはいえ、かなり可能性を感じさせてくれました。

＃さ、IE7、アンインストールしないと・・・

Tight lipped people tend to not to steal other people’s ideas.

Thanks for commenting!

Django, the Python “Web Framework for Perfectionists”, is bundling Dojo for Ajax with its 0.92 release, due in out in a few weeks. The initial integration will use Dojo in the admin interface of Django, but the toolkit will be available for any part of a Django app.

It was recently announced that the Java framework WebWork 2.2 will be released with Dojo under the hood, so this looks like another vote of confidence from the open source community in Dojo’s quality.

Thanks to Eugene, who also blogged about the announcement.

Ambas compañías presentarán el nuevo dispositivo en la feria Consumer Electronics Show (CES) que se inaugura en Las Vegas.

DIARIO TI: Netgear y Skype anuncian su acuerdo de colaboración para crear una nueva e innovadora familia de productos que incluye el primer teléfono móvil Skype que irá acompañado de un router que optimizará el uso de la tecnología Skype.

El teléfono Wi-Fi de Netgear, hará realidad la telefonía móvil a través de Internet para los usuarios de Skype, el teléfono Wi-Fi de Netgear funcionará en cualquier lugar en el que el usuario pueda conectarse a un punto inalámbrico de acceso a Internet, ya sea en casa, en la oficina, en un cibercafé, en un hotspot público o en cualquier acceso wireless abierto disponible.

“Ahora los usuarios de Skype pueden llamar de forma gratuita, a otros usuarios de Skype, en cualquier lugar del mundo, en cualquier momento, con tan sólo estar conectados a una red wireless. Estamos muy orgullosos de haber creado el primer teléfono móvil que permite a los usuarios disfrutar de todos los beneficios de Skype” afirma Patrick Lo, Presidente y CEO de Netgear.

Además del anuncio del lanzamiento de este teléfono Wi-Fi para Skype, ambas compañías colaboran para que el Router inalámbrico RangeMax de Netgear WPN824, esté totalmente equipado para optimizar el rendimiento de Skype.

rev. 1.00

Rachel McAddams

Continuing on the religious tip, you can now Chat with God at iGod

today my gf come to sg to sign the offer letter, finally she got her dream job, as a research assistant and wow.. her salary give me a shock, its almost 20% more then me ..

i think this might be a new challenge for us, so far we go through some challenge

• character challenge - both of us having quite different character , it take  quite some time for  us to  break this
• distance challenge - spending about 1 and half year for long distance relationship after we start the relationship for few month

and now .. financial challenge is coming, lets hope both of us can get through this

Homelessness on the Rise in Iowa, Families Affected Most

Click here to read the Full Report

http://www.iowapolicyproject.org/

deusx : Info balloons: A how-to - "If you move your mouse over one of the four web-services buttons at the bottom of this page, a balloon pops up showing you whatever is new for that particular web-service."

Tags : ajax domscripting hacks javascript js nifty webdev

A couple of curiosities have come up recently concerning national identity and how it distorts (rightly or wrongly) one's view of things.

First was a map of national stereotypes based on Google searches for e.g. "what the English are known for". [via Mike]

Not sure what "aristocratic kitchens" are - kitchens that the owners never enter? - and I really didn't know the Swedes still carve Viking longboats at the weekend. Anyway, thought it was interesting as an emergent view of national stereotypes, and how easy it is to recognize rather than agree with them.

Second (and loosely connected) was a letter to the Times published last Friday title "Truth Exchange". Commenting on an initiative between Agincourt and an English school, one Dr Kerry Bluglass of Warwick wrote

Not long ago, a charming French acquaintance of mine asked me, in all seriousness, about the British habit of naming landmarks after French victories.

"Which ones?", I inquired.

"Trafalgar Square and Waterloo Station," he replied. I was completely unable to convince him of the true outcome of these battles, and I later discovered that this view is not unusual in France."

... Interview de Nicolas Sarkozy Ministre d’Etat, de l’Intérieur et de l’Aménagement du Territoire Président de l’UMP Le Point – jeudi 8 décembre 2005 Propos recueillis par Catherine Pégard Quelles ...

SARKOZY-NICOLAS: MA PAGE D'ACCUEIL

God said, "Let there be Intel Macs" and there were Intel Macs.

MacBooks and iMacs to be precise.

And the ad.

I am a MST3K junkie. I cannot get enough of the stupidist, lamest films ever made. They really aren’t supposed to be funny, but they are.

At least with Joel, Mike and the bots they are.

There are 197 episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, so at about 2 hours an episode, not counting “The Movie”, factoring in time for potty breaks and inserting some sort of caffeine pic line, I think I can get every one watched in about a month or so.

I watched my nephew being born and it was great. That was 7 years ago and I still remember it. I kind of watched my son Jeremy (in this picture) being born through a mirror on the ceiling lol (emergency c-section) and I will never forget that!!

Giving stuff can bring so much internal joy. I have 499 Gmail invites to give away. If you need a Gmail account, just buzz me. Looking forward to seeing you on Gmail soon :-)

Well, we all know that Iran has boldly and defiantly removed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) seals from its nuclear research facilities, bringing to an end an alleged two-year "suspension" of its "research" programme. (That's research into how quickly it can nuke Israel and solve the "Zionist" problem once and for all, for any slow learners and liberals reading this!)

But Ireland is keeping a close eye on this and so it is that Irish foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern has worked up the courage to criticise Iran’s decision to resume nuclear research in defiance of international pressure. Mr Ahern called on the Middle Eastern country to "reconsider" the move and call a halt to its nuclear programme.

