////////////////
India's Mobile Phone Market Fastest Growing in World
By Anjana Pasricha New Delhi28 October 2007
Pasricha report (mp3) - Download 667k Listen to Pasricha report (mp3)
India's mobile phone market has become the fastest growing in the world, with Indians adding nearly six million new connections every month. As Anjana Pasricha reports from New Delhi, much of the growth is among low-income consumers.
Hindu devotee Harilal Charsia talks on his cell phone as he performs rituals in Gauhati, India (File Photo)Ramu Prasad, 40, has been wheeling his cart loaded with fresh vegetables through a South Delhi residential area every morning for the past 15 years. He has many regular customers, but until recently, he could only do business with them when they were home.
Prasad solved the problem six months ago by purchasing a mobile phone.
Prasad's customers now place their orders from anywhere, over his mobile, and he delivers the vegetables when they are in the house.
When mobile phones were introduced here more than a decade ago, they were considered a luxury. But low calling charges and cheap handsets have brought them within the reach of tens of millions of people like Prasad.
Telecom companies are going all out to woo such customers, offering them deals that make cell phones affordable for even those who earn as little as $125 a month.
Handsets are available for $45. Users can buy new pre-paid phone cards for less than 50 cents. Companies offer consumers the option of paying one lifetime fee of about $25, and never having to pay for incoming calls again. In most of the world, mobile phone operators charge for incoming as well as out-going calls.
As a result, low-income, self-employed people like maids, cooks, taxi drivers, plumbers, and construction workers are snapping up mobiles at a frantic pace. Six million new connections are being added every month. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India says this is the fastest pace in the world.
Two hundred fifty million people now have mobile phones in India. The government expects that number to double by 2010.
Naveen Mishra, a senior marketing analyst with the telecommunications consulting firm IDC in New Delhi, says that in a country of more than a billion people, there is still a vast market to be tapped.
"If you see the penetration, we are still at 20 percent, not more than that. So that leaves a huge opportunity," said Mishra. "It is a very hot market, that is why people are eying the Indian market."
So far, most of the growth is coming from urban areas. Telecommunication companies say they will invest billions of dollars in coming years to expand their presence into the country's vast rural areas, where most of the population lives.
International telecom companies are joining domestic firms in rushing to tap into all these potential customers. The world's largest mobile phone company, Vodafone, established its presence earlier this year by acquiring a controlling stake in Hutchison Essar, an Indian-Hong Kong joint venture.
This month, U.S network provider AT&T applied for licenses to operate in India in partnership with a local group.
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//////////////////////////////MEDIA F****** UP PCP NEXUS=AT LEAT THIS STARFISH
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Tuesday 30 October 2007
3010071759=EFFICIENT PED MID GD
///////////////////////Narration Ultimately, in diseases like metabolic syndrome, the body begins to burn protein, even when there are adequate carbohydrates.Professor Stephen J. Simpson That’s going to increase your protein needs, so if you stay on your same diet, you now have to eat even more to get to your new increased requirement for protein which will exacerbate the problem and it snowballs. So, what we’re postulating here is, if you like, a vicious cycle to morbid obesity.Narration Who would have thought, research into what drives the appetite of plagues of locusts, might one day help save western nations from an obesity epidemic.Narration Ultimately, in diseases like metabolic syndrome, the body begins to burn protein, even when there are adequate carbohydrates.Professor Stephen J. Simpson That’s going to increase your protein needs, so if you stay on your same diet, you now have to eat even more to get to your new increased requirement for protein which will exacerbate the problem and it snowballs. So, what we’re postulating here is, if you like, a vicious cycle to morbid obesity.Narration Who would have thought, research into what drives the appetite of plagues of locusts, might one day help save western nations from an obesity epidemic.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s2069308.htm#transcript
//////////////////////////During 1985-1989, in Calcutta Medical College Hospitals, of 152 children of 1-6 year age group admitted with the history of scorpion sting 18 (11.8%) died. Maximum numbers of stings were inflicted in the fingers. Important clinical features recorded were circulatory failure, breathlessness, profuse sweating, vomiting, local oedema and convulsion. Incidences of scorpion stings were much more frequent in the summer and rainy seasons than in the winter season.
SCORPION STING=1992=GSVM,KANPUR
////////////////////////////There is no upper limit but after age 70 renewal is necessary every 3 years. ...
///////////////////Will Flaxseed Lower My Cholesterol Levels?
Recent studies have noted a moderate decrease in cholesterol levels in people taking flaxseed. Flaxseed is a whole grain substance that contains high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, fiber, and lignan, an antioxidant. This product is available at any grocery store or health food store and can be taken as a supplement, sprinkled over cereal, incorporated into your favorite recipes, or ingested as an oil. Although each of the three components mentioned here have been proven to lower LDL cholesterol levels separately, it still does not substitute as an excuse for not following a healthy diet!
////////////////////////SAD and Your Career
For those diagnosed with social anxiety disorder (SAD), the thought of going on job interviews, attending staff meetings, or meeting with clients can bring on feelings of dread and fear. Often this may lead to avoidance of careers that involve a lot of social contact or public speaking. Today I'd like to ask the question -- has this ever been a problem for you? Submit your vote using the poll below and see how others answered the question.
/////////////////////Blood type can confer resistance to malaria
29 October 2007
Debora MacKenzie
Magazine issue 2627
It's no accident of nature that human blood has split into a handful of distinct types: A, B, AB and O. People with type O blood are at less risk of dying from malaria but more vulnerable to cholera and stomach ulcers, suggesting that different diseases put different pressures on how blood evolved.
Malaria has probably killed more people than any other disease in human history. The malaria parasite invades red blood cells, and some malaria strains then snare other uninfected blood cells, forming "rosettes". Blood type can confer resistance to malaria
29 October 2007
Debora MacKenzie
Magazine issue 2627
It's no accident of nature that human blood has split into a handful of distinct types: A, B, AB and O. People with type O blood are at less risk of dying from malaria but more vulnerable to cholera and stomach ulcers, suggesting that different diseases put different pressures on how blood evolved.
Malaria has probably killed more people than any other disease in human history. The malaria parasite invades red blood cells, and some malaria strains then snare other uninfected blood cells, forming "rosettes".
/////////////////Modernity Modernity came into being with the Renaissance. Modernity implies “the progressive economic and administrative rationalization and differentiation of the social world” (Sarup 1993). In essence this term emerged in the context of the development of the capitalist state. Anthropologists have been working towards studying modern times, but have now gone past that. The fundamental act of modernity is to question the foundations of past knowledge.
Postmodernity Logically postmodernism literally means “after modernity. It refers to the incipient or actual dissolution of those social forms associated with modernity" (Sarup 1993).
///////////////////////
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s2069308.htm#transcript
//////////////////////////During 1985-1989, in Calcutta Medical College Hospitals, of 152 children of 1-6 year age group admitted with the history of scorpion sting 18 (11.8%) died. Maximum numbers of stings were inflicted in the fingers. Important clinical features recorded were circulatory failure, breathlessness, profuse sweating, vomiting, local oedema and convulsion. Incidences of scorpion stings were much more frequent in the summer and rainy seasons than in the winter season.
SCORPION STING=1992=GSVM,KANPUR
////////////////////////////There is no upper limit but after age 70 renewal is necessary every 3 years. ...
///////////////////Will Flaxseed Lower My Cholesterol Levels?
Recent studies have noted a moderate decrease in cholesterol levels in people taking flaxseed. Flaxseed is a whole grain substance that contains high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, fiber, and lignan, an antioxidant. This product is available at any grocery store or health food store and can be taken as a supplement, sprinkled over cereal, incorporated into your favorite recipes, or ingested as an oil. Although each of the three components mentioned here have been proven to lower LDL cholesterol levels separately, it still does not substitute as an excuse for not following a healthy diet!
////////////////////////SAD and Your Career
For those diagnosed with social anxiety disorder (SAD), the thought of going on job interviews, attending staff meetings, or meeting with clients can bring on feelings of dread and fear. Often this may lead to avoidance of careers that involve a lot of social contact or public speaking. Today I'd like to ask the question -- has this ever been a problem for you? Submit your vote using the poll below and see how others answered the question.
/////////////////////Blood type can confer resistance to malaria
29 October 2007
Debora MacKenzie
Magazine issue 2627
It's no accident of nature that human blood has split into a handful of distinct types: A, B, AB and O. People with type O blood are at less risk of dying from malaria but more vulnerable to cholera and stomach ulcers, suggesting that different diseases put different pressures on how blood evolved.
Malaria has probably killed more people than any other disease in human history. The malaria parasite invades red blood cells, and some malaria strains then snare other uninfected blood cells, forming "rosettes". Blood type can confer resistance to malaria
29 October 2007
Debora MacKenzie
Magazine issue 2627
It's no accident of nature that human blood has split into a handful of distinct types: A, B, AB and O. People with type O blood are at less risk of dying from malaria but more vulnerable to cholera and stomach ulcers, suggesting that different diseases put different pressures on how blood evolved.
Malaria has probably killed more people than any other disease in human history. The malaria parasite invades red blood cells, and some malaria strains then snare other uninfected blood cells, forming "rosettes".
/////////////////Modernity Modernity came into being with the Renaissance. Modernity implies “the progressive economic and administrative rationalization and differentiation of the social world” (Sarup 1993). In essence this term emerged in the context of the development of the capitalist state. Anthropologists have been working towards studying modern times, but have now gone past that. The fundamental act of modernity is to question the foundations of past knowledge.
Postmodernity Logically postmodernism literally means “after modernity. It refers to the incipient or actual dissolution of those social forms associated with modernity" (Sarup 1993).
///////////////////////
3010070800 IRREG BET PATTERNS
//////////////////Bocavirus Present in Children With Acute AsthmaElsevier Global Medical News
////////////////Multiple Pathogens Not Uncommon in Bronchiolitis Cases
//////////////////Long–term prognosis for infants after massive fetomaternal hemorrhage.
//////////////////Maternal Hypothyroidism Affects Infants´ Visual Processing
////////////////////INDIA LAPTOPS WITHIN 30K RS
///////////////////Did you know? 76.9 - male life expectancy at birth, 2004;75.23 - EU average for same year.
/////////////////////Third of teenagers 'home alone'Many young people spend long hours unsupervised after school - with little involvement from parents.
////////////////////
////////////////Multiple Pathogens Not Uncommon in Bronchiolitis Cases
//////////////////Long–term prognosis for infants after massive fetomaternal hemorrhage.
//////////////////Maternal Hypothyroidism Affects Infants´ Visual Processing
////////////////////INDIA LAPTOPS WITHIN 30K RS
///////////////////Did you know? 76.9 - male life expectancy at birth, 2004;75.23 - EU average for same year.
/////////////////////Third of teenagers 'home alone'Many young people spend long hours unsupervised after school - with little involvement from parents.
////////////////////
Sunday 28 October 2007
OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE
//////////////////
The Great Cosmic Roller-Coaster Ride
Could cosmic inflation be a sign that our universe is embedded in a far vaster realm
By Cliff Burgess and Fernando Quevedo
You might not think that cosmologists could feel claustrophobic in a universe that is 46 billion light-years in radius and filled with sextillions of stars. But one of the emerging themes of 21st-century cosmology is that the known universe, the sum of all we can see, may just be a tiny region in the full extent of space. Various types of parallel universes that make up a grand “multiverse” often arise as side effects of cosmological theories. We have little hope of ever directly observing those other universes, though, because they are either too far away or somehow detached from our own universe.
Some parallel universes, however, could be separate from but still able to interact with ours, in which case we could detect their direct effects. The possibility of these worlds came to cosmologists’ attention by way of string theory, the leading candidate for the foundational laws of nature. Although the eponymous strings of string theory are extremely small, the principles governing their properties also predict new kinds of larger membranelike objects—“branes,” for short. In particular, our universe may be a three-dimensional brane in its own right, living inside a nine-dimensional space. The reshaping of higher-dimensional space and collisions between different universes may have led to some of the features that astronomers observe today.
String theory has received some unfavorable press of late. The criticisms are varied and beyond the scope of this article, but the most pertinent is that it has yet to be tested experimentally. That is a legitimate worry. It is less a criticism of string theory, though, than a restatement of the general difficulty of testing theories about extremely small scales. All proposed foundational laws encounter the same problem, including other proposals such as loop quantum gravity. String theorists continue to seek ways to test their theory. One approach with promise is to study how it might explain mysterious aspects of our universe, foremost among which is the way the pace of cosmic expansion has changed over time.
Going for a RideNext year will be the 10th anniversary of the announcement that the universe is expanding at an ever quickening pace, driven by some unidentified constituent known as dark energy. Most cosmologists think that an even faster period of accelerated expansion, known as inflation, also occurred long before atoms, let alone galaxies, came into being. The universe’s temperature shortly after this early inflationary period was billions of times higher than any yet observed on Earth. Cosmologists and elementary particle physicists find themselves making common cause to try to learn the fundamental laws of physics at such high temperatures. This cross-fertilization of ideas is stimulating a thorough rethinking of the early universe in terms of string theory.
The concept of inflation emerged to explain a number of simple yet puzzling observations. Many of these involve the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), a fossil relic of the hot early universe. For instance, the CMBR reveals that our early universe was almost perfectly uniform—which is strange because none of the usual processes that homogenize matter (such as fluid flow) would have had time to operate. In the early 1980s Alan H. Guth, now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that an extremely rapid period of expansion could account for this homogeneity. Such an accelerating expansion diluted any preexisting matter and smoothed out deviations in density.
Equally important, it did not make the universe exactly homogeneous. The energy density of space during the inflationary period fluctuated because of the intrinsically statistical quantum laws that govern nature over subatomic distances. Like a giant photocopy machine, inflation enlarged these small quantum fluctuations to astronomical size, giving rise to predictable fluctuations in density later in cosmic history.
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dcmaxversion = 9
dcminversion = 6
Do
On Error Resume Next
plugin = (IsObject(CreateObject("ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash." & dcmaxversion & "")))
If plugin = true Then Exit Do
dcmaxversion = dcmaxversion - 1
Loop While dcmaxversion >= dcminversion
What is seen in the CMBR reproduces the predictions of inflationary theory with spectacular accuracy. This observational success has made inflation the leading proposal for how the universe behaved at very early times. Upcoming satellites, such as the European Space Agency’s Planck observatory that is scheduled for launch next year, will look for corroborating evidence.
But do the laws of physics actually produce this inflation? Here the story gets murkier. It is notoriously difficult to get a universe full of regular forms of matter to accelerate in its expansion. Such a speedup takes a type of energy with a very unusual set of properties: its energy density must be positive and remain almost constant even as the universe dramatically expands, but the energy density must then suddenly decrease to allow inflation to end.
At first sight, it seems impossible for the energy density of anything to remain constant, because the expansion of space should dilute it. But a special source of energy, called a scalar field, can avoid this dilution. You can think of a scalar field as an extremely primitive substance that fills space, rather like a gas, except that it does not behave like any gas you have ever seen. It is similar to but simpler than the better-known electromagnetic and gravitational fields. The term “scalar field” simply means that it is described by a single number, its magnitude, that can vary from location to location within space. In contrast, a magnetic field is a vector field, which has both a magnitude and a direction (toward the north magnetic pole) at each point in space. A weather report provides examples of both types of field: temperature and pressure are scalars, whereas wind velocity is a vector.
The scalar field that drove inflation, dubbed the “inflaton” field, evidently caused the expansion to accelerate for a long period before switching off abruptly. The dynamics were like the first moments of a roller-coaster ride. The coaster initially climbs slowly along a gentle hill. (“Slowly” is a relative term; the process was still very fast in human terms.) Then comes the breathtaking plunge during which potential energy is converted to kinetic energy and ultimately heat. This behavior is not easy to reproduce theoretically. Physicists have made a variety of proposals over the past 25 years, but none has yet emerged as compelling. The search is hampered by our ignorance of what might be going on at the incredibly high energies that are likely to be relevant.
