Fireproof homes of Bowerbirds and more irrelevancies

Innovation:

Male great bowerbirds (Chlamydera nuchalis) of northern Australia erect two walls of twigs partially flanking a six-foot-long passageway that they pave with conspicuous bits of bones, stones, shells, and fruits. There, the males strut their stuff, inviting females over for a tryst.

Bower construction takes a week or longer, so it's no fun when brush fire sweeps through the savanna and threatens the males' handiwork.

Yet, as a new study shows, the bowers seem strangely immune to fire.
-Live Science

Thanks to the firebreaks they make around their nests.

Animals are marvellous, and their survival instincts wondrous- but when man tampers with them, the consequences are unpredictable:

Residents of a rural district in eastern Sweden said pesticide rules adopted to protect nearby nature reserves have brought swarms of mosquitoes to their homes.

Locals in the Osterfarnebo district said the pesticide restrictions were put in place to protect nearby nature reserves from spraying, but the rules leave residents without an effective weapon to curb the insects' breeding, The Local reported Friday.
-UPI

Nature has great ways of coping up with, nature. What we have here is hardly surprising, if you remember how it is with us people (only the sexes are reversed):

Seahorses have a unique mode of reproduction: male pregnancy. Male seahorses provide all post-fertilization parental care, yet despite the high levels of paternal investment, they have long been thought to have conventional sex roles, with females choosing mating partners and males competing for their attention. However, clutch, egg and offspring size all increase with female body size in seahorses, suggesting that males may obtain fecundity benefits by mating with large-bodied females.

...Mattle and Wilson found striking differences in courtship behavior between male and female seahorses, with choosy males and indiscriminate females. Male seahorses were highly active and showed a clear preference for larger partners. In contrast, females were significantly less active and showed ambiguous mating preferences.
-EurekAlert

Hardly surprising- it is the ones that live with consequences that worry about consequences, and so on.


And finally, a news that comes as a surprise-shock (the Nobel prize winning Novelist is Hemingway):

Last week, however, saw the publication of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press), which reveals the Nobel prize-winning novelist was for a while on the KGB's list of its agents in America. Co-written by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, the book is based on notes that Vassiliev, a former KGB officer, made when he was given access in the 90s to Stalin-era intelligence archives in Moscow.
-Guardian

Trivial Accidents- with some serious consequences

This is about bad luck:

A woman is suing an Egyptian hotel claiming her daughter got preggers from swimming in their pool.

...The mother returned home with her daughter after visiting the hotel on vacation, when her 13 year old announced she was pregnant. The woman, Magdalena Kwiatkowska, actually believes the teenager was sperminated while swimming in the hotel's "mixed pool."

-Perez Hilton

And this one, is good luck:

In the Brest Province of Belarus a man in a state of alcoholic intoxication fell asleep on train tracks. The man was so drunk that even the train that passed over him could not awaken him from his stupor.

-Russia Times

And elsewhere in US, a woman had luck going for her in what could have been a very unlucky incident:

Authorities said a bullet from a gun that was accidentally dropped injured a Tampa woman sitting in a bathroom stall. Police said the bullet hit 53-year-old Janifer Bliss in the lower left leg. She was taken to a hospital with minor injuries.

Bliss was sitting on the toilet in a hotel bathroom when a woman in the next stall accidentally let her handgun slip out of her waist holster. The weapon discharged when it hit the ground.

-Yahoo! News

And back again to Russia:

A young Moscow woman failed to notice when her 2 year-old son fell out of their speeding car, Russian website Lenta.ru reports. Miraculously, the toddler survived. The car which was travelling directly behind stopped just a few centimeters from the child.

-MosNews

“My elder son told me that Roman fallen out of the car, but I thought that he was just joking” Tatiana says- hmmm, these Russianas...

Some rot, more rot, still more rot and is this rot or wot- Copernicus had blue eyes!

The day is breaking in, not silently like a burglar, but loudly, orchestrated with cawing and cuckooing- we can already see the Sun warming up: and here we are, snatching a precious fifteen minutes break to post at this blog:

This terrible news that is necessary for Pakistan to take on the Talibans:

According to a report by Ahmed Quraishi’s at the International Analyst Network, India has paid terrorist leader Baitullah Mehsud nearly $25 million to mount a spectacular attack on a major Pakistani nuclear site. Government officials have not confirmed this report however; there is speculation that it could be at least part of the reason for the stepped up effort to capture Mehsud and quickly end his reign of terror in the region.

