The world is filled with beauty.

To live in a house made of jello.

In Rainbows Music Video Contest

 

 

Here’s your chance to have your animation seen by Radiohead. Storyboard or animate your music video idea.

Competition begins March 17, 2008

Go to this link for the general overview and rules:

http://www.aniboom.com/Pages/Application/Competitions/Radiohead/RadioheadAdditionalInfo.aspx

Watch the video:

http://www.aniboom.com/Player.aspx?v=183973

There’s still time left so get over there and how us your creatuve side, yo.

Bjork interview on ‘planet rock profiles’ part 2 of 2

Bjork interview on ‘planet rock profiles’ part 1 of 2

Should countries boycott the Olympics?

I have recieved a lot of emails asking this question and have heard debates from people for weeks on this topic. Should the Olympics be boycotted?

I don’t think so. I think having access to that country can shed some light on human rights issues in that country. Want to show China how you feel about their oppression tactics?

Stop buying anything “made in China”

That would send a message. Question is. Are you ready to put your money where your mouth is?

Obama says Clinton should keep running

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – Barack Obama refused Saturday to go along with other Democrats who are calling for Hillary Rodham Clinton to step away from the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

My attitude is Senator Clinton can run as long as she wants,” Obama said.

Obama told reporters he did not agree with one of his supporters, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, when he said earlier this week that Clinton cannot win the nomination and should therefore drop out. “I hadn’t talked to Pat about it,” Obama said.

At stops throughout the day, Clinton raised the question of whether she should leave the race — eliciting loud jeers from supporters.

“There are some people who say we should just stop these elections. ‘Enough people have already voted, what’s a few million more?’” Clinton said in Louisville, Ky. “I don’t know about you but I’m glad Kentucky is going to be voting and you’ll be choosing because it’s such an important election.” The state holds its primary May 20.

Campaigning in Pennsylvania, her husband, Bill Clinton, said party insiders looking to resolve the contest should step back and allow the process to move forward.

“We just need to relax and let this happen. Nobody’s talking about wrecking the party,” the former president said. “Everywhere I go, all these working people say: ‘Don’t you dare let her drop out. Don’t listen to those people in Washington, they don’t represent us.’”

The campaign on Saturday released a fundraising e-mail, signed by Bill Clinton, asking supporters to challenge talk of his wife departing the race by sending a check to her campaign.

“There’s no better way to tell Hillary that you support her staying in than to make a contribution to her campaign,” he wrote.

Obama offered a bit of tough love to Pennsylvania voters, saying some industrial and manufacturing jobs may not return to this steel region, but others could take their place.

Clinton also stressed job creation at campaign stops in Indiana and Kentucky, vowing to help manufacturers transition to new industries like clean energy and ending tax breaks for American companies that ship jobs overseas.

“I think this election, particularly here in Indiana, is about jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs,” the former first lady said.

Jobs and the economy are front and center in the remaining primary contests between the two Democratic hopefuls. Pennsylvania, which holds its primary April 22, has seen its manufacturing base and especially its steel industry weakened in recent decades, as has Indiana, which votes May 6.

While campaigning in Ohio, another big manufacturing state, both Clinton and Obama criticized free trade deals and insisted the other candidate was not as reliable a protector of U.S. jobs. Clinton won that state’s March 4 primary.

Read the rest here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080330/ap_on_el_pr/campaign_rdp;_ylt=AgNQDIySezueyMmYowiPbdR2wPIE

Indian workers in US demand visa reforms

WASHINGTON – Indian workers who say they were lured by false promises into moving to the Gulf Coast to fill a labor shortage after Hurricane Katrina demanded Thursday that their country help stop what they call human trafficking.

The nearly 100 workers, who have sued their U.S. employer, met with Indian Ambassador Ronen Sen after holding a rally. They said after the meeting that he appeared to take their complaints seriously, but that they were not satisfied.

“What we need is action, not just symbolic assurances,” said one of the workers, Rajan Pazhambalakode.

They say that more than 500 Indian nationals paid recruiters $20,000 each after they were promised permanent U.S. residency to work as welders and pipefitters for Signal International, an oil rig construction and repair company.

Instead, they said, they received 10-month guest-worker visas and were forced into inhumane living conditions at company facilities in Pascagoula, Miss. and Orange, Texas.

They filed a federal lawsuit against Signal this month and organized protests in several cities before traveling to Washington. They want the companies involved to be barred from participating in visa programs and are pressing discussions between the U.S. and Indian governments on improving those programs.

Signal has denied allegations that it mistreated workers. The company said Thursday it will stop hiring guest workers until more safeguards are in place to prevent recruiting abuses.

Richard Marler, Signal’s president and chief executive, said he was shocked to learn that foreign workers allegedly were charged thousands of dollars by recruiters. He said Signal has severed its contract with recruiter Global Resources and its principals and plans to sue the firm.

Marler said he was hurt by allegations that workers were subjected to poor living conditions, saying Signal provided catered meals, 24-hour transportation services, Internet access and other amenities.

