Dr. Zehra Attari, a 55 year old pediatrician left her clinic at 2700 International Blvd. in Oakland and is currently missing. Anyone with information contact the police at 510.238.3352.
She was last seen wearing blue pants, a blue sweater and black shoes. She has black hair and brown eyes, is 5 feet 4 and weighs about 135 pounds. The license plate number of her 2001 gray Honda Accord is 4MUH810. Website is http://www.zehraattari.com/
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Firms Cater to Interracial Families - It's About Time!!
Products celebrate diverse relationships
Sunday, May 22, 2005
By Michele M. Melendez
Newhouse News Service
Courtney Morrison's birthday card from her parents last year had a cartoon drawing of a white couple on the front, but her mom shaded the man's skin with a brown pencil and curled his hair with a black pen.
Dad is black. Mom is white. Morrison and her sister, Tiffany, are a blend of the two.
Their mother's alteration inspired the sisters to design their own greeting cards, showing a more nuanced American family.
Frustration among biracial and multiracial consumers, who crave products that reflect their cultures and skin tones, has bred a home-grown market in goods from cards to clothes.
"There are all of these children of interracial marriages," said Tiffany Morrison, 37, who, with her sister, 36, launched Mix It Up in Los Angeles in January. "There are things that we need, and now we're creating them."
On the sisters' Web site, www.mix-it-up.net, are a host of black-and-white and color photographs on cards that are blank inside. The selections show the hands of interracial couples wearing wedding rings, holding a rose, clinking champagne flutes, wrapping around a baby with caramel skin.
The 2000 Census was the first to let respondents identify themselves by more than one race, recognizing intermarriage. About 7 million people described themselves as biracial or multiracial, 2.4 percent of the population. And about 6 percent of married couples characterized themselves as interracial.
By many accounts, the mixing is likely to continue.
Billy No, 28, sensed that vibe early. With a Korean-Mexican-French background, he was only a high school sophomore when he began to refer to himself as "blend." Not blended. Just blend.
He soon started making T-shirts and caps with "Blend America" in graffiti style. Eventually, the venture turned into a Web-based company, www.blendamerica.com, selling T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts.
"It's all about community, unifying cultures," said No, of Tempe, Ariz.
Saren Sakurai, 37, of Los Angeles opened his online store to support his Web site, www.halvsie.com, a membership forum for people who are half Japanese. His father is Japanese and his mother is Caucasian, of French and Welsh ancestry.
Sakurai said he activated the site in 2002, after a two-year stay in Japan helping to teach English to schoolchildren. He said the Japanese didn't embrace him as Japanese, as he had expected. Back in the States, he stood between two worlds.
His store sells T-shirts, tote bags, mugs and baby clothes with logos and phrases that point to the multicultural, including: "kiss me; I'm half Japanese," "multiracial," "multiethnic," "blackanese" and "Got rice?" written in Japanese.
The trend has its roots in the ethnic revival of the 1970s, a visible and vocal pride in culture, said Marilyn Halter, history professor at Boston University and author of "Shopping for Identity: The Marketing of Ethnicity."
"Here it is, 30 years later, and there's still so much attention paid to celebrating distinctive heritage," Halter said.
Halter said mainstream companies have fed the multiethnic market, broadening the range of models and actors in advertising. Various goods, including Crayola crayons and Cover Girl cosmetics, have undergone changes in marketing in response to the country's kaleidoscopic skin tone.
Individuals -- and children, in particular, building their sense of identity -- seek reflections of themselves in everyday life, said Nancy McFall Jean, president of the Interracial Family Circle, a nonprofit membership organization in Washington.
"These objects . . . are reaffirming in a lot of ways," Jean said.
And they are created by folks who have yearned for multicultural merchandise.
Mahisha Dellinger, 29, whose father is Creole and mother is black, remembers experimenting in the kitchen, mixing coconut oil and shea butter with store-bought hair conditioners and styling products.
"I couldn't find the right line of product for my hair," she said.
Based in Sacramento, Calif., she started Curls online at www.curls.biz in 2003, and now the products, including a children's line called Curly Q's, are available at selected salons.
Yvette Walker, 43, of Kansas City, Mo., took a longer road to her store. She recalls not being able to find a wedding cake topper with bride and groom figurines that looked like her and her fiancé. She had one custom painted.
That was 1989. Now, interracial couples have options, including www.meltingpotgifts.com, started by an interracial husband-wife team in Trenton, N.J.
Walker's exasperation led her to create New People magazine in 1990, exploring blended culture.
The magazine, online at www.newpeoplemagazine.com, gave rise to an online store in February. Cards, T-shirts, mouse pads and other gift items display different shades of skin together: the interlaced fingers of a black woman and white man, an illustration of a heart-shaped pendant split in half, its two sides representing racially distinct facial features.