"I strongly urge Iran to immediately reconsider their actions and refrain from proceeding with their nuclear programme at this time,” he squeaked.

Or what? What will you DO, Mr. Ahern? Issue more glib press releases? Send in the Irish Army? What will you DO, exactly? Let me suggest an answer - you will do NOTHING whatsoever of substance. Instead, you will wait for the USA and Israel to act comprehensively and then you will CONDEMN them for doing that which you lack the guts and ability to do - which is to stop the Mullahs RIGHT NOW!

I was thinking about the fact that Muslims intent on becoming German citizens will have to undergo a rigorous cultural test to gauge their views on subjects ranging from bigamy to homosexuality. Believed to be the first test of its kind in Europe, the southern state of Baden-Württemberg has created the two-hour oral exam to test the loyalty of Muslims towards Germany. Have a look at the questions posed in the "rigorous" test. What are YOUR answers? Mine would be;

1. I would pray that God would help him see the error of his ways but he is my son. And I love my son.

2. Yes.

3. No.

4. No, German fashion is all the rage in Donacloney!

5. It's a sin.

But I think there are a few MISSING questions;

Do you support Jihad?

Did you cheer the 9/11 murderers?

Do you swear allegiance to our Nation State?

And then, the crunch question.....

Should a  member of Hizbollah who spent 19 years in a German prison for hijacking an airliner and killing an American navy diver be secretly sent back to Lebanon?

If you answer the last question YES then you're in! After all, that's JUST what the craven Germans have just done, to their eternal shame.

JVC has introduced its second generation feature-packed HD Radio™ CD Receiver for your car – the KD-HDR1. It comes with a multi-cast capable HD Radio tuner, is satellite radio ready, and [like every other device in the market] it's ready for the iPod. You would need to connect to the iPod through the JVC KS-PD100 adapter.

The iPod influence does not end there. It's evident in JVC’s new user interface that mimics the iPod’s click wheel. A circular front panel control has search and playback functions positioned identically to where they’re placed on the iPod click wheel. It's that married to the iPod.

The KD-HDR1 outputs 50 watts x 4 maximum (20 watts x 4 RMS). It provides a smooth surround sound effect thanks to the SRS CS-Auto™ technology. The JVC Digital Integrated Alignment System (DiAS) improves the quality of reception by eliminating interference. To match your car's acoustics the Digital 7-band iEQ, users can boost or cut the level by up to 10dB on each of seven bands (60, 150, 400, 1k, 2.4k, 6k and 15kHz). Further, the unit makes it easy to view the display in varying light conditions through a switchable dimmer. It also comes with an oval-shaped remote control.

The JVC KD-HDR1 will be available in March and will sell for about $299.95. It seems to be competing with the Panasonic CQ-CB9900U, one of the first such receivers.

For newbies, here's a quick guide to HD Radio.

Manufacturer website: JVC

The JVC KS-PD100 iPod adapter:

JVC finally broke into the world of mobile navigation with a new portable GPS system featuring audio/video playback as well as data storage. As demo'ed at the 2006 CES, the JVC KV-PX9 is a feature-packed device sporting a bright 3.5" TFT LCD screen.

The KV-PX9 is equipped with a generous 20GB hard drive, of which it reserves 13GB for navigation maps apart from more than 13 million POIs (points of interest). The remaining 7GB is available for you to store movies or songs, good enough for about 1,400 songs or 40 hours of videos. If you're the kind to take photos along with you, you can even store nearly 4,500 photos on the 7GB available.

Thankfully the KV-PX9 comes with USB 2.0 interface for quick transfers from a PC. The included SD card slot is also very useful when you want to exchange data between the device and the SD card. The touch-screen is convenient for navigation and it comes integrated with a voice guidance system for turn-by-turn directions in both male and female voices. 2D and 3D map views are possible on the KV-PX9.

Supported audio/video formats include WMA, MP3, WMV, ASF, AVI (320x240 max) and for photos, it's JPEG. Built-in stereo speakers are provided, but you'd get a better output when you connect its output to the vehicle's audio system line input. A shock absorbing gel ensures sufficient cushion for the hard drive, and an acceleration sensor takes care of pulling away the pickup in case the hard drive is dropped.

Priced at US $799.95, the JVC KV-PX9 navigation device will be available in March 2006. www.jvc.com. Check out features in the extended entry.

Picture Via Gizmodo

JVC KV-PX9 Portable Navigation Features Include:

• The new JVC KV-PX9 packs multiple functions into an efficiently-sized device that boasts a 3.5-inch TFT screen and an internal 20GB hard disk drive that allows consumers to access navigational information, play music and view movies and images.
• It is part of JVC's EXAD line, which features the company's most advanced technologies and design concepts.
• The JVC KV-PX9 dedicates 13GB of hard disc space to navigation maps and over 13 million points of interest (P.O.I).
• The remaining 7GB are available to store movies (up to 40 hours), music files (up to 1400 songs) and pictures (up to 4500 files) as well as a data.
• Files are easily transferred using the unit's USB 2.0 input or its SD card slot. Compatible file formats are WMA, MP3, WMV, ASF, AVI (320 x 240 maximum) and JPEG.
• The KV-PX9's 3.5-inch full-color screen is a low reflection, high luminance display for easy visibility under a wide range of lighting conditions. Touch-screen controls make for simple operation, as does a voice guidance system that offers a choice of three languages and a male or female voice
• The KV-PX9 includes a pair of built-in stereo speakers. Alternatively, sound can be routed to the line input of a vehicle's head unit or an RF modulator can be used to route the sound through the vehicle's FM tuner.
• The unit includes a headphone jack, and features JVC's exclusive CC Converter that enhances the sound quality of compressed music files.
• The KV-PX9 has a lithium ion battery with a three-hour battery life. Included with the unit is a suction mount, 12 volt to 24 volt power adapter, dedicated cradle and a carrying case.
• Available options include a car kit that duplicates the included items for convenient use in multiple vehicles, and a home kit that includes an AC adapter and USB cable.
• The JVC KV-PX9 measures 3.6 x 3.4 x 1.8 inches (W x H x D).

