Eyecatchers-63: "A Culture City to Revive Confucianism"

China plans to spend billions of dollars to build a culture symbolic project in the eastern province of Shandong, home to ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius, to revive traditional cultural values, including Confucianism.

Jiang Daming, governor of Shandong, announced at a news conference in Beijing that the “Chinese Cultural Symbolic City” will be built in the Ji’ning City, spanning more than 300 sq.km.

The city will incorporate the country-level city of Qufu, ancestral home of Confucius, and Zoucheng, home of Mencius, and the Jiulong Mountain range between the two cities. The whole project covers refurbishing the homes of the two ancient philosophers and building new architectures in the Jiulong mountain range, Jiang said.

The project planning and construction commission, chaired by top Shandong officials, will solicit ideas on project designing from the public.

Details of the solicitation are available at the city’s website, www.ccsc.gov.cn.

Jiang said all design plans will be reviewed by a consultation panel of some 30 top artists, sinologists and architects in China. The ambitious engineering project, initiated by 69 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2001, aims to showcase the traditional values like peace, harmony and ingenuity advocated by ancient philosophers such as Confucius.

The project has won supports from many, including Pei Ieoh Ming, renowned architect and glass pyramid designer of Louvre, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Xu Jialu, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress and an initiator of the project, said: “The city will exhibit and commemorate the long-honoured Chinese values, such as refining personal morality, cherishing peace and harmony, and filial piety. Ideally, it shall be the spiritual home for the whole nation.” Xu told reporters that the total budget of the project will be made after design plans are finalized, and forecasts the total cost to surpass about $4.2 billion estimated in 2004.

Construction is expected to start before 2010.

Courtesy: Xinhua and The Hindu, March 3, 2008

Health Watch-1: Snoring and Heart

Researchers at a Budapest university have found that loud snoring with breathing pauses is linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

Courtesy: The Hindu, March 3, 2008 (Newscape)

A Thought for Today : March 5, 2008

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books - Longfellow

Letters-9: "Forgotten Farmers"

1. I was shocked to learn that the UP Govt gave cheques for amounts as low as Rs.3 to drought-affected farmers in Bundelkhand (‘Doomed in dryland’, The Week, Feb.17, 2008). Farmers are taken for granted and cheated. We forget that it is the fruits of their toil that everybody, including the ministers, enjoys at the dining table. – Sanjay Pawar, On email

2. It is a shame that the government gave cheques for Rs.3 to drought-hit farmers. Perhaps, even the cheque leaf would cost more! – N.S.Rajaram, On email.

3. It is a shame that political parties are blaming each other when 600 farmers have already died of starvation or committed suicide in Bundelkhand. Strangely enough, the crisis went unheeded, though the region had been reeling under drought for the past five years. Howe can the government be so blind? - Harish Saxena, Noida, UP

4. That officials have tried to suppress cases of starvation death in Bundelkhand is a serious matter. I was shocked to read that officials prevented a man from taking the body of his father, who died of starvation, for autopsy. If the police action in Nandigram was state-sponsored terror, this was worse. Human rights groups should take up the matter and ensure that the guilty officials are punished. – Prem Kumar, Lucknow

Courtesy: The Week, March 9, 2008 (Letters to the Editor)

A Thought for Today : March 4, 2008

Compromise makes a good umbrella but a poor roof - James Russell Lowell

Science Watch-4: "Ulysses satellite freezing to death"

After 17 years of studying the sun and the solar system, the Ulysses solar probe is about to freeze to death, NASA and the European Space Agency have said.

The satellite had long outlasted the five-year mission it began in 1990, but continued to transmit useful data on solar winds. More recently, its plutonium power source had weakened and its fuel was freezing as the probe made a wide circle of the sun, traveling as far as Jupiter.

In January, engineers tried a long-shot manoeuvre to heat up the fuel. But their effort backfired and hastened Ulysses’ death by months.

The $ 250 million probe was a joint ESA-NASA project. After being released from orbit by astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery in October 1990, Ulysses made nearly three full wide circles of the sun from above and below its poles, logging nearly 10 billion km overall.

When the satellite recently started to fail, it had just finished examining the sun’s North Pole for a third time.

“This mission has rewritten textbooks,” said Arik Posner, NASA’s Ulysses program scientist. What made Ulysses unique and crucial to scientists was its orbit and perspective. It provided astronomers with a three-dimensional look at the sun and the rest of the solar system. Most of the planets line up along the same geometric plane generally around the middle of the sun and that is where most of the space probes orbit, too. But Ulysses made long wide circles of the sun’s poles, essentially gazing down at the sun and solar system from above and below instead of around the middle.

That three-dimensional data from Ulysses was important for scientists trying to figure out the solar wind. These winds blast away from the sun at 1.6 million km an hour in all directions, said David McComas, a scientist with the Ulysses project.

The wind is crucial because it protects the earth from cosmic radiation, causes geomagnetic storms on the earth, and causes Aurora borealis. “We understand it now, we did not understand it before,” Mr.McComas said.

