Yagam that smacks evil

Gayatri Aswamedha Yagam to be held in Sambalpur district on December 25 smacks of evil intent Christian leaders in Orissa told the Chief Minister of Orissa.

A delegation of Christian leaders led by Archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Raphael Cheenath met Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik urging him to provide security to Christians in other areas besides violence-prone Kandhamal district.

"Christians in other dioceses are also afraid. Security should also be provided to Balasore, Berhampur, Rourkela and Sambalpur dioceses", Cheenath told reporters after meeting the chief minister.

Claiming that a number of "strange" people from outside Kandhamal had entered the district despite extensive frisking exercise on roads, the Archbishop alleged criminals were freely moving in Kotagarh area.

"We apprehend that influx of non-state players into Kandhamal is aimed at creating communal violence", he said adding Christians were leaving relief camps because of fear. read it all

Geneology of Pencil: Fifty year old article on Pencil by Leonard E Read

..........

 not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.

RP.6

Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the eye—there's some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a bit of metal, and an eraser.

Innumerable Antecedents

RP.7

Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it impossible for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would like to suggest enough of them to impress upon you the richness and complexity of my background.

RP.8

My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of all the persons and the numberless skills that went into their fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement into saws, axes, motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through all the stages to heavy and strong rope; the logging camps with their beds and mess halls, the cookery and the raising of all the foods. Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the loggers drink!

RP.9

The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad engines and who construct and install the communication systems incidental thereto? These legions are among my antecedents.

RP.10

Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into small, pencil-length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness. These are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put rouge on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid white. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went into the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the light and power, the belts, motors, and all the other things a mill requires? Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors? Yes, and included are the men who poured the concrete for the dam of a Pacific Gas & Electric Company hydroplant which supplies the mill's power!

RP.11

Don't overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand in transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation.

RP.12

Once in the pencil factory—$4,000,000 in machinery and building, all capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine—each slat is given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which another machine lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places another slat atop—a lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are mechanically carved from this "wood-clinched" sandwich.

RP.13

My "lead" itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The graphite is mined in Ceylon. Consider these miners and those who make their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped and those who make the string that ties the sacks and those who put them aboard ships and those who make the ships. Even the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted in my birth—and the harbor pilots.

RP.14

The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally appears as endless extrusions—as from a sausage grinder-cut to size, dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural fats.

RP.15

My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? They are. Why, even the processes by which the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow involve the skills of more persons than one can enumerate!

RP.16

Observe the labeling. That's a film formed by applying heat to carbon black mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what, pray, is carbon black?

RP.17

My bit of metal—the ferrule—is brass. Think of all the persons who mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are black nickel. What is black nickel and how is it applied? The complete story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel on it would take pages to explain.

RP.18

Then there's my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade as "the plug," the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. An ingredient called "factice" is what does the erasing. It is a rubber-like product made by reacting rape-seed oil from the Dutch East Indies with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the common notion, is only for binding purposes. Then, too, there are numerous vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy; and the pigment which gives "the plug" its color is cadmium sulfide.  

read it all

Marriage soleminsed at Orissa police station

Orissa policemen play cupid
Subhashish Mohanty
Monday, December 15, 2008 01:22 IST


BHUBANESWAR: Marriages are made in heaven. But this one in Orissa was solemnised at a police station.
Sabir Ahmed, 25, an Indian Air Force man, on Friday married girlfriend Reshmi Roshan Nigar, 22, at Kendrapara police station, about 100 km from here, under the watchful eyes of superintendent of police Diptesh Patnaik.

Sources said Ahmed, who is now posted in Chandigarh, met Nigar in Bhadrak in 2005. They stayed in touch over the phone and soon fell in love. Nigar’s parents told Ahmed’s family about the relationship. But Ahmed’s parents did not approve of the relationship.

Ahmed snapped all ties with Nigar. Shattered, the Nigars sought the help of Ashiyana, a Bhadrak-based NGO working for the welfare of minority communities.

Ashiyana secretary Sophia Seikh stepped in to settle the discord. She first went to Chandigarh to settle the issue amicably. “As we did not get any help from the Air Force, we came back and lodged a police complaint,” she said.

When Sabir came to his hometown, Kendrapara, for Bakri-Eid last week, cops took him to the police station. The girl’s family members were summoned to the police station. Ahmed then agreed to marry Nigar. The marriage was soleminsed at the police station. Before the nikaah, a pre-nuptial agreement was signed between the two families. “The agreement states that if Nigar dies under unnatural circumstances, Ahmed’s family will be held responsible. Ahmed cannot divorce his wife,” Sophia said, adding that her NGO has settled about 18 such disputes. But for the first time, a marriage had been solemnised at a police station, she added.

Woman, 70, in 'oldest new mum' claim

A 70-year-old woman from India claims she has become the world's oldest new mother.

Rajo Devi and her husband Bala Ram had wanted a child in all their 50 years together.

She claims to have given birth to a baby girl at the end of November after having IVF treatment. Her husband is 72. more BBC

Bush gets Foot in Mouth award for his abuse of English language!

Wed, Dec 10 12:35 PM

New York, Dec 10 (ANI): United States President George Bush's long, rambling sentences and grammatically incorrect speeches have finally been acknowledged by a British language watchdog group.

Bush's famous gaffes have won him this year's not-so-coveted Foot in Mouth Lifetime Achievement Award, reports the New York Daily News.

The Plain English Campaign (PEC) gave the award to mark the departure of Bush from the White House.

While handing out the title, PEC praised Bush for "capturing the spirit of every true gobbledegooker" by using his unique way with words to address a wide range of subjects.

"I hope you leave here and walk out and say, 'What did he say?'" was just one of the Bushisms singled out for special praise, along with a comment he made on a visit to Rome in 2001.

Bush said: "I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right."

Bush has joined the list of celebrities and politicians who have also received the title, including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and supermodel Naomi Campbell. (ANI)  courtesy

Martha "Sunny" von Bulow dies after 30 years in coma

Sun, Dec 7 05:05 PM

New York, Dec 7 (ANI): After spending 30 years in coma, Manhattan socialite Martha "Sunny" von Bulow died in a New York nursing home. She was 76.

She spent the last decade at an upper East Side nursing home, surrounded by pictures of grandchildren she never got to meet.

Sunny was found unconscious in the marble-tiled bathroom of Newport, R.I., estate in December 1980.

Her second husband, Claus von Bulow was convicted of trying to kill her with an insulin overdose - then acquitted after an appeal got him a retrial.

