http://time2berich.blogspot.com

Catch the Drug King Pin, not young drug mule

2011-01-29T11:55:00.000+08:00

Save Vui Kong

This is a call to the people of Singapore and Malaysia to stand up for Yong Vui Kong, a teenager and drug mule who was caught in Singapore and sentenced to death for trafficking 47g of heroin in 2007. He is currently on death row in Changi prison.

Tao Living The Dream of the Butterfly by Derek Lin

2009-10-06T01:53:00.000+08:00

First Lesson: Oneness

By connecting himself with the butterfly, Chuang Tzu is pointing out that all living things are united by the life force within them. The drive to survive and thrive in us is the very same drive that also exists in everything from the largest creatures to the smallest insects. When we recognize this, we can begin to see ourselves as part of nature rather than apart from nature.

Chuang Tzu has chosen the butterfly deliberately to emphasize this point. In terms of appearance, the butterfly seems as different from a human being as anything can be. Nevertheless, at a fundamental level it is exactly like us - a manifestation of life, and therefore of the Tao, in the material world.

If we can say that about a butterfly, then we can say that about anything. Therefore, one of the most basic truths in the world is that all are one.

Second Lesson: Life is Like a Dream

Chuang Tzu also points out in this story that a dream can seem every bit as real as our waking existence. All the sights and sounds, feelings and emotions in the dream can be just as vivid and intense as our experience in reality.

This lesson is an exercise in detachment in two areas of life: emotional obsessions and material obsessions. The key to this lesson is the realization that if we can see how dreams can seem completely real, then we can also see how reality can be just like a dream.

We can become emotionally obsessive when we interact with others. Sometimes people say positive things about us and we grasp onto their compliments and approval; sometimes they say negative things instead and we cling to the destructive feelings of taking offense or being attacked.

Let us use the negative side as an example. Suppose someone has said something that you find extremely hurtful and insulting, and you become angry. You wish to regain your tranquility, but your anger makes it impossible. What to do?

Step one: recall to mind Chuang Tzu's equivalence between dream-state and reality. If you experience the insult in a dream, you would feel just as hurt, offended and angry.

Step two: realize that you already have a natural ability to deal with it. If the event occurred in a dream, you would simply shrug it off upon awakening. It's only a dream; everything's okay. We have all done this before. We are all experts in dealing with bad dreams.

Step three: apply this natural ability to deal with your negative emotions. Although the event has actually occurred and isn't a dream, your emotional reactions to it are, again, exactly identical. This basic equivalence gives you the leverage to manage your rage. Handle the negativity as if it is the result from a nightmare, and reflect on how in some ways this is literally true. Soon you'll discover letting the anger go is not so impossible after all.

Third Lesson: Awakening Awareness

Becoming fully awake is a powerful metaphor in spiritual cultivation. The word "buddha" literally means someone who has become fully awakened. Compared to this true state of wakefulness, our everyday consciousness resembles sleep, and everything we consider real in life turns out to have no more reality than a dream that fades into nothingness.

This may be difficult to understand. After all, at this very moment you probably feel very much awake. Why would anyone say you are asleep when you know you aren't?

The truth is that almost everyone operates at a low level of awareness most of the time. Consider the last time you locked a door, walked away, and then had to go back to double-check because you couldn't be sure you actually locked it. Or, think of the last time you walked into a room and couldn't remember why you went in there. Were you looking for something? If so, what was it? Chances are you had to retrace your steps just to reconnect with your original intent.

If you've ever had experiences similar to the above, then you already understand Chuang Tzu's point. As we go through the motions in day-to-day existence, we seem to be sleepwalking most of the time. Once in a while we have a moment of clarity, like a sleeper awakening just enough to check the alarm clock, and then we go right back into slumber.

How can we become more fully awake? This is something that requires persistent effort. Tao cultivators who focus on this aspect of life would consistently practice being present. Through diligent repetition, they develop the habit to always ask themselves "What exactly am I doing right now?" and "What exactly is going on around me right now?" People who do this invariably make surprising discoveries. They catch themselves doing things that make little sense, or they suddenly become aware of something significant and obvious that somehow eluded their notice before. The more they practice this, the better they get at it, and being in the moment becomes a more natural and much more frequent occurrence.

Fourth Lesson: Transformation

The last lesson from Chuang Tzu is also the most important. The butterfly in the story is crucial, because it represents joyous freedom - a liberating state of spirituality where one transcends fears, just like the butterfly flying free of the limitations imposed by gravity. A Tao cultivator who achieves this freedom becomes an unbounded individual, not held back by emotional or material attachments that tie most people down.

The transformation that Chuang Tzu speaks of in this story, in conjunction with the butterfly, form a powerful imagery that represents the complete process of Tao cultivation. We start out making slow progress, learning one lesson after another, just like the caterpillar crawling slowly, eating its way through leaves.

After sufficient accumulation of knowledge over a period of time, the mind begins processing the information to extract wisdom for the soul. This is a time of meditation, reflection and quietude, much like the fully grown caterpillar going into the chrysalis stage.

Then, the magical metamorphosis begins. Miniature wings, almost imperceptible, expand rapidly to become much larger. A spectacular transformation takes place, and the stunning creature that emerges from the chrysalis bears no resemblance to its former self. The child has become the adult.

In the same way, someone who goes through the metamorphosis of the Tao has become a new person. The Tao cultivator has transformed into a sage. The wings of spirituality have expanded to become much larger, much more colorful and beautiful.

Now we can see even more clearly that Chuang Tzu chose the butterfly with careful deliberation. It is also quite obvious now why the butterfly has come to represent Chuang Tzu in Chinese culture. Every piece of the puzzle fits together so well that it simply cannot be any other way.

Is Chuang Tzu telling us with this story that we all have the potential to turn into the butterfly?

Yes, but not without going through the larval and pupal stages. To jump directly into the butterfly stage can only be a dream that soon comes to an end. If you encounter people who claim to be enlightened, be especially cautious, because in all likelihood they are merely caterpillars no different from you and me. They may be convinced they are the butterfly, but that’s because they are dreaming.

What Chuang Tzu has given us is a glimpse of what we can achieve through Tao cultivation. If we have patience, diligence and faith as we seek and consume nutritious leaves, then the day will come when we go into the chrysalis and eventually emerge from it. That is when we will know... that the joyous freedom of the butterfly is no longer a dream!

P.S : A beutiful mandarin songs, We are one family !..

http://truetao.org/sanctuary/taosongs/onefamily.wmv

Pls prevent this incident. DO NOT DRINK AND DRIVE !

2009-08-22T02:03:00.002+08:00

I was walking around in a store, when I saw a Cashier hand this

little boy some money back.

The boy couldn't have been more than 5 or 6 years old.

The Cashier said, 'I'm sorry, but you don't have enough money to buy

this doll.

Then the little boy turned to the old woman next to him: ''Granny, are

you sure I don't have enough money?''

The old lady replied: ''You know that you don't have enough money to buy

this doll, my dear.''

Then she asked him to stay there for just 5 minutes while she went to

look around.. She left quickly. The little boy was still holding the

doll in his hand.

Finally, I walked toward him and I asked him who he wished to give this

doll to.

'It's the doll that my sister loved most and wanted so much for

Christmas.

She was sure that Santa Claus would bring it to her.'

I replied to him that maybe Santa Claus would bring it to her after all,

and not to worry.

But he replied to me sadly. 'No, Santa Claus can't bring it to her where

she is now. I have to give the doll to my mommy so that she can give it

to my sister when she goes there.'

His eyes were so sad while saying this. 'My Sister has gone to be with

God.

Daddy says that Mommy is going to see God very soon too, so I thought

that she could take the doll with her to give it to my sister.''

My heart nearly stopped.

The little boy looked up at me and said: 'I told daddy to tell mommy not

to go yet. I need her to wait until I come back from the mall.'

Then he showed me a very nice photo of him where he was laughing. He

then told me 'I want mommy to take my picture with her so she won't

forget me.'

'I love my mommy and I wish she doesn't have to leave me, but daddy says

that she has to go to be with my little sister.' Then he looked again at

the doll with sad eyes, very quietly.

I quickly reached for my wallet and said to the boy. 'Suppose we check

again, just in case you do have enough money for the doll?''

'OK' he said, 'I hope I do have enough.' I added some of my money to his

with out him seeing and we started to count it. There was enough for the

doll and even some spare money.

The little boy said: 'Thank you God for giving me enough money!'

Then he looked at me and added, 'I asked last night before I went to

sleep for God to make sure I had enough money to buy this doll, so that

mommy could give It to my sister. He heard me!''

'I also wanted to have enough money to buy a white rose for my mommy,

but I didn't dare to ask God for too much. But He gave me enough to buy

the doll and a white rose. My mommy loves white roses.'

A few minutes later, the old lady returned and I left with my basket. I

finished my shopping in a totally different state from when I started. I

couldn't get the little boy out of my mind. Then I remembered a local

news paper article two days ago, which mentioned a drunk man in a truck,

who hit a car occupied by a young woman and a little girl. The little

girl died right away, and the mother was left in a critical state. The

family had to decide whether to pull the plug on the life-sustaining

machine, because the young woman would not be able to recover from the

coma. Was this the family of the little boy?

Two days after this encounter with the little boy, I read in the news

paper that the young woman had passed away.. I couldn't stop myself as I

bought a bunch of white roses and I went to the funeral home where the

body of the young woman was exposed for people to see and make last

wishes before her burial. She was there, in her coffin, holding a

beautiful white rose in her hand with the photo of the little boy and

the doll placed over her chest. I left the place, teary-eyed, feeling

that my life had been changed for ever.

The love that the little boy had for his mother and his sister is still,

to this day, hard to imagine. And in a fraction of a second, a drunk

driver had taken all this away from him.

P>S Reminder Please DO NOT DRINK & DRIVE.

When You Divorce Me, Carry Me Out in Your Arms

2009-08-22T01:46:00.002+08:00

On my wedding day, I carried my wife in my arms. The bridal car stopped in front of our one-room flat. My buddies insisted that I carry her out of the car in my arms. So I carried her into our home. She was then plump and shy. I was a strong and happy bridegroom.

This was the scene of ten years ago.

The following days were as simple as a cup of pure water: we had a kid, I went into business and tried to make more money. When the assets were steadily increasing, the affections between us seemed to ebb. She was a civil servant. Every morning we left home together and got home almost at the same time. Our kid was studying in a boarding school.

Our marriage life seemed to be enviably happy. But the calm life was more likely to be affected by unpredictable changes.

Dew came into my life.

It was a sunny day. I stood on a spacious balcony. Dew hugged me from behind. My heart once again was immersed in her stream of love. This was the apartment I bought for her.

Dew said, "You are the kind of man who best draws girls' eyeballs. Her words suddenly reminded me of my wife. When we just married, my wife said, "Men like you, once successful, will be very attractive to girls." Thinking of this, I became somewhat hesitant. I knew I had betrayed my wife. But I couldn't help doing so.

I moved Dew's hands aside and said," You go to select some furniture, O.K.? I've got something to do in the company." Obviously she was unhappy, because I had promised her to go and see with her. At the moment, the idea of divorce became clearer in my mind although it used to be something impossible to me.

However, I found it rather difficult to tell my wife about it. No matter how mildly I mentioned it to her, she would be deeply hurt. Honestly, she

was a good wife. Every evening she was busy preparing dinner. I was sitting in front of the TV. The dinner was ready soon. Then we watched TV together. Or, I was lounging before the computer, visualizing Dew's body. This was the means of my entertainment.

One day I said to her in a slight joking way, "suppose we divorce, what will you do?" She stared at me for a few seconds without a word. Apparently she believed that 'divorce' was something too far away from her. I couldn't imagine how she would react once she got to know I was serious.

When my wife went to my office, Dew had just stepped out. Almost all the staff looked at my wife with a sympathetic eye and tried to hide something while talking with her. She seemed to have got some hint. She gently smiled at my subordinates. But I read some hurt in her eyes.

Once again, Dew said to me, "He Ning, divorce her, O.K.? Then we live together." I nodded. I knew I could not hesitate any more.

When my wife served the last dish, I held her hand. "I've got something to tell you," I said.

She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes. Suddenly I didn't know how to open my mouth. But I had to let her know what I was thinking. "I want to divorce." I raised a serious topic calmly.

She didn't seem to be much annoyed by my words, instead she asked me softly, "why?". "I'm serious." I avoided her question. This so-called

answer turned her angry. She threw away the chopsticks and shouted at me, "you are not a man!".

At that night, we didn't talk to each other. She was weeping. I knew she wanted to find out what had happened to our marriage. But I could hardly give her a satisfactory answer, because my heart had gone to Dew.

With a deep sense of guilt, I drafted a divorce agreement which stated that she could own our house, our car, and 30% stake of my company. She glanced at it and then tore it into pieces. I felt a pain in my heart. The woman who had been living ten years with me would become a stranger one day. But I could not take back what I had said.

Finally she cried loudly in front of me, which was what I had expected to see. To me her cry was actually a kind of release. The idea of divorce

which had obsessed me for several weeks seemed to be firmer and clearer.

A late night, I came back home after entertaining my clients. I saw her writing something at the table. I fell asleep fast. When I woke up, I found

she was still there. I turned over and was asleep again.

She brought up her divorce conditions: she didn't want anything from me, but I was supposed to give her one month's time before divorce, and in the month's time we must live as normal life as possible. Her reason was simple: our son would finish his summer vacation a month later and she didn't want him to see our marriage was broken.

She passed me the agreement she drafted, and then asked me, "He Ning, do you still remember how I entered our bridal room on the wedding day?" This question suddenly brought back all those wonderful memories to me. I nodded and said, "I remember". "You carried me in your arms", she continued, "so, I have a requirement, that is, you carry me out in your arms on the day when we divorce. From now to the end of this month, you must carry me out from the bedroom to the door every morning."

I accepted with a smile. I knew she missed those sweet days and wished to end her marriage with a romantic form.

I told Dew about my wife's divorce conditions. She laughed loudly and thought it was absurd. "No matter what tricks she does, she has to face the result of divorce," she said scornfully. Her words more or less made me feel uncomfortable.

My wife and I hadn't had any body contact since my divorce intention was explicitly expressed. We even treated each other as a stranger. So when I carried her out for the first day, we both appeared clumsy. Our son clapped behind us, "daddy is holding mummy in his arms." His words brought me a sense of pain. From the bedroom to the sitting room, then to the door, I walked over ten meters with her in my arms. She closed her eyes and said softly, "Let us start from today, don't tell our son." I nodded, feeling somewhat upset. I put her down outside the door. She went to wait for bus, I drove to office.

On the second day, both of us acted much more easily. She leaned on my chest. We were so close that I could smell the fragrance of her blouse. I realized that I hadn't looked at this intimate woman carefully for a long time. I found she was not young any more. There were some fine wrinkles on her face.

On the third day, she whispered to me, "The outside garden is being demolished. Be careful when you pass there."

On the fourth day, when I lifted her up, I seemed to feel that we were still an intimate couple and I was holding my sweetheart in my arms. The

visualization of Dew became vaguer.

On the fifth and sixth day, she kept reminding me something, such as, where she put the ironed shirts, I should be careful while cooking, etc. I

nodded. The sense of intimacy was even stronger.

I didn't tell Dew about this.

I felt it was easier to carry her. Perhaps the everyday workout made me stronger. I said to her, "It seems not difficult to carry you now."

She was picking her dresses. I was waiting to carry her out. She tried quite a few but could not find a suitable one. Then she sighed, "All my

dresses have grown fatter." I smiled. But I suddenly realized that it was because she was thinner that I could carry her more easily, not because I

was stronger. I knew she had buried all the bitterness in her heart. Again, I felt a sense of pain. Subconsciously I reached out a hand to touch her head.

Our son came in at the moment. "Dad, it's time to carry mum out." He said. To him, seeing his father carrying his mother out had been an essential part of his life. She gestured our son to come closer and hugged him tightly. I turned my face because I was afraid I would change my mind at the last minute. I held her in my arms, walking from the bedroom, through the sitting room, to the hallway. Her hand surrounded my neck softly and naturally. I held her body tightly, as if we came back to our wedding day. But her much lighter weight made me sad.

On the last day, when I held her in my arms I could hardly move a step. Our son had gone to school. She said, "Actually I hope you will hold me in your arms until we are old."

I held her tightly and said, "Both you and I didn't notice that our life was lack of such intimacy."

I jumped out of the car swiftly without locking the door. I was afraid any delay would make me change my decision. I walked upstairs. Dew opened the door. I said to her, "Sorry, Dew, I won't divorce. I'm serious."

She looked at me, astonished. The she touched my forehead. "You got no fever." She said. I moved her hand off my head. "Sorry, Dew," I said, "I can only say sorry to you, I won't divorce. My marriage life was boring probably because she and I didn't value the details of life, not because we didn't love each other any more. Now I understand that since I carried her into the home, she gave birth to our child, I am supposed to hold her until I am old. So I have to say sorry to you."

Dew seemed to suddenly wake up. She gave me a loud slap and then slammed the door and burst into cry. I walked downstairs and drove to the office.

When I passed the floral shop on the way, I ordered a bouquet for my wife which was her favorite. The salesgirl asked me to write the greeting words on the card. I smiled and wrote, "I'll carry you out every morning until we are old."

P. S : I am suggesting all married woman who are about to divorce act this piece of drama out. i am damn sure you would get your man back into the rightful place in the corner of your heart.

2009-03-25T11:15:00.001+08:00

The real Slumdog Millionaires: Behind the cinema fantasy, mafia gangs are deliberately crippling children for profit
By Andrew Malone

Alone and afraid, Aamir was initially grateful when a ‘kind’ older couple befriended him on his arrival in Mumbai. This chaotic urban sprawl is now India’s largest city and home to more than 20 million people. More than nine million of them live in slums, raising families in shacks built from rubbish on top of open sewers. For a homeless 12-year-old child freshly arrived from the countryside, it is a terrifying place to be.
Overcrowding is now so bad in this huge metropolis that shanty towns have even sprung up in the international airport. People in rags scavenge as giant jets thunder past just feet away.
But for many on the Indian sub-continent, Mumbai will always be the city of dreams — a place of Bollywood film stars and gold-paved streets. It was certainly the image that brought Aamir here.

Beggars belief: Children at a Mumbai drop-in centre
Fleeing a violent, drunken father in rural India — his mother had died years before — the12-year-old had sneaked on to a train bound for the city. And when he got there, he hoped to make his fortune.
It was not to be. Alighting at Victoria Station, the city’s main terminal and an architectural monument to the days of the British Raj, Aamir was penniless and bewildered. He started begging for food.
Within minutes, a couple emerged from the crowd and approached him. They gave him cakes and said they’d take him away to start a better life.
‘I thought they were maybe social workers or religious people,’ he told me.
But Aamir’s food was drugged and when he became drowsy, the couple put him in a rickshaw and took him to the city’s municipal hospital, which is where the real nightmare began.

Crippled: A child begging on Marine Drive in south Mumbai
For at the hospital, a doctor was paid to amputate one of his healthy legs. Now speaking in the third person, as if to pretend it didn’t happen to him, Aamir tells me ‘the child’ was in ‘great pain’ after the operation.
‘The leg is removed here,’ he says, pointing to his own stump and grimacing. His limb had been severed mid-calf, leaving him without a foot.
Now in hiding after being rescued from the hospital by a charity, Aamir is one of hundreds of Indian children deliberately crippled by gangs so they can earn extra money begging. He still struggles to talk about his experience.
Asked to describe what he thinks about those who ruined his life, he just stares at the ground in silence. Crippled for life, he is now the lowest of the low.
Dalbeer, 15, is another victim of this shocking industry. Reduced to begging at the railway station after his parents died, Dalbeer was approached by two friendly older strangers one day. ‘I thought they were maybe social workers,’ he told me. ‘I thought they could help me.’
But he was taken from everything he knew to Nagpur, a city a thousand miles from Mumbai, after the woman told him it would ‘be better there’.
And there, along with several others, he was deliberately crippled before being brought back to Mumbai and put to work begging. His leg had been severed in the same place as Aamir’s.

Indian film star Amitabh Bachchan said the film unfairly portrayed a 'dirty underbelly' of India
So just who would chop off the leg of a healthy child? The boys are victims of India’s so-called ‘beggar mafia’ — criminals so violent and amoral that they are prepared to hack the limbs off children, as well as steal new-born babies from hospitals.
They use the children as begging ‘props’ to maximise their earnings from sympathetic passers-by. The plight of India’s child beggars has been thrust into the international spotlight by Slumdog Millionaire, the British-made film tipped for Oscar glory with a staggering ten nominations. It has already won an unprecedented four Hollywood Golden Globes.
Directed by Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire tells the story of Jamal, a boy who escapes the slums of Mumbai and wins a fortune on the Indian equivalent of the TV game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Branded ‘poverty porn’ by some Indian critics, the film has caused controversy in a country that wants to promote itself as a modern economic super-power.
Due to open in India this week with the Hindi title Slumdog Crorepati, the film-makers have been criticised by police and politicians for painting an ‘outdated’ portrait of a corrupt, violent country.
Their anger centres on a scene in which an Indian boy is intentionally blinded by gangsters so that he can earn more as a beggar.
‘They are making out that India is a Third World, dirty underbelly, developing nation,’ snorts Amitabh Bachchan, one of the country’s leading film stars and a powerful, patriotic voice.

Slum children as portrayed in the Danny Boyle film
Now home to thousands of ‘outsourced’ British jobs, such as call centres, many insist that such brutality has been banished from the ‘new’ India.
Yet the truth, as I discovered during a chilling week-long investigation, is more disturbing than anything dreamt up by the creators of Slumdog Millionaire.
For in Mumbai, as well as in other major Indian cities, hundreds of young children have had their arms and legs chopped off; scores of others have been blinded. The gangs also pour acid on to the children’s bodies, leaving them with suppurating wounds.

A happy ending for the stars of the film Slumdog Millionaire - but for real slum dwellers the future is bleak
Their suffering comes down to one thing: money. In a country of 1.2 billion people, where the gulf between rich and poor is vast, there are an estimated 300,000 child beggars.
By no means all are mutilated by the beggar mafia, but those with the worst injuries do make the most money — up to £10 a day for deformed children, a fortune in a country where millions survive on just a tenth of that.
Not that Aamir and Dalbeer saw any of their earnings. After being crippled and put to work on the streets, the children are forced to hand over the cash to gang masters each evening. And if they don’t hit their ‘targets’, they are beaten and tortured.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, almost all of these child beggars, whether mutilated or not, are addicted to solvents, alcohol and charras (powerful Afghan hashish, often laced with opium), which are supplied by the gang masters to keep the children under control.
‘It helps us forget where we are,’ says Tufhaar, nine, a child beggar who had his left arm removed and constantly sucks on a bag filled with glue. Right across this chaotic city, amputees line the streets, operating in aggressive gangs at every intersection and tourist attraction. Many maimed children are terrified of speaking out, saying their limbs ‘just disappeared’ or blaming unspecified ‘accidents’.
This code of silence is understandable. ‘The gang masters hold you down and cut out your tongue if they think you have informed,’ says Flintoff, 18, a ‘reformed’ local Indian gangster and former child beggar who wears a T-shirt with a picture of the rapper Eminem.
‘I still steal now and again, and sell drugs — but I keep away from the beggar mafia. These men are not human.’
Mohini Nerurkar, 33, agrees with Flintoff’s assessment. After giving birth to a boy last week, she was recovering at the city’s Sion municipal hospital when a woman posing as a social worker in a neat yellow sari asked if she could examine the baby.
Glad of a break, Mohini went to wash her four-day-old son’s nappy. But when she returned, her baby had been taken. The ‘social worker’ is believed to have been part of a gang which steals babies for the beggar mafia.

A child stands in the doorway of her home in Nehru Nagar, a shantytown where a part of Slumdog Millionaire was shot
With at least one child being taken every week in Mumbai, not to mention dozens more in India’s other overcrowded cities, Mohini received no sympathy from the authorities. ‘The mother shouldn’t have spoken to a stranger,’ says hospital physician Dr Sandhya Kamat, ruling out any hope of the baby being recovered.
Inspector Sanjit Kavdakar, the detective in charge of Mohini’s case, says begging has become big business for the crime syndicates. ‘There is a lot of money involved in it and it is highly organised. Mafia people are stealing these children simply to use in begging.’
Two other children were abducted by the mafia in a single day last week: Asiya, aged three, disappeared from outside her home in a slum to the east of the city, while Faiz Sheikh, 13, was taken from another slum to the west. Both girls’ parents blamed ‘beggar mafia goons’ for stealing their children.
Complaints to the police are pointless. With the beggar mafia making more than £20 million a year in Mumbai alone, corrupt officers ensure that the trade thrives. According to official figures, as many as 44,000 children fall into the clutches of the beggar mafia in India each year and of these, hundreds are deliberately mutilated.
However, some charities say that the figure could be as high as a million. Most of the victims are under ten. ‘They are taught the most appropriate place to beg, the kind of people one should approach, and the kind of mannerisms that would make people sympathise,’ says Mufti Imran, a researcher with Save the Children.

Shah Rukh Munshi, 11, one of the actors in Slumdog Millionaire poses with his mother next to their home in the slums
‘The more a person is tortured or tormented, the more unfortunate he looks — all this will evoke more sympathy among the people who will then give them alms or gifts,’ he adds.
The shocking truth about the beggar mafia emerged last year. In what was dubbed the ‘arms for alms’ scandal, doctors were filmed by Indian journalists agreeing to cut off the healthy limbs of children for just £100.
The maiming of children is now so widespread that even devoutly religious locals refuse to give disabled children money, knowing that it is passed straight to their ‘handlers’ and that they are the pawns of a growing organised crime syndicate.
‘I don’t give them a penny,’ says Father Barnabe D’Souza, a Catholic priest, who has worked with homeless children for 25 years and now runs a refuge to which they can escape and be weaned off drugs.
‘If they approach me on the street, I offer them food, which they don’t want,’ he says. ‘There is no room for emotion. This is a business — a mafia. These children are taught how to look as pitiful as possible to get money — and what they earn just gets taken from them.’

High rise buildings are seen in the foreground of Dharavi in Mumbai, Asia's largest slum
Many of Mumbai’s child beggars live in Dharavi, Asia’s biggest slum. Here, a million people live in a labyrinth of tunnels and walkways where sewage flows openly through the streets and violence is rife.
During my visit to this slum, a group of child beggars stinking of alcohol and solvents press round me, asking for money and pulling at my pockets. Vicky, at 17 one of the oldest, says he no longer has his money taken from him by the beggar mafia.
‘I’ve started taking the money off the younger children,’ he laughs. Jahan is a ‘street level’ gang master, who, in turn, pays off other gangsters higher up the criminal pecking order.
On pain of a savage beating or worse, his children hand over their spoils to him each night. Working ‘his’ beggars in shifts, he makes around £50 a day — a fortune in a country where the average monthly wage is less than £100.
As well as soliciting money from tourists, these children are the lifeblood of the criminal underworld. They are also used to sell bootleg DVDS and drugs, and to beat up anyone who tries to encroach on their gang master’s patch.

A child sits on steps outside a slum dwelling
‘The terrorist attacks mean that there are fewer tourists,’ Jahan tells me. ‘So we are selling everything we can until they come back. We have Afghani opium, Kashmiri black, King Charles (cocaine) and pure brown from Pakistan (heroin). I will give you a good price.’
‘We give the police some money — a little something to let them wet their beaks,’ said Jahan, smirking and flashing stained, rotting teeth.
Swami Agnivesh, a child-rights activist, says: ‘The beggar mafia is a huge industry and the perpetrators get away scot-free every time. There is collusion between the lawmakers and lawbreakers.’
Not all the ‘disappeared’ children are maimed or turned into beggars. But all face a truly grim future. According to human rights groups, some are forced into child pornography and used as sex slaves. Others are killed and have their organs sold to wealthy Indians.