Even though Walker and her husband are no longer together, she carries on the New People message: "My sensibilities haven't changed. You should be with whomever you want to be with."
Sunday, May 22, 2005
By Michele M. Melendez
Newhouse News Service
Courtney Morrison's birthday card from her parents last year had a cartoon drawing of a white couple on the front, but her mom shaded the man's skin with a brown pencil and curled his hair with a black pen.
Dad is black. Mom is white. Morrison and her sister, Tiffany, are a blend of the two.
Their mother's alteration inspired the sisters to design their own greeting cards, showing a more nuanced American family.
Frustration among biracial and multiracial consumers, who crave products that reflect their cultures and skin tones, has bred a home-grown market in goods from cards to clothes.
"There are all of these children of interracial marriages," said Tiffany Morrison, 37, who, with her sister, 36, launched Mix It Up in Los Angeles in January. "There are things that we need, and now we're creating them."
On the sisters' Web site, www.mix-it-up.net, are a host of black-and-white and color photographs on cards that are blank inside. The selections show the hands of interracial couples wearing wedding rings, holding a rose, clinking champagne flutes, wrapping around a baby with caramel skin.
The 2000 Census was the first to let respondents identify themselves by more than one race, recognizing intermarriage. About 7 million people described themselves as biracial or multiracial, 2.4 percent of the population. And about 6 percent of married couples characterized themselves as interracial.
By many accounts, the mixing is likely to continue.
Billy No, 28, sensed that vibe early. With a Korean-Mexican-French background, he was only a high school sophomore when he began to refer to himself as "blend." Not blended. Just blend.
He soon started making T-shirts and caps with "Blend America" in graffiti style. Eventually, the venture turned into a Web-based company, www.blendamerica.com, selling T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts.
"It's all about community, unifying cultures," said No, of Tempe, Ariz.
Saren Sakurai, 37, of Los Angeles opened his online store to support his Web site, www.halvsie.com, a membership forum for people who are half Japanese. His father is Japanese and his mother is Caucasian, of French and Welsh ancestry.
Sakurai said he activated the site in 2002, after a two-year stay in Japan helping to teach English to schoolchildren. He said the Japanese didn't embrace him as Japanese, as he had expected. Back in the States, he stood between two worlds.
His store sells T-shirts, tote bags, mugs and baby clothes with logos and phrases that point to the multicultural, including: "kiss me; I'm half Japanese," "multiracial," "multiethnic," "blackanese" and "Got rice?" written in Japanese.
The trend has its roots in the ethnic revival of the 1970s, a visible and vocal pride in culture, said Marilyn Halter, history professor at Boston University and author of "Shopping for Identity: The Marketing of Ethnicity."
"Here it is, 30 years later, and there's still so much attention paid to celebrating distinctive heritage," Halter said.
Halter said mainstream companies have fed the multiethnic market, broadening the range of models and actors in advertising. Various goods, including Crayola crayons and Cover Girl cosmetics, have undergone changes in marketing in response to the country's kaleidoscopic skin tone.
Individuals -- and children, in particular, building their sense of identity -- seek reflections of themselves in everyday life, said Nancy McFall Jean, president of the Interracial Family Circle, a nonprofit membership organization in Washington.
"These objects . . . are reaffirming in a lot of ways," Jean said.
And they are created by folks who have yearned for multicultural merchandise.
Mahisha Dellinger, 29, whose father is Creole and mother is black, remembers experimenting in the kitchen, mixing coconut oil and shea butter with store-bought hair conditioners and styling products.
"I couldn't find the right line of product for my hair," she said.
Based in Sacramento, Calif., she started Curls online at www.curls.biz in 2003, and now the products, including a children's line called Curly Q's, are available at selected salons.
Yvette Walker, 43, of Kansas City, Mo., took a longer road to her store. She recalls not being able to find a wedding cake topper with bride and groom figurines that looked like her and her fiancé. She had one custom painted.
That was 1989. Now, interracial couples have options, including www.meltingpotgifts.com, started by an interracial husband-wife team in Trenton, N.J.
Walker's exasperation led her to create New People magazine in 1990, exploring blended culture.
The magazine, online at www.newpeoplemagazine.com, gave rise to an online store in February. Cards, T-shirts, mouse pads and other gift items display different shades of skin together: the interlaced fingers of a black woman and white man, an illustration of a heart-shaped pendant split in half, its two sides representing racially distinct facial features.
Even though Walker and her husband are no longer together, she carries on the New People message: "My sensibilities haven't changed. You should be with whomever you want to be with."
