Author Archives: marcia

Dutch Sinse on Extreme 3/2 Weather

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3/3/2012 — ” (never) in my life.. ” — EXTREME hail in Fort Branch Indiana — March Mega-storm 2012

Posted on March 3, 2012

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I agree .. NEVER IN MY LIFE have I seen such a tremendous weather outbreak effect so many people over so many states….. it may indeed be one for the record books when it comes to widespread damage.. only time will tell.

This video is just a SMALL SAMPLE of the severity of these storm.

The March Mega-storms of 2012 have turned out to be something for the record books, tragedy beyond imagination in many towns across the United States. Our thoughts and prayers are with those effected by this severe weather outbreak.

MANY THANKS to youtube video maker ‘themetaltempest’ for recording this!

http://www.youtube.com/themetaltempest

make sure to check out their Anti-GMO site !!!

http://www.gmodestroyer.com

from:    http://sincedutch.wordpress.com/

 

Phoenix Rising Star on Moving Beyond the Old Ways

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MESSAGE FROM THE MEDICINE WHEEL

By Phoenix Rising Star

Oh my. What a year 2012 is turning out to be! A lot of predictions are coming true.

Solar flares. More intense ones than before.

Interruption and breakage in computers, digitized formats and microchip devices.

Emotional turmoil.

Death.

But also, there seems to be an increased awareness and desire for truth.

Giving us greater opportunities to go into our hearts.

So far, and I know I’m not alone in this; I’ve had a wide variety of symptoms that have led me to believe I have the ‘Ascension Flu’.

These symptoms include:

* unexplained nausea

* weight loss

* weight increase

* sometimes both weight loss and increase in the same day!

* nervousness

* super-sensitivity, physically and emotionally and every other way

* mood swings

* body temperature changes

* pain, sometimes phantom, never lasting long

* and a feeling of having one foot in quicksand and one in the elevator.

Oh, did I forget to mention short term memory loss????????

We’ve known that 2012, Ascension, or whatever you want to call this time period, was coming. We’ve known this for quite awhile. There’s no excuse not to recognize it, or the fact that like it or not, we’re in it. And that we chose to be here at this time. Right now.

Somehow I guess I figured that because I chose to be here now, I wouldn’t have to experience the symptoms, the challenging changes, or feel like I had to cope.

Wrong!

I’m here now, thick in the middle of Ascension Flu and feeling like I’m going crazy.

I realize this is the chance for going into my heart, but some days I can’t seem to let go of my haunting fear long enough to do that.

One day, when I was feeling really badly,I went to Mother Earth – to connect deeply, send my love, receive hers and to connect with all the directions through the teachings of the wheel – the Medicine Wheel. Named because traditionally it is a place of healing, of knowledge and awareness, and a place where we can more easily open ourselves to the messages from spirit.

I was feeling fear, negativity, self-judgment, pain, sorrow, you name it; all nameless and formless, but insistently there regardless. Welling up and overwhelming me.

I felt so desperate by the time I got to my place in nature that I forgot how to make a wheel.

Confused I looked around a flat area and wondered where to start.

All of a sudden one rock selected itself to be the center, all that is.

From here I could figure out the cardinal directions of east, west, south and north.

I found a stone for the west, the place of transition, and began to open the wheel.

I stopped aghast at what I was doing.

In the tradition I was taught, the medicine wheel should be opened from the east.

What was I doing?????

I recalled one of my teachers talking about her teacher. He told her, ‘Always open the wheel from the east, the place of new beginnings.” One day to her surprise, he opened the wheel from the west, the place of transition. And a week later, he passed away.

Oh my God!

Did this mean I was dying? Maybe that would explain so much pain and fear! Old cellular memory needing to be cleared before I crossed over!

I hurriedly corrected my opening to the wheel and opened from the east.

I moved immediately to the west.

What?????

What was I doing???????

I’d gone to the south, and in my mind called it the west.

Oh my God!!!! Is this more confirmation I’m dying?