The events were turned into a 1990 Hollywood film, 'Reversal of Fortune'.  more

P. Sainath on American Elections: Socialism haunts America

Pro-Obama television channels are running dictionary definitions of ‘socialism.’ These aim to clear the air by establishing that nothing he has proposed falls into that dreaded territory. In no other electoral democracy in the world is this kind of response possible. Certainly not in Europe where so many of Washington’s allies wear the labels — if not the legacy — of ‘socialism’ and ‘labour.’ To those from most other countries, this ‘debate’ must seem whacko. In the United States, it still has adherents, even if they are confounded by the scarier spectre of economic crisis. Two million families could lose their homes in the mortgage avalanche. But the buzzword, for the Republicans at least, is ‘socialism.’ “Obama says he wants to spread the wealth around,” Mr. McCain now protests. “That’s a basic tenet of socialism. If I were President, I would never do that.”  more  

 NewsBlaze Published: October 25,2008

  Send to a friend

Obama Wants A Welfare State For America

By National Black Republican Association

Thanks to Joe the Plumber, we now know for sure that Barack Obama wants to "spread the wealth around." But the Democratic candidate still hasn't come clean on just how much of a European-style socialist he is.

Look at the "tax cut" he says he'll give to 95 percent of Americans. In fact, this is simply a government check he'd hand out - including to millions who don't pay income taxes, since each year 38 percent of Americans already get a full refund. In other words, his "rebate" is a welfare plan, plain and simple.

When called on this, Obama's answer is that those 38 percent still pay payroll taxes, so he's rebating part of those payments. But that actually puts him deeper into the socialist hole. Here's why.

Payroll taxes go to fund Social Security and Medicare - the main US social-insurance programs. The taxes are dedicated because these are insurance programs - you're paying so that you'll be covered when you hit retirement age.  more

Bishop told to file affidavit

DNA INDIA

Mayura Janwalkar

Saturday, October 25, 2008  03:46 IST

HC wants to know if there is a sale deed by the church land trust

The Bombay High Court on Thursday asked bishop of Mumbai Prakash Patole to file an affidavit stating whether or not there is any sale deed between the Bombay Diocesan Trust Association (BDTA) that runs Afghan Church and any private builders.

Additional public prosecutor Sangeeta Shinde said the case will be heard on November 17 by when Patole will have to submit his affidavit.

Former bishop of Mumbai Baiju Gavit and other trust members of the BDTA that runs Afghan Church in Colaba had moved the high court urging it to quash a complaint of forgery and cheating filed at Colaba police station.

Gavit with trustees Bishop Vijay Sathe, Shrikant Salvi and the bishop of Pune Rajnikant Salvi, in their application stated that an activist, Cyril Dara, had filed bogus complaints against them for allegedly striking illegal deals worth crores of rupees with various builders for development of the land where the Afghan Church, a heritage structure, stands on.  more

3-year-old goddess of Nepal: abuse or worhsip?

Nepal appoints 3-year-old as new living goddess

By YUVRAJ ACHARYA, Associated Press WriterTue Oct 7, 9:59 AM ET

KATMANDU, Nepal - Hindu and Buddhist priests chanted sacred hymns and cascaded flowers and grains of rice over a 3-year-old girl who was appointed a living goddess in Nepal on Tuesday.

The new "kumari" or living goddess, was carried from her parents' home to an ancient palatial temple in the heart of the Nepali capital, Katmandu, where she will live until she reaches puberty and loses her divine status.

She will be worshipped by Hindus and Buddhists as an incarnation of the powerful Hindu deity Taleju.

A panel of judges conducted a series of ancient ceremonies to select the goddess from several 2- to 4-year-old girls who are all members of the impoverished Shakya goldsmith caste.

The judges read the candidates' horoscopes and check each one for physical imperfections. The living goddess must have perfect hair, eyes, teeth and skin with no scars, and should not be afraid of the dark.

As a final test, the living goddess must spend a night alone in a room among the heads of ritually slaughtered goats and buffaloes without showing fear.

Having passed all the tests, the child will stay in almost complete isolation at the temple, and will be allowed to return to her family only at the onset of menstruation when a new goddess will be named to replace her.

Devotees touch the girls' feet with their foreheads, the highest sign of respect among Hindus in Nepal. During religious festivals the goddesses are wheeled around on a chariot pulled by devotees.

Critics say the tradition violates both international and Nepalese laws on child rights. The girls often struggle to readjust to normal lives after they return home.

Nepalese folklore holds that men who marry a former kumari will die young, and so many girls remain unmarried and face a life of hardship.  read it all 

I Too Am Hurt Dear Father

October 06, 2008
Vivek Bharat

Reacting sharply to the attack on Churches in Karnataka, the Archbishop Bernard Moras of Bangalore fumed indignantly that Christians were deeply hurt. I, too, have been badly traumatized, dear Father, not once but repeatedly. Your compatriots have consistently trampled upon my sensibilities and those of millions of others like me for sometime now. The only difference is that I am a Hindu and in the broad framework of India's warped secular ideology, Hindu sentiments are dispensable to maintain this hollow but grandiose show of communal harmony that has been essentially built on the backs of the Hindu community. So, neither you or nor the authorities have bothered to take any corrective action to assuage the Hindu hurt. It does not even register as a cause for remedy on your moral radar. more

Friedrich Schiller, dead for more than 200 years asked to pay TV Radio fees

Dead German poet gets TV demands

Friedrich Schiller is one of Germany's favourite poets The celebrated German poet Friedrich Schiller, dead for more than 200 years, has been sent reminders that he should pay his TV and radio licence fee. The German fee collection agency, GEZ, mistakenly sent letters to "Mr Friedrich Schiller" - which arrived at a primary school bearing his name. The author of Ode to Joy had been registered with GEZ as a householder. With the annual fee of about 200 euros (£157) unpaid since 1805 Schiller would owe more than 40,000 euros.

Guinness World Records:Loudest Burp at 104.9 dB in UK

Loudest Burp

The world's loudest burp measured from a distance of 2.5 m (8ft 2 in)and 1 m (3 ft 3 in) high, read 104.9 dB on a certified and calibrated class 1 precision measuring noise level meter, and was achieved by Paul Hunn (UK) at the offices of Guinness World Records, London, UK, on July 20, 2004.

Nude church services

A Dutch Nudist Church Services called off
Friday, 26 September , 2008, 22:09

Amsterdam: A group of Dutch nudists called off a special church service to be held in a nudist park after receiving threats, a spokesman for the group said on Friday.

In June, the Christian Gan Eden nudists held their first church service at the Flevo-Natuur nudist park in Zeewolde in the eastern Netherlands and planned to hold a second service.

However, the group was hit by numerous emails and phone calls, many of them threatening, the Gan Eden spokesman said. The church service was called off and the group shut its website down.


"I do not understand the fuss," the spokesman said. "We are just a group of Christians who want to have our own church service."

Amarinder Singh former Congress Chief Minister of Punjab is expelled from Punjab Assembly

Satinder Bains | Chandigarh

Vigilance to file FIR in land scandal

In an unprecedented decision, the Punjab Vidhan Sabha on Wednesday expelled former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh from the membership of the Assembly for its remaining term (three-and-a-half years) after being indicted by a House committee in the Amritsar Improvement Trust land scandal.



In a resolution adopted amid ruckus, the House directed the Director, State Vigilance Bureau, to register an FIR against the three accused named in the committee report and investigate the distribution of money among them.

The House also resolved to write to the Election Commission of India to declare the Patiala City seat held by Capt Amarinder Singh vacant.

