Belly Size Predicts Heart Disease Better Than Obesity

Check out this article from Medical News Today.

75 FREE MP3s with eMusic

http://www.emusic.com/me

Baha'i Blog Portal

This is from an email from a friend of mine named David:

"Some of the most popular websites these days, like digg.com and popurls.com, constantly update themselves with the newest stories, blog entries, and videos. We're trying to create a Baha'i version of this. The House appointed Baha'i Internet Agency has identified individual Baha'i generated content like blogs as a great, untapped teaching tool. Baha'is all over the world are producing great blogs, podcasts, videos, pictures and websites and we're trying to create a dynamic portal to make it all easily accessible and searchable...and we need your help.

Go over to bahainine.com to vote on your favorite look for the website, but more importantly if you have a blog take a minute to register it, and pass this [message] on to any Baha'i bloggers you know."

Ray LaMontagne in Concert

Some friends had an extra ticket to go see Ray LaMontagne in concert recently at the Paramount in Oakland. I was glad I went, he has a pretty amazing voice. His style puts him into a similar group as jack Johnson and John Mayer, but his melancholy distinguishes him. Click on the link to listen to a live concert in D.C.

Try Last.fm

If you like music and want to try something new, I recommend Last.fm. It's a social music/internet radio web site. Download the software, then enter your favorite artist. Last.fm creates your own music station that plays artists similar to the one you entered. You can also choose a tag, like opera or rap. Last.fm almost always chooses good music, unlike Pandora (a similar web site that I'm not linking to because I never like the music it chooses).

Check out my top artists:

Meet the Real Sacha Baron Cohen

NPR (National Public Radio) dropped this gem today - an interview with Sasch Baron Cohen, aka Borat, Ali G & Bruno. In addition to the interview, NPR includes another gem - the Kazakh embassy's point-by-point response to Borat.

We're all Egyptian

HAIFA, Israel, 26 December 2006 (BWNS) -- The Universal House of Justice, the highest governing body of the Baha'i Faith, has addressed a message to the Baha'is of Egypt in the wake of a 16 December Supreme Administrative Court decision in Cairo that upheld a discriminatory government policy regarding the Baha'is and their identification cards. The policy places the Baha'is in the untenable position of either having to make a false statement about their religious beliefs or give up their state identification cards. The cards are essential to accessing most rights of citizenship, including education, financial services, and even medical care.

Courtroom account - Denial of IDs to Egyptian Bahais

Read this courtroom account of the denial of IDs to Egyptian Bahais. Complete with photos and video! Reading the comments of some of the court-goers, it makes you think you are reading Dawnbreakers 2.0... (for those that aren't familiar, Dawnbreakers is a first hand account of the early days of the Bahai Faith, days filled with intense persecution.)

If this is your first time hearing of the case of the Egyptian Bahais, the Egyptian government requires that your religion be displayed on your ID. This ID is like our driver's license here in California, you need it for everything. The Egyptian government only allows three choices for religion - Muslim, Christian & Jew. So the Bahais are marginalized as second-class citizens because they must either go without identification or deny their belief.

(I found the link while reading Bahai Blog.)

Kramer

My friend Badi found this hilarious mix of Seinfeld clips commenting on the Michael Richards incident.

Thanks Badi!

New Rapper: Lupe Fiasco

There's a new rapper out there who I would like to recommend to you: Lupe Fiasco. If you like the Roots, I think you'll like this guy too. Most well known for "Kick, Push" (a song about a skateboarding date), a lot of his songs are more socially conscious. Check "Hurt Me Soul" for instance. Apparently Jay-Z thought Lupe's skillz were equal to his five years ago. (Don't believe me? Read it on his web site.) You can also check him on Myspace.

Audio files of Bahai Talks

Cool site with audio files of Baha'i talks.

Don't see Babel

Don't see Babel the movie. It's horrible. In fact, don't even rent it. OK fine, go ahead rent it, now that I've piqued your curiosity.

I should explain - the director, Inarritu, is known for telling a story from three points of view. (21 Grams, Amores Perros) Usually the movie is shot from three different points of view and he chops up the progression of time in the movie as well to make things interesting (the beginning in the middle, the end at the beginning, etc). In Babel, the director tells three stories that feel almost completely separate, each treating a different social ill. So the movie felt disjointed to me and neither of the three separate stories felt resolved. Plus the soundtrack was horrible. It was so bad I felt ill actually. Well, I'm pretty sure it was the music, not what I had for dinner...

Food

If you are a food lover, check out Yahoo's new food web site.

Kite Runner

If you haven't read Kite Runner yet, I highly recommend reading it. It's a tragic story about the life of a man who leaves Aghanistan at a young age due to political turmoil. It's a moving story of betrayal and redemption and I'll wager that no one has read it without at least getting a little misty eyed. I thought of this quote from the Bahai Writings while reading it: "He should forgive the sinful, and never despise his low estate, for none knoweth what his own end shall be. How often hath a sinner, at the hour of death, attained to the essence of faith, and, quaffing the immortal draught, hath taken his flight unto the celestial Concourse. And how often hath a devout believer, at the hour of his soul's ascension, been so changed as to fall into the nethermost fire."

(Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan, p. 193)

It's Hammer Time

The Azads ran into MC Hammer. Check it out.

Bahai calendar

The U.S. Bahai community has a very nice Bahai calendar you can print out and put on your fridge. Click on the PDF. (Thanks Kev for the find.)

Aref: African. Persian. World Citizen.

Check out this video about Aref: African. Persian. World Citizen. It's well done, by Bahai filmmaker Ryan Haidarian. This short is about Aref, a black child in Botswana who was adopted by an Iranian Bahai couple. Incidentally he is the little brother of a friend of mine who I went to Cal with (Negar A.). Shout out to Roya for finding this!

Jajah.com - Free & Cheap international calls!

This post is to recommend Jajah.com. Farshid recommended it to me, so I can't take the credit of finding it. It's very simple - go to Jajah.com, enter your own phone number, the number you want to call, and press send. The system then calls your phone and connects you to the destination number. The phone call quality was great - better (and 2.5 cents cheaper) than the 1019898 service you can use from a landline. (Depending on the country, 1019898 might be cheaper. Just add 1019898 before the international calling code, country code, then number.) With Jajah.com, calling El Salvador costs only 7.5 cents and to call Israel is just 2.5 cents. To call China it's free! And if you all register and call me, it's also free, regardless of where you are!

Here's the line from the Web site:

The JAJAH Free Global Calling Plan applies to land line and mobile calls to and within the United States; Canada; China; Hong Kong; Singapore and Taiwan and it applies to landline calls to and within Australia; UK; Germany; France; Italy and most other European nations. It applies when both call participants are registered JAJAH users. In countries where free phone calls are not available, or if someone is calling a non-JAJAH member, calls are simply subject to JAJAH’s ultra-low rates: http://www.jajah.com/info/rates/.

HCD Art

Check out Mr. Dunbar's paintings. Truly incredible. You can see some older paintings here.

Josh and Jessica in Honduras

My brother Josh and cousin Jessica are volunteering for six months at a Bahai-inspired orphanage. Check them out here.