BEHERENOW
We are deeply indebted to Ram Dass, aka Richard Alpert. We are indebted to him for his immense courage with psychedelics, for the deep wisdom he brought back from his journeys to the East, and especially for his enlightening concept of being in the here and the now.
This place in The Caldron is dedicated to Ram Dass and to being in the here and the now. Let's keep it flowing, folks. Keep sending in your submissions, and we will keep posting them just as soon as we get them.
THIS JUST IN - Just Don't Lose the War
Washington faced a vastly superior British Army and Navy during the American Revolution, the reigning superpower of its day. He lost more battles than he won, but he gradually came to the recognition that he did not need to win the war, only not lose it. (Joseph Ellis, Newsweek, "Welcome to 2004, President Washington," p. 31, November 1, 2004.)
This, of course, is also good advice for the now beleaguered Democratic Party - as well as for the Iraqi insurgents now fighting the reigning superpower of their day.
Study: 100,000 Iraqis Dead
PARIS - An estimated 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq as a direct or indirect consequence of the March 2003 U.S. led invasion, according to a new study by a research team at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. (For the rest of the article read the Daily Camera, p. 3B, October 29, 2004.)
THIS JUST IN - NASA Scientist Slams Bush
IOWA CITY, Iowa - The Bush administration is trying to stifle scientific evidence of the dangers of global warming in an effort to keep the public uninformed, a NASA scientist said Tuesday night.
"In my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it is now," James E Hansen told a University of Iowa audience.
Hansen is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and has twice briefed a task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney on global warming.
Hansen said the administration wants to hear only scientific results that "fit predetermined, inflexible positions." Evidence that would raise concerns about the dangers of climate change is often dismissed as not being of sufficient interest to the public.
"This, I believe is a recipe for environmental disaster."
Hansen said the scientific community generally agrees that temperatures on Earth are rising because of the greenhouse effect - emissions of carbon dioxide and other materials into the atmosphere that trap heat.
These rising temperatures, scientists believe, could cause sea levels to rise and trigger severe environmental consequences, he said.
(Daily Camera, World View, p. 2B, October 27, 2004.)
Earth Endangered
Geneva - Humanities reliance on fossil fuels, the spread of cities, the destruction of natural habitats for farmland and over-exploitation of the oceans are destroying Earth's ability to sustain life, the environmental group WWF warned in a new report Thursday. The biggest consumers of nonrenewable natural resources are the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Kuwait, Australia and Sweden, the World Wildlife Fund said in its regular Living Planet Report. Humans currently consume 20 percent more natural resources than the Earth can produce, the report said. (Daily Camera, World View, p. 1, October 22, 2004.)
THIS JUST IN - Andean Glaciers Shrink
Ecuador's mountain glaciers are melting at an alarming rate due to global warming, threatening the country's future water supplies, according to researchers. Ecuador's Meteorology Institute and France's scientific research institute IRD said that the Cotopaxi Volcano has lost 31 percent of its ice cover between 1976 and 1997, and others such as El Altar could lose all of their snow pack during the next 10 to 20 years. Ecuador's capital, Quito, depends on snow-covered mountains for 80 percent of its water supply. (Daily Camera, Earth Week, October 22, 2004.)
Greenhouse Gas Surges
Climate experts are debating the significance of increased rises in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during 2002 and 2003, which may mean that global warming has begun to accelerate. For the first time on record, CO2 levels rose by more than two parts per million for two years running. The data was recorded at the summit of Mauna Loa in Hawaii by U.S. researcher Charles Keeling, who has collected it since 1958. He feels the consecutive rises could be an anomaly, or a sign of increasing climate change. Peter Cox of Britain's Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research told the BBC that the increase in carbon dioxide was not uniform across the globe, and he suspects something unusual happened in the Northern Hemisphere. He suggested hot European summers and wildfires could have destroyed the vegetation and increased the release of carbon from the soil. (Daily Camera, Earth Week, October 15, 2004.)
A Thought for the Day
Sex, the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble. (John Barrymore)
Global Warming Is Expected to Raise Hurricane Intensity
Global warming is likely to produce a significant increase in the intensity and rainfall of hurricanes in coming decades, according to the most comprehensive computer analysis done so far. By the 2080's, seas warmed by rising atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases could cause a typical hurricane to intensify about an extra half step on the five-step scale of destructive power, says the study, done on supercomputers at the Commerce Department's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J. And rainfall up to 60 miles from the core would be nearly 20 percent more intense. Other computer modeling efforts have also predicted that hurricanes will grow stronger and wetter as a result of global warming. (Andrew C. Revkin, www.nytimes.com, September 20, 2004)
Democracy, It's Hard Work
Speaking of his new album, "The Revolution Starts ... Now," Steve Earle told Associated Press writer, David Bauder, "I don't hold 'them' responsible for the fact that the country is not going the way that I think it ought to go." He went on to say, "I hold us - the people who think like I do - responsible. We went to sleep. Democracy, it's hard work. It requires vigilance." (In the Colorado Daily, September 29, 2004, Music section, p. 15.