El gobierno considera la Televisión Digital un bien cultural, y por ello rebaja el IVA de los prestadores de servicios de difusión al 7%.

Siendo Internet un bien cultural también, también sus prestadores de servicios deberían de ser grabados por un IVA del 7 %, ¿no?

Esto acabaría repercutiendo en los usuarios, que somos los que pagamos el IVA al final.

Wiki de la campaña.

(Como TAG/Etiqueta de este artículo, pongo internet7, sugerida en Abladias) .

Etiquetas: internet7

Am I crazy? I..I really have to be…I mean, I’ve currently have the best job I’ve ever had (I love my coworkers, I own the IT, I get to design and build, I make good pay, the infrastructure is my baby, it’s all good), I currently live in the best place I’ve ever been (my landlords are wonderful (seriously, they are family), my house is perfect for me, my neighobors are friendly, I have great friends a block away, there are trees, gardens, quiet, roomy, really comfy!) I’ve no debt, I’ve no responsibilities (other than myself), I’m saving, EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL! (ok, the only thing missing is someone to share it with)

…and yet I’m leaving it all…

I gave 30 days notice, I quit my job (and gave up about $250,000 in stock if the numbers are right), and I’m leaving all my friends and family….

And why?…..becuase I’m moving to Australia (Southport, just outside of Brisbane) with one of my best friends (Kristen). I don’t have a workers visa, that means this endeavor is COMPLETLY on my own dollar. I’ll be living off of my savings…..for a year. (and to put this in perspective, I don’t have a nest egg from the dot.com explosion, I was working for PG&E at the time as a contractor….translation, this is all my own saved money. I’m going to have to play this right, because once I get back and have to starting working again, I have to make sure I have a launching pad, (money for first and last rent, money to fix or purchase transportation, money for food, etc all while I find a source of income (myself or being hired))

….and now of the other side of the (why?) coin…..because I can, because I want to, how often do you get a chance like this in life? (actually if you really want it, you can set it up, I just figure this is my first step). A friend of mine reciently told me that “you don’t grow if you don’t take chances” and that was a wake up call that I needed. This is a wonderful opportunity, I am pretty much hitting the reset button on my life. I was doing great, and now I get to vactation for a year and then start over and see where it takes me. (I really love that idea, seriously) For the next 12 months, I’m going to be swimming, surfing, exploring, meeting people, playing around, doing photography, possibliy my art again, and in many ways rediscovering myself. I cannot express how excided I am. Then, afterwards, I look to see where the winds take me.

In my ideal world, I would travel worldwide, visiting businesses, helping them create IT infrastructues, living in their country for a year or so and then moving on. I would love to have someone with me to share it all with (and also to keep me in check )

….yeah…. this is going to be fun

Връзките ще са в началото, че краят не се вижда:

• Old Negro Space Program Video ,Old Negro Space Program Site
• Щатите са напът да се самоизядат
• Truth Happens
• Как да познаем милионера?
• За или против Diskoteka Boom?
• Planeta TV forums

Тони Стораро – Милиони звезди

Колко дни те желах
колко нощи аз очаквах
и с молби те зовях
и в съня си тихо
аз проплаквах.
Припев:
Милиони звезди ще сваля
слънцето дори ще затъмня
за усмивката желана
роб навеки аз ще стана
само тя да ме топли в света.

So here is the blow by blow details of the Keynote for MWSF 2006:

Retail Update:

• 135 Retail Stores
• 26 Million visitors during the 2005 holiday quarter
• First $1 Billion dollar quarter
• Over $5.7 Billion in total revenue for the 2005 holiday quarter

Music Update:

• Sold over 14 Million iPods in 2005 holiday quarter.
• Over 100 sold every minute 24/7.
• Over 850 Million songs sold on iTunes /// Avg. of 3M per day ///  >1B Songs per yr. run rate.
• New video content for the iTunes Music Store.
• iPod Remote + FM Tuner for nano or 5G iPod - $49, available TODAY.
• Chrysler iPod integration support - in 2006 over 40% of vehicles sold in US will offer iPod integration New iPod Ad.

Mac Updates:

• Aperture - Nice new videos. 
• Widgets - Over 1500 New Widgets available for Tiger.  New widgets introduced.
• iLife '06 - Impressive enhancements to the iLife suite.  New Jam Pack. New product - iWeb. Updated iWork.
• Intel-based iMac. Duo Core processor, 2x faster than previous iMac.
• New Intel TV Ad.
• PowerBook replaced by MacBook Pro. Intel Duo Core processor, 4x faster than previous PowerBook G4. Built-in iSight, Apple Remote, Front Row.
• Magsafe Power Adapter - AWESOME!.

My thoughts and commentary on the individual products to follow...stay tuned!

Ok guys I’ve updated “My Netvouz” google module to reflect the latest changes done by Netvouz.

