A Miracle At Ebay

Here is a sweet story for you: A man lists his Rolex for $9.95 on e-bay, and sells it for a whopping $66,100, and that too right before the holidays. This shall inspire many to dig through their junks and see if there is something that can make them at least enough money to ride through the holiday shopping.

A retired neurosurgeon, who just went by his first name Bob for this story, had purchased a Rolex Submariner dive watch at the Navy Exchange on Kwajalein Atoll in 1958, for his scuba diving. By the mid-1960s, he started to wear it rarely as his diving slowed down, but in the 1980s, he resurrected his scuba diving hobby and started using it regularly.

The watch served well through different periods of his life, but now in his nineties, Bob has overgrown its need since he is no more in scuba driving, and decided to sell it. When the watch was listed on e-bay, the savvy e-bayers realized this watch was no ordinary watch. It was a vintage Rolex Submariner dive watch; one of its kind once adorned the wrist of Sean Connery in one early Bond films.

When the bidding rose to $30,000, Bob could not believe his eyes, and only then he asked his son to do a research on the watch’s significance and value, and then he found out the checkered history of this time keeping machine.

Although the watch was sold for a staggering price, the watch-enthusiast site Hodinkee.com thinks the true price of the watch could be much higher. When Hodinkee asked Bob if he had any regret selling this watch at this price after learning that it is a piece of history and worth much more, he replied, "None at all."

This was the first interesting angle of the story for me, Bob did not regret selling it cheap, why didn’t he? Is it because he is in his nineties? Does it mean that anyone reaching the age of ninety suddenly loses attachment to money? Why do we all run after money in the first place?

Then, think of it what was the chance that the e-bayers would be discovering the worth of the watch in time to bid it so high? Contrary to people’s belief, e-bay does not always fetch the best price, many times items are not sold, because no body desiring it noticed in time.

I also deliberated on the thought, what is the real price of a thing, of any thing? Why does an item suddenly becomes precious when it is linked to history, or celebrity? Who buys these? For what? How trivial is the worth of money to these people?

In my host of thoughts, I also considered the phenomenon that Deepak Chopra calls living in total connectedness with God when miracles happen as natural occurring events. Is this a miracle that just transpired, because Bob’s desire to sell the watch at a good price was connected to the source that people call God, and no one really understands what It Is?

By the way if in this picture a man resembles Christopher Reeve to you, you have good eyes, for he is Christopher Reeve, the Superman, who happens to be a friend of Bob.

Article first published as A Miracle At Ebay on Technorati.

Researchers At Stanford Discover New Solar Cells That Can Change The World

For Pete’s sake, please call on your state representatives and ask them to press for allocating some serious money in the development of PETE (photon enhanced thermionic emission) processing of solar cells, a technique developed by Stanford engineers. It has the the potential to make the cost of large-scale solar cell power generation competitive with traditional methods of power generation.

The current photovoltaic technology only takes advantage of light from the sun, however, as temperature rises, the solar cells lose efficiency and the heat is wasted. The new process takes advantage of both light and heat from solar radiation and converts them to electricity, thereby tripling the efficiency of the existing solar cell technology.

In the PETE process the semiconducting material is coated with a thin layer of the metal cesium, which changes the characteristic of the cell, enabling it to use the previously wasted heat to generate electricity. In fact, the cells work better at higher temperatures. Most current generation silicon solar cells are inert by 100 C, while the new cells reach peak efficiency at well over 200 C.

Nick Melosh, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering, who led the research group at Stanford said, “It is actually something fundamentally different about how you can harvest energy.” He dubbed it as “a conceptual breakthrough, a new energy conversion process, not just a new material or a slightly different tweak.” The materials needed to build the new solar energy converters are cheap and easily available, meaning that the power that comes from the device will be in the range of production cost of existing commercial plants.

According to Melosh’s calculation, the PETE process can reach efficiency up to 60 percent, which is three times as high as the efficiency of the existing systems. Regardless, with the experimental cells, the researchers never reached that efficiency, and they attributed that to the use of gallium nitride as their base semiconductor. The team believes that if they use gallium arsenide, which is employed in household electronics, they would reach the desired efficiency.

