QTSaver Relevant Micro Content Search Engine Results

Capricorn symbol

2008-08-26T11:00:00.002+03:00

Following is a demonstration of the power of Qtsaver micro content search engine to grab relevant info from multiple sources and present it on one page.

http://www. tattoosymbol. com/zodiac/capricorn. html Capricorn | TattooSymbol. com

Capricorn Tattoo Symbol - Capricorn (21 December - 19 January) is the tenth sign of the ZODIAC and it begins the winter solstice. It is a symbolic representation of the goat's body and fish’s tail and reflects the ambivalent nature of those born under the influence of this sign. In the Far East, it is the first sign of the ZODIAC.

http://www. elore. com/Astrology/Study/capricorn. htm Capricorn Astrology - Earthlore Explorations - Lore of Astrology . . .

Capricorn, whose constellation is known as Capricornus, is one of the oldest of the astrological interpretations. Ruled by Saturn, its symbol is the goat. This is sometimes depicted as a sea borne hybrid or Dolphin. The image is often an animal with the body of a goat and the tail of a fish.
Capricorn sea-goat symbol, within shell, fifteenth century, French manuscript.
Capricorn symbol within the zodiac, seventeenth century European manuscript.

http://answers. yahoo. com/question/index?qid=20070304042227AAkL75G capricorn sun and moon rising sign gemini?

Block User Capricorn THE GOAT - the sign of Consistency Capricorn's symbol is the sea goat, rather than the mountain goat and this represents a sure footedness but also an ability to be a lot more fluid and flexible than their reputations suggest. Often having a superbly dry sense of humour Capricorns are instinctively knowledgeable about timing and will know when to make the most of opportunities. Tending to be quite career orientated, they will focus on making a name for themselves or finding their life's purpose.

http://www. geocities. com/capricorn_horoscope Capricorn horoscope,compatibility, full description of the personality

Ambitious, pragmatic, and goal-oriented, they learn how to get things done. The mountain goat is an appropriate astrological symbol for this sign since a sure-footed, methodical climb to the top is the main goal of Capricorn individuals. They aspire to positions of power and authority, and they admire others who attain such positions. Initiative and willingness to accept responsibilities are keys to their success.

http://www. skyscript. co. uk/capricorn. html Skyscript: Capricorn the Goatfish

The fire that animates the Capricorn's spirits is gestating and self-contained, but not to be taken lightly. The Romans celebrated the Sun's ingress into Capricorn as Saturnalia, a festival which welcomed back the return of the Sun's power after the shortest day of the year. The emphasis was on renewal of strength, fertility, and power that originates from the depths of being. As the cardinal earth sign Capricorn portrays the enduring and irrepressible spirit of nature. There is a productive fecundity inherent in the symbolism of the goat-fish that is dismissed too lightly if we fail to explore the deeper meanings of this complex ancient symbol.
They can suffer through shyness and are seldom at ease displaying affection. Yet Capricorn is a strongly sexual sign - the goat's horn is a symbol of male virility - and their fixed emotions can cause them to remain locked in grief and disappointment if they fail to win the object of their affection. Within relationships they have a strong sense of duty and commitment. This will be highly satisfactory to some but others may perceive it as unnecessarily restrictive and oppressive.
See also:
Scorpio symbol
Pisces symbol

Widget

2008-08-07T13:47:00.001+03:00

Following is a demonstration of the power of Qtsaver micro content search engine to grab relevant info from multiple sources and present it on one page.

1. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Widget Widget - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

o GUI widget, a component of a graphical user interface with which a user interacts

o Widget toolkit, a software library containing a collection of GUI widgets that collaborate when used in the construction of applications

o Web widget, a physically-inspired applet on the web

o Widget engine, a software system for running applets on the web, desktop or mobile phone

2. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Web_widget Web widget - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

o A web widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation. They are derived from the idea of code reuse. Other terms used to describe web widgets include: gadget, badge, module, capsule, snippet, mini and flake.

o A widget is anything that can be embedded within a page of HTML, i. e. a web page. A widget adds some content to that page that is not static. Generally widgets are third party originated, though they can be home made. Widgets are also known as modules, snippets, and plug-ins.

o The first widely syndicated web widget, Trivia Blitz, was introduced in 1997. It was a java game applet offered by Uproar.com embedded on 15,200 websites as of December 31, 1998 and 36,100 websites as of December 31, 1999. It spread virally through an "add this game to your website" button.

3. http://widget. dilbert. com The official Dilbert daily comic strip widget: The OFFICIAL Dilbert . . .

o Grab your very own Dilbert widget for your Facebook, MySpace, iGoogle page or any other place you may be feeling a void and let the icon of office workers make each day a little more brilliant and carefree.

o Even The Boss will appreciate the daily joy it will bring. Just choose the size widget you need and in the time it would take you to grab that 10th cup of coffee you can be sharing Dilbert with all your fellow cubies!

4. http://widgets. yahoo. com Yahoo! Widgets: useful, fun, beautiful little apps for Mac and Windows

o This is a highly addictive puzzle. To learn more about the puzzle, install the Widget, right-click on it and select "Help. . . ".

o This Widget will countdown the number of days, hours, minutes, seconds until the start of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

o This Widget gives you information on indices, stocks and funds. Its resizable window can also show charts and news for the items you're tracking.

5. http://code. google. com/webtoolkit/documentation/com. google. gwt. doc. DeveloperGuide. UserInterface. html Building User Interfaces - Google Web Toolkit - Google Code

o While it is possible to manipulate the browser's DOM directly using the DOM interface, it is far easier to use classes from the Widget hierarchy. You should rarely, if ever, need to access the DOM directly. Using widgets makes it much easier to quickly build interfaces that will work correctly on all browsers.

6. http://widgets. opera. com Opera Widgets

o Widget to search and display webcams all over the world.

o Advanced painting widget with many tools: pencils, charcoal, paint brushes, calligraphy pen and much more - draw, paint, paste photos, have fun!

o This little widget allows you to keep an eye on things that need to be done.

o A customizable calendar widget with events and reminders.

o Opera has released more tools and documentation for Widget developers.

7. http://automattic. com/code/widgets WordPress Widgets « Automattic

o Widgets have come to WordPress! By installing the Widgets plugin by Automattic and using a widget-ready theme, you can bring the popular customization feature from WordPress.com to your very own, hosted WordPress installation.

8. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Dashboard_(software) Dashboard (software) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

o When Dashboard is activated, the user's desktop is dimmed and widgets appear in the foreground. Like application windows, they can be moved around, rearranged, deleted, and recreated (so that more than one of the same Widget is open at the same time, possibly with different settings). New widgets can be opened, via an icon bar on the bottom of the layer, by dragging a widget icon out into the layer. After loading, the widget is ready for use.

o When a Dashboard widget is built, it usually consists of six files:

o The widget's HTML file, which is the actual file that will be displayed in the Dashboard layer

o The widget's CSS file, which is used for styling the widget (but is called on from the HTML file)

o The widget's JavaScript file, although it may be implemented directly within the HTML file if the developer desires

o The widget's Property List (called “Info. plist”), which is what Dashboard uses to load the widget’s properties (i. e. : name, version, HTML file, etc. )

o The background image of the widget, in PNG format

o Once all of these files are in the root of a directory, it is given a name and the extension ". wdgt", and then it can be opened up in Dashboard as a widget. More complex widgets may also include a Cocoa widget plugin (for platform-specific functionality), one or more JavaScript files (for text scrolling, preferences, etc. ) or multiple images (for personalized select menus or buttons).

o Dashboard widgets, like web pages, are capable of many different things, often to perform tasks that would be tedious or complicated for the user to access manually. One example is the Google Search widget, which simply opens up the user's browser and performs a Google search. Other widgets, like Wikipedia, grab the contents of webpages and display them within Dashboard. Some widgets can also serve as games, using Adobe Flash (or another multimedia authoring program) to create games just as if they were in a browser.

Fighting Broken Links

2008-07-26T20:16:00.004+03:00

Online surfing suffers from broken links. They pollute the web. The best way to prevent these annoying “thorns” is to reduce making them. We have to cope with the recklessness behind manufacturing them. Taking the problem personally and seriously means finding ways to bypass the need for links, which work perfectly until they break for some reason. For instance: Instead of linking to Wikipedia in order to mention a source of a quote it might be enough to refer to the heading of the entry, which is usually a unique keyword.

In order to fix broken links I have to click on every single link on my large web site. When the link doesn't work or works too slowly I ask myself if I can delete it. Most of the times the answer is positive, and I ask myself why did I make the links from the start.

It might seem too tedious to fix all these broken links one by one without using any software, but I can tell you that after a while I found patterns that gradually helped me find shortcuts.

I don't believe in solutions from “above” (that Google would encourage us, up loaders, to use less links and rank higher). I even don't mind if nobody else but me genuinely thinks that it's worth the time to fix broken links. I'm just convinced that's what I have to do without delay, and I share it with those who read this.

Tip 1: remember that a link is only a highlighted text. If you have a lot of broken links on one of your pages you may consider canceling the highlights (copy the document to MS Word with the Special Paste command unformatted text). Without highlights a link becomes regular text and no one can break it.

Tip 2: consider writing textual (not highlighted) links. Readers who will be really interested in following these links will have to make the (copy and paste) effort.

Tip 3: avoid links to PDF files, which download too slowly.

Tip 4: avoid dynamic links.

QTSaver Demonstration, Tribal Tattoos

2008-07-23T09:57:00.000+03:00

See a demonstration of multiple QTSaver Queries about Tribal Tattoos resulting as an article I sent to tattooblogger.

I started with the Keyword Tribal Tattoos and proceeded to other Keywords that I stumbled upon such as:

African tattoos, Bengal tattoos, Berber tattoos, China tattoos and so on.

I arranged the results in Microsoft Word Levels and eventually the headings by alphabetic order.

It took me about 4 hours.

Hotlinking

2008-07-19T11:07:00.000+03:00

Demonstration of the power of Qtsaver micro content search engine to grab relevant info from multiple sources and present it on one page.

http://altlab. com/hotlinking. html What is Hotlinking? Bandwidth Theft? Stop Hotlinking and test your . . .

Did you receive a notice that you are hotlinking an image on someone else's server and warned to stop doing it immediately?Would you like to test image hotlink protection on your own web site? Would you like to prevent hotlinking of your image files with an htaccess file?
Bandwidth theft or "hotlinking" is direct linking to a web site's files (images, video, etc. ). An example would be using an img tag to display a JPEG image you found on someone else's web page so it will appear on your own site, eBay auction listing, weblog, forum message post, etc.
Hotlinking can have a lot of undesirable consequences. One is the so-called "switcheroo". If you've linked to an image on someone's server, what's to prevent them from changing the image you linked to?

http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Inline_linking Inline linking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Inline linking (also known as hotlinking, leeching, piggy-backing, direct linking, offsite image grabs and bandwidth theft) is the use of a linked object, often an image, from one site into a web page belonging to a second site. The second site is said to have an inline link to the site where the object is located.
For Microsoft's Internet Information Services web server software, third party tools may be installed to combat inline linking and hotlinking.

http://altlab. com/htaccess_tutorial. html Stop Hotlinking with htaccess. Test your Image Hotlink Protection with . . .

So You Want to Stop Hotlinking and Bandwidth Theft
Want to test image hotlink protection for your web site? Here is information on using an htaccess file to stop hotlinking and bandwidth theft.
You can stop others from hotlinking your site's files by placing a file called . htaccess in your Apache site root (main) directory. The period before the name means the file is hidden, so you may want to edit your file as htaccess. txt, upload it to your server, then rename the txt file to . htaccess in your directory. Contact your web host on how to access your directories and configure your . htaccess file.

http://www. imagehotlinking. com Your Guide to Preventing Image Hotlinking

It is quite possible that people new to webpages may be engaging in the practice of image hotlinking without realizing it.
If the image is coming from a site that isn't yours, it's considered hotlinking or inline linking. To solve this, save a copy of the image yourself (assuming you have permission to do so), upload it to your web server, and link to it from there. Alternatively, you can upload it to the numerous free image hosting sites available around the net.
Legal Action - Hotlinking to images and other multimedia can be considered intellectual property theft, and can open the perpetrator to legal action. This method of prevent hotlinking however, it is expensive and time consuming, and won't necessarily prevent others from trying the same thing.

http://www. free-webhosts. com/definition/hotlinking. php Definition: Hotlinking (hot linking)

This not only causes the other person to pay for the bandwidth of the hotlinked file, but often is intellectual property theft. The term is also used loosely (a misnomer) by free image hosts which allow you to store images on their server and allow you to direct link the hosted image files on forums or other websites (sometimes altering the image to have a watermark).
One of the most common occurrences of "hot linking" is when people are forum posting and they hotlink pictures from another website to use as avatars or signature images on the messageboards (forums). Some disadvantages of hot linking worth considering are that the webpage generally loads slower when you link to images stored on a different web hosting server than the webpage is hosted on, and the owner of the image has full control to disable hotlinking, or delete, rename, or worse yet, do a "switcheroo" (i. e. , switching the file name to be another image which is sure to cause the hotlinker embarrassment) of the hot-linked image. Common methods of preventing hotlinking are by using an . htaccess file, using the "Hotlink Protection" offered in control panels such as Cpanel, or simply renaming image files periodically.

http://www. static8. com/hotlink. html Static8 Hotlinking is Bad

Hotlinking can quickly put a big dent in allowed bandwidth. Quite often, images are hotlinked from forums and discussion boards. . . if it's a large image, and the forum is popular, the site being hotlinked could be shut down or charged for the extra bandwidth in just a few hours.
More importantly, hotlinking is a copyright crime. A hotlinker is displaying someone else's art on a site not affiliated with the artist.

http://www. xentrik. net/htaccess/hotlinking. php Xentrik | Htaccess | Hotlinking

You hear people with websites complaining about hotlinking all the time. It has a number of names besides hotlinking, such as leeching, direct linking and bandwidth stealing. The problem is, the majority of offenders don't realise what they're doing, or that it's stealing at all.
So how can you tell if you're hotlinking? Take a look at your HTML code. If the code for your image looks like this: img src="http://www.xentrik. net/image.gif" Then you are hotlinking to an image on http://www.xentrik.net, and using up that siteowner's data transfer, which is wrong.

Google Pages

2008-07-05T19:49:00.003+03:00

QTSaver Daily Search results for Google Pages

Another demonstration of the power of this micro content search engine to grab relevant info from multiple sources and present it on one page

1. http://pages. google. com/-/about. html About Google Page Creator

o We're testing a new product that makes creating your own web pages as easy as creating a document in a word processor. Google Page Creator is a free tool that lets you create web pages right in your browser and publish them to the web with one click. There's no software to download and no web designer to hire. The pages you create are hosted on Google servers and are available at http://yoursitename. googlepages. com for the world to see.

o Will Google give preferential treatment to web pages created with Google Page Creator in Google search results?

o If you're interested in testing out the product, please visit http://pages. google. com and sign in using your Gmail account to begin making pages.

o preferential treatment of any kind in Google search results.

2. http://google. about. com/od/googleproducts/g/pagesdef. htm Page Creator

o Definition: Google Page Creator is a Google Labs project to generate and host simple HTML web pages with images.

3. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Google_Page_Creator Google Page Creator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

o Google launched a product called Google Sites in February 2008. It is unclear whether these two products lines will each remain, or whether Google Pages will get phased out.

4. http://www. techcrunch. com/2006/02/22/google-pages-released Google Pages Released

o Although there has been no official announcement yet Google have released the long awaited and long-rumored Google Pages (which has nothing to do with cloning Larry Page). Pages allows users to create a web page using an AJAX interface that removes a lot of the ‘pain’ associated with creating pages with HTML and other desktop design applications.

o Once you are in the application you are presented with a WYSIWYG interface displaying your page and some editing controls. The interface in terms of what they have done with client-side Javascript is impressive, and what Google has done in terms of putting up simple pages is cool but overall it is an underwhelming gimmick that may have some potential if they focus. Google Pages allows you to upload files, create many pages that you can link up, and select from a smorgasbord of templates. The website which you can then push out to publish can then be found at username. googlepages. com.

o The way it usually works with real website design is that the design wraps the content creator up completely simply so they don’t mess things up – only because we aren’t all creative types. Google Pages does let you upload any file though, and gives you 100MB of space, which some may find more useful for sharing files or distributing SNL video’s.

o For instance, this is not going to be a threat to the younger crowd who are all creating pages on MySpace, nor to the audience of millions of bloggers who already have their online presence, nor to the players in the CMS space who offer a whole lot more in functionality and power. I am not sure who this is targeted at as the small business owners and non technical folk sure aren’t looking at Google for a website solution and considering there is no domain mapping at the moment being a business and handing out a googlepages.com domain is just, well, embarrassing.

5. http://www. desktoplinux. com/news/NS2909568909. html Google Pages launches

o Google released the first public beta of its Google Pages service Wednesday, allowing users who signed up for the service in January and February to begin creating personal websites using an easy-to-use, browser-based tool. The service gives each user 100 MB of free storage space on Google's servers.

o To use the Google "Page Creator" tool, users must have an existing Google account. However, only those who signed up early (in January and February) to use Google Pages have access to the current beta. No new signups are being accepted at this time, Google said. The company is expected to open Page Creator to more widespread use over the next few weeks.

Flickr How To

2008-06-28T17:32:00.002+03:00

QTSaver Daily Search results for Flickr how to
Another demonstration of the power of this micro content search engine to grab relevant info from multiple sources and present it on one page

1. http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2005/03/great-flickr-tools-collection

*.Did you know the most popular camera on Flickr was the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT.

* Steganography with Flickr - See how steganographied images can be shared with Flickr friends to pass on documents or other files.

· Check out my How to: Flikr Intro http://www.benbishop.me.uk/software/how-to-flickr-into/

* Someone told me there is a program that lets you see who has linked to one of your Flickr shots. I didn’t see it in your cool and extensive list but I may not understand all the terms or how such a program would be described.

2. http://www.paulstamatiou.com/2005/11/19/how-to-quickie-embedded-flickr-slideshows

· Posted by Kent Sandvik on 29 Aug 2006

· Photos Below is my collection of Flickr photos for August. I used a technique described here how to embed the actual slideshow in a blog entry. The other trick was to tag all the August entries with 2006 as a tag.

* Kuddos to this guy for his easy instructions on how to put a Flickr slide show based on tags into your Blog. [...]

* For a while now I have longingly watched Darcy Norman include Flickr sets in his blog posts. My urge to finally scratch this itch was further prompted by the fact that I recently bucked-up and became a proud Flickr Pro account holder. So last night I was thinking, “Hey, maybe I could find a quick tool for WordPress to make this happen and be as cool as them Canadians.” What I discovered in the meantime might just make me twice as cool. Paul Stamitiou had time for a quickie tutorial on how to include a slideshow of images from Flickr in a blog post or page. This code allows you to includes image by tag, sets, date, etc. - it is very vesatile, and above all I think it works with just about any blogging system or html encoded page. I would also like to say the Paul Stamitou is my new found guru of online tutorials, his K2 series is to die for. His cool, calm and collected tone makes me wanna rethink my mad ravings all together.

3. http://bytescout.com/post2blog_how_to_upload_to_flickr.html

* Flickr is a photo sharing website. Post2Blog is capable of automated and semi-automated uploading of images to Flickr. This tutorial will demonstrate you how to use Post2Blog to upload images and photos for your blog into Flickr.

4. http://bytescout.com/post2blog_how_to_insert_tags.html

* How to insert Technorati, Flickr and other tags into post in Post2Blog editor

5. http://lifehacker.com/software/flickr/how-to-embed-flickr-slideshows-210683.php

* Blogger Paul Stamatiou details how to embed the default Flickr slideshows on your own web page or blog.

6. http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2006/01/flickr_howtos.html

* Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Flickr How-Tos:

7. http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2567/flickr_how_to_download_pictures_printing

Flickr: How to Delete Set

Flickr: Hacks, Easter Eggs, and Hidden Places

Upload Pictures from Picasa/Picasa2 to Flickr with Tags, Descriptions, and Title Flickr: Add Multiple Photos to Group at Once Flickr:

Enable Stats Flickr:

Mass Remove Tags from Photos Flickr:

Search for Tag Within Most Recent and Most Interesting URL Hack:

View and save original photos on Flickr.

Flickr Hack: How to Allow Users to Search Your Flickr Account from Any Web Page

8. http://www.mahalo.com/How_to_Use_Flickr:_Basics_and_Beyond

* Guide Note: This page tells you how to set up an account with Flickr, and how to get the most out of your account once it's up and running. Soon you'll know how to use Flickr: basics and beyond.

9. http://www.ehow.com/how_2107004_embed-flickr-slideshows.html

* How to Create a Flickr Account By: expertvillage

* How to Pay For Your Flickr Prints By: eHow Internet Editor

* How to Add A Contact To Your Friends List On Flickr By: eHow Internet Editor

* How to Get the Most from Flickr By: Virginia DeBolt

* How to Sign Up For Flickr By: eHow Internet Editor

* How to Sign Up for a Flickr account By: teeterrl

Daily Search Results For Havdalah Tower

2008-06-20T14:40:00.001+03:00

http://www.nmajh.org/images/244.htm Silver Havdalah Spice Tower

William Cohen, a founding member of the Jewish farming colony in Alliance, New Jersey, received this silver havdalah spice tower as a birthday present in 1935.His daughter, Elizabeth Colen, who donated the spice tower to the Museum, recalls that as a young girl she regularly assisted her father with the family's havdalah ceremony. At the conclusion of the Saturday evening meal, Elizabeth held the blazing havdalah candle as her father used wine and spices to mark the end of the Sabbath and the resumption of weekday activities.

http://www.silverheaven.com/Detail.bok?no=792

Roma Havdalah Tower…Two pieces built like a tower, holds spices as well as having a candle holder.

http://jhom.com/topics/havdalah/salvation.html JHOM - Havdalah - Salvation

The use of sweet-smelling herbs and spices for the Havdalah ceremony roused the creative instincts of artisans and they fashioned spice boxes in widely varied designs and shapes in gold, silver, brass, glass and wood. In Ashkenazi circles, the spice box took many forms, from flowers to miniature trains. Most popular, however, from around the sixteenth century, was the tower form, which was stylistically influenced by local architecture. Rabbi Shubert Spero takes a closer look at the symbolism of the tower spice box.
The architectural form of the spice tower with its domes and turrets, belfries and flags, represented to the medieval Jew both a military fortress with its suggestions of strength and security, as well as a magnificent religious edifice built by men to honor their deity.
Supportive of this basic symbolism is the association of the tower with the architectural elements of the Holy Temple. Salvation, messiah, restoration of the Temple …The spices, seen as incense, likewise evoked memories of the Temple service.

http://www.mezuzahstore.com/p14301/Spice-Tower---Sterling-Silver/product_info.html

Yehudah crafts each of these items by hand from pure Sterling Silver. The spice tower is traditionally used as part of the Havdalah ceremony at the end of Shabbat.The small door opens to allow you to put cinnamon sticks, cloves and other spices inside.

Daily Search results for Judenstern Lamp

2008-06-19T20:39:00.001+03:00

1. http://www.imj.org.il/eng/exhibitions/2005/40/yudaica/index.html

* The Sabbath oil lamp dedicated in 1763 to the synagogue of the small German town of Pfersee was made by a Christian silversmith from nearby Augsburg. This type of lamp, known in German as a Judenstern ("Jewish Star"), has oil fonts which are in fact arranged in the form of a star. All the parts - the star, the oil drip pan below, and the hanging device above - are repousse. The hanging device consists of spherical knobs, with chased twisted scrolls and with cast child-like images (putti) seated on railings.