New Features
The Show Hotpicks:
- if selected will now retrieve your hotpicks from Netvouz, no need to specify a seperate tag for them anymore
- if not selected the most recent list of the bookmarks you’ve added to Netvouz will show
Open in a new window:
- when you click on a link, the pages doesn’t load anymore in the iframe, but it opens in a new window.

for previous releases and/or additional help please click [here]

According to the website for the Austin Convention Center, the annual meeting of the professional association for which this is an ad is expected to draw about 2,500 attendees.

There's no doubt that the graphics of this full-page display catch the eye. A bat has certainly come to be one of the symbols representing Austin. The guitar? A bit generic, but it does represent music. The flower?

Maybe it's for flower power. "Save the dates, man!" That's one entire line of the six lines of copy. There's little doubt that this will be one happenin' event. The reader is practically blown away.

Comments (0)

Comments on this Entry:

egoSurf es una de esas herramientas re-contra útiles por estos lados en que las burbujas de ego muchas veces fomentan la escritura de los autores - aunque el contenido sea poco más que nada.

Lo que hace esta ajaxesca herramienta es encontrar el ranking de tu bitácora en Google y otros buscadores, y en base a enlaces y coincidencias va inflando la burbujita. Mientras más ego points tengas, más cerca estarás de ser el número uno. No tiene ningún propósito este sitio más que eso, no te cuesta nada y lo puedes usar las veces que quieras.

Vía: Blogpocket

deusx : b3ta.com board - The Incredible Fluff - "Don't make me angry... you wouldn't like me when I'm... BUNNIES!"

Tags : beta comics funny images

In vino veritas

Originally uploaded by alexbrie.

Cand eram mic aveam pe perete un poster publicitar ce zicea “In Romagna il vino e divino”. In cazul de fata, sampania. De revelion, deh… :P

PS. Ochii rosii sunt de la camera. Expresia pierduta in meditatii filozofice e accidentala.

ive got one on my right thigh (see pic) and its quite big. i have such an itch for another one though. was thiking about something wth butterflies up mu back…saving my lower back area for matt diffa from tusk in london! he’s amazing

Steve Rubel blogged about this earlier this week via a destinationCRM.com article.  Steve says of all the parts his best part are the lips.  Me?  I'm more in the brain (filtering info) and heart (passion).  Of course good bloggers need all these parts, not just corporate ones.  Professional bloggers need to hone these traits plus add speed and adaptable writing.  You need to be able to write good posts pretty quickly and be able to alter your writing style and voice to suit the audience of each client.

So as Steve asked ... what's your best part?

Cross posted from ProBlogging How To

Tags: corporate blogging, professional blogging, Steve Rubel

Powered by Qumana

Hvem kender ikke det gode gamle russiske tetris spil? Nu kan du spille det online lige så længe du kan overkomme det. Hvor god er du til at lægge de brikker der falder ned? Prøv det nu, men pas på det er meget vanedannende!

God fornøjelse.

KLIK HER FOR AT SPILLE

Du kender garanteret Reversi. Du ved det spil hvor det gælder om at vende modstanderens brikker, her er en flot 3D udgave.

God fornøjelse.

KLIK HER FOR AT SPILLE

The Medium Lobster's predictions for 2006.

The Cultured Savage's predictions for 2006.

Episode 10 of The Adventures of Battle Action Bush and the Keyboard Kommandos.

Fork art.

"I get the feeling that 60% of what you say is crap."

If you're in Maryland, you can go ahead and drop your pants. Just turn around first.

NASA's 2005 in Pictures, now with extra cheesy new age synth.

This article has some interesting "average" facts at the end (the average person drinks about 16,000 gallons of water in their lifetime), but the money quote is the caveat about misleading averages: "Divide the total number of working testicles in the UK by its population and you arrive at the disconcerting conclusion that the average British citizen has one testicle."

Page upon page of high-speed photography, with special emphases on water and objects at the moment of destruction.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Nu har du, muligheden for at gå på storvildts jagt. Skyd på alt hvad der bevæger sig, med undtagelse af de hvide svaner.

God fornøjelse.

KLIK HER FOR AT SPILLE

Sky diving var det noget for dig? Her kan du prøve uden at risikere liv og lemmer - og det er nok ret godt :-)

God fornøjelse.

KLIK HER FOR AT SPILLE

Is this Bill Gates' former car?

In the process of putting together an item about the car for Monday's Insider column in the P-I business section, I spent quite a bit of time last week trying to figure out the answer to that question -- talking to the current and past owners, running a vehicle history report, checking property records to determine Gates' former address, calling the Washington State of Department of Licensing, and even asking Microsoft if Gates himself might be able to take a look at the listing and weigh in. (He wasn't available.)

And the answer, at least for now, is that it's not clear. On one hand, it may, in fact, be Gates' old Lexus. The current owner and the Oregon couple that owned it in the late 1990s said they previously had no reason to believe it wasn't his former car. But as noted in this morning's Insider item, there's something strange about the two documents that have apparently been used for several years, and in multiple sales, to link the car to Gates.

As noted in blog posts by others, the listing was temporarily taken down a couple days ago, but it's back up now under the link above. In addition to speaking with the seller, Temple University instructor Bill Mooney, I also spoke with his daughter's boyfriend, the person handling the online sale, who said it came down because of a technical problem not related to any questions over the authenticity of the car's connection to Gates.

To be clear, the inconsistencies in the documents are merely red flags at this point. My other efforts to get to the bottom of things before the holiday weekend were inconclusive. If it is a hoax, it appears to have originated before any of the current or past owners I spoke with, unbeknownst to them. But to reiterate, it could end up that it's actually the same car that Gates sped around in with Windows 95 on his mind.

