Worried people

Work is full of people worried

The world is full of worried people

People are worried about work

Work is worrying

People are worrying

And what does it achieve?

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Precious little

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Worrying causes harm to us

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It unbalances us

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It stresses us

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It tires us

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And we all know this

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Yet we still find ourselves worrying

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Thought for the day there are few people in any developed country who starve to death

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Few who cannot find clothing or shelter

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These might not be comforting thoughts for you however if the worst comes to the worst you will survive

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So if we will not starve or freeze to death what are we really worrying about?

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Our standard of living

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Yes

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This might well suffer and if it does then we find out who our real friends are

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To those of you who have not gone through this experience be warned it is amazing how many so called friends disappear when times get tough

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And after the emotion has dissipated we can say what a nice thing to find out who our real friends are

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If it is not our status that we are worrying about then really what is left is our fear of change and the unknown

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Funny that because few of our ancestors had great certainty of life

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Coming out of our caves in the morning looking for food must have been quite precarious

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Did they worry?

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We do not know

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We do know that living in this moment now rather than thinking "what if" all the time is a better way to be

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So if you want to come through the next few years enjoying yourself then for sure this will not happen if you worry about everything

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So live in the moment and let go of worrying by pushing thoughts of "what if" away

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Easy to say hard to achieve

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Worth the effort though

Bring back the wolves

No trace remains of the wolves whose howls ricocheted for millennia down the lush valleys of the Olympic peninsula in Washington state.

Settlers and trappers killed them all in little more than three decades.

But the loss of the stealthy predators in the early 1900s left a hole in the landscape that scientists say they are just beginning to grasp.

The ripples extend throughout what is now Olympic National Park, leading to a boom in elk populations, overbrowsing of shrubs and trees, and erosion so severe it has altered the very nature of the rivers, says a team of Oregon State University biologists.

The result, they argue, is an environment that is less rich, less resilient and - perhaps - in peril.

"We think this ecosystem is unravelling in the absence of wolves," said OSU ecologist William Ripple.

Everything from salmon to songbirds could feel the fallout from the missing predators, the scientists say.

It sounds hard to believe, but the research adds to growing evidence that key predators do more than simply keep prey species in check.

Most famously, Ripple and his OSU colleague Robert Beschta showed that within three years after wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and elk populations fell, pockets of trees and shrubs began rebounding.

Beavers returned, coyote numbers dropped and habitat flourished for fish and birds.

It was an "explosive" discovery, said David Graber, regional chief scientist for the National Park Service. "The whole ecosystem re-sorted itself after those wolf populations got large enough."

A push to reintroduce wolves to Olympic National Park a decade ago fizzled in the face of local opposition, but the OSU work could revive the debate.

"If what we're saying is right, and the Park Service believes it, that means they have to do something," Beschta said.

Beschta was searching for cottonwoods in the Hoh river rain forest on a day when clouds and sunshine chased each other across the sky. Centurion cedars unfurled their boughs. Raindrops glistened on waist-high ferns, and a carpet of moss muffled the sound of footfalls.

Few corners of the state are less touched by man, and the idea that an ecological crisis was unfolding seemed laughable.

"To most people, this would look pretty pristine," Beschta conceded.

But decades spent studying forests and rivers have taught him to notice things most people don't.

Those "fern prairies," for example, shouldn't occupy vast swaths of forest floor.

Nor should you be able to see 100 yards in any direction. "This looks like a well-kept lawn," Beschta said with dismay.

Gone is the jungle-like understory of shrubs, young cottonwoods, hemlock and maple reported by early explorers.

The reason?

Beschta pointed to piles of elk pellets that made walking an obstacle course.
"Trophic cascade" is the term biologists use for the ecological chain of events set off by extermination of wolves and other top predators.

Starting in Yellowstone more than a decade ago, Beschta and Ripple have documented these trickle-down effects in landscapes across the American west.

In Zion National Park, they linked the absence of cougars to an upswing of mule deer and a crash in cottonwoods, followed by stream-bank erosion and declines in butterflies, frogs and native fish.

Similar patterns of vegetation and habitat destruction emerged in Yosemite and Jasper national parks, the latter in Canada.

"We think this may be pretty universal," Ripple said.

Some are sceptical of the pair's conclusions, including Olympic National Park wildlife biologist Patti Happe.

She questions some of the historical records used to conclude the ecosystem has shifted, and points out that increased erosion could be caused by more frequent floods in recent years.

"There's no denying that predation ... would shape the behaviour and population numbers of elk," she said. "But how much, we don't know - and to extrapolate that to salmon and [rivers] is to my mind just too big of a reach."

President Theodore Roosevelt created Mount Olympus National Monument in 1909 to protect the unique subspecies of elk that now bears his name.

None of that solicitude was extended to wolves, which were trapped, poisoned with strychnine and shot on sight.

The final stragglers were killed around 1920.

Elk populations spiked, and park managers warned of the consequences.

"Unless some substitute for this now-absent controlling factor [the wolf] is provided, serious destruction of certain plants and even their total elimination ... will occur," a 1938 report said.

Starvation drove elk numbers down, and the park's year-round population has stabilised at between 3,000 and 5,000 animals, Happe estimated.

But elk today don't behave like they did when wolf packs were on the prowl. Gone is the "ecology of fear" that kept browsers on the move, wary of narrow river bottoms and thick brush.

Bear and cougar occasionally kill elk in the park, but the big herbivores feel complacent enough to hang out in the valleys and eat their fill.

That's disastrous for the young plants they fancy most, like cottonwood, hemlock, big leaf maple and Western red cedar.

With no reason to be looking over their shoulder, they now stand around and eat down to the ground," Beschta said, scanning duff and nurse logs for seedlings.