Brane BogglersDuring the 1980s, as inflation was gaining credence, an independent line of reasoning was making progress toward reducing our ignorance on that very issue. String theory proposes that subatomic particles are actually tiny one-dimensional objects like miniature rubber bands. Some of these strings form loops (so-called closed strings), but others are short segments with two ends (open strings). The theory attributes all the elementary particles ever discovered, and many more undiscovered, to different styles of vibration of these types of strings. The best part of string theory is that, unlike other theories of elementary particles, it organically contains gravity within itself. That is, gravity emerges naturally from the theory without having been assumed at the outset.
If the theory is correct, space is not quite what it appears to be. In particular, the theory predicts that space has precisely nine dimensions (so spacetime has 10 dimensions once time is included), which represent six more than the usual three of length, breadth and height. Those extra dimensions are invisible to us. For instance, they may be very small and we may be oblivious to them simply because we cannot fit into them. A parking lot may have a hairline fracture, adding a third dimension (depth) to the pavement surface, but if the fracture is small, you will never notice it. Even string theorists have difficulty visualizing nine dimensions, but if the history of physics has taught us anything, it is that the true nature of the world may lie beyond our ability to visualize directly.
Despite its name, the theory is not just about strings. It also contains another kind of object called a Dirichlet brane—D-brane, for short. D-branes are large, massive surfaces that float within space. They act like slippery sheets of flypaper: the ends of open strings move on them but cannot be pulled off. Subatomic particles such as electrons and protons may be nothing more than open strings and, if so, are stuck to a brane. Only a few hypothetical particles, such as the graviton (which transmits the force of gravity), must be closed strings and are thus able to move completely freely through the extra dimensions. This distinction offers a second reason not to see the extra dimensions: our instruments may be built of particles that are trapped on a brane. If so, future instruments might be able to use gravitons to reach out into the extra dimensions.
D-branes can have any number of dimensions up to nine. A zero-dimensional D-brane (D0-brane) is a special type of particle, a D1-brane is a special type of string (not the same as a fundamental string), a D2-brane is a membrane or a wall, a D3-brane is a volume with height, depth and width, and so on. Our entire observed universe could be trapped on such a brane—a so-called brane world. Other brane worlds may float around out there, each being a universe to those trapped onboard. Because branes can move in the extra dimensions, they can behave like particles. They can move, collide, annihilate, and even form systems of branes orbiting around one another like planets.
Although these concepts are provocative, the acid test of a theory comes when it is confronted with experiments. Here string theory has disappointed because it has not yet been possible to test it experimentally, despite more than 20 years of continued investigation. It has proved hard to find a smoking gun—a prediction that, when tested, would decisively tell us whether or not the world is made of strings. Even the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—which is now nearing completion at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics near Geneva—may not be powerful enough.
Seeing the Unseen DimensionsWhich brings us back to inflation. If inflation occurs at the high energies where the stringy nature of particles becomes conspicuous, it may provide the very experimental tests that string theorists have been looking for. In the past few years, physicists have begun to investigate whether string theory could explain inflation. Unfortunately, this goal is easier to state than achieve.
To be more specific, physicists are checking whether string theory predicts a scalar field with two properties. First, its potential energy must be large, positive and roughly constant, so as to drive inflation with vigor. Second, this potential energy must be able to convert abruptly into kinetic energy—the exhilarating roller-coaster plunge at the end of inflation.
The good news is that string theory predicts no shortage of scalar fields. Such fields are a kind of consolation prize for creatures such as ourselves who are stuck in three dimensions: although we cannot peer into the extra dimensions, we perceive them indirectly as scalar fields. The situation is analogous to taking an airplane ride with all the window shades lowered. You cannot see the third dimension (altitude), but you can feel its effects when your ears pop. The change in pressure (a scalar field) is an indirect way of perceiving the dimension.
Air pressure represents the weight of the column of atmosphere above your head. What do the scalar fields of string theory represent? Some correspond to the size or shape of space in the unseen directions and are known by the mathematical term of geometric “moduli” fields. Others represent the distance between brane worlds. For instance, if our D3-brane approached another D3-brane, the distance between the two could vary slightly with location because of ripples in each brane. Physicists in Toronto might measure a scalar field value of 1 and physicists in Cambridge a value of 2, in which case they could conclude that the neighboring brane is twice as far from Cambridge as from Toronto.
To push two branes together or contort extra-dimensional space takes energy, which can be described by a scalar field. Such energy might cause branes to inflate, as first proposed by Georgi Dvali of New York University and Henry S.-H. Tye of Cornell University in 1998. The bad news is that the first calculations for the various scalar fields were not encouraging. Their energy density proved to be very low—too low to drive inflation. The energy profile more resembled a train sitting on level ground than a slowly climbing roller coaster.
Introducing AntibranesThat is where the problem stood when the two of us—together with Mahbub Majumdar, then at the University of Cambridge, and Govindan Rajesh, Ren-Jie Zhang and the late Detlef Nolte, all then at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.—began thinking about it in 2001. Dvali, Sviatoslav Solganik of N.Y.U. and Qaisar Shafi of the University of Delaware developed a related approach at the same time.
Our innovation was to consider both branes and antibranes. Antibranes are to branes what antimatter is to matter. They attract each other, much as electrons attract their antiparticles (positrons). If a brane came near an antibrane, the two would pull each other together. The energy inside the branes could provide the positive energy needed to start inflation, and their mutual attraction could provide the reason for it to end, with the brane and antibrane colliding to annihilate each other in a grand explosion. Fortunately, our universe does not have to be annihilated to benefit from this inflationary process. When branes attract and annihilate, the effects spill over into nearby branes.
When we calculated the attractive force in this model, it was too strong to explain inflation, but the model was a proof of principle, showing how a steady process could have an abrupt ending that might fill our universe with particles. Our hypothesis of antibranes also inspired new thinking on the long-standing question of why our universe is three-dimensional.
The next level of refinement was to ask what happens when space itself, not just the branes within it, becomes dynamic. In our initial efforts, we had assumed the size and shape of extra-dimensional space to be fixed as the branes moved around. That was a serious omission, because space bends in response to matter, but an understandable one, because in 2001 nobody knew how to compute this extra-dimensional bending explicitly within string theory.
Space Warps Within two years the situation changed dramatically. In 2003 a new theoretical framework known as KKLT, for its creators’ initials, was developed by Shamit Kachru, Renata Kallosh and Andrei Linde of Stanford University, together with Sandip Trivedi of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai. Their framework describes the circumstances in which the geometry of the extra dimensions is very stiff and so does not flex too much as things move around within it. It predicts a huge number of possible configurations for the extra dimensions, each corresponding to a different possible universe. The set of possibilities is known as the string theory landscape. Each possibility might be realized in its own region of the multiverse.
Within the KKLT framework, inflation can happen in at least two ways. First, it could result from the gravitational response of extra dimensions to brane-antibrane motion. The extra-dimensional geometry can be very peculiar, resembling an octopus with several elongations, or “throats.” If a brane moves along one of these throats, its motion through the warped dimensions weakens the brane-antibrane attraction. This weakening enables the slow-roll process that gives rise to inflation, perhaps solving the main problem with our original proposal.
Second, inflation could be driven purely by changes in the geometry of the extra dimensions, without the need for mobile branes at all. Two years ago we and our colleagues presented the first stringy inflationary scenario along the second of these lines. This general process is called moduli inflation because moduli fields, which describe the geometry, act as the inflatons. As the extra dimensions settle into their current configuration, the three normal dimensions expand at an accelerated pace. In essence, the universe sculpts itself. Moduli inflation thus relates the size of the dimensions we see to the size and shape of those we cannot.
Strings in the SkyThe stringy inflation models, unlike many other aspects of string theory, might be tested observationally in the near future. Cosmologists have long thought that inflation would produce gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space and time. String theory may alter this prediction, because the existing stringy inflation models predict unobservably weak gravitational waves. The Planck satellite will be more sensitive to primordial gravitational waves than current instruments are. If it were to detect such waves, it would rule out all the models of string inflation proposed so far.
Also, some brane inflation models predict large linear structures known as cosmic strings, which naturally arise in the aftermath of brane-antibrane annihilation. These strings could come in several types: D1-branes or fundamental strings blown up to enormous size, or a combination of the two. If they exist, astronomers should be able to detect them by the way they distort the light coming from galaxies.
Despite the theoretical progress, many open questions remain. Whether inflation indeed occurred is not entirely settled. If improved observations cast doubt on it, cosmologists will have to turn to alternative pictures of the very early universe. String theory has inspired several such alternatives, in which our universe existed before the big bang, perhaps as part of a perpetual cycle of creation and destruction. The difficulty in these cases is to describe properly the transition that marks the moment of the big bang.
In summary, string theory provides two general mechanisms for obtaining cosmic inflation: the collision of branes and the reshaping of extra-dimensional spacetime. For the first time, physicists have been able to derive concrete models of cosmic inflation rather than being forced to make uncontrolled, ad hoc assumptions. The progress is very encouraging. String theory, born of efforts to explain phenomena at minuscule scales, may be writ large across the sky.
/////////////////////POP CULTURE IS HISTORY
/////////////////////WHEN THE LEGEND BECOMES FACT,PRINT THE LEGEND
////////////////////RELIGION=UNION=YOGA
UNION WITH TRUTH
GNOSIS=KNOWLEDGE=THE NARROW PATH
EYES TO SEE,EARS TO HEAR
JUDAISM INFLUENCED BY SUMER AND BABYLON
BIBLE-GITA SYMBOLIC
The Great Cosmic Roller-Coaster Ride
Could cosmic inflation be a sign that our universe is embedded in a far vaster realm
By Cliff Burgess and Fernando Quevedo
You might not think that cosmologists could feel claustrophobic in a universe that is 46 billion light-years in radius and filled with sextillions of stars. But one of the emerging themes of 21st-century cosmology is that the known universe, the sum of all we can see, may just be a tiny region in the full extent of space. Various types of parallel universes that make up a grand “multiverse” often arise as side effects of cosmological theories. We have little hope of ever directly observing those other universes, though, because they are either too far away or somehow detached from our own universe.
Some parallel universes, however, could be separate from but still able to interact with ours, in which case we could detect their direct effects. The possibility of these worlds came to cosmologists’ attention by way of string theory, the leading candidate for the foundational laws of nature. Although the eponymous strings of string theory are extremely small, the principles governing their properties also predict new kinds of larger membranelike objects—“branes,” for short. In particular, our universe may be a three-dimensional brane in its own right, living inside a nine-dimensional space. The reshaping of higher-dimensional space and collisions between different universes may have led to some of the features that astronomers observe today.
String theory has received some unfavorable press of late. The criticisms are varied and beyond the scope of this article, but the most pertinent is that it has yet to be tested experimentally. That is a legitimate worry. It is less a criticism of string theory, though, than a restatement of the general difficulty of testing theories about extremely small scales. All proposed foundational laws encounter the same problem, including other proposals such as loop quantum gravity. String theorists continue to seek ways to test their theory. One approach with promise is to study how it might explain mysterious aspects of our universe, foremost among which is the way the pace of cosmic expansion has changed over time.
Going for a RideNext year will be the 10th anniversary of the announcement that the universe is expanding at an ever quickening pace, driven by some unidentified constituent known as dark energy. Most cosmologists think that an even faster period of accelerated expansion, known as inflation, also occurred long before atoms, let alone galaxies, came into being. The universe’s temperature shortly after this early inflationary period was billions of times higher than any yet observed on Earth. Cosmologists and elementary particle physicists find themselves making common cause to try to learn the fundamental laws of physics at such high temperatures. This cross-fertilization of ideas is stimulating a thorough rethinking of the early universe in terms of string theory.
The concept of inflation emerged to explain a number of simple yet puzzling observations. Many of these involve the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), a fossil relic of the hot early universe. For instance, the CMBR reveals that our early universe was almost perfectly uniform—which is strange because none of the usual processes that homogenize matter (such as fluid flow) would have had time to operate. In the early 1980s Alan H. Guth, now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that an extremely rapid period of expansion could account for this homogeneity. Such an accelerating expansion diluted any preexisting matter and smoothed out deviations in density.
Equally important, it did not make the universe exactly homogeneous. The energy density of space during the inflationary period fluctuated because of the intrinsically statistical quantum laws that govern nature over subatomic distances. Like a giant photocopy machine, inflation enlarged these small quantum fluctuations to astronomical size, giving rise to predictable fluctuations in density later in cosmic history.
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dcmaxversion = 9
dcminversion = 6
Do
On Error Resume Next
plugin = (IsObject(CreateObject("ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash." & dcmaxversion & "")))
If plugin = true Then Exit Do
dcmaxversion = dcmaxversion - 1
Loop While dcmaxversion >= dcminversion
What is seen in the CMBR reproduces the predictions of inflationary theory with spectacular accuracy. This observational success has made inflation the leading proposal for how the universe behaved at very early times. Upcoming satellites, such as the European Space Agency’s Planck observatory that is scheduled for launch next year, will look for corroborating evidence.
But do the laws of physics actually produce this inflation? Here the story gets murkier. It is notoriously difficult to get a universe full of regular forms of matter to accelerate in its expansion. Such a speedup takes a type of energy with a very unusual set of properties: its energy density must be positive and remain almost constant even as the universe dramatically expands, but the energy density must then suddenly decrease to allow inflation to end.
At first sight, it seems impossible for the energy density of anything to remain constant, because the expansion of space should dilute it. But a special source of energy, called a scalar field, can avoid this dilution. You can think of a scalar field as an extremely primitive substance that fills space, rather like a gas, except that it does not behave like any gas you have ever seen. It is similar to but simpler than the better-known electromagnetic and gravitational fields. The term “scalar field” simply means that it is described by a single number, its magnitude, that can vary from location to location within space. In contrast, a magnetic field is a vector field, which has both a magnitude and a direction (toward the north magnetic pole) at each point in space. A weather report provides examples of both types of field: temperature and pressure are scalars, whereas wind velocity is a vector.
The scalar field that drove inflation, dubbed the “inflaton” field, evidently caused the expansion to accelerate for a long period before switching off abruptly. The dynamics were like the first moments of a roller-coaster ride. The coaster initially climbs slowly along a gentle hill. (“Slowly” is a relative term; the process was still very fast in human terms.) Then comes the breathtaking plunge during which potential energy is converted to kinetic energy and ultimately heat. This behavior is not easy to reproduce theoretically. Physicists have made a variety of proposals over the past 25 years, but none has yet emerged as compelling. The search is hampered by our ignorance of what might be going on at the incredibly high energies that are likely to be relevant.
Brane BogglersDuring the 1980s, as inflation was gaining credence, an independent line of reasoning was making progress toward reducing our ignorance on that very issue. String theory proposes that subatomic particles are actually tiny one-dimensional objects like miniature rubber bands. Some of these strings form loops (so-called closed strings), but others are short segments with two ends (open strings). The theory attributes all the elementary particles ever discovered, and many more undiscovered, to different styles of vibration of these types of strings. The best part of string theory is that, unlike other theories of elementary particles, it organically contains gravity within itself. That is, gravity emerges naturally from the theory without having been assumed at the outset.