Well, if so, I’m in it now.

No stopping here.

I corrected my direction of the south and managed to chuckle that this direction opens our intuition and feminine receptivity.

Ha!

I went again to the west, in a clock-wise fashion. And then to the north. Where I froze.

I couldn’t remember what the north represented. I knew the animals were white: white buffalo and polar bear. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember anything else.

I stood there and stood there.

Nothing came. No idea whatsoever.

Eventually I had to move on.

In the tradition in which I was taught, one walks counter clock-wise around the circle to release energy and clockwise to energize the new energy.

“Thinking” I was releasing, I found myself walking clockwise. It was only when I turned to go in the opposite direction that I realized what I was doing.

What was I doing?????

I couldn’t believe this! I’ve never felt so messed up before. Not just short term memory loss, but loss of conscious awareness.

This was positively weird.

I went to the center andasked for a message from spirit.

I received my message:

“You are not wrong, misguided, incorrect, or at fault here. You are truly acting on a deeper level of inner guidance. This guidance is what is essential to master the old lessons of the third dimension, such as fear, judgment, negativity, etc. In order to master these lessons, the old ways of learning from and releasing them must be changed. The old ways are not working anyway, so why keep trying them?

“Listen to your guidance and do things differently.

“Go into your heart. Feel love. Express love. Send love. Anytime you feel the old feelings of fear, judgment and negativity, keep sending love until that’s all you feel is love.

“Energize with love. This is the new way. This is the only way that will work to help you on your path to ascension, to the next dimension. If you choose to stay in the fear, or not to energize with love, you are choosing to stay in this dimension. And will have to come back to re-learn this another time. By choosing love, you are choosing to move beyond this dimension into the next. Which do you choose?”

Hearing this internal message actually melted my anxiety, self-recriminations, judgment, fear and everything else.

I was able to send love to myself, finally.

I sent love to all beings feeling fear, judgment, and everything not love.

I sent it without expectation of what would happen. I sent it because I could.

And I felt peace for the first time since December. Or maybe even before that.

Peace and harmony.

Now I know what to do to alleviate the Ascension Flu.

Go into my heart, into the center of all that is, and feel love.

Send love.

Be love.

Energize with love.

That’s all.

In Peace,
Phoenix Rising Star

 

PS—What is the teaching of the north?

Purification.

 

About Phoenix Rising Star

Phoenix Rising Star

 

Phoenix’s Credentials:

Flower of Life Facilitator

M.S. Counseling

Clinical Hypnotherapist

Integrated Energy Therapist, Top Master Instructor since 2006

Reiki/Seichem Master

Medicine for the Earth Facilitator

Angel Therapist

S.H.E.S. Minister (Spirit Helpers and Earth Stewards)

 

For more information on Your HeartWalk Center in Sedona, AZ, see their website:www.sedonaheartwalk.com

For more information on Integrated Energy Therapy, see their website: www.learniet.com

from:   http://www.spiritofmaat.com/mar12/message_from_the_medicine_wheel.html

 

The Difficulties of Inventing the Wheel

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Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel

by Natalie Wolchover
Date: 02 March 2012 Time: 06:24 PM ET

 

Wheels were invented circa 3,500 B.C., and rapidly spread across the Eastern Hemisphere.
Wheels were invented circa 3,500 B.C., and rapidly spread across the Eastern Hemisphere.
CREDIT: James Steidl | Shutterstock

Wheels are the archetype of a primitive, caveman-leveltechnology. But in fact, they’re so ingenious that it took until 3500 B.C. for someone to invent them. By that time — it was the Bronze Age — humans were already casting metal alloys, constructing canals and sailboats, and even designing complex musical instruments such as harps.

The tricky thing about the wheel is not conceiving of a cylinder rolling on its edge. It’s figuring out how to connect a stable, stationary platform to that cylinder.

“The stroke of brilliance was the wheel-and-axle concept,” said David Anthony, aprofessor of anthropology at Hartwick College and author of “The Horse, the Wheel, and Language” (Princeton, 2007). “But then making it was also difficult.”