* Each putto holds swags of flowers and leaves in its hands. The lamp's components are designed in such a way that the flames are reflected from the gleaming surface and multiplied. The Judenstern lamps were cast in brass over a period of hundreds of years, most often in Germany. They would typically include a long hook in the shape of a serrated knife.

2. http://www.shemayisrael.com/chanukah/shape.htm

* Menachos, 28b. 2 Bamidbar 8:2. 3 According to this view, the Menora appeared similar to the Judenstern, (literally, "star of the Jews") a circular lamp in the shape of star, which typically had six or seven lamps. Centuries ago, Jews had the custom to suspend a Judenstern from the ceiling, and light it for Shabbos. Hundreds of these lamps still exist in museums, and in Judaica collections around the world.

3. http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/pm.php?id=record_detail&fl=0&lg=English&ex=00000257&rd=148107

* The lamp is typical of German Shabbat lamps, which evolved from an old type of star-shaped domestic oil lamp used in medieval Europe by both Jews and non-Jews. In Jewish homes, the lamp was lit at the start of Shabbat to provide light over the holiday. The lamp developed into a ritual object when this purpose became obsolete. Around the sixteenth century, this form of lamp became known by its German name Judenstern, or Jewish Star.

4. http://www.russiansamovars.com/candlesticks.htm

Rare Antique Sabath Candlesticks, Candelabra, and Candleholders

* Rare Antique Germany Hanging Sabbath Lamp "Judenstern" 6 pointed brass star with florets - complete with ratchet hanger, drip pan and oil runners. $3000.00 SOLD

5. http://www.brillonline.nl/public/art-material-culture.html
Art and Material Culture of Judaism—Medieval through Modern Times ...

* Seder scenes in both Ashkenazic and Sephardic haggadot commonly show a star-shaped hanging lamp above the festive table. The form was in general use in medieval Europe, but was eventually superseded by other forms of lighting. Among Jews, however, the lamp became a traditional type so that, by the sixteenth century, it became known among German goldsmiths as a Judenstern. The star-shaped hanging lamp was utilized by central- and east-European Jews for Sabbaths and holy days into the twentieth century. One medieval survivor of Jewish ownership was found in Deutz. Made of bronze, its faceted form indicates a date in the first half of the fourteenth century.

* Because Judaism is a home-centered religion as well as one focused on the synagogue, many significant ceremonial objects were created for domestic use. There are, first of all, those known from the Middle Ages, like the Judenstern, whose kindling marked the onset of the Sabbath. The star-shaped lamp remained traditional for Sabbaths and holy days in Germany and eastern Europe, although many used candlesticks and candelabra after wax candles came into widespread use.

6. http://www.templeisraelcenter.org/about_us/sanctuary.php?page=113

* The ner tamid, (eternal light) originally came from 19th century Germany. In Germany, this type of lamp was called a judenstern, or Jewish star, because it cast a star-shaped shadow. A Jewish family would lower the lamp on Friday night and use it as the Sabbath light. Originally an oil lamp, it was later electrified and first brought to Temple Israel in the 1950s.

QTSaver Daily Search Results For Statcounter

2008-06-17T14:08:00.000+03:00

1. http://www.statcounter.com

Some of our members have demanded even more, and so we have introduced a number of optional upgrades to enhance the service available for such users.

StatCounter offers lifetime summary stats covering all your pageloads for free. However in addition we also offer the most detailed analysis available anywhere for a smaller number of your latest pageloads. Your log-size determines how many pageloads are covered by this vastly more detailed analysis.

2. http://my.statcounter.com/register.Php

StatCounter is dedicated to the privacy of its members.

Attention: We have a zero-tolerance policy on spam! Using StatCounter to track spam will result in the deletion of your account, and possible further action.

3. http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2007/gb20070717_028843.htm

In 1999, at the age of 16, Cullen launched Dublin-based StatCounter, an online service that lets clients measure the number of hits they get on their Web sites, plus the geographical location of visitors, the pages people view, and the keywords they use to find a site.

Latching onto such a hot growth market may have been what gave Cullen the edge among voters in our second annual contest to identify the most promising young entrepreneurs in Europe. Out of a field of 16 companies run by 19 Europeans age 25 or younger, StatCounter rose to the top.

Still, Cullen's company stood out for its strong growth. StatCounter currently has more than 1.5 million users and tracks more than 9 billion page views per month across its network of 2.2 million Web sites. Cullen won't discuss revenues for the privately held company, but says he's signing up 1,500 new members per day.

That helps explains why Alexa Internet Web Search (AMZN), which ranks sites by traffic, currently lists StatCounter as the 34th-most-visited site in the U.S.

StatCounter doesn't really compete with Omniture or other players such as WebTrends that target multinationals and big corporations. Rather, it's going after small and midsize firms that don't need highly sophisticated analytical tools—and can't afford to spend $10,000 and up to buy them.

4. http://forum.statcounter.com

Welcome to the StatCounter User Forum.

Is StatCounter not providing a feature or statistic that you want?

Don't understand something about StatCounter? Need help installing your counter?

5. http://drupal.org/project/statcounter

This module provides an integration between Drupal and StatCounter web statistics. The module allows user to insert their StatCounter tracking code and select the scope of pages they wish to display it on.

6. http://www.statcounter.com/privacy.html

StatCounter Privacy Policy

StatCounter. com respects the privacy and rights of its visitors. No effort is made to identify individuals without their knowledge.

When a visitor requests pages from the StatCounter.com site, our Web servers automatically log the browser's domain name, and IP address. This information is collected solely for statistical purposes and is not used to identify individuals.

To enable StatCounter.com to track your unique visitors we send a cookie to your visitors' computer. This information is collected solely to improve the service we offer to you and statistical purposes and is not used to identify individuals.

StatCounter. com maintains a strict "no-spam" policy. Your e-mail address will not be sold to a third party.

qtsaver

2008-06-12T08:36:00.001+03:00

View My Stats

QTsaver Daily Search Resaults For: Sandbox Google

2008-06-12T05:13:00.002+03:00

1. http://www.seochat.com/c/a/ Google-Optimization-Help/ Google-Sandbox-Frequently-Asked-Questions/
Does everyone agree that there is a Google Sandbox?
How do I know it’s the Sandbox and not a Google penalty?
The Google Sandbox is an alleged filter placed on new websites. The result is that a site does not receive good rankings for its most important keywords and keyword phrases. Even with good content, abundant incoming links and strong Google PageRank, a site is still adversely affected by the Sandbox effect. The Sandbox acts as a de facto probation for sites, possibly to discourage spam sites from rising quickly, getting banned, and repeating the process.

http://www. webpronews. com/insiderreports/2004/05/06/ Google-sandbox-effect-revealed Google "SandBox Effect" Revealed | WebProNews

I reported recently on a Google ranking phenomenon in which newly listed sites rank well for two to three weeks and then drop completely out of the top 1000. Often these newly dropped sites have high page rank and don't show for even the least competitive of terms.
I too have been reading the WMW threads and a couple have people have recently commented that after 3 months their sites have started to rank. "
Google search from the inception of a site, through indexing of the first pages, through the Google sandbox, and out the other side. No black hat SEO was used, and the sandbox effect lasted about 1 month.

http://www. searchengineguide. com/david-wallace/how-to-play-in- Googles-sandbox. php How To Play In Google's Sandbox - Search Engine Guide Blog

Search Engine Guide David Wallace How To Play In Google's Sandbox
The so-called "sandbox" theory suggests that new sites will be added to the Google index and may even show up for obscure searches such as the company/web site name but will not show well for other phrases that are relevant to the site. It doesn't matter if the site is optimized for the search engines either. In fact, those who have optimized their sites can drive themselves crazy making change after change but to no positive avail.
So if a site is sent to the sandbox by Google either because it is new or it is participating in mass link building, what is the time frame that must pass before the site is allowed out of the box? Most search engine marketers that have been discussing and analyzing this say about 6-8 months. As for myself, I don't actually believe that Google is sending new sites to a "sandbox" but rather they may be applying some sort of aging filter.

http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Sandbox_Effect Sandbox Effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Sandbox Effect is a theory used to explain certain behaviors observed with the Google search engine. It appears this effect does not affect new pages unless the domain is in the sandbox.
Those who believe in the "sandbox effect" (such as Searchguild. com) consider it a "policies" based approach by Google, whereas some mathematicians believe it is simply an algorithmic effect.
Since Google is the dominant search engine on the Internet, this "sandbox effect" has distressed webmasters [who?] who see their websites included in Yahoo! and MSN in a short period of time, but not in Google despite following Google's own guidelines. [citation needed]
Google's sandbox appeared to be put in place in March 2004. [citation needed]

http://www. webpronews. com/topnews/2004/08/26/what-is-the- Google-sandbox-effect What is The Google Sandbox Effect? | WebProNews

So it's taken me three years but I've finally cracked the sandbox. From the first time that the Google spiders visit your website it's exactly 75 days later that the site goes into the sandbox.
My site is stilll in Google sandbox. It has been six months since it was pur into sandbox. I saw a poll investigation on the net. It will take about 3-9 months for competitive keyword to walk out Google sandbox affection. No any visitor from Google to my site. homepage is in 950 position penalty.
I bought my domain all of four months ago, and still nothing on Google. I've read elsewhere on a SEO website that it can take at least six months to get through the 'sandbox' now, even up to 12 months.

http://www. webconfs. com/ Google-sandbox-article-11. php Jumping Over the Google Sandbox

Although there is no direct confirmation of the existence of a sandbox, Google employees have implied it and SEO experts have seen in practice that new sites, no matter how well optimized, don't rank high on Google, while on MSN and Yahoo they catch quickly. For Google, the jailing in the sandbox for new sites with new domains is on average 6 months, although it can vary from less than a month to over 8 months.
Before we delve into more detail about particular techniques to minimize sandbox damage, it is necessary to clarify the general rule: you cannot fight the sandbox. The only thing you can do is to adapt to it and patiently wait for time to pass. Any attempts to fool Google - starting from writing melodramatic letters to Google, to using “sandbox tools” to bypass the filter - can only make your situation worse.
Host on a well established host - another solution is to host your new site on a subdomain of a well-established host (however, free hosts are generally not a good idea in terms of SEO ranking). The sandbox effect is not so severe for new subdomains (unless the domain itself is blacklisted).
Rely more on non- Google ways to increase traffic - it is often reminded that Google is not the only search engine or marketing tool out there.

http://www. seroundtable. com/archives/001963. html Google Sandbox Defined

I find it to be a real shame about the confusion around the Web as to what the term "sandbox" means. Google, of course, would not admit to it and I do not blame them. But there are so many different definitions of what defines a site to be sandboxed.
I believe we, at the Search Engine Roundtable, was the first information site (outside of a forum) to publicly acknowledge the existence of some form of issue with Google and new sites. The first post we had was named New Sites = Poor Results in Google, that was before it had a name. In a WebmasterWorld thread linked to from the "New Sites = Poor Results in Google" entry, the term "sandbox" came about. Later on, guest author SEO Guy posted an entry here using that title The Sandbox Effect, which helped make its name. Then Garrett French, who was writing at WebProNews wrote an excellent, early recap of all the coverage and named it Google "SandBox Effect" Revealed. Since then the word sandbox has been discussed here dozens of times.

OTsaver Daily Search Resaults For: Cashew Nut

2008-06-08T12:30:00.001+03:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cashew
Cashew - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The true fruit of the cashew tree is a kidney or boxing-glove shaped drupe that grows at the end of the pseudofruit. Actually, the drupe develops first on the tree, and then the peduncle expands into the pseudofruit. Within the true fruit is a single seed, the cashew nut. Although a nut in the culinary sense, in the botanical sense the fruit of the cashew is a seed. The seed is surrounded by a double shell containing a dermatogenic phenolic resin, urushiol, a potent skin irritant toxin also found in the related poison ivy. Some people are allergic to cashew nuts, but cashews are a less frequent allergen than nuts or peanuts.

http://www.living-foods.com/articles/rawcashew.html
raw cashew nuts - are they really raw? (cashew apple tree(

Cashew nuts are one of my favorite nuts on this planet. Unfortunetly, most cashew nuts labeled "raw cashew nuts" are not truly "raw". They have been heat processed in order to remove the delicious nut from the toxic shell.

I have often thought of the very same questions. Most companies label it "raw" because to them, the nut has "not" been processed, ie: roasted. Although in the process of removing the actual shell, the nut has been very processed...usually steamed and boiled in oil! So until recently I have pretty much avoided purchasing raw cashew nuts. I have been enjoying in-shell macadamia nuts, which are my all time favorite nut. When purchasing mac nuts, its important to purchase them in the shell. Once the nut has been out of the shell, many go rancid.

This article will explain more about the cashew nut, and cashew apple, the fruit of the nut, as well as its origin, and nutrient value.

Cashew trees produce both a fruit ("apple") and a nut, and a valuable oil can be drawn from the nut shell. After the cashew flower blooms, a nut forms. The apple later swells between the nut shell and the stem. It takes two months for the cashew apple to ripen. When harvested, the apple can only keep for twenty-four hours before it begins to ferment. Although the fruit can be used for making many typical fruit products (jellies, jams, juice, wine and liquor), the apple is often discarded, in pursuit of the nut. If processed and stored properly, the cashew nut can be kept for a year or longer. Technically, the actual nut is the thick-shelled seed. The outer shell (coat) of the seed contains the poison oak allergen urushiol, and may cause dermatitis in hypersensitive people.

There is a toxic resin inside the shell layer. If the shell is not opened properly, the resin will get on the cashew nut, making it inedible. Most companies steam the shell open at a high temperature, thus cooking the cashew nut inside. A certain nut producer in Indonesia uses a special technique with specially-designed tools (without using any heat at all) to open the shell cleanly every time without ever exposing the cashew nut to the resin. The raw cashews are much sweeter, tastier, and nutritious than their cooked counterparts.

http://www.fao.org/ag/ags/agsi/Cashew/Cashew.htm
cashew
The cashew tree, native to Brazil, was introduced to Mozambique and then India in the sixteenth century by the Portuguese, as a means of controlling coastal erosion. It was spread within these countries with the aid of elephants that ate the bright cashew fruit along with the attached nut. The nut was too hard to digest and was later expelled with the droppings. It was not until the nineteenth century that plantations were developed and the tree then spread to a number of other countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

This allowed them to benefit from the sale of both processed nuts and the extracted cashew nut shell liquid.

Cashew is known by many names. In Mozambique, the Maconde tribe refer to it as the "Devil's Nut". It is offered at wedding ceremonies as a token of fertility and is considered by many to have aphrodisiac properties.

Cashew kernels are ranked as either the second or third most expensive nut traded in the United States. Macadamia nuts are priced higher and pecan nuts can be more costly, if the harvest is poor. Cashew nuts have a well established market in the United States with a great variety of uses. Retail prices range from about US$4 to 11 per pound (US$9 to 23 per kg) depending on the size of nut and the packaging.

Three main cashew products are traded on the international market: raw nuts, cashew kernels and cashew nut shell liquid (CNSL).A fourth product, the cashew apple is generally processed and consumed locally.

The raw cashew nut is the main commercial product of the cashew tree, though yields of the cashew apple are eight to ten times the weight of the raw nuts.Raw nuts are either exported or processed prior to export. Processing of the raw nuts releases the by-product CNSL that has industrial and medicinal applications.

The skin of the nut is high in tannins and can be recovered and used in the tanning of hides. The fruit of the cashew tree that surrounds the kernel can be made into a juice with a high vitamin C content and fermented to give a high proof spirit.
…

http://www.recipezaar.com/library/getentry.zsp?id=642
Kitchen Dictionary: cashew nut

about "cashew nut" or what to substitute for it.

The cashew nut grows at the bottom of an edible, pear-like fruit (cashew apple).Cashew nuts have a sweet, buttery flavor. You never see cashews for sale in the shell because between the outer and inner shells covering the nut is an extremely caustic oil. The outer shell must be roasted or burned off with the oil. The kernels are then boiled or roasted again, and a second shell is removed.

http://www.thenutfactory.com/kitchen/facts/facts-cashews.html
The Nut Factory : Kitchen : Interesting Facts : Cashews

The delightful cashew nut is loved by everybody. Cashews are a product loved by the wealthy nations and provided for by the poor nations. It is closely related to the Mango and Pistachio plants.

The first western people sighting the cashew tree was by the Portuguese. They invaded Brazil in the 1500's. Portuguese seamen brought the seeds of the cashew nut tree from Brazil to be planted by the early settlers along the east coast of Africa. The trees took root and thrived. It was not long before cashew trees were growing wild along the entire coast of Mozambique. They spread to Kenya and Tanzania.

The gray/brown cashew nut hangs like a nose at the end of the cashew apple. The nut shell is 1-1/2 inches long and kidney shaped. The nut is found on the end closest to the cashew apple. The other end is honeycombed with cells. These cells contain a toxic resinous fluid called cardol that blisters the mouth.

For many years, the cashew was referred to as the blister nut.

Inside the hard shell is a slightly curved white cashew kernel which is about 7/8 inches long and is wrapped in a thin brown skin called a testa which is removed during the processing. The cashew nut, therefore, has two shells - the hard exterior shell and the testa.

There are two ways to remove the cashew shell, the inside fluid and the thin brown skin. Washing the raw nut in a water bath and storing it in moist heaps or silos for 12 hours makes the shells brittle as long as they maintain 7% to 10% humidity. The shell will rupture and liberate cardol fluid.

At The Nut Factory, we roast the cashew kernel at 325 degrees Fahrenheit in hot roasting oil for between 5 and 12 minutes. This softens the kernel and gives it a buttery taste. No two batches of cashews roast the same, so it requires skill and careful watching of the exact moment when the nut starts to turn an ivory color. Only by roasting in small batches can we get the perfect roast on each nut.

http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/c/casnut29.html
botanical.com - A Modern Herbal Cashew Nut

Cashew Nut (Anacardium occidentale)

Other Species--- The Oriental Anacardium or Cashew Nut (Semecarpus anacardium), a native of India, has similar qualities to the West Indian Cashew, and is said to contain an alkaloid called Chuchunine.

This is the Ammonium compound of beta and delta resinous acids of A. occidentale (Cashew Nut), and is used as a hair-dye, but cannot be used with acids, acid salts, or acetate of lead.

http://www.organiccashewnuts.com
Cashew, Cashew Nut, Cashew Tree, Grow Cashew, Cashew Recipe

Since Cashews are found only in the tropics, many people in the US, Europe, and Middle East have never seen a Cashew Tree, a Cashew Nut still in its shell, or a Cashew Apple. Learn about the taxonomy and history of the Cashew Tree, how to grow Cashew trees, how to roast cashew nuts, uses of Cashew Nut Shell Liquid (CNSL), and how to make traditional Cashew Wine and Cashew Butter.

OTsaver Daily Search Resaults For: The Chinese dragon boat festival

2008-06-07T21:17:00.000+03:00

http://www.ncsu.edu/midlink/dec97/holiday/boatz.html
The Chinese Dragon Boat Festival

The Chinese Dragon Boat Festival is a significant holiday celebrated in China, and the one with the longest history. The Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated by boat races in the shape of dragons. Competing teams row their boats forward to a drumbeat racing to reach the finish end first.

The boat races during the Dragon Boat Festival are traditional customs to attempts to rescue the patriotic poet Chu Yuan. Chu Yuan drowned on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in 277 B.C. Chinese citizens now throw bamboo leaves filled with cooked rice into the water. Therefore the fish could eat the rice rather than the hero poet. This later on turned into the custom of eating tzungtzu and rice dumplings.

http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/DragonBoatFestival.htm
Chinese Dragon Boat Festival

Chinese New Year, the Mid-Fall Moon Festival and the Dragon Boat Day are three major festivals in China. The Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month of the Chinese calendar. Chinese call this day as Duan-Wu .Wu means Horse month in Chinese calendar. The Horse month usually begins on June 5th or June 6th in the Gregorian calendar. That means Dragon Boat Festival should be held in June, unless that year has Leap Month in the Chinese lunar calendar.

In China, the Dragon Boat Festival memorializes the Chinese patriotic poet Chiu Yuan (340 BC-278 BC or 343-290 B.C.), who committed suicide by jumping into the river after tying himself with big rock on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month.

The custom of Dragon Boat Race might begin from the southern China. They selected the 5rh lunar day of the 5th lunar month as the totem ceremony. The dragon was the main symbol on the totem, because Chinese thought they were son of dragon. Later, Chinese connected this custom with Duan-Wu festival. Since this was the event only in the southern China. This might be why Dragon Boat Race doesn't that popular in entire China today. But we can see yearly Dragon Boat Race events in Honk Hong and Taiwan. The picture shows a person lies on the top of dragon head of the boat to prepare to catch the flag of target to win the race.

The Date of Chinese Dragon Boat Festival The 5th day of the 5th lunar month

http://chineseculture.about.com/library/weekly/aa052998.htm
Dragon Boat Festival

But since some of the well-known traditions of the festival already existed even before Qu Yuan, other origins of the festival were also suggested. Wen Yiduo suggested that the festival may be associated with dragon closely because two of the most important activities of the festival, dragon boat racing and eating zongzi, are related to dragon. Another view is that the festival is originated from the taboo of evil days. The fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar is traditionally considered an evil month and the 5th of the month is particularly a bad day, so a lot of taboo had been developed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Boat_Festival
Duanwu Festival –
The Duanwu Festival is a Chinese traditional and statutory holiday. It is a public holiday in mainland China and in Taiwan, where it is known as the "Duanwu Festival". It is also a public holiday in Hong Kong and Macau, where it is known as Duen Ng Festival. Its alternative name in English is "Dragon Boat Festival", after one of the traditional activities for the holiday.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_boat
Dragon boat –

Dragon boat races are traditionally on the day of the Duanwu Festival, also known in English as the Dragon Boat Festival, making dragon boating the only sport to be celebrated as a national holiday. The Chinese calendar date is the fifth day of the fifth month, which usually corresponds to a date in June.

The use of dragon boats for racing and dragons are believed by modern scholars, sinologists and anthropologists to have originated in southern central China more than 2,500 years ago, along the banks of such iconic rivers as the Chang Jiang, also known as Yangtze (that is, during the same era when the games of ancient Greece were being established at Olympia).Dragon boat racing as the basis for annual water rituals and festival celebrations, and for the traditional veneration of the Asian dragon water deity, has been practiced continuously since this period. The celebration is an important part of ancient agricultural Chinese society, celebrating the summer harvest. They first used a "dragon boat" to save a local scholar from drowning in the river and went to save his life. They now honour this feat on (or around) the 5/5 every year (Lunar Calendar(.

Dragon boat racing traditionally coincides with the 5th day of the 5th Chinese lunar month (varying from late May to June on the modern Gregorian Calendar).The Summer Solstice occurs around June 21 and is the reason why Chinese refer to their festival as "Duan Wu". Both the sun and the dragon are considered to be male.(The moon and the mythical phoenix are considered to be female.)The sun and the dragon are at their most potent during this time of the year, so cause for observing this through ritual celebrations such as dragon boat racing. It is also the time of farming year when rice seedlings must be transplanted in their paddy fields, for wet rice cultivation to take place.