If the theory is correct, space is not quite what it appears to be. In particular, the theory predicts that space has precisely nine dimensions (so spacetime has 10 dimensions once time is included), which represent six more than the usual three of length, breadth and height. Those extra dimensions are invisible to us. For instance, they may be very small and we may be oblivious to them simply because we cannot fit into them. A parking lot may have a hairline fracture, adding a third dimension (depth) to the pavement surface, but if the fracture is small, you will never notice it. Even string theorists have difficulty visualizing nine dimensions, but if the history of physics has taught us anything, it is that the true nature of the world may lie beyond our ability to visualize directly.
Despite its name, the theory is not just about strings. It also contains another kind of object called a Dirichlet brane—D-brane, for short. D-branes are large, massive surfaces that float within space. They act like slippery sheets of flypaper: the ends of open strings move on them but cannot be pulled off. Subatomic particles such as electrons and protons may be nothing more than open strings and, if so, are stuck to a brane. Only a few hypothetical particles, such as the graviton (which transmits the force of gravity), must be closed strings and are thus able to move completely freely through the extra dimensions. This distinction offers a second reason not to see the extra dimensions: our instruments may be built of particles that are trapped on a brane. If so, future instruments might be able to use gravitons to reach out into the extra dimensions.
D-branes can have any number of dimensions up to nine. A zero-dimensional D-brane (D0-brane) is a special type of particle, a D1-brane is a special type of string (not the same as a fundamental string), a D2-brane is a membrane or a wall, a D3-brane is a volume with height, depth and width, and so on. Our entire observed universe could be trapped on such a brane—a so-called brane world. Other brane worlds may float around out there, each being a universe to those trapped onboard. Because branes can move in the extra dimensions, they can behave like particles. They can move, collide, annihilate, and even form systems of branes orbiting around one another like planets.
Although these concepts are provocative, the acid test of a theory comes when it is confronted with experiments. Here string theory has disappointed because it has not yet been possible to test it experimentally, despite more than 20 years of continued investigation. It has proved hard to find a smoking gun—a prediction that, when tested, would decisively tell us whether or not the world is made of strings. Even the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—which is now nearing completion at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics near Geneva—may not be powerful enough.
Seeing the Unseen DimensionsWhich brings us back to inflation. If inflation occurs at the high energies where the stringy nature of particles becomes conspicuous, it may provide the very experimental tests that string theorists have been looking for. In the past few years, physicists have begun to investigate whether string theory could explain inflation. Unfortunately, this goal is easier to state than achieve.
To be more specific, physicists are checking whether string theory predicts a scalar field with two properties. First, its potential energy must be large, positive and roughly constant, so as to drive inflation with vigor. Second, this potential energy must be able to convert abruptly into kinetic energy—the exhilarating roller-coaster plunge at the end of inflation.
The good news is that string theory predicts no shortage of scalar fields. Such fields are a kind of consolation prize for creatures such as ourselves who are stuck in three dimensions: although we cannot peer into the extra dimensions, we perceive them indirectly as scalar fields. The situation is analogous to taking an airplane ride with all the window shades lowered. You cannot see the third dimension (altitude), but you can feel its effects when your ears pop. The change in pressure (a scalar field) is an indirect way of perceiving the dimension.
Air pressure represents the weight of the column of atmosphere above your head. What do the scalar fields of string theory represent? Some correspond to the size or shape of space in the unseen directions and are known by the mathematical term of geometric “moduli” fields. Others represent the distance between brane worlds. For instance, if our D3-brane approached another D3-brane, the distance between the two could vary slightly with location because of ripples in each brane. Physicists in Toronto might measure a scalar field value of 1 and physicists in Cambridge a value of 2, in which case they could conclude that the neighboring brane is twice as far from Cambridge as from Toronto.
To push two branes together or contort extra-dimensional space takes energy, which can be described by a scalar field. Such energy might cause branes to inflate, as first proposed by Georgi Dvali of New York University and Henry S.-H. Tye of Cornell University in 1998. The bad news is that the first calculations for the various scalar fields were not encouraging. Their energy density proved to be very low—too low to drive inflation. The energy profile more resembled a train sitting on level ground than a slowly climbing roller coaster.
Introducing AntibranesThat is where the problem stood when the two of us—together with Mahbub Majumdar, then at the University of Cambridge, and Govindan Rajesh, Ren-Jie Zhang and the late Detlef Nolte, all then at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.—began thinking about it in 2001. Dvali, Sviatoslav Solganik of N.Y.U. and Qaisar Shafi of the University of Delaware developed a related approach at the same time.
Our innovation was to consider both branes and antibranes. Antibranes are to branes what antimatter is to matter. They attract each other, much as electrons attract their antiparticles (positrons). If a brane came near an antibrane, the two would pull each other together. The energy inside the branes could provide the positive energy needed to start inflation, and their mutual attraction could provide the reason for it to end, with the brane and antibrane colliding to annihilate each other in a grand explosion. Fortunately, our universe does not have to be annihilated to benefit from this inflationary process. When branes attract and annihilate, the effects spill over into nearby branes.
When we calculated the attractive force in this model, it was too strong to explain inflation, but the model was a proof of principle, showing how a steady process could have an abrupt ending that might fill our universe with particles. Our hypothesis of antibranes also inspired new thinking on the long-standing question of why our universe is three-dimensional.
The next level of refinement was to ask what happens when space itself, not just the branes within it, becomes dynamic. In our initial efforts, we had assumed the size and shape of extra-dimensional space to be fixed as the branes moved around. That was a serious omission, because space bends in response to matter, but an understandable one, because in 2001 nobody knew how to compute this extra-dimensional bending explicitly within string theory.
Space Warps Within two years the situation changed dramatically. In 2003 a new theoretical framework known as KKLT, for its creators’ initials, was developed by Shamit Kachru, Renata Kallosh and Andrei Linde of Stanford University, together with Sandip Trivedi of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai. Their framework describes the circumstances in which the geometry of the extra dimensions is very stiff and so does not flex too much as things move around within it. It predicts a huge number of possible configurations for the extra dimensions, each corresponding to a different possible universe. The set of possibilities is known as the string theory landscape. Each possibility might be realized in its own region of the multiverse.
Within the KKLT framework, inflation can happen in at least two ways. First, it could result from the gravitational response of extra dimensions to brane-antibrane motion. The extra-dimensional geometry can be very peculiar, resembling an octopus with several elongations, or “throats.” If a brane moves along one of these throats, its motion through the warped dimensions weakens the brane-antibrane attraction. This weakening enables the slow-roll process that gives rise to inflation, perhaps solving the main problem with our original proposal.
Second, inflation could be driven purely by changes in the geometry of the extra dimensions, without the need for mobile branes at all. Two years ago we and our colleagues presented the first stringy inflationary scenario along the second of these lines. This general process is called moduli inflation because moduli fields, which describe the geometry, act as the inflatons. As the extra dimensions settle into their current configuration, the three normal dimensions expand at an accelerated pace. In essence, the universe sculpts itself. Moduli inflation thus relates the size of the dimensions we see to the size and shape of those we cannot.
Strings in the SkyThe stringy inflation models, unlike many other aspects of string theory, might be tested observationally in the near future. Cosmologists have long thought that inflation would produce gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space and time. String theory may alter this prediction, because the existing stringy inflation models predict unobservably weak gravitational waves. The Planck satellite will be more sensitive to primordial gravitational waves than current instruments are. If it were to detect such waves, it would rule out all the models of string inflation proposed so far.
Also, some brane inflation models predict large linear structures known as cosmic strings, which naturally arise in the aftermath of brane-antibrane annihilation. These strings could come in several types: D1-branes or fundamental strings blown up to enormous size, or a combination of the two. If they exist, astronomers should be able to detect them by the way they distort the light coming from galaxies.
Despite the theoretical progress, many open questions remain. Whether inflation indeed occurred is not entirely settled. If improved observations cast doubt on it, cosmologists will have to turn to alternative pictures of the very early universe. String theory has inspired several such alternatives, in which our universe existed before the big bang, perhaps as part of a perpetual cycle of creation and destruction. The difficulty in these cases is to describe properly the transition that marks the moment of the big bang.
In summary, string theory provides two general mechanisms for obtaining cosmic inflation: the collision of branes and the reshaping of extra-dimensional spacetime. For the first time, physicists have been able to derive concrete models of cosmic inflation rather than being forced to make uncontrolled, ad hoc assumptions. The progress is very encouraging. String theory, born of efforts to explain phenomena at minuscule scales, may be writ large across the sky.
/////////////////////POP CULTURE IS HISTORY
/////////////////////WHEN THE LEGEND BECOMES FACT,PRINT THE LEGEND
////////////////////RELIGION=UNION=YOGA
UNION WITH TRUTH
GNOSIS=KNOWLEDGE=THE NARROW PATH
EYES TO SEE,EARS TO HEAR
JUDAISM INFLUENCED BY SUMER AND BABYLON
BIBLE-GITA SYMBOLIC
WAS JESUS CAUCASIAN
Was Jesus white?
The traditional Image of Jesus
If we look at Christmas cards & stationery with Christian themes, the face of Jesus looking back at us has a pale skin, blue eyes, and often fair hair. This image of Jesus comes from the painter & sculptor Michelangelo (1475-1564) who used his lily-white cousin as the sitting model. Ever since, western Christians have reproduced this image or variants in their churches, picture cards and so on. White representations of Jesus continue to dominate Euro-American Christian culture. The suggestion that Jesus might have been dark-skinned (black in today’s racial taxonomy of the US or UK), makes most westerners uneasy. In addition, Adam & Eve, Moses, the Apostles and even God "himself" are depicted as fair-skinned folk, all of which can contribute to a white supremacist view of the world.
Novette Thompson, Methodist minister at Neasden church (in 1993) told Spare Rib in Jan 1993:
"Christianity began to change when it spread to the Greek & Roman world that was rooted in empire and a patriarchal structure. Then came the theologians who had a position of authority and interpreted the scriptures according to their world view... Those who were no in agreement with mainstream thinking were declared heretics.
"Jesus was no doubt African-Arabic... with Europe's immigration laws today, he would not be allowed in. Rome was the new coloniser and Greek influence was strong. Jesus came to be Europeanised."
The evidence for a dark Jesus
a) Biblical lore: Soon after Jesus was born, Herod is believed to have sent his soldiers to seek and kill him as an infant. To hide the Christ child, we are told his family fled with him to Egypt but pre-Arab Egypt was a society of dark-skinned Africans (as evidenced in their own hieroglyphs) and it would be folly to try hiding an Aryan baby there of all places. The land was referred to as Kemet (the Black land), for thousands of years, and themselves as "Kemetcu" (the black humans). The "father" of modern history, Herodotus, himself acknowledged as much when he said "the Egyptians, Colchians and Ethiopians have thick lips, broad nose, wooly hair and are of burnt skin." Elsewhere, he actually referred to them as "black”.
////////////////////BILL GATES AND WARREN BUFFET
////////////////////////Tortoise shapes evolved to avoid 'turning turtle'
Some turtles and tortoises have developed into a self-righting geometric shape that is both a life-saver and extremely rare in nature
////////////////////LT BRAINED=Asymmetry is absolutely essential in order to complete the complex tasks we take for granted. In a conversation with someone, the left brain will be processing the verbal language, while the right brain interprets tone and inflection. If you are asked to imagine a scene, the left brain will create the details, while the right brain handles the overall shapes, sizes and their spatial locations. Without both sides processing all of these details at once, we would never be able to function at the advanced level we do.
But there are also disadvantages to asymmetry. Certain tasks may be easier to execute on either the left or right side of your body. The left side of the human face tends to be more expressive because it is controlled by the right hemisphere. Most people are right-handed because the left brain is usually dominant. According to Bisazza and Dadda, the aforementioned fish will tend to guard one side of their body over the other and as a result their predators will tend to approach them from the unguarded side.
/////////////////////UK POOR LIVE LONGER THAN US POOR D/T NHS
///////////////////
The traditional Image of Jesus
If we look at Christmas cards & stationery with Christian themes, the face of Jesus looking back at us has a pale skin, blue eyes, and often fair hair. This image of Jesus comes from the painter & sculptor Michelangelo (1475-1564) who used his lily-white cousin as the sitting model. Ever since, western Christians have reproduced this image or variants in their churches, picture cards and so on. White representations of Jesus continue to dominate Euro-American Christian culture. The suggestion that Jesus might have been dark-skinned (black in today’s racial taxonomy of the US or UK), makes most westerners uneasy. In addition, Adam & Eve, Moses, the Apostles and even God "himself" are depicted as fair-skinned folk, all of which can contribute to a white supremacist view of the world.
Novette Thompson, Methodist minister at Neasden church (in 1993) told Spare Rib in Jan 1993:
"Christianity began to change when it spread to the Greek & Roman world that was rooted in empire and a patriarchal structure. Then came the theologians who had a position of authority and interpreted the scriptures according to their world view... Those who were no in agreement with mainstream thinking were declared heretics.
"Jesus was no doubt African-Arabic... with Europe's immigration laws today, he would not be allowed in. Rome was the new coloniser and Greek influence was strong. Jesus came to be Europeanised."
The evidence for a dark Jesus
a) Biblical lore: Soon after Jesus was born, Herod is believed to have sent his soldiers to seek and kill him as an infant. To hide the Christ child, we are told his family fled with him to Egypt but pre-Arab Egypt was a society of dark-skinned Africans (as evidenced in their own hieroglyphs) and it would be folly to try hiding an Aryan baby there of all places. The land was referred to as Kemet (the Black land), for thousands of years, and themselves as "Kemetcu" (the black humans). The "father" of modern history, Herodotus, himself acknowledged as much when he said "the Egyptians, Colchians and Ethiopians have thick lips, broad nose, wooly hair and are of burnt skin." Elsewhere, he actually referred to them as "black”.
////////////////////BILL GATES AND WARREN BUFFET
////////////////////////Tortoise shapes evolved to avoid 'turning turtle'
Some turtles and tortoises have developed into a self-righting geometric shape that is both a life-saver and extremely rare in nature
////////////////////LT BRAINED=Asymmetry is absolutely essential in order to complete the complex tasks we take for granted. In a conversation with someone, the left brain will be processing the verbal language, while the right brain interprets tone and inflection. If you are asked to imagine a scene, the left brain will create the details, while the right brain handles the overall shapes, sizes and their spatial locations. Without both sides processing all of these details at once, we would never be able to function at the advanced level we do.
But there are also disadvantages to asymmetry. Certain tasks may be easier to execute on either the left or right side of your body. The left side of the human face tends to be more expressive because it is controlled by the right hemisphere. Most people are right-handed because the left brain is usually dominant. According to Bisazza and Dadda, the aforementioned fish will tend to guard one side of their body over the other and as a result their predators will tend to approach them from the unguarded side.
/////////////////////UK POOR LIVE LONGER THAN US POOR D/T NHS
///////////////////
VALUE OF DIVERSITY
////////////////////Excess” packaging? It is essential for a modern economy. It allows goods to be sold in bulk and keeps food fresh... more»
MAKES MONEY SENSE NOT GREEN SENSE-GLOBAL HEATING=MCLWP
//////////////////////The "100/100" health and fitness rule of thumb is to eat 100 fewer calories a day while burning 100 more calories a day
//////////////////////Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be. - William Hazlitt
The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting. - Fran Lebowitz
The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance. - Laurence J. Peter
/////////////////////KILLED BY THE LLAN
///////////////////Our kids, dumber than dirt. Yes, it may turn out that the next generation is the biggest pile of ignorant idiots in U.S. history... more»
/////////////////////DTH OF LIT CRIT
/////////////////////
We Will Meet Again
Ron Atchison
We will meet again my friend,
A hundred years from today
Far away from where we lived
And where we used to play.
We will know each others' eyes
And wonder where we met
Your laugh will sound familiar
Your heart, I won't forget.
We will meet, I'm sure of this,
But let's not wait til then...