- National Terror Alert

We don't want to see the national secular media exhorting the Government to help out Pakistan in this.

We were made more unhappy when we read this:

Sumo bad boy Asashoryu, no stranger to public criticism, has been labelled "podgy" in a bizarre attack on the volatile Mongolian.

A popular former wrestler now working as a TV commentator accused Asashoryu of being flabby, even though his 150-kilogram frame is relatively small for the sport.

-Yahoo! News

Talk about unfairness...

But not always:

Local authorities in Majorna, Sweden, must subsidize a 30-year-old impotent man's Viagra prescription, a court ruled.

The County Administrative Court ruled in favor of the man, who argued having sex is essential to a reasonable quality of life, The Local reported Saturday.

-UPI

Now the spokeswoman for the assistance program that has to pay out for Viagra asks, "How often should someone have Viagra? Is it once a week? Does that amount to a reasonable quality of life?"

Hmmm... I think 3.5 is the right number.

Moving over to science, they have identified Copernicus through DNA tests- he most likely had blue eyes, fair skin and light hair color. I think they took the DNA from a skull:

Despite missing the lower jaw, the skull provided additional clues that led to the identification of the remains. It belonged to a man who died at the age between the age of 60 and 70, and had suffered a broken nose. The skull also featured a cut mark above the left eye.

-Discovery

Little fellows like Carson, Konkatsu, echolocation and the geeks of Truro.

Some old news I marked to be blogged, find their way out now:

Mr Mugabe told the state-owned Herald newspaper in Zimbabwe that nothing came out of his talks with Mr Carson - his first meeting with a US government official for many years.

"You would not speak to an idiot of that nature," he said. "I was very angry with him, and he thinks he could dictate to us what to do and what not to do."

Mr Mugabe pointed out that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) supported the unity government.

"We have the whole of SADC working with us, and you have the likes of little fellows like Carson, you see, wanting to say: 'You do this, you do that.'

"Who is he?

"I hope he was not speaking for Obama. I told him he was a shame, a great shame, being an African American."

-BBC

Carson, the little fellow, is US assistant secretary of state for African affairs.

And we know what Mugabe is- monster is not the word.


Here in India, what with girls studying better than boys and finding jobs that pay more and looking for grooms of a higher status, marriage is a game that is souring on us. Happily, the Japanese are in the same boat.

"I was lucky to come across the book," says the 37-year old, unmarried Mr. Honda.

The book is the best-seller "Konkatsu Jidai," or "The Era of Marriage Hunting." In it, sociologist Masahiro Yamada and journalist Tohko Shirakawa use the term -- a play on the Japanese words for "marriage" and "activity" -- that has become a national rage.

The tome has sold 170,000 copies since it was released by Tokyo publisher Discover21 in early 2008. The authors urge young singles to actively seek a spouse: Just sitting back and waiting for the right person to come along isn't enough.

-The Wall Street Journal

Happy Konkatsuing- that is the word we were looking for.


By the way, you could more easily learn to find your way through heavy traffic like bats and dolphins do- earlier than what it takes to find the right girl:

With just a few weeks of training, you can learn to “see” objects in the dark using echolocation the same way dolphins and bats do.

Ordinary people with no special skills can use tongue clicks to visualize objects by listening to the way sound echoes off their surroundings, according to acoustic experts at the University of Alcalá de Henares in Spain.

“Two hours per day for a couple of weeks are enough to distinguish whether you have an object in front of you,” Juan Antonio Martinez said in a press release. “Within another couple weeks you can tell the difference between trees and pavement.”

-Wired

Echolocation is the word:

“The almost ideal sound is the ‘palate click,’” said Martinez in a press release, “a click made by placing the tip of the tongue on the palate, just behind the teeth, and moving it quickly backwards.” The palate click is better than other sounds, because it can be made in a uniform way, works at a lower intensity, and doesn’t get drowned out by ambient noise.

Again, this works better for you in finding your way about the town than into a girl's heart- do it in the bus-stand at a girl, you are certain to get drowned by ambient noise of the angry public.

And finally, the geeks of Truro. In Truro, zoning measurse need a two-thirds vote to pass. There are 206 votes in all.

Voters narrowly approved one of four zoning amendments late Tuesday night at the annual town meeting. But town officials were still looking at the exact vote count on that article yesterday.