Read the full story

Bachans say sorry

I am by nature an individual that invariably, when confronted, addresses an issue by looking at the other person’s point of view first. This is my character. I was born with it and shall remain with it. I cannot change it now. Many friends and family look upon it as a malaise, which is defensive, wrong and incorrect. But, much to their dismay I have remained unchanged.

My first reaction therefore is, that in this matter, sentiments have been hurt.

I am not going into what has been said and under what circumstances. But rather that, even if one person is disturbed, then I would wish that that disturbance be addressed first. All else can come later.

I immediately therefore sent an sms to Jaya stating that -

The casual off the cuff remarks made by her at the music launch function were without malice or deliberate intent, but if it has caused hurt to the sentiments of Maharashtra, Maharashtrians and indeed the city and citizens of Mumbai, then she must seek regret and offer apology. Everything that we possess today is what came to us from this great state and city. We never have and never can look at Maharashtra with disrespect. If inadvertently this is what has been construed, then we apologize and are sorry and seek forgiveness for any sentiments that have been hurt.

Read Bachan's blog

Hindus help Muslims keep Ramadan fast

IANS
Sunday, September 07, 2008 15:35 IST


PATNA: Setting an example of communal harmony in relief camps in flood-hit Bihar, Hindus are helping Muslims keep Ramadan fast by sharing their meagre resources.

"What is interesting to note that Hindus are helping Muslims to keep fast by providing whatever possible in relief camps," said Bihar Disaster Management Minister Nitish Mishra.

The majority of Muslims in relief camps were keeping fast while sharing everything with others.

It was reported that several NGOs have been providing food to Muslims keeping fast outside government control relief camps.

"People, mostly Hindus are arranging fruits, sweets and dinner for Muslims keeping fast outside relief camps," said Ranjeev, an activist in Saharsa district. Read more

The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria

Goodbye America? Not yet
Manish Chand, Indo-Asian News Service
August 28, 2008
First Published: 18:21 IST(28/8/2008)
Last Updated: 18:38 IST(28/8/2008)

The Post-American World
Author: Fareed Zakaria;
Publisher: Penguin/Viking;
Price: Rs 499

Don't write an obituary of the American superpower yet. It's not that America is declining, but everyone else is rising - this is the "great story of our times" Fareed Zakaria tells in his new book that goes to the heart of tectonic power shifts to the non-Western world in the 21st century.

Take a few random examples, says Zakaria, of this "great transformation taking place around the world". The tallest building in the world is now in Taipei, the world's richest man is Mexican, its largest publicly traded corporation is Chinese, the biggest plane is built in Russia and Ukraine, the biggest refinery is under construction in India, and the world's largest factories are all in China.

What's more, Zakaria says, "quintessentially American icons have been appropriated by foreigners" with Singapore flaunting the world's largest Ferris wheel and Macau showing off the world's largest casino.

"The biggest movie industry, in terms of both movies made and tickets sold, is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Of the top 10 malls in the world, only one is in the US; the world's biggest is in Beijing," he writes.

If all this gives the impression that "the most powerful country in the world since ancient Rome" is fading into the sunset, don't be gulled by appearances. In The Post-American World, Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International and one of the most influential commentators in Washington, tries to deflate the hype about the "rise of Asia" and pits it against hard facts about American power.

The US economy has averaged about 25 percent of global GDP for 130 years and will continue to do so; it's economy at $14 trillion is more than four times that of China; and nearly 14 times that of India. Its military spending is nearly equivalent to what the rest of the world spends on defence.

Read more

A Crtique of Evangelization by Dr.BABUSUSEELAN

Monday, September 01, 2008

Evangelization and destabilisation of states

Three reports:
1. Seven hundred plans to evangelize the world
2. Ram Swarup's expose of christism
3. Robert Kaplan's idea of bringing in Baptists and other missionaries to subvert the Burmese state

k

“EVANGELIZATION: THE GREAT COMMAND AND A COSMIC AUDITING"

(A REVIEW ARTICLE OF ‘SEVEN HUNDRED PLANS TO EVANGELIZE THE WORLD: THE RISE OF A GLOBAL EVANGELIZATION MOVEMENT, by, DAVID B. BARRATT and JAMES W. REAPSOME. PUB: THE A.D.2OOO SERIES.)

Continue to read

Korean Buddhists Rally against 'pro-Christian bias

Fri, 2008-09-05 05:15
Seoul, 05 September, (Asiantribune.com): The Buddhists of South Korea strongly protested accusing President Lee Myung Bak and his administration of showing religious bias against Buddhists and favoring Christians.

South Korea by law is a secular state. Article 20 of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea stipulates the prohibition of state religion, and the separation of religion and politics.
It was alleged that, since the inauguration of the new government, some of the high government officials and the President himself have been violating the Constitution as if intent upon turning the country into a Christian state. We strongly regret the government's physical suppression of the civil rights of peaceful assembly and demonstrations demanding the principle of democracy.

However due to the phenomenal rise in the size and power of the Christian community in recent decades, it has the Buddhist community here gripped by apprehension.

Read more

Blog Beauty Contest for Nuns

Italian Priest Organizes Beauty Contest for Nuns
Italian Priest Says He is Organizing an Online Beauty Pageant for Nuns
ROME August 24, 2008 (AP)
The Associated Press

An Italian priest and theologian said Sunday he is organizing an online beauty pageant for nuns to give them more visibility within the Catholic Church and to fight the stereotype that they are all old and dour.

The "Miss Sister 2008" contest will start in September on a blog run by the Rev. Antonio Rungi and will give nuns from around the world a chance to showcase their work and their image.

More

Oprah Winfrey and Jesus Christ

Oprah Winfrey is a hero of tens of millions of television viewers. "How can there be only one way to heaven or to God?" She asks her audience. She is of the opinion that there are now millions of ways to get to heaven.

When a lady in her audience asked, "What about Jesus?" Oprah defiantly answered her by repeating the question, "What about Jesus?" Oprah went on to explain how she had been a Baptist until she heard a charismatic Pastor make the statement that God was a jealous God. She told her viewers in her opinion God was simply love and God being described as a Jealous God made her really stop and think.

On her television show Oprah Winfrey has been pushing a new book by Eckhart Tolle called A New Earth.



Read more

Teacher Arrested for Sex Acts With Student

Another Teacher Arrested for Sex Acts With Student
Police Say the Affair Started When the Student was 15 Years Old
By SARAH NETTER
Aug. 22, 2008


A 24-year-old Maryland woman has become the latest high school teacher to be arrested and charged with having sexual activity with an underage student.
Autumn Leathers was charged after police say she performed sex acts with a student.
Police say teacher Autumn Leathers had a sexual relationship with a teenage student.

Autumn Leathers, of Frostburg, Md., was charged Thursday with child abuse, fourth-degree sex offense, perverted practice and second-degree assault. She is alleged to have been having sexual relations regularly this summer with a 16-year-old boy from Mountain Ride High School in Frostburg. Leathers taught at the school, but it was unclear whether the boy was one of her students.