There is a caveat however. There exists a time gap between a newly discovered technique in the laboratory and its commercialization. That gap can be bridged quickly only by the government sponsorship. The sooner that effort is made, the quicker the product will be in the market.

The effect of this new discovery is going to be really far-reaching, and there probably will be a lot of resistance from the existing oil lobby and the energy industries. Nevertheless, when its impact is fully reached, it may change the world as we know it.

Imagine this scenario: this country finally getting over its oil addiction, no Arab Sheikhs holding us hostages with OPEC, only the sun above us for all our energy, no Islamic terrorists, and no TSA. Imagine living like we did before that fateful day of 2001. It’s easy if you try—and John Lennon would smile in heaven.

Article first published as Researchers At Stanford Discover New Solar Cells That Can Change The World on Technorati.

A Miracle At Sea

As an individual trained in science, and making living through the application of it, I am ostensibly not supposed to believe in miracles, yet, everyday I experience them, and at times I enjoy sharing them with my readers.

Three boys—Samuel Perez , Filo Filo, and Edward Nasau all under fifteen, were last seen in their small boat near the atoll of Atafu on October 5, and then vanished without any trace. New Zealand authorities employed two airplanes to search a 10,000-square mile expanse of the South Pacific ocean and then called it off to great disappointment of many people.

The boys' families took them for dead and performed their last rites. However, after 50 days of being adrift on the ocean, the boys were discovered on Wednesday by a fishing boat, north-east of Fiji. The boys had traveled an incredible distance of 800 miles in a little speed boat!

They survived drinking rainwater, catching and eating raw fishes and a seagull, that they had managed to catch one time. They were emaciated and had little sunburns, nonetheless, physically in good health otherwise.

My grooming and lifelong discipline in scientific activity says that this is a simple case of lost and found—the whole incident nothing more than sheer matter of coincidence, lady luck shining on those three lucky boys; and a few years earlier I would have been happy with that rationalization.

For some reasons however, I now see a miracle in it, like I see miracle, in my heart beating faithfully with its perfect rhythm for all these years, and in this life that I live and share with six billions other people, several billions animals, and innumerable plants. And it does not even need a God to believe in interplay of life forces in creation of miracles.

Wayne Dyer says, we are not human beings who have spiritual experiences, we are spiritual beings having human experiences. We are just blocks of entrapped energies that has given us this particular shape and consciousness that we call "ourselves." These "selves" come from one source, that many call God, others nature, and they go back to the source after the journies are complete on this earth.

Remember, the world does not exist if you are not there to experience it.

I see a purpose of God keeping those boys alive and bringing them back among us for our own lessons, and for our wisdom. And you may take the word “God” out of this equation if that suits you, after all who knows God, except as a mere expression of transmitting some concepts!

First published on Technorati

The Rain-Giver

There was nothing special about the village where this story took place, except that the people who lived there were having a particularly bad time, at the moment. They had in past experienced flood, tornado, and other epidemics. Those nevertheless, passed, leaving just mere blips in their memories.

Being far away from the nearest major city, the villagers had simple lifestyle, and they did not need much to be content so long they had their daily breads and some free time to share with each other. Off late, a severe drought had daunted their spirit, and they were collectively in a somber mood.

The monsoon came and went, yet, there was no rain. The land became dry. The fields where cattle would graze turned barren and flaky. Even their domestic animals were suffering from malnutrition and looked rickety.

One day the elder of the village asked all the villagers to gather at an open expanse and requested them to join him in a prayer. He said that he was a frail old man and did not have much strength left in him, regardless, if all the villagers joined him and prayed to God together, clouds would come and shower rain on their village.

So they all gathered and prayed together. They prayed hard and long, young and old, all joining hands in hands prayed to God for rain.

They prayed again the next day, and the following. Then one day the elder told the villagers, “Last night I had a dream. God told me that He would send us a rain giver, who would bring rain to our village. Make sure you take good care of him.”

