Message For the Day…” How to Train and Command Your Senses…” ?

December 19, 2014December 19, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

Generally people get drawn to sense objects, for they are victims of instincts. And instincts come along with the body and aren’t derived by any training. The infant seeks milk from the mother, no training is needed for this. However for the infant to walk and talk, some training is necessary, because these actions are not automatic but are socially prompted, by example and by imitation of others. Training is essential even for the proper pursuit of sense pleasure, for it is the wild and untrained search for such pleasure that promotes anger, hatred, envy, malice, and conceit. To train the senses along salutary lines and to hold them under control, certain good disciplines like repetition of the name, meditation, fasts, worship at dawn and dusk, etc. are essential. When one is asked to do such spiritual acts, one has no inner prompting at all. Still, one shouldn’t give up in despair. No one has a taste for such practices from the very beginning, but constant practice creates the zest.

Message For the Day…” How to Achieve Spiritual Wisdom…”

December 18, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

The quintessence of the scriptural texts is this: Realise that the awareness of Divine or Brahman cannot be won by the accumulation of wealth nor by giving away the riches. Nor can it be achieved by reading texts, rising to power, acquiring degrees and diplomas, or performing scriptural sacrifices and rituals. The body is an anthill, with the mind inside as a deep cavity. The mind has hidden in it the serpent named ignorance or nescience (a-jnana).The serpent cannot be killed by resorting to satisfaction-oriented works (kamya karma). Spiritual wisdom (jnana) is the only weapon that can kill it. To achieve spiritual wisdom, you must have ‘Steady Faith’. Shraddhavan labhathe jnanam, states the scriptures. Meaning, that person alone, who has steady and unwavering faith, can certainly secure wisdom.

Sathya Sai Baba

Is There Life on Mars ?… Question Remains….

December 17, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

Questions of life on Mars revive with methane spike

Curiosity rover has now measured a dramatic spike in methane, an organic chemical, in the Martian air, plus other organic molecules in a Martian rock.

The mystery of whether Mars has or ever had life got a boost today (December 16, 2014) when NASA announced that its Curiosity rover – which landed on Mars in August, 2012 – has measured a tenfold spike in methane in the atmosphere around the rover. NASA scientists made the announcement at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The journal Science also published these results today.

Methane is an organic chemical, and it’s conceivable, although far from certain, methane-belching microbes on Mars might be responsible for the spike.

Overall, researchers said, methane levels recorded by Curiosity’s onboard Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) are lower than expected.

However, for about a two-month period in late 2013 and early 2014, researchers did observe a temporary and dramatic increase in methane in the Martian air around the rover.

NASA scientists are quick to point out that the source of the methane on Mars could be either biological or non-biological. For example, a non-biological source of the methane might be an interaction between water and rock.

At the same time, for the first time ever, the rover has detected other organic molecules in a rock-powder sample collected by drilling into a rock on Mars, which scientists have dubbed Cumberland. Organic molecules, which contain carbon and usually hydrogen, are chemical building blocks of life (although they can exist without the presence of life). NASA says it’s the first definitive detection of organics in surface materials of Mars. These Martian organics could either have formed on Mars or been delivered to Mars by meteorites, scientists say.

Is there life on Mars today, or was there ever life on Mars? These results don’t prove either speculation. However, said John Grotzinger, Curiosity project scientist of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena:

We will keep working on the puzzles these findings present. Can we learn more about the active chemistry causing such fluctuations in the amount of methane in the atmosphere? Can we choose rock targets where identifiable organics have been preserved?

NASA says that Curiosity is:

… one element of NASA’s ongoing Mars research and preparation for a human mission to Mars in the 2030s.

Bottom line: Mars Curiosity rover measures a dramatic spike in methane and detects other organic molecules in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory’s drill.

SOURCE:::: http://www.earthsky.org

Natarajan

This Day in Science… Wright Brothers’ First Flight !!!

December 17, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

December 17, 1903. On this date, two Ohio brothers – Wilbur and Orville Wright – made the first bonafide, manned, controlled, heavier-than-air flight. It was the first airplane, and it took off at 10:35 a.m. with Orville Wright on board as pilot. He flew their vehicle, called theFlyer, for 12 seconds over 120 feet (about 37 meters) of sandy ground just outside Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

One of the world’s most famous early photographs serves to commemorate the flight.

Two years later, the Wrights wrote in a patent application that their airplane design:

… provide[s] means for guiding the machine both vertically and horizontally … combining lightness, strength, convenience of construction, and certain other advantages.