He finds none. But a cluster of cottonwoods anchors a small clearing, their trunks up to 3 feet (0.9 metres) across.

These patriarchs sprouted 140 years ago or more - a few decades after Lewis and Clark blazed a path to the Pacific.

Beschta and Ripple walked transects in the park's valleys, counting and aging every cottonwood and big leaf maple.

They found that after wolves were eradicated, very few seedlings made it past the knee-high stage.

Along one three-mile stretch of the Hoh, not a single new cottonwood survived the ravenous elk in the last half-century.

"It's totally out of whack," Beschta said.

Just as transplanted wolves have proved resilient, the experience from Yellowstone shows that ecosystems can bounce back when all of their original pieces are restored, Beschta pointed out.

"So if you put wolves back into Olympic National Park, will it recover?" he asked. "We're optimistic."

The Guardian

Bamboo

Bamboo production brings immense benefits to those involved and importantly to the local environment, which is often in countries of modest means

Agricultural efficiency is easily its largest benefit.

Since bamboos are the fastest growing woody plants in the world, the crop can be replenished quickly.

Furthermore, bamboo is self-regenerating, which means that after the stalk has been cut, it rapidly regrows from the remaining rootstock.

As long as bamboo is grown in its native habitat, its impact on local ecosystems is minimal compared to the destructive foresting practices of timber production.

Although concerns about bamboo as a textile and clothing fabric are warranted (and consumers should probably avoid bamboo textiles unless they're particularly well-informed), bamboo is a remarkably suitable replacement for timber as building material.

It forms a very hard wood that is extremely light weight and exceptionally durable.

And despite the fact that almost all bamboo has to be imported to North America and Europe, the carbon-conscious consumer can rest easier knowing that the fuel-usage for transporting bamboo from Asia to California is essentially equivalent to shipping timber coast-to-coast in the U.S., according to the Department of Energy.

For farmers and local communities in developing countries like Vietnam, it's impossible to deny the economic benefits of growing more bamboo.

The Prosperity Institute estimates that 60% of the value of bamboo production goes right back into the pocket of the farmers who grew it.

And as demand for the gregarious grass increases around the globe, rural economies in Southeast Asia could garner huge benefits by growing and selling bamboo to foreign buyers.

As many as 1.5 billion people already rely upon bamboo or rattan in some significant way, according to the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan.

So even if bamboo isn't an omnibenevolent eco-crop, it's not bad, and it's here to stay

The Guardian

Quotes - 1

... the purpose of your life, and each life, *is in its being*. That being may include certain actions, but the acts themselves are only important in that they spring out of the essence of your life, *which simply by being* is bound to fulfill its purposes." - Seth

"Whatever it is, if it doesn't make you happy, walk away, give it away to someone else who wants it. Let it be THEIR next dream; let it flee from you. You're emptying out your limitations when you do that. Then you have ROOM to grow, to allow magnificent things to fill the vacuum of those seemingly empty places. When you hold onto yesterday, when you hold onto dead and dying adventures, you have no room in your box for greatness." - Ramtha

"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages." - Thomas Edison

"The thinking man must oppose all cruelties no matter how deeply rooted in tradition or surrounded by a halo." - Albert Schweitzer

"I would daily throw out crumbs for the sparrows in the neighborhood.I noticed that one sparrow was injured, so that it had difficulty getting about. But I was interested to discover that the other sparrows, apparently by mutual agreement, would leave the crumbs which lay nearest their crippled comrade, so that he could get his share, undisturbed." - Albert Schweitzer

"People who let their dogs and cats have litters in order to show their children the 'miracle of birth' should come witness the 'miracle of death' performed in the back rooms of animal shelters all over the country." - Phyllis Wright, Humane Society

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." - Mark Twain

"The tongue weighs practically nothing, but so few people can hold it." - Unknown

"To be yourself, in a world that tries, night and day, to make you just like everybody else - is to fight the greatest battle there ever is to fight, and never stop fighting..." - E.E. Cummings

"If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome." - Anne Bradstreet

"Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more - more unseen forms become manifest to him." - Rumi

"A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day." - Emily Dickinson

Google and Atlantis

Google announced recently that the grid like find made by an English aeronautical engineer using Googles new Google Earth 5.0, which includes undersea data was not Atlantis as first believed

True or false it is interesting that the find is in the area of Poseidonis which was in fact the last part of Atlantis to go under the water

For the record the truth of Atlantis is the following

Atlantis was not a city

Nor was it an island

Atlantis was a continent

Nor was it destroyed in a day it disappeared over many hundreds of thousands of years

Plato being an initiate was not allowed, by virtue of his vows, to refer to Atlantis except by allegory

Poseidonis to which he referred was the last remaining Atlantean island of note being about the size of Ireland and located beyond the Straits of Gibraltar

Poseidonis was submerged in 9565BC in a great cataclysm involving massive earthquakes and tidal waves, and yes this was very quick

Atlantis proper was an immense continental system that once more or less covered the face of the globe, its main centre being located in what is now the Atlantic Ocean.

As well as covering the North and South Atlantic regions, it included portions of the North and South Pacific, and islands in the Indian Ocean.

Sri Lanka (Ceylon) was the northern headland of one of the Pacific-Atlantean land-masses.

Sweden and Norway formed part of Atlantis on the European side, and eastern and western Siberia and Kamchatka belonged to it on the Asiatic side.

Other surviving remnants of Atlantis are the Azores, the Canaries, and the island of Madeira -- all of which were once mountain-peaks of the Atlantean continent

The Atlantic portion of Lemuria was the geological basis of what is generally known as Atlantis.

