as the blog says at the beginning "growing, discerning, evolving and creating a new existence in this world that is coming to a close"
and with this in mind this blog will use the cloaking device and morph into
http://newdawn-now.blogspot.com/
which I will be starting with the new Large Hedron Collider going on it's maiden run on 10/09/08 (looks like a count down happening here)
Enjoy the new blog, the new start. Lets see where we are led...
Monday 8 September 2008
No sunspots for a month
In the recent article highlighting the historical event of zero sunspots for one full month, does point to a very important consequence. This recent event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity, which determines the number of sunspots, is an influencing factor for climate on Earth. According to data from Mount Wilson Observatory, UCLA, more than an entire month has passed without a spot. The last time such an event occurred was June of 1913. Sunspot data has been collected since 1749.When the Sun is active, it is not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop to near-zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins. But this year, which corresponds to the start of Solar Cycle 24, has been extraordinarily long and quiet, with the first seven months averaging a sunspot number of only 3. August followed with none at all. The astonishing rapid drop of the past year has defied predictions, and caught nearly all astronomers by surprise.
Friday 22 August 2008
Practical Cloaking Devices
Invisibility cloaks get a step closer to realization, with the demonstration of a new material that can bend (visible) light the 'wrong' way for the first time in three dimensions. In Nature this week, researchers report a metamaterial that produces negative refraction of visible light, and show that it can be can be easily probed from free space, paving the way for practical optical device applications. Metamaterials are artificially engineered structures that have properties, such as negative refractive index, not attainable with naturally occurring materials. Only thin, effectively two-dimensional materials have been demonstrated until now, limiting practical applications.Jason Valentine, Xiang Zhang and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley create a multilayered, ‘fishnet’ structure which unambiguously exhibits negative refractive index. (PhysOrg.com)
Shown is a schematic and two scanning electron microscope images with top and side views of a metamaterial developed by UC Berkeley researchers. The material is composed of parallel nanowires embedded inside porous aluminum oxide. As visible light passes through the material, it is bent backwards in a phenomenon known as negative refraction.
Shown is a schematic and two scanning electron microscope images with top and side views of a metamaterial developed by UC Berkeley researchers. The material is composed of parallel nanowires embedded inside porous aluminum oxide. As visible light passes through the material, it is bent backwards in a phenomenon known as negative refraction.
Wednesday 13 August 2008
scientists know we are not from 'here'
Imagine the shock of growing up in a loving family with people you call "Mum" and "Dad" and then, suddenly, learning that you are actually adopted! This same sense of shock came as scientists announced that the Sun, the Moon, our planet and its siblings, were not born into the familiar band of stars known as the Milky Way galaxy, but we actually belong to a strange formation with the unfamiliar name of the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy!
How can this be? Using volumes of data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a major project to survey the sky in infrared light led by the University of Massachusetts, the astronomers are answering questions that have baffled scientists for decades and proving that our own Milky Way is consuming one of its neighbors in a dramatic display of ongoing galactic cannibalism. The study published in the Astrophysical Journal, is the first to map the full extent of the Sagittarius galaxy and show in visually vivid detail how its debris wraps around and passes through our Milky Way. Sagittarius is 10,000 times smaller in mass than the Milky Way, so it is getting stretched out, torn apart and gobbled up by the bigger Milky Way.A new infra red digital survey of the entire sky was made in 2003. Teams from the universities of Virginia and Massachusetts used a supercomputer to sort through half a billion stars to create a -- NEW STAR MAP showing our Solar System (yellow circle) to be at the exact nexus crossroads where two galaxies are actually joining. "It's clear who's the bully in the interaction," said Steven Majewski, U.Va. professor of astronomy and lead author on the paper describing the results. "If people had infrared-sensitive eyes, the entrails of Sagittarius would be a prominent fixture sweeping across our sky," Majewski said. "But at human, visual wavelengths, they become buried among countless intervening stars and obscuring dust. The great expanse of the Sagittarius system has been hidden from view." Not any more. By using infrared maps, the astronomers filtered away millions of foreground stars to focus on a type of star called an M giant. These large, infrared-bright stars are populous in the Sagittarius galaxy but uncommon in the outer Milky Way. The 2MASS infrared map of M giant stars analyzed by Majewski and collaborators is the first to give a complete view of the Milky Way galaxy's meal of Sagittarius stars, now wrapping like a spaghetti noodle around the Milky Way. Prior to this work, astronomers had detected only a few scattered pieces of the disrupted Sagittarius dwarf. Even the existence of Sagittarius was unknown until the heart of this nearest satellite galaxy of the Milky Way was discovered by a British team of astronomers in 1994. The fact that the Milky Way is seen in the sky at an angle has always puzzled astronomers. If we originated from the Milky Way, we ought to be oriented to the galaxy's ecliptic, with the planets aligned around our Sun in much the same angle as our Sun aligns with the Milky Way. Instead, as first suggested by researcher Matthew Perkins Erwin, the odd angle suggests that our Sun is influenced by some other system. Together with data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey we now know what it is. We actually belong to the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy."We sifted several thousand interesting stars from a catalog of half a billion," said co-author Michael Skrutskie, U.Va. professor of astronomy and principal investigator for the 2MASS project. "By tuning our maps of the sky to the 'right' kind of star, the Sagittarius system jumped into view." The study's map of M giants depicts 2 billion years of Sagittarius stripping by the Milky Way, and suggests that Sagittarius has reached a critical phase in what had been a slow dance of death. "After slow, continuous gnawing by the Milky Way, Sagittarius has been whittled down to the point that it cannot hold itself together much longer," said 2MASS Science Team member and study co-author Martin Weinberg of the University of Massachusetts. "We are seeing Sagittarius at the very end of its life as an intact system." Does this mean we are at a unique moment in the life of our galaxy? Yes and no. "Whenever possible, astronomers appeal to the principle that we are not at a special time or place in the universe," Majewski said. "Because over the 14 million-year history of the Milky Way it is unlikely that we would just happen to catch a brief event like the death of Sagittarius, we infer that such events must be common in the life of big spiral galaxies like our own. The Milky Way probably dined on a number of dwarf galaxy snacks in the past." On the other hand, Majewski and his colleagues have been surprised by the Earth's proximity to a portion of the Sagittarius debris. "For only a few percent of its 240 million-year orbit around the Milky Way galaxy does our Solar System pass through the path of Sagittarius debris," Majewski said. "Remarkably, stars from Sagittarius are now raining down onto our present position in the Milky Way. Stars from an alien galaxy are relatively near us. We have to re-think our assumptions about the Milky Way galaxy to account for this contamination." The new findings will help astronomers measure the total mass of the Milky Way and Sagittarius galaxies, and probe the quantity and distribution of the invisible dark matter in these systems."The shape of the Sagittarius debris trail shows us that the Milky Way's unseen dark matter is in a spherical distribution, a result that is quite unexpected," Weinberg said. "The observations provide new insights into the nature of the mysterious dark matter," said Princeton's Spergel. "Either our galaxy is unusual or the dark matter has richer properties than postulated by conventional models." are there implications in Global Warming?
It has been postulated that this is the real reason for both global warming since higher energy levels of the Milky Way are almost certain to cause our Sun to burn hotter and emit higher energies. Indeed, temperatures have been seen to rise on virtually all the planets in our system. This seems quite apart from any local phenomenon like greenhouse gases etc.This grand turning is possibly the root cause for the discontinuation of the Mayan calendar (the most accurate on the planet) because the 'read-point' of the Pleiades star cluster, which many believe the calendar was based upon, can no longer be a constant as we begin to steer away from the earlier predictable movements.
What does it all mean? We of the overarching Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy have finally come down next to, and even with the massively powerful spiral armed equatorial plane of the Milky Way Galaxy. In our movement through space, our Earth has now fully begun to respond to the more powerful galactic energies and electro-gravitational bias of the massive Milky Way. We have reached the higher energy equatorial disc region of the massive spiral arm. We have now been "adopted" by a new system, a stronger and more powerful system, and we can expect changes on almost every level of energy. Whatever these changes are, they are all part of the natural birth, death, rebirth and transformation of the cosmos. As our knowledge of the universe grows, we cannot but understand how much we do not understand. Such is life.
A new infra red digital survey of the entire sky was made in 2003. Teams from the universities of Virginia and Massachusetts used a supercomputer to sort through half a billion stars to create a -- NEW STAR MAP showing our Solar System (yellow circle) to be at the exact nexus crossroads where two galaxies are actually joining.
Summary & comments by Dan Eden for Viewzone
How can this be? Using volumes of data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a major project to survey the sky in infrared light led by the University of Massachusetts, the astronomers are answering questions that have baffled scientists for decades and proving that our own Milky Way is consuming one of its neighbors in a dramatic display of ongoing galactic cannibalism. The study published in the Astrophysical Journal, is the first to map the full extent of the Sagittarius galaxy and show in visually vivid detail how its debris wraps around and passes through our Milky Way. Sagittarius is 10,000 times smaller in mass than the Milky Way, so it is getting stretched out, torn apart and gobbled up by the bigger Milky Way.A new infra red digital survey of the entire sky was made in 2003. Teams from the universities of Virginia and Massachusetts used a supercomputer to sort through half a billion stars to create a -- NEW STAR MAP showing our Solar System (yellow circle) to be at the exact nexus crossroads where two galaxies are actually joining. "It's clear who's the bully in the interaction," said Steven Majewski, U.Va. professor of astronomy and lead author on the paper describing the results. "If people had infrared-sensitive eyes, the entrails of Sagittarius would be a prominent fixture sweeping across our sky," Majewski said. "But at human, visual wavelengths, they become buried among countless intervening stars and obscuring dust. The great expanse of the Sagittarius system has been hidden from view." Not any more. By using infrared maps, the astronomers filtered away millions of foreground stars to focus on a type of star called an M giant. These large, infrared-bright stars are populous in the Sagittarius galaxy but uncommon in the outer Milky Way. The 2MASS infrared map of M giant stars analyzed by Majewski and collaborators is the first to give a complete view of the Milky Way galaxy's meal of Sagittarius stars, now wrapping like a spaghetti noodle around the Milky Way. Prior to this work, astronomers had detected only a few scattered pieces of the disrupted Sagittarius dwarf. Even the existence of Sagittarius was unknown until the heart of this nearest satellite galaxy of the Milky Way was discovered by a British team of astronomers in 1994. The fact that the Milky Way is seen in the sky at an angle has always puzzled astronomers. If we originated from the Milky Way, we ought to be oriented to the galaxy's ecliptic, with the planets aligned around our Sun in much the same angle as our Sun aligns with the Milky Way. Instead, as first suggested by researcher Matthew Perkins Erwin, the odd angle suggests that our Sun is influenced by some other system. Together with data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey we now know what it is. We actually belong to the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy."We sifted several thousand interesting stars from a catalog of half a billion," said co-author Michael Skrutskie, U.Va. professor of astronomy and principal investigator for the 2MASS project. "By tuning our maps of the sky to the 'right' kind of star, the Sagittarius system jumped into view." The study's map of M giants depicts 2 billion years of Sagittarius stripping by the Milky Way, and suggests that Sagittarius has reached a critical phase in what had been a slow dance of death. "After slow, continuous gnawing by the Milky Way, Sagittarius has been whittled down to the point that it cannot hold itself together much longer," said 2MASS Science Team member and study co-author Martin Weinberg of the University of Massachusetts. "We are seeing Sagittarius at the very end of its life as an intact system." Does this mean we are at a unique moment in the life of our galaxy? Yes and no. "Whenever possible, astronomers appeal to the principle that we are not at a special time or place in the universe," Majewski said. "Because over the 14 million-year history of the Milky Way it is unlikely that we would just happen to catch a brief event like the death of Sagittarius, we infer that such events must be common in the life of big spiral galaxies like our own. The Milky Way probably dined on a number of dwarf galaxy snacks in the past." On the other hand, Majewski and his colleagues have been surprised by the Earth's proximity to a portion of the Sagittarius debris. "For only a few percent of its 240 million-year orbit around the Milky Way galaxy does our Solar System pass through the path of Sagittarius debris," Majewski said. "Remarkably, stars from Sagittarius are now raining down onto our present position in the Milky Way. Stars from an alien galaxy are relatively near us. We have to re-think our assumptions about the Milky Way galaxy to account for this contamination." The new findings will help astronomers measure the total mass of the Milky Way and Sagittarius galaxies, and probe the quantity and distribution of the invisible dark matter in these systems."The shape of the Sagittarius debris trail shows us that the Milky Way's unseen dark matter is in a spherical distribution, a result that is quite unexpected," Weinberg said. "The observations provide new insights into the nature of the mysterious dark matter," said Princeton's Spergel. "Either our galaxy is unusual or the dark matter has richer properties than postulated by conventional models." are there implications in Global Warming?
It has been postulated that this is the real reason for both global warming since higher energy levels of the Milky Way are almost certain to cause our Sun to burn hotter and emit higher energies. Indeed, temperatures have been seen to rise on virtually all the planets in our system. This seems quite apart from any local phenomenon like greenhouse gases etc.This grand turning is possibly the root cause for the discontinuation of the Mayan calendar (the most accurate on the planet) because the 'read-point' of the Pleiades star cluster, which many believe the calendar was based upon, can no longer be a constant as we begin to steer away from the earlier predictable movements.
What does it all mean? We of the overarching Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy have finally come down next to, and even with the massively powerful spiral armed equatorial plane of the Milky Way Galaxy. In our movement through space, our Earth has now fully begun to respond to the more powerful galactic energies and electro-gravitational bias of the massive Milky Way. We have reached the higher energy equatorial disc region of the massive spiral arm. We have now been "adopted" by a new system, a stronger and more powerful system, and we can expect changes on almost every level of energy. Whatever these changes are, they are all part of the natural birth, death, rebirth and transformation of the cosmos. As our knowledge of the universe grows, we cannot but understand how much we do not understand. Such is life.
A new infra red digital survey of the entire sky was made in 2003. Teams from the universities of Virginia and Massachusetts used a supercomputer to sort through half a billion stars to create a -- NEW STAR MAP showing our Solar System (yellow circle) to be at the exact nexus crossroads where two galaxies are actually joining.
Summary & comments by Dan Eden for Viewzone
Friday 8 August 2008
08.08.08
Hi everyone
just wanted to bring to your attention that today is the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year of the new millennium.
If you add 8+8+2+8 it comes to, yes you guessed it 8!!
note what this day brings your way and your response.