Let's take a walk beneath the stars
And share this world again.
/////////////////////////
Letting Go
Author Unknown
To let go doesn't mean to stop caring;It means I can't do it for someone else.To let go is not to cut myself off...It's the realization that I can't control another...To let go is not to enable,but to allow learning from natural consequences.To let go is to admit powerlessness,which means the outcome is not in my hands.To let go is not to try and change or blame another,I can only change myself.To let go is not to care for, but to care about.To let go is not to fix, but to be supportive.To let go is not to judge,but to allow another to be a human being.To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,but to allow others to affect their own outcomes.To let go is not to be protective,It is to permit another to face reality.To let go is not to deny, but to accept.To let go is not to nag, scold, or argue,but to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires,but to take each day as it comes and cherish the moment.To let go is not to criticize and regulate anyone,but to try to become what I dream I can be.To let go is not to regret the past,but to grow and live for the future.To let go is to fear less and love more.
/////////////////////DARWIN VS DESIGN
/////////////////////JUNK FOOD IS FOOD PORN
//////////////////AFPOE
A Fresh Pair Of Eyes
///////////////////
Tachophobia
Fear of speed.
Taeniophobia or Teniophobia
Fear of tapeworms.
Taphephobia Taphophobia
Fear of being buried alive or of cemeteries.
Tapinophobia
Fear of being contagious.
Taurophobia
Fear of bulls.
Technophobia
Fear of technology.
Teleophobia
1) Fear of definite plans. 2) Religious ceremony.
Telephonophobia
Fear of telephones.
Teratophobia
Fear of bearing a deformed child or fear of monsters or deformed people.
Testophobia
Fear of taking tests.
Tetanophobia
Fear of lockjaw, tetanus.
Teutophobia
Fear of German or German things.
Textophobia
Fear of certain fabrics.
Thaasophobia
Fear of sitting.
Thalassophobia
Fear of the sea.
Thanatophobia or Thantophobia
Fear of death or dying.
Theatrophobia
Fear of theatres.
Theologicophobia
Fear of theology.
Theophobia
Fear of gods or religion.
Thermophobia
Fear of heat.
Tocophobia
Fear of pregnancy or childbirth.
Tomophobia
Fear of surgical operations.
Tonitrophobia
Fear of thunder.
Topophobia
Fear of certain places or situations, such as stage fright.
Toxiphobia or Toxophobia or Toxicophobia
Fear of poison or of being accidently poisoned.
Traumatophobia
Fear of injury.
Tremophobia
Fear of trembling.
Trichinophobia
Fear of trichinosis.
Trichopathophobia or Trichophobia or Hypertrichophobia
Fear of hair. (Chaetophobia)
Triskaidekaphobia
Fear of the number 13.
Tropophobia
Fear of moving or making changes.
Trypanophobia
Fear of injections.
Tuberculophobia
Fear of tuberculosis.
Tyrannophobia
Fear of tyrants.
////////////////////////////CONS 75K A YR
SG=35K A YR
//////////////////3.5 X1000 MILLENIA AGO=LF APPEARED
//////////////
He who finds a thought that enables him to obtain a slightly deeper glimpse into the eternal secrets of nature has been given great grace. - Albert Einstein
//////////////////////
MAKES MONEY SENSE NOT GREEN SENSE-GLOBAL HEATING=MCLWP
//////////////////////The "100/100" health and fitness rule of thumb is to eat 100 fewer calories a day while burning 100 more calories a day
//////////////////////Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be. - William Hazlitt
The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting. - Fran Lebowitz
The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance. - Laurence J. Peter
/////////////////////KILLED BY THE LLAN
///////////////////Our kids, dumber than dirt. Yes, it may turn out that the next generation is the biggest pile of ignorant idiots in U.S. history... more»
/////////////////////DTH OF LIT CRIT
/////////////////////
We Will Meet Again
Ron Atchison
We will meet again my friend,
A hundred years from today
Far away from where we lived
And where we used to play.
We will know each others' eyes
And wonder where we met
Your laugh will sound familiar
Your heart, I won't forget.
We will meet, I'm sure of this,
But let's not wait til then...
Let's take a walk beneath the stars
And share this world again.
/////////////////////////
Letting Go
Author Unknown
To let go doesn't mean to stop caring;It means I can't do it for someone else.To let go is not to cut myself off...It's the realization that I can't control another...To let go is not to enable,but to allow learning from natural consequences.To let go is to admit powerlessness,which means the outcome is not in my hands.To let go is not to try and change or blame another,I can only change myself.To let go is not to care for, but to care about.To let go is not to fix, but to be supportive.To let go is not to judge,but to allow another to be a human being.To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,but to allow others to affect their own outcomes.To let go is not to be protective,It is to permit another to face reality.To let go is not to deny, but to accept.To let go is not to nag, scold, or argue,but to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires,but to take each day as it comes and cherish the moment.To let go is not to criticize and regulate anyone,but to try to become what I dream I can be.To let go is not to regret the past,but to grow and live for the future.To let go is to fear less and love more.
/////////////////////DARWIN VS DESIGN
/////////////////////JUNK FOOD IS FOOD PORN
//////////////////AFPOE
A Fresh Pair Of Eyes
///////////////////
Tachophobia
Fear of speed.
Taeniophobia or Teniophobia
Fear of tapeworms.
Taphephobia Taphophobia
Fear of being buried alive or of cemeteries.
Tapinophobia
Fear of being contagious.
Taurophobia
Fear of bulls.
Technophobia
Fear of technology.
Teleophobia
1) Fear of definite plans. 2) Religious ceremony.
Telephonophobia
Fear of telephones.
Teratophobia
Fear of bearing a deformed child or fear of monsters or deformed people.
Testophobia
Fear of taking tests.
Tetanophobia
Fear of lockjaw, tetanus.
Teutophobia
Fear of German or German things.
Textophobia
Fear of certain fabrics.
Thaasophobia
Fear of sitting.
Thalassophobia
Fear of the sea.
Thanatophobia or Thantophobia
Fear of death or dying.
Theatrophobia
Fear of theatres.
Theologicophobia
Fear of theology.
Theophobia
Fear of gods or religion.
Thermophobia
Fear of heat.
Tocophobia
Fear of pregnancy or childbirth.
Tomophobia
Fear of surgical operations.
Tonitrophobia
Fear of thunder.
Topophobia
Fear of certain places or situations, such as stage fright.
Toxiphobia or Toxophobia or Toxicophobia
Fear of poison or of being accidently poisoned.
Traumatophobia
Fear of injury.
Tremophobia
Fear of trembling.
Trichinophobia
Fear of trichinosis.
Trichopathophobia or Trichophobia or Hypertrichophobia
Fear of hair. (Chaetophobia)
Triskaidekaphobia
Fear of the number 13.
Tropophobia
Fear of moving or making changes.
Trypanophobia
Fear of injections.
Tuberculophobia
Fear of tuberculosis.
Tyrannophobia
Fear of tyrants.
////////////////////////////CONS 75K A YR
SG=35K A YR
//////////////////3.5 X1000 MILLENIA AGO=LF APPEARED
//////////////
He who finds a thought that enables him to obtain a slightly deeper glimpse into the eternal secrets of nature has been given great grace. - Albert Einstein
//////////////////////
THEY CALL ME TRINITY
///////////////////http://www.classiccinemaonline.com/cinema/sp-western/theycallmetrinity.html
/////////////
The wormhole cannot be established
The planet you are looking for is currently unavailable. The planet might be experiencing Goa'uld invasion, or you may need to adjust your DHD settings to account for Stellar Drift.
Please try the following:
Press the Big Red Button button, or dial again later.
If you dialled the page address in the DHD, make sure that the co-ordinates are correct.
To check your wormhole connection settings, ignore the gate technicians and locate Major Carter , and then ask her to examine the DHD. Under the Big Red Button crystal, remove the orange crystal and replace. The settings should match those provided by your local gate network (LGN) or Ancient Gate provider (AGP).
If your local Goa'uld system lord has enabled it, DHD Diagnostics can examine your gate network and automatically discover gate network connection settings.If you would like Major Carter to try and discover them, click Super Sam
Some planets require 8 Chevron connections. Click the Asgard Communication Device menu and then click About Stargates to determine what number of chevrons you require.
If you are trying to reach another galaxy, make sure your power systems can support it. Locate the ZPM in the basement storage, and then find General O'Neill. On the Gate security tab, scroll to the Security section and check Avenger 2.0 is not running. If Avenger 2.0 is running, locate Felger and steal his Carter doll until he fixes it.
Click the Disengage button to try another planet.
Cannot find planet or gate System Error Ancient Gate Network
/////////////////////About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every three and a half seconds, as you can see on this display. Unfortunately, it is children who die most often.
///////////////////MINIATURE EARTH PROJECT=MOVING=http://www.miniature-earth.com/me_english.htm
NEVER WHINE ABT MISFORTUNE AGAIN
//////////////////THEY CALL ME TRINITY=A drifter comes to town where his brother is sheriff. His brother is actually a robber who broke the real sheriff's leg and left him for dead, and became sheriff in order to hide out. They team up against the local land baron who is trying to get rid of the Mormon settlers in a valley he wishes to own. Written by Ed Sutton
//////////////////////Mormon is a term used to describe the adherents, practitioners, followers or constituents of Mormonism. The term most often refers to a member of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which is commonly called the Mormon Church. The LDS Church believes that "Mormon" may only properly be applied to its members; however, the term is occasionally used more broadly to describe any individual or group that claims belief in the Book of Mormon, including other Latter Day Saints groups. According to Latter Day Saint belief, Mormon is also the name of the compiler of the book of scripture known as the Book of Mormon.
/////////////////////
///////////////////////
/////////////
The wormhole cannot be established
The planet you are looking for is currently unavailable. The planet might be experiencing Goa'uld invasion, or you may need to adjust your DHD settings to account for Stellar Drift.
Please try the following:
Press the Big Red Button button, or dial again later.
If you dialled the page address in the DHD, make sure that the co-ordinates are correct.
To check your wormhole connection settings, ignore the gate technicians and locate Major Carter , and then ask her to examine the DHD. Under the Big Red Button crystal, remove the orange crystal and replace. The settings should match those provided by your local gate network (LGN) or Ancient Gate provider (AGP).
If your local Goa'uld system lord has enabled it, DHD Diagnostics can examine your gate network and automatically discover gate network connection settings.If you would like Major Carter to try and discover them, click Super Sam
Some planets require 8 Chevron connections. Click the Asgard Communication Device menu and then click About Stargates to determine what number of chevrons you require.
If you are trying to reach another galaxy, make sure your power systems can support it. Locate the ZPM in the basement storage, and then find General O'Neill. On the Gate security tab, scroll to the Security section and check Avenger 2.0 is not running. If Avenger 2.0 is running, locate Felger and steal his Carter doll until he fixes it.
Click the Disengage button to try another planet.
Cannot find planet or gate System Error Ancient Gate Network
/////////////////////About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every three and a half seconds, as you can see on this display. Unfortunately, it is children who die most often.
///////////////////MINIATURE EARTH PROJECT=MOVING=http://www.miniature-earth.com/me_english.htm
NEVER WHINE ABT MISFORTUNE AGAIN
//////////////////THEY CALL ME TRINITY=A drifter comes to town where his brother is sheriff. His brother is actually a robber who broke the real sheriff's leg and left him for dead, and became sheriff in order to hide out. They team up against the local land baron who is trying to get rid of the Mormon settlers in a valley he wishes to own. Written by Ed Sutton
//////////////////////Mormon is a term used to describe the adherents, practitioners, followers or constituents of Mormonism. The term most often refers to a member of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which is commonly called the Mormon Church. The LDS Church believes that "Mormon" may only properly be applied to its members; however, the term is occasionally used more broadly to describe any individual or group that claims belief in the Book of Mormon, including other Latter Day Saints groups. According to Latter Day Saint belief, Mormon is also the name of the compiler of the book of scripture known as the Book of Mormon.
/////////////////////
///////////////////////
BLD=BRTH,LF,DTH
///////////////////Ecclesiastes 3: 19 Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: as one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless.
///////////////////Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale - Results
Your score:60 (fear) + 52 (avoidance) = 112 The scoring scale:55-65 Moderate social phobia65-80 Marked social phobia80-95 Severe social phobiaGreater than 95 - Very severe social phobia
Your score:60 (fear) + 52 (avoidance) = 112 The scoring scale:55-65 Moderate social phobia65-80 Marked social phobia80-95 Severe social phobiaGreater than 95 - Very severe social phobia
/////////////////////I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." --Stephen Roberts
"When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me." --Emo Philips
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" --Epicurus
"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." --Gene Roddenberry
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." --H. L. Mencken
"Jesus' last words on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" hardly seem like the words of a man who planned it that way. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure there is something wrong here." --Donald Morgan
"Everything is more or less organized matter. To think so is against religion, but I think so just the same. When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself." --Peter O'Toole
"Why should I allow that same God to tell me how to raise my kids, who had to drown His own?" --Robert G. Ingersoll
"The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on." --Frank Zappa
Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?" --Annie Dillard, 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'
"When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me." --Emo Philips
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" --Epicurus
"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." --Gene Roddenberry
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." --H. L. Mencken
"Jesus' last words on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" hardly seem like the words of a man who planned it that way. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure there is something wrong here." --Donald Morgan
"Everything is more or less organized matter. To think so is against religion, but I think so just the same. When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself." --Peter O'Toole
"Why should I allow that same God to tell me how to raise my kids, who had to drown His own?" --Robert G. Ingersoll
"The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on." --Frank Zappa
Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?" --Annie Dillard, 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'
//////////////////////GREEN FUEL=AL GORES TEARS
///////////////First genocide of human
This planet faced a global catastrophe 30,000 years ago as a result of which mankind was destroyed by humans themselves. The phenomenon known today as genocide that began 30,000 years ago when homo sapiens came across a unique independent type of humans and destroyed them to seize more space on the planet.
Paleontology, the science about ancient creatures that once inhabited the planet has always been a quiet academic occupation. But today the science is gripped with stormy disputes between two research groups. They still fail to define the place of strange creatures Neanderthal men in the past of the Earth. They inhabited the planet for half a million of years and vanished without leaving a trace. They formed in Europe and lived there for hundreds of thousands of years and would not leave it. Those creatures had features that we now call primitive: big superciliary archs and massive jaws. Their heads were much bigger than modern people have as their brain was much bigger. It is not clear yet for what purposes they needed such a huge intellectual device.
The average male height was 1.65 m with the weight of about 90 kg and females were 10 cm shorter. They had a different structure of arms and legs: shorter forearms and shanks. Neanderthal men’s faces with wide pug noses that allowed them safely inhale very cold air produced a really proud and scary impression.
All evidence about Neanderthal men proves that they formed an individual culture different from the world of other hominids and the animal world; they knew how to use fire and made various tools of stone. At that, their methods of stone working differed from those that our homo sapiens ancestors used. It means that homo sapiens and Neanderthal men obtained knowledge from different sources. Neanderthal men traveled about the world, from Europe to the Middle East and brought stone instruments that had been made by craftsmen in the homeland.
Forty thousand years ago Neanderthal men began to burry their deceased. No other predecessors of humans but homo sapiens and Neanderthal men did so. Also, only humans and Neanderthal men knew what adornment was and used decorations.
It is not clear if Neanderthal men could speak. At least, the structure of their palate allowed them to speak. Neanderthal men were real hunters and hunted in groups. Neanderthal men and homo sapiens began to hunt each other and eat up bodies of defeated enemies about 40 thousand of years ago. That was a period when first homo sapiens appeared in Europe, the land of Neanderthal men. The two peoples coexisted on the territory for 10,000 years. About 30,000 years ago Neanderthal men lived in the south of Spain, in Gibraltar and the Pyrenees, and then vanished without leaving a trace.
