Sunday, June 17, 2012

DON'T CHEAT SELF- DO U REALLY LOVE?


DON’T BE A CHEATER-
This and That Day or Week or month or Year or Century-
Father’s/Mother’s/Christmas/Dipawali/New Year/Brother’s/Sister’s/Friendhip/Solidarity/Independence/Children’s/Sr. Citizen’s/Women’s…..and so on.

Why such appointment of a specific days or short periods to express love, to meet, to gift, to celebrate? Why restrict to a single day or short periods; the love, the happiness, the togetherness etc. that should have been a continuous happening, as frequent as possible?

With the advancing boundaries between villages, cities, states, countries people started spreading out due to compelling reasons of fulfilling basic necessities of self and family. Family used to encompass neighbours, locality, villages. All occasions of celebration or sadness, were ‘our’ occasions. But with spreading out to distant places, personal expression of love, solidarity became difficult. Probably the special events were appointed when socially it became a practice to personally meet the family. On such events employers would gladly give leave of absence to their employees; businesses/shops would gladly remain closed and so on.

To put it briefly, the appointment of specific periods to express love and concern was in culmination of the strong desire to be close to the family. But the ‘stupidity’ of the intelligent humans made such events as in lieu of being close to the family- family in a very broad sense of the word. So a telephone, a hand written letter, a printed card selected out of huge choice of lovely ready made expressions of love, sorrow, condolences, greetings et all. No sweat. Go and buy. Then there came automatic reminders and automatic emails on specified events. No need to remember. Elders came to be referred as ‘furnitures’ in coded language. The ‘love and concern’ deteriorated to such extent for example one set of parents would feel proud because his children staying some distance away, always sent birthday and marriage anniversary greetings and the neighbours children always forgot to do so. One had ample time for annual vacations in international tours but ‘no time’ for the ‘furniture’.

So just think hard before sending a card or telephoning or emailing to someone to profess your love and concern in somebody’s catchy slogans. Is it in lieu of love or because of the strong love surging in your hearts and personal meeting to express it is really and genuinely not possible. If not so, don’t send it- that would be cheating. Examine your 24 hrs, and 365 days- how they were spent. Did you avoid personal stays with people, for whom you profess great love via the emails and preprinted cards, and gave clever excuses? Don’t be a cheater.


Friday, June 15, 2012

TOO POSH TO PUSH- CEASARIAN DELIVERRIES


The 1 Percent Birth

By Tim Newcomb Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. (TIMES, 23 JAN 2012)


Closing hospital wings for complete redecoration in anticipation of your two- or three-night stay may seem excessive, but for celebrity soon-to-be moms, having a hospital wing at your disposal is simply part of the baby budget.
Beyonc and Jay-Z welcomed their baby girl Blue Ivy Carter at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan amid reports that the star couple funded renovations prior to their (and Blue's) arrival--and that the security surrounding the event irked other new moms and their families, whose babies were apparently not quite as special.
Ellie Miller, a co-founder of Los Angeles--based Ellie & Melissa, the Baby Planners, says it isn't just celebs who opt for the star treatment. The rest of the 1% give birth differently too. "It has always been the well-to-do that get a private suite," she says. "The celebrities can go over the top."
Bespoke medical care isn't just for babies. Many hospitals have VIP wings with hotel-like accommodations. And the number of concierge-doctors--they don't accept insurance and often charge yearly "membership" fees--increased 46% in the past 18 months, according to the American Academy of Private Physicians.
But birth is big business--worth more than $30 billion a year--and this limousine labor is highly profitable. It often involves complete room redecoration prior to Mom's arrival. And expect an entire team to attend her once the baby is born. Miller has seen these types of teams grow--with massage therapists, special music options, an interior decorator, a chef, a photographer and especially a makeup artist; where there are photographers, there must be makeup. Miller says nearly every L.A. hospital is ready for celebrities and the privacy--and security--concerns that go with a well-publicized birth, as well as the VIP treatment. "There is really no end to the options," Miller says. "And with a lot of celebrities, but not Beyonc, having C-sections, they are staying longer." Too posh to push, as they say in the U.K.(Ceasarian deliveries and not normal push deliveries of babies).
Hospitals from coast to coast specialize in the luxe maternity, but only people in New York City and Los Angeles can turn birth into a movie production. At Cedars-Sinai in L.A., deluxe maternity suites offer three rooms with hardwood floors, a personal aide 24/7 and other lush hotel-style amenities, all for about $3,800 per day. On Manhattan's east side, the Mount Sinai Hospital boasts three-room suites with views of Central Park for $4,000 per night--an average price for these high-end private options, Miller says. That's above the hospital's standard charges for, say, delivering a baby.



