Here comes Li-Fi

Among the many new gadgets unveiled at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was a pair of smartphones able to exchange data using light. 
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These phones, as yet only prototypes from Casio, a Japanese firm, transmit digital signals by varying the intensity of the light given off from their screens. 
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The flickering is so slight that it is imperceptible to the human eye, but the camera on another phone can detect it at a distance of up to ten metres. 
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In an age of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, flashing lights might seem like going back to sending messages with an Aldis lamp. 
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In fact, they are the beginning of a fast and cheap wireless-communication system that some have labelled Li-Fi.
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The data being exchanged by Casio’s phones were trifles: message balloons to be added to pictures on social-networking sites. 
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But the firm sees bigger applications, such as pointing a smartphone at an illuminated shop sign to read information being transmitted by the light: opening times, for example, or the latest bargain
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Yet that is still only a flicker of what is possible. 
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Last October a number of companies and industry groups formed the Li-Fi Consortium, to promote high-speed optical wireless systems. 
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The idea is that light can help with a looming capacity problem. 
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As radio-based wireless becomes ubiquitous, more and more devices transmitting more and more data are able to connect to the internet, either through the mobile-phone network or through Wi-Fi. 
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But there is only a limited amount of radio spectrum available. 
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Using light offers the possibility of breaking out of this conundrum by exploiting a completely different part of the electromagnetic spectrum, one that is already ubiquitous because it is used for another purpose: illumination.
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Lighten the darkness
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To turn a light into a Li-Fi router involves modulating its output, to carry a message, and linking it with a network cable to a modem that is connected to a telephone or cable-broadband service, just like a Wi-Fi router. 
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Incandescent light bulbs and fluorescent tubes are not really suitable for modulation, but they are yesterday’s lighting technology. 
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Tomorrow’s is the light-emitting diode. 
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LEDs are rapidly replacing bulbs and tubes because they are more efficient. 
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And because they are semiconductor devices, tinkering with their electronics to produce the flickering signals required for data transmission is pretty straightforward, according to Gordon Povey, who is working on light communication with Harald Haas and his colleagues at the University of Edinburgh, in Britain.
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The rate of data transfer is also good. 
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Dr Povey’s group is already up to 130 megabits a second (faster than some older Wi-Fi routers) over a distance of about two metres, using standard LEDs. 
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Dr Povey, who is also the boss of VLC, a firm set up to commercialise the technology, thinks such devices should be able to reach 1 gigabit per second (Gbps), and do so over greater range. 
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Specially constructed LEDs would be even faster. 
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The Li-Fi consortium reckons more than 10 Gbps is possible. In theory, that would allow a high-definition film to be downloaded in 30 seconds.
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Dr Povey believes that adapting existing LEDs to work with the sensors and light sources—cameras, ambient-light detectors, screens, flashbulbs, torches and so on—already found in smartphones and similar devices will be the fastest way to bring Li-Fi to market. 
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VLC has already produced a smartphone app which allows low-speed data transmission between a pair of iPhones. 
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It has also made an experimental optical transceiver that plugs into a laptop to receive and send light signals. 
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Later this year it will bring out Li-Fi products for firms installing LED-lighting systems.
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There are limitations to using light, of course. 
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Unlike radio, light waves will not penetrate walls. 
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Yet for secure applications that could be a bonus. 
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And light bulbs—some 14 billion of them around the world—are almost everywhere and often on. 
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As they are gradually replaced by LEDs, every home, office, public building and even streetlight could become a Li-Fi hotspot. 
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Having a line-of-sight connection with the LED in question would undoubtedly improve the signal, but light reflected from walls or ceilings might often be enough.
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In any case, having a good line of sight helps Wi-Fi as well. 
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And spotting a nearby light in order to sit next to it is certainly easier than finding the location of a Wi-Fi router.
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Communication, though, is a two-way street. 
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That means the LEDs involved in Li-Fi would need photo detectors to receive data. 
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Some LED systems have such sensors already (to know when to turn on at night). 
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But even if LEDs are not modified Dr Povey reckons hybrid systems are possible: data could be downloaded using light but uploaded (typically a less data-intensive process) using radio. 
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In an office, for example, an LED-powered desk lamp could work as a Li-Fi router, able to link up with any networked device placed on the desk.
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A big advantage of light is that it can be used in areas which contain sensitive equipment that radio signals might interfere with, such as aircraft and operating theatres. 
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LEDs in the ceiling of an airliner would not only allow internet access but could also transmit films on demand to individual seats, removing the need for lots of expensive and heavy cabling, thus saving airlines fuel. 
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That alone could be enough to, as it were, make this idea fly.
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Economist - Science and technology