The old villagers had faith in their elder. They had lived together through the thick and thin of life; their trust strengthened with the experiences of shared memories of many years. The younger people had no such conviction. They were smiling quietly, mocking the elder, and talking between themselves, “Rain giver? Whoever has heard of such nonsense?”

A young man who was visiting his parents from his city residence told his friends, “This is unbelievable. Whoever could think that people in the 21st century still believe in prayers? No wonder this village is so backward!”

Anyway, there is nothing permanent in nature, and even the worst of the moments come to pass. One night while people were in their sleep, rain came in.

Old and young, male and female, healthy and the sick, they all woke up hearing the nearly-forgotten pattering sound of rain drops beating on their tin-topped roofs. In an indomitable expression of happiness people came out of their homes and gathered on streets, and began dancing in the rain.

It rained for three days and three nights without stop, and it rained hard. Yet, no one complained.

When the rain stopped, the land was wet and muddy, but rejuvenated; life had taken a new lease.

The trees had traces of green again, birds returned and sat on their branches; blades of green green shoots of grass appeared through the brown thatches of land everywhere. Only in three days and three nights the village had been transformed— a miracle had happened.

The farmers took out their plows and commenced tilting their lands. Even their emaciated animals visibly regained their strength overnight. Soon they finished tilting and sowing their fields, and in record time the crops grew. Life had turned for the better once again, the villagers had their smiles back.

One day, while playing in an uninhabited remote area, on the fringe of the village, a few children discovered a small hut that seemed to have been built where there were only wild plants before.

The children grew curious, and they ventured in. They found an old man with long flowing white beard sitting on a mat inside the hut; all by himself. The man saw the boys and girls and invited them inside. The children went in, and the old man began talking to them.

That year there was so much crop that the villagers ran out of storage space. They invited people from other villages to come in and share their harvest, for they were nice and good people. The villagers had never been so happy, and they were keen to share their happiness with others.

Gradually, the word of the strange old man and his hut reached the ears of the grown ups of the village. They came to know that many young children were regularly visiting the old man and spending time with him. The seniors were curious. They asked the children why they were spending time with an old man, and what they did with him.

The youngsters told the men and women that the old man told them stories, and they loved to hear stories from him. The seniors asked the young boys to find out where the old man came from, what he ate, and what he did in a typical day.

The kids watched the man for hours, and hours, in day time and night time, nonetheless, they never saw the old man eating anything. The old man was never found to step outside his hut, and he was never seen sleeping. They reported their findings to their seniors.

The villagers grew suspicious of the old man. Some of them banded together and went to him, and questioned him. They demanded to know where he came from, what did he do for a living, and what was his purpose for being there?

Each question the old man answered with stories. The stories did hardly make any sense to the villagers, although the children found them fascinating. The only thing the grown ups of the village learned, the old man claimed to be the bearer of rain. He said he was the answer to their prayers. God had sent him to this village since there was a severe drought. The villagers grew angry with the old man for they thought the stranger was ridiculing them.

With time the villagers’ suspicion only grew stronger. The young man from the city suggested that the old man must have been attracted by the recent prosperity of the village, and he might have evil intentions. Perhaps he was an informer who was secretly collecting information about the good fortune of the village to pass to some bandits.

Finally, the villagers decided to drive him out of the village.

The day the old man went away, the elder of the village had a dream, God was telling him that he had sent his rain giver to the village. The rain giver did not impose on the villagers, he took nothing from them, and he spoke the truth when confronted by the villagers. Yet, the villagers took offense of the old man for no reason, and they drove him away from the village. God was not happy with them.

The next morning the elder gathered all the villagers, and narrated his dream to them. He asked the villagers to go out and find the old man, ask him for his forgiveness, and bring him back to the village.

Volunteers gathered, and went out in many directions. They searched and searched, and searched.

Morning turned into evening, and evening into night. The villagers came back to their homes tired and discouraged. The old man was not to be found anywhere. They were utterly dejected.

Days passed, the villagers noticed that the rain had stopped falling on their fields. The land was turning dry again. Trees were shedding leaves, and meadows turning brown. So they all gathered, and prayed, and prayed, but no rain fell, not that day, not the next day, nor the day after.

The older people started saying, “It is our jealousy and our suspicion that has brought the hardship back on us.”