Rest assured that I'm in full Hardy Boys mode at this point, with a level of curiosity completely disproportionate to the actual significance of the situation. I'm going to keep digging and hope that a couple other promising leads come through later this week, answering this question definitively. Stay tuned ...

• Transparency support


• Picking


• New input methods for VR devices like the P5 Glove


• Camera Layers


• many bugfixes and improvements

HAVE U HEARD OF THIS SITE?
HI MAMA:0http://rayandfaith.com/lindy/

[ via MacVroom ]

Mac'd Ride: Jeepintosh - 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee:

Check out this sweet Mac mini install in a 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee. The mini is installed in the glove box and snugly held in place with a soft, but rugged carpet-covered custom bracket. A hub is mounted behind the CPU and USB and Firewire cables run to the back of the Jeep to easily add peripherals to this system. The 7" Xenarc 700 TSV display has replaced the original stereo in the center console. Grey vinyl was used to match the display surround to the factory grey interior. Below the heat/air controls is a small Kensington USB hub with a Griffin PowerMate connected to it to control iTunes.

[ via TUAW ]

As of year’s end yesterday two API programming contests closed: the Microsoft/Amazon Web Services contest and the MSN Messenger World’s Best App Contest. Winners TBD. But there’s still a little time to make your entries for any of these three contests.

Volker recently posted about a grass-roots movement to update the familiar XML / RSS button graphics you see here, there, and everywhere. I re-did my icons a couple of weeks back. The new graphic is beautifully simple — I like it very much, as do many others out there.

Some more good news: quicker than you can say “rich site summary”, someone has come up with a way of updating the RSS graphic that appears in Safari when browsing a newsfeed-enabled website. If you click on the thumbnail above, you will see a larger view of the new icon, added-in to Safari courtesy of a utility from the Mac Specialist.

» Read more...

Happy New Year!

Courtesy of that there DominoWiki thing I have set up a “stub” wiki for this year’s Lotusphere event. Please go edit and add pages!

» Lotusphere 2006 wiki.

şuraya tıkla, iki basamaklı bir sayı tut sonra basamakları birbiriyle topla ve çıkan sonucu tuttuğun sayıdan çıkar. Çıkan sonuca karşılık gelen sayının simgesine bak en son da küreye tıkla bak ne oluyor; (ör. 82 tuttun 8+2=10 82-10=72)

tags: sayı tahmin

My friend Teck Hui sent me a lame flash animation – with Jay Chou as Super Mario.

(Jay Chou as Mario, but who’s the girl?)

View the Jay Chou flash animation. I don’t know what does it mean though. I guess I’m too lazy to look at the Chinese characters. I don’t quite know the meaning of the animation too, I mean, who is the girl, who is the other guy. I’m confused (as usual). Anyone care to tell me who are the characters?

Christmas Berries

Originally uploaded by bpc.

My parents got me a new lens for my camera for Christmas, so I had to go out and find photo subjects in the backyard to test it out!

Best viewed large.

Should have posted this a while back as a good Christmas gift

Thanks to Fr. Daniel Sparks for his donation of $5.

He left this comment:

Thanks for all the WordPress support!

By Benjamin H. Freedman    (1961)

from http://i.am/jah/freedman.htm  
 

Now you can also listen to Benjamin H. Freedman's speech in in MP3 format. (Thanks James)

The transcript of the speech exists at http://100777.com/jewry/freedman

To hear it now without first downloading, just left click "listen" for the "streaming" version.

Listen

Download

To save it to your hard drive, right click "download" and select "save as" (click here for an alternative download site)

Benjamin H. Freedman was one of the most intriguing and amazing individuals of the 20th century. Mr. Freedman, born in 1890, was a successful Jewish businessman of New York City who was at one time the principal owner of the Woodbury Soap Company. He broke with organized Jewry after the Judeo-Communist victory of 1945, and spent the remainder of his life and the great preponderance of his considerable fortune, at least 2.5 million dollars, exposing the Jewish tyranny which has enveloped the United States. Mr. Freedman knew what he was talking about because he had been an insider at the highest levels of Jewish organizations and Jewish machinations to gain power over our nation. Mr. Freedman was personally acquainted with Bernard Baruch, Samuel Untermyer, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Kennedy, and John F. Kennedy, and many more movers and shakers of our times. This speech was given before a patriotic audience in 1961 at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Conde McGinley's patriotic newspaper of that time, Common Sense. Though in some minor ways this wide-ranging and extemporaneous speech has become dated, Mr. Freedman's essential message to us - his warning to the West - is more urgent than ever before. - K.A.S.

The complete transcript of the speech exists at http://100777.com/jewry/freedman

近頃は正月用の花は自分で生ける人、アレンジを買う人どちらが多いのでしょうか？直売所などでは単品物の自分で生けるタイプの人が多いように思いますが小売やさんへはアレンジを買い求める人が多い様です。
どちらにしても私にとってはありがたい話ですね。
今回は趣を変えて正月用の花材をネットで販売しているサイトを紹介したいと思います。僕の作った花材が使われているとは限りませんが、花業界が活況づくなら良いかなと思っています。
よかったら見ていってください。

日比谷花壇
言わずと知れた日比谷花壇の正月向けアレンジメントは全5種類。どれも正月にふさわしい雰囲気の品物です。紹介するアレンジはお正月アレンジメント「祝歌（いわいうた）」。

シンピジウム・オンジなどの洋花や千両・若松も使った鮮やかなアレンジメントですね。さすが日比谷花壇と言う一品です。価格は税込み10500円（送料は別途）。その他のアレンジも販売しています。価格帯は15750円～5250円です。但し、凍結懸念のため一部地域へは発送できないようです。締め切りは12月27日です。お早めに。
詳しくは日比谷花壇ホームページにてご確認ください。