Street children eat bread on a roadside in Delhi, India's capital
On the approach road to the airport, wealthy businessmen hoping to tap into India’s huge reserves of cheap labour and cash in on the economic miracle drive past hundreds of child beggars, many of whom have been stolen from their parents and mutilated by cruel gangs.
It is here the two faces of ‘modern’ India can be seen side by side.
And, despite India’s economic boom, the future looks bleak for millions of the nation’s children.
‘They never really get old,’ says Father Barnabe. ‘They just get replaced with new ones — and cast out on to the street to become beggars or die. That’s the way life is here — it never changes.’

2008-10-24T13:16:00.000+08:00

Moral of this PHOTOSNAP - DO NOT LEAVE YOUR KID ALONE !!

मम थे greatest

2008-07-29T11:31:00.000+08:00

My mom only had one eye. I hated her... She was such an embarrassment.
She cooked for students & teachers to support the family.

There was this one day during elementary school where my mom came to
Say hello to me.

I was so embarrassed.

How could she do this to me?
I ignored her, threw her a hateful look and ran out.
The next day at school one of my classmates said, 'EEEE, your mom only
Has one eye!'

I wanted to bury myself.
I also wanted my mom to just disappear.
I confronted her that day and said, ' If you're only goanna make me a
Laughing stock, why don't you just die?'

My mom did not
respond...
I didn't even stop to think for a second about what I had said, because
I was full of anger.
I was oblivious to her feelings.

I wanted out of that house, and have nothing to do with her.
So I studied real hard, got a chance to go abroad to study.
Then, I got married.
I bought a house of my own.
I had kids of my own.
I was happy with my life, my kids and the comforts, Then one day, my
Mother came to visit me.
She hadn't seen me in years and she didn't even meet her
Grandchildren.

When she stood by the door, my children laughed at her, and I yelled at
Her for coming over uninvited.
I screamed at her, 'How dare you come to my house and scare my
Children!'
GET OUT OF HERE! NOW!!!'

And to this, my mother quietly answered, 'Oh, I'm so sorry. I may have
Gotten the wrong address,'
And she disappeared out of sight.
One day, a letter regarding a school reunion came to my house.

So I lied
to my wife that I was going on a business trip.
After the reunion, I went to the old shack just out of curiosity.

My neighbors said that she died.
I did not shed a single tear.
They handed me a letter that she had wanted me to have.

'My dearest son,
I think of you all the time. I'm sorry that I came to your house and
Scared your children.
I was so glad when I heard you were coming for the reunion.
But I may not be able to even get out of bed to see you.
I'm sorry that I was a constant embarrassment to you when you were
Growing up.

You see........when you were very little, you got into an accident, and
Lost your eye.
As a mother, I couldn't stand watching you
Having to grow up with one eye.
So I gave you mine.
I was so proud of my son who was seeing
a whole new world for me, in my
Place, with that eye.

With all my love to you,
Your mother.

2008-01-04T14:20:00.000+08:00

Frankly, this is one of the best short stories that reflects our current society.It rflects the ignorance of younger generations had or taken for granted.

The old woman sat in the backseat of the magenta convertible as it careened down the highway, clutching tightly to the plastic bag on her lap, afraid it may be kidnapped by the wind. She was not used to such speed, with trembling hands she pulled the seatbelt tighter but was careful not to touch the patent leather seats with her callused fingers, her daughter had warned her not to dirty it, 'Fingerprints show very clearly on white, Ma.'

Her daughter, Bee Choo, was driving and talking on her sleek silver mobile phone using big words the old woman could barely understand. 'Finance' 'Liquidation' 'Assets' 'Investments'... Her voice was crisp and important and had an unfamiliar lilt to it. Her Bee Choo sounded like one of those foreign girls on television. She was speaking in an American accent. The old lady clucked her tongue in disapproval.'I absolutely cannot have this. We have to sell!' Her daughter exclaimed agitatedly as she stepped on the accelerator; her perfectly manicured fingernails gripping onto the steering wheel in irritation. 'I can't DEAL with this anymore!' she yelled as she clicked the phone shut and hurled it angrily toward the backseat.The mobile phone hit the old woman on the forehead and nestled soundlessly into her lap. She calmly picked it up and handed it to her daughter. 'Sorry, Ma,' she said, losing the American pretence and switching to Mandarin. 'I have a big client in America. There have been a lot of problems.' The old lady nodded knowingly.

Her daughter was big and important. Bee Choo stared at her mother from the rear view window, wondering what she was thinking. Her mother's wrinkled countenance always carried the same cryptic look.The phone began to ring again, an artificially cheerful digital tune, which broke the awkward silence.'Hello, Beatrice! Yes, this is Elaine.' Elaine. The old woman cringed. I didn't name her Elaine. She remembered her daughter telling her, how an English name was very important for 'networking', Chinese ones being easily forgotten.'Oh no, I can't see you for lunch today. I have to take the ancient relic to the temple for her weird daily prayer ritual.' Ancient Relic.

The old woman understood perfectly it was referring to her. Her daughter always assumed that her mother's silence meant she did not comprehend. 'Yes, I know! My car seats will be reeking of joss sticks!'The old woman pursed her lips tightly, her hands gripping her plastic bag in defence.

The car curved smoothly into the temple courtyard. It looked almost garish next to the dull sheen of the ageing temple's roof. The old woman got out of the back seat, and made her unhurried way to the main hall.Her daughter stepped out of the car in her business suit and stilettos and reapplied her lipstick as she made her brisk way to her mother's side.'Ma, I'll wait outside. I have an important phone call to make,' she said, not bothering to hide her disgust at the pungent fumes of incense.

The old lady hobbled into the temple hall and lit a joss stick, she knelt down solemnly and whispered her now familiar daily prayer to the Gods.Thank you God of the Sky, you have given my daughter luck all these years. Everything I prayed for, you have given her. She has everything a young woman in this world could possibly want. She has a big house with a swimming pool, a maid to help her, as she is too clumsy to sew or cook.Her love life has been blessed; she is engaged to a rich and handsome angmoh man. Her company is now the top financial firm and even men listen to what she says. She lives the perfect life. You have given her everything except happiness. I ask that the gods be merciful to her even if she has lost her roots while reaping the harvest of success. What you see is not true, she is a filial daughter to me. She gives me a room in her big house and provides well for me. She is rude to me only because I affect her happiness. A young woman does not want to be hindered by her old mother. It is my fault.

The old lady prayed so hard that tears welled up in her eyes. Finally, with her head bowed in reverence she planted the half-burnt joss stick into an urn of smouldering ashes.She bowed once more. The old woman had been praying for her daughter for thirty-two years. When her stomach was round like a melon, she came to the temple and prayed that it was a son.Then the time was ripe and the baby slipped out of her womb, bawling and adorable with fat thighs and pink cheeks, but unmistakably, a girl. Her husband had kicked and punched her for producing a useless baby who could not work or carry the family name. Still, the woman returned to the temple with her new-born girl tied to her waist in a sarong and prayed that her daughter would grow up and have everything she ever wanted. Her husband left her and she prayed that her daughter would never have to depend on a man.

She prayed every day that her daughter would be a great woman, the woman that she, meek and uneducated, could never become. A woman with nengkan; the ability to do anything she set her mind to. A woman who commanded respect in the hearts of men. When she opened her mouth to speak, precious pearls would fall out and men would listen. She will not be like me, the woman prayed as she watched her daughter grow up and drift away from her, speaking a language she scarcely understood. She watched her daughter transform from a quiet girl, to one who openly defied her, calling her laotu; old-fashioned. She wanted her mother to be 'modern', a word so new there was no Chinese word for it. Now her daughter was too clever for her and the old woman wondered why she had prayed like that.

The gods had been faithful to her persistent prayer, but the wealth and success that poured forth so richly had buried the girl's roots and now she stood, faceless, with no identity, bound to the soil of her ancestors by only a string of origami banknotes. Her daughter had forgotten her mother's values. Her wants were so ephemeral; that of a modern woman. Power, Wealth, access to the best fashion boutiques, and yet her daughter had not found true happiness. The old woman knew that you could find happiness with much less. When her daughter left the earth everything she had would count for nothing. People would look to her legacy and say that she was a great woman, but she would be forgotten once the wind blows over, like the ashes of burnt paper convertibles and mansions. The old woman wished she could go back and erase all her big hopes and prayers for her daughter; now she had only one want: That her daughter be happy. She looked out of the temple gate. She saw her daughter speaking on the phone, her brow furrowed with anger and worry. Being at the top is not good, the woman thought, there is only one way to go from there - down.

The old woman carefully unfolded the plastic bag and spread out a packet of beehoon in front of the altar. Her daughter often mocked her for worshipping porcelain Gods. How could she pray to them so faithfully and expect pieces of ceramic to fly to her aid? But her daughter had her own gods too, idols of wealth, success and power that she was enslaved to and worshipped every day of her life. Every day was a quest for the idols, and the idols she worshipped counted for nothing in eternity. All the wants her daughter had would slowly suck the life out of her and leave her, an empty soulless shell at the altar. The old lady watched her joss tick. The dull heat had left a teetering grey stem that was on the danger of collapsing. Modern woman nowadays, the old lady sighed in resignation, as she bowed to the east one final time to end her ritual.

Modern woman nowadays want so much that they lose their souls and wonder why they cannot find it.Her joss stick disintegrated into a soft grey powder. She met her daughter outside the temple, the same look of worry and frustration was etched on her daughter's face. An empty expression, as if she was ploughing through the soil of her wants looking for the one thing that would sow the seeds of happiness.They climbed into the convertible in silence and her daughter drove along the highway, this time not as fast as she had done before.

'Ma,' Bee Choo finally said. 'I don't know how to put this. Mark and I have been talking about it and we plan to move out of the big house. The property market is good now, and we managed to get a buyer willing to pay seven million for it. We decided we'd prefer a cosier penthouse apartment instead. We found a perfect one in Orchard Road . Once we move in to our apartment we plan to get rid of the maid, so we can have more space to ourselves....'The old woman nodded knowingly. Bee Choo swallowed hard. 'We'd get someone to come in to do the housework and we can eat out - but once the maid is gone, there won't be anyone to look after you. You will be awfully lonely at home and, besides that, the apartment is rather small. There won't be space. We thought about it for a long time, and we decided the best thing for you is if you moved to a Home. There's one near Hougang - it's a Christian home, a very nice one.'

The old woman did not raise an eyebrow. 'I've been there, the matron is willing to take you in. It's beautiful with gardens and lots of old people to keep you company! I hardly have time for you, you'd be happier there.' 'You'd be happier there, really.' Her daughter repeated as if to affirm herself. This time the old woman had no plastic bag of food offerings to cling tightly to; she bit her lip and fastened her seat belt, as if it would protect her from a daughter who did not want her anymore. She sunk deep into the leather seat, letting her shoulders sag, and her fingers trace the white seat. 'Ma?' her daughter asked, searching the rear view window for her mother. 'Is everything okay?' What had to be done, had to be done. 'Yes,' she said firmly, louder than she intended, 'if it will make you happy,' she added more quietly.'It's for you, Ma! You'll be happier there. You can move there tomorrow, I already got the maid to pack your things.' Elaine said triumphantly, mentally ticking yet another item off her agenda.'I knew everything would be fine.' Elaine smiled widely; she felt liberated.

Perhaps getting rid of her mother would make her happier. She had thought about it. It seemed the only hindrance in her pursuit of happiness. She was happy now. She had everything a modern woman ever wanted; Money, Status, Career, Love,Power and now, Freedom, without her mother and her old-fashioned ways to weigh her down...Yes, she was free. Her phone buzzed urgently, she picked it up and read the message, still beaming from ear to ear. 'Stocks 10% increase!' Yes, things were definitely beginning to look up forher... And while searching for the meaning of life in the luminance of her hand phone screen, the old woman in the backseat became invisible, and she did not see the tears....

Well, fyi this story by the way won an award...Singapore girl wins Commonwealth essay prize!A 15-YEAR-OLD Singaporean, competing against 16- to 18-year-olds, has won the top prize in a writing contest that drew 5,300 entries from 52 countries.In the annual Commonwealth Essay Competition, Amanda Chong of Raffles Girls' School (Secondary) chose to compete in the older category and won with a piece on the restlessness of modern life..

Her short story, titled What The Modern Woman Wants, focused on the conflict in values between an old lady and her independent-minded daughter.'Through my story, I attempted to convey the unique East-versus-West struggles and generation gaps that I felt were characteristic of young people in my country,' said Amanda, who likes drama, history and literature and wants to become a lawyer and a politician.

Chief examiner Charles Kemp called her piece a 'powerfully moving and ironical critique of modern restlessness and its potentially cruel consequences'. The writing is fluent and assured, with excellent use of dialogue.

Amanda gets (S$1,590). A Singaporean last won the top prize in 2000, said Britain 's Royal Commonwealth Society, which has been organising the competition since 1883. Singaporeans also came in second in the 14- to 15-year-old category, and fourth in the under-12s. Other winners included students from Australia, Canada and South Africa .

Finding what we look for..

2008-01-02T17:39:00.000+08:00

You may have read about the teenage boy who lost a contact lens while playing basketball in his driveway. After a fruitless search, he told his mother the lens was nowhere to be found. Undaunted, she went outside and in a few minutes returned with the eyepiece in her hand.

"How did you manage to find it, Mom?" the teenager asked.

"We weren't looking for the same thing," she replied. "You were looking for a small piece of plastic. I was looking for $150."2

What we look for and see in life is largely determined by our values. More often than not when kids inherit a small fortune which cost them nothing and for which they did nothing to earn it, they pretty much blow it within two years. Also, if suffering people don't have any value to us, we will largely ignore them and not do anything to help them.

Just remember that in actual fact, what we value is what we seek after and find.

Get started with thinking out of box

2007-09-26T17:23:00.001+08:00

Interesting site worth feeding the mind if you are into thinking out of box type of subjects.

http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/

Tomato Story

2007-09-11T15:03:00.000+08:00

Okay forget about HYIP. Most turns out to be scams couple with E-gold payment processor intermittant issue, it is good to forget about it at the moment.

Here's a short story u know what is better when it comes to earning.

U Will Knw What Is Better When It Comes To Earning Money

Tomato Story

A Jobless man applied for the position of "office boy" at Microsoft.
The HR manager interviewed him then watched him cleaning the floor as a test.

"You are employed" he said. Give me your e-mail address and I'll send you the application to fill in, as well as date when you may start.

The man replied "But I don't have a computer, neither an email".

"I'm sorry", said the HR manager. If you don't have an email, that means you do not exist. And who doesn't exist, cannot have the job."

The man left with no hope at all. He didn't know what to do, with only $10 in his pocket. He then decided to go to the supermarket and buy a 10Kg tomato crate.
He then sold the tomatoes in a door to door round. In less than two hours,
he succeeded to double his capital. He repeated the operation three times,
and returned home with $60.

The man realized that he can survive by this way, and started to go everyday earlier, and return late. Thus, his money doubled or tripled everyday.

Shortly, he bought a cart, then a truck, and then he had his own fleet of delivery vehicles.

5 years later, the man is one of the biggest food retailers in the US
He started to plan his family's future, and decided to have a life insurance.

He called an insurance broker, and chose a protection plan.
When the conversation was concluded the broker asked him his email.
The man replied,"I don't have an email."
The broker answered curiously, "You don't have an email, and yet have succeeded to build an empire. Can you imagine what you could have been if you had an e mail?!!" The man thought for a while and replied, "Yes, I'd be an office boy at Microsoft!"

Moral of the story

Moral 1
Internet is not the solution to your life.

Moral 2
If you don't have Internet, and work hard, you can be a millionaire.

Moral 3
If you happen to read this message on a computer or received by mail
You are closer to being a office boy/girl,than a millionaire..........

Another way to describe money

2007-06-26T14:07:00.000+08:00

Money is either a good or a bad influence, according to the character of the person who possesses it

Money has no character, no personality, no values. Its actions only reflect the desires of its owner. Money can build great hospitals and schools, or it can be gambled away or squandered on meaningless possessions. Money may build great factories who produce environmental friendly protective energy products, it may construct income for many people by setting up sustainable projects - or it may be used to create instruments of war and environmental and human destruction. As you build your personal wealth, make sure you build your character by setting aside a portion of your income to help others. Choose a cause that you can enthusiastically support. Then give a part of your money and your time in support of that cause. The primary beneficiary of such noble actions is always the one who gives, not the one who receives.

Born to Fly

2007-06-22T15:15:00.000+08:00

"But those who hope in the creator will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."

A naturalist visiting a farm one day was surprised to see a beautiful eagle in the farmer's chicken coop. Befuddled, he asked, "Why in the world is that eagle living with chickens?"

"Well," answered the farmer, "I found an abandoned eagle's egg one day and laid it in the coop, and a chicken adopted it and raised the creature after it hatched. It doesn't know any better; it thinks it's a chicken." The eagle was even pecking at grain and strutting awkwardly in circles.

"Doesn't it ever try to fly out of there?" asked the naturalist, noticing that the bird never lifted its gaze. "No," said the farmer, "I doubt it even knows what it means to fly."

The naturalist asked to take the eagle a few days for experiments, and the farmer agreed. The scientist placed the eagle on a fence and pushed it off, bellowing, "Fly!" But the bird just fell to the ground and started pecking. He then climbed to the top of a hayloft and did the same thing, but the frightened bird just shrieked and fluttered ungraciously to the barnyard, where it resumed its strutting.

Finally, the naturalist took the docile bird away from the environment to which it had grown accustomed, driving to the highest butte in the county. After a lengthy and sweaty climb to the hillcrest with the bird tucked under his arm, he peered over the edge and then spoke gently: "You were born to soar. It is better that you die here today on the rocks below than live the rest of your life being a chicken. It's not what you are."

Then, with its keen eyesight, the confused bird spotted another eagle soaring on the currents high above the bluff, and a yearning was kindled within it. The naturalist threw the majestic beast up and over the edge, crying out, "Fly! Fly! Fly!"

The eagle began to tumble toward the rocks below, but then it opened its seven-foot span of wings and, with a mighty screech, instinctively began to flap them. Soon it was gliding gracefully, climbing in ever-higher spirals on unseen thermals into the blue sky. Eventually, the mighty eagle disappeared into the glare of the morning sun. The bird had become what it was born to be.

Have you discovered your given purpose and potential—and have become or are becoming all that you were born to be?

Broken Chains, by Doug Batchelor.

The Thrill of Temptation

2007-06-12T11:32:00.000+08:00

Kent Edwards wrote how the tuna fish "were running for the first time in forty-seven years only thirty miles off Cape Cod." They were apparently biting furiously so many would-be tuna fishermen in their excitement to catch a large tuna ignored Coast Guard warnings. What they didn't realize was that the problem didn't lie in hooking a tuna but landing it in the boat.

One boat, the Christi Anne, capsized while battling with a large tuna. The same day another boat, Basic Instinct, met with the same fate. And Official Business was swamped when trying to land its catch. The tuna pulled the boat below the surface of the water.

What these fishermen didn't realize was the power of large tuna fish. That's pretty much like what temptation does to us. At first it can seem very exciting and enticing but once we take the bait, we're the ones that get hooked and it can quickly overpower us and pull us under.

Remember to avoid the thrill of temptation at all times. Be strong and stand firm !.

And by the way !!. Have you guys capitalise on Asianagoldinvest. I think we should..This program is gaining momentum and i just hope that it would lasts for another 3 months.

Good Luck to all !!...

This is crucial knowledge - Know That Video Games affect Your Child's Brain !

2007-03-15T14:17:00.000+08:00

By Al Sears, MD
Did you play video games when you were a child? They weren't around until I was in college. But nowadays, kids all over the country are spending a lot of time in front of the TV or computer, playing those games.
That's a big change. And with the arrival of ever-better technologies, video games are increasingly vivid, realistic - and addicting.
I've wondered for years whether playing these games influences brain development. I think it might make a kid's brain work faster, able to process more visual information. And my nine-year-old son seems to be able to multitask in ways I can't. But I've also wondered if there's a dark side to brain development, induced by the shocking brutality in some of the videos. Now, for the first time, I've found new evidence that violent video games do alter brain functioning.
Researchers at Indiana University in Indianapolis used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to map out which parts of the brain are stimulated when kids play different types of video games. One group of adolescents played a violent game called "Medal of Honor," while another group played an equally exciting but non-violent game called "Need for Speed." After 30 minutes, doctors collected the MRI data.
The teens playing the non-violent game showed activity in the frontal area of the brain. This is the area associated with concentration, inhibition, and self-control. The teens playing the violent video game showed no activity in the frontal area of the brain. Instead, the game activated their amygdala. This is the "reptilian" brain that's associated with emotional arousal - especially anger.
This study is sobering for a number of reasons. The reptilian, or limbic, brain is the least cerebral and most animal-like part of the brain. It's where your most basic instincts reside. Instincts to do with things like feeding, survival, and procreation.
This works well in times of crisis. If you're starving, your reptilian brain will drive you to find food. If someone is chasing you and you're in danger, this part of your brain will put you into "fight or flight" mode. In other words, to protect yourself, you'll either become violent or you'll run for your life.
But this area of your brain has no capacity for logic, reason, or objective decision-making. It has no way to express tolerance, understanding, or love. Now consider that millions of teenagers are over-stimulating this portion of their brain for hours every day.
Cause for concern? I think so. Because other research has shown that both repetitive actions and repetitive thoughts hardwire your brain, reinforce whatever actions or thoughts you're practicing, and make it more likely you'll repeat them in the future.
What do I mean by "hardwire"? There are connections between your brain cells that are called dendrites. Repeated activities stimulate dendrites and create neural pathways between different parts of your brain. The more you practice a certain activity, the stronger that neural pathway becomes. These structural changes are the physical mechanisms of learning.
And your brain, like the rest of your body, follows the "use it or lose it" rule. Neural pathways that are not being used eventually get "pruned."
The Indiana University study, coupled with what we know about conditioning and learning, is not proof that playing video games leads to violence. But it does give us reasonable cause to suspect that children who spend a lot of time firing up their reptilian brains may be more prone to violence - and may be less likely to have self-control.
An extreme example of this occurred when authorities discovered a teenage girl who had been locked up in her bedroom for her entire life. Her parents never spoke to her, never touched her - never even acknowledged her. They kept her alive by sliding trays of food under her door.
When police arrested the parents and rescued the girl, she was 12 years old. She was unable to communicate with words, as she had never spoken or been spoken to. Psychologists tried to teach her to speak, but she couldn't learn to do it. After running brain scans, they discovered the area of her brain that rules speech had atrophied. Due to lack of use, the neural pathways had collapsed - in this case, irreversibly.
I'm not suggesting that all kids who play violent video games will go nuts and lose their ability to be rational. But the nature of the human brain is clear: Practiced behavior becomes dominant. Functions that are ignored get cut off - sometimes forever.
I've never bought my son a video game. Yet they are so popular among his friends, he is still exposed to them. I suspect your children or grandkids are too. And I think there is reason to keep the violent ones away from them as much as you possibly can.
I have one other practical piece of advice for you if your child or grandchild is having a hard time controlling his or her aggression. You might consider a nutritional supplement.
Studies show that omega-3s have the power to reduce aggression and violence. For instance, British researchers gave violent prisoners a fish oil supplement along with their regular daily meals. In a matter of days, the prison guards started to notice a change among those prisoners. The results showed that the group taking the supplement had a 37 percent decrease in violent offenses and a 26 percent decrease in overall offenses.
Your brain is 60 percent fats, and omega-3 fats are essential for your brain to function properly. Children today suffer from a dramatic omega-3 deficiency. And violent video games just might be making a nutritional deficiency worse.
I give my son a daily teaspoon of cod liver oil as a natural source of omega-3 fats. These days, you can find it without the bad taste of the cod liver oil my grandmother used.

The 6 Keys to Wealth Building

2007-03-05T19:07:00.000+08:00

By Scott Hove

There are keys to wealth and success that those who have attained them understand. If you wish to build wealth and achieve success then it’s crucial to implement the keys discussed below.

Here, then, are six things that the successful understand and implement. As you read them, please understand that you can practice them too!

1. They believe in themselves!

Successful people believe nothing can stop them from reaching their goals – financial and otherwise. They do what is necessary to reach those goals. That means they even do things they dislike or take on tasks that seem impossible.

You can sense their self-belief and can almost see it when they enter a room. Successful people exhibit a high level of self-confidence that is contagious. Most are optimistic and maintain a positive outlook even when life is tough. Their confidence is not easily shaken by external factors. They see opportunities in problems!

2. They learn from people who have achieved more than they have!

Successful people know that in order to grow they need to learn from those who have already realized greater success. They know that when you stop growing you stop living!

They ask questions, study and learn from others. One man that I interviewed said to me, “No one has asked me questions like this before!” I wasn’t surprised to hear him say that as I have heard it before.

Who can you ask about their success? What might you learn?

3. They recognize the tremendous value of time!

Successful people understand time is their most important asset. They know it is a very scarce resource. They don’t spend much time watching television soap operas, for example. One of the best investments we made recently was to spend $9.99 a month to get the digital video recording service our local cable provider offers. While we already watch limited programming, now we record the few shows we normally watch so we can zip through the commercials! (Sorry, advertisers!)

Wealthy people know the power of the use of leverage to achieve maximum gains with minimum efforts. When you can leverage time, you can achieve tremendous results!

4. They understand the importance of investing in themselves!

Successful people understand that many expenses are investments. They know that by spending money to acquire an asset or skill (learning) they will realize a future return. In many cases that return will be a large multiple of their original expenditure. (A good accountant will help them to see this, too!)

Many successful people spend good amounts of money on educational and motivational resources – CD’s, seminars, books, membership websites and more. They know that it is an investment that can never diminish in value because it is an investment in themselves.

5. They implement strategic monetary decisions!

Wealthy people place a significant portion of their wealth in some type of investment that gives them a better return than a savings account.

These investments might be real estate, gas and oil, stocks, bonds, or their business. Recently we learned about an investment opportunity that over the last year (February 2006 – January 2007) returned over 70% compounded. We learned about it because we are actively looking for things that have the possibility of doing much better than the local bank.

Successful people also know that not putting all your eggs in one basket is critical. There are far too many stories of people losing everything because everything was riding on one horse that couldn’t make it to the finish line.

6. They understand the power of being generous!

Many wealthy people are also great givers. They have come to see the importance of giving to something beyond themselves. They know that as they give to their community, college, church and other organizations they are helping others and that, too, is a great investment!

To be sure there are tax benefits involved, in some cases tremendous tax benefits (i.e., charitable remainder unitrusts), but for most successful people it is a benefit of giving and not the primary motivating factor.

Conclusion

Wealth and success are not measured simply by money in the bank and are rarely attained quickly. Practice the disciplines above and you too will develop a wealthier life in many ways!

Scott Hove is a wealth-building expert, speaker, author and entrepreneur. To learn more about him and how to have him speak to your business or organization visit: http://www.ScottHove.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_Hove
http://EzineArticles.com/?Wealth-Building:-Six-Keys&id=448814

Just another interesting Short Story

2007-03-04T02:17:00.000+08:00

Here's an interesting short story a friend of mind posted me today.. It seems quite true for most of us treating our parents for granted, isn't it so ?.

An 80-year old man was sitting on the sofa in his house along with his 45-year old highly educated son, when suddenly a crow perched on their window.

