MikeLigalig.com

9. Give up anger. Anger burns a hole in the hand of the person still holding on to it. Move it out once and for all.

10. Give up control. Control is an illusion. We live in an out of control world. Learn to embrace the new and welcome change; otherwise you'll grow old through your own rigidity. Learn to let go.

7. Give up the past. We've all been hurt, we all had parents that made mistakes and we've all been through hell. You didn't listen to your parents when you were younger, so why are you still listening to their voices in your head now? Every experience in life has taught you something or made you stronger.

8. Give up spending money on what you don't need in effort to buy happiness. Living simply allows the space for life to flow. We complicate our lives by spending too much money and filling our home with "things." Less is truly more.

5. Let go of insecurity. When we take ourselves too seriously, we think everyone else does too. There is one version of you on the planet. Be it, own it and quit worrying about it. No one really cares or watches you that closely.

6. Stop taking everything personally. Truth is, most people are too consumed with their own life to really consider what you're doing. As my first boss said so well: "The world doesn't revolve around you. Most people's reactions have nothing to do with you, so let it go."

3. Give up participating in gossip. 100 percent of the time, those sharing gossip with you will gossip about you. Believing gossip is like gambling everything on a horse sight unseen. It's naive.

4. Quit worrying. Where thoughts go, energy flows. Worry is investing time and energy in something you don't want to have happen. Learn to let go and trust.

1. Give up caring what other people think of you. I know it seems counter intuitive as we humans are primal pack animals that don't want to be cast from the village, but spending time worrying what others think, is a waste of energy. You'll never please everyone and it's none of your business what others think of you.

2. Give up trying to please everyone. Unless you're living life to the beat of your own drum, your tribe won't be able to find you. Be the best version of you you can be, and you'll naturally attract in the people that are supposed to surround you.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Tamara Star
Life Coach, Speaker, Writer
Posted: 10/10/2013 10:57 am


I'm told happiness is a choice.

Unfortunately we complicate our lives to the point of being unable to recognize happiness when it appears before our eyes.

So how to clear the slate? Here are 10 things you'll need to give up in exchange for your happiness.

Perform service and charity anonymously. Prideful men want everyone to know when they do a charitable act. They drop the amount of money they donated to a cause into conversation, they post pictures of their service to Facebook, and they never miss a chance to remind someone they served of their generosity towards them. They are obviously doing service for the wrong reason: to stoke their ego and gain acclamation. Real charity is not self-seeking and is done solely for the benefit of others. Next time you do something nice, try keeping it completely to yourself. It’s a tough test of your manly humility.

Do what’s expected, but don’t make a big deal about it. My grandparent’s generation understood the idea of fulfilling your duty. In his book, The Greatest Generation, Tom Brokaw made this observation:

The World War II generation did what was expected of them. But they never talked about it. It was part of the Code. There’s no more telling metaphor than a guy in a football game who does what’s expected of him â€" makes an open-field tackle â€" then gets up and dances around. When Jerry Kramer threw the block that won the Ice Bowl in ’67, he just got up and walked off the field.

Why don’t we take a lesson from our grandfathers? Do something because you’re supposed to do it, have a little humility, and shut the hell up about it.

Don’t name/experience drop. Have you ever been in a conversation with a man who felt it necessary to interject how he’s been to Europe twice, got a 4.0 in college, dines frequently at pricey restaurants, or knows a famous author, at points in the conversation where such tidbits of information didn’t belong? These people are completely annoying and are basically trying let others know how great they are. Their exaggerated sense of self-importance leads them to demand the lion’s share of attention. These men are clearly insecure; they do not think they can win the interest of others without frontloading all of their attention grabbers. A humble man can hold back on sharing his strengths. He understands that others have equally important and interesting stories to share, and his turn will come.

How to practice humility

Give credit where credit is due. The prideful man will take as much credit for a success as he possibly can. The humble man seeks to shine the light on all the other people and strokes of luck that came together to make that success happen. No man rises on the strength of his bootstraps alone. Innate talent, a supportive family member, friend, teacher or coach, and lucky breaks always contribute somewhere down the line.

What humility is not

In their quest to be humble, people often confuse humility with false modesty. I think we’ve all been guilty of this at one time or another. When we are recognized for a great accomplishment, we act as though what we did really wasn’t that important or that big of a deal. For example, we spend many hours meticulously putting together an excellent presentation for work, and when people praise us we say, “Oh, it was just something I threw together.” We have a tendency to devalue what we’ve done under the pretense of humility. In fact, people often take on the guise of false humility for the sake of receiving more praise and adulation from others. You want people to think “Wow, he said he just threw that together! Imagine what he could do if he had spent hours on it.” When you do something well, don’t toot your own horn excessively, but truthfully acknowledge what you accomplished.