To make a fixed axle with revolving wheels, Anthony explained, the ends of the axle had to be nearly perfectly smooth and round, as did the holes in the center of the wheels; otherwise, there would be too much friction for the wheels to turn. Furthermore, the axles had to fit snugly inside the wheels’ holes, but not too snugly — they had to be free to rotate.

The success of the whole structure was extremely sensitive to the size of the axle. While a narrow one would reduce the amount of friction, it would also be too weak to support a load. Meanwhile, a thick axle would hugely increase the amount of friction. “They solved this problem by making the earliest wagons quite narrow, so they could have short axles, which made it possible to have an axle that wasn’t very thick,” Anthony told Life’s Little Mysteries.

The sensitivity of the wheel-and-axle system to all these factors meant that it could not have been developed in phases, he said. It was an all-or-nothing structure.

Whoever invented it must have had access to wide slabs of wood from thick-trunked trees in order to carve large, round wheels. They also needed metal tools to chisel fine-fitted holes and axles. And they must have had a need for hauling heavy burdens over land. According to Anthony, “It was the carpentry that probably delayed the invention until 3500 B.C. or so, because it was only after about 4000 B.C. that cast copper chisels and gouges became common in the Near East.”

The invention of the wheel was so challenging that it probably happened only once, in one place. However, from that place, it seems to have spread so rapidly across Eurasia and the Middle East that experts cannot say for sure where it originated. The earliest images of wheeled carts have been excavated in Poland and elsewhere in the Eurasian steppes, and this region is overtaking Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) as the wheel’s most likely birthplace. According to Asko Parpola, an Indologist at the University of Helsinki in Finland, there are linguistic reasons to believe the wheel originated with the Tripolye people of modern-day Ukraine. That is, the words associated with wheels and wagons derive from the language of that culture.

Parpola thinks miniature models of wheeled wagons, which are commonly found in the Eurasian steppes, likely predated human-scale wagons. “It is … striking that so many models were made in the Tripolye culture. Such models are often thought to have been children’s toys, but it seems more likely to me that they were miniature counterparts of real things,” he said. “The primacy of the miniature models is suggested by the fact that wheeled images of animals even come from native Indian cultures of Central America, where real wheels were never made.”

Toys or not, those popular models of old have their counterparts in today’s Hot Wheels and miniature fire trucks. Who appreciates wheeled vehicles more fully than babies and toddlers? Their almost universal fascination with the way tiny vehicles can be rolled along the floor, and the joy they derive from transportation in life-size ones, calls attention to the remarkable ingenuity of the wheel.

from:   http://www.livescience.com/18808-invention-wheel.html

Solar Activity Gearing Up

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EMERGING SUNSPOT, STRONG FLARE: A big new sunspot is emerging over the sun’s northeastern limb. It announced itself on March 2nd at 1746 UT with anM3-class solar flare. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the extreme ultraviolet flash:

Although the blast site was partially eclipsed by the solar limb, the flare nevertheless created waves of ionization in Earth’s upper atmosphere. Dave Gradwell of Birr Ireland detected the effect of these waves on the propagation of low-frequency radio signals across Europe. The explosion also hurled a faint CME over the northeastern limb: SOHO movie. The expanding cloud is not Earth-directed.

NOAA forecasters estimate a 55% chance of additional M-class flares and a 5% chance of an X-flare during the next 24 hours. Solar activity is picking up

from: spaceweather.com

Earthquake – Loyalty Islands Region

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Very strong earthquake in the greater Loyalty Islands / New Caledonia area

Last update: March 3, 2012 at 1:14 pm by By 

 

Earthquake overview : A very strong earthquake occurred at 11:19 PM (23:19) in the greater Loyalty Islands / New Caledonia area

Most important Earthquake Data:

Magnitude : 6.9 (preliminary)
UTC Time :  Saturday, March 03, 2012 at 12:19:57 UTC
Local time at epicenter : Saturday, March 03, 2012 at 11:19:57 PM at epicenter
Depth (Hypocenter) : 31 km (19.3 miles)
Geo-location(s) :
254 km (158 miles) ESE (110°) from Tadine, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia
323 km (200 miles) SSE (163°) from Isangel, Vanuatu  

 

Update 13:13 UTC
– The picture to the right shows very well the deep trench were 2 plates are subducting each other. The traveling speed of these plates is estimated to be approx. 8 cm / year which can be called a massive movement, and also the reason for these many sometimes violent earthquakes, luckily mostly with epicenter in the ocean.

Update 12:56 UTC
– Only 3000 people will experience a light MMI IV shaking and 34000 people a weak shaking. This may be the reason that we haven’t received experience reports yet. A lot of people in Vanuatu and New Caledonia will have slept through this earthquake and will be surprised tomorrow morning.

Update 12:51 UTC
– The maximum tsunami wave height near the coast of Isino will be 0.04m.  In other words, NO real tsunami has to be expected.
– A lot of strong to very strong aftershocks can be expected.

Update 12:49 UTC
GDACS simulation, is not mentioning a tsunami wave towards the New Caledonia or Vanuatu islands, most at risk in similar earthquakes.

Tsunami wave propagation courtesy GDACS

Update 12:42 UTC
– This area of the Pacific has regular massive earthquakes due to fast traveling tectonic plates.  Based on the Magnitude/ Depth and distance from the islands Earthquake-Report.com is calling this earthquake NOT dangerous for eventual damage or injuries on the nearest islands, however people and properties will be shaken very good.

Update 12:38 UTC
NOAA PACIFIC EVALUATION
NO DESTRUCTIVE WIDESPREAD TSUNAMI THREAT EXISTS BASED ON HISTORICAL EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI DATA. HOWEVER – EARTHQUAKES OF THIS SIZE SOMETIMES GENERATE LOCAL TSUNAMIS THAT CAN BE DESTRUCTIVE ALONG COASTS LOCATED WITHIN A HUNDRED KILOMETERS OF THE EARTHQUAKE EPICENTER. AUTHORITIES IN THE REGION OF THE EPICENTER SHOULD BE AWARE OF THIS POSSIBILITY AND TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION.   

for more information and updates, go to:    http://earthquake-report.com/2012/03/03/very-strong-earthquake-in-the-greater-loyalty-islands-new-caledonia-area/

 

Dr. Seuss & The Rhyming Brain

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Oh, the Places You’ll Go with Seuss’ Rhymes in Tow

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 02 March 2012 Time: 10:59 AM ET
A screenshot from the move "The Lorax"
The latest of Dr. Seuss’ creations to hit the big screen, “The Lorax” was released on March 2, 2012.
CREDIT: Illumination Entertainment/Universal PicturesTrailer

“I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-am.”

Dr. Seuss, the children’s book author born Theodor Seuss Geisel 108 years ago today (March 2), knew how to craft a catchy rhyme. But these rhymes aren’t just child’s play— research suggests that rhyming is built into our brains, and is even key to helping children learn to read.

“If you hear one word, words that rhyme with that word will get activated” in the brain, said Michael Wagner, an experimental linguist at McGill University in Montreal. “It seems like this is one of the factors that explains why rhyme seems to work so well and is so pleasing to us.”

The rhyming brain

Indeed, Dr. Seuss’ playful rhymes have pleased generations of children and their parents. “The Cat in the Hat” (Random House, 1957), for example, has sold more than 11 million copies. The evidence suggests that Seuss knew his audience: Rhymes are very compelling for young children, and their brains seem to process them even better than they process the meanings of other words.

In one 2004 study, researchers read lists of words to young children and then asked them to recall and recite the words they’d heard. The words on the list were all related: A child might hear “nap,” “bed,” “rest,” “peace,” “wake,” “dream,” “doze” and “snore,” for example. When adults take this test, they often inject the word “sleep” into their recitation, despite the fact that it appears nowhere on the original list. The litany of sleep-related words has tricked their brain into assuming the word’s presence.

