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Archive for the ‘News’ Category

PEACE FOR PALESTINE

January 5, 2009

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Boycott Israel
Campaign for boycott divestment and sanctions to end the occupation of Palestinian Territories.

Campaign Against Arms Trade
Lots of background information on the UK arms industry, government policy and the arms trade generally.

Electronic Intifada
News and analysis about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict from a Palestinian perspective. See also Electronic Lebanon.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Information on the Israel/Palestine conflict, plus campaign actions and related events.

War on Want
Radical anti-poverty charity running a major campaign against the occupation.

Foundation for Middle East Peace
A nonprofit US-based organisation that promotes a peace based on two states, bringing security for Israel and freedom for Palestinians.

Al-Haq
Al-Haq is an independent Palestinian non-governmental human rights organisation that works in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) to uphold the rule of law and respect for human rights.

Free Gaza
The Free Gaza Movement. 40 Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals sail to Gaza to deliver urgently needed medical equipment in August 2008.

Civitas Project
Foundations for Participation:Civic Structures for the Palestinian Refugee Camps and Exile Communities.
Based at University of Oxford. Works on representation for refugee communities in exile.

Gush Shalom
Promotes peace and conciliation with the Palestinian people.

Coalition for Palestine Australia
Committee Against Israeli Apartheid Canada
Association France Palestine Solidarite (AFPS) France
ACSUR Las Segovias, Group of NGOs for Palestine Spain
Palestine Solidarity Committee South Africa
End the Occupation USA

Posted in Humanities, News, Special, Vital | Leave a Comment »

2008 in Pictures

December 22, 2008

The Boston Globe’s website is sharing its 2008 photographs. As they say: “It’s not the story of 2008, it’s certainly not all stories, but as a collection it does show a good portion of what life has been like over the past 12 months.”

07_iraq0001 A U.S. Marine with a ground combat element assigned to Delta Company, 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, Task Force Mechanized, Multi-National Force – West walks through the Hatra Ruins in the Jazeerah Desert in Iraq on July 20, 2008. The task force is conducting disruption operations in the area to deny the enemy sanctuary and prevent foreign fighters from accessing the area. (Lance Cpl. Albert F. Hunt, U.S. Marine Corps.)

16_17252285 A competitor dives from the 14 meter-high bridge over Drina river during annual high diving competition in Bosnian town of Visegrad July 12, 2008. (REUTERS/Stringer)

11_cafires2 Most of the homes in the Oakridge mobile home park, which reportedly had 600-800 homes, lie in ruins after burning in the Sylmar Fire on November 15, 2008 in Sylmar, California. The fire began last night and was fueled to more than 2,600 acres by strong erratic winds in excess of 70 miles per hour which kept firefighting aircraft grounded in the morning. (David McNew/Getty Images)

10_17351247 Samuel Peter from Nigeria receives a punch from Vitali Klitschko of Ukraine during their WBC heavyweight boxing world championship fight in Berlin, Germany on Oct. 11, 2008. Klitschko won the fight after round nine due to technical knock out. (AP Photo/Herbert Knosowski)

For More click HERE

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Shoe – - – - > Bush (with a vengeance)

December 16, 2008

…an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at some guy named George Bush.

now, I leave you with some lovely digital re-enactments (the mighty GIFs):

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Venice Under Water

December 10, 2008

The recent “acqua alta” (high water) in Venice, Italy reached a depth of 1.56 meters (5 ft, 1 in.) on Monday – the deepest flood in 22 years, and the fourth highest flood level in recent history, claimed Venice’s Tide Center. The water began to subside on Tuesday, while residents and tourists made their way through the city, hip-waders or not – one man even took the opportunity to ride his wake board through Piazza San Marco (until police stepped in). Although this flood was severe enough for the mayor to ask tourists to temporarily stay home, Venetian floods are fairly routine, several occurring every year, and residents usually take it all in stride. (text by The Boston Glove)

v23_17211881 A woman walks through floodwater on Piazza San Marco during floods on December 1, 2008 in Venezia.

v25_17213103 Customers stand in flood waters in a pastry shop in Venice December 1, 2008. Tourists and residents struggled to get across the city over raised walkways. The Centro Maree, which forecasts water levels, said sea levels in the Adriatic rose 1.56 meters (5.1 ft).