Biocentrism / Robert Lanza’s Theory of Everything by Robert Lanza with Bob Berman

Biocentrism / Robert Lanza’s Theory of Everything
by Robert Lanza with Bob Berman

how-life-and-consciousness-are-the-keys-to-understanding-the-true-nature-of-the-universe

“Robert Lanza, a world-renowned scientist who has spanned many fields from drug delivery to stem cells to preventing animal extinction, and clearly one of the most brilliant minds of our times, has done it again. ‘A New Theory of the Universe’ takes into account all the knowledge we have gained over the last few centuries … placing in perspective our biologic limitations that have impeded our understanding of greater truths surrounding our existence and the universe around us. This new theory is certain to revolutionize our concepts of the laws of nature for centuries to come.” —Anthony Atala, internationally recognized scientist and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

Every now and then, a simple yet radical idea shakes the very foundations of knowledge. The startling discovery that the world was not flat challenged and ultimately changed the way people perceived themselves and their relationships with the world. For most humans of the 15th century, the notion of Earth as ball of rock was nonsense. The whole of Western natural philosophy is undergoing a sea change again, forced upon us by the experimental findings of quantum theory. At the same time, these findings have increased our doubt and uncertainty about traditional physical explanations of the universe’s genesis and structure.

Biocentrism completes this shift in worldview, turning the planet upside down again with the revolutionary view that life creates the universe instead of the other way around. In this new paradigm, life is not just an accidental byproduct of the laws of physics.

Biocentrism takes the reader on a seemingly improbable but ultimately inescapable journey through a foreign universe—our own—from the viewpoints of an acclaimed biologist and a leading astronomer. Switching perspective from physics to biology unlocks the cages in which Western science has unwittingly managed to confine itself. Biocentrism shatters the reader’s ideas of life, time and space, and even death. At the same time, it releases us from the dull worldview that life is merely the activity of an admixture of carbon and a few other elements; it suggests the exhilarating possibility that life is fundamentally immortal.

Biocentrism awakens in readers a new sense of possibility and is full of so many shocking new perspectives that the reader will never see reality the same way again.

WARREN BUFFETT – HIS WIFE SUSAN


WARREN BUFFETT – HIS WIFE SUSAN
Buffett's other hero is his first wife Susan Thompson Buffett, who suffered from oral cancer and died in 2004. She too had the inner scorecard. "In everything that's been written about me, I've never felt that my wife was remotely done justice to," says Buffett. "She was just an incredibly wise and good person. She didn't do things with a metric attached to them. She was just as interested in one person as in another. I couldn't say that about myself."
The two met in 1950 through Warren's sister Bertie, who attended Northwestern University with Susie. They married two years later, after Buffett had done a stint at Columbia Business School in New York City and gone to work as an investor on Wall Street and then for himself in Omaha. "She put me together," he says simply, and by all accounts, it's true. Susie was a born nurturer who took care of everything from dressing Warren to caring for their home and three children to arranging their social life and engaging with his family. Warren's mother Leila was a difficult woman prone to hysteria and vicious verbal attacks on her children. Susie headed her off and managed her needs so that Warren could be left to do what he was good at--making money.
But she was also responsible for deeper transformations, like Warren's conversion from Republican to Democrat. A civil rights supporter, Susie was involved in helping integrate Omaha in the 1960s, going so far as to front for blacks who wanted to buy houses in white neighborhoods. She took Warren to hear people like Martin Luther King Jr. speak. One speech in particular, given at Iowa's Grinnell College, became a turning point for Buffett. The topic was "Remaining Awake during a Revolution," and one line in particular chimed deeply with the young investor: "It may be true that the law can't change the heart," said King, "but it can restrain the heartless." It was something that Buffett began to think deeply about. Led by Susie, he became more involved in liberal politics, helping overturn anti-Semitic membership rules at the Omaha Club and doing Democratic fundraising at a national level.
It was the first time there had been space in Warren's life for anything outside of moneymaking, and it was Susie's doing. She was "a great giver," he says, "and I was a great taker." But the dichotomy eventually resulted in separation. After their children were grown, Susie, who hungered for a life of arts and culture that she, could never have in Omaha and who wanted to pursue a career as a singer, decided to move out of their home and into an apartment in San Francisco. Warren reluctantly agreed. "We were like two parallel lines," she said in an interview with Charlie Rose two months before her death. "He was very intellectual, always reading and thinking big thoughts. I learned to have my own life."
But Susie worried about Warren, who was socially and practically inept. "I'm lucky if I can get him to comb his hair," she said. "He needs help." So she introduced him to Astrid Menks, a hostess at a local French restaurant and a friend of Susie's who became his mistress and eventually, after Susie's death, his wife. "I called Astrid. I said, Astrid, will you take Warren, make him some soup, go over there and look after him?" She did. And she stayed. It all happened consensually; the three even sent out Christmas cards together. It worked for all of them. "He appreciates it, and I appreciate it," said Susie. "She's a wonderful person."
Seven years on from Susie's death, Buffett is still coming to terms with it all. When I ask if he regretted being apart from her in her final years, he insists, "We didn't live that separately. We were as connected in the last years of her life, perhaps more connected, than we'd ever been. We had exactly the same view of the world. We just didn't want to go about it in the same way." He tells me about her interview with Rose, the only major one she ever granted, which was done with his encouragement, because he wanted the world to better understand the woman who was most important to him.
Then his cheerful face crumples, and he bursts into tears. "Her death is--it's just terrible. It's the only thing that's really up there," he says, his voice shaking. "I still can't talk about it." It takes several moments, as we sit together at the table overlooking the golf course at the Happy Hollow Club, for Buffett to recover. I put my hand on his arm. Eventually, we move on to an easier subject--his investments.

