Thursday, October 30, 2008

Jack O'Lantern

Pumpkin carving is a popular part of modern America's Halloween celebration. Come October, pumpkins can be found everywhere in the country from doorsteps to dinner tables. Despite the widespread carving that goes on in this country every autumn, few Americans really know why or when the jack o'lantern tradition began. Or, for that matter, whether the pumpkin is a fruit or a vegetable. Read on to find out!

People have been making jack o'lanterns at Halloween for centuries. The practice originated from an Irish myth about a man nicknamed "Stingy Jack." According to the story, Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him. True to his name, Stingy Jack didn't want to pay for his drink, so he convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to buy their drinks. Once the Devil did so, Jack decided to keep the money and put it into his pocket next to a silver cross, which prevented the Devil from changing back into his original form. Jack eventually freed the Devil, under the condition that he would not bother Jack for one year and that, should Jack die, he would not claim his soul. The next year, Jack again tricked the Devil into climbing into a tree to pick a piece of fruit. While he was up in the tree, Jack carved a sign of the cross into the tree's bark so that the Devil could not come down until the Devil promised Jack not to bother him for ten more years.

Soon after, Jack died. As the legend goes, God would not allow such an unsavory figure into heaven. The Devil, upset by the trick Jack had played on him and keeping his word not to claim his soul, would not allow Jack into hell. He sent Jack off into the dark night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the Earth with ever since. The Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as "Jack of the Lantern," and then, simply "Jack O'Lantern."

In Ireland and Scotland, people began to make their own versions of Jack's lanterns by carving scary faces into turnips or potatoes and placing them into windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits. In England, large beets are used. Immigrants from these countries brought the jack o'lantern tradition with them when they came to the United States. They soon found that pumpkins, a fruit native to America, make perfect jack o'lanterns.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Yahoo To Cut 1,400 Jobs

NEW YORK (AFP) - - Yahoo announced plans on Tuesday to lay off at least 10 percent of its workforce, some 1,400 employees, as the weak economy cut deeply into third-quarter profits at the struggling Web company.

Yahoo said net profit for the third-quarter of the year was 54 million dollars, or four cents per share, down from 151 million dollars and 11 cents per share during the same period of 2007.

It said revenues were 1.78 billion dollars in the third-quarter, an increase of only one percent over the 1.76 billion dollars in the same period last year.

Yahoo has been losing ground on the Internet to companies such as Google, MySpace and Facebook and the economic slowdown has hurt the firm particularly hard as advertisers cut back on spending.

"An increasingly challenging economic climate and softening advertising demand contributed to revenues this quarter coming in at the low end of our outlook range," said Yahoo chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen.

"While we are disappointed with our results, we're pleased that we continue to benefit from the aggressive cost management efforts we have pursued during the year," he said in a statement.

"We have the balance sheet strength, liquidity, and free cash flow we need to continue to make progress on our core strategies as we address this slowdown," Jorgensen added.

The Sunnyvale, California-based Internet company said it would carry out its second round of layoffs this year in a bid to cut costs.

"Yahoo expects to reduce its global workforce by at least 10 percent during the fourth quarter of 2008," the company said, reducing its annual expenses by some 400 million dollars.

Yahoo, which had 14,300 employees at the end of June, already announced in January that it would be cutting more than 1,000 jobs this year. The announcement Tuesday is for a second round of cuts.

In a bid to reverse its fortunes, Yahoo has rolled out several new products and entered into an advertising tie-up with Google but the deal has yet to receive a green light from US Justice Department anti-trust regulators.

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said Tuesday that Google and Yahoo had extended their talks with the Department of Justice regulators examining their proposed search advertising deal.

The Department of Justice had been expected to announce on Wednesday whether they would give the green light to the tie-up between Google and Yahoo, respectively number one and number two in the Internet ad market.

Yahoo is hoping to earn hundreds of millions of dollars from the deal with Google in the first year alone.

Yahoo's share price has shed more than 40 percent over the past three months but it gained more than seven percent to 12.58 dollars in after-hours trading on Monday after the cost-cutting moves were announced.

Yahoo's management earlier this year rejected a 33-dollar-a-share takeover bid for the company from US software giant Microsoft, earning the ire of some shareholders.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites told to warn users of weak privacy controls.

STRASBOURG, France (AFP) - - Social networking websites were urged Friday to warn users about the low level of protection given to their profiles at a Council of Europe-organised conference on the issue.
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The European Union Data Protection Authority (Cnil) said websites like Facebook should inform users that their profiles currently receive only "weak" protection.

It added that website users, especially minors, should be told about the risks they face by going online and given clear instructions on how to change their data protection settings.

The request came at the end of a two-day conference in the French city of Strasbourg during which 70 countries also stressed the need for a universal standard on privacy and personal data protection.

"A standard set of international rules is needed because everyone accepts we cannot go on in the same way," said Alex Turk, president of Cnil.

Organisers are also considering offering financial rewards to countries, institutions and businesses each year that install the best privacy and personal data protection.


taken from: Entertainment and Lifestyle yahoo News

Monday, October 13, 2008

All About Love

By: Steven Curtis Chapman

We've got CDs, tapes and videos, radios and TV shows
Conferences, retreats and seminars
We've got books and magazines to read on everything from A to Z
And a web to surf from anywhere we are
But I hope with all this information buzzing through our brains
That we will not let our hearts forget the most important thing is

Love love love love love ...it's all about
Love love love love love
Everything else comes down to this
Nothing any higher on the list than love
It's all about love

Now they're fighting in the Middle East and they're fighting down on 7th street
And there are fights in my own house on given days
It's like something's lurking deep inside that can't seem to be satisfied
But life was not meant to be lived this way
'Cause it's true for every man and woman, every boy and girl
That our only hope for living here together in this world is ...

Love love love love love ...it's all about
Love love love love love
Everything else comes down to this
Nothing any higher on the list than love

This is the reason we were made
To know the love of our creator
And to give the love He's given us away
Yeah, the Maker and the Father and the God of everything
He says to ...

Love love love ... He says love love love
Love love love ... 'cause after all it's all about love
God says ...

Love love love love love ...it's all about
Love love love love love
Everything else comes down to this
Nothing any higher on the list than love
'cause after all it's all about love

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Friendship is always a form of love

The difference between the love of an acquaintance, the love of a good friend, the love of a best friend, the love of a spouse and the love of a good God (whichever) is in the amount of one's own wrongdoing they are willing to endure without taking their love away.

Endurance means to accept others' wrongdoing as thoughtlessness or miscomprehension, without blaming it on antipathy or cruelty, believing that it does not come from the core of their personality but from its surface. The core cannot be seen. Only the traffic through the surface can be experienced and accessed. What happens underneath one can only believe in.

To be friends means to love. To love means to endure. To endure means to believe in the other.

To be friends also means knowing the threshold of endurance, and to abandon the other when it is crossed.

To love from the heart means to put the threshold as high as humanly possible.

No human being can love perfectly. Only a being who cannot take any damage and who cannot feel any pain can.

Also read on everything2.com ~ friendship