More pictures HERE

post by Wanderlust

Posted in Architecture, Events, News | Leave a Comment »

The Sun

October 19, 2008

The Sun is now in the quietest phase of its 11-year activity cycle, the solar minimum – in fact, it has been unusually quiet this year – with over 200 days so far with no observed sunspots. The solar wind has also dropped to its lowest levels in 50 years. Scientists are unsure of the significance of this unusual calm, but are continually monitoring our closest star with an array of telescopes and satellites. Seen below are some recent images of the Sun in more active times. (text by The Boston Globe)

A sweeping prominence, a huge cloud of relatively cool dense plasma is seen suspended in the Sun’s hot, thin corona. At times, promineces can erupt, escaping the Sun’s atmosphere. Emission in this spectral line shows the upper chromosphere at a temperature of about 60,000 degrees K (over 100,000 degrees F). Every feature in the image traces magnetic field structure. The hottest areas appear almost white, while the darker red areas indicate cooler temperatures. (Courtesy of SOHO/EIT consortium)

A view of a sunspot and granules on the Sun’s surface, seen in the H-alpha wavelength on August 4, 2003. (Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST) operated by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Göran Scharmer and Kai Langhans, ISP)

NASA’s STEREO (Ahead) spacecraft observed this visually stunning prominence eruption on Sept. 29, 2008 in the 304 wavelength of extreme UV light. It rose up and cascaded to the right over several hours, appearing something like a flag unfurling, as it broke apart and headed into space. The material observed is actually ionized Helium at about 60,000 degrees. Prominences are relatively cool clouds of gas suspended above the Sun and controlled by magnetic forces. (NASA/STEREO)

A transit of the Moon across the face of the Sun on February 25, 2007 – but not seen from Earth. This sight was visible only from the STEREO-B spacecraft in its orbit about the sun, trailing behind the Earth. NASA’s STEREO mission consists of two spacecraft launched in October, 2006 to study solar storms. STEREO-B is currently about 1 million miles from the Earth, 4.4 times farther away from the Moon than we are on Earth. As the result, the Moon appears 4.4 times smaller than what we are used to. (NASA/STEREO)

For MORE photos, illustrations, and information.

post by Wanderlust

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Spam + Blogs = SPLOGS (down with the impostors)

September 4, 2008

An impostor or imposter is a person who pretends to be somebody else, often to try to gain financial or social advantages through social engineering, but just as often for purposes of espionage or law enforcement.(wikipedia)

A splog (spam blog) is a fake blog created solely to promote affiliated Web sites, with the intent of skewing search results and artificially boosting traffic. Some splogs are written like long-winded ads for the Web sites they promote; others have no original content, featuring either nonsense or content stolen from authentic Web sites. Splogs include huge numbers of links to the Web sites in question to fool Web crawler s (programs that search the Web for sites to index). The sploggers associate popular search keywords with their pages so that the splog links turn up in blog search results and are sent out as search subscription notifications through e-mail and RSS feeds. (info source)

I recently found out someone “sploging” me and I decided to inform myself about it.

WATER SAVES GAS=SPLOG

Check this example:

http://blog.watersavesgas.com/

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The Hacking Lifestyle

August 19, 2008

Hacking has been part of our lifestyles for many year now. We all hack to a certain degree. The term hackingis used for different purposes and is commonly used to refer to illegal activity performed by computer experts. However, hacking can take different forms and approaches. It can go from furniture and architecture to toys and other electronic devices. Hacking basically refers to the act of customizing of modifying everyday products to improve their functionality, re-purpose them for conceptual reasons, pure entertainment or a clever fusion of all the previously mentioned. Today, hacking practice and theories are used in different fields as a tool to reveal how systems are built and learning how they operate. Something that should become mandatory in our societies.

Just in case you are new to this subject (i don’t thinks so), I am going to bombard you with a selection of links that can inform you in more specific ways or take you through the different hacking avenues.

HACKING FURNITURE

‘greewich tea time’ table & ‘low waist’ bookshelf by moebler. (http://diemoebler.de)