Marler said about 100 Indian workers who have stayed at Signal are happy with their jobs.

Article found here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080327/ap_on_go_ot/immigrant_workers_suit_1;_ylt=AksFTGZTzThH0VybLrL2e8xH2ocA

Katrina victims may have to repay money

NEW ORLEANS – Imagine that your home was reduced to mold and wood framing by Hurricane Katrina. Desperate for money to rebuild, you engage in a frustrating bureaucratic process, and after months of living in a government-provided trailer tainted with formaldehyde you finally win a federal grant.

Then a collector calls with the staggering news that you have to pay back thousands of dollars.

Thousands of Katrina victims may be in that situation.

A private contractor under investigation for the compensation it received to run the Road Home grant program for Katrina victims says that in the rush to deliver aid to homeowners in need some people got too much. Now it wants to hire a separate company to collect millions in grant overpayments.

The contractor, ICF International of Fairfax, Va., revealed the extent of the overpayments when it issued a March 11 request for bids from companies willing to handle “approximately 1,000 to 5,000 cases that will necessitate collection effort.”

The bid invitation said: “The average amount to be collected is estimated to be approximately $35,000, but in some cases may be as high as $100,000 to $150,000.”

The biggest grant amount allowed by the Road Home program is $150,000, so ICF believes it paid some recipients the maximum when they should not have received a penny. If ICF’s highest estimate of 5,000 collection cases — overpaid by an average of $35,000 — proves to be true, that means applicants will have to pay back a total of $175 million.

One-third of qualified applicants for Road Home help had yet to receive any rebuilding check as of this past week. The program, which has come to symbolize the lurching Katrina recovery effort, is financed by $11 billion in federal funds.

ICF spokeswoman Gentry Brann said in an e-mail Friday that the overpayments are the inevitable result of the Road Home grant being recalculated to account for insurance money and government aid given to Katrina victims.

Brann said there was a sense of urgency in paying Road Home applicants, and ICF and the state knew applicants would have to return some money.

“The choice was either to process grants immediately or wait until the March 2008 deadline (for submitting Road Home applications) before disbursing any funds,” Brann said in her e-mail.

Brann pointed out that 5,000 collections cases would represent a 4-percent error rate for the Road Home that is “quite good for large federal programs.”

Frank Silvestri, co-chair of the Citizen’s Road Home Action Team, a group that formed out of frustrations with ICF, sees it far differently.

“They want people to pay for their incompetence and their mistakes. What they need to be is aggressive about finding the underpayments,” he said. “People relied, to their detriment, on their (ICFs) expertise and rebuilt their houses and now they want to squeeze this money back out of them.”

The prospect of Road Home grant collections comes less than two weeks after the Louisiana inspector general and the legislative auditor said they were investigating why former Gov. Kathleen Blanco paid ICF an extra $156 million in her waning days in office to administer the program. With the increase, ICF stands to earn $912 million to run Road Home, a contract that also sweetened its initial public stock offering, and helped it buy out four other companies. It now reaches into government contracting sectors that include national defense and the environment.

Paul Rainwater, executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, the state body that asked for the Blanco-ICF investigations, acknowledged the collections could be painful for applicants, many of whom have used up their nest eggs to rebuild.

Read the rest here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080330/ap_on_re_us/katrina_collections;_ylt=AtXji9lY4XQgj8rhvVimHKxvzwcF

China says Dalai Lama rejects dialogue

BEIJING – Chinese state media accused the Dalai Lama on Sunday of closing the door to talks over Tibet’s future, an apparent response to rising international calls for Beijing to negotiate with Tibet’s exiled Buddhist leader.

In a lengthy article, Xinhua News Agency cited past actions and statements attributed to the 72-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner that it said contradicted or undermined his calls for negotiations.

“It was the Dalai Lama clique that closed the door of dialogue,” Xinhua said, using China’s standard term for the Tibetan government-in-exile.

The statement came a day before the arrival in Beijing of the Olympic torch, which has become a magnet for Tibetan activists and other groups seeking to use the August Games to draw attention to their cause.

China has accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating protests in Tibet’s regional capital Lhasa and other heavily Tibetan areas that started peacefully among Buddhist monks, but turned deadly on March 14. Beijing says 22 people were killed in Lhasa, while Tibetan exiles put the overall death toll at 140.

China’s Premier Wen Jiabao told Hong Kong media in Laos Sunday that Lhasa is “basically stable,” and that “social order has returned to normal.”

Wen reiterated China’s position that it is open to talks with the Dalai Lama if he gives up his desire for independence, and acknowledges that Tibet and Taiwan are inseparable from China.

Officials with Lhasa’s municipal government described the city as calm Sunday, a day after a protest reportedly broke out at a monastery there. The officials said they were sending text messages to area residents telling them not to “believe or pass on rumors of unrest.”

Read the rest here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080330/ap_on_re_as/china_tibet