In a vote of 136 to 70, voters passed a new time limit on how quickly a cottage colony, cabin colony, motel or hotel can be converted to condominiums.

-Cape Cod Times

But did the amendment get the two-third vote? .66 multiplied by 206 means 136 is two-third of 206, so it is alright. But if you do the calculation with .6666 — a more accurate version of two-thirds — the amendment needs 137 votes, one more than what it got.

Can anyone clarify this?

Being There- "There will be Growth in Spring"

Thanks to Doomsday Cult Refugee, we came to know of this film, "Being There" (The last words in the movie, "Life is a state of mind." ):

In the much-discussed final sequence of "Being There,'' Chance casually walks onto the surface of a lake. We can see that he is really walking on the water, because he leans over curiously and sticks his umbrella down into it.

-roger ebert.com

Intriguing.

Peter Sellers as Chance the Gardener, a.k.a. Chauncey Gardiner: a simple gardener who has spent his entire life isolated from the world. Chance's calm and seemingly highly intelligent demeanor is essentially a blank canvas on which each of the film's characters paint their own picture, sometimes making Chance out to be much more than he really is. In most of his interactions with others, mostly prominent individuals, he pays rapt attention, nods appreciatively, and often restates their comments by way of agreement, all simply oblivious actions on his part, but the types of response to cause the others to be flattered and feel confirmed by this man who has recently entered their circle. He never learned to read or write.
this movie is a must see. it is a synchronicity! we need a real life Chauncey!
-Doomsday Cult Refugee.

We Googled some and found this dialogue:

President "Bobby": Mr. Gardner, do you agree with Ben, or do you think that we can stimulate growth through temporary incentives?
[Long pause]
Chance the Gardener: As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.
President "Bobby": In the garden.
Chance the Gardener: Yes. In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.
President "Bobby": Spring and summer.
Chance the Gardener: Yes.
President "Bobby": Then fall and winter.
Chance the Gardener: Yes.
Benjamin Rand: I think what our insightful young friend is saying is that we welcome the inevitable seasons of nature, but we're upset by the seasons of our economy.
Chance the Gardener: Yes! There will be growth in the spring!
Benjamin Rand: Hmm!
Chance the Gardener: Hmm!
President "Bobby": Hm. Well, Mr. Gardner, I must admit that is one of the most refreshing and optimistic statements I've heard in a very, very long time.
[Benjamin Rand applauds]
President "Bobby": I admire your good, solid sense. That's precisely what we lack on Capitol Hill.
-imdb

Hmmm...

We want to get hold of a DVD and watch this film...

Blogging will die an easy death as bloggers ditch it to tweet about themselves and their cat and what it ate

Four PM., Sun went into clouds, TV blaring, kids fighting it out- and a slight throbbing headache from an overnight excess...

We don't know whether this is relevant to what you do (it is pretty useless information for the likes of us), but still this looks interesting-

In a paper being published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of July 6, the scientists report that as zebra finches fine-tune their songs, the brain initially stores improvements in one brain pathway before transferring this learned information to the motor pathway for long-term storage.

-EurekAlert

We also found this interesting description of Zebra Finch Learning System:

Young zebra finches learn to sing by mimicking their fathers, whose song contains multiple syllables in a particular sequence. Like the babbling of human babies, young birds initially produce a disorganized stream of tones, but after practicing thousands of times they master the syllables and rhythms of their father's song.

Speaking of useless knowledge, here is more:

Using an imaging technique that enabled them to trace the process of neural activation in the brains of rats, University of Washington researchers have pinpointed the basolateral nucleus in the region of the brain called the of amygdala as the place where fear conditioning is encoded.

Neuroscientists previously suspected that both the amygdala and another brain region, the dorsal hippocampus, were where cues get associated when fear memories are formed. But the new work indicates that the role of the hippocampus is to process and transmit information about conditioned stimuli to the amygdala, said Ilene Bernstein, corresponding author of the new study and a UW professor of psychology.

-Science Daily

We can now blame our amygdala for our fears, so that is one bit of information that we uselessly processed.

Speaking of information processing, bits and pieces like what we have been dishing out are less than useful: it is in the proper setting, in the light of proper perspective, that they reveal their worth:.

