suchandra

TELEVISION REVIEW January 26, 2009

'The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer'

A moving PBS documentary on the 'father of the atomic bomb,' who perhaps was the right man for the wrong job.

By Robert Lloyd, Television Critic

http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-et-oppenheimer26-2009jan26,0,7940026.story

<!-- MEDIUM RECTANGLE AD --> It's hard not to view Julius Robert Oppenheimer, the man often called the Father of the Atomic Bomb, as a tragic figure. His work directing the Manhattan Project ended a war but also ensured that we'd never again know total peace, the means of self-destruction having been brought to term. Which bothered him.

As portrayed in “The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” a rather moving "American Experience" documentary airing tonight on PBS, Oppenheimer was poorly cast as a weapons-grade Prometheus. Not only a talented theoretical physicist but a student of philosophy and Eastern religions and an occasional poet, he was the right man for the wrong job. (Some thought him the wrong man for the right job.)

"I feel I have blood on my hands," he told President Truman, after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first atomic test made him think, famously, of the Bhagavad Gita, when Vishnu "takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.' "

The film, by David Grubin, tells Oppenheimer's tale from cradle to grave, hanging the story on the 1954 hearings that were the culmination of efforts by rivals in science and enemies in government to remove him from the apparatus of nuclear policy by attacking him with old associations and missteps. David Strathairn, who played Oppenheimer in the 1989 TV movie "Day One," stands in for him again in scenes drawn from hearing transcripts.

He wasn't exactly a hero in those days; earlier he had confirmed that certain former students had been involved in communist politics. But he was a victim, of his times and his fatal naivete. His attempts to establish international oversight of nuclear power must have seemed quixotic to anyone with access to a newspaper.

Oppenheimer was a depressive, socially backward prodigy, at once arrogant and self-lacerating. It appears that his happiest days were spent at Los Alamos, sorting out the atomic bomb. Still, there were limits: Of Edward Teller's H-bomb, whose development he opposed, he said, "Even if from a technical point of view it was a sweet and lovely and beautiful job, I still thought it was a dreadful weapon."

The film suggests that he was never the same after losing his security clearance, but he continued to pursue "this great enterprise of our time, testing whether men can live without war as the great arbiter of history." That was nearly half a century ago. No luck yet.

robert.lloyd@latimes.com

<nyt_byline version="1.0" type=> Study Pinpoints Main Source of Asia’s Brown Cloud

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/science/earth/27obbrown.html

By HENRY FOUNTAIN

</nyt_byline> Published: January 23, 2009

South Asia has a cloud over its head — an unpleasant, unhealthy and climate-affecting soup of sooty haze that envelops the region, particularly in winter.

Scientists have studied what’s called the “brown cloud” for years, yet there has always been uncertainty about it. How much of the soot and other carbon-containing aerosols that make up the haze comes from the burning of fossil fuels in cars, power plants and the like, and how much comes from burning wood and other biomass for cooking and agriculture?

Orjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University in Sweden and colleagues have now removed the cloud of uncertainty hanging over the brown cloud. Burning of biomass, they report in Science, is the greater culprit.

The researchers used carbon-14 dating of atmospheric soot sampled in early 2006 at Sinhagad in western India and Hanimaadhoo island in the Maldives. They made use of the fact that fossil fuels are millions of years old, and thus the carbon-14, a radioactive isotope with a half-life of 5,700 years, has decayed away. On the other hand, vegetation that is burned when fields are cleared, and wood and dung that are used for cooking, contain “young” carbon, with plenty of C-14.

They found that biomass combustion produced about two-thirds of the pollution, a much larger proportion than found in earlier studies that used different methodologies.

The findings suggest that controls on agricultural burning and improvements in cookstove technology to allow for more complete combustion could make as much of a difference, if not more, in lightening the skies over South Asia as efforts to restrict cars or build cleaner-burning power plants.

The researchers also note that because soot persists in the atmosphere for a relatively short time, efforts to reduce the amount of soot may have an immediate positive impact on the regional environment.

First, some background from Wikipedia: "Since Poland's conscription system required every nonexempt university graduate to become a reserve officer, the Soviets were able to round up much of the Polish intelligentsia. Those who died at Katyn included an admiral, two generals, 24 colonels, 79 lieutenant colonels, 258 majors, 654 captains, 17 naval captains, 3,420 NCOs, seven chaplains, three landowners, a prince, 43 officials, 85 privates, and 131 refugees. Also among the dead were 20 university professors; 300 physicians; several hundred lawyers, engineers, and teachers; and more than 100 writers and journalists as well as about 200 pilots. In all, the NKVD executed almost half the Polish officer corps."

Why has Hollywood ignored this story? So there should be no surprise that a film about Christian martyrs and patriots coming from an anachronism called a nation like Poland will be quietly swept under the carpet by Hollywood.

Carol Moriel seems to have a few questions on chanting Hare Krsna, one shouldnt use repetitions.

The Hare Krishnas - ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness)

Chanting to Krishna… HOLY or HEATHEN?

http://moriel.org/MorielArchive/index.php/discernment/hare-krishna/the-hare-krishnas-iskcon-international-society-for-krishna-consciousness/

” Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.”

“But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking”- Jesus Christ (Mat. 6:7).

Hare Krishnas try to work off their bad deeds, saying, “If you act nicely and perform pious activities then you get good fortune, and if you act sinfully then you have to suffer. Q. What is the duty of a person who does not believe the scriptures? A. His duty is to go to hell. Q. How can it be changed for him? A. By coming here and chanting Hare Krishna.” (Back to Godhood, No. 35).

Hare Krishnas carry a row of 108 rosary beads, chanting a “round” per bead 16 times a day. They show devotion to Krishna by wearing East Indian dress, often painting their faces. Males shave their heads except for a hair-tuft. Sexual attention given to one’s mate is held in check to once a month. What bondage!

ISKCON publications (the Bhagavad-Gita, As It Is, and Back to Godhead), are sold while chanting on city streets. Hare Krishnas are to avoid newspapers and other publications (a mind control technique). The public often reacts to the transcendental trickery, fraudulent con games! The Hare Krishnas consider non-members to be demons! Misleading a demon is acceptable; so they try to liberate people’s money which is considered to be Krishna’s. Christianity renounces dishonesty (2 Cor. 4:2). . Hare Krishnas (like New Age religion) is just repackaged Hinduism. Hinduism teaches that many gods exist (polytheism), that god is all and all is god. One supreme personality of the universe contains all of the gods and goddesses within himself. The sect teaches that Krishna is the supreme god. Followers hope to attain god-consciousness, giving up the illusion of individuality, merging with the all-encompassing person of Krishna.

What a breath-taking leap of logic! Clearly, if I am striving for this god-consciousness, I can never say, “I have reached god-consciousness.” As soon as I say “I”, I have disproved my claim, for I am still an individual personality. If I even think “I” (or think at all), I perform an individual act of personality. Logically followed, the experience of Nirvana becomes a nonexperience experienced by a nonentity. This is impossible.

Are the Hare Krishnas compatible with Christianity as they claim? No one can fall for their belief system and still have a modicum of sense when it comes to the Bible. There is nothing Christian about their belief system. The one God of the Bible (Isaiah 43:10) is distinct from His creation (Romans 1:20-23) and condemns idol worship (Isaiah 44:6-20). We will never become a part of God or God — the job is already taken! (See Gen. 3:1-5; Ez. 28:2-9; Isaiah 47:8-11). The Hare Krishnas believe in the existence of Jesus but only as one person who had religious truth. He was just one son of god and did not die for our sins. How wrong!

Anyone who comes to know Jesus Christ as God the Son (John 20:28,31), knows God is not a mere cosmic force or an impersonal spiritual entity! How does one attain salvation? Hare Krishnas imagine salvation is gained by working hard to erase the debts of ones karmic existence. They strive to meet Krishna’s approval, serving and worshipping him. When good deeds atone for bad deeds, then a person becomes one with Krishna and ceases the cycle of rebirths.

This karma idea is neither logical nor Biblical. Is it just or reasonable for one to suffer in this life for sins committed in a previous life that a person does not even remember? How can suffering for an unknown sin reform the sinner so he no longer performs that sin? That would be cruelty, not justice! Children, for example, supposedly starve because of their bad karma in a previous life.

Is salvation from many lives of ignorant slavery? You don’t have to chant to please God. God wants to free you from the bondage of your past (John 8:34-36). He offers you salvation immediately (Heb. 7:25), through His grace and not our good works (Eph. 2:8-10), and by God’s work not ours (John 6:29). You are not bound by bad karma. God knows that you could never do enough to reach Him on your own. That is why God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to pay for your sin-debt at the cross. You can have peace with God right now and know that He loves you! Accepting Jesus, God promises you can know you are accepted by Him (1 John 5:13). God offers you forgiveness now for all of your sins and for all time.

Can you trust a self-authenticating message? Everything from demonism, Eastern mysticism, Roman Catholicism — the isms, the cisms, the asims and spasms claim mystical experiences. Hare Krishna interpretations come from Hindu philosophy. Even the Charismatic lunatic fringe has wild experiences that resemble demonism. Everyone who carries on like a bonzo in public places is going to be considered a bit crazy (1 Cor. 14:23). Clearly, if you want to know what is going on, subjective religious experiences cannot be self-interpreting. Hindu groups generally disapprove of alcohol and drugs, but they produce the same kind of a dependency as the chanting and meditation. Such vain efforts to attain god-consciousness really hinder getting to know the true God. Is “inner harmony” a test of truth? Many claim peace when there is no inner peace. Nothing appears to be more at rest than a corpse!

Relief from stress does not prove someone is close to God. Those who study human nature know the dangers of getting rid of rationality, grasping a pseudo-peace. Eastern Mysticism implies there is no significance in human reason. Our minds and responsibility become enemies one must transcend to find peace. Yet, the only lasting peace and fulfillment does make sense and is consistent with rationality. Is a subjective human experience sufficient grounds upon which to build our knowledge of God? The Christian life does include wonderful experiences; but trusting the God who spoke in history is not just subjective. Objectively, Jesus Christ came as God’s personal, revelation. Jesus called men into a personal relationship with God through knowing Him (John 1:18; 14:7).

Is meditation and chanting desirable to reach out to God? Bhakti-Yoka is not of God! Jesus never encouraged this kind of meditation. Instead He taught His disciples to pray. The prayer He taught was simple, rational and short. Bible characters experienced God’s blessings through their daily experiences and devotion to Him. Jesus warned that ecstatic experiences are not the criteria to discern a person’s relationship with God (Mat. 7:22). Love for God is defined in practical terms (John 14:23-24). If there were any value in mind-emptying or mantra-rehearsing, Jesus would have said so.

