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Around the globe, scientists are racing to solve a series of mysteries. Unsettling transformations are sweeping across the planet, and clue by clue, investigators around the world are assembling a new picture of Earth, discovering ways that seemingly disparate events are connected. Crumbling houses in New Orleans are linked to voracious creatures from southern China. Vanishing forests in Yellowstone are linked to the disappearance of wolves. An asthma epidemic in the Caribbean is linked to dust storms in Africa. Scientists suspect we have entered a time of global change swifter than any human being has ever witnessed. Where are we headed? What can we do to alter this course of events?
National Geographic's Strange Days on Planet Earth, premiering in Spring 2005 on PBS, explores these questions. Drawing upon research being generated by a new discipline, Earth System Science (ESS), the series aims to create an innovative type of environmental awareness. By revealing a cause and effect relationship between what we as humans do to the Earth and what that in turn does to our environment and ecosystems, the series creates a new sense of environmental urgency. Award-winning actor, writer and director Edward Norton (Primal Fear, American History X, Italian Job) hosts the series. A dedicated environmental activist, Norton has a special interest in providing solar energy to low income families. Each of the four one-hour episodes is constructed as a high-tech detective story, with the fate of the planet at stake.
Posted by Melodie Munro on September 20, 2012 at 3:32pm
Setting the world on fire: Stunning picture of rare 'devil tornado' emerges
An astonished filmmaker has told of the moment he witnessed this rare fire tornado
(Picture: SWNS)
Chris Tangey had been out in Alice Springs, Australia, scouting locations for a new movie.
After finishing he went over to help workers at a cattle station when he was confronted by one of nature's most intimidating spectacles.
Just 300 metres away was a 30-metre high fire swirl which "sounded like a fighter jet", despite there being no wind in the area.
A fire tornado, also know as a fire devil, is caused when a column of warm, rising air comes into contact - or causes - a fire on the ground.
These fire whirls are known to last for around two minutes on the very rare occasions they take place.
But Chris found himself mesmerised by the tornado for more than 40 minutes.
The 52-year-old said: "The weather was perfectly still and it was about 25 degrees celsius - it was an entirely uneventful day.
"Then the next thing a man is yelling 'what the hell is that?' and I turned around and saw a 30-metre fire tornado.
"I was about 300 metres away and there was no wind but the tornado sounded just like a fighter jet. My jaw just dropped."
Chris, who runs Alice Springs Film and Television, in Australia, described it as a "once in ten lifetimes experience". He added: "I've been shooting in the outback for 23 years and I have never seen anything like it. We've heard about them but they're never seen.
"If I had known what was about to happen then I would have happily paid $1,000 to watch it.
"At any time there were three different tornadoes, it just kept going and going for 40 minutes.
"The whole experience was staggering and the length and variety were astonishing."
Although they are rare, these spectacles are extremely dangerous.
In 1923, a fire whirl emerged during Japan's Great Kanto Earthquake and killed 38,000 people in just 15 minutes.
Bedside proof of the non-locality of Consciousness...
Dr. Pim van Lommel on the fact of a Consciousness Beyond Biological Brain Life... Like the bottle contains the beer, but DOES NOT produce the beer... Similarly: The brain contains consciousness, but the brain DOES NOT produce consciousness!
Ian was night diving off the island of Mauritius when he was stung multiple times by Box Jellyfish, which are among the most venomous creatures in the world.
Ian is not 100% sure which species of Box Jelllyfish that stung him as it has been very hard to find info from Mauritius on them. Ian suffered as a child from allergies and had to take antihistamines on a regular basis as even a mosquito bite would cause him to swell up, so his reaction to these jellyfish stings was very bad.
His testimony relates how he clung to life while getting to hospital, was declared clinically dead soon afterwards, and how during this time he had an encounter with God, which radically changed the direction of his life.
The Picture, which can be viewed by clicking on the link, came to me in an email and I refer to it on this blog, because it so beautifully depicts the Earth surrounded by a glowing Merkabah field of Light in the shape of the Star Tetrahedron. This sacred geometric shape of Light creates a high frequency field of Light around whatever, or whomsoever, is inside of it. As such it creates a raised resonance state as well as a protective energy field.
We note the results of the efforts of the Light Beings who concentrate their efforts on Earth, as well as the Archangels who stand in attendance. All of this Light, beaming into Earth, can only be a good thing.
With the Merkabah field of Light in place around the Earth, we are assured that all who live here are stimulated by higher frequencies of Light. This means that human beings are more likely to start thinking from the basis of an awakened state of consciousness. From this we are more likely to choose to do the following:
Create more peace, both individually and collectively.
Live with the principles of Light and love in our hearts and minds.
Understand who we are as Souls.
Connect to our Soul Intent, and live that purpose, as human beings.
Realise what we are doing here on this planet.
Begin to understand what our purpose is for the future.
And, in this way, we gently and easily birth what has been termed the Golden Age on Earth. As we live the reality of truth, peace, harmony, tolerance and mutual co-operation we find there is no room in our lives for the lower resonance states no matter whether they are thoughts, emotions or actions, and we begin to live the reality and the truth of ONE.
Therefore, please actively participate in creating this state of ONENESS on Earth by keeping this picture in your mind’s eye and using it during a meditation, or print it out and put it in a place where you can look at it as often as possible. Our visual processes are a powerful means of creation, so when we consciously make use of them, we enhance their performance.
While we do this we note that calling in the Archangelic helpers of humanity and asking them to shine their Light on problem areas around the Earth, is all we need to do to raise the resonance of the whole planet.
The Shower Prophecies — Wisdom on a Bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Soap : Exclusive Renegade Health Article
Grab your reading glasses, cause Dr. Bronner’s kicking some serious knowledge in your bathroom.
A few months ago, I took the Dr. Bronner’s soap bottle out of the shower with me, dried it off, and started to read…
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably skimmed the bottle from time to time while taking your shower or bath. My challenge is that I was never able to get past the “All-One or None!”
proclamations or the “health-meat-salt-soap-tape” to read more than a few seconds.
This day, on which I clearly had nothing better to do, I thought I’d write a parody article poking fun at all the crazy things written on the label (again, see: “health-meat-salt-soap-tape), but instead I unexpectedly found some incredibly wise teachings.
Now, from all accounts I’ve heard and seen, Dr. Bronner was a very smart and very nutty man (and my article was originally going to highlight his eccentricities), but now after finding myself inspired by the words I’ve read, I’m going to share the 12 life’s lessons I’ve found on this incredibly loquacious soap bottle label written by this modern day sage.
Dr. Bronner’s Lesson #1: Embrace Work Hard and Discipline
“A great teacher, must first, be a self-supporting hardworker be, like Alesen – Baeck – Carnegie – Cousteau – Hammer – Leibman – Paine – Pike – Sanger – Spinoza – Strauss – Szasz – Wilke – Yadin – Zamenhof, or he’ll turn our greatest teaching into spades, to bury our people!” “All freedom loving children hate the word “Discipline!” Yet, self-discipline is the key to freedom! Without it, even the most brilliant head remains useless, ineffective, small! How basic is self-discipline? Anthropologist, Margaret Mead, found Arctic Timberwolves litter abandoned, the mother probably killed: ‘So, we put the timberwolf pups with out Dachshund mother, since she had only one pup of her own. She raised the timberwolves. Within three months, they were twice as large as their foster mother. Now when we threw a chunk of raw meat into the kennel, the pups attacked it ravenously, like timberwolves, but one grunt from their Dachshund mother, and they jumped back, stood still like a soldier at attention waiting obediently until the Daschund mother has eaten her fill, then with a loving grunt she gave them permission to go back and eat!’ That illustration of love-discipline was amazing; but any wild animal bird or bee, has that self-discipline down to a “T,” or there is no survival!”