Young kids responded differently, however. Instead of interjecting new words based on meaning, 5-year-olds added new words that rhymed with the words on the original list. A kid who heard “nap,” for example, might throw in “gap” or “sap.” In their brains, the rhyme overrode the meaning. [11 Facts About Baby Brains]

As children grow older, they seem to grow out of this tendency. Eight-year-olds in the study added mistaken words based on rhyme at about the same rate as they did mistaken words based on meaning. Eleven-year-olds responded just like adults, adding in false words based on the meanings in the original lists.

Reading in rhyme

In fact, rhyme is crucial to learning how to read. When we speak, we think we know what a hard “C” sounds like — “Kk” — and that we represent that sound with a “C” symbol. But consonants change their sound depending on the vowels that follow them. Prepare yourself to say “cat” and compare that with the shape your mouth takes when you start to say “cot.”

What this means is that kids have to learn, to borrow a Seussian phrase, that a C is a C, no matter the vowel. The process of learning this is called “phoneme awareness,” and rhymes help kids figure it out, said Miriam Cherkes-Julkowski, an educational consultant who works in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Arizona.

“Rhyme is the first step in actually segmenting out an individual phoneme-level sound,” Cherkes-Julkowski told LiveScience. “When you say cat/fat, what you’ve done is you’ve pulled the C away from the A, you’ve pulled the F away from the A. … That’s a big accomplishment.”

In other words, rhymes are the framework that helps kids understand the pieces of a word. The part of the word that’s key is the “rime,” the syllable that starts at the vowel and goes through the end of the word.

“This rime with an ‘i’ becomes really, really critical in reading,” Cherkes-Julkowski said. “By prepping kids to pay attention to that part of the syllable, the vowel through the end, you’re also prepping them to orient through print.”

Most of the time, reading isn’t taught with a focus on the rime, Cherkes-Julkowski said. Kids might learn to read phonetically, sounding out letter by letter. That’s not always best, especially for kids with dyslexia and learning disabilities, she said.

“No human being who is a reader reads left to right,” she said. “You can’t do it.”

Take the word “rage.” If you start out with the R, you get an “Rrr” sound. Next, you have an A, but is it a long or a short A? There’s no way to know until you get the next letter — a G. “Aha,” you might think, “‘Rag!’ It’s a short A.” But now you hit that E, and it changes everything. Even the G doesn’t sound the same anymore.

In other words, even when we’re not rhyming, we’re focused on the rime. Many kids can figure this all out with a phonetic reading approach, Cherkes-Julkowski said. But for kids with dyslexia, learning to pay attention to the rime is the key to reading.

“It gives the child the information that he or she needs that, ‘Aha, there are some patterns, and the patterns lie within the rime,'” she said.

Shelley Lacey-Castelot, the director of Connecticut-based Literacy Solutions, an education consulting group, agreed.

“I have a number of students who were unable to learn to read any other way than through rime-onset,” Lacey-Castelot told LiveScience. “These students aptly label this instruction amazing, life-saving, miraculous.”

As for Dr. Seuss, he was ahead of the rime-reading curve.

“He nicely sets it up for them,” Cherkes-Julkowski said. “He introduces it to them in a fun way before they ever have to make sense out of print.”

from:    http://www.livescience.com/18787-seuss-rhymes-reading.html

Blue Flash of Sunset

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fr/spaceweather.com:

BLUE FLASH: We’ve all heard of the green flash, the fleeting emerald light that sometimes appears just above the setting sun. Once thought to be a fable, the green flash was popularized by Jules Verne in his 1882 novel “Le Rayon Vert” (The Green Ray). Now it is generally known to be real.

But what of the even rarer blue flash? Turns out, that’s real too. Peter Rosén photographed one from Stockholm, Sweden, on Feb. 