Within the many years after 1856 when remains of Neanderthal men were first discovered in the Neanderthal valley in Germany researchers gave a clear explanation why they had vanished. In accordance with the Darwinism dogmas, Neanderthal men were declared next of kin and predecessors of humans. It was believed that at some stage Neanderthal men smoothly transformed into modern humans, and those who failed to transform just vanished as a result of natural selection and competition between more perfect and primitive species.
These days some researchers state that Neanderthal men merged with predecessors of euhominids. The hypotheses arose from the study of Neanderthal kids’ skulls that revealed some lineament of modern people. Portuguese researcher Joao Zilhao was the most ardent advocate of the theory after he discovered such skulls in Portugal; later similar skulls were discovered in France, Croatia and the Middle East.
In 1997, researchers from the University of Munich analyzed DNA of remains of the first Neanderthal men found in 1856. The study of 328 detected nucleotide chains allowed paleontologist Svante Paabo to make a sensational statement. He insisted that the difference between the genes of Neanderthal men and euhominids were too great to consider them relatives. The information was confirmed by similar studies of remains discovered in the Caucasus (Georgia) in 1999. A new sensation came from the University of Zurich where Spanish researcher Maricia Ponce de Leon and Swiss Christoph Zollikofer compared skulls of a two-year-old Neanderthal man and of a Cro-Magnon man of the same age. The result of the study was that cranial bones of the two kids had been forming in different ways which in its turn proved that the gene pools of both races radically differed.
Based on the above facts several researchers from the USA and Europe made up a conclusion that Neanderthal men were neither ancestors nor relatives of euhominids. Those were two different biological species that originated from different offshoots of ancient hominids. According to the species law, they could not interbreed and sire. So, Neanderthal men were a particular kind of sentinel beings generated by evolution of life on Earth. They were a special mankind that created their independent culture but were ruthlessly liquidated by our ancestors.
The results announced were a real shock. As it turned out, evolution was able to produce several different types of mankind, and Darwin’s evolution theory was smashed. It came to light that homo sapiens became dominating over the planet not through a peaceful merger with less developed congeners but with aggression and war, through liquidation of another civilized people.
Author of popular books about origin of humans Professor Jean-Jacques Hublin from the University of Bordeaux is an advocate of the new approach in the Neanderthal men study. He explains why the revelation about liquidation of Neanderthal men by homo sapiens turned out to be so shocking. For many years it was believed that Homo sapiens was a synonym for culture, and the scheme was quite agreeable for many. But suddenly archeological digs demonstrated that Neanderthal men were no primitive semi-beasts as it had been believed. They had culture of their own. At the same time, many researchers began to ascribe the relation of Neanderthal men to homo sapiens. They were trying to prove that Neanderthal men were just a variety of euhominds.
It is a problem why the idea of existence of another mankind with a culture different from ours is so much disagreeable for some people. Since WWII anthropologists have been trying to demonstrate that all people including Neanderthal men are equal. It seems that they want to atone the fault of researchers whose teaching about the existence of various races was employed by the Nazi ideology. The same logic together with the post-colonial syndrome makes some experts deny cannibalism with Neanderthal men and our ancestors, Cro-Magnon men. The idea that a more developed variety of people liquidated other people in the course of evolution to seize domination over the planet is the revival of racist concepts to these researchers.
Today it is a real taboo for anthropologists to state that the Neanderthal culture differed from the culture of our ancestors and was more primitive, that they borrowed many of technical achievements and skills from Cro-Magnon men. To say so sounds like declaring Neanderthal men underdeveloped creatures.
Some historians state that Neanderthal men quite independently generated culture that was similar to that of Cro-Magnon men. They say it was either shortly before our ancestors came to Europe or immediately after the intrusion. Meanwhile, the two kinds of people were developing independently for 400,000 years.
Archeological facts reveal that Cro-Magnon men and Neanderthal men were living side by side in Europe for a long period of time. Each group had its territory for hunting and never broke the borders. Homo sapiens could eat not only meat and were effective in the use of their grounds. Neanderthal hunters had to leave their sites in search of game, but when they were back home they found their camps destroyed and occupied by strangers.
It is likely that homo sapiens managed to beat the strong and smart rival thanks to their ability to communicate and coordinate activity of separate groups in fighting the enemy. Neanderthal men were less sociable and were reluctant to contact.
This planet faced a global catastrophe 30,000 years ago as a result of which mankind was destroyed by humans themselves. The phenomenon known today as genocide that began 30,000 years ago when homo sapiens came across a unique independent type of humans and destroyed them to seize more space on the planet.
Paleontology, the science about ancient creatures that once inhabited the planet has always been a quiet academic occupation. But today the science is gripped with stormy disputes between two research groups. They still fail to define the place of strange creatures Neanderthal men in the past of the Earth. They inhabited the planet for half a million of years and vanished without leaving a trace. They formed in Europe and lived there for hundreds of thousands of years and would not leave it. Those creatures had features that we now call primitive: big superciliary archs and massive jaws. Their heads were much bigger than modern people have as their brain was much bigger. It is not clear yet for what purposes they needed such a huge intellectual device.
The average male height was 1.65 m with the weight of about 90 kg and females were 10 cm shorter. They had a different structure of arms and legs: shorter forearms and shanks. Neanderthal men’s faces with wide pug noses that allowed them safely inhale very cold air produced a really proud and scary impression.
All evidence about Neanderthal men proves that they formed an individual culture different from the world of other hominids and the animal world; they knew how to use fire and made various tools of stone. At that, their methods of stone working differed from those that our homo sapiens ancestors used. It means that homo sapiens and Neanderthal men obtained knowledge from different sources. Neanderthal men traveled about the world, from Europe to the Middle East and brought stone instruments that had been made by craftsmen in the homeland.
Forty thousand years ago Neanderthal men began to burry their deceased. No other predecessors of humans but homo sapiens and Neanderthal men did so. Also, only humans and Neanderthal men knew what adornment was and used decorations.
It is not clear if Neanderthal men could speak. At least, the structure of their palate allowed them to speak. Neanderthal men were real hunters and hunted in groups. Neanderthal men and homo sapiens began to hunt each other and eat up bodies of defeated enemies about 40 thousand of years ago. That was a period when first homo sapiens appeared in Europe, the land of Neanderthal men. The two peoples coexisted on the territory for 10,000 years. About 30,000 years ago Neanderthal men lived in the south of Spain, in Gibraltar and the Pyrenees, and then vanished without leaving a trace.
Within the many years after 1856 when remains of Neanderthal men were first discovered in the Neanderthal valley in Germany researchers gave a clear explanation why they had vanished. In accordance with the Darwinism dogmas, Neanderthal men were declared next of kin and predecessors of humans. It was believed that at some stage Neanderthal men smoothly transformed into modern humans, and those who failed to transform just vanished as a result of natural selection and competition between more perfect and primitive species.
These days some researchers state that Neanderthal men merged with predecessors of euhominids. The hypotheses arose from the study of Neanderthal kids’ skulls that revealed some lineament of modern people. Portuguese researcher Joao Zilhao was the most ardent advocate of the theory after he discovered such skulls in Portugal; later similar skulls were discovered in France, Croatia and the Middle East.
In 1997, researchers from the University of Munich analyzed DNA of remains of the first Neanderthal men found in 1856. The study of 328 detected nucleotide chains allowed paleontologist Svante Paabo to make a sensational statement. He insisted that the difference between the genes of Neanderthal men and euhominids were too great to consider them relatives. The information was confirmed by similar studies of remains discovered in the Caucasus (Georgia) in 1999. A new sensation came from the University of Zurich where Spanish researcher Maricia Ponce de Leon and Swiss Christoph Zollikofer compared skulls of a two-year-old Neanderthal man and of a Cro-Magnon man of the same age. The result of the study was that cranial bones of the two kids had been forming in different ways which in its turn proved that the gene pools of both races radically differed.
Based on the above facts several researchers from the USA and Europe made up a conclusion that Neanderthal men were neither ancestors nor relatives of euhominids. Those were two different biological species that originated from different offshoots of ancient hominids. According to the species law, they could not interbreed and sire. So, Neanderthal men were a particular kind of sentinel beings generated by evolution of life on Earth. They were a special mankind that created their independent culture but were ruthlessly liquidated by our ancestors.
The results announced were a real shock. As it turned out, evolution was able to produce several different types of mankind, and Darwin’s evolution theory was smashed. It came to light that homo sapiens became dominating over the planet not through a peaceful merger with less developed congeners but with aggression and war, through liquidation of another civilized people.
Author of popular books about origin of humans Professor Jean-Jacques Hublin from the University of Bordeaux is an advocate of the new approach in the Neanderthal men study. He explains why the revelation about liquidation of Neanderthal men by homo sapiens turned out to be so shocking. For many years it was believed that Homo sapiens was a synonym for culture, and the scheme was quite agreeable for many. But suddenly archeological digs demonstrated that Neanderthal men were no primitive semi-beasts as it had been believed. They had culture of their own. At the same time, many researchers began to ascribe the relation of Neanderthal men to homo sapiens. They were trying to prove that Neanderthal men were just a variety of euhominds.
It is a problem why the idea of existence of another mankind with a culture different from ours is so much disagreeable for some people. Since WWII anthropologists have been trying to demonstrate that all people including Neanderthal men are equal. It seems that they want to atone the fault of researchers whose teaching about the existence of various races was employed by the Nazi ideology. The same logic together with the post-colonial syndrome makes some experts deny cannibalism with Neanderthal men and our ancestors, Cro-Magnon men. The idea that a more developed variety of people liquidated other people in the course of evolution to seize domination over the planet is the revival of racist concepts to these researchers.
Today it is a real taboo for anthropologists to state that the Neanderthal culture differed from the culture of our ancestors and was more primitive, that they borrowed many of technical achievements and skills from Cro-Magnon men. To say so sounds like declaring Neanderthal men underdeveloped creatures.
Some historians state that Neanderthal men quite independently generated culture that was similar to that of Cro-Magnon men. They say it was either shortly before our ancestors came to Europe or immediately after the intrusion. Meanwhile, the two kinds of people were developing independently for 400,000 years.
Archeological facts reveal that Cro-Magnon men and Neanderthal men were living side by side in Europe for a long period of time. Each group had its territory for hunting and never broke the borders. Homo sapiens could eat not only meat and were effective in the use of their grounds. Neanderthal hunters had to leave their sites in search of game, but when they were back home they found their camps destroyed and occupied by strangers.
It is likely that homo sapiens managed to beat the strong and smart rival thanks to their ability to communicate and coordinate activity of separate groups in fighting the enemy. Neanderthal men were less sociable and were reluctant to contact.
http://sense4fun.com/first-genocide.php
////////////////////BRAINSWITCH OUT OF DEPRESSION-ROW,ROW,ROW THE BOAT
GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM
MERRILY,MERRILY MERRILY
//////////////////PSY MUMBO JUMBO
///////////////////BREAKING OFF THE MENTAL MOVIES-MENTAL MOVIES
"A chief cause of unhappiness is what is called mental movies. Mental movies are a misuse of the imagination. You know how it goes. You have a painful experience with someone, then run it over and over in your mind. You visualize what you said, what he did, how you both felt. As awful as it is, you feel compelled to repeat the film day and night. It is as if you were locked inside a theatre playing a horror movie.
To break out be aware that you ARE running a mental movie. Be conscious of its mechanical hold on your mind. Then, by deliberate choice, break it off. Shake your head and break it off. Now, at this instant, take a quick look. Where is your pain? It is not there. It has disappeared. You have now accomplished something great. You have proved that you CAN snap the film and its tyrannical pain. You are free and you are free RIGHT NOW.
Try the above method for yourself. Even though you succeed at first for just a split second, you have succeeded completely! Now realizing that small success is possible, you can advance to great success!"....VERNON HOWARD
///////////////////////NASA Discovers Planet With Four Suns"Posting by Stafflink to story | permalink
October 5, 2007 How many stars does it take to "raise" a planet? In our own solar system, it took only one - our sun. However, new research from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows that planets might sometimes form in systems with as many as four stars. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope recently discovered what might be the first planetary system with four Suns. The quadruple-star system known as HD 988000 is approximately 10-million years old, and is located 150 light-years away from Earth (fairly close in astronomical terms) in the constellation TW Hydrae.
//////////////////////Seismologists See Earth's Dynamic Interior as Interplay of Temperature, Pressure, Chemistry (10/26/2007)
-United States
digg_url = 'http://www.geologytimes.com/Research/Seismologists_See_Earths_Dynamic_Interior_as_Interplay_of_Temperature_Pressure_Chemistry.asp';
digg_title = 'Seismologists See Earth's Dynamic Interior as Interplay of Temperature, Pressure, Chemistry';
digg_topic = 'general_science';
digg_bgcolor = '#FFFFFF';
digg_skin = 'compact';
reddit_url='http%3A//www.geologytimes.com/Research/Seismologists_See_Earths_Dynamic_Interior_as_Interplay_of_Temperature_Pressure_Chemistry.asp'
Tags:
tectonics, volcanoes, earthquakes, eruptions, mantle
Surface topography and bathymetry around South America (top) overlays variable topography in Earth's upper mantle at 410 kilometers and 660 kilometers depth. - Credit: Arizona State University, Nicholas Schmerr/Edward GarneroSeismologists have recast their understanding of the inner workings of Earth from a relatively homogeneous environment to one that is highly dynamic and chemically diverse.
The research, conducted by scientists Nicholas Schmerr and Edward Garnero of Arizona State University in Tempe, is published in the October 26 issue of the journal Science.
This view of Earth's inner workings depicts the inner planet as a living organism where events that happen deep within can affect what happens at its surface, like the rub and slip of tectonic plates and the rumble of volcanoes.
The new research into these inner workings shows that in Earth's upper mantle (an area that extends down to 660 kilometers), more than temperature and pressure play a role.
"It has long been a goal of seismologists to distinguish between thermal and chemical effects on seismic velocities in Earth's deep interior," said Robin Reichlin, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s division of earth sciences, which funded the research. "This work is a tantalizing step toward solving this important problem, necessary for understanding the internal structure and dynamics of our planet."
///////////////////////////#THEY CALL ME TRINITY-1970
2810071152-SICKO-MOORE
///////////////////US INURANCE BASED HEALTH CARE-50 MN WORKING CLASS WITHOUT INSURANCE
////////////NHS GREAT IN EMERGY CARE
///////////////LONG WAITING LIST IN NHS AS MORE INCLUSIVE WELFARE SERVICE
///////////////////......personal vainglory; he has cast himself as a high priest of righteous indignation, the people’s prophet, and he has an almost religious following
///////////////////////Writer/producer Michael Moore interviews Americans who have been denied treatment by our health care insurance companies -- companies who sacrifice essential health services in order to maximize profits. The consequences for the individual subscribers range from bankruptcy to the unnecessary deaths of loved ones.Moore then looks at universal free health care systems in Canada, France, Britain, and Cuba, debunking all the fears (lower quality of care, poorer compensation for doctors, big-government bureaucracy) that have been used to dissuade Americans from establishing such a system here. The roots of those health care systems are explored, and our failure to establish free health here care is traced to a) President Richard Nixon's deceptive support of the then-emerging HMOs pursuing huge profits and b) subsequent pressures for Congress to sacrifice sound health care in favor of corporate profit.A group of Americans who became ill from volunteering at 911 Ground Zero, but were refused health coverage for their illnesses, are ferried by Moore to Cuba, where they receive the top-rate, free care one would hope they'd get here at home.In his interviews, historical reportage, and typical sarcastic wit, Moore soundly condemns American health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, as well as the politicians who have been paid millions to do their bidding. He makes the case that there is something wrong with Americans that we cannot learn from the successes of other countries in providing better quality-of-health than we enjoy in the USA.