Dr. Bronner’s Lesson #2: Be Brave
“To dream the Impossible dream! To reach that unreachable star! ’til All-One, All-One we are! To fight that unbeatable foe! To go where the brave dare not go! To right the unrightable wrong! To love pure, chaste, from afar! To try when your arms are too weary! ‘Til All-One, All-One we are! For this is my goal! To reach that unreachable star. no matter how hopeless, no matter how far! To fight for the right without question or pause, to be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause! For I know that if I follow this glorious quest, my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I’m laid to my rest! And I know that the world will be better for this, that one main, tortured, blinded, covered with scars, still strove with his last ounce of courage, to reach that unreachable star ’til united All-One, All-One we are!”
Dr. Bronner’s Lesson #3: Eat Healthy
“2nd, every body in God’s tremendous Universe must eat or there is no body! To shine on, eat must even the sun, consuming every second 4 million metric ton! To shine on, eat must even the sun!” “Absolute cleanliness is Godliness! Balanced food for body-mind-soul-spirit is our medicine!”
Dr. Bronner’s Lesson #4: Work Together
“3rd, every ton of good food requires teamwork in harmony with God’s law, timing-team-work-wisdom-power-mercy-love can reap 6 million more fruit above.”
“The trouble is that the wrong people are always the most energetic, united & intense, dividing the hardworker to die in self-defense! That fact alone brings Hitlers & Stalins to power & that fact will only change when we teach the whole Human race the Moral ABC of All-One-God-Faith, lighting-like, 6 billion strong & we’re All-One! All-One! All-One!”
“Beavers, by family teamwork, stay alive! Building dams, surviving the toughest winters without any welfare help to enjoy life!”
Dr. Bronner’s Lesson #5: Be True to Yourself
“If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you! If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, and yet make allowance for their doubting too! If you can wait and not be tired of waiting or being lied about, don’t deal in lies! Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, and yet don’t look too good nor talk too wise! If you can dream and not make dreams your master! If you can think and not make thoughts your aim! If you can meet with triumph or disaster and treat those two imposters just the same! If you can bear to hear the full-truth you have spoken twisted by crooks to make a trap for fools!
Or watch the things that you have given your life to broken, and stoop to build them up again with worn out tools! If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it at one turn of pitch or toss! And lose and start again at your beginnings and never breath a word about your loss! If you can force your heart, your nerve, your sinew, to serve you long after they are gone! And so hold on although there is nothing left within you except that voice that says to them “Hold on! Hold on!” If you can talk to crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings and not lose that common touch! If neither loving friend nor enemy can hurt you; if all men count with you, but none too much! If you can work hard to teach each unforgiving minute the Moral ABC, mason Hillel taught carpenter Jesus to unite all mankind free, come hell, hate, ban, you’ll enjoy God’s spaceship Earth & do great work within it; & which is more my son, you’ll be man! A man!”
“99. ‘An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot! It will succeed where diplomacy may fail! It will always unite the Human race where all else divides All-One-God-Faith!’”
Dr. Bronner’s Lesson #6: Be a Leader
“7th: Each swallow works hard to be perfect pilot-provider-builder-trainer-teacher-lover-mate, no half-true hate! So, each day like a bird, perfect thyself first! Have courage and smile my friend. Think and act 10 years ahead!”
Dr. Bronner’s Lesson #7: Have Faith
“The 1st law of God’s tremendous Universe is order! Absolute all-embracing, ever-evolving, ever-recreating, ever-loving order! Exceptions eternally? Absolute none!”
Dr. Bronner’s Lesson #8: Make the World a Better Place
“4th, any man raising 600 fruit trees in harmony with God’s law, timing-teamwork-wisdom-power-mercy-love can reap 6 million more fruit above, above! Exceptions? Eternal? Absolute”
Dr. Bronner’s Lesson #9: Share Your Wisdom with Others
“4th: Only hard work – God’s law can save us, but if we teach only our clan? We’re all hated then! So, we must teach friend & enemy, the whole Human race, the full-truth, hard-work, free speech, press-&-profitsharing Moral ABC’s All-One-God-Faith, lightning-like, 6 Billion strong, we’re All-One or none!”
Dr. Bronner’s Lesson #10: Be a Little Nuts
“8th: The mark of the mature man is his ability to work brave, teaching all, every slave, hot to replace coal-oil-gas-mineral-nuclear, unemployed-inflation, welfare-waste-war with Essene Birth-Control for very girl, Swiss 6000 year Universal Military Training UMT for full-employment, raising 1 trillion Isreal-system treas, 2 million Dutch dikes, 3 Greek mirror-solars, 4 Hannibal windpower plants, 76 million Planetemples teaching All-One-God-Faith, Austrian music, Babylon roof-gardens, California rain forests, China-bikes, Cartha-UMT, Catspaw sandals, compost tree, CO2 bomber, the Moral ABC, cattle-lemon-Esperanto. Finn-jails, gasohol, German solar-Zeppelins, Health-meat-salt-soap-tape, jojoba-aloevera-chia-ginseng-garlic, Kibbutz, Nature Friends, patents, Swiss economy, Town-Without-Toothache, Patrick Henry teaches PHt’s of USA-USSR H20 co-op, with 76 million battery-banks, powering every car-factory-farm-home-Milorganite-monorail!” (Huh?)
Dr. Bronner’s Lesson #11: Embrace Love
“Love is like a willful bird, do you want it? It flies away! Yet, when you least expect its bliss, it turns around and it’s here to stay!”
“12th: Over-population destroys God’s spaceship Earth, unless Essene controls limit all birth! Who else by God gave man this sensuous passion. Love that can spark mere dust to life! Beauty in our Eternal Father’s fashion! Poetry, uniting All-One, brave, all life! Who else by God can make Love last 1 trillion years of sweet eternities! For when conquered after years of toil-sweat-blood, Love can strike like greased lightning sent by God to spark mere dust to intense blazing fire and create new Love-faith-hope-guts-strength, as only God inspire!”
Dr. Bronner’s Lesson #12: We are All One!
“95: ‘I’ve never stooped so low as to hate any man! For I’ve learned that in the long run, all mankind needs-wants-loves whatever good work you’ve done! Regardless of your race, color, nationality or religion!’ Booker T. Washington, born a slave!”
“American democratic President Wilson, 1917, replaced Marxism by Lenin. “We are not a nation of classes, races, minority or pressure groups! Anybody trading on our race color, nationality or religious is not yet American, does not yet deserve to enjoy the liberties of the Stars & Stripes!”
(Extra quote is Dr. Bronner’s punctuation, not mine!)
There you have it, 12 life lessons from a crazy, old soap-maker.
Makes you wonder just how crazy he really was. Maybe we’re all nuts and he’s the one who had it right.
Anyway, today, why not get out there and live these principles like you never have before. What have you got to lose? Let the wisdom of a soap bottle change the way you live your life and teach others just the same. Who knows, you may just end up the “perfect pilot-provider-builder-trainer-teacher-lover-mate.”
We’re All-One! All-One or None! Eternal exceptions? None! (But don’t eat the health-meat-salt-soap-tape.)
If you want to read more, head on over here.
Your Question of the Day: Have you ever read the entire Dr. Bronner’s soap bottle?
Extra Credit: Watch the trailer for the Dr. Bronner documentary…
Give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way. Native American prayer
The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.
- Denis Waitley –
Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy. Jacques Maritain
The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.
- Steve Jobs –
I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.