Zennie's Zeitgeist Joins Sports Business Simulations - Film at 11
I got this idea from my friend Craig Newmark, who's blog "Craig's Blog" is a part of his overall set of Craigslist links. After some thought, I determined that since I was so interested in popular culture, and established my company (in part) to meld sports, simulations, and popular culture, and wrote two blogs: one on sports and sports business matters and one on popular culture with a personal bent, and since I was already identified with SBS, and Zennie's Zeitgeist was gaining an audience, it just seemed to make sense.
So, my blog's wrapped in the SBS brand and is a happy new part of the overall traffic count.
So, my blog's wrapped in the SBS brand and is a happy new part of the overall traffic count.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
"Pat" Morita of "The Karate Kid" Dies - Another Zeitgeist Signpost
And he was a big one, because in my view Morita was the picture of the assention of Asians in American popular culture. He went from playing roles that were somewhat "less than" to one that gained him true respect as an actor: that of "Mr. Miyagi" in "The Karate Kid." How many people loved it when he smoothly beat the crap out of that bully and his so-called martial arts teacher in the second "Kid" film? But far beyond that, Morita became a massive part of American Culture and he served the mantle of icon with dignity. He will be missed but never forgotten.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
California Population 33,871,648 : Already Majority Minority, Latinos to Outnumber Whites By 2020
SACRAMENTO — Researchers said Tuesday that aging infrastructure is not the only growing pain the governor and his successors face — by 2020, the state is projected to gain
10 million people who will strain services ranging from education to social programs.
The California Budget Project, an independent think tank that concentrates on concerns of the poor and middle class, released a demographic report that also indicates as the state grows by a third, diversity will increase to the point where Latinos outnumber whites.
In addition, a much greater percentage of the population will be elderly.
He Pulled a Truck With His Penis
I guess The Oakland Tribune has a slow news day. And no way am I posting a photo with this story.
Bay Area grandmaster of Qigong pulls truck with penis
By Grace Rauh, STAFF WRITER
FREMONT — The ancient Greeks worshipped it. Freud said women envy it. And Tuesday, a man pulled a truck with it.
Yes, you read that right.
He pulled a truck with his penis.
Grandmaster Tu Jin-Sheng, best known for his "Iron Crotch," attached himself not once but twice to a rental moving truck and pulled it several yards across a parking lot in Fremont. In lace-up leather boots and a black tank top, the 50-year-old tied a strip of blue fabric around the base of his penis and testicles and tugged to make sure it was on tight. An assistant kicked him hard between the legs before he lashedhimself to the vehicle.
He groaned, grunted and pressed against two men for resistance.
Then, slowly, the truck began to roll forward.
About 20 people, most of whom study Qigong, the ancient Chinese art of movement and breathing to increase energy, gathered for the truck pull in an unassuming office park just off Interstate 880.
________________________________________________________
His website doesn't really explain how he excercises at all. Oh well.
Bay Area grandmaster of Qigong pulls truck with penis
By Grace Rauh, STAFF WRITER
FREMONT — The ancient Greeks worshipped it. Freud said women envy it. And Tuesday, a man pulled a truck with it.
Yes, you read that right.
He pulled a truck with his penis.
Grandmaster Tu Jin-Sheng, best known for his "Iron Crotch," attached himself not once but twice to a rental moving truck and pulled it several yards across a parking lot in Fremont. In lace-up leather boots and a black tank top, the 50-year-old tied a strip of blue fabric around the base of his penis and testicles and tugged to make sure it was on tight. An assistant kicked him hard between the legs before he lashedhimself to the vehicle.
He groaned, grunted and pressed against two men for resistance.
Then, slowly, the truck began to roll forward.
About 20 people, most of whom study Qigong, the ancient Chinese art of movement and breathing to increase energy, gathered for the truck pull in an unassuming office park just off Interstate 880.
________________________________________________________
His website doesn't really explain how he excercises at all. Oh well.
Irag Leaders Want US Timetable to Get Out! - Bush Administration Backed Into Corner
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Leaders of Iraq's sharply divided Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis called Monday for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces in the country and said Iraq's opposition had a ``legitimate right'' of resistance.
The final communique, hammered out at the end of three days of negotiations at a preparatory reconciliation conference under the auspices of the Arab League, condemned terrorism, but was a clear acknowledgment of the Sunni position that insurgents should not be labeled as terrorists if their operations do not target innocent civilians or institutions designed to provide for the welfare of Iraqi citizens.
The participants in Cairo agreed on ``calling for the withdrawal of foreign troops according to a timetable, through putting in place an immediate national program to rebuild the armed forces ... control the borders and the security situation'' and end terror attacks.
The conference was attended by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish lawmakers, as well as leading Sunni politicians.
_____________________________________________________
This is the first clear signal that the US should get out. Between calls to get out here, and this one from Iraq itself, the Bush Administration has no real excuse.
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