What is humility?

The definition of humility need not include timidity or becoming a wallflower. Instead, humility simply requires a man to think of his abilities and his actions as no greater, and no lesser, than they really are. Real humility then mandates that a man knows and is completely honest with himself. He honestly assesses what are, and to what magnitude he possess talents and gifts, struggles and weaknesses.

Humility is the absence of pride. We are taught to think pride is a good thing. But pride functions only when comparing others to yourself. Don’t base your self-worth on how you stack up to others. Instead, focus on yourself and how you can improve. C.S. Lewis said the following about pride:

The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with everyone else’s pride. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. Two of a trade never agree. Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive-is competitive by its very nature-while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking, there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.

This pride then results in the great Trojan, Hector, killing Achilles’ friend. It is only then, after it has become too late, that Achilles decides to fight. Even so, it isn’t even for his country; he is motivated by the pull of revenge. After Achilles kills Hector in battle, in an act of complete dishonor, Achilles ties up Hector’s body to a chariot and drags it around the walls of Troy for nine days.

While many today think of Achilles as a hero, to the ancient Greeks he embodied the shameful consequence of hubris. While they admired his legendary fighting ability, the real lesson they took from his story was the need to be humble.

The Hubris of Achilles

The ancient Greeks often wrote about the importance of humility. A reoccurring theme throughout their literature was the shameful, often fatal effects of hubris-excessive, arrogant pride. For the Greeks, hubris meant thinking you were wise when you were not. One story that drives home the importance of manly humility is Homer’s The Iliad.

Throughout The Iliad, we find young Achilles, the invincible Greek soldier, sitting in his tent pouting because King Agamemnon took his slave woman. All the while, Achilles’ countrymen are dying at the hands of the Trojans. Even when Agamemnon apologizes and gives back the woman in hopes that Achilles will start fighting, Achilles still acts like a little bitch and refuses to do so. In fact, he starts to pack up to head back to Greece. He demonstrates a complete lack of humility. While his comrades perish, he seeks to save his own skin because of an inflated sense of self-importance and his arrogant pride.

http://www.artofmanliness.com/
by BRETT & KATE MCKAY





Our popular image of manliness usually consists of a man with a cocky swagger, a rebel who blazes his own path and stands confident and ready to take on the world. “Humility” doesn’t seem to fit into this image. Humility oftentimes conjures up images of weakness, submissiveness, and fear. But this is a false idea of humility. Real humility is a sign of strength, authentic confidence, and courage. It is the mark of a true man.

World religions have strikingly like-minded beliefs on the Golden Rule: Hindus believe that one should never do to others what would pain oneself; Islam says not one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself. The Sikh faith asks you to treat others as you would like to be treated. That nature is only good when it shall not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self is a precept of the Zoroastrian faith. Buddhists say, hurt not others with that which pains yourself. And Confucius said: Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.

Inversely, your heart's capacity to hate is limited. Try applying the Golden Rule of infinite love to hate and you'll find yourself shattered. That's because you don't have a limitless capacity to hate like you have to love. For, love gives you joy and power and victory and hate brings in sorrow and powerlessness and defeat.

Different religions propound love of your neighbour as an important part of their teaching. But you don't have to be a religious person to love your neighbour...because love of your neighbour is a superb human emotion, not necessarily tied to any creed or religion.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." This is the first and greatest teaching. And the second greatest teaching is: "Love your neighbour as yourself." All other teachings hinge on these two teachings. This is how Christianity explains the Golden Rule of 'Love Thy Neighbour.'

The second choice â€" hatred â€" will harm you as much as it hurts your neighbour...which leaves you with the first and the best choice â€" To love your neigbhour. Honestly, loving an irksome neighbour is not as hard as it seems. It simply means respecting the person and thinking of his needs and desires as much as you would your own.

You won't be able to love yourself until you first love your neighbour. Whether we like it or not, a major part of our life will always centre on that of our neighbour's. Ask yourself some questions and you'll see from the answers how important your neighbour is for your own peace and happiness:

And you can't just stop at loving your immediate neighbour. You've got to love your neighbour's neighbour, too and your neighbour's neighbour's neighbour and...the circle of love gets wider subsuming differences of community, state, nation, continents â€" encompassing the whole universe and beyond. Your heart is so big and so full of love, that its capacity to love is infinite; it's Divine.

http://redroom.com/
By Oswald Pereira


Why should I love my neighbour like I love myself? The answer is simple: Because it's the most sensible thing to do. Loving your neighbour is the first and best choice among the three choices you have with regard to that person next door. The first choice is love. The second is hate and the third is indifference.