Women thoughts

Aspire to be Barbie – the b*tch has everything. 

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 If the shoe fits – buy them in every colour. 

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Take life with a pinch of salt… and a wedge of lime, and a shot of tequila. 

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In need of a support group? – eat some chocolate!  

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Go on the 30 day diet. I’m on it and so far I’ve lost 15 days. 

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Let your greatest fear be that there is no PMS and this is just your personality.  
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I know I’m in my own little world, but it’s ok. They know me here. 

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Lead me not into temptation, I can find it myself. 

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Don’t get your panties in a knot; it solves nothing and makes you walk funny.

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When life gives you lemons – buy some Coronas. 

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Forget about the perfect man – he’s living in San Francisco with his boyfriend. 

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Keep your chin up, only the first 40 years of parenthood are the hardest. 

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If it has tires or testicles, it’s going to give you trouble. 

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By the time a women realizes her mother was right, she has a daughter who thinks she’s wrong.

Stretch time

The operations of nature are characterized by order and harmony. 
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For instance, the planets move in regular orbits around the sun
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Water always boils at 100°C at sea level.
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Apple seeds always grow into apple trees rather than some other kind of tree.
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And electrons always carry the same electric charge.
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In a world where regularity and order did not prevail, everything would be completely unpredictable and life as we know it could not exist.
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These regularities are generally attributed to laws of nature, which are considered to be eternal and transcendent.
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And to have existed in some sense before the birth of the physical universe.
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According to Christian theology, these laws were designed by God and exist in His mind.
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Although materialist science rejects the idea of God, it still accepts the existence of immutable laws.
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How these laws can exist independent of the evolving universe and at the same time act upon it is something of a mystery.
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As Rupert Sheldrake says:

They govern matter and motion, but they are not themselves material nor do they move. . . . Indeed, even in the absence of God, they still share many of his traditional attributes. They are omnipresent, immutable, universal, and self-subsistent. Nothing can be hidden from them, nor lie beyond their power. 

A variation on the theme of nonmaterial laws is that rather than being eternal, new laws come into being as nature evolves and thereafter apply universally.
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In other words, the creation of the first atom, sun, crystal, protein, etc., involved the spontaneous appearance of the relevant laws and rules.
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A very different point of view is that the regularities of nature are more like universal habits which have grown up within the evolving universe and that a kind of memory is inherent in nature.
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According to Sheldrake's hypothesis of formative causation, the physical world is organized and coordinated by morphic fields, which contain a built-in memory, and past patterns of activity influence those in the present by morphic resonance.
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Sheldrake states that morphic fields are neither a form of matter nor of energy.
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But it is strange that he rejects the idea that nonmaterial laws could act upon the material world, but then proposes that nonmaterial morphic fields in some way can.
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If morphic fields are anything, they must surely be a nonphysical, more ethereal form of energy-substance, a possibility which Sheldrake does not altogether rule out.
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Theosophy, too, dismisses the idea that nonmaterial, free-floating laws, beyond time and space, matter and energy, could not have any influence on the physical world.
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It would also agree with Sheldrake that the laws of nature are habits, but goes further in saying that these habits are the habits of living entities.
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As G. de Purucker says: 'This word law is simply an abstraction, an expression for the action of entities in nature'.
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Within and behind the material world there are worlds or planes composed of finer grades of matter, all inhabited by appropriate entities at varying stages of evolutionary development.
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The higher entities collectively make up the 'mind' of nature, which works through elemental nature-forces.
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Strictly speaking, there are no mechanically acting laws of nature, for there are no lawgivers.
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The spiritual entities on higher planes do not govern the lower worlds -- this is a relic of the theological idea of divine intervention.
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Just as bodily processes such as digestion, the beating of the heart, respiration, and growth are normally regulated by our automatic will.
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So the physical world is the body of higher worlds and the regularities of nature are the instinctual effects on this plane of the wills and energies of the entities dwelling on inner planes.
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Sheldrake writes:

The habits of most kinds of physical, chemical, and biological systems have been established for millions, even billions of years. Hence most of the systems that physicists, chemists, and biologists study are running in such deep grooves of habit that they are effectively changeless. The systems behave as if they were governed by eternal laws because the habits are so well established. 

This could also apply to the effectively invariable mathematical principles governing the structure of the hierarchies of worlds and planes, visible and invisible, composing universal nature. 
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Ten, for instance, was regarded as the 'perfect number' underlying the structure of the universe by many ancient philosophers, including Pythagoras.
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A hierarchy of worlds may be said to consist of ten planes or spheres, each divisible into ten subplanes.
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All these planes interpenetrate, but because they are composed of energy-substances vibrating at different rates, only the lowest, physical plane can be perceived by our physical senses.
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How have galaxies, stars, planets, and the incredible diversity of life-forms that we find on earth managed to evolve?
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Sheldrake suggests three different ways of viewing the creativity of nature.
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It could be ascribed
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(a) to blind and purposeless chance,
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(b) to a creative agency pervading and transcending nature,
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or (c) to a creative impetus immanent in nature. 

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He says that a decision between these alternatives can be made only on metaphysical grounds and on the basis of intuition.
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From a theosophical viewpoint, the first hypothesis is unacceptable since chance does not play any role in nature;
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Chance is merely a word that conceals our ignorance.
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As physicist D. Bohm and science writer F.D. Peat remark: 'What is randomness in one context may reveal itself as simple orders of necessity in another broader context'.
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According to the second hypothesis, creativity descends into the physical world of space and time from a higher, transcendent level that is mindlike.
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While theosophy accepts that there are superior, causal, mindlike planes behind the physical world, it questions Sheldrake's assumption that such realms would have to be completely changeless and 'beyond time altogether'.
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All the planes interact and evolve, though the higher planes are relatively more enduring than the lower.
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The third hypothesis states that creativity

depends on chance, conflict, and necessity . . . [I]t is rooted in the ongoing processes of nature. But at the same time it occurs within the framework of higher systems of order. For example, new species arise within ecosystems; new ecosystems within Gaia; Gaia within the solar system; the solar system within the galaxy; the galaxy within the growing cosmos. 

Again, while blind chance has no part to play in the theosophic scheme, creativity is rooted in the processes of nature, and is closely associated with 'higher systems of order', which would include higher planes and subplanes.
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In fact, the creative agency -- or rather agencies -- referred to in hypothesis
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(b) dwell in these higher spheres and are the source of the creative impetus referred to in hypothesis (c).
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Sheldrake does not recognize the existence of superior, causal worlds, though he does recognize the existence of a nonmaterial realm of morphic fields of various types.
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But what exactly is the relationship between this realm and the physical world?
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A new morphic field is said to come into being with the first appearance of a new system, whether it be a molecule, galaxy, crystal, or plant.
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These new patterns of organization arise through a spontaneous, creative jump and thereafter guide the development of subsequent similar systems and become increasingly habitual through repetition.
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However,

at every level of organization, new morphic fields may arise within and from higher-level fields. Creativity occurs not just upward from the bottom, with new forms arising from less complex systems by spontaneous jumps; it also proceeds downward from the top, through the creative activity of higher-level fields. 