The elder of the village was sad and angry. He said, you have turned God’s gift away. Now you must wait for your deeds to pass.

The villagers were overcome with remorse. They watched their fields turning desolate, once again, their fields cracking, once again, their cattle becoming rickety, once again, and they watched on helplessly!

The Story of The Stone Cutter

It was a hot summer day and the sun was shining mercilessly on the mountain. A poor stone cutter was exhausted working in the heat, and took shelter under a tree to cool off. Soon the exhaustion overcame him and he fell asleep.

In his sleep he dreamed of talking to God, he said, “God why did you make me a man, my life is so hard and miserable! Please have mercy on me and make me the most powerful of all.”

God answered, “O my poor son, I feel your pain, tell me what you want to be.”

“I want to be the sun, the most powerful, so that no one dares to trouble me.”

“Your life had been hard, I understand my son. I will fulfill your wish, you will be the sun from now on,” God granted his wish.

The stone cutter was very happy; he became the sun and ruled the world. He would shine hard and burn whatever he took offence with. The plants would wilt, forest would catch fire, and all animals would run for life with mere expression of his rage. He was happy in deed!

Then one day he got angry with some villagers, and he started striking them hard, making their life miserable. The land became dry and hard, developed cracks long and deep. The poor villagers sought compassion from God, “O merciful, please save us from this fire of hell. Give us rain.”

God took pity on the poor villagers and send clouds over. The clouds showered rain and cooled down the land.

The sun was irate and turned the heat up and up, the clouds nonetheless grew darker and darker, and the sun became dejected again.

The stone-cutter-sun was sad and angry at himself, he pleaded to God, “I made a mistake my Lord, I realize now that the sun is not the most powerful, the cloud is, please change me to cloud.”

The God granted his wish and made him cloud. So the stone-cutter-sun was now cloud and he was happy again. He could fly fast, go anywhere he willed, and deluge any place he took offence with. He was happy indeed!

Then he saw a mountain one day, rising high in the sky, so close to the throne of God—he become jealous. He started pouring over the mountain hard and relentless. Tried as much as he could over days and nights, he could cause no dent on the mountain, and he was unhappy again.

He cried out loud once again, “Oh God, I realize my mistake, cloud is not the most powerful, please make me a mountain.

“So be a mountain,” God said, and the stone-cutter-sun-cloud became a mountain.

Now he seemed happy at last. He was standing tall dwarfing everyone, and so close to the throne of God, he was happy in deed!

One day however, someone started chipping at his feet, cutting him off in small pieces, angry he became and fumed with each strike, regardless, he could do nothing to that tiny creature, whoever was tearing him into pieces. He could not even raise a finger, for he had none.

The stone cutter-sun-cloud-mountain cried out in despair, “Oh my Master, please help me, I realize now mountain is not the most powerful, I do not want to be mountain anymore.”

“The ever patient God responded, “O my son, I feel your pain. What do you want to be?

The stone-cutter-sun-cloud-mountain cried out in anguish, “whatever that tiny creature is who is chipping away at my mighty body, I want to be that.”

“But that is only a stone cutter like you once were,” God said.

“I understand my mistake my Lord, you gave me what was best for me, but I did not have eyes to see that. Please forgive my ignorance and turn me back into the stone cutter.

And so God did.

After that the stone cutter never complained again, he became a wise man and thanked God for what He had given him.

(With inspiration from a Chinese cartoon)

When A Dog Teaches Us Virtue

Troy Whalen, a baseball coach for Grayslake Central High School credits his three-legged dog for saving his life . Whalen was talking on telephone in an upstairs room of his house in Grayslake, when it caught fire on Monday about 10:30 AM. The dog entered the room, barked, and acted in a strange way that was not normal of him.

Whalen ran downstairs and found that his house was on fire. The fire started from an outdoor garbage can closed to the home that caught fire when someone dumped hot coal in it from an outdoor fireplace. The side of the home caught fire and it quickly spread to a kitchen and great room area in the home.

When his effort to extinguish the fire with a blanket failed, Whalen called 911. Both Whalen and the dog escaped unharmed.