Let's examine each choice, beginning with the third choice. Perhaps, you don't want to love your neighbour, because he is bad; but yet you wouldn't want to hate him because you are a good person and you avoid negative emotions. So you are indifferent to your neighbour. But indifference or apathy is a cold emotion. Apathy is as negative as hatred. The line between hatred and apathy is very fine. If you meet your neighbour on the street and you ignore him, it's hardly a good and decent thing to do.

He is a friend we all have met â€" and one we will meet again in just a few minutes. The great gift of communion will join us once more to him, and join us together again as a body of believers, bound together by faith, healed together by Christ’s limitless love, redeemed together by his great sacrifice.

That’s the ultimate “social network,” the greatest in all of history.

This morning, let’s remember that â€" and, like the Samaritan, let’s cherish not only the gift … but the One who gave it.

Like the Samaritan, before we leave, let us turn back to the One who gave it â€" whispering our thanksgiving, praying in joyful hope that we too may one day hear the words that changed the life of that Samaritan forever:

“Your faith has saved you.”

All of us who have felt bullied or betrayed.

Christ can make all of us whole, and healed.

Through the gift of his love and mercy, we no longer have to feel like lepers.

In the world of Facebook, the point of connection is to “friend” someone â€" some people I know have thousands of Facebook friends, most of them people they’ve never met.

I’m reminded of that old Protestant hymn that proclaims: “What a friend I have in Jesus.”

It was gratitude grounded in faith. Faith in something â€" and someone.

He understood that what really mattered wasn’t the gift…but the One who gave it.

And as Luke makes clear again and again in his beautiful gospel: that gift is offered to all.

All of us who stand outside the circle, who feel at one time or another rejected or cast out or unloved.

All of us who feel lonely or abandoned, desperate or despairing.

All these are people who might be considered outsiders or outcasts â€" but they are the ones in Luke’s gospel who repeatedly find healing, and salvation, and hope.
Just like the lone figure in this Sunday’s gospel.

The others who were miraculously cured went on with their lives. But this one Samaritan didn’t. He couldn’t. He had to turn around and go back to Christ and fall before him and give thanks.

But Christ made clear it was more than this gesture that changes this man’s life.
“Your faith,” Jesus tells him, “has saved you.”

Something stirred in this Samaritan’s heart, and moved him to reverse course, to go back to where it began â€" healed, renewed, redeemed. It was gratitude, but with a profound difference.

The only one who went back to Jesus, who fell before him and gave thanks, was the outcast among all outcasts, a figure doubly despised. A Samaritan.

It’s important to remember that Luke was the only writer of the four gospels who was not Jewish. He was a gentile, probably Greek. Like the Samaritan, he was an outsider himself. And so again and again, he opens the gospel to a wider world.

The first chapters of Luke, with the nativity story, bring people from all over the world to Bethlehem â€" wise men, shepherds, angels, everyone. When tracing Christ’s geneology, Luke doesn’t begin with Abraham, as Matthew does, but with Adam â€" the father of us all. And in his gospel, Luke takes pains to write about all the despised people who are saved: the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the prodigal son, the penitent thief. And, of course, he also gives us two famous Samaritans: the Good Samaritan, and the man we met today, this healed Samaritan.

They were the ultimate outcasts: lepers. They lived totally apart from others â€" diseased and disfigured. By law, they had to keep a certain distance from everyone else. They had to keep their faces covered. Other people could have nothing to do with them. In curing them, Christ offered them more than just a miraculous healing. He offered them a new life. A new way of life. A life in community â€" able to walk freely in the town, to worship with others, eat with others, to be accepted and even, perhaps, to be loved. They could finally have a life they had long been denied because of their disease.

All of that, on its own, is meaningful enough. But Luke throws in one sentence that makes it clear it’s about much more than another healing miracle.

“He was a Samaritan.”

Zuckerberg’s motivations in the movie are the kind any of us can recognize â€" but it comes down to more than just settling scores or even blind ambition.
It all comes down to wanting to be accepted â€" our need to belong to something, our yearning to love and to be loved.

That, for better or worse, is part of our humanity.

No one wants to feel like an outcast.

Which brings me to the 10 people Jesus encountered in today’s gospel.

http://www.patheos.com/
By Deacon Greg Kandra


Centuries from now, when people are studying our civilization, one of the most fascinating examples of our culture will be something that just a few years ago seemed like a foolish conceit. But it has touched lives in ways even its creator couldn’t have imaginedâ€"reaching over one billion people. It’s now a part of our vocabulary.