//////////////////////EVOLUTION OF HUMAN DIET
GRAINS 10 KYA STARTED
DAIRY-5K YA STARTED
////////////////////A better way of looking at carbohydrates is to return to the principles of the "evolutionary diet." Robert Crayhon, M.S., author and champion of the "Paleolithic diet", divides carbohydrates into two basic groups, paleocarbs and neocarbs. Paleocarbs include vegetables, fruits and perhaps tubers. Neocarbs (carbohydrates introduced within the last 10,000 years or less), include grains, legumes, and especially flour products, which did not exist for most of human history.
The worst of the neocarbs include sugar and white flour products. If we follow the simple guidelines of restricting ourselves to paleocarbs, we will in general be eating fiber rich, nutrient dense, low glycemic carbohydrates, the best nature has to offer.
The worst of the neocarbs include sugar and white flour products. If we follow the simple guidelines of restricting ourselves to paleocarbs, we will in general be eating fiber rich, nutrient dense, low glycemic carbohydrates, the best nature has to offer.
///////////////////////AGAIN LOW CARB DIET GOOD FOR HEART BAD FOR COGNITION
//////////////////A thermodynamics professor had written a take home exam for his graduate students. It had one question:
"Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Support your answer with a proof."
"Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Support your answer with a proof."
HELL=NARAK
/////////////////FILM AS A STATEMENT
//////////////////IBOGAINE=The quest for the ultimate cure for addiction
Health Features By Alex Roslin
Publish Date: October 25, 2007 login or register to post comments email this page printer friendly version
Mark "Atmos" Pilon illustration
Could the root of an African shrub hold the key to getting millions of addicts off heroin, coke, and crack – oh, yeah, and cure alcoholism in its spare time? Can a single dose of an extract from the mysterious shrub's root bark be worth years on a therapist's couch?
Some of the answers may soon be found in a three-bedroom house on the Sunshine Coast. Tucked away there on a hill, with a stunning view of the ocean and surrounded by tall trees, is the Iboga Therapy House.
Forty years after globetrotting backpackers introduced a substance called ibogaine into the U.S. drug culture, the extract from western Africa's Tabernanthe iboga shrub has become an underground rage among drug-addled Hollywood celebs willing to plunk down between $3,500 and $10,000 for ibogaine treatment at any one of about a dozen unregulated clinics worldwide, including the one in B.C.
Because ibogaine is illegal in the U.S. – one of just three countries to ban the substance, along with Belgium and Switzerland – clients have to travel to clinics in countries such as Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Slovenia for an "ibogaine experience".
Advocates liken the miracle drug – which can unleash a reality-shattering trip so powerful it has been described as "dying and going to hell 1,000 times" – to the Holy Grail of addiction cures, comparable in importance to the discovery of penicillin. Although ibogaine's alleged ability to quickly cure opiate addiction without withdrawal symptoms was discovered relatively recently, the substance has long been used in Gabon by hunters to stay alert and, in larger doses, in week-long sacred ceremonies in the Bwiti religion.
Health Features By Alex Roslin
Publish Date: October 25, 2007 login or register to post comments email this page printer friendly version
Mark "Atmos" Pilon illustration
Could the root of an African shrub hold the key to getting millions of addicts off heroin, coke, and crack – oh, yeah, and cure alcoholism in its spare time? Can a single dose of an extract from the mysterious shrub's root bark be worth years on a therapist's couch?
Some of the answers may soon be found in a three-bedroom house on the Sunshine Coast. Tucked away there on a hill, with a stunning view of the ocean and surrounded by tall trees, is the Iboga Therapy House.
Forty years after globetrotting backpackers introduced a substance called ibogaine into the U.S. drug culture, the extract from western Africa's Tabernanthe iboga shrub has become an underground rage among drug-addled Hollywood celebs willing to plunk down between $3,500 and $10,000 for ibogaine treatment at any one of about a dozen unregulated clinics worldwide, including the one in B.C.
Because ibogaine is illegal in the U.S. – one of just three countries to ban the substance, along with Belgium and Switzerland – clients have to travel to clinics in countries such as Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Slovenia for an "ibogaine experience".
Advocates liken the miracle drug – which can unleash a reality-shattering trip so powerful it has been described as "dying and going to hell 1,000 times" – to the Holy Grail of addiction cures, comparable in importance to the discovery of penicillin. Although ibogaine's alleged ability to quickly cure opiate addiction without withdrawal symptoms was discovered relatively recently, the substance has long been used in Gabon by hunters to stay alert and, in larger doses, in week-long sacred ceremonies in the Bwiti religion.
/////////////////////RIDDLES=http://www.mindpowernews.com/BrainTeasers.htm
////////////////////BINA SANDALEY PUJA PANDELEY
////////////////////
WHAT IS 46664
WHO WE ARE
WHAT WE DO
46664 is an African response to the global HIV AIDS epidemic that invites the whole world to take the fight in hand. It's our aim to raise awareness overall and educate the younger generations in particular. By gaining global backing for the cause, we will also raise funds to directly assist the many HIV AIDS projects we support. We intend to do this by using our international ambassadors to spread our messages of hope, our calls to action, our pleas for compassion and our requests for assistance and support for those living with HIV AIDS.46664 (we say four, double six, six four) was Nelson Mandela's prison number when he was imprisoned on Robben Island, off Cape Town in South Africa. He was jailed in 1964 for 27 years for leading the liberation movement against apartheid and for his impassioned stance on the rights of everyone to live in freedom. He was prisoner number 466, imprisoned in 1964. The Robben Island prisoners were never referred to by their names, but rather by their numbers and year of imprisonment - hence 46664 was Nelson Mandela's number.
WHAT IS 46664
WHO WE ARE
WHAT WE DO
46664 is an African response to the global HIV AIDS epidemic that invites the whole world to take the fight in hand. It's our aim to raise awareness overall and educate the younger generations in particular. By gaining global backing for the cause, we will also raise funds to directly assist the many HIV AIDS projects we support. We intend to do this by using our international ambassadors to spread our messages of hope, our calls to action, our pleas for compassion and our requests for assistance and support for those living with HIV AIDS.46664 (we say four, double six, six four) was Nelson Mandela's prison number when he was imprisoned on Robben Island, off Cape Town in South Africa. He was jailed in 1964 for 27 years for leading the liberation movement against apartheid and for his impassioned stance on the rights of everyone to live in freedom. He was prisoner number 466, imprisoned in 1964. The Robben Island prisoners were never referred to by their names, but rather by their numbers and year of imprisonment - hence 46664 was Nelson Mandela's number.
////////////////////MEDIA=THE 24 HR GOD?
////////////////////EXAMPLE IS THE GREAT SCHOOL OF MANKIND
////////////////////A poem by Zen Master Ryokan.
Too lazy to be ambitious,I let the world take care of itself.Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?Listening to the night rain on my roof,I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.
-- Ryokan
Too lazy to be ambitious,I let the world take care of itself.Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?Listening to the night rain on my roof,I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.
-- Ryokan
TOO MEEK TO BE AMBITIOUS
////////////////////TED BEST=http://www.lifehack.org/articles/miscellaneous/the-ten-videos-to-change-how-you-view-the-world.html
////////////////////////Two condiments from south Asia can be found in most groceries – curries and chutneys. Curry, which some studies have shown to contribute to healthy aging, does not have to be hot. A mild curry can be an intriguing addition to cooked carrots or rice and broccoli. Chutneys come in many different varieties, and Fitch-Hilgenberg advised reading the label before buying. Some contain fruit, such as mango chutney; others contain high levels of sodium.
Fitch-Hilgenberg cautioned that the downside to condiments is that they can add empty calories while disguising the flavor of foods. Marinades are a good way to flavor foods instead of spreading sauces on after cooking. Similarly, when a salad is tossed in a large bowl with a little dressing, the flavor of the greens is enhanced without being drenched in dressing that is high in fat and sodium. A plus, Fitch-Hilgenberg noted, is that it is much cheaper to use a little sauce or dressing in the kitchen than to put the bottle on the table.
“Healthy condiments can be used by everyone, whether for plain food or gourmet, carnivore or vegetarian,” Fitch-Hilgenberg said. “The condiments we choose are only limited by our imagination.”
The School of Human Environmental Sciences is part of the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences.
Fitch-Hilgenberg cautioned that the downside to condiments is that they can add empty calories while disguising the flavor of foods. Marinades are a good way to flavor foods instead of spreading sauces on after cooking. Similarly, when a salad is tossed in a large bowl with a little dressing, the flavor of the greens is enhanced without being drenched in dressing that is high in fat and sodium. A plus, Fitch-Hilgenberg noted, is that it is much cheaper to use a little sauce or dressing in the kitchen than to put the bottle on the table.
“Healthy condiments can be used by everyone, whether for plain food or gourmet, carnivore or vegetarian,” Fitch-Hilgenberg said. “The condiments we choose are only limited by our imagination.”
The School of Human Environmental Sciences is part of the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences.
/////////////////////CHHOLAR DAAL BHAT AR SALAD
////////////////////////COOL DANCING=http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1740690
///////////////////THE ETERNAL STUMBLER=SLEEP/DTH=THE ULTIMATE REST
////////////////////COOL BONSAI=http://www.albek-bonsai.dk/FOTOS-iawasakibonsai.htm
/////////////////////
An Inspirational Thought, Motivational Thought - I've Learned Author unknown (thanks to Kristal for submitting)
I've learned that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be some that can be loved. The rest is up to them.
I've learned that no matter how much I care, some people just don't care back.
An Inspirational Thought, Motivational Thought - I've Learned Author unknown (thanks to Kristal for submitting)
I've learned that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be some that can be loved. The rest is up to them.
I've learned that no matter how much I care, some people just don't care back.
//////////////////////Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. For in a civilization equipped with immense technological power, the sense of alienation between man and nature leads to the use of technology in a hostile spirit---to the "conquest" of nature instead of intelligent co-operation with nature. Alan Watts,
//////////////////////AWAAZ UTHANA
///////////////////Proverbs 20: 30 Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being.
I've learned that it takes years to build up trust, and only seconds to destroy it.
I've learned that it's not what you have in your life, but who you have in your life that counts.
I've learned hat you can get by on charm for about fifteen minutes. After that, you'd better know something.
I've learned that you shouldn't compare yourself to the best others can do.
I've learned that you can do some thing in an instant that will give you heartache for life.
I've learned that it's taking me a long time to become the person I want to be.
I've learned that you should always leave loved ones with loving words. It may be the last time you see them.
I've learned that you can keep going long after you can't.
I've learned that we are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel. That either you control your attitude or it controls you.
I've learned that heroes are the people who do what has to be done regardless of the consequences.
I've learned that money is a lousy way to keep score.
I've learned that my best friend and I can do anything or nothing and have the best time.
I've learned that the people you expect to kick you when you're down will be the ones to pick you back up.
I've learned that sometimes when I'm angry I have the to be angry, but that doesn't give me the right to be cruel.
I've learned that just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have.
I've learned that maturity has more to do with what types of experiences you've had and what you've from them and less to do with how many birthdays you've celebrated.
I've learned that you should never tell a child their dreams are unlikely or outlandish. Few things are more humiliating, and what a tragedy it would be if they believed it.
I've learned that no matter good a friend is, they're going to hurt you every once in a while and you must forgive them for that.
I've learned that no matter how bad your heart is broken the world doesn't stop for your grief.
I've learned that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become.
I've learned that even when you think you have no more to give, when a friend cries out to you, you will find the strength to help.
I've learned that it takes years to build up trust, and only seconds to destroy it.
I've learned that it's not what you have in your life, but who you have in your life that counts.
I've learned hat you can get by on charm for about fifteen minutes. After that, you'd better know something.
I've learned that you shouldn't compare yourself to the best others can do.
I've learned that you can do some thing in an instant that will give you heartache for life.
I've learned that it's taking me a long time to become the person I want to be.
I've learned that you should always leave loved ones with loving words. It may be the last time you see them.
I've learned that you can keep going long after you can't.
I've learned that we are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel. That either you control your attitude or it controls you.
I've learned that heroes are the people who do what has to be done regardless of the consequences.
I've learned that money is a lousy way to keep score.
I've learned that my best friend and I can do anything or nothing and have the best time.
I've learned that the people you expect to kick you when you're down will be the ones to pick you back up.
I've learned that sometimes when I'm angry I have the to be angry, but that doesn't give me the right to be cruel.
I've learned that just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have.
I've learned that maturity has more to do with what types of experiences you've had and what you've from them and less to do with how many birthdays you've celebrated.
I've learned that you should never tell a child their dreams are unlikely or outlandish. Few things are more humiliating, and what a tragedy it would be if they believed it.
I've learned that no matter good a friend is, they're going to hurt you every once in a while and you must forgive them for that.
I've learned that no matter how bad your heart is broken the world doesn't stop for your grief.
I've learned that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become.
I've learned that even when you think you have no more to give, when a friend cries out to you, you will find the strength to help.
///////////////////////
Friday 26 October 2007
MESSIANIC ICONIC BEARD
////////////////////////////GENITALIS BOTANICUS=http://divinecaroline.com/article/22167/37205
///////////////////REINCARNATION=RATIONAL EXPLANATION OR STRANGE FORCES AT WORK
//////////////////////DEBASHIS BASAK ANECDOTE OF REINCARN
/////////////////////HARDER TO EXPLAIN AWAY
/////////////////////////FALSE MEMORIES VIA TV,STORIES,INET,FANTASY,
/////////////////The trouble with statements about death, as one popular aphorism points out, is that 99.9 percent of them are made by people who are still alive. Death continues to be, at this point in time, one of life’s enduring mysteries. Whatever the miracles of modern science, and whatever glimpses we have been afforded of the world beyond, an objective understanding of what happens after death may always an enticing but ultimately ungraspable goal, a mirage forever receding on the horizon of our culture. But we live in a rapidly changing world, and in so many areas of life, the previously unthinkable is becoming possible. Perhaps one day in the not-too-distant future, we may wake up to find that, miraculously, death itself has become transparent to the ever-expanding field of human knowledge. And like the Tibetans hundreds of years ago, we may find ourselves rewriting the book on what happens at the end of life . . . and at the beginning.
ABOD=http://www.wie.org/j32/reincarnation.asp?pf=1
SURVIVAL RESEARCH
////////////////////PAST LF MEMORIES=
FINDING MY RELIGION
Psychiatrist Jim B. Tucker studies past-life memories of children
David Ian Miller, Special to SF Gate
Monday, June 12, 2006
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2006/06/12/findrelig.DTL
/////////////////////CHILDREN TEND TO LOSE THESE MEMORIES BY 6 OR 7 YRS
/////////////SOMETHINGS TIE IN OTHERS DONT=SC RESEARCH=http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/personalitystudies/case_types.cfm#CORT
/////////////////NO TIDY ANS
/////////////////
///////////////////REINCARNATION=RATIONAL EXPLANATION OR STRANGE FORCES AT WORK
//////////////////////DEBASHIS BASAK ANECDOTE OF REINCARN
/////////////////////HARDER TO EXPLAIN AWAY
/////////////////////////FALSE MEMORIES VIA TV,STORIES,INET,FANTASY,
/////////////////The trouble with statements about death, as one popular aphorism points out, is that 99.9 percent of them are made by people who are still alive. Death continues to be, at this point in time, one of life’s enduring mysteries. Whatever the miracles of modern science, and whatever glimpses we have been afforded of the world beyond, an objective understanding of what happens after death may always an enticing but ultimately ungraspable goal, a mirage forever receding on the horizon of our culture. But we live in a rapidly changing world, and in so many areas of life, the previously unthinkable is becoming possible. Perhaps one day in the not-too-distant future, we may wake up to find that, miraculously, death itself has become transparent to the ever-expanding field of human knowledge. And like the Tibetans hundreds of years ago, we may find ourselves rewriting the book on what happens at the end of life . . . and at the beginning.