Rambling, of course, but we are searching for a way to relate this piece of insight into this post:-

Blogging is hard when done regularly, and there are plenty of other things that are easier, such as tweeting or posting on someone’s Facebook wall. Blogging requires having something to say, which, in turn, requires some analysis, thought and creativity. All this must happen on a regular basis, on a daily basis, in fact. It’s essentially a lot like working at newspaper except that you don’t get paid. Why bother?

But there is another, deeper problem—that of the short attention span. It is far easier for the average person to read a 140 word tweet than to read a 500 word post on a blog. This is especially so when the blog is light on reader-relevant content as most blogs are.

-The Denver Bibliophile

We were watching the film, "The Proof", and we came across this dialogue: "The future of heat is the future of cold". We very well know where the heat of enthusiasm for blogging will take us- the cold comfort of Twitter (we have started to take to that particular form of triviality).

The Denver Bibliophile predicts that all bloggers won't wind up- those that remain would serve society as providers of links: such as this:

Irena D. was on her way from Moscow to Los Angeles on an unnamed airline.

When she boarded the plane, she was not feeling too well, but things really got out of hand when she stepped off the plane and collapsed. Apparently, one of her size F silicone implants had ruptured.

-Gadling

Be happy.

I have a hunch Irina D. is a Russiana.

Man without much hair and Woman with some hair- both together, dressed in black.

via faith in honest doubt

This should suffice, we think.

The China Story- Riots in Urumqi.

Remember the clashes in China? Urumqi, to be precise- this is a post about what has happened there- we googled and got some links, and we went through them, because we knew next to nothing except that there has been a riot there and people have been killed.

The clash is between minoriry Uighur Muslims and Han Chinese- both sides are blaming each other for what has happened.

According to The Big Picture in Boston.com,

On Sunday, July 5th in Urumqi, the capital of China's western Xinjiang region, thousands of minority ethnic Uighur residents marched, demanding a government investigation into an earlier incident - a brawl between Han Chinese and Uighurs in a toy factory in Shaoguan that ended with at least two Uighur deaths.

We can safely say that rumours were the spark that fomented this fire.

The Big Picture tells its story through pictures, and some of them are,

Interesting for us is the comment number 94,

What's wrong with the world ? Muslim needs respect & job.

I am in Delhi. Muslims plan to build a mosque in a area where there is no mosque and the whole neighborhood came against of it . Why ?? we just need basic right to live and earn.

Posted by Tanvir July 9, 09 04:17 AM

Let us leave that alone.

There are 56 ethnic groups in China, reports The Washington Post, and if you are interested kn the tension between them, you should read the article A Guide to China's Ethnic Groups.

Is there racism in China or not? From what we know of the human condition, we would bet that it exists, healthy and thriving, but there are lessons to be learnt, not only for the Chinese, but the whole world:

The truth is, there is racism here as surely as there is race. This is, in fact, unavoidable. But there is an important message behind the violence that has taken place in Urumqi, one that should not be lost, and that is: in order for multiple cultures to exist harmoniously in one country, there needs first to be a self-awareness, an awareness of prejudice and the roots. It does no one any good to simply say “but there is no prejudice!” Certainly thousands of people would not have taken to the streets over an imagined slight. It is possible that sometimes the authorities, being human and having their own biases, might sometimes allow those biases to get in the way of their judgment. When biases translate into action, that is racism, (and its relatives, classism, and sexism). The mistake is for any country, anywhere in the world, to assume that these biases don’t exist and to declare racism extinct, for it exists, and when ignored the consequences can be deadly, for all sides of the equation.

-eChinacities, "Is There Really No Racism in China?"

The cause of the riots at this instance, we do not know, but it is discussed here:

Two divergent narratives now seem to be unfolding. The best place to see an evolving digest of Chinese and Western coverage in one place is at EastSouthWestNorth. However, to summarize, in the broad Western media narrative, Uighurs ground down by decades of colonial oppression and incited by racism have erupted in rebellion. In the one told by Chinese media, "splittists" let by the Uighur exile Rebiyah Kadeer have engineered an outbreak of groundless violence (中) directed largely at innocent ethnic Han.