Can we ignore the possibilities of spiritual deception? (Mat. 7:15; 24:11; 2 Pet. 2:1; 1 John 4:1-3). Besides God, there is another spiritual power, a deceiver and a liar (John 8:44). Satan gives experiences to religious people all over the world. Meditation and mantra-chanting result in a loss of personality and psychological disorder. Satan busily exploits the Eastern meditative techniques! Just opening up gives him access to the mind. In human terms, psychiatrists note a similarity between what they call a manic-depressive psychosis and those who practice mystical experiences. The Bible always interprets such personality disorders in terms of direct action from the devil who devours human personality (Luke 8:30). Unlike the Hindu philosophical presuppositions, your human individuality is very important to God (Mat. 13:43; 20:23; 25:23; 1 Cor. 15:35-55; 1 Thes. 5:23; 2 Tim. 4:18).

How can we know the true God? We must come to God as a Person we need to know (John 14:7). Such knowledge is not mystical; it is personal. This knowledge bridges the gap between the objective and the subjective. God reveals Himself to us both objectively, through the Bible (1 Pet. 1:23), and subjectively, through His Spirit (John 3:5). An intellectual understanding of the Bible is important but not enough. God’s Word appears puzzling and sterile without His Spirit. Knowing about God is not knowing God Himself. If you treat anyone as only an object, you will never come to really know that person. You merely know how they look or act. Subjectively, we must come to God, knowing Him and being known (John 10:14-15; Gal. 4:9). Applying these truths by the Spirit, we enter into a personal relationship with God (Mat. 11:25-30; 1 Cor. 2:6-16; 2 Cor. 4:6).

God is not just a fact to be believed or a feeling to be experienced. He is a Person to be known, trusted and loved. What is the gospel (1 Cor. 15:1) that saves (vs. 2)? We must understand, objectively, that Jesus died for our sins, was buried and rose again from the dead (vs. 3,4). Subjectively, the Holy Spirit must apply the truth to our hearts. There must be repentance and faith (a change of mind and a change of heart) before becoming a Christian. Neglecting either produces many decisions and many experiences, but not real life in God. Spiritual experiences without God’s Word lead to an incoherent mysticism resembling the work of evil spirits.

Therefore, if God is to be known, it will be through a union and cooperation of external revealed truth and internal spiritual illumination Illusions or delusions? The Hare Krishnas refuse to eat eggs, meat, or fish (Acts 10:9-16; 1 Cor. 10:25-31; 1 Tim. 4:1-5). Their food is considered a spiritual offering to Krishna. They are deceived into thinking that our material atmosphere is just an illusion. Yet they ceremoniously bath, dress, feed, and worship statues in their temple. Regardless of anyone’s religious perspective of life after death, what happens will not just follow the views of some religious group. Your destiny depends upon reality!

Is the Koran a divine book? Hare Krishnas regard both the Bible and the Koran as distorted scripture. Relating to prophecy, the Koran contains only one and that was self-fulfilling by Mohammed (not too impressive). We might score the Koran a .001 on that basis.

What about the Bible? Hundreds of prophecies given hundreds of years in advance have been fulfilled (no failures)! In baseball terms, the Bible bats a thousand!

Poof or Proof? When it’s all said and done, facts still count. You can chant yourself right into hell or you can investigate objectively! Read the greatest Book ever written! It will touch your heart and stimulate your intellect! If your religion is wrong, you are wrong for all eternity! It would be well to take time now and hear from God! Consider Science for example –

God’s Word:

• Says, “In the beginning God created…” (Gen. 1:1). A termite chews and swallows wood; but cannot digest it! Flagellates (parasites living in the stomach of the termite) digest cellulose fibers if someone chews it up first. The termite is totally dependent on the flagellate and the flagellates are totally dependent on the termite! One cannot exist without the other. Explain that without creation!
  
• Says the life of flesh is in the blood (Lev. 17:11).
  
• Describes the fixed orbit of the earth (Job 22:14).
  
• Says the earth is suspended on nothing. Atlas, a huge turtle or elephants do not hold it up. In the Northern sky within millions of stars is a vast expanse of blackness. Only God could describe it before telescopes (Job 26:7).
  
• Noted that the air has weight (the result of gravity). Science confirms air is about 50 miles thick, exactly right to support life and perfect for our lungs. Air filters deadly rays. If the earth was 10% larger or smaller we would all die. We are in a fragile balance before the sun between frying and freezing (Job 28:25).
  
• Explains the hydraulic cycle. Condensation and hydrology maintain life, provide evaporation, trans-portation, precipitation and run-off. The never-ending cycle is described with fine accuracy (Job 36:27-28; Ec. 1:6,7; Isaiah 40:12; 55:10).
  
• Shows the earth rotates (Job 38:12-17).
  
• Tells of the treasures of the snow. Snow provides nitrogen for fertilizer. Each flake is perfect and different, (Job 38:22).
  
• Describes ice. Uniquely, frozen water expands and rises; to sink would kill the waterlife (Job 38:30).
  
• Explains the solar system. The Hebrew language speaks of a pivot or hinge. In the south-southwest is the Pleiades, 7 stars making up the center of the solar system (Job 38:31).
  
• Describes man near a dinosaur (Job 40:15-24).
  
• Mentions the paths of the sea (Psalm 8:8).
  
• Reveals that the earth is wearing down. Now mankind affirms the speed of light is decaying, the magnetic field is collapsing, the earth is slowly beginning to wobble on its axis, and the protective ozone layer is thinning. Could nothing plus nobody result in everything, bringing man from a frog? The 2nd law of thermo-dynamics says everything tends to disintegrate, not move to a higher complexity (Psalm 102:25,26).
  
• Describes poetically the DNA molecule in the formation of the unborn child (Psalm 139:13-16).
  
• Mentions the dust particles in the air. Without reflection on dust there could be no light (Proverbs 8:26).
  
• Explains psychotherapy (Proverbs 16:24; 17:22).
  
• Tells us the wind has currents. Science discovered that the circulation of winds move by fixed laws. Scripture is not human supposition (Ec. 1:6; Isaiah 40:12).
  
• Explains the ocean as the origin of rain (Ec. 1:7).
  
• Tells us the earth is not flat but a round sphere. The atmosphere is a terrestrial blanket making the earth inhabitable — retaining heat, spreading light, and providing air (Isaiah 40:22).
  
• Explains that the stars are beyond numbering. Hipparchus numbered the stars in 150 B.C. at exactly 1026. Ptolemy, 150 years later, counted 1056 . There are at least 10 million, billion, billion stars according to Dr. Henry Morris. Scientists estimate by modern telescope that there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone. Note that there are not millions but billions of such galaxies. Biblical insights were far in advance of our modern day science (Gen. 15:5; Jeremiah 33:32; Job 22:12; Isaiah 55:9; 1 Corinthians 15:41 and 2 Peter 3:10).

Sources: Answers to the Cultist at Your Door, (Harvest House); God and the Gurus, (InterVarsity Press).

Suggestions for reading: Knowing God, by J.I. Packer, for a head and heart knowledge of God. Evidence That Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell, for great archaeological, historical, and prophetic proof of the Bible.

According Srimad Bhagavatam, the first stratum of the covering (earth) is calculated to extend eighty million miles, and the subsequent coverings of the universe are respectively of fire, effulgence, air and ether, one after another, each extending ten times further than the previous.

<table bgcolor="#e6f2f2" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="466"><tbody><tr><td colspan="3">

</td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td colspan="2">Very-highenergy gamma rays from a distant quasar: How transparent is the universe?

</td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td class="content" colspan="2" valign="top"> The atmospheric Cherenkov gamma- ray telescope MAGIC, designed for a low- energy threshold, has detected very- high- energy gamma rays from a giant flare of the distant Quasi- Stellar Radio Source ( in short: radio quasar) 3C 279, at a distance of more than 5 billion light- years ( a redshift of 0.536). No quasar has been observed previously in very- high- energy gamma radiation, and this is also the most distant object detected emitting gamma rays above 50 gigaelectron volts. Because high- energy gamma rays may be stopped by interacting with the diffuse background light in the universe, the observations by MAGIC imply a low amount for such light, consistent with that known from galaxy counts. </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td valign="top" width="16" height="16"></td> <td class="linkBlack" valign="top"> Quelle: [Article] Science. 320(5884):1752-1754, 2008 Jun 27.

Autoren: Albert J. Aliu E. Anderhub H. Antonelli LA. Antoranz P. Backes M. Baixeras C. Barrio JA. Bartko H. Bastieri D. Becker JK. Bednarek W. Berger K. Bernardini E. Bigongiari C. Biland A. Bock RK. Bonnoli G. Bordas P. Bosch-Ramon V. Bretz T. B </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3" bgcolor="#cccccc" height="1"></td></tr></tbody></table> <table bgcolor="#ffffff" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="466"><tbody><tr> <td width="10" height="10"></td> <td width="16"></td> <td width="440"></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td valign="top" width="16" height="16"></td> <td class="linkBlack" valign="top"> Gravitational wave detectors - Squeezing up the sensitivity

Source: [News Item] Nature Physics. 4(6):440-441, 2008 Jun.

Authors: Schnabel R. </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3" bgcolor="#cccccc" height="1"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td valign="top" width="16" height="16"></td> <td class="linkBlack" valign="top"> The redshift dependence of the structure of massive Lambda cold dark matter haloes

Source: [Article] Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 387(2):536-544, 2008 Jun 21.

Authors: Gao L. Navarro JF. Cole S. Frenk CS. White SDM. Springel V. Jenkins A. Neto AF. </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3" bgcolor="#cccccc" height="1"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td valign="top" width="16" height="16"></td> <td class="linkBlack" valign="top"> Near-infrared integral field spectroscopy of the Homunculus nebula around eta Carinae using Gemini/CIRPASS

Source: [Article] Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 387(2):564-576, 2008 Jun 21.

Authors: Teodoro M. Damineli A. Sharp RG. Groh JH. Barbosa CL. </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3" bgcolor="#cccccc" height="1"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td valign="top" width="16" height="16"></td> <td class="linkBlack" valign="top"> Timeline analysis and wavelet multiscale analysis of the AKARI All-Sky Survey at 90 mu m

Source: [Article] Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 387(2):601-615, 2008 Jun 21.

Authors: Wang LY. Rowan-Robinson M. Yamamura I. Shibai H. Savage R. Oliver S. Thomson M. Rahman N. Clements D. Figueredo E. Goto T. Hasegawa S. Jeong WS. Matsuura S. Mueller TG. Nakagawa T. Pearson CP. Serjeant S. Shirahata M. White GJ. </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3" bgcolor="#cccccc" height="1"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td valign="top" width="16" height="16"></td> <td class="linkBlack" valign="top"> Clarifying the nature of the brightest submillimetre sources: interferometric imaging of LH 850.02

Source: [Article] Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 387(2):707-712, 2008 Jun 21.

Authors: Younger JD. Dunlop JS. Peck AB. Ivison RJ. Biggs AD. Chapin EL. Clements DL. Dye S. Greve TR. Hughes DH. Iono D. Smail I. Krips M. Petitpas GR. Wilner D. Schael AM. Wilson CD. </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3" bgcolor="#cccccc" height="1"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td valign="top" width="16" height="16"></td> <td class="linkBlack" valign="top"> New active galactic nuclei among the INTEGRAL and SWIFT X-ray sources

Source: [Article] Astronomy Letters-A Journal of Astronomy & Space Astrophysics. 34(6):367-374, 2008 Jun.