Read more

At 138 years, India's oldest man dies

Wed, Aug 20 03:27 AM

India's oldest man, Habib miyan, who entered the Limca Book of World Records in 2005, died early on Tuesday morning in his Jaipur house at the age of 138 years. The centurion fell ill with fever and dysentery on Sunday and succumbed in Jaipur's SMS Hospital. Incidentally, Habib decided not to celebrate his 138th birthday on May 20 this year following the serial blasts in Jaipur on May 13.

Born in Rajgarh in Rajasthan's Alwar district on May 20, 1870, Habib grew up to become a clarinet player with the Jaipur Royal Palace band. His close friend, Rajesh Nagpal, a bank employee, recalls, "I noticed him when he came to collect pension for years from the bank. He started with a pension of Rs 1.28 in 1938, which finally rose to Rs 2,698."

Read the full story

The Shroud of Turin Controversy

From the Los Angeles Times
A Colorado couple researching the shroud dispute radiocarbon dating of the alleged burial cloth of Jesus, and Oxford has agreed to help them reexamine the findings.
By DeeDee Correll | Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 17, 2008

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO.

In 1988, science seemed to put that question to rest.

Findings Radiocarbon dating by three separate laboratories showed that the shroud originated in the Middle Ages, leaving the "shroud crowd" reeling. Shroud skeptics responded, "We told you so." The Catholic Church admitted that it could not be authentic. Many scientists backed away.

But John Jackson, one of the shroud's most prominent researchers, was among those who insisted that the results made no sense. Too much else about the shroud, they said, including characteristics of the cloth and details in the image, suggested that it was much older.

Twenty years later, Jackson, 62, is getting his chance to challenge the radiocarbon dating. Oxford University, which participated in the original radiocarbon testing, has agreed to work with him in reconsidering the age of the shroud.

If the challenge is successful, Jackson hopes to be allowed to reexamine the shroud, which is owned by the Vatican and stored in a protective chamber in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy.

Jackson, a physicist who teaches at the University of Colorado, hypothesizes that contamination of the cloth by elevated levels of carbon monoxide skewed the 1988 carbon-14 dating by 1,300 years.

On that point, Christopher Ramsey, head of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, seems to agree.

"There is a lot of other evidence that suggests to many that the shroud is older than the radiocarbon dates allow, and so further research is certainly needed," says a statement on his website. "Only by doing this will people be able to arrive at a coherent history of the shroud which takes into account and explains all of the available scientific and historical information."

Steven Schafersman, a geologist who maintains a website skeptical about the shroud, dismisses the effort as one that's bound to fail.

At a conference sponsored by the Shroud Science Group at Ohio State University this weekend, the Los Alamos National Laboratory presented findings that the 1988 test results were flawed because the samples tested came from a portion of cloth that may have been added to the shroud during medieval repairs.

The shroud's historical record dates back to 1349, when a French knight wrote to the pope of his possession of a cloth he described as the burial shroud of Christ. In 1978, a team of scientists led by Jackson conducted a series of tests on the shroud, including X-rays and chemical analyses. They concluded that the shroud was not painted, dyed or stained and that the blood stains were real. But those findings did little to quell the controversy surrounding the shroud.

Many believe that Jesus imprinted his image on his burial cloth during his resurrection, and others think that the shroud is the authentic burial cloth but that the image was formed by natural processes. Skeptics maintain that the shroud is a forgery created by a medieval artist seeking to display it to relic-hungry pilgrims. The debate often is bitter; each side accuses the other of twisting facts and ignoring evidence that doesn't fit its view.

A former professor at the Air Force Academy and scientist at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, Jackson holds a doctorate in physics from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. Born and raised in Denver, he also is a devout Catholic who has been transfixed by the shroud since he first saw its image at age 13.

Read it full

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/la-na-turin17-2008aug17,0,7350329,full.story

The story of Asaram Bapu and controversy of child deaths in his ashram

http://in.news.yahoo.com/48/20080811/814/tnl-cult-controversy-the-story-of-asaram.html
Search:
Cult & Controversy: the story of Asaram ashram

Mon, Aug 11 03:48 AM

For the phenomenally influential religious guru, Asaram Bapu, his 37-year-long spiritual career had never been a cakewalk and the four mysterious deaths in his ashramss here and in Madhya Pradesh and the public ire he has been courting are only the latest that he hopes to shrug off.

His spiritual domain is spread across 300 ashrams throughout India, as also in the US, with lakhs of his followers and admirers flooding his commune with funds. Sixty-seven-year-old Bapu has even delivered a speech at the parliament of world religions.

Few controversies connected with his ashrams have invited media attention the way the deaths of four children in his two ashrams - in Ahmedabad and Chhindwara - did in just one month. His ashram, in both the cases, is facing serious problems, with investigators finally getting down to grilling inmates of the ashrams in connection with the deaths.

Asaram Bapu may not have had to look back ever since he set up his first kutia or hutment in Motera village here in 1971, but the path had all along been strewn with scandals.

Sindh-born Asaram, who had migrated to Ahmedabad with his parents during Partition, is facing about dozen-odd cases at different places - all of them pertaining to alleged land grabbing by his Sant Asaram Bapu Trust. One of the villagers in Motera, Ashok Thakore, has moved the court to get back five acres of his family's land allegedly grabbed by the ashram. According to Thakore, the land is situated adjoining the ashram and was used for erecting tents on the Guru Purnima day. Permission to this effect was given by his father to the ashram. After his father's death, the ashram grabbed it by saying that Thakore's father had 'gifted' it to the ashram. However, the ashram has not been able to substantiate its claim with proofs.

In another case, Anil Vyas, a farmer from Jehangirpura village near Surat, where the ashram is facing several allegations of land grabbing, is fighting a prolonged battle for recovery of his 34,400 square metres of prime land from the ashram. According to Vyas, despite the fact that the ashram's claim over the land was challenged in the court, the state Government regularised the unauthorised encroachment on January 24, 1997. However, the Gujarat High Court on December 8, 2006, held the regularisation illegal and decreed in favour of the farmer. The Ashram then appealed to the Division Bench against the order.

A Delhi-based widow, Sudarshan Kumari, is also fighting a legal battle against Asaram Bapu whose Trust, she alleges, had fraudulently got some papers signed by her. The paper later turned out to be a 'gift deed' to the ashram. The documents say that she has gifted the ground floor of her house in Rajouri Garden, New Delhi, to the ashram. According to her complaint, on July 6, 2000, on the pretext of taking her to Asaram satsang, she was taken to the office of Sub Registrar in Janakpuri, New Delhi. One of the inmates of the ashram, identified as Mani Kaka, hypnotised her and made her sign a number of documents, without allowing her to go through the content. The other person who signed the papers there, according to her, was Narayan Swamy, son of Asaram Bapu. She came to know about the gift deed when officials from the Municipal Committee of Delhi came to confirm it.