-Imagethief, "Riots in Xinjiang and the price of omission"

China is blaming rumours, and as could be expected from totalitarian states, it has gone into overdrive- as you can see from this blog post:

...Rebiya Kadeer, a former Chinese government official living in the US, is accused of masterminding the chaos in Xinjiang. The danger has spread to sexagenarian women! While the Xinjiang riots seemed to have no specific political purpose, but rather just huge masses of angry young people tragically out of control, China was smart enough to see through this ruse, right to its post-menopausal root. Her age? 62. I know, she’s not that old, but apparently she’s crossed the age threshold that tends to turn people into the type of violent anarchists that capture the hearts of youths. And she can do it concisely, in words that to the casual observer would not indicate violence. But according to China Daily, the government claims it has proof!"

-Cup of Cha, Chinese Government Fears Old People

Apart from blaming exiles, and other sundry entities, and restoring law and order, the Chinese Government banned some social sites, stating they too caused the problems:

The recent racial riots in Urumqi, Xinjiang, China have triggered the shutdown of several social media sites and blogs, notably Facebook, Twitter, Fanfou (Chinese version of Twitter), Danwei.org, and more. This follows a similar Twitter blackout a few weeks back, prompting the question whether some level of control and censorship is required in the Chinese Social Media scene.

-Southern China Community, "Maybe Jackie Chan was right about Chinese needing to be controlled"

This is supportive of the ban on social sites, but not in a blinkered way- it explores the question and finds the answers that it does.
If you want to keep a watch on this, you can do no better than follow this link to EastSouthWestNorth: "The Urumqi Mass Incident - Part 2". It is constantly being updated- but the download is likely to be quite heavy.

As of now,

China has raised the death toll from ethnic rioting in its far west to 184 and detailed for the first time the ethnicity of those killed, while tension lingered over the city at the center of the strife.

The official Xinhua news agency said on Saturday that 137 of those killed in the mayhem on July 5 in Urumqi, regional capital of Xinjiang, were Han Chinese, who form the majority of China's 1.3 billion population, including 111 men and 26 women.

Forty-six were Uighurs, the largely Muslim people of Xinjiang who share cultural bonds with Central Asian peoples. All but one of them were men. Uighurs make up 46 percent of Xinjiang's 21.3 million people, according to government statistics.

reports Reuters.

Let's see how this one plays out.

Ukulele music... (With Michael Jackson thrown in- and rescued by Veena)

Ever heard of Ukulele?- "do guitar players get upset when the guitar is used in a hokey / joking way... like I do when I see comedy ukulele....? probably not, eh?"- victoriavox- ( Love many, trust few, paddle your own canoe. (with a ukulele)).

Comedy (there is a Channel "Anarchy in the Ukulele" at kewego) or not, it is the in thing in London it seems:

Fliers for ukulele-themed events seem to be everywhere in London lately. In vintage shops, pubs, record stores throughout the city, it’s become increasingly common to see advertisements for ukulele jam sessions, a ukulele karaoke night or a full-on ukulele performance. The city’s love for the uke may be small, but it’s undeniable.
-New York Times

Victoriavox is dismayed by the misuse of ukulele, but she should take heart from the fact that it will never suffer the fate of Michael Jackson, or will it?-

We are indebted to Amit Varma's The India Uncut Blog for the YouTube of the Hindi Version of Beat It.




Hope you enjoyed that. We did.

Lest you get the idea that we in India gut Western Hits for fun, here is a great piece of Carnatic Music from the remix album 'Wow Classical!'(by Veenai E Gayathri- an icon in her own right), that makes Heal the World sound dignified in a meditative kind of way. Hope you listen to that.

Veenai E Gayathri has her own blog: Jasmine Strings, and in a post that pays tribute to Michael Jackson, she dedicates this song "in the memory of one of the greatest child prodigies and showmen the world had ever known!"

She herself is one of the greatest child prodigies, and this dedication should inspire us to be humble.


Be Happy.

How to get links from this blog and elsewhere more efficiently and quickly...

This is friday night and here are some reflections on what I have been doing in this blog.

We started out as a group blog, and it is a sad fact that it is only I that posts regularly, and others are not at all frequent. Initially I worried about why they were not posting, why they were not commenting, whether anyone reads this or not, so on and so forth.

Not now- my focus has shifted- so much so that I don't worry about how many people visit this blog or how many comment. In fact, I feel some dismay when I see a comment, because I have to reply out of courtesy (not that your comment is unwelcome, it is just that I am disinterested in this, sorry- but feel free to comment, it helps me know what I am doing).

Phew! That was egotistical- this whole business is narcissistic, so it goes with the territory.