Space signal studied for alien contact
London, England (Reuters, Thursday, September 2, 2004)
An unexplained radio signal from deep space, coming from a point between the Pisces and Aries constellations, has been picked up three times by a telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. It could be a contact from an alien civilization, New Scientist magazine reported on Thursday.
The signal has a frequency of 1420 megahertz, one of the main frequencies at which hydrogen absorbs and emits energy. Astronomers say that this is the frequency aliens would likely use to search for other life in the galaxy.
Global Warming's surprising Fallout
The buildup of carbon dioxide (CO2) is forcing scientists to rethink their expectations - not only about the buildup of heat on Earth but also about the implications for the natural world far beyond warming.
Take those powerful Alaskan earthquakes. We expect land to rise as the weight of glaciers melts away. Should we also adjust our assessment of earthquake risk?
Two geophysicists say "yes." Glaciers hold down earthquake action even in a seismically active region like Alaska, argue Jeanne Sauber with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Bruce Molnia with the US Geological Survey in Reston, Va. They use history and current data to make their case.
For example, earthquake action picked up in places where the ice masses retreated some 10,000 years ago, Dr. Sauber notes. Scandinavia had major quakes back then. Canada also had many moderate quakes as its glaciers melted.
Melting glaciers do not cause earthquakes: Quakes are created when forces within the crust build up strain in rock until something slips. Alaska is seismically active because a North Pacific crustal plate is ramming into southern Alaska, creating pressures that must be relieved at some point.
Another nonwarming implication of global warming is plant growth. Because plants use the carbon in CO2 to make their food and structures, they should grow faster as concentrations of the greenhouse gas go up. Many experts hope this will take some of the excess CO2 out of the air. They count on increased nitrogen fixation to supply the extra nitrogen to fertilize the plants.
Not so fast, warn Bruce Hungate at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. The experiments of Dr. Hungate and his collaborators show that this expected boon soon turns sour.
After burgeoning for a couple of years, the nitrogen fixers begin to lose their fixing ability. It looks as though molybdenum - a key nutrient - becomes less available as elevated CO2 levels change soil chemistry.
To adapt the financial guru's mantra, the way things worked in the past is an unreliable guide for expectations of how our planet will respond as humans force more unnatural change upon it.
(Excerpted from Robert C. Cowen's article, Global warming's surprising fallout, in The Christian Science Monitor, July 19, 2004. Copyright 2004 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.)
In all Fairness
I can no longer feel good about not paying taxes on the earnings from my dividends while the wage earner has to pay taxes on what he earns from his labor. (From Steve, a former supporter of President Bush and his war on Iraq, reporting on his spiritual conversion, in a private conversation.)
The deep dark secret of small businesses
Phyllis Burlage, an accountant in Millersville, Md., whose clients include several small businesses, said rising health insurance costs were driving some employers to skirt age-discrimination law by hiring only younger workers as a way to reduce premiums. It's, the deep dark secret of small businesses, Ms. Burlage said. (From NYTimes.com)
403,300 high-tech jobs lost
The U.S. information tech sector has lost 403,300 jobs since March, 2001 and the future doesn't look any better. Most of the lost is said to come from corporations outsourcing high tech jobs overseas where the labor is cheaper. (Daily Camera, Business section, p. 1, September 15, 2004.)
And this just in from our ace reporter in India,
Partha Pratim Majumder -
In India, the death sentence of Dhananjay Chatterjee - a man who had raped and killed Hetal Parikh, a fourteen years old school girl in 1991 - was execution by hanging.
The hangman was Nata Mulch, who was 84 years old and the only professional hangman in India with a proven track record. By hanging Dhananjay as his twenty-fifth victim, he celebrated a silver jubilee of his individual career as a hard-core executioner.
This last death penalty was different from all previous ones. For the first time, media played a pivotal role in the process, focusing everyone's awareness on the last month in the life of the convict, his family, lawyers and jail officials, as well as that of the hangman.
The twenty odd TV Channels, the fifty odd print media of India and abroad were all glued to the Alipore Central Jail, while their counterparts were stationed at Kuldih, Chatterjee's home village, 250 kilometers away. The viewers were thus able to see the agony and lamentation of the poor family members. The people also read the reports telling of Dhananjay's every action in his cell - his anger, frustration, wishes, rejections, recalling of memories, silence, expression, sadness, feelings, dialogue with jail attendants, and his final convictions just before wearing the noose.
Millions got every taste of the scene, as if they were sitting in the front row. The media went rampant in describing his death, marinated in literary juice and flamboyant colour and did not even stop after his death. For example, we got to know that Nata, the executioner per excellence, burst into tears and restlessness soon after he pulled the lever. Death by hanging would never be the same again. The lonesome convict to the gallows would ever be sure of his celebrity status, a perfect feast of news for popcorn munching generations glued to the TV.
And are you interested to know what happened in the following two weeks after the end of the poor man's life? The media continued to serve up even more palatable news - for example, stories of the deaths of five children and the fortunate saving from death of several more, all between the ages of 8 and 13 years, all who had copied the hanging of Dhananjay.
The power of Media is unquestionable, right?