Sending you love
just wanted to bring to your attention that today is the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year of the new millennium.
If you add 8+8+2+8 it comes to, yes you guessed it 8!!
note what this day brings your way and your response.
Sending you love
Friday 25 July 2008
Codex Sinaiticus, the world's oldest Bible, goes online
How wonderful is this?!
Almost 1700 years after scribes in the Holy Land first created it from vellum, one of the world’s oldest Bibles this week makes its debut on the internet. The Codex Sinaiticus is a complete transcription of Christian scriptures in Greek, written by scribes around 350AD. Together with another work, the Codex Vaticanus, it is considered the oldest known Bible in the world. From Thursday, high definition images of the Codex will be available online to all as the first part of a project led by the British Library comes to fruition. According to the library,the Codex is “a treasure beyond price”. “Within its beautifully handwritten Greek text are the earliest surviving copy of the complete New Testament, and the earliest and best copies of some of the Jewish scriptures.” More than 100 pages of the Bible will go
online on Thursday, including 67 from the British Library and dozens from the University of Leipzig.Within the next year pages will be added to the Codex website as digitisers scan more of its intricately inscribed vellum sheets. Since it was discovered in Egypt more than 150 years ago by a German scripture expert,pages from the Codex have found their way to London,St Petersburg and Leipzig. The remainder is still held by St Catherine’s monastery in Sinai, Egypt, where scholar Constantine Tischendorf unearthed it in 1844.Tischendorf returned with parts of the Codex to Leipzig and then presented Russia’s Tsar Nicolas II with much of it in 1869. Half a century later Josef Stalin, the Russian dictator, sold 694 pages to the British Library. The entire Codex comprises 1460 pages. In 2005, a £650,000 digitisation project was launched to reunite the far-flung sections of the Codex. Now, according to Ulrich Johannes Schneider, Leipzig’s library curator, “more than 100 pages, those from Leipzig and 67 from the British Library, will be available online at www.codex-sinaiticus.net.”
By Harry de Quetteville in Berlin
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/2439897/Codex-Sinaiticu\
s%2C-the-worldandrsquos-oldest-Bible%2C-goes-online.html
Almost 1700 years after scribes in the Holy Land first created it from vellum, one of the world’s oldest Bibles this week makes its debut on the internet. The Codex Sinaiticus is a complete transcription of Christian scriptures in Greek, written by scribes around 350AD. Together with another work, the Codex Vaticanus, it is considered the oldest known Bible in the world. From Thursday, high definition images of the Codex will be available online to all as the first part of a project led by the British Library comes to fruition. According to the library,the Codex is “a treasure beyond price”. “Within its beautifully handwritten Greek text are the earliest surviving copy of the complete New Testament, and the earliest and best copies of some of the Jewish scriptures.” More than 100 pages of the Bible will go
online on Thursday, including 67 from the British Library and dozens from the University of Leipzig.Within the next year pages will be added to the Codex website as digitisers scan more of its intricately inscribed vellum sheets. Since it was discovered in Egypt more than 150 years ago by a German scripture expert,pages from the Codex have found their way to London,St Petersburg and Leipzig. The remainder is still held by St Catherine’s monastery in Sinai, Egypt, where scholar Constantine Tischendorf unearthed it in 1844.Tischendorf returned with parts of the Codex to Leipzig and then presented Russia’s Tsar Nicolas II with much of it in 1869. Half a century later Josef Stalin, the Russian dictator, sold 694 pages to the British Library. The entire Codex comprises 1460 pages. In 2005, a £650,000 digitisation project was launched to reunite the far-flung sections of the Codex. Now, according to Ulrich Johannes Schneider, Leipzig’s library curator, “more than 100 pages, those from Leipzig and 67 from the British Library, will be available online at www.codex-sinaiticus.net.”
By Harry de Quetteville in Berlin
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/2439897/Codex-Sinaiticu\
s%2C-the-worldandrsquos-oldest-Bible%2C-goes-online.html
Tuesday 15 July 2008
World Youth Day
well, what an incredible time we are in. I know I have said this before but I just must stress this again. Here in Australia we have hit economically difficult times with this and that plummeting, shares loosing ground, property on an all time low ebb and petrol prices like no one's business. Just like America, Europe and Asia our financial situation is being dampened.
But what's this? Pilgrims, from around the world converging on Sydney, bringing traffic to a gridlock. Rejoicing, jubilation in the streets. What intense and immense positive energy from 150,000 participants in World Youth Day.
This positive energy is bound to upstage the negativity and doom and gloom that is being taunted by the media. Even Pope Benedict XVI who arrived in Sydney for the first time yesterday looks happy!
I will quote a few lines that were said at the opening of the WYD by PM Kevin Rudd which ring true and encouraging:
He said the young pilgrims were "so much the light of the world at a time when the world has so much darkness". "Too often in the history of the world, when young people travel in great number to other parts of the world, they do so in the cause of war, but you here today are here as pilgrims of peace.
and from Dr Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney these words: "Don't spend your life sitting on the fence, keeping your options open, because only commitments bring fulfillment.
Such positivity and exhuberance is so terrific and can plant a positive outcome for a nation when times are getting tough.
But what's this? Pilgrims, from around the world converging on Sydney, bringing traffic to a gridlock. Rejoicing, jubilation in the streets. What intense and immense positive energy from 150,000 participants in World Youth Day.
This positive energy is bound to upstage the negativity and doom and gloom that is being taunted by the media. Even Pope Benedict XVI who arrived in Sydney for the first time yesterday looks happy!
I will quote a few lines that were said at the opening of the WYD by PM Kevin Rudd which ring true and encouraging:
He said the young pilgrims were "so much the light of the world at a time when the world has so much darkness". "Too often in the history of the world, when young people travel in great number to other parts of the world, they do so in the cause of war, but you here today are here as pilgrims of peace.
and from Dr Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney these words: "Don't spend your life sitting on the fence, keeping your options open, because only commitments bring fulfillment.
Such positivity and exhuberance is so terrific and can plant a positive outcome for a nation when times are getting tough.
Telecommunications probs
Is this actually related to the tandem asteroids passing earth at the closest point today July 15? Just ponder...
Queensland is experiencing major communication problems with the entire Optus phone and internet out of action.Optus is blaming the major outage on damage to a fibre optic cable on the Gold Coast. The failure is creating major hardship for business and customers across the State.Brisbane Airports International and Domestic Terminals are also affected, with flight delays of up to an hour. The outage is causing problems for the check-in and baggage handling systems. Queensland Health says it is experiencing major problems as a result of the outage with staff unable to communicate via email, mobile or landline.It is advising customers experiencing problems contacting their local health for MINOR inquires to phone 131-HEALTH.Any life threatening calls should be directed to 000.
Queensland is experiencing major communication problems with the entire Optus phone and internet out of action.Optus is blaming the major outage on damage to a fibre optic cable on the Gold Coast. The failure is creating major hardship for business and customers across the State.Brisbane Airports International and Domestic Terminals are also affected, with flight delays of up to an hour. The outage is causing problems for the check-in and baggage handling systems. Queensland Health says it is experiencing major problems as a result of the outage with staff unable to communicate via email, mobile or landline.It is advising customers experiencing problems contacting their local health for MINOR inquires to phone 131-HEALTH.Any life threatening calls should be directed to 000.
Strange rock
This strange rock found near Roswell by a local businessman — inscribed with what appears to be “crop circles” or some intergalactic message — has stimulated a huge amount interest, as experts probe its origins and any message it may bear.
A strange rock with unusual magnetic properties - deeply scored, with what appears to be moon phases, a solar eclipse and the depiction of a supernova -- has been unearthed on the outskirts of Roswell. Its discovery has startled researchers, scientists and all who have examined it.If proven to be of extraterrestrial origin, it will mark the second time in less than a century that the Roswell area has received communications from outer space.Roswell Mayor Sam D. LaGrone, who actually saw and touched the rock over the weekend, said, "It is a very strange looking rock.... I touched it, I felt it, and I just don't see how it could have been produced."The rock, he said, adds another element to "the strangeness of Roswell," 61 years after the purported 1947 UFO crash and alleged cover-up by military authorities.The deep wine-red colored rock, measuring less than two inches across, and weighing about 40 grams, was unearthed in September 2004 by Roswell businessman Robert Ridge, 50 , who said he found it while deer hunting in Cedar Hill, 17 miles "as the crow flies" from the 1947 purported UFO crash site."I saw some fresh tracks and followed them," he said. "That's when I noticed the partially exposed rock on the side of a sand pit. But I didn't pick it up at first because I thought there were deer up ahead, and didn't want to break off the pursuit."When he realized the tracks were just goat tracks, he headed back the way he came, picked up the rock, and put it in his pocket, he said.After showing the rock to family and friends, he decided to keep it in a safe deposit box until last year, when curiosity to discover the truth about it got the better of him."In July 2007, I was introduced to UFO investigators Chuck Zukowski and Debbie Ziegelmeyer, and they were astounded at what they saw," he said.Zulkowski said the investigators where so impressed, they presented the rock to a number of experts, including prominent New Mexico anthropologists, "all of whom claimed they had never seen anything like it.""They said there is no way this rock could have been scored or drilled in the way it was, without sophisticated modern equipment, like lasers and high speed water-fed grinders and drills," Zukowski said.
The artifact's image appears to be literally "pulled" from the surface of the red iron ore rock.Apart from its strange appearance, Zukowski said, the rock has "peculiar" magnetic properties."It retains its magnetic polarity by which it will spin a compass needle and register its magnetic field on meters," he said. The oval rock will also spin, depending on the position of a magnet over the image surface, he added.Zukowski and Ziegelmeyer said that archeologists requested that the rock be submitted for further laboratory analysis, in what they describe as phase two of their investigation.One anthropologist reportedly described the rock as being similar to a "lodestone."Lodestones have been mentioned in literature for centuries as having magical and mystical properties. There are ancient accounts of people reporting that when holding lodestones, their hands and body shook, and that the stones cured a wide range of illnesses, including snake bites and headaches.Native Americans reportedly used lodestones as protection against snakes.Meanwhile, investigators claim the artifact mirrors crop circles that appeared in Liddleton, England, in 1996, indicating a possibility the stone bears a message from space.Priscilla Wolf, of Tijeras, a native American woman known to have "powers," visited the site were the rock was found last weekend, and said she felt a vibration in her hands when she held the rock, and that "light came down from the skies" when the rock was deposited at the site.Although the rock was found partially exposed on the surface, Zukowski said, the sandy area in which it was found is known to erode and shift, possibly uncovering the rock."It appeared to have been buried at one time," said Ridge, who believes the rock represents more than just an interesting object."After I had it a few months, I began to think about it and began to think that it may be a beacon of some kind, or a message," he said."And I believe the message is that if we don't learn to get along with each other, we will be destroyed," he said.
Lucy Pringles photo of a cropcircle in Aug 1996 said to be two suns, crescent moon and a supernova behind them. Both the rock and the crop circle look the same to me. Picture repeated loud and clear, all that's needed now is the correct discifering of it's meaning
Tandem asteriods
What at first was thought by scientists to be a good-sized asteroid currently hurtling past Earth has turned out to be two giant rocks in tandem.The setup, catalogued as 2008 BT18, was thought to be nearly a half-mile wide after its discovery by MIT's LINEAR search program in January. Nothing else was known about it.
Now seen as two objects orbiting each other, the pair will be closest to Earth on July 14, at about 1.4 million miles (2 million kilometers) away. That's nearly six times as far from us as the moon.It will not strike the planet. But scientists want to learn more about binary asteroids because one day they might find one headed our way. Deflecting a binary off course could be considerably more challenging that altering the path of a single rock.Radar observations from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico on July 6 and 7 "clearly show two objects," said Lance Benner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.The objects are estimated to be 1,970 feet (600 meters) and 650 feet (200 meters) in diameter. The larger one rotates upon its axis in 3 hours or less.Additional observations from NASA's Goldstone radar in the Mojave Desert in California are expected to reveal more about the density, shapes and orbit of the pair.Asteroids are often loose rubble piles rather than solid objects, and pairs are common. Scientists announced earlier this month that binaries can be created when energy from sunlight splits a loose asteroid in two.Source:Xinhua/Agencies
Now seen as two objects orbiting each other, the pair will be closest to Earth on July 14, at about 1.4 million miles (2 million kilometers) away. That's nearly six times as far from us as the moon.It will not strike the planet. But scientists want to learn more about binary asteroids because one day they might find one headed our way. Deflecting a binary off course could be considerably more challenging that altering the path of a single rock.Radar observations from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico on July 6 and 7 "clearly show two objects," said Lance Benner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.The objects are estimated to be 1,970 feet (600 meters) and 650 feet (200 meters) in diameter. The larger one rotates upon its axis in 3 hours or less.Additional observations from NASA's Goldstone radar in the Mojave Desert in California are expected to reveal more about the density, shapes and orbit of the pair.Asteroids are often loose rubble piles rather than solid objects, and pairs are common. Scientists announced earlier this month that binaries can be created when energy from sunlight splits a loose asteroid in two.Source:Xinhua/Agencies
Saturday 28 June 2008
I love Paris
Shields around the Metro entrance at The Lourve
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Ceiling at the Palace of Versai
Red Geraniums in a window box, how French
Saturday 14 June 2008
Mind over matter
Most people believe they will die from some disease.weather its cancer or heart disease.Here's the irony - of course, they will! Two hundred years ago, this was not a way of thinking. Cancer and heart disease are relatively 'modern' ills.
Long life is not in our 'genes' - it's in our perceptions.
This, from Dr. Bruce Lipton:
"Brace yourselves, for we are in for a wild ride. Frontier research in cell biology has finally acknowledged the mechanisms by which perception controls behavior, selects genes and can even lead to a rewriting of the genome. Rather than being the victims of our genes, we have been the victims of our perceptions. We are on the verge of a most radical and most wonderful upheaval of human civilization."
Many researchers now give credit to negativity and stress as contributors, if not actual 'causes' of the majority of disease states, especially in people under 80 years of age.
If you were to change your beliefs? Could you change your physiology, down to the cellular matrix? That is what I am working on. That is my intention.
Currently those who want to be fit and healthy focus first on exercise, second on nutrition and last, if at all, on our state of mind. The reality is the other way around, that is: MIND MEALS MOTION. In that order.
This article is according to Jon Benson Author of 7 Minute Muscle and Fit Over 40
Long life is not in our 'genes' - it's in our perceptions.