The father asked his son: "What is that?" and The son replied: "It is a crow".

After a few minutes, the father asked his son the 2nd time, "What is that?"

The son said: father, I have just told you "It is a crow".

After a little while, the aged father again asked his son the 3rd time, "What is that?"

At this time, some ex-pression of irritation was felt in the s on's tone when he said to his father with a rebuff: "It's a crow, a crow".

A little after, the father again asked his son the 4th time: "What is that?"

This time the son shouted at his father: "Why do you keep asking me the same question again and again although I have already told you so many times 'IT IS A CROW'. Were you not able to understand that?"

A little later the father went to his room and came back with an old tattered diary, which he had maintained since his son was born.

On opening a page, he asked his son to read that page. When the son read it, the following words were written in the diary : "Today my little son, aged three, was sitting with me on the sofa, when a crow suddenly perched on the window. My son asked me 23 times what it was, and I replied to him all 23 times that it was a Crow. I hugged him lovingly each time he asked me the same question again and again for 23 times. I did not at all feel irritated, I rather felt affection for my innocent child".

While the little child asked him 23 times "What is that?", the father had felt no irritation in replying to the same question all 23 times, and today when the father asked his son the same question just 4 times, the son felt irritated and annoyed.

So the moral of the story.. If our parents attain old age, do not be repulsed by them or look at them as a burden, but speak to them in gracious words, be cool, obedient, humble and kind to them. Be considerate to our parents.

From today say this aloud: "I want to see my parents happy forever. They have cared for me ever since I was a little child.

They have always showered their selfless love on me".

They crossed all mountains and valleys without seeing the storm and heat to make me a person presentable to the society today.

Say this now: "I will serve my old parents in the BEST way I can and I will say all good and kind words to my dear parents, no matter how they behave".

Encouragement Energizes

2007-03-01T11:27:00.000+08:00

"Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing."

A study was done by psychologist Dr. Henry H. Goddard, on energy levels in children. He used an instrument he called the 'ergograph.' How he ever got some children to stand still long enough to connect them to the machine is a mystery. But he did, and his findings are fascinating.

He found that when tired children are given a word of praise or encouragement, the ergograph shows an immediate upward surge of new energy. When the children are criticized and discouraged, the ergograph shows their physical energy take a sudden nosedive."

The same principle applies to teenagers and adults of any age. When we are genuinely thanked, praised, and encouraged, we definitely feel much better and energized. And when we are criticized or just feel bad, our energy level certainly falls and we are de-energized.

We all need to be encouraged daily ... so let's decide that we will first of all be encouragers ourselves especially to those we love the most, to our friends, and also to strangers as opportunities arise.

A short story to treasure..

2007-02-01T17:01:00.000+08:00

I ran into a stranger as he passed by,
"Oh excuse me please" was my reply.

He said, "Please excuse me too;
I wasn't watching for you."

We were very polite, this stranger and I.
We went on our way and we said goodbye.

But at home a different story is told,
How we treat our loved ones, young and old.

Later that day, cooking the evening meal,
My son stood beside me very still.

When I turned, I nearly knocked him down.
"Move out of the way," I said with a frown.

He walked away, his little heart broken.
I didn't realize how harshly I'd spoken.

While I lay awake in bed,
God's still small voice came to me and said,

"While dealing with a stranger,
common courtesy you use,
but the family you love, you seem to abuse.

Go and look on the kitchen floor,
You'll find some flowers there by the door.

Those are the flowers he brought for you.
He picked them himself: pink, yellow and blue.

He stood very quietly not to spoil the surprise,
you never saw the tears that filled his little eyes."

By this time, I felt very small,
And now my tears began to fall.

I quietly went and knelt by his bed;
"Wake up, little one, wake up," I said.

"Are these the flowers you picked for me?"
He smiled, "I found 'em, out by the tree.

I picked 'em because they're pretty like you.
I knew you'd like 'em, especially the blue."

I said, "Son, I'm very sorry for the way I acted today;
I shouldn't have yelled at you that way."
He said, "Oh, Mom, that's okay.
I love you anyway."

I said, "Son, I love you too,
and I do like the flowers, especially the blue."

FAMILY
Are you aware that if we die tomorrow, the company that we are working for could easily replace us in a matter of days. But the family we left behind will feel the loss for the rest of their lives.

And come to think of it, i think most of us pour ourselves more into work than into our own family..right?.

Let's ask ourselves, is it really a wise thing to do?. What are we going to do differently from today onwards?.

Think about provision for the future

2007-01-30T16:46:00.000+08:00

According to an article in Today in the World, "

In the spring of 1981, a young man was flown into desolate northern Alaska to photograph the natural beauty and mysteries of the tundra. He took along 500 rolls of film, several firearms, and 1,400 pounds of provisions.

"As the months passed, the words in his diary changed from wonder and fascination into a nightmare. In August he wrote, 'I think I should have used more foresight about arranging my departure. I'll soon find out.' In November he died in a nameless valley, by a nameless lake, 225 miles northeast of Fairbanks. An investigation revealed that though he had carefully planned his trip, he had made no provision to be flown out.

"Difficult to imagine isn't it? How could anyone be so foolish or even forgetful? He made every provision for his journey except how to get home! Unbelievable!

"How tragic," we may say. And yet, how many of us make every provision for life here on earth but no preparation for our departure?. Give a deep thought about this and plan our provision for the future.

Know Which Direction Your Money is Flowing

2007-01-03T23:35:00.000+08:00

“A big part of financial freedom is having your heart and mind free from worry about the what-ifs of life.” -Suze Orman

To make the right decision about how to invest your money, you must know what your income is and how you are spending it. This is a great reason to have a budget and keep track of your expenses.

Many people do not realize that they are overspending. Money is not flowing in quick enough to cover what is flowing out in expenses. If you can barely afford to meet your monthly expenses, you certainly do not have enough money available to invest.

However, once you have a clear picture of how you spend your money you can take action by cutting and reducing luxury spending.

A budget is similar to a map. It shows you where you have been, where you are, and where you could go. Only through taking an honest look at where you are financially in terms of income and expenses can you start working on your dreams.

Perhaps you want to have your own home, start your own business, invest, or plan for your kids' future education. Detailing which way your money is flowing and how fast is, a great place to start working on making your dreams come true.

This allows you to have firm control over every single penny and make sure it is being spent in a way which is improving your financial situation and not creating debt. There are several investment opportunities which allow you to invest a small amount of capital over time.
Money market accounts, high yield bonds, and mutual funds are all great options for people who have little money to invest. Most financial advisors suggest that new investors start small and early.

Even if budgeting only helps you save $20 dollars a month, this can lead to thousands of dollars over time and with the right investment plan. You can live without your afternoon paper, and that expensive lunch.

Think of how much money that little sacrifice could be making you. Most people consider budgeting restricting. But you should view a budget like a spending plan which frees up more money for investing, saving, and perhaps a little extra pocket money.

Utilizing your income correctly can ensure that money is flowing into your pockets and not out. The key to financial success is control. Controlling your income and your expenses allows you to make solid choices that are not motivated by fear but on well researched decisions. Decisions which will create financial stability and freedom for your family and yourself.

The Search for Significance

2006-12-20T15:01:00.000+08:00

"Then he [Jesus] said to them, 'Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.'"

Not all by any means, but most of the motivational books and lectures that I have read and heard pretty much measure success in terms of wealth and material gain. For example, businessmen and women who are considered successful are those who have built an effective business that has become very profitable financially. Most of these "successful" people have been totally committed to and have invested their life in achieving their goal of success.
However, many or at least some of these people after they have reached the pinnacle of success in terms of the world's measure of success ask themselves, "Is this all there is to life?" and wonder, "What have I achieved with my life that will leave anything of lasting value after I have gone? What, if anything, have I contributed to the betterment of mankind?" In other words, "What have I done of lasting significance?"

The reality is that one can achieve success and receive many accolades and obtain wide recognition and yet not have achieved anything of lasting significance. On the other hand, if one has invested his or her life in things of lasting value, he or she is the one who has achieved real success and whose life is truly significant—with or without any accolades, recognition or monitory gain.

In other words I can be "successful" but not have any significance, but if I have achieved significance I will be truly successful. I think this is a good for thought.

Little creatures that may cheer you up..

2006-11-21T15:09:00.000+08:00

Jokes with real facts..

2006-11-17T10:26:00.000+08:00

Husband & Wife - Why divorce?

In a divorce court a woman requested the judge:
"Your honor, I want to divorce my husband."
"But why ?" asked the judge.
She replied, "Because he is not faithful to me."
The judge asked, "How do you know ?"
She replied, "My lord, not a single child
resembles him."

Husband & Wife - Love Your Enemy
From his death bed, the husband called his wife
and said, "One month after I die I want you to
marry Samy."
"Samy! But he is your enemy !"
"Yes, I know that ! I've suffered all these years
so let him suffer now."

Husband & Wife - Wedding Ring
At the cocktail party, one woman said to another,
"Aren't you wearing your wedding ring on the wrong
finger? "
The other replied, "Yes I am, I married the wrong
man."

Husband & Wife - Why?
"Dad, I was away for a week. Yesterday I sent a fax
to my wife I'd be home that night, and when I got
into my room I found my wife in another man's arms.
"Why, Dad ? Tell me why!"
Dad kept silent for a few minutes, then coolly said,
"Maybe, Son, she didn't get the fax."

Husband & Wife - Same Service
A husband visited a marriage counselor and said,
"When we were first married, I would come home
from the office, my wife would bring my slippers and
our cute little dog would run around barking. Now
after ten years it's all different, I come home, the dog
brings the slippers and my wife runs around barking."
"Why complain?" said the counselor. "You're still
getting the same service!"

Husband & Wife - Talk About Husband
One woman told another: "My neighbor is always
speaking ill of her husband, but look at me, my
husband is foolish, lazy and a coward; but have I
ever said anything bad about him?"

Husband & Wife - Love To Do
A wife, one evening, drew her husband's attention
to the couple next door and said, "Do you see that
couple? How devoted they are? He kisses her every
time they meet. Why don't you do that?"
"I would love to." Replied the husband. "But I don't
know her well enough."

Husband & Wife - No Answer Back
A man was telling his friends, "When my wife is
infuriated, she starts shouting at me, my children
and even at our dogs and nobody dares answer her."
One of his friends asked." And when you are angry,
what do you do?"
The man replied, "I also shout angrily at the
windows and doors of the house and none of them
dares to answer back.

Husband & Wife - Come Home Late
A woman was complaining to the neighbor that her
husband always came home late, no matter how she
tried to stop him.
"Take my advice," said the neighbor, "and do what
I did. Once my husband came home at three o'clock
in the morning, and from my bed I called out: "Is
that you, Jim?" And that cured him.
"Cured him !" asked the woman, "but how?"
The neighbor said, "You see, his name is Bill."

Husband & Wife - Problem Father
"You looked troubled," I told my friend, "what's
your problem?"
He replied, "I'm going to be a father."
"But that's wonderful," I said.
"What's wonderful? My wife doesn't know about it
yet.

Follow the bubbles....

2006-11-14T14:46:00.000+08:00

Vern Treat tells about a scuba diver who said that "when you're in deep water, you're encircled by light, so there's no way you can tell which way is up because the water diffuses the light. You're also totally weightless, so you have no sense of gravity.

"Surrounded in an aura of light and weightlessness, it's very easy to lose all sense of direction and get disoriented. You may sense that this way is up and that your air bubbles are going sideways. You may be so convinced that your perception is true that you decide to ignore your bubbles and go the way you think is up. I wouldn't be surprised if some divers have drowned because of this. One of the first things we were told when learning to scuba-dive was to always trust your bubbles—to always follow your bubbles. No matter how you feel, no matter what you think, your bubbles are always right."

Life can be like that at times too. If we base the rules of life on our feelings and/or perception, we can be very easily led astray. The philosophy, "If it feels good it must be right," is a dangerous guide to follow because our feelings can play all sorts of tricks on us. If something is wrong, it is wrong regardless of how we feel. True, it's important that we don't deny or repress our feelings because we can learn to trust them—but what we can't always trust is our interpretation of them or understand what they are telling us.

So in life the only safe guide to follow when it comes to fruitful and successful living is to trust GOD's word. Therein lie the "bubbles of life" to follow. These "bubbles" are always right. Always! Never fails.

The little things ..

2006-11-08T17:41:00.000+08:00

"Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom."

A four-hundred-year-old tree crashed to the forest floor. Over the centuries it had been struck by lightning fourteen times, braved great windstorms, and even defied an earthquake. In the end, however, it was killed by little beetles. Boring under the bark, they chewed away its mighty fibers until the giant of the forest lay broken on the ground.

Little things can either make us or break us. A little lie, a little theft, a little laziness, a little neglect, a little drink a little too often, a little sarcasm, a little denial here and a little there ... bit by bit we can add them all together and eventually hurt or destroy our relationships, our physical and/or mental health.

On the other hand, a little smile, a little deed of kindness, a little encouraging word, a little thoughtful gift, a little phone call, a little bit of love given a lot of times every day can add up to a whole lot of sunshine that we can spread wherever we are and go—and in so doing encourage others, enhance our relationships, improve our physical and mental health.

It is important to watch the many little things in our life. It is also equally important to clean out all the 'little' sins and self-destructive habits that hurt ourselves and others. We have to keep on practicing little acts of love and kindness until they become an everyday habit. We need to shower our love to others and act with great compassion.

Encouragement

2006-11-02T10:42:00.000+08:00

"Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another."

Guess you are aware that geese fly in "V" formation but do you know why ?. Well, the answer can be a good reminder for us as humans.

As each bird flaps its wings, it creates uplift for the bird immediately following. By doing this, the whole flock adds at least 71 percent greater flying range than if each bird flew on its own.
When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to go it alone—and quickly gets back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird in front.

When the head goose gets tired, it rotates back and another goose flies point. Also, the following geese honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep on keeping on and to keep up their speed.

Also, when a goose gets sick or is wounded by gunshot, and falls out of formation, two other geese fall out with that goose and follow it down to lend help and protection. They stay with the fallen goose until it is able to fly or until it dies, and only then do they launch out on their own, or with another formation to catch up with their group.

We would definately do well to follow the example of the geese.

Famous Quotes on Wives

2006-10-31T10:39:00.000+08:00

I recently read that love is entirely a matter of chemistry. That must be why my wife treats me like toxic waste.

David Bissonette

======================================================
When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.

Sacha Guitry

======================================================
After marriage, husband and wife become two sides of a coin; they just can't face each other, but still they stay together.

Hemant Joshi

======================================================
By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher .

Socrates

======================================================
Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them.

Dumas

======================================================
The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, "What does a woman want ?

Sigmund Freud

======================================================
I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me.

Anonymous

======================================================
"Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays."

Henry Youngman

======================================================
"I don't worry about terrorism. I was married for two years."

Sam Kinison

======================================================
"There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic banking. It's called marriage."

James Holt McGavran

======================================================
"I've had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me and the second one didn't."

Patrick Murray

======================================================
Two secrets to keep your marriage brimming

1. Whenever you're wrong, admit it,

2. Whenever you're right, shut up.

Nash

======================================================
The most effective way to remember your wife's birthday is to forget it once...

Anonymous

======================================================
You know what I did before I married? Anything I wanted to.

Henny Youngman

======================================================
My wife and I were happy for twenty years...…..Then we met.

Rodney Dangerfield

======================================================
A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong.

Milton Berle

======================================================
Marriage is the only war where one sleeps with the enemy .
Anonymous

Good things about Persistency - It pays !

2006-10-27T11:04:00.000+08:00

"If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done. Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow—perhaps it all will."

Remember about Thomas Edison's many attempts in seeking to invent the electric light bulb ?.

Susan Hayward in Begin It Now wrote, "Two dejected assistants of Thomas Edison said, 'We've just completed our 700th experiment and we still don't have the answer. We have failed.'

"'No, my friends, you haven't failed,' replied Mr. Edison, 'it's just that we know more about this subject than anyone else alive. And we're closer to finding the answer because now we know 700 things not to do. Don't call it a mistake. Call it an education.'"

Persistence paid off very well for Edison ... for us too because eventually he succeeded in perfecting the electric light bulb. Persistence in any worthwhile cause always pays rich dividends.

And better still—persistence in Charity or God's work pays eternal dividends.

The Facts on taking risks

2006-10-16T12:02:00.000+08:00

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool,
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental,
To reach out for another is to risk involvement,
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self,
To place your ideas, your dreams, before a crowd is to
risk their loss,
To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To live is to risk despair,
To try is to risk failure,
But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in
life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing does nothing and is nothing.
They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they cannot learn,
feel, change, grow, love, live.
Chained by their attitudes, they are slaves; they have
forfeited their freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.
Author Unknown

"Take good care of my eyes"

2006-10-13T13:59:00.000+08:00

There was a blind girl who hated herself just because she's blind.
She hated everyone, except her loving boyfriend. He's always there for her.
She said that if she could only see the world, she would marry her boyfriend.
One day, someone donated a pair of eyes to her and then she can see everything, including her boyfriend.
Her boyfriend asked her, "now that you can see the world, will you marry me?" The girl was shocked when she saw that her boyfriend is blind too, and refused to marry him.

Her boyfriend walked away in tears, and later wrote a letter to her saying.
"Just take care of my eyes dear."
This is how human brain changes when the status changed.
Only few remember what life was before, and who's always been there even in the most painful situations.

Moral of this short Story :-
Today before you think of saying an unkind word - Think of someone who can't speak.
Today before you complain about life - Think of someone who went too early to heaven.
And when you are tired and complain about your job - Think of the unemployed, the disabled and those who wished they had your job.
But before you think of pointing the finger or condemning another - Remember that not one of us are without sin and we all answer to one maker.
And when depressing thoughts seem to get you down - Put a smile on your face.

Life is a gift.

As i see it, the real moral of this Story:
It is just plain stupidity, Dun give anything valuable to your girl. Keep it to yor self !!.

Knowledge is Power

2006-10-12T17:23:00.000+08:00

"Nothing ventured nothing gained".
"What You Can Conceive You Can Achieve!"
"Knowledge that breaks all barriers of understanding"
"Be curious always, for knowledge will not acquire you; you must acquire it." -- Sudie Back

Knowledge is What the World is Searching for..

In the spring of 1979 a 26 year old student at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom walked into the university doctor's office with complaints of a cold.
The doctor on staff noticed that the student, who held a first-class honours degree in mathematics, was rather normal except he had a slightly larger than average head. Curious, the doctor sent the student to James Lorber who was part of a world-leading spinal surgery team at Sheffield Children's Hospital.
What Dr. Lorber found was almost unbelievable!
The student, with a reported IQ of 126 had no signs of any mental deficiency. Yet, when Dr. Lorber X-rayed the student's head he discovered he had almost no brain tissue to speak of. His head was filled with fluid. What little brain matter he had was crushed against his spinal cord, a measly few millimeters thick rather than the typical CENTI-meters.
This condition is called hydrocephalus. It results when cerebral fluid expands and fills the brain causing the cortex to be squashed against the inside of the skull.
There have been many other reported cases where normal functioning people have been found to have virtually no brain matter.
In this particular case Lorber calculated the man's entire brain weighed about 100 grams compared to the average adult brain weighing 1500 grams. 100 grams is little more than the average weight of a dog's brain and this from an honours student in mathematics!

Let's pause and think about this for a moment. How many dogs do you know who have an honours degree in mathematics? Can't think of any? Neither can I. How was the student capable of functioning on the level that he was?
Lorber asked himself a similar question and it begged him to wonder whether the brain was even necessary at all. In 1980 the journal Science headlined with the discovery and the rest is history.

Many scientists have been quietly but steadily growing in suggesting the brain is more of a receiver than the total warehouse storing our consciousness. This leads to another unusual question. If the brain is a receiver what is sending the signals?
The answer is one we have been hearing from mystics for thousands of years.
You are not flesh. You are an energy being using a physical body to interpret and explore this reality.
By reflecting on that knowledge you have been given power because now you can work to affect your energy body. If you are not aware of it how can you help it?
Like your physical body, your energy body needs food. Albert Einstein said that energy can never be destroyed; only transformed. If you learn to absorb energy you will begin to awaken and strengthen your energy mind.
Without the proper knowledge you will never be able to make the transformations you want to make and awaken to a deeply profound and rewarding spiritual life.

Money - Master or Slave ?.

2006-10-09T11:49:00.000+08:00

"Beware! Don't always be wishing for what you don't have. For real life and real living are not related to how rich we are." ~ Jesus Christ

"Money," said Sanford Lee, "is an excellent servant, but a terrible master."

A reporter once asked the elder Rockefeller, "How much money does it take to satisfy a person?"

The billionaire snapped back, "Always a little more!"

Another has said:" Money will buy the following: A bed but not sleep / Books but not brains / Food but not an appetite / Finery but not beauty / A house but not a home / Medicine but not health / Luxuries but not culture / Amusement but not happiness / A crucifix but not a Savior."
Obviously we can't live without money and there's nothing wrong with being wealthy. The issue is do we own our money or does our money own us, and what is our motive for wanting more money?

The truth is that it takes money to do much of God's work and God's way of financing this is through the committed giving of his people. If everyone did this and gave in proportion to what God has given him/her (or tithed as some prefer to call it), God's work on earth would be done.

We came into the world with nothing. We'll go out the same way. It's only what we invest now in the Kingdom of God that we can send ahead.

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

PS : Money is just one of the pure energy just like wind, fire or water. It can makes things happen just like fire. Use it wisely and not to burn your-self eg: to cook food, to keep purself warm, to boil water etc etc.

Training Our mind

2006-10-03T10:55:00.000+08:00

CREATING OUR REALITY
If we spent 4,000 to 5,000 thoughts focused positively and calmly on acheiving one object or goal, it is very likely to manifest - (as long as we have the right relationship to it - be aware of feelings of doubt, unworthiness, guilt, sin etc. Affirm 'I am worthy of.....")
Also be calm when you visualize your heart's desires. A distracted, anxious, envious, greedy mind - quickly loses energy & focus.
The calmer you are the quicker the results. Calm mind leads to long life.

Tips for training your mind.

Notice how decisions, choices, desires are arising or being made. Are they arising from fear (ego - fear of losing approval / power / control) or from a higher pure intention / source / compassion / love / being.

Be detached from the outcome - don't be annoyed if you don't get something you desire - you get what you need, not what your ego wants, however do your best.
Look at your everyday life as if you are watching a movie / dream. Take a step back - take a broader & higher perspective.

Be aware of symbols and coincidences - notice words / people / things / experiences / that keep re-ocurring - is there a message to learn from these things?
Balance your desires - we live be in the duality - gain / loss, pleasure / pain, light / dark , male / female, Yin / Yang - cycles of life - moderation & measure is the key

The trick can be :-
to have no lower desires, just preferences or higher desires
to have no preferences at all - non attachment , no fixed perspective, no expectations
to celebrate life, with conscious awareness / mindfulness (being especially aware of ego)
realizing there is no right or wrong only consequences eg. the more you drink the larger the hangover.

There is no need to renounce physical life - it is also the work of the divine. Every stone is sacred. Integrate meditation & action, method & wisdom. We live in a trinity -so there is always the third component - eg. male / female & neutral or the right hand, left and and path.

One needs to develop
Morality - (Renunction)
Compassion - loving- kindness, Joy, equanimity
Wisdom - Right View, Concentration (Meditation)
As an antidote to
Attachment
Aversion
Ignorance

Subconscious Mind, Habits & Affirmations

The subconscious mind is like a robot / computer whom we can program with certain functions and tasks. Subconscious mind is our auto-pilot, eg. we use it when we drive and talk on a mobile phone at the same time.
The subconscious mind (lower self) does not know the difference between imagination and reality - that is why affirmations & visualisations work.
'I am beautiful, healthy and slim'
but for this affirmation to work you need the right self-programming - right relationship to self and others. Also the affirmations need to be relatively realistic. For example
"I need the be fit, healthy & vibrant, I will be at ideal weight of ...., in 55 days"
So if for years you've been saying to yourself, subconsciously -
'I'll always be fat, I deserve to be fat!', then the above affirmation is simply not going to work!!
Say first, I am worthy of being slim, beautiful, healthy or having a my ideal partner / soul mate.
Also you need to love yourself before you can truly love others!
Likewise past negative attachments, thoughts, habits or beliefs hinder our progress.
'I delete all negative memories, emotions, thoughts & programming, that have been projected onto me by myself and from others, that are stopping me from reaching .. . . (my goal)......in the past, present and future.
So be it! So be it! So be it!'
Every morning and night you can affirm:
''I am healthy, vibrant and attractive'

However most are not aware that they are being controlled by their own subconscious mind.

VISUALISATIONS.

Visualize what you want
Know
Feel
See
Hear
Smell / Taste
that you are acheiving your goal.
For something to be in the physical, there need to be causes & conditions. started of as an idea in somebody's mind.

ON DEALING WITH SITUATIONS.

"Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts. Nikki Giovanni
"We cannot direct the wind...But we can adjust the sails."

Our thoughts shape how we react / respond to circumstances. If we master our mind we have control over our thoughts, words and deeds - instead of being under their control.
To have self control is to have strength. Serenity is goal, as well as our true nature.
We truly are incharge of our reality. In every moment we have the following three choices:

Leave the situation with dignity, like dolphins who only play with people they like.
Change the situation, if possible - may need discerning wisdom (prajna) & skillful means
Fully accept the situation, with compassion and understanding - like Jesus - surrendering to a higher power / wisdom / flow.

If you ever feel stressed, anxious, frustrated, angry, or negative just focus on your breathing or listening. Don't judge you emotions. Just watch them without trying to change your feeling.
Bring yourself to the present moment. Bring your mind home'. 'Place your mind in your body

Do not underestimate your mind power . Start trainig your mind today !.
Sports psychologists / coaches / pro's have been using these techniques to win major events. (Yogi's have known these techniques for ages!!)

The Better A Man is, The More Mistakes He Will Make

2006-09-29T11:54:00.000+08:00

An insightful quote for our sharing...

"The better a man is, the more mistakes he will make, for the more new things he will try," says management consultants Peter Drucker. "I would never promote into a top-level job a man who was not making mistakes...otherwise he is sure to be mediocre."

A now famous story at IBM involved founder Thomas Watson and one of his vice presidents who took the initiative on the development of a new product. As reported in Fortune (August 31, 1987), the product was a risky venture that ended up colossal failure and cost the company $10 million. Watson called the executive into his office saying there was something he wanted to discuss with him.

Sure he was about to lose his job, the young man blurted out, "I guess you want my resignation."
Watson replied, "You must be kidding. We've just
spent $10 million educating you."

Anyone making a multi-million-dollar mistake had to learn something that would help him do a better job the next time. Drucker's comment that people who are not making mistakes are sure to be mediocre is comforting to those of us who make mistakes as a part of our daily regimen.

Penetrating Worldly Illusions

2006-09-25T11:23:00.000+08:00

This is a story from India. I find it a good one. It really challenge our very own thoughts and sincerity. A good piece of info to feed the mind. What do you think ?.

Once an enlightened master asked his
disciple to renounce the world and join his monastic order.
However, the disciple said that his wife, parents and siblings
all loved him very much, and he could not forsake them. His
departure would bring unbearable pain for his family. "Well, let
me show you how much your family members love you," said his
master.

Together, they came to the home of the disciple. Then the master
gave the disciple a pill and hid himself outside, pretending to
be a stranger. After swallowing the pill, the disciple became
like a dead man, with no heartbeat or breathing. His body turned
stiff and icy cold. His family members burst into tears, crying
and imploring God to save him, but to no avail.