Sheldrake suggests that all morphic fields may ultimately be derived from the primal field of the universe, and considers the possibility that this universal field could be connected with previous universes.
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Fields play a fundamental role in modern science: matter is said to consist of energy organized by fields. '
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Fields,' says Sheldrake, 'have replaced souls as invisible organizing principles'.
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He even goes so far as to liken the universal field of gravity to the Neoplatonic conception of the world soul.
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Although clearly an exaggeration, since the world soul is something far higher and more spiritual than the fields known to physics, the behavioral and mental morphic fields postulated by Sheldrake may be regarded as higher-level fields and bear some resemblance to what in theosophic thought are called the animal soul and human soul.
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Virtually all religious and mystical traditions teach that our physical body is merely the lowest level of our constitution, and that there is a higher part of us that survives physical death.
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Although Sheldrake does not explicitly consider the possibility of survival and reincarnation, there is nothing in his theory that rules them out.
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Interestingly, he argues that morphic fields never completely vanish when the species or entity they organize dies:

When any particular organized system ceases to exist, as when an atom splits, a snowflake melts, an animal dies, its organizing field disappears from that place. But in another sense, morphic fields do not disappear: they are potential organizing patterns of influence, and can appear again physically in other times and places, wherever and whenever the physical conditions are appropriate. When they do so they contain within themselves a memory of their previous physical existences.

This would explain how the characteristics of ancestral species, even those extinct for millions of years, can suddenly reappear. 
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A phenomenon known as reversion, atavism, or throwing back.
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There are also many examples from the fossil record that suggest that particular evolutionary pathways are repeated:
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Organisms with features almost identical to previous species appear again and again.
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Taking this idea a step further, is it not conceivable that the same individualized higher-level 'fields' could manifest repeatedly in physical form and provide a thread of continuity between one life or embodiment and the next?
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Theosophy proposes that all entities -- atoms, animals, humans, planets, suns, and universes -- reembody, i.e., pass through cyclic periods of activity and rest, manifestation and dissolution.
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They are all informed by spiritual monads which use the different forms offered by the various kingdoms of nature to gain evolutionary experience.
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Evolution is without conceivable beginning and without conceivable end.
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Everything exists because it has existed before, and no development or achievement is ever lost but remains imprinted on the astral light or âkâsha, which acts as a sort of memory of nature.
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As H.P. Blavatsky puts it: 'the spiritual prototypes of all things exist in the immaterial world before those things become materialised on Earth.'

Everything that is, was, and will be, eternally IS, even the countless forms, which are finite and perishable only in their objective, not in their ideal Form. They existed as Ideas, in the Eternity, and, when they pass away, will exist as reflections. Neither the form of man, nor that of any animal, plant or stone has ever been created, and it is only on this plane of ours that it commenced 'becoming,' i.e., objectivising into its present materiality, or expanding from within outwards, from the most sublimated and supersensuous essence into its grossest appearance. Therefore our human forms have existed in the Eternity as astral or ethereal prototypes . 

In other words, when the cycle of evolution on a particular planet comes to an end, all evolutionary forms and pathways remain imprinted as 'reflections' on the higher planes. 
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When the next period of activity dawns, these memories or seeds of life will be reawakened and reactivated, and provide the prototypes and blueprint for the new cycle of evolution.
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All things are therefore constantly building on the achievements of the past; we follow in the footsteps of what has gone before.
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There was never a time when nothing was.
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Our brain-minds tend to find this idea rather daunting and prefer to impose at least an absolute beginning before which nothing existed and at which moment the universe came into being out of nothing.
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But the idea of something being created out of literal nothingness is an illogical fantasy:
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The Occult teaching says, "Nothing is created, but is only transformed.
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Nothing can manifest itself in this universe -- from a globe down to a vague, rapid thought -- that was not in the universe already .
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However, the existence of evolutionary plans and prototypes by no means implies that everything is rigidly predetermined, for although the higher levels of reality help to coordinate the lower, the lower levels retain a degree of autonomy and creative freedom, and the plan itself is modified by each cycle of evolution.
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On the subject of God, Sheldrake writes:

a view of nature without God must include a creative unitary principle that includes the entire cosmos and unites the polarities and dualities found throughout the natural realm. But this is not far removed from views of nature with God. 

