A Good Heart - Fortunetelling or Turkish Coffee Cup Reading

The news come from Jaffa, Israel. A fortuneteller named Kuma has been convicted for fraud and magic practices, plus reading coffee grounds.

"Kuma's transgression is something known to its practitioners as tasseography, the ancient art of overturning a coffee cup — usually a demitasse used for Turkish coffee — and looking for answers in the patterns left behind by the grounds."

According to Israeli laws, "it is OK to offer advice based on tarot cards and the stars. But not coffee grounds.

I have yet to find out if it is OK to practice coffee grounds reading in the US. By the way, if you know how to read coffee grounds, check out the pictures I posted on Flickr. Comment on any symbols you can figure out over the grounds.

Once again, keep enjoying your Turkish Coffee.

A couple of words about Turkish Airlines

Europe's fastest growing airlines company Turkish Airlines.
However, they still try to negotiate with "the Turkish civil aviation workers' union Hava-Is over workers' conditions are not resolved mutually."
According to Airwise News;
- The union, which represents about 11,500 THY employees including pilots and stewards,
- Turkish Airlines, which is also the national flag carrier posted a net profit of USD$132 million last year, up 28 percent from a year earlier.
Airwise also got this news from Reuters.
So, let's research Reuters about THY (Turkish Airlines). Same quoted news have been released on Yahoo India News by Reuters.
Their success might also be a result of their decision taken on Oct. 19, 2005.
"Turkish Airlines is applying new technology to achieve greater revenues from improved inventory management. The airline has signed a multi-year contract worth more than US$1 million with Sabre Airline Solutions for decision-support technology from the Sabre AirMax Revenue Management group of products. Turkish Airlines expects to boost total revenues by five percent as a result of the deal."

Besides, their admission to Star Alliance group at through the end of 2006 might have boosted their revenue.

To make the long story short, did you fly with THY? How was your experience? For me, their non-stop flight from New York, and Chicago (and Miami) to Istanbul is very convenient, even better if you redeem your miles :-)

Today's post took about 30 minutes. Through the surfing, I found out about Globalcool.org
The best application they offer is calculating your CO2 Emissions. Go ahead, and measure yours. and save the planet. I pledged to reduce my CO2 emissions by 2,056 tonnes.

I still stand for recycling, and cannot believe how much littering goes on in Philadelphia streets. Everything begins at the early age, even a young child can sometimes teach his/her parents. So, recycling should be on the agenda of every elementary school. My elementary school teacher told me not to even spit on the street.

While searching for the motto on Philly trash cans, "Fill It For Philly's Sake, Do Not Litter", I found out about this Sake site, and I want to dedicate this bookmark to all my Japanese friends. Arigatto!

Last, I laughed a lot to this picture below. Again, I was intending to search for littering in Philadelphia, but Google showed me this search result.

Thanks Google, you are awesome! I mean it.


Take care for now. Please, do not litter wherever you are breathing in oxygen.

Mind Blogging - Web, Mobile, and Here Comes Your Genuine Mind

How many times did you think about something in a very particular, innovative way?
And then, forgot!

Do we need to carry a paper and pencil all the time we have these priceless moments? Maybe, they are not going to change the world, but they may make a difference. Who knows, you might even write your own poem!

I would like to have my mind connected to a wireless receiver. I do not want to connect to Internet with my mind. I want to send my thoughts through this wireless receiver to my computer, or some type of library of thoughts, etc. Really, many times, all those priceless thoughts, metaphors, just dissolve. I am just waiting to have the tech geeks announce this innovative machine.

Philadelphia will be going wireless citywide, via Earthlink. So, it might be possible to connect to internet and do mindblogging. Or, almost everywhere, you can receive mobile phone signal (well, in subway it is very poor though!). So, mindblogging might be possible through your own cell phone. (By the way, check Blog Catalog for a mindblogging search result I found out. Indeed, the overall catalog seems to be nice agenda.)

Let's pay respect to one of the innovative ideas of this century. Low cost personal laptops for the developing countries. Unfortunately, it is not a great news appearing with the latest response from US President George W Bush's top adviser on HIV/Aids saying the world is losing the battle against the virus. The table below is taken from BBC World News.

ADULT AND CHILD HIV RATES IN 2006

	Living with HIV	Newly infected	Deaths from Aids
Sub-Saharan Africa	24.7m	2.8m	2.1m
South and South-East Asia	7.8m	860,000	590,000
Eastern Europe and Central Asia	1.7m	270,000	84,000
Latin America	1.7m	140,000	65,000
North America	1.4m	43,000	18,000
East Asia	750,000	100,000	43,000
Western and Central Europe	740,000	22,000	12,000
North Africa and Middle East	460,000	68,000	36,000
Caribbean	250,000	27,000	19,000
Oceania	81,000	7,100	4,000
Total	39.5m	4.3m	2.9m
Source: UNAids, all figures estimates

We are hoping to see more innovations in the health industry. It seems just unbearable to see those figures growing.

Last, I forgot to time my blogging again, but I guess it took about 15 minutes. As Mastercard ad tells us, these are priceless moments, as long as we grow a community discussing some issues over our Turkish Coffee break. Stay tuned for more!

Also, we bloggers should be able to add other bloggers (using Google's service), like a friend. I am hoping to see this feature in the near future. Google, hear my voice :-)