Lemuria was the third race before the Atlantean Fourth Root-Race

The latter, indeed, must be regarded rather as a development of the Atlantic prolongation of Lemuria, than as an entirely new mass of land upheaved to meet the special requirements of the Fourth Root-Race.

Just as in the case of Race-evolution, so in that of the shifting and re-shifting of the continental masses, no hard and fast line can be drawn where a new order ends and another begins.

Continuity in natural processes is never broken.

Thus the Fourth Race Atlanteans were developed from a nucleus of northern Lemurian Third Race Men, centred, roughly speaking, toward a point of land in what is now the mid-Atlantic Ocean.

Their continent was formed by the coalescence of many islands and peninsulas which were upheaved in the ordinary course of time and became ultimately the true home of the great Race known as the Atlanteans

D.Pratt

Excellent news

In the first step by a developing country to stop multinational companies patenting traditional remedies from local plants and animals, the Indian government has effectively licensed 200,000 local treatments as "public property" free for anyone to use but no one to sell as a "brand".

The move comes after scientists in Delhi noticed an alarming trend – the "bio-prospecting" of natural remedies by companies abroad.

After trawling through the records of the global trademark offices, officials found 5,000 patents had been issued — at a cost of at least $150m (£104m) — for "medical plants and traditional systems".

More than 2,000 of these belong to the Indian systems of medicine

We began to ask why multinational companies were spending millions of dollars to patent treatments that so many lobbies in Europe deny work at all," said Dr Vinod Kumar Gupta, who heads the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, which lists in encyclopaedic detail the 200,000 treatments.

The database, which took 200 researchers eight years to compile by meticulously translating ancient Indian texts, will now be used by the European Patent Office to check against "bio-prospectors".

Gupta points out that in Brussels alone there had been 285 patents for medicinal plants whose uses had long been known in the three principal Indian systems: ayurveda, India's traditional medical treatment; unani, a system believed to have come to India via ancient Greece; and siddha, one of India's oldest health therapies, from the south.

Researchers found that in Europe one company had patented an Indian creeping plant known as Brahmi — Bacopa monnieri — for a memory enhancer.

Another patent was awarded for aloe vera for its use as a mouth ulcer treatment.

We have shown the authorities that ayurveda, unani and siddha medicinal uses were known in India.

We would like the patents therefore lifted, said Gupta.

In the past India has had to go to court to get patents revoked.

Officials say that to lift patents from medicines created from turmeric and neem, an Indian tree, it spent more than $5m.

In the case of the neem patent, the legal battle took almost 10 years.

We won because we proved these were part of traditional Indian knowledge.

There was no innovation and therefore no patent should be granted, said Gupta.

The Guardian

As an example the plant shown at the top is Aloe chinensis or Indian Medicine plant, and is the common plant that most in the West know aas Aloe vera

They are native to India and Vietnam and have been used for thousands of years in various treatments

Today they feature in various Western guises being claimed to help various ailments with usually scant or no reference to their origin or Indian heritage

Mmmmm - 65

The Earth, or earth-life rather, is the only Avichi (Helll) that exists for the men of our humanity on this globe

Avichi is a state of mind not a locality

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A counterpart of Devachan (Heaven)

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Such a state follows the soul wherever it goes, whether into Kama-Loka as a semi conscious spook or into a human body when reborn to suffer Avichi

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There is no other Hell

UFOs

Or to give them their full title Unidentified Flying Object

All of us have heard or read of UFOs

Usually these are discounted as being weather balloons or some such object by officialdom

But then why would one expect government to be honest even if it did know more?

We would not

Recently the British Daily Telegraph published a photo taken by a man using his mobile

There were no UFOs visible to the naked eye and only when he looked at the photo did he see the UFO - See DT Most viewed tab - 23.03.09

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Four of them, and the expert (who are these people?) said it was a weather balloon

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Silly statement as there are four of them, did he seriously mean four weather balloons flying in formation?

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Which brings to mind something that I heard from a good friend when I was living in Geneva

He told me that Gorbachev and Regan intended to announce to the world that they had clear and supportable evidence of many confirmed reliable UFO sightings, when they met in Geneva

My friend related this because he knew many of the people involved in creating the Regan Gorbachev meeting and was privy to a particular meeting where CIA, KGB and other National Security people vetoed this intent on the grounds that it would create fear and uncertainty

So it never happened

Today we still live in a world of great fear and uncertainty

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Would honesty and intelligent study of these reports not be more helpful than continued official denial?

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For the record there are indeed many unexplained legitimate sightings of UFOs all over the world

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Many sighted by sane intelligent people

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To continue treating the earth's citizens like morons is not helpful

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But then looked at another way is it because those making the decisions are the real morons?

Moral issue

Professor Bill Ledger, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Sheffield University and a member of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, said it was legitimate for a young woman with cancer to have her eggs frozen before chemotherapy seriously damaged her childbearing potential, but it was ethically questionable for women to do it purely for what he called "lifestyle reasons".

We should be very careful about performing medical procedures on healthy people.

The group I worry about are women who are healthy and want to have kids, but do it later.

The image that's portrayed [of egg freezing] is that a woman in her late 20s or early 30s can establish a relationship 10 or 15 years later and then take the eggs out of the freezer, fertilise them with the partner's sperm and have the baby.

That's the dream.

The central issue is that it doesn't work very well.

The chance of a baby from a frozen egg with vitrification is less than 6% per egg.

By doing the egg freezing for social reasons, they are taking a huge gamble for their future.

Concern that babies born using egg freezing may not be healthy should also dissuade women from undertaking the procedure, which costs about £5,000, added Ledger.

Melanie Davies, a professor of reproductive medicine at University College Hospital in London, endorsed Ledger's comments.