Today, dragon boat festivals continue to be celebrated around the world with dragon boat racing, although such events are still culturally associated with the traditional Chinese Tuen Ng Festival in Hong Kong (Cantonese Chinese dialect) or Duan Wu festival in south central mainland China (Mandarin Chinese dialect.(
The Hong Kong Tourism Bureau helped move dragon boat racing into the modern era by donating teak dragon boats to countries around the world, starting in 1980 when three boats were sent to London England, for the Chinese Festival on the River Thames. The following year two boats were sent to Germany. In 1986, the Hong Kong Pavilion at Expo 86 donated 4 teak dragon boats to the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Community leaders in Vancouver quickly saw the potential in creating a multicultual event that would bring together the Chinese and non-Chinese citizens for a fun event and festival, giving birth to the Canadian International Dragon Boat Festival, now known as the Rio Tinto Dragon Boat Festival. The original boats were loaned/rented to Toronto, Victoria, Seattle and Los Angeles and quickly helped spread the seeds for modern dragon boat racing throughout North America. Two Taiwanese style dragon boats were donated to the Portland-Kaohsiung Sister City Association (PKSCA) in North America to help found the Portland Rose Festival Dragon Boat Race in Portland Oregon, USA.

Several of the largest dragon boat events outside Asia include Rio Tinto Dragon Boat Festival (aka. Canadian International Dragon Boat Festival) held in Vancouver, British Columbia, the GWN Dragon Boat Challenge held in Toronto, Ontario, Toronto International Dragon Boat Festival held in Toronto, Ontario, the Ottawa Dragon Boat Race Festival held in Ottawa, Ontario, the Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival in New York held in Queens, New York, and the Portland Rose Festival Dragon Boat Race. The three Canadian festivals feature 180 teams and the New York festival features over 120 teams, and all are held on weekends nearest the Summer Solstice in accordance with traditional Chinese dragon boat traditions. The Philadelphia International Dragon Boat Festival has held its festival the first Saturday in October for the last six years and in 2007 hosted 136 teams, making it the largest one day Dragon Boat event to be held in North America. Portland, Oregon hosts several dragon boat races annually including the largest Taiwan style races in North America with over 100 teams and two full days of racing in front of 100,000 spectators at Portland's Rose Festival.

http://www.chiff.com/home_life/holiday/chinese-dragon-boat-festival.htm
Chinese Dragon Boat Festival 2008, Races, Recipes, History ...

The Dragon Boat Festival commemorates the popular Chinese patriot, Qu Yuan.(Chu Yuan) who in the 3rd century in protest of a corrupt government threw himself into the Mi Lo River in despair.

Along with the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival and Chinese New Year, the Dragon Boat Festival is one of the most significant in China, celebrated by colorful and lively races featuring narrow boats shaped like dragons.

The Chinese Dragon Boat Festival - Good intro with pictures of the customs & traditions surrounding the festival.

http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/Festivals/78316.htm
Traditional Chinese Festivals -

There are many legends about the evolution of the festival, the most popular of which is in commemoration of Qu Yuan (340-278 BC). Qu Yuan was minister of the State of Chu and one of China's earliest poets. In face of great pressure from the powerful Qin State, he advocated enriching the country and strengthening its military forces so as to fight against the Qin. However, he was opposed by aristocrats headed by Zi Lan, and later deposed and exiled by King Huai. In his exiled days, he still cared much for his country and people and composed immortal poems including Li Sao (The Lament), Tian Wen (Heavenly Questions) and Jiu Ge (Nine Songs), which had far-reaching influences. In 278 BC, he heard the news that Qin troops had finally conquered Chu's capital, so he finished his last piece Huai Sha (Embracing Sand) and plunged himself into the Miluo River, clasping his arms to a large stone. The day happened to be the 5th of the 5th month in the Chinese lunar calendar. After his death, the people of Chu crowded to the bank of the river to pay their respects to him. The fishermen sailed their boats up and down the river to look for his body. People threw into the water zongzi (pyramid-shaped glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in reed or bamboo leaves) and eggs to divert possible fish or shrimp from attacking his body. An old doctor poured a jug of reaglar wine (Chinese liquor seasoned with realgar) into the water, hoping to turn all aquatic beasts drunk. That's why people later followed the customs such as dragon boat racing, eating zongzi and drinking realgar wine on that day.

Dragon boat racing is an indispensable part of the festival, held all over the country. As the gun is fired, people will see racers in dragon-shaped canoes pulling the oars harmoniously and hurriedly, accompanied by rapid drums, speeding toward their destination. Folk tales say the game originates from the activities of seeking Qu Yuan's body, but experts, after painstaking and meticulous research, conclude that dragon boat racing is a semi-religious, semi-entertaining program from the Warring States Period (475-221 BC).In the following thousands of years, the game spread to Japan, Vietnam and Britain as well as China's Taiwan and Hong Kong.

OTsaver Daily Search Resaults For: Tom Jones

2008-06-06T10:20:00.003+03:00

http://www.tomjones.com/home/index.aspx
Tom Jones

It's a time machine, transporting you back to when life was less complicated, adulthood and its concerns were a distant spot on the horizon, and you could feel so happy it seemed like the sensation would never end. For about 90 minutes Thursday night, Tom Jones took the crowd at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall expertly by the hand.

"This is my fifth concert of his," the Vancouver resident said. "But I haven't been to one of his shows for 30 years."As Johnson was talking, another woman leaned forward to say that her late mother liked Jones so much she carried a picture of the singer in her wallet: "She was a quiet, devout woman, mother of eight -- but she loved Tom Jones."A silver-haired woman, overhearing the conversation, volunteered that she wasn't planning on tossing her underwear toward the stage."I don't want to hurt him," she said, laughing. "He's older, and I'm bigger."Then the lights went down, rumbling noises came up, and it was time to give a warm welcome to the one and only Sir!

Lights came up, and Jones appeared, tanned, brown hair completely free of gray, Van Dyke-style beard neatly trimmed, sporting a tomato-red blazer over black shirt and black pants. At the shirt's open collar, he wore a silvery, sparkly bit of bling. Wasting no time, Sir Tom burst into song, asking the crowd to "Raise Your Hand. "Women waved arms in the air. Some rushed to the front of the stage to dance. Jones smiled and sang in a voice as strong as his heyday, while behind him, his tight band played and three back-up singers chimed in. As he proved weekly on his 1969-71 variety show, "This Is Tom Jones," he may not be the most subtle singer in the world, but Jones can perform any kind of music with utter conviction. The show started on time, there was no tedious opening act, no intermission -- just Jones singing everything from the George Jones classic "He Stopped Loving Her Today" to blues to standards to his playful cover of Prince's "Kiss" as an encore. With a minimum of Vegas-style glitz and just enough banter –

http://www.last.fm/music/Tom+Jones
Tom Jones – Listen free at Last.fm

Sir Thomas Jones Woodward, KBE, OBE (born 7 June 1940), best known by his stage name, Tom Jones is a Welsh pop singer particularly noted for his powerful voice. He was born in Treforest, near Pontypridd in South Wales. He rose to fame in the mid-1960s, with an exuberant live act which included wearing tight breeches and billowing shirts, in an Edwardian style popular amongst his peers at the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Jones_(singer)
Tom Jones (singer) -

Tom Jones rose to fame in the mid-1960s, with an exuberant live act that included wearing tight breeches and billowing shirts, in an Edwardian style popular among his peers at the time. He was known for his overt sexuality, before this was as common as it has become in subsequent years.

The group returned to South Wales and continued to play gigs at dance halls and working men's clubs. One night, at the Top Hat in Cwmtillery, Jones was spotted by Gordon Mills, a London-based manager originally from South Wales. Mills became Jones' manager, and took the young singer to London. He also renamed him "Tom Jones," an ingenious moniker that not only linked the singer to the image of the title character - a good-looking, low-born stud - portrayed in Tony Richardson's film of Fielding's Tom Jones, which was a huge contemporary hit, but also subtly emphasized his nationality. Gordon Mills gave many rock stars their stage names, among them Engelbert Humperdinck (born Arnold George Dorsey). The Senators became the Playboys, and later still the Squires.

Jones had an internationally successful television variety show from 1969-1971 titled This Is Tom Jones.This hit TV show was aired by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC-TV) in America and ITV in the UK. The 1970s saw Jones' popularity leveling off, but the hits kept coming: "Daughter Of Darkness", "She's A Lady", "Till" and "The New Mexican Puppeteer" were all hits in the UK.On July 29, 1986, Gordon Mills, Jones' long-time manager, died of cancer.Jones' son Mark became the singer's manager.In April 1987, the singer re-entered the singles chart with the hit "A Boy From Nowhere"', which got him back into the public eye. A few months later he performed a version of Prince's "Kiss", and recorded it with The Art of Noise, and it was an instant hit.

In 1998 he performed a medley of songs from the film The Full Monty with Robbie Williams at the BRIT Awards. That same year, Space and Cerys Matthews released "The Ballad Of Tom Jones".

An album of cover versions recorded as duets with contemporary artists, using their record producers, and utilising their recording methods, it reached number one in the United Kingdom, and sold over 4 million copies worldwide.[3] In 2002, he released the album Mr. Jones, which was produced by Wyclef Jean and included the singles "Tom Jones International" and "Black Betty".In 2003, he was honored with a BRIT Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2004, his "Sex Bomb" single became a major club hit.

For his contribution to the recording industry, Tom Jones has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6608 Hollywood Blvd.

Although his manager and public relations staff have attempted to change his sex-bomb image and neutralize the knicker-throwing fans, to the delight of his audiences Jones has never felt the need to tone down his behavior in the shows. Tom Jones has remained highly respected by other singers and continues to attract audiences of all ages.As of 2008, Jones continues to tour and record.A major portion of the year he regularly performs his show at the MGM Grand hotel, located on the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, USA. His show at the MGM is performed in a cabaret style theater.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KUJE2xs-RE
YouTube
- Tom Jones - Sex bomb

Tom Jones - Sex Bomb music video Added: March 17, 2007 (Less info) Tom Jones - Sex Bomb music video

Tom Jones - She's a Lady 02:26 From: Samanosuke2 Views: 1,379,484

Tom Jones - Black Betty 03:57 From: 10DaNa10 Views: 155,170

TOM JONES - DELILAH 02:07 From: lmj22 Views: 620,815

Tom Jones - It's Not Unusual (Live) 02:34 From: USAsoccer2010 Views: 651,458

Tom Jones - Love Me Tonight 02:52 From: TopTJFan Views: 254,906

Tom Jones - Sex Bomb - Festival Viña 2007 03:27 From: jowyto2 Views: 127,416

Tom Jones - Thunderball 02:28 From: TomJonesMania Views: 91,131

Tom Jones - Green,Green grass Of Home 03:09 From: brethren03 Views: 476,456

"What's New Pussycat?" - "This is Tom Jones" on DVD 02:19 From: tomjonesdvd Views: 343,544

Tom Jones - Unchained Melody 03:20 From: generaciomix Views: 332,575

Tom jones dances like HELL! 02:16 From: elvispresley3 Views: 133,812

Tom Jones & Mousse T. - Sex Bomb 03:48 From: lafcanbazi Views: 71,720

Tom Jones - You can leave your hat on - Festival Viña 2007 03:55 From: jowyto2 Views: 123,485

TOM JONES - Chills and Fever (1964) 03:06 From: lmj22 Views: 68,722

Black Betty - Tom Jones 03:22 From: VoodooGoddess Views: 73,625

Tom Jones - Delilah Live At Cardiff Castle 03:21 From: dubwisse Views: 284,204

http://www.tomjonesinternational.com
Tom Jones International

This site is for you and, hopefully, by you, the fans of Tom Jones.

Tom Jones can still deliver a sexy show By Lana Michelin/Red Deer Advocate/June 04, 2008 Sex-bomb Tom shared his hits — and his pheromones — with 2,000 screaming fans at Red Deer’s Centrium on Wednesday, proving that age is just a state of mind.

At nearly 68 (his birthday is on Saturday), Tom Jones gyrated across the stage like a young hipster singing “Just help yourself to my lips, to my arms, just say the word and they’re yours…”

One review of Tuesday night’s show from The Edmondton Sun is overall a good one and we do understand why there is almost always mention panties (except the reviewer here in Las Vegas who unfailingly reviews Tom Jones, singer).When people don’t see him often, audience-tossed items are an unusual occurrence that one tends only to see at a Tom Jones show and it naturally draws comment.When people see him frequently, they often get annoyed by the interruption or, sometimes, even guess what he’ll do with a particular item — ignore it, pick it up, comment on it, etc. Practiced fans know there are ways to forecast what will happen.

That point was brought crashing down to earth as the devilishly silly Tom Jones and his 2,500 fans clapped, sang and laughed during Tuesday’s love-in at the Jubilee Auditorium.” She found a few, very minor, issues with the performance but it is on the whole a terrific review.

We cannot promise any other incentives than Sir Tom Jones in a very unusual venue in a beautiful city.

http://www.cosmopolis.ch/english/cosmo8/tomjones.htm
Tom Jones

Despite Jones' numerous affairs, the couple is still together. Their son, by the way, is Tom Jones' manager.

In the evening, he performed in bars, where Gordon Mills, his first manager, spotted him. Tom Jones sounded black and sexy and knew how to move. In 1964, the two men landed a record contract with Decca. Already his second single, It's Not Unusual, became an international hit.

In 1969, Tom Jones was offered a television show by ABC. Among his guests were Elvis Presley, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Ray Charles, Tony Bennett, The Bee Gees, Smokey Robinson, Kirk Douglas, Elliot Gould, Peter Sellers and many more.

At the same time, these able musicians helped him create a sound unknown for years. But even with his new album, Tom Jones has not completely lost his trashy image.

On Reload Tom Jones performs, together with Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, Iggy Pop's Lust For Life.Van Morrison, Zucchero, The Stereophonics (Mama Told Me Not To Come) and Robbie Williams are some of the other musicians who recorded duets with the Tiger. Nothing was left out, not even the obligatory slushy Christmas tune (Baby It's Cold Outside.(

Tom Jones has one of the most incredible and sexiest male voices in show business, comparable to greats like Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley (in completely other genres of course).This comparison of course sheds a bad light on his accomplishments. For years he has worked with pitiful musicians and arrangements.

In Younger Days the singer shows his self-ironic side. Tom Jones International will become a hit.It is one of the songs on Mr. Jones which Tom Jones co-wrote for the first time in his career.The album's highlight is the soul song Feel The Rain on which the potential of the Tiger's unique voice comes best to light.

QTsaver Daily Search Results For: Flamingo Birds

2008-06-05T10:36:00.000+03:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamingo
Flamingo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Flamingo Fossil range: Eocene - Recent

Flamingos or flamingoes are gregarious wading birds in the genus Phoenicopterus and family Phoenicopteridae. They are found in both the Western Hemisphere and Eastern Hemisphere, but are more numerous in the former. There are four species in the Americas while two exist in the Old World.
Two species, the Andean and the James's Flamingo, are often placed in the genus Phoenicoparrus instead of Phoenicopterus.
Stout-legged Flamingo (Borgloon Early Oligocene of Hoogbutsel, Belgium)
Giant Flamingo (Late Oligocene - Early Pliocene)

In a 2004 study comparing DNA sequences of intron 7 of the β-fibrinogen gene (FGB-int7), the Neognathae (all living birds except the ratites and tinamous) excluding waterfowl and Galliformes were shown to be divided into two subgroups of uneven size. The first and smaller one, Metaves, contains flamingos and grebes, alongside the hoatzin, pigeons, sandgrouse, the Caprimulgiformes, the Apodiformes, tropicbirds, mesites, sunbittern and kagu. Interestingly, most of these groups have traditionally been difficult to place on the family tree of birds. According to this study, all other birds belong to the second subgroup of Neoaves, the Coronaves (Fain & Houde 2004).

But their molecular data was insufficient to resolve inter-Metaves relationships to satisfaction; the flamingo FGB-int7 sequence is apparently most similar to that of some species of nighthawks, strongly suggesting a case of convergent evolution on the molecular level. The conclusions that one can draw from this study are twofold: first, that flamingos are Metaves (if that group is not based on molecular convergence, for which there are some indications), and second, that FBG-int7 is unsuitable to determine their relationships beyond that. It is interesting to note, however, that among all the groups which have been proposed as sister taxa of the flamingos, only the grebes are Metaves.

The relationships of the flamingos still cannot be resolved with any certainty, but presently a close relationship with grebes appears somewhat more likely than other proposals. For this clade, the taxon Mirandornithes ("miraculous birds" due to their extreme divergence and apomorphies) has been proposed.In summary, all this confusion serves to show that all lines of "evidence" - molecular, morphological, ecological and parasitological - are liable to yield erroneous "proof" and that no method can be considered generally superior. Any future attempt to finally resolve the flamingos' relationships, therefore, would have to employ total evidence to support it and carefully weigh the data against alternative proposals.

The filtering of food items is assisted by hairy structures called lamellae which line the mandibles, and the large rough-surfaced tongue. The flamingo's characteristic pink colouring is caused by the Beta carotene in their diet.The source of this varies by species, but shrimp and blue-green algae are common sources; zoo-fed flamingos may be given food with the additive canthaxanthin, which is often also given to farmed salmon. Flamingos produce a "milk" like pigeon milk due to the action of a hormone called prolactin (see Columbidae).

Young flamingos hatch with grey plumage, but adults range from light pink to bright red due to aqueous bacteria and beta carotene obtained from their food supply. A well-fed, healthy flamingo is more vibrantly coloured and thus a more desirable mate.A white or pale flamingo, however, is usually unhealthy or malnourished.Captive flamingos are a notable exception; many turn a pale pink as they are not fed carotene at levels comparable to the wild. This is changing as more zoos begin to add prawns and other supplements to the diets of their flamingos.

Possible causes include avian cholera, botulism, metal pollution, pesticides or poisonous bacteria, say researchers. Also, fears for the future of the Lesser Flamingo — Phoeniconaias minor — have also been raised by plans to pipe water from one of their key breeding areas, the shores of Lake Natron.

http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-flamingo.html
San Diego Zoo's Animal Bytes: Flamingo

Class: Aves (Birds) Order: Phoenicopteriformes Family: Phoenicopteridae Genus and species: .Phoenicopterus ruber (greater flamingo and Caribbean flamingo subspecies)

The flamingo’s pink color, which is very important for stimulating reproduction, comes from the food they eat, including algae, diatoms, and small aquatic insects and crustaceans. .In East Africa, more than one million lesser flamingos may gather together—forming the largest flocks known among birds today. .Standing on one leg really is their most comfortable resting position. . The Andean flamingo is the only flamingo species with yellow legs. .The San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park are among only a handful of zoos in the world to raise offspring from four of the six flamingo species. Together, we have hatched nearly 300 chicks.

The flamingo’s pink color, which is very important for stimulating reproduction, comes from the food they eat, including algae, diatoms, and small aquatic insects and crustaceans. .In East Africa, more than one million lesser flamingos may gather together—forming the largest flocks known among birds today. Standing on one leg really is their most comfortable resting position. . The Andean flamingo is the only flamingo species with yellow legs. The San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park are among only a handful of zoos in the world to raise offspring from four of the six flamingo species.Together, we have hatched nearly 300 chicks.

Long legs let flamingos wade into deeper water than most other birds to look for food.And speaking of food, the flamingo also has very distinctive eating habits.The bill is held upside down in the water. The flamingo feeds by sucking water and mud in at the front of its bill and then pumping it out again at the sides.Here, briny plates called lamellae act like tiny filters, trapping shrimp and other small water creatures for the flamingo to eat.The smaller puna Phoenicopparrus jamesi, Andean Phoenicopparrus andinus, and lesser flamingos Phoeniconaias minor have deeper bills and stiff lamellae. This helps them filter very fine particles, such as algae, through their bill and keep bigger particles out.

Flamingos are social birds that like to live in groups of varying sizes, from a few pair to sometimes thousands or tens of thousands.

http://www.thewildones.org/Animals/flamingo.html
The Wild Ones: Flamingo

Nearly everyone knows what flamingos look like ---pink birds with long legs.You can see them at just about every zoo. You can find them in storybooks.

Ornithologists (scientists who sturdy birds) spent many years arguing whether flamingos are more like ducks, or more like storks, until they decided that flamingos belong in a group by themselves.

There are 5 species of flamingos that occur throughout the world. The greater flamingo is as tall as a grown-up person is. The lesser flamingo is as tall as a first-grader.

Caribbean flamingo (also known as American, Cuban, rosy, or West Indian)

Greater flamingo (also known as European)

Lesser flamingo (also known as African)

Caribbean flamingos have the brightest coloration: crimson or vermilion. The Chilean flamingo is pale pink.

A flamingo's pink or reddish feather color comes from its diet, which is high in alpha and beta-carotene. People eat beta-carotene when they eat carrots.

The typical flamingo diet consists of diatoms, seeds, blue-green alage, crustaceans, and mollusks they filter out of the water. Using their long legs and partially webbed feet, flamingos will stamp on the muddy bottom of lagoons to mix the food particles with the water. Different species of flamingo have slightly different shaped bills; the different shapes helping it obtain slightly different types of food.

Flamingos use their large beaks to filter small food items from the water. A flamingo lowers its head into the water, upside-down. It moves its head from side to side, collecting the food/water mixture. The spiny, piston-like tongue acts to pump the water mixture past the tooth like ridges on the outside of the beak and the lamellae, or finger-like projections, inside the beak.

When they are ready to lay their breed, birds will form pairs.Within the whole colony, groups of birds will be engaged in courtship displays -, a predictable sequence of displays including marching and head turning, calling and preening.Several hundred to several thousand flamingos are all doing the same behaviors at the same time. This helps to synchronize breeding within the colony, so that most of the birds are laying eggs or raising young at the same time.

Every flamingo does not nest every year.When they do nest, they typically lay one large, white egg. The nest is built of mud, small stones, and feathers on the ground and is in the shape of a volcano.

http://www.beyond.fr/birds/flamingo.html
Flamingo Birds - by Provence Beyond

Photo gallery of 5 photos for Flamingo

The flamingo appears all-over pale pink while standing. It's a lot more colorful when it take off, though; the wings are black along the outer and trailing edges, and dark pink forward.

The thick, curved beak is practical, designed to sieve animal and vegetable food from shallow water. In flight, the neck and feet stretch far out before and behind the slender body and flapping wings, and the curved beak help distinugish the flamingo from storks or geese. The flamingo's loud honking in flight is very similar to the sound of a goose.

This pink flamingo likes any shallow-water lakes, ponds or protected inlets of the Mediterranean, and can often be found along the coast of Spain and southwestern France. It can be most readily seen in the Camargue (map), the only place in France where it nests.

QTsaver Daily Search Results For: Shavuot Blintzes

2008-06-04T20:20:00.001+03:00

QTsaver Search results for: shavuot Blintzes

http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/articles/2007/05/17/news/local/acover0518.txt
Archives: Story

Cheese blintzes wrapped in tradition for Shavuot

http://www.aish.com/shavuotfeatures/shavuotfeaturesdefault/Cheese_and_Flowers.asp
Cheese and Flowers - Shavuot with Aish

This is an exception to the talmudic rule that "holiday joy requires meat and wine." Shavuot cheesecake and cheese blintzes have become beloved and fattening staples in Jewish homes for centuries.

http://www.manischewitz.com/entertaining/shavuot2.php
Manischewitz - The Unbelievable BLintz

Blintzes are to Shavuot what matzos are to Passover. Both are the gastronomical heroes of the holidays.