It’s Facebook.

A few years ago, the movie “The Social Network” offered one account of how Facebook came to be.

In the first scene of the movie, Harvard undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg ends up being rejected by a girl while on a date. You can understand why: he’s really a jerk. But bent on revenge, and feeling like an outsider, he goes back to his dorm and sits down at his computer and sets out to create the ultimate “club” at Harvard â€" and succeeds beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.

Seoul, South Korea
Shenzhen, China
Singapore, Singapore
Surakarta, Indonesia
Sydney, Australia
Tehran, Iran
Tokyo, Japan
Toronto, Canada
Valparaiso, Chile
Vancouver, Canada
Vientiane, Laos
Zurich, Switzerland

Panama, Panama
Paris, France
Perth, Australia
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
Prague, Czech Republic
Quito, Ecuador
Reykjavik, Iceland
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Rome, Italy
St. Petersburg, Russia
San Jose, Costa Rica
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Santiago, Chile
Seattle, U.S.

Lagos, Nigeria
Las Vegas, U.S.
Lima, Peru
London, UK
Mendoza, Argentina
Mexico City, Mexico
Miami, U.S.
Montevideo, Uruguay
Montreal, Canada
Mumbai, India
Muscat, Oman
Naples, Italy
Nadi, Fiji
Nairobi, Kenya
New York, U.S.

Curitiba, Brazil
Cusco, Peru
Doha, Qatar
Dubai, UAE
Durban, South Africa
Edinburgh, UK
Ha Noi, Viet Nam
Havana, Cuba
Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Istanbul, Turkey
Jakarta, Indonesia
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Kyoto, Japan
La Paz, Bolivia

The cities Cebu, Iloilo and Vigan would have to compete with the following cities so far to be among the New7Wonders Cities:

Accra, Ghana
Asuncion, Paraguay
Athens, Greece
Auckland, New Zealand
Baghdad, Iraq
Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei
Bangkok, Thailand
Barcelona, Spain
Beirut, Lebanon
Bethlehem, Palestine
Bogota, Colombia
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Cairo, Egypt
Casablanca, Morocco
Caracas, Venezuela
Cuenca, Ecuador
Chicago, U.S.

The list of 77 will further be trimmed to 28 and will be subjected to online voting by October 21. The top seven cities will be announced by year-end 2014.

Weber earlier said he hopes the campaign will be a “catalyst for discussing everything from urban planning to metropolitan governance, from tourism to architecture.”

The New7Wonders Cities is the third global voting campaign by the Swiss firm, after the man-made New 7 Wonders of the World and the New7Wonders of Nature.

In 2011, Palawan’s famed Subterranean River National Park was named as one of the world’s New7Wonders of Nature, amid an aggressive campaign by local officials.

Weber said, “My hope is that the New7Wonders Cities campaign will generate debate about the challenges cities face… and how they are responding to them.”

Cebu, Iloilo, Vigan vie for New7Wonders title
By Kim Arveen Patria | Yahoo Southeast Asia Newsroom â€" Fri, Oct 11, 2013


After the Puerto Princesa underground river was named one of the new wonders of nature, three Philippine cities are now being recognized by Swiss firm New7Wonders.

The cities of Cebu, Iloilo and Vigan bested more than 200 other cities to be part of “long list” of 77 revealed by New7Wonders President Bernard Weber October 7.

The “long list” of 77 is based on the results of online voting which began in March 2012. More than 300 cities were initially considered from nominations sent from around the world.

“Global in its scope, this remarkable New7Wonders long list reflects the energy and culture of the city at its best,” Weber said in the New7Wonders website.

“[C]ities remind us of the possibilities of civilization when, for the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population live in cities,” he added.

Bwahaha! Yes, someone is all three!

Quote from: hubag bohol on October 13, 2013, 12:23:57 PM
'Broadway Idiot' Documentary Examines Green Day's 'American Idiot' Musical

What a title. It's obviously one idiot too many.

Hamilton, who has also produced segments for "Nova" and "Frontline," had nothing but praise for Armstrong, whom he says was "remarkably open, stripped down and honest" throughout the production of both the musical itself and the subsequent documentary.

"He came into the room without any pretense," Hamilton recalled. "Here you have one of the world's most famous artists trying something totally new ... he didn't say, 'This is the way I do it,' he approached it with an open mind. I think that is really, really rare."

