message for the day – Page 221 – Take off with Natarajan

” Dear Pilots of the Plane …Who are Taking Me Home…”

April 1, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

WE’RE in the midst of one of aviation’s darkest times.

We have been left shocked and heartbroken time after time again over the past year with a series of unimaginable flight tragedies, the latest seeing 150 people killed on board Germanwings Flight 9525.

So it’s to be expected that we’re all looking for answers, hoping to prevent another tragedy from happening in our skies. And as more and more harrowing information comes to light of the terrifying final moments on board the doomed Germanwings jet, many flyers are on edge at the thought of taking to the skies.

So imagine this pilot’s surprise when a passenger decided to share some kindness in a rather unexpected way.

The pilot and airline cannot be named for security reasons. Source: Supplied

The pilot, who is unnamed for security reasons, was handed a note from the passenger during a flight from Spain to the south of England on Monday.

Instead of being a complaint or criticism, the glowing note voiced appreciation for the incredible job pilots do, ultimately seeking to inject kindness into a shocked world.

The letter doing the rounds Source: Supplied

The thrilled pilot shared the note with a colleague, Jai Dillon, who then posted it onto Twitter where it has already been shared thousands of times.

Dillon, a pilot based in the UK who has been flying commercially for the past three years, told news.com.au his co-worker wanted to share the letter that had touched his heart.

“They were incredible happy,” Dillon, 23, said. “I feel that the positive message is worth spreading.”

It’s a good reminder that thousands of pilots and crew get millions of people safely from point A to B every year. To you all, we say thank you.

Source::::: http://www.news.com.au

Natarajan

Message For the Day…”Discard Both Praise and Blame …”

March 31, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Every aspirant who seeks the Divine through the path of devotion should strive to keep away from the turmoil, cruelties, and falsehoods of this world and practice truth, righteousness, love, and peace. Those who seek union with God and the welfare of the world should discard as worthless both praise and blame, appreciation and derision, prosperity and adversity. They should courageously keep steady faith in their own innate reality and dedicate themselves to spiritual uplift. No one, including a Maha-purusha (Avatar), can ever escape criticism and blame. But such people do not bend, but hold on to truth. Those who indulge in criticism or blame later wade through unbearable trouble and then realise the real nature of great ones and start to praise them. Their weakness and ignorance is the root-cause for such criticism. So, keep away from doubters and ignorant people and desist from discussing your beliefs with them.

Sathya Sai Baba

” Go Back to the Year 90s…” !!!

March 31, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Everyone talks about how technology has taken over our lives and about how it has its downsides, despite having made our lives easy. And I’d have to say, it holds quite a bit of truth.

So, if you’re feeling tired of all the advanced, digital life you’re leading, you could always try going old school for a bit, and take yourself back to simpler times. Here are a few things you could do that might seem simple, but are guaranteed to have a big impact in transporting you back in time.

Send a letter to a loved one and start a long conversation

Tell them about your day, week, and subsequently about your life in general, without the help of any other mode of communication.

Make use of your old landline, and call someone on theirs

Make someone a mixed tape or a CD with all their favourite songs…

To make it better, put old songs in them, exclusively.

Listen to music with your old walkman/CD man

Carry all your favourite cassettes and CDs, and change them when necessary.

Spot an ice-cream cart, and relish on some yummy ice-cream

They’re surely going to be around children’s parks. Enjoy an ice-cream cone in a children’s park!

Go to a cyber cafe close by, and spend an hour surfing the net on a PC

Some of the computers might even still have Windows XP.

Pay a visit to your old school, and reminisce

Who knows, you might end up meeting some old teachers there.

Fix an old radio at home….

And listen to a few cassettes after you do.

Check the time- not on your phone, but on your wrist watch, for a week

There still are a lot of us who wear watches, but not all of us really use it to tell the time. Take an entire week and just go by the time of your watch, and soak in the feeling of not constantly checking your phone for every little thing.

Even if time flies by, there are these little things we’ll have that we can go back to whenever we feel like everything is changing. Change is good, but going back to what it was before once in a while is great.

Source::::: http://www.storypick.com

Natarajan

Shortest Lunar Eclipse of the Century…. on 4 April 2015….