Martha Washington
Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
Carl Gustav Jung
Love is so exquisitely elusive. It cannot be bought, cannot be badgered, cannot be hijacked. It is available only in one rare form: as the natural response of a healthy mind and healthy heart.
Eknath Easwaran
Words to Live By
I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
Abraham Maslow
Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.
Yoko Ono
Gratitude is twofold - love coming to visit us and love running out to greet a welcome guest.
Henry Van Dyke
If God sends you down a stony path, may God give you strong shoes. Irish Blessing
Daring to dream what is deepest in our collective longings is what makes us most human and fully alive.
Wendy Wright
The Vigil
Many an individual has turned from the mean, personal, acquisitive point of view to one that sees society as a whole and works for its benefit. If there has been such a change in one person, there can be the same change in many.
Mahatma Gandhi
Love makes labour light. Love alone gives value to all things.
St. Teresa of Avila
In the time of your life, live — so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.
The government has just announced a plan to spy on us all, to be pushed through “as soon as Parliamentary time allows”.
[1] They want to see details of who we call, text and email, and which websites we visit - without any kind of warrant or reason.
They want to force phone and internet companies to install special devices to provide all this data on each and every one of us.
[2] Experts are lining up to condemn this idea as intrusive, expensive and ineffective.
[3] But we know that when the Labour government announced similar plans a few years ago, a huge outcry was needed to make them to back down.
[4] So let's build a massive petition right away, to show David Cameron that British citizens simply won’t put up with the government spying on their every move.
A final version of the plan is due to be announced in just one month's time.
[5] We need to move fast if we're to get this scrapped before then. A big petition right now could persuade David Cameron to rethink before he commits too deeply. His officials will report the rising number of signatures to him. And they will warn him that he can expect voters to challenge him every step of the way.
MPs from different political parties are already expressing unease.
[6] One prominent Conservative MP, former shadow Home Secretary David Davis, has been in touch with the 38 Degrees office to say: "These plans would give the state huge new powers to snoop on ordinary people. They'd be expensive, unnecessary, and a huge invasion of everybody's privacy. If they are to be stopped, public pressure will be critical – including from 38 Degrees members".
David Cameron claims this will make us safer. But this is about spying on all of us, not serious criminals. It's already perfectly possible for the government to monitor people suspected of serious crimes, with proper permission and oversight.
[7] And serious criminals will inevitably find ways to hide their online identities.
Most importantly, this isn’t the kind of Britain we want to live in. We shouldn’t respond to criminals by abandoning our principles and scrapping basic civil liberties. We shouldn’t treat every citizen like a potential criminal who needs to be monitored. Help stand up for our right to privacy when we browse the internet or phone our friends - please sign the petition and spread the word now:
Marie, Cian, David, Hannah, Becky, James and the 38 Degrees
PS: This plan would be like demanding the Royal Mail keep a copy of every single letter it handles. It's exactly the kind of thing this government announced with a fanfare that they wouldn't do. If we let them get away with this, what comes next? ID cards? Long-term detention without trial? Sign the petition to put a stop to the government’s snooping plans now:
PPS: 38 Degrees members have been voting on whether to continue our campaign to protect the NHS. 96% voted yes to continuing to campaign! You can read an update on what will happen next, here: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/nhs-yes-vote-blog
[5] The plans are currently expected to be confirmed in the Queen's Speech on 9 May. The Queen's Speech is the formal occasion where the government outlines its plans for the coming session of parliament.
But is the UFO sighting authentic or just a computer-generated hoax?
Whatever the explanation, the video - which has racked up almost a million views since it was posted three days ago - has divided viewers. The owner of the video has speculated that it could be a military drone.
Others humorously suggest that it is a giant frisbee or flying Mentos.
Posted by Melodie Munro on February 27, 2012 at 3:25pm
Gandhi on Knowledge Without Character
[Pre-reading: Gandhi on the Power of One, from a January DailyGood]
[A] faith in the power of the individual formed the foundation for Gandhi’s extremely compassionate view of the industrial era’s large-scale problems, as well as of the smaller but no less urgent troubles we found in our own lives. Our problems, he would say, are not inevitable; they are not, as some historians and biologists have suggested, a necessary side effect of civilization.
On the contrary, war, economic injustice, and pollution arise because we have not yet learned to make use of our most civilizing capacities: the creativity and wisdom we all have as our birthright.
When even one person comes into full possession of these capacities, our problems are shown in their true light: they are simply the results of avoidable—though deadly—errors of judgment.
Gandhi formulated a series of diagnoses of the modern world’s seemingly perpetual state of crisis, which he called “the seven social sins.” I prefer to think of them as seven social ailments, since the problems they address are not crimes calling for punishment but crippling diseases that are punishment enough in themselves. The first—and the one we will focus on here—is knowledge without character. It traces all our difficulties to a simple lack of connection between what we know is good for us and our ability to act on that knowledge.
Knowledge Without Character
To me, the central paradox of our time is that despite our powerful intellectual skills and our ingenious engineering and medical achievements, we still lack the ability to live wisely. We send sophisticated satellites into space that beam us startling information about the destruction of the environment, yet we do little, if anything, to stop that destruction.
As Martin Luther King, Jr., put it, we live in a world of “guided missiles and misguided men,” where few technical problems are too complex to solve but we find it impossible to cope with the most basic of life’s challenges: how to live together in peace and health. In our lucid moments we see that we are doing great harm to ourselves and our planet, but somehow, for all our intellectual understanding, we cannot seem to change the way we think and live.
This is not to say we are bad people. The problem is simply that we have not yet completed our education. When Gandhi speaks of knowledge without character, he is not implying that we know too much for our own good. He is saying that because we do not understand what our real needs are, we are unable to use our tremendous technical expertise in a way that might make our lives more secure and fulfilling. Instead, we treat every problem as if it were a matter for technology, or chemistry, or economics, even when it has nothing to do with these things.
Every day, for example, dozens of new products appear, promising to satisfy our deepest desires. We are barraged with messages—subliminal and otherwise—on billboards and in magazines, on television and in the movies, telling us that everything we are looking for in life can be found in a car or a bowl of ice cream or a cigarette.
The hidden message is that what we own or eat or smoke has the power to endow us with self-respect. Actually, I would say it is the other way around. Your car may be useful and comfortable, it may have a wet bar and a cellular phone, but that is not why it is dignified. You, a human being, are the one who gives dignity to your car by driving it. If it were not for you, that car would be only a hunk of metal.
Over the past fifty years, the automobile, like so many of our appliances and machines, has sped down the now-familiar psychological highway from desirable luxury to basic necessity to tyrannical master. We no longer choose to drive a car—we have to: there are so many things to do, so little time to do them, and so far to travel in between. We rush about from place to place, caught in a perilous game of catch-up, and the price is high: nearly fifty thousand Americans lose their lives in traffic accidents every year. The irony is, we are often in such a hurry that we can’t get anywhere. I have read that commute time in Tokyo and London now is often less by bicycle than by car; and to judge by rush hour on our freeways, our situation is not much different.
Worse than the loss of time, of course, is the threat to our health. In each of those cars, according to recent research conducted in Los Angeles, commuters are exposed to two to four times the levels of cancer-causing toxic chemicals found outdoors. And as it idles there on the freeway, the average American car makes a significant contribution to the greenhouse effect, pumping its own weight in carbon into the atmosphere each year.
These things are not secrets. We have all heard them many times before, but we find it hard to do anything about them. Our cities and towns have grown in such a way that we feel helpless without a car. And as our cities expand ever farther into the surrounding countryside, the situation promises to get even worse.