He points out that instead of the theistic notion that God is remote and separate from nature, God could also be considered as immanent in nature, and yet at the same time as the unity that transcends nature. 
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He quotes fifteenth-century mystic Nicholas of Cusa: 'Divinity is the enfolding and unfolding of everything that is.
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Divinity is in all things in such a way that all things are in divinity.'
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St. Paul put forward a similar pantheistic idea, saying that Deity is that in which 'we live, and move, and have our being' (Acts 17:28).
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The divine can certainly not be anything less than our grandest conception, and must therefore be infinitude itself.
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But if divinity is infinite, it cannot be outside nature, for otherwise there would be no room left for the universe!
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Divinity is the universe -- not just the physical universe but all the endless hierarchies of worlds and planes which infill and in fact compose the boundless All.
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Divinity is therefore immanent, omnipresent, and the root of all things.
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Since it is greater than any of its individual expressions, it may also be regarded as transcendent.
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Theosophy is therefore pantheistic in that it recognizes a universal life infilling and inspiriting everything without exception, containing everything, contained in all.
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Sheldrake calls this panentheism, since he defines pantheism as the view that divinity is immanent in all things, but not transcendent.
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But this is a rather arbitrary definition.
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Infinitude is composed of an infinite number of world-systems, and within any particular hierarchy of worlds all the entities that have passed beyond the human stage may be termed spiritual beings or gods, meaning beings who are relatively perfected in relation to ourselves.
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And the aggregate of the most advanced beings in any system of worlds may be regarded as divinity for that hierarchy.
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But this is not God in the traditional sense, for there is no god so high that there is none higher.
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Everything in our hierarchy of worlds derives from the same divine source and is destined in the fullness of time to return to it, there to rest for untold aeons before issuing forth again on an evolutionary pilgrimage as part of even higher worlds.
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Evolution is a fundamental habit of nature and proceeds in cyclic periods of activity and rest, in a never-ending, ever-ascending spiral of progress in which there are always new and vaster fields of experience in which to become selfconscious masters of life.
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David Pratt
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The above was taken from DP's comments on Sheldrake's ideas about how it is.

Honesty

The British people are becoming less honest and their trust in government and business leaders has fallen to a new low amid fears that the nation is heading for an "integrity crisis".
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Lying, having an affair, driving while drunk, having underage sex and buying stolen goods are all more acceptable than they were a decade ago.
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But people are less tolerant of benefits fraud.
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The portrait of a nation increasingly relaxed about "low-level dishonesty" emerges in a major study carried out by the University of Essex.
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Which will today launch Britain's first Centre for the Study of Integrity.
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It suggests that the "integrity problem" is likely to get worse because young people are more tolerant of dishonest behaviour than the older generation. 
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The new centre will look at issues arising from recent scandals such as phone hacking, MPs' expenses and the banking crisis.
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A separate "trust barometer", published by the PR company Edelman, shows that two out of three people do not trust politicians to tell the truth. 
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Trust levels in MPs from all parties slumped by 36 points to 4 per cent after last summer's riots. 
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People also lost confidence in the young and the police.
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Only 29 per cent of people believe the Government is doing the right thing, while 38 per cent trust businesses and a surprisingly low 42 per cent trust non-governmental organisations. 
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There is a chasm between the public's expectations of government and what they think is actually being delivered, said Ed Williams, boss of Edelman. 
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The vast majority [68 per cent] think the country is on the wrong track.