They [women] may have a perception that it's a panacea and will guarantee them the opportunity to have a family in later years - that it's some sort of miracle technique.

But it's still early days to be reliant on this technique and at the moment it should not be used for women who want to guarantee a family in the future.

The message has to be that your best chance of having a baby is doing it naturally when you are under 35."

She criticised the recent introduction of an egg-freezing scheme that enables women under 35 to donate some of their eggs for implantation into a recipient in return for the fertility clinic agreeing to store their remaining eggs for free.

Such schemes could lead to the "emotional trauma" of a child born to the recipient tracing its natural donor mother when it turns 18, as the law allows.

Ledger and Davies were speaking in a personal capacity.

Forty-one clinics are licensed to offer egg freezing in the UK

HFEA figures show that 78 women froze their eggs for non-medical reasons in 2007, more than double the 33 who did so the year before, and that their average age was 37.

The Guardian

Truly this is also a moral issue

How do you feel about this?

Inertia

There is nothing in the Universe that does not have motion

One way or another

It is all relative as we have heard so many times

How about your own inertia?

Have you ever looked at this?

How you get things going

How you stop things

All have their inertia

Depending on this inertia depends how they work

How they respond

Often we get stuck in our ways

Losing our own inertia

As we sometimes notice

Or fail to notice

Or do not want to notice

Various aspects of our lives slipping quietly into an almost static condition

Unchecked

Unattended

Uncared for

Changes you though particularly when you do nothing abut it

Changes you from an active user of energy to something slowly losing it's way

Our blocked or frozen inertia prevents us from moving on

From finding better ways of doing things or experiencing life differently

Take time to look at where your energy went

Why you seem to have so little left for other things

Having done this ponder how once you reach take off then inertia will help carry you along

Make that effort to rekindle your inertia

Inertia

Young men

All have mothers

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So how come many grow up not understanding anything about women?

What happens in these families?

Did they even have families?

What values, what shared wisdom is passing from one generation to the next?

How come so many young men seem to know little or nothing about relationships?

About being men either come to think of it

Young men often have no fathers

Many being of divorced parents where the mother retained custody of the child or children

These young men see little or nothing of their fathers

Often they have no role model, no men to relate to at all

And at school teachers are often too busy with the demands of the system to give much time to their pupils, particularly challenging ones

At school young boys turning into young men are often left to their own devices

Society then becomes disturbed about young men and their propensity towards gangs, violence or drugs and alcohol

What hypocrisy

Society had few ideas or interest in helping them when they were young

Society has no place for many when they are adults

Just a myopic fear of their anger and frustration

So lock them up

Just put them away

Do you know any young men?

Are you helping at all?

Young men are often difficult to approach, however if this is done through some existing organisation or activity then often they are very grateful

Because no one ever cared before

Do you have any time?

Things vs actions

Psychologists have found that people who spend their money on simple experiences such as going to the theatre, dining out or taking adventure holidays tend to be happier with their purchases than those who buy material possessions, regardless of how much they spend.

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We don't tend to get bored of happy memories like we do with a material object, said Professor Ryan Howell, a psychologist at San Francisco State University who conducted the study.

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In life experiences, the only thing left afterwards is a memory of the event, but this tended to give people a greater sense of vitality and of being alive, which is satisfying the higher psychological needs that humans have.

Material items did not do that to nearly the same extent.

It is an extension of basic need theory, where purchases that satisfy psychological needs produce the greatest well being. It shows that if you use money in the right way it can make you happy.

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Professor Howell presented the findings at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

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The researchers asked 154 students, who had an average age of 24 and many of whom were also .in full time work, to write about either an object or life experience they had bought recently.

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After writing about the object, the researchers then assessed the participants' levels of happiness and satisfaction.

They found that those who had spent their money on meals, theatre tickets or trips were happier than those who had purchased items like televisions or clothes.

Professor Howell added:

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People still believe that more money will make them happy.

Maybe this belief has held because money is making some people happy some of the time, at least when they spend it on life experiences.

The Sunday Telegraph

Enlightenment

Is a term loosely used by many self styled gurus and so called Masters

Beware!

Few of these people can define enlightenment let alone claim to have attained that state

As a modern con it has few equals as it allows the modern scam artist the chance to fleece people

They do this by offering courses and products that will allegedly help the purchaser to advance in their life journey

Claiming to have insights and knowledge, all of which is hard to challenge when the average person knows so little of these things

As a small help to avoiding the pain of being bilked pay attention to these comments

To our knowledge no true Master takes money for anything

No true Master is teaching anything to the public

No true Master is even known to the public

Any true Master can articulate whatever he wants in a concise, clear and short manner

He does not ramble on endlessly in a confusing manner, he is not in his ego

No Master says that this and that are secret or cannot be discussed

Where things are esoteric he does not go

He does offer help

He never refuses help

Where he comes into contact with people he will offer insights and help appropriate to that person's needs

Which he does in a clear and simple manner

There are many people who claim abilities, trust your intuition and beware those offering courses in enlightenment or anything else in this area where the person offering is not able to answer your queries or questions in a simple clear and easily understood manner

Masters do not offer courses

Masters do not solicit

Masters are rare and seldom encountered

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Steps on the path must be undertaken by you because this is what you feel to do

Nature will support you as when this is correct

Not when you want it

Not on your terms

But when you truly need it

Enlightenment is so far away that you can forget it

Just focus on being the best you can in whatever comes your way day by day

Consciousness evolution is attained by pursuing the truth of things

Enlightenment is something that has been written and spoken about since time immemorial

Enlightenment is the basis of all world teachings however distorted they have become today

True spiritual or consciousness evolution is achieved by being the best you can everyday in every way

Enlightenment is many lives away just focus on the here and now

Lies

Have become acceptable

Lies have become open

We know this from the way any politician caught stealing or lying immediately says it is all political

The business man says it was not him

Happily lying without embarrassment

Not overly worried about being sent to prison knowing that their lawyers can spin more lies and get them off

Does it matter?