March 31, 2015March 31, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

The total eclipse of the full moon on April 4, 2015 will last less than five minutes, making it the shortest total lunar eclipse of the 21st century. It’s perfect for short attention spans! The total lunar eclipse will be visible from western North America, eastern Asia, the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand. At North American time zones, that means the greatest eclipse happens before sunrise on April 4 – the morning of April 4, not the evening. From the world’s Eastern Hemisphere – eastern Asia, Indonesia, New Zealand and Australia – the greatest eclipse takes place after sunset April 4. Follow the links below to learn eclipse times and more:

Eclipse times in Universal Time

Eclipse times for for North American time zones

Is this the third of four Blood Moon eclipses?

Who will see a partial lunar eclipse?

What causes a lunar eclipse?

Time lapse of October 8, 2014 lunar eclipse as reflected in a pond in central Illinois, by Greg Lepper

source:::::www.earthskynews.org

Natarajan

Image of the Day…Sunrise !!!

March 31, 2015March 31, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Striped sunrises and the shadows they cast

Two photos by Peter Lowenstein. One shows a sunrise striped with cloud, and the other shows the shadow from a cloud-striped sunrise on a nearby mountain slope.

View larger. | Photo by Peter Lowenstein.

Peter Lowenstein of Mutare, Zimbabwe – who recently contributed an interesting photo of straight lightning to these pages – has submitted another set of unusual photos for us. One is above, and the other is at the bottom of this post. The photos were taken a year apart, but might have been taken on the same day if two photographers had been standing back to back, one shooting a cloud-striped sunrise and the other shooting the sun’s first light – showing banded cloud shadow – shining on a nearby mountain slope. Peter wrote:

The first picture was taken almost a year ago from a high vantage point in the Bvumba Mountains looking east over Chikamba in Mozambique and shows a glorious sun striped by rising through thin layers of early morning cloud and mist on the horizon. I captured it at 5:57 a.m. using a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ10 compact camera in sunset mode and x16 zoom setting.

The second picture was taken at sunrise yesterday morning (March 29, 2015) from the verandah of my house and shows alternate stripes of bright orange sunlight and the dark shadows of a thin strip of cloud and the eastern horizon being projected by the sun onto Murawa Mountain a few kilometers to the west. This spectacle lasted less than a minute before being faded by larger clouds passing in front of the sun. It was captured at 6:10 a.m. using a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ60 compact camera in sunset mode and x2 zoom setting.

Bottom line: Peter Lowenstein in Zimbabwe took these photos a year apart. One shows a sunrise striped with cloud, and the other shows cloud-striped sunrise’s cloud shadow.

Source:::::::: http://www.earthskynews.org

Natarajan

The Strange History of April Fool’s Day…!!!

March 31, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Have you ever stopped to think WHY you’re Saran Wrapping a toilet seat on April Fools’ Day?

Do you think the first time a man pranked his neighbor everyone reveled in the delight of it so much they decided to make a holiday out of it? Is that where April Fools’ Day came from?

Well, it’s as good a guess as any because the origins of this high jinx-filled holiday aren’t entirely

solidified. There are, however, some strong theories of how it came about.

The most popular theory of the holiday actually has Catholic origins: In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII replaced the widely used Julian calendar with the now currently instated Gregorian calendar. This moved the start of the year from April 1st to January 1st.

Those who were late to catch on or refused to acknowledge the change and still celebrated the New Year in April were mocked and teased (humans are the best!). In France, a common prank was throwing paper fish at the springtime New Year’s celebrators and calling them poisson d’avril, or April Fish, a term for a gullible person.

Other cultures and societies have springtime celebrations centering around foolishness and joviality. Hilaria was an ancient Roman celebration on the vernal equinox for Cybele, the mother of the gods. People would dress up in costumes and masks, imitating those in higher positions of power.

Sizdah Be-dar, which falls thirteen days after Nowruz, the Persian New Year, is an occasion where families gather outside for picnics and celebrate the return to ordinary life after the New Year. It’s a day where laughter is used to overpower the bad omens and thoughts for the upcoming year.

In Hinduism, Holi is the spring festival of colors where crowds welcome the warming weather and longer days by throwing colored dyes on each other. Covered in layers of powdered dyes, people were indistinguishable by class, caste, or gender.

As with many other traditions/holidays, like Santa Claus, Thanksgiving, or Halloween, there doesn’t seem to be one exact origin of April Fools’ Day, which might be for the best. Why do we need one excuse to be silly?

Fool on, pranksters!