This, from Dr. Bruce Lipton:
"Brace yourselves, for we are in for a wild ride. Frontier research in cell biology has finally acknowledged the mechanisms by which perception controls behavior, selects genes and can even lead to a rewriting of the genome. Rather than being the victims of our genes, we have been the victims of our perceptions. We are on the verge of a most radical and most wonderful upheaval of human civilization."
Many researchers now give credit to negativity and stress as contributors, if not actual 'causes' of the majority of disease states, especially in people under 80 years of age.
If you were to change your beliefs? Could you change your physiology, down to the cellular matrix? That is what I am working on. That is my intention.
Currently those who want to be fit and healthy focus first on exercise, second on nutrition and last, if at all, on our state of mind. The reality is the other way around, that is: MIND MEALS MOTION. In that order.
This article is according to Jon Benson Author of 7 Minute Muscle and Fit Over 40
Wednesday 11 June 2008
Man's heart stopped for over an hour
The case of a man whose heart stopped beating for one and a half hours only to revive just as doctors were preparing to remove his organs for transplants, is fuelling ethical debates in France about when a person is dead.The 45-year-old man suffered a massive heart attack and rescuers used cardiac massage to try and revive him without success before transferring him to a nearby hospital.Due to a series of complex circumstances, revival efforts continued for longer than usual for a patient whose heart was not responding to treatment, until doctors started preparations to remove organs.It was at that point that the astonished surgeons noticed the man was beginning to breathe unaided again, his pupils were active, he was giving signs that he could feel pain - and finally, his heart started beating again.Several weeks later, the man can walk and talk."This situation was a striking illustration of the questions that remain in the field of re-animation ... and what criteria can be used to determine that a re-animation has failed," says a report on the case, published online by an ethics committee.
The case has stirred debate among medical professionals and daily newspaper Le Monde dedicated a full page to the subject under the headline: "The organ donor wasn't dead.""What is under consideration here is the status of a person, whether they are a patient who can be re-animated or a potential (organ) donor," said the ethics committee report.The hospital where the man was treated is one of only nine in France that are allowed to perform organ transplants on patients in cardiac arrest, in very specific conditions, under a pilot program launched in 2007. Elsewhere, organ transplants are possible on other categories of patients under older rules.The program, which was approved by the French agency in charge of bio-ethics, aims to help reduce the number of people waiting for a transplant by making it possible to take organs from new categories of patients.
The committee, made up of medical professionals involved in the revival of heart attack patients as well as organ transplants, held lengthy discussions on the case of the man on February 19 and a summary was later published on the AP-HP website.
"During the meeting, other re-animators ... spoke of situations in which a person whom everyone was sure had died in fact survived after re-animation efforts that went on much longer than usual," say the minutes of the committee meeting.
The case has stirred debate among medical professionals and daily newspaper Le Monde dedicated a full page to the subject under the headline: "The organ donor wasn't dead.""What is under consideration here is the status of a person, whether they are a patient who can be re-animated or a potential (organ) donor," said the ethics committee report.The hospital where the man was treated is one of only nine in France that are allowed to perform organ transplants on patients in cardiac arrest, in very specific conditions, under a pilot program launched in 2007. Elsewhere, organ transplants are possible on other categories of patients under older rules.The program, which was approved by the French agency in charge of bio-ethics, aims to help reduce the number of people waiting for a transplant by making it possible to take organs from new categories of patients.
The committee, made up of medical professionals involved in the revival of heart attack patients as well as organ transplants, held lengthy discussions on the case of the man on February 19 and a summary was later published on the AP-HP website.
"During the meeting, other re-animators ... spoke of situations in which a person whom everyone was sure had died in fact survived after re-animation efforts that went on much longer than usual," say the minutes of the committee meeting.
Tuesday 10 June 2008
astrological happenings May to August 2008
During this time we will be experiencing a feeling of intensity, energetically for some this maybe a painful experience and for others a very enlightening time.It is a time of searching for Truth, enabling one to find “The Light of God/our Presence within”.It may feel like a right of passage, to the next level of consciousness; open to those who allow themselves to just be in the moment, being witness to the mechanisms of life, understanding that the drama is the stage show, and the production being a catalyst and the vehicle we sometimes need in order to enable us to awaken within, remembering who we truly are. And sometimes it feels as though it takes everything we have inside us, to really stop and dive down deeply internally, this can feel like a journey into the darkness in order to find the Light once again.
Transitioning through the essence of love through outer realms, surrendering to compassion while entering a wounding point being the healer and the healed and by doing so entering the reaping of past actions.Is this an activation of an awakening throughout the Collective, for it is only when we are fully conscious and bearing witness to what we are actually doing and have actually done in the past, our his-story that this healing of our great planet as a Collective can take place. We will be forced to look at and take responsibility for what we have been doing to our planet.Being a Taurus this astrological formation will be felt pysically/emotionally.
There is another very important thing happening astrologically right now as Saturn has just started its journey through the sign of Virgo and will remain in this sign until late July 2010.Saturn is considered the Lord of Karma and represents the gatekeeper who holds the keys and will not let us through until we have passed the testing ground. Testing us with all our lessons learned and represents dharma or cosmic order, and our work on this earthly plane through our responsibilities and obligations before we are allowed to ascend to a higher level. He is Lord of restriction, self-discipline and boundaries and structure, he can take away and deplete as easily as creating foundations to something, he is long term and represents the old wise man/wise old Owl.Virgo represents the Mythological figure Demeter who is the ruler of the seasons and is the goddess of our crops, grains and harvest. She represents the goddess of the earth, of agriculture, fertility, livestock and agricultural products.So with Saturn in Virgo for the next few years you can imagine the effects it will have upon our food supplies globally as we will find that one of the first things that is affected are our grains, so we will be forced collectively to rethink our strategies of food wastage and distribution and storage for the long term.New Moon, Full Moon, and Eclipse dates/times/signs:
May New Moon: Monday 5th, at 1017 pm, The psyche turns within looking to the things that keep you safe, secure and comfortable.Full Moon: Tuesday 20th, at 1211 pm, This full Moon is part of a Grand Square formation so something may come to a head with intensity and drama, or you are forced into action as the pressure has been building.
June: New Moon: Wednesday 4th, the mind chatter is in overdrive, bailout,bail out!
Full Moon: Thursday 19th, stay centred Relationships may feel very curly, find some space to breathe, and there you will find Truth. July New Moon: Thursday 3rd, day dreams are full of hopes and wishes, Angels watch over you, blessings in your sleep tonight.Full Moon: Friday 18th, Family and work are brought to the fore, finding and building the right structures to bring a better balance in your lives. August New Moon: Friday 1st, at 8.12 pm, at 09 degrees 32 mins of Leo. Then about 8 mins after this there is a Total Solar eclipse lasting for about 2 hours and 27 mins. So this naturally is a very powerful time. There are 6 planets all lined up closely together in a Stellium including the Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus plus the South Node and Vertex all in Leo, and close by Saturn and Mars in Virgo. Leo planets/Points oppose Chiron, Neptune and the North Node and quincunx Uranus sitting there rising right on the Ascendant, something very surprising is on its way.It feels like there will be great help needed, the Heart Charkas are opened out as the people who have more must give to the people in crisis. There may be great Earth movement around this time, this eclipse begins in Canada and extends across northern Greenland, the Arctic, central Russia, Mongolia, and China. The Olympic Games may be affected, or the attention is drawn away from them, as things of greater importance are at play now. Full Moon: Sunday 17th, at 7 15 am, at 24 degrees 2l mins of Aquarius. Then about 7 mins before the Full Moon there is a Partial Lunar Eclipse. The Moon is conjunct Neptune, the North Node and Chiron, Pluto squares Mars exactly, and Jupiter Trines Venus, Mercury and Saturn and Uranus conjuncts the Vertex. Again this is very potent energetically and it feels like a shift has happened, the land/oceans may be involved, and it looks like there is a lot of hard work ahead for us.
Transitioning through the essence of love through outer realms, surrendering to compassion while entering a wounding point being the healer and the healed and by doing so entering the reaping of past actions.Is this an activation of an awakening throughout the Collective, for it is only when we are fully conscious and bearing witness to what we are actually doing and have actually done in the past, our his-story that this healing of our great planet as a Collective can take place. We will be forced to look at and take responsibility for what we have been doing to our planet.Being a Taurus this astrological formation will be felt pysically/emotionally.
There is another very important thing happening astrologically right now as Saturn has just started its journey through the sign of Virgo and will remain in this sign until late July 2010.Saturn is considered the Lord of Karma and represents the gatekeeper who holds the keys and will not let us through until we have passed the testing ground. Testing us with all our lessons learned and represents dharma or cosmic order, and our work on this earthly plane through our responsibilities and obligations before we are allowed to ascend to a higher level. He is Lord of restriction, self-discipline and boundaries and structure, he can take away and deplete as easily as creating foundations to something, he is long term and represents the old wise man/wise old Owl.Virgo represents the Mythological figure Demeter who is the ruler of the seasons and is the goddess of our crops, grains and harvest. She represents the goddess of the earth, of agriculture, fertility, livestock and agricultural products.So with Saturn in Virgo for the next few years you can imagine the effects it will have upon our food supplies globally as we will find that one of the first things that is affected are our grains, so we will be forced collectively to rethink our strategies of food wastage and distribution and storage for the long term.New Moon, Full Moon, and Eclipse dates/times/signs:
May New Moon: Monday 5th, at 1017 pm, The psyche turns within looking to the things that keep you safe, secure and comfortable.Full Moon: Tuesday 20th, at 1211 pm, This full Moon is part of a Grand Square formation so something may come to a head with intensity and drama, or you are forced into action as the pressure has been building.
June: New Moon: Wednesday 4th, the mind chatter is in overdrive, bailout,bail out!
Full Moon: Thursday 19th, stay centred Relationships may feel very curly, find some space to breathe, and there you will find Truth. July New Moon: Thursday 3rd, day dreams are full of hopes and wishes, Angels watch over you, blessings in your sleep tonight.Full Moon: Friday 18th, Family and work are brought to the fore, finding and building the right structures to bring a better balance in your lives. August New Moon: Friday 1st, at 8.12 pm, at 09 degrees 32 mins of Leo. Then about 8 mins after this there is a Total Solar eclipse lasting for about 2 hours and 27 mins. So this naturally is a very powerful time. There are 6 planets all lined up closely together in a Stellium including the Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus plus the South Node and Vertex all in Leo, and close by Saturn and Mars in Virgo. Leo planets/Points oppose Chiron, Neptune and the North Node and quincunx Uranus sitting there rising right on the Ascendant, something very surprising is on its way.It feels like there will be great help needed, the Heart Charkas are opened out as the people who have more must give to the people in crisis. There may be great Earth movement around this time, this eclipse begins in Canada and extends across northern Greenland, the Arctic, central Russia, Mongolia, and China. The Olympic Games may be affected, or the attention is drawn away from them, as things of greater importance are at play now. Full Moon: Sunday 17th, at 7 15 am, at 24 degrees 2l mins of Aquarius. Then about 7 mins before the Full Moon there is a Partial Lunar Eclipse. The Moon is conjunct Neptune, the North Node and Chiron, Pluto squares Mars exactly, and Jupiter Trines Venus, Mercury and Saturn and Uranus conjuncts the Vertex. Again this is very potent energetically and it feels like a shift has happened, the land/oceans may be involved, and it looks like there is a lot of hard work ahead for us.
Monday 26 May 2008
What is exponential?
Over this last weekend I attended a seminar in Sydney called "Unlimited Power 2008"
There was a variety of presenters with various topics but all were leading to the same goal, being financial independence.
Having used Blogger. com for some time now has given me confidence in this area and a small amount of skill.
One of the presenters was Dr Marc Dussault from Canadia land now residing in Sydney and soon to be an official Aussie Citizen. Marc spoke about being exponential in your thinking and way of doing business. It's what I have referred to in the past as work smart not hard and the way I prefer to live. I see everything in life as an expenditure of energy and depending on where I channel it is where I make progress. For instance i can harp on about the kids washing up after themselves, (which I do to a point) after which I don't bother because it only gets me upset and wastes my energy that I can put into something productive.
But saying that, how many people do not think like this? They continually hit their head against a brick wall and don't get anywhere in life. My guess would sadly be around 90% of the population. These are the worker ants who toil for crumbs. Sad but true. Not my cup of tea!
Ever since I ingested the understanding of the Golden Mean I have looked for this in my life and surrounds.
Why toil when there is no need to do so.
I will continue this analogy with the Celtic myth about the wren and the eagle on the next post. For the time being enjoy the exponential growth in nature...
There was a variety of presenters with various topics but all were leading to the same goal, being financial independence.
Having used Blogger. com for some time now has given me confidence in this area and a small amount of skill.
One of the presenters was Dr Marc Dussault from Canadia land now residing in Sydney and soon to be an official Aussie Citizen. Marc spoke about being exponential in your thinking and way of doing business. It's what I have referred to in the past as work smart not hard and the way I prefer to live. I see everything in life as an expenditure of energy and depending on where I channel it is where I make progress. For instance i can harp on about the kids washing up after themselves, (which I do to a point) after which I don't bother because it only gets me upset and wastes my energy that I can put into something productive.
But saying that, how many people do not think like this? They continually hit their head against a brick wall and don't get anywhere in life. My guess would sadly be around 90% of the population. These are the worker ants who toil for crumbs. Sad but true. Not my cup of tea!
Ever since I ingested the understanding of the Golden Mean I have looked for this in my life and surrounds.
Why toil when there is no need to do so.
I will continue this analogy with the Celtic myth about the wren and the eagle on the next post. For the time being enjoy the exponential growth in nature...
Friday 23 May 2008
Volcanos
Filipino farmers plow their rice fields as Mount Pinatubo spews ash following a major eruption in this photo taken July 8, 1991.
A year-long global cooling followed—but it was nothing compared to a massive cooling event in A.D. 536 that withered crops, sparked wars, and helped spread pestilence.
Now scientists have uncovered the first physical evidence that the ancient chill was due to a supervolcano eruption.
