Dennis Prager, radio show host and author, wrote the following rambles in a recent article:
[
Women Talk Three Times As Much As Men
It is confirmed…
In fact, women talk almost three times as much as men, with the average woman chalking up 20,000 words in a day – 13,000 more than the average man.
Women also speak more quickly, devote more brainpower to chit-chat – and actually get a buzz out of hearing their own voices, a new book suggests.
[Source: Daily Mail]
So I guess we men shouldn’t feel that guilty when women accuse us of not being good listeners, they simply talk too much, we could never keep up, no matter how much we try.
Plus, the same study says that what the male brain may lack in converstation and emotion, we more than make up with our ability to think about sex. It estimates that men think about sex every 52 seconds.
How are we expected to focus?
Oh whatever…
[Via: Leilouta]
An Other Cup – Yusuf Islam
Yesterday, while cruising through the music section at G
Cut and Run, the Only Brave Thing to Do
Some highlights from a new letter titled “Cut and Run, the Only Brave Thing to Do” from Michael Moore…
That’s right. We were able to defeat all of Nazi Germany, Mussolini, and the entire Japanese empire in LESS time than it’s taken the world’s only superpower to secure the road from the airport to downtown Baghdad.
And we haven’t even done THAT. After 1,347 days, in the same time it took us to took us to sweep across North Africa, storm the beaches of Italy, conquer the South Pacific, and liberate all of Western Europe, we cannot, after over 3 and 1/2 years, even take over a single highway and protect ourselves from a homemade device of two tin cans placed in a pothole.
[…]
Let’s listen to what the Iraqi people are saying, according to a recent poll conducted by the University of Maryland:
– 71% of all Iraqis now want the U.S. out of Iraq.
– 61% of all Iraqis SUPPORT insurgent attacks on U.S. troops.
[…]
There are many ways to liberate a country. Usually the residents of that country rise up and liberate themselves. That’s how we did it. You can also do it through nonviolent, mass civil disobedience. That’s how India did it. You can get the world to boycott a regime until they are so ostracized they capitulate. That’s how South Africa did it. Or you can just wait them out and, sooner or later, the king’s legions simply leave (sometimes just because they’re too cold). That’s how Canada did it.
The one way that DOESN’T work is to invade a country and tell the people, “We are here to liberate you!”
[…]
A country can HELP another people overthrow a tyrant (that’s what the French did for us in our revolution), but after you help them, you leave. Immediately. The French didn’t stay and tell us how to set up our government. They didn’t say, “we’re not leaving because we want your natural resources.” They left us to our own devices and it took us six years before we had an election. And then we had a bloody civil war. That’s what happens, and history is full of these examples. The French didn’t say, “Oh, we better stay in America, otherwise they’re going to kill each other over that slavery issue!”
Read the full letter here: “Cut and Run, the Only Brave Thing to Do“.
[Via: Jimbo]
11 Great Ways To Start Your Day
American philosopher and writer Elbert Hubbard once said:
“Be pleasant until ten o
Nine Requisites for Contented Living
“Nine requisites for contented living:
Health enough to make work a pleasure.
Wealth enough to support your needs.
Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them.
Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them.
Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished.
Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor.
Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others.
Faith enough to make real the things of God.
Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.”
Peter Jackson Not To Direct ‘The Hobbit’
In a letter to TheOneRing.net Peter Jackson, director of the “Lord Of The Rings” trilogy, officially announced that he would not be directing the movie incarnation of the LOTR prequel “The Hobbit” even though he wishes to.
The main reason why he and his company Wingnut Films won’t be making this movie is a financial dispute with NewLine over the money made from “The Fellowship of the Ring”. Wingnut believe they deserve a bigger cut of the profit and are suing NewLine for it.
NewLine offered to tie the settlement of the dispute with the making of “The Hobbit” and to negociate a new deal accordingly, but Wingnut refused that and said they wanted to first settle the lawsuit on it’s own without being tied to a new deal.