The ashram authorities at Rajokri village, near Gurgaon, have allegedly forged documents pertaining to the registration of the ashram. Bhagwani Devi, a resident of Rajokri, has also approached the Delhi High Court levelling allegations of land grabbing against Asaram's Rajokri ashram.

Even Government agencies have levelled allegations of land grabbing against Asaram's Trust. A few months ago, the Bihar State Board of Religious Trusts (BSBRT) had served a notice to the Trust's headquarters in Ahmedabad, asking it to vacate a land belonging to BSBRT, worth Rs 80 crore. And in April 2007, a retired judge of the Patna High Court had filed a criminal complaint in Kadamkuan police station, Patna, alleging grabbing of his land by Asaram Bapu and others.

In Ratlam, Asaram's Trust had to vacate a piece of land after a prolonged litigation. In January 2007, power theft amounting to Rs 4.7 lakh was detected from his Rajkot ashram.

Despite all these cases and allegations, Asaram Bapu's popularity is on the rise - particularly among the ruling party politicians in the state. "It is due to the clout of Asaram that no criminal case was registered against any of his ashram-members nor was anyone from the ashram arrested after the two boys of his gurukuls died under mysterious circumstances," said a rebel BJP leader, requesting anonymity.

The popularity of Asaram can be gauged from the fact that his photographs can be spotted in every government office across the state and even state transport corporation's buses display his photos and messages.

When the Gujarat Government in 2005 decided to rejuvenate the Saraswati river by filling long tracts of land considered to be the vestiges of the mythical river at Sidhpur town in Mehsana district, Asaram Bapu was the chief guest at the launch of the project. Though there are other religious leaders in the state, inviting him to such a high-profile programme as the chief guest explains the popularity of the man among the ruling party.

Again, when the state Government temporarily launched Vande Gujarat TV channel, telecasting its developmental achievements on the eve of December 2007 Assembly polls, the channel regularly carried footages of Asaram Bapu.

This explains the clout of Asaram Bapu whose religious movement has taken the shape of a cult, having followers in every section of the society. With his influence growing, there are many politicians, including Minister of State for Home Amit Shah, visiting his ashram regularly.

Senior BJP leader L K Advani is also believed to be one of the regular visitors to the ashram. The Ashram manager in Ahmedabad, Arvind Patel, is a senior BJP functionary.

Beijing rockets rain away from opening gala - Yahoo! India News

Beijing rockets rain away from opening gala - Yahoo! India News

Magazine Preview - Malwebolence - The World of Web Trolling - NYTimes.com

Magazine Preview - Malwebolence - The World of Web Trolling - NYTimes.com

New York Times
Magazine

* World
* U.S.
* N.Y. / Region
* Business
* Technology
* Science
* Health
* Sports
* Opinion
* Arts
* Style
* Travel
* Jobs
* Real Estate
* Autos

* The Times Magazine
* T: Style
* Key
* Play

Magazine Preview
Malwebolence
Robbie Cooper for The New York Times

The Trolls Among Us: Weev (not, of course, his real name) is part of a growing Internet subculture with a fluid morality and a disdain for pretty much everyone else online.

* Sign In to E-Mail or Save This
* Print
* Single Page
* Share
o Linkedin
o Digg
o Facebook
o Mixx
o Yahoo! Buzz
o Permalink

Article Tools Sponsored By
By MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ
Published: August 3, 2008

This article will appear in this Sunday's Times Magazine.
Skip to next paragraph
Related
The Medium

Virginia Heffernan talks to the existence of trolls, mad scrollers and all matter of Internet denizens.
Comment Post a Comment at The Medium
Blogrunner: Reactions From Around the Web
Enlarge This Image
Robbie Cooper for The New York Times

“A normal person who does insane things on the internet.” Jason Fortuny in real life.

One afternoon in the spring of 2006, for reasons unknown to those who knew him, Mitchell Henderson, a seventh grader from Rochester, Minn., took a .22-caliber rifle down from a shelf in his parents’ bedroom closet and shot himself in the head. The next morning, Mitchell’s school assembled in the gym to begin mourning. His classmates created a virtual memorial on MySpace and garlanded it with remembrances. One wrote that Mitchell was “an hero to take that shot, to leave us all behind. God do we wish we could take it back. . . . ” Someone e-mailed a clipping of Mitchell’s newspaper obituary to MyDeathSpace.com, a Web site that links to the MySpace pages of the dead. From MyDeathSpace, Mitchell’s page came to the attention of an Internet message board known as /b/ and the “trolls,” as they have come to be called, who dwell there.

/b/ is the designated “random” board of 4chan.org, a group of message boards that draws more than 200 million page views a month. A post consists of an image and a few lines of text. Almost everyone posts as “anonymous.” In effect, this makes /b/ a panopticon in reverse — nobody can see anybody, and everybody can claim to speak from the center. The anonymous denizens of 4chan’s other boards — devoted to travel, fitness and several genres of pornography — refer to the /b/-dwellers as “/b/tards.”

Measured in terms of depravity, insularity and traffic-driven turnover, the culture of /b/ has little precedent. /b/ reads like the inside of a high-school bathroom stall, or an obscene telephone party line, or a blog with no posts and all comments filled with slang that you are too old to understand.

Something about Mitchell Henderson struck the denizens of /b/ as funny. They were especially amused by a reference on his MySpace page to a lost iPod. Mitchell Henderson, /b/ decided, had killed himself over a lost iPod. The “an hero” meme was born. Within hours, the anonymous multitudes were wrapping the tragedy of Mitchell’s death in absurdity.

Someone hacked Henderson’s MySpace page and gave him the face of a zombie. Someone placed an iPod on Henderson’s grave, took a picture and posted it to /b/. Henderson’s face was appended to dancing iPods, spinning iPods, hardcore porn scenes. A dramatic re-enactment of Henderson’s demise appeared on YouTube, complete with shattered iPod. The phone began ringing at Mitchell’s parents’ home. “It sounded like kids,” remembers Mitchell’s father, Mark Henderson, a 44-year-old I.T. executive. “They’d say, ‘Hi, this is Mitchell, I’m at the cemetery.’ ‘Hi, I’ve got Mitchell’s iPod.’ ‘Hi, I’m Mitchell’s ghost, the front door is locked. Can you come down and let me in?’ ” He sighed. “It really got to my wife.” The calls continued for a year and a half.

In the late 1980s, Internet users adopted the word “troll” to denote someone who intentionally disrupts online communities. Early trolling was relatively innocuous, taking place inside of small, single-topic Usenet groups. The trolls employed what the M.I.T. professor Judith Donath calls a “pseudo-naïve” tactic, asking stupid questions and seeing who would rise to the bait. The game was to find out who would see through this stereotypical newbie behavior, and who would fall for it. As one guide to trolldom puts it, “If you don’t fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.”

Today the Internet is much more than esoteric discussion forums. It is a mass medium for defining who we are to ourselves and to others. Teenagers groom their MySpace profiles as intensely as their hair; escapists clock 50-hour weeks in virtual worlds, accumulating gold for their online avatars. Anyone seeking work or love can expect to be Googled. As our emotional investment in the Internet has grown, the stakes for trolling — for provoking strangers online — have risen. Trolling has evolved from ironic solo skit to vicious group hunt.