I call this a sweet story, and there are millions of stories such as this known to us all. Many instances have been recorded when animals sacrificed their own lives trying to save their master’s. I often wonder, the animals that we call dumb, where do they get this quality that is so unique that many human beings lack?

Why do ‘dumb animals’ beat humans repeatedly in providing service to whom they are loyal? The other day a story broke where a dolphin came between a shark and a woman swimming in an ocean, who was being attacked by the shark. The dolphin kept circling the woman in a way that she was able to swim ashore safely.

And yet, we treat animals so cruelly, and make fun of the animal lovers who fight to redress cruelty to them. What gives us power over every other creation, and consider ourselves master of the universe, when we repeatedly demonstrate that often we come short of even the rudimentary qualities that animals exhibit time and again without fail?

Life’s greatest virtue is observed in expression of compassion to nature, with all our religions, ethics, and discourse on humanity, are we ever going to learn to be compassionate?

First Published on Technorati

Rove Pokes A hole In Sarah’s Balloon

You may love him or hate him, regardless, Carl Rove is a man with high intellect when political gamesmanship is concerned. You may or may not like his tactics, but he gets the job done. It was not for nothing that he was called Bush’s brain, and he was largely responsible for making George W Bush a very successful President.

In an interview with London’s Daily Telegraph, Rove said that Sarah Palin lacks the “gravitas” to be president. Specifically he mentioned Palin’s upcoming reality TV show which is not really a prep stage for running for White House.

“There are high standards that the American people have” for the presidency, Rove interjected, “They require a certain level of gravitas. … They want to look at the candidate and say, ‘That candidate is doing things that [give] me confidence that they are up to the most demanding job in the world.’”

If Rove thinks Palin is not a presidential material why is there such hype in media over her? The answer is really very simple, if Palin is made the President, it would be dreams come true for the people who control corporate media; for then they would be the real drivers hiding under dark shadows.

Never before a candidate with such little credentials as Sarah Palin has conquered the national stage with such fanfare! Now it would be interesting to see what happens to Sarah’s balloon, when a hole is poked in it by no less a personality than the master Conservative strategist, Carl Rove.

Reprinted from Technorati.

A Budding Actress and Sex Scandal

Cyberspace is buzzing with headlines such as Sadia Jahan Prova sex tape leaked and other racy titles of the kind. Here is a story of a young budding Bangladeshi actress whose irate ex-boyfriend, Rajib, published recordings of their love-making on the net.

What two consenting adults do in their bedroom should not be a concern to the world, but in this instance, their story is up on the internet for everyone to watch, and therefore, comment. Most public remarks are vicious attacks on the young girl, on her character, and some in languages not fit to be printed. We live in a strange world where guilt and shame related to sex is all for the women, while for men it adds to their tally of conquest!

It is unfortunate that Prova allowed their personal moments to be on camera; however, a young girl in her early twenties, who is madly in love, does not always behave in her own best interest. It is evident that Rajib had cajoled her into recording their intimate moments, and Prova succumbed to that pressure in an unfortunate lapse of common sense on her part. It is clearly a lesson for all young girls to be especially careful about their relationships, and not to drop their guards under any circumstances.

What is remarkable about this incident is the way Bangladeshi media personalities and intellectuals have come forward in defending Sadia. They are sympathetic to her, treating her as a victim, and demanding exemplary punishment of the perpetrator, her ex-boyfriend Rajib, for publishing the tape. It is a commendable reaction from a so-called backward society!

I am particularly proud of the way Bangladesh and its institutions have handled this case. There is a clear demonstration to the western world that the imagery an average western person has about a Muslim, as a crude jehadi ready to stone anyone committing adultery, is so wrong. Bangladesh is overwhelmingly a Muslim country, but its people behave in a civilized manner, just as people do in the developed world.

I pray to God with all sincerity, may the good Lord bless Prova and her family with infinite Grace that is only the preserve of the Almighty. I pray that this incident educates all unsuspecting young women. And, to all of them who condemn Prova I say, let him come forward and cast the first stone, who has not sinned.