The problem is that the roots of our dependence on the auto go deeper than the desire for a convenient mode of transportation. There is a much more powerful force at work here—a force that characterizes almost every activity in industrial society: profit. Under the relentless domination of the profit motive, we have remade our country in the image of the automobile. As the political historian Richard Barnet writes, describing America in the middle decades of this century, Buying highways meant buying motels, quick food eateries,…and the culture of suburbia….The highway system was the nation’s only physical plan, and more than anything else it determined the appearance of cities and the stretches in between. In choosing the automobile as the engine of growth, the highway and automotive planners scrapped mass transit.
Oil shortages and higher gasoline prices have led us to regret turning a blind eye toward such practices, yet we go on driving more and more, drilling new oil wells, making and buying more and bigger cars. In just one hundred years, urged on by the profit motive and the media conditioning that driving is entertainment and our car is an extension of our personality, we have used up nearly half of the world’s known petroleum reserves, fouled our air, and put our oceans and beaches at continual risk from oil spills.
Now, I have nothing against automobiles. I have a car, and I appreciate its utility. All I would say is, it is important to remember who is serving whom. If we were the masters of our machines—and our lives—we would have good, well-made cars and good roads on which to drive, but wouldn’t we also use them sparingly, so our children and our children’s children would have enough oil left to heat their homes?
Nor am I suggesting that there is anything wrong in a businessperson making enough profit to support his or her family in comfort—everyone should have this opportunity. But we have exaggerated the importance of profit out of all proportion to its natural place in business. We have become addicted to it, and that is a very dangerous situation.
Most addictions begin innocently enough. “Just one more helping, one more bowl of ice cream, one more cigarette, one more drink for the road.” That is how it starts—just one more: “Let’s sell just one more new car, make one more dollar, pump one more gallon of gas.”
When we give in to that desire repeatedly, with a second helping, a second smoke, a second drink, or a second sniff, it becomes a habit—not just one more but one every day: “The stockholders want to see this quarter’s profits rising above last quarter’s. Get the general manager on the phone and tell him to increase production, bolster demand, and heat up consumption. And do it yesterday.”
With a habit we still have a choice whether to give in or not, but when a habit continues long enough, we lose our power to choose. Our feeling of security becomes so closely attached to the thing we crave that we must have it, whatever the cost. The habit has become a compulsion, and we have become its servant. We will do anything for a profit, even if it means sacrificing our children’s precious seas, air, and earth. This is what Gandhi means by knowledge without character—a lack of connection between what we know to be in everyone’s long-range best interest and our ability to act on that knowledge. It has become the cornerstone of much of our business and our lives.
Posted by Melodie Munro on January 12, 2012 at 2:56pm
Angels on Earth
Pamela Kribbe channels Earth
Sweet human child,
I am the voice of the earth. I have known you forever. Your every footstep is felt and acknowledged by me. At the deepest level we are one. There is one consciousness that envelops us both. This consciousness is majestic and unnameable. It is the spirit of God. It is mysterious and at the same time deeply familiar. Within the hand of this creative Consciousness the game of our togetherness enfolds. Together we play a game; we are partners in a relationship that has evolved over time. This relationship is now ready for transformation. We are entering a new era. But first I will tell you more about the beginning of this process of our cooperation together. It is different from what you may have expected.
At our first coming together, you were not yet human. You did not possess a physical body. You were not incarnated upon earth. You were an angel. And you were not just any angel! You belonged to a family of angels who intended to pave the way for a new adventure in the cosmos. What was that adventure about? I will put this in very simple terms. In the cosmos, there is a law that like attracts like. For instance, after you die on earth, you are automatically drawn to an area in the spirit world that mirrors your state of consciousness. Your surroundings are a direct reflection of how you feel inside.
There is a unity between inner and outer. In the spirit world, there are realms of light and realms of relative darkness. These realms are separated. This is not the case on earth, or so it would appear. On earth many different types of consciousness are present together and interact with one another. There is great diversity, and therefore earth is like a huge melting pot of different realms of consciousness.
Even here, it is the case that you create your own reality by your inner state of consciousness. However, this is something you gradually come to understand in the course of a deep spiritual quest. At first, you are greatly distracted on earth by an external world that does not seem to be created by your own mind at all. On the contrary, you seem to be the product of that reality rather than its creator. In the spirit world, the unity between inner and outer is simply a given, concrete and palpable. On earth, it takes a highly evolved consciousness to realise that oneness, and to take responsibility for oneself as creator.
On earth a special experiment takes place. When you are here in physical form, a veil is put over you so that you do not recognise your own divine creative power. It remains there until you awaken and see that you are God at the core of your being. Then the veil drops and you also recognize the deep underlying oneness that pervades all living creatures on earth. The process of awakening on earth is intense, and the very existence of earth gives a powerful evolutionary impulse to the entire spirit world. In the spirit world especially, there can be a lack of dynamics and of change. Indeed stagnation has taken place because all realms are so neatly separated. Change, growth, evolution occur when you meet and confront otherness. When I speak of meeting up with otherness, I do not mean having a polite chat with it, but rather a truly plunging into it. You learn and grow from diverse forms of consciousness not by studying them ‘from above’, but by becoming them. This is exactly what happens when you plunge into incarnation on earth. You take a dive into the deep, and by incarnating you connect to diverse realms of consciousness. This is how you forge a bridge between realms of being which would not have connected otherwise.
Being human means to be a bridge between widely varying realms of consciousness. In the forging of that bridge lies the hope for an expansion of consciousness in all the realms of the spirit world. Even the highest evolved realm in the spirit world gains an impulse of growth and renewal from the great experiment on earth. Humans are able to explore the extremes of light and dark, and eventually recognize the oneness behind all forms and appearances. When human beings attain this consciousness of oneness within, they become conscious creators on earth, and their presence will have a transformative and healing effect on all living creatures they come in contact with.
Creating unity consciousness is the goal of your adventure on earth. I started this tale by mentioning that when we first began this process of cooperation, you were not humans but angels. Your consciousness had not yet attached itself to any material form, and you felt strongly connected with the other angels around you, your brothers and sisters. There was such a strong bond among you that you experienced yourself like the cells of one organism. You would work for a common good in a selfless, obvious way, being of the same mind and heart. At a certain moment, you heard a calling from earth. You were invited to embark on a journey with this planet. Why you?
To make a long story short: you were the bold ones among the angels. You were fearless, passionate and yes, somewhat stubborn and self-willed. The claim has been that you were banished from paradise because of your desire for knowledge and your wilfulness. And yes, you were indeed curious and a bit unruly too. But that was precisely as it was supposed to be! Did you think God made a mistake in creating you? Well no, God knew precisely what she/he was doing and by the way, God does not deem anything wrong or sinful easily. God is perfectly capable of living with your “sins”. You are the ones suffering most from it.
Although it is understandable that as a human being you may regret your own acts, it is not wise to be endlessly weighed down by them. In this respect you have suffered a lot from your religions which have put such a strong emphasis on guilt and punishment.
God is more gentle and compassionate that you would ever hold possible. You are forgiven even before you trespass. God whole-heartedly grants you the space to make mistakes. She/he rather prefers that you look upon your own mistakes with equanimity than that you beat yourselves up about it. All those “mistakes” are steps on the journey within, the journey on which you fully get to know yourself. This journey need not be straight, it is meant to be erratic. Without twists and turns, there is no experience, and without experience, no awakening. You first have to get lost to be able to come Home consciously. You were the ones taking the experience of “lostness” fully upon you, with the passion and the self-wilfulness that God him/herself planted in your hearts.
However, I am straying a bit from my subject!