Authors: Burenin RA. Mescheryakov AV. Revnivtsev MG. Sazonov SY. Bikmaev IF. Pavlinsky MN. Sunyaev RA. </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3" bgcolor="#cccccc" height="1"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td valign="top" width="16" height="16"></td> <td class="linkBlack" valign="top"> GMASS ultradeep spectroscopy of galaxies at z similar to 2 - III. The emergence of the color bimodality at z similar to 2

Source: [Article] Astronomy & Astrophysics. 483(3):L39-L42, 2008 Jun.

Authors: Cassata P. Cimatti A. Kurk J. Rodighiero G. Pozzetti L. Bolzonella M. Daddi E. Mignoli M. Berta S. Dickinson M. Franceschini A. Halliday C. Renzini A. Rosati P. Zamorani G. </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3" bgcolor="#cccccc" height="1"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td valign="top" width="16" height="16"></td> <td class="linkBlack" valign="top"> Diffuse stellar emission in X-ray luminous galaxy clusters at z similar to 0.3 - I. Is the diffuse optical light boosted and rejuvenated in merging clusters?

Source: [Article] Astronomy & Astrophysics. 483(3):727-739, 2008 Jun.

Authors: Pierini D. Zibetti S. Braglia F. Bohringer H. Finoguenov A. Lynam PD. Zhang YY. </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3" bgcolor="#cccccc" height="1"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td valign="top" width="16" height="16"></td> <td class="linkBlack" valign="top"> Opacity in compact extragalactic radio sources and its effect on astrophysical and astrometric studies

Source: [Article] Astronomy & Astrophysics. 483(3):759-768, 2008 Jun.

Authors: Kovalev YY. Lobanov AP. Pushkarev AB. Zensus JA. </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3" bgcolor="#cccccc" height="1"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td valign="top" width="16" height="16"></td> <td class="linkBlack" valign="top"> The effects of ram-pressure stripping on the internal kinematics of simulated spiral galaxies

Source: [Article] Astronomy & Astrophysics. 483(3):783-791, 2008 Jun.

Authors: Kronberger T. Kapferer W. Unterguggenberger S. Schindler S. Ziegler BL. </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3" bgcolor="#cccccc" height="1"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td valign="top" width="16" height="16"></td> <td class="linkBlack" valign="top"> A probable close brown dwarf companion to GJ 1046 (M 2.5V)

Source: [Article] Astronomy & Astrophysics. 483(3):869-874, 2008 Jun.

Authors: Kurster M. Endl M. Reffert S. </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3" bgcolor="#cccccc" height="1"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td valign="top" width="16" height="16"></td> <td class="linkBlack" valign="top"> Magnetic field measurements and wind-line variability of OB-type stars [Review]

Source: [Review] Astronomy & Astrophysics. 483(3):857-NIL_30, 2008 Jun.

Authors: Schnerr RS. Henrichs HF. Neiner C. Verdugo E. de Jong J. Geers VC. Wiersema K. van Dalen B. Tijani A. Plaggenborg B. Rygl KLJ. </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3" bgcolor="#cccccc" height="1"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td valign="top" width="16" height="16"></td> <td class="linkBlack" valign="top"> Large sample of BL Lac objects from the SDSS and first

Source: [Article] Astronomical Journal. 135(6):2453-2469, 2008 Jun.

Authors: Plotkin RM. Anderson SF. Hall PB. Margon B. Voges W. Schneider DP. Stinson G. York DG. </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3" bgcolor="#cccccc" height="1"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td valign="top" width="16" height="16"></td> <td class="linkBlack" valign="top"> Comparing Jupiter and Saturn: dimensionless input rates from plasma sources within the magnetosphere

Source: [Article] Annales Geophysicae-Atmospheres Hydrospheres & Space Sciences. 26(6):1341-1343, 2008.

Authors: Vasyliunas VM. </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3" bgcolor="#cccccc" height="1"></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3"></td></tr> <tr> <td width="10" height="16"></td> <td valign="top" width="16" height="16"></td> <td class="linkBlack" valign="top"> Technology challenges for space interferometry: The option of mid-infrared integrated optics

Source: [Article] Advances in Space Research. 41(12):1975-1982, 2008.

Authors: Labadie L. Kern P. Labeye P. LeCoarer E. Vigreux-Bercovici C. Pradel A. Broquin JE. Kirschner V. </td></tr></tbody></table>

Weapons are smuggled into Gaza from Israel, says Egyptian human rights official

<small> <xxa href="http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=19307" target="_new">Abdel-Rahman Hussein</xxa></small>

http://uruknet.info/?p=m51157&hd=&size=1&l=e

<small> </small><small> </small> <small> </small> January 23, 2009

CAIRO: Egypt has proof that the majority of weapons that are smuggled into the Gaza Strip come from Israel, said the general secretary of Egypt’s National Council for Human Rights Mukhlis Qutb.

In an interview with the state owned Al-Ahram newspaper, Qutb said Egypt has the necessary documentation and confessions proving that weapons are smuggled into Gaza by people possessing Israeli citizenship.

He also alleged that some members of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are involved in the smuggling and selling of Israeli weapons to the Strip. Qutb added that the deals and payment for the weapons are struck inside Israel.

Qutb did not show any documents to prove his allegations, but said that Egypt would never allow its border to be used for weapons smuggling. He also said that Egypt would refuse any security pact between the United States and Israel stipulating the presence of foreign monitors on its territory because this goes against its national security interests.

The tunnels between the Egypt-Gaza border were bombed consistently during the 22-day offensive Israel conducted on Gaza because Israel believes weapons going to Hamas come through these tunnels.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told Israeli public radio Thursday that the option to bomb the tunnels once more was still on the table.

"If we have to act, we will do so, we will exercise our right to legitimate defense, we will not leave our fate ... to the Egyptians nor to the Europeans, nor to the Americans," she said.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak had given similar comments to Israeli public television earlier in the day, saying, "If we are forced to, there will be more attacks."

Gaza-based Hamas officials entered Egypt Friday to hold further talks with Egyptian mediators on maintaining the ceasefire a day after IDF representative Amos Gilad was in Cairo for the very same reason.

Adapting new themes into Odissi

<img class="image_none" width="216" height="54">

Express News Service

First Published : 25 Jan 2009 10:07:00 AM IST

Last Updated : 25 Jan 2009 12:14:06 PM IST

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Hardly anyone could recognise her as the heroine of `Sthithi’, the Malayalam film directed by Sarath, which saw the debut of singer Unni Menon as an actor. But beautiful Nandini Ghosal has no complaints about it. ``I never expected people to recognise me. I’ve been in Kerala only for the shooting of that film. Now, I’ve been here for two days and I don’t think anybody knew me.’’ Nandini, best known for her exploits in the field of Odissi dance than her acting, is in the city to perform Odissi at the Nishagandhi Festival on Sunday evening (7.45 p.m.). `Sthithi’, best remembered for the song `Oru Chembaneer poo...’, is still fresh in Nandini’s mind. ``Recently I saw it on Youtube.’’ And she is all excited about doing another Malayalam film. ``Give me a chance to work here,’’ she said. Acting has taken a backseat for the time being, said Nandini. ``I’m busy with dance programmes and classes. And I am very selective about the films I do,’’ said Nandini, who had acted in Bengali and Hindi films too - like Char Adhyay (Hindi) by Kumar Shahani (Indian Panorama, International Film Festival of India, (1998), Kicchu Sanlap (Bengali) by Ashoke Vishwanathan (National Award and Indian Panorama 1999) and Akeli (Hindi) directed by Vinod Pandey Anya Swapna. She had started off with learning Kathak and Bharatanatyam, but devoted herself to Odissi when she found it suited her. And today she gives performances across the country and abroad, conducts classes, workshops and lecture demonstrations in Spain and the US and teaches at her school in Kolkata. And she has always been into adapting new themes into the tradition of Odissi. ``I always stick to the tradition, but have always tried new themes,’’ she said, refe rring to two dance-dramas based on Kalidasa’s works. On Sunday evening, she and her team of dancers and musicians will present a dance drama `Bhanusingher Padabali’, written and tuned by Rabindranath Tagore. It will be the first-ever presentation of the item. ``Tagore has written separate songs and I have woven that to tell the traditional love story of Radha and Krishna.’’ At the age of 15, he took the pseudonym `Bhanusingha’ and published these songs in a magazine claiming them to be from the medieval Vaishnava literature. It tells about Radha’s longing for Krishna. The night they were to meet, Chandravali, another woman, lures him. Though Radha is upset about that, she forgives him when he places the peacock feather of his crown and his flute at her feet. ``Tagore never mentioned about Chandravali,’’ she said. She also shared a few dreams. ``I want to direct one day. Also, my biggest ambition is to present dance, drama and film on one stage.’’

Although by rejecting Srila Prabhupada's varnasram project present Vaishnava institutions became big supporters of abortion (it is almost untolerable for a Vaishnava mother to raise a child in a materialistic society), the Vatican does the right thing and to publically reject abortion. As usual iskconnews and GM keep silent.

Vatican criticizes Obama on abortion issue

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Vatican officials said Saturday they were disappointed by President Barack Obama’s decision to end a ban on federal funding for international groups that perform abortions or provide information on them.

Monsignor Rino Fisichella, who heads the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, urged Obama to listen to all voices in America without "the arrogance of those who, being in power, believe they can decide of life and death."

Fisichella said in an interview published Saturday in Corriere della Sera that "if this is one of President Obama’s first acts, I have to say, in all due respect, that we’re heading quickly toward disappointment."

Obama signed an executive order that ended the ban on Friday, reversing the policy of the Bush administration.

"This deals a harsh blow not only to us Catholics but to all the people across the world who fight against the slaughter of innocents that is carried out with the abortion," another top official with the Academy for Life, Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, told the ANSA news agency.

"Among the many good things that he could have done, Barack Obama instead chose the worst," he was quoted as saying Saturday.

Officials at the academy could not be reached Saturday.

Although people are deeply stuck in sinful life the maha-mantra is gradually getting popular.

.....Brand also tried to explain why he kept uttering “Hare Krishna” in public at the height of the storm last November.

“It spreads positivity,” he said. “People were saying, ‘You can’t say anything now, Russell.’ So I just thought I’d say something positive and difficult to analyse.”

 

 

 

source: http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/showbiz/142092/Russell-Brand-My-nooky-wook-with-80-babes-a-month.html

 

 

The human body is like a junction. One may either take the path of liberation or the path leading to a hellish condition.

Developments like upraising to spiritual consciousness or the degradation of consciousness and to actually become situated on a desired status of live takes time.