第一園芸
第一園芸のニューイヤーラインナップは全18種類。お正月飾りからプリザーブドフラワー･アレンジメントまで選べます。今回ご紹介するのは迎春アレンジメント「祝」。

使用花材は 大王松・バラ・アンスリウム・シンビジウム・ピンポンマム・オンシジウム・水引き等。大王松が迫力ありますね。価格は税込み11000円(送料込み）その他のアレンジも販売しています。発送は北海道のみ不可です。販売期間は12月27日まで。お早めに。
詳しくは第一園芸ホームページまで。

About 50 degrees warmer and several thousand miles away from Detroit, UTMB Galveston played an important role in the founding of bioethics and is a hive of activity in several areas of the field. It is home to a surprising number of superior senior scholars and a long-standing PhD program; until the University of Houston's formerly #1 health law program was gutted by the departure of Mark Rothstein and colleagues, UTMB also housed what was unquestionably the top JD/PhD program in the field.

It is a good place but Galveston needed a strong replacement in the director slot for Ron Carson, as it faces a decade of retirements and hirings. So UT lured Howard Brody, who as director of the Michigan State program from 1985-2000 did what many describe as an incredible job of program building.

Leo's Answers
A Weekly Newsletter From
Ask Leo!
Leo Notenboom

Hello!

I hope the holiday season is treating you well. My Christmas present appears to be a nasty head and chest cold that put a crimp in our Christmas dinner plans. Fortunately my computer doesn't care. My wife, on the other hand ... well, we're just hoping she doesn't catch it as well. In the mean time, I'm undergoing "fudge therapy" - I keep hearing that chocolate is good for you in several ways, so who am I to argue?

One of the things I love about the internet is how it's made the world smaller. Because of the internet I've reconnected with family overseas (my parents were from The Netherlands), and my wife's small retail business regularly ships collectible dolls all over the globe. Amazing.

That thought prompted me to check: this newsletter will be sent to subscribers in over 100 countries around the world!

As we start the new year, I'm honored to have you all here. May 2006 be successful, profitable, happy and joyous for you all, wherever on the planet you may be.

Weekly publication resumes with the next newsletter, January 6, 2006.

*** Contents

• New Articles of Note on Ask Leo!
• Popular Articles from the Ask Leo! Archives.
• Interesting Sites and Useful Resources.
• Newsletter Administration Department

You're receiving this newsletter because you subscribed, and confirmed your subscription. Instructions for unsubscribing are at the end of every newsletter.

*** New Articles of Note on Ask Leo!

How can I make my computer run faster?

Please tell me that how can I make my PC run faster, I'm using windows XP Service Pack 2 on Pentium 4 2.40ghz, 40 GB hard Disk, 120 mb of ram and I have also install Mcafee Virus Scan but still it is getting slower and slower.

There are a number of steps that you can take to attempt to speed up your system. Most require simply tweaking the software you already have, not adding more.

However, if the information you've provided is accurate, the problem with your system is much more fundamental.

Continue reading: "How can I make my computer run faster?"
http://ask-leo.com/how_can_i_make_my_computer_run_faster.html

* * *

How do I disable the "remember me" feature of Instant Messaging clients?

I run a Cyber Cafe and my customers log into their MSN/Yahoo Messenger account - sometimes they check in the "save username and password" or other variations of "remember me". I need to disable that feature - how?

One the most common classes of questions I get has to do with people who've lost access to their own accounts because someone else changed their password. Setting "remember me" on a public computer is a quick way to set yourself up for having your password changed and your account stolen.

I laud your efforts to help prevent this.

Sadly, the news isn't all that good.

Continue reading: "How do I disable the "remember me" feature of Instant Messaging clients?"
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_disable_the_remember_me_feature_of_instant_messaging_clients.html

* * *

How do I change my "From" user name in MSN Hotmail?

Can you please tell me how to change my Hotmail user name? Every time I email someone my full name and email address comes up and I don't want that to happen, I just want my email address to show on their email. How can i fix this?

Hotmail automatically fills in the "From:" address in the mail you send with your email address, and your name.

Changing your name is actually fairly simple, but getting exactly what you want? Not so much.

Continue reading: "How do I change my "From" user name in MSN Hotmail?"
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_change_my_from_user_name_in_msn_hotmail.html

* * *

How should I reinstall Windows?

It's time to reinstall Windows. Things are flaky, the machine's crashing every once in a while ... I just know it's time. How do I do that and still preserve as much of what's set up on the machine already? How do I reinstall Windows without losing all my installed programs and data?

There are definitely scenarios where a reinstallation of Windows is required. Be it simple "software rot" (the degradation of your system as you add, and remove, programs over time), or something more malicious like a virus or an accumulation of spyware.

The first question isn't really "how?", it's "how much?"

Continue reading: "How should I reinstall Windows?"
http://ask-leo.com/how_should_i_reinstall_windows.html

* * *

Podsafe for Peace - If Every Day Were Christmas

Continue reading: "Podsafe for Peace - If Every Day Were Christmas"
http://ask-leo.com/podsafe_for_peace_if_every_day_were_christmas.html

* * *

Why shouldn't I use the "Report Spam" or "Junk" button?

As I was dealing with my email the other day, a friend was with me. He nearly when ballistic when I used the "Report Spam" button to get rid of some email in my in box. He said I was using it wrong. There's a right and wrong way? Why shouldn't I just use it?