ABOD=http://www.wie.org/j32/reincarnation.asp?pf=1
SURVIVAL RESEARCH
////////////////////PAST LF MEMORIES=
FINDING MY RELIGION
Psychiatrist Jim B. Tucker studies past-life memories of children
David Ian Miller, Special to SF Gate
Monday, June 12, 2006
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2006/06/12/findrelig.DTL
/////////////////////CHILDREN TEND TO LOSE THESE MEMORIES BY 6 OR 7 YRS
/////////////SOMETHINGS TIE IN OTHERS DONT=SC RESEARCH=http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/personalitystudies/case_types.cfm#CORT
/////////////////NO TIDY ANS
/////////////////
ILR CRSS=ARTALAD=EDIS=BTKAT 130+
////////////////////////Cold Evidence for a Cosmic "Texture"?October 25, 2007 A ripple in the cosmic background radiation hints at an irregularity in spacetime. . . maybe. > read more
///////////////////SILENCE OF THE BEES=COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER
//////////////////////TO IMPOSE DISCIPLINE
////////////////////////NIKE=
Philosopher's Notes: Just Do It.
"What would you do if you weren't afraid?"
~ Unknown
As Ralph Waldo Emerson teaches us, "Always, always, always, always, always do what you are afraid to do."
He also advises, "Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain."
I guess he felt pretty strongly about it.
What would you do if you weren't afraid?
Just do it.
Philosopher's Notes: Just Do It.
"What would you do if you weren't afraid?"
~ Unknown
As Ralph Waldo Emerson teaches us, "Always, always, always, always, always do what you are afraid to do."
He also advises, "Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain."
I guess he felt pretty strongly about it.
What would you do if you weren't afraid?
Just do it.
///////////////////I FEEL FOR U,UNFORTUNATELY THE FEELING IS NAUSEA
/////////////////////AXDENTAL INSERTION OF XX INTO LF=NAYIKA SANGBAD
/////////////////////////////////////THE INNOCENT 60s OF BLACK AND WHITE MOVIES
///////////////////////BLS CRTSY=What People with Cancer Want You to Know
Lori Hope ne in two men and one in three women will get cancer during their lifetimes, according to the American Cancer Society. The advent of new treatments has allowed many cancer patients to live relatively normal lives, and about nine million Americans are cancer survivors.
When someone has cancer, friends and family members want to help and give support, but sometimes they unknowingly say things that may be disturbing. There are many ways to express concern and love when someone is faced with cancer or any serious illness... and just as many ways to make someone cringe. Here's what cancer survivors wish people would do...
BE PRESENT
People may disappear or withdraw when a loved one gets sick. Some are afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. Others are geared toward fixing problems and get frustrated when they can't help. Still others have experienced their own tragedies with cancer and don't feel strong enough to face the emotional turmoil again.
Though it's uncomfortable to confront a person's outpourings of fear and grief, make the effort. Cancer patients need to cry and release their pain. One of the greatest acts of love is to be with him/her, to listen as he shares his fears.
If you live far away, call or write. Let him know that he's loved... that he matters... and that your heart is with him.
If you simply can't be there, at least explain why the situation is too difficult for you to cope with.
GIVE HOPE
People often talk about their own experiences when they meet a person who has cancer. Their intention may be to show empathy or unload their own burdens, but the stories can hurt more than help.
Example: When people heard about my diagnosis, many said things like, "Lung cancer -- that's really bad." A waiter at an Italian restaurant even told me that his wife died of the same cancer. He shared all the gruesome details -- about the surgery, how the cancer returned and how she died. It brought back all of my own terror.
People who have cancer don't need to be reminded that they could die -- they live with that fear every day. They would rather hear stories of hope and success.
Better: When I told my cousin about my diagnosis, she related a story about one of her professors who had had the same cancer 20 years before -- and who is still alive and healthy.
When I told my best friend, with whom I have always taken an annual vacation, she said that we would still be vacationing together when we're old ladies. That's the type of encouragement people with cancer need to hear.
ASK PERMISSION
Few of us ask permission before sharing our feelings or advice, but asking permission is important when you are dealing with someone who has a life-threatening illness. That's when people are at their weakest and most vulnerable.
People say things like, "You really should try this immune-boosting herb" or "You should ask your doctor about this new treatment I read about." The word "should" suggests that the person with cancer would be remiss not to take your advice.
Instead, ask him if he is interested in your advice or information or wants to hear your stories. Back off if he says no. Possible ways to ask...
"I have been looking into this type of cancer. Would you like to hear some of the treatment options I've read about?"
"A friend told me about an herb that might help. Would you like to hear about it?"
LAUGH
We all tend to be overly serious when we're with people who have serious illnesses. That's appropriate some of the time, but not all the time. People with cancer may want to forget the pain and just laugh and be happy.
I interviewed a woman who received a cancer diagnosis on a Friday. She had all weekend to worry before she saw her doctor again on Monday, so to make herself feel better, she went to a video store and rented a bunch of comedies.
Going through cancer is not all about fear. There's always room for humor and joy.
DON'T HARP ON POSITIVE THINKING
It's normal to be angry, depressed or sad when you have cancer. No one feels positive all the time. Nevertheless, friends and family members often nag cancer patients about the importance of positive thinking and tune them out when they express worries, pessimism or fear.
The implication is that the cancer is somehow the patient's fault or that he can control the outcome. There's a myth that some people have a "cancer personality." There's no truth to it -- and it implicitly blames the patient for causing the disease.
It is important to understand that people who have cancer need to allow themselves to feel everything. They shouldn't have to hide their true emotions. It's okay to feel rotten sometimes.
SPARE THE PLATITUDES
Platitudes are reassuring words that usually are said without much thought or understanding.
Everyone with cancer has heard things like, "You never know how much time any of us has -- you could go outside tomorrow and get hit by a truck."
One woman I talked to had heard this cliché at least 10 times from people she knew -- even from her doctor. Her comment? "Okay, so then in addition to the fact that I could die from cancer, I might also get hit by a truck." That isn't comforting.
No one who has had cancer sees it as "a gift." Cancer patients don't want to hear how lucky they are or what they can learn from the experience. They just want to get better.
Silence and compassion are more helpful than empty words.
Lori Hope ne in two men and one in three women will get cancer during their lifetimes, according to the American Cancer Society. The advent of new treatments has allowed many cancer patients to live relatively normal lives, and about nine million Americans are cancer survivors.
When someone has cancer, friends and family members want to help and give support, but sometimes they unknowingly say things that may be disturbing. There are many ways to express concern and love when someone is faced with cancer or any serious illness... and just as many ways to make someone cringe. Here's what cancer survivors wish people would do...
BE PRESENT
People may disappear or withdraw when a loved one gets sick. Some are afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. Others are geared toward fixing problems and get frustrated when they can't help. Still others have experienced their own tragedies with cancer and don't feel strong enough to face the emotional turmoil again.
Though it's uncomfortable to confront a person's outpourings of fear and grief, make the effort. Cancer patients need to cry and release their pain. One of the greatest acts of love is to be with him/her, to listen as he shares his fears.
If you live far away, call or write. Let him know that he's loved... that he matters... and that your heart is with him.
If you simply can't be there, at least explain why the situation is too difficult for you to cope with.
GIVE HOPE
People often talk about their own experiences when they meet a person who has cancer. Their intention may be to show empathy or unload their own burdens, but the stories can hurt more than help.
Example: When people heard about my diagnosis, many said things like, "Lung cancer -- that's really bad." A waiter at an Italian restaurant even told me that his wife died of the same cancer. He shared all the gruesome details -- about the surgery, how the cancer returned and how she died. It brought back all of my own terror.
People who have cancer don't need to be reminded that they could die -- they live with that fear every day. They would rather hear stories of hope and success.
Better: When I told my cousin about my diagnosis, she related a story about one of her professors who had had the same cancer 20 years before -- and who is still alive and healthy.
When I told my best friend, with whom I have always taken an annual vacation, she said that we would still be vacationing together when we're old ladies. That's the type of encouragement people with cancer need to hear.
ASK PERMISSION
Few of us ask permission before sharing our feelings or advice, but asking permission is important when you are dealing with someone who has a life-threatening illness. That's when people are at their weakest and most vulnerable.
People say things like, "You really should try this immune-boosting herb" or "You should ask your doctor about this new treatment I read about." The word "should" suggests that the person with cancer would be remiss not to take your advice.
Instead, ask him if he is interested in your advice or information or wants to hear your stories. Back off if he says no. Possible ways to ask...
"I have been looking into this type of cancer. Would you like to hear some of the treatment options I've read about?"
"A friend told me about an herb that might help. Would you like to hear about it?"
LAUGH
We all tend to be overly serious when we're with people who have serious illnesses. That's appropriate some of the time, but not all the time. People with cancer may want to forget the pain and just laugh and be happy.
I interviewed a woman who received a cancer diagnosis on a Friday. She had all weekend to worry before she saw her doctor again on Monday, so to make herself feel better, she went to a video store and rented a bunch of comedies.
Going through cancer is not all about fear. There's always room for humor and joy.
DON'T HARP ON POSITIVE THINKING
It's normal to be angry, depressed or sad when you have cancer. No one feels positive all the time. Nevertheless, friends and family members often nag cancer patients about the importance of positive thinking and tune them out when they express worries, pessimism or fear.
The implication is that the cancer is somehow the patient's fault or that he can control the outcome. There's a myth that some people have a "cancer personality." There's no truth to it -- and it implicitly blames the patient for causing the disease.
It is important to understand that people who have cancer need to allow themselves to feel everything. They shouldn't have to hide their true emotions. It's okay to feel rotten sometimes.
SPARE THE PLATITUDES
Platitudes are reassuring words that usually are said without much thought or understanding.
Everyone with cancer has heard things like, "You never know how much time any of us has -- you could go outside tomorrow and get hit by a truck."
One woman I talked to had heard this cliché at least 10 times from people she knew -- even from her doctor. Her comment? "Okay, so then in addition to the fact that I could die from cancer, I might also get hit by a truck." That isn't comforting.
No one who has had cancer sees it as "a gift." Cancer patients don't want to hear how lucky they are or what they can learn from the experience. They just want to get better.
Silence and compassion are more helpful than empty words.
/////////////////////SANDHYA SONGS OF CHILDHOOD NOSTALGIA
///////////////////////MUTUAL RECIPROCATED KISSING
////////////////Life Extension Update Exclusive
Animals on calorie restricted diets stay fit longer
The October issue of Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences reported the discovery of researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo that restricting calories, a technique long proven to extend the life span of laboratory animals, enabled rats to maintain their physical fitness into their later years.
UB School of Public Health and Health Professions assistant professor of exercise and nutrition sciences Tongjian You, PhD, and associates evaluated 18, 24 and 29 month old male rats, equivalent in age to humans 50 to 70 years old. The animals had been divided to eat as much as they wanted from birth or to receive diets that contained 40 percent fewer calories than the normal amount. The rats were tested for grip, swimming speed, muscle tone and stamina, and data was obtained on whole body mass, lean body mass, fat mass, proinflammatory cytokine levels, and C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation.
Rats that received the restricted diets had significantly higher physical performance scores than animals on normal diets, less body and visceral fat and a reduced fat to lean ratio. The animals also experience lower adipose secretion of the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6) and decreased circulating C-reactive protein.
Reduced levels of interleukin-6 may be the mechanism through which the benefits associated with calorie restriction in this study occurred. Inflammation can cause chronic disease and reduce physical performance.
"This is the first study to report that caloric restriction reduced production in visceral fat of the inflammatory cytokine IL-6 and enhanced performance on overall physical function assessments," Dr You announced. "In addition, rats that ate a normal diet lost a significant amount of lean muscle mass and acquired more fat, while calorie-restricted rats maintained lean muscle mass as they aged."
"Based on an average of 2,000 calories per day for adult women and 2,500 for men, cutting by 40 percent would mean surviving on 1,200 and 1,500 calories per day, respectively,” Dr You observed. "It's very difficult for people to maintain that type of diet for short periods of time, and it would be nearly impossible over a lifetime, while staying healthy."
Dr You suggested restricting calories by 8 percent as a more practical goal. "Preclinical testing of this 8-percent regimen could be informative and beneficial in translating to humans,” he noted.
Health Concern
Caloric restriction
It appears that caloric restriction works by slowing biological aging in many ways, including decreasing reactive oxygen species (ROS) damage to cells, limiting inflammation, enhancing insulin sensitivity, and repairing damaged cells. Certain nutrients have demonstrated similar effects, leading one group of researchers (Lemon JA et al 2005) to attempt to mimic calorie restriction with optimal nutrition (CRON) with a formula containing 31 ingredients that included a wide range of antioxidants and nutrients that have been extensively studied in humans (such as vitamin E, vitamin C, coenzyme Q10, glutathione precursors, and essential fatty acids).
This formula was given to normal mice and mice that over-expressed growth hormone. The mice that over-expressed growth hormone were larger and had a shorter life span than the normal ones, presumably because they aged faster.
The results were dramatic. Supplementation extended the life span of the growth hormone mice by 28 percent, to 431 days. In normal mice, supplementation extended life span by 11 percent on average, from 688 days to 765 days (Lemon JA et al 2005).
How does this 11 percent increase in longevity in normal mice compare to caloric restriction? Although a CRON group was not included in the study described above, other investigators have reported that 40 percent restriction in calories increased survival in the same strain of mice about 19 percent (Forster MJ et al 2003). Thus, supplementation yielded about half as much longevity as caloric restriction.
http://www.lef.org/protocols/lifestyle_longevity/caloric_restriction_01.htm
Animals on calorie restricted diets stay fit longer
The October issue of Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences reported the discovery of researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo that restricting calories, a technique long proven to extend the life span of laboratory animals, enabled rats to maintain their physical fitness into their later years.
UB School of Public Health and Health Professions assistant professor of exercise and nutrition sciences Tongjian You, PhD, and associates evaluated 18, 24 and 29 month old male rats, equivalent in age to humans 50 to 70 years old. The animals had been divided to eat as much as they wanted from birth or to receive diets that contained 40 percent fewer calories than the normal amount. The rats were tested for grip, swimming speed, muscle tone and stamina, and data was obtained on whole body mass, lean body mass, fat mass, proinflammatory cytokine levels, and C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation.
Rats that received the restricted diets had significantly higher physical performance scores than animals on normal diets, less body and visceral fat and a reduced fat to lean ratio. The animals also experience lower adipose secretion of the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6) and decreased circulating C-reactive protein.
Reduced levels of interleukin-6 may be the mechanism through which the benefits associated with calorie restriction in this study occurred. Inflammation can cause chronic disease and reduce physical performance.
"This is the first study to report that caloric restriction reduced production in visceral fat of the inflammatory cytokine IL-6 and enhanced performance on overall physical function assessments," Dr You announced. "In addition, rats that ate a normal diet lost a significant amount of lean muscle mass and acquired more fat, while calorie-restricted rats maintained lean muscle mass as they aged."
"Based on an average of 2,000 calories per day for adult women and 2,500 for men, cutting by 40 percent would mean surviving on 1,200 and 1,500 calories per day, respectively,” Dr You observed. "It's very difficult for people to maintain that type of diet for short periods of time, and it would be nearly impossible over a lifetime, while staying healthy."
