HC notice on religious structures
TNN Aug 29, 2013, 10.11AM IST
CUTTACK: The Orissa high court has issued notices to the chief secretary, home secretary and secretary of general administration department in connection with a PIL, seeking demolition of temples and religious structures built on the premises of government offices, government educational institutions and police stations. "The
Sunday, 1 September 2013
India: In Bihar the encroachment of Muslim graveyards by Hindus, reflects growing tensions between the two communities
livemint.com
In Bihar, graveyard politics plays up
To prevent desecration of Muslim graveyards, JD(U) has expedited the fencing of these graveyards by spending some Rs.400 crore
Utpal Bhaskar
First Published: Mon, Aug 26 2013. 10 44 PM IST
A graveyard in suburbs of Patna in a thickly populated Muslim area. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint
Nawada/Nalanda/Patna
: In Bihar, the living are fighting
In Bihar, graveyard politics plays up
To prevent desecration of Muslim graveyards, JD(U) has expedited the fencing of these graveyards by spending some Rs.400 crore
Utpal Bhaskar
First Published: Mon, Aug 26 2013. 10 44 PM IST
A graveyard in suburbs of Patna in a thickly populated Muslim area. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint
Nawada/Nalanda/Patna
: In Bihar, the living are fighting
India's Dept of Personnel Peddles Biased Religious Text for Training of Administrators
http://tinyurl.com/mozxetd
Sunday, 6 May 2012
PHOTOS marking 22nd Anniversary of Hubble Telescope's Launch Into Space
In 1929 Dr. Edwin Hubble determined that "the farther a galaxy is from Earth, the faster it appears to move away." This formed the basis of the Big Bang theory, the prevailing cosmological model of the development of the universe... The Hubble Space Telescope launched on April 24, 1990, ushering in a new era in space exploration. From its low-earth orbit, the telescope can take pictures without interference from the planet's atmosphere, snapping photographs in visible light, ultraviolet and near-infrared wavelengths.
Link For Images From The Hubble Space Telescope
Named for astronomer Dr. Edwin Hubble, who established the notion that the universe is expanding, the images the telescope has produced over the past 20 years have similarly changed the course of astronomy, "[turning] astronomical conjectures into concrete certainties," according to the Hubble Space Telescope website. Its landmark discoveries include more accurately gauging the age of the universe--13 to 14 billion years--and unveiling the existence of dark energy, "a mysterious force that causes the expansion of the universe to accelerate."
Mystic Mountain galaxy
The Hubble has also detected gamma ray bursts from giant, collapsed stars, found protoplanetary disks where new planets are forming, and captured images of galaxies in different stages of evolution. Most recently, the telescope documented the first-ever auroras above Uranus. In celebration of the 22nd anniversary of the telescope, the Hubble science team released a mosaic image of stars forming in the Tarantula nebula.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/hubble-space-telescope-anniversary-photos_n_1460494.html?ref=science
Also see: Saturn's Moons In High Resolution:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/02/saturn-photo-moons-tethys-enceladus_n_1471365.html?ref=science
And: Stunning Photos of the Very Small:
http://www.livescience.com/16369-nikon-small-world-photos-2011.html
Link For Images From The Hubble Space Telescope
Named for astronomer Dr. Edwin Hubble, who established the notion that the universe is expanding, the images the telescope has produced over the past 20 years have similarly changed the course of astronomy, "[turning] astronomical conjectures into concrete certainties," according to the Hubble Space Telescope website. Its landmark discoveries include more accurately gauging the age of the universe--13 to 14 billion years--and unveiling the existence of dark energy, "a mysterious force that causes the expansion of the universe to accelerate."
Mystic Mountain galaxy
The Hubble has also detected gamma ray bursts from giant, collapsed stars, found protoplanetary disks where new planets are forming, and captured images of galaxies in different stages of evolution. Most recently, the telescope documented the first-ever auroras above Uranus. In celebration of the 22nd anniversary of the telescope, the Hubble science team released a mosaic image of stars forming in the Tarantula nebula.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/hubble-space-telescope-anniversary-photos_n_1460494.html?ref=science
Also see: Saturn's Moons In High Resolution:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/02/saturn-photo-moons-tethys-enceladus_n_1471365.html?ref=science
And: Stunning Photos of the Very Small:
http://www.livescience.com/16369-nikon-small-world-photos-2011.html
What Is Love?