Suddenly the master entered and said to them, "I can save your
relative." On hearing this, they became very happy. They bowed
down and begged him to waste no time saving the man. "But there
is one requirement," said the master. "For him to be revived,
one person must die in his place, because this is the law of
cause and effect. If I raise him from death, then I have to die
for him. But I am not his kin! He is your relative. Since you
love him so much, you must be very happy to die for him. I am
just a passer-by. How can I die for him? So if one of you is
willing to die for him, I can immediately bring back his soul.
As we cannot transcend the karmic law of cause and retribution,
an exchange has to be made."

None of the relatives were willing to die for him. They found
very good excuses. "If I die, who will take care of this home?"
"If I die, who will take care of this business?" Though the wife
of the disciple loved him very much, and had cried desperately
and rolled on the floor, she answered, "No, no! If I die, there
will be no one to take care of my two children." Then they said,
"Oh, well! The man is already dead. Then let it be so. Let us
just send the body for cremation." Hearing that, the disciple
got up immediately and said, "I am not dead yet!" Then he said
good-bye to his family and left with his master.

There are many stories like this. Sometimes when we love
someone, or when someone loves someone else, there are always
some aspects of imperfection. Usually we do not love others to
the extent of forgetting ourselves, or to the extent of being
willing to die for them. Hence, with certain things, we do not
know the truth without personal experience. We perceive only the
outside appearances, which are not correct.

The attachments that we feel for this world are not the
ultimate. It is best that we do not have to come back anymore
because no matter how deeply attached we are, after a while we
still have to leave. So, it is best to be prepared beforehand,
and at the time of departure, to be gone forever. Otherwise, the
next time we come back, we will again become attached, and get
tied up with one another. After a while, we will have to leave
once more. Again at that time, our relatives will feel great
pain. Therefore, it is best to just be gone once and for all,
without any need to come back again to trouble others. This is
also an act of filial piety. Don't you think so? (Audience: Yes.)

It is this way between husband and wife. After a while, each
goes his or her own way. Since both feel so attached and
miserable at the time of separation, do not repeat it. Hence, we
should be prepared spiritually. It is better to leave in a
clear-cut manner. Do not come back again to re-play these
painful scenes. Otherwise, we will be miserable and so will be
the other party. What good will it do us?

Things that my Mother had taught me

2006-09-21T11:46:00.000+08:00

1. My Mother taught me about ANTICIPATION... "Just wait until your father gets home."

2. My Mother taught me about RECEIVING.... "You are going to get it when we get home!"

3. My Mother taught me to MEET A CHALLENGE... "What were you thinking? Answer me when I talk to you! Don't talk back to me!"

4. My Mother taught me LOGIC... "If you fall out off that swing and break your neck, your not going to the store with me."

5. My Mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE... "If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to freeze that way."

6. My Mother taught me to THINK AHEAD... "If you don't pass your spelling test, you'll never get a good job."

7. My Mother taught me ESP... "Put your sweater on; don't you think I know when you're cold?"

8. My Mother taught me HUMOR... "When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me."

9. My Mother taught me how to BECOME AN ADULT... "If you don't eat your vegetables, you'll never grow up."

10.My Mother taught me about SEX.... "How do you think you got here?"

11.My Mother taught me about GENETICS... "You're just like your father."

12.My Mother taught me about my ROOTS... "Do you think you were born in a barn?"

13.My Mother taught me about WISDOM OF AGE... "When you get to be my age, you will understand."

14.And my all time favorite... JUSTICE... "One day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you....Then you'll see what it's like."

Success Tips - DO what you love most.

2006-09-20T20:50:00.000+08:00

“Along with a strong belief in your own inner voice, you also need laser-like focus combined with unwavering determination.” -Larry Flynt

Are you restless in your current job position and hate going into work everyday? Do you have a nagging want to do something else or a particular goal to accomplish? Most psychologists believe that if individuals ignore their desires, they will end up having increasing restlessness.

If you have to work 40 or more hours a week, you should at least be doing something you enjoy. Desires are often blocked out by the daily grind and people forget that they have goals they want to accomplish.

Procrastination is a dream stealer and can leave you bitter in your old age. If you want to do something you truly enjoy you need to start today. You are capable of anything you set your mind to. With the right amount of time, energy, and pure determination you can do anything your heart desires.

Perhaps you are doing something you hate simply because you do not know what you would really enjoy doing. Begin by taking the time to reflect on what makes you happy. Make a list of professions you would like to try or activities that you enjoy doing.

Think back to your childhood and what games you liked to play. Think about who you pretended to be and what you loved to do. Ask yourself “What do I want to achieve in my work?” Is it only individual success, or do you have hopes of changing the world?

You may want to consider visiting the local library or looking online for career resources, classes, or even a life advisor. This will help you bring into focus what you would love to do with your life. This is the first step in doing what you love. Once you have decided on the path just go for it and implement your plan. There is plenty of time along the way to build skills, and acquire new knowledge.

Another factor which prevents people from doing what they love is age. Many people think they are simply too old for a career change and are resigned to live out their miserable existence. Whether you are a new graduate, a middle aged mother of 4, or a new retiree – you still have the time and energy to achieve those dreams which have been pushed to the sidelines. Doing what you love will bring fulfillment and satisfaction in your life that is unmatched by any other endeavor.

Begin your new life today!

Sure way of Making Money without Risks..

2006-09-11T19:19:00.000+08:00

Frens on the net,

Here's what i discovered on making money on-line. It is really worth sharing with you guys and gals.

The only sure way and without risk generating money on-line is nevertheless thru Google Adsense. If you guys has talent on writing, i suggest you run a blog, once you have establish a number of readers to your blog, there are chances that you may get paid if by the advertisement click. Well, i hv experimented and found that my Adsense account in accumulating wealth. It looks slow, never mind bout that but it definately generating money. Once it reaches USD100, Google will send me a cheque. Let's see how it turns out.

Making money through Google ?.

Adsense Getting started..

Here's the catch...
"When a publisher that signed up for Google AdSense through your referral earns their initial $100.00 and is eligible for payout, we'll credit your account with $100.00".

Google AdWords enables advertisers to create and display ads on Google.com and the Google content network, which includes Google AdSense publisher sites like yours. Advertisers can choose their target audience, set their budget, and see their ad almost instantly. Visit the Google AdWords website.

When a user signs up for Google AdWords through your referral and spends their first $100.00 in advertising, we'll credit your account with $20.00.

It really made me feels good to be able to share this great piece of information. Good Luck and keep trying.

Boy with Divine Power

2006-09-05T14:25:00.000+08:00

Some old articles on a Boy who seek meditation without food and water and dramatically able to survice for 10 months until he finally dissapear into forest to seek and find real peace to complete his meditation stint of 6 years in completer meditatation solidarity.

Pilgrims flock to see 'Buddha boy' said to have fasted six months
By Thomas Bell in Bara District, Nepal (Filed: 21/11/2005)

Thousands of pilgrims are pouring into the dense jungle of southern Nepal to worship a 15-year-old boy who has been hailed as a new Buddha.
Devotees claim that Ram Bomjon, who is silently meditating beneath a tree, has not eaten or drunk anything since he sat down at his chosen spot six months ago.

Ram Bomjon maintains his vigil in the shade of his pipal tree
Witnesses say they have seen light emanating from the teenager's forehead.
"It looks a bit like when you shine a torch through your hand," said Tek Bahadur Lama, a member of the committee responsible for dealing with the growing number of visitors from India and elsewhere in Nepal.
Photographs of Ram Bomjon, available for five rupees (4p) from his makeshift shrine, have become ubiquitous across the region. "Far and wide, it's the only topic of conversation," said Upendra Lamichami, a local journalist.
He said no allegation had yet emerged of Ram breaking his fast or moving, even to relieve himself.
Santa Raj Subedi, the chief government official in Bara district, appealed to the capital, Kathmandu, for assistance in dealing with the influx of visitors, and for a team of scients to examine the case.
Local doctors failed to reach a final conclusion, although they were allowed no closer than five yards from the boy mystic, declaring that they could confirm no more than that he was alive.

The popularity of the phenomenon is partly because it resembles an episode in the life of the historical Buddha, who was born 160 miles away around 543 BC. The Buddha achieved enlightenment when he meditated beneath a sacred pipal tree for 49 days.
Ram Bomjon is also sitting beneath a pipal tree, in the same posture as the Buddha is depicted, but his vigil has already taken longer.
Ram's mother, who is called Maya Devi, like the Buddha's mother, admits to anxiety, particularly at meal times. But she tells herself: "God took him to the forest and I have faith that God will feed him."
She said: "He's definitely got thinner. Early in the morning he looks sunken, like there's no blood in him, but as the sun rises he seems to get brighter and brighter."
The fervour increased last week when a snake is said to have bitten Ram, and a curtain was drawn around him.
After five days it was opened and he spoke. "Tell the people not to call me a Buddha. I don't have the Buddha's energy. I am at the level of rinpoche [lesser divinity].
"A snake bit me but I do not need treatment. I need six years of deep meditation."
Despite his protestations, "Buddha boy" is famous.
A thriving market has grown in the once pristine forest, supplying pilgrims with everything from chewing tobacco and bicycle repairs to incense and sacred amulets. The ground is covered in litter.
A fence was built around Ram's tree to prevent pilgrims prodding him, then a second, and now a third is planned, as well as a bus park, leaving Ram at the centre of an ever growing circle of rubbish.
Prakash Lamsal, a businessman said: "Some people are selling 2,500 rupees [£20] worth of tea a day.
"These lamas [monks] are going to build mansions out of this. If I wasn't a bit embarrassed I'd take a van down there and set up a stall."

On another separate article.
Buddha Boy has nation guessing: holy or hoax?
By Connie Levett February 11, 2006

IN SOME ways, Ram Bahadur Bomjan is a typical teenager: he loves his cricket, he sits with shoulders slumped, hair falling into his eyes, uninterested in the world.
In other ways, he is definitely not. For the past nine months, the 15-year-old has sat, meditating at the base of a peepal tree in Nepal's Bara District, without food, water, sleep or the need to use the toilet. If that was not remarkable enough, on January 19, he spontaneously combusted, burning off the clothes he has worn for nine months but leaving no scars. Lest there be doubters, his followers caught that combustion on video and plan to present the footage, seen by The Age, at a news conference in Kathmandu, soon.
The Buddha Boy, as he is known in Nepal, is a source of equal scepticism and reverence. To the doubters, it is an elaborate scam, which has drawn thousands of pilgrims, domestic and international, to a dirt poor area of Nepal's terrai region.
To the pilgrims and merchants in the food bazaar that have sprung up to cater to them, there is no questioning the boy's legitimacy. He is the reincarnation of the Lord Buddha, despite the boy's own denials.
Last November, he briefly emerged from his meditation to announce: "Tell people not to call me the Buddha, I do not have the Buddha's energy, I am only at tapaswi level." A tapaswi is a sage who practises austerities.
To find the Buddha Boy's forest shrine, you travel 250 kilometres south of Kathmandu.
The final kilometre of the pilgrimage is on foot, to prevent traffic disturbing the boy's meditative state. At the site, a series of fenced alleys loop through the forest, directing pilgrims in a one-way stream past the open front of the peepal tree where the boy, with distinctive sloping shoulders, sits slumped inside. Pilgrims are kept at 30 metres distance as they walk past the donation boxes stuffed full of Nepalese rupees.
"We believe him, he has been meditating without food for the last six or seven months, (and) we cannot live for even one day without food," said Shesh Raj Lamichhane, 30, a member of the bazaar management committee. "Many people are staying through the night and nobody has seen him eating." At night the forest site is dark and only his supporters stand guard.
Mr Lamichhane said on the most holy day of Dashain festival last year, there were 4800 vehicles in a single day.
Those who grew up with Ram are surprised at his sudden fame. Prem Lama, his boyhood friend, said he had no sense during his childhood that Ram would be special.

2006-09-04T16:33:00.000+08:00

An interesting article ..

Remote viewing Tibetan monks see Extra Terrestrial powers saving the World from destroying itself in 2012N.K. Subramanium, Special CorrespondentDecember 26, 2004

Remote viewing is nothing new in Tibetan monasteries. For thousands of years remote viewing in the middle of other spiritual activities have dominated Tibetan culture. What some Indian tourists came to learn from a few Tibetan monasteries under the current Chinese rule is extremely alarming and fascinating.

According to these tourists remote viewers are seeing world powers in the course of self-destruction. They also see that the world will not be destroyed. Between now and 2012 the world super powers will continue to engage in regional wars. Terrorism and covert war will be the main problem. In world politics something will happen in and around 2010. At that time the world powers will threaten to destroy each other. Between 2010 and 2012, the whole world will get polarized and prepare for the ultimate dooms day. Heavy political maneuvers and negotiations will take place with little progress. In 2012, the world will start plunging into a total destructive nuclear war.And at that time something remarkable will happen, says, Buddhist monk of Tibet. Supernatural divine powers will intervene. The destiny of the world is not to self-destruct at this time. Scientific interpretation of the monks’ statements makes it evident that the Extra Terrestrial powers are watching us every step of the way. They will intervene in 2012 and save the world from self-destruction. When asked about recent UFO sightings in India and China, the monks smiled and said the divine powers are watching us all. Mankind cannot and will not be allowed to alter the future to that great extent. Every human being though their current acts in life called “Karma” can alter the future lives to some extent, but changing the destiny in that large extent will not be allowed to that great an extent.Monks also mentioned that beyond 2012 our current civilization would understand that the final frontier of science and technology is in area of spirituality and not material physics and chemistry. Beyond 2012, out technologies will take a different direction. People will learn the essence of spirituality, the relation between body and the soul, the reincarnation and the fact we are connected with each other are all part of “God”.In India and China UFO sightings have increased in many folds. Many say the Chinese and Indian Governments are being contacted by the Extra Terrestrials.

In recent days most UFO activities have been seen in those countries who have indigenously developed Nuke capabilities.When asked if these extra-terrestrials will show up in reality in 2012, the answers remote viewers are giving is: they will reveal themselves in such a way that none of us scared. They will reveal themselves only if they have to. As our science and technology progresses, we are destined to see them and interact with them any way.According to the remote viewers, our earth is blessed and is being saved continuously from all kinds of hazards all the time that we are not even aware of. As our technologies progress we will realize how external forces saved us.

http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/12-26-04.asp

Are you ready to be rich?

2006-08-24T17:25:00.000+08:00

Because you need to be completely convinced that you want to be rich. Once you reach that conviction, money will follow - easily, effortlessly, and, most importantly, immediately.

When it comes to being rich, it is your thoughts that matter. Being rich has nothing to do with the "how." It all has to do with the state of your mind.
Two identical businesses can be started next to each other. Every single element about them can be the same...from the products sold to management. But...and this is important...if one of the owners believes the business will succeed while the other owner isn't sure if it will succeed...I can guarantee you that the first business with the owner believing in success will take off and thrive in no time. The other owner...well...there's a reason why most businesses fail...
Like the owner with the failed business, you can't simply desire to be rich. Desire is a negative emotion because it assumes you don't have what you want. So long as you simply desire to be rich, you cannot experience true prosperity.
It is when you are rich, through your beliefs, that you will experience the wealth you seek. This is easy to do if you are willing for it to be easy. Be willing to accept your life completely from this day forward. Be willing to love yourself. Be willing to do whatever it takes to achieve your desires. Be willing to love being rich.

Believe with your heart and focus your attention upon what you want - it's already yours!

2006-08-14T18:00:00.000+08:00

Malaysia gallery seeks ghost busters
Friday 11 August 2006, 12:10 Makka Time, 9:10 GMT

A Malaysian museum will let a US research team from Ripley's Believe It or Not! conduct scientific tests on genies, ghouls and other paranormal items on display in an exhibition to determine whether they are real.

The three-month Mysteries, Genies, Ghosts and Coffins exhibition at the Sultan Alam Shah Museum in central Selangor state has drawn criticism since it began in July 4. Some accuse it of being un-Islamic, while others have denounced the items as fakes.

The exhibition has drawn tens of thousands of visitors. Officials say the approximately 100 items on display include a preserved mermaid; the shrivelled skeletal remains of a half-woman, half snake; a goblin trapped in a bottle; and other creatures from Malay folklore.

Amzah Umar, chairman of the Selangor Museum Board, said on Friday the organisers and the owner of the exhibits have agreed to Ripley's request to examine the items.

Ripley's Believe It or Not! is a franchise which deals in bizarre events, having started in 1918 as a newspaper cartoon panel featuring unusual and startling facts from around the world.

Umar said: "They have written to us for permission to analyse the items. A team from US will be coming to conduct scientific tests.

"This will put to rest any allegations that the exhibits are fake."

He did not say when the tests would be conducted.

Ghost hunter

Syed Abdullah Al-Attas, a popular ghost hunter and head of the Paranormal Seekers Malaysia group, on Wednesday lodged a police report against the museum, demanding the exhibition be shut down because the exhibits were merely replicas and animal carcasses.

The items belong to religious teacher Safuan Abu Bakar, who was quoted as saying by The Star newspaper on Friday that he planned to bring a langsuir - a deadly Malay banshee - to life in three weeks to silence doubters.

Organisers say the exhibition is aimed at educating the public

"We are currently facing opposition from religious bodies but I will bring the exhibit to life. I will place the langsuir on a tree and bring it to life to let observers see it fly and screech," he was quoted as saying.

Safuan could not be reached for comment.

Amzah stood firm on the museum's decision to hold the exhibition. "Our exhibition is aimed at educating the public on the existence of the supernatural world. It is not against Islam, we should take it as education and entertainment," he said.

The exhibition is expected to end on October 4 but Amzah said the museum may close it by September 15 in advance of the Ramadan fasting month for Muslims, who make up about 60% of Malaysia's 26 million population.

"It's not proper to hold such an exhibition during fasting month," he said.

The museum has said it expects a million visitors to the exhibition.

Malaysia gallery seeks ghost busters

Jokes for time2berich.blogspot.com

2006-08-14T11:35:00.000+08:00

Great Steaks
A guy had told all of his friends about the great steak he'd eaten downtown the day before. A group of them decided to head down and see if it was really as large and delicious as he was making it out to be.

The group was seated in the back of the restaurant. After looking over the menu, they ordered and waited, hungrily, for their large, delicious, gigantic steaks.

To their collective disappointment, the waiter brought out some of the smallest steaks they'd ever seen.

"Now see here," the very embarrassed guy said to the waiter. "Yesterday, when I came down here you served me a big, juicy steak. Today, though, when I have my friends with me, you serve tiny steaks! What is the meaning of this?"

"Yes, sir," replied the waiter, "yesterday you were sitting by the window."

Long Hair

A young boy had just gotten his driving permit. He asked his father, who was a minister, if they could discuss his use of the car. His father said to him, "I'll make a deal with you. You bring your grades up, study your Bible a little, and get your hair cut, then we will talk about it."

A month later the boy came back and again asked his father if they could discuss his use of the car. His father said, "Son, I'm real proud of you. You have brought your grades up, you've studied your Bible diligently, but you didn't get hair cut!"

The young man waited a moment and replied, "You know Dad, I've been thinking about that. You know Samson had long hair, Moses had long hair, Noah had long hair, and even Jesus had long hair."

His father replied, "Yes son, and they walked everywhere they went!"

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

2006-08-11T18:03:00.000+08:00

Latest crop circles. What's your interpretation on this coded sign.

The circle which appeared in Fife on the banks of the Tay has been widely reported in the Scottish media. BBC Scotland has run an item with a reporter on its nightly television news programme. Newspapers such as The Scottish Daily Mail, The Scotsman, The Dundee Courier, The Sun (Scottish edition), to name but a few, have all carried articles on it. Many have included a photograph of this exciting event.
FORMATION: REF. WESTER FLISK FARM NEAR BALMERINO, FIFE, SCOTLAND

This formation appeared on Saturday 5th August 2006. Wester Flisk Farm lies on the country tourist route between Gauldry and Newburgh, Fife, Scotland.

The field is approximately 4 miles due west from Gauldry. A left turn should be taken at the T-junction and follow the road to Newburgh. It can be seen approximately 1 mile down that road on the right hand side of the steep hill.

The field lies directly below Norman’s Law, which is an ancient hill fort.

Adjacent to the field are the ruins of an old Church with graveyard.

Description

The field is of wheat.

The formation is large. 180 metres in circumference.

Two crescent shapes enclosing what appears to be a cup with orbs falling into it. The left hand crescent contains what appears to be a sperm-like formation.

Comment

It is very unusual for formations to appear in Scotland although one did appear at Luthrie in Fife last year. Luthrie is only 3 – 4 miles from this new circle. Also, the sperm-like shape was an integral part of the Luthrie circle. Can there be a connection?

At Saddel, on the Mull of Kintyre, there are medieval, religious carved stones. There is a carving of a cup, or Grail, with an orb falling into it. This symbolises the Earth falling into the Grail. It appears identical to the central cup in this formation. I suggest the sperm symbolises a re-birth or possibly a spiritual re-awakening of some kind.

The farmer does not want anyone to enter the field so pole shots are not possible, although aerials have been done.

It remains to be seen if the phenomenon has established itself in Scotland but it must be kept in mind that this is the second year running that this country has been graced with these new formations.

James Morrison

source:-
http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2006/fife/fife2006a.html

2006-08-10T17:59:00.000+08:00

A simple forward this mail to other will be a meritorious deed, and it doesn't waste much of your time. Thank you for doing that in advance.

Please act as soon as possible. Chen Siew Cheng : Tel :(+6012)23708099, Fax:(+6012)25507098 - Malaysia. Please forward to the person who has AB blood type of bone marrow and hope everybody will forward the mail to your friends so that they can have the opportunity to find the "right person" to help.

The success rate maybe very slim, that's why we used the e-mail method hope to find the right person. It may not be the smart method, but to us, this is final chance. To the family member of the leukaemia (blood cancer) patient, every second count. We anxiously need a AB blood type of person to donate his/her bone marrow, and although it only have very little chance to match, but we still have hope for it. Because of your loving kindness to pass the mail along, she may stand a chance to recover.

So, please put a little effort, the little girl may have chance to live because of you. Thank you very much and thousand words cannot express our appreciation.

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

2006-08-10T15:50:00.000+08:00

A Conversationof Waves
by Derek Lin

There was once a small wave who was unhappy. "I'm so miserable," it moaned. "The other waves are big and powerful, while I'm so little and weak. Why is life so unfair?"
Another wave passing by heard the small wave and decided to stop by. "You only think so because you haven't seen your own 'original nature' clearly. You think you're a wave and you think you're suffering. In reality you are neither."
"What?" The small wave was surprised. "I'm not a wave? But it's obvious I'm a wave! I've got my crest, see? And there's my wake, little as it is. What do you mean I'm not a wave?"
"This thing you call 'wave' is merely a temporary form you assume for a short time. You're really just water! When you understand completely that this is your fundamental nature, you will no longer be confused about being a wave, and you will be free of your misery."
"If I'm water, what about you?"
"I'm water too. I'm temporarily assuming the form of a wave somewhat larger than you, but that doesn't change my fundamental essence - water! I'm you and you're me. We're part of a greater self."

Most people, mired in the illusion known as the material world, mistakenly assume they belong only to themselves. Therefore they compare themselves to other people. When they perceive some sort of lack or inequity, they become totally miserable. They would feel quite differently if they see clearly that all of us are part of nature. Everyone of us is connected to one another in a fundamental way beyond the explanation of science. We're part of a greater whole - the Oversoul, the Universal Sentience, God....

2006-08-08T11:09:00.000+08:00

Anyone for a Delicious mouth watering stinky beans cooked in "Sambal" and Prawn for your lunch treat today ?.

If you happen to visit Malaysia, dun miss this opportunity to test out this healthy dish..who knows u may love it..

Well, here's an interesting fact on this sticky bean.

A tall species of the lowland forest in Malaysia, also known as Parkia Speciosa. The seeds encapsulated in the long pendulous pods of this species are a local delicacy, despite its strong and slightly bitter aftertaste. The seeds are eaten raw, grilled or blanched.Petai makes the bodily secretion and breath smell bad. But Petai contains three natural sugars -sucrose, fructose and glucose - combined with fiber, petai gives an instant, sustained and substantial boost of energy.

Little did you (and I) know ..... after reading THIS, you'll NEVER look at petai in the same way again!
Research has proved that just two servings of petai provide enough energy for a strenuous 90-minute workout. No wonder petai is the number one fruit with the world's leading athletes. But energy isn't the only way petai can help us keep fit. It can also help overcome or prevent a substantial number of illnesses and conditions, making it a must to add to our daily diet.

Depression:According to a recent survey undertaken by MIND among people suffering from depression, many felt much better after eating petai. This is because petai contain tryptophan, a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin, known to make you relax, improve your mood and generally make you feel happier.

PMS(premenstrual syndrome):Forget the pills - eat petai. The vitamin B6 it contains regulates blood glucose levels, which can affect your mood.
Anemia:High in iron, petai can stimulate the production of hemoglobin in the blood and so helps in cases of anemia.

Blood Pressure:This unique tropical fruit is extremely high in potassium yet low in salt, making it the perfect to beat blood pressure. So much so, the US Food and Drug Administration has just allowed the petai industry to make official claims for the fruit's ability to reduce the risk of blood pressure and stroke.

Brain Power:200 students at a Twickenham (Middlesex) school were helped through their exams this year by eating petai at breakfast, break, and lunch in a bid to boost their brain power. Research has shown that the potassium-packed fruit can assist learning by making pupils more alert.

Constipation:High in fiber, including petai in the diet can help restore normal bowel action, helping to overcome the problem without resorting to laxatives.

Hangovers:One of the quickest ways of curing a hangover is to make a petai milkshake, sweetened with honey. The petai calms the stomach and, with the help of the honey, builds up depleted blood sugar levels, while the milk soothes and re-hydrates your system.

Heartburn:Petai has a natural antacid effect in the body, so if you suffer from heartburn, try eating petai for soothing relief.

Morning Sickness:Snacking on petai between meals helps to keep blood sugar levels up and avoid morning sickness.

Mosquito bites:Before reaching for the insect bite cream, try rubbing the affected area with the inside of the petai skin. Many people find it amazingly successful at reducing swelling and irritation.

Nerves:Petai is high in B vitamins that help calm the nervous system.

Overweight:Studies at the Institute of Psychology in Austria found pressure at work leads to gorging on comfort food like chocolate and crisps. Looking at 5,000 hospital patients, researchers found the most obese were more likely to be in high-pressure jobs. The report concluded that, to avoid panic-induced food cravings, we need to control our blood sugar levels by snacking on high carbohydrate foods every two hours to keep levels steady.

Ulcers:Petai is used as the dietary food against intestinal disorders because of its soft texture and smoothness. It is the only raw fruit that can be eaten without distress in over-chronicler cases. It also neutralizes over-acidity and reduces irritation by coating the lining of the stomach.

Temperature control:Many other cultures see petai as a "cooling" fruit that can lower both the physical and emotional temperature of expectant mothers. In holland, for example, pregnant women eat petai to ensure their baby is born with a cool temperature.

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD):Petai can help SAD sufferers because they contain the natural mood enhancer, tryptophan.

Smoking:Petai can also help people trying to give up smoking. The B6, B12 they contain, as well as the potassium and magnesium found in them, help the body recover from the effects of nicotine withdrawal.

Stress:Potassium is a vital mineral, which helps normalize the heartbeat, sends oxygen to the brain and regulates your body's water balance. When we are stressed, our metabolic rate rises, thereby reducing our potassium levels. These can be rebalanced with the help of a high-potassium petai snack.