Dr You suggested restricting calories by 8 percent as a more practical goal. "Preclinical testing of this 8-percent regimen could be informative and beneficial in translating to humans,” he noted.
Health Concern
Caloric restriction
It appears that caloric restriction works by slowing biological aging in many ways, including decreasing reactive oxygen species (ROS) damage to cells, limiting inflammation, enhancing insulin sensitivity, and repairing damaged cells. Certain nutrients have demonstrated similar effects, leading one group of researchers (Lemon JA et al 2005) to attempt to mimic calorie restriction with optimal nutrition (CRON) with a formula containing 31 ingredients that included a wide range of antioxidants and nutrients that have been extensively studied in humans (such as vitamin E, vitamin C, coenzyme Q10, glutathione precursors, and essential fatty acids).
This formula was given to normal mice and mice that over-expressed growth hormone. The mice that over-expressed growth hormone were larger and had a shorter life span than the normal ones, presumably because they aged faster.
The results were dramatic. Supplementation extended the life span of the growth hormone mice by 28 percent, to 431 days. In normal mice, supplementation extended life span by 11 percent on average, from 688 days to 765 days (Lemon JA et al 2005).
How does this 11 percent increase in longevity in normal mice compare to caloric restriction? Although a CRON group was not included in the study described above, other investigators have reported that 40 percent restriction in calories increased survival in the same strain of mice about 19 percent (Forster MJ et al 2003). Thus, supplementation yielded about half as much longevity as caloric restriction.
http://www.lef.org/protocols/lifestyle_longevity/caloric_restriction_01.htm
CAL RESTRICTION REDUCES INTERLEUKIN RELATED AGEING
////////////////////Halloween [Oct 31]
Make A Difference Day [Oct 27]
Mother-in-law's Day [Oct 28]
.////////////////////////http://www.universetoday.com/2007/10/23/galaxy-caught-stealing-gas/#more-11970One galaxy gobbles another galaxy's gas
///////////////////http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21422845/Dinosaurs once roamed the pole
///////////////////CANCER-5 STAGES=http://www2.mdanderson.org/depts/oncolog/articles/07/10-oct/10-07-hc.html
//////////////////WYE, WYG=WHAT YOU EXPECTED,WHAT YOU GOT
WYSIWYG=WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET
///////////////////LONG CLOUDY WINTRY AFTERNOONS OF DARK DEPRESSION
//////////////////GOLEMALE GOLEMALE PIRIT KORO NA
/////////////////////BIONIC ACCENT=?CHER
///////////////////PPL PLEASING CONTROL FREAK
/////////////////RT BRAINED OR LEFT=ME LEFT=http://wewe-wetwet.com/?p=443
//////////////////TAXI CAB CONFESSIONS
///////////////////HUMAN FACE FISH=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTVwgvqhwn8
//////////////////EXUBERANT EXTROVERT ATTITUDE OF WEST
VS CONTEMPLATIVE,PHILOSOPHICAL ATTITUDE OF EAST
//////////////////////////ALMOST A FEELING TO JUMP IN=http://slightlywarped.com/crapfactory/amazingimages/volcanoes.htm
BTGON
////////////////////SITN GETTING OOC=OUT OF CONTROL
///////////////////RAIL GAVE OWN FIRST JOB
/////////////////////DROPPED IN AND LIKED IT
////////////////////MRRG FIGHTS=DO NOT ACCUSE=http://www.essentiallifeskills.net/relationship.html
//////////////////////CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPN=http://timepass.onlyfanpics.com/?thenewtitanic
///////////////////////The Day The Earth Nearly Died - programme summary
250 million years ago, long before dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the land and oceans teemed with life. This was the Permian, a golden era of biodiversity that was about to come to a crashing end. Within just a few thousand years, 95% of the lifeforms on the planet would be wiped out, in the biggest mass extinction Earth has ever known. What natural disaster could kill on such a massive scale? It is only in recent years that evidence has begun to emerge from rocks in Antarctica, Siberia and Greenland.
"At the end of the Permian you'd see virtually nothing alive"
Professor Peter Ward, University of Washington
The demise of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago (at the so-called K/T boundary), was as nothing compared to the Permian mass extinction. The K/T event killed off 60% of life on Earth; the Permian event 95%. Geological data to explain the destruction have been hard to find, simply because the rocks are so old and therefore subject to all kinds of erosion processes. It seems plausible that some kind of catastrophic environmental change must have made life untenable across vast swathes of the planet.
250 million years ago, long before dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the land and oceans teemed with life. This was the Permian, a golden era of biodiversity that was about to come to a crashing end. Within just a few thousand years, 95% of the lifeforms on the planet would be wiped out, in the biggest mass extinction Earth has ever known. What natural disaster could kill on such a massive scale? It is only in recent years that evidence has begun to emerge from rocks in Antarctica, Siberia and Greenland.
"At the end of the Permian you'd see virtually nothing alive"
Professor Peter Ward, University of Washington
The demise of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago (at the so-called K/T boundary), was as nothing compared to the Permian mass extinction. The K/T event killed off 60% of life on Earth; the Permian event 95%. Geological data to explain the destruction have been hard to find, simply because the rocks are so old and therefore subject to all kinds of erosion processes. It seems plausible that some kind of catastrophic environmental change must have made life untenable across vast swathes of the planet.
///////////////////
The Day The Earth Nearly Died - questions and answers
Can we estimate how much life there was on Earth before the Permian extinction events?
We have no way of knowing how densely the Permian world was inhabited or how large the different animal populations were because the fossil record is too patchy and inaccurate. However we do know that what was significant about the Permian world was that, for the first time, practically every ecological niche was occupied. This was a self-sustaining world as complete, in its way, as ours is today. In fact this was the first time such a complete array of creatures had existed.
Moreover we know that some of these creatures were in the process of evolving into mammals and were, therefore evolutionarily, extremely sophisticated. The early dinosaur period, which followed the Permian extinction, was much less sophisticated. In this sense, the Permian extinction marks a step back in evolution. Indeed it's doubtful the early dinosaurs - which were evolutionarily rather primitive - would have been able to find a niche in the world had the more advanced animals of the Permian world not been wiped out. In other words, the Permian extinction probably cleared the way for the dinosaurs and if there hadn't been a Permian extinction, there may not have been any dinosaurs.
What proportion of plants and animals survived the end of the Permian?
The Permian extinction wiped out around 95% of all life on earth. By contrast the extinction which ended the reign of the dinosaurs killed a mere 65% of all life. Almost all scientists agree the Permian extinction was the biggest recorded event of its kind in the history of the world.
What new information does this insight into Permian extinction offer on dinosaur extinction, 200 million years later?
The Permian extinction, and the later K/T extinction which wiped out the dinosaurs, have led some scientists to suggest that extinctions are a normal part of evolution; that the extinction of one species clears the way for the next. Thus the extinction of the Permian's thorapsids, or mammal-like creatures, cleared the way for the early reptilian dinosaurs, and the extinction of the dinosaurs cleared the way for mammals. If this is true then evolution is not a smooth process of advance but is marked by steps and even reverses.
It may also be true that there is an intimate relationship between the evolution of life and the physical/geological development of the earth. In other words as the earth has undergone geological change, so have the animals that have lived on it. Geology and evolution go hand in hand, each throwing light on the other.
What theories are there for how such a large animal as lystrosaurus could have weathered the climate warming by 10°C?
Lystrosaurus was a herbivore and is believed to be the ancestor of every mammal now on Earth. Nobody really knows why some animals survived the extinction and others didn't. In particular we can only guess at why lystrosaurus was the only thorapsid (mammal-like creature) to survive. Paleontologists speculate, from looking at its fossil remains, that it may have had a particularly well adapted jaw or mouth which enabled it to eat tough woody vegetation and thus survive in desert like conditions. This is only an informed guess.
Why does Greenland have such useful geological records for this period?
The Permian geological record is extremely patchy across the world. This is partly because it was such a long time ago (roughly 290 million - 250 million years ago) and has been overlain or disrupted by later geological activity, and partly because many parts of the Permian world - and in particular most of what is now Europe and North America - were hot and desert like and the fossil record vaporised. Thus the Permian rocks in Britain, for instance, are mostly a red sandstone which contains no fossils; some of the bst examples of this are along the dorset coast in the cliffs around budleigh salterton.
One of the results of this absence of Permian fossils in Europe and North America is that, for many years, scientists were extremely ignorant about the Permian period. This ignorance has been exacerbated by the fact that, by a perverse set of accidental circumstances, the best Permian fossil records tend to be in some of the most physically or politically challenging places which have been extremely expensive or politically difficult to visit. As a result it's only in recent years that scientists have begun to collect accurate data on the period.
Does the theory rule out the possibility of an asteroid sparking off the extinction period? Could the extensive movement of continents since then not have erased any huge impact crater?
The debate about what caused the Permian extinction remains unresolved. The weight of evidence currently tends to discount a large meteor as the culprit and to favour a multicausal explanation: probably volcanism and methane. But new evidence could, once again, turn all this on its head. It is possible that somebody may, one day, find the crucial evidence of a meteor impact that is currently missing. It may be that the impact crater, for instance, has been buried under later geological activity, or is hidden on the bottom of an ocean. All we can say for sure is that nobody has yet found all the usual indicators of a large meteor impact. That doesn't mean they do not exist.
Is there any pattern emerging in the timing of such mass extinctions?
No. There is no apparent pattern to the timing of the different extinction events in the Earth's history. However, if it's true that the geological evolution of the Earth is related to the evolution of life on Earth, then if, in the future, geology becomes a predictive science then we may be able to predict future extinctions. Indeed to the extent that we are correctly predicting global warming we may already be partly along this road. What we don't know, with any certainty, is how adaptable life, in all its different guises, is to change.
How much of a threat to global climate change is there still from sub-sea methane hydrate?
The existence of huge reservoirs of frozen methane hydrate around the world's coasts is a relatively recent discovery and nobody knows quite how unstable it is or what it would take, today, to melt it. Scientists calculate that a global increase of 10°C might have been sufficient to release frozen methane hydrate during the Permian period but nobody knows whether that would be sufficient under today's conditions. What is clear, however, is that should it be released, huge quantities of greenhouse gases would escape into the atmosphere and the world would very rapidly warm up.
The Day The Earth Nearly Died - questions and answers
Can we estimate how much life there was on Earth before the Permian extinction events?
We have no way of knowing how densely the Permian world was inhabited or how large the different animal populations were because the fossil record is too patchy and inaccurate. However we do know that what was significant about the Permian world was that, for the first time, practically every ecological niche was occupied. This was a self-sustaining world as complete, in its way, as ours is today. In fact this was the first time such a complete array of creatures had existed.
Moreover we know that some of these creatures were in the process of evolving into mammals and were, therefore evolutionarily, extremely sophisticated. The early dinosaur period, which followed the Permian extinction, was much less sophisticated. In this sense, the Permian extinction marks a step back in evolution. Indeed it's doubtful the early dinosaurs - which were evolutionarily rather primitive - would have been able to find a niche in the world had the more advanced animals of the Permian world not been wiped out. In other words, the Permian extinction probably cleared the way for the dinosaurs and if there hadn't been a Permian extinction, there may not have been any dinosaurs.
What proportion of plants and animals survived the end of the Permian?
The Permian extinction wiped out around 95% of all life on earth. By contrast the extinction which ended the reign of the dinosaurs killed a mere 65% of all life. Almost all scientists agree the Permian extinction was the biggest recorded event of its kind in the history of the world.
What new information does this insight into Permian extinction offer on dinosaur extinction, 200 million years later?
The Permian extinction, and the later K/T extinction which wiped out the dinosaurs, have led some scientists to suggest that extinctions are a normal part of evolution; that the extinction of one species clears the way for the next. Thus the extinction of the Permian's thorapsids, or mammal-like creatures, cleared the way for the early reptilian dinosaurs, and the extinction of the dinosaurs cleared the way for mammals. If this is true then evolution is not a smooth process of advance but is marked by steps and even reverses.
It may also be true that there is an intimate relationship between the evolution of life and the physical/geological development of the earth. In other words as the earth has undergone geological change, so have the animals that have lived on it. Geology and evolution go hand in hand, each throwing light on the other.
What theories are there for how such a large animal as lystrosaurus could have weathered the climate warming by 10°C?
Lystrosaurus was a herbivore and is believed to be the ancestor of every mammal now on Earth. Nobody really knows why some animals survived the extinction and others didn't. In particular we can only guess at why lystrosaurus was the only thorapsid (mammal-like creature) to survive. Paleontologists speculate, from looking at its fossil remains, that it may have had a particularly well adapted jaw or mouth which enabled it to eat tough woody vegetation and thus survive in desert like conditions. This is only an informed guess.
Why does Greenland have such useful geological records for this period?
The Permian geological record is extremely patchy across the world. This is partly because it was such a long time ago (roughly 290 million - 250 million years ago) and has been overlain or disrupted by later geological activity, and partly because many parts of the Permian world - and in particular most of what is now Europe and North America - were hot and desert like and the fossil record vaporised. Thus the Permian rocks in Britain, for instance, are mostly a red sandstone which contains no fossils; some of the bst examples of this are along the dorset coast in the cliffs around budleigh salterton.
One of the results of this absence of Permian fossils in Europe and North America is that, for many years, scientists were extremely ignorant about the Permian period. This ignorance has been exacerbated by the fact that, by a perverse set of accidental circumstances, the best Permian fossil records tend to be in some of the most physically or politically challenging places which have been extremely expensive or politically difficult to visit. As a result it's only in recent years that scientists have begun to collect accurate data on the period.
Does the theory rule out the possibility of an asteroid sparking off the extinction period? Could the extensive movement of continents since then not have erased any huge impact crater?
The debate about what caused the Permian extinction remains unresolved. The weight of evidence currently tends to discount a large meteor as the culprit and to favour a multicausal explanation: probably volcanism and methane. But new evidence could, once again, turn all this on its head. It is possible that somebody may, one day, find the crucial evidence of a meteor impact that is currently missing. It may be that the impact crater, for instance, has been buried under later geological activity, or is hidden on the bottom of an ocean. All we can say for sure is that nobody has yet found all the usual indicators of a large meteor impact. That doesn't mean they do not exist.
Is there any pattern emerging in the timing of such mass extinctions?
No. There is no apparent pattern to the timing of the different extinction events in the Earth's history. However, if it's true that the geological evolution of the Earth is related to the evolution of life on Earth, then if, in the future, geology becomes a predictive science then we may be able to predict future extinctions. Indeed to the extent that we are correctly predicting global warming we may already be partly along this road. What we don't know, with any certainty, is how adaptable life, in all its different guises, is to change.
How much of a threat to global climate change is there still from sub-sea methane hydrate?
The existence of huge reservoirs of frozen methane hydrate around the world's coasts is a relatively recent discovery and nobody knows quite how unstable it is or what it would take, today, to melt it. Scientists calculate that a global increase of 10°C might have been sufficient to release frozen methane hydrate during the Permian period but nobody knows whether that would be sufficient under today's conditions. What is clear, however, is that should it be released, huge quantities of greenhouse gases would escape into the atmosphere and the world would very rapidly warm up.
///////////////////IRIDIUM-COMMON CONTENT OF METEORS
/////////////////////// It's called the Permian mass extinction and it was the worst disaster ever to hit earth-250 mya
/////////////////////INTERNET EXPLORIAN OR COMPUTER GEEKUS
////////////////////FAV ART=http://www.monicel.info/2007/09/16/fruit-and-veggie-art/
///////////////////TIGERS-NEARLY GONE=http://thirdeyedumb.com/2007/05/tigers_amazing_wildcats.html
//////////////////HALLOWEEN=NIGHTMARE B4 CHRISTMAS
///////////////////////
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