http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/the-dolphin-defender/download-dolphin-wallpaper/823/

from: http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=114625

I'll offer this simple prayer

Heavenly Father,

Help us remember that the jerk who cut us off in traffic last night is a single mother who worked nine hours that day and is rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry and spend a few precious moments with her children.

Help us to remember that the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man who can't make change correctly is a worried 19-year-old college student, balancing his apprehension over final exams with his fear of not getting his student loans for next semester.

Remind us, Lord, that the scary looking bum, begging for money in the same spot every day is a slave to addictions that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.

Help us to remember that the old couple walking annoyingly slow through the store aisles and blocking our shopping progress are savoring this moment, knowing that, based on the biopsy report she got back last week, this will be the last year that they go shopping together.

Heavenly Father, remind us each day that, of all the gifts you give us, the greatest gift is love. It is not enough to share that love with those we hold dear.

Open our hearts not to just those who are close to us, but to all humanity.

Let us be slow to judge and quick to forgive, show patience, empathy and love.

So be it

http://space.moonagewebdream.com/2007/08/14/arthur-clarke-and-plasma-life/

from: Faith in the Heartland:

http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&brand=msnbc&vid=24f67258-bb40-4f1d-bdff-f048e2684056



image from:  http://en.ttscn.com/newEbiz1/EbizPortalFG/portal/html/musicindex.html



"Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural & spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity" -- Einstein

 

The Survivalist Returns

What's wrong with the CDC's new pandemic planning guide.

By David Shenk

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2007, at 1:25 PM ET

"Cascading consequences" is one of those elegant phrases that disaster planners use to refer to very bad stuff happening later on-hypothetical events that only occur as a result of other events and are therefore very difficult to predict and even more difficult to plan for. It's not the initial head-on collision, but the divorce resulting from the affair precipitated by the sense of worthlessness fueled by the lost job clinched by the rude insubordination fed by the frustration from the lateness from the traffic jam caused by the head-on collision.

http://www.slate.com/id/2159166/nav/navoa/

The Survivalist

from: David Shenk

How To Survive a Disaster

Posted Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2006, at 6:21 PM ET

The third and most surprising method for dissolving the paradox of disbelief is highly counterintuitive: It's what risk communications specialist Peter Sandman calls "riding the seesaw."

In my catastrophe research, I stumbled one morning onto a video of Sandman speaking to the financial industry about pandemic flu and ended up spending the rest of the day poring over his fascinating Web site. In a field that pits jargony scientists against skittish politicians against a sensational press against a confused public, Sandman (whose name I am not making up) serves as a valuable navigator who can help different constituencies understand one another.

It turns out that when trying to communicate risks and hazards to the general public, you don't necessarily want to simply stick the facts out there-third-most seismically active region, etc. Rather, you want to strategize against what the public already knows or thinks it knows. People, he explains, are inherently ambivalent and will usually compensate for whatever side of the argument is not being made: If you emphasize the low probability of a particular catastrophe occurring, for example, the listener's mind will usually rush to the other side and worry about its potential devastation. If, on the other hand, you emphasize its potential devastation, the listener will respond by lending more weight to its low probability.

"When we are ambivalent," Sandman explained to me, "whichever half of our ambivalence the communicator is stressing, we resolve the ambivalence in the direction of the other half-the other seat on the seesaw. That's why, if you're worried about people thinking you are paranoid and upset, you should sort of float out the hypothesis that you're paranoid and upset. The vast majority of the time, people will tell you, 'No, you're reasonable.' If you say, 'I know this sounds paranoid,' they'll think, 'Well, you know, he actually has a point.'

There are a variety of things you can say that take care of half of their ambivalence so that they're more inclined to lean toward the other half."

http://www.slate.com/id/2148772/entry/2148773/

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life; nothing is great or desirable if it is off from that.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

Helen Keller

-----------------------------------

10 09 07

Become Your Own Religion

Sourcing a Personal Spirituality from Within

By Daniel Jacob

"It's all coming back to me now." These are familiar words, aren't they? We've all heard them a time or two. They are a celebration of remembrance, perhaps........or a seizing of the day to gather necessary thoughts and aspirations for some new project or adventure. It speaks to that blessed moment when everything seems to "gel," and all the loose ends finally come together.

If it had a voice, these would also be words spoken by the "file manager" on your local computer as it defrags itself. "It's all coming back to me now." Have you ever witnessed that operation? It's awesome. All the little boxes which once formed a "data tree" on your hard drive begin retracting back into the ONEBOX from whence they all sprang. If you catch my analogy here..........In the area of Expanded Consciousness these are the times in which we live, my friends!

THERE'S NOTHING LIKE "AN ORIGINAL"

In matters of religion, politics, science, or art......every significant "movement" of thought or style begins with an "Original".........an individual who just seems to have what it takes to make things happen in a particular field, or in life. An Original sets his mind on a cherished goal, and his whole process begins to instantly unfold. This is because that process sources itself at the center of his being. It's only when interested followers begin to gather around him (or her), that things can get confusing. Primarily, this is due to the "separation" factor which occurs when people begin projecting their own God/Goddess Aspect on some individual, group, or idea which they believe exists outside themselves.

