BlogDay was initiated with the belief that bloggers should have one day which will be dedicated to know other bloggers, from other countries or areas of interests. In that day Bloggers will recommend about them to their Blog visitors.

In one long moment In August 31st, bloggers from all over the world will post a recommendation of 5 new Blogs, Preferably, Blogs different from their own culture, point of view and attitude. On this day, blog surfers will find themselves leaping and discovering new, unknown Blogs, celebrating the discovery of new people and new bloggers.

• Idle Type: "distracting your brains out" -- Troy is really talented at aiding procrastination, and posts all sorts of interesting links to check out. Plus he really likes Saskatoon.

• Bitch, PhD. One of my new favorites -- Dr. B has insightful, madly funny, and activist oriented posts.
  

• The Revealer: A Daily Review of Religion and the Press. This one is put out by Jeff Sharlet (editor of Killing the Buddha) and the NYU Department of Journalism & Center for Religion and Media. This is the site to read if you're looking to raise your blood pressure -- they do a good job keeping the Religious Right accountable for their crazy actions. But, they watch not only Protestant fundies, but how religion in general is covered in media today -- a good site to watch.

• Cecilia's Blog: "we're not working, why should you?" -- it's the PhD comics blog. Their latest comic, "the vortex of unproductivity" is a little too true.

• The Movie Blog -- full of gossip, reviews, and rants. It's also one of my best-kept secrets in how I know so much about current movie projects and gossip.

• and finally, One Good Move -- Norm has clips of everything from the Daily Show to silly moments spotted on FOX News, along with interesting links and news stories, everyday.
  

"KYAGB—kiss your ass good bye," reads Maestri.

"Because," says Maestri, "anyone who was here when that storm came across was gone—it was body-bag time. We think 40,000 people could lose their lives in the metropolitan area."

And some scientists say that figure is conservative. People have known for centuries that New Orleans is a risky spot — the biggest river in North America wraps around it; and most of the land is below sea level. But researchers say they've been learning just how grave the problem is, only in the last few years. And they say the city and the nation aren't prepared to handle it.

[...]

"One of the things that's frustrating now for all of us in my business," explains Maestri, "is that if that Category Five Hurricane comes to New Orleans, 50,000 people could lose their lives. Now that is significantly larger than any estimates that we would have of individuals who might lose their lives from a terrorist attack. When you start to do that kind of calculus - and it's horrendous that you have to do that kind of calculus - it appears to those of us in emergency management, that the risk is much more real and much more significant, when you talk about hurricanes. I don't know that anybody, though, psychologically, has come to grip with that: that the French Quarter of New Orleans could be gone."

Our politics may be completely opposite, but our sense of humor isn't? Via Kate of small dead animals,

"If Quentin Tarantino Made Plush Toys Instead Of Films"

Think you’re up with current events and doing what you can to protect the rights of those who can’t fight for them? What about the piñatas who have no voice? Society accepts disturbing brutality towards piñatas, but one man is standing up and defending piñata rights.

• WARM and sunny outside (finally)

• listening to Loretta Lynn's new album "Van Lear Rose" and deciding to go out and rent Coal Miner's Daughter tonight. I love that movie.

• making mexican for supper tonight! Black Bean burritos and some Spanish rice. Yum.

Is it just me, but does the way Jerry and Becky are sitting and looking make them seem like they came from the pages of a blogging catalogue or something? What a pose! I've got my mouth full of Wendy's Big Bacon Classic, Dixie's probably saying something witty (or saying, "What the hell are you doing?" to the photographer, which, in its own way, is also witty), and Joel looks like he's ready to high-tail it out of there.

christian fundamentalist anti green tea
Sallie Mae sucks
who got the only sweetest thing in the world
tickling as foreplay or tickling foreplay (!!)
signs of a compulsive liar
cute guys prefer ugly girls
becky dobson (yikes indeed)
if you were to get mauled by bears i hope they d stay away from you re face cause i think you re cute
geek fleece blanket
unbelievable scary picture
preacher daughter nose ring

Modern, Cool Nerd
69 % Nerd, 52% Geek, 26% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd.

Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore.

Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and "geek is chic." The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)!

You scored higher than 72% on nerdiness

You scored higher than 75% on geekosity

You scored higher than 37% on dork points

Stewart: There is reasonable dissent in this country about the way this war has been conducted that has nothing to do with the belief that we should "cut and run" from the terrorists, or that we should show weakness in the face of terrorism, or that we believe we have in some way brought this upon ourselves -- they believe that this war is being conducted without transparency, without credibility, and without competence.

Hitchens: I'm sorry, sunshine, but I just watched you ridicule the President for saying he wouldn't give a ...

Stewart: No, you misunderstood why ... that's not why I ridiculed the President. What I ridiculed the President because ... he refuses to answer questions from adults as though we were adults, and falls back upon platitudes and phrases and talking points that does a disservice to the goals that he himself shares with the very people he needs to convince.

CBC On the Line

Bill Doskoch: Media, BPS*, Film, Minutiae -- a good roundup of news (from various outlets) by a CTV newsman

CBC Unplugged -- podcasts from various locked out workers & an extensive list of CBC bloggers

The GarretTree -- a Toronto CBC producer's firsthand views & rants on the situation

I Love Radio.org's Special Lockout Coverage -- Day by day updates off the picket line. There's even a special "this sucks" teeshirt design to download.

Parkdale Pictures -- another picketer's perspective, along with various "lockout songs of the day" to peruse.