A world full of liars

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Openly cynical

In many environments openly contemptuous of those challenging them

In other countries people pretending not to notice or being too afraid to note the open corruption and intimidation and murder of those reporting their abuses

Liars openly contemptuous of the public

Knowing that they can get away with their lies

We say yes it does matter

In fact it more than matters because society cannot function fairly with gross misbehaviour running unchecked

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And fair societies are what we need in order to run this planet for the well being of all life around us

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No longer for just the well being of the few on this planet, it's very survival is at stake

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This is not an alarmist statement it is what humanity must find and create if it is to survive

Planet Earth cannot sustain itself in the face of the lies and corruption that lead to so many poor decisions based on the greedy needs of the few that are so rampant in many places today

The greed and selfishness that has resulted in our present global financial situation is a perfect example of where greed and corruption lead

Inevitably greed and selfishness feed on themselves and become unstoppable until disaster strikes

The world's bankers competed with each other for more and more profit and chose to pursue reckless strategies which resulted in our current mess

None of them could stop the greed imperative driving them to certain disaster

The lies they told themselves and the world being faithfully reported by the media

Are they apologetic?

Are they contrite?

Have they said they regret their decisions?

No just grudging apologies denying that they did any wrong

Time to say it as it is they made their decisions based on their greed for more

These people are weak and dishonest

These people have lied and continue to do so

Our politicians have yet to show that they understand the anger building amongst the public

And why am I going here?

Teaching 14-16 year olds in a London school recently I was challenged on this subject

The point being made was that no one gets punished or very seldom and that so many people in the public eye lie why should we not do the same?

If business people, bankers and politicians lie then why should we care about lying said another?

My answer was one that came at the subject from a different direction

Judgement by other men or society is not the only issue

Judgement by society may also not be the strongest reason why we should not lie

We should not lie because if we lie it sets us on a course where because we lie we must assume that others do too

If we assume that others lie as well then we change our experience of life

For the worse

As we continue to lie we learn to make the lie true in the sense that when we lie we learn to defend it and protest that it is the truth and this gets to the point where we actually believe our own lies

People who lie frequently become adept at saying a lie and within the next heart beat have convinced themselves that the lie is the truth

By becoming cynical about life and others liars justify themselves in their own eyes

Only this way can they live with themselves

They have to be right even when it is a lie, a lie which they tell themselves and others is the truth

Over time this leads to cynicism paranoia and this is not a nice state to live in

Trusting no one

Examples of this abound throughout history and to this day

A more interesting reason not to lie maybe is because it is morally wrong

Morals are the fabric of any group and without morals society descends into anarchy

Again examples abound with many countries today showing just what happens when lying is endemic

On a personal level something inside us intuitively knows lying to be wrong

It is this knowing that is the only argument against which there is no reply

We know inside that lying is wrong

Over time not lying is also less wearing

Not lying means less stress when thinking about how we answer any given question

Nor do we get so stressed about the tension that naturally arises when the choice to lie or not to lie arises
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We do not lie

Lying is a poor life strategy

Lying is for the weak

Most of the students agreed with my comments

Not all though as one who wants to go into politics said he did not agree because lying is necessary sometimes and he felt this was fine and intended to lie in order to get ahead

And when the lie sometimes becomes the norm where are you then?

My only comment to him was that he had missed the point as life is not only about man things

Life is about doing what is right

Life is about contribution and altruism

Life is about being the best we can in any given situation

This means following the moral and ethical innate something that is inside all of us

Not sure I persuaded him but if he thinks about it then maybe this is OK too

The decision is his as it is for all of us

Lying might seem obscure to our survival but this is not so our future depends on how we choose to behave

And what example are the young getting today?

Make sure that in your own life you are the best that you can be

The Climate Change business

Considering how the fear of global warming is inspiring the world's politicians to put forward the most costly and economically damaging package of measures ever imposed on mankind, it is obviously important that we can trust the basis on which all this is being proposed. Last week two international conferences addressed this issue and the contrast between them could not have been starker.

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The first in Copenhagen, billed as "an emergency summit on climate change" and attracting acres of worldwide media coverage, was explicitly designed to stoke up the fear of global warming to an unprecedented pitch. As one of the organisers put it, "this is not a regular scientific conference: this is a deliberate attempt to influence policy".

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What worries them are all the signs that when the world's politicians converge on Copenhagen in December to discuss a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, under the guidance of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), there will be so much disagreement that they may not get the much more drastic measures to cut carbon emissions that the alarmists are calling for.

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Thus the name of the game last week, as we see from a sample of quotations, was to win headlines by claiming that everything is far worse than previously supposed. Sea level rises by 2100 could be "much greater than the 59cm predicted by the last IPCC report". Global warming could kill off 85 per cent of the Amazon rain forest, "much more than previously predicted". The ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica are melting "much faster than predicted". The number of people dying from heat could be "twice as many as previously predicted".

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None of the government-funded scientists making these claims were particularly distinguished, but they succeeded in their object, as the media cheerfully recycled all this wild scaremongering without bothering to check the scientific facts.

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What a striking contrast this was to the second conference, organised by the Heartland Institute under the title Global Warming: Was It Ever Really A Crisis?. In Britain this received no coverage at all, apart from a sneering mention by the Guardian, although it was addressed by dozens of expert scientists, not a few of world rank, who for professional standing put those in Copenhagen in the shade.