Photo by Bullit Marquez/AP
Does this photo have similar qualities as the photo my daughter took? to me it looks that way except for the fact that there was no volcanic eruption, just a weird cloud
Monday 12 May 2008
Something to ponder
hmmm, its been a long time between posts.
so much has happened in the world, much of which is quite unpleasant so I think I'll just post a couple of cloud photos that my daughter took earlier in the year. most intriguing. what do they look like to you?
full moon 22/1/08
Wednesday 23 April 2008
12,000 year old temple found
TURKEY: DISCOVERY OF 12,000-YEAR- OLD TEMPLE COMPLEX COULD ALTER THEORY
OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
* Nicholas Birch 4/17/08
As a child, Klaus Schmidt used to grub around in caves in his native Germany in the hope of finding prehistoric paintings. Thirty years later, representing the German Archaeological Institute, he found something infinitely more important -- a temple complex almost twice as old as anything comparable on the planet."This place is a supernova", says Schmidt, standing under a lone tree on a windswept hilltop 35 miles north of Turkey’s border with Syria. "Within a minute of first seeing it I knew I had two choices: go away and tell nobody, or spend the rest of my life working here."
Behind him are the first folds of the Anatolian plateau. Ahead, the Mesopotamian plain, like a dust-colored sea, stretches south hundreds of miles to Baghdad and beyond. The stone circles of Gobekli Tepe are just in front, hidden under the brow of the hill. Compared to Stonehenge, Britain’s most famous prehistoric site, they are
humble affairs. None of the circles excavated (four out of an estimated 20) are more than 30 meters across. What makes the discovery remarkable are the carvings of boars, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and scorpions, and their age. Dated at around 9,500 BC, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia, and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge. Never mind circular patterns or the stone-etchings, the people who erected this site did not even have pottery or cultivate wheat. They
lived in villages. But they were hunters, not farmers. "Everybody used to think only complex, hierarchical civilizations could build such monumental sites, and that they only came about with the invention of agriculture" , says Ian Hodder, a Stanford University Professor of Anthropology, who, since 1993, has directed digs at Catalhoyuk, Turkey’s most famous Neolithic site. "Gobekli changes everything. It’s elaborate, it’s complex and it is pre-agricultural. That fact alone makes the site one of the most important archaeological finds in a very long time." With only a fraction of the site opened up after a decade of excavations, Gobekli Tepe’s significance to the people who built it remains unclear. Some think the site was the center of a fertility rite, with the two tall stones at the center of each circle representing a man and woman. It’s a theory the tourist board in the nearby city of Urfa has taken up with alacrity. Visit the Garden of Eden, its brochures trumpet, see Adam and Eve. Schmidt is skeptical about the fertility theory. He agrees Gobekli Tepe
may well be "the last flowering of a semi-nomadic world that farming was just about to destroy," and points out that if it is in near perfect condition today, it is because those who built it buried it soon after under tons of soil, as though its wild animal-rich world had lost all meaning. But the site is devoid of the fertility symbols that have been found at other Neolithic sites, and the T-shaped columns, while clearly semi-human, are sexless. "I think here we are face to face with the
earliest representation of gods", says Schmidt, patting one of the biggest stones. "They have no eyes, no mouths, no faces. But they have arms and they have hands. They are makers." "In my opinion, the people who carved them were asking themselves the
biggest questions of all," Schmidt continued. "What is this universe? Why are we here?" With no evidence of houses or graves near the stones, Schmidt believes
the hill top was a site of pilgrimage for communities within a radius of roughly a hundred miles. He notes how the tallest stones all face southeast, as if scanning plains that are scattered with archeological sites in many ways no less remarkable than Gobekli Tepe. Last year, for instance, French archaeologists working at Djade
al-Mughara in northern Syria uncovered the oldest mural ever found. "Two square meters of geometric shapes, in red, black and white - a bit like a Paul Klee painting," explains Eric Coqueugniot, the University of Lyon archaeologist who is leading the excavation.Coqueugniot describes Schmidt’s hypothesis that Gobekli Tepe was meeting point for feasts, rituals and sharing ideas as "tempting," given the
site’s spectacular position. But he emphasizes that surveys of the region are still in their infancy. "Tomorrow, somebody might find somewhere even more dramatic."
Director of a dig at Korpiktepe, on the Tigris River about 120 miles east of Urfa, Vecihi Ozkaya doubts the thousands of stone pots he has found since 2001 in hundreds of 11,500 year-old graves quite qualify as that. But his excitement fills his austere office at Dicle University in Diyarbakir. "Look at this", he says, pointing at a photo of an exquisitely carved sculpture showing an animal, half-human, half-lion. "It’s a sphinx, thousands of years before Egypt. Southeastern Turkey, northern Syria - this region saw the wedding night of our civilization. "
*Editor’s Note*: Nicolas Birch specializes in Turkey, Iran and the
Middle East.
*Posted April 17, 2008 © Eurasianet*
http://www.eurasian et.org
OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
* Nicholas Birch 4/17/08
As a child, Klaus Schmidt used to grub around in caves in his native Germany in the hope of finding prehistoric paintings. Thirty years later, representing the German Archaeological Institute, he found something infinitely more important -- a temple complex almost twice as old as anything comparable on the planet."This place is a supernova", says Schmidt, standing under a lone tree on a windswept hilltop 35 miles north of Turkey’s border with Syria. "Within a minute of first seeing it I knew I had two choices: go away and tell nobody, or spend the rest of my life working here."
Behind him are the first folds of the Anatolian plateau. Ahead, the Mesopotamian plain, like a dust-colored sea, stretches south hundreds of miles to Baghdad and beyond. The stone circles of Gobekli Tepe are just in front, hidden under the brow of the hill. Compared to Stonehenge, Britain’s most famous prehistoric site, they are
humble affairs. None of the circles excavated (four out of an estimated 20) are more than 30 meters across. What makes the discovery remarkable are the carvings of boars, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and scorpions, and their age. Dated at around 9,500 BC, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia, and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge. Never mind circular patterns or the stone-etchings, the people who erected this site did not even have pottery or cultivate wheat. They
lived in villages. But they were hunters, not farmers. "Everybody used to think only complex, hierarchical civilizations could build such monumental sites, and that they only came about with the invention of agriculture" , says Ian Hodder, a Stanford University Professor of Anthropology, who, since 1993, has directed digs at Catalhoyuk, Turkey’s most famous Neolithic site. "Gobekli changes everything. It’s elaborate, it’s complex and it is pre-agricultural. That fact alone makes the site one of the most important archaeological finds in a very long time." With only a fraction of the site opened up after a decade of excavations, Gobekli Tepe’s significance to the people who built it remains unclear. Some think the site was the center of a fertility rite, with the two tall stones at the center of each circle representing a man and woman. It’s a theory the tourist board in the nearby city of Urfa has taken up with alacrity. Visit the Garden of Eden, its brochures trumpet, see Adam and Eve. Schmidt is skeptical about the fertility theory. He agrees Gobekli Tepe
may well be "the last flowering of a semi-nomadic world that farming was just about to destroy," and points out that if it is in near perfect condition today, it is because those who built it buried it soon after under tons of soil, as though its wild animal-rich world had lost all meaning. But the site is devoid of the fertility symbols that have been found at other Neolithic sites, and the T-shaped columns, while clearly semi-human, are sexless. "I think here we are face to face with the
earliest representation of gods", says Schmidt, patting one of the biggest stones. "They have no eyes, no mouths, no faces. But they have arms and they have hands. They are makers." "In my opinion, the people who carved them were asking themselves the
biggest questions of all," Schmidt continued. "What is this universe? Why are we here?" With no evidence of houses or graves near the stones, Schmidt believes
the hill top was a site of pilgrimage for communities within a radius of roughly a hundred miles. He notes how the tallest stones all face southeast, as if scanning plains that are scattered with archeological sites in many ways no less remarkable than Gobekli Tepe. Last year, for instance, French archaeologists working at Djade
al-Mughara in northern Syria uncovered the oldest mural ever found. "Two square meters of geometric shapes, in red, black and white - a bit like a Paul Klee painting," explains Eric Coqueugniot, the University of Lyon archaeologist who is leading the excavation.Coqueugniot describes Schmidt’s hypothesis that Gobekli Tepe was meeting point for feasts, rituals and sharing ideas as "tempting," given the
site’s spectacular position. But he emphasizes that surveys of the region are still in their infancy. "Tomorrow, somebody might find somewhere even more dramatic."
Director of a dig at Korpiktepe, on the Tigris River about 120 miles east of Urfa, Vecihi Ozkaya doubts the thousands of stone pots he has found since 2001 in hundreds of 11,500 year-old graves quite qualify as that. But his excitement fills his austere office at Dicle University in Diyarbakir. "Look at this", he says, pointing at a photo of an exquisitely carved sculpture showing an animal, half-human, half-lion. "It’s a sphinx, thousands of years before Egypt. Southeastern Turkey, northern Syria - this region saw the wedding night of our civilization. "
*Editor’s Note*: Nicolas Birch specializes in Turkey, Iran and the
Middle East.
*Posted April 17, 2008 © Eurasianet*
http://www.eurasian et.org
Saturday 19 April 2008
Just a little more information
Rare 5.4mag quake that has hit the New Madrid fault line seems to have caught people by surprise. What makes this moderate quake unique is area of which it occurred. It hit at the northern end of the "New Madrid Fault".Geographic coordinates: 38.520N, 87.872W. Magnitude: 5.4 Mw. Depth: 5 km. Universal Time (UTC): 18 Apr 2008 09:36:56.
A turn of the century earthquake, the New Madrid fault system was responsible for the 1812 New Madrid Earthquake and has the potential to produce damaging earthquakes on an average of every 300 to 500 years. On February 7, 1812, the New Madrid Earthquake measured a 7.9 magnitude; epicenter near New Madrid, Missouri. The area of New Madrid was destroyed. Near by St. Louis, Missouri, many houses were damaged severely, and their chimneys were thrown down. The meizoseismal area was characterized by general ground warping, ejections, fissuring, severe landslides, and caving of stream banks.
Large areas sank into the Earth, fissures opened, lakes permanently drained, new lakes were formed, and forests were destroyed over an area of 150,000 acres (600 km). Many houses at New Madrid were thrown down. "Houses, gardens, and fields were swallowed up" one source notes. But fatalities and damage were low, because the area was sparsely settled.The earthquakes were felt as far away as New York City and Boston, Massachusetts, where church-bells rang. It has been recorded this earthquake was so powerful; people witnessed the mighty Mississippi River rolled back on itself, then literally changed course. Because of the change in the course of the Mississippi River, land was cut off from counties by the river and wound up on the other side of the new riverbed, on the other side of the Mississippi. The settlement of Reverie, Tennessee, in Tipton County was cut off and placed on the western bank of the Mississippi River on the Arkansas side.
This happened in 1812. The next one is overdue. What will happen this time?
A turn of the century earthquake, the New Madrid fault system was responsible for the 1812 New Madrid Earthquake and has the potential to produce damaging earthquakes on an average of every 300 to 500 years. On February 7, 1812, the New Madrid Earthquake measured a 7.9 magnitude; epicenter near New Madrid, Missouri. The area of New Madrid was destroyed. Near by St. Louis, Missouri, many houses were damaged severely, and their chimneys were thrown down. The meizoseismal area was characterized by general ground warping, ejections, fissuring, severe landslides, and caving of stream banks.
Large areas sank into the Earth, fissures opened, lakes permanently drained, new lakes were formed, and forests were destroyed over an area of 150,000 acres (600 km). Many houses at New Madrid were thrown down. "Houses, gardens, and fields were swallowed up" one source notes. But fatalities and damage were low, because the area was sparsely settled.The earthquakes were felt as far away as New York City and Boston, Massachusetts, where church-bells rang. It has been recorded this earthquake was so powerful; people witnessed the mighty Mississippi River rolled back on itself, then literally changed course. Because of the change in the course of the Mississippi River, land was cut off from counties by the river and wound up on the other side of the new riverbed, on the other side of the Mississippi. The settlement of Reverie, Tennessee, in Tipton County was cut off and placed on the western bank of the Mississippi River on the Arkansas side.
This happened in 1812. The next one is overdue. What will happen this time?
Friday 18 April 2008
Something big's a foot
Earth Changes Media has been reporting a swarm of quakes since February which has increased along the Alaska Aleutian Chain. It is unusual to see such high magnitudes ranging in the 4's and 5's as it relates to 'swarms'. Usually they remain in the 2's and 3's. But there appears to be more to this story----
The earthquake swarm at Baja California continues as reported since February, along with the more recent swarm which occurred off the Oregon Coast. When you put this puzzle together, it is quite probable --- we are looking at a potential Cascadia Subduction Zone eruption.
The USGS recently came out with an announcement stating they expect with 99% assurance, a magnitude 6.7 or larger quake will occur in California ---- in 30 years. No one knows for sure why they came out with such a ridiculous statement leaving the geological and seismological community both laughing and embarrassed. Any geology 101 student can tell you with "100% assurance" there will be several large earthquakes hitting California over the next 30 years.
But the more serious question would be - are we seeing current signs telling of a coming large eruption along the west coast in the next "30 months" or even sooner than this.
The earthquake swarm at Baja California continues as reported since February, along with the more recent swarm which occurred off the Oregon Coast. When you put this puzzle together, it is quite probable --- we are looking at a potential Cascadia Subduction Zone eruption.
The USGS recently came out with an announcement stating they expect with 99% assurance, a magnitude 6.7 or larger quake will occur in California ---- in 30 years. No one knows for sure why they came out with such a ridiculous statement leaving the geological and seismological community both laughing and embarrassed. Any geology 101 student can tell you with "100% assurance" there will be several large earthquakes hitting California over the next 30 years.
But the more serious question would be - are we seeing current signs telling of a coming large eruption along the west coast in the next "30 months" or even sooner than this.
Thursday 10 April 2008
Matrix-style virtual worlds
I put this article in, in it's entirety even though the technical parts are somewhat beyond me. The picture it paints is a mind blowing reality. So, are we just holograms ourselves as some scientists are starting to think? What is our reality? What is general reality? Questions, questions....
Matrix-style virtual worlds 'a few years away'
* NewScientist. com news service
Are supercomputers on the verge of creating /Matrix/-style simulated
realities? Michael McGuigan at Brookhaven National Laboratory
virtual worlds realistic enough to be mistaken for the real thing are
just a few years away.
In 1950, Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science, proposed
the ultimate test of artificial intelligence – a human judge engaging in
a three-way conversation with a machine and another human should be
unable to reliably distinguish man from machine.
A variant on this "Turing Test
" is the "Graphics Turing
Test", the twist being that a human judge viewing and interacting with
an artificially generated world should be unable to reliably distinguish
it from reality.
"By interaction we mean you could control an object – rotate it, for
example – and it would render in real-time," McGuigan says.