Blintzes are popular on Shavuot because it’s customary to eat dairy on the holiday and because rolling cheese up in pancakes is a rather efficient--and tasty--method of transporting dairy to your mouth (to find out why we eat dairy of Shavuot, read Traditions, Tips and Trends)

http://www.chabad.org/calendar/view/day.asp?tdate=6/5/2008&mosadid=7424 Chabad-Lubavitch of Southern Rensselaer County - Calendar of ...

Join the Jewish Women's Circle in celebrating the giving of the Torah by trying your hand at the traditional Shavuot delicacy- blintzes! learn the art of frying, filling and folding blintzes from Elena Silverman. Discover what giving the Torah 3,320 years ago has to do with blintzes and all Jewish Women today!

http://www.forward.com/articles/13450
Home / Fast Forward / Beyond Blintzes: A Culinary Tour of Shavuot

Beyond Blintzes: A Culinary Tour of Shavuot

Cheesecake and blintzes hold an important place in the realm of Jewish cuisine, but they aren’t the be all and end all of Shavuot foods. In fact, there are many unique dishes — both dairy and nondairy — associated with the holiday that reflect the culinary traditions of Jews around the world.

http://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Blintzes-Barbara-Diamond-Goldin/dp/0152019022
Amazon.com: A Mountain of Blintzes: Barbara Diamond Goldin, Anik ...

PreS-Gr 2-A delightful and satisfying tale celebrating the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. According to tradition, Jews are supposed to eat dairy foods to commemorate the day that Moses received the Torah on Mount Sinai, and hardworking Sarah would love to make a mountain of cheese blintzes for her husband and five children. However, with such a large family to feed, she cannot afford to buy all the ingredients, until she comes up with an ingenious plan. For the two weeks preceding the holiday, she and her husband will each work a little extra, every day putting their additional earnings into a special coin box.

With both of them saving a little each day, surely they will have enough by Shavuot. Of course, neither Sarah nor Max part with the extra coins, each rationalizing that the other will do so. Ultimately, it is their resourceful children who provide the ingredients for the celebratory mountain of blintzes. Loosely based on a traditional Chelm tale, this story is set in the Catskills in the late 1920s, providing a charming small-town locale for the sunny watercolor illustrations. Utilizing a bright, friendly palette and endearing pink-cheeked characters, the illustrations tell an amusing story within a story, as the children find their own ways to contribute to the Shavuot table. Background notes and recipe are included.-Teri Markson, Stephen S.

On their farm in the Catskills in the 1920s, Sarah and Max plan for Shavuot. It is a time for cleaning house, new clothes, and good food, especially blintzes. The couple agree to work hard and put their money into a coin box, saving for the family holiday. But one thing leads to another and neither saves any coins.

Clever visual clues in whimsical, full-page watercolor illustrations extend the story, showing the children secretly working at odd jobs to earn money. When Shavuot comes, the penniless parents are rescued by their giggling children, and they all celebrate together. The author's note provides details about this Jewish holiday and about the traditional Chelm stories that inspired this ebullient picture book. And there's also Goldin's family recipe for making the perfect mountain of blintzes. Karen Simonetti Copyright American Library Association.

http://www.jewish-holiday.com/shav66laws.html
Shavuot Laws & Customs

Shavuot "blintzes" are rolled pancakes filled with cheese. Other tempting tidbits are cheese knishes, butter cakes and cheesecakes, and three-cornered cheese kreplakh, based on the Talmudic triangle: "G-d gave the threefold Law [Torah, Prophets, Scriptures] to a tripled people [Kohen, Levi, Israel], through a third born [Moses, third child of his parents] in the third month [Sivan]."

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Hills/1259/shvdairy.htm
Beit HaChatulim Eats Dairy for Shavuot

We just love blintzes and blintzes are traditional on Shavuot. To paraphrase Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, "Why do we eat blintzes on Shavuot?

Our dairy meal for Shavuot may look much more elaborate than it really is. The only thing that is particularly time-consuming is the blintzes, which can be made in advance -- and even frozen.

http://kosherfood.about.com/od/dairymaindishes/r/blintzsouffle.htm
Blintz Souffle Recipe - Kosher Dairy Recipes for Shavuot - Nine ...

While Jews probably began making blintzes hundreds of years ago in Poland, they only began to use frozen blintzes to make this Blintz Souffle recipe in 20th-century America. When you have a crowd joining you for a dairy meal - such as for Sabbath, Shavuot, or the Nine Days - this easy-to-make, crowd-pleasing Blintz Souffle is the perfect dish to serve.

http://kosherfood.about.com/od/shavuot/r/blintz_cheese.htm
Chana's Cheese Blintzes (Dairy)

Blintz, which means "pancake" in Ukrainian, is a classic Ashkenazic Jewish food that probably originated in Poland. Blintzes are thin crepe-like pancakes folded around a filling. Cheese blintzes are traditionally served for Shavuot along with other dairy dishes. In this recipe, the blintzes are so delicious that there is no need to fry them after they are filled.

QTSaver Daily Search Results for: Driving in Drunkness

2008-06-03T17:42:00.002+03:00

http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/drive/a/aa082797.htm
Drunk Driving - Penalties for Driving Drunk

In most states, the certified counselor now has the power to adjudicate the offender into Alcoholic Anonymous or a medical treatment or counseling program.The offender does not have to follow the guidelines outlined by the counselor, but it's the only way he will ever regain his driving privileges.

In some areas, part of the DUI school curriculum puts offenders face to face with victims, who tell their painful stories of how a drunk driver changed their lives forever.The idea is that personalizing the pain that drinking and driving can cause might make the offender stop and think before getting behind the wheel.

An evaluation of the effectiveness of alcohol treatment, driver license actions and jail terms in reducing drunk driving recidivism in California.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/04/toyota-getting-into-the-anti-drunk-driving-game
Toyota getting into the anti-drunk driving game - Engadget

Just days after most everyone in the world celebrated (read: ingested alcohol) the new year, Toyota is hitting us up with news declaring that drunk driving won't be tolerated in its future fleet of vehicles. Although Nissan has already considered an add-on option that would prevent inebriated individuals from motoring around on a whim, it looks like Toyota is following suit with its own anti-drunk driving approach. Reportedly, the automaker is developing a "fail-safe system for cars that detects drunken drivers and automatically shuts the vehicle down if sensors pick up signs of excessive alcohol consumption."

surely this will be japan only...privacy concerns in the US will keep it out, just like self-driving features (other than parking) are blocked by fears of lawsuits

What I wonder is if this thing is going to go hawire in the snow? Occasionally my car does things beyond my control on snow/ice (like a very frightening 180 on the highway). Is it going to shut off and not let me at least attempt to get out of harms way on the possibility I'm driving drunk?

http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/drinkinganddriving.html
Drinking & Driving

Every single injury and death caused by drunk driving is totally preventable. Although the proportion of crashes that are alcohol-related has dropped dramatically in recent decades, there are still far too many such preventable accidents. Unfortunately, in spite of great progress, alcohol-impaired driving remains a serious national problem that tragically effects many victims annually.

DWI courts, sometimes called DUI courts, sobriety courts, wellness courts or accountability courts have proven effective in reducing the crime of drunken driving (driving while intoxicated or while impaired).Such courts address the problem of hard-core repeat offenders by treating alcohol addiction or alcoholism.

Requiring every state to provide adequate information on alcohol and driving to prospective drivers and adequately testing them on the subject in their driver's exams. In too many states, the subject is given only brief mention and do not include any information or testing in the process of obtaining a driver's license. Some actually provide factually incorrect information.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/888126/drunk_driving_jacqueline_saburido
Drunk Driving: Jacqueline Saburido Video

5 4.52 Tags: Jacqueline Saburido Reggie Drunk Driving Girls Burned Alive Parties Friends Help Hacks Fix Amazing Crazy In order to view this video, you must enable Javascript

I posted a video last week about drinking and driving and I've got tons of thank you messages. I made that after I've lost four friends in one horrible accident a few weeks ago.

http://www.alcoholalert.com/drunk-driving-statistics.html
Drunk driving statistics

Below are some statistics on drinking and driving in the US. After reading this list, please read about Alcohol Alert to find out what you can do to help stem the tide of drunk driving deaths in your neighborhood...and make money at the same time.

All 50 states in the US and Puerto Rico now apply two statutory offenses to driving under the influence of alcohol. The first (and original) offense is known either as driving under the influence (DUI), driving while intoxicated/impaired (DWI), or operating [a motor vehicle] while intoxicated/impaired (OWI).This is based upon a police officer's observations (driving behavior, slurred speech, the results of a roadside sobriety test, etc.)

The second offense is called "illegal per se", which is driving with a BAC of 0.08% or higher. Since 2002 it has been illegal in all 50 states to drive with a BAC that is 0.08% or higher.

In 2006, 1,794 children age 14 and younger were killed in motor vehicle crashes. Of those 1,794 fatalities, 306 (17%) occurred in alcohol-impaired driving crashes. Children riding in vehicles with drivers who had a BAC level of .08 or higher accounted for half (153) of these deaths.

The 13,470 alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities in 2006 were almost the same as compared to 13,451 alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities reported in 1996.

The 13,470 fatalities in alcohol-impaired-driving crashes during 2006 represent an average of one alcohol-impaired-driving fatality every 39 minutes.

Drivers with a BAC level of .08 or higher involved in fatal crashes were eight times more likely to have a prior conviction for driving while impaired (DWI) than were drivers with no alcohol (8% and 1%, respectively).

Drinking and driving fatalities by state in 2005 (ranked by highest number of alcohol related deaths):

http://iii.org/media/hottopics/insurance/drunk
III - Drunk Driving

Alcohol-related crashes are defined as those where someone involved, either a driver or a pedestrian or another nonoccupant, had a traceable amount of alcohol in his or her blood. According to NHTSA, 17,602 people died in alcohol-related crashes in 2006, the highest level since 1996 and up 0.1 percent from 17,590 in 2005.Alcohol was involved in 41 percent of all crash fatalities in 2006.The Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates that 1.5 million drivers were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics in 2006.The arrest rate works out to one arrest for every 137 licensed drivers in the United States, based on 2005 licensed drivers. The definition of drunk driving is consistent throughout the United States. Every state and the District of Columbia defines impairment as driving with a BAC (blood alcohol content) at or above 0.08.In addition, they all have zero tolerance laws prohibiting drivers under the age of 21 from drinking and driving. Generally the BAC in these cases is 0.02.Antidrunk driving campaigns especially target drivers under the age of 21, repeat offenders and 21-to 34-year-olds, the age group that is responsible for more alcohol-related fatal crashes than any other. Young drivers are those least responsive to arguments against drunk driving, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. To make sellers and servers of liquor more careful about to whom and how they serve drinks, 43 states and the District of Columbia hold liquor servers legally liable for the damage and injuries a drunk driver causes.

The Safe, Accountable, Flexible and Efficient Transportation Equity Act—the 2005 federal highway funding bill signed by the president in August 2005—includes funding incentives for states that pass laws that target three types of drunk drivers: repeat offenders, drivers with BACs over 0.15 (“higher-risk drunk drivers”) and drunk drivers whose licenses were previously revoked for drunk driving. It also withholds a certain percentage of funding from states that do not have an open container law (one that prohibits at least the driver of a car from having an open container of alcohol in the passenger compartment of a motor vehicle).Among the more serious penalties included for convicted higher-risk drunk drivers are license revocation, vehicle impoundment and use of ignition interlocks (devices that prevent a vehicle from starting if the breath of the driver contains any alcohol).

http://www.pamf.org/teen/risk/alcohol/drunk_driving.html
Driving Drunk Can Kill You!

Minors found driving with alcohol in their systems who don't yet have a driver's license, or who aren't eligible for a license at the time of the violation, will be disqualified from applying for a license for one year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunkenness
Drunkenness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Laws on drunkenness vary between countries. In the United States, for example, it is commonly a minor offense (misdemeanor) for an individual to be so intoxicated in a public place that he or she is unable to care for his or her own safety or the safety of others. This degree of intoxication is considerably higher than the standard for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs ("drunk driving"), which commonly requires intoxication to the degree that mental and physical faculties are impaired. In the United States, United Kingdom, Mexico, New Zealand, Republic of Ireland and Canada, this is legally defined as a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.08% or greater for operating a motor vehicle. In countries such as Australia and Portugal, the BAC limit is lower at 0.05%.S. Federal Aviation Administration prohibits pilots from operating aircraft with any BAC greater than 0.04%, or operating an aircraft within 8 hours of consuming an alcoholic beverage.

QTsaver daily search resaults for: Shavuot

2008-06-02T10:56:00.005+03:00

Here is another illustration of The Beauty of QT

Shavuot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavuot
Shavuot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Basket of Bikkurim, or First Fruits, brought to the Temple on Shavuot

Shavuot (or Shavuos, in Ashkenazi usage; Hebrew: שבועות, lit."Weeks") is a Jewish holiday that occurs on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan (late May or early June). It marks the conclusion of the Counting of the Omer and the day the Torah was given to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai.

The date of Shavuot is directly linked to that of Passover. The Torah mandates the seven-week Counting of the Omer, beginning on the second day of Passover and immediately followed by Shavuot. This counting of days and weeks is understood to express anticipation and desire for the Giving of the Torah. On Passover, the Jewish people were freed from their enslavement to Pharaoh; on Shavuot they accepted the Torah and became a nation committed to serving God.

In the Bible, Shavuot is called the Festival of Weeks (Hebrew: חג השבועות, Hag ha-Shavuot, Exodus 34:22, Deuteronomy 16:10); Festival of Reaping (Hebrew: חג הקציר, Hag ha-Katsir, Exodus 23:16), and Day of the First Fruits (Hebrew יום הבכורים, Yom ha-Bikkurim, Numbers 28:26).The Mishnah and Talmud refer to Shavuot as Atzeret (Hebrew: עצרת, a solemn assembly), as it provides closure for the festival activities during and following the holiday of Passover. Since Shavuot occurs 50 days after Passover, Christians gave it the name Pentecost (πεντηκόστη, "fiftieth day").As this always falls on a Sunday, "Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the Lord."

In Israel and for Reform Jews, Shavuot is celebrated for one day. Outside Israel, the holiday is mostly celebrated for two days.

Besides its significance as the day on which the Torah was given by God to the Jewish nation at Mount Sinai, Shavuot is also connected to the season of the grain harvest in Israel. In ancient times, the grain harvest lasted seven weeks and was a season of gladness (Jer. 5:24; Deut. 16:9-11; Isa. 9:2). It began with the harvesting of the barley during Passover and ended with the harvesting of the wheat at Shavuot. Shavuot was thus the concluding festival of the grain harvest, just as the eighth day of Sukkot (Tabernacles) was the concluding festival of the fruit harvest. During the existence of the Temple in Jerusalem, an offering of two loaves of bread from the wheat harvest was made on Shavuot (Lev. 23:15-21).

Shavuot was also the first day on which individuals could bring the Bikkurim (first fruits) to the Temple in Jerusalem (Mishnah Bikkurim 1:3).The Bikkurim were brought from the Seven Species for which the Land of Israel is praised: wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates (Deut. 8:8). In the largely agrarian society of ancient Israel, Jewish farmers would tie a reed around the first ripening fruits from each of these species in their fields.

Shavuot is unlike other Jewish holidays in that it has no prescribed mitzvot (Torah commandments) other than the traditional festival observances of abstention from work, special prayer services and holiday meals. However, it is characterized by many minhagim (customs) that have taken on the force of law in traditional Jewish circles. A mnemonic for these customs is the letters of the Hebrew word acharit (אחרית, "last").

Since the Torah is called reishit (ראשית, "first"), the customs of Shavuot highlight the importance of custom for the continuation and preservation of Jewish religious observance.

אקדמות – Akdamot, the reading of a liturgical poem during Shavuot morning synagogue services

On the Gregorian calendar, Shavuot usually falls around late May or early June. In 2007, Shavuot was on Monday, May 28. In 2008, Shavuot will be on Monday, June 9.

Akdamot is a liturgical poem extolling the greatness of God, the Torah and Israel that is read publicly in the synagogue right before the morning reading of the Torah on the first day of Shavuot. It was composed by Rabbi Meir of Worms, whose son was murdered during the Crusade of 1096. Rabbi Meir was forced to defend the Torah and his Jewish faith in a debate with local priests, and successfully conveyed his certainty of God's power, His love for the Jewish people, and the excellence of Torah.

Cheese blintzes, often served on Shavuot.
Dairy foods such as cheesecake and blintzes with cheese and other fillings are traditionally served on Shavuot. One explanation for the consumption of dairy foods on this holiday is that the Israelites had not yet received the Torah, with its laws of shechita (ritual slaughtering of animals). As the food they had prepared beforehand was not in accordance with these laws, they opted to eat simple dairy meals to honor the holiday.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/holidayc.html
Shavuot
Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks, is the second of the three major festivals with both historical and agricultural significance (the other two are Passover and Sukkot).Agriculturally, it commemorates the time when the first fruits were harvested and brought to the Temple, and is known as Hag ha-Bikkurim (the Festival of the First Fruits). Historically, it celebrates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, and is also known as Hag Matan Torateinu (the Festival of the Giving of Our Torah).

The period from Passover to Shavuot is a time of great anticipation. We count each of the days from the second day of Passover to the day before Shavuot, 49 days or 7 full weeks, hence the name of the festival. See The Counting of the Omer. Shavuot is also sometimes known as Pentecost, because it falls on the 50th day. The counting reminds us of the important connection between Passover and Shavuot: Passover freed us physically from bondage, but the giving of the Torah on Shavuot redeemed us spiritually from our bondage to idolatry and immorality.

Shavuot is not tied to a particular calendar date, but to a counting from Passover. Because the length of the months used to be variable, determined by observation (see Jewish Calendar), and there are two new moons between Passover and Shavuot, Shavuot could occur on the 5th or 6th of Sivan. However, now that we have a mathematically determined calendar, and the months between Passover and Shavuot do not change length on the mathematical calendar, Shavuot is always on the 6th of Sivan (the 6th and 7th outside of Israel. See Extra Day of Holidays.)

Work is not permitted during Shavuot.

It is customary to stay up the entire first night of Shavuot and study Torah, then pray as early as possible in the morning.

It is customary to eat a dairy meal at least once during Shavuot. There are varying opinions as to why this is done. Some say it is a reminder of the promise regarding the land of Israel, a land flowing with "milk and honey."

http://www.ou.org/chagim/shavuot
The OU.ORG Shavuot Celebration!

SHAVUOT OU/NCSY Israel Center Torah Tidbits

THE INSTRUCTIONS FOR SHAVUOT AN AUDIO SHIUR BY RABBI UNION

SHAVUOT AN AUDIO SHIUR BY RABBI ISAAC BERNSTEIN Z"L

SHAVUOT: EVENTS AT MOUNT SINAI AN AUDIO SHIUR BY RABBI AVI GELLER OF AISH HATORAH

CHAG SAME'ACH FROM EFRAT RABBI SHLOMO RISKIN'S SPECIAL SHAVUOT D'VAR TORAH

SHAVUOT JOURNAL From Yeshivat Har Etzion

SHAVUOT AND THE MESSIAH AN AUDIO SHIUR BY RABBI MOTI ELON (IN HEBREW)

KABBALAT HATORAH AND SHAVUOT AN AUDIO SHIUR BY RABBI YITZCHAK BERKOWITZ OF AISH HATORAH

SEFIRA: THE COUNTDOWN TO SHAVUOT AN AUDIO SHIUR BY RABBI PAYSACH KROHN (FROM THE OU TORAH DIMENSIONS SERIES)

http://www.urj.org/holidays/shavuot
URJ - Shavuot

Holidays Home Page Calendar Shabbat Slichot Rosh HaShanah Yom Kippur Sukkot Simchat Torah Chanukah Tu BiSh'vat Purim Pesach Lag Ba'Omer Yom HaShoah Yom HaAtzmaut Shavuot Tishah B'Av

Union for Reform Judaism / Jewish Holidays / Shavuot

Shavuot is a Hebrew word meaning "weeks" and refers to the Jewish festival marking the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. Shavuot, like so many other Jewish holidays began as an ancient agricultural festival, marking the end of the spring barley harvest and the beginning of the summer wheat harvest. Shavuot was distinguished in ancient times by bringing crop offerings to the Temple in Jerusalem.

Shavuot, also known as the Festival of the Giving of the Torah, dates from biblical times, and helps to explain the holiday's name, "Weeks." The Torah tells us it took precisely forty-nine days for our ancestors to travel from Egypt to the foot of Mount Sinai (the same number of days as the Counting of the Omer ) where they were to receive the Torah. Thus, Leviticus 23:21 commands: "And you shall proclaim that day (the fiftieth day) to be a holy convocation”

The name Shavuot, "Weeks," then symbolizes the completion of a seven-week journey.

Special customs on Shavuot are the reading of the Book of Ruth, which reminds us that we too can find a continual source of blessing in our tradition. Anther tradition includes staying up all night to study Torah and Mishnah, a custom called Tikkun Leil Shavuot, which symbolizes our commitment to the Torah, and that we are always ready and awake to receive the Torah. Traditionally, dairy dishes are served on this holiday to symbolize the sweetness of the Torah, as well as the "land of milk and honey".

http://www.joi.org/celebrate/shavuot/index.shtml
How We Celebrate: Shavuot
Shavuot is a spring holiday that celebrates the first harvest, the ripening of the first fruits, and most importantly, the giving of the Torah. In the Bible, Shavuot is called by various other names: Feast of Weeks, Feast of The First Fruits and Feast of the Giving of the Law. This year, the two-day festival begins on the evening of June 8th, 2008.

The festival of Shavuot combines some of the best aspects of Jewish observance and culture. On the one hand, Shavuot celebrates z’man matan torateinu, literally "the time of the giving of the Torah. "Shavuot recalls the importance of the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people, and many Jews customarily use Shavuot as an opportunity to study from the Torah and other important Jewish texts. On the other hand, Shavuot is also the opportunity to bring the Jewish community together, to celebrate our tradition and heritage, while rejoicing with delicious Shavuot treats. It is customary on Shavuot to eat dairy foods, so delicious recipes for blintzes, cheesecake, and ice cream sundaes are in high demand!

For an exciting children’s story on the festival of Shavuot, you might want to consider reading A Mountain of Blintzes by Barbara Diamond Goldin and Anik McGrory.This adorable story talks about the delicious food Jewish people customarily eat on Shavuot, and how Shavuot is an opportunity for families to spend special time together.

http://www.aish.com/shavuotfeatures/shavuotfeaturesdefault/Cheese

Why do we eat dairy foods and decorate the synagogue on Shavuot?

Though the holiday of Shavuot has great historical significance, being the anniversary of the revelation at Sinai and of the gift of Torah to Israel, it nevertheless was left bereft of special biblical ritual to celebrate the event. In fact, in the Bible we find the holiday of Shavuot referred to as the "Holiday of Bikkurim" -- the bringing of the first fruits of the year's crop to the Temple in Jerusalem.

After the destruction of the Temple and the entry into our long exile, the Jewish people refused to leave the holiday of Shavuot unadorned of distinctiveness. The holiday of Shavuot was therefore invested with customs and rituals that have preserved the beauty and uniqueness of the holiday to our day.

Another Shavuot custom arose, that of decorating one's home, the synagogue and even the Torah scroll itself with greens and flowers in honor of the holiday. This custom of flowers and greens was based upon a statement in Midrash that the foot of Mount Sinai (where the Jews stood in awe, awaiting the granting of the Torah) was carpeted with greens and sweet smelling flowers.