Oh, my, yes - there is most definitely a wrong way to use it. In fact it's so wrong, that you could be contributing to other people not being able to get their email.

Their legitimate, non-spam, email.

Continue reading: "Why shouldn't I use the "Report Spam" or "Junk" button?"
http://ask-leo.com/why_shouldnt_i_use_the_report_spam_or_junk_button.html

* * *

Why can't I send mail from my hotel room?

I checked in to my hotel which provides free high speed internet. All was well and good, except that after a while, I could no longer send email. I could receive all I wanted, but all my attempts to send failed. And the weird thing is that the next morning, sending mail worked ... for a while. What's going on?

I've run into this as well. It's very strange, but once I understood it, it kinda, sorta, made sense. And understanding it allowed me to work around it.

But it's the kind of thing I wouldn't expect the front desk to be able to help with at all. You're kind of on your own.

And I think you can blame spam.

Continue reading: "Why can't I send mail from my hotel room?"
http://ask-leo.com/why_cant_i_send_mail_from_my_hotel_room.html

* * *

Does spam blocking prevent spam from reaching my machine?

I just discovered "blocking" to keep spam from coming in my mail box. I'd been choosing words to make the spam go to the deleted messages folder but seemed I couldn't keep up with them. I'd also tried to write back and "unsubscribe" but then I'd get a message that said it bounced. So I found blocking and am giving that a try. Now, does this keep the message from ever getting into my computer or does it accept it and then delete it?

Welcome to the world of spam - and the never-ending battle against it.

Choosing words and blocking based on that is one approach, but as you noted it's tough to keep up.

In fact, it's darned near impossible.

Continue reading: "Does spam blocking prevent spam from reaching my machine?"
http://ask-leo.com/does_spam_blocking_prevent_spam_from_reaching_my_machine.html

*** Popular Articles from the Ask Leo! Archives

The second in a series of articles on changing your Hotmail password - one of the most popular topics on Ask Leo! I get this question at least every day.

How do I change my MSN Hotmail password if I forgot it?

Passwords seem to be a hot topic among MSN Hotmail users. Apparently people lose them frequently, because I get a lot of questions relating to password loss and theft.

If you've simply forgotten your password, MSN Hotmail does provide at least one level of back-door that you can use to recover it - your alternate email address or secret question. If you don't have those, you're probably out of luck.

Here's the approach to take when you've lost your password....

Continue reading...

*** Interesting Sites and Useful Resources

Word Tips - http://wordtips.vitalnews.com, and Excel Tips - http://exceltips.vitalnews.com

Allen Wyatt is a friend I met a couple of years ago, and he has perhaps one of the best kept secrets on the internet. Both Word Tips and Excel Tips are fantastic resources if you're using Microsoft Word or Excel on any regular basis. For detailed and in-depth questions on "how to" do just about anything in these incredibly powerful applications, these are the sites to visit.

Word Tips and Excel Tips are also available as free or premium weekly newsletters, and the sites include a "Daily Nugget" RSS feed - a tip every day!

*** Newsletter Administration Department

Do you have a question? A comment, perhaps? Newsletter subscribers can drop me a line at leo <at> ask-leo.com. (I only give that email address to newsletter subscribers, so I'll know it's from one of my loyal readers.) If you like, you can make sure you get past any spam filters by simply posting your question or comment using the Ask Leo! Question Form.

I'll be honest: I'll try to respond, but I get a lot of questions every day - I'm currently quite backlogged. I simply cannot answer absolutely every one. Rest assured, though, that even if you don't hear from me directly, I read every email I get.

Leo's Answers Newsletter is a weekly publication of Ask Leo! and Leo A. Notenboom. It's also available as an RSS feed at this URL: http://ask-leo.com/newsletter.xml?UD=nl. Archives of previous newsletter issues can be found on the Ask Leo! web site, here.

You're quite welcome to forward this email in its entirety, but you should probably delete your unsubscribe link below, so your friends don't unsubscribe you by accident. You may forward individual articles from this newsletter only if you include all and only the text of that article as found in this newsletter, including any links therein. You may not copy full articles from the Ask Leo! website - more on that in my section on copyright.

I'd sure appreciate it if regular readers got a subscription of their own. You can sign up here.

Till next week!

Leo Notenboom

Continue reading Leo's Answers #6 - December 26, 2005
Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

gmail’s login page today:

This is mirrored from my brother’s site. He’s right, some things are just missing this Christmas. But it’s still a good one.

They’re singing ‘Deck the Halls’ /
But it’s not like Christmas at all /
I remember when you were here /
And all the fun we had last year.

I know this is kind of about a guy and a girl, but ‘tis how I feel.

  Merry Christmas, and  Happy Hanukkah!

Peace.

DynaMotive Energy Systems Corp. (DYMTF) announced today that the Company and Mitsubishi Canada Ltd., have entered into a wide-ranging Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") which expresses their mutual intentions to develop definitive agreements for marketing and distribution of DynaMotive's patented technology in Canada and internationally. [ more ]

Clean Break has more to say about this agreement as well. [ more ]

This is the second MOU announcement they have made in the last month and it looks like something is happening here. This stock has been moving strong this last month and it has piqued my interest. I will have to take a closer look at it and I have added it to my potential buylist.

Oh the world just became a simpler place to live. No, peace has not been called, nor has the cure for Avian Flu been ditributed to the masses. Alas, it is the discovery of relishes that has opened my eyes toward the land of tasty simplicity.

Some of you may mock. Some of you may sneer. But I stand by this position. The right relish can compliment, even enhance your dinners. Sauces are not the only option.