Were the Wright brothers always destined for the skies? It’s known that their father gave them a rubber-band-powered flying toy when they were still children. The toy was made of cork and bamboo, with a paper body.

By 1899 – when Wilbur was 33 years old and Orville was 28 – the brothers were already learning everything they could about the science of aeronautics and the history of attempted human flight. Their first airplane were gliders, which they tested on the long, isolated beaches of Kitty Hawk. By 1902, they had built a glider that could be manned and controlled by a human pilot. It held a world record for gliding over 600 feet (nearly 200 meters).

Their first powered aircraft had a 40-foot (12-meter) wingspan, weighed 750 lbs, and had a 12-horsepower engine.

That first flight in December 1903 marked the beginning of a new era of global travel and relatedness.

By the way, at the time they received their patent for their airplane in 1906, several other aviators of the day claimed to have been the first to use the Wrights’ method of turning the airplane by warping or twisting the wings. But this part of the design, too, was included in the Wrights’ patent. In 2013, a story came to light about another would-be aviator, Gustave Whitehead, whose first flight supposedly beat the Wright brothers by two years. Thus far, that story has not been supported and is not accepted by aviation scholars.

Bottom line: The first airplane soared for 12 seconds over 120 feet (about 37 meters) of sandy ground just outside Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903.

SOURCE:::: http://www.earthsky.org

Natarajan

Image of the Day…Sunset Over the Gulf of Mexico…

December 17, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

Sunset Over the Gulf of Mexico

From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset and posted it to social media on Dec. 14, 2014.

The space station and its crew orbit Earth from an altitude of 220 miles, traveling at a speed of approximately 17,500 miles per hour. Because the station completes each trip around the globe in about 92 minutes, the crew experiences 16 sunrises and sunsets each day.

Image Credit: NASA/Terry Virts

SOURCE::::www.nasa.gov

Natarajan

Image of the Day…Mars Exploration Rover opportunity …

December 16, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

Opportunity Pausing at a Bright Outcrop on Endeavour Rim, Sol 3854

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is continuing its traverse southward on the western rim of Endeavour Crater during the fall of 2014, stopping to investigate targets of scientific interest along way. This view is from Opportunity’s front hazard avoidance camera on Nov. 26, 2014, during the 3,854th Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s work on Mars. This camera is mounted low on the rover and has a wide-angle lens.

The scene includes Opportunity’s robotic arm, called the “instrument deployment device,” at upper left. Portions of the pale bedrock exposed on the ground in front of the rover are within the arm’s reach. Researchers used instruments on the arm to examine a target called “Calera” on this patch of bedrock. The wheel tracks in the scene are from the drive — in reverse — to this location, a drive of 32.5 feet (9.9 meters) on Sol 3846 (Nov. 18, 2014).

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

SOURCE:::: http://www.nasa.gov

Natarajan

Indian American Vivek Murthy is Now ‘America’s Doctor’ !!! …First Indian to Hold this Post …

December 16, 2014December 16, 2014Natarajan1 Comment

US senate voted to confirm Vivek Murthy as the next surgeon general, a position often called America’s Doctor. He is the first Indian American to hold and the position, and the youngest.

The US senate voted to confirm Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy as the next surgeon general, a position often called America’s Doctor. (AP File Photo)

His confirmation also marked a major defeat for the powerful gun lobby spearheaded by the National Rifles Association, which had lobbied hard with senators to block a vote.

And nearly succeeded, delaying a vote for 10 months.

Democrats pushed the nomination through in the dying days of their leadership of the upper chamber, which passes into Republican hand next month following recent polls.

Murthy was confirmed by a 51-43 vote.

Welcoming Murthy’s confirmation as “America’s Doctor”, President Barack Obama said he will “hit the ground running” and “build on the progress we’ve made combating Ebola”.

Indian Americans, who were following the confirmation process closely, were ecstatic. Ami Bera, Indian American congressman, called the confirmation “historic” for the community.

At 37, Murthy, who was born into a family from Karnataka, becomes the youngest surgeon general in US history, something that made some senators publicly wonder if he was too young.

Considered whip smart – studied biochemical sciences from Harvard and then a combined medicine and business degree from Yale – Murthy has been working at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital as a physician.

But it were his political work and comments about gun control that got him into trouble with Republicans, many of whom vowed to not let his nomination go through.

Specially this tweet from him in October, 2012: “Tired of politicians playing politics w/ guns, putting lives at risk b/c they’re scared of NRA. Guns are a health care issue.”

NRA wrote to all senators urging them to block his nomination saying his confirmation would be “prescription for disaster for America’s gun owners”. Many senators agreed.

