Around The Blogosphere 06 February 08

It's time for the Lunar New Year, which starts February 7th and lasts for 14 days, and this year is the Year of the Rat, 4706.

Tension, disaster, turbulence - welcome to the Year of the Rat...
Sheylara: The annual Chinese New Year rant... Izzy hates Chinese New Year...

Princess Sabrina blogs "Every year I'd make some plans to not be physically unavailable during Chinese New Year so I wouldn't have to withstand un-necessary snobbishness from the all and might relatives, of which my mum likes to call, family."

Chinese New Year celebrations in your city:

LA (check out the OFFICIAL Chinese Chamber of Commerce Los Angeles)

New York City

San Francisco

Chicago


Seattle

London

What do Chinese do when they get a scratchy throat? Munch on a hornet? Please see What do you do when you have sore throat or a cough?

Beija Flor is the winner of this year's title of best samba school of Rio de Janeiro's carnival, reports Thiago Velloso [pt]. Rio Carnival Video, Rio Carnival 2008 Videos

Best Teen Weblogs (from the Bloggies -- the nominees are: Sarcastica, The Rural Juror, Both Sides of the Mouth, It's Raining Noodles, and Miss Couturable)

Last week, Nigerian superstar, 2Face [African Queen], was attacked and robbed, Bella Naija reports: “Nigeria superstar, 2Face Idibia was attacked by armed robbers AGAIN! On Thursday last week, armed robbers attacked Tuface Idibia around 11PM in Anthony Village, Lagos State. The robbers allegedly got away with Tuface’s new Range Rover SUV.”

PopCandy: Shell Kepler, the actress who played Amy on General Hospital, died last week. Here's an extended version of the Super Bowl Pepsi ad featuring Justin Timberlake with the full Andy Samberg cameo. Here's a Q&A with The View's Elizabeth Hasselbeck. She writes a baby blog now. PItchfork has posted an interview with Goldfrapp.

Suanie on why she worships Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the world wide web.

Talk about "viral" - an initiative that began on the Net morphed into a massive, worldwide event in just one month. The February 4th demonstration against the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) , came to life as an idea on the FaceBook group "A Million Voices Against the FARC" --- it snowballed into a worldwide event with marches in 133 different cities around the world!

Sokari blogs about the campaign to end hate in South Africa

Srebrenica Genocide Blog writes about Bill Clinton's legacy in the Balkans.

YPulse:
- Textonyms (another word for text messaging acronyms used by those crazy text messaging teens) (Reuters)

- Hannah Montana, Inc. (more from Forbes on how "Miley Ray" is big business. Plus Soulja Boy's mobile sweeps) (Direct Marketing News)

Portugal has its own 'quarterlife' (online series "Flatmates" proving popular. And in Canada, Teen Flare launched a new site.)

Iraq: The Idiots have finally made Saddam’s wish come true, so says Baghdad Connect.