Fans of the stage musical will be pleased to know that "Broadway Idiot" offers a more intimate take on what was admittedly a oft-bombastic show. "I think this film gives people a chance to see how differently a piece of media can be experienced in different settings," Hamilton noted.

'Broadway Idiot' Documentary Examines Green Day's 'American Idiot' Musical
The Huffington Post  |  By Curtis M. Wong   
Posted: 10/11/2013 1:08 pm EDT  |  Updated: 10/11/2013 2:23 pm EDT


A new documentary is taking a behind-the-scenes look at Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong's 2010 Broadway debut.

"Broadway Idiot," which hits select theaters on Oct. 11, traces Armstrong's path from multi-platinum punk rock star to leading man in Green Day's Tony-winning musical, "American Idiot." Directed by Doug Hamilton, the movie offers what most Broadway fans never get to see: a no-holds-barred, warts-and-all backstage glimpse at the production of a musical.

Hamilton says working alongside Armstrong and the rest of the "American Idiot" cast and crew was very much a labor of love, albeit one that he freely admits was an eye-opening experience.

"I think most people in the audience have no real idea of the time, detail and hard work that go into making the final show," Hamilton told The Huffington Post in an email. Describing "Broadway Idiot" as "the most intimate, behind-the-scenes documentary that's been done of the Broadway process," Hamilton added, "We were incredibly lucky to have the kind of access we did."

In fact, naay custom-built electric fan fit for a mini milyonir...

Kon gusto ka, naay vintage American electric fans...

...naay Philippine buri fans...

Naay Japanese paper fans...

Quote from: Lorenzo on October 13, 2013, 05:40:59 AM
mura man mo duha og duhang woodpeckers nga nag awayaway kai nag kompetisyon sa usang baji. gi ahak.

tamz na oyz.

Bwahaha! Gilabay man gud kog bato, mao nga mobawos kog labay og pan...

Quote from: hubag bohol on October 12, 2013, 08:47:40 PM
The mental patient bird





Bwahaha!

Botoy knows one.

If people are interested in this kind of discovery, what can they do to support it? What should they be urging congress to do? Fund NASA? Join the Planetary Society? Send paypal to Lee Billings?

Yes, all donations can be made to me. I shall provide you with my banking details shortly.

But in all seriousness, I think they should be contacting their congressional representatives to make their voices heard. They should go vote for the political candidates that seem to take these topics seriously. As starry-eyed and idealistic and strident as it may sound, I think they should actively oppose and electorally challenge those elements of our sociopolitical system that refuse to approach and plan for a sustainable human future, whether on this world or others. I’m not a one-issue voter, and I wouldn’t suggest that people cast their votes and support based solely upon stimulating the search for exo-Earths. But I very strongly believe that the search for extraterrestrial life and intelligence is something most of the public, if they knew they had the option, would want to meaningfully support.

Maybe I’m just blinkered and naive, but I believe that the public appetite is there in abundance to support the quest for other Earths. It’s past time we stopped dithering and went out and found these habitable planets which almost certainly exist around nearby stars. One of the most thoughtful summations of this was made to me by Wesley Traub, the current (and somewhat stifled) head of NASA’s exoplanet efforts. He said, “What it’s going to take is someone in Congress, someone in the presidency, feeling strongly about this and realizing that the first discovery of life beyond the solar system is an event that in all of history will only happen once. Do we want to be the ones who dropped the ball, who screwed up and didn’t move this forward? All we need is for our political leadership to decide this is something important for NASA and for our nation to do. I can guarantee we know exactly how to proceed if we are given the go-ahead.”

Wow. What was the sense you got about life elsewhere in the galaxy? Did most of these scientists get into this line of work because they think there’s life out there, and they want to find it?

It’s much the same answer here â€" they have faith, in a sense, that life is out there somewhere, and that it’s near enough and familiar enough to our own biology on Earth that we might have some hope of recognizing it if and when we stumble across it. Granted, that faith is informed by a wealth of inference and tangential empirical measurement.

That quality of informed, measured, hopeful faith was universal within the people I talked to.

Some of the Earth-sized planets that have been found (UPR Arecibo)

Do they, in their heart of hearts, think we’ll ever get there?

I think most of them do, because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to get out of bed each morning. In some cases, their faith in this brighter long-term future for humanity has even helped them overcome tragedy and adversity in their own lives.

The best example of that is something I don’t like to trumpet or talk a lot about in interviews, though it’s of course in the book. One of the brightest and most ambitious researchers I profiled was Sara Seager, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at MIT. As we got deeper into talking about her work and her life for what would eventually become the book, she opened up to me that her husband had recently been diagnosed with cancer. Over the course of our further interactions and interviews, his cancer became terminal. He died as I was writing the book, and I ended up telling some of that story, and how Seager dealt with that loss, within the book. I do think her belief in the immense potential for humanity to survive and persist and expand, her drive to find other Earths that could someday be visited or even colonized by our distant descendants, was something that gave her solace and strength during that difficult experience.