One Republican senator pointedly asked Murthy his confirmation hearing in February if he will use the office of surgeon general to push his personal views on gun control.

Murthy responded in the negative, saying he will be focussing on obesity prevention. But his critics were not convinced. They had one other issue with him.

He was an outspoken supporter of Obama’s healthcare reforms.
Some other Indian Americans nominated to high offices by Obama

Sri Srinivasan: Judge at DC circuit court of appeals (roughly a high court), which puts him in line for a Supreme Court judgeship

Nisha Biswal: First Indian American to hold the powerful position of assistant secretary of state heading South and Central Asia

Rich Verma: As the first Indian American named US ambassador to a major country – India. He was confirmed by the senate last week. Verma earlier held the position of assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs

Aneesh Chopra: First Chief Technology Officer of the United States, who has since moved on, running unsuccessfully for the Democratic ticket for Virginia governorship

Preet Bharara: Who as US attorney for the Southern District of New York has successfully prosecuted many for insider trading, including Rajat Gupta. His prosecution of diplomat Devyani Khobragade, however, did go down well with Indians

Rajiv Shah: As USAID administrator, Shah is possibly the senior most Indian American in Obama’s administration now

Puneet Talwar: Assistant secretary of state for bureau of political-military affairs. He is reported to have played a significant role in the recent thaw in US-Iran ties

Vivek Kundra: First Chief Information Officer of the US, who has since moved on

– SOURCE::::www.hindustantimes.com

Natarajan

Story of Rock Garden as Revealed by its Creator Nek Chand Who Has Turned 90 !!!…

December 15, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

His statues have ended up in museums around the world. AFP PHOTO/NARINDER NANU. Source: AFP

DEEP inside his massive garden of handmade waterfalls and sculptures, Nek Chand recalls toiling away secretly in the dead of night for a staggering 18 years to create his wonderland in north India.

Riding his bicycle after dark to a state-owned forest, Chand spent night after night clearing patches of ground and transforming the landscape into a majestic garden that would eventually cover eight hectares.

Waterfalls, gardens and sculptures dot the serene environment. Source: AFP/NARINDER NANU Source: AFP

“I started building this garden as a hobby” in the 1950s, Chand told AFP in a rare interview on the eve of his 90th birthday on Monday.

“For 18 years nobody came to know. There was a forest here, who would come here and what for? There were no roads to come and go,” Chand said nostalgically, seated in the garden that has become a major tourist attraction, drawing thousands of visitors a day.

Indian visitors in the Rock Garden, built by self-taught Indian artist Nek Chand Saini over the course of 18 years AFP/NARINDER NANU. Source: AFP

After the deadly violence and upheaval of partition in 1947, India set about building a capital for Punjab state, carved out of a region that stretched across the border into newly formed Pakistan.

From the tonnes of building materials and rubbish that followed, Chand carefully collected what he considered gems while working as a lowly roads inspector in the upcoming Chandigarh city.

Pottery pieces, glass, tiles and even broken bathroom sinks were used to make sculptures of men and women, fairies and demons, elephants, monkeys and gods.

Pottery pieces, glass, tiles and broken household items wre used to create this wonderland. AFP PHOTO/NARINDER NANU Source: AFP

“I had many ideas, I was thinking all the time. I began carrying all the material on my bicycle and collecting it here,” Chand said of his garden of mosaic pathways, hidden chambers and courtyards.

“I did three to four rounds on my cycle each day. I saw beauty and art in what people said was junk.”

‘Like reliving Willy Wonka’

When his secret was finally discovered in 1976, authorities threatened demolition, claiming Chand had violated strict land laws.

But an amazed public rallied behind him, leading to his appointment as head of the newly opened Rock Garden of Chandigarh.

Chand stepped up his creation of hundreds of sculptures — mostly made from broken household material and discarded personal items including electric sockets, switches, bangles and bicycle frames.

Riding his bicycle after dark to a state-owned forest, Chand spent night after night clearing patches of ground and transforming the landscape into a majestic garden AFP/NARINDER NANU. Source: AFP

Some made of broken glass bangles show girls dancing, others of ceramic pieces depict men at a party pouring glasses of whiskey.

Ticket sales grew as word of the secret garden spread, with some 3,000 people from across the country and overseas now wandering through daily.

“It’s so amazing. It’s something like reliving Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” Jasmine Paul, a resident of Vancouver who was holidaying in India, told AFP.

“It is just like the fairy tales that you grow up reading.” With no formal education in art or sculpture, Chand drew inspiration from his childhood when he played near a river flowing through his village in what is now Muslim-majority Pakistan.