Even in Eastern Europe, where Jews in the main lived in squalor and poverty, flowers in the synagogue on Shavuot was a widely practiced societal custom. However, the Gaon of Vilna, Rabbi Eliyahu Kramer, opposed the custom vigorously. His contention was that a custom, even if its origin was Jewish and based on Jewish tradition, had been adopted by the non-Jewish world as a custom in their houses of worship, then Jews should forego their further observance of that custom.
Since flowers and greens were widely used in church services and in non-Jewish cemeteries, the custom of flowers and greens in the synagogue on Shavuot should be abandoned.
The Gaon's opinion was widely followed in Lithuanian Jewry but was ignored almost everywhere else in the Jewish world. Thus, the decorating of the synagogue and the home with flowers on Shavuot remains a strong custom among Jews until today.

QTSaver Daily Search results for: Jerusalem day

2008-06-01T18:57:00.001+03:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_Day
Jerusalem Day - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Israeli Jerusalem Day national holiday, held on the 28th day of Iyar, marking the Israeli liberation of East Jerusalem in 1967 and the subsequent reunification of the city.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Yerushalayim
Yom Yerushalayim - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jerusalem Day 2004 at the Western Wall

The reunification of Jerusalem under Israeli rule after the Six-Day War

Jerusalem Day , (Yom Yerushalayim) is an Israeli national holiday commemorating the reunification of Jerusalem and the reestablishment of Jewish control over the Old City in 1967.
The day is marked by state ceremonies, memorial services for soldiers who died in the battle for Jerusalem, parades through down town Jerusalem, reciting the Hallel prayer in synagogues, lectures on Jerusalem-related topics, singing and dancing, and special television programming. Schoolchildren throughout the country learn about significance of Jerusalem, and schools in the city itself hold festive assemblies. The mayor holds a reception open to the general public.

Some members of the ultra-orthodox community do not celebrate Jerusalem Day because of their refusal to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the state.

This state of affairs changed in 1967 as a result of the Six-Day War. Before the start of the war, Israel sent a message to King Hussein of Jordan saying that Israel would not attack Jerusalem or the West Bank as long as the Jordanian front remained quiet. Urged by Egyptian pressure and based on misleading intelligence reports, Jordan began shelling civilian locations in Israel, to which Israel responded on June 6 by opening the eastern front. The following day, June 7, 1967 (28 Iyar 5727), Israel liberated the Old City of Jerusalem.

On May 12, 1968, the government proclaimed a new holiday - Jerusalem Day - to be celebrated on the 28th of Iyar, the Hebrew date on which the divided city of Jerusalem became one. On March 23, 1998, the Knesset passed the Jerusalem Day Law, making the day a national holiday.

One of the themes of Jerusalem Day, based on a verse from the Book of Psalms, is "Ke'ir shechubra la yachdav - "Built-up Jerusalem is like a city that was joined together" (Psalm 122:3).

The slogan for Jerusalem Day 2007, marking the 40th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, was "Mashehu Meyuhad leKol Ehad" ‎, Something Special for Everyone), punning on the words "meyuhad" (special) and "meuhad" (united).To mark the anniversary, the approach to Jerusalem on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway is illuminated with decorative blue lighting that will remain in place throughout the year. The parade planned for the day was rained out.

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=12735
Text: Olmert's Jerusalem Day speech

http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jerusalem
Jerusalem

The Story of Jerusalem by Yaffa Ganz
Jerusalem is the heart and soul of the Land of Israel. In celebration of Jerusalem Day, her cherished history, based on ancient Jewish sources, is retold.

Siege of Jerusalem by Rabbi Noah Weinberg The Tenth of Tevet is a Jewish fast day marking Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem 2,500 years ago. What's the message for us today?

http://www.knesset.gov.il/holidays/eng/jerusalem_day.htm
Jerusalem Day
Legislation on Jerusalem: Basic Law: Jerusalem, the Capital of Israel (1980) Jerusalem Day Law, 5758-1998

http://www.knesset.gov.il/holidays/eng/jer_intro.htm
Jerusalem Day

Jerusalem was divided during the War of Independence and nineteen years later was reunited as a result of the 6-Day War.

Following the 6-Day War victory, on June 27, 1967, the Government presented the Knesset with three law proposals. These proposals determined the effective unification of Jerusalem and sanctioned the application of Israeli law in the entire area of the unified city. The municipal boundaries of the city were altered and its area was increased threefold: from 38,100 dunams to 110,000 dunams. At the same time a law was adopted that enabled free access to the holy places by the members of every religion.

On May 12 1968 the Government, decided to make the 28th of Iyar the symbolic holiday, Jerusalem Day , a day that symbolizes the continued historical connection of the Jewish People to Jerusalem. Thirty years later, this holiday became anchored in the law: On March 23 1998 the Knesset passed the second and third readings of the "Jerusalem Day Law", which determined that the date that Jerusalem was liberated during the 6-Day War was now a national holiday.

http://www.torah.org/learning/yomtov/jerusalem
YOM YERUSHALAYIM (JERUSALEM DAY) - Torah.org

Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day) - On June 7,1967 / Iyar 28, 5727, Israeli troops crashed through the defenses set up by Arab troops and recaptured those parts of the holy city of Jerusalem which had previously been in Arab possession. Yom Yerushalayim commemorates this significant day.

http://www.christiansstandingwithisrael.com/jerusalem_day.html
Jerusalem Day Israel

Jerusalem Day : America Tips its Hand by Mikael Knighton Christians Standing with Israel

Ambassadors of all EU countries will not show up for the special Knesset session which will be on Jerusalem Day on Wednesday .As far as they are concerned, east Jerusalem, which was occupied during the Six Day War, is an occupied territory. Among the EU countries there is a difference of opinion regarding the participation in the Jerusalem Day celebrations. Germany decided to send the letter to the official bodies in Israel, but a number of EU countries are considering violating the boycott and taking part in the celebrations. The Egyptian and Jordanian ambassadors were also invited to take part in the events, and Foreign Ministry officials expressed their concern over the possibility that they would also fail to show up.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/yomyerushalayim.html
Yom Yerushalayim - Jerusalem Day

Of the four holidays that were added to the Jewish calendar in the 20th century (Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron, Yom HaAtzmaut, and Yom Yerushalayim), the latest holiday is also the last one held during the month of Iyar. Yom Yerushalayim - Jerusalem Day - is the anniversary of the liberation and unification of Jerusalem under Jewish sovereignty that occurred during the Six Day War. Yom Yerushalayim is celebrated on the 28th of the month of Iyar (one week before Shavuot). The liberation of Jerusalem in 1967 marks the first time in thousands of years that the entire city of Jerusalem, the holiest city in Judaism, was under Jewish sovereignty. The destruction of Jerusalem was a watershed event in Jewish history that began thousands of years of mourning for Jerusalem, so, it follows, that the reunification of Jerusalem should be a joyous celebration that begins the process of reversing thousands of years of destruction and exile. Jerusalem is central to the Jewish tradition. Jews face in the direction of Jerusalem and all of the prayer services are filled with references to Jerusalem.

QTSaver Daily Search results for: Olmert Investigation

2008-05-31T21:26:00.001+03:00

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/27/africa/ME-GEN-Israel-Olmert.php
Israeli police to question Australian billionaire in Olmert ...

Finance Minister Avraham Hirchson is under investigation in an embezzlement case and has suspended himself from office, while Olmert's longtime office manager was placed under house arrest on suspicions she helped arrange government jobs in return for tax breaks.

http://tzvee.blogspot.com/2008/05/olmert-investigation-identity-revealed.html
Tzvee's Blog: Olmert Investigation Identity Revealed by NY Post

I. LINK By KATE SHEEHYMay 6, 2008 -- A Long Island mogul is at the center of a sensational bribery scandal that could bring down embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, The Post has learned.Millionaire financier Morris Talansky - who runs an investment firm out of his tony home in Woodmere - allegedly passed money to Olmert while the politician was mayor of Jerusalem in the '90s, sources said.In a highly unusual move, Israeli authorities have barred the country's media from publishing Talansky's name - revealed now in The Post - saying it could hamper their investigation.Israeli media has referred only to the involvement of an "American businessman."Talansky is apparently set to sing to Israeli authorities about his alleged role in the scheme, sources said."It looks serious, and it looks like they have a state witness" in Talansky, one source said. Talansky - a philanthropist and political contributor to everyone from Rudy Giuliani to Bill Clinton - is in Jerusalem, where he has an apartment, preparing to head to a closed-door court hearing as early as today, sources said.

Olmert Investigation Identity Revealed by NY Post

http://www.currentargus.com/ci
_6987140 Israel's AG orders Olmert investigation - Carlsbad Current-Argus

Jerusalem - Israel's attorney general on Monday ordered police to open a criminal investigation into allegations that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert fraudulently purchased a Jerusalem home well below market value.

Attorney General Meni Mazuz ordered the investigation at the recommendation of the state comptroller, a government watchdog agency that suspects Olmert bought the house from a Jerusalem developer "at a discount," the Justice Ministry said.Olmert, a former mayor of Jerusalem, was a government minister at the time of the 2004 sale.

This is the second criminal investigation launched against Olmert since he became prime minister in May 2006.The other probe concerns suspicions that Olmert, as finance minister in 2005, tried to influence the sale of the government's controlling interest in the country's second-largest bank, Bank Leumi, to favor two associates.

http://topics.cnn.com/topics/ehud_olmert
Ehud Olmert: News & Videos about Ehud Olmert - CNN.com

Israeli police investigators raided a ministerial building Tuesday and seized documents related to a fraud investigation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a police spokesman said.

Authorities raided municipal offices in Jerusalem on Monday as part of a fraud investigation involving Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, police said.

Israeli police investigators raided a ministerial building Tuesday and seized documents related to a fraud investigation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a police spokesman said.

Authorities raided municipal offices in Jerusalem on Monday as part of a fraud investigation involving Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, police said.

Israel's attorney general has ordered police to carry out a criminal investigation into the purchase of a Jerusalem home by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a statement by the Justice Ministry said.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2007/10/14/israeli
_police_to_launch_new_olmert_investigation/?rss_id=Boston.com+%2F+News Israeli police to launch new Olmert investigation - Boston.com

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's attorney-general ordered police on Sunday to launch a new criminal investigation into Ehud Olmert's conduct in government before he became prime minister.

Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz said in a statement that the latest investigation would focus on Olmert's tenure as minister of industry, trade and labor.

A statement issued by Olmert's office said that the new investigation was "needless" and that it would ultimately lead nowhere.

The investigation was the latest to target Olmert, whom police questioned last week over suspicions that he, as finance minister, tailored a sale offer for state-owned Bank Leumi to favor a friend.

Another investigation is focused on whether Olmert received a discount on the price of a home he purchased in return for using his influence in Jerusalem's city hall to speed up building permits for the contractor who sold it to him.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/982720.html
Police quiz U.S. tycoon Sheldon Adelson as part of Olmert probe ...

The investigation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert continued on Tuesday to focus on the search for any quid pro quo that Olmert might have provided to U.S. businessman Morris Talansky in exchange for the hundreds of thousands of dollars he is suspected of giving to Olmert.

Israeli law-enforcement authorities on Tuesday confirmed that both Adelson and Abraham were questioned by police in connection with the investigation but emphasized that they are not suspects and that their statements were intended to establish Olmert's pattern of behavior and that he acted in Talansky's favor.

Earlier on Tuesday, detectives from the police's National Fraud Unit raided offices at the Trade and Industry Ministry in their widening search for a paper trail showing the alleged money trail between Talansky and Olmert.Police did not raid the minister's office, as they did in a previous search in a different Olmert investigation, focusing instead on the ministry's correspondence archive.

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/8832
Police raid office in Olmert investigation FP Passport

"At present, the investigation is clearly focusing on the period when Olmert served as the minister of industry, trade and labor," the official said, adding that investigators may yet expand their probe to cover the period during which Talansky raised funds for Olmert's various election campaigns."The investigators have solid information regarding envelopes of cash that were handed over to Olmert, and there is no information regarding the fate of that money."

Bush will arrive in Israel tomorrow and plans to meet with Olmert.Asked about the investigation today, he described the Israeli prime minister as "an honest man, an open man, a guy easy to talk to and somebody who understands the vision necessary for Israelis' security."

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/olmert-under-fire-as-scandals-rock-israel/2006/09/04/1157222066923.html
Olmert under fire as scandals rock Israel - World - theage.com.au

Israel's state comptroller - the official responsible for monitoring governmental abuse - was yesterday reported to have called for a criminal investigation into the appointment of three supporters of Mr Olmert's then party, Likud, to paid government posts.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24580032
Police raid trade ministry in Olmert case - Israel-Palestinians ...

A poll Monday said six of 10 Israelis think Olmert is not capable of promoting peace with the Palestinians because of the investigation. Sixty percent of those polled also said they don’t believe Olmert’s claim that he didn’t funnel money into his own pocket. The survey had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.

An Israeli police official said investigators are looking into many allegations against Olmert, including possible money laundering, accepting bribes and campaign finance violations.The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing, said the case is looking at a 12-year period.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gdRHFH3MWfB_HavrUn-J3rX7uoIwD90GDSTG1
The Associated Press: Report: NY businessman linked to probe of ...

Y. (AP) — A New York-area businessman and philanthropist has emerged as a key figure in an Israeli investigation into financial dealings of Ehud Olmert that have cast a new cloud over the embattled prime minister.

The investigation, which emerged last week, threatens to embarrass Olmert as the country marks its 60th anniversary of independence on Thursday. Dozens of world leaders, including President Bush, are scheduled to join celebrations next week.

But the investigation could limit Olmert's ability to pursue that agenda.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhSB3arP10I
YouTube - What Israelis think about the Olmert investigation - 28 May

Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland reports from Jerusalem on what Israelis think abo... Added: May 28, 2008 (Less info) A US businessman has revealed how he gave Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, large sums of money in personal loans.Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland reports from Jerusalem on what Israelis think about the investigation into bribery allegations against their country's leader.

QTSaver Daily Search results for: Israel Book Week

2008-05-30T16:57:00.002+03:00

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/122688
Israelis Flock to 'Book Week' Stands - Inside Israel - Israel News ...

(IsraelNN.com) Israel Book Week - actually, 11 days of book-travaganzas in cities all over the country - opened Wednesday night. Over 7,000 new books were published last year.

http://www.jewishbookweek.com/2008/230208.php
Jewish Book Week 2008 Israel at 60

In a unique 15 minute film shot in Israel exclusively for our Jewish Book Week audience, the multitalented writer and film-maker Etgar Keret and internationally acclaimed writer Amos Oz open tonight’s discussion on Israel at 60.

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Israel+beyond+the+conflict/Going+Back+to+the+Books.htm
Going Back to the Books

After years of decline, book sales in Israel are once again on the rise. Mass participation in the annual Hebrew Book Week is yet more proof that Israelis are still avid consumers of the written word.

Despite the temptations posed by television, computers and even the increasingly popular Internet, Israelis appear not to have lost their flavor for reading. An estimated 45 percent of Israel's population visits book fairs during the annual Hebrew Book Week, held throughout the country in early summer. Sales statistics also show that, in Israel at least, books are far from obsolete: Amnon Ben Shmuel, managing director of the Book Publishers' Association of Israel, reveals that book sales in Israel are on the rise again after many years of decline.

Israel boasts more than 200 publishing houses, including 70 major publishing enterprises, producing books mostly in Hebrew, with a large minority in Arabic, English and Russian. Ben Shmuel also notes that Israel publishes over 4,000 new books each year, or an average of ten new titles each day. This is the second highest per-capita output of any country; the highest belongs to the People's Republic of China. Hebrew Book Week is an Israeli tradition of unique scope and popularity. In cities and small towns across the country, parks and squares fill with booths in which publishers and book stores display and sell their wares. "In other places in the world, there are some city and even regional events," observes Ben Shmuel, "but nothing on this scale.

It is a colorful event, which draws people who might not otherwise purchase books." The first Hebrew Book Week was held in Tel Aviv in 1926 by several local publishers. The modern event, in its current nationwide format, has been held every year since 1961. Another major literary event in Israel is the Jerusalem International Book Fair, held biennially in Israel's capital, which is the world's second largest book fair.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_Book_Week Hebrew Book Week - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Hebrew Book Week is an annual event celebrating literature in the State of Israel. During the Hebrew Book Week, large day-long outdoor book fairs are organized in Israel's major cities in which publishing houses advertise and sell their products, often at a discount. Book stores in Israel typically offer sales during this time which can last up to a month.

http://jrichman.blogspot.com/2007/06/46th-annual-hebrew-book-week.html Good News from Israel: 46th Annual Hebrew Book Week

Tonight begins the 46th annual Hebrew Book Week. Over the next 10 days there will be book related events in every major city in Israel. In Jerusalem, the main book fair will take place in the old train station. The Jewish National and University Library (JNUL) has collated data about books published in Israel during 2006.The JNUL is the legal deposit library of Israel, and receives, according to the "Book Act", two copies of each book, journal, cassette or disk published in Israel. The publications are catalogued in the JNUL catalogue, in the Israel national bibliography and in the Israel Union List. From their website:"During the previous year 8,608 new Israeli titles were registered by the Legal Deposit Department of the JNUL: 6,840 books, 915 new periodicals, and 650 non-print titles, such as CDs and cassettes. In addition, 12,874 issues of current periodicals were received in JNUL.

The JNUL catalogue is the most comprehensive in Israel, and includes the vast majority of the titles published in Israel. "You can see additional information at their website at:http://www.jnul.huji.ac.il/eng/lgd-statistics-2007.html
I plan to pay a visit to the Jerusalem book fair next week. I visited these fairs in the past and not only is it fun to leaf through new books and get discounts - it is also great to see Am Yisrael expressing themselves (both sellers and buyers) as the "people of the book".

http://greenprophet.com/2008/05/22/509/hebrew-book-week
Have an Environmentally and Child Friendly Hebrew Book Week ...

A tradition that began with modest book stalls on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv in 1926, Hebrew Book Week has since grown to enormous dimensions and every municipality and book store in Israel finds a way to celebrate the event.

(IsraelNN.com) Israel's annual Hebrew Book Week opens today, with very large book fairs - free of charge - in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Be'er Sheva, and smaller ones in some 60 other cities throughout the country. The fair in Jerusalem will be held in the Israel Museum, and in Tel Aviv it will take place in Ganei Yehoshua.

Some statistics: This is Israel's 43rd annual Book Week...Some 3,000 books were published in Israel last year - down from 4,000 in 2001... 150 publishers are taking part in Book Week...A quarter of the books were published by religious circles...

See photos
If you click on the ALL SIZES button you may ZOOM IN.
See: poster

The annual event called Hebrew Book Week, started on May 28^th at the Old Railway Station in Jerusalem. The Book Fair will be held there until June 7^th. The Hebrew Book Week was invented by Mrs. Bracha Peli, founder of Masada Press in 1926, but only Since 1961 it has become a country wide celebration. Many books are published especially towards this event, and many authors come to the fair to speak and to give autographs.

QTSaver Daily Search results for: Frauds

2008-05-29T13:10:00.001+03:00

QTSaver Daily Search results for: Frauds

http://www.fbi.gov/majcases/fraud/fraudschemes.htm
- Federal Bureau of Investigation - Common Fraud Schemes
Nigerian letter frauds combine the threat of impersonation fraud with a variation of an advance fee scheme in which a letter, mailed from Nigeria, offers the recipient the "opportunity" to share in a percentage of millions of dollars that the author, a self-proclaimed government official, is trying to transfer illegally out of Nigeria. The recipient is encouraged to send information to the author, such as blank letterhead stationery, bank name and account numbers and other identifying information using a facsimile number provided in the letter. Some of these letters have also been received via E-mail through the Internet.

Medicare fraud can take the form of any of the health insurance frauds described above. Senior citizens are frequent targets of Medicare schemes, especially by medical equipment manufacturers who offer seniors free medical products in exchange for their Medicare numbers. Because a physician has to sign a form certifying that equipment or testing is needed before Medicare pays for it, con artists fake signatures or bribe corrupt doctors to sign the forms.
Letters of credit frauds are often attempted against banks by providing false documentation to show that goods were shipped when, in fact, no goods or inferior goods were shipped.

Other letter of credit frauds occur when con artists offer a "letter of credit" or "bank guarantee" as an investment wherein the investor is promised huge interest rates on the order of 100 to 300 percent annually. Such investment "opportunities" simply do not exist. (See Prime Bank Notes for additional information.)
The purpose of these frauds is generally to encourage the victim to send money to a foreign bank where it is eventually transferred to an off-shore account that is in the control of the con artist. From there, the victim's money is used for the perpetrator's personal expenses or is laundered in an effort to make it disappear.

Pyramid schemes, also referred to as franchise fraud, or chain referral schemes, are marketing and investment frauds in which an individual is offered a distributorship or franchise to market a particular product. The real profit is earned, not by the sale of the product, but by the sale of new distributorships. Emphasis on selling franchises rather than the product eventually leads to a point where the supply of potential investors is exhausted and the pyramid collapses.

http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/scamsdesc.htm
- FCIC: Scams and Frauds
Scams and Frauds Here are some of the Scams, Frauds, and Consumer Abuse items in the news.
Oil and Gas Investment Frauds - October 2006
FTC Survey Shows Advance-Fee Scams Top the List of Consumer Frauds - November 2004
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud
- Fraud - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fraud is a crime, and is also a civil law violation. Many hoaxes are fraudulent, although those not made for personal gain are not technically frauds. Defrauding people of money is presumably the most common type of fraud, but there have also been many fraudulent "discoveries" in art, archaeology, and science.
investment frauds, such as Ponzi schemes
securities frauds such as pump and dump
pious frauds, a form of fraud in religion motivated by sincere zeal
Frauds, Spies, and Lies - and How to Defeat Them.

http://www.fraudsandscams.com
- Frauds and Scams Crimes of Persuasion - An Investigators Resource
The Institute of Internal Auditors recently invited me to deliver a presentation regarding the various and sundry scams and frauds promoted via the Internet. As I prepared the outline for that presentation, several of the investigators I network with requested copies for their review. Many reported that they found the drafts useful and informative and several suggested that I write a book.
Rather than continue to produce copies of my outline, revise them and re-revise the revisions for my professional colleagues, I have established this web site. I hope that those among us who are interested in the investigation of swindlers, grifters, frauds and scams find it useful.

http://www.bestfrauds.com
- BestFrauds -- best frauds, scams and big company cons in America Today
The Best Frauds, Scams, and Big Company Cons in America Today
That mission is to:
1. Expose the BEST FRAUDS going on in America today.
2.Warn consumers to be wary of these scams and frauds.
3. Post your experiences on this site so others can learn.
4. Show how inept our Government is at fixing the scams.
5. Read the Best Frauds and scams below, including companies lying to the public, and intricate corporate scams:

We're not talking about complaints here -- there are always complaints against airline companies. No, these are outright frauds, one of the best of them by a company called "Best Fares". In fact it was they and their irresponsible attitude about consumer fraud that inspired our site's name -- Best Frauds -- and got this site started! Read the classic discount air fare scam that started it all, right here.
How can you tell the difference? Read the frauds listed on this site. Each one has a theme, that the company is violating a rule or law of commerce set down by the government, who of course is too slow or stupid to enforce their laws. Without obvious fraudulent intent, or "final result", on the part of the seller or provider, we can't publish it here.
We will try to verify your situation, but we can't intercede for you. The best we can do is publish all verified frauds, so others will know.

http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com
- Crimes of Persuasion: Nigerian email scams, consumer frauds.
Frauds and Scams - run by former enforcement official unafraid to tell it like it is.

http://www.elsop.com/wrc/complain.htm
- Spam: Where to Complain About Frauds & Scams on the Internet
Where to Complain About Frauds & Scams on the Internet

See also
http://qtsaver.blogspot.com/search?q=Whitehead

QTSaver Daily Search results for: Henna

2008-05-28T15:11:00.000+03:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henna
Henna - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Henna or Hina (Lawsonia inermis, syn. L. alba) is a flowering plant, the sole species in the genus Lawsonia in the family Lythraceae. It is native to tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, southern Asia, and northern Australasia in semi-arid zones.