Although one might contemplate a goal, till one actually becomes fully established it takes a lot of hurdles and barriers to overcome, things don't go speedily. Therefore the Gaudiya Vaishnavas did not protest so strongly about the ritual in Puri, first become born in a Hindu family, then take your next steps.

In the same way what we have now in the Western world, it should be clear that all these people take birth because they worked hard in previous life-times to get the chance to enjoy on Earth unristricted sex, meat eating, intoxication, sinful actions of cheating each other and to do all this among like-minded people.

I say on Earth because when you perform sinful activities on Earth you clearly do this in order to enter the lower planets to investigate and explore the sinful activities on millions of planets of the seven lower planetary systems. The catalyst at the beginning is always a deliberate decision, yes, I want this.

Therefore, it should be clear, in order to preach KC to present hell-bent humanity it takes much more input than to just do what is presently done. People have activated their way to hell already in their last lifetime. The way how they are presently informed about spiritual life is just rather a joke, damp squib, barrel burst. What the present Vaishnava institutions are doing is this full sunlight? No, it is not.

Prabhupada, December 16, 1976, Hyderabad: Just like in the morning there is no full sunshine, but there is some glimpse of light. That is not real light. Real light is full sunshine but before the sun rises fully there is some light. That light and this light is different. We have to come to the full light. Then our life will be success. Not partial light. That will not help. The full light you can get from the Supreme Person, Krsna.

A New York TV Show called "Cash Cab" is a reality TV show in a NY Cab that asks the passengers questions and if they get it right, they get money.

One of the questions on tonight's show went something like this:

The Hare Krishna Mantra, a mantra used by the popular religious sect The Hare Krishnas, is a repetitious mantra with three names: HARE, KRISHNA, AND _____ What is the third name?

The participants answered correctly "RAMA"!!!!

Jaya Prabhupada!!!!!

<table class="backGX" background="./templates/ProBlue/images/bg_blockblue.gif" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" width="15"></td> <td> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td align="left" valign="top"> <table class="backGX" background="./templates/ProBlue/images/bg_titleblock.gif" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" height="16"> <tbody><tr> <td width="5"></td> <td class="catnav">Community Post</td> <td width="10"></td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" width="5"></td> </tr> </tbody></table></td> <td class="more" align="right" width="45"> </td> </tr> </tbody></table></td> <td valign="top" width="9"></td> </tr> <tr><td height="8"></td></tr> </tbody></table> Hindu Americans pray to welcome Obama

Friday, 01.23.2009, 03:37am (GMT-7)

 MINNESOTA: Hindu temples throughout the United States marked the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama with the ringing of temple bells, lighting of sacred lamps, the sweet scent of burning incense and melodic recitations from holy Hindu scripture. The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) invited leaders of Hindu temples across America to participate in a national inaugural prayer service. The Foundation said special Pujas (worship services) and prarthna (prayers) were offered to invoke blessings for peace and prosperity just as inaugural activities were afoot in Washington, DC.

"With a new administration comes hope and a promise of new beginnings, and our prayers as Americans reflect these collective aspirations," said Shashikant Sane, M.D., a co-founder of the Hindu Temple of Minnesota. "Our Vedic prayer--from Hinduism's holiest scripture--translated from its Sanskrit asks, 'May God bestow on the leader of our great nation, the strength and wisdom to take care of all people with utmost care and compassion, and by just and ethical means.

'"Several Hindu temples from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Miami, Florida held special services and voiced optimism that the "change" President, President-elect Obama, will renew a commitment to inclusion and religious pluralism in the United States.

Prabhupada, April 23, 1975, Vṛndavana: Imagine if these hills were green. How much foodstuff would have been available both for the animal, for the man. All dry, all dry. People should immediately accept this chanting to solve this problem. And the yajna means yajnaiḥ sankirtana.

By Marcela Valente, BUENOS AIRES, Jan 21 (IPS) - Severe drought, which is many parts of Argentina is considered the worst in 100 years, has hit the country’s most agriculturally productive region and is expected to cause a sharp decline in grain and meat output.

Rural associations estimate that grain production will drop 39 percent and that 1.5 million head of livestock will be lost, while meat and dairy productivity levels among the surviving animals will be poor.

Drought assistance measures adopted by the government of Cristina Fernández include deliveries of livestock fodder, but farmers say the aid is insufficient given the magnitude of the disaster and are now directing their demands towards provincial governments.

The drought extends from the southern province of Río Negro through the central provinces of La Pampa and Córdoba and east and north to the provinces of Buenos Aires, Entre Ríos, Santa Fe, Corrientes, Chaco, Formosa and Santiago del Estero. It has especially hit the entire 600,000 square kilometre pampas grasslands region, considered one of the most fertile areas in the world.

Chaco Governor Jorge Capitanich predicted that in his province, agricultural output will be half of what it was last year. The area planted in wheat and sunflowers is smaller this year, and yields are down due to the lack of rainfall, he said.

And among corn producers in Entre Ríos, losses are estimated at over 80 percent.

An agricultural emergency has been declared in Chaco, Entre Ríos and Santa Fe, which gives farmers a six-month moratorium on tax and debt payments.

Although rainfall was scarce throughout most of 2008, the drought affecting the 10 provinces, which include the country’s agricultural heartland, has become even more severe in the past few months.

In the northern part of the province of Santa Fe alone, 300,000 head of cattle have been lost, and the rest are surviving in difficult conditions. In addition, fewer animals are pregnant.

The secretary of the Argentine Rural Confederation (CRA), Javier Jayo, told IPS that the current harvests of wheat, corn, soy and sunflower – the main crops – will be 30 million tons lower than in the last growing season.

The 2007-2008 harvest reached a record 97 million tons, including 47 million tons of soy. But political, economic and now climatic factors have conspired to bring about a poor 2008-2009 yield.

First there were the March to July 2008 roadblocks staged by rural associations, whose members were protesting the centre-left Fernández administration’s decision to increase export taxes on soy and grains. The government finally eliminated the tax hike.

Then came the global financial crisis that originated in the United States, which led to a plunge in commodity prices. The price of soy, for example, which was fetching more than 600 dollars a ton, had dropped to half that by the end of the year.

Now the most pressing problem is the climate. According to a report by the National Institute for Agricultural Technology (INTA), "in many parts of the pampas region, rains have been at their lowest level in 100 years."

The drought has caused a seven to eight million ton drop in wheat production, from 16 million tons in the last harvest to around eight million, INTA reported.

"The wheat yield was the lowest in 30 years and everything indicates that national production of corn, soy and sunflowers will also be far below the growing levels of production seen in the last few years," said the INTA report.

Although INTA has not provided estimates of output other than for wheat, which has already been harvested, rural associations have produced projections.

The CRA predicts that the corn harvest will amount to 15 million tons, down from 22 million tons in the last season, while the soy harvest could shrink from 47 to 37 million tons, if the scarcity of rainfall continues.

As a result, farmers will suffer at least seven billion dollars in losses, and revenue from taxes on grain exports will be down, said Jayo.

"This time the drought extended throughout the entire pampas region, the best agricultural and ranching area, and the rains increased in arid zones," Alicia Urricarriet, an economist with the Argentina Rural Society (SRA), which represents large landowners, told IPS.

She said the drought in Argentina and Brazil, which together cover 50 percent of global demand for soy, is driving up prices on the Chicago Board of Trade, a global commodity futures exchange.

According to Jayo, the recovery of prices is a reaction to the fall in Argentine production.

Farmers, having just emerged from a year of record output and prices, are thus preparing to face the impact of the dire new conditions. (END/2009)

Maybe you do not know, but 95% of those Allies members were Christians. They didn't have much love for Jews any more than Muslims have love for them today.

 

Matter a fact, even up to 1980s, many Christians have openly blamed Jews for "death" for Jesus Christ (which ironically, according to them, needed to die in order to save them). Yeah ... Christians are bunch of weirdos ... they blame Jews for "killing" their god but celebrate the death of their god as necessary to safe them.

 

Anyway, Allies attacked Germans NOT because they had love for Jews. They attacked because many of the nations of Europe have already fallen under Adolf Hitler and they were afraid of conquest by Hitler.

30 big cities in Germany like pic above, Dresden, were totally wiped out, civilians killed with napalm and phosphor bombs, altogether 2.100.000 civilian people killed by air attacks of the Allies. To say that the Allies were Christians who didnt want to stop the deportation of Jewish people but at the same time killed 2.100.000 German Christians, is of course not true.

My guess is that only consciousness exists. Everything is consciousness. Our perception of a material outside world is the product of our consciousness and in that sense may be seen as illusion. The existence of (lucid) dreams, for example, strongly indicates that such a theory can indeed be valid.

 

Why don’t we naturally accept this? I think because it ultimately implies that autonomous individual consciousness or individuality doesn’t exist, which is very hard to accept. If I see a brick wall and decide to run into it, I will experience a sudden stop of movement and pain. So the wall appears to be actually there. If you were witnessing me running into the wall, you would agree that there is a wall and that I ran into it. If, however, the wall is a conscious illusion, then we both must have experienced highly correlated illusions.

 

Another example is the fact that we can communicate with each other through this forum. If the forum is an illusion, then somehow our individual consciousness must be intimately linked through some other medium. If there exists no outside material world to account for such correlated conscious experience, then the only explanation is that all individual consciousness is in fact part of one single complex conscious organization that mediates, synchronizes and arranges all our individual conscious experiences.

 

Although obviously the (illusory) product of our consciousness, I don’t think that what we perceive as our material world is irrelevant. Somehow it is the way in which our consciousness makes sense of this complex underlying real organization. The human dream may be a limited but accurate reflection of aspects of reality.

Good points, this is exactly what is missing in modern science. Modern science is observing and theorizing. On one side it is ok, human being can do this, imagining, visualizating, to envisage things, etc.

When we speak of science there must be also an experiment, otherwise the whole thing cannot be called science. Therefore modern science should admit, we do not know what is consciousness, what is life, what is the soul, we cannot prove anything if life is created by chemicals.

When we speak of jnana, yes, there can be different opinions.

<embed src="http://en.harunyahya.tv/player/flv_player.swf?movieName=1262&sId=29437" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="320" height="280">

Love and happiness, the way of Yoga

http://www.thenewstoday.info/2009/01/22/love.and.happiness.the.way.of.yoga.html

Updated January 22, 2009 Iloilo City, Philippines<!-- InstanceEndEditable -->

By Alce S. Felizardo

<dfn>Shamarani Dasi.</dfn>

This is probably the most dynamic century of human existence. But, we only have a lifetime to live. Are we living it the way we want it to be? Are we happy?

Many of us seek “inner peace.” To be part of something that will promote not only our physical but spiritual well-being.

Bhakti Yoga Society of Bacolod under the leadership of Mark Cervantes (Madan Das, is his yoga name), organized a free lecture on “Bhakti Yoga and Mantra Meditation” at the Check Inn Hotel last Jan 10.

The speaker was Syamarani Devi Dasi, a world renowned Vaisnava artist and one of the first teachers of the Krsna Consciousness movement in the west and presently honored as the speaker of Vedic philosophy throughout the world.