Source:::::www.businessinsider.com

Natarajan

Image of the Day…Spacecraft Launch on March 27 2015…

March 31, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

One-year crew lift-off success

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will spend a year aboard the International Space Station.

Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft launch on March 27, 2015

Media photograph the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft as it launches to the International Space Station with Expedition 43 NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) onboard.

Liftoff was at 3:42 p.m. EDT Friday, March 27, 2015 (March 28 Kazakh time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

As the one-year crew, Kelly and Kornienko will return to Earth on Soyuz TMA-18M in March 2016.

The goal of the mission is to help scientists better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to the harsh environment of space.

Source:::: http://www.earthskynews.org

Natarajan

Message For the Day…”Your Journey will be Smooth , if Your Axle is Truth and Your Goal is Peace…”

March 30, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

The vehicle of human life is drawn by the senses, driven by the intellect, with discrimination and detachment as the reins on the two wheels of Time and Action. The spokes of the wheel are the rules of righteousness, bound by the rim of Love. Your journey will be smooth, if your axle is Truth and your goal is Peace. Be careful to not exaggerate the importance of things that have material utility. They fade, even while you grasp them. Search for truth (Sath) – that which suffers no change, and Awareness (Chith) – the state of consciousness which is pure, unaffected by gusts of passion and is free from egoism or the desire to possess. Then you will experience Light, and illumine the Path for others. Experience the joy that emanates from Love with no blemish of attachment.

Sathya Sai Baba

One of the History’s Best Hoaxes …World”s Longest Running Hoax!!!

March 30, 2015March 30, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Cottingley Fairies

This story deserves some kind of award for being the world’s longest-running hoax. This one started way back in 1917, perpetrated by two young girls, Elsie and Frances, aged 16 and 9. They took five photographs of themselves in the woods, but something weird happened when these images were developed: the girls were surrounded by fairies.

Right off the bat, the girls received support from a peculiar source – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Sherlock Holmes creator was a keen spiritualist and complete believer in fairies, so he immediately accepted the pictures as genuine despite skeptics pointing out that they were faked.

Interest in the pictures lasted for a few years, but eventually died down. By then, the two cousins grew up and went on with their lives. Every now an then, a newspaper would track one of the girls down and do a story on the once-famous Cottingley Fairies. The girls would again claim that the pictures are genuine and interest in the story is briefly rekindled.

By the 1970s new technology allowed careful analysis of the photographs, which had been completely dismissed as fakes. A closer look reveals a series of strings holding the fairies up. However, it wasn’t until 1983 that the girls confessed to the hoax, admitting that the fairies were nothing but cardboard cutouts from a children’s book.

Source:::: http://www.all-that-is-interesting.com

Natarajan

பெற்றோர் போற்றுதும்! …

March 30, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

நாம் ஒவ்வொருவரும் ஒரு கட்டத்தில் பெற்றோராகிறோம் என்றாலும், அந்த நேரத்தில் நம்மைப் பெற்றோரை நினைத்துப் பார்க்கும் போதுதான் அவர்கள் பட்ட கஷ்டம் நமக்குப் புரிகிறது. வாழ்க்கையில் வயது கூடக் கூட பாசமும் பயமும் பக்குவமும் அதிகரிக்கும் என்பது பொதுவான விதி. தன்னுடைய பிள்ளைகளின் எதிர்காலம் சிறப்பாக அமைய வேண்டும் என்பதற்காக தங்களுடைய நிகழ்காலத்தின் சுமைகளைத் தாங்கும் உறவுகள் தாய், தந்தையைத் தவிர வேறு உண்டா? வாழ்க்கையில் எத்தனையோ வளர்ச்சிகளைப் பிள்ளைகளுக்கு உரித்தாக்கி அவற்றைக் கண்ணாரக் கண்டு மகிழ்வோர் பெற்றோர் மட்டுமே.

அறிவியல் வளர்ச்சி மனிதனை ஆகாயம் வரை உயர்த்தி விட்டது. அந்த அபார வெளிச்சத்தில் உறவு, பந்தம், பாசம், நேசம் அன்பு எல்லாம் பொசுங்கிப் போய் விட்டன. மனித நேயம் கொஞ்சம் கொஞ்சமாக மரித்துப் போய் விட்டது. ஆனால், இன்றளவும் அதற்கு விதி விலக்காக இருப்பது பெற்றோர் – பிள்ளைகள் உறவு மட்டும்தானே. தாயும், தந்தையும் தன் பிள்ளைகள் மேல் வைத்திருக்கும் அன்பையும் பாசத்தையும் எந்த அறிவியலால் பிரிக்க முடியும்?