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Led off with stirring speeches from the Czech President Vaclav Klaus, the acting head of the European Union, and Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, perhaps the most distinguished climatologist in the world, the message of this gathering was that the scare over global warming has been deliberately stoked up for political reasons and has long since parted company with proper scientific evidence.

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Nothing has more acutely demonstrated this than the reliance of the IPCC on computer models to predict what is going to happen to global temperatures over the next 100 years. On these predictions, that temperatures are likely to rise by up to 5.3C, all their other predictions and recommendations depend, yet nearly 10 years into the 21st century it is already painfully clear that the computer forecasts are going hopelessly astray. Far from rising with CO2, as the models are programmed to predict they should, the satellite-measured temperature curve has flattened out and then dropped. If the present trend were to continue, the world in 2100 would not in fact be hotter but 1.1C cooler than the 1979-1998 average.

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Yet it is on this fundamental inability of the computer models to predict what has already happened that all else hangs. For two days in New York we heard distinguished experts, such as Professor Syun-Ichi Akasofu, former director of the International Arctic Research Center, Dr Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute, authoritatively (and often wittily) tear apart one piece of the scare orthodoxy after another.

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Sea levels are not shooting up but only continuing their modest 3mm a year rise over the past 200 years. The vast Antarctic ice-sheet is not melting, except in one tiny corner, the Antarctic Peninsula. Tropical hurricane activity, far from increasing, is at its lowest level for 30 years. The best correlation for temperature fluctuations is not CO2 but the magnetic activity of the sun. (For an admirable summary of proceedings by the Australian paleoclimatologist Professor Bob Carter, Google "Heartland" and "Quadrant").

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Yet the terrifying thing, as President Klaus observed in his magisterial opening address, is that there is no dialogue on these issues. When recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he found the minds of his fellow world leaders firmly shut to anything but the fantasies of the scaremongers.

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There seems little doubt that global warming is leading the world towards an unprecedented catastrophe. But it is not the Technicolor apocalypse promised by the likes of Al Gore.

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The real disaster hanging over us lies in all those astronomically costly measures proposed by politicians, to meet a crisis which in reality never existed.

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Telegraph

Beyond

Man is ever craving for a beyond

He cannot live without an idea of some kind

As a beacon and consolation

This is as true today as when this was written many centuries ago

And another piece of writing as valid today as when it was written many years ago

Before the lethal breath of selfishness and indifference every uncomfortable fact is transformed into meaningless fiction, and every branch of the once verdant Tree of Truth has become dried up and stripped of its primeval spiritual significance

Yet all of us can make choices as to what we want to believe

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Without spiritual understanding life slides down to a material plane where nothing lasts for long nor does it satisfy that need and loneliness inside

Throughout history men have had choices and some men and women of courage had the strength and conviction to state unpopular ideas

Ideas that were subsequently found to be true

Yet today we look back with the smug belief that our technically advancing society is in many ways superior to those civilisations of old

But we know almost nothing about them

Our view is of a few thousand years at most and that view itself is very biased

Were people then, so simple and credulous in the days of Pythagoras and Plato?

Were the millions in Babylonia and Egypt, of India and Greece, with their great sages to lead them, all fools

That during those periods of great learning and civilisation which preceded the year one of our era

- the later giving birth but to the intellectual darkness of medieval fanaticism -

so many otherwise great men should have devoted their lives to a mere illusion, a superstition called magic?

It would seem so, had one to remain content with the words and conclusion of modern Philosophy

Again these words were written many years ago, and have we learnt?

No we have not

We have no idea of the esoteric teachings of these great men for the simple reason that those teachings were and remain esoteric

Esoteric means hidden, or secret to use modern language

For all our so called progress we know less than they did about the workings of nature

Considerably less than they did about healing and the ability to control various aspects of nature

About using the elements, even about our real true history, our future, our potential human possibilities

The certain cyclical disasters that are coming our way

What to do?

Choose to follow the path yourself because as they well knew it is the only way out of endless lives of pain and struggle

Just an idea and if you do so decide then search out the perennial or secret wisdom because this is where you will find the truth of things

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Setting you on the path as it is known, which in turn leads towards qualifying yourself to learn those esoteric secrets

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Only through this can you find truth and see why these things have remained secret all these many many years

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There is no magic only things we do not understand

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Beyond, go beyond mind

Silence and noise

When did you last hear silence?

Real silence

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Surely though real silence cannot be heard?

We can experience the absence of noise

Not hear it

No matter semantics maybe

The point being made is that real silence is hard to experience for most of us because of where we live

Background noises all around us

Without notice they are there all the time

Time to notice them spring is coming in the Northern hemisphere

Birds are coming back

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They are making noise it's their time for making noise

And nests

And mating

Life returning all around us

Even some shoots appearing

Buds even

Time to notice we might not have silence but we do have new noise

Noises of returning life

Noises of new life

Notice new noises and make your day more aware

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It's great to feel new life around us

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Be conscious it does nice things to us humans too

Knowledge

He who has knowledge makes no predictions

He who makes predictions has no knowledge

True or false?

Maybe a bit of both

Knowledge from the dictionary is defined as expertise and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject

Fine but there is no single agreed definition of knowledge nor is there likely to be one as there remain many competing theories

Plato for me says it best and as usual those who are masters are able to express what they want to say simply and clearly

In this case he simply defines knowledge as "justified true belief"

Yes that says enough to feel the truth of the expression

Somehow things have got muddled up today where we use the word carelessly and talk about knowledge as if it is truth

What I am leading up to is the warning not to take what so many say as knowledge when often it is just speculation and conjecture

Too easily we accept other peoples knowledge at face value

Keep your eye on global warming pronouncements particularly by those who work for the IPCC

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

In the kiss

The mutual caressing of lips and the exchange of saliva changes the levels of the bonding hormone oxytocin

The ancient Greeks believed that it unleashed the soul upon a lover, whereas the Romans did it to test the sobriety of their wives.