Bhakti Yoga or Devotional Yoga is claimed as the most natural path for those who are dominantly seeking emotional fulfillment and well-being. Bhakti connotes devotion, or love, and love implies service. Service refers to that activity which is intended to please the beloved. Thus “devotional service” eloquently defines Bhakti.

<dfn>Syamrani’s famous painting 'Seva Kunja'

duplicated as posters and sold all over

the world.</dfn>

The ambiance of the venue was so calm. The aromatic scent of incense filled the room as the barefooted devotees sat comfortably in the “lotus” position. They eagerly listened to Syamarani Dasi. The female yoga monk interpreted the paintings she made in the past. The guests were mesmerized by the intricacy of each painting and the stories behind them. The paintings were said to be windows to the spiritual world.

What caught my interest was the seven rules to be happy being espoused by Bhakti Yoga. They are never hate, don’t worry, live simply, expect little, give a lot, always smile, but most of all… stay in love!

Syamarani Devi Dasi was assisted by Govinda Preya Dasi and yoga preacher from Manila, Krishna Chandra Prabhu who warmly welcomed the guests mostly coming from the local Indian community and other sectors of the society. The affair started and ended with chants and dances. Everybody swayed following bajans or vedic Indian music. After that, the guests were feted with “sentient diet” a vegetarian food which are without onion and garlic or “Prasad” as they call it.

<dfn>The devotees were treated to a

sumptuous Yogi meal.</dfn>

Syamarani Dasi and the group's next stop is Cebu City to join with her spiritual master Srila Bhaktivedanta Naranaya Maharaja who has been providing insightful guidance to all who come to him and is now giving his purifying association and divine realizations to sincere searchers of truth all over the globe.

Looks like there will be next week a showdown at the high court if Madhu Pandit has to give up the keys or go on with his huge program of devotional service of daily feeding 1 mio school children with prasadam? What is ISKCON Mumbai actually doing except of showing the deities to visitors? They badmouth Madhu Pandit as being selfish? Feeding daily 1 mio kids prasadam is selfish? Is here someone getting envious when people worship Srila Prabhupada and having tremendous success?

Open Letter to All Devotees on Hare Krsna Hill, Bangalore BY: ISKCON BANGALORE DEVOTEE ASSOCIATION

Jan 21, BANGALORE, INDIA (SUN) —

• Restoration: The action of restoring to a former state or position; the fact of being restored or reinstated. The action or process of restoring something to an unimpaired or perfect condition.
  Oxford English Dictionary

This text is addressed to all devotees on "Hare Krsna Hill" from the ISKCON Bangalore Devotee Association:

Dear Devotees, please accept our humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. Madhu Pandit dasa and associates have been trying to get you to support his theft by fraud of Srila Prabhupada's land and money by falsely claiming that he is fighting for the Rtvik cause. The truth is very different:

• 
  
• Madhu Pandit Dasa is not fighting a court case in support of Rtvik philosophy. There are absolutely no "Prayers" for enforcement of the Rtvik system in his suit #7934. [see pages 26, 27, 28 and 29 of his suit.] Madhu Pandit has not asked the court for implementation of the Rtvik system in ISKCON (reg. Mumbai 1971). If Madhu Pandit succeeds and the court grants him all his wishes, still there will be no Rtvik system in ISKCON (reg. Mumbai 1971). The topic of these suits is the fraud perpetrated by Madhu Pandit dasa to illegally usurp the Bangalore branch of Srila Prabhupada's ISKCON (reg. Mumbai 1971) and its assets for his selfish, egotistic purposes.
  
• ISKCON (reg. Mumbai 1971) is not hounding or harassing any Rtviks. In Srila Prabhupada's ISKCON (reg. Mumbai 1971) there are several prominent leaders and Temple Presidents who espouse Rtvik sentiments to various degrees. such as Jasomatinandana Prabhu. Temple President of Amhedabad; Mahaman Prabhu, Temple President of Indore; Rasaraja Prabhu, BI Mumbai and member of the ISKCON (reg. Mumbai 1971) Bureau; and Sevatulya Prabhu, who is serving at the Mumbai, Juhu temple for the last year. Sevatulya is openly Rtvik but he is holding a position of authority in the Pujari department. No one has thrown them out or even removed them from their posts because they are espousing Rtvik philosophy. So this is not about Rtvikism, but rather about Madhu Pandit's fraud and theft.
  
• Devotees in the Hare Krsna Hill temple can continue to serve in the temple and maintain their beliefs, just like the other devotees mentioned above.

Madhu Pandit Dasa is keen to point out other's flaws or fall downs but aren't fraud, theft and purgery also a fall down? According to Manu, theft is considered a mahapataka - a mortal sin:

• "Killing a Brahmana, drinking (the spirituous liquor called) Sura, stealing (the gold of a Brahmana), adultery with a Guru's wife, and associating with such (offenders) , they declare (to be) mortal sins (mahapataka)."
  Manu Samhita 11.55
  "Stealing a deposit, or men, a horse, and silver, land, diamonds and (other) gems, is declared to be equal to stealing the gold (of a Brahmana)."
  Manu Samhita 11. 58.

Bali Maharaja said that out of greed for money, he could not lie because:

<center> na hy asatyat paro 'dharma

iti hovaca bhur iyam

sarvam sodhum alam manye

rte 'lika-param naram </center>

• "There is nothing more sinful than untruthfulness. Because of this, mother earth once said, "I can bear any heavy thing except a person who is a liar."
  Srimad Bhagavatam 8.20.4

But for Madhu Pandit dasa and his cadre, lying and perjury are necessary expedients for achieving his selfish motives.

Madhu Pandit dasa has stolen by fraud Srila Prabhupada's funds and property. Why put yourself at spiritual, physical, and legal risk to defend Madhu Pandit's anartha of insatiable lust for power and control? You gain nothing in defending his interests, but risk losing a lot.

Very soon (late January early February 2009) the legal cases (#7934 and #1758) involving Madhu Pandit dasa's fraud will come to a conclusion. We are very confident of ISKCON (reg. Mumbai 1971) getting a favorable judgment and are expecting a return of the stolen property back to Srila Prabhupada. We request that the devotees on "Hare Krsna Hill" cooperate with the court order and thus ensure a smooth restoration of control of the temple back to Srila Prabhupada's ISKCON (reg. Mumbai 1971), so that the seva to Sri-Sri Radha-Krsnacandra is not disrupted or marred by needless violence urged by Madhu Pandit dasa in a last ditch effort to defend his selfish interests and megolamania.

We repeat, please cooperate with the court order and don't risk yourself for Madhu Pandit dasa, a liar, fraud and thief.

We are sure that the devotees of ISKCON (reg. Mumbai 1971) will look forward to working together with all the sincere devotees of Sri-Sri Radha-Krsnacandra on "Hare Krsna Hill" to usher in a new era free from strife so that we can focus on fulfilling the desires of that great mahatma Srila Prabhupada.

If anyone would like more information about the court case and how Madhu Pandit dasa perpetrated this fraud they can visit our website: http://www.iskcon-bda.org

To see this letter in its original form with live links and formatting please click here.

Yours faithfully,

ISKCON Bangalore Devotee Association

The "External World" Inside Our Brain

As a result of these physical facts, we come to the following indisputable conclusion: Everything we see, touch, hear, and perceive as "matter,the world" or "the universe" is in fact electrical signals interpreted in our brain. We can never reach the original of the matter outside our brain. We merely taste, hear and see an image of the external world formed in our brain. In fact, someone eating an apple confronts not the actual fruit, but its perceptions in the brain. What that person considers to be an apple actually consists of his brain's perception of the electrical information concerning the fruit's shape, taste, smell, and texture. If the optic nerve to the brain were suddenly severed, the image of the fruit would instantly disappear. Any disconnection in the olfactory nerve travelling from receptors in the nose to the brain would interrupt the sense of smell completely. Simply put, that apple is nothing but the interpretation of electrical signals by the brain.

Also consider the sense of distance. The empty space between you and this page is only a sense of emptiness formed in your brain. Objects that appear distant in your view also exist in the brain. For instance, someone watching the stars at night assumes that they are millions of light-years away, yet the stars are within himself, in his vision centre. While you read these lines, actually you are not inside the room you assume you're in; on the contrary, the room is inside you. Perceiving your body makes you think that you're inside it. However, your body, too, is a set of images formed inside your brain.

The same applies to all other perceptions. When you believe you're hearing the sound of the television in the next room, for instance, actually you are experiencing those sounds inside your brain. The noises you think are coming from meters away and the conversation of the person right beside you—both are perceived in the auditory centre in your brain, only a few cubic centimetres in size. Apart from this centre of perception, no concepts such as right, left, front or behind exist. That is, sound does not come to you from the right, from the left, or from above; there is no direction from which sound "really" comes.

Similarly, none of the smells you perceive reach you from any distance away. You suppose that the scents perceived in your centre of smell are those of outside objects. However, just as the image of a rose exists in your visual centre, so its scent is located in your olfactory centre. You can never have direct contact with the original sight or smell of that rose that exists outside.

To us, the "external world" is merely a collection of the electrical signals reaching our brains simultaneously. Our brains process these signals, and we live without recognizing our mistaken assumption that these are the actual, original versions of matter existing in the "external world." We are misled, because by means of our senses, we can never reach the matter itself.

Again, our brain interprets and attributes meanings to the signals that we assume to be "external." Consider the sense of hearing, for example. In fact, our brain interprets and transforms sound waves reaching our ear into symphonies. Music, too, is a perception formed by—and within—our brain. In the same manner, when we see colours, different wavelengths of light are all that reaches our eyes, and our brain transforms these wavelengths into colours. There are no colours in the "external world." Neither is the apple red, nor is the sky blue, nor the trees green. They are as they are only because we perceive them to be so.

Even the slightest defect in the eye's retina can cause colour blindness. Some people perceive blue as green, others red as blue, and still others see all colours as different tones of grey. At this point, it no longer matters whether the outside object is coloured or not.

The prominent Irish thinker George Berkeley also addressed this point:

First, . . . it was thought that colour, figure, motion, and the rest of the sensible qualities or accidents, did really exist without the mind; . . . But, it having been shewn that none even of these can possibly exist otherwise than in a Spirit or Mind which perceives them it follows that we have no longer any reason to suppose the being of Matter. . .204

In conclusion, we see colours not because objects are coloured or because they have a material existence outside ourselves, but because all the qualities we ascribe to objects are inside us, not in the "external world."

In that case, how can we claim to have complete knowledge of "the external world?”

Mankind's Limited Knowledge

One implication of the facts described so far is that actually, man's knowledge of the external world is exceedingly limited.

<embed src="http://en.harunyahya.tv/player/flv_player.swf?movieName=9573&sId=34016" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="320" height="280">

That knowledge is limited to our five senses, and there is no proof that the world we perceive by means of those senses is identical to the "real" world.