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The Essex University study found that in 2000, 70 per cent of people believed an extramarital affair could never be justified; today, the proportion is about 50 per cent. 
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The proportion of people who say picking up money found in the street is never justified fell from 40 per cent to 20 per cent. 
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Lying and breaking the speed limit have also become an accepted part of life. 
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Fabricating a job application and having an affair are less acceptable, but many people do not rule them out.
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According to the Essex study, women have slightly more integrity than men. 
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There appears to be little variation in honesty according to social class, education or income. 
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But there is a significant age factor: younger people are far more likely to tolerate dishonesty. 
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Only 33 per cent of under-25s thinks lying on a job application is never justified, compared with 41 per cent of middle-aged people and 55 per cent of those over 65.
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The report's author, Professor Paul Whiteley, who will direct the new centre, believes there might be a "life cycle" effect in which people become more honest as they age. 
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However, he points out that other research suggests people learn honesty or dishonesty in their formative years and this will not change very much as they get older.
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There are reasons to be pessimistic about this, since people tend to acquire their basic political beliefs in adolescence and these do not change very much as they grow older.
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If integrity is anything like political values, then it is likely to decline in future as the norms which sanction such behaviour weaken further. 
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This will be more likely if new cohorts of young people learn to be even more dishonest than at present.
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Comparing the latest findings with similar research in 2000, Professor Whiteley says: It is apparent that large changes have occurred in sexual mores, attitudes to keeping money found in the street, and to smoking cannabis. 
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These activities are much more sanctioned than they were 11 years ago.
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There have been smaller but significant changes in attitudes towards failing to report damage to a parked car, buying stolen goods and drink-driving, which earn less disapproval than they did in 2000. 
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The only transgression of which people are less tolerant is cheating on benefit claims. 
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The proportion condemning the practice has risen from 78 per cent to 85 per cent. 
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This may reflect a growing hostility to welfare fraud at a time of economic austerity in comparison with the years of relative prosperity of the late 1990s.
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It appears Britons are growing more and more tolerant of low-level dishonesty and less inclined to sanction activities which would have been heavily frowned on in the past."

There could be big implications for politics. Professor Whiteley, who has devised an "integrity test", said integrity levels mattered because there was a link between them and a sense of civic duty. 
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If integrity continues to decline, he thinks it will be difficult to mobilise volunteers to support David Cameron's Big Society project.
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If social capital is low, and people are suspicious and don't work together, those communities have worse health, worse educational performance, they are less happy and they are less economically developed and entrepreneurial.
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It really does have a profound effect.
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The same trend could also deter people from voting, as a sense of civic duty is an important factor in explaining why people take part in elections.
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Individuals with a strong sense of integrity also feel they would be neglecting their duty if they did not vote, says the Essex study.

Those nicotine patches

Nicotine patches are no better than will power to quit smoking

Nicotine patches may not help smokers to stub out the habit, according to a new study.

Researchers found nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs) designed to help people stop

smoking - specifically patches and gum - 

Do not appear to be effective in helping smokers quit long-term, even when combined with counselling sessions.

The study was conducted by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the University of Massachusetts in the United States who are now calling for greater regulation of which nicotine products can be sold over the counter.

Lead author Hillel Alpert, a research scientist at HSPH, said: "This study shows that using NRT is no more effective in helping people stop smoking cigarettes in the long-term than trying to quit on one's own."

The researchers followed 787 adult smokers in Massachusetts who had recently quit smoking. 
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They were surveyed over three time periods: 2001-2002, 2003-2004, and 2005-2006 and were asked whether they had used a  nicotine replacement therapy in the form of the nicotine patch placed on the skin, 
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Nicotine gum.
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Nicotine inhaler, 
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Or nasal spray to help them quit, and if so, what was the longest period of time they had used the product continuously.
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They were also asked if they had joined a quit-smoking programme or received help from a doctor, counsellor, or other professional.
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The results showed that, for each time period, almost a third of recent quitters reported to have relapsed. 
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The researchers found no difference in relapse rate among those who used NRT for more than six weeks, with or without professional counselling. 
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No difference in quitting success with use of NRT was found for either heavy or light smokers
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Mr Alpert said that even though clinical trials have found NRT to be effective, the new findings demonstrate the importance of empirical studies regarding effectiveness when used in the general population.
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He added that using public funds to provide NRT to the population at large is of questionable value, particularly when it reduces the amount of money available for smoking interventions shown in previous studies to be effective, 
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Such as media campaigns, promotion of no smoking policies, and tobacco price increases.

Smoking cessation medications have been available over the counter for more than a decade.

Co-author Gregory Connolly, director of the Centre for Global Tobacco Control at HSPH, said: What this study shows is the need to approve only medications that have been proven to be effective in helping smokers quit in the long-term and to lower nicotine in order to reduce the addictiveness of cigarettes.