Courtesy: AP and The Hindu, February 24, 2008

A Thought for Today : March 3, 2008

Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity - T. S. Eliot

Letters-8: ‘Sons of the Soil’ Slogan

The Bombay of yore prided itself on being a melting pot of cultures and El Dorado for those dreaming to make something of their lives. Many were willing to bear hardships for that ‘pot of gold’. An example is my great-aunt who had come to the city with her little daughter to escape harassment by her husband and in-laws. When her daughter died of typhoid, my aunt made her life in the city’s suburbs. Another woman, who is a friend of my mother, had come to the city long ago. After working in a ration shop initially, she completed her MBBS and moved to the US in the 50s. That was Bombay for many. We should take pride in being Indians and go beyond state and linguistic classifications. And not allow politicians to use the ‘sons of the soil’ slogan to tear us apart to garner votes. - Suman G.Pai, On email.

A Thought for Today : March 2, 2008

Yearning for the seemingly impossible is the path to human progress - Bryant H. McGill

Facts & Figures-25 : Undiscovered Planet at the edge of Solar System

Japanese scientists studying the path of space debris over the last four billion years postulated an undiscovered "Planet X," between 30 and 70 percent the size of Earth, at the edges of the solar system.

Courtesy: Weekly Review, Harper's Weekly, March 4, 2008

Facts & Figures-24 : Drug-resistant TB found in 45 countries

The World Health Organization announced that virtually untreatable drug-resistant tuberculosis could now be found in 45 countries with a half-million new cases each year, and that the highest rate of infection was in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Courtesy: Weekly Review, Harper's Weekly, March 4, 2008

A Thought for Today : March 1, 2008

Success depends on your backbone, not your wishbone – Author not known

A Thought for Today : February 29, 2008

Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan - Norman Vincent Peale

12 Ways of Winning People to Your Way of Thinking

1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
2. Show respect for the other man’s opinions. Never tell a man he is wrong.
3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
4. Begin in a friendly way.
5. Get the other person saying, “yes, yes” immediately.
6. Get the other do a great deal of talking.
7. Let the other man feel that the idea is his.
8. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
9. Be sympathetic with the other person’s point of view.
10. Appeal to the nobler motives.
11. Dramatize your ideas.
12. Throw down a challenge.

Courtesy: “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie

A Thought for Today : February 28, 2008

Greater is he who acts from love than he who acts from fear - Simeon Ben Eleazar

Eyecatchers-62: "Darwin's Legacy"

On February 12, 2009, most of the world will celebrate the 200th birth anniversary of a great scientist whose theory – based on incredibly laborious empirical observation and once-in-a-millennium-insights – forever changed humankind’s perceptions of itself and of the natural world around. Next year will also mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s great work, On the origin of species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. The five year (December 27, 1831 – October 2, 1836) the English naturalist spent on board H.M.S.Beagle in a round-the-world voyage gave him the opportunity to study and compare the fauna, flora, and geology of many distant lands. It led him to wonder about the diversity of life forms he found and why creatures occupying similar environments in places around the globe could be so vastly different. The idea that biological species were not immutable but were capable of change was in itself not new at the time. Darwin would have been familiar with the speculations of his own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, and the French zoologist, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. But within a couple of years following the Beagle voyage, Darwin was going much further. He was thinking about a common origin for all life on the planet when he sketched in his notebook a ‘tree of life’, implying that all species had diversified from a common stalk.

However, Darwin was not the only one thinking alone such lines. In 1858, he received a letter suggesting ideas remarkably like his own; it was from Alfred Russell Wallace, who was collecting biological specimens in Southeast Asia. Papers putting forth both points of view were duly presented at a meeting of the Linnaean Society of London. The Origin of Species (as Darwin’s 1859 magnum opus came to be titled in 1872, in the sixth edition) marshaled a vast body of evidence and presented his arguments in favour of evolution driven by a process of natural selection that allowed traits best suited to a particular environment to spread in a population. Evolution and a common origin for all life lie at the heart of biology. In an essay strikingly titled ‘nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,’ the geneticist and evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky declared: “Without that light [biology] becomes a pile of sundry facts – some of them interesting or curious but making no meaningful picture as a whole.” The elucidation of the structure of the DNA, the unraveling of the genetic code, and the ability to sequence the entire genome of even complex organisms have served only to lay bare the processes that produce life, which all living organisms share, and show how evolutionary pressures act on those processes. As though this were not enough, Darwin’s ideas have inspired, over the past century-and-a-half, “powerful images and insights in science, humanities and the arts,” as an essay in Nature reminds us.

Courtesy: Editorial, The Hindu, Feb.12, 2008

A Thought for Today : February 27, 2008

Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance - Samuel Johnson

Facts & Figures-23 : Sperm Damage affects Four Generations!

According to a recent U.S.study, mean can pass down sperm damage caused by alcohol, cigarettes, and other environmental toxins for up to four generations.

Courtesy: Weekly Review, Harper's Weekly, Feb.26, 2008

Facts & Figures-22 : The Sun will vaporize the Earth!

Scientists revealed that the sun will vaporize the earth if we cannot figure out how to change our orbit within 7.6 billion years.

Courtesy: Week Review, Harper's Weekly, Feb.26, 2008

Facts & Figures-22 : Japan Launches Experimental Satellite

Japan launched an experimental satellite that would provide Internet access speeds of 1.2 gigabytes per second.

Courtesy: Weekly Review, Harper's Weekly, Feb.26, 2008