It may, therefore, be very different from what we perceive. There may be a great many dimensions and other beings of which we remain unaware. Even if we reach the furthermost extremities of the universe, our knowledge will always remain limited.

Almighty God, the Creator of all, has complete and flawless knowledge of all beings who, having been created by God, can possess only the knowledge that He allows them. This reality is explained in the Qur'an as follows:

The Artificially Constituted "External World"

The only world we know is the one that is designed, recorded, and made vivid there—in short, the one created and existing within our minds. Perceptions we observe in our brain may sometimes be coming from an artificial source.

We can illustrate this with an example:

First, imagine that by artificial means, your brain can survive apart from your body. And suppose a computer able to produce all kinds of electrical signals. Let us artificially produce electrical signals of the data relating to a given environment—including its sights, sounds and aromas. Finally, let's have electrical cables connect this computer to your brain's sensory centres and transmit the recorded signals. Perceiving these signals, your brain (in other words, "you") will see and experience the environment they represent.

This computer can also send to your brain electrical signals related to your own image. For example, if we send the electrical correlates of all senses such as hearing, sight and touch that you experience while sitting at a desk, you will assume that you're a businessman in his office. This imaginary world will endure as long as the computer keeps sending stimuli. Never will it become possible for you to understand that you consist of nothing but your brain. This is because all that's needed to form a world within your brain is the availability of stimulations to the relevant centres. It is perfectly possible for these stimulations (and hence, perceptions) to originate from some artificial source.

Along these lines, the distinguished philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote:

As to the sense of touch when we press the table with our fingers, that is an electric disturbance on the electrons and protons of our fingertips, produced, according to modern physics, by the proximity of the electrons and protons in the table. If the same disturbance in our finger-tips arose in any other way, we should have the sensations, in spite of there being no table.205

It's very easy indeed to be deceived into deeming perceptions without any material correlates as real. Often we experience this illusion in dreams, wherein we experience events and see people, objects and settings that seem completely genuine. But they're all merely perceptions. There's no basic difference between these dreams and the "real world"; both sets of perceptions are experienced in the brain.

Who Is the Perceiver?

The "external world" that we think we inhabit is no doubt created inside our brain. Here, however, arises a question of primary importance: If all the physical objects we know of are intrinsically perceptions, what about our brain itself? Since our brain is a part of the material world just like our arms, our legs, or any other object, it too should be a perception.

An example will help illustrate this point. Assume that we perceive a dream in our brain. In our dream, we have an imaginary body, imaginary arms and eyes, and an imaginary brain. If, during our dream, we were asked "Where do you see?" we'd answer, "I see in my brain." Yet, actually there is no real brain to talk about, only an imaginary body, along with an imaginary head and an imaginary brain. The seer of the dream's various images is not the imaginary dreaming brain, but a being who is far beyond it.

Since there is no physical distinction between the setting of a dream and the setting we call real life, when in "real life" we are asked the same question of "Where do you see?" it would be equally meaningless to answer, "In my brain." Under either condition, the entity that sees and perceives is not the brain, which is after all only a hunk of nerve tissue.

So far, we have kept referring to how we watch a copy of the external world in our brains. An important result is that we can never know the external world as it actually is.

A second, no less important fact is that the "self" in our brains who observes this world cannot be the brain itself, which is like an integrated computer system: It processes data reaching it, translates it into images, and projects them on a screen. Yet a computer cannot watch itself; nor is it aware of its own existence.

When the brain is dissected to search for this awareness, nothing is found in it but lipid and protein molecules, which exist in other organs of the body as well. This means that within the tissue we call "our brain," there is nothing to observe and interpret the images, constitute consciousness, or to create the being we call "ourselves."

In relation to the perception of images in the brain, perceptual scientist R.L. Gregory refers to a mistake people make:

There is a temptation, which must be avoided, to say that the eyes produce pictures in the brain. A picture in the brain suggests the need of some kind of internal eye to see it—but this would need a further eye to see its picture… and so on in an endless regress of eyes and pictures. This is absurd.206

This problem puts materialists, who hold that nothing is real except matter, in a quandary: Who is behind the eye that sees? What perceives what it sees, and then reacts?

Renowned cognitive neuroscientist Karl Pribram focused on this important question, relevant to the worlds of both science and philosophy, about who the perceiver is:

Philosophers since the Greeks have speculated about the "ghost" in the machine, the "little man inside the little man" and so on. Where is the I—the entity that uses the brain? Who does the actual knowing? Or, as Saint Francis of Assisi once put it, "What we are looking for is what is looking."207

This book in your hand, the room you are in—in brief, all the images before you—are perceived inside your brain. Is it the blind, deaf, unconscious component atoms that view these images? Why did some atoms acquire this quality, whereas most did not? Do our acts of thinking, comprehending, remembering, being delighted, being unhappy, and everything else consist of chemical reactions among these atoms' molecules?

There is no sense in looking for will in atoms. Clearly, the being who sees, hears, and feels is a supra-material being, "alive," who is neither matter nor an image. This being interacts with the perceptions before it by using the image of our body.

This being is the soul.

The intelligent being reading these lines is not an assortment of atoms and molecules and the chemical reactions between them, but a soul.

200 Frederick Vester, Denken, Lernen, Vergessen, vga, 1978, p.6

201 R.L.Gregory, Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing, Oxford University Press Inc. New York, 1990, p.9

202 Lincoln Barnett, The Universe and Dr.Einstein, William Sloane Associate, New York, 1948, p.20

203 Orhan Hancerlioglu, Dusunce Tarihi (The History of Thought), Istanbul: Remzi Bookstore, 6.ed., September 1995, p.447

204 V.I.Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-criticism, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1970, p.14

205 Bertrand Russell, ABC of Relativity, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1964, pp.161-162

206 R.L.Gregory, Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing, Oxford University Press Inc. New York, 1990, p.9

207 Ken Wilber, Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes, p.20

Question arises to me when reading below, is this a better way to preach?

The Secret Beyond Matter

http://en.harunyahya.tv/productCat/CatId/67/THE_SECRET_BEYOND_MATTER

Those who contemplate their surroundings conscientiously and wisely realize that everything in the universe—both living and non-living—must have been created. So the question becomes, "Who is the Creator of all these things?"

It is evident that the creation that reveals itself in every aspect of the universe cannot be an outgrowth of the universe itself. For example, no insect could have created itself, nor could the solar system have created or organized itself. Neither could plants, humans, bacteria, red-blood cells, nor butterflies have created themselves. As this book explains throughout, any possibility that all these could have originated "by chance" is unimaginable.

Therefore, we arrive at the following conclusion: Everything that we see has been created, but nothing we see can itself be a "creator." The Creator is different from—and superior to—all that we see, a Superior Power Who is invisible to our eyes, but Whose existence and attributes are revealed in everything that He creates.

This is where those who deny God's existence are led astray. They are conditioned not to believe in God's existence unless they see Him with their own eyes, forced to conceal the actuality of creation manifested all throughout the universe, and to claim that the universe and all the living things it contains have not been created. In order to do so, they resort to falsehoods. As explained earlier, evolutionary theory is one key example of their lies and vain endeavours to this end.

The basic mistake of those who deny God is shared by many others who don't actually deny His existence, but have wrong perceptions of Him. These people, constituting the majority of society, do not deny creation, but have superstitious beliefs about God, most believing that God is only "up in the sky." They tacitly and falsely imagine that God is off behind some very distant planet and only occasionally interferes with worldly affairs. Or perhaps He doesn't intervene at all: He created the universe, and then left it to itself, leaving us humans to determine our fates for ourselves.

Still others have heard the fact that God is "everywhere," as revealed in the Qur’an, but cannot understand exactly what this means. Superstitiously, they think that God surrounds all matter like radio waves or like an invisible, intangible gas. (God is certainly beyond that.)

However, this and other notions that cannot clarify "where" God is (and perhaps deny Him accordingly) are all based on a common mistake: They hold a groundless prejudice that moves them to wrong opinions about God.

What is this prejudice? It concerns the existence and nature of matter. Most people have been conditioned to assume that the material universe we see is itself the true reality. Modern science, however, demolishes this position and discloses a very important and imposing truth. In the following pages, we will explain this great reality to which the Qur'an points.

The World of Electrical Signals

All the information we have about the world is conveyed to us by our five senses. Thus, the world we know consists of what our eyes see, our hands feel, our nose smells, our tongue tastes, and our ears hear. We never believe that the external world can be other than what our senses present to us, since we've depended on those senses since the day we were born.

Yet modern research in many different fields of science points to a very different understanding, creating serious doubt about the "outside" world that we perceive with our senses.

For this new understanding, the starting point is that everything we perceive as external is only a response formed by electrical signals in our brain. The red of an apple, the hardness of wood—moreover, one's mother, father, family, and everything that one owns, one's house, job, and even the pages of this book—all are comprised of electrical signals only.

On this subject, the late German biochemist Frederic Vester explained the viewpoint that science has reached:

Statements of some scientists, positing that man is an image, that everything experienced is temporary and deceptive, and that this universe is only a shadow, all seem to be proven by current science.200

To clarify, let's consider the five senses which provide us with all our information about the external world.

How Do We See, Hear, and Taste?

The act of seeing occurs in a progressive fashion. Light (photons) traveling from the object passes through the lens in front of the eye, where the image is refracted and falls, upside down, onto the retina at the back of the eye. Here, visual stimuli are turned into electrical signals, in turn transmitted by neurons to a tiny spot in the rear of the brain known as the vision centre. After a series of processes, these electrical signals in this brain center are perceived as an image. The act of seeing actually takes place at the posterior of the brain, in this tiny spot which is pitch dark, completely insulated from light.

Even though this process is largely understood, when we claim, "We see," in fact we are perceiving the effects of impulses reaching our eye, transformed into electrical signals, and induced in our brain. And so, when we say, "We see," actually we are observing electrical signals in our mind.

All the images we view in our lives are formed in our centre of vision, which takes up only a few cubic centimetres in the brain's volume. The book you are now reading, as well as the boundless landscape you see when you gaze at the horizon, both occur in this tiny space. And keep in mind that, as noted before, the brain is insulated from light. Inside the skull is absolutely dark; and the brain itself has no contact with light.

An example can illustrate this interesting paradox. Suppose we place a burning candle in front of you. You can sit across from it and watch this candle at length. During this time, however, your brain never has any direct contact with the candle's original light. Even while you perceive the candle's light, the inside of your brain is lightless. We all watch a bright, colourful world inside our pitch-dark brain.

R. L. Gregory explains the miraculous aspect of seeing, which we take so very much for granted:

The same applies to all our other senses. Sound, touch, taste and smell are all transmitted as electrical signals to the brain, where they are perceived in the relevant centres.

The sense of hearing proceeds in the same manner. The auricle in the outer ear picks up available sounds and directs them to the middle ear; the middle ear transmits the sound vibrations to the inner ear by intensifying them; the inner ear translates these vibrations into electrical signals and sends them to the brain. Just as with the eye, the act of hearing takes place in the brain's hearing centre. The brain is insulated from sound just as it is from light. Therefore, no matter how noisy it may be outside, it is completely silent inside the brain.