Once you heard the call from earth, you entered my dimension. You found a planet rich in vegetation, with green forests, endless oceans and a burgeoning animal kingdom.
You were moved by the beauty and richness of life upon me. You felt invited to participate in this life, to inspire and nurture it with the angel energy that was at your disposal. I was happy with your arrival. You were my shepherds; you helped to take care of life and even implanted seeds of change and innovation into the existing life forms. How did you do this? You were so close to the Source of creative power, that you had magical abilities, as one would call it today. You allowed yourself to imagine new, exciting life forms and these imaginings grew into spiritual seeds which attached themselves to already existing life forms. You impregnated life with new ideas. That is how biological evolution came to be. All life forms are born from Spirit. Physical, material forms are the manifestation of spiritual forces. The spirit is much stronger than you assume. You have been raised in a materialist frame of mind, which tells you that the physical – as described by the science of physics – is the foundation of reality. In fact the opposite is true. The spirit is not a product of soulless matter. All matter is pervaded by a creative consciousness that sustains it.
Let yourself go with your imagination for a moment. Remember who you were in those ancient times. It is possible! Your soul is open and unlimited. It knows no space or time. Imagine that you float above the oceans and forests in a very refined and ethereal body. You feel enchanted about the beauty you see, about the adventure that is about to take place here. See yourself as an angelic being guided by joy and passion. You feel as free as a child who can do anything it wants. Now imagine you gather up your powers to express your sense of joy and respect for life in a magnificent flower. Allow an image to come forth of a flower which particularly allures you. See its colours and feel them from within. Hear the flower’s laughter welling up from its heart like little bells ringing – it is like music to your soul. Now pass on this image to me, Earth. Imagine how it falls into my womb and how it is nurtured there by physical and ethereal powers which help this spiritual seed gain material form. This is what you did in those ancient times. You let yourself be carried away by the flow of your inspiration and impregnated me with it. And I was receptive. I, the awareness present in this material realm, wanted to be impregnated and to absorb your thought forms.
Our partnership and cooperation stem from that time. It is the reason why you can be so moved by the beauty of nature and the innocence of non-human life forms. You are not only touched by their physical beauty, you are also reminded of the old connection there is between you and life on earth and the joyful game you once played. You made your contribution to the creation of many life forms on earth. As an angel you were the spiritual parent of life on earth. This is how deep and far your creative power reaches.
During the time I am speaking of, there were also dark powers present in the universe, who got fascinated with the flowering of consciousness on earth. Dark powers are nothing but energies who are not yet aware of their divine nature and therefore believe they need something outside themselves to be whole and complete. These dark powers wanted to feed on the life on earth that radiated such vitality and life force. As a reaction to the intrusion of these dark powers, you wanted to protect life on earth. Your emotions were much like those of a parent who wants to shield their child from danger.
To meet and confront the intruders, you had to have denser bodies and live in a denser vibration, less thin and subtle than the realm of the angels. Essentially, the intrusion by the darkness lit a spark of passion and a fighting spirit in you, and this in turn drew you deeper into matter. The next step in your journey was for you to let go of being an angel, and you took the path of incarnation.
With this step, you in a sense lost your innocence. Just before this step, there was a moment of hesitation in which you realised that by becoming more material, you were going to let go of something very precious. You would lose your angel wings, which symbolise freedom from time and space, freedom from birth and death, freedom from fear and illusion. Yet there was something that deeply attracted you toward the adventure of incarnation. You were a passionate and bold angel, as I said. And that was as it should be. Apparently, your journey took a negative turn when you let go of being an angel and engaged yourself in a battle with the dark forces. You got mixed up in several conflicts and wars for a long, long time. On the other hand, this plunge into the deep made it possible to spread your angel energies to the farthest corners of the universe. Your angel energy is an unalienable part of you which, even if it is temporarily veiled, can never be taken away from you.
Your first mortal bodies were not made of physical matter as you know it on earth. They were much less dense and compact. One would not be able to see them with human eyes. Your consciousness was less focused than it is now. You still went in and out of your physical forms easily and you experienced reality in a way that is similar to how you now experience reality in the dream state. You were less aware of yourself as a separate entity, your “I-ness” as opposed to the outside world.
Presently, you are very much attached to your physical form. Many of you think they are that form and that they will perish with the physical body. In your earliest incarnations this was not yet the case, and in many ways you were much freer to go and do what you pleased.
Nonetheless, you did feel confused. Although you were guided by the intention to struggle for light and to protect life, you now also had to deal with dark emotions such as fear, desolation and doubt. As soon as you start to battle someone or something, you cannot but partly absorb your adversary’s vibration. If that would not happen, there would be no common ground to start the battle from, and you would simply let go of the other completely.
As an angel, you really only had high and elevated feelings. There was joy, enthusiasm and a strong sense of connectedness. When you went down the road of incarnation, an emotional body formed around your soul. This energetic body contains emotional responses that arise when you do not perceive reality from the standpoint of oneness and connection. The feelings of the angels have their seat in the heart. The emotions you experience when incarnated are related to the lower three energy centers (chakras) which in your body are located around the stomach, the belly and the tail bone.
These three chakras form the ladder to incarnation: through them you trade the experience of oneness for the experience of duality. It is also through them that you go up the ladder and rise from duality to oneness. Your emotional body presents the greatest obstacle to inner peace and liberation, because it contains fear, sadness and anger. Yet the way up, to freedom and enlightenment, goes through the emotional body and not alongside or around it. We will speak of this later.
As your emotional body grew heavier and denser, and you lost track of your origin, the possibility arose to incarnate as a human. You had become widely-travelled souls in the meantime; you had become experienced in both the light and dark aspects of life.
The energies of duality had taken hold of you, which means that, for a long time, you have believed in the illusions it creates. If you live in duality, you believe deep within that you are alone, fearful and powerless, and that you need something outside of you to protect, feed and acknowledge you. From this notion, you start to exert power over others and you hide your vulnerability. Or you may become too vulnerable and give your power away to another power who wants to feed on your life energy.
Whether you are offender or victim in this game, the fundamental error you make is that you think you cannot experience wholeness within yourself. There is a hole you want to fill, either by being boss or by being slave. This game is very painful, as many of you have experienced. In that distant past, there was a moment in which you strongly realized this. This was a moment of change. You had experienced both extremes of the game and knew there was no real solution in either of them. You knew something had to change, but you did not know how. You had become far removed from the original freedom and joy of the angel inside you. Yet your emotional body held a memory, a longing for home. You knew there was something you wanted to go back to, some Home, a state of being that felt like heavenly ecstasy to you. Your emotional body now embarked on a new path. Having explored the extremes of duality, it now started to turn within. This change of consciousness created the impulse to incarnate upon earth as a human.
The human being at that point already existed on earth as a biological life form. When you entered that life form however, you added something to it, which made the human being less animal and more self-aware. Human biology is related to the animal kingdom, but the human being was forged by powers which do not solely spring from natural evolution on earth. What separates man from animal is the ability to be self-aware. Through this ability the human being is able to transform their emotional body and spread the energy of the heart consciously on earth. Whereas the non-human realms of nature radiate the joy and connectedness of the angels unconsciously, it is humanity’s mission to transform it into a conscious energy.