And of course, the CBC Negotiations page & the Canadian Media Guild Negotiations site.

FOR thousands of hungry children in Niger today, a tiny plastic bracelet in red, yellow or blue could be a passport to the future.

The bands around their shrunken wrists and ankles allow them and their mothers to receive special food handouts. For many that extra food will make the difference between life and death.

For aid workers the bracelets represent an ironic contrast with those worn symbolically by Western supporters of the Make Poverty History campaign.

[...] The plastic bands indicate how malnourished a child is. If a limb is less than a pitiful 110mm (4.3in) in circumference, a red bracelet is stapled around it. The child is classed as severe and given a five-day intensive feeding course. The mother receives an emergency package of basic food items.

If the circumference is between 110mm and 124 mm, the child qualifies for a yellow bracelet and the mother is given 25kg (55lb) of fortified flour and 5 litres (8.8pt) of cooking oil — a huge amount in what is officially classed as the second-poorest country in the world — which she can then use to feed all her family.

“After they are given food, the band is switched to blue, which means they can come back in a month’s time and get more,” said an aid worker at a food distribution centre in the village of Dan Malam, 32km (20 miles) outside the southern town of Maradi, one of the worst-affected areas. “They can come back three times.”

1. Dismiss the message -- megachurch pastor Ted Haggart defending and Stewart translating: "Robertson didn't make his comment during the time of day when he's a Christian"
2. FOX News -- dismiss the messenger. The pundits call for his retirement saying "his day has passed" -- but, wait! What is Robertson doing on Hannity and Colmes ONE WEEK AGO, as a panelist?!
3. Dismiss critical thinking -- CNN Paula Zahn, "has Robertson gone too far, or is he onto something?"

Google Talk is a downloadable Windows application that enables users to quickly and easily talk or send instant messages to their friends for free. Calls are made through your computer using the latest voice technology; all you need is an Internet connection, a microphone and a speaker. If you don't have a speaker or built-in microphone, you may want to consider buying a headset, which will also provide the best voice quality when using Google Talk.

Wake up, television executives of America: Jon Stewart - the wiseacre host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show - knows more about your business than you do. Sure, The Daily Show may just seem like a smart comedy program on basic cable; nothing more than good political satire and a spot-on parody of TV news pieties. But it's also a demonstration of television done right. In the six years since Stewart took over, the audience for The Daily Show has grown almost threefold to 1.4 million viewers a night. It boasts a legion of young, smart fans who are among the most demographically desirable audiences in the industry - further collapsing the caste distinctions between networks and cable. It has raised the bar for tie-ins, with a best-seller (America [The Book] has sold a stunning 2.5 million copies), a hit DVD (Indecision 2004), and - starting in October - a full-fledged spinoff (The Colbert Report). And The Daily Show may be the most popular TV program on the Internet:

Between blog links and BitTorrent downloads, hundreds of thousands of people watch clips online each day rather than on TV. In other words, in form if not in tone, Stewart's Daily Show offers a glimpse of what all TV may one day become: something we can consume in many distillations, at a time, place, and device of our choosing.

Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

People are taught from childhood to believe that the brain is essentially the "boss" of the body. While it is true that the brain is the centerpiece of our mental capacity and nervous system, it is also a fact that there are nearly one hundred million nerve cells in the gut alone -- about the same number found in the spinal cord!

Fully one-half of your nerve cells are located in the gut, so your capacity for feeling and for emotional expression depends primarily on the gut (and only to a lesser extent on your brain). By the time you add together the number of nerve cells in the esophagus, stomach, and small and large intestines, there are more nerve cells in the overall digestive system than there are in the peripheral nervous system.

Most people would say the brain determines whether you are happy or sad, but they have their facts skewed. It seems the gut is more responsible than we ever imagined for mental well-being and how we feel.

Ever wonder why people get "butterflies" in the stomach before going on stage? Or why an impending job interview can cause an attack of intestinal cramps? And why antidepressants targeted for the brain cause nausea or abdominal upset in millions of people who take such drugs?

The reason for these common experiences, scientists say, is that the body has two brains - the familiar one encased in the skull and a lesser known but vitally important one found in the human gut Like Siamese twins, the two brains are interconnected ; when one gets upset, the other does, too.

The gut's brain, known as the enteric nervous system, is located in sheaths of tissue lining the esophagus, stomach, small intestine and colon. Considered a single entity, it is a network of neurons, neurotransmitters and proteins that zap messages between neurons, support cells like those found m the brain proper and a complex circuitry that enables it to act independently, learn, remember and, as the saying goes, produce gut feelings.

VIRGINIA BEACH (AP) — Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson called on Monday for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him a "terrific danger" to the United States.

Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America and a former presidential candidate, said on "The 700 Club" it was the United States' duty to stop Chavez from making Venezuela a "launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism."

Chavez has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of President Bush, accusing the United States of conspiring to topple his government and possibly backing plots to assassinate him. U.S. officials have called the accusations ridiculous.

"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson said. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."

Robertson accused the United States of failing to act when Chavez was briefly overthrown in 2002.

"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," Robertson said.

"We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator," he continued. "It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

Extremists will always be with us, and they will always have followers. But while Americans are constantly asking mainstream Muslims to please denounce Islamic extremists, no one is asking mainstream Christians to do something about Robertson, Falwell, Dobson, [Eric]Rudolph, and their ilk.

• Junk Food Nation: Who's to blame for childhood obesity?

Conflict about junk food has intensified since late 2001, when a Surgeon General's report called obesi