Photoreal animation
Although existing computers can produce artificial scenes and textures
detailed enough to fool the human eye, such scenes typically take
several hours to render. The key to passing the Graphics Turing Test,
says McGuigan, is to marry that photorealism with software that can
render images in real-time – defined as a refresh rate of 30 frames per
second.McGuigan decided to test the ability of one of the world's most powerful
supercomputers – Blue Gene/L
at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York – to generate such an
artificial world.Blue Gene/L possesses 18 racks, each with 2000 standard PC processors that work in parallel to provide a huge amount of processing power – it
has a speed of 103 teraflops, or 103 trillion "floating point
operations" per second. By way of comparison, a calculator uses about 10
floating operations per second.In particular, McGuigan studied the supercomputer' s ability to mimic the interplay of light with objects – an important component of any virtual world with ambitions to mimic reality.He found that conventional ray-tracing software could run 822 times faster on the Blue Gene/L than on a standard computer, even though the software was not optimised for the parallel processors of a
supercomputer. This allowed it to convincingly mimic natural lighting in real time.
Not there yet "The nice thing about this ray tracing is that the human eye can see it
as natural," McGuigan says. "There are actually several types of ray-tracing software out there – I chose one that was relatively easy to port to a large number of processors. But others might be faster and even more realistic if they are used in parallel computing."Although Blue Gene/L can model the path of light in a virtual world both rapidly and realistically, the speed with which it renders
high-resolution images still falls short of that required to pass the
Graphics Turing Test.But supercomputers capable of passing the test may be just years away, thinks McGuigan. "You never know for sure until you can actually do it,"
he says. "But a back-of-the- envelope calculation would suggest it should
be possible in the next few years, once supercomputers enter the
petaflop range – that's 1000 teraflops."But others think that passing the Graphics Turing Test requires more than photorealistic graphics moving in real-time. Reality is not 'skin deep' says Paul Richmond at the University of Sheffield, UK. An
artificial object can appear real, but unless it moves in a realistic
way the eye won't be fooled. "The real challenge is providing a
real-time simulation that includes realistic simulated behaviour," he says.
Fluid challenge
"I'd like to see a realistic model of the Russian ballet," says Mark
Grundland at the University of Cambridge. "That's something a
photographer would choose as a subject matter, and that's what we should
aim to convey with computers."Grundland also points out that the Graphics Turing Test does not specify what is conveyed in the virtual world scene. "If all that is there is a diffusely-reflectin g sphere sitting on a diffusely-reflectin g surface,
then we've been able to pass the test for many years now," he says. "But
Turing didn't mean for his vision to come true so quickly."
McGuigan agrees that realistic animation poses its own problems.
"Modelling that fluidity is difficult," he says. "You have to make sure
that when something jumps in the virtual world it appears heavy." But he
remains optimistic that animation software will be up to the task.
"Physical reality is about animation and lighting," he says. "We've done
the lighting now – the animation will follow."
Matrix-style virtual worlds 'a few years away'
* NewScientist. com news service
Are supercomputers on the verge of creating /Matrix/-style simulated
realities? Michael McGuigan at Brookhaven National Laboratory
virtual worlds realistic enough to be mistaken for the real thing are
just a few years away.
In 1950, Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science, proposed
the ultimate test of artificial intelligence – a human judge engaging in
a three-way conversation with a machine and another human should be
unable to reliably distinguish man from machine.
A variant on this "Turing Test
Test", the twist being that a human judge viewing and interacting with
an artificially generated world should be unable to reliably distinguish
it from reality.
"By interaction we mean you could control an object – rotate it, for
example – and it would render in real-time," McGuigan says.
Photoreal animation
Although existing computers can produce artificial scenes and textures
detailed enough to fool the human eye, such scenes typically take
several hours to render. The key to passing the Graphics Turing Test,
says McGuigan, is to marry that photorealism with software that can
render images in real-time – defined as a refresh rate of 30 frames per
second.McGuigan decided to test the ability of one of the world's most powerful
supercomputers – Blue Gene/L
artificial world.Blue Gene/L possesses 18 racks, each with 2000 standard PC processors that work in parallel to provide a huge amount of processing power – it
has a speed of 103 teraflops, or 103 trillion "floating point
operations" per second. By way of comparison, a calculator uses about 10
floating operations per second.In particular, McGuigan studied the supercomputer' s ability to mimic the interplay of light with objects – an important component of any virtual world with ambitions to mimic reality.He found that conventional ray-tracing software could run 822 times faster on the Blue Gene/L than on a standard computer, even though the software was not optimised for the parallel processors of a
supercomputer. This allowed it to convincingly mimic natural lighting in real time.
Not there yet "The nice thing about this ray tracing is that the human eye can see it
as natural," McGuigan says. "There are actually several types of ray-tracing software out there – I chose one that was relatively easy to port to a large number of processors. But others might be faster and even more realistic if they are used in parallel computing."Although Blue Gene/L can model the path of light in a virtual world both rapidly and realistically, the speed with which it renders
high-resolution images still falls short of that required to pass the
Graphics Turing Test.But supercomputers capable of passing the test may be just years away, thinks McGuigan. "You never know for sure until you can actually do it,"
he says. "But a back-of-the- envelope calculation would suggest it should
be possible in the next few years, once supercomputers enter the
petaflop range – that's 1000 teraflops."But others think that passing the Graphics Turing Test requires more than photorealistic graphics moving in real-time. Reality is not 'skin deep' says Paul Richmond at the University of Sheffield, UK. An
artificial object can appear real, but unless it moves in a realistic
way the eye won't be fooled. "The real challenge is providing a
real-time simulation that includes realistic simulated behaviour," he says.
Fluid challenge
"I'd like to see a realistic model of the Russian ballet," says Mark
Grundland at the University of Cambridge. "That's something a
photographer would choose as a subject matter, and that's what we should
aim to convey with computers."Grundland also points out that the Graphics Turing Test does not specify what is conveyed in the virtual world scene. "If all that is there is a diffusely-reflectin g sphere sitting on a diffusely-reflectin g surface,
then we've been able to pass the test for many years now," he says. "But
Turing didn't mean for his vision to come true so quickly."
McGuigan agrees that realistic animation poses its own problems.
"Modelling that fluidity is difficult," he says. "You have to make sure
that when something jumps in the virtual world it appears heavy." But he
remains optimistic that animation software will be up to the task.
"Physical reality is about animation and lighting," he says. "We've done
the lighting now – the animation will follow."
Wednesday 19 March 2008
Radiation from mobile phones
Radiation from cell phones is too weak to heat biological tissue or break chemical bonds in cells, but the radio waves they emit may still change cell behavior.
Scientists exposed 10 female volunteers to radiation at 900 megahertz from GSM phones to simulate an hour-long phone call.
They screened 580 different proteins in their skin cells and found that the numbers of two proteins were altered in all of the volunteers: one protein increased by 89 percent, the other decreased by 32 percent.
This study shows that even without heating, molecular level changes take place in response to exposure to cell phone frequency electromagnetic radiation.
Scientists exposed 10 female volunteers to radiation at 900 megahertz from GSM phones to simulate an hour-long phone call.
They screened 580 different proteins in their skin cells and found that the numbers of two proteins were altered in all of the volunteers: one protein increased by 89 percent, the other decreased by 32 percent.
This study shows that even without heating, molecular level changes take place in response to exposure to cell phone frequency electromagnetic radiation.
Spirit and Stardust
I don't normally post speeches from American congressmen but this particular speech warrants such an action. I have posted it in its entirety
As one studies the images of the Eagle Nebula, brought back by the Hubble Telescope from that place in deep space where stars are born, one can imagine the interplay of Cosmic Forces across space and time, of matter and Spirit dancing to the music of the spheres atop an infinite sea of numbers.Spirit merges with matter to sanctify the Universe. Matter transcends to return to Spirit. The interchangeability of matter and Spirit means the starlit magic of the outermost life of our Universe becomes the soul-light magic of the innermost life of our self. The energy of the stars becomes us. We become the energy of the stars. Stardust and Spirit unite, and we begin: One with the Universe-whole and holy from One source, endless creative energy bursting forth, kinetic, elemental-we, the earth, air, water and fire, source of nearly fifteen billion years of Cosmic spiraling.We begin as a perfect union of matter and Spirit. We receive the blessings of the Eternal from sky and Earth. In our outstretched hands, we can feel the energy of the Universe. We receive the blessings of the Eternal from water, which nourishes and sanctifies life. We receive the blessings of the Eternal from the primal fire, the pulsating Heart of Creation. We experience the wonder of life, multidimensional and transcendent. We extend our hands upwards, and we are showered with abundance. We ask and we receive. A Universe of plenty flows to us, through us. It is in us. We become filled with endless possibilities.We need to remember where we came from, to know that we are One, to understand that we are of an undivided whole: race, color, nationality, creed, gender are beams of Light refracted through one great prism. We begin as perfect and journey through life to become more perfect in the singularity of 'I' and in the multiplicity of 'we,' a more perfect union of matter and Spirit. This is human striving. This is where, in Shelley's words, '. . . hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates.' This is what Browning spoke of, our 'reach exceeding our grasp.' This is a search for Heaven within, a quest for our eternal Home.In our souls' Magnificent, we become conscious of the Cosmos within us. We hear the music of peace; we hear the music of cooperation; we hear music of love. We hear harmony, a celestial symphony in our souls' forgetting; we become unconscious of our Cosmic Birthright, plighted with disharmony, disunity, torn asunder from the stars in a disaster well described by Matthew Arnold in Dover Beach: '. . . the world, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy, nor love, nor Light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain. And we are here, as on a darkling plane, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight where ignorant armies clash by night.'Today Dover Beach is upon the shores of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. Our leaders think the unthinkable and speak of the unspeakable inevitability of nuclear war, of a nuclear attack on New York City, of terrorist attacks throughout our nation, of war against Iraq using nuclear weapons, of biological and chemical weapon attacks on civilian populations, of catastrophic global climate change, of war in outer space.When death, not life, becomes inevitable, we are presented with an opportunity for great clarity, for a great awakening, to rescue the human spirit from the arms of Morpheus through love, through compassion and through integrating spiritual vision and active citizenship to restore peace to our world. The moment that one world is about to end, a New World is about to begin. We need to remember where we came from because the path HOME is also the way to the future.In Ohio, the city I represent in the United States Congress, there is a memorial to Peace, named by its sculptor, Marshall A. Fredericks, the 'Fountain of Eternal Life.' A figure rises from the flames, his gaze fixed to the stars, his hands positioned sextant-like as if measuring the distance. Though flames of war from the millions of hearts and the dozens of places wherein it rages may lick at our consciousness, our gaze must be fixed upward to invoke universal principles of unity, of cooperation, of compassion, to infuse our world with peace, to ask for the active Presence of Peace, to expand our capacity to receive it and to express it in our everyday life. We must do this fearlessly and courageously and not breathe in the poison gas of terror. As we receive, so shall we give.as citizen-diplomats of the world, we send Peace as conscious expression wherever, whenever and to whomever it is needed: to the Middle East, to the Israelis and the Palestinians, to the Pakistanis and the Indians, to Americans and to al-Qaida and to the people of lraq and to all those locked in deadly combat. And we fly to be with the bereft, with those on the brink, to listen compassionately, setting aside judgment and malice to become peacemakers, to intervene, to mediate, to bring ourselves back from the abyss, to bind up the world's wounds.As we aspire to universal brotherhood and sisterhood, we hearken to the cry from the heart of the world and respond affirmatively to address through thought, word and deed conditions which give rise to conflict: economic exploitation, empire building, political oppression, religious intolerance, poverty, disease, famine, homelessness, struggles over control of water, land, minerals and oil.We realize that what affects anyone anywhere affects everyone everywhere.