The study was published online by the journal Tobacco Control.

Lying leaders

Small wonder young people are becoming less honest, given the example they are set.
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For many years, those who complained of a decline in moral standards in British society were greeted with derision, and informed that they were old-fashioned and out of touch. 
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Yet the evidence keeps on piling up. 
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In whatever area you care to mention. 
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Personal responsibility.
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Public behaviour.
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Neighbourliness. 
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Truth-telling
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There is no question that in the space of little more than a single generation, Britain has experienced a catastrophic collapse.
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The rot started at the top. 
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Much changed under the Blair government where, incredibly, it became normal for the prime minister’s official spokesman to lie on the record. 
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Tony Blair himself repeatedly deceived Parliament, often on vital issues involving peace and war. 
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Meanwhile, he exploited his position as prime minister to obtain favours such as free holidays, discounted goods and other inducements.
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A pattern which has continued or accelerated after leaving office.
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This amorality spread to MPs. 
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The 2005‑10 parliament was probably the most corrupt since the 18th century.
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Its members lied, cheated and sometimes falsified documents in order to obtain expenses fraudulently. 
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The problem was so widespread that when David Cameron came to form his government, he felt that he had no choice but to include some of the most notorious expenses abusers. 
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In a very unpleasant irony, one of them, Francis Maude, is at the Cabinet Office, where he is in part responsible for issues of integrity inside his own Cabinet.
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More recently, we have learnt that much of the media and in particular Rupert Murdoch’s News International has been systemically corrupt, bribing police officers and seeming impervious to the basic law of the land. 
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Politicians have been shamefully complicit in this process, especially Blair and Cameron. 
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The Prime Minister’s decision to employ Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor who has since been arrested, as Downing Street’s director of communications remains the worst episode of his premiership.
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Overall, standards at the highest levels of British life – infecting Downing Street, Parliament, the media, the police and much else besides – have sunk so low that yesterday’s report from Essex University, finding that Britain has become a more dishonest and cynical country over the past decade, came as no surprise.
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The study finds that Britons are significantly more likely to lie and cheat than we were 10 years ago. 
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Those aged over 45 remain decent people, but attitudes have changed sharply for the worse among the young. 
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Yet we should pause before condemning these youngsters. 
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They are merely replicating the self-interest and contempt for decency and standards they see among the most powerful people in our society, whether prime ministers, newspaper editors, or police chiefs.
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If Tony Blair can lie to Parliament about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and get away with it, or David Cameron hire the appalling Coulson as his No 10 spokesman, why on earth should a teenager feel even a twinge of conscience when he steals money or dodges fares?
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Less than 20 per cent of the British population, according to the Essex University report, would hand back money they found in the street. 
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That’s halved from just under 40 per cent a decade ago. 
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We could guess it was closer to 80 per cent in the post-war period. 
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It is time to ask: what sort of nation have we become? 
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More than 60 per cent of us are prepared to lie, and 30 per cent would contemplate buying goods we know to be stolen.
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Some say that we were always like this. 
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We just don’t believe it. 
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There was an era, and not very long ago, when the British were famous through the world for our honesty, decency, courtesy and good manners. 
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Now we are fast becoming a nation of liars and cheats, and this is a process that is being encouraged by the terrible example seen at the top.
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It doesn’t have to be this way, and one of the most important jobs of a prime minister is to set the tone for the nation as a whole. 
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Mr Cameron has an opportunity to do this, and is so far failing by not pushing for full disclosure of lobbying and special interest groups in legislation now making it's way through parliament.
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Something new has to happen.
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The great British public that prefers to do nothing has finally to raise itself and make the Prime Minister and his fellow MPs aware that the normal bullshit of spin and deception has gone too far.
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Time to behave as you want us to behave your lies and deceit have gone too far.

From Africa to Scotland

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It sounds more like folklore than science, but meteorologists have discovered that lightning in Africa could be a warning of cloudy skies in Britain.

Thunderstorms over central and east Africa were found to create an electrical charge in the sky above Scotland, 8,000 miles away.