Peter Jacksons says about this:
“…In other words, we would have to agree to make The Hobbit as a condition of New Line settling our lawsuit. In our minds this is not the right reason to make a film and if a film of The Hobbit went ahead on this basis, it would be doomed. Deciding to make a movie should come from the heart – it’s not a matter of business convenience. When you agree to make a film, you’re taking on a massive commitment and you need to be driven by an absolute passion to want to get the story on screen. It’s that passion, and passion alone, that gives the movie its imagination and heart. To us it is not a cold-blooded business decision.”
And as NewLine say they only have the rights to make “The Hobbit” and another LOTR prequel for a limited period of time, they will be proceeding on the new Hobbit films without Wingnut.
I think it’s a shame that it won’t be Peter Jackson and his team revisiting Middle Earth and the Shire to bring the magic of “The Hobbit” to our screens.
I’ve been looking forward to this movie ever since I read the book and the LOTR trilogy ended, and I knew that it would be a great experience in the hands of Peter Jackson.
Anyway, I hope whoever takes the helm of this project realizes the responsability he has on his shoulders, and the kind of quality he has to live up to, and does something really good with it.
Ikbis – Video & Photo Sharing
Ikbis, the new service by the creative guys over at toot has gone live.
After a really cool viral marketing campaign featuring “The Largest Yellow Button On The Web” and the humorous animations behind it, the service went online this morning.
Ikbis, which means “Press” or “Click” in Arabic, is a cool online video and photo sharing service, sort of an Arabic cousin of YouTube and Flickr.
The design is very nice, simplistic and clean; I really like the logo, the colours used and the way it’s organized. Then again, I wouldn’t expect anything less from the toot designers.
The interface comes in two languages, English and Arabic, and is pretty simple and straightforward, which is always good in a web service; you upload your photos or videos, label them, describe them, tag them, organize them into albums, choose who can view them or not…etc; on the other hand you can navigate through the videos and photos uploaded by other users, leave comments and add users as your contacts.
In short, it’s a fully rounded sharing service with all the bells and whistles you could need.
RSS feeds of each user’s video and photo stream are available too.
The service is still in beta and might be a bit rough around the edges when it comes to certain small features or their usability, but I’m very sure these are things that the ikbis team are ironing out as I speak.
I certainly recommend you check out the service and play around with it, it’s a very good effort that I’m sure will continue to grow.
Finally, I’d like to congratulate my friends over at toot for this new baby and wish them all the best of luck and success with it.
McDonald’s Australia & Halal Food
McDonald’s Australia reaches out to Muslim fast-food lovers…
However some non-Muslim customers are furious they were not told their hamburger meat was slaughtered and blessed in accordance with Islamic rules laid down in the Koran.
[…]
Coburg resident Miriam McLennan was stunned to discover the hamburger she bought from the Brunswick East store was blessed.
“Just as a Muslim would not want to eat anything that isn’t halal . . . I should have my rights to eat normal, ordinary food that hasn’t been blessed,” she said.
[Source: Herald Sun]
First of all, I think this is great news. Being a fast food fan myself, when traveling abroad, I often find myself wishing there were a restaurant or two of my favorite chains that served halal food. So I definitely hope more and more chains consider opening up halal restaurants.
Secondly, regarding the reaction by some of the non-Muslim customers, I think that it might be because of a misunderstanding of the concept of halal food and the way the animals producing halal meat are killed.
In the Koran, here’s what we find:
“Forbidden to you are: dead meat, blood, the flesh of swine, and that on which hath been invoked the name of other than Allah. that which hath been killed by strangling, or by a violent blow, or by a headlong fall, or by being gored to death; that which hath been eaten by a wild animal; unless ye are able to slaughter it; that which is sacrificed on stone;…”
Us & Life…
“The trouble with so many of us is that we underestimate the power of simplicity. We have a tendency it seems to over complicate our lives and forget what’s important and what’s not. We tend to mistake movement for achievement. We tend to focus on activities instead of results. And as the pace of life continues to race along in the outside world, we forget that we have the power to control our lives regardless of what’s going on outside.”