As we help others to heal, we heal ourselves. Our vision of interconnectedness resonates with new networks of world citizens in non-governmental organizations linking from numberless centers of energy, expressing the emergence of a new organic whole, seeking unity within and across national lines. New transnational, web-based e-mail and telecommunications systems transcend governments and carry within them the power of qualitative transformation of social and political structures and a new sense of creative intelligence. If governments and their leaders, bound by hierarchy and patriarchy, wedded to military might for legitimacy, fail to grasp the implications of an emerging world consciousness for cooperation, for peace and for sustainability, they may become irrelevant.As citizen-activists merge the world over, they can become an irresistible force to create Peace and protect the planet. From here will come a new movement to abolish nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction. From here will come the demand for sustainable communities, for new systems of energy, transportation and commerce. From here comes the future rushing in on us.How does one acquire the capacity for active citizenship? The opportunities exist everyday. In Cleveland, citizens have developed the ability to intercede when schools are scheduled to be closed and have kept the schools open. Citizens can rally to keep hospitals open, to save industries which provide jobs, to protect neighborhood libraries from curtailment of service, to improve community policing, to meet racial, ethnic and religious intolerance openly and directly.Active citizenship begins with an envisioning of the desired outcome and a conscious application of spiritual principles. I know. I have worked with the people in my own community. I have seen the dynamic of faith in self, faith in one's ability to change things, faith in one's ability to prevail against the odds through an appeal to the Spirit of the world for help, through an appeal to the Spirit of community for participation, through an appeal to the Spirit of cooperation which multiplies energy. I have seen citizens challenge conditions without condemning anyone while invoking principles of nonopposition and inclusion of those who disagree.I have seen groups of people overcome incredible odds, as they become aware they are participating in a cause beyond self and sense the movement of the inexorable, which comes from unity. When you feel this principle at work, when you see spiritual principles form the basis of active citizenship, you are reminded once again of the merging of Stardust and Spirit. There is creativity. There is magic. There is alchemy.Citizens across the United States are now uniting in a great cause to establish a Department of Peace, seeking nothing less than the transformation of our society, to make nonviolence an organizing principle, to make war archaic through creating a paradigm shift in our culture for human development, for economic and political justice and for violence control. Its work in violence control will be to support disarmament treaties, peaceful coexistence and peaceful consensus building. Its focus on economic and political justice will examine and enhance resource distribution, human and economic rights and strengthen democratic values.Domestically, the Department of Peace would address violence in the home, spousal abuse, child abuse, gangs, police/community relations conflicts and work with individuals and groups to achieve changes in attitudes that examine the mythologies of cherished world views such as 'violence is inevitable' or 'war is inevitable.' Thus it will help with the discovery of new selves and new paths toward peaceful consensus.The Department of Peace will also address human development and the unique concerns of women and children. It will envision and seek to implement plans for Peace education, not simply as a course of study but as a template for all pursuits of knowledge within formal educational settings.Violence is NOT inevitable. War is NOT inevitable. Nonviolence and peace ARE inevitable. We can make of this world a gift of Peace, which will confirm the presence of universal Spirit in our lives. We can send into the future the gift, which will protect our children from fear, from harm, from destruction.Carved inside the pediment, which sits atop the marble columns, is a sentinel at the entrance to the United States House of Representatives. Standing resolutely inside this 'Apotheosis of Democracy' is a woman, a shield by her left side, with her outstretched right arm protecting a child happily sitting at her feet. This child holds the Lamp of Knowledge under the protection of this patroness.This wondrous sculpture by Paul Wayland Bartlett is titled 'Peace Protecting Genius.' Not with nuclear arms, but with a loving maternal arm is the knowing child genius shielded from harm. This is the promise of hope over fear. This is the promise of love, which overcomes all. This is the promise of faith, which overcomes doubt. This is the promise of Light, which overcomes darkness. This is the promise of Peace, which overcomes war.For more information on how you can participate in the Department of Peace, you may E-mail Representative Kucinich at: Dkucinich@aol.com or info@thespiritoffreedom.com
As one studies the images of the Eagle Nebula, brought back by the Hubble Telescope from that place in deep space where stars are born, one can imagine the interplay of Cosmic Forces across space and time, of matter and Spirit dancing to the music of the spheres atop an infinite sea of numbers.Spirit merges with matter to sanctify the Universe. Matter transcends to return to Spirit. The interchangeability of matter and Spirit means the starlit magic of the outermost life of our Universe becomes the soul-light magic of the innermost life of our self. The energy of the stars becomes us. We become the energy of the stars. Stardust and Spirit unite, and we begin: One with the Universe-whole and holy from One source, endless creative energy bursting forth, kinetic, elemental-we, the earth, air, water and fire, source of nearly fifteen billion years of Cosmic spiraling.We begin as a perfect union of matter and Spirit. We receive the blessings of the Eternal from sky and Earth. In our outstretched hands, we can feel the energy of the Universe. We receive the blessings of the Eternal from water, which nourishes and sanctifies life. We receive the blessings of the Eternal from the primal fire, the pulsating Heart of Creation. We experience the wonder of life, multidimensional and transcendent. We extend our hands upwards, and we are showered with abundance. We ask and we receive. A Universe of plenty flows to us, through us. It is in us. We become filled with endless possibilities.We need to remember where we came from, to know that we are One, to understand that we are of an undivided whole: race, color, nationality, creed, gender are beams of Light refracted through one great prism. We begin as perfect and journey through life to become more perfect in the singularity of 'I' and in the multiplicity of 'we,' a more perfect union of matter and Spirit. This is human striving. This is where, in Shelley's words, '. . . hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates.' This is what Browning spoke of, our 'reach exceeding our grasp.' This is a search for Heaven within, a quest for our eternal Home.In our souls' Magnificent, we become conscious of the Cosmos within us. We hear the music of peace; we hear the music of cooperation; we hear music of love. We hear harmony, a celestial symphony in our souls' forgetting; we become unconscious of our Cosmic Birthright, plighted with disharmony, disunity, torn asunder from the stars in a disaster well described by Matthew Arnold in Dover Beach: '. . . the world, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy, nor love, nor Light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain. And we are here, as on a darkling plane, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight where ignorant armies clash by night.'Today Dover Beach is upon the shores of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. Our leaders think the unthinkable and speak of the unspeakable inevitability of nuclear war, of a nuclear attack on New York City, of terrorist attacks throughout our nation, of war against Iraq using nuclear weapons, of biological and chemical weapon attacks on civilian populations, of catastrophic global climate change, of war in outer space.When death, not life, becomes inevitable, we are presented with an opportunity for great clarity, for a great awakening, to rescue the human spirit from the arms of Morpheus through love, through compassion and through integrating spiritual vision and active citizenship to restore peace to our world. The moment that one world is about to end, a New World is about to begin. We need to remember where we came from because the path HOME is also the way to the future.In Ohio, the city I represent in the United States Congress, there is a memorial to Peace, named by its sculptor, Marshall A. Fredericks, the 'Fountain of Eternal Life.' A figure rises from the flames, his gaze fixed to the stars, his hands positioned sextant-like as if measuring the distance. Though flames of war from the millions of hearts and the dozens of places wherein it rages may lick at our consciousness, our gaze must be fixed upward to invoke universal principles of unity, of cooperation, of compassion, to infuse our world with peace, to ask for the active Presence of Peace, to expand our capacity to receive it and to express it in our everyday life. We must do this fearlessly and courageously and not breathe in the poison gas of terror. As we receive, so shall we give.as citizen-diplomats of the world, we send Peace as conscious expression wherever, whenever and to whomever it is needed: to the Middle East, to the Israelis and the Palestinians, to the Pakistanis and the Indians, to Americans and to al-Qaida and to the people of lraq and to all those locked in deadly combat. And we fly to be with the bereft, with those on the brink, to listen compassionately, setting aside judgment and malice to become peacemakers, to intervene, to mediate, to bring ourselves back from the abyss, to bind up the world's wounds.As we aspire to universal brotherhood and sisterhood, we hearken to the cry from the heart of the world and respond affirmatively to address through thought, word and deed conditions which give rise to conflict: economic exploitation, empire building, political oppression, religious intolerance, poverty, disease, famine, homelessness, struggles over control of water, land, minerals and oil.We realize that what affects anyone anywhere affects everyone everywhere.
As we help others to heal, we heal ourselves. Our vision of interconnectedness resonates with new networks of world citizens in non-governmental organizations linking from numberless centers of energy, expressing the emergence of a new organic whole, seeking unity within and across national lines. New transnational, web-based e-mail and telecommunications systems transcend governments and carry within them the power of qualitative transformation of social and political structures and a new sense of creative intelligence. If governments and their leaders, bound by hierarchy and patriarchy, wedded to military might for legitimacy, fail to grasp the implications of an emerging world consciousness for cooperation, for peace and for sustainability, they may become irrelevant.As citizen-activists merge the world over, they can become an irresistible force to create Peace and protect the planet. From here will come a new movement to abolish nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction. From here will come the demand for sustainable communities, for new systems of energy, transportation and commerce. From here comes the future rushing in on us.How does one acquire the capacity for active citizenship? The opportunities exist everyday. In Cleveland, citizens have developed the ability to intercede when schools are scheduled to be closed and have kept the schools open. Citizens can rally to keep hospitals open, to save industries which provide jobs, to protect neighborhood libraries from curtailment of service, to improve community policing, to meet racial, ethnic and religious intolerance openly and directly.Active citizenship begins with an envisioning of the desired outcome and a conscious application of spiritual principles. I know. I have worked with the people in my own community. I have seen the dynamic of faith in self, faith in one's ability to change things, faith in one's ability to prevail against the odds through an appeal to the Spirit of the world for help, through an appeal to the Spirit of community for participation, through an appeal to the Spirit of cooperation which multiplies energy. I have seen citizens challenge conditions without condemning anyone while invoking principles of nonopposition and inclusion of those who disagree.I have seen groups of people overcome incredible odds, as they become aware they are participating in a cause beyond self and sense the movement of the inexorable, which comes from unity. When you feel this principle at work, when you see spiritual principles form the basis of active citizenship, you are reminded once again of the merging of Stardust and Spirit. There is creativity. There is magic. There is alchemy.Citizens across the United States are now uniting in a great cause to establish a Department of Peace, seeking nothing less than the transformation of our society, to make nonviolence an organizing principle, to make war archaic through creating a paradigm shift in our culture for human development, for economic and political justice and for violence control. Its work in violence control will be to support disarmament treaties, peaceful coexistence and peaceful consensus building. Its focus on economic and political justice will examine and enhance resource distribution, human and economic rights and strengthen democratic values.Domestically, the Department of Peace would address violence in the home, spousal abuse, child abuse, gangs, police/community relations conflicts and work with individuals and groups to achieve changes in attitudes that examine the mythologies of cherished world views such as 'violence is inevitable' or 'war is inevitable.' Thus it will help with the discovery of new selves and new paths toward peaceful consensus.The Department of Peace will also address human development and the unique concerns of women and children. It will envision and seek to implement plans for Peace education, not simply as a course of study but as a template for all pursuits of knowledge within formal educational settings.Violence is NOT inevitable. War is NOT inevitable. Nonviolence and peace ARE inevitable. We can make of this world a gift of Peace, which will confirm the presence of universal Spirit in our lives. We can send into the future the gift, which will protect our children from fear, from harm, from destruction.Carved inside the pediment, which sits atop the marble columns, is a sentinel at the entrance to the United States House of Representatives. Standing resolutely inside this 'Apotheosis of Democracy' is a woman, a shield by her left side, with her outstretched right arm protecting a child happily sitting at her feet. This child holds the Lamp of Knowledge under the protection of this patroness.This wondrous sculpture by Paul Wayland Bartlett is titled 'Peace Protecting Genius.' Not with nuclear arms, but with a loving maternal arm is the knowing child genius shielded from harm. This is the promise of hope over fear. This is the promise of love, which overcomes all. This is the promise of faith, which overcomes doubt. This is the promise of Light, which overcomes darkness. This is the promise of Peace, which overcomes war.For more information on how you can participate in the Department of Peace, you may E-mail Representative Kucinich at: Dkucinich@aol.com or info@thespiritoffreedom.com
Tuesday 18 March 2008
Repost of solar cycle starting april 2008
Several reports, analysis, and latest research statistics have been released over the last 7 days telling us of the coming solar cycle and its potential damaging consequences.
It is known as Cycle 24 and is expected to be as much as 50% stronger than its predecessor. Most solar scientists agree Cycle 24 began on July 1st 2006 when the first sunspot distributed a 'reverse' magnetic field. Over the last several months, the sunspot and solar activity have been extremely mild. This is known as 'solar minimum'. From this point on, solar activity will begin to ramp up with more significant activity becoming noticeable by the end of this year.
To present a frame work of just what "50% stronger" might look like, lets go back to Cycle 23. In this cycle we witnessed sunspot counts into the 400's. The prediction for Cycle 23's 'apex' or maximum issued by NASA was 150. The count had more than doubled. We also witnessed the largest solar flare every recorded on November 4th 2003 know as the "Halloween Flare". This solar flare and following CME was so large, it literally pegged the needles on all gages. It buried all the instruments which measure magnetic flux and charged particles. It literally shocked the science community.
At the time, the measuring instruments to measure the strength of a solar flare/CME and its effect on our (Earth's) magnetic field only went to 9. Until this day, an X-9 was the largest flare recorded. On November 4th 2003 a solar flare and following CME (coronal mass ejection) exploded just as it began rotating over the western limb of the Sun. If it had been just 48 to 72 hours earlier, the flare would have Earth directed and we would have experienced a direct hit. The strength of this event measured an X-45, of which such strength had never been witnessed or anticipated. Even to this day we can only speculate the damage it would have caused to our power grids, satellites, GPS, and any number of devices which depend of communication or directional satellites.
I was there right in the middle of it and I have never forgotten the exhilaration of the moment. I have never experienced such a moment in "live" radio as this one, and probably never will again. As the event was unfolding right in front of our eyes, I had Dr. Ernest Hildner, Director of the NASA/NOAA Space Weather Center on the phone doing an interview. At that moment the solar flare exploded and the information was coming in as we were talking. Hearing Dr. Hildner saying "oh my gosh, the instruments are off the charts. I've never seen this before". We were getting first hand information from the world's hub on space weather. Nothing, and I mean nothing hits the news services without going across Hildners desk. Earth Changes Media was in the right place; at the right time and we have never stopped perusing the most recent cutting edge breaking news since.
You can hear this breath-taking interview on our "Audio Archives" page and select the year 2003 and Day Nov.3rd http://www.earthchangesmedia.com/secure/olderaudio.php
Dr. Hildner reminded us of the luck we had by this sunspot region just passing over the western limb before it exploded. Even with this, an emergency call to the FAA was placed, and commercial and military aircraft was ordered to lower altitudes to avoid solar radiation hazards. The electrical charge was so strong, the 'Aurora Borealis' (northern lights) had dropped down to the 36 parallel. This would include Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma. This is a very rare event. Usually the Aurora's are only seen in Alaska and occasionally Washington State, Wyoming, Montana, and Maine.
NOTE: The new 'Cycle 24' has been predicted to be up to 50% stronger. I don't think you need a scientific degree to understand the possible outcomes as a result of this escalation. In fact, the news of this prediction was 1st to broadcast on Earth Changes Media prior to any other news agency in the world.
It is known as Cycle 24 and is expected to be as much as 50% stronger than its predecessor. Most solar scientists agree Cycle 24 began on July 1st 2006 when the first sunspot distributed a 'reverse' magnetic field. Over the last several months, the sunspot and solar activity have been extremely mild. This is known as 'solar minimum'. From this point on, solar activity will begin to ramp up with more significant activity becoming noticeable by the end of this year.
To present a frame work of just what "50% stronger" might look like, lets go back to Cycle 23. In this cycle we witnessed sunspot counts into the 400's. The prediction for Cycle 23's 'apex' or maximum issued by NASA was 150. The count had more than doubled. We also witnessed the largest solar flare every recorded on November 4th 2003 know as the "Halloween Flare". This solar flare and following CME was so large, it literally pegged the needles on all gages. It buried all the instruments which measure magnetic flux and charged particles. It literally shocked the science community.
At the time, the measuring instruments to measure the strength of a solar flare/CME and its effect on our (Earth's) magnetic field only went to 9. Until this day, an X-9 was the largest flare recorded. On November 4th 2003 a solar flare and following CME (coronal mass ejection) exploded just as it began rotating over the western limb of the Sun. If it had been just 48 to 72 hours earlier, the flare would have Earth directed and we would have experienced a direct hit. The strength of this event measured an X-45, of which such strength had never been witnessed or anticipated. Even to this day we can only speculate the damage it would have caused to our power grids, satellites, GPS, and any number of devices which depend of communication or directional satellites.
I was there right in the middle of it and I have never forgotten the exhilaration of the moment. I have never experienced such a moment in "live" radio as this one, and probably never will again. As the event was unfolding right in front of our eyes, I had Dr. Ernest Hildner, Director of the NASA/NOAA Space Weather Center on the phone doing an interview. At that moment the solar flare exploded and the information was coming in as we were talking. Hearing Dr. Hildner saying "oh my gosh, the instruments are off the charts. I've never seen this before". We were getting first hand information from the world's hub on space weather. Nothing, and I mean nothing hits the news services without going across Hildners desk. Earth Changes Media was in the right place; at the right time and we have never stopped perusing the most recent cutting edge breaking news since.