We live under a massive cultural delusion about the nature of real love. Propagated by mainstream media, from the time you're born you're inundated with the belief that love is a feeling and that when you find "the one" you'll sense it in your gut and be overcome by an undeniable sense of knowing. When the feeling and corresponding knowing fade (for the knowing is intimately linked to the feeling) and the work of learning about real love begins, most people take the diminished feeling as a sign that they're in the wrong relationship and walk away. And then they start over again, only to find that the now-familiar knowing and feeling fade again... and again... and again.
If love isn't a feeling, what is it?
Love is action. Love is tolerance. Love is learning your partner's love language and then expressing love in a way that he can receive. Love is giving. Love is receiving. Love is plodding through the slow eddies of a relationship without jumping ship into another's churning rapids. Love is recognizing that it's not your partner's job to make you feel alive, fulfilled, or complete; that's your job. And it's only when you learn to become the source of your own aliveness and are living your life connected to the spark of genius that is everyone's birthright can you fully love another.
M. Scott Peck says it poignantly in The Road Less Traveled:
Love is as love does. Love is an act of will -- namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.
And Kate Kerrigan writes in her essay, Marriage Myths:
We have mythologized love to such an extent that people are no longer prepared for the realities of long-term relationships. We are taught that it is good not to compromise, not to put up with anything we don't like, not to sacrifice our own beliefs for anyone or anything. Yet compromise and sacrifice are the cornerstones of marital love... No matter what way you dress it up, the best thing you can bring to a marriage is not the feeling of 'being in love', but romance's poor relation: tolerance. Add to that enough maturity to be able to fulfil your own needs and you have some hope. Optimism and chemistry.. just don't cut it, folks... One more tip for the ladies: Try to find a man who has that most underrated of qualities: character.
It's time to send a different message to young people about the difference between infatuation and love. If we're going to restore marriage to a place of honor and respect, we must teach that the role of one's partner is not to save you from yourself and make you feel alive, fulfilled, and complete; only you can do that..http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sheryl-paul/what-is-love_2_b_1446105.html
If love isn't a feeling, what is it?
Love is action. Love is tolerance. Love is learning your partner's love language and then expressing love in a way that he can receive. Love is giving. Love is receiving. Love is plodding through the slow eddies of a relationship without jumping ship into another's churning rapids. Love is recognizing that it's not your partner's job to make you feel alive, fulfilled, or complete; that's your job. And it's only when you learn to become the source of your own aliveness and are living your life connected to the spark of genius that is everyone's birthright can you fully love another.
M. Scott Peck says it poignantly in The Road Less Traveled:
Love is as love does. Love is an act of will -- namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.
And Kate Kerrigan writes in her essay, Marriage Myths:
We have mythologized love to such an extent that people are no longer prepared for the realities of long-term relationships. We are taught that it is good not to compromise, not to put up with anything we don't like, not to sacrifice our own beliefs for anyone or anything. Yet compromise and sacrifice are the cornerstones of marital love... No matter what way you dress it up, the best thing you can bring to a marriage is not the feeling of 'being in love', but romance's poor relation: tolerance. Add to that enough maturity to be able to fulfil your own needs and you have some hope. Optimism and chemistry.. just don't cut it, folks... One more tip for the ladies: Try to find a man who has that most underrated of qualities: character.
It's time to send a different message to young people about the difference between infatuation and love. If we're going to restore marriage to a place of honor and respect, we must teach that the role of one's partner is not to save you from yourself and make you feel alive, fulfilled, and complete; only you can do that..http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sheryl-paul/what-is-love_2_b_1446105.html
Nuclear-free Japan braces for power shortages
Japan's $5 trillion economy has relied heavily on nuclear power for decades, with its reactors providing almost 30 percent of electricity needs, but last year's massive earthquake and subsequent nuclear crisis spurred a public backlash against atomic energy. Cabinet ministers have largely failed to win over the public to allow the restart of the country's plants - shut one by one for scheduled maintenance and unable to resume operations because of concerns about safety.
Japan's Asahi newspaper said public sentiment was "wavering between two sources of anxiety" - fear over the safety of nuclear power and doubts on whether Japan can live without it. "The public shouldn't just criticise (the government) but make its own decision on energy policy that involves burden and responsibility, such as through cooperating in power saving," the paper said in an editorial on Sunday. The government hopes to come up with an estimate by mid-May of expected shortages this summer, and will then produce a plan to conserve energy that could include compulsory curbs on use of power, Japanese media say. But setting a long-term energy policy or a clear timeframe for restarting the plants will take time given strong public opposition and a divided parliament that has paralysed policy-making, analysts say...