“Lulz” is how trolls keep score. A corruption of “LOL” or “laugh out loud,” “lulz” means the joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium. “Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh,” said one ex-troll who, like many people I contacted, refused to disclose his legal identity.

Another troll explained the lulz as a quasi-thermodynamic exchange between the sensitive and the cruel: “You look for someone who is full of it, a real blowhard. Then you exploit their insecurities to get an insane amount of drama, laughs and lulz. Rules would be simple: 1. Do whatever it takes to get lulz. 2. Make sure the lulz is widely distributed. This will allow for more lulz to be made. 3. The game is never over until all the lulz have been had.”

/b/ is not all bad. 4chan has tried (with limited success) to police itself, using moderators to purge child porn and eliminate calls to disrupt other sites. Among /b/’s more interesting spawn is Anonymous, a group of masked pranksters who organized protests at Church of Scientology branches around the world.

But the logic of lulz extends far beyond /b/ to the anonymous message boards that seem to be springing up everywhere. Two female Yale Law School students have filed a suit against pseudonymous users who posted violent fantasies about them on AutoAdmit, a college-admissions message board. In China, anonymous nationalists are posting death threats against pro-Tibet activists, along with their names and home addresses. Technology, apparently, does more than harness the wisdom of the crowd. It can intensify its hatred as well.

* 1
* 2
* 3
* 4
* 5
* 6
* 7

Next Page »

Mattathias Schwartz last wrote for the magazine about online poker. He is a staff writer at Good magazine and lives in New York.

Unsigned passport

Malayala Manorama Indian Newspaper of Malayalam Language from eight places in Kerela

Unsigned passport lands official in trouble

New Delhi: Anuradha Thadipathri Gopinath's plan to visit Dubai was dashed at Mumbai airport because she had been issued an unsigned passport. Now a court has pulled up the passport officer for "serious deficiency in discharge of duties".

National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission pulled up the passport officer posted at the Bangalore regional passport office last week for the negligence and asked him to pay a compensation of Rs.10,000 and cost of Rs.2,000 to Gopinath.

Observing that travelling on such a passport could have invited unnecessary trouble for her, commission president M.B. Shah said: "A passport, which is issued without the signature of the competent authority, is on the face of it invalid which would have placed the complainant in a precarious position and she might have been hauled up for various offences if she had tried to go abroad on that passport.

"Such lapse amounts to a serious deficiency in discharge of duties, which is in the nature of rendering of service," said Shah.

Gopinath was issued a passport by the official, who did not sign it at the time of its issuance. She got a visa too.

She reached Mumbai airport to embark on her journey to Dubai. But at the airport, the lacuna came to light and the airport authorities asked her to go back. She lost the opportunity of going abroad on a trip that her company had sponsored.

Gopinath went to the Karnataka District Forum. The forum directed the officer to pay a compensation of Rs.10,000 and costs of Rs.2,000 to her.

The passport officer appealed to the Maharashtra State Commission which upheld the original order.

The official then appealed to the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission. He said he was "exercising a sovereign function" while issuing the passport. He was not charging a fee, and therefore this could not be a consumer dispute, the official contended.

But the commission ruled: "In our view, issuance or non-issuance of a passport may be a statutory duty and may not be a consumer dispute but issuance of an invalid passport which is not signed by the passport officer, would be deficiency in service on the part of the officer concerned."

Everybody pays a fee for getting a passport, the commission, and dismissed the appeal.

ABC News: Randy Pausch, 'Last Lecture' Professor Dies

ABC News: Randy Pausch, 'Last Lecture' Professor Dies

Carnegie Mellon Professor, Author of 'The Last Lecture,' Succumbs to Cancer
By GEOFF MARTZ, SAMANTHA WENDER and CHRIS FRANCESCANI
July 25, 2008

Randy Pausch, the charismatic young college professor who chronicled his battle with pancreatic cancer in a remarkable speech widely-known as the "Last Lecture," has died at the age of 47. He was at home, surrounded by his wife, Jai, and his three children.
A dear friend to Diane Sawyer and "Good Morning America," Pausch's lecture and subsequent interview was one of the most powerful accounts of hope, grace and optimistism ABC News has ever featured, and drew a worldwide response.

"I'd like to thank the millions of people who have offered their love, prayers and support," Jai Pausch said in a statement. "Randy was so happy and proud that the lecture and book inspired parents to revisit their priorities, particularly their relationships with their children. The outpouring of cards and emails really sustained him."

Tune in to "Good Morning America" Monday July 28 and Tuesday July 29 for a special tribute to Professor Pausch. Then be sure and catch "The Last Lecture: A Celebration of Life" Tuesday July 29 on "Primetime" at 10 p.m. ET and click here to see ABC News' full coverage of his story.

It all began with one, age-old question: What would you say if you knew you were going to die and had a chance to sum up everything that was most important to you?

That question had been posed to the annual speaker of a lecture series at Carnegie Mellon University, where Pausch was a computer sciences professor. For Pausch, though, the question wasn't hypothetical.

Pausch, a father of three small children with his wife Jai, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer -- and given six months to live.

Friends and colleagues flew in from all around the country to attend his last lecture. And -- almost as an afterthought -- the lecture was videotaped and put on the Internet for the few people who couldn't get there that day.

That was all it took.

Alice: Randy Pausch's Computer Software for Kids

Somehow amid the vast clamor of the Web and the bling-bling of million-dollar budgets, savvy marketing campaigns and millions of strange and bizarre videos, the voice of one earnest professor standing at a podium and talking about his childhood dreams cut through the noise.

The lecture was so uplifting, so funny, so inspirational that it went viral. So far, 10 million people have downloaded it.

And thousands have written in to say that his lecture changed their lives.

If you had only six months to live, what would you do? How would you live your life? And how can all of us take heart from Pausch's inspiring message to live each day to its fullest?

Pausch's answers to these questions, both in the lecture and in three separate interviews over a series of months with Diane Sawyer, are moving, funny, thought-provoking and extraordinary.

According to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, an advocacy organization for the pancreatic cancer community, approximately 37,170 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2008 and 33,370 will die from it. The Pausch family has asked that donations on Randy's behalf be sent to the organization or to Carnegie Mellon's Randy Pausch Memorial Fund.

Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the United States, and unlike other cancers, during the last 30 years the medical community has seen very little advancement in prolonging the lives of pancreatic cancer patients.

But instead of focusing on his death, Pausch spoke about his childhood dreams. "You may not agree with the list but I was there. ... Being in zero gravity, playing in the National Football League, authoring an article in the World Book Encyclopedia -- I guess you can tell the nerds early. ... I wanted to be one of the guys who won the big stuffed animals in the amusement park."

He went on to attain almost all of those dreams, but they didn't all come easy.

In the lecture, he spoke of overcoming the obstacles that may seem insurmountable.