Nevertheless, the brain perceives sounds most precisely, so that a healthy person's ear hears everything without any atmospheric noise or interference. Your brain is insulated from sound, yet you listen to the symphonies of an orchestra, hear all the noises in a crowded auditorium, and perceive all sounds within a wide frequency, from the rustling of leaves to the roar of a jet plane. However, were a sensitive device to measure the sound level in your brain, it would show complete silence prevailing there.

Our perception of odour forms in a similar way. Volatile molecules, emitted by vanilla extract or a rose, reach receptors in the delicate hairs in the olfactory epithelium and become involved in an interaction that is transmitted to the brain as electrical signals and perceived as smell. Everything that you smell, be it pleasant or repugnant, is only your brain's perception of the interactions of volatile molecules transformed into electrical signals. The scent of a perfume, a flower, any delicious food, the sea, or other odours you like or dislike, you perceive entirely in your brain. The molecules themselves never reach there. Just as with sound and vision, what reaches your sensory centres is simply an assortment of electrical signals. In other words, all the sensations that, since you were born, you've assumed to belong to external objects are just electrical signals interpreted through your sense organs.

Similarly, at the front of your tongue, there are four different types of chemical receptors that create the tastes of salty, sweet, sour, and bitter. After a series of chemical processes, your taste receptors transform these perceptions into electrical signals and transmit them to the brain, which perceives these signals as flavours. The taste you get when you eat chocolate or a fruit that you like is your brain's interpretation of electrical signals. You can never reach the object outside; you can never see, smell or taste the chocolate itself. For instance, if the nerves between your tongue and your brain are cut, no further signals will reach your brain, and you will lose your sense of taste completely.

Here, we come across another fact: You can never be sure that how a food tastes to you is the same as how it tastes to anyone else; or that your perception of a voice is the same as what another's when he hears that same voice. Along the same lines, science writer Lincoln Barnett wrote that "no one can ever know whether his sensation of red or of Middle C is the same as another man's."202

Our sense of touch is no different. When we handle an object, all the information that helps us recognise it is transmitted to the brain by sensitive nerves on the skin. The feeling of touch is formed in our brain. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we perceive sensations of touch not at our fingertips or on our skin, but in our brain's tactile centre. As a result of the brain's assessment of electrical stimulations coming to it from the skin, we feel different sensations pertaining to objects, such as hardness or softness, heat or cold. From these stimulations, we derive all details that help us recognise an object. Concerning this important fact, consider the thoughts of B. Russell and L. J. J. Wittgenstein, two famous philosophers:

For instance, whether a lemon truly exists or not and how it came to exist cannot be questioned and investigated. A lemon consists merely of a taste sensed by the tongue, an odor sensed by the nose, a color and shape sensed by the eye; and only these features of it can be subject to examination and assessment. Science can never know the physical world.203

It is impossible for us to reach the physical world outside our brain. All objects we're in contact with are actually collection of perceptions such as sight, hearing, and touch. Throughout our lives, by processing the data in the sensory centres, our brain confronts not the "originals" of the matter existing outside us, but rather copies formed inside our brain. At this point, we are misled to assume that these copies are instances of real matter outside us.

The one and only present experiment of modern science to actually stop speculating and prove that life comes from chemicals in bad shape. So far this experiment has cost 25 Billion Dollars - result: no life created yet.

"The priority now is to repair the machine and install protection systems that will prevent such events from occuring in the future", continues Heuer.

A global view

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1154954

After the usual six-month overlap with the previous management, Rolf-Dieter Heuer took office on 1st January as new Director-General. His mandate will cover the early years of operation of the LHC as well as its first scientific results. As he starts his new position, Rolf Heuer gives a long interview to the Bulletin.

The past six months have been a hectic period for our Lab with dramatic ups and unexpected downs that have marked the spirit of all CERN personnel. Given the challenges faced and still to come, the discoveries in sight and the open questions that remain, this promises to be one of the most exciting periods in the life of the Laboratory and in particle physics in general. "The scientific results from the LHC will have a huge impact not only on the future of CERN but also, potentially, the future of particle physics world-wide", confirms Heuer. "The indications we expect from the LHC in the time window 2010-2012 will show us the best way to proceed. Regarding accelerator-based physics at the energy frontier, the possible options are the SLHC and the linear collider, with technologies and strategies still to be defined". The Super LHC project (SLHC) would consist of an upgrade of luminosity up to 10³⁵ cm⁻²s⁻¹, obtained with a new chain of pre-accelerators.

"The priority now is to repair the machine and install protection systems that will prevent such events from occuring in the future", continues Heuer. "The LHC will certainly not run at 7 TeV this year. We don’t want to push for higher energy before additional protection is installed. On the other hand, we will go for collisions as soon as possible. The exact schedule for the LHC will be discussed at the beginning of February during a meeting that will be held in Chamonix and that will see the participation of people from the machine and representatives from the experiments."

The LHC is, and remains, the Laboratory’s priority but CERN also has a long and very valuable tradition in a rich fixed-target experimental programme. "After an initial setback caused by the request of resources required for the LHC", says Heuer, "the new management would like to increase the fixed-target programme beyond 2010, particularly with experiments looking at rare decays. But we are also asking for new ideas from the physics community; we need to do some brainstorming there. We will address the community soon to see whether they can come up with some good ideas, and will then seek funds to allow the realization of scientifically excellent experiments".

The role of CERN world-wide has grown in recent years, in part because the Council has taken up the new responsibility of leading the particle physics strategy in Europe. "CERN is Europe’s pillar for particle physics and my vision is to make CERN a global laboratory", explains Heuer. "The particle physics landscape is changing; we are experiencing a sort of ‘symmetry breaking’. In the past there were large machines in all regions. Today there is only one large machine and it’s at CERN. The big projects absorb a lot of money and take a long time, which is why one has no longer to think regionally but more globally, not neglecting regional and national projects of course".

Given the current financial situation and the strict convention that determines fixed contributions of Member States to CERN, it is not easy to imagine ways of enlarging the scope of the Lab and mantaining the usual high standards. In the December session, the Council approved the creation of a study group to examine the geographical and scientific enlargement of CERN. This group will hold its first meetings early in 2009. "In this phase, one has to be creative and find new ways of involving other countries in our scientific projects", adds the Director-General. "For this, I have set up a new unit in charge of external relations whose mandate is to seek for some kind of partnership with other countries and laboratories around the globe. My vision is to turn CERN into one of the big players in a sort of global laboratory. However, this has to happen while still preserving the existence of regional projects, because otherwise there is a danger of losing competencies".

Any partnership is a two-way solution, and CERN will be required to improve the transfer of both technology and knowledge to the Member States and other partners involved. "CERN is also a technology laboratory, as fundamental science cannot live without technology at the forefront. And there, we can have a lot of transfer both to industry and to society. To my mind, the first goal is the impact of such transfer and the second is the additional funding that can possibly come from it. There too, we observe that the world is changing. Transferring more technology and knowledge to our partner countries will certainly help us answer the question ‘why basic science?’ that we face more and more often. I definitely want a proactive technology and knowledge transfer from CERN and this is why both the new TT Group and the External Relations Unit are directly attached to the DG".

Coming to the new internal structure that was circulated via e-mail to all staff at the end of November, one of the priorities of the new management is to favour internal mobility. "Internal mobility is a good thing because it helps to break the virtual barriers between departments and between groups. It brings competencies from one field to another and helps to increase motivation."

Although the Director-General is not exactly seen as a colleague by the staff, Heuer wants "to reduce the distance between the management and the staff, and keep it as small as possible". And, he continues: "I would like to show my presence in various parts of the Laboratory as often as possible. This will depend on the time available, but at least I would like to try since direct contact is important."

The role of the CERN staff and a healthy relationship with the new management will be crucial to the success of the Lab in the coming years. "I want to keep the professionalism and skills of the CERN personnel and I want to keep their high level of motivation", says our new Director-General. "The new management also wants to have open communication, both internal and external. Internal is even more important, and we have to find an efficient way for communicating because CERN people need to get the information from us and not from the newspapers." And, he concludes: "I thank my predecessor and his team for the work done for CERN and I want to stress how instrumental he was in getting the LHC to deliver its first beams."

Rolf Heuer’s CV in brief

Rolf-Dieter Heuer is no stranger to CERN. From 1984 to 1998, he was a staff member at the Laboratory, working for the OPAL collaboration at the Large Electron Positron collider (LEP). From 1994 to 1998, he was the collaboration’s spokesman.

Much of his career has been involved with the construction and operation of large particle detector systems for studying electron-positron collisions. On leaving CERN in 1998, he took up a professorship at the University of Hamburg, where he established a group working on preparations for experiments at a possible future electron-positron linear collider. On taking up his appointment as Research Director for particle and astroparticle physics at DESY in 2004, Professor Heuer was responsible for research at the HERA accelerator, DESY’s participation in the LHC and R&D for a future electron-positron collider.

Professor Heuer has been a member of many scientific committees and advisory bodies where he acquired much expertise in reviewing projects as well as in judging and promoting people. As a research director at DESY he initiated the restructuring and focusing of German particle physics at the energy frontier with particular emphasis on the LHC.

<table><tbody><tr><td valign="top" width="50%">First black or multiracial president?

Mixed-race groups wish Obama would champion issue more

Gene Davis, DDN Staff Writer

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

</td><td align="right">

</td></tr></tbody></table>

While many people yesterday were celebrating Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th president of the United States, several activists said one part of the population has at times felt left out of the proceedings and Obama’s overall campaign — the multiracial community.

Obama — who was born to a white mother and black father — has said that he thinks of himself as a black man. And while the multiracial activists said it’s Obama’s choice to have whatever identity he wants, some expressed a level of frustration that he seemingly disregarded his diverse heritage and has improperly become labeled the “first black president” instead of the “first multiracial president.”

“There is a certain level of disappointment in the multiracial community that during the campaign and maybe his (inauguration) speech that he didn’t put a little more emphasis on his biracial background,” said Charles Byrd, publisher and editor of Interracial Voice. “Politics is politics and people understand that integrity and ethics kind of go out the window, but I think people expected a little more from him in terms of speaking to that issue of multicultural identity than he did.”

Susan Graham, executive director of Project RACE — a national organization that is striving for a multiracial classification on public forms like the census — said she was disappointed that Obama’s inauguration address mentioned his black father and not his white mother. However, she added that the new president has been good for the multicultural community as a whole and that she understands why Obama self-identifies as a black man.

“It goes back to that ‘one drop rule’ — you have one drop of black blood and you’re black,” she said. “Barack Obama probably felt the ‘one drop rule’ and he had to drop one (race) or the other.”