You can hear this breath-taking interview on our "Audio Archives" page and select the year 2003 and Day Nov.3rd http://www.earthchangesmedia.com/secure/olderaudio.php
Dr. Hildner reminded us of the luck we had by this sunspot region just passing over the western limb before it exploded. Even with this, an emergency call to the FAA was placed, and commercial and military aircraft was ordered to lower altitudes to avoid solar radiation hazards. The electrical charge was so strong, the 'Aurora Borealis' (northern lights) had dropped down to the 36 parallel. This would include Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma. This is a very rare event. Usually the Aurora's are only seen in Alaska and occasionally Washington State, Wyoming, Montana, and Maine.
NOTE: The new 'Cycle 24' has been predicted to be up to 50% stronger. I don't think you need a scientific degree to understand the possible outcomes as a result of this escalation. In fact, the news of this prediction was 1st to broadcast on Earth Changes Media prior to any other news agency in the world.
Wednesday 27 February 2008
ZZTORMZZ
with all the storms and rain we have been having it has been a spectacular opportunity to take photos the likes of which we have not seen.
these storm clouds had the most spectacular light show happening inside them. it's just a pity that my camera did not do justice to the reality that was unfolding infront of us. It was TOTALLY spectacular!
This monster of a cloud sat in the South East all day and then on dusk the light show inside it began. Lightning went sideways and up and down, it went from side to side and lit up different bits of cloud. The show was out of this world!I think it was sitting above Braidwood.
enjoy these photos as best you can. I will try to magnify them.
NSW bracing for more severe storms
NSW could be in for more severe weather after thunderstorms and heavy rain lashed Sydney, the south coast and parts of the state's inland.Afternoon storms on Tuesday dumped about a month's worth of rain in less than a few hours, prompting the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) to describe it as a "one in 20-year event".BoM senior forecaster Chris Webb said a storm front which dropped 18mm of rain in the 30 minutes to 6am (AEDT) on Tuesday at Orange, in the state's central tablelands, was due to hit the Sydney Basin from 7am.The front could weaken by the time it reached Sydney, but storms forecast for Wednesday afternoon might resemble Tuesday's deluge, Mr Webb said."The Illawarra area, parts of the south coast, also Sydney metropolitan and parts of the Hunter as being the prime areas for some severe weather this afternoon," Mr Webb told AAP."I think it's a real possibility."Storms on Tuesday dumped 35mm of rain in 30 minutes on parts of Sydney's south-western outskirts, while Cringila, near Wollongong, copped 44mm in 30 minutes.The heaviest rainfall in Sydney was recorded at Strathfield, where 17mm of rain fell in just 15 minutes.Rose Bay, in Sydney's east, was hit with 26mm in a short period.At Bilpin, in the Blue Mountains, 70mm of rain also fell in 90 minutes early on Tuesday night.The spectacular lightning and thunder that hit parts of Sydney early on Wednesday morning did not bring much rain.
Tuesday 12 February 2008
Sparrow sized Pterodactyl fossil found
As pterodactyls go it was small, toothless and had unexpectedly curved toes -- yet scientists are welcoming their new find as another piece in the puzzle of ancient life."We have this really amazing creature, sparrow sized, which lived essentially in the trees, showing us a very new, very interesting side of the evolutionary history of those animals," said Alexander W. A. Kellner of the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil."We would never have thought of it," Kellner said in a telephone interview.Pterodactyls are best known from giant examples of the ancient flying reptiles, and most specimens have been uncovered in coastal areas.
Dubbed Nemicolopterus crypticus -- hidden flying forest dweller -- the new fossil was uncovered in the western part of China's Liaoning province, a region that was forested when it lived there about 120 million years ago."We just had one side of the story of pterosaur evolution, Kellner said. "This is now providing us with information about pterosaurs that were living deep inside the continent.""It's a new species. It's showing us a new chapter of the evolutionary history of those animals," Kellner went on.Speaking at a news conference in Rio on Monday, Kellner said the find "opens a brand new chapter in the history of the evolution of these flying vertebrates."The curved toes, he said, indicate that the pterosaurs lived most of the time in trees. "Because they were flying animals, their fossils are extremely rare. So, discoveries such as this are fundamental to understand the evolution of these winged vertebrates," he said.It was the smallest of its group of flying pterosaurs, he said, and when first uncovered the researchers thought it was a baby.The skull was not fully fused, meaning it was not yet an adult, but the ends of the bones were developed, so it was not a hatchling either."How much could it grow? We have no idea," he said. "But even if it would double its size it would still be the smallest of its particular group."The researchers said the legs and feet of Nemicolopterus had attachments for muscles indicating that it could grasp limbs, and unlike most pterodactyls, it lacked teeth. They speculated it might have eaten insects.Matthew Carrano, a paleontologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, said some smaller specimens have been found but those were clearly younger than this animal."It is interesting to see some clear arboreal adaptations in this species," said Carrano, who was not on the research team. "It confirms a suspicion we had, that pterosaurs were more diverse in their habitats than we knew from the record.""Once again, the Liaoning region is bringing out all sorts of new things," Carrano said.
Sunday 10 February 2008
Thursday 7 February 2008
Cycles in earth changing events
Tuesday over 50 devastating tornadoes riped through the US southern states. Today (Wednesday)two volcanoes are erupting Thursday we will witness an annular solar eclipse. This will be followed by a 'full lunar eclipse' on February 21.Is there cause for concern? The 'science of cycles' suggests there certainly might be. I would suggest this would be a time of extra caution. History tells us there is always a significant earth changing event i.e. earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes (14 days prior to and 14 days after) a full lunar eclipse. Past evidence. Below is a list of dates of 'full lunar eclipse' from 2001 to 2011. According to past events The "science of cycles" tells us we should in fact witness escalated earth changes over the next 24 day period (give or take a few days).In America storm fatality Continues to Rise. America's Super Tuesday was spoiled by more than 50 tornadoes that hit the southern States and caused at least 45 casualties plus hundreds of wounded. The most serious toll was suffered in Tennessee (26 dead). Arkansas 13 dead, Kentucky 7 and Alabama 1.
Ecuador's Tungurahua Volcano Erupts, Prompts Evacuation Order for 3,000
Chile Volcano Spits Out Lava, Experts Warn of More
Chile's Llaima, one of South America's most active volcanoes, belched ash and a nearly mile-long river of lava crept down its slopes on Wednesday as geologists warned activity could intensify. Columns of ash and smoke rose from the crater, some of them as high as 16,400 feet (5,000 metres) above the volcano that is located 435 miles (700 km) south of the capital Santiago.
Looking at history and the scientific evidence of "cycles" and in this case as it relates to "full lunar events".Here are the dates of a 'full lunar eclipse' from 2001 to 2011
2001 Jan 09
2003 May 16
2003 Nov 09
2004 May 04
2004 Oct 28
2007 Mar 03
2007 Aug 28
2008 Feb 21
2010 Dec 21
2011 Jun 15
2011 Dec 10
And here is what happened: The following events occurred within two weeks prior and/or two weeks after the last seven full lunar eclipse.January 25 2001 - (India) A magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook the Indian Province of Gujarat. It was one of the two most deadly earthquakes to strike India in its recorded history. The death toll was 19,727, number of injured at 166,000, over 600,000 people were left homeless, with 348,000 houses destroyed and an additional 844,000 damaged.
May 2 2003 - (Turkey) At least 176 people have died and 521 people were injured after a magnitude 6.4 earthquake that shook the eastern Turkey?s Bingol province. Several public buildings collapsed in the centre of Bingol city and its vicinity. May 21 2003 - (Algiers) A strong earthquake measuring 6.8 magnitude struck the coastal region east of Algiers and the Tell Atlas mountains of Algeria. 2,251 people died, another 1,200 missing, 10,243 were injured and 200,000 made homeless.May 26 2003 A 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit northern Japan, however, there were no casualties and very few people were injured due to the depth (about 44 miles underground) of the epicenter of the earthquake.November 17 2003 - (Alaska) A 7.8 earthquake hits Aleutian Islands, Alaska; tsunami warning issued.April 2004 - (United States) Yellowstone Super Volcano experienced over 400 quakes within three days. This type of increase in earthquake activity is called a "swarm". Parts of the caldera were closed to the public with areas of surface temperatures reaching over 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Some reports were telling of the sole of on-lookers shoes were melting just prior to the area's closing.October 23 2004 - (Japan) A series of powerful earthquakes the strongest with a magnitude of 6.7 jolted northern Japan, killing at least 30 people and injuring more than 2000 people largely as the result of building collapse. Thousands of landslides were triggered by the earthquakes and aftershocks with much associated damage to roads, agricultural fields, and residential.
March 3 2007 - Two strong earthquakes shook the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Tuesday, killing at least 70 people, 460 serious injuries have been reported, spread across many towns and regencies in West Sumatra. Over 43,000 houses were damaged.August 15 2007 - Large 8.0 earthquake hits Peru. Over 514 died, with 1,090 injured, and around 40,035 families rendered homeless. A further 30,542 families have been affected.
Addendum
as I'm blogging here I can hear a long low deep rumble. there are no trucks going by or planes flying over or thunder rolling. I don't know what is causing the sound.
Ecuador's Tungurahua Volcano Erupts, Prompts Evacuation Order for 3,000
Chile Volcano Spits Out Lava, Experts Warn of More
Chile's Llaima, one of South America's most active volcanoes, belched ash and a nearly mile-long river of lava crept down its slopes on Wednesday as geologists warned activity could intensify. Columns of ash and smoke rose from the crater, some of them as high as 16,400 feet (5,000 metres) above the volcano that is located 435 miles (700 km) south of the capital Santiago.
Looking at history and the scientific evidence of "cycles" and in this case as it relates to "full lunar events".Here are the dates of a 'full lunar eclipse' from 2001 to 2011
2001 Jan 09
2003 May 16
2003 Nov 09
2004 May 04
2004 Oct 28
2007 Mar 03
2007 Aug 28
2008 Feb 21
2010 Dec 21
2011 Jun 15
2011 Dec 10
And here is what happened: The following events occurred within two weeks prior and/or two weeks after the last seven full lunar eclipse.January 25 2001 - (India) A magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook the Indian Province of Gujarat. It was one of the two most deadly earthquakes to strike India in its recorded history. The death toll was 19,727, number of injured at 166,000, over 600,000 people were left homeless, with 348,000 houses destroyed and an additional 844,000 damaged.
May 2 2003 - (Turkey) At least 176 people have died and 521 people were injured after a magnitude 6.4 earthquake that shook the eastern Turkey?s Bingol province. Several public buildings collapsed in the centre of Bingol city and its vicinity. May 21 2003 - (Algiers) A strong earthquake measuring 6.8 magnitude struck the coastal region east of Algiers and the Tell Atlas mountains of Algeria. 2,251 people died, another 1,200 missing, 10,243 were injured and 200,000 made homeless.May 26 2003 A 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit northern Japan, however, there were no casualties and very few people were injured due to the depth (about 44 miles underground) of the epicenter of the earthquake.November 17 2003 - (Alaska) A 7.8 earthquake hits Aleutian Islands, Alaska; tsunami warning issued.April 2004 - (United States) Yellowstone Super Volcano experienced over 400 quakes within three days. This type of increase in earthquake activity is called a "swarm". Parts of the caldera were closed to the public with areas of surface temperatures reaching over 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Some reports were telling of the sole of on-lookers shoes were melting just prior to the area's closing.October 23 2004 - (Japan) A series of powerful earthquakes the strongest with a magnitude of 6.7 jolted northern Japan, killing at least 30 people and injuring more than 2000 people largely as the result of building collapse. Thousands of landslides were triggered by the earthquakes and aftershocks with much associated damage to roads, agricultural fields, and residential.
March 3 2007 - Two strong earthquakes shook the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Tuesday, killing at least 70 people, 460 serious injuries have been reported, spread across many towns and regencies in West Sumatra. Over 43,000 houses were damaged.August 15 2007 - Large 8.0 earthquake hits Peru. Over 514 died, with 1,090 injured, and around 40,035 families rendered homeless. A further 30,542 families have been affected.
Addendum
as I'm blogging here I can hear a long low deep rumble. there are no trucks going by or planes flying over or thunder rolling. I don't know what is causing the sound.
Tornados USA/torrential downpours Australia
Historic Outbreak of Extremely Dangerous
Tornadoes is Primed to Erupt by Mitch Battros - Earth Changes Media feb5
Beginning late today a severe outbreak of tornadoes is likely across a widespread area from Arkansas to Ohio. By Wednesday, the strong storms will reach the East Coast.Storms similar to those that normally occur in middle to late spring will erupt late today along and ahead of a cold front separating warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and a cold air mass moving across the country.This is the first time in ten years that a high risk alert has been issued in the month of February. The Severe Weather Center lists the storm-related watches and warnings in effect across the Southeast and the mid-South states.This has the potential to be a very dangerous situation, especially overnight. Anyone in the threat zone should monitor media outlets for weather alerts and should be prepared to evacuate or take precautionary action at a moment's notice.
And in Australia we have storms and floods.
Lightning has struck a power station in Sydney's south, leaving tens of thousands without electricity as a wild storm dumped more than 30mm of rain over parts of the city.The NSW Fire Brigades said the lightning bolt hit a transformer at Menai power station about 1.10pm (AEDT).Fire crews isolated the burning 132 kilovolt transformer from the power grid and used carbon dioxide to smother the flames.Energy Australia said the single lightning strike had temporarily cut off power to 15,000 people in the Sutherland area.A further 26,000 on Sydney's northern beaches also lost electricity due to lightning strikes as thunderstorms and heavy rain swept north towards the Hunter region. more than 30mm of rain in half an hour had been recorded at Peakhurst, Woronora Dam and Lucas Heights.Residents of Sydney's western suburbs, where some 7,000 homes are still under tarpaulins awaiting repairs of storm damage earlier this summer, faced further damage with the sudden appearance of storm cells over the area.The State Emergency Service (SES) issued a warning to stay away from creeks and storm drains and not to walk, ride bikes or drive through floodwater.The SES also advised the public to unplug computers and appliances, avoid using phones during the storm, stay indoors away from windows, and keep children and pets indoors.
Mr Phillips said the storms had resulted from a humid air mass meeting a southerly change and had intensified due to the presence of colder air in the upper atmosphere.