Although he graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, he nearly didn't get in to Brown in the first place -- he was wait listed. It was a brick wall that some might have walked away from. But Pausch had a novel way of looking at obstacles:

"The brick walls are there for a reason," he said during his lecture. "The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something."



He kept calling the college until it let him in.


Pausch maintained that his most formidable brick wall was a beautiful graduate student named Jai Glasgow. Pausch was 37, with a reputation as something of a ladies' man, when he met her at a lecture. Pausch was smitten, but she resisted. However, he refused to give up, and they eventually married and had three children.

Pausch spoke movingly of how he was trying to create memories for his three kids, Dylan, 6, Logan, 3, and Chloe, 18 months, and why he couldn't allow himself to wallow in self pity.

"I mean, the metaphor I've used is ... somebody's going to push my family off a cliff pretty soon, and I won't be there to catch them. And that breaks my heart. But I have some time to sew some nets to cushion the fall. So, I can curl up in a ball and cry, or I can get to work on the nets."

Pausch was already a popular professor, and one of the foremost teachers in the field of virtual reality, when he proposed a class that would become legendary at CMU: It was called Building Virtual Worlds, a high-wire act that brought together students from many different disciplines, writers and computer programmers and artists who were forced to work together intensively in small groups.

Pausch told Sawyer that while the course was ostensibly about designing virtual reality worlds, there was a stealth message as well: "How do you behave with integrity? How do you behave in a way that other people will respect you and want to keep working with you?"



The result was so popular that it eventually spawned an entire program at the university. Together with drama professor Don Marinelli, Pausch started the Entertainment Technology Center, which over the years has become the go-to school for video gaming and Hollywood high tech.

At the ETC, students were encouraged to try the unconventional and the risky.

As former student Phil Light said, "We went to him and said, 'We have these ideas, we have a couple of ideas. This idea here is very safe. This idea here is risky.' He said, 'Go for the risk. It's better to fail spectacularly then to pass along and do something which is mediocre.'"

Pausch said that over the years, he went from attaining his own childhood dreams to learning to enable the dreams of his students, which he maintained is every bit as satisfying.

'Never Lose the Childlike Wonder'

To enable dreams on a grand scale, Pausch began his latest venture, called Alice. Alice is a free computer application that teaches kids to program, while giving them the impression that they are simply creating animated stories.

Created by a Carnegie Mellon team including Wanda Dann, Dennis Cosgrove and Caitlin Kelleher, Alice has already been downloaded more than a million times. The new version of Alice will feature characters from the popular computer game "The Sims."

After his diagnosis, Pausch devoted almost all of his time to his family, moving to a location near his wife's family, so that she would have some emotional support, and spent a lot of time with his three kids.

He had tried to approach what he called his "engineering problem" as a scientist: He interviewed people who'd lost their parents and asked them what they would have wanted to have as keepsakes; what they wished their parents had told them before they died. Pausch said he wanted to make sure he gave his wife and children what they would need to remember him, and to know that he loved them.


He and his wife, Jai, consulted psychotherapist Michele Reiss and other experts to help them grapple with such issues as when to tell the children. Reiss says very young children "have no particular time orientation yet. So you can talk to a young child in terms of breakfast time, or lunchtime, or dinnertime, or nap time, but you can't talk about the day after tomorrow, or next week, or next month, much less three to six months from now."

Therefore, the decision was made not to tell the children until their father was much sicker. The Pausch family had asked any viewers who might run into them to respect the experts' opinion and say nothing.


One of the things Pausch left behind for his kids: the lecture. He called it a message in a bottle. The lecture, along with private videos he made for their eyes alone, and a book he wrote called "The Last Lecture" would help give his children -- at least one of whom is too young now to be able to have distinct memories of her father -- a sense of how much he loved them.

Sawyer asked Pausch about his children, in particular Chloe, the youngest. "I hope that her passion will take her to wherever she goes. And the same for Dylan and Logan. I just hope that they have passion for things, and I'm sure they will. I'm sure their mother will instill that in them. And whatever they see of me in direct memories and indirect memories, uh, will send that signal. Because if they have passion for things, then I'm happy for whatever they have passion for."

Worldwide Impact

But if Pausch's lecture was written for an audience of only three, it has touched millions of others as well. People around the country told ABC News about the many ways his lecture had helped bring magic into their lives.

Alfred Nicolosi of Salem, N.J., said the night he watched Pausch's lecture was the "same night when Randy's life turned mine around." Battling depression, cancer surgery and facing heart problems, Nicolosi cleaned up his life, literally.

"I had never been very organized person, but this was exceptional. I'd allowed piles of boxes, groceries, laundry, books scattered everywhere. There was absolutely no order to my life, no way to find things, it was just lost. So immediately after seeing the lecture, I began to organize my house, and I felt like I was rediscovering my life in the process."

Peter Riebling, a lawyer from Vienna, Va., handed his 10-year-old daughter, Kimberly, a pencil and gave her free reign on her bedroom walls. "He told me to go draw on my walls, so at first I honestly thought he had gone crazy, because most parents wouldn't let their children draw on the walls, especially when they are brand new and painted and stuff. So I did start drawing on my walls -- and then I actually found it was extremely fun so I kept doing it," said Kimberly.

Diane Gregory from Las Vegas encouraged her teenage son Matt to express himself by hanging every piece of sports memorabilia he had collected on his walls. Matt jumped at the opportunity and with the tacks and double-sided tape went to work. Harry Wooten, a choir minister from Dallas, uses Pausch's message to touch his congregants through prayer and song.




After battling breast cancer, Kaje Lane of Los Angeles says Pausch has inspired her to pursue singing -- a passion she had put aside for many years.

"I think so many people relate to Randy because every one of us has some sort of dream they want to make real, or some sort of passion that they want to tap into if they're not already thinking that way. … I think people are just drawn to that. It's very magnetic to see someone positive not just about the big things but the little things."

'Leave It All on the Field'

Even though he had enabled the dreams of so many others, we couldn't help but notice that there was one dream Pausch had never been able to fulfill -- playing in the NFL.

So ABC News made a couple of phone calls, and in October, Pausch took the field with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was wearing the jersey of his favorite player: wide receiver Heinz Ward.

Moments later he was catching balls thrown by Ward.

He caught every pass -- and even kicked a field goal, on his first attempt.

"There was a definite sense," Pausch told Sawyer, "when I put that talk together, to use another football expression, you know, I wanted to leave it all on the field. … If I thought it was important, it's in there. I played in football games where you walk off the field and the scoreboard didn't end up the way you wanted. But you knew that you really did give it all. And the other team was too strong. Yeah, I'm not going to beat the cancer. I tried really hard … but sometimes you're just not going to beat the thing…I wanted to walk off the stage and say anything I thought was important, I had my hour."

After a bout earlier this year in the hospital to overcome kidney and congestive heart failure -- side effects of his chemotherapy -- Pausch returned home to his family.

"His fate is, is our fate, but it's just sped up," said co-author Jeff Zaslow. "He's, you know, 47, and, and we don't know when we're gonna go, but we all have the same fate. We're all dying, just like Randy is … when we can see him, how he's, how he's traveling, it makes us think about how we're going to travel."