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/05/06/nuclear-japan-idINDEE84503H20120506
See also: Table showing status of 50 reactors with capacity of 46,148 megawatts:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-07/japan-nuclear-power-free-after-shutdown-of-last-reactor-table-.html
Japan's Asahi newspaper said public sentiment was "wavering between two sources of anxiety" - fear over the safety of nuclear power and doubts on whether Japan can live without it. "The public shouldn't just criticise (the government) but make its own decision on energy policy that involves burden and responsibility, such as through cooperating in power saving," the paper said in an editorial on Sunday. The government hopes to come up with an estimate by mid-May of expected shortages this summer, and will then produce a plan to conserve energy that could include compulsory curbs on use of power, Japanese media say. But setting a long-term energy policy or a clear timeframe for restarting the plants will take time given strong public opposition and a divided parliament that has paralysed policy-making, analysts say...
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/05/06/nuclear-japan-idINDEE84503H20120506
See also: Table showing status of 50 reactors with capacity of 46,148 megawatts:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-07/japan-nuclear-power-free-after-shutdown-of-last-reactor-table-.html
Quantum computers are leaping ahead
The reality of the universe in which we live is an outrage to common sense. Over the past 100 years, scientists have been forced to abandon a theory in which the stuff of the universe constitutes a single, concrete reality in exchange for one in which a single particle can be in two (or more) places at the same time. This is the universe as revealed by the laws of quantum physics and it is a model we are forced to accept – we have been battered into it by the weight of the scientific evidence. Without it, we would not have discovered and exploited the tiny switches present in their billions on every microchip, in every mobile phone and computer around the world. The modern world is built using quantum physics: through its technological applications in medicine, global communications and scientific computing it has shaped the world in which we live.
Although modern computing relies on the fidelity of quantum physics, the action of those tiny switches remains firmly in the domain of everyday logic. Each switch can be either "on" or "off", and computer programs are implemented by controlling the flow of electricity through a network of wires and switches: the electricity flows through open switches and is blocked by closed switches. The result is a plethora of extremely useful devices that process information in a fantastic variety of ways.
Modern "classical" computers seem to have almost limitless potential – there is so much we can do with them. But there is an awful lot we cannot do with them too. There are problems in science that are of tremendous importance but which we have no hope of solving, not ever, using classical computers. The trouble is that some problems require so much information processing that there simply aren't enough atoms in the universe to build a switch-based computer to solve them. This isn't an esoteric matter of mere academic interest – classical computers can't ever hope to model the behaviour of some systems that contain even just a few tens of atoms. This is a serious obstacle to those who are trying to understand the way molecules behave or how certain materials work – without the possibility to build computer models they are hampered in their efforts. One example is the field of high-temperature superconductivity. Certain materials are able to conduct electricity "for free" at surprisingly high temperatures (still pretty cold, though, at well but still below -100 degrees celsius). The trouble is, nobody really knows how they work and that seriously hinders any attempt to make a commercially viable technology. The difficulty in simulating physical systems of this type arises whenever quantum effects are playing an important role and that is the clue we need to identify a possible way to make progress.
It was American physicist Richard Feynman who, in 1981, first recognised that nature evidently does not need to employ vast computing resources to manufacture complicated quantum systems...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/may/06/quantum-computing-physics-jeff-forshaw
Although modern computing relies on the fidelity of quantum physics, the action of those tiny switches remains firmly in the domain of everyday logic. Each switch can be either "on" or "off", and computer programs are implemented by controlling the flow of electricity through a network of wires and switches: the electricity flows through open switches and is blocked by closed switches. The result is a plethora of extremely useful devices that process information in a fantastic variety of ways.
Modern "classical" computers seem to have almost limitless potential – there is so much we can do with them. But there is an awful lot we cannot do with them too. There are problems in science that are of tremendous importance but which we have no hope of solving, not ever, using classical computers. The trouble is that some problems require so much information processing that there simply aren't enough atoms in the universe to build a switch-based computer to solve them. This isn't an esoteric matter of mere academic interest – classical computers can't ever hope to model the behaviour of some systems that contain even just a few tens of atoms. This is a serious obstacle to those who are trying to understand the way molecules behave or how certain materials work – without the possibility to build computer models they are hampered in their efforts. One example is the field of high-temperature superconductivity. Certain materials are able to conduct electricity "for free" at surprisingly high temperatures (still pretty cold, though, at well but still below -100 degrees celsius). The trouble is, nobody really knows how they work and that seriously hinders any attempt to make a commercially viable technology. The difficulty in simulating physical systems of this type arises whenever quantum effects are playing an important role and that is the clue we need to identify a possible way to make progress.
It was American physicist Richard Feynman who, in 1981, first recognised that nature evidently does not need to employ vast computing resources to manufacture complicated quantum systems...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/may/06/quantum-computing-physics-jeff-forshaw
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