Tornadoes is Primed to Erupt by Mitch Battros - Earth Changes Media feb5
Beginning late today a severe outbreak of tornadoes is likely across a widespread area from Arkansas to Ohio. By Wednesday, the strong storms will reach the East Coast.Storms similar to those that normally occur in middle to late spring will erupt late today along and ahead of a cold front separating warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and a cold air mass moving across the country.This is the first time in ten years that a high risk alert has been issued in the month of February. The Severe Weather Center lists the storm-related watches and warnings in effect across the Southeast and the mid-South states.This has the potential to be a very dangerous situation, especially overnight. Anyone in the threat zone should monitor media outlets for weather alerts and should be prepared to evacuate or take precautionary action at a moment's notice.
And in Australia we have storms and floods.
Lightning has struck a power station in Sydney's south, leaving tens of thousands without electricity as a wild storm dumped more than 30mm of rain over parts of the city.The NSW Fire Brigades said the lightning bolt hit a transformer at Menai power station about 1.10pm (AEDT).Fire crews isolated the burning 132 kilovolt transformer from the power grid and used carbon dioxide to smother the flames.Energy Australia said the single lightning strike had temporarily cut off power to 15,000 people in the Sutherland area.A further 26,000 on Sydney's northern beaches also lost electricity due to lightning strikes as thunderstorms and heavy rain swept north towards the Hunter region. more than 30mm of rain in half an hour had been recorded at Peakhurst, Woronora Dam and Lucas Heights.Residents of Sydney's western suburbs, where some 7,000 homes are still under tarpaulins awaiting repairs of storm damage earlier this summer, faced further damage with the sudden appearance of storm cells over the area.The State Emergency Service (SES) issued a warning to stay away from creeks and storm drains and not to walk, ride bikes or drive through floodwater.The SES also advised the public to unplug computers and appliances, avoid using phones during the storm, stay indoors away from windows, and keep children and pets indoors.
Mr Phillips said the storms had resulted from a humid air mass meeting a southerly change and had intensified due to the presence of colder air in the upper atmosphere.
Monday 4 February 2008
Blue Eyes, baby's got blue eyes
All blue-eyed people can be traced back to one ancestor who lived 10,000 years ago near the Black Sea. Throughout history they have been the eyes that are prized. According to a team of researchers from Copenhagen University, a single mutation which arose as recently as 6-10,000 years ago was responsible for all the blue-eyed people alive on Earth today. The team, whose research is published in the journal Human Genetics, identified a single mutation in a gene called OCA2, which arose by chance somewhere around the northwest coasts of the Black Sea in one single individual, about 8,000 years ago. The gene does not "make" blue in the iris; rather, it turns off the mechanism which produces brown melanin pigment. "Originally, we all had brown eyes," says Dr Hans Eiberg, who led the team. And most people still do. The finding that a rare mutation, probably dispersed in the rapid wave of colonisation that followed the end of the last ice age, highlights one of the great mysteries of human evolution: the oddness of Europeans. Those from Europe and the Near-East have many characteristics that set them apart from the rest of the human race. Not only are Europeans far more likely to have blue eyes (95 per cent in some Scandinavian countries), they also have a far greater range of skin tones and hair colour than any other ethnic grouping. it is only in Europe that you will find large numbers of blondes and redheads, brunettes, pale skins and olive skins, blueeyed and green-eyed people living together in the same communities. Across the rest of the world people are almost uniformly darkhaired and dark-eyed. One theory is that Europe's cold weather and dark skies played a part. Fair skin is better at making Vitamin D from the 8 per cent of the world's population have blue eyes weak sunlight found in northern latitudes.Perhaps the most plausible theory is that blonde hair and blue eyes arose because of a mechanism called sex selection. This is where males and females choose as their mates those who have one unusual physical characteristic, not necessarily associated with "fitness" per se but simply something unusual. Sex selection comes to the fore when there is a lot of competition for mates of one sex or the other. The theory is that in Europe, where men had to spend weeks at a time out on the hunt, males were in very short supply. In such societies, women who had flaxen locks stood a better chance of standing out and attracting the attention of the few men that would have been available for mating.
Friday 1 February 2008
Sun cycles and jet streams
Recent studies show El Nino cycles to be in line with the Sun's cycles. NOAA's latest research shows a 4-6 year El Nino oscillation which is in perfect rhythm with the Sun's 11 year solar cycle. Solar cycle is 4-6 years to "maximum" and 4-6 years "minimum". El Nino and La Nina are driven by "jet streams". Jet streams drive ocean currents. Shifting ocean currents cause "extreme weather".
ENSO (El Nino-Southern Oscillation) is a coupled ocean-atmosphere effect that has a sweeping influence on weather around the world. Scientists found that during El Nino winters, the position of the jet stream is altered from its normal position and, in the U.S., storm activity tends to be more intense in several regions: the West Coast, Gulf States and the Southeast.
A just released study by NOAA , University of Colorado at Boulder lead researcher Amy Solomon, and CIRES (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences), has confirmed this integral connection between ocean and jet stream currents perpetrated by charged particles.Researcher Amy Solomon says: "Earlier climate studies suggest that the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which affects weather around the world, evolves independently of interannual-to-decadal North Pacific Ocean climate variability. Our study shows that the two are really quite connected through a large-scale 'atmosphere-ocean tropical-subtropical feedback loop.' In other words shifting jet streams dictate shifting ocean currents.Solomon's study is the first to separate feedbacks one at a time in an atmosphere-ocean coupled model. Through this process, Solomon and her colleagues found a clear extra-tropical signal in the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle.
NOAA/Solomon's study suggests the mechanism that connects the two latitudinal regions is an ocean subduction zone, around 30 degrees North, where water sinks and moves south until it rises again at the equator. The subduction is caused by wind stress where the tropical easterlies meet the mid-latitude westerlies."When we didn't allow the northern Pacific to interact with the equatorial Pacific area, we observed a sharp 2-year ENSO cycle, with El Ninos happening every other year, which is not what we see in real life. By adding in the extra-tropical feedback, we produced a more realistic 4-6 year ENSO cycle, with El Ninos occurring every few years," explained Solomon.NOAA's and Solomon's team as outlined above - shows their equation to match with solar cycles. It takes 4-6 years to reach solar "maximum", and 4-6 years to reach solar "minimum".
So what is driving the ocean currents to shift, which is what we know as Southern Oscillation? Simply put - 'shifting ocean currents'. But what causes the shifting of ocean currents? Well, it appears to be winds. Not just jet stream winds, but also 'solar winds'. What has been found is when the Earth's magnetic field shifts, it simultaneously causes a shift in ocean and jet streams. How is the Sun causing the ocean currents to shift? Turns out it's the Sun's impact on the Earth's magnetic field that has a causal effect on the Earth's ocean currents. So could this be the driving force behind shifting ocean currents? Batross reported "Complex and distorted magnetic fields travel with the CME cloud and sometimes interact with the Earth's own magnetic field to pour tremendous amounts of energy into the space near Earth." End result: turbulence in the atmosphere and water.
ENSO (El Nino-Southern Oscillation) is a coupled ocean-atmosphere effect that has a sweeping influence on weather around the world. Scientists found that during El Nino winters, the position of the jet stream is altered from its normal position and, in the U.S., storm activity tends to be more intense in several regions: the West Coast, Gulf States and the Southeast.
A just released study by NOAA , University of Colorado at Boulder lead researcher Amy Solomon, and CIRES (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences), has confirmed this integral connection between ocean and jet stream currents perpetrated by charged particles.Researcher Amy Solomon says: "Earlier climate studies suggest that the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which affects weather around the world, evolves independently of interannual-to-decadal North Pacific Ocean climate variability. Our study shows that the two are really quite connected through a large-scale 'atmosphere-ocean tropical-subtropical feedback loop.' In other words shifting jet streams dictate shifting ocean currents.Solomon's study is the first to separate feedbacks one at a time in an atmosphere-ocean coupled model. Through this process, Solomon and her colleagues found a clear extra-tropical signal in the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle.
NOAA/Solomon's study suggests the mechanism that connects the two latitudinal regions is an ocean subduction zone, around 30 degrees North, where water sinks and moves south until it rises again at the equator. The subduction is caused by wind stress where the tropical easterlies meet the mid-latitude westerlies."When we didn't allow the northern Pacific to interact with the equatorial Pacific area, we observed a sharp 2-year ENSO cycle, with El Ninos happening every other year, which is not what we see in real life. By adding in the extra-tropical feedback, we produced a more realistic 4-6 year ENSO cycle, with El Ninos occurring every few years," explained Solomon.NOAA's and Solomon's team as outlined above - shows their equation to match with solar cycles. It takes 4-6 years to reach solar "maximum", and 4-6 years to reach solar "minimum".
So what is driving the ocean currents to shift, which is what we know as Southern Oscillation? Simply put - 'shifting ocean currents'. But what causes the shifting of ocean currents? Well, it appears to be winds. Not just jet stream winds, but also 'solar winds'. What has been found is when the Earth's magnetic field shifts, it simultaneously causes a shift in ocean and jet streams. How is the Sun causing the ocean currents to shift? Turns out it's the Sun's impact on the Earth's magnetic field that has a causal effect on the Earth's ocean currents. So could this be the driving force behind shifting ocean currents? Batross reported "Complex and distorted magnetic fields travel with the CME cloud and sometimes interact with the Earth's own magnetic field to pour tremendous amounts of energy into the space near Earth." End result: turbulence in the atmosphere and water.
Thursday 24 January 2008
Mars Rover Spirit
This image was taken by the Mars Rover Spirit last November. The fact that it appears to be a figure of some sort is being dismissed by planetologists as an example of pareidolia, the human tendency to unconsciously construct apparent human images out of random forms that suggest them. It's quite small, just a few feet from Spirit, but it is a powerful reminder of how little we actually know about Mars, and the dismissive reaction in the scientific blogospher e is a warning that, if we don't keep an open mind about the red planet's anomalies, we are never going to understand. The problem with the discovery of an object like this is that, if it is a statue or even a living creature, it calls many cherished theories into question, and that is going to result in resistance. So what is certainly one of the strangest photos ever taken by one of the rovers is going to be tossed onto the scientific dustbin without serious study, or dismissed as a trick of light and forgotten.
Given the fact that the one consistent cycle in UFO sightings is that they increase when Mars is close to Earth, as has been happening recently, it is interesting that this and other extremely unusual images have been returned by the rovers are being ignored. However, the same scientific community that dismisses these images out of hand also claims, incorrectly, that there is no physical evidence of UFOs. There is extensive evidence, ranging from millions of sighting and close encounter reports, to unexplained materials and implants that have been extracted from witnesses and in some cases carefully researched, and photographs and videos that cannot be dismissed.
Another one of the many anomalous images collected by the rovers and dismissed without comment is this apparent "log" on the surface. It's another odd rock, supposedly. It is only one of many ignored and unexplained features, the totality of which suggest that there is something important about the red planet that we are missing, or refusing to acknowledge.
Saturday 19 January 2008
an invasion of freedom
Microsoft Files for a Remote Mind-Reading Patent
Microsoft has filed for a patent for a device that would measure workers' mental and physical well-being wirelessly and be capable of reporting on their condition in the workspace.
The device uses a camera system to monitor numerous physiological signals, and could also be used in cars to monitor drivers awareness, or anywhere that monitoring might be needed. Conceivably, it could be used to monitor public areas and evaluate the mental state of travelers, in order to target individuals who seem nervous or stressed for more careful scrutiny.
It is another in a long list of devices that are challenging individual privacy as never before.
Microsoft has filed for a patent for a device that would measure workers' mental and physical well-being wirelessly and be capable of reporting on their condition in the workspace.
The device uses a camera system to monitor numerous physiological signals, and could also be used in cars to monitor drivers awareness, or anywhere that monitoring might be needed. Conceivably, it could be used to monitor public areas and evaluate the mental state of travelers, in order to target individuals who seem nervous or stressed for more careful scrutiny.
It is another in a long list of devices that are challenging individual privacy as never before.
Solar cycle 24 in more detail
Scientists have gone on record to predict "the next solar cycle will be up to 50 percent stronger than the previous." (NASA)It is known as Cycle 24 and is expected to be as much as 50 percent stronger than its predecessor C-23. There has been ongoing debate whether Cycle 24 began on July 1st 2006, or began January 4th 2008. What determines a new solar cycle is when the first sunspot distributes a 'reverse' magnetic field. Over the last several months, the sunspot and solar activity have been extremely mild. This is known as 'solar minimum'. From this point on, solar activity will begin to ramp up with more significant activity becoming noticeable by the end of this year.Cycle 23 introduced us to the largest solar flare "ever recorded". On November 4th 2003 a solar flare coming from just around the western limb of the Sun exploded. It was measured as an X-40. Until this moment, nothing had measured past an X-9. (at least since instruments were developed to measure). The strength of this event measured an X-40, of which such strength had never been witnessed or anticipated. Even to this day we can only speculate the damage it would have caused to our power grids, satellites, GPS, and any number of devices which depend on communication or directional satellites. Also note Cycle 24's 'apex' (maximum) occurs between 2011 and 2012. I suggest our Mayan elders knew of this all along and is in association with Mayan prophecy and calendar.
Solar Storm Warning: You Have One Year or Less to Prepare. The american federal government now predicts a new cycle of solar storms will begin to intensify by spring (in the northern hemisphere, autumn in the southern hemisphere) 2008. By this time we will start to see larger and possibility of dangerous consequences. The new set of storms are expected to peak around the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012. That's the conclusion of some scientists at NASA and NOAA.Solar storms lead to violent eruptions on the Sun's surface. There'll be solar flares and explosions sending highly charged matter toward Earth's atmosphere. This jolts Earth's geomagnetic field and ionosphere. That can lead to disruption of electric grids and communications systems.
Solar Storm Warning: You Have One Year or Less to Prepare. The american federal government now predicts a new cycle of solar storms will begin to intensify by spring (in the northern hemisphere, autumn in the southern hemisphere) 2008. By this time we will start to see larger and possibility of dangerous consequences. The new set of storms are expected to peak around the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012. That's the conclusion of some scientists at NASA and NOAA.Solar storms lead to violent eruptions on the Sun's surface. There'll be solar flares and explosions sending highly charged matter toward Earth's atmosphere. This jolts Earth's geomagnetic field and ionosphere. That can lead to disruption of electric grids and communications systems.
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Life & fire
is this the Dawning One?