Strokes:According to research in 'The New England Journal of Medicine', eating petai as part of a regular diet can cut the risk of death by strokes by as much as 40%.

Warts:Those keen on natural alternatives swear that if you want to kill off a wart, take a piece of petai and place it on the wart. Carefully hold the petai in place with a plaster or surgical tape! So, you see, petai really is a natural remedy for many ills. When you compare it to an apple, it has four times the protein, twice the carbohydrates, three times the phosphorus, five times the vitamin A and iron, and twice the other vitamins and minerals. It is also rich in potassium and is one of the best value foods around.

So maybe its time to change that well-known phrase so that we say,

"A Petai a day keeps the doctor away"

P.S Everything good stuffs will soon find its way to this web-log...Stinky beans is no exception.

2006-08-07T10:09:00.000+08:00

The 17 Chapters Money Tips Article on The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles

Chapter 1: The Right To Be Rich

WHATEVER may be said in praise of poverty, the fact remains that it is not possible to live a really complete or successful life unless one is rich. No man can rise to his greatest possible height in talent or soul development unless he has plenty of money; for to unfold the soul and to develop talent he must have many things to use, and he cannot have these things unless he has money to buy them with.
A man develops in mind, soul, and body by making use of things, and society is so organized that man must have money in order to become the possessor of things; therefore, the basis of all advancement for man must be the science of getting rich.
The object of all life is development; and everything that lives has an inalienable right to all the development it is capable of attaining.Man's right to life means his right to have the free and unrestricted use of all the things which may be necessary to his fullest mental, spiritual, and physical unfoldment; or, in other words, his right to be rich.
In this book, I shall not speak of riches in a figurative way; to be really rich does not mean to be satisfied or contented with a little. No man ought to be satisfied with a little if he is capable of using and enjoying more. The purpose of Nature is the advancement and unfoldment of life; and every man should have all that can contribute to the power; elegance, beauty, and richness of life; to be content with less is sinful.
The man who owns all he wants for the living of all the life he is capable of living is rich; and no man who has not plenty of money can have all he wants. Life has advanced so far, and become so complex, that even the most ordinary man or woman requires a great amount of wealth in order to live in a manner that even approaches completeness.

Every person naturally wants to become all that they are capable of becoming; this desire to realize innate possibilities is inherent in human nature; we cannot help wanting to be all that we can be. Success in life is becoming what you want to be; you can become what you want to be only by making use of things, and you can have the free use of things only as you become rich enough to buy them.

To understand the science of getting rich is therefore the most essential of all knowledge.
There is nothing wrong in wanting to get rich. The desire for riches is really the desire for a richer, fuller, and more abundant life; and that desire is praise worthy. The man who does not desire to live more abundantly is abnormal, and so the man who does not desire to have money enough to buy all he wants is abnormal.
There are three motives for which we live; we live for the body, we live for the mind, we live for the soul. No one of these is better or holier than the other; all are alike desirable, and no one of the three--body, mind, or soul--can live fully if either of the others is cut short of full life and expression. It is not right or noble to live only for the soul and deny mind or body; and it is wrong to live for the intellect and deny body or soul.
We are all acquainted with the loathsome consequences of living for the body and denying both mind and soul; and we see that real life means the complete expression of all that man can give forth through body, mind, and soul. Whatever he can say, no man can be really happy or satisfied unless his body is living fully in every function, and unless the same is true of his mind and his soul. Wherever there is unexpressed possibility, or function not performed, there is unsatisfied desire. Desire is possibility seeking expression, or function seeking performance.
Man cannot live fully in body without good food, comfortable clothing, and warm shelter; and without freedom from excessive toil. Rest and recreation are also necessary to his physical life.
He cannot live fully in mind without books and time to study them, without opportunity for travel and observation, or without intellectual companionship.
To live fully in mind he must have intellectual recreations, and must surround himself with all the objects of art and beauty he is capable of using and appreciating.
To live fully in soul, man must have love; and love is denied expression by poverty.
A man's highest happiness is found in the bestowal of benefits on those he loves; love finds its most natural and spontaneous expression in giving. The man who has nothing to give cannot fill his place as a husband or father, as a citizen, or as a man. It is in the use of material things that a man finds full life for his body, develops his mind, and unfolds his soul. It is therefore of supreme importance to him that he should be rich.
It is perfectly right that you should desire to be rich; if you are a normal man or woman you cannot help doing so. It is perfectly right that you should give your best attention to the Science of Getting Rich, for it is the noblest and most necessary of all studies. If you neglect this study, you are derelict in your duty to yourself, to God and humanity; for you can render to God and humanity no greater service than to make the most of yourself.

Chapter 2: There is A Science of Getting Rich
Chapter 3: Is Opportunity Monopolized?
Chapter 4: First Principle in The Science of Getting Rich
Chapter 5: Increasing Life Chapter
Chapter 6: How Riches Come to You
Chapter 7: Gratitude
Chapter 8: Thinking in the Certain Way
Chapter 9: How to Use the Will
Chapter 10: Further Use of the Will
Chapter 11: Acting in the Certain Way
Chapter 12: Efficient Action
Chapter 13: Getting into the Right Business
Chapter 14: The Impression of Increase
Chapter 15: The Advancing Man
Chapter 16: Some Cautions, and Concluding Observations
Chapter 17: Summary of the Science of Getting Rich

2006-08-06T16:36:00.000+08:00

How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates - a strange offshoot of the Bill Gates Personal Wealth Clock by Philip Greenspun

"As a graduate student in computer science at MIT earning a $1600/month research stipend, I feel amply qualified to instruct the entire Internet on the art of becoming as rich as Bill Gates (check the Wealth Clock to see how much he has right now). I get my confidence from Dr. Leo Buscaglia, author of Love, Born for Love : Reflections on Loving, Living, Loving and Learning, and Bus 9 to Paradise. Dr. Buscaglia, our nation's most prominent lecturer on the subject of love, turns out to be divorced ("it was a very loving divorce").

Lesson 1: Choose Your Grandparents Carefully
"There are three ways to make money. You can inherit it. You can marry it. You can steal it."-- conventional wisdom in Italy William Henry Gates III made his best decision on October 28, 1955, the night he was born. He chose J.W. Maxwell as his great-grandfather. Maxwell founded Seattle's National City Bank in 1906. His son, James Willard Maxwell was also a banker and established a million-dollar trust fund for William (Bill) Henry Gates III.
In some of the later lessons, you will be encouraged to take entrepreneurial risks. You may find it comforting to remember that at any time you can fall back on a trust fund worth many millions of 1998 dollars.

Lesson 2: Choose Your Parents Carefully
"A young man asked an old rich man how he made his money. The old guy fingered his worsted wool vest and said, "Well, son, it was 1932. The depth of the Great Depression. I was down to my last nickel. I invested that nickel in an apple. I spent the entire day polishing the apple and, at the end of the day, I sold the apple for ten cents. The next morning, I invested those ten cents in two apples. I spent the entire day polishing them and sold them at 5 pm for 20 cents. I continued this system for a month, by the end of which I'd accumulated a fortune of $1.37. Then my wife's father died and left us two million dollars." William Henry Gates, Jr. and Mary Maxwell were among Seattle's social and financial elite. Bill Gates, Jr. was a prominent corporate lawyer while Mary Maxwell was a board member of First Interstate Bank and Pacific Northwest Bell. She was also on the national board of United Way, along with John Opel, the chief executive officer of IBM who approved the inclusion of MS/DOS with the original IBM PC.
Remind your parents not to send you to public school. Bill Gates went to Lakeside, Seattle's most exclusive prep school where tuition in 1967 was $5,000 (Harvard tuition that year was $1760). Typical classmates included the McCaw brothers, who sold the cellular phone licenses they obtained from the U.S. Government to AT&T for $11.5 billion in 1994. When the kids there wanted to use a computer, they got their moms to hold a rummage sale and raise $3,000 to buy time on a DEC PDP-10, the same machine used by computer science researchers at Stanford and MIT.
Note: Recall that in the 1980s we venerated Donald Trump and studied his "art of the deal". If Donald Trump had taken the millions he inherited from his father and put it all into mutual funds, you'd never have had to suffer through one of his books. But he'd be just about as rich today.

Lesson 3: Acquire Research Results by Hiring and Buying Conventional (loser) economic wisdom holds that monopolies should spend heavily on research because they are in a position to capture the fruits of the research. But if you want to become as rich as Bill Gates, you have to remember that it is cheaper to wait for a small company to come up with something good and then buy them. In the old days, antitrust laws kept monopolies from buying potential competitors. But not anymore. When Microsoft products were threatened by network computers and Web-based applications, they simply bought WebTV and Hotmail.
Another good strategy is to hire the right people. Some of the guys who wrote Microsoft Windows had previous worked on window systems at Xerox PARC. So Xerox paid for the research; Microsoft paid only for development.

In the long run a tech company without research probably can't sustain its market leadership. So you'll eventually need to build something like research.microsoft.com (check out netscan.research.microsoft.com to see some interesting online community research).

Lesson 4: Let Other People Do the Programming If you're a great engineer, it can be frustrating to rely on other people to translate your ideas into reality. However, keep in mind that the entire Indian subcontinent is learning Java. And that if Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Sun products simply worked and worked simply, half of the world's current IT workers would be out of a job. You're not going to get rich being "just a coder." Especially working in painful low-level imperative languages such as C or Java. It might be worth writing your own SQL queries and HTML pages since these tend to be compact and easier than precisely specifying the work for another person to do. But basically you need to get good at thinking about whether a piece of software is doing something useful for the adopting organization and end-user. Bill Gates does code reviews, not coding.

[If you aren't sure that you need to be filthy rich and like to do some coding, see this old misguided article for more about what it might mean to be a great software engineer.]

Lesson 5: Train your new CEO If you're an intelligent curious person it can be painful to run a company of more than 50 people. You spend more time than you'd like repeating yourself, sitting in boring meetings, skimming over long legal documents in which you know there are errors but aren't sure how serious, etc. The temptation is to hand over the reins to the first "professional manager" who comes along. And that's what the standard venture capitalist formula dictates. But Bill Gates didn't do that. He hired Steve Ballmer in 1980 and gave him the CEO job 20 years later. Making money in the software products business requires domain expertise and a commitment to solving problems within that domain. Great tech companies are seldom built by non-technical management or professional managers who aren't committed to anything more than their paycheck. Adobe is another good example. The two founders were PhD computer science researchers from Xerox PARC who were passionate about solving problems in the publishing and graphics world. They are still guiding operations at Adobe.
Note that this is a principle that Old Economy companies have long understood. Jack Welch joined GE in 1961 and became CEO 20 years later. Sometimes an Old Economy company may pull in a few outsiders to senior positions but, because they have such stable bureaucracies underneath, they can more easily afford this than startups.
See Charles Ferguson's High Stakes, No Prisoners (1999) for a longer explanation of how hired-gun CEOs manage to kill software products companies.

Lesson 6: Focus on Profit
"At Hewlett-Packard, people, materials, facilities, money, and time are the resources available to us for conducting our business. By applying our skills, we turn these resources into useful products and services. If we do a good job, customers pay us more for our products than the sum of our costs in producing and distributing them. This difference, our profit, represents the value we add to the resources we utilize." -- David Packard in The HP Way Remembering to make a profit was tough in the dotcom 1990s but it turns out that Hewlett and Packard's ideas were right. Most of the management teams at dotcom businesses, by being disorganized, unintelligent, and ignorant, were subtracting value from the resources that they controlled.
How does one make money in the software products business? Simple. The necessary step is to build something that becomes part of information systems that generate value for organizations and end-users. Once you've created value you can extract a portion in lots of ways. You can be closed-source and charge a license fee. You can be open-source and charge for training, service, support, and extensions. But if you aren't getting your software product into important information systems, you don't have a prayer, no matter how slick your marketing materials.
If you're creative and diligent the software products business is extremely lucrative. If you're losing money, ask yourself what you're doing wrong. The answer is probably "plenty".

Lesson 7: Let the Venture Capitalists Schmooze Wall Street ...... but don't let them run your company. A profitable Microsoft Corporation brought in venture capitalists (VCs) at the last minute. They didn't need or spend the money but used the VCs to boost their valuation at the initial public offering, thus getting more money for the shares that they sold. Venture capitalists are dangerous because even the most successful might not know anything about business. Remember that there are tens of thousands of venture capitalists in this world. Assuming that they make random choices of companies in which to invest there will be a Gaussian curve of performance. Some firms will do consistently better than average even if everyone is guessing. Imagine that thousands of monkeys are flipping coins; some of the monkeys will get 10 heads in a row. These are the monkeys that will be celebrated for their insight. These are the monkeys whose track records will lead to uncritical cheerleading by underwriters and public investors. In bull markets such as we had in the 1990s nearly all the monkeys will be fairly consistent winners. But remember your next-door neighbor who made money in the stock market in 1985. He convinced himself that he had special insight and ability when actually he was only holding high-beta stocks in a rising market. So his foray into the commodities futures market wiped him out in the crash of '87.

Bottom line: successful software products companies spend most of their time listening to their customers and users rather than to venture capitalists.
[See "Money, Money, Money (and Investing)" for how the Gaussian curve works for mutual fund managers and also read Princeton Professor Burton Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street.]

Lesson 8: Self-Esteem is Not Job 1Gentility, politesse, decorum, and high self-esteem are wonderful. You can achieve all of these things within your organization. And then watch it be destroyed by competitors where frank and, if necessary, harsh criticism is encouraged. Technical people, even (and especially) those fresh out of school are always convinced that whatever they've developed, no matter how hare-brained, is perfect. It takes a technical person with good judgement to notice the flaws and it may require repeated and increasingly harsh delivery for the, uh, pinhead to realize his or her mistake.

Example: I once encountered a group of 6 people who called themselves "engineers." To solve what they thought was a new problem, they were going to build their own little database management system with their own query language that was SQL-like without being SQL. I pointed them to some published research by a gang of PhD computer scientists from IBM Almaden, the same lab that developed the RDBMS and SQL to begin with in the 1970s. The research had been done over a five-year period and yet they hadn't become aware of it during several months of planning. I pointed them to the SQL-99 standard wherein this IBM research approach of augmenting a standard RDBMS to solve the problem they were attacking was becoming an ISO standard. They ignored it and spent another few months trying to build their enormously complex architecture. Exasperated, I got a kid fresh out of school to code up some Java stored procedures to run inside Oracle. After a week he had his system working and ready for open-source release, something that the team of 6 "engineers" hadn't been able to accomplish in 6 months of full-time work. Yet they never accepted that they were going about things in the wrong way though eventually they did give up on the project.

An 1994 New Yorker article about Microsoft relates "If he strongly disagrees with what you're saying, [Gates] is in the habit of blurting out, 'That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard!'". Jennifer New, a former Microsoft contractor, writes "Meetings with Bill or one of his top people are often replete with a barrage of expletives and other disdainful comments." (Salon, September 1997) My friends who work or have worked at Microsoft tell similar tales. But how different is this from other elite organizations?

When I arrived at MIT as a first-year graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science, I asked a professor for help with a research problem. He said "The reason that you've having trouble is that you don't know anything and you're not working very hard." A friend of mine was a surgery resident at Johns Hopkins. He complained to one of his teachers that he was having trouble concentrating because he'd been up all night for several nights in a row. The professor replied "Oh... does your pussy hurt?" According to Business Week, Jack Welch "encouraged near-brutal candor in the meetings he held [at GE]".

The bottom line: self-esteem is great but beware of creating a cozy home for unproductive people with bad ideas.

MorePlato addresses some of these issues in the first book of The Republic (available online from http://www.gutenberg.net/). Socrates asserts that people who've inherited fortunes tend to be light with their money but that people who've made their fortunes "have a second love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit which is common to them and all men. And hence they are very bad company, for they can talk about nothing but the praises of wealth."

Socrates asks Cephalus, a wealthy old man, "What do you consider to be the greatest blessing which you have reaped from your wealth?" Cephalus replies that "The great blessing of riches, I do not say to every man, but to a good man, is, that he has had no occasion to deceive or to defraud others, either intentionally or unintentionally."

In the Decameron, Boccaccio writes "If you really want to make the big bucks, what you really need is a monopoly on the desktop operating system. But the Sherman Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1 and 2, and Clayton Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. § 25, are real bitches."

SourcesGood sources of facts about Bill Gates and Microsoft are the following books:
Hard Drive (James Wallace and Jim Erickson; 1992)
Overdrive (James Wallace; 1992)
Gates : How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry-And Made Himself the Richest Man in America (Stephen Manes, Paul Andrews 1994)
How the Web Was Won : How Bill Gates and His Internet Idealists Transformed the Microsoft Empire (Paul Andrews 1999)
High Stakes, No Prisoners (Charles Ferguson 1999) explains how Microsoft crushed Netscape
if you don't feel like reading Project Gutenberg's version on-line, you can pick up a paperback copy of Robin Waterfield's translation of The Republic

2006-08-02T10:59:00.000+08:00

Staying Spiritually in an Unspiritual World....

Regardless of the simplicity of your life, you will still encounter times when everything seems complicated and insurmountable. That's the toll of modern society: unless you manage to pull out entirely, find yourself a dwelling on a deserted island, and live from the fruits of the trees that are hopefully plenteous, you will get confronted with hardships that you would rather not face: tax issues, renewal of licenses, fines for this or that, monthly bills, you name it.

For let's face it: being human also means that you will sometimes make mistakes and forget to meet society's requirements in a timely manner. And once you have made that error, the severity of modern civilization will definitely present itself to you in its grimmest version.

To make a long story short: we have all been confronted with troubles at times. In every mature life there have been crises that pushed the affected individual to the edge of his or her sanity and bearing. And whether these molestations of dispiritedness are the result of your own fault or not; whether they manifest themselves at home, in the workplace, or elsewhere; whether they are huge or minor; and whether they pertain to you directly or someone you dearly care for: you can try to keep your spirituality alive by executing the sequence of points below:

1. Let it out. Cry, cuss or scream if you really have to, but make sure you vent, and don't implode, as that may cause severe damage to both your body and your spirit. In the worst case, swallowing your setbacks may lead to a heart attack or a stroke, and you don't want that. However, when you cry out loud, do that toward one who cares and will not hold your vulnerable moment against you later on. In these times of increasing calls for spirituality in the workplace you may very well manage to find an honest, trustworthy colleague, but you might still want to practice some carefulness since many of us are, unfortunately, still performing in a very aggressive, politically loaded corporate environment.

2. Reflect and rationalize. Evaluate the effects this event has on your living or work circumstances, but even more, on yourself. Some of the things you can contemplate on are: What is the sense of this? How logical was it that it would happen? Could I have avoided it, and if so, how? Are the effects this event sorted so far rational? Depending on the questions you ask, you will soon find yourself formulating your possible next steps.

3. Take action. This is where the implementation of the "next steps" formulated in point 2 takes place. Actions may vary from phone calls to make and letters to write to things to sell and new environments to move to. Especially the latter should never be overlooked as a valid option: there are too many people who automatically discard this possibility as a course of action, and thus stay in an unpleasant situation for mere fear of change. Many workplaces and homes consist of people who dream of alternatives yet lack the creativeness and courage to really achieve these options.

4. Evaluate the lessons learned. Although part of this process already surfaced in point 2, it was not yet in evaluative stage at that time. But once the actions have been formulated and executed, you will usually find yourself having a more rational and less heated perspective of the event. So, this is the right moment to analyze how this event can benefit your self toward achieving a higher level of maturity and spiritual awareness. It is therefore important not to limit your evaluations to a narrow perspective, which is a strict formulation of what to do and what not to do in the future regarding this case, but to also review the broad perspective, in which you formulate your past, current, and future place in society, at home, at work, or whichever areas the problem affected.

5. Release bad feelings. Now, this may sound easier than it is to be applied, especially if your problem was caused by someone who sold you out or acted on basis of a senseless bias, or by an act that someone could have avoided if only he or she paid more attention or demonstrated a more humane attitude toward you. But releasing bad feelings is not impossible. Although it is not recommendable to forget what happened and why, it only affects you negatively if you remain stuck in a pessimistic mindset that usually accompanies the event at first.

Move on: wiser, and without grudge. So, why is grudge mentioned again here if the bad feelings toward the situation and the ones involved are already discussed in point 5? Well, because you may have neglected releasing the grudge you may hold toward your self! Many times we blame ourselves for things that happen to us, and perhaps we are not always wrong when we do that. But it is absolutely of no use to remain angry with yourself, no matter how stupid you consider the trouble you got caught in. As has been stated by many authors before, there is a lesson to learn from everything we experience. If you remain angry with yourself, you will fall into the mindset of not liking yourself. And if you don't like yourself, you will make it very hard for others to do so!

Dr. Joan Marques, Burbank, CA, 6/02/04Reprinted from Zongoo! Self help

Two Types of Spirituality ... Faith and Knowledge

The term "spirituality" is a confusing term. Usually, when one mentions "spirituality", the first thought in many people's minds is that of "religion". While religion is an aspect of spirituality, spirituality is not an aspect of religion. Spirituality covers other areas of belief as well. Put simply, spirituality is the all-encompassing arena of "belief in something greater." This can be a god, oneself as the greater being, or simply, the life-force or essence that surrounds us all. But, society and religion lead their followers in many different directions replacing core meanings with moralistic and idealistic terms in hopes of garnering attention by answering those "big questions" pertaining to life, death, the after-life, and a god.

Faith vs. Knowledge

While many religious zealots view the idea of knowledge-based spirituality as "agnostic", indeed, it is not. As a matter of fact, even agnosts believe in something, which provides them an alternative stance to organized religion and gods. You have to believe in something to take a stance!
Faith-based spirituality is the belief and trust that things will be as they will be in the future. It is the acceptance of the "great mysteries" of life and death for which religion and society teaches that there are no "definitive answers." Such an approach to spirituality creates a fear-based environment based on gods who are vindictive and uncaring. Believers place their lives into the hands of an unseen being in the hope that all will "work out for the best."

Knowledge-based spirituality is the understanding and kinship of all and the desire to achieve and progress through life toward one's own Vision and goals. The "great mysteries" become topics of personal research and, with an open mind, answers can be acquired from the environment and the Universe. This type of spirituality invites one to set aside fears and examine the information and entities of the surrounding environment. One has the chance to take life into one's own hands and guide it along a path to one's own desires.

Hatred and Faith

One of the problems of today is that, in our world, wars, hatred, and bias begin in the moral grounds established by religion and society. Religion creates a solid separation between different factions of humanity. These factions take the core ideals of society and mutate them to suit the needs of their particular beliefs. In the end, when societal boundaries are breached, and control languishes over the ranks, uprisings and bitter conflicts begin to restore order. The stronger of the factions wins and forces their beliefs on the weaker.
In faith-based factions, fear is instilled and faith that a great hereafter exists. People fight to maintain their beliefs because they've finally "forced" their conscious minds to accept the unanswered questions based on invisible and unfounded guesses by their "noblemen". The battles are fought to ensure that their foundations and comfort zones are not affected by the infidels of the intruding factions.
However, with knowledge-based factions, fear is minimized and the great hereafter is right here and now and continues on forever. Knowledge provides the mind with a greater degree of processing information arriving at our many senses in many contexts. It allows us to look beyond the basics and outside of the accepted "comfort zones" to comprehend the ideas and ideals of other entities, both physical and spiritual.

Opening Your Mind

As part of our being, we all have the need to believe in something greater than ourselves. There is a part of us that "has to belong." Many people fall deeply into organized religion because it provides the camaraderie and a focal point for their community as well as a basis for the moral code of the community. These, in addition to the faith-based answers to the "big questions", provide a comfort zone and a foundation for many. However, by opening one's mind and examining the many facets behind these "big questions", one can develop and acquire the true answers within one's own context.

What is the key? Context-free rationalization. Of course, "context-free" is a little strong as we must all have a context, or a point of reference, that we can use to compare information and apply our rules and belief systems. However, open experience and vast knowledge can provide us with multiple contexts that we can use to devise a wider view of a particular piece of information. This wider view is what is called an "open mind". The open mind has no safety zone as it is always risking it's "comfort zones" in search of new information and new ways of examining situations and other beings.

What's next?

Acquiring this knowledge and ability to move across many contexts is not a simple task as it requires the ability to acquire, accept, and process information outside of our current context. It is a "chicken or the egg" situation; however, it is a decision that we make as humans to initiate such a move.

By opening our minds and perceptions, we allow our conscious minds the ability to communicate more freely with our subconscious minds. In doing so, the vast amounts of information available in the collective unconscious, "The Grid", "The Universal Library" is available to us, simply by " looking." Consider the idea of opening the mind as a primer for what follows once you are able to use your mind to its fullest capabilities and acquire immeasurable knowledge from all entities across the Universe and throughout time.

This is the true meaning of spirituality. The knowledge and desire to exist with and within the Universal essence. To accept and acquire knowledge that is freely available to you through time and space. Finally, the knowledge to use this information in a way that is beneficial to you, as protecting and projecting yourself, you are providing a pathway for others and the betterment of your communities.

Copyright (c) 2004 Edward B. ToupinReprinted from Zongoo! Self help

2006-07-31T19:19:00.000+08:00

Egyptian Mysteries? - How were the ancient Egyptian wonders created and by whom?Who built the Pyramids and Sphinx? Well, the ancient Egyptians of course. However, alternative theories abound. Some argue that extraterrestrials may have constructed the monuments and that the "monuments on Mars" are related to the monuments at Giza. Others believe that the pyramids were built by humans who were members of an advanced, but lost, civilization.

Who Built The Pyramids? - Nova Online interviews with researchers on new evidence pointing to humans as the builders of the pyramids. Includes analysis into how the Pyramids were built.

The Plateau - The Official Web Site of Dr. Zahi Hawass - Hawass, Director General of the Giza Pyramids, discusses current conservation programs and how the Pyramids were built. Press releases, interviews and photos.

Guardian's Sphinx - Conventional Sphinx history and Sphinx photos.

Sphinx/Mars Connection - Are the "face" and "pyramids" on Mars related to the monuments on the Giza Plateau?

Pyramid Mathematics - The author argues that the Pyramids are based upon rational mathematics and that they were built by man.

Alternative Egyptian Theory Page - Interesting theories on the uses and age of the Pyramids.

The Orion Mystery - Analysis into how the North-South reflection of the Giza Pyramids corresponds with the stars in the Belt of Orion.How old are the monuments? Most researchers believe that the Pyramids and Sphinx were built around 4,500 years ago. Recently, some researchers have argued that the Egyptian monuments are much older than originally thought. The Sphinx, in particular, is believed to have suffered heavy water erosion. However, water and rain were only present in Egypt during the distant past - 11,000 years ago, which would make the Sphinx almost 6,000 years older than conventional age estimates.

Are The Giza Pyramids 11,000 Years Old? - Hypothesis that the Giza Pyramids and the Sphinx were constructed at the same time and were built to correspond with the stars.

Redating The Sphinx - Analysis into how water has eroded the Sphinx and not wind erosion as previously thought.

Redating The Sphinx: The Debate - A good overview of the debate over the Sphinx's age. Covers the different viewpoints.

The Modern Riddle Of The Sphinx - This Web site argues that conventional theory is incorrect and only alternative theory can explain the Sphinx. Links and articles on alternative Sphinx theory.The Hall of Records? Alternative researchers often talk about the Hall of Records, a legendary room in the Sphinx or Great Pyramid that is thought to hold evidence of a past technological age. The ancient Egyptians themselves spoke of "Zep Tepi" or a golden age that existed in the distant past. Does this mystical place really exist and does it hold the secrets of this past age?

Operation Hermes - News and info on the English expedition to find the Hall of Records, a secret room thought to exist under the Sphinx.