First published on Technorati

Tighten Your Belts Folks, IMF Predicts Grim Future

In a recently published world economic outlook titled, Will It Hurt? Macroeconomic Effects of Fiscal Consolidation, the IMF has painted a bleak picture of near depression scenario from the south to the north of Europe including Britain, and in America as well. The world body also predicts that we are in a slump for the long haul.

Following the scandalous affairs of bankrupt Iceland, and riots in Greece, Spain is the new sick man of Europe mired by political upheaval and widespread public protests normally witnessed in the third world countries.

To reign in the harsh financial downturn, the IMF in the past had routinely dispensed the medicine of severe belt tightening in Asia and South America, forcing misery on the hapless poor people of those countries. Nonetheless, when the citadels of European civilization are catching pneumonia, the IMF admits that the measure of austerity is going do more damage than good.

Ah, what a revelation!

It should not take a Nobel Prize-winning economist to grasp that you do not recover from severe recession by further choking social programs and cutting jobs. In fact, Econ 101 says that if people have no money to buy, the consumption would keep on shrinking and production would follow suit in an interlinking chain of events.

IMF says that tightening of 1% of GDP in a country results in a 0.5% loss of growth in two years. Traditionally, countries have come out of economic recession by devaluing their currencies and increasing exports.

Austerity measures have worked effectively for some countries in the past. For an example, Britain has applied that successfully twice, once when it left the Gold Standard in 1931, and then again in 1992. This time the problem is there is no one to pick up the slack. How did we come here?

It is all in distribution of wealth, my friends. Unrestrained human greed gave rise to laissez-faire capitalism, which dismantled all regulations and created giant monopolies. Capitalism lives and dies with free competition; therefore, when giant monopolies are created in the name of “scale of economics,” the very spirit that thrives on capitalism is destroyed. Couple that with tax benefits for the high earning populace and shifting the tax burden to the middle class. Capital shifts from the bottom to the top, creating a few super-rich on one hand, and large number of struggling deprived masses on the other.
The mantra of the capitalists, cutting taxes for the rich and slicing social programs for the poor, is not going to work, as half the globe is now in financial trouble and taking the same measures in lockstep. When the interest rate is nearly zero, and everyone begins slashing expenditures, the downward slump doubles with time.

The leader of the free world, the USA, was supposed to lead by example in such a time. Unfortunately, in Barak Obama, the American people elected a President who neither had the courage nor the will to do a la FDR, as he is busy protecting the very group that brought this ruin on us.

It is apparent that people understand this and there is widespread dissatisfaction at the general level; notwithstanding, what is the solution? People may vote Obama out in 2012, and bring back the GOP and the Tea Party leaders, however, that would be like jumping from frying pan to the fire, because it is the policies of the renegade conservatives that have brought us here.

Thirty years of Reaganomics, embraced and implemented with vigor by subsequent Democratic and Republican administrations since Ronald Reagan have created this situation. The recovery will not be attained on the backs of the poor, as they are already broken.

Hold on to your shoestrings folks, this is going to be a long and hard ride.


Previously published on Technorati

Dear readers:

The poll on Future of America has closed. 51% of you said you expect major setback going forward. 36% of you foresee minor setback. 6% of you think that we are doomed, and equal number of you think of continuous prosperity.

I am with the majority this time, and will explain my position next week. Thank you all for letting me know what you think.

A Mohit

The Heart’s Code Says We Are All Interconnected

You may have heard it from your grandmother, Shamans, Lamas, or Indian Gurus. You might have even heard it coming from Gary E. R. Schwartz and Linda G.S. Russeka. And of course, you, the left-brained intellectual, rightfully knew all along, this was mere housewife’s tale, an irrational belief on the part of the unsophisticated rustic individuals.

Rightfully?

The problem is Dr. Schwartz and Dr. Russeka are not really laypeople. At the time of publishing of the book, The Heart’s Code, the former was a Professor of Psychology, Neurology, Psychiatry, and Medicine, at the University of Arizona, and the latter was a research Psychologist at the Harvard University. In a foreword to Dr. Paul Pearsall’s revolutionary book published in 1998, they wrote, “Sometimes a book is written that forever changes not only the way we think about life, but the way we feel about life as well. This is The Heart’s Code.”