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=111027

My chief task has been to conquer fear. The public sees only the thrill of the accomplished trick; they have no conception of the tortuous preliminary self-training that was necessary to conquer fear...no one except myself can appreciate how I have to work at this job every single day, never letting up for a moment. I always have on my mind the thought that next year I must do something greater, something more wonderful. ~ Harry Houdini quoted by David Blaine

Believe me! The secret to reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously! ~ Nietzsche

Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor (or employee), every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or depression, every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath. Every moment is the guru. ~ Joko Beck

"The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware."
  -Henry Miller

European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Reiter (bottom center), Expedition 13 flight engineer, and the STS-121 crewmembers pose in "star-burst" formation for an in-flight portrait in the Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station while Space Shuttle Discovery was docked with the station. Clockwise, around the circle from Reiter, are astronauts Michael E. Fossum, Lisa M. Nowak, both mission specialists; Steven W. Lindsey and Mark E. Kelly, commander and pilot, respectively; Stephanie D. Wilson and Piers J. Sellers, mission specialists. Reiter launched on the Space Shuttle Discovery with the STS-121 crew and officially became an Expedition 13 crewmember after the shuttle docked with the station.

4 October 2007
Fifty years ago today, on the night of 4 October the first 'beep-beep' from Sputnik fell from the heavens and marked the beginning of a new era for the human race.
 
Satellites and space probes have dramatically changed our way of living, they have turned the world into a global village where an unprecedented wealth of information is at hand anywhere, anytime. The world has shrunk, and our perception of our planet has changed too. Thanks to remote sensing and Earth observation, we can now take the pulse of our environment and devise politics based on an increasing knowledge of the way our world is evolving.  
 
We have explored many worlds in the Solar System and our space-based instruments have been able to open large windows into previously unknown realms of our universe. What was thought to be quiet has revealed its violence and its incredible activity. 
 

from: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Space_Year_2007/SEMANZP11ZE_0.html

Could a naked singularity, the bare core of a black hole, be sitting at the centre of our galaxy? A new study shows how astronomers could detect such a brazen object - which is so dense it would shred the known laws of physics.

Singularities exist in the heart of every black hole, according to Einstein's general theory of relativity. When matter collapses under its own gravity, it forms either a point or a ring-shaped line of infinite density. But each of these singularities is cloaked by a so-called event horizon - where light and everything else is inexorably sucked inwards. So we could never see one.

Unless, that is, there are black holes that spin at extreme speeds. A spinning black hole drags nearby space around with it, and if it spins fast enough, then light and matter could escape from right by the singularity, because they would be flung outwards by the dizzying rotation.

This gravitational tornado would have no event horizon, and the singularity would be exposed.

Its gravity would also have a telltale effect on light passing by it from background objects, say Arlie Petters of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, US, and Marcus Werner of the University of Cambridge, UK.

Rainforest of sources

They find that a spinning naked singularity turns out to be a strong gravitational lens, magnifying the light from background stars more than an ordinary black hole and producing a distinctive pattern of images.

Astronomers could start looking for this effect in the centre of our galaxy, where some dark object 3.6 million times the mass of the Sun is lurking. It is usually assumed to be a black hole with an event horizon, but if it is instead a naked singularity, then at least one existing instrument could tell.

The CHARA interferometer is an array of six telescopes on Mount Wilson in California, US, which can produce exceptionally sharp images. Aimed at the centre of the galaxy, it would be able to distinguish the lensing effect of a black hole from that of a naked singularity.

The galactic centre is a crowded place, however, so observers will have to slog though "a rainforest of sources" to sieve out lensed images, says Petters.

Cosmic censorship

Naked singularities make many physicists uneasy. "These singularities are worrisome philosophically because they are places where the laws of physics break down," says Petters. That's because the infinite density renders all equations meaningless.

"If a naked singularity is found today, then no matter how hard we try, our current physics cannot predict the future behaviour of such objects," Petters told New Scientist.

And if a singularity follows no rules, it could leak lawlessness into the universe, destroying any concept of cause and effect.

So in 1969, Cambridge mathematician Roger Penrose coined the "cosmic censorship hypothesis" - that all singularities must be insulated from the rest of the universe behind a horizon. "When singularities are covered up by an event horizon, the problem of physics breaking down is pushed under the covers," says Petters.

Tangle of strings

But a naked singularity doesn't necessarily mean cosmic chaos. To properly describe these extreme objects, physicists need a more profound theory that can deal with strong gravity on tiny scales - a quantum theory of gravity.

A dose of quantum mechanics should blur out a singularity, so its density isn't infinite after all. One candidate for such a unified quantum gravity model is string theory, which might describe the singularity as a fuzzy tangle of tiny vibrating strings.

Depending on exactly how gravity behaves on such small scales, it is possible that a singularity would shine with its own light, or emit gravitational waves. In that case, astronomers might not have to settle for indirect evidence from lensing. One day they might be lucky enough to gaze on a singularity in all its naked splendour.

Cosmology - keep up with the latest ideas in our special report.

Journal reference: Physical Review D (vol 76, p 064024)

from: http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12707-is-a-naked-singularity-lurking-in-our-galaxy.html

image from:   http://stevemcintosh.com/spirals/

  excerpt from Patricia Aburdene's : 2010 Megatrends:

"In fact, there can be no invention in business or technology without human consciousness."

What is consciousness? I use the term in the spiritual sense, to mean presence or alertness-the awareness of awareness, the willingness to observe without attachment, the gleam of Spirit that animates humanity.

WISDOM

image from: www.ginablickenstaff.com
a Boulder, CO artist

When an engineering whiz patiently contemplating a complex problem, submerged for hours on end, he or she is living in the Now, dwelling in the realm of consciousness. Consciousness, the prime ingredient in creativity, represents a higher intelligence than the mind. When consciousness guides our mental facilities, the results can be brilliant.

"Technology is consciousness externalized."