Henna is a tall shrub or small tree, 2–6 m high. It is glabrous, multibranched with spine tipped branchlets. Leaves are opposite, entire, glabrous, sub-sessile, elliptical, and broadly lanceolate (1. 5–5. 0 cm x 0. 5–2 cm), acuminate, having depressed veins on the dorsal surface.

The leaves gradually yellow and fall during prolonged dry or cool intervals. Henna flowers have four sepals and a 2 mm calyx tube with 3 mm spread lobes. Petals are obvate, white or red stamens inserted in pairs on the rim of the calyx tube. Ovary is four celled, style up to 5 mm long and erect.

3 Traditions of henna as body art

Henna, Lawsonia inermis, produces a red-orange dye molecule, lawsone. This molecule has an affinity for bonding with protein, and thus has been used to dye skin, hair, fingernails, leather, silk and wool. Henna's indigenous zone is the tropical savannah and tropical arid zone, in latitudes between 15° and 25° N and S from Africa to the western Pacific rim, and produces highest dye content in temperatures between 35°C and 45°C. It does not thrive where minimum temperatures are below 11°C. Temperatures below 5°C will kill the henna plant. The dye molecule, lawsone, is primarily concentrated in the leaves, and is in the highest levels in the petioles of the leaf.

Henna is commercially cultivated in western India, Pakistan, Morocco, Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan and Libya. Presently the Pali district of Rajasthan is the most heavily cultivated henna production area in India, with over 100 henna processors operating in Sojat City.

Though henna has been used for body art and hair dye since the Bronze Age, henna has had a recent renaissance in body art due to improvements in cultivation, processing, and the diasporas of people from traditional henna using regions.

Henna for sale at the Egyptian Bazaar in Istanbul

In the Bible's Song of Songs and Song of Solomon, henna is referred to as Camphire.
(An old spelling of Camphor.)

Henna will repel some insect pests and mildew.

The United States Food and Drug Administration has not approved henna for direct application to the skin. It is unconditionally approved as a hair dye, and can only be imported for that purpose. Henna imported into the USA which appears to be for use as body art is subject to seizure, and at present it is illegal to use henna for body art in the U. S. ,though prosecution is rare. The fast black stains of “black henna” are not made with henna, but are from p-phenylenediamine. This can cause severe allergic reactions and permanent scarring. No henna can make a black stain on a torso in ½ hour. P-phenylenediamine can stain skin black quickly, but the FDA specifically forbids PPD to be used for that purpose.

Henna body art is made by applying henna paste to the skin: the lawsone in the paste migrates into the outermost layer of the skin and makes a red-brown stain.

Whole, unbroken henna leaves will not stain the skin. Henna will not stain skin until the lawsone molecules are made available (released) from the henna leaf. Fresh henna leaves will stain the skin if they are smashed with a mildly acidic liquid. This will stain skin within moments, but it is difficult to form intricate patterns from coarse crushed leaves. Dried ground, sifted henna leaves are easily worked into a paste that can be used to make intricate body art. Commercially available henna powder is made by drying the henna leaves and milling them to powder, then the powder is sifted. This powder is mixed with lemon juice, strong tea, or other mildly acidic liquids. Essential oils with high levels of "terps", monoterpene alcohols such as tea tree, eucalyptus, cajeput, or lavender will improve skin stain characteristics.

The henna mix must rest for 6 to 12 hours so the leaf cellulose is dissolved, making the lawsone available to stain the skin. This is mixed to a toothpaste consistency and applied with a one of many traditional tools, including resist techniques, shading techniques, and thicker paste techniques, or the modern cellowrap cone.

http://www.hennaforhair.com/faq/index.html
Henna for Hair - Frequently Asked Questions

There are 3 green plant powders: Neutral Henna, Red Henna and Black Henna. Only one of them is henna!

Neutral henna, a green powder that smells like freshly cut grass, is neither henna nor neutral. Cassia obovata contains anthraquinones, particuarly Chrysophanic acid, a remarkable anti-fungal, anti-microbial and anti-bacterial.

Red henna, a green powder that smells like hay, is Lawsonia inermis, commonly known as henna. The leaves of the henna plant have a red-orange dye molecule, Lawsone, a napthaquinone. Henna will stain your hair red-orange; but this stain is translucent and will combine with your natural color. Body art quality henna has a much higher dye content than the henna usually sold for hair. Henna is the best hair conditioner of all. It will make your hair heavy, thick and silky.

Black henna, a green powder that smells like frozen peas, is neither black nor henna. It is indigo, Indigofera tinctoria.

What kinds of henna are there?

Learn about the history of henna for hair: http://www. hennaforhair. com/history/

Lawsonia alba and Lawsonia spinoza are misleading older names for Lawsonia Inermis. When henna is a small and immature plant, it has low dye content and is spineless; when mature, it develops spines and higher dye content. Henna plants undergo this change when they are 3 years old. When western botanists saw juvenile and mature henna plants, they thought they were seeing two species, and gave them different botanical names. Lawsonia also has different colors of flowers. The plants with white flowers are sometimes called var. alba, but they are used for dye as are the plants with yellow, pink and red flowers.

http://www.hennapage.com/henna/encyclopedia/growing/

Can you get different colors from different parts of the henna plant?

Only henna leaves have dye, and the highest content is in the leaf petiole. There is no dye in the bark, twigs, or rootstock of Lawsonia inermis, and certainly not different colors such as black. The roots of henna are never harvested for dye, as henna is a small tree that is kept in production for many years. Though henna is grown in many different countries, the henna dye molecule is always the same red orange. The leaf’s dye content differs according to climate and soil conditions, so the dye saturation may differ, but henna is not black in one country and red in another country.

Some Blonde, Brown, Auburn, Mahogany, and other “shades” of henna are mixes of amla, indigo, walnut, rhubarb, and Lawsonia, with other plant or synthetic dyes added, and may have metallic salts added. Many of these products have no henna whatsoever and are chemical dyes. This is a completely bogus addition, as far as henna itself is concerned and is the biggest indicator that your product is NOT even close to being 100% pure henna! The labeling on these products is often misleading, inaccurate, false, or entirely missing. The quality is often very poor.

Once the henna’s dye has oxidized and reached its final shades, the color is permanently impregnated into the strand. Shampooing, chlorine, blow-drying, will all cause some type of degradation. Because there is a single-compound natural dye in henna, it is far less likely to go brassy or bronze like multiple-compound synthetic dyes, which will degrade and change color after a shorter period of time, and do not bond to the hair in the same way.

As with some chemical dyes, repeated applications of true henna or henna mixes develop a richer, deeper color with each succeeding application. Think of a teaspoonful of coffee in a white cup. It will look very light brown.

Each application coats the last, changing the depth and bounce of the light wavelengths off your hair and giving the appearance of progressively deeper richer color each time. If you only henna your hair once, it may lighten a few shades from its peak color, but the henna’s essential color will remain until it grows out and is cut off unless it is stripped out with a chemical process.

QTSaver Daily Search results for: BOB DYLAN

2008-05-27T15:56:00.000+03:00

http://www.bobdylanisis.com ISIS Magazine

ISIS is the longest running Bob Dylan magazine still in print. Established since 1985, our aim is to provide Dylan enthusiasts with a comprehensive magazine regarding all aspects of Dylan's life and work.

We publish exclusive articles, interviews and rare and exclusive photographs of Bob Dylan. In fact, ISIS is everything that you will ever need in a Dylan magazine.

Renowned authority on the life and works of Bob Dylan, Derek Barker founded the international Bob Dylan magazine ISIS in September 1985 and has edited this highly respected journal uninterruptedly for over twenty years. ISIS magazine is sold through this website and has subscribers in 32 countries.

Over the years, Barker has contributed regularly to BBC Radio programs on Bob Dylan and has been featured on the BBC World Service, BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio Northern Ireland, BBC Radio Scotland as well as numerous local radio stations. He has also appeared on the BBC 2 television program 'The Culture Show' and Channel 4s Breakfast News talking about Bob Dylan.

Derek has also had two books published, the first book, a collection of writings and interviews from the back pages of ISIS. 'ISIS: A Bob Dylan Anthology' (Helter Skelter Publishing, 2001) received almost universal rave reviews. It sold out a hardback edition and two paperback printings. A revised edition of the book (Helter Skelter Publishing 2004) remains in print.

The second collection of writings from ISIS, Bob Dylan Anthology 2 - 20 Years of ISIS, (Chrome Dreams, 2005) is a bumper 368-page book, which was published to celebrate the 20th anniversary of ISIS magazine, and is also still in print.

Barker has had his writings on Bob Dylan published in journals in England, the USA and Japan. He has worked on three CD projects with his current publisher, Chrome Dreams, writing the liner notes for two of them, and has advised on, and appeared in, the DVD documentary films 'Tales From a Golden Age: Bob Dylan 1941-1966' and 'After The Crash: Bob Dylan 1966-1978'. Barker�s status as an expert on all things Dylan is such that he regularly advises premier auction house Christie�s (both in London and New York) on the authenticity of items of Dylan memorabilia.

http://www.bobsboots.com BobsBoots - Bob Dylan Bootlegs
The Bob Dylan Bootleg Museum We are now receiving 2,000,000 (two million) hits per month!Thanks to you for making us one of the most popular Dylan websites on the net!

http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interv.htm INTERVIEWS
This is intended to be as definitive a listing as possible of interviews with Bob Dylan, including both press conferences and "one to one" interviews.

http://music.yahoo.com/ar-312874---Bob-Dylan Bob Dylan - Yahoo! Music
Bob Dylan's influence on popular music is incalculable. As a songwriter, he pioneered several different schools of pop songwriting, from confessional singer/songwriter to winding, hallucinatory, stream-of-conscious narratives.

LAUNCHcast Radio Stations that play Bob Dylan:
Bob Dylan Fan Station - Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, Neil Young

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan Bob Dylan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author, musician and poet who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of Dylan's best known work is from the 1960s when he became an informal documentarian and reluctant figurehead of American unrest. Some of his songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", became anthems of the anti-war and civil rights movements. Forty years later, his 2001 album "Love and Theft", reached the top five on the charts in the U.

His musical focus on rock and roll gave way to an interest in subtler, Gael-inflected American folk music, typically performed with an acoustic guitar. He soon became actively involved in the local Dinkytown folk music circuit, fraternizing with local folk enthusiasts and occasionally "borrowing" many of their albums. [9][10] During his Dinkytown days, Zimmerman began introducing himself as "Bob Dylan". In his autobiography, Chronicles (2004), Dylan wrote: "What I was going to do as soon as I left home was just call myself Robert Allen. . . . It sounded like a Scottish king and I liked it. " However, by reading Downbeat magazine, he discovered that there was already a saxophonist called David Allyn.

In January 1961, he headed for New York City to perform and to visit his ailing musical idol Woody Guthrie in a New Jersey hospital. Guthrie had been a huge revelation to Dylan and was a major influence. In the hospital room, Dylan also met Woody's old road-buddy Ramblin' Jack Elliott visiting Guthrie the day after returning from his trip to Europe. Bob and Jack became friends and much of Guthrie's repertoire was actually channelled through Elliott.

His performances, like his first Columbia album Bob Dylan (1962), consisted of familiar folk, blues and gospel material combined with some of his own songs. As he continued to record for Columbia, he recorded more than a dozen songs for Broadside Magazine a folk music magazine and record label, under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt. In August 1962, Robert Allen Zimmerman went to the Supreme Court building in New York and changed his name to Robert Dylan.

By the time his next record, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, was released in 1963, he had begun to make his name as both singer and songwriter.

His next album, Another Side of Bob Dylan, recorded on a single June evening in 1964, had a lighter mood than its predecessor. The surreal Dylan reemerged on "I Shall Be Free #10" and "Motorpsycho Nightmare", accompanied by a sense of humor that has often reappeared over the years. "Spanish Harlem Incident" and "To Ramona" were love songs, "I Don't Believe You" a rock and roll song played on acoustic guitar, and "It Ain't Me Babe" a rejection of the role his reputation thrust at him.

That summer Bob Dylan made history by performing his first electric set (since his high school days) with a pickup group drawn mostly from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, i. e. Mike Bloomfield, guitar, Sam Lay, drums, Jerome Arnold, bass, plus Al Kooper, organ and Barry Goldberg, piano, at the Newport Folk Festival. Dylan had appeared at Newport twice before in 1963 and 1964, and two wildly divergent accounts of the crowd's response in 1965 emerged. The settled fact is that Dylan, met with a mix of cheering and booing, left the stage after only three songs. As one version of the legend has it, the boos were from the outraged folk fans Dylan alienated by his electric guitar. An alternative account has it that audience members were upset by poor sound quality and a surprisingly short set. Whatever sparked the crowd's disfavor, Dylan soon reemerged and sang two much better received solo acoustic numbers, "It's All over Now, Baby Blue" and "Mr.

While Dylan and the Hawks met increasingly receptive audiences on tour, their studio efforts floundered. Producer Bob Johnston had been trying to persuade Dylan to record in Nashville for some time. In February 1966 Dylan agreed and Johnston surrounded him with a cadre of top-notch session men. At Dylan's insistence, Robertson and Kooper came down from New York City to play on the sessions. The Nashville sessions created what Dylan later called "that thin wild mercury sound" - Blonde on Blonde (1966.)

http://www.expectingrain.com Bob Dylan - Expecting Rain
Theme Time playlists BBC signs Bob Dylan show White Man Stew bt Files This week: 31 Tennessee Next: Moon

http://my.execpc.com/~billp61/dates.html Bob Dylan - Bob Links - 2006 Tour Guide
This page is dedicated to providing Bob Dylan concert information and links to other Bob Dylan related sites.

Wanted - 8mm, 16mm film of Bob Dylan from 1941 - 1978 (concert or offstage). Also looking for Bob Dylan concert posters from the 1960s, early photographs 1941 - 1969 and audio tapes of his shows from the 1960s. Willing to buy or trade.

Bob Dylan 2006 Tour Guide A unique poster listing the name of the venue will be sold at each show. Posters will be limited to several hundred per show and they should become highly collectible.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001168 Bob Dylan
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005) (writer: 'Like a Rolling Stone', 'Little Richard', 'When I Got Troubles', 'Teen Love Serenade', 'Mr.
'Unplugged' (1episode, 1994) . . . aka MTV Unplugged - Bob Dylan (1994) TVEpisode
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005) . . . .
Bob Dylan: 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration (1993) (TV) . . . .

QTSaver Daily Search results for Boy George

2008-05-26T18:56:00.002+03:00

1. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Boy_George

Boy george - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

* Boy george (born George Alan O'Dowd 14 June 1961 in Eltham, London) is an English singer-songwriter and club DJ who was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the early 1980s. He helped give androgyny an international stage with the success of Culture Club during the 1980s. His music is often classified as blue-eyed soul, which is influenced by rhythm and blues and reggae.

* Boy george's androgynous style caught the attention of music executive Malcolm McLaren (of Sex Pistols fame), who arranged for O'Dowd to perform with the group Bow Wow Wow, featuring Annabella Lwin. Boy george's association with Bow Wow Wow ended soon afterwards, and he started his own group with bassist Mikey Craig. The group was to be called In Praise Of Lemmings, but the name was later abandoned. Jon Moss (who had drummed with The Damned, Adam and the Ants and London) then joined the group.

* Several days later, keyboardist Michael Rudetski, who played on From Luxury to Heartache and had co-written “Sexuality” and "What Have I Got To Lose" with George, was found dead of a heroin overdose in George's home. This followed a second death, friend Mark Vaultier who overdosed on methadone and Valium at a party Boy george was attending but got arrested en route on suspicion of carrying drugs. A tour of America was cancelled and the group had disbanded by late 1986.

* The album (the tentative title of which, "Popularity Breeds Contempt", also survived as opening line spoken at the beginning of the 1993 collection called "At Worst: The Best of Boy george and Culture Club") was shelved, as it were, in favour of the recent growing interest in rock for George.

* Some of the tracks from those sessions appeared later on The Unrecoupable One Man Bandit Volume One, which was at first sold on the internet only and then distributed by several minor labels. Another project from the time was a new group that would include Boy george and two long-time musicians, John Themis and Richie Stevens. Initially named "Shallow", it was later re-named "Dubversive". The project took place in 1997 and was to include trip-hop, dub and reggae.

* "When Will You Learn" was also nominated for the Best Dance Recording, at the Grammy Awards. In 1999, Boy george collaborated on songs with dance-oriented acts. For example, "Why Go," a slow-paced track with Faithless, from their Sunday 8 PM LP, was later released in a remixed form in some European countries and Australia. A track was done with Groove Armada, named "Innocence Is Lost", but was only released on a promo 12" in 1999.

* Boy george was nominated for a Tony Awards for the "Best Musical Score", receiving good reviews about all the original songs included in the show. In 2002, Boy george released U Can Never B2 Straight, an "unplugged" collection of rare and lesser known acoustic works. It contained unreleased tracks from previous years as well as some ballads from Cheapness And Beauty and the Culture Club album Don't Mind if I Do. It received the best reviews of Boy george's solo career, many of them highlighting his strong song writing abilities. The record was only released in the UK and Japan, and received almost no promotion from Virgin Records, only rising to 147 on the UK album charts.

* From 2002 to 2004, under the pseudonym "the Twin", Boy george experimented in electronica, releasing limited edition 7" singles and promo records. Performed in small venues such as the Nag Nag Club, the material was considered innovative, but not commercially marketable. This period, however, was a very creative and liberating one for George; for "the Twin," could sing whatever he wanted. The limited releases included four 500 to 520 copies 7", one limited 12" (for Sanitized) and a promo cd, 1000 copies 13-track album Yum Yum. Two years later, it was released via digital outlets like itunes.

* A collaboration with electronic combo T-Total, the album was a collection of covers of songs by Jefferson Airplane, David Bowie, John Lennon, Dusty Springfield, T-Rex, and the Eurythmics among others. It is suggested that Boy george's numerous abandoned projects are due to his broad interest and need to explore other creative mediums such as photography, writing, and fashion.

* A reggae-ton oriented EP was also planned for August 2006 but was never released. Some recent tracks were shared by George himself in late 2006 and early 2007 on his YouTube account, his three myspace pages and sometimes on his official site. In January 2007, Boy george released "Time Machine" on Plan A Records.

2. http://music. yahoo. com/ar-285352

Boy-George Boy george - Yahoo! Music

* British singer Boy george combined a strong, soulful singing voice with a provocative sense of fashion, both of which were first brought to the attention of English and American audiences in the group Culture Club, for whom he served. . .

3. http://web. swedevice. com/sistergeorge/main/latestnews. asp

The ultimate homepage dedicated to DJ, author and pop icon Boy george

* Apr 22, 2008 Boy george has announced the first round of dates for a summer North American tour.

* Apr 21, 2008 Boy george stunned the crowd at the Bacardi B-Live music festival in Moscow by singing in Russian with the Pyatnitsky folk choir. According to Russia Today he says he’s totally in love with Russia and her music. And to prove that, he learned the language. "There are a lot of things to explore in Russia,” Boy george said.

* Mar 30, 2008 "We met on my first trip to LA when I was travelling with Boy george. He was touring and we had a make-up artist friend who was throwing one of these brunches where they get together a load of celebrities who vicariously know each other in honour of someone or other.

* Jan 24, 2008 The Boy george tour have started!The excellent site www. allaboutboygeorge. com have photos of the merchandise.

* Jan 13, 2008 We asked John Themis some questions about the up and coming tour with Boy george in January 2008. John even shared some photos with us and - voilà - here's a proper interview 4 ya! Thanks to John and my friends!

* Jul 20, 2007 I'm in the process of encoding my entire VHS collection of Boy george, Culture Club and related video clips. Why not showing You some of my clips when I spend all the time to encode them and all! So I'm joining the tube and sharing some clips You might enjoy.

4. http://www. youtube. com/watch?v=YqeTpbV9nt0

YouTube - Culture Club - Boy george: Karma Chameleon.

* Culture Club - Boy george: Karma Chameleon.

* Added: November 09, 2007 (Less info) I Love Boy george ;).

* Tags: Culture Club Boy george: Karma Chameleon.

* boy george & culture club - do you really want to hurt me 04:25 From: SannieGirl5 Views: 112,098

* Boy george - Karma Chameleon (Live 12/06) 08:12 From: InMyArseGoesTheCash Views: 140,740

* boy george & culture club - karma chameleon 04:03 From: SannieGirl5 Views: 39,101

* Boy george The Crying Game 03:23 From: dandyperuvian Views: 485,593

* boy george interview 05:26 From: bitchtroll69 Views: 155,238

* Boy george - The War Song 03:51 From: dududez Views: 334,381

* Whisper - Boy george 03:25 From: martyrmantras Views: 96,354

* Boy george & Culture Club 1983 -- Karma Chameleon 03:57 From: Ricquer Views: 75,572

* BOY GEORGE "DO YOU REALLY WANT TO HURT ME ? " QUIVER MIX 05:29 From: mixology2 Views: 33,123

* generation of love boy george 03:55 From: avedisGR Views: 143,786

* Boy george Culture Club - Come Clean 03:17 From: DoccyBGforever Views: 15,160

* Boy george - Victims 04:50 From: dududez Views: 86,694

* Boy george - Bow Down Mister 03:42 From: dududez Views: 123,758

* Boy george Karma Chameleon 04:03 From: abbbys Views: 45,804

Everybody Can Write A Book

2008-01-07T15:00:00.001+02:00

Three years ago, when I developed QTSaver as a micro content search engine, I already saw the possibility to write whole books by combining micro contents and thus showing them as macro contents also known as chapters, or papers.

I started a big scale pilot :

I gathered 1500 blog-posting-micro-contents, sorted them by categories like: meaning, history, usages, stamps - and then copied and pasted them into the right category. All I had to do was to edit the material, mostly to erase duplicates and voila… I got the printed books.

See: http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/printed-blook-0

What I want to emphasize is that everybody can write a book- it’s that simple!

WhiteSmoke

2008-01-05T23:17:00.000+02:00

Do you use WhiteSmoke software for proofreading?
I bought it two weeks ago, and it saved me at least 60 times since then.
I just finished writing my book: Star of David Album, which has about 15 text pages and the rest are photos. After proofreading it with WhiteSmoke, I sent it to a few friends and each one of them wrote me back that he found no typos. I accepted their opinion as a complement for someone that dares writing in English, which is not his mother tongue.