The researchers believe this "fair weather electric field", carried around the globe in the upper atmosphere, could influence the weather by triggering cloud formation. 

The finding has been hailed as a real-life example of the "butterfly effect", in which a seemingly minor event has a big impact elsewhere.

This shows just how intricate the climate system is, said Professor Giles Harrison, head of the department of meteorology at the University of Reading and leader of the research team.

There are unexpected and subtle links between one place and another many miles away.

There is a current that flows from the tropical thunderstorms into the ionosphere [upper atmosphere] and back down again to regions where there clear skies.

It can be thought of as a kind of giant electric circuit looping around the Earth where the thunderstorms around the equator are a kind of battery, and the wires are formed by the ground and the ionosphere. Areas where the skies are clear cause small leakages from that circuit.

Professor Harrison and his colleagues, whose work is published in the Institute of Physics scientific journal Environmental Research Letters and Environmental Research Web, have now been able to explain a phenomenon that has baffled scientists since 1753, when Louis-Guillaume Le Monnier, the French natural scientist, discovered that the atmosphere could become electrified even on clear days,

Professor Harrison analysed 60 years of Met Office data on the electrical field above Lerwick in Shetland, where there is little pollution to interfere with the electric signal.

He found that peaks in the electric field at times when skies were blue, which had never been explained before, correlated with times of thunderstorms in Africa.

There were also smaller peaks that coincided with storms in Australia and America, indicating a global circuit of electrical activity.

The professor has also shown that electrical activity in the atmosphere can help turn water droplets in clouds into larger drop, increasing the chances of rain clouds and rain.

He added: "We have found that it causes a small amount of charging on the edge of clouds. It is quite interesting that electrified clouds can be forming so far away from thunderstorms."

Richard Gray - Telegraph

Quotes from the Secret Doctrine

The only decree of Karma – an eternal and immutable decree – is absolute Harmony in the world of matter as it is in the world of Spirit. 
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It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we, who reward or punish ourselves according to whether we work with, through and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that Harmony depends, or – break them. 
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Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union and harmony, instead of disunion and strife. 
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For our ignorance of those ways – which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate; 
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While another sees in them the action of blind Fatalism.
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And a third, simple chance, with neither gods nor devils to guide them 
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Would surely disappear, if we would but attribute all these to their correct cause. 
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With right knowledge, or at any rate with a confident conviction that our neighbours will no more work to hurt us than we would think of harming them. 
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Two-thirds of the world’s evil would vanish into thin air. 
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Were no man to hurt his brother, Karma-Nemesis would have neither cause to work for nor weapons to act through.
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There is not an accident in our lives, not a misshapen day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life. 
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If one breaks the laws of Harmony, ... one must be prepared to fall into the chaos one has oneself produced. 
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Man is himself his own saviour as his own destroyer and need not accuse Heaven and the gods, Fates and Providence, of the apparent injustice that reigns in the midst of humanity.’ 
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SD 1:643-4
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The Law of KARMA is inextricably interwoven with that of Re-incarnation. 
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It is only the knowledge of the constant re-births of one and the same individuality throughout the life-cycle ... that can explain to us the mysterious problem of Good and Evil, and reconcile man to the terrible and apparent injustice of life. 
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The law of karma predestines nothing and no one. 
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It exists from and in Eternity, truly, for it is ETERNITY itself; and as such, since no act can be co-equal with eternity, it cannot be said to act, for it is ACTION itself. 
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It is not the wave which drowns a man, but the personal action of the wretch, who goes deliberately and places himself under the impersonal action of the laws that govern the Ocean’s motion. 
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Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. 
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It is man who plans and creates causes, and karmic law adjusts the effects; which adjustment is not an act, but universal harmony, tending ever to resume its original position, like a bough, which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigour. 
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If it happen to dislocate the arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we say that it is the bough which broke our arm, or that our own folly has brought us to grief? 
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KARMA is an absolute and eternal law in the world of manifestation; ... for karma is one with the Unknowable, of which it is an aspect in its effects in the phenomenal world.’ 
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SD 2:303-6