Millions of people around the globe have been touched by his message of optimism.

Last spring, Sawyer asked Pausch what was the best thing that had happened to him that day. He replied, "Well, first off, I'd say the day's not over yet. So there's always a chance that there will be a new best."

Lasting Legacy

Carnegie Mellon University will honor Pausch's commitment to collaboration by building the Randy Pausch Memorial Footbridge to connect a computer science center under construction with a nearby arts building.

Announcing the project last September, Carnegie Mellon President Jared L. Cohon said, "Randy, there will be generations of students and faculty who will not know you, but they will cross that bridge and see your name and they'll ask those of us who did know you. And we will tell them."

In a statement released by the university today, Cohon expressed the community's sadness at Pausch's passing.

"Randy had an enormous and lasting impact on Carnegie Mellon," Cohon said . "He was a brilliant researcher and gifted teacher. His love of teaching, his sense of fun and his brilliance came together in the Alice project, which teaches students computer programming while enabling them to do something fun -- making animated movies and games. Carnegie Mellon -- and the world -- are better places for having had Randy Pausch in them."

The family requests that donations on Randy's behalf be directed to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, 2141 Rosecrans Ave., Suite 7000, El Segundo, CA 90245, or to Carnegie Mellon's Randy Pausch Memorial Fund.

Abhishek, two Bollywood Khans in Forbes' 10 'cell celebs' list - Yahoo! India News

Abhishek, two Bollywood Khans in Forbes' 10 'cell celebs' list - Yahoo! India News

Abhishek, two Bollywood Khans in Forbes' 10 'cell celebs' list

Thu, Jul 17 07:14 PM

New York, July 17 (IANS) Three Bollywood stars, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Abhishek Bachchan, feature in Forbes magazine's list of 10 celebrities who are brand ambassadors for different mobile phone companies.

The three Indian actors are joined by football star David Beckham and tennis champion Maria Sharapova on the list released by the US magazine, otherwise known for its billionaire rankings. Sharapova endorses Sony Ericsson phones and Beckham lends his name to the Motorola RAZR2 phone.

While Shah Rukh lends star power to mobile phones made by Nokia, Abhishek and Aamir endorse Motorola and Samsung phones respectively.

The Forbes report said that Nokia, the world's largest phone manufacturer, 'doesn't work with many celebrities but makes an exception for Shah Rukh, who says he has used Nokia phones for more than a decade.'

It added that after a popular commercial last December, the company sponsored Shah Rukh's Indian Premier League cricket team earlier this year.

The magazine said Abhishek, a former LG Electronics' brand ambassador, now represents Motorola phones in India, and that he is 'Bollywood royalty, thanks to his famous actor father, Amitabh Bachchan, and glamorous actress wife Aishwarya Rai'.

About Aamir, the report said: 'After appearing in his first movie at eight, Bollywood star Aamir now produces and directs films, as well as acts. Samsung has said it is counting on his popularity to help it double its market share in India this year.'

Samsung also claimed that Aamir's work mirrors their brand's 'qualities of innovation, change, discovery, self-expression and excellence in performance'.

Explaining how mobile phone companies are now emulating perfume and designer jean makers in hiring celebrities, Forbes said: 'As nearly everyone on the planet seems to have a cellphone, device makers must work harder to win new customers. Cool designs and low prices help, of course. But so do celebrities. That's led phone makers to recruit some A-listers from Usher (a singer) to David Beckham to lend an ear and a smile to selling cellphones.'

Others in the magazine's 'Ten Celebs and Their Cells' list are singers Fergie, Rain (also known as Jung Ji Hoon), Andy Lau and race car driver Danica Patrick.

Mukesh Ambani's $2 bn home world's most expensive: Forbes

tag: luxuary

Economic Times - Indian Newspapers in English Language from seven editions.

Mukesh Ambani's $2 bn home world's most expensive: Forbes
2 May, 2008, 1225 hrs IST, PTI


NEW YORK: The 27-storey skyscraper being built in Mumbai by Mukesh Ambani, the richest person in India, could be the world's largest and costliest home with a price- tag nearing two billion dollar, according to Forbes magazine. ( Watch )

"When the Ambani residence is finished in January, completing a four-year process, it will be 550 feet high with 4,00,000 square feet of interior space," Forbes said in a report on its website.

Earlier in March, Mukesh Ambani was ranked as the fifth richest person in the world with a net worth of 43 billion dollars by the Forbes magazine in its annual list of world's wealthiest billionaires. While Lakshmi Mittal, who is an Indian citizen was ranked higher at fourth, he is a British resident. Among resident Indians, Mukesh was ranked at top.

"The only remotely comparable high-rise property currently on the market is the 70 million dollar triplex penthouse at the Pierre Hotel in New York, designed to resemble a French chateau, and climbing 525 feet in the air," Forbes said in its report titled, "Inside The World's First Billion-Dollar Home."

Mukesh Ambani heads India's most valuable firm Reliance Industries, an oil and petrochemicals giant.

"Like many families with the means to do so, the Ambanis wanted to build a custom home. They consulted with architecture firms Perkins + Will and Hirsch Bedner Associates, the designers behind the Mandarin Oriental, based in Dallas and Los Angeles, respectively," the report said.

karnataka BJP paid MLAs Rs 5 cr to switch

Deccan Chronicle - Indian Newspapers in English Language from Secunderabad


BJP paid MLAs Rs 5 cr to switch


Bengaluru, July 7: The four MLAs who quit their Assembly membership last week were paid Rs 5 crores each to switch sides. Sources in the BJP said the party — that worked out a strategy to pre-empt the Congress’ strategy to bring down the BJP government midway through the Budget Session of the state legislature — agreed to a long list of demands put forth by these leaders.As part of the deal, Rs 5 crores was paid to each MLA on resignation. At least two of the MLAs, Balachandra Jarkiholi and Narasimha Swamy, will be inducted into the Cabinet on Wednesday.

Two others are likely to be made chairmen of boards and corporations. Besides this, the party will bear the expenses of the by elections in which the MLAs will contest as BJP candidates. Also, they will be helped in retaining political clout in their constituencies.Sources in the party said that the entire episode was strategised when the Congress Rajya Sabha MP Anil Lad tried to persuade BJP MLAs Shankarlige Gowda and A. Narayanaswamy to quit their Assembly membership midway through the Budget Session besides cajoling the six independent MLAs to rock the BJP’s boat in exchange for a fat sum that was promised by the Congress leaders.

The Congress’ strategy, is to woo disgruntled BJP MLAs and persuade them to leave the party. In fact, BJP approached Mr V. Somanna, who had promised to resign, but he is believed to be bargaining for a ministry. The BJP spin doctors found it easy to convince the four MLAs who quit to defect. BJP strategists are working overtime to persuade a few more MLAs into quitting the Congress and Janata Dal (S). The names doing the rounds include Umesh Katti, Mahadev Prasad, Cada Venkatesh and H.C. Mahadevappa.