No argument there, I’m afraid. What about taking the longer view on this. Do these people realize the planets they’re finding may eventually be targets for something like the 100-year Starship Project? If humanity lasts long enough, these will essentially be analogous to the first maps of the western world.

Yes, that’s something that keenly, achingly informs their work and their thoughts, the things that keep them up in the dark moments of the night. To a person, these researchers realize they are part of what may be a much greater, grander story that begins but does not end upon the Earth, and perhaps even extends out beyond the solar system into the vast frontier of interstellar space.

There was, without question, an almost spiritual sentiment, a muffled sense of transcendent longing, that was a powerful undercurrent in many conversations I had. The planet hunters know that in some sense they could be at the fulcrum of a profound turning point in history, and, what’s worse, for about a decade now they’ve had to mostly just sit back and watch it slowly slip away from them, perhaps past the horizons of their own personal longevity.

Maybe that’s melodramatic, but, well, I do think that this quest for other living planets, for evidence of life and intelligence beyond the solar system, is intimately connected with our own possible long-term future.

What about reaching out to philanthropy? Certainly we’re seeing that with the Thirty Meter Telescope and Giant Magellan Telescopes.

Philanthropy can certainly help, but I don’t think it’s a panacea. It seems to me that most billionaires and mega-millionairees make their fortunes by making savvy, careful investments. There is very little capital return on investing in something like a big life-finding space telescope. It would basically be one of the world’s biggest vanity projects, if only the the super-wealthy like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates could be convinced to care. And I do believe that to properly conduct this search, to survey a representative sample of stars, you really do need to take this to space. The ground won’t do. I do hope I’m wrong about that, but I don’t think I am based on all that I’ve heard and learned over the past several years.

One other thing to consider is that we do have a space agency that, at least on paper, is more than capable of doing this. If we have to just jettison that and rely purely on the beneficence of billionaires, I think you really have to question what the purpose of NASA is and whether or not it’s worth continuing, whether or not it’s really a good investment anymore. One more caveat to that… I truly love NASA. I am a diehard NASA fanboy, and I’m unapologetic about that. But I can still see that something is gravely wrong with NASA right now. People like to bash NASA, but the truth is that NASA is our space agency. It works for us. The fact that NASA is in such a terrible state is, I think, largely due to the American people’s extremely negligent stewardship.

The book

So what is their sense of the galaxy, teeming with planets, that they discovered? I know there are many people you interviewed, but was there a common thread?

Whatever their sense is, it’s bittersweet, and tinged with some sadness. I tried to summarize this in the book’s introduction when I wrote that “time and time again I felt I was witnessing the planet hunters reach for the stars just as the sky began to fall.” There was a common thread of smothered hopes, squandered promise, frozen dreams. Right now we are nearing the confirmation of the 1,000th planet known beyond our solar system. Right now, we already have a handful of exoplanets we can point to that are potentially habitable, potentially somewhat like our own life-bearing world. These are amazing achievements, and they have occurred almost in the blink of an eye in historical terms. And yet I and the researchers I talked to think we will soon come to an impasse where further progress in the search for life beyond the solar system will be slowed. These potentially habitable, potentially inhabited exoplanets are piling up by the dozens. They are barely even newsworthy anymore, because they are pouring out of the sky everywhere we care to look. But right now and for what may be decades to come, we will lack a robust capability to follow-up on these discoveries, to learn whether these promising, tantalizing distant worlds are actually habitable or even inhabited. On the threshold of epoch-making discoveries, the wave of rapid progress seems to have broken, and is now falling back. The major and significant investments in R&D required to deliver the light of other living worlds are presently not being made, and so the dream of finding life beyond the solar system seems to be deferred. That’s a tough thing to deal with when you’ve devoted your life to this search as so many of these researchers have.

And I think this failure, if it can be called that, is perhaps diagnostic and representative of other great challenges we face as a society and culture in dealing with big problems and bold endeavors. That’s something that deeply informs the book.

One of the great advances in science during the last 15 years has been our discovery of exoplanets and understanding of other solar systems. How does your book shed light on these findings?