And indeed, The Heart’s Code is such a book and more. Else, whoever in his right mind can claim in the world of science that our hearts are the real sources of our personalities and enduring memories? The heart dwarfs the brain in the matters of energy and memory. Truly, the heart has such lasting memories that it continues to retain minute details even when it is transplanted to another body.

Dr. Pearsall quoted a story that was told to him in a meeting of an international group of psychologists and psychiatrists in Houston, Texas, in the late 1990s. A psychiatrist told the group that she had an 8-year-old patient who received the heart of a murdered 10-year-old girl. The patient was having vivid dreams of a man who had murdered her donor. Her dreams became more intense with time and the girl’s mother decided to see the police with the advice of the psychiatrist. With detailed descriptions from the little girl about the time, the weapon, the place and the clothes the murderer wore, police apprehended the culprit.

Dr. Pearsall’s book is the result of painstaking efforts of leading researchers in the field of heart-brain connections in human thought processes and memories, having been conducted in the most prestigious institutions in the US and other countries. The overwhelming verdict from their research is that the heart thinks, feels, remembers, and there is a subtle yet very powerful energy that connects everything and every person.

He quotes scientists after scientists and their works in his book that convincingly points to an overflowing energy in the universe that Pearsall calls “L” energy. It is that “L” energy that interconnects all beings and is indestructible; it survives death.

First published on Technorati.

Is There a Limit to Human Achievement?

In 1994, Philippe Croizon, at the age of 26, had a vocation as a metal worker. While trying to remove a television antenna from a house roof, he was struck by an arc that hit him from a nearby electric line that carried 20,000 Volts.

To save his life, doctors amputated both his arms and legs. Recovering in the hospital, he watched a television documentary that showed a swimmer crossing the English Channel, and he dreamed of doing it himself one day.

Croizon was fitted with flipper-shaped prosthetic legs by his doctors, and he taught himself to swim using the stumps of his arms and his prosthetic legs . He trained for over two years before he tried for a 12-hour endurance test.

Then on September 18, 2010, 16 years after that fateful day, he began swimming the English Channel from Folkestone in southern England around 8 AM. He reached the French coast just before 9:30 PM local time. His average speed at 3 km/hr was marginally less than the normal swimmers’ 4-5 km/hr.

Philippe Croizon demonstrated once again that there is no limit to human achievement. If there is any limit, it is what we set ourselves in our own minds. Many athletes have demonstrated this time and again, and people in other fields, too, have achieved similar implausible feats.

And it is in this context, Jesus said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there, and the mountain will move.” (John 14:14)


First published in Technorati

Mother’s Love Brings Dead Baby Back to life

Is there more to life than what meets the eyes? Is there a special bond between a mother and her child that can defy death? This story is about an Australian mother, whose longing for the life of her new born baby—who was pronounced dead at birth—revived him.

When the attending nurse handed the baby’s limp body to Kate, she would not let him go. For two hours she kept him on her chest, cuddling him, stroking him and talking to him. She told him that her twin sister Emily was doing well. Then suddenly, she felt a movement—the baby was grasping for air.

The doctors told her that those movements were merely autonomic reactions and she should not get her hopes high. Yet, in a short while the baby who was named Jamie, opened his eyes, and a little later began suckling at her mother’s breast. The doctor’s called it a medical miracle.

Today, Jamie is a normal healthy infant; the question is was it really his mothers indomitable desire for him to live that brought him back to life? Or, is it as the doctors said, a medical miracle, meaning; it is a phenomenon for which we have no explanation?

The greatest mystery of life is life itself, which is the true miracle. If you think in macro scale, so many variables, such as strong nuclear force, gravity, temperature of the earth surface and hosts of others, have to be so precisely at whatever magnitude they are, to make this world hospitable for life, that it is simply mind boggling.

And then again, every day in our lives, the odds that we fight against from the unseen microbes to the seen and known elements that act against us, make us wonder how we remain alive for years and years. For me it also makes me wonder how precious every life is!