Sculptures made from discarded household items. AFP PHOTO/NARINDER NANU Source: AFP

Chand and his family were forced to flee across the border during partition because they were Hindus, finally settling in Chandigarh, the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana states.

“That is why there is a childlike quality to the sculptures,” said Alan Cesarno, a British volunteer with the Nek Chand Foundation that was set up in 1997 to raise funds for the garden’s upkeep.

“When you look around you realise that it is actually a child’s version of a fantasy kingdom,” he told AFP standing next to one of the several waterfalls.

Self-taught Indian artist Nek Chand Saini on the eve of his 90th birthday. AFP PHOTO/NARINDER NANU. Source: AFP

Conservation challenges

Chand’s statues have found their way into museums across the world, including at the National Children’s Museum in Washington, the American Folk Art Museum in New York and the RIBA gallery in Liverpool in 2007.

Back home, the garden is facing conservation challenges, including a lack of funds from the state government which takes the ticket sales, according to volunteers.

Vandalism has been reported more than once and enthusiastic visitors often climb or lean on the structures, damaging their fragile pieces.

“In a country known more for slums and garbage dumps, the rock garden stands as an exceptional example,” said Mani Dhillon, a volunteer involved in the garden’s upkeep.

“It is perhaps the only place of its kind in the entire world. The administration and the people must realise its importance, they must come forward and save it before it’s too late,” she told AFP.

Magical waterfalls enchant its visitors. AFP PHOTO/NARINDER NANU Source: AFP

While Chand still oversees the garden as its founding head with near daily visits, his age and failing eyesight mean he can no longer spend the long hours needed to create new sculptures.

He is however undaunted by the challenges facing his more than half a century’s work, saying he has faith in God from which he draws his strength.

“I am not scared of anything. Had I been scared, how would I have worked in the dead of the night in the jungle?”

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

Natarajan

Amazing Freestyle FootBall Skill … Watch This Lady !!!

December 15, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

<div id=”fb-root”></div> <script>(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1″; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));</script>
<div class=”fb-post” data-href=”https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152837712968826″ data-width=”470″><div class=”fb-xfbml-parse-ignore”><a href=”https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152837712968826″>Post</a> by <a href=”https://www.facebook.com/streetstylesociety”>S3</a>.</div></div>

Watch her magnificent freestyle football above….

Breaking Stereotypes: This Woman’s Freestyle Football Skills Will Leave You Spellbound

Rub your eyes all you want but it’s true. This young woman’s skills with the football are unbelievable and this video will give you much joy and motivation to find and nurture a talent, maybe. Melody Donchet, winner of the 2014 Street Style World Final held in Salvador, Brazil, makes sweet music with her footwork as she juggles a football, watched by a thrilled audience.She does hand-stands and swirls her legs like a ribbon, all the while balancing a football like it’s no big deal. The expression on her fellow contestant’s face tells you everything there is. She looks awed and mortified and we don’t blame her.

With the crowd cheering her on and the judges unanimously declaring her victorious, there is no doubt whatsoever that Melody’s skill with the ball makes her everything that a winner ought to be.

Mind = blown.

SOURCE::::: http://www.ndtv.com

Natarajan

A Briton Who is Cleaning Up India ….

December 14, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

There is a reason Jodie Underhill is called the ‘garbage girl’.

Archana Masih/Rediff.com meets the young lady who has been dirtying her hands in a crusade against filth.

“The first thing I saw were the beautiful mountains, but when I looked over the edge what I saw was — garbage,” says Jodie Underhill remembering her trek to Triund, near McLeodganj a few years ago.

Left: Jodie Underhill, CEO-Founder, Waste Warriors. Photograph: Seema Pant/Rediff.com

After spending three months travelling through Mumbai, Goa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, she had made her way to Dharamsala in 2008.

“India is such a beautiful country, but I haven’t seen filth on this scale. People just don’t care,” she continues talking about her battle with garbage in her office-cum-home in Dehradun; which is also a refuge to Bella, a donkey that broke its leg in a car accident across the road.

“I thought Dharamsala would be my salvation. It was the home of the Dalai Lama and would be clean, but I was wrong. I got off the tourist bus at 6 am to see a big pile of garbage at my feet. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

A native of England, Underhill, who had come to volunteer at a Tibetan school, then spent two weeks walking around McLeodganj with a placard saying ‘Volunteers Needed.’

Hundreds of people, mostly foreigners, turned up for her first clean up.

She and the volunteers went on to clean a children’s park that had been made into a dumping ground and started a waste collection system from home and shops in Triund so that people stopped throwing garbage down the mountains.