By incarnating into the human being as it then existed on earth, you added something to its development, and this addition has been controversial. On the one side, self-consciousness holds a great promise; on the other hand it can lead you astray. By becoming human on earth you hoped to reconnect with all life on earth and be the gentle creator and keeper you once were. Being human is a rich and complicated reality. Many aspects of reality come together in the human being: you are partly animal, plant and mineral, partly a cosmic being with a long galactic history. Human beings are dark and light, the lost ones and the saviours, the cause of suffering and destruction, and at the same time messengers of hope, love and creative power. In the human being many powers converge with the purpose of reconnecting and cooperating. The consciousness of man holds the possibility to connect widely diverging realms of being and reinstate the notion of underlying unity. Because of the possibility of realizing this beautiful ideal, humanity is granted the opportunity to make grave mistakes. The goal can still be attained. Hope is not lost yet.
In this age, hope rises as never before. Great changes occur in the collective consciousness of man. I just referred to a moment in the past in which you realised that your salvation could not come from the game of stealing or giving away energy, but that the solution lies in finding wholeness within. This insight now germinates in the consciousness of humanity. It is only a seed, not yet a plant. But a change is at hand and something is awakening in the heart of mankind. The heart is the connecting force between the many realms of consciousness represented in man: the earthly, the galactic and the cosmic. The call for peace and fellowship now resounds through all of these realms and this collective call creates a wave of energy that engulfs me, the earth.
If you feel touched by my words, and recognise yourself in it, you are one who has heeded this calling of the heart. You are someone who wants to contribute to the transformation of consciousness on earth. I welcome you and wish to assist you. I am telling you this long story, to make you aware of who you really are: an angel at the core of your being. Your growing self-awareness helps me. If you remember who you are, we can again have a partnership.
I see your longing, I feel your home-sickness. I see you reaching out for the joyful and carefree state that once was so familiar to you on the one hand, and now still so far and distant on the other hand. It is time now to return to who you are. It is time to climb that ladder and embrace your emotional body with your heart. Surround your pain, your sense of heaviness, your sadness with the angel consciousness of mildness and compassion that is natural to you. You can heal yourself.
You are now becoming an angel who is able to hold her light in the densest realm of reality. You are becoming a conscious creator, who has learned to manifest themselves in realms both light and dark, without losing themselves in it. You are carrying a seed of consciousness that is transformative for your environment. You are becoming a spiritual teacher. A spiritual teacher is not someone coming down from the highest realms to explain to the ignorant what life is all about. A true teacher has gone though darkness himself and reaches out their hand to you not from above but from a deeply sensed inner unity.
The adventure you once started as a creative angel is nearing its end. Especially in this final chapter of your journey, you are invited to reconnect with me, the life form on which your experiment took place. Allow yourself to travel in your imagination, become the dreamer and visionary you once were. Own the greatness of what wants to manifest itself through you on earth. Become again the angel who graciously entrusts itself to the magic of life. Let yourself be guided by what gives you joy and inspiration.
The angel inside you wants nothing more than to become fully human. By feeling one with the angel within, you bring a piece of heaven on earth.
Posted by Melodie Munro on February 20, 2012 at 3:49pm
Miniature Art on the Tip of Pencil by Dalton Ghetti
Many artists have used pencils to create works of art – but Dalton Ghetti creates miniature masterpieces on the tips of pencils.
Dalton, who works as a carpenter, has been making his tiny graphite works for about 25 years. A sculpture of Elvis Presley wearing shades, carved from a single pencil.
The 49-year-old said: “At school I would carve a friend’s name into the wood of a pencil and then give it to them as a present. Later, when I got into sculpture, I would make these huge pieces from things like wood, but decided I wanted to challenge myself by trying to make things as small as possible.
I experimented sculpting with different materials, such as chalk, but one day I had an eureka moment and decided to carve into the graphite of a pencil”
A tiny saw, using both the wood and graphite of a single pencil
Dalton uses three basic tools to make his incredible creations – a razor blade, sewing needle and sculpting knife. He even refuses to use a magnifying glass and has never sold any of his work, only given it away to friends. He said: “I use the sewing needle to make holes or dig into the graphite. I scratch and create lines and turn the graphite around slowly in my hand”
The longest Dalton has spent on one piece was two and half years on a pencil with interlinking chains. A standard figure will take several months. He said: “The interlinking chains took the most effort and I was really pleased with it because it’s so intricate people think it must be two pencils”
When Dalton, from Connecticut, USA, first started he would become frustrated when a piece would break before being finished after he had spent months working on it. He said: “It would drive me mad when I would be just a bit too heavy-handed and the pencil’s tip would break. I would get very nervous sometimes, particularly when the piece was almost finished, and then I would make a mistake. I decided to change the way I thought about the work – when I started a new piece my attitude would be ‘well this will break eventually but let’s see how far I get. It helped me break fewer pencils, and although I still do break them, it’s not as often”
Dalton, who is originally from Brazil, has a box full of more than 100 sculptures that have broken while working on them that he affectionately calls ‘the cemetery collection’. He said: “I have quite a few broken pieces so I decided to glue them on pins and into styrofoam for a display case. People might think it’s weird I keep them but they’re still interesting. I worked on them for months so they might be dead now but at one point I gave them life”
“I don’t make any money from it but that’s not what it’s about for me. However, I would love for a gallery owner in England to fly me over to put on a show,” he said Dalton hollowed out the centre of the wood, then carved the central column of graphite to create this hanging, linked heart
Carved from the graphite in a normal pencil: A tiny hammer
Carved from the graphite in a normal pencil: A tiny button
This carving shows a goblet being held by a hand, all carved from one pencil’s graphite
Carved from the graphite in a normal pencil: A highly detailed boot
A miniature graphite chair
Using the eraser end of a pencil, Dalton created a tiny cross sculpture from the internal graphite
A mini mailbox on a post
An intricately detailed screw, carved in one piece from a pencil’s graphite
Posted by Melodie Munro on January 25, 2012 at 1:20pm
New post on Kauilapele's Blog
Benjamin Fulford 1-17-12…”The Old World Order wants to surrender but to the people, not to the New World Order” by kauilapele
Highlights• The negotiations on a new financial system for the planet are proceeding well but due to the complexity of the situation, it will take time before any public announcements are possible... • The final solution to the problem will need to involve an audit of the real world and the removal of all fraudulent funds from the system. • The owners of the Washington D.C. Corporation have already decided on Mitt Romney as the new President of the United States. • The future of the U.S. dollar is also now being debated. • If the US does issue treasury dollars and devalues them by about 50% this is what will happen: First of all, all that Chinese stuff in Wall-Mart will double in price overnight. • There will also have to be a one-time write-off of most of the US debt to the rest of the world. • ...the White Dragon Foundation is proposing that the Japanese people continue to finance the US 7th fleet and turn it into an institution dedicated to exploring and enhancing the Ocean’s eco-systems. • There is also going to have to be very thorough disclosure through a South African style truth and reconciliation committee. • Most of all it will mean releasing in a safe and responsible manner most of the 6000 or so patents that have been suppressed for “national security reasons.”
The Old World Order wants to surrender but to the people, not to the New World Order
The negotiations on a new financial system for the planet are proceeding well but due to the complexity of the situation, it will take time before any public announcements are possible, according to sources close to the negotiations. The current owners of the Federal Reserve Board System and the Washington D.C. corporate government are hoping to offer enough reforms that they can stay in power. Their money has been frozen, though, by a group that would rather see them all put in jail.
The final solution to the problem will need to involve an audit of the real world and the removal of all fraudulent funds from the system. It will also involve a massive redistribution of wealth, meaning that the American people and other worldwide victims of the cabal will get their stolen funds returned to them.
The owners of the Washington D.C. Corporation have already decided on Mitt Romney as the new President of the United States. They have been rigging opinion polls and primary results to make sure their decision is enforced. The corporate media propaganda machine is also in on the decision. The Asian creditors to the Western nations do not interfere in the politics of other countries so they will take no stand on this issue. They say this is an internal matter for the American people to resolve on their own.