WARREN BUFFET- RADICAL VIEWS


WARREN BUFFET (WB) SAYS, SOME EXCERPTS.
OTHER TYCOONS AND WANTING TO BE TYCOONS, CONSIDER VIEWS AND PERCEPTIONS OF WB AS GUIDANCE AND ‘GOLDEN ADIVICE’ MAY ALSO ACCEPT AND FOLLOW THESE.

(Taken with thanks from the article in TIMES- Jan. 23, 2012- Profile - WARREN BUFFET by Rana Foroohar)

Genes, luck and birthplace may have helped make Buffett the world's third richest man. 

He's an ardent capitalist who is demanding higher taxes on the rich and more government spending on the rest to solve our economic problems. Although he is giving away 99% of his $45 billion fortune, he operates less out of a sense of noblesse oblige than noblesse outrage. The country that made him rich is lousy with bailout billionaires, a culture of selfishness and a loss of opportunities. "We can rise to any challenge but not if people feel we're in a plutocracy," he says. "We have to get serious about shared sacrifice." (Plutocracy= government or controlling class of the wealthy).

Shared sacrifice, to Buffett, means not just higher taxes for the rich--who often pay extremely low rates on money made by moving money around--but also curbs on short-termism. He'd like to see speculative-trading gains taxed at much higher rates. He believes CEOs of publicly bailed-out institutions should be on the hook for everything they own if their institutions go bust. He's only half joking when he says he'd like to see private schools banned so that rich families would be forced to invest in the public K--12 system. (No Buffett in Omaha has ever gone to a private school, he notes proudly.) 

It's the opposite of the Darwinian capitalism embraced by many prominent conservatives who believe the market is the only means to distribute the economy's assets. "The market system rewards me outlandishly for what I do," Buffett says, "but that doesn't mean I'm any more deserving of a good life than a teacher or a doctor or someone who fights in Afghanistan."

He doesn't want to stop bond traders from making their billions: "Capitalism has unleashed more human potential than any other system in history." But, he says, "We need a tax system that essentially takes very good care of the people who just really aren't as well adapted to the market system but are nevertheless doing useful things in society." Bond traders and corporate raiders of the world, take note: your higher taxes should subsidize bridge builders and child-care workers.

In Washington, where economic theory is now a partisan grudge match, the prospect of higher taxes and income redistribution enrages Republicans and their business and banking allies. Republican Mitch McConnell said last September that if Buffett felt guilty, he should just "send in a check." Republicans subsequently proposed a rule that would make it easier for millionaires--and McConnell is one--to voluntarily pay more taxes.

Buffett paid a tax rate of only 11% on adjusted gross income of $62,855,038 in 2010. (After deductions, most of which were for charitable contributions, he paid a still low 17% rate on his $39,814,784 of taxable income; his office staff, meanwhile, paid percentages somewhere in the 30s.) 