QTSaver Search results for WhiteSmoke

Search engine: Google+Yahoo

http://www.whitesmoke.com WhiteSmoke Text Enrichment

WhiteSmoke can improve your whole experience of written communication – at home, at the workplace and on the Internet. Based on patented Natural Language Processing technology, WhiteSmoke performs advanced and context-based English grammar, spelling and punctuation checking, as well as text enrichment with synonyms, adverbs and adjectives.
"WhiteSmoke is unequaled in its field."
With WhiteSmoke, you can perform all English editing and proofreading tasks within a single intuitive interface:

http://www.whitesmoke.com/landing_flash/grammar.html The inclusive English grammar,text enrichment,thesaurus ...

Donna Wegscheid, USA "My 1st book is finished and will be published soon thanks to the WhiteSmoke program.I needed help to edit and spell words correctly. I really think you all did a great job with this program – thanks!"

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/3/prweb511319.htm WhiteSmoke Revolutionizes English Writing, Editing and Grammar Software

WhiteSmoke Revolutionizes English Writing, Editing and Grammar Software
(PRWEB) March 13, 2007 -- WhiteSmoke, the best on-line writing software to help businesses to improve their English, announces two new additions to its suite of writing solutions. Top Expert, an online forum that provides quick answers about English from experts in writing. And WhiteSmoke’s new translation dictionaries cover seventeen different languages.
Increasingly, translation has become important in this writing. WhiteSmoke offers a unique and truly comprehensive software solution.
WhiteSmokes software allows users to achieve perfect English grammar in their writing with English grammar check, English grammar corrector, and English grammar lessons. Users instantly enrich their writing with relevant adjectives, adverbs, and phrases using unique, patented Natural Language Processing technology that allow WhiteSmoke to make context-based suggestions for synonyms and style-enrichment. Its dictionaries provide extensive entries about usage, history, and the subtleties of meaning that other software dictionaries leave out. Its proofreading functions correct grammar and spelling. No matter what software the user has been writing with but go well beyond that by offering text enrichment, style suggestions, and templates for different writing contexts.

http://www.mywritingblog.com/writer/2007/01/review-whitesmoke-writing-software.html Nick's Writing Blog: Review: WhiteSmoke Writing Software

Recently the good folk at WhiteSmoke sent me a copy of their writing software to evaluate. So here's my review of this popular tool for writers... For those who don't know, WhiteSmoke is a program that aims to help its users produce better-written documents. It does this by analyzing the spelling, punctuation and grammar in any document, and then suggesting corrections and possible improvements. WhiteSmoke is compatible with Microsoft Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows2000, and Windows XP. It will work in almost any text-based application, including word processors, email programs, web-based forms, and so on. Once WhiteSmoke is installed on your PC, you use it as follows. First, you create your text in your chosen application (e.g.
Select the text you want to analyze by highlighting it in the normal way, then press the WhiteSmoke shortcut key. This is set by default to F2, though you can change it if you like. In Word a separate "Enrichment" button is created on the toolbar, and you can click on this as an alternative to pressing the shortcut key.
WhiteSmoke will then open in a new window, with your selected text in a box in the middle. Spelling mistakes are highlighted in red and grammar mistakes in green. When you move the cursor over any item, suggested corrections (a range of them) appear in a box at the foot of the screen.
Perhaps the most interesting feature for writers, however, is the enrichment function. The WhiteSmoke software analyzes your writing and looks for ways it could be improved, e.g. by using an alternate word or phrase (thesaurus function), or by adding extra words.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/11/prweb572635.htm WhiteSmoke Provides Your Own Personal Editor and Proofreader

Professionals and managers who get high anxiety over writing reports, presentations and important email letters, as well as "Web-writers" who spare the time to check their posts, can get help from WhiteSmoke 2008.
What's more, WhiteSmoke (http://www.whitesmoke.com) users have online access to "Top Experts" who answer English language questions and edit user documents. These experts answer questions on how to use commas, apostrophes, and possessive pronouns such as "yours". WhiteSmoke experts also offer advice on making writing less choppy by using transitional words such as, "nevertheless".
WhiteSmoke also includes templates for business and legal situations ranging from apologizing for a late shipment, to welcoming a new employee.
English as a second language learners increase business-writing skill and confidence with WhiteSmoke.
Bruce Birt, CEO of Know Your Coast LLC, an Oregon real estate firm, bought WhiteSmoke to help write copy for the company website in-house, "I realized that my basic writing skills could use a higher power. Since I am not able to hire a professional writer, I am going at it alone.... The WhiteSmoke Product has been very useful in allowing me to catch mistakes in grammar or spelling immediately."

http://writing-enhancement-software-review.toptenreviews.com/whitesmoke-review.html WhiteSmoke Review 2008

WhiteSmoke has a huge database of suggestions that consists of 6,007,005 enrichment corrections, 7,484,611 grammar corrections and 3,684,281 spelling corrections. When you submit your writing samples into the program it can check for spelling and grammar errors, punctuation, passive verbs, overused words and wordy phrases.
WhiteSmoke can be contacted by telephone, email or chat; however, we could not get their live chat to work. WhiteSmoke responded to our first email within 24 hours, but instead of answering our email they provided general sales information. We sent a second email with a list of questions and they responded within an hour with useful and relevant information.
ClearEdits, Editor, Grammar Expert Plus, Grammar Station, Study Skills, WhiteSmoke, Wizards 4 Students, WordDog, WordQ, Writer's Workbench, have all been reviewed with the latest versions of Writing Enhancement Software.

http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2005/07/_last_week_i_bl.html collision detection: Smoke 'em out

By successfully "understanding" context, WHITESMOKE ENRICHMENT can optimize any sentence or text without changing its meaning. For example, the sentence "I am happy with your work" may be upgraded to "I am completely thrilled with your outstanding achievement," or any other agreeable combination. The program also offers a unique "Suggested Phrase" feature.
White Smoke changed the path to my MSWord program. After spending $179.00 in a pro Repairman and confirmation froma whitesmoke support person we were told he had seen the problem before and would have an answer for us in the morning. None came and then all denied knowing anything about it.
Whitesmoke is garbage, don't buy it.This software will make your writing worse and there is no chance of a refund when you find out how bad it is. Don't buy, install it, or recommend it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitesmoke Whitesmoke - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WhiteSmoke is an English grammar writing software that is designed to improve and enrich typed grammar and sentences, by replacing particular words and phrases with more sophisticated and complex vocabulary in the touch of a button. It was rated Number 5 in CNN's Top 31 Business Ideas In the World.
There are six versions that WhiteSmoke is available in including Business, Executive, Legal, Medical and Creative Writing versions, with each tailored to enrich text with vocabulary and grammar relevant and context-related to the particular writing style.
Critics of WhiteSmoke praise the software for it's "simplicity" and "compatibility", as Writing Enhancement Software Review wrote "This product is easy to use and works with numerous applications."
Like the majority of software on the market, WhiteSmoke has attracted some criticism particularly in the fact that it offers "invalid" and "out-of-context" suggestions to the text. In a quote from Writing Enchancment Software Review they commented "we found some of the feedback incorrect or irrelevant.

Google images Indexing Policy

2007-12-02T12:39:00.000+02:00

On July 10, 2006 Rani asked on
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_toolbar_tools/3001697.htm
"I am seeing no trace of the pictures that I post on my Blog on google images.
I would like google images to index my blog pictures.
Is this possible?
And if so, then how?"

I just found out that uploading your images to Picasa helps -
as well as uploading your images to Flickr helps indexing in Yahoo-
This is a very good example to the way things work: each search engine nurtures its subsidiary companies.
On Picasa web Albums front page you’ll see that I’m right:
“New Features!
Integration with Google image search results
Get more exposure for the public albums you're currently sharing on Picasa Community Search. Now, public albums from users with 'Public Search' enabled may also be included in Google image search results”.
See:
http://picasaweb.google.com/zeevveez/StarOfDavidStamps
Four of my stamps arrived to the promised SERP in 2 days!

Sending Query Addresses

2007-09-10T19:14:00.001+03:00

Here's a nice shortcut I stumbled upon:
I blink web pages that mention my blog. Now, if I want to show the list of all these web-pages all I have to do is to send the address of the SERP ( Search Engine Results Page). In this instance:
http://www.blinklist.com/zeevveez/recommendation/
The same goes for every query in Google E.g. about QTSaver:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=QTSaver&btnG=Google+Search
All this is new to me...So I guess it will help some of you...

Big Scale Experiment

2007-07-08T18:27:00.001+03:00

I've just published my first Summary of my Blog Postings about a certain subject:
the Origin of the Star of David

In my blog I collected last year more than 1000 Postings on every aspect of the Star of David I could lay hands on. The postings are ordered by the time I posted them which adds a small if any value to their grouping. But it is a goldmine since each posting is a micro content that can be a member in a group of postings that answers a certain question.

I used about 60 postings for this document.

correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that this summary is the most extensive answer to the question about the Origin of the Star of David.
Imagine that a search engine will be able in the future to give you such detailed answers for EVERY question you have - wouldn't it be something!

In the near future I hope to find time to answer in a similar manner the following questions:
The Meaning of the Star of David
The Shape of the Star of David
Yellow Badge Artists

Practical Backup Tip

2007-07-07T21:14:00.000+03:00

I want to share with you something that you may be doing already , but I started only this week:
Every document that I work on I send to myself
This way in case my P.C. crashes (which happened before I started using this tip) I won't loose precious hours of work.

Copyrights On Illustrations Based On Photos

2007-06-01T13:23:00.000+03:00

I asked on Yahoo Answers
If I illustrate a photo - do I have to ask permission from the copyrights' owner? (In case it is hard to get permission from copyrights' owner but you need to publish the content of the photo. By "illustrate" I mean making a new creation based on a copyrighted photo.

Answers:
Just_gone
Member since: 05 September 2006 Total points: 25,960 (Level 7)

Yes, and especially if used for commercial purposes. It is like sampling a record.

Jeff
Member since: 11 May 2007 Total points: 290 (Level 2)

The law is on the side of the copyright owner, so if you publish your revision of the copyright owner's work without prior consent you can be sued for copyright infringement. You need to ask yourself how badly you need to use that photo. The photographer may simply wish to be acknowledged and given a photo credit, or he may ask for a fee. If he asks for a fee you then have to decide if it's worth the money. If you decide not to pay, but use the photo anyway, then you are at risk of being sued.

Charlie P

I think your respondents missed the question. Making an illustration from someone's photo is not copying. It is your interpretation of another's creation. Regardless of the source of your inspiration, your creation is yours and not a copy. So copyright law does not apply. Were I to take a camera and recreate the exact same photo that would probably be considered an illegal copy. Were I to copy an illustration so that it is not substantially different from the original that would, most likely, be interpreted as a violation of copyright. In front of the Public Library in Columbus, Indiana is a massive, wonderful Henry Moore sculpture. I can photograph that sculpture, or parts of it, as much as I want and publish the photos in any way I desire. I have done so. I can pose a model against the sculpture and publish those photos without infringing on any rights of the estate of Henry Moore. And I have done so. I can draw the sculpture in pencil or make an oil painting of it with it as the only content. It's a huge sculpture, 10-15 feet tall. I could make a 1-foot tall copy of it in a different medium (like stoneware) and title it "Homage to Henry Moore." So why can't I go into the Museum of Modern Art and do the same thing? The Columbus Henry Moore is in a public space; MOMA can control who has access to their sculptures and who can photograph them and who can publish (i.e., sell) the photos. MOMA won't stop you from sketching their sculptures. Sampling a song is making an exact copy. For that you need permission and will probablly have to pay royalties. Not, however, if I use that sample in a piece of performance art done for free. I can use a Jimi Hendrix guitar riff in the middle of my own guitar composition without infringing on copyright. As long as I don't copy the entire Hendrix creation I have used his creativity within my own creation. No copyright problem. You can't take someone's creation and claim it as your own. That's called plagerism. You can, however, use anyone's work or ideas as food for your own creativity. You can always interpret another's creation through your own eyes. Think of Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans or Wierd Al Yankovic's song parodies. Ask any good lawyer (if there is such a thing) and they should be able to cite tons of case law to support both parodies and interpretations. Artists copy from other artists. It has always been so and will continue to be so.

If Charlie P is right competent painters can make a fortune enabling publishers to publish content that is
1. Copyrighted
2. Hard to get permission (owner of copyrights is hard to find; not accessible; it is not clear who is the owner of the copyrights; you need to publish in a hurry, etc.

Still I'd like to know more about this interesting issue and readers are invited to comment.

QTSaver is back on line

2007-05-13T12:53:00.000+03:00

From February 23, 2007 until yesterday QTSaver,the microcontent engine, was off line but it's back now, still waiting for an investor who will make our dream about the microcontent WWW come true.

How to Extract Addresses From a List

2007-05-07T09:18:00.000+03:00

Sometimes you get an endless list that is composed of addresses, phone numbers, Fax numbers, email addresses. You want to extract only the web addresses from the list that looks like this:

The Marilyn and Marvin Simon JCC
5000 Corporate Woods Dr
Ste 100
Virginia Beach, VA 23462
757-489-1371
Fax 757-489-4427
Established 1952
www.simonfamilyj.org
- 37 -
Jewish Community Center
Richmond
Weinstein JCC
5403 Monument Ave
Richmond, VA 23226
804-288-6091
Fax 804-285-3139
Established 1952
www.richmondjcc.org

All you have to do is to
1. Copy the whole list to Microsoft Word
2. Select all
3. Go to Tables- Sort [a-z] – click it
4. The list will be sorted from A to Z and your addresses will be in one group under the letter W
Like this
- 37 -
5000 Corporate Woods Dr
5403 Monument Ave
757-489-1371
804-288-6091
Established 1952
Established 1952
Fax 757-489-4427
Fax 804-285-3139
Jewish Community Center
Richmond
Richmond, VA 23226
Ste 100
The Marilyn and Marvin Simon JCC
Virginia Beach, VA 23462
Weinstein JCC
www.richmondjcc.org
www.simonfamilyj.org
5. Erase superfluous lines

Using Define on Google as Content for Your Web Site

2007-05-03T12:49:00.000+03:00

It doesn’t matter what is your subject matter - there is always a need to define it. Google Search Engine has a wonderful feature that enables you to get many definitions on one page- all you have to do is enter as search words:
define: (your subject).
For example: My web site is about Stars of David. The Star of David is a Symbol – but what is a Symbol? I entered the keywords
define: Symbol into Goggle’s search-window and got many interesting answers
Then I edited them carefully to fit them to my concept and voila – I posted it.

It took me about a quarter of an hour, and it tightened the connection between my main search words (Star of David) and the search word symbol. Next time somebody looks for the phrase
Star of David symbol
He might stumble upon my web site…

BTW, as for today, my web site pops up in the 19th place of about 1,360,000 results for Star of David symbol.

Copyrights and Free Resources For Building A Web Site

2007-03-24T19:39:00.000+02:00

In order to build a successful web site you need to get a lot of relevant texts and a lot of relevant photos. You need huge amounts of texts to rank high on Search Engine Results Pages but without photos texts tend to get boring. A successful web site aims at prolonging visitor’s stay, using seducing tactics like the colors the flowers use to prolong the staying of the bees…
One can write his own texts and publish his own photos, but it will take him much longer than being helped also by others’ texts and photos. Others’ texts and photos are copyrighted. So the question is where on the WWW are free resources for building successful web sites?
1. Fair Use: text is free up to about 300 words as long as you reference the quoted source.
2. Wikipedia is an excellent resource without any limits on the length of the quote.
3. Books and newspapers, which don’t have valid copyrights anymore. E.g. Gutenberg project’s thousands of on line books.
4. Creative-Commons photos. E.g. Flickr, Jewish Encyclopedia.
5. Getting permission to publish texts and photos from copyrights holders.

Readers are encouraged to add free resources on the comments section of this web page.

QTSaver no longer online

2007-02-23T07:04:00.000+02:00

QTSaver,the microcontent engine, is no longer on line. We tried our best to promote it but couldn't find an investor who will make our dream about the microcontent WWW come true.

Anyhow, people who want to get an impression about what QTSaver DID can still read this blog which is full with demonstrations.

The vision is still valid - search engine users still get more results than they can chew, and more paragraphs in each result than they need.

I'm convinced that when the QTSaver File will reopen QTSaver will come back online...

FIRST on Google

2007-02-23T06:54:00.002+02:00

Today for the FIRST time my blog about Stars of David comes FIRST on Google out of
3630000 results for search words
star of david and its meaning
See
http://qtsaver.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-reach-top-in-msn-serp.html

How to Sort Your Blog Posting addresses by Category

2007-02-11T18:58:00.002+02:00

If you have a large blog and you want to know what's in it:
1. Enter the address of your blog to Google's Advanced Search "return results from the site or domain".
2. Ask to get 100 results instead of the 10 results default.
3. You get snippets for all your postings with the address of each posting.
4. Copy the results to Microsoft Word.
5. Change the font of the Address to bold, for example.
6. In the find and replace window enter the definitions for the regular font and don't fill the "replace with" window - this will erase all the text which is not bold.
7. Copy the addresses to a Microsoft Access Table.
8. Make a Table of categories.
9. Link the Table of addresses with the Table of categories so that you can fill in the category of each posting.
10. Make a query that will have the category field twice, so that the second field will be summed by COUNT.
11. See what I got for my blog.

How To Make a Table of Contents for Your Blog

2007-01-01T20:41:00.001+02:00

In order to make a table of contents for your blog there’s the old way and there’s the new way:

The old way is to open each posting and copy its domain address to a new document. It’s a lot of boring work. The new way is to enter a clever query into http://blogsearch.google.com/ and calibrate the number of results to 100. The best part is that you can make a separate Table of Contents for each subject. E.g. here is what I’ve got, for search words “Star of David” Asher Eder after editing the recurring snippets, Sorting by date, and repeating the search with the omitted results included:

Second Zionist Congress Delegate Card

22 Dec 2006

The following paragraph is from Dr. Asher Eder’s book The Star of David, which

was published in 1987 in English in Jerusalem by Rubin Mass Ltd. The publication

here is courtesy of Oren Mass This version includes corrections and new ...

Star of David - http://star-of-david.blogspot.com

David Ganz

18 Dec 2006

Philosophical Implications

17 Dec 2006

The Dimensions

16 Dec 2006

Perspective of Time

15 Dec 2006

Four Different Times

13 Dec 2006

Our Feelings Of Time

12 Dec 2006

Relativity of time

11 Dec 2006

The Meaning of the Hexagram For the Native American People

10 Dec 2006

Measure of Time

10 Dec 2006

Time

9 Dec 2006

The Static and the Dynamic Concept

8 Dec 2006

The Space Time Relation

7 Dec 2006

Numerical Observations

7 Dec 2006

Ashkelon Mosque

6 Dec 2006

Infinity

3 Dec 2006

Pyramid and Hexagram

1 Dec 2006

Pomegranates In The Temple Service

30 Nov 2006

The Sign of Man

29 Nov 2006

Harmony of the Triangles

28 Nov 2006

The Joining of the Triangles

27 Nov 2006

Service and Labor

26 Nov 2006

Religion And The Sciences

23 Nov 2006

Symbol For Natural Man

23 Nov 2006

Cairo Genizah

22 Nov 2006

The Pentagram In History And Today

21 Nov 2006

Songs Of Peace And Joy

21 Nov 2006

The United Nations

20 Nov 2006

the Seven Laws of the Sons of Noah

20 Nov 2006

Jerusalem: Mother Of All

19 Nov 2006

Jerusalem at the Center of the World

19 Nov 2006

The Founders Of The Nation

18 Nov 2006

Magen David, The Shield Of David

18 Nov 2006

Jerusalem / Zion

18 Nov 2006

Israel and the Nations

17 Nov 2006

here is courtesy of Oren Mass This version includes corrections and new ...

The Formation Of Israel

16 Nov 2006

The Sign Aleph

15 Nov 2006

The Sign Daleth

14 Nov 2006

The Sign Gimel

14 Nov 2006

The Sign Beth

14 Nov 2006

Shabbat

12 Nov 2006

Alpha-Bet

12 Nov 2006

Father

12 Nov 2006

Language And Revelation

11 Nov 2006

Old-New Synagogue Window, Prague

11 Nov 2006

Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor

11 Nov 2006

The Founders Of The Nation

Magen David, The Shield Of David

Jerusalem / Zion

Miniature Jerusalem 9, originally uploaded by mharrsch. Photo is courtesy of

mharrsch who Photographed it at "The Holy Land Experience", Orlando, Florida and

published it on Flickr. The story of this most historic city begins in the ...

shabbat

12 Nov 2006

if we take the six outer triangles of

our star of david to symbolize the six days of the week, it's middle field ...

thou shalt love thy neighbor

11 Nov 2006

this could well be

depicted by our symbol, the star of david, with its two equilateral triangles. ...

good and pleasant it is for brethern to dwell

9 Nov 2006

i already published on this blog a star of david with a cross, a star of david

with a swastika, and a star of david with a crescent, so in order to make this

meeting of religious symbols more complete here's a star of david with om. ...

the divine soul

8 Nov 2006

the term 'breath of life' is not an adequate ...

fate will and destiny

5 Nov 2006

fate and destiny are by no means identical. ...

mutilated star of david

4 Nov 2006

mutilated star of david originally uploaded by dvmagen. the following paragraph

is from dr. asher eder’s book the star of david, ... nor can peace be achieved

by mutilating its symbol, the star of david, as a fanatical muslim did while ...

crescent and pentagram

3 Nov 2006

such a situation could then be expressed

symbolically by the star of david, with its two triangles representing the ...

i-awareness

2 Nov 2006

should this ego- or i-awareness then be a ...

symbol of man

2 Nov 2006

since this passage is of the profoundest meaning and importance for our understanding

of human existence and its dual nature - as expressed by the star of david - we

shall look at some of its aspects: 1) the passage brings out clearly ...

in our image, after our likeness

2 Nov 2006

…the principle of polarity works also within ...

kabbalists' star of david

1 Nov 2006

in the middle ages, the star also played quite some role in the kabbalists'

understanding and description of the world , while the very term,magen david,

rendered "shield of david" or "star of david") for describing the hexagram was ...

shem ham and yafet

1 Nov 2006

. the number three plays an important role in ...

symbol of the six days of creation

31 Oct 2006

capernaum -convoluted star pf david

31 Oct 2006

this photo was taken by dr. asher eder about 40 years ago. he found out that it

resembles another star of david he saw in the ruins of an herodian building in

beth-el, north of ramallah. i heard from my teacher, dr. ze'ev goldmann, ...

beith el - defaced star of david

31 Oct 2006

beith el - defaced star of david, originally uploaded by zeevveez. this photo was

taken by dr. asher eder about 40 years ago in the ruins of an herodian building

in beth-el, north of ramallah. there, it had a curvilinear shape. when dr. ...

the circle and the star of david

30 Oct 2006

this is not an arbitrary exercise. it is ...

creator -creation

30 Oct 2006

let us consider the six-pointed star as ...

the kabbalistic "tree of life"

30 Oct 2006

the harmonious balance of a relationship as indicated by the star of david

is possible only if the two partners are balanced in themselves. contrary to

widespread view, harmony is not achieved by merely coming together and joining. ...

the great american seal

29 Oct 2006

the publication

here is courtesy of oren mass. in the culture of india, where it must have ...

shame and honor

27 Oct 2006

thus, since 1948, judaism, israel and the star of david have been linked.

moreover, the star is not only the flag ... i translated this paragraph from dr.

asher eder’s book the star of david. rubin mass ltd. published it in 1987 in ...

the star of jerusalem

26 Oct 2006

"the oldest undisputed example [of a hexagram] is on a seal ...

dr. asher eder’s book: the star of david

26 Oct 2006

and to publish the

illustrations on flickr. dr. asher eder told me why he wrote this book: ...

anousim, marranos, crypto jews

22 Oct 2006

... nominally catholic families of iberian descent had stealthily maintained jewish

customs throughout the centuries, including lighting candles on friday evening,

avoiding pork and having the star of david inscribed on gravestones". ...

hexagram room snow flakes

18 Oct 2006

what is the origin of the star of david? - well, from the dawn of history people

saw this shape in snow slakes such as the ones shown in this photo, which is

courtesy of moonbird who published it on flickr and made it creative commons ... Note:

I started this list when I was in the middle of the project and added another retrieval while I finished translating Asher Eder’s book into Hebrew.

