My foray into the Blogosphere – Elena Kelly – Open Salon
…when I told my wife, it took her a couple of days to work through all the emotions that came up for her. Finding out you are married to a transexual female is a huge and painful revelation for a straight woman. But she decided that she fell in love with a person, not a gender, and though I would make many outward changes, inside I was still the same one she fell in love with. Our marriage has never been better. …
The legal hurdles of existing law make it virtually impossible for the federal government to limit or ban the use of toxic chemicals or to even obtain the information needed to devise effective regulations, several witnesses testified before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee.
Four tons of seeds representing hundreds of crop species were delivered today to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault as it celebrated its one-year anniversary. The vault in nothern Norway is intended to serve as a fail-safe backup should the original samples be lost or damaged or to provide a Noah’s ark for agriculture in the event of a global catastrophe.
Announcing the award on Tuesday, FEMA Regional Administrator Phil May said the information and results from this study may help formulate strategies to deal with potential effects of sea level rise along all of the nation’s coastlines.
“The Department of Commerce plays a critical role in nurturing innovation, expanding global markets, protecting and managing our ocean fisheries, and fostering economic growth,” said Secretary-designate Locke. “The Department of Commerce can and will help create the jobs and the economic vitality our nation needs.”
“Mongolia is the first Asian Buddhist country to emerge from communist rule but to reestablish their Buddhist traditions they have many obstacles to overcome,” said Hubbard, the Yehan Numata Professor of Buddhist Studies, “not least is the loss of virtually all senior teachers and institutions.”
Pictures of casualties have long played into the politics of a war — most notably in Vietnam, dubbed the “living-room war” for its extensive television coverage, including footage of coffins rolling off planes at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii as if off a conveyor belt. Indeed, starting in the 1990s, politicians and generals used the term “the Dover test” to describe the public’s tolerance for troop casualties.
via U.S. to End Ban on Media Coverage of Returning Military Coffins – washingtonpost.com.
He’s one of those rare Buddhism scholars who has the linguistic training to decipher not just ancient texts but inscriptional and archaeological evidence as well. Well-versed in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali and Tibetan, Schopen probably knows more about classical Buddhism than the entire line of reincarnated Dalai Lamas, and it’s no wonder that his work has significantly altered the way other religions are studied.
via Lessons in Buddhism from an Iconoclastic Scholar, UCLA International Institute.
While the Islamic world was enjoying astronomy, philosophy and medicine, those in Europe could not tell the hours of the day, thought the Earth was flat, and saw disease as punishment from God, says Jonathan Lyons in The House of Wisdom. That changed after the Crusades, set in motion by Pope Urban II at the end of the 11th century, which resulted in a spectacular growth in trade and communication between east and west. Knowledge that had taken centuries to build was unleashed on an unsuspecting Europe.
via Time to acknowledge science’s debt to Islam? – science-in-society – 25 February 2009 – New Scientist.
Behavioral neurologist V.S Ramachandran has referred to mirror neurons as “empathy neurons” or “Dalai Llama neurons.” He believes this system, by allowing us to understand the intentions and desires of others, is the principal driving force behind “the great leap forward” in human evolution. As a result of such claims, the mirror neuron system has risen to the level of accepted folk psychology. According to U.C. Berkeley psychologist Alison Gopnik, “Mirror neurons have become the ‘left brain/right brain’ of the 21st century.”
But [Bernard] Madoff’s behavior raises serious questions about the relationship between mirror neurons and empathy — and represents a golden opportunity to study the as yet puzzling connection between them. …
Snow and ice are declining in both polar regions, affecting human livelihoods as well as local plant and animal life in the Arctic, as well as global ocean and atmospheric circulation and sea level.
WASHINGTON, DC, February 23, 2009 (ENS) – The planet is quickly approaching the tipping point for abrupt climate changes, perhaps within a few years, according to the UN Environmental Programme’s newly released 2009 Year Book and a separate World Bank report now being presented throughout Latin America.
WASHINGTON, DC, February 23, 2009 (ENS) – The National Governors Association 2009 Winter Meeting wrapped up today with a session on best practices from around the world for financing infrastructure repairs and upgrades.
Sea Shepherd founder Captain Paul Watson says much of material seized belongs to the Discovery Channel’s Animal Planet producer and camera crew who were videoing the confrontations with the Japanese whaling fleet for the second season of the series “Whale Wars,” which last year proved to be a popular offering for the American television channel.The police have refused to give details about the search, saying only that it was done at the request of “Japanese authorities.”
WASHINGTON, DC, February 25, 2009 (ENS) – A federal appeals court Tuesday ruled that Bush-era clean air standards were insufficient, sending them back to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to be rewritten in a way that will better protect public health.
WASHINGTON, DC, February 24, 2009 (ENS) – The U.S. Supreme Court Monday declined to consider a Bush-era rule that would have allowed a cap-and-trade approach to mercury, a toxic heavy metal emitted by power plants that burn coal and oil. Power plants are the largest source of mercury in the nation.
“The research, development, and demonstration leases we will offer can help answer critical questions about oil shale, including about the viability of emerging technologies on a commercial scale, how much water and power would be required, and what impact commercial development would have on land, water, wildlife, and communities,” [Salazar] said.
Analysis of brain tissue from adults who had committed suicide found key genetic changes in those who had suffered abuse as a child.
Chances are, your college economics course didn’t involve much meditation. But after completing a fellowship at the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, Amherst College economics professor Daniel Barbezat decided to introduce meditation, along with other Buddhist practices, into his course on “consumption and the pursuit of happiness.”
via Economics 101 Meets Buddhism – Alpha Consumer (usnews.com).
Brad Warner has practiced Zen for more than 20 years. He’s become an internationally noted teacher of the spiritual discipline, but it hasn’t eliminated his problems. Staring down a divorce and pondering an affair, the punk-bassist-turned-Zen-teacher had the idea for his new book, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of True Dharma. In it, Warner recalls his original inspiration. …
When Governor Martin O’Malley appeared before the Maryland Senate last week, he made an unconventional argument that is becoming increasingly popular in cash-strapped states: abolish the death penalty to cut costs.
O’Malley, a Democrat and a Roman Catholic who has cited religious opposition to the death penalty in the past, is now arguing that capital cases cost three times as much as homicide cases where the death penalty is not sought. “And we can’t afford that,” he said, “when there are better and cheaper ways to reduce crime.”
Lawmakers in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska and New Hampshire have made the same argument in recent months as they push bills seeking to repeal the death penalty, and experts say such bills have a good chance of passing in Maryland, Montana and New Mexico.
For Buddhists, death is but part of an eternal “stream” of consciousness. Death is merely an inescapable part of human suffering. Death is very central to Buddhism because it is said that it is what prompted Gautama Buddha to ponder about the futility of life and material possessions.
At first, Buddhism allied itself closely with Taoism to gain a foothold in China and borrowed from it. But in later centuries it was the Taoists who borrowed from Buddhism! Taoism was never a religion, it was a set of beliefs and doctrines left behind by a master and “preserved in a corpus of literature”. They got the idea of a ‘religion’ from Buddhists and also borrowed the idea of making statues and images from the latter.
