When it comes to funerals, though, the Japanese have traditionally been inflexibly Buddhist — so much so that Buddhism in Japan is often called “funeral Buddhism.” That expression describes a religion that, by appearing to cater more to the needs of the dead than to those of the living, is losing its standing in Japanese society.

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The Dalai Lama is accused of blackmailing Dorje Shugden worshippers into giving up their religious beliefs. At the same time, Indian citizens who worship Dorje Shugden are reviled and condemned as non-Buddhists and Chinese agents.

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The thinking behind the Chinese chastity movement is certainly different from similar movements in the US and other Western countries. Losing virginity before marriage is losing competitiveness, which may lead to losing an opportunity of a good marriage. Moreover, a woman can be respected or disrespected for chastity’s sake.

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In science we can theorize that a planet exists even though we cannot see it from the effect it’s magnetic field has on the surrounding satellites. Cannot we also theorize that even if we cannot see evidence of God we can theorize that He exists from the effect He has on culture and the history of the human species?

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Is the stereotype accurate that Mac users are cafe sitting, herbal tea drinking, Bob Dylan-listening, liberal democrats, socialists, or communists? Here are the facts, and they may surprise you. In fact more IT professionals consider themselves Republicans than Democrats!

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Romanian-born priest, The Reverend Antonio Petrescu believes you can worship God and Elvis at the same time: as a Catholic priest and Elvis Presley impersonator. Petrescu feels his responsibility as a priest is to “walk this Earth in love for Jesus Christ,” a task in which he is inspired by Elvis’s “search for spirituality in his own life.”

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NBC is offering complete streaming of the Olympics over the internet for the first time ever. It is great news for people working office jobs to be able to watch it from their desks. Unfortunately, it will only be available to Microsoft Vista users. To make it even worse it will only be available to the Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Vista!

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A little over a month ago, Zhang Xiaoyan lay in the rubble of her earthquake-shattered apartment building. Trapped for more than 50 hours, she prayed for the life of her unborn child. “Even if I didn’t make it, I just wanted my baby to survive,” she said. “I was holding out hope during the earthquake that this day would come.” That day was today.

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These are some very beautiful icons, but with close of my mission and with my hundreds of icons that I own, I have no space to display them. My loss is your gain! All icon auctions are starting at only 99 cents American.

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The Hao Hao Report is at the beginning of making a major transition to a completely new webware back end. Why the switch? Digg-clone Pligg still in “beta” after 2 1/2 years of development which leads them to believe if and when v1 an v2 are released, they will be equally slow in updating. Pligg updates are few and far between, upgrades are painful.

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Cafe Press now has a hilarious(?) store that sells items supporting police brutality. The bumper stickers are guaranteed to help you get out of your next speeding ticket!?!

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Excess consumption is practically an American religion. But as anyone with a filled-to-the-gills closet knows, the things we accumulate can become oppressive. Which is why people are so intrigued by the 100 Thing Challenge, a grass-roots movement in which otherwise seemingly normal folks are pledging to whittle down their possessions to 100 thiongs

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What if there was something simple you could do every day that would burn calories, be good for your heart, and help you stay young. You’d do it, right?

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The YDL PowerStation, a robust deskside tower which returns the Power architecture to both the workstation and server at an affordable price. It offers four 2.5GHz IBM 970MP cores, up to 32GB RAM, dual Gigabit ethernet, four USB ports, integrated ultra-fast SAS with 4 hot-swap bays, both PCI-E and PCI-X slots and support for x86 graphic cards.

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The Euphrosynos Cafe is wanting to know if current crises are changing your driving habits. Are you driving less? Are you walking more? Are you bicycling more? Why? Is it to save money? Is it to save the Earth’s environment? Is it to lose weight? Is it to build more muscle tone? Or is it just because you enjoy walking and biking?

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With oil prices sky-high, bikes for hire have finally rolled into the United States looking for riders in the US capital, as they have with success in Paris, Lyon and Barcelona. It works like this: for an annual fee of 40 dollars paid for online the bike can be taken out for no additional cost for up to three hours.

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A direct response from the Google Browser Sync team: “It was a tough call, but we decided to phase out support for Browser Sync. Since the team has moved on to other projects that are keeping them busy, we don’t have time to update the extension to work with Firefox 3 or to continue to maintain it.”

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Terra Soft Solutions, the company behind Yellow Dog Linux, launched its YDL PowerStation, the unofficial successor to the Apple PowerMac G5. Not just a simple replacement, but a well designed, readily upgradable, and far, far, more open source friendly system. The YDL PowerStation is four cores of unleashed Power in a solid, affordable package.”

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Terra Soft Solutions announced a development workstation billed as the heir to the Apple PowerMac G5 Quad, except more open. The Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) PowerStation offers four PowerPC cores clocked at 2.5GHz, up to 32GB RAM, and four bays for serially attached SCSI (SAS) drives.

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Available exclusively from Terra Soft Solutions, the YDL PowerStation offers four 2.5GHz IBM 970MP cores, up to 32GB RAM, dual Gigabit ethernet, four USB 2.0 ports, integrated ultra-fast SAS with 4 hot-swap bays, both PCI-E and PCI-X slots, and support for x86 architecture graphics cards.