In Obama’s 1995 autobiography “Dreams From My Father,” the Harvard graduate described in detail his quest for who he was. After “traveling two worlds” in which he slipped back and forth between hanging out with whites and blacks, Obama wrote that he finally discovered his identity.

“It was in my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela,” he wrote.

However, the multiracial Byrd — who is also the author of “The Bhagavad — Gita in Black and White” — said he isn’t convinced that Obama didn’t have other motives for establishing himself as a black man.

“I think Obama made a calculated decision to identify as black so he would not turn off the black political establishment, whether it was locally in Chicago or nationally,” he said. “I think he felt he needed them in order to get elected.”

Five Denverites interviewed yesterday said they don’t suspect any ulterior motives for Obama identifying himself as black. Everyone interviewed also said that they thought the new president would be helpful for race relations in the United States.

“I think he embodies all nations,” said Linda Walmsley, a white Denver woman who had been at Obama-related events all day yesterday.

“I think (his race) means different things for different people,” added Merrian Brown, a black middle-aged Denverite. “It’s just one of the biggest things to happen right now — it gives people hope for a better day.”

The new president will be able to prove his dedication to the multiracial community in several ways, Byrd and Graham said. Both activists are hoping there will be a “multiracial” category on the 2010 census. Byrd is also hoping that Obama will not appoint any Supreme Court Justices who would rule in favor of any race-based polices — including affirmative action — that use racial categories.

“I know there’s a lot on his plate with the wars and the economy, but he still has a huge potential in terms of redefining racial discourse in this country if he chooses to be so bold,” he said. “The ball is in his court, and we will have to wait and see what he does with it.”

Gordon Brown brings Britain to the edge of bankruptcy

They don't know what they're doing, do they? With every step taken by the Government as it tries frantically to prop up the British banking system, this central truth becomes ever more obvious.

Yesterday marked a new low for all involved, even by the standards of this crisis. Britons woke to news of the enormity of the fresh horrors in store. Despite all the sophistry and outdated boom-era terminology from experts, I think a far greater number of people than is imagined grasp at root what is happening here.

The country stands on the precipice. We are at risk of utter humiliation, of London becoming a Reykjavik on Thames and Britain going under. Thanks to the arrogance, hubristic strutting and serial incompetence of the Government and a group of bankers, the possibility of national bankruptcy is not unrealistic.

The political impact will be seismic; anger will rage. The haunted looks on the faces of those in supporting roles, such as the Chancellor, suggest they have worked out that a tragedy is unfolding here. Gordon Brown is engaged no longer in a standard battle for re-election; instead he is fighting to avoid going down in history disgraced completely.

This catastrophe happened on his watch, no matter how much he now opportunistically beats up on bankers. He turned on the fountain of cheap money and encouraged the country to swim in it. House prices rose, debt went through the roof and the illusion won elections. Throughout, Brown boasted of the beauty of his regulatory structure, when those in charge of it were failing to ask the most basic questions of financial institutions. The same bankers Brown now claims to be angry with, he once wooed, travelling to the City to give speeches praising their "financial innovation".

Does the Prime Minister realise the likely implications when the country joins the dots? He has never been wild on shouldering blame, so I doubt it. But Brown is a historian. He should know that when a nation has put all its chips on red and the ball lands on black, the person who made the call is responsible. Neville Chamberlain discovered this in May 1940 with the German invasion of France.

We're some way from a similar event. But do not underestimate the gravity of the emergency and potential for disgrace.

The Government's bail-out of the banks in October with £37 billion of taxpayers' money was supposed to have "saved the world", according to the PM, but now it is clear that it has not even saved the banks. Our money kept the show on the road for only three months.

As the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman Vince Cable asks: where has the £37 billion gone? The answer, as Cable knows, is that it has disappeared down the plug hole.

It is finally dawning on the Government that the liabilities of the British banks grew to be so vast in the boom years that they now eclipse the entire economy. Unfortunately, the Treasury is pledged to honour those

liabilities because it has guaranteed not to let a British bank go down. RBS has liabilities of £1.8 trillion, three times annual UK government spending, against assets of £1.9 trillion. But after the events of the past year, I wager most taxpayers will believe the true picture is worse.

Meanwhile, the assets are falling in value. This matters, because post-nationalisation these liabilities are now yours and

mine.

And they come piled on top of the rocketing national debt, charitably put at £630 billion, or 43 per cent of GDP. The true figure is much higher because the Government has used off-balance sheet accounting to hide commitments such as PFI projects.

Add to that record consumer indebtedness and Britain becomes extremely vulnerable. The markets have worked this out ahead of the politicians, as usual, and are wondering what to do next. If they decide our nation is a basket case, they will make it so.

The PM and the Chancellor , both looking a year older every day, tell us that for their next trick they will buy more bank shares, create a giant insurance scheme for bad debt, pledge to honour liabilities without limit, cross their fingers and hope it all works. The phrase "bottomless pit" springs to mind for a reason: that is what they have designed.

In this gloom, the Prime Minister has but one slender hope: that somehow, by force of personality, the new President Obama engineers a rapid American recovery restoring global confidence, energising the markets and making us all forget this bad dream.

Obama is talented but he is not a magician. Instead, Gordon Brown's nightmare, in which we are all trapped, is going to get much worse.

www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/iainmartin/4295219/Gordon-Brown-brings-Britain-to-the-edge-of-bankruptcy.html

Same in Europe, the farmers also say they're getting no money for their milk.

Every household consumes milk but the farmers say they're not getting paid. Looks like our politicians should be send to the forests. Once they had 80,000 farms in Austria, now only 2000. And these 2000 are fighting to survive, have to work in other jobs to keep their farm from being collected by the bank.

it would be great if you can post some quotes amlesh...to open this discussion further from the vedic viewpoint.

Earth is meant to generate a new chapter of pious assets by performing tapasya, aquiring of knowledge, welfare activity, penance etc. Therefore people come from the heavenly planets to the earthly planet from begin with, their balance to enjoy on the heavenly planets is used up. In order to top up good karmas and to go back to the heavenly planets they again have to perform severe tapasya and pious activity on Earth.

Unfortunately due force of habit those coming from the heavenly planets want to first of all go on enjoying like on the heavenly planets. Therefore all this drug consumption on Earth. But on Earth you cannot enjoy, it is only a poor copy, stereotype of heaven, in fact Earth is only meant to perform tapasya, to create new pious funds.

Taking intoxicants on Earth causes degeneration, falling down to the lower planetary systems. Especially those who fall from the heavenly planets to Earth while here's kali-yuga going on shows clearly that they don't mind to degenerate even to the lower planets.

Of course the best is to stop materialism altogether and go back to Vaikuntha.

Upper caste pays the price of social injustice

http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=156773

We stand to lose credibility worldwide when each personal bio-data shall reek of caste or sub-caste. But should the bearers of culture and learning be subjected so much ‘unconcern’ due to an unfounded premise that they were upper caste exploiters. .

THE OTHER day I passed by the neighbourhood ‘nursing home’. A man, very happily, was mopping the floor with his pedestal mounted swab. Good menial jobs are becoming high-tech and new-fangled! But the nature of the job remains the same. What is his qualification caste or talent? Now the man doing the menial job at the nursing home could be a poor Brahmin. But he has to bear the price for his brethren. Why is it that the ‘Manuvadis’ are suffering from persecution complex as the exploited lot?

The famished Brahmin, Lord Krishna’s friend Sudama is archetypical of the community that survived on the margins and survived on the ideology of ‘simple living and high thinking’. Many a times they were subjected to public ridicule due to their impoverished bearings. Chanakya’s case ― of his ridicule at the hands of the Nand ruler when he was seated among the high-ranking officials, at the behest of Shaktar, King Nand’s minister, is a case in point (source ‘Mudra Raksha’ by Vishakhatt Samant). His heart rankled with rage due to the treatment meted out to him. But should the carriers of knowledge and repositers of culture and learning be subjected so much ‘unconcern’ due to an unfounded premise that they were the high-brow exploiters.

A rare kind of dedication, discipline and training in phonetics and clarity of diction was required to preserve the esoteric texts of Vedic learning preserved through the oral tradition. We find callousness and arrogance in most people in the corridors of power, be it the erstwhile underdogs who now hold sway by riding on caste bigotry. As the cliché goes power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So people should not be categorised as such. People are either the perpetrators or the exploited. There is no third category in the Indian game of politics which now is rife with only dirty politics of ‘authoritarian’ caste agenda. People seem to react with no enthusiasm at all and ignore the fact on how the Other Backward Class and Scheduled Caste students have notched about forty high ranks among the first hundred ranks in the Uttar Pradesh Board Exam this year; a fact which establishes the Supreme Court order that beneficiaries should be the economically weaker sections. At grass-root level the benefits should trickle down. We are creating a marginalised people on the basis of a premise which does not hold good any more. Most of the neighbours do not care to see who lives next door…it could be any person with the money to afford that kind of living, most of my neighbours with impressive-looking houses belong to the much-politicised and politically-empowered ‘reserved’ category. Are these economically sound people contributing sufficiently to uplift the people with negligible resources? The government is doing its bit by creating a rift; the squabble will only increase. Could I join the cause without an authenticated birth certificate? A cult is rising in order to exploit the sentiments of the people. They are not championing the cause but only championing the champion. They keep the divide open. They are beating the corpse of class consciousness. The sporadic semblance of reason is hushed by bigots and non-conformists who refuse to accept change, and browbeat all efforts of social ironing out of differences. How can you chastise the myopic mentality. We need not be reactionary but be reconciliatory.

Mahatma Gandhi has been refused the credit as the benefactor who assiduously worked for Dalit uplift. He accelerated their social acceptance. He acknowledged the dignity of labour and that gratitude towards these people should be the norm. His detractors beat the dust to blind every eye that could not assuage any hurt. We stand to lose credibility worldwide when each personal bio-data shall reek of caste or sub-caste (Prajapati, Ahir, Yadav, Bhil, Gujjar etc).

We have a responsibility to build the nation and consolidate trust among different people. There is no ‘grabbing game’, no treasure trove to covet. This might be a social eye-opener for people to learn that among the people of indigenous residents of Kashmir no well-defined social hierarchies existed, by and large there were the Dogras or the Pandits, that too the Dogras were by and large concentrated in Jammu region. The eagerness with which most sectarian groups claim reservation sets a vicious chain reaction. There are many officious angels of this ‘masala’ tear- jerker.

In the age of self-defying politics the problem gains seismic momentum. When will we become sound of judgement? Why do people who fired public imagination of the masses… need memorials? No memorials are ever made to commemorate the masses! The masses need that public faith in a system should be restored, the elected politicians should be national leaders and not self-seekers.

Do we need self-seeking icons, self-gloating leaders who tower in advertising cut-outs declaring “I have arrived.” This is happening in the state of UP, which boasts of so many achievements, one more memorial may be bestowed to the Capital territory with most expensive ‘chaurahas’ and the fastest emerging statues in history. The lords of the rings have monumental marble elephants covering hectares of land and downing crores of rupees on each elephantine nightmare.