There are lots of ways to answer that question, because the exoplanet boom, this ongoing revolution, is very multifaceted, and I’ve tried to present many different angles and perspectives and reflections of this larger whole. I think where my book departs from many others about this subject is in its depiction of and devotion to many of the key players in the field. It’s not just about the science â€" in many ways, it’s much more about the people doing the work, and about this strange moment in time we all find ourselves in when our cosmic context, our place within the wider universe, is suddenly coming into clearer focus.

One thing I strove to do while I was working on the book was to get out of the way, in a sense. I’m a writer, not a scientist. Too often, I think, writers get in the way of their subjects, inserting themselves where it’s not really necessary or appropriate. I wanted to be a catalyst that linked up with these amazing researchers to allow them to better express their own thoughts and feelings, their own stories, in their own words.



Billings

After five billion years of solitude, Earth has become a lot less lonely in the last decade
http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/
Eric Berger
Friday, October 11, 2013


During the last 10 or 15 years astronomers have completely rewritten our understanding of planets around other stars, finding that not only are planets common in our galaxy, but they’re everywhere, and there are lots of Earth-sized planets around. This increases the likelihood of life elsewhere in our universe, and eventually may give humans somewhere meaningful to travel to beyond our solar system.

This month a new book telling the story of these remarkable discoveries, Five Billion Years of Solitude, was released. I had a chance to interview its author, science writer Lee Billings, about the scientists who made these discoveries. The interview, in full:

POSTS FOR THE DAY

October 12, 2013

hubag bohol
145 Posts



TOTAL POSTS

October 12, 2013

Posts: 74000

from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

A government report on the 1999 disaster put the death toll at 8,243 and said 445,000 livestock perished.

Authorities have said they are better prepared this time around.

The Orissa government said it was setting a "zero casualty target" in the state of close to 40 million people, and was seeking "100 per cent" evacuation of people in the worst - affected areas.

Some of the deadliest storms in history have formed in the Bay of Bengal, including one in 1970 that killed hundreds of thousands of people in modern-day Bangladesh.

Memories of '99

It is set to strike the same coastal area that was hit badly in 1999, a region mostly populated with fishermen and small-scale farmers who live in flimsy huts with thatched roofs or shanties.

Weather officials have warned of widespread crop damage in impoverished Orissa, which relies heavily on agriculture.

It took years for crop yields to recover after soil was contaminated by saltwater during the 1999 cyclone, leaving the state dependent on aid.

That storm had higher wind speeds and a larger storm surge â€" six metres â€" than being currently predicted by the Indian weather office.

But "with the horrendous experience of 1999 still haunting them, no one wants to take anything for granted", retired government officer Yudhistir Mohanty said.

Authorities were still rushing to get people out of the storm's path, even those who were reluctant to move.

"We've been instructed by the government to use force in case people resist," said Mohapatra, the Orissa special relief commissioner.

In the seaside town of Gopalpur, which is expected to be one of the worst affected areas, women and children were the first to pack into shelters, schools and public buildings, where they lay on mats.

The Indian Red Cross Society also had disaster response teams ready while the air force, fresh from helping evacuate thousands from floods in the Himalayas in June, flew in food and medical supplies to Bhubaneswar.

An AFP correspondent on the last flight to arrive in Orissa state capital Bhubaneswar before the airport was closed described how the plane aborted the first attempted landing in shearing winds and pounding rain.

'On a war footing'At least 440,000 people have been evacuated from the coastal areas of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh to the south, according to the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA).

Vice-chairman Marri Shashidhar Reddy told a news conference it was one of the biggest evacuations in India's history, and had been aided by improved early warning systems.

"We will be on a war footing," he said in New Delhi.

Food stockpiling began earlier in the week as Phailin gathered strength dramatically in the Bay of Bengal, with many shops stripped bare before they closed on Saturday afternoon.

In Visakhapatnam, further south on the coast of neighbouring Andhra Pradesh state, fishermen frantically sought to secure their boats while others admired the rough surf.

Large boats could be seen anchored out at sea, while the biggest port in the area, in Paradip, has shut down.

"This boat cost Rs400,000 ($6,500). I don't want to lose it," 60-year-old fisherman Tonka Rao said as he secured his wooden vessel.

Authorities said they expected a three-metre (10 - foot) storm surge when the eye of the cyclone strikes in the early evening (around 1230GMT), with torrential rain also threatening floods in low-lying areas.

"I've got faint memories of the 1999 super cyclone," nervous 23-year-old student engineer Apurva Abhijeeta said from the coastal town of Puri, 70 kilometres from state capital Bhubaneswar.

"I dread this Phailin. It's as if the world is coming to an end."