Keys Under The Sphinx - Is the secret of the Hall of Records hidden in the stars? This site says so.

Is A Secret Tunnel Being Excavated In The Great Pyramid? - Is the Egyptian government conducting a secret investigation into finding the mysterious Hall of Records deep inside the Great Pyramid?

In Search of The Martian Sphinx - Is there a Sphinx on Mars? Cool photos and diagrams.

The Age of the Sphinx - Much the Sphinx has possibly been eroded by rainfall, which hasn't been present in Egypt for over 10,000 years. There is also a secret chamber under the Sphinx, which holds the secrets of "Zep Tepi" or the golden age that supposedly existed before the Pyramids were built.

2006-07-31T13:30:00.000+08:00

Explaining "Karma"- The Universal Law of Cause & Effect

To begin with, we first need to clear up some popular misconceptions about karma. We are not actually being punished or made to pay for past mistakes, or rewarded for good deeds, nor has it anything to do with cause and effect. Karma means action, and is the process by which our thoughts shape our lives. It consists of the many different thought patterns and imprints on our consciousness that are creating the events of our lives. Below are listed the various categories of karmic influence, and the ways to clear them.

1. Beliefs. These are basic raw materials out of which we create our reality. They affect our actions, our thoughts, and tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies. They are never formed by one event alone, but form in stages. In infancy, when our minds are formative, we are observing the events in our lives in order to form a map of what life is about. Very early events sensitise us to the possibility of beliefs that might form. A second event will be used to test a belief, and a third event to prove it, before it is stored and used to measure our lives. We create a belief by the meaning and significance we give to each event. Beliefs will not be changed just by affirmations, as the subconscious requires sensory experience to test and prove the belief. We need to remember the initial sensitising event, the testing event and the proving event, and give a new meaning and significance to those events. This can be done through regression therapy.

2. Choices. Some of the deep choices we made early in life are still affecting us, even though we may have forgotten what those choices were. Choices made in great emotional intensity are stored deep in the subconscious, and if we push down a traumatic experience so we don't have to feel it any more, we cannot access and change the choice that was made at that time. The power of the choice depends upon the intensity of emotion in which it is made. For example, suppose that in your childhood you had been struggling to get what you want, and after being slapped down, in a moment of humiliation or disappointment, you decide to settle for less. Later in life, when you are trying to build success, love or happiness, you are always settling for less than you could have. The old choice is colouring every new choice that you make. Once the old choice has been accessed, it can be superseded by new choice, provided that the new choice is made in the same intensity as the old. This means going back to remember the event in all it's intensity. Regression and emotional release therapies can help here.

3. Personal Laws. In early childhood, we all go through a stage when we need to make sense of the chaos, in order to lessen the confusion and pain, so we tend to make a law defining the limits in our lives, and having given ourselves a satisfactory explanation, we can be at peace. Some of these laws can be very restrictive. For example, if we are having to work while we see other children receiving good things, we might make the law that we are here to serve rather than to enjoy ourselves. We can have laws that forbid us love, wealth, power or expression, or hold us in various limited roles. We cannot break these laws without punishing ourselves. Laws are held more deeply than beliefs, as they are formed as part of our survival instinct, and are formed in the unconscious, beyond words. For this reason they cannot be reached by normal counselling. They have a form in the unconscious, that can be broken down shamanically, if you can find where they are stored in the underworld. This depends on having the right kind of allies. The most effective allies to do this work are dark elves. The underworld journey, with the assistance of dark elves, is the most powerful method for erasing personal laws.

4. Futures. At any moment, there are many possible futures trying to happen. They all compete for our attention, as that is the food they need to grow, until they can manifest. Each future is having impact upon us, as it tries to draw us towards it. A negative future stimulates negative thoughts and feelings in us, whereas a positive future tends to produce positive thoughts and feelings. Regardless of which futures actually manifest, they are all having impact on you now. It is therefore important to destroy the negative futures and redirect our mental energy into the positive ones. A shamanic journey can be used to weed and cultivate our futures.

5. Imprints. Although we create our own reality, we have impact on each other, and energies we pick up from others interferes with the life we are creating. Our subconscious tends to be sticky, and picks things up easily and stores them. Our auras are often full of old thought forms, that begin to imprint on our subconscious, so that we gradually take on the thoughts and feelings we pick up from outside. We are imprinted with negative conditioning from others since early childhood, and often have other peoples shame dumped on us. These imprints vary in strength from simple thought forms that come from emotionally charged statements, to deliberate curses, controlling spells, and entity possession. What all these things have in common is that they are not a part of us, and therefore we don't need to process them all individually, we just need to clean them all out of our energy fields. Our energy system has the means to do this: The raising of the kundalini will purify us of all these influences. It can also be done through shamanic purification rituals.

6. Karmic Webbing. Our etheric bodies consist of a kind of vital web. We each have individual web patterns according to the individual expressions of our life force. As soon as we enter incarnation with a destiny in mind, we create the unique web-pattern that will best enable us to express our unique talents and live our chosen destinies. However, as our destinies change, old webbing from a previous expression can remain, and if that kind of expression no longer agrees with how we live our lives now, the old webbing interferes with our present life expression. For instance, if our last life was about serving and now we are trying to be a warrior, the karmic webbing of serving makes it very difficult to express our power as a warrior. Old webbing will be burned away by the raising of the kundalini, if you have done sufficient spiritual practice. The other way is through etheric weaving, a healing technique learned from faeries, and performed by the Tethatu shaman. Through faerie magick, we gain the perception to see the etheric web, and the ability to reweave it. The old karmic web can be dismantled, and any damage to the vital web can be repaired.

7. Samskara. This is a sanskrit name for a particularly heavy kind of karmic imprint. Any action you repeat for long enough becomes imprinted on your etheric body. For example, if you read a lot all your life, reading is the easiest thing for you to do. If you suddenly decide to become an athlete, you find that you are not built for athletics. It is not just that the body lacks the conditioning; your energy body is also shaped by your actions. Note that this kind of habitual imprint is not stored emotionally; it is purely etheric, so no amount of psychotherapy will shift it. If you do the same thing for seven life times, the imprinting has become really fixed and is called a samskara. It is as if you have made this expression of your life force into your permanent identity. As an example, suppose that you had seven or more celibate life times. If you now wish to manifest a relationship, your etheric body cannot hold the resonance, and so you never succeed in love, and nothing you do changes that. A samskara is too dense to be released by normal techniques; it requires divine intervention or high magick

source of info link :
http://meta-religion.com

2006-07-31T13:01:00.000+08:00

"Justice is not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. The dice of God are always loaded. The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself. Take what figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor less, still returns to you. Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. What we call retribution is the universal necessity by which the whole appears wherever a part appears. If you see smoke, there must be fire. If you see a hand or a limb, you know that the trunk to which it belongs is there behind".
Ralph Waldo Emerson -- "Compensations"

"Power is intoxicating. Power is one of the first barriers you must pass in becoming a Man of Knowledge.Magic and Siddhi create a drunkenness that is very tricky to sidestep. What you wish for comes true, like Aladdin and the Genie."
Jeffrey Ellis -- "DreamingAwake"

The more pure and spiritually developed a person is (especially if they are actively working towards real spiritual advancement) the more attention they will attract from the negatives to pull them down (see Mara). In other words, the potential of any aspirant generates their level of negative opposition, plus their level of positive assistance, as set by Karmic Law. This is the natural way of things, and is part of the reason why real long-term spiritual development is so difficult. And this is also why those that achieve any significant level of spiritual / psychic development usually live fairly difficult lives, or have a painful past.
Robert Bruce -- "White Light Shields"

The First Law of Thermodynamics, a cornerstone of classical physics, states energy always presents itself as being "fixed." That is, energy can be exchanged between the system of interest and its surroundings, however, the total energy of the system PLUS the surroundings remains constant. Nevertheless, in spite of the "rules" observed throughout history in classical physics, in quantum physics, energy can and does appear and disappear out of nowhere spontaneously.
Anna Jones -- "Apportation Revisited"

"There is a powerful connecting force between events. We may not understand it scientifically, but spiritually we know it is so."
Yasutani Hakuun Roshi -- "A Biographical Note"

"All the details about how to dig up plants --- not using a metal tool, using branches from tree-friends of the plant, and even apologizing to the plant-spirit every time for taking them and assuring them that someday the diviner's own body will serve as food for them "so, all in all, the plants and ourselves are even" --- are all things my uncle taught me."
the Wanderling -- "The Informant and Carlos Castaneda"

2006-07-26T14:17:00.000+08:00

Know The Seven Deadly Sins and the Demons associated with it ..

Lucifer - pride
The angel who rebelled against God and fell from Heaven.

Beelzebub - gluttony
Satan's second-in-command,
also known as "The Lord of the Flies".

Leviathan - envy
Also the great serpent demon of Hell and ruler of the oceans.

Mammon - avarice
Demon of riches & covetousness

Belphegor - sloth
A demon that seduces men with wealth.

Asmodeus - lechery
Demon of lust and marital discord.

Satan - anger
The supreme Lord of Hell and and its' Demons.

Know the The Seven Sublime Virtues of Buddhism faith.

1. The Seven Sublime Virtues
1. To know cause
2. To know result
3. To know oneself
4. To know moderation
5. To know appropriate time
6. To know society
7. To know individuals

2. Another set of Seven Sublime Virtues
1. Faith
2. Moral shame
3. Moral fear
4. Knowledge
5. Effort
6. Mindfulness
7. Wisdom

3. The Sevenfold Noble Wealth
1. Faith
2. Morality
3. Moral shame
4. Moral fear
5. Knowledge
6. Generosity
7. Wisdom

4. The Sevenfold Mode of Regular Practice (appropriate for the leaders)
1. Taking care of parents
2. Being respectful to elders in the family
3. Speaking kind and friendly words
4. Refraining from divisive speech
5. Doing away with niggardliness
6. Being truthful
7. Controlling anger

2006-07-25T15:24:00.000+08:00

Dog saves abandoned baby from forest
The dog was looking for food for her newborn puppies when she reportedly saved a 2-week-old baby girl from a forest in Kenya.

The dog found the baby in a forest south of the capital Nairobi. She then took the infant, wrapped in a dirty, black cloth, and carried it across a busy road and through a barbed-wire fence and placed it close to her own puppies.A witness, Stephen Thoya says: "I heard the sound of a baby crying, (when) I looked closely, I saw a dog carrying a baby as it crossed the road."The owner of the heroic dog, Mary Adhiambo says her dog lay next to the baby and cared for it until it was spotted by human rescuers. Ms Adhiambo washed the baby who's umbilical chord was covered with maggots. After cleaning the baby Mary Adhiambo rushed it to hospital.
At the hospital, the 3.3 kilogram child was christened Angel. Doctors confirmed the newborn baby girl had been out in the open for at least two days after being abandoned.Dr Jonathan Micheni said: "An infant of such a tender age, having spent two nights in the cold, is likely to develop respiratory infections and we have put her on a treatment to prevent any bacterial or fungal infections."These kinds of incidents in which babies are abandoned are very common in East African countries like Kenya, where over 56% of the population lives on less than US $1 a day.This is ultimate proof that dogs realy are a man's best friend!

source from :- link

2006-07-24T19:30:00.000+08:00

I got this frm the net. Guess, i just post it to share..

"SPACE LADY" &

"RED ANGEL"

2006-07-23T16:20:00.000+08:00

A World in Chaos - Why?

The Middle East is not the only region of the world spiraling out of control today at this moment. It is irony that man-kind still resorts to WAR despite at this civilisation state. What really went wrong?.

Other areas of unrest North Korea, Sudan, Iran, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan are also simmering to a boil.

Why? What lies ahead? Is there a solution to mankind’s escalating conflicts?. What should we do?. How to instill Universal love and peace to the world?.

2006-07-21T10:52:00.000+08:00

The Divine Feminine"

To speak of God as She in today's society is regarded as either brazen feminism or the deliberate reformation efforts of religious liberals. However, the tradition of the feminine aspect of divinity has a long history. From Ameratsu and Cannon in Japan, to Quanyin in China, to Tara in Tibet, to Shakti in India, to Akua'ba in Africa, to Isis in Egypt, to Ishtar and Astarte in the Middle East, to Demeter, Aphrodite and Venus in Greece and Rome, to the Great Goddess of Willendorf and Laussel, to Freya in Scandinavia, to Spider Woman and Ixchel the Weaver in North America, the Divine Mother has a long tradition in the history of the planet's consciousness. It appears that from approximately 40,000 BCE to approximately 5,000 BCE the Goddess was the primary deity figure. Over 90% of the figurines found from this period appear to be of a female goddess. Our planet has a need to reinstate a sense of the "Goddess" within its understanding of the divine; the nurturing principle of the female is needed to help guide our way through the maze of accelerated change which surrounds us. I would submit to you that many of our problems arise as a result of looking at God only as He , the He who appears to initiate holy wars and conquest. As the Taoist, Buddhist or Hindu would tell you, without the Divine Feminine Principle incorporated into one's concept of the Godhead, you have only told, at best, half the story regarding the divine nature; you have fallen short of a full appreciation of the
divinity within and without.

The "feminine principle"is viewed by the traditions of the East as the principle of birth, transformation and rebirth, the nurturing and sustaining influence in the universe. In the Taoist world view, the feminine principle is the responsive nature of the universe in juxtaposition to the "male principle"which is the proactive and initiating nature of the universe. The male principle initiates action and movement; the female principle nurtures and is responsive to those actions and movements.

Our current world view is out of balance, and the world scene reflects that lack of balance. The patriarchal world view has dominated Western Culture for the last seven thousand years. The aggressive concepts of a Patriarchal God have been responsible for tremendous initiative in the history of the West, but they have lost the respect of many for not inspiring a greater sense of responsibility and nurture for our planet earth.

The traditions of the West have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are not ecologically responsive and responsible. They have at best tolerated, and at worst espoused, political and social behaviors which have violated the planet. The results are all around us: the polluted skies, earth, and ocean attest to this gross lack of responsibility, along with the absence of an attitude of care necessary to heal our sick planet. The Goddess, in contrast, is the caretaker, and by neglecting her within ourselves and the cosmos, we have moved into a state of disequilibrium where our relationships to ourselves and to the planet are in disarray. People who have been guided by the defensive and exclusive characteristics of a jealous Patriarchal God have promoted the distinctions and differences amongst the people of the world. Such distinctions and differences can lead to disastrous results if not balanced with the promotion of sensitivity and understanding that leads to a celebration of differences, an appreciation of distinctions. Two North American traditions Ixchel and Weaver from the Mayan culture, and Spider Woman from numerous American Indian cultures, attempt by their efforts as weavers to bring integration to the great diversity of life.

Within the analytical tradition of Carl Jung and the work of mythologists such as Joseph Campbell, there is much evidence to support the existence of the feminine principle (anima) within the human psyche alongside that of the male principle (animus). Jung's definition of spiritual growth within the individual in large part relates to the development and integration of those male and female components of the human psyche.

The Eastern religious traditions have for millennia observed that if you fail to show respect to the female principle within and without, the results can be awesomely destructive. The figures of Kali and Camunda personify that sense of danger. With vast arsenals of nuclear weaponry at our fingertips, it is past time for the female principle to re-emerge and take her position as coequal along side Yahweh, Allah, and the Lord God.

The Goddess image surrounded the planet for well over 35,000 years to about 5,000 BCE, when her position descended like the goddess Peresephone into the deep earth, the home of Hades. Around that time we observe the ascendancy of the male gods Zeus, Indra, Yahweh, and Thor. There are numerous theories as to why this shift in religious tradition occurred. I choose not to speculate about these theories. Rather, I choose to ask whether in that shift something of value was lost to humanity? In Greek mythology, not until the goddess Peresephone was returned from the kingdom of Hades did the earth restore her health. It was the winter of the earth's history according to the myth. We are still caught as a planet deep in the winter of our history. We should seek after the lost Peresephone and restore her to her Divine Mother so that our planet may find its wholeness, following not only the guidance of the Great Father, but also the Great Divine Mother Spirit".

The Goddess by Gard Jameson

interesting site link on dedicated to goddess
http://www.thesacredfeminine.com/

2006-07-18T19:25:00.000+08:00

Paradox of Our Times

Today we have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time;

We have more degrees, but less common sense; more knowledge, but less judgment;

We have more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness.

We spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get to angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too often, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too little and lie too often
We‘ve learned how to make a living, but not a life; we’ve added years to life, not life to years.

We have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.

We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less.

We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.

We've conquered outer space, but not inner space. We've split the atom, but not our prejudice;

We write more, but learn less; plan more, but accomplish less.

We've learned to rush, but not to wait; we have higher incomes, but lower morals.

We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies, but have less communication. We are long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men and short character; steep profits and shallow relationships.

More leisure and less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition; two incomes, but more divorce; fancier houses, but broken homes.

That’s why I propose, that as of today, let us not keep anything for a special occasion, because every day, every moment that we live now is indeed a special occasion. Take Calculated risks and together we capitalise this on-line investment opportunities. Let us set this amount of money to work real hard for us.

Instead with the time gain, we search for knowledge, read more, sit on our front porch and admire the view without paying attention to our needs.

Life is a chain of moment of enjoyment, not only about survival.

Remove from our vocabulary phrases like “one of these days” and “someday”. Let’s write that letter we thought of writing “one of these days”.

Let’s tell our families and friends how much we love them. Do not delay anything that adds laughter and joy to your life.

Every day, every hour, and every minute is special. And we really don’t know if it will be our last moment.

It is now the time2berich.....

2006-07-15T17:44:00.000+08:00

Jesus's roots recovered ?.

Yupe, looks like jesus to me as I do not believe in coincidence. There is no coincidence, all things happens through almighty creator's will.

Divine vegetation in tutor’s garden
By Samantha Payne

"A GARDENER had a revelation when he dug up his asparagus plant and saw the face of Jesus.

Martin Gregory was enjoying his Sunday morning gardening when he noticed something quite different about one of his asparagus ferns he removed from a pot.

As the 52-year-old laid the 30-inch plant on the grass the sun shone down on the roots and revealed the face of Jesus to him.

The part-time mosaic tutor said: "I thought Good gracious! It's the face of Jesus. It's the most weird thing I have ever seen.

"The roots are fantastic. You can actually make out a thorn crown around his head, his eyes and nose.

"I've heard about Mother Theresa's face being seen in a bagel but I thought this was much better."

Belvedere resident Mr Gregory removed the plant from his pot, which had been in the garden for 10 years, because he thought it was dying.

He believed the Christ-like image was caused by the roots being pressed against the stones in the plant pot causing the unusual indentations.

He added: "It looked so much like His face it took my breath away.

"It has not made me religious. But it could be something supernatural linked to the abbey ruins opposite.

"We don't know what's in the ground."

Father David Sherratt, of St Michael and All Angels Church, Abbey Wood Road, Abbey Wood, said: "I have often heard of people seeing things. God may want Mr Gregory to interpret what he saw in the plant as a sign.

JESUS'S Other APPEARANCES

1978: Maria Rubio made a burnt tortilla, which resembled the mournful face of Jesus Christ. 8,000 curious pilgrims treked to her house in rural New Mexico to view the sacred icon.

1981: Christ appears, crucified on a garage door in California, caused by reflections from two street lights that had merged with shadows of a bush and a real-estate sign.

1987: Jesus appears on the chimney of a suburban bowling alley in Chicago. The four-foot image is formed from rusting metal.

1989: Thousands flocked to a home in north-east Harris County, Texas, to view a linoleum table top reflecting the image of Jesus".

1991: Jesus made national news as the centerpiece of a Pizza Hut billboard in Atlanta. The image of Jesus' face was found in strands of spaghetti hanging from a fork.

source link

2006-07-14T13:22:00.000+08:00

Listening to God!

Listen!!!"
The man whispered, "God, speak to me"
And a meadowlark sang, but the man did not hear.
So the man yelled,"God speak to me!"
And the thunder rolled across the sky, but the man did not listen.
The man looked around and said, "God let me see you!"
And a star shone brightly, but the man did not notice.
And the man shouted, "God show me a miracle!"
And a life was born, but the man did not know.
So, the man cried out in despair, "Touch me God, and let me
know that you are here!"
Whereupon God reached down and touched the man, but the man brushed the
butterfly away and walked on.
Moral of the story:
Don't miss out on a blessing, because it isn't packaged the way you expect.

2006-07-13T12:36:00.000+08:00

Angel @ Heavenly Gate

What are angels?
Angels represent God in a more worldly form. God cannot be seen as a person or as a being. He is more a part of everything, interweaving through us all and every tree and planet. We cannot sit and have a direct conversation with God as we would with our parents. Talking to God is bigger than this.

We often talk to God or say a little prayer, sending our intentions and hopes out into the ether and these prayers may come back answered in various ways. Angels though bring the vastness of God, and put it in a package we as human beings can relate to much better. Angels embody some of the greatest qualities of God: compassion, love, understanding, non-judgment, contentment and peace.

Angels bring these beautiful qualities down to earth. They are like messengers of God sent to bring us special things. Angels have the ability to be the 'inbetween' beings, able to communicate with both humans and the very subtle energies of creation.

Angels and religion

There are tales of angels in the Bible. Yet sometimes we are left with a sense that some religions see angels as beings of the past that are no longer around, or they take the existence of angels in stories to be metaphors, used merely to illustrate a point. This historical view of angels can lead some people away from the more traditional religions because they want a spiritual faith that is alive and in the present, one that says angels still exist today. If God still exists why can't angels exist?

Many Christian religions actually give the angels ranks such as Seraphim and Cherubim. In the New Testament St. Paul added another seven orders. They are, in order of importance, after the previous two: Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels and Angels (Regular). For most of us giving the angels different roles is of little importance, as we cannot verify this information. What really matters to most of us is that angels exist. Because if they do, for many of us, it means that God exists, which is what most of us would like to know for sure.
Angels are also common to many other religions such as Judaism, Islam and Native American beliefs. Also, many people who do not have a specific religion believe in angels. They may prefer not to get involved in what they may see as the dogma of certain belief systems. Angels do not have this dogma as there is no judgement or expectation. Angels just love us for who we are and just want the best for us.

What do they look like?
So do they exist?
How do angels help us?
Can believing in angels harm me in any way?

2006-07-12T10:49:00.000+08:00

The Cosmic Mother..

I am Protennoia.
I am revealed in the immeasureable.
I move in every creature.

I am the life within every Power
and every eternal movement
and invisible Light.

Those who sleep I awaken.
And I am the sight of those who dwell in sleep.
I am the Invisible One within the All.

Whenever I wish I shall reveal myself of my own accord.
I am the head of the All.
I exist before the All and I am the All.

It is through me that Gnosis comes forth.
I am the real Voice.
The Word originated through my Voice.

The Voice that originated
exists as three permanences:
the Father, the Mother, the Son.

I anointed Christ.
Through me the All took shape.

I am the Mother, the Light, the Virgin,
the incomprehensible Womb,
the unrestrainable and immeasureable Voice.

I am the Mother of the Voice
speaking in many ways, completing the All.
It is in me that knowledge dwells --
the knowledge of things everlasting

The Children of the Light know me.
I cast into them the eternally Holy Spirit.

I am the Light that illumines the All.

I came down to the world of mortals
on the account of the Spirit that remains
in that which descended and came forth
from the innocent Sophia.

~~freely extracted/adapted from
Trimorphic Protennoia

2006-07-11T23:05:00.000+08:00

We Can Create Anything Out of Nothingness

This is a truly a remarkable article on the portal http://mindbodynsoul.com . It explains The Universe is full of abundace and affluence. The entire flora and fauna surrounding us was created out of nothingness. The barren earth stood in solitude and then God began the phenomenal creation of life.

It is believable that When God could create this fascinating and miraculous world for us out of nothing, we, who are created in His image, can also weave fascinating realities for ourselves.

It is for sure that positive thinking is the key to realisin dreams because positivism and optimism are basic ingredients to unlock success. I have read many motivational articles and books but I am very happy to read this article as it explains in depth process of energy impulses.

The thought is verbalized and structured in the universal language of "feeling" or "intent" by the energy impulses. The nature of our "intent" gives visualization to our mind, which we verbalize as thought.

The people who have made their great mark in any field have been highly motivted positive thinkers with great faith and positive thinking attitude for realising their dreams.

It is a must read article for enterpreneurs and ambitious persons who aspire to achieve great heights and become legends in their chosen areas.

More info on creating anything out of nothingness Link

COPYRIGHT 2005 www.mindbodynsoul.com

2006-07-10T15:39:00.000+08:00

Lotus Hand & Lotus Feet.
A beautiful painting available at Exotic India.

2006-07-07T16:35:00.000+08:00

Is Reincarnation True ?. Below the site link to this interesting subjects .

Why reincarnation is true ?
How reincarnation happens ?
Reincarnation in the Bible ?
Reincarnation in Judaism ?

Reincarnation and early Christianity
Reincarnation is the belief that the soul is reborn repeatedly. When one body wears out, it is cast off like a garment and soon another one is put on. You will find a thorough discussion of reincarnation in the Bible, the Jewish Kabbalah and early Christianity in the book The Mystic Christ. Explore the book The Mystic Christ .

Reincarnation Statistics.
Reincarnation is also referred to as the transmigration of the soul or rebirth. 20% of the world's religious population are either Hindu or Buddhist with both religions believing in reincarnation. Further, according to a recent Fox News poll, 25% of Americans believe in reincarnation. When we look at findings that span European convictions from 1968 - 1990, we see a steady increase in the acceptance of reincarnation. In 1968 23% of people in France believed in reincarnation; in 1990 that figure had risen to 28%. In Britain it rose during the same period from 18% to 30%; in the Netherlands from 10% to 18%.

Reincarnation is Intuitive - Cyclic
It is obvious to us that everything in nature moves in cycles. We have the cycle of the seasons complete with birth, growth, fruition and death - spring, summer, fall and winter. There is the daily cycle of day and night. The planets cycle about the sun and the sun revolves around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. We see cycles in the process of our own daily lives - what goes around comes around. The Vedas (Hindu scriptures) tell us that the universe is born from a violent explosion, expands and then contracts, all of this taking trillions of years and then the process is repeated ad infinitum. These cycles are referred to as God breathing - and, oh yes, there is the cycle of our own breathing and the beating of our heart. In a recent Discover magazine, such a cycling of the universe from Big Bang to death and then another Big Bang rebirth was proposed as the occurrence of one parallel universe bumping into another with the cycle continuing without end. We can see that reincarnation appeals to old fashioned common sense.

We are Not the Body
Reincarnation is easier to grasp if we understand that we are not our bodies. However, the mind is in the habit of thinking the reverse. Thus it is difficult for us to imagine departing with one body and then assuming another because we blindly and habitually have come to identify ourselves with the body - this body - the one we see in the mirror everyday. It is correct to say, "My body." This reveals that the body is distinct from the owner. In fact, our true nature is pure awareness. We cannot be the observer (awareness) of an object (the body) and also be that object. In the equation of our own personal existence, we are that which is aware. Our true nature is awareness itself. In the English language the closest term to describe this is I AM (Exodus 3:13-14). In Sanskrit it is Sat-Chit-Ananda or Being-Awareness-Bliss. Our soul is fashioned from I AM and not from our body. In Genesis 1:27 we are told that we are made in God's image which is to say we are beings of spirit and not flesh (in John 4:24 we are told that God is a spirit).

We have discovered from Quantum Physics, that matter depends on an observer (awareness) for its existence and not visa versa. So awareness does not arise from the body or brain. Our bodies arise as manifestations in the field of our own primal awareness. The body and brain filter the experiences which appear on the movie screen of our pure awareness.