Now scientists have found that kissing alters the love chemicals of the body.

Whatever the reasons why generations of lovers have engaged in the act of open-mouthed snogging, it seems that the mutual caressing of lips and the exchange of saliva changes the levels of the bonding hormone oxytocin released into the bloodstream from the brain.

Intriguingly, oxytocin – which is also released during childbirth and is believed to be involved in the bonding of mother to newborn baby – actually decreases in women during a kissing bout, while it increases in their male partners.

Scientists are unsure why there is this difference between the sexes, but they speculate that it may be connected with the fact that women have naturally higher levels of oxytocin in their bloodstream than men and that kissing just brings them nearer to the male level.

In addition to the changes in oxytocin levels, the scientists also found that a 15-minute bout of kissing with a loved one significantly lowers the levels of the stress hormone cortisol – which can only be good for a lover's sense of well-being.

"The science of kissing, known as philematology, is an under-researched area of study," said Wendy Hill, a professor of neuroscience at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, who carried out the kissing experiments on 15 heterosexual couples who volunteered their time and their lips.

"Kissing is defined as a behaviour in which an adult male and female touch lips and engage in open mouth-to-mouth contact as a sign of greeting and affection.

[It has been] proposed that kissing originated as an oral food exchange between mothers and infants, a behaviour known as pre-mastication," Professor Hill said.

"Pre-mastication is still common among some non-western societies.

This behaviour closely resembles the kiss that is shared between adult pairs since both involve positive oral contact, neural stimulation and saliva exchange," she told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago.

Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University, New Jersey, said that kissing may stimulate any one of the three primary brain systems involved in mating and reproduction: the sex drive, romantic love and long-term attachment.

"The sex drive motivates you to seek a range of partners, romantic love motivates you to focus your mating energy on one individual at a time, feelings of attachment motivate you to sustain a pair bond at least long enough to rear a single child through infancy together," Dr Fisher said.

Kissing may have evolved as a fast-acting biological strategy to assess a potential mate quickly and to initiate a sexual partnership.

"Men like sloppier kisses with more open mouths and more tongue movement.

The hypothesis is they're trying to get small traces of oestrogen to see where the woman is in her menstrual cycle to indicate the state of her fertility," Dr Fisher said.

"There are others who think that women use smell as they are kissing to deduce some things about the man's immune system.

That's not proven yet.

"There's some who suggest that by kissing a man a woman is unconsciously able to detect aspects of a particular complex of genes in the immune system, and that what they're doing is being turned on by someone with different variations in the system," she said.

By kissing, "you can the smell the health of their teeth and what they have been eating and drinking and smoking, and these are all devices we use to size up an individual before we do something like have sex with them," Dr Fisher said.

"This is the tip of the iceberg. We are going to find many other mechanisms we unconsciously use to size up a person's biological traits."

The Independent

Quite so

Alcoholism new hope?

An eminent French cardiologist has triggered an impassioned debate in the medical world over his claim to have discovered a cure for alcoholism.

Dr Olivier Ameisen discovered baclofen had cut addiction in rats

Dr Olivier Ameisen, 55, one of France's top heart specialists, says he overcame his own addiction .to alcohol by self-administering doses of a muscle-relaxant called baclofen.

He has now written a book about his experience - Le Dernier Verre (The Last Glass) - in which he . calls for clinical trials to test his theory that baclofen suppresses the craving for drink.

But many other specialists are sceptical, warning of the dangers of so-called miracle cures.

Dr Ameisen was associate professor of cardiology at New York's Cornell University, and in 1994 he opened a profitable private practice in Manhattan.

But, stricken by an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy - he says he felt like "an impostor waiting to be unmasked" - he found relief in large quantities of whisky and gin.

Encouraging people to think that there is a miracle molecule is to completely misunderstand the nature of alcoholism, Dr Michel Reynaud

Dr Ameisen "I detested the taste of alcohol. But I needed its effects to exist in society," he says in Le Dernier Verre, which comes out in English next month.

Dr Ameisen says he tried every known remedy to end his dependence.

Between 1997 and 1999 he spent a total of nine months confined in clinics - but nothing worked.

Fearing for his own patients, he gave up his practice and returned to Paris.

Then, in 2000, he read an article about an American man who was treated with baclofen for muscle .spasms and found that it eased his addiction to cocaine.

Further investigation uncovered research showing that the drug worked on rats to cut addiction to .alcohol or cocaine.

Some experts say curing alcoholism takes more than just a drug

But, strangely, Dr Ameisen found that baclofen was unknown to specialists on dependence.

In March 2002 he began treating himself with daily doses of five milligrams.

"The first effects were a magical muscular relaxation and baby-like sleep," he says.

Almost immediately he also detected a lessening in his desire for drink.

Gradually, he increased the daily dosage to a maximum of 270mg, and found that he was "cured".

Today he continues to take 30 to 50mg a day.

"Mine is the first case in which a course of medicine has completely suppressed alcohol addiction," he says.

"Now I can have a glass and it has no effect. Above all, I no longer have that irrepressible need to drink."

Some doctors have decided to ignore the fact that the drug is not authorised for treating alcoholism, and report exciting results.

"I prescribed it to two alcoholics who were really at the end of the road. To be honest, it was pretty miraculous," says Dr Renaud de Beaurepaire of the Paul-Guiraud hospital at Villejuif near Paris.