What I want to do now, is to clarify what I am doing here nowadays- I am just providing links to what I find diverting.

How I do this is the point of the post- and also, how you can get them quickly than through this blog- you don't have to read this blog at all!

What happens is that I have subscribed to a few news aggregators and blogs with Google Reader. Whenever I get a good story or post I like, I share them on the Reader, and then through the FriendFeed bookmarklet, send it to Twitter.

So there are four ways to find these links: through this blog, or Google Reader, or FriendFeed or Twitter.

If you follow this blog, you get the links late- some of them find the light of day weeks later- and some not at all; and another advantage is the verbiage from me.

If you follow the Reader, you get the links as and when I share them- the problem is, there are some long posts, and you have to scroll past them.

FriendFeed is good- You get the headline, plus a small extract with a photo or two- if you are here for the links, please make use of Friend Feed.

If you find that even that is too much to read, I hope you follow this blog through Twitter. You only get the headlines, and then you click a link to get to the original story. If you are short of time, Twitter is best- but sometimes, I am lazy and don't tweet the point of the story in the headline.

You might wonder about the point of this all- it is just that when you read a story and move on, nothing happens, but if you share them, it feels like there is a meaning to it. It is a lame excuse for wasting my time, but this will do for now.

By the way, I think Twitter is a fantastic concept- I remember someone asking what is the use of Twitter, and for that I have to talk about DericBownds (Retired Univ. Wisc. Professor, studies brain and mind), psychcentral (Psychology and mental health information and support, since 1995), weirdnews (We try our best to bring the weirdest and most offbeat news as possible), BreakingNewz (Our mission is to be the essential global news network, providing distinctive news services of the highest quality, reliability and objectivity), tricyclemag (Tricycle: The Buddhist Review—Buddhism, Meditation & Community), haohaoreport (All the best news and blog posts about China) and more... I get great links from them.

Twitter has many more uses, and I make use of some, it is just great to find stuff you want to read:

As I post, the last five tweets I got from those I follow are these:

Home

1. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   weirdnewsWill Fertility Research Make Men Obsolete?http://is.gd/1tJmF2 minutes ago from Seesmic Desktop
   
   
   
   
   
2. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   ELICOMPUTERGUYCool Pictures Pucon Chile http://bit.ly/yr1z55 minutes ago from API
   
   
   
   
   
3. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   BreakingNewzPaper 'to refute' hacking claims http://is.gd/1tISm6 minutes ago from API
   
   
   
   
   
4. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   BreakingNewzMedtronic recalls some Paradigm sets used by diabetics http://is.gd/1tINk12 minutes ago from API
   
   
   
   
   
5. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   darjimdsimply accept and flow. Become river like. Become a white cloud floating in the sky, and let the winds take you wheresoever they take....15 minutes ago from web
   
   
   
   
   
       
6. 
   
   
   
   
   

And these are the most recent five tweets I marked as favorites:

Your Favorites

1. 
   
   
   
   
   
   DharmaTalksIf you stay focused, then you learn your lessons. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross #quoteabout 4 hours ago from TweetDeck
   
   
   
   
     
2. 
   
   
   
   
   
   tricyclemagLike an umbrella, a mind is only useful when it is open. http://3.ly/eDB #dailydharmaabout 6 hours ago from web
   
   
   
   
     
3. 
   
   
   
   
   
   SprayAdaptogens"Life is not waiting for the storms to pass-it's about learning to dance in the rain."~Unknownabout 7 hours ago from API
   
   
   
   
     
4. 
   
   
   
   
   
   sonriversRamana on meditation: “What posture is best?”... The Maharshi answered. “Let the mind assume the right posture. That is all.” (namaste)about 15 hours ago from twhirl
   
   
   
   
     
5. 
   
   
   
   
   
   qjohnhttp://is.gd/1sWmE Time Magazine's 1942 article about Ramakrishnaabout 15 hours ago from Seesmic Desktop
   
   
   
   
     
6. 
   
   
   
   

I think you get the idea...

But what about this blog? Don't I want lots of people following this and commenting? No. Definitely a big NO. I have no such expectations- mainly because there are two blogs I admire for their quality:

The Daily Irrelevant has 29 readers, and
Small Bits & Pieces has 39 followers. There'll be more people reading those blogs, and I am sure I won't do anything that will go anywhere near them. So?

Once again, a rambling post- see what I mean?

Be happy.