Asked if he's ever considered writing a check for what he thought his taxes should have been, he says, "I have thought about that. But what I've thought more about, because Mitch McConnell put it out there, is offering to match the total amount of voluntary contributions made by all Republican members of Congress. And I will. I'll go 1 for 1 with any Republican. And I'll go 3 for 1 with McConnell." He chuckles. "And I'm not worried."

At 81, Buffett says he's in a unique position to speak out. "If you are a CEO or you have to deal with a conservative board or you have a boss that might get upset by what you say, you can't do what I do. But I don't have a boss. It's hard to hurt me. If you don't speak up now, when are you going to? As my partner Charlie told me, it's like saving up sex for your old age!"

AUSTERITY MEASURES
The reason people listen to Buffett, at a time when being the 0.001% may not seem like the best public relations asset, is that in matters of finance he's very often right. But it's also that he's not like other billionaires.
Buffett lives not on an isolated island of wealth but in Omaha, in a shingle-roofed five-bedroom house on an unpretentious street that looks as if it might belong to a successful dentist.


The corporation he runs, Berkshire Hathaway, owns 76 businesses--from a candy company to an electric utility--that throw off $1 billion a month in free cash, and he holds major stakes in many of the country's biggest blue-chip firms, including Coca-Cola, American Express, IBM and Procter & Gamble. Yet aside from his indulgence in private air travel (he named his first jet the Indefensible), he estimates his personal yearly expenses to be no more than $150,000. The company canteen in his small office suite, where he has a habit of walking around turning off lights in empty rooms, features a beat-up wooden table, a faux-leather sectional couch and Formica countertops.

His investment habits are as austere as the decor. In an age of leverage, he likes to steer clear of debt, preferring to keep from $10 billion to $20 billion of liquid assets on hand at all times--"so that I can sleep better," he says. In a world of high-frequency traders with two-hour sell windows, Buffett's investment horizon is somewhere between 10 years and forever.

Now he's President Obama's highest-profile supporter, a crusader for higher taxes on the millionaires' club. As he wrote in an op-ed article for the New York Times last summer, in which he noted that his personal tax rate was lower than that of his office staff, Washington needs to "stop coddling the superrich."

His worry is that in this era of late-stage capitalism, the next generations won't be as lucky as he has been. The problem of inequality is likely, he says, to get worse. When people can't climb up the ladder, it's bad for the economy.

"Someone in America who has a 90-point IQ is qualified for many fewer jobs today than he was 100 years ago."

The solution, to him, is obvious. "People who make withdrawals from societies' resources--like me with my plane--should have to pay a lot for it." That means not only higher taxes for the rich and an extremely progressive European-style consumption tax but also fewer loopholes for corporations. Buffett says it's "baloney" that corporate America's tax rates are too high and says companies should not be allowed to repatriate profits tax-free. (It'll just encourage more investment to flow overseas.) In general, he says, "I find the argument that we need lower taxes to create more jobs mystifying, because we've had the lowest taxes in this decade and about the worst job creation ever."

He (Howard Buffet, four terms Republican Congressman and WB’s father) once turned down a raise because his constituents had voted him in at a lower salary. And he was shocked by the way his peers padded payrolls with friends, relatives, mistresses and fake expenses. 

I ask Buffett if, when he started, his aim was to be the richest man in the world. "I knew I wanted to make a lot of money. But that's because I knew I wanted to be independent. That was very important to me. The money itself is all going to charity," says Buffett, who in 2006 pledged 99% of his personal wealth to charity, with the bulk going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "I'm really just a steward of it for now." 

He gives the ratings agency Moody's and the investment bank Goldman Sachs, both of which he owns stakes in, a pass for dubious behavior during the financial crisis, as they were both a part of "a mass delusion. Everyone felt houses couldn't go down."
In a speech delivered at the famous Allen & Co. Sun Valley Conference in 1999, at the height of the Internet bubble, Buffett succinctly explained the virtues of being a Luddite: (Luddite- one of a group of early 19th century English workmen destroying laborsaving machinery as a protest; broadly : one who is opposed to especially technological change).

 "[The automobile was] the most important invention, probably, of the first half of the 20th century. It had an enormous impact on people's lives. If you had seen at the time of the first cars how this country would develop in connection with autos, you would have said, 'This is the place I must be.' But of the 2,000 companies, as of a few years ago, only three car companies survived. So autos had an enormous impact on America but the opposite direction on investors."