Take this relish...Please. Ha ha ha. See, this is how happy this dish as made me, as I can paraphrase Henny Youngman without any trace of ironic detachment.

Red Onions and Balsamic Vinegar go together like Nick and Jessica Brad and Angelina. Add green olives, and it's like adding a very comforable third to the mix, without the uncomfortable silences, and petty jealousies. Add it to pork, and it's like Morman Tabernacle Choir singing Handel.

I made this with Panfried Pork Loin, but in truth, any chop or loin cut will work with this.

• 1/2 cup chopped green olives, pitted (I used Picholine)
• 1/2 red onions, peeled and sliced
• 2 Tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar (The better the vinegar, the better the relish)
• 1/4 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1 teaspoon red chili flakes
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 4 pork loin chops, about 1 inch thick
• AP Flour

The instructions are easy. Take all of the ingredients, except the pork and flour, and place in a medium mixing bowl. Mix well. Cover with saran wrap and place in the refrigerator to chill.

Place a large skillet over medium high heat with a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Bring to temperature.

Pat the chops down with a paper towel. Coat with flour and tap off any excess. Salt and pepper generously and place in the skillet. Cook 5-7 minutes on one side, flip, and cook 5-7 minutes on the other. Using a meat thermometer, ensure the inside has cook to above 140 degrees F.

When done cooking, place on a plate and allow to set for 5 minutes. Top with the Red onion Relish. Serve!

Serves 4

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Recipes, Pork Chops, Red Onion Relish

So I found my self looking through the aisles of my local liquor store, as I am wont to do. Lo and behold, I found a bottle calling out for me.

"Kate! Kate!", it cried.

I looked directly at the bottle of Chai liquer and gasped. They had done it. The bastards have done it! Looks like Santa Claus came a little early this year. I plopped me down some moola (around $20 I think) and headed home with my gotten booty ("gotten booty" being the opposite of "ill-gotten Booty, for those of you looking to the annotated version of Accidental Hedonist).

It's called Voyant, and it's imported from Holland. I believe it to be the first of its kind, but that's merely a guess, not a hard fact.

It's taste? It's on the sweet side, so know that going in. It's about half as sweet as Starbucks Chai, but about twice as sweet as traditional chai. It's also a bit viscous, being a thicker consistency than Kahlua, but still quite good. Their website says the liqueur contains aged Virgin Island Rum, Fresh Dutch Cream, Black Tea from India, Premium Spirits from Holland and a Distinctive Blend of Spices from Asia (let's call them the mysterious spices). There's no chemical after taste that you get from time to time with liqueurs. But as I said, it is sweet. It should be treated as a dessert drink.

Speaking of Kahlua, it's plays quite nicely with coffee liqueur, and also spices up your hot teas quite well.

Chai liqueur. I am one happy cat at the moment.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Chai Liqueur, Voyant, Liqueur

Here's another recent find in my local Grocer's bin. Called the Pepito Melon,it is native to Colombia, Peru and Chile. The plant is not known in the wild, and the details of its origin are not known. The fruit is grown commercially in New Zealand, Chile and Western Australia. Prior to this past Sunday, I had never heard of the fruit.

Eyes: Outside, it looks like a miniature melon. It's fits nicely in the palm of your hand. This one had a squash yellow skin, with light green striping.

Cutting it opened revealed a deep hay color within the meat of the fruit.

Nose: Flowery and sweet, it reminded me a bit of American cantaloupe, but not as strong.

Taste: It has the texture of cucumbers, but a banana/melon taste to it, with a touch of honey. It was quite good.

Overall: I liked this more than I thought I would. Tasty and in single serving packages, I'm fairly sure that I'll be picking this up the next time I see it in the grocers sections.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Pepino Melon, Fruit, Tasting Notes

One other aspect of the Google/AOL deal ... it reportedly calls for AOL to open its Instant Messenger network to Google Talk (IM and Net phone callss) users. 

AOL has refused to make IM accessible over the general Internet (a few mobile and corporate deals have been done), so this is a big step.  Tens of millions of AOL users ... Google's IM folks ... and all that ad inventory on the IM screens.  (via PaidContent.org) Trackback

Another punch in the gut to Microsoft, failing to be able to take advantage of the opportunity to "share" its own visitors with AOL's. 

Kan du huske det gamle klassiske spil snake?

Her er en sød kombination af det spil samtidig med du får julemandens kone til at smide tøjet. Hvor langt kan du nå???

God fornøjelse.

KLIK HER FOR AT SPILLE

Puha måske skulle du ikke have taget den sidste øl? Prøv hvordan du klare din julebrandert.

God fornøjelse.

KLIK HER FOR AT SPILLE

OMG, OMG I am laughing so hard OMG

For those who have subscribed to the feeds on my site may have noticed that instead of pictures loading, you instead have a pale violet image.

This is because I have hot-linking protection turned ON.
And unfortunately, I don’t think I will be turning it OFF in the near future.

For those who don’t know, websites can display an image from another site and pretend to have it as their own. This not only causes loss of bandwidth for the source website but is straight forward stealing!

I’ve noticed over time a lot of images on my site, especially those in my reviews have been linked to from other sites. I usually just block the site (via IP) in my .htaccess.

Probably in the near future if I cross a few hundred subscribers, I may turn OFF the protection.

Until then, please visit this site to view the post (especially if it contains images). I agree it beats the purpose of having a feed, but for a sake of a few, many always have to suffer

Thanks.

I’m sick, too. Off today, but I have to work tomorrow and I ain’t lookin’ forward to it.

Just get well, Beth.