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It’s been three years since the PowerMac was killed. The wait for a PPC replacement is over. Not just a simple replacement, but a more open source friendly system. The YDL PowerStation is four cores of unleashed Power in a solid, affordable package. 4 Quad-core 2.5GHz 970 cores, up to 32GB RAM, Dual Gigabit ethernet, Yellow Dog Linux v.6.0 installed, only $1895.

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This anti-McCain video, put together in February by a Ron Paul supporter, is just brutal. Some of it is a little off the beaten track, but up to the 7 minute mark, it is devastating, especially starting at the 2:30 mark.

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Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognized that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients.

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The YDL PowerStation features 4 Power architecture cores, deskside tower chassis, surprisingly quiet, up to 32 GB RAM, up to 4 SAS drives, a limited 1 year warranty, and it will ship with the most current version of Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed. Hmm, YDL PowerStation sounds suspiciously like Sony’s PlayStation (3). Could there be a connection?

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Churches in Nürnberg, Romania and Erie, Pennsylvania, USA are a prime example Orthodoxy’s spectacular use of wall, ceiling, pillar, and people space. Beautiful architecture and artwork!

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To all lovers of freedom: Please read, sign and send on. This is an impressive letter. Just think of the impact by the time July 12 comes and we are all in Wash. DC showing the GOP what we think! Carry on in Liberty.

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While some Mac users will gladly move forward to the Intel-only OS X 10.6 when it ships, just as many have already embraced Leopard, some will be left behind - and as their version of Mac OS X 10.2-5 grows increasingly outdated by new apps, we may see more and more low-end Mac users looking into Linux (which is free and offers up-to-date apps) as a viable alternative to Apple’s operating systems on their aging hardware. Funny, isn’t it, how Apple will leave your hardware behind while the Linux community will keep you up to date.

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KyLin TV is an IP TV service that offers over 40 channels from Asia in various Chinese dialects, Korean, Japanese, English, Spanish, and French languages. With a special FAF code and this link you can get a free IPTV box, a free month of service and continuing service after that for only $8 a month! What a great television deal for Sinophiles, Japanophiles, and other Asiaphiles!

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No computers, downloads, or phone cards necessary. Just dial and talk internationally and pay local rates! How does it work? You give RebTel the phone number of a friend in another country, and they give you a local number for them. Then you are given a local number for them that they can call you back on your mobile for absolutely no cost to you!

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Swingers take note–monogamy may be the foundation of cooperative societies, at least for insects. Researchers have found that bees, wasps, and ants live in communal groups because all members of the group are closely related. The finding challenges a theory recently proposed by one of the world’s most eminent scientists. Some insects, such as ants

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Sometimes we come across a very specific word which is not in our dictionary. We need a translation anyway. So what can we do? Wikipedia rescues us, at least in many cases. This How To is written for the English -> Chinese translation, however it can be applied for any language to other language translation as long as it is used by Wikipedia.

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For many users, getting started with Linux is surprisingly easy. But a lot of people who try Linux dump it and switch back to Windows the instant they want to get some work done, mostly because they don’t know which Linux programs to use in lieu of their old Windows standbys. Fortunately, such confusion need last only a moment.

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Thomas, who lives in West Virginia, is being called a medical miracle after she suffered two heart attacks and had no brain waves for more than 17 hours; reports NewsNet5.com.–a modern-day Lazarus. God bless her.

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She’s revered as a trail-blazing feminist and author Alice Walker touched the lives of a generation of women. A champion of women’s rights, she has always argued that motherhood is a form of servitude. But one woman didn’t buy in to Alice’s beliefs - her daughter, Rebecca Walker. Here she talks about her experiences.

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I recently discovered a recreation of Bioware’s Infinity Engine which runs Baldur’s Gate 2, IceWind Dale 1 and 2, and Planescape Torment. The project is named GemRB. With a little work and some help from the GemRB discussion forum I was able to get it running on the PS3 under Yellow Dog Linux 6. Here’s how you can too!

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YDL 6.0 vs. 5.0 Goodies:
- 6.0 has built-in WiFi Support
- Joysticks in 6.0 are now working again, as opposed to version 5.0.2 (Still via USB though, Bluetooth requires super extra work)
- 6.0 has updated linux kernel.

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Scientists, studying facts and coming to their own theories of the creation of the universe, Earth, and life are being browbeaten, fired, and blacklisted for simply not going along with the current popular theory of the beginning of life and everything we know. Is this science where questions lead to new understandings or a new dogmatic religion?

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Women who breastfeed for more than a year reduce their chance of rheumatoid arthritis by half, research suggests.

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This is neither surprising nor news, but it contains both Obama AND Ron Paul, the two candidates not beholden to the special interests that have none of our interests in mind or pocket.

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Social networking site, The Hao Hao Report, is a way to quickly see what the most popular English language articles regarding China are. The HHR accepts blog posts, major news articles, and basically anything about China. The HHR is part of the Lost Laowai family, a site providing a number of resources for foreigners coming to or already in China.

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The group of Christian loonies known as the Westboro Baptist Church, which has been known to go on public pickets with signs such as “Thank God for 9-11,” “Thank God for AIDS,” “Thank God for Katrina,” “Thank God for IEDs,” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” also announced plans to “preach to the whole world” at the Olympic Stadiums.

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