As for President Obama--should he win re-election--Buffett would like to see him lay out the truth about the road ahead to the American people. "I think that the American people would be pretty responsive to shared sacrifice if it was really shared and they knew what to expect," says Buffett. "I've always thought that part of my job at Berkshire is telling people what they should expect and what they shouldn't expect from us. I don't want to be held to things I can't do. On the other hand, I shouldn't totally downplay what can be done just to create a phony target."
Buffett feels the President missed an opportunity to do that right after he took office. But he's optimistic that it can still be done. "We need to tell people that the road is going to be long. We've got too many damn houses. They're not going to go away. This recovery is going to take a long time. And the financial crisis has exposed a lot of flaws in our system." But the flaws can be fixed. With the right rules, says Buffett, our system can work again.
"It's like Martin Luther King said. We aren't trying to change the heart. We're trying to restrain the heartless.
"Isn't that," he asks, "what government is all about?"

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2104309,00.html#ixzz1xqAjWu00

Monday, June 11, 2012


CALCULATION OF ‘YUGA’ – CYCLE OF AGE OR EQUINOCTIAL CYCLES.

( BASED ON THE BOOK ‘HOLY SCIENCY’ BY THE ENLIGHTENED GURU SHRI YUKTESHWAR GIRI.
. THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS ARE FROM THE BOOK ‘AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI’ BY HIS DISCIPLE SHRI PARAMHANS YOGANAND (GIRI) WHERE A REFERENCE IS MADE TO THE ABOVE IN THE CHAPTER 16 ‘OUTWITTING THE STARS’ ).

    “The starry inscription at one's birth, I came to understand, is not that man is a puppet of his past. Its message is rather a prod to pride; the very heavens seek to arouse man's determination to be free from every limitation. God created each man as a soul, dowered with individuality, hence essential to the universal structure, whether in the temporary role of pillar or parasite. His freedom is final and immediate, if he so wills; it depends not on outer but inner victories.
Sri Yukteshwar discovered the mathematical application of a 24,000-year equinoctial cycle to our present age.4
The cycle is divided into –
an Ascending Arc (aroha) and
a Descending Arc (avaroha),
each of 12,000 years.

Within each Arc fall four Yugas or Ages, called 
  1. Kali,
  2. Dwapara,
  3. Treta, and 
  4. Satya, 

corresponding to the Greek ideas of

5.     Iron,
6.      Bronze,
7.     Silver, and
  1. Golden Ages.

My guru determined by various calculations that
·        the last Kali Yuga or Iron Age, of the Ascending Arc, started about A.D. 500.
·        The Iron Age, (Kali Yuga) 1200 years in duration, is a span of materialism;
·        It ended about A.D. 1700. That year ushered in Dwapara Yuga, a 2400-year period of electrical and atomic-energy developments, the age of telegraph, radio, airplanes, and other space-annihilators.
·        The 3600-year period of Treta Yuga will start in A.D. 4100; This age will be marked by common knowledge of telepathic communications and other time-annihilators.
·        During the 4800 years of Satya Yuga, final age in an ascending arc, the intelligence of a man will be completely developed; he will work in harmony with the divine plan.
·        A descending arc of 12,000 years, starting from 12500 A.D. with a descending Golden Age (Satya Yuga) of 4800 years,
·        then begins5 for the world. Man gradually sinks into ignorance. These cycles are the eternal rounds of maya, the contrasts and relativities of the phenomenal universe.6
Man, one by one, escapes from creation's prison of duality as he awakens to consciousness of his inseverable divine unity with the Creator.
(Note: 6 The Hindu scriptures place the present world-age as occurring within the Kali Yuga of a much longer universal cycle than the simple 24,000-year equinoctial cycle with which Sri Yukteswar was concerned. The universal cycle of the scriptures is 4,300,560,000 years in extent, and measures out a Day of Creation or the length of life assigned to our planetary system in its present form. This vast figure given by the rishis is based on a relationship between the length of the solar year and a multiple of Pi (3.1416, the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle).
The life span for a whole universe, according to the ancient seers, is 314,159,000,000,000 solar years, or "One Age of Brahma."
Scientists estimate the present age of the earth to be about two billion years, basing their conclusions on a study of lead pockets left as a result of radioactivity in rocks.
The Hindu scriptures declare that an earth such as ours is dissolved for one of two reasons: the inhabitants as a whole become either completely good or completely evil.
The world-mind thus generates a power which releases the captive atoms held together as an earth.)