Heavy waves pounded the coast as terrified locals made their way to solid buildings, cramming into packed rickshaws and buses as they travelled. Relief efforts were underway, with free food being served in shelters.

by AFP
October 12, 2013 , 3 : 09 pm



People walk among debris from a broken wall after it was damaged by a wave brought by Cyclone Phailin at a fishing harbour in Visakhapatnam district in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Photo - Reuters


New Delhi: India evacuated nearly half a million people as massive cyclone Phailin closed in on the impoverished east coast on Saturday, with winds already uprooting trees and tearing into the flimsy homes.

The storm packed gusts of up to 240 kilometres per hour (150 miles per hour) as it churned over the Bay of Bengal, making it potentially the most powerful cyclone to hit the area since 1999, when more than 8,000 died, the Indian weather office said.

"The very severe cyclonic storm Phailin is moving menacingly towards the coast," special relief commissioner for the state of Orissa, Pradipta Mohapatra said, as it arrived within 150 kilometres (90 miles) of landfall.

Mao jud pud. Just look around.

Naa nay nikubit!

By Ma Wen

The mental patient bird





Bwahaha!

Bwahaha! Designed to fail man ta ani...

On a lighter vein...

10 The building where Ophelia was painted still stands

Millais’s studio was on the second floor at 7 Gower Street in London, just around the corner from the British Museum.

A blue plaque today identifies the building as the place where “The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in 1848”. But other than that, little evidence remains of its key role in the creation of the nation’s favourite picture.

9 The artist didn’t always seem destined for greatness

Millais’s educational career got off to an inauspicious start when, at the age of four, he was expelled from nursery, after just three days, for biting his teacher’s hand.

Seven years later he redeemed himself â€" and put his career back on track â€" by becoming the youngest pupil ever admitted to the Royal Academy school, where he earned the nickname “the child”. In 1885, he became the first artist to become a baronet and by the following year he was exploiting the commercial aspect of his work to earn the modern equivalent of nearly £2 million a year.

8 Millais sold the painting for 300 guineas

Ophelia was bought from the artist on Dec 10, 1851 by art dealer Mr Henry Farrer for 300 guineas.

He sold it on to a keen Pre-Raphaelite collector called Mr B. G. Windus, who then sold it in 1862 for 748 guineas. Millais’s work has continued to increase in value at a phenomenal pace ever since, with Sleeping, his image of a girl asleep in a bed, selling for £2.1 million at auction in 1999. Experts place the current value of Ophelia at at least £30 million.

7 Ophelia is big in Japan

The painting has enjoyed something of a cult following in the Far East since it was immortalised as “a thing of considerable beauty” in a novel by the renowned Japanese novelist Natsume Soseki in 1906. It travelled to Tokyo in 1998 and will return to the city next year when the Millais show transfers there from the Tate.

The Japanese have decided not to use the image of Ophelia on posters in their capital for fear that its romantic power will inspire young women to take their own lives.

6 In the 20th century, Salvador Dalí emerged as a surprise champion of the picture

“How could Salvador Dalí fail to be dazzled by the flagrant surrealism of English Pre-Raphaelitism,” wrote the great surrealist in an article published in a 1936 journal, alongside a reproduction of Ophelia.

“The Pre-Raphaelite painters bring us radiant women who are, at the same time, the most desirable and most frightening that exist.”

5 Not everybody fell for Ophelia’s charms

When the painting made its public debut at the Royal Academy in London in 1852, the critics were far from unanimous in their praise.

The Times declared that “there must be something strangely perverse in the imagination which sources Ophelia in a weedy ditch, and robs the drowning struggle of that love-lorn maiden of all pathos and beauty”. Another newspaper objected that “Mr Millais’s Ophelia in her pool?…?makes us think of a dairymaid in a frolic."

And even John Ruskin, a great supporter of Millais, was not altogether kind. Although he found the technique of the painting to be “exquisite”, he expressed grave doubts about Millais’s decision to set it in a Surrey landscape:

“Why the mischief should you not paint pure nature,” he asked, “and not that rascally wirefenced garden-rolled-nursery-maid’s paradise?”

4 Ophelia caught a cold

Determined to depict Shakespeare’s waterlogged maiden with utmost accuracy, but recognising that the chances of persuading someone to pose in the freezing Hogsmill were distinctly slim, Millais came up with the wheeze of getting his model â€" the 19-year-old Elizabeth Siddall, future wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti â€" to lie, fully clothed, in a full bathtub.

Oil lamps were placed underneath the tub to keep the water warm, but when they went out the artist was too engrossed in his work to notice. Lying deathly still in chilly water for hours on end left Siddall with a stinking cold, and Millais with a £50 doctor’s bill.