Uploading a Book to Promote Your Website

2006-12-13T12:24:00.000+02:00

I just finished translating from English into Hebrew Dr. Asher Eder’s book The Star of David, which was published in 1987 in Jerusalem by Rubin Mass Ltd.
I asked the publisher to let me publish the book in English as well and he agreed.

Before uploading the English version of the book to my English website I had around 30 visitors a day. After uploading the book I have around 100 visitors a day, and my blog started appearing third in Yahoo Search Engine Results Page for keywords STAR OF DAVID (out of 80,500,000 results).

I’m sure that there are millions of such old books that were not published on the WWW. They are not selling anymore but they have very important content in any conceivable subject. All you have to do is persuade the publisher to let you upload the book in exchange to credits and links to his website.

BTW if many Web Masters will embrace my proposal and upload books to promote their websites it will enrich the WWW with quality content. It is a win-win situation…

Using Flickr For My Blog

2006-11-22T20:00:00.000+02:00

Google and Yahoo have enormous image collections. These are good for answering the question: is there a photo that suits my needs? For example, I collect Star of David photos on my blog. I search for Star of David on Google and get 55000 photos. I start evaluating them and find one that I wish to blog. How do I do that? I have to find out who shot it and ask his permission. How do I find him? At this stage things become quite complicated...

But with Flickr I can jump over this hurdle.
With Flickr I can answer an even more sophisticated question:
Is there a photo that suits my needs which is available to blog?
The answer is yes. I search for Star of David on Flickr. I get "only" 1,727 photos.
I go to the advanced search and at the bottom of the page there are options to choose:
Only search within Creative Commons-licensed photos
Find content to use commercially
Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon
I mark the first and the third options, push the search button, and get 372 photos available to blog without starting a correspondence about getting permission, and without waiting for an answer that might never come.

There's more: I choose the photo I want and see above it a button called "blog this". I click on it and the photo is on its way to my blog.

- And that’s it?
No, I go back to the comments section on Flickr to thank the photographer for letting me use his creation. The link to the original photo is automatically installed in my blog. Neat!

Imagine what will happen if Google and Yahoo will start using this feature on their enormous Image Search Engines...

Axioma Search Engine

2006-11-20T19:10:00.001+02:00

My neighbor sent me this link to an article in Hebrew about Axioma and I hurried to download it and to try it out. My first impression is that it is fun and that the team there did a good job. Investor Arie Adler can be satisfied from the result...

On their web site I read that Axioma

Allows you to interactively increase the relevancy and context searches you make on general search engines… You arrive at more relevant results quickly - without weeding through a lot of unwanted results.

So the idea behind Axioma is to solve the problem of relevancy, the problem of “lot of unwanted results”- but can they do that?

IMHO Axioma will never solve the problem of relevancy because it is built on the wrong concept: it is a macro content search engine, which means that even if you get the web-page you wanted you still have to find your way in it, and what if you need only one small paragraph from a page that contains hundreds of irrelevant paragraphs? And what if the data you need is scattered in 10 different results? – you’ll have to enter each result separately, just like you did in the “old" search engines that the “new” Axioma is destined to save us from.

Only micro content strategy will help essentially solve this problem. QTSaver is a step in that direction. Axioma is a step in the opposite direction…

Arnauld Leene about QTSaver

2006-10-25T07:46:00.000+03:00

Last week Arnauld Leene wrote the following about QTSaver:

Martin's post reminded me to have a look at QTsaver again. I think I never commented on it before. The main reason for that was that I did not know what to think of it.
QTsaver allows you to do free searches based on Yahoo and Google. It then throws up the sentences where the search queries occur. I like this way to present the results of a search query. It is much easier to find the sites that are interesting. And it is nice to have a list of quotes around a subject. But that is what I find the trouble of the results as well. It lacks the context. I rather see the whole article or even the web-page, than some quotes.
By the way QTsaver calls it self a "micro content search engine". In my formal definition these quotes are not MicroContent. But never mind the definition, it is a nice experiment to see what happens when we dig down into MicroContent Items.

And here is my comment to what he wrote:

Thanks for commenting on QTSaver. I like your point of view...

A few notes:
1. You say: "Based on Yahoo and Google" and I'd like to add that it is based also on Dmoz and Wikipedia.

2.You say: "it lacks the context" and I'd like to add that there's a link to the source so once you found something interesting you click on that link and get the context.

3. BTW for me micro content is not a technical term but a vision - I hope to help convert the MACRO CONTENT WWW to micro contents, and I view QTSaver as a pioneer for making this needed change: today we get for most of our queries much more than we can chew - I think we deserve better.

Searching problems with Google Images

2006-10-24T08:54:00.000+03:00

Searching images for my research about the Star of David is very frustrating. The captions of the best images I found so far had no relevant keywords like:
Star of David
Shield od David
Davids's shield
Magen David
Solomon's Seal etc.
I found them by scanning hundreds of photos that answer search words like
Roman Mosaics Sicily
Bardo Museum Tunisia, etc.
This problem seems unsolvable...

Another problem I stumbled upon was that my own photos from Flickr didn't publish on Google Images and I wandered why. I asked around and nobody knew. Today I noticed that my traffic meter shows visitors to my site who were referred to it by Google Images. I searched on Google Images for "star of David" Flickr and got 248 answers - a few dozens of them were mine. So the answer is that it takes six months until Google Images adds new photos to its pool.

Dr Asher Eder

2006-10-17T10:41:00.000+03:00

I helped Dr Asher Eder open a new blog and just to show him how it works I uploaded the results from QTSaver for the query: "Asher Eder". IMHO it gives the reader who doesn't know who Dr Asher Eder is quite a good summary in one click. This is something QTSaver does brightly - answering the question who is that guy...

Babylon and the State of Search Engines

2006-09-17T12:29:00.000+03:00

I tried to buy Kombucha mushrooms from the USA through the Internet. In Hebrew they are called kambuchion, but entering this word into Google search produced nothing, of course. Babylon on line dictionary doesn't recognize this word in Hebrew. I had to find the right spelling by describing to the Google search box what this mushroom does. It was a brilliant clumsy way to get what I needed.
This is an everyday example of the problem to access existing data on the Web. Language barriers still prevent us from finding answers to our most simple queries.
It seems that biblical Babylon is still here, we speak in a language that others do not recognize.

Powered by Qumana

ESP Game

2006-08-20T18:45:00.000+03:00

I just got a comment from Henk Poley on my posting Tagging Pictures is Bad Hunting where I said:

I am quite skeptical about finding possible solutions for this problem

Henk Poley:

Do you know the ESP Game? It's a game that solves this problem by letting people tag photos via a game interface.

http://www.espgame.org/
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143

Well, I saw the video with Luis von Ahn's brilliant lecture and I recommend all those interested in this problem to watch it.

I also used QTSaver to gather a few micro contents that will help us understand what it's about.

http://jayisgames.com/archives/2005/01/the_esp_game.php
From Carnegie Mellon University comes this multiplayer Java applet simply called: The ESP Game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP_GameThe ESP Game is an experiment in human computation originally conceived by Luis von Ahn of Carnegie Mellon University.The idea behind the game is to use the computational power of humans to perform a task that computers cannot yet do (in this case, labeling images) by packaging the task as a game.

Humans are perfectly capable of it, but not necessarily willing. The ESP Game makes humans willing to perform this task by making a game out of it.Some users reportedly play over 40 hours a week. According to the game's creator, if the ESP Game gains popularity comparable to other online games, all images on Google Images could be labeled in just a few months.

http://forum.ebaumsworld.com/showthread.php?t=2015
The game throws up an image in a Java applet, then asks you and an anonymous "partner" elsewhere on the net to type in keywords until both of you have a word in common -- IOW, until you and a stranger can agree on a good label for the picture. Presumably, this is being added to a metadata database for the purpose of cataloguing all the images on the net.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03278/228349.stm

"There's some meat to his idea," said his mentor, Manuel Blum, a CMU professor and a pioneer in the field of theoretical computer science. Producing word descriptions of images with the ESP Game is nice, of course, but the bigger idea is to entice people to cooperatively solve problems that defy electronic computers.

http://momb.socio-kybernetics.net/beta/esp-game
The ESP Game is a two-player game.You can’t communicate with your partner, and the only thing you have in common with them is that you can both see the same image.

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/03/the_esp_game.html

The ESP Game: Labeling the Web - great model of using one type of interest (playing a game) to fulfill an unrelated need (creating an image database) -- it's the cornucopia of the uncommons!

Tagging Pictures is Bad Hunting

2006-08-20T12:13:00.000+03:00

Searching pictures in any search engine is very clumsy and inaccurate. It depends totally on the description of the picture or on its tags (in case it is tagged on a photo sharing on line software like Flickr). The tags (or descriptions) are focused on the interests of the tagger, which don't always match the needs of the other WWW users.

E.g. I'm interested in Stars of David. There are dozens of pictures in Flickr which are tagged Menorah but include Stars of David. There are other items on these pictures which are not retrievable since the only thing that interested the tagger was the Menorah. Let's say that there are ten interesting items on each picture - imagine how much information is lost only because we (WWW users) don't tag properly.

This problem doesn't exist on text search. All the text "items" are retrievable.

I am quite skeptical about finding possible solutions for this problem, but I believe the more we use micro content anthologies the easier it will be to retrieve these "lost sheep". For example, I hope that in my micro content project people will find pictures that deal with Stars of David and were not tagged by the relevant tags in the place where I found them. The same goes for other websites that collect everything there is to know about a certain subject.

New ideas to promote your Website

2006-08-03T09:08:00.001+03:00

One of my readers asked my advice how to promote his Website. I told him I'm not an expert but he insisted. So here is what I wrote him based on my own experience:

1. Update - It is better to update 3 times a day with micro contents that once a week with macro contents.
2. Micro contents - If your website has already long articles you can break them down into many small units; publish each "chapter" in a separate page and erase the original (search engines punish you if you duplicate content).
3. comment on the discussion pages of Wikipedia and leave a link to your website - this will bring you many visitors since people turn first to Wikipedia when they need info and from there they go on their search (it helped me a lot - see the discussion page of the term Star of David).
4. Translate parts of your site to any other language on a separate blog.
5. Traffic: read your traffic report and click the referrers' links to see who reads your articles. In case it's a blogger leave him a thank you comment with your link.
6. Letters to editors: send letters to editors of on line newspapers about the subjects you nurture in your website.

Bypassing Google Book Search

2006-07-27T10:28:00.000+03:00

On Google Book Search and on Amazon Search inside the Book Program we are unable to print or copy/paste or print screen what we found. All these restrictions do not prevent us from using what we need – we can always copy the material word by word. To make things faster we can use IBM ViaVoice or some other Speech-To-Text program, then read the excerpt aloud and the machine will take care of the printing. (You need to invest about two hours to train the program).

Usually when you quote five WWW sources with links and all people are not surprised since everybody can do this. It's a whole new game when you can quote in one hour five books without reading them…

Searching Images

2006-07-27T06:47:00.000+03:00

I published on my Micro Content Project more than 100 photos, most of them are published also on Flickr but when I look for Star of David blogspot OR Flickr on Yahoo Image Search I get only 7 photos none of them is mine. This is strange since Yahoo bought Flickr and one should expect that uploading to Flickr would end up in finding your images on Yahoo.
Same query on Google Image Search got me more or less same results.

What's going on here?
What's the policy of these giants toward our photos?
What do you have to do in order to find your photos there?
Do you know?

How to Reach the Top in MSN SERP

2006-07-18T11:26:00.000+03:00

My subject matter is Stars of David. On the left side of this article you'll see a link to My MICRO CONTENT PROJECT and that's the place where I deal with it. There is a tough competition in this field – in Google there are 197,000,000 results for the query Star of David. Anyhow this morning my blog reached the first place on MSN SERP out of 10,467,906 results containing the words Star of David.

I want to tell you how I did it because I have a certain vision behind it:
1. Four months ago I opened a blog on Blogger. Blogs get priority on certain search engines and IMHO it's better to start a blog than to start a web site.
2. I entered my target keywords into my domain name – I heard that this may help promoting your site. [http://star-of-david.blogspot.com/]
3. Each Day I posted about three times– regular updating wins points for you on certain search engines.
4. I found all the content I needed on the WWW and edited it so that each posting was interesting, concise, and short. I added many photos (Creative-Commons and photos I shot) to prevent problems with copyrights. These two steps ensured that the reader will feel that he is treated respectfully and doesn't waste his time.

It took me four months, seven hours a day, and about 300 postings to reach the first placement on MSN SERP, but now I believe I (and each one of you) can repeat this achievement with any other subject matter. You can calculate the expenses easily. If you hire a student for four months, seven hours a day, his salary is what it costs to be first in your field in MSN. When I'll reach the first place in Google or Yahoo I'll try to calculate how much this will cost…

Any how the point is that finding content on the WWW is an obstacle. Snippets were misleading and I spent most of my time on opening irrelevant links and closing them. I believe QTSaver can save 75% of this lost time because it helps choose the right articles. It also helps a lot by suggesting words for further research. This means that the cost for placing whatever you want on the first link of MSN SERP will cost you only one month salary and to me it sounds like an excellent bargain.

The result is that people who are interested in Stars of David get answers on a totally different level of relevance than they are used to. Imagine what will happen when millions of sites will become collections of micro contents on a special subject. It will change the WWW from Chaos to a friendly neighborhood. That's my vision. This is what I'm working on. Search Engine Optimizers that will understand the economic benefits of this vision will make it happen. Not because they believe in a better visual reality, but because this is the shortest and cheapest way to get to the top.

Right now QTSaver is not ready for this kind of operation since it retrieves only from the first dozens of results, but it is quite simple to change the algorithm so that QTSaver will work on all the SERP. Now I need an investor to make this happen. -Any volunteers?

Finding New Data for Your Research

2006-07-16T19:56:00.000+03:00

On the left side of this article you'll see a link to my MICRO CONTENT PROJECT which contains already 279 postings. The first 50 were quite easy to get: I entered the search words "Star of David" into Google and read the results one after the other. After a few dozen articles the data started recurring in such percentage that I had to change tactics.

I found out that new data is hiding around unique keywords like Capernaum, where one of the oldest Jewish Star of David was found, or Theodor Herzl who promoted this emblem in the Zionist movement. So I started collecting unique keywords on my Microsoft Access.

The question is if we can automate this process. In QTSaver we have a special algorithm. For example: for the query Star of David I got the following announcement: "QTSaver finds that the following words may help you think about what you're looking for... Click on a word to add it to your search query:

Jewish
Symbol
Jews
Shield
Triangle
Flag
Israel
God
Hexagram
Sign
Judaism

A similar result is suggested at
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
where I got for the same query a long list of suggestions arranged by frequency of Searches done in June 2006 :
6019 david star
511 david picture star
399 david jewelry star
306 david meaning star
273 david necklace star
244 david jewish star
243 david star tattoo
222 david foster search star
200 david pendant star
155 david history star

This is good for the first steps of your research, but let me tell you a secret: for what I need after finding data for 279 postings these suggestions aren't useful at all; adding each one of them to my "Star of David" query will bring only more "noise". What I mean by finding unique keywords is more like this:
"As Above As Below"; "boundary stone"; "wedding stone"; " David Alroy"; "David Gans"; " David Hareuveni"; Dormizion; Eder Asher; " Hashomer Hatzair"; " Isaac Luria"…
I don't believe we have such a filter in the market, but I'm working on it, and I'm anxious to read your suggestions.

Skype Directory

2006-07-10T19:56:00.000+03:00

On February 15, 2006 I wrote about the need to make a Skype Yellow-Pages (see: http://qtsaver.blogspot.com/2006/02/skype-yellow-pages.html). Now one of my readers notifies me that Skype Yellow Pages is already existing on http://www.skype-directory.com. This is great news. I checked it out and it is a small directory, but it looks exactly the way I imagined it. I'm not suggesting they did it because they read my posting - I just feel good that I saw it coming.

Now I tell you that search engine users need a micro content search on top of the existing macro content search and that users need better snippets. Let's see if this vision will also find its happy ending.

Google Book Search Beta

2006-07-08T21:46:00.000+03:00

Today I entered the search words "Shield of David" into http://books.google.com/ and got 1020 answers. I read 130 snippets, chose to open 20 links, and found after all this trouble 4 lines I needed and 2 pages that were "interesting" for further research. This was much less than I expected.

Conclusions:
o The bottom line - it was a waste of time. I could find more new data on a regular search engine
o This method of research brought me macro contents that included more paragraphs than I needed
o Snippets were misleading - promised good info but after opening the link they were not what I expected
o Most of the pages weren't relevant or their contents were already known to me
o 2-3 pages were technically in bad print quality and I couldn't read them
o Some interesting beginnings didn't allow me to see the next page
o I couldn't copy and paste

Maybe it is a good search engine for those who want to know which books are in their field of interest, or for getting introductory material, but for getting more info about something I already knew about it was disappointing!

Advanced Search is not enough

2006-07-05T07:57:00.000+03:00

I'm so frustrated from the current solution that all search engines suggest us for serious heavy duty research that I published a question on Yahoo answers: (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=20060703121710AA0JgrU)

How to search when there are too many results?
In the details part of the form I added that
I want to know every thing about the Star of David. On Yahoo there are 71,800,000 results for search words star of david. On Google 172,000,000 results. Adding quote marks reduces the last number to 1,740,000.
How am I supposed to cross this river of information?
Not to mention 16,900,000 results for shield of
david and 51,300 for "shield of david"?
Any suggestions?

In a few hours I got 4 answers telling me what I already knew- to use advanced search. But advanced search is not enough. It brings me to a list of ten links with snippets and when I enter the sites that the links lead to I don't find what I needed.

There are two major problems to solve here:
1. Snippets are bad! (See: http://qtsaver.blogspot.com/2006/01/google-snippets.html) they are fragmented and mislead users.
2. Macro contents are bad! They give users much more than asked and force them to spend too much time to find a paragraph in a whole article instead of giving them only the paragraph.

All these idea were discussed thoroughly in this blog. QTSaver gives a partial solution for this problem – it runs only on the first dozens of results. The new idea is to enable QTSaver to run on all the results retrieved for a specific question, ten at a time. I reckon this will solve the above problem.

I only need an investor to make it happen…

Mreining

2006-06-26T07:19:00.000+03:00

I just got a Google Alert about an event that happened on Oct 2, 2005 – mreining blinklisted QTSaver and that's what he wrote:

Try out QTSaver on http://qtsaver.dynalias.com/. It is a Web 2.0 micro-content aggregator. Can come in very handy when you are looking up information about a new topic. I love how the info is presented. Much more digestible than starting with Google.com

Filed under research tool, micro content, aggregator, search, qtsaver, online discovery by mreining.

Thanks for your support, mreining.

Micro Content Project

2006-06-20T14:02:00.001+03:00

In the last three months I was posting to my new blog about the star-of-david. This is an online Micro Content Project which can be a model for any research. I want to find everything I can about my subject (Star of David in my case);
1. I get thousands of results for my queries.
2. I enter each result and copy what I need to a new document.
3. The first five results are great!
4. After the first 50 results things are repeating themselves and I get lost.

The snippets under each link of the search engines are misleading. They promise a relevant micro content and find an irrelevant one, or a duplicate of what I already found. It takes hours to find a new item after the first 100 results.

Qtsaver can solve this problem if we build a new version that will give RELEVANT snippets for thousands of results; but we need an investor to make this happen…

Investor

2006-05-27T09:36:00.000+03:00

When an idea gets down from the hall of ideas in Heaven it looks for its vessels: its herald (inventor), its gardener (developer), its investor.

Not every investor that was interested in Qtsaver was fit for the job. The ordinary way of thinking is that Qtsaver didn't fit the investor, but when the right investor will come – you'll see!

More Compliments

2006-05-14T00:37:00.000+03:00

Dave wrote about Ori Alon a comprehensive article on http://www.passingnotes.com/index.php/google-bought-an-algorithm-but-dont-get-your-panties-in-a-bunch/ and on his way left me some compliments:

do keep in mind that there is already traction in this space - and orion (ori allon’s algorithm and concept that none of us can use) is similar in spirit to qtsaver (i was totally sucked into the blog behind this engine btw) …okay, yeah, read more about all of this orion discussion in detail if you want http://qtsaver.blogspot.com/2005/11/orion-ori-allon.html, and then tell me if you get a kick out of this very interesting new micro-content search engine called qtsaver (extracts micro-content from existing search engines, so perhaps similar in spirit? or is this a leap of faith or a wicked stretch of the imagination when comparing these?) …or did other search engines conceive of this a long, long time ago? …or instead of just qtsaver, check out surfnotes (a patent pending algorithm though, not issued)…or check out the concept from q-phrase (”ConceptQ works in conjunction with Google, MSN, Wikipedia and other major search engines.”)…the dude from qtsaver turned me on to both of those btw, so do keep an eye on his blog!

compliments

2006-05-14T00:10:00.000+03:00

Honestly I didn't mean to get compliments when I thanked Jaan Ovret for his candid criticism...Anyway here's what he wrote about us on
http://www.orvet.com/blog/2006/04/qtsaver-does-it-right.html

it makes me especially happy when people can handle a less than stellar "review" in a good way, and take feedback and suggestions onboard. This speaks bundles about who they are.A couple of people who seem to have taken my less than enthusiastic words to heart over the past month are the guys at QTSaver. Cheers to that...

This lives me no choice but to thank you again, Jaan Ovret!

Ori Alon Made It

2006-04-15T20:53:00.000+03:00

In the last year I wrote a lot about QTsaver's competitor, Ori Alon. The news is that Google acquired his text search algorithm. Google confirmed that "Ori Alon works at Google's Mountain View, California offices." Alon's Orion search engine was developed for getting the most relevant textual results.

Now it is hard for me to estimate whether Google "killed" Orion or whether they are going to develop it. I also have no clue about the consequences this acquisition will have on the future of QTSaver which is competing in the same field of relevant textual results.

Anyhow – I congratulate you, Ori Alon. It must be great for you to be acknowledged by the best search engine in the world, better than getting a gold medal.

Image Search Tip

2006-03-21T05:55:00.000+02:00

Sometimes the best search strategy is to look for an image and then use the links from that image to find the answer. In case there's a need for more information from many websites - After finding the basic details in the above mentioned way it's easier to construct on QTSaver a sophisticated query that will gather the best results.

This strategy is good especially when you look for:

· Products

· People

· Paintings

For example: I used this strategy to answer the following questions on Yahoo Answers:

1. Who are the statues in San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza supposed to be?

I entered search words San Francisco Civic Center statue into Google Image search and got a picture of a certain building. Clicking on that picture led me to Simon Bolivar's statue.

2. How did amur leopards come to be, when was its prime, why is it on a current endangered list?

I entered search words amur leopards into Google Image search and clicked the first picture. It led me to an article with all the needed details .