The School of LifeThe soul is evolving.
Each soul is most likely without beginning just as it has no end. Souls have evolved from beginningless time. Going back we see we have been animals, plants, one celled organisms and beyond. Most of us have been humans many times. We gain experience and grow as we traverse our incarnations. Each life is a day in God's school room.

What are We Learning?
We are learning to be as God is. To be perfect even as God is perfect (Mat. 5:48). When one has become the perfection that God is, no further births and deaths are necessary. We graduate. The exception would be to continue to incarnate for the well being of those still studying in the schoolroom of earth. These souls are called Bodhisattvas in Sanskrit. Jesus, Buddha and Krishna were such souls. They were already perfect in God but came here out of compassion as teachers.It is our desires that fuel our rounds of births and deaths. Our desires continue through death and demand another body to act as the instrument for the fulfillment of our desires. Thus spiritual wisdom is often referred to as the end of desires. Then we abide in God, in the peace that is beyond understanding.

QUOTES FROM FAMOUS PEOPLE ABOUT REINCARNATION
REINCARNATION IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY
REINCARNATION IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
REINCARNATION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
REINCARNATION IN THE JEWISH KABBALAH

Jesus, Buddha, and Krishna Are One
Jesus never said he was the only way. A short but dynamic exploration of supporting scripture. There is only one Christ or Logos appearing as all incarnations of God.

Infinite Goddess
A penetrating exploration of God in the form of the Goddess or Divine Mother.

The Gnostic Jesus
A brief explanation of the meaning of Gnosticism and the early years of Christianity.

Bhakti Devotion
Love and devotion to the Divine is a path easily traveled to know or merge in the non-dual reality of God's infinite being. A brief discussion.

Alternative Health and Wellness
The most potent force for healing is love. A short exploration.

Goddess: Kali Ma
The Hindu goddess Kali Ma: A Short Exploration.

2006-07-06T17:55:00.000+08:00

"The Eye of God"..

Origins: This is a real photograph of the Helix Nebula, although it's technically not a single photograph but rather a composite image formed from several photographs taken by NASA's orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and a land-based telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. This image was NASA's "Astronomy Picture of the Day" for 10 May 2003. The tinting of the image is artificial; the Helix Nebula does not naturally appear with the colors shown above. The picture's "Eye of God" appellation is a title coined by an admirer of the photo due to the nebula's resemblance to a human eye, not something designated by NASA. The nebula is also visible all the time, not merely "once in 3000 years."

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000828.html

2006-07-04T10:29:00.000+08:00

A Special Child
A meet was held quite far from earth,
It's time again for another birth.
Said the angels to the Lord above,
"This special child will need much love."
Her progress may seem very slow,
Accomplishment she may not show,
And she'll require extra care
From the folks she meets down there.
She may not run or laugh or play,
Her thoughts may seem quite far away.
In many ways she won't adapt
And she'll be known as handicapped.
So let's be careful where she's sent,
We want her life to be content.
Please, Lord, find the parents who
Will do a special job for you.
They wil not realize right away,
The leading role they're asked to play;
But with this child from above,
Comes stronger faith and richer love.
This precious charge so meek and mild
Is heaven's very special child.
And soon they'll know the privilege given
In caring for this gift from heaven.

~Author Unknown~

2006-07-03T10:25:00.000+08:00

Scientists say there is a place for God in the Universe

Only five per cent of the Universe is a usual visible matter, all the rest is mysterious dark substancesThe international Vigro consortium of German, British, Canadian and US scientists handled the data collected from world observatories and created the most thorough computer model of the Universe using the largest European supercomputer of the Max Planck Institute. The supercomputer was turned off from other tasks that could distract it. 20 million galaxies were reproduced. Tracks of 10 billion particles of mysterious dark matter were traced. All in all 500 trillion mathematical operations were performed. The main result is that only five per cent of the Universe is a usual visible matter, all the rest is mysterious dark substances.

The most famous question by Einstein comes down to if the God had any choice when he was creating the Universe or all the universal rules and constants determined the events. Many ingenious minds have been either trying to solve the mystery of the Creator's plan or leaving no place for God in the Universe at all. Astronomy is the science that split scientists and theologians most of all.

The funniest thing about it is that today astronomy brings science and religion closer together. One of the most popular scientific theories about the origin of the Universe says that the Universe originated from the infinitely burning point of the infinitely small size and infinitely large density. This is the Big Bang theory that presupposes that there were no time and no matter until this moment.

Both astronomers-believers and complete atheists accept the Big Bang. The theory was formulated by Belgian priest and astronomer Georges Lemaоtre. The Big Bang is a detailed reproduction of the world's creation as it is described in the Bible. Not so long ago a Jesuit priest and the main Vatican astronomer George Coyne was defending the evolution of the Universe theory. He was urging school authorities to stop teaching such theories where God is described as a projector and constructor of the Universe.

The supercomputer can be given a new task – to check the scandalous theory of British astronomer sir Martin Rees, according to which the chance of modern civilization to live to see the next century is only 50 per cent. The reason for this is those mysterious dark substances that make up 95 per cent of the Universe and cause the never-ending recession of galaxies. Another road to stability is to revise the Einstein's theory and to add extra dimensions into space, those being inhabited by God knows whom.

The head of the Sternberg Astronomical Institute and the corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Anatoly Cherepaschuk says: “Only three-five per cent of the Universe consists of common matter of baryons (protons, neutrons, electrons and light quanta). 70 per cent of the Universe is a matter with positive energy density and negative pressure. This matter is called the dark energy. Other 25 per cent of the Universe is particles of unknown nature. They have not been discovered yet but it is clear that they are heavier than protons and do not reach the speed of light. There are lots of baryons on Earth. We can get energy out of them. Scattered energy of the Universe's vacuum that is incommensurably larger remains beyond our reach. Where is the place for God here? Physicist may view the scalar field as God. It has not been discovered yet but its existence results from the theory”.

The chief researcher of the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics and the corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences commented on those mysterious substances: “25 per cent of the Universe is the dark matter, through which electromagnetic waves move freely without interaction. The least comprehensible is the dark energy, which is 70 per cent of the Universe’s mass. The dark energy is mysterious: it does not have particles and is distributed evenly in space. It is not clear whether its density changes. The density of the common matter became eight times smaller because the Universe extended twice. Why doesn't the density of the dark energy drop? Or is it that we are just not able to measure it yet? Complete darkness”.

One of the most promising models for explaining the dark matter is the so-called supersymmetric particles, that can originate from the collision of fermions (that include protons, neutrons, electrons) and bosons that follow Bose-Einstein statistics. “Supersymmetric particles are searched for with the help of the newest accelerators. The Great hadronic collider that is being created in Switzerland with Russian financial and scientific participation has a fair chance of success”, says Mikhail Danilov, the deputy head of the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics and the corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “Another way of looking for these particles is cosmic rays. Russian scientists have developed a new type of detector for a joint Russian-English experiment. The main problem is to distinguish background radiation from the dark matter energy. I hope that the mystery of the dark matter will be solved in eight or ten years. A long time? Well, the neutrino particle was discovered only 30 years after Pauli had predicted it”.

Scientists who were believers:
The Monk Gregor Mendel – the father of genetics
Charles Darwin – the father of the evolutionary theory
Albert Einstein – the author of the relativity theory, the Nobel Prize winner
Niels Bohr – the author of the model of the atom, the Nobel Prize winner
Max Planck – the father of the quantum physics, the Nobel Prize winner
Andrey Tupolev – famous Soviet aircraft designer.

sourced from :
http://english.pravda.ru/science/tech/9554-2/

2006-07-01T23:02:00.000+08:00

Mankind descended from civilization of Atlanteans in the Arctic

Who are the primogenitors of the human race? Both Russian and foreign scientists have been racking their brains for decades trying to come up with an answer to this question. The theories that have been put forward over the years vary. One of them says the humans are the descendants of aliens. Another says the Atlanteans are the forebears of the species.

Following the latest scientific achievements, scientists began to unravel the longstanding mystery of the origins of our civilization. The discoveries in the field of geology and paleontology, and the on-site study of folklore of various peoples helped scientists to locate (with a high degree of probability) not only the primordial mother country of today’s human race but the original motherland of our ancestors, the Aryans, which were to be referred later to as the Russes.

The well-known Russian scientist and explorer Kandyba raises the above and other issues in his books. Kandyba is also the president of the World Association of Professional Hypnotists. He spent many years exploring various parts of the world, taking part in expeditions across the Atlantic and the Arctic. Eventually, he produced a sensational theory by comparing assorted pieces of information. His theory seems capable of defying some dogmas that look firmly implanted in the world of science.
During an expedition in the Atlantic, Kandyba learned from experience that Atlantis was not located in that part of the ocean – quite contrary to the land described by Plato in detail. Unlike other scientists who gave in, Kandyba continued his quest. He opted to seek advice in the Vedas, one of the most ancient historical chronicles.

Many experts in religious writings are inclined to view the Vedic myths as the oldest and most objective source of information. The sacred Hindu writings are penned in a peculiar poetic manner, which at times makes a snaky line between truth and fantasy disappear. However, there is a direct reference to the primordial motherland of the human race in the Vedas.
For example, the sacred book Rig-Veda contains a story of a great civilization that existed 18 million years ago on the continent Oryana. The location of the continent could be easily identifiable with the help of Hindu sacred writings. According to them, the city of Arka, a capital of the united empire, was situated beneath the Polar Star i.e. on the territory of the present-day Arctic.

According to the ancient Vedic writings, the first man was called Ory. The name of the first man was used not only for naming both the ancient continent and the Aryans, the prehistoric people. Our ancestors were head and shoulders in achievements in comparison with the ancients. The Oryans professed monotheism. Not unlike the present-day Christians, they accepted the doctrine of the Trinity or the union of three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) in one Godhead.

Some scientists showed a fare share of skepticism with regard to the writings, they even called them a fake because that philosophy of life resembled the Christian religion a great deal. However, the supporters of the theory were capable of firing back and defend it. The well-known researcher of Slavic mythology and author of numerous books Asov could find evidence to show that all the peoples had a similar concept of the world yet the ancient faith eroded over the ages. Asov found evidence after running a comparative analysis of the myth of our direct ancestors.

The wooden tablets that were found recently in the territory of present-day Russia constitute irrefutable evidence of monotheism among our ancestors. At the very beginning our ancestors worshipped Godhead in three hypostases. Other deities came to light later. At the first stage of the myths they acted as mere assistants to the Creator. The sources of the Slavic wooden tablets are thought to be much older than the Hindu Vedas. Both of them contain information that looks miraculously identical. On the other hand, the Slavs could have communicated with the ancient Indians only if the both peoples had shared the motherland.
According to the Vedic writings, the ancient civilization populated the whole continent. It was a single state, divided into principalities and governed by a sole ruler. The residence of a ruler was located in the city of Arka, the capital of the empire. It is easy to see where the city was situated by using the celestial map. The city was lying right under the Polar Star.

According to the Vedas, the empire was free from wars and conflicts because the people believed in God and followed His commandments that were very much akin to those in the Bible. The Oryans were building lots of cities all across the land, they had a good knowledge of astronomy and medicine. All temples were also used as observatories. The Oryans possessed many other secrets that were lost after the civilization ceased to exist.

These days we have only bits and pieces of some moth-eaten legends dating back to prehistoric times. Those legends say about big and mighty ships calling on other parts of the world populated by savages. The ships carried tall strangers who had astronomical and astrological calendars, and expertise in pottery and metallurgy.
Arctic ice

Those were legends about the great civilization of Atlanteans, which was actually situated in the Arctic. Perhaps some translators are to blame for humankind’s great misunderstanding. The translators misled scientists when they wrote “Atlantis” in lieu of “Arctitis.”

The Vedas have a detailed account of the tragic demise of the Arctic civilization. Legend has it that God advised the high priest of Arka of the incoming destruction of the civilization as the priest was worshipping at the temple on a mountain. It was revealed to the priest that the fertile lands of the empire would be covered with ice after freezing temperatures superseded the warm climate.
The priest relayed the revelation to the people and urged them to move for other parts of the world. But the people ignored God’s warning and the priest’s requests. The residents of tiny principalities decided to stay and fight for their life till the end. As a result, many of them were killed by hunger and extremely low temperatures. The Vedas maintain the last people left the Arctic three million years ago. The modern geological research contains evidence to confirm the data. In reality, complete icing of the Arctic took place about three million years ago.

Different peoples of the Arctic region still have numerous stories about strangers coming from the land stuck in between the ice. There is some evidence of this hypothesis in some Slavic myths e.g. the myth of the winter that lasted several years. Some scientists maintain that the myth of the building of the tower of Babel is nothing else but an account of the collapse of the Arctic civilization.
Scientists were fortunate to obtain soil samples at a depth corresponding to some 20 million years. The soil samples extracted from a depth that equaled 18 million years were not only frozen earth. They also contained a few fragments of plants e.g. a piece of grapevine – evidence to support the hypothesis featuring warm and fertile lands in the prehistoric Arctic.

Explorers of the Arctic claim it is impossible to find any signs of civilization buried under the layer of ice that is one kilometer thick. A new theory was put forth. It featured settlers from the Arctic forming a new civilization. For many years there was no evidence to prove the theory. Then archeologists came across sensational finds in Arkaim, in the Ural Mountains.

Having excavated and reconstructed some if the buildings on the excavation site, scientists arrived at the conclusion that a huge city used to sit near the eastern slopes of the Urals. The city had temples and palaces, and astronomical observatories. A painstaking comparative analysis on the basis of the Vedic writings enabled scientists to maintain that the city in the Urals was one of the last strongholds of the Aryan civilization.
Arctic ice

Historians and archeologists stress the level of knowledge of astronomy and architecture displayed by those who planned and built the city in the mountains. None of the peoples who lived in the Urals at the time knew much about astronomy and architecture. As for the layout of the city, it resembled very much that of the city Arka, which lay under the Polar Star.
According to the legends of the Middle East, the prophet Zoroaster came down from the territory of the present-day Urals. The prophet allegedly drew from the bits and pieces of the ancient Vedic doctrines while devising a new religion that dominated in the Middle East for many years.
Archeologists found out that the residents fled Arkaim about 3,500 years ago, the time of the eruption of the Santorin volcano. The Aryans had to run away from cold weather after the climate in the Urals started to change. The site of the city of Arkaim was discovered by Professor Zdanovich in 1987. It was declared a national historic reserve four years later. Arkaim is one of the few existing monuments that remind us of our distant ancestors.
The term “Russian” was put in circulation after the arrival of the Aryans, according to some scientists. The descendants of Arctitis who came in from the ice-clad motherland were called “Russes” for the light color of their hair. Many anthropologists suppose that our compatriots largely look like their legendary ancestors.

articles quoted from :
http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/82750-3/

2006-06-30T12:05:00.000+08:00

A Story on Friendship
~ Author Unknown

A story is told about a soldier who was finally coming home after having fought in Vietnam. He called his parents from San Francisco.

"Mom and Dad, I'm coming home, but I've a favor to ask. I have a friend I'd like to bring home with me.

"Sure," they replied, "we'd love to meet him."

"There's something you should know," the son continued, "he was hurt pretty badly in the fighting. He stepped on a land mind and lost an arm and a leg. He has nowhere else to go, and I want him to come live with us."

"I'm sorry to hear that, son. Maybe we can help him find somewhere to live."

"No, Mom and Dad, I want him to live with us."

"Son," said the father, "you don't know what you're asking. Someone with such a handicap would be a terrible burden on us. We have our own lives to live, and we can't let something like this interfere with our lives. I think you should just come home and forget about this guy. He'll find a way to live on his own."

At that point, the son hung up the phone. The parents heard nothing more from him. A few days later, however, they received a call from the San Francisco police. Their son had died after falling from a building, they were told. The police believed it was suicide.

The grief-stricken parents flew to San Francisco and were taken to the city morgue to identify the body of their son. They recognized him, but to their horror they also discovered something they didn't know, their son had only one arm and one leg.

The parents in this story are like many of us. We find it easy to love those who are good-looking or fun to have around, but we don't like people who inconvenience us or make us feel uncomfortable. We would rather stay away from people who aren't as healthy, beautiful, or smart as we are.

Thankfully, there's someone who won't treat us that way. Someone who loves us with an unconditional love that welcomes us into the forever family, regardless of how messed up we are.

Tonight, before you tuck yourself in for the night, say a little prayer that God will give you the strength you need to accept people as they are, and to help us all be more understanding of those who are different from us!!! There's a miracle called Friendship That dwells in the heart You don't know how it happens Or when it gets started But you know the special lift It always brings. And you realize that Friendship Is God's most precious gift!

Friends are a very rare jewel, indeed. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed. They lend an ear, they share a word of praise, and they always want to open their hearts to us. Show your friends how much you care....

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"A letter to a brother"
~ Author Unknown

Dear Patrick,

I was then an only child who had everything I could ever want. But even a pretty, spoiled and rich kid could get lonely once in a while so when Mom told me that she was pregnant, I was ecstatic. I imagined how wonderful you would be and how we'd always be together and how much you would look like me. So, when you were born, I looked at your tiny hands and feet and marveled at how beautiful you were.

We took you home and I showed you proudly to my friends. They would touch you and sometimes pinch you, but you never reacted. When you were five months old, some things began to bother Mom. You seemed so unmoving and numb, and your cry sounded odd --- almost like a kitten's. So we brought you to many doctors.

The thirteenth doctor who looked at you quietly said you have the "cry du chat" (pronounced Kree-do-sha) syndrome, "cry of the cat" in French.

When I asked what that meant, he looked at me with pity and softly said, "Your brother will never walk nor talk." The doctor told us that it is a condition that afflicts one in 50,000 babies, rendering victims severely retarded. Mom was shocked and I was furious. I thought it was unfair.

When we went home, Mom took you in her arms and cried. I looked at you and realized that word will get around that you're not normal. So to hold on to my popularity, I did the unthinkable ... I disowned you. Mom and Dad didn't know but I steeled myself not to love you as you grew. Mom and Dad showered you love and attention and that made me bitter. And as the years passed, that bitterness turned to anger, and then hate.

Mom never gave up on you. She knew she had to do it for your sake.

Everytime she put your toys down, you'd roll instead of crawl. I watched her heart break every time she took away your toys and strapped your tummy with foam so you couldn't roll. You struggle and you're cry in that pitiful way, the cry of the kitten. But she still didn't give up.

And then one day, you defied what all your doctors said -- you crawled.

When mom saw this, she knew you would eventually walk. So when you were still crawling at age four, she'd put you on the grass with only your diapers on knowing that you hate the feel of the grass on your skin.

Then she'd leave you there. I would sometimes watch from the windows and smile at your discomfort. You would crawl to the sidewalk and Mom would put you back. Again and again, Mom repeated this on the lawn. Until one day, Mom saw you pull yourself up and toddle off the grass as fast as your little legs could carry you.

Laughing and crying, she shouted for Dad and I to come. Dad hugged you crying openly.

I watched from my bedroom window this heartbreaking scene.

Over the years, Mom taught you to speak, read and write. From then on, I would sometime see you walk outside, smell the flowers, marvel at the birds, or just smile at no one. I began to see the beauty of the world through your eyes. It was then that I realized that you were my brother and no matter how much I tried to hate you, I couldn't, because I had grown to love you.

During the next few days, we again became acquainted with each other. I would buy you toys and give you all the love that a sister could ever give to her brother. And you would reward me by smiling and hugging me.

But I guess, you were never really meant for us. On your tenth birthday, you felt severe headaches. The doctor's diagnosis --leukemia. Mom gasped and Dad held her, while I fought hard to keep my tears from falling. At that moment, I loved you all the more. I couldn't even bear to leave your side. Then the doctors told us that your only hope is to have a bonemarrow transplant. You became the subject of a nationwide donor search. When at last we found the right match, you were too sick, and the doctor reluctantly ruled out the operations. Since then, you underwent chemotherapy and radiation.

Even at the end, you continued to pursue life. Just a month before you died, you made me draw up a list of things you wanted to do when you got out of the hospital. Two days after the list was completed, you asked the doctors to send you home. There, we ate ice cream and cake, run across the grass, flew kites, went fishing, took pictures of one another and let the balloons fly. I remember the last conversation that we had. You said that if you die, and if I need of help, I could send you a note to heaven by tying it on the string of any balloon and letting it fly. When you said this, I started crying. Then you hugged me. Then again, for the last time, you got sick.

That last night, you asked for water, a back rub, a cuddle. Finally, you went into seizure with tears streaming down your face. Later, at the hospital, you struggled to talk but the words wouldn't come. I know what you wanted to say. "Hear you," I whispered. And for the last time, I said, "I'll always love and I will never forget you. Don't be afraid. You'll soon be with God in heaven." Then, with my tears flowing freely, I watched the bravest boy I had ever known finally stop breathing. Dad, Mom and I cried until I felt as if there were no more tears left. Patrick was finally gone, leaving us behind.

From then on, you were my source of inspiration. You showed me how to love life and live to the fullest. With your simplicity and honesty, you showed me a world full of love and caring. And you made me realize that the most important thing in this life is to continue loving without asking why or how and without setting any limit.

Thank you, my little brother, for all these.

2006-06-29T10:19:00.000+08:00

Aliens in Biblical History

Is it possible that the UFO phenomenon is actually a glimpse of the battle raging in the hidden spiritual realms as the struggle makes brief forays into this earthly sphere?

The Bible teaches that there are angels and demons and there is warfare in the heavenly realms. The demons are the fallen angels that once followed God, but later rebelled with Satan and turned against the Lord.

Ephesians 6:12
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against
the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the
spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Revelation 12:7-8
And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and
the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in Heaven

Revelations 12:12
But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.

Revelation 16:13-14
Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. They are spirits of demons performing miraculous signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty.

Just what are angels? The Bible tells us angels are "ministering spirits" (Hebrews 1:14). It tells us they are beings of a different nature than humans, but created by God and for God. It describes how they sometimes act, how they sometimes appear, and how they are sometimes perceived. It also tells us what they sometimes do. If one studies all the passages in the Bible that mention angels, one will see that angels are very powerful spiritual beings that, among other things, can:

1.) Appear as normal human beings, undetected by people (Genesis 19:1-29, Hebrews 13:2)
2.) Appear as bright, shinning beings that terrify those who see them (Matthew 28:2-7)
3.) Appear in people's dreams (Matthew 1:20-24)
4.) Appear to animals, but invisible to humans (Numbers 22:21-40)
5.) Appear in the form of a plague (1Chronicles 21:14-16)
6.) Appear in flames of fire (Exodus 3:2)
7.) Etc., etc

In other words, angels can take on many different shapes and forms, perhaps at will. It would make sense then, that if demons are fallen angels, they may possess many of the same powers that the faithful angels possess.

Many people who have encountered "aliens" describe a reptilian likeness to their appearance. It is curious to note that when Satan appeared to Eve in the garden of Eden that he appeared in the form of a snake?probably the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word "reptile".

A few people will follow the devil with full knowledge of who he is. Others, being deceived, follow him without knowing whom they really serve. To those that seek Christ, one of the devil's favorite ploys is to masquerade as an imposter, preaching and teaching lies, false doctrine and false Christianity:

2 Corinthians 11:13-15For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ.
And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising,
then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what
their actions deserve.

1 Timothy 4:1
The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow
deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.

Satan teaches anything that is false. He uses false religions. He distorts and perverts the true gospel of Christ so that it can no longer save those who hear his message. He uses deception. He makes people think they are worshipping God or a god when they are in fact, worshipping him. Some want to worship money and power; To those he gives this. Others want to worship other gods; To those he gives this. Others want to worship fame and material things; To those he gives this. Others want to worship themselves; To those he gives this. Some want to believe lies, and God lets them have their way. Be careful what it is you want, because God will give it to you:

2 Thessalonians 2:9-12
The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed
in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that
deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth
and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but
have delighted in wickedness.

How do we protect ourselves against the devil's schemes?

Ephesians 6:10-18
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

Revelation 12:10b-11
For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.
They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.

Even in the Old Testament, God knew how great the temptation would be, and warned numerous times not to follow any other beings except Him:

Exodus 20:3You shall have no other gods before me.

Exodus 23:13
Be careful to do everything I have said to you. Do not invoke the names of other gods;
do not let them be heard on your lips.

Deuteronomy 5:7You shall have no other gods before me.

Deuteronomy 6:14Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you;

Deuteronomy 11:26-28See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse- the blessing if you obey the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today; the curse if you disobey the commands of the LORD your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known.

Deuteronomy 13:1-4
If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you
a miraculous sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, "Let us follow other gods" (gods you have not known) "and let us worship them," you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The LORD your God
is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul.
It is the LORD your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands
and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him.

The terms, "heavenly hosts", or the "host of heaven" are frequently used in reference to angelic beings.
See: 1 Kings 22:19, 2 Chronicles 18:18, Psalm 148:2, Luke 2:13. The seeking after these beings is most offensive to God, and dangerous for us as humans:

Jeremiah 8:1-2At that time, saith the LORD, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves: And they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and after whom they have walked, and whom they have sought, and whom they have worshipped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried; they shall be for dung upon the face of the earth.

Jeremiah 19:13And the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, shall be defiled as
the place of Tophet, because of all the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense
to all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink offerings unto other gods.

Deuteronomy 17:2-4If there is found among you, within any of your gates which the LORD your God gives
you, a man or a woman who has been wicked in the sight of the LORD your God, in
transgressing His covenant, who has gone and served other gods and worshiped them,
either the sun or moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded, and
it is told you, and you hear of it, then you shall inquire diligently. And if it is indeed true
and certain that such an abomination has been committed in Israel,

Ancient Israel's history is full of times when they sought after and embraced other gods and the "host of heaven". In so doing, they abandoned God and His blessings, guidance, and protection--and paid a terrible price. These times were Israel's darkest hours. See: 2 Kings 17:15-17, Kings 21:2-5, 2 Kings 23:4-6.

Remember, no matter what these "aliens" may say or teach, Jesus Christ is the only way to God:

Acts 4:12
Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given
to men by which we must be saved.

John 14:6
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the
Father except through me.

God has given proof of Jesus as being His Son to all men, for all time:

Romans 1:1-4
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God?the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.

Acts 17:30-31
In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.

But in the end Jesus Christ will triumph over all evil:

2 Thessalonians 2:7-8
For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.

1 Corinthians 7:31.. For this world in its present form is passing away.

2Peter 3:10-13
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.

Matthew 28:18
Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth
Has been given to me.

Hebrews 10:12-14
But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

Philippians 2:9-11
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

And that includes not just us humans, but Satan and his deceptive followers as well.

What is more important?
--That God came to earth, revealed Himself to us, told us the truth and lived among us as one of us, gave His life for us, left us the gift of His Spirit, and will return,
or
that so called "aliens" visit, tell us lies, and leave?

Are you saved? Many people think they are?and are not. Are you certain the Bible agrees with what you have been taught regarding how to be saved? Find out what the Word of God teaches about salvation. Click here and visit www.bebaptized.org

The Kingdom of Heaven is Here

2006-06-28T18:47:00.000+08:00

Old Hindu legend...

