Mind Soup

TELEGRAPH : Mark Boyle, 31, gave up using money in November 2008. He lives in a caravan that he got from Freecycle ( uk.freecycle.org ), which is parked at an organic farm near Bristol, where Boyle volunteers three days a week. He grows his own food, has a wood-burning stove and produces electricity from a solar panel (it cost £360 before the experiment started). He has a mobile phone for incoming calls only and a solar-powered laptop. Boyle, who has been vegan for six years, set up the Freeconomy in 2007 ( justfortheloveofit.org ), an online network that encourages people to share skills or possessions and now has 17,000 members. The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living (Oneworld Publications, £10.99) is out now. Mark Boyle gave up using cash over a year ago and loves his new lifestyle. "It all started in a pub. My friend and I were talking about all the problems in the world, such as sweatshops, environmental destruction, factory farms, animal testing, wars over reso...

To my friends and fans, As you might know, I have been working on poetry book for several months now. Today, I thought I would share with you a sneak peak from my unpublished material. My book is still untitled, but this poem is from a chapter entitled "Disappointments of me". I hope you enjoy it, and I would really appreciate your feedback. Which reminds me, I am looking for a graphic designer to design the book. So if you are interested, click here for more information. Serial Killer Love by Mohammad Hijazi They say they love me. They might as well shoot me in the head with their careless cheese cake covered guns. Ironic as it may be, they stand there for a short eternity and watch as I bleed drops of dark cranberry-filled ungratefulness, or at least they would think I am ungrateful. And still they love me, off course they do; un-humane love is what that is: a canine-attacking-a-juicy-bloody-steak kind of love. Dare they admit it? They say denia...

So I was studying today for my information systems final, and I was reading this case in the book about social networking sites and the work environment, and I found it severely ironic that someone lost his job due to blogging. OSB, is that supposed to be a hint? MIS Book, I'm on to you! :P

Before you guys go crazy on me, I did not write this article. It is a repost from Al-Bayt Baytak blog which I found interesting. I am very interested to see what you guys think about this issue, so feel free to comment below . Sari Hanafi, a sociology professor at the American University of Beirut, has done an incredibly brave or stupid act (depending on your perspective) co-editing a book with Israeli academics. This is particularly perplexing considering that Hanafi has put his name to the Lebanese Campaign for the boycott of Zionism in solidarity with the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. This includes boycotting Israeli academics and their institutions, as the statement reads: Specifically, we ask our colleagues worldwide to support the call by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel to comprehensively and consistently boycott and disinvest from all Israeli academic and cultural institutions, and to refrain from participat...

NEW YORK -- J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth hero and fugitive from fame whose "The Catcher in the Rye" shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, has died. He was 91. Salinger died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday, the author's son said in a statement from Salinger's literary representative. He had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, remote house in Cornish, N.H. "The Catcher in the Rye," with its immortal teenage protagonist, the twisted, rebellious Holden Caulfield, came out in 1951, a time of anxious, Cold War conformity and the dawn of modern adolescence. The Book-of-the-Month Club, which made "Catcher" a featured selection, advised that for "anyone who has ever brought up a son" the novel will be "a source of wonder and delight - and concern." Enraged by all the "phonies" who make "me so depressed I go crazy," Holden soon became American litera...

Here come the e-readers, a boon to travelers and speed readers, and, we’re told, a saver of trees. And, in their wake, here come the prophets predicting doom to the paper book, and along with it the death of copyright and all sorts of unknown effects. But not so fast. Don’t burn the books yet. I’m not pleading the venerable history, the beauty of design, or the tactility of the page. Here are three practical reasons not to ditch the paper: 1. Solar storms. A big one could fry transformers, as solar storms have in the past, and affect satellites and towers in such a massive way that communications could be down for months, with much disruption of all sorts. Including, possibly, the wipeout of all online libraries and downloads. Don’t let anyone embed a chip into your head, either, no matter how much memory they promise to add! 2. Energy shortages. Remember Peak Oil? We know that green energy is galloping to the rescue, but is nowhere near meeting the need. We know that interne...

November 24 will mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species , one of the most influential books on biology ever written, and arguably the most controversial. One hundred and fifty years after Darwin made popular the idea that the diversity of life on planet Earth today descended (or ascended?) from lower life forms over millions of years, the general theory of evolution is still not accepted by vast numbers of people, to the chagrin of large numbers of evolutionary biologists.  Did all of life really descend from one-celled organisms that developed in primordial waters billions of years ago? Is that really what happened? If so, we should see plenty of evidence of it all around us, and there are significant numbers of scientists who argue that we indeed find just that. They argue that there are a sufficient number of transitional forms in the fossil record to support Darwin’s theory. They argue that natural selection, acting to preserve small...