பிள்ளைகள் உதட்டில் புன்னகையைப் பார்த்தால் பரவசப்படுவதும், கண்களில் கலக்கத்தைக் கண்டால் ஓடி வந்து தாங்கிப் பிடிப்பதும் ஈன்றெடுத்த தாயும், பேணி வளர்த்த தந்தையும்தானே.

உணவு – உடை – பண்பாடு – கலாசாரம் எல்லாம் மாறிப் போனாலும், தலைமுறைகளைக் கடந்தும் மாறாதவை அன்னையின் அன்பும் தந்தையின் பாசமும்தான். அந்தத் தூய்மையான அன்பிலும் கலப்படமில்லாத பாசத்திலும் திளைத்த பிள்ளைகள், தங்கள் பெற்றோரைக் கொண்டாட வேண்டாமா? விழா எடுத்து மகிழ வேண்டாமா? பெற்றோரைக் கொண்டாடப் பிள்ளைகளுக்குக் காரணம் தேவையில்லை என்றாலும், சமூகம் சில காரணங்களைக் கண்டுபிடித்து வைத்திருக்கிறது. மணி விழா, முத்து விழா, வைர விழா, அறுபதாண்டு விழா, எண்பதாண்டு விழா என, ஏதாவது ஒரு பெயரில் விழா எடுக்கலாம். பெயர் முக்கியமல்ல; பெற்றோரைப் போற்றுவதே முக்கியம்.

அடுத்த பிறவியிலும் இவர்களுக்கே மகனாகவோ, மகளாகவோ பிறக்க வேண்டும் என்று மனமுருகி வேண்ட வேண்டும். பெற்றோரின் மறைவுக்குப் பிறகு அவர்களுக்கு நினைவு நாள் கடைப்பிடிப்பது இவற்றையெல்லாம் விட, பெற்றோர் வாழும் போதே அவர்களைப் போற்றிக் கொண்டாட வேண்டும். காரணம், பெற்றோரைப் போற்றிக் கொண்டாடுவோரே நிறைவான வாழ்க்கை வாழ்ந்தவராவர்.

நம்மில் எத்தனை பேர் நம்முடைய பிறந்த நாள், திருமண நாள் மற்றும் பண்டிகை நாள்களில் நமது பெற்றோரின் கால்களில் விழுந்து ஆசி பெற்றிருக்கிறோம்? கட்சித் தலைவர்கள், திரைப்பட நடிகர்களின் கால்களில் கூச்சப்படாமல் விழுபவர்கள் கூட, பெற்றோர் காலில் விழுவதற்குக் கூச்சப்படுகிறார்கள் அல்லது தயங்குகிறார்கள்.

ஒரு கையை நீட்டி எந்தப் பொருள்களும் கொடுக்கக் கூடாது. அந்தக் கையை மறு கையால் பிடித்துக் கொண்டே கொடுக்க வேண்டும். பெரியவர்கள் முன்பாக கால் மேல் கால் போட்டபடியோ, கால் ஆட்டியபடியோ உட்காரக் கூடாது.

பிறந்த நாள், பண்டிகைக் காலங்களில் பெற்றோர் காலில் விழுந்து ஆசி வாங்க வேண்டும். கோயிலுக்குப் போகும் போதும் பெரியவர்களைப் பார்க்கப் போகும்போதும் வெறுங்கையுடன் போகக் கூடாது. இவற்றையெல்லாம் பின்பற்றிப் பார்த்தால்தான் அருமை புரியும். தமிழர் பண்பாடே இப்படி என்றால் தமிழர்கள் பெற்றோரைப் பராமரிக்கும் விதம் எப்படி இருக்க வேண்டும்.

இது போன்ற நல்ல விஷயங்களையெல்லாம் எடுத்துச் சொல்லி நம்மை வாழ்க்கையில் வழி நடத்த அனுபவம் மிக்க நமது பெற்றோரால் மட்டுமே முடியும். அப்படிப்பட்ட பெற்றோரைப் போற்றி வாழ்ந்தால் நம் வாழ்க்கை இனிதாக அமையும் என்பதில் சிறிதும் ஐயமில்லை!

source::: மன்னை பாஸ்கர், சென்னை. in http://www.dinamani.com

Natarajan