There was once a time when all human beings were gods, but they so abused their divinity that Brahma, the chief god, decided to take it away from them and hide it where it could never be found.
Where to hide their divinity was the question. So Brahma called a council of the gods to help him decide. "Let's bury it deep in the earth," said the gods. But Brahma answered, "No, that will not do because humans will dig into the earth and find it." Then the gods said, "Let's sink it in the deepest ocean." But Brahma said, "No, not there, for they will learn to dive into the ocean and will find it." Then the gods said, "Let's take it to the top of the highest mountain and hide it there." But once again Brahma replied, "No, that will not do either, because they will eventually climb every mountain and once again take up their divinity." Then the gods gave up and said, "We do not know where to hide it, because it seems that there is no place on earth or in the sea that human beings will not eventually reach."
Brahma thought for a long time and then said, "Here is what we will do. We will hide their divinity deep in the center of their own being, for humans will never think to look for it there."
All the gods agreed that this was the perfect hiding place, and the deed was done. And since that time humans have been going up and down the earth, digging, diving, climbing, and exploring--searching for something already within themselves.

2006-06-27T17:48:00.000+08:00

Crop Circles.

I've always been fascinated by Crop Circles. Below articles were sent to me my friend. We actually shared much common interests.

August 15, 2002
Another year later, nearly to the day on August 15, 2002, a formation in wheat is reported 8.5 miles from the Chilbolton Observatory on a hill top farm near Winchester, Hampshire. A small woods that runs along the field is called Crabwood, so some people have called it the Crabwood formation.

The first photographs of this Winchester/Crabwood formationwere taken on August 16, 2002, the day after an e-mail announcement froman unknown source on August 15, 2002, gave survey coordinates for the new crop pattern.Aerial photograph © 2002 by Steve Alexander.
This time, there is another face and code, but the face is not humanoid like the Chilbolton one. The face is a characterization of all the "grey alien" faces that have been drawn over the past thirty years by people in the so-called "human abduction syndrome." Allegedly, people are taken physically, mentally, or both, from their cars, bedrooms, or yards, into an extraterrestrial craft where extraterrestrial biological entities perform examinations and often extract sperm or ova. The creatures are generally described as grey-colored with faces very similar to the one patterned in the Winchester wheat field.
Pattern in wheat of "grey alien" face and round discof 8 bit binary encoding in hexadecimal form.Aerial photograph © 2002 by Lucy Pringle.
While the 2001 Chilbolton code was a large rectangle of binary code similar to the 1974 Arecibo radio telescope transmission, the 2002 code was produced in a spiral of 8 bit binary encoding in hexadecimal form with English alphabet letters represented by ASCII character sets used by computer programmers since the 1960s. To translate the code, you have to start at the center and spiral outward, counterclockwise, to figure out each English letter-by-letter to produce the message.

August 15, 2002 Winchester/Crabwood Spiral Code Message:
"Beware the bearers of false gifts and their broken promises. Much pain, but still time. Believe there is good out there. We oppose deception.

Source : http://www.cciam.com/chibolton_extraterrastrial_

2006-06-26T15:51:00.000+08:00

Investment Tips and Financial Management worth reading..

Looking After Your Finances To look after your finances, you have to know how much money you have and where it’s going. This means that the first step in taking care of your finances is sitting down and making a budget.

The Top Five Basic Investment Principals One of the biggest mistakes people make is to keep putting of making investments, and every day they wait is a day their money could have been earning them more money.

Personal Finance Tips Managing your personal finances doesn’t always come naturally, and even if you’re just beginning to take your financial matters seriously, then you likely need a few personal finance tips.

Understanding The Need For Financial Management It takes time and effort to learn the art of managing your finances. Unless you have a great deal of money, though, the basics of managing finances are not difficult to learn and perform.

Learning How To Invest Learning how to invest is not difficult and can be an exciting experience. There’s nothing quite like making your first stock market investment. Before jumping in to the investment ocean, though, you want to know some basics.

A Quick Guide To Financial Planning Financial planning basics aren’t rocket science, though it may take the discipline and dedication a rocket scientist put into his or her training to accomplish.

How To Get Started In The Stock Market By starting to invest in the stock market using small to moderate amounts of money, a person can learn the ups and downs of the market without feeling that they’ve placed themselves at great risk.

What You Should Know Before Investing In A Mutual Fund One important consideration when making a mutual fund investment is to look for a manager who has a good track record.

Beginners Guide To Property Investment In order to know the best techniques for making property investments, you want to have a good understanding of the real estate market and know what constitutes a good property investment.

2006-06-26T14:30:00.000+08:00

A Simple Solution to world's problem

Make Everybody Rich by FREDERICKTURNER

The Panacea is obvious

“Any inventory of the world’s current problem areas probably includes several of the following: war, the environment, education, health, crime, women’s rights, unemployment, the oppression of the poor, racism, xenophobia, restrictions on political liberty, the decline of religious spirituality, various crises in the arts, lack of support for scientific research and the space program, and over population. There is, in fact, a simple and effective solution to all these problems: make everybody in the world rich. Poverty is not just one more head on the hydra, but the hydra itself that grows all the heads. Put a stake in the hydra, and the heads disappear. The Panacea Is Obvious

The overwhelming evidence is that rich people don’t like sending their children off to war, and they will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid doing so. They will take these actions individually, as did the parents of U.S. politicians who pulled strings to keep their kids out of Vietnam, or they will take them collectively, as did the Western nations that hovered nervously around Bosnia, like country club luncheon guests who have discovered a wasp on the cucumber sandwiches. In Kosovo, the rich nations would not let their children get any closer to the sharp end than fifteen thousand feet. A world full of rich people will obviously be too wary to go to war, so war will die out. The resultant savings in military budgets will make the world richer still.

Rich people like to have a nice, clean, bio diverse environment, and they will go to extreme lengths to get it. They connive so successfully to avoid ecological distress that a whole government agency is devoted to ensuring that pollution sources are not unduly located in poor neighborhoods. But if there are no poor neighborhoods, people will make very sure that there are no pollution sources. Poor countries today are almost invariably more polluted and environmentally damaged than are rich countries, and the worst-polluted countries are in the old Soviet bloc, where poverty was ideologically privileged.

Rich people have historically supported arboretums, national parks, game reserves, gardens, restored wetlands, and zoos. A rich world, out of pure self-interest, will invest in a biologically diverse planetary ecosystem. In the teeth of principle, adverse public relations, political conviction, and enormous financial cost, rich people will obtain the best education they can for themselves and their children, even if they must abandon the public school system and pay twice. A world full of rich people is a world in which first-rate education will be in such hot demand by folk who can afford to finance it themselves that it will be plentiful, and governments will not need to supply it.

Rich people are notorious for their interest in their health and for the vast sums of money they pay to get and keep it. A world of wealthy valetudinarians will support cutting-edge medical research, first-rate hospitals, and a horde of well-trained and well-paid doctors; and, of course, everybody, as our premise stipulates, will be able to afford it. Rich people rarely commit crimes, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that their natural human proclivities for criminality are usually thwarted by lack of opportunity and incentive. The reason gated communities are gated is to ensure that one’s neighbors are rich and therefore unlikely to steal from or assault their neighbors, having too much to lose themselves. A world of rich people will be a world of police idleness.

Rich people support women’s rights for a variety of reasons, the simplest being that because money accumulates and women live seven years longer than men, rich women tend to be richer than rich men and hence more able to assert their rights. Other reasons include the neutralization of male physical strength by the prostheses of wealth and technology, the greater freedom of the rich from reproductive labor (see “overpopulation”), the greater access rich women have to education, and rich men’s demand for women who are interesting and present a real challenge. There is a pretty exact match worldwide between the relative wealth of a given nation and the relative extent of women’s rights. A rich world is a gender-equal world.

Unemployment will disappear in a universally rich world, not because there will be no people without jobs but because unemployed rich people are not called “unemployed” at all, but “independently wealthy,” “idle rich,” “parasites,” “comfortable,” “philanthropists,” or “retired.” The word unemployed will become archaic and comic. In a rich world, workers in less creative and interesting occupations will have to be paid exorbitantly and given grandiose job titles perhaps derived from the old aristocratic rankings, such as “count” or “marquis,” or from the artistic and professional designations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as “maestro,” “star,”“ doctor,” “professor,” “counsel,” and “president”to keep them at work at all. Creative and interesting jobs probably will be fewer in number than the multitudes of people who will want them, and therefore people might very well pay handsomely to hold such a job. Readers who already see these trends at work in areas such as publishing, politics, philanthropy, and the arts are probably well ahead of this writer. Rich people have always been accused of oppressing and exploiting the poor, and the accusation has often been justified. Human nature is as it is, and poor people, after all, often oppress those who are poorer still, as slum-crime statistics demonstrate. The answer to this problem, however, is not to take revenge on the rich or to make every-body poor for spite, but to make sure there are no poor people for rich people to oppress—that is, to make everybody rich.

Rich people are more interested in consuming the cuisine, anthropology, spiritual secrets, and picturesquet touristic offerings of the racial or ethnic “Other” than in stringing him up. Genocide, so appealing to poor people, will be counter productive in a rich world because it will amount to one less cultural tourism venue. Rich people unfailingly arrange for forms of government that protect them against the government, against each other, and against the poor, and thus provide freedom and security for themselves and other rich people. The Magna Carta was written by a group of rich nobles eager to prevent the king and the commoners from infringing on their freedom to keep and make wealth. The larger the proportion of relatively rich people in a society, the wider the net of free and democratic institutions is cast to ensure that the rich continue to be protected, even if the poor are protected in the process, too.

Poor people are bought off by larger grants of freedom and by recruitment into the ranks of the rich. The American Revolution was a revolution of comparatively rich people against the financial demands of the poor as represented by George III’s taxation policies. The richest countries today are the most politically enlightened. A world of rich people will be a world of exemplary political freedom and of incorruptible, open, and just public administration. Nobody will want public office for the money, and in fact people will pay well for the privilege of public service—we already see this phenomenon in recent elections. In a rich world, we will have the best government money can buy.

Once the existential demands of poor people and the pleasure-and-status demands of middle-class people are satiated, there is no place for human desire to go but up theMaslovian pyramid of human needs, up toward fulfillment of personal and public ideals, and finally toward the realms of divine enlightenment. Boredom drives rich people toward the complexities and perverse discipline of true virtue and spiritual insight; everything else palls eventually. Dynasty after dynasty in the world’s history has spiritualized itself out of the banal realities of political power and ended up communing with the spiritual world and constructing their souls—as did Japanese emperors ,Spanish Hapsburgs, Mayan priest-kings, Shakespeare’s Henry VI and Prospero, or Prince Gautama the Buddha himself. Wealthy Europe in the Middle Ages bought its way into monasteries; at the beginning of the twentieth century, it sought out Madame Blavatsky, Gurdjieff, Catholic aestheticism, and the Golden Dawn; and today it follows Deep Ecology and the Sufi mystics. Any visitor today to such pilgrimage sites as Santa Fe, New Mexico, or Sedona, Arizona, can find the California and Texas elite in the process of purging their souls. A rich planet will be an increasingly spiritual and religious one.

What rich people famously spend their money on, especially when that money is old and matured by generations, is art. When everybody is rich, there will be no need for government arts funding. Within the enclaves of the already rich, the Warhols and Johnses and Kiefers—not to mention the Ozawas, Spielbergs, and McCartneys—have already joined the aristocracy. Rich people have traditionally funded science research, and a world filled with pleasant landscaped environments will be too tame for the wealthy adventurer. Science is an irreducibly uncomfortable occupation, which is why the wealthy seek it out. Like peasants in a field, trust-fund kids grub about in dusty archeological digs. Aristocrats love to abandon their pleasant homes to climb icy and dangerous mountains, or they buy expensive and ingeniously obsolete sailboats and, on the fine edge of boredom and terror, sail around the world. Outer space will be the final frontier for the rich, the ultimate tourist destination, and they will pay for the privilege.

Finally and most decisively of all, being rich is unquestionably the cure for over-population. With the exception of a few countries such as China, in which brutal state power is exercised to prevent births, the birthrate is in inverse proportion to income per capita. And the fact that incomes begin to increase before birthrates start to decrease shows clearly that the driving factor in the connection is predominantly the increase in income—though there is also a secondary feedback effect in which low birthrates begin to accelerate the growth of wealth. Demographers are unanimous in noting the connection, and they argue only about the reason for it. Some believe in a direct relationship: that once children are no longer an insurance policy against the poverty of old age, they are less urgently required; or that when contraceptives are affordable, they tend to be used. Other scholars invoke factors that we have already seen are secondary consequences of wealth—for instance, the education of women or the availability of health care leading to lower infant mortality rates, less need to compensate for the uncertainty of infant survival, and a consequent drop in fertility. The chief demographic problem in a rich world will be one already currently faced by wealthy nations such as Germany, Italy, and Japan—how to keep the birth rate high enough to replace the population. The leveling off of population will compound the other beneficial effects of wealth: relaxation of the pressure on health and education services; an older, less crime-prone population; fewer draft-age young men; a higher proportion of people preparing their souls for death; resources freed up for the arts and sciences; a lightening of women’s reproductive burdens; greater political maturity; and a softening of the human impact on the environment. So What Are We Waiting For? A panacea for almost all of our recognizable present world problems lies right before us, one so simple that though it stares us in the face we do not notice it. Are we really so blind? To my knowledge, no nation in the world places that solution—make every-body rich—at the top of its public-policy priority list. Some nations, such as Switzer-land and Singapore, implicitly adopt that policy, and they are among the richest in the world.

The United States itself, during the period of its most vigorous economic expansion, may be said to have been following Calvin Coolidge’s maxim that the business of America is business. Maybe the idea is too base and uninspiring to be thought of as the principle behind the high and noble calling of politics; we don’t want it to be true, and so we ignore it. Or maybe there are other, less-wholesome reasons why wedo not want to adopt that solution. It would be churlish to state the least-attractive reason directly, but an old Russian joke conveys it rather well. The czar is separated from his hunting party in the midst of the chase, anda violent storm comes on. He seeks shelter in the cottage of a peasant, who is suspicious and unwilling to let him in. The Little Father of all the Russias pledges before the saints that if he receives shelter, the peasant may come to Moscow at the end of a year and be granted whatever he wishes in recompense. The year passes, and the czar becomes increasingly anxious. At last he tells his fears to his wisest counselor: “What if the fellow demands my daughter in marriage or my empire itself? I have given my sacred promise. ”The counselor ponders for three days and returns to his master. His advice puzzles the czar, but the czar trusts his advisor, and when the peasant duly appears at the end of the year, all smiles, the czar welcomes him to the Kremlin. “Ah, my friend,” he says, “I have thought often and gratefully of your hospitality; and I am in so generous a frame of mind that I have decided in the spirit of Christian love to add to my gift. Whatever you demand of me, I shall not only grant but give twice over to your next door neighbor.”The peasant’s face turns ashen. There is a silence. Finally, in a voice of anguish, he speaks. “Sire, I have decided on my gift.” “What is it?” asks the czar. The peasant replies: “Let my left eye be put out.” But perhaps our unwillingness to see our neighbors prosper is not the main reason why we have not made universal wealth our goal. Perhaps our assumption is that the goal is impossible to achieve.

How will it be possible for everybody to get rich?

First of all, the world is getting richer anyway. If the average world income per capita at the beginning of the twentieth century was, conservatively, a tenth of what itis now in constant dollars, and the rate of increase continues as it did throughout the twentieth century—despite two world wars and a great depression—the average income for every man, woman, and child on the planet by the end of the twenty-first century will be approximately $66,000. The CIA World Fact book for 1999 (Washing-ton, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1999) estimates the current world purchasing power per capita at approximately $6,600, with an annual growth rate of world domestic product (WDP) of approximately 4 percent, except during occasional recession years, when it drops to approximately 2 percent. The present growth rate of population is approximately 1.3 percent, but it is dropping rapidly. Given an average population growth rate of 1 percent for the coming century (high, by most estimates) and an average WDP growth rate of 3.5 percent, purchasing power per capita by 2100should rise to almost $80,000 in constant dollars, in good agreement with our previous estimate. Thus, the income of an average four-member family in 2100 will be approximately $320,000, and, given the normal ratio of net worth to income for families at that income level, the average family will be millionaires. Obviously, income disparities will mean that there will be some pauper families, who will have only$100,000 or so to spend each year, and others whose wealth will be unimaginably large to us now.

This rosy future will not just happen by itself. There were in history long periods of economic decline. How will we keep the present progress going? Here it might be wise to study the times and places in which prosperity took huge leaps—for instance, ancient Mesopotamia, classical Greece, Renaissance Italy and Holland, Bismarck’s Germany, China under the Han emperors, Meiji Japan, Victorian England, the late-nineteenth-century United States, post–World War II Japan, present-day Hong Kong and Singapore. What one finds is some combination of the following: lowered tariffs; racial and ethnic mixing (or at least vigorous intercultural communication); social and economic encouragement of technological innovation; a relaxation of the human prejudice against commerce and the merchant caste; a huge improvement in communications technology; a relatively free flow of labor, information, capital, technology, ideas, and culture; a rule of law that is consistent and predictable and protects property and contracts; a broad cultural consensus in favor of education and invention; low taxes; an intelligent coinciding of the units of government with the most efficient units of production; and a union of moral discipline with a good appetite for the pleasures of life. Above all, one finds reliable ways in which the older generation can pass on its wealth to the younger and thus facilitate capital formation and long-term, high-risk entrepreneurial investment.

Let’s Stop Shooting Ourselves in the Foot

How might public policy be changed if we adopt these objectives for ourselves? If we look at our laws from this perspective, it is remarkable how many of them seem designed to prevent people from getting rich; America’s present prosperity owes much to the cleverness of its lawyers in evading the intent of those laws. The first thing to do, obviously, will be to repeal many of those laws: get rid of tariffs; stop discouraging miscegenation and cultural mixing; deregulate technology (while increasing the legal power of the public to punish sellers of misrepresented or dangerous products);stop discriminating against business in cultural, political, and legal arenas; lower barriers against immigration and technology transfer; remove barriers against access to property and legal loopholes in property laws; and cut taxes across the board, especially inheritance taxes. Any law designed to stop people from getting richer should be repealed, and any law that will tend to make poor people rich should be enforced.

More subtly, in the pos tindustrial era, the economies of scale associated withmass production no longer matter much. Once manufactures and information have become vanishingly cheap to produce and therefore are not very profitable or labor intensive, the major form of profitable production in the twenty-first century will be cultural production—the irreducibly labor and capital-intensive human activities that I call the Charm Industries: tourism, education, entertainment, adventure, religion, sport, fashion, cuisine, personal service, gardening, art, history, movies, ritual, psychotherapy, politics, and the eternal soap opera of relationships. Those industries are subject to diseconomies of scale—that is, they are less effective when pursued by large units of production, such as big nation-states, and more efficient when they take place in small units such as cities, regions, and traditional ethnic areas. Therefore, we should remove the political obstacles to the present trend toward greater regional autonomyin culture, while opening all the technological and economic gates of world communication.

Public policy might also concern itself with the moral discipline, or virtue, of the citizens—of course in ways that do not violate democratic liberty and the imperative need to allow all human value systems to interact profitably with one another. Cultures possessing strong codes of moral behavior and self-restraint—as did republican Rome, Confucian East Asia, Victorian England, and puritan America can rely ontheir members to save before they spend, work hard and enjoy it, and look after each other in misfortune, thus increasing the wealth of the society. Many countries across the world, beginning with Chile, have been privatizing their social security systems. This simple step has two effects: it provides a reliable flow of investment into profitable business and permits all parents to leave some wealth totheir children (because we cannot predict the hour and date of our death, natural caution persuades us to overestimate our life expectancy, and so to die before we have spent our savings). In a generation or two, every citizen in such systems will become independently wealthy.

Above all, perhaps, a government wishing to make everybody rich should elevate that principle to the top of its priority list. Simply looking at political choices from that perspective will change every decision made. Instead of trying at huge expense to fix the myriad problems that come from people’s not being rich, government can focus on the real issue. Consider a thought experiment: if we take all the money in the national budget except what is necessary to maintain a justice system, government administration, and a national defense, and instead invest it in sound growth funds fore very child in the United States, we will be able to make everybody in the country in dependently wealthy in one generation. Or suppose Franklin D. Roosevelt had instituted a private rather than a public social security system. The money flowing into that system would have lowered interest rates and restored the capitalization of the corporations damaged by the 1929 crash. Recovery might not have required World War II, and the United States might have led the world economy into peaceful prosperity in the 1940s.*Meanwhile, all those born of American parents would have inherited the remains of their parents’ pensions—which, if invested until today, would have made them millionaires.

If government wishes to be activist about its prime directive, rather than simply standing out of the way, it should research means to destroy poor people’s jobs and replace them with rich people’s jobs, thereby making the poor rich. For instance, it might support research designed to automate all repetitive and burdensome jobs. It might create accrediting infrastructures for all the interesting but poorly paid service jobs, dubbing them arts or professions, and establishing AMA- or ABA-like organizations to protect their interests. Interior decorators, cooks, landscape architects, gardeners, and fashion designers are already on their way to being canonized in this way, joining dancers, potters, moviemakers, mimes, performance artists, photographers, and clowns. Masseurs, perfumiers, adventure-tour guides, martial arts experts, furniture makers, animal breeders and trainers, coiffeurs, auto customizers, cosmeticians,Web page designers, and the like soon will enter their ranks.

In time, the information industries will go the way of manufacturing and farming, becoming so efficient, productive, user-friendly, and competitive that there will be little money to be made in them. Robots, nanotechnology, electronics, and biotechnology will very soon be able to do all the unpleasant work; only pleasant work will be left, and it will command top-dollar wages because nobody will be forced by circumstances to work at all. The world economy will become Martha Stewartized, with all workers seeking occupations that help them to build their souls and refine their taste. Millions of dollars will be made baking the perfect cherry pie, remodelling the perfect loft, sewing the perfect border, composing the perfect cantata of worship, and training the perfect sheepdog.

*Editor’s note: For a revisionist view of the relation between World War II and recovery from the Great Depression, see Robert Higgs, “Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed after the War,” The Independent Review 1 (spring 1997): 561–90.

2006-06-25T16:10:00.000+08:00

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2006-06-19T10:36:00.001+08:00

J U R A S S I C A R T
by Dan Eden

High atop the Andes Mountains, the "Rockies" of South America, there is an arid region in Peru that is both unusual and unnatural. Seen from the air, this region could easily be mistaken for an abandoned airport. Someone has carefully cleared and carved a series of laser straight lines that span many kilometers. Most of these lines are just wide enough to be called a path. Other areas form huge rectangles and trapezoids, hundreds of meters in width and length. Indeed, it looks as if the area was made to accommodate a fleet of DC-747's, But these "runways" are thousands of years old.

This is just one of the many mysteries to be found in the region. On neighboring mountain tops, the intact remains of walls and buildings can be seen. This architecture is all made from massive stones-- some weighing as much as a locomotive-- each meticulously carved and transported to the high peaks from a quarry some five miles away. The precision of each stone's final finish is so exact that there was no need for mortar or cement. The stones are joined so tightly that not even a pin can be inserted between them.
When the Spanish came to Peru and discovered this construction, they asked the native people if they had made these

Images on the Ica Stones show human type figures riding in Pterodactyls while hunting dinosaurs (left), an amazing global map showing the continents (center), and other activities not yet understood.

In this area, rain is infrequent. In the mid 1960's it rained a lot. The dry washes quickly filled to capacity and normally calm rivers were scoured by the torrential flood. In a small town near the Nazca lines, the narrow Ica River was eroded away along the banks, revealing several hundred carved stones that had been buried in subterranean chambers. As the water receded, the carved stones were left on the Ica's banks.
As the locals began to collect these stones, a particular image of a fish caught the eye of Dr. Javier Cabrera, the town's physician. Dr. Cabrera recognized the outlined image as that if an extinct species of fish. His curiosity peaked, he sought more of these stones. Gradually, the villagers knew that he was interested in these strange objects and so they gave him what is now his collection-- something Cabrera calls his "library"-- of stone enigmas.

The stones come in all sizes. There are small ones that can easily fit your palm and there are rocks as large as a dog. All of the stones have images that have been carved with continuous lines etched into the rock surface. The etching reveals a lighter color than the original dark varnish of age, yet the etched grooves also bear traces of this varnish, indicating that the carving was done in ancient times.

Curious images of a comet and an astronomer, using an object that looks like a telescope, are found on the stones

One could easily attribute these stones to any pre-Columbian civilization were it not for the uncanny and unmistakable pictures of dinosaurs, humans flying on Pterodactyls and vivid scenes of human heart transplants and continental world maps.
Sophia Melewska is a Geomorphologist who was commissioned to investigate the rocks, summarize their content, and comment on their authenticity. After studying the collection of Ica stones, Dr. Melewska said that she was in a state of "intellectual shock." The art that surrounds the entire rock face shows evidence of an advanced civilization that knew about surgery, the history of man's past, and the Earth's evolution. But how? Melewska is one of the scientists now trying to direct the attention of professional research toward this mystery. But her battle is a tough one.

Unlike clay figurines that have organic material (i.e. straw) in their composition, there are no organic materials in plain old rock that will tell anything of its age. Traditional radiocarbon dating techniques rely upon organic material (that was once alive) to determine age. The surface of these rocks, however, has a varnish that is the result of bacteria and minute organisms which have adhered to the surface. A good black varnish or patina will take thousands of years to discolor and coat each stone. Etching these rocks would have removed the existing varnish, revealing the bare rock. Since these rocks have developed additional varnish in the grooves, it seems likely that they have were carved a long time ago. But how long?
In their video production, Jurassic Art, the producers again sent Neil Steede to examine this phenomenon. Neil, as was suggested with the Julesrod report, is unbiased. He travels the globe looking at stones and listening to all sorts of claims and stories. Some stories are blatantly fake, while others seem shockingly real and genuinely perplexing. Neil examined the varnish on the stones but was not able to guess at the date. They looked old, but exactly how old was old?
In cases where no organic material can be dated, the setting and strata where the objects are found can often give a clue to their age. Unfortunately, since these stones were revealed by accidental erosion, their original resting place is not known. Perhaps there were other ways of determining their age.

Acting on a rumor, Steede traveled to a nearby village where he met a local man who was in the process of carving similar stones for tourists and anyone else that could be duped into believing that they had a piece of antiquity. The rumors of Dr. Cabrera's collection have brought tourists to the area, seeking what they are assured are the "real stones." Steede found that the artist managed to emulate the style on the Ica stones, but his technique was not quite as good. Moreover, the tell-tale varnish was absent from his grooves. Despite this, skeptics point to these reproductions as proof of a hoax, and dismiss any serious study of the original collection which is still maintained by Dr. Cabrera. And if reproductions were not enough to cast doubt on the age of the Ica stones, their fantastic images of extinct animals and flying humans inhibit any serious scholar from taking a second look at the phenomenon.
If these stones are to be taken at face value, the time frame of our past history is askew. Either humans were able to remember dinosaurs and medical procedures as part of their history, or some species of dinosaur lived to fairly recent times.
Of course, dismissing them as a hoax is the easiest way to avoid this brain teaser. But since the stones seem to be associated with a culture possessing highly developed engineering and mathematical aptitudes, it is not an impossibility that such civilization might also have had knowledge of Earth's history and human evolution.
Could dinosaurs have lived until recent times ? There is some evidence for this. Certain species of animals, thought to be extinct, have been found frozen and preserved. Mastodons (a type of hairy elephant) have been found in Siberian ice. These animals could have survived through the last ice age, some 13,000 years ago. Their bodies were so intact that, upon autopsy, fresh daffodils and sweet grass was found undigested in their stomachs. Unfortunately the stones do not show Mastodons, and no frozen dinosaurs have yet been found.
So the question to be answered is this: If there was an advanced civilization in South America thousands of years ago, why did it vanish? Who were they ? How did they know of dinosaurs and stone masonry ?

Source : http://www.viewzone.com/dinostone.ica.html
Other Pics at http://www.ldi5.com/archeo/ica2.php