In Geneva, Dr Pascal Garche put 12 patients on baclofen, of whom seven came through reporting marked improvements.

"I have never had reactions like this before. We cannot ignore findings such as this

However, many specialists fear that media excitement over Dr Ameisen's theory is obscuring the complex nature of alcoholism.

"Encouraging people to think that there is a miracle molecule is to completely misunderstand the nature of alcoholism, and is extremely irresponsible, " says Dr Michel Reynaud of Paul-Brousse hospital in Paris.

"We need comprehensive tests to determine how this drug acts, if it is effective and at what dosage, and if it is genuinely harmless in the longer term, " says Alain Rigaud, president of the National Association for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Addiction.

"But even if it turns out to work, that does not mean a drug alone is the solution."

BBC

Quite so however this could be very good news for what is undeniably one of mankind's worst addictions

New

Such an over used word but it still works

Everything from bathroom fittings to toothpaste are sold using the word new

Certainly one could question many for their truth in advertising but we still fall for it

In marketing the word new is used over and over because it works

And if it works for marketeers then why not you?

Our lives are so short and yet we tend to cling to the old with some ferocity

Sure what we have learnt in life is why we hold onto some things so tenaciously

However some others could be let go or modified

Every New Year millions of people make resolutions usually to be forgotten in a few weeks or months time

So a new approach is in order for this already challenging year

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Why not a new you?

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Choose to let go of things you do not need

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Choose also to let go of habits that govern your life

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Bring the new into your life

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Bringing new into your life will change it for sure

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Through that change you just might find those things that you have been looking for

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Without change we become more and more predictable

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And being predictable we lose that curiosity and freshness that we find so attractive in others

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So embrace new to help you find those things that have been eluding you

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New works!

Really moving on

Is only possible when we acknowledge that we feel stuck and are prepared to examine our life and ourselves

Because without this acknowledgment we are still stuck in that space where change is not possible

This acknowledgment requires a certain detachment and honesty

We need this honesty and detachment to analyse and name the feelings that are holding us back, thereby reducing some of their power over us

For some writing things down gives greater clarity

A clarity to see what might not be clear when we only look at these things in our mind

The clarity that comes from seeing things in black and white

The act of writing down clarifies a situation, detaches you from it

Reduces it's hold over you

And often shows you the beginnings of a way out.

For many people getting out of the house and walking changes their thinking and provides clarity

Being in a state of despair is a solitary one

As is the feeling of being isolated

Getting busy can take you out of this state

Being among people

As can connecting with the flow of what is out on the streets

Even a day in an unfamiliar place can shift your feelings about yourself

Actions to break your patterns of isolation need not be long but they do need to be ones where you cannot keep thinking about yourself

The trick is to focus on some action or activity where you break the pattern of thinking about yourself

This can give you a respite

To really move on requires effort

It also requires that we drop self pity

That we embrace life as something amazing

Something truly positive

Life is also difficult and the sooner we accept this as being the order of things the sooner we can enjoy it and really move on

Life is tough for all of us no one gets out of here without experiencing pain

Pain is part of life, a natural one

Anyone who pretends otherwise is telling a porky pie = lie

Decide to really move on

Recognise that there is always something you can do now

Waiting does nothing to resolve things if you are stuck

Activity and actions can

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Then and only then can you really move on

Chips

Or fries to those of you who hail from the US of A

Some recent research seems to zero in one why we like the smell of fries or chips

It is a mixture of onion, butterscotch and would you believe ironing board!

Food scientists at Leeds University in the UK took apart the smell of chips in their laboratory

They also used human noses as well

They broke down the smell into components using gas chromatography mess spectrometry

The results showed the chip aroma is made up of cocoa, onion, flowers, cheese and ironing boards

The research was sponsored by the Potato Council lead by Graham Clayton

He said Lightly cooked or undercooked chips were found to contain three simple aromas including bitter cocoa

A little extra cooking will produce a more complex aroma profile with up to nine different aromatic notes

So now you know

Kissing

Couples who share a passionate kiss will enjoy sensations of relaxation and excitement because of a complex series of chemical processes, as well as their love for their partners.

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The study showed that women need more than just a kiss to experience the same chemical high as men

with additional features such as a romantic atmosphere of dimmed lights and mood music also required.

Wendy Hill, professor of psychology at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania began the research to find out why the mundane physical activity of rubbing lips can elicit such a gratifying emotional response.

Her team tested the levels of two hormones, cortisol and oxytocin, in 15 couples before and after holding hands and kissing.

They found that kissing reduced the levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, in both sexes.

But levels of oxytocin, a hormone linked to social bonding that they expected to be boosted by kissing, only rose among the men.

The scientists have since replicated the tests in more intimate settings, to see if the less-than-alluring environment of the university health centres where the original research was carried out hampered women's hormonal surge.

The final results will be presented at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago

"This study shows kissing is much more complex and causes hormonal changes and things we never thought occurred," said Prof Hill.

"We tend to think more about who we are kissing and how it feels, yet there are a lot of other things happening."

It is not clear how kissing provokes such hormonal reactions, but some scientists believe they are triggered by the exchange of pheromones – chemicals our bodies release to attract sexual partners – in the saliva.

This interaction may also have health benefits. Helen Fisher of Rutgers University, New Jersey, said: "If you share your germs with somebody, you're boosting your internal defence system."

This is not the first research to analyse the physical effects of kissing.

In 2007 British scientists measured the brain and heart activity sparked by passionate kissing, but found it was less intense that the stimulation produced by eating chocolate.

Romantic love has also been shown to have a close link to neurological activity, with scans showing that it has similar effect to cocaine on our brains.

Telegraph - Matthew Moore