The sad part is, while every other animal live and die with the fancy of the nature, we have the ability to alter nature, and oftentimes we do that, just for the short term benefit, causing enormous destruction to not only us but other living beings as well.

First published on Technorati

An Appeal To The Proponents Of Ground Zero Mosque

On August 3, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg standing on Governor’s Island departed from his usual style which is more suited to his technocrat image, and delivered the most heartfelt speech of his life. He was defending the right of the people who wants to build the Muslim community center near ground zero. He began citing from history, “We've come here to Governors Island to stand where the earliest settlers first set foot in New Amsterdam, and where the seeds of religious tolerance were first planted. We come here to see the inspiring symbol of liberty that more than 250 years later would greet millions of immigrants in this harbor. And we come here to state as strongly as ever; this is the freest city in the world. That's what makes New York special and different and strong.”

It was a long speech, and a visibly emotional mayor got choked up at one point. The mayor was accompanied by Council Speaker Christine Quinn and 10 religious leaders, among them three Jewish leaders— Rabbi Bob Kaplan from the Jewish Community Council, Rabbi Irwin Kula from the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, and Cara Berkowitz from the UJA Federation.

It is remarkable that despite the general perception among Muslims that Jews are their arch enemies, they find, when chips are down; it is the leaders from the Jewish communities who stand by their side. And I say, there is a lesson to be learned in that.

It appears to me that at this time the most insensitive people, when it comes to religion, come from my fellow Muslims. Take for instance this very matter of ground zero mosque, when 70% American people are against it, why pursue this? The memory of loss of their loved ones is still fresh in many people’s minds. At least, why not defer the project till people are more receptive to it?

(First Published on Technorati)

Burqa And France

The lower house of French parliament has approved a law banning wearing Islamic veils, called burqas. The lawmakers consider that this practice is against the French ideals of women’s equal rights and the country's secular tradition.

Finally a western Government has shown courage against oppressive Muslim practices of forcing their women to wear “burqa” and “niqab”in the name of Islam. I commend President Sarkozy for this initial success, for he was the one who first declared in June 2009 that the burqa is “not welcome” in France.

Muslims are increasingly demonstrating their ignorance of their own religion by adhering to practices that is discriminatory against women and not even ordained by their holy book, Quran. Take for instance the statement of Egyptian Islamic scholar Abdelmotie Bayoumi, who said, “The niqab has no strong legitimacy based on Quran or in examples from the Prophet's life that makes it a religious imposition on women.” Then why women are forced to wear those veils?

The mainstream French Muslim organization agrees that such dress code is not suitable in France, yet, they worry that the ban will stigmatize all Muslims. However, perhaps it wouldn't if they did their part to educate their community to treat women as equals, and stop treating them as chattels.

During the National Assembly debate, the Greens lawmaker Francois de Rugy commented that conservatives “are throwing oil on the fire — you are reviving tensions just to win votes.” I say, how long will the civilized world condone medieval practices in the name of religion?

Berengere Poletti, a member of Sarkozy’s party, said that the face-covering veils “are a prison for women, they are the sign of their submission to their husbands, brothers or fathers.” Absolutely: this is the truth and the only truth. In France, the niqab and burqa are viewed as an opening to extremism and an attack on secularism which are the central values of French culture. As a Muslim, I say "Amen," and I share the French view wholly.

The Quran says when you are in a foreign country, obey their laws, respect their customs, and be a good citizen if you make that country your home. The tragedy is that many Muslims seldom read their holy book to understand its meaning, and defer their cultural guidance to the uneducated mullahs.

The Quran says: We made the Quran easy to learn. Does any of you wish to learn? (54:17) Yet, mullahs claim, it is difficult to understand Quran, and therefore they come up with fatwas (religious edicts) for uncharted territories, and force uninformed followers to live by their decrees.

The new law will be in the Senate in September, where it is expected to pass. However, this will be scrutinized by France’s constitutional watchdog before it becomes Law-of-the-land, and they may still find it unconstitutional.

I hope they do not.

Reprinted from Technorati

http://technorati.com/lifestyle/article/france-introduces-law-to-ban-islamic/