“With every piece of glass, plastic or trash you picked, it felt you were rescuing nature in a small way,” she says.

Since then waste is collected from 250 households and brought down on mules. Her NGO also maintains an 8-km-long popular trekking trail.

Underhill, who is often called ‘pagal (mad) for her passion for cleaning up and disposing off waste in the correct way, moved to Dehradun in 2012 to start Waste Warriors with funding from Max-India.

One of its projects was Gandhi Park, the only park in the city, which costs Rs 20,000 a month to maintain.

The organisation and its staff of 24 waste workers maintain certain shopping complexes, forest areas and localities in cooperation with shopkeepers and locals. She also conducts workshops in schools and has conducted a programme on waste management with the Indian Army.

“In India, people have a terrible attitude towards those who clear waste. They are the invisible people. Without them India would have disappeared under its garbage,” says the 38 year old, who won Times Now’s Amazing Indian Award in 2012 and a Rs 4 lakh (Rs 400,000) grant from the Mahindra Rise competition that supports new ideas.

In addition, Mahindra also gave Waste Warriors two pick-up trucks. It was the first time Waste Warriors moved on from the sole cycle rickshaw it had used till then to collect waste. Individual donations also help the organisation with funds — one of them being Telugu movie superstar Chiranjeevi’s contribution of Rs 5 lakhs (Rs 500,000).

When Underhill, a CEO without a salary, could not get a reduction in her visa extension fee of Rs 32,000 recently, Michael Dalvi, the former Ranji Trophy player, donated the amount to the NGO.

Waste Warriors charges Rs 100 from a chaiwallah to Rs 5,000 from a bank to collect and dispose the garbage responsibly. In a particular complex in Dehradun, the waste was earlier being dumped into a parking lot.

Struggling to raise funds and at times confronted with local governmental indifference, working with garbage hasn’t been easy for Underhill. It also elicits prejudice. She was once reported as a prostitute to the Foreigners Registration Office because residents disapproved of her living with two sweepers and her clean-up rounds in a cycle rickshaw.

“I shared their home. It was convenient as I worked with them,” she says and is grateful to have found the present space where Waste Warriors does waste segregation, composting and even provides shelter to cows, donkeys and dogs

Getting down on her knees as she goes through a pile of garbage her waste warriors had brought in, she picks up a plastic bag with rotting, smelly foodstuff.

“This plastic will take hundreds of years to decompose,” she says, reiterating the 5 important things all of us MUST do:

Segregate dry and liquid waste.
Stop using plastic.
Recycle.
Compost food/ garden waste.
Stop LITTERING and PEEING anywhere you feel like!

Image: Jodie Underhill with Bella, an injured donkey that she has given refuge. Photograph: Seema Pant/Rediff.com

“To change mindsets and habits is not impossible, but difficult. Stopping littering, dumping, burning is equivalent to giving up alcohol or drug addiction,” says Underhill, whose NGO is also working with six villages surrounding the Corbett National Park and aims to expand to 120 villages in the next five years.

With no awareness or mechanism, villagers have been dumping their waste into the Corbett tiger reserve. Funding for the first year has been provided by Mahindra. Waste Warriors has projects in Dharamsala, Dehradun, Corbett and has recently started work in Rishikesh. It aims at having similar projects around the country.

Underhill is quite obviously, excited about the Swachh Bharat initiative, and is eager to make a presentation to the prime minister. “I’d like to tell him what needs to be done because I work in the field,” she says.

“The PM is doing the right thing, but sweeping is not enough, it also has to be disposed properly. We need infrastructure, technology and mass scale awareness,” says Underhill.

“The municipal solid waste rules that came into being 14 years ago need to be enforced and read by every government official. This piece of legislation is the key to cleaning India.”

Yet she feels no government can work wonders unless the people bring about the transformation themselves.

Back in England, her parents think she has lost her mind to be working with garbage in India. But she feels India is home.

“English parents are like Indian parents. They want you to get married and have kids. I say I want to make a difference for other kids,” says Underhill who hasn’t been home for a couple of years.

“What are we leaving behind for them — a planet that has nothing left? Millions are going to die if we don’t change the way we live.”

Archana Masih/Rediff.com in Dehradun

Related News: Jodie Underhill, Waste Warriors, NGO, Corbett, Bella

SOURCE:::: http://www.rediff.com

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Message For the Day…” How to Train and Command Your Senses…” ?

Message For the Day…” How to Achieve Spiritual Wisdom…”

Indian American Vivek Murthy is Now ‘America’s Doctor’ !!! …First Indian to Hold this Post …