The future of the U.S. dollar is also now being debated. The current proposal being put forward by White Dragon Foundation representatives is that the United States government will need to issue Treasury dollars controlled by the elected representatives of the United States Government. These new treasury dollars will have to be separated from the international dollars now in circulation and devalued. The reason for this is that 90% of the dollars ever created are not owned by Americans.
The interests of those dollar holders and the interests of the American economy are not the same.
They do not want those dollars, which they use to trade with each other, to lose half their value.
If the Americans insist on continuing to use international dollars as their currency, then they will have to wait until US wages fall to Chinese levels before the US economy will once again become competitive. Until that time, the Chinese will take increasing ownership of the United States.
If the US does issue treasury dollars and devalues them by about 50% this is what will happen: First of all, all that Chinese stuff in Wall-Mart will double in price overnight. That is the tough part. The good part is that there will be a huge investment boom in the United States because the US will once again be a competitive exporter. Americans will also start buying more made in America products, creating real jobs and real wealth for the American people. There will also be lots and lots of free spending foreign tourists flooding in, also creating real jobs for real Americans.
There will also have to be a one-time write-off of most of the US debt to the rest of the world. The Americans are hoping to accomplish this by delivering physical gold they control in various locations.
For the United States to get rid of its structural trade deficit, however, the military-industrial complex will have to stop relying of foreigners to finance it. That means retooling it from a machine dedicated to invasion and pillage into something constructive, defensive and welcomed by the peoples of the planet as a beneficial institution.
For example, the White Dragon Foundation is proposing that the Japanese people continue to finance the US 7th fleet and turn it into an institution dedicated to exploring and enhancing the Ocean’s eco-systems.
They would dedicate themselves to going where no man has gone before a la Starship Enterprise.
Fighting pirates and stuff like that would be a side job.
There is also going to have to be very thorough disclosure through a South African style truth and reconciliation committee. The pharmaceutical industry, for example, will have to come clean about how they were creating and spreading disease and infertility drugs as a part of a depopulation agenda on the part of the cabal. The petroleum industry will have to admit they have retarded human progress by 100 years by suppressing new energy technology.
The pharmaceutical industry can then change its business model from one that profits from disease and death into one that makes its money by increasing health, longevity and by creating new drugs to enhance human ability and enjoyment of life. The petroleum industry will be able to capitalize on its ability to carry out giant infrastructure projects to do things like turn the deserts green and create tropical year round resorts around Northern Canadian lakes.
The military industrial complex will also have to come clean about all the secret projects they have been carrying out. This will mean opening area 51 and other secret bases to public tours for American citizens.
Most of all it will mean releasing in a safe and responsible manner most of the 6000 or so patents that have been suppressed for “national security reasons.” A new era will begin.
Posted by Melodie Munro on October 31, 2011 at 6:47pm
Seven billionth person on earth born todayToday, the world's seven billionth person has been born. It is impossible to say exactly where the seven billionth person on the planet has been born or who they are.So the United Nations have chosen several newborn babies across the world to symbolically represent the global population milestone, including two baby girls Nargis and Danica who were born in India and the Philippines, respectively.However, the stark reality is that if a baby girl is born in the developing world, her future is set to be far from rosy.According to a recent report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) there is a widening gap between boys and girls in these regions of the world.While they receive the same care and opportunities during early childhood, as they reach adolescence the anomalies in terms of health or education become marked.“While there is little difference between boys and girls in early childhood with respect to nutrition, health, education and other basic indicators, differences by gender appear increasingly more pronounced during adolescence and young adulthood,” said UNICEF deputy executive director Geeta Rao Gupta.If the seven billionth child born was a girl in the developed world, for instance in Europe, Japan or the United States, once she becomes a teenager she is likely to receive many of the same opportunities as her male peers.Her education, health and career prospects may even exceed those of her male counterparts.But if she is born in a region defined as ‘developing’ she is significantly more likely to be married as a child, less likely to be literate than young men in her country and, shockingly, should she be born in sub-Saharan Africa, is as many as four times more likely to contract HIV/AIDS than boys her age.A World Bank working paper examined the real economic impact of excluding girls from learning or work opportunities.For instance, just one teenage mother in India can lose $100,000 (£62,052) in potential income over her lifetime, while a single girl in Ethiopia who has dropped out of school can expect to lose the equivalent of two months’ average pay per year.The financial impacts on the national economies is bigger still: the cost to India of the 3.8 million girls having children at the ages of 15 to 19 is $7.6 billion a year (£4.7 billion) – enough to fill every single car in the US with a full tank of petrol 100 times.The denial of education to 4.5 million girls in Ethiopia costs the country $582 million (£361 million) a year.So beyond the headlines about the seven billionth birth – which will come 12 years after the six billionth, a baby boy in Sarajevo – UNICEF chiefs are urging developing countries to improve the education prospects of their female citizens.Increasing the availability of good and long-term schooling for girls will have a ‘ripple effect’ and help to break the cycle of poverty in those regions.“Closing gender gaps in all stages of childhood and eliminating gender discrimination – whether against girls or boys – are fundamental to inclusive and sustained progress for countries around the world,” said Rao Gupta.“In addition to the harmful and often tragic effects of gender inequalities on children themselves, the kinds of persistent inequalities that we continue to see… are major barriers to the efforts of many nations to move out of long-term poverty and achieve their development aspirations.”Read more…
Posted by Melodie Munro on October 2, 2011 at 4:34pm
Stars who hated each other on setBette Davis and Joan CrawfordThe granddaddy of Hollywood feuds - Bette Davis and Joan Crawford absolutely loathed one another.While filming ‘What Happened to Baby Jane?’, Davis actually kicked Crawford in the scene when she pushed her down the stairs.In return, when Bette had to drag Joan off her bed, Joan put on a weighted diver's belt underneath her costume, making her heavier to drag.Naturally, the duo also pitched in with some a-grade bitching. Discussing Davis' hair, Crawford said: “I don't understand these Poodle cuts on elderly women”. Davis retorted by saying Crawford was “single handedly responsible for the syphilis outbreak in America.” Meow.
Read more…
Putting ice - or a pack of frozen peas - on an injury to reduce swelling may not be such a good idea after all, as scientists say that inflammation is an essential part of the healing process.
The discovery, published in the FASEB Journal, turns conventional wisdom - which says that inflammation must be controlled to promote healing - on its head.
Researchers say the findings could lead to new treatments for muscle injury caused by trauma, chemicals, infections, freeze damage, and medications, which cause muscle damage as a side effect.
Researcher Lan Zhou, from the Neuroinflammtion Reserch Centre at the Cleveland Clinic, said: "We hope that our findings stimulate further research to dissect different roles played by tissue inflammation in clinical settings, so we can utilise the positive effects and control the negative effects of tissue inflammation."
During acute muscle injury, researchers discovered that inflammatory cells produce high levels of insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), which significantly increases the rate of muscle regeneration.
In the study, they compared how two groups of mice responded to acute muscle injury. The first group of mice were genetically altered so they could not make an inflammatory response to injury and the second group consisted of normal unaltered mice.
All mice were injected with barium chloride to cause muscle injury. The genetically altered mice which could not make an inflammatory response did not heal, but the second group of normal mice repaired the injury.
Further investigations showed the inflammatory cells within the injured muscle tissue produced a high level of IGF-1.
Gerald Weissmann, editor in chief of the FASEB Journal, said: "For wounds to heal we need controlled inflammation, not too much, and not too little.
"It's been known for a long time that excess anti-inflammatory medication, such as cortisone, slows wound healing. This study goes a long way to telling us why: insulin-like growth factor and other materials released by inflammatory cells helps wound to heal."
Posted by Melodie Munro on October 25, 2010 at 1:52pm
Cross on Interstate 40 Groom, Texas (near Pampa)
IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
On a lonely stretch of highway just outside of Groom, Texas (near Pampa) stands a 19 story tall cross that can be seen for miles from any direction. The arm spans are 110 feet across.
It is constructed of a welded steel framework covered with steel sheeting.
This cross is the result of the efforts of Steve Thomas and family of Pampa, Texas. It took 250 welders eight months to complete, and weighs 1,250 tons. It stands alone, unsupported by guy wires, and can withstand winds of 140 miles per hour.
Steve Thomas' son, Zack Thomas, is an All-Pro middle linebacker for the Miami Dolphins.
The cross is truly an awsome sight to behold. It is a dedication to the love and sacrifice of Jesus.
It is a spectacular sight at night, and is open for viewing 24 hours per day, seven days a week,and the site is truck and RV accessible.
It is anticipated that 10 million people a year will pass by the cross and a thousand a day will stop.
The cross is truly an awsome sight to behold. It is a dedication to the love and sacrifice of Jesus.
It is a spectacular sight at night, and is open for viewing 24 hours per day, seven days a week,and the site is truck and RV accessible.
It is anticipated that 10 million people a year will pass by the cross and a thousand a day will stop.
On a small hill facing the cross there are three bronze cross statues depicting the crucifixion of Jesus between two thieves.
The base of the cross is surrounded by life-sized bronze statues of Jesus depicting twelve stations of Jesus carrying the cross to Calvary.
Station 1 - Jesus is condemned. Station 2 - Jesus carries cross.
Station 3 - Jesus falls for the first time. Station 4 - Jesus meets his mother
Station 5 - Simon helps Jesus Station 6 - Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
Station 7 - Jesus falls the second time. Station 8 - Jesus comforts the women of Jerusalem.
Station 9 - Jesus falls the second time. Station 10 - Jesus is stripped of his garments.
Station 11 - Jesus is nailed to the cross. Station 12 - Jesus is crucified and dies on the cross for our sins.
Posted by Melodie Munro on August 19, 2010 at 4:44pm
10 good reasons to chow down on the nation’s favourite food
Nutritionist and curry lover Rachael Anne Hill explains how the much maligned curry can actually be good for your health.…Posted By Rachael Anne Hill
Think of a healthy meal and a curry might be the last thing that springs to mind, but recent research shows that many of the ingredients used within a typical curry can do you the power of good.
1. Reduced risk of Alzheimer’s
Turmeric, one of the spicy ingredients of almost every curry from korma to vindaloo may be an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s. According to researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, a chemical found in the spice called curcumin can reduce the build up of knots in the brain that can cause Alzeihmer’s by as much as 50%. This may help to explain why Alzheimer's affects just 1% of people over the age of 65 living in some Indian villages. Turmeric has also been found to improve memory, aid digestion, reduce inflammation, fight infection and guard against heart attacks.
2. Fewer colds
Paprika, chilli and many other spices commonly found in curries can ward off colds by triggering the body's natural defences to produce extra mucus which traps viruses and soothes inflamed passages. Eating spicy dishes also clears the nostrils and gets rid of that 'bunged-up' feeling, enabling a speedier recovery for sufferers.
3. Better moods
Lean red meat in curries such as beef, pork and lamb not only provide a significant number of B vitamins which are essential for helping the body to release energy from food, but they can also enhance mood and promote a more positive state of mind.
4. Less risk of cancer
Tomato based curries are a great source of lycopene. This extremely powerful antioxidant is far more prevalent in cooked tomatoes than raw ones. Research shows that eating cooked tomatoes three or more times a week can lower the risk of prostate, lung, stomach, pancreas, bowel and breast cancers.
5. Reduced risk of heart disease
Regular consumption of cooked tomatoes also prevents the formation of blood clots, lowering the risk of heart attacks and strokes by as much as 48%. Many spices, such as curry powder, hot paprika and thyme may also help to cut the risk of heart disease as they contain salicylic acid, a compound that scientists believe may work to stem inflammation in the blood vessels that could otherwise lead to hardening of the arteries.
6. Improved circulation and reduced pain
Ginger, an ingredient commonly used in curries, contains an antioxidant that reacts with free radicals that can cause tissue damage and joint inflammation and so helps to reduce the pain of arthritis. Chilli has also been shown to be a powerful painkiller.
7. Increased metabolic rate
Several clinical research studies have found that an ingredient known as capsaicin found in spices, particularly chilli, can raise the metabolic rate for as long as three hours after a curry.
8. Reduced blood pressure
Coriander, another common ingredient of both Indian and Thai curries, contains high levels of antioxidants that help to lower high blood pressure and prevent the formation of cancer causing free radicals.
9. Increased energy
Lack of energy can be caused by an iron deficiency. This is particularly common in women, with research suggesting that one in four has well below the recommended iron intake. Curries containing red meat such as beef, pork or lamb can be an excellent way of boosting iron intake. A lamb curry can provide up to 50% of the iron a woman needs in a day. Baltis can be particularly high in iron as, during the cooking process, some of the iron from the pans they are cooked in transfers into the food. Other common ingredients of curries such as lentils and spinach are also good sources of iron.
10. A stronger immune system
No curry would be complete without a generous helping of garlic. Research shows that garlic contains allicin which is antibiotic, antifungal and may even be antiviral.
Despite all these wonderful health benefits many curries can contain extremely high fat levels. Here’s how to reduce the fat in your curry whether you’re eating in or out.
Eating in
Use a non-stick pan or fry ingredients in a small amount of water instead of oil.
If you do use oil, measure it with a tablespoon and gradually cut down to half – or even less!
Use tomatoes as bases for sauces instead of cream or coconut. If you do want a creamy tasting curry try using natural or Greek yoghurt instead. To prevent the yoghurt from curdling simply mix in a tablespoon of cornflour.
When cooking meat-based curries, add all the ingredients together without oil, cover and cook slowly, stirring frequently to improve the flavour. The natural fat in the meat will provide enough moisture and fat for cooking – and for taste!
Use the leanest meat you can find. For a quick cooking curry trim off any visible fat and cut into thin strips or mini cubes (approx. 1.25cm(½”)
Add dahls (lentils) to as many dishes as you can. They are filling, rich in protein and fibre, and help keep your blood sugar and cholesterol low.
Increase your fibre intake and cut the fat by using boiled wholegrain rice instead of pilau rice or naan.
Boost your vitamin and mineral intake by using a wide variety of vegetables and fruits such as apple, pineapple and sultanas.
A curry always tastes better the next day so make a day in advance and then let it sit in the fridge.
Eating out
Cut calories by up to 50% by asking for your poppadoms to be grilled or microwaved instead of deep fat fried.
Ask for naan breads to be served without butter on top or have a chapatti instead as they are usually lower in fat. A naan can have double the calories and up to 16 times more fat than a chapatti.
Opt for dahl and vegetable dishes whenever possible as they tend to be lower in fat and higher in fibre.
Choose boiled rice instead of pilau rice which is fried.
Go for tandoori (dry, oven cooked) curries or ones with tomato based sauces instead of high fat cream or coconut varieties such as massalas, passandas or kormas. A chicken tikka massala can have up to twice the number of calories and fat than a tandoori chicken curry.
Keep snack type foods such as bhajis and samosas to a minimum.
Avoid drinking alcohol before ordering. Even a small glass of wine or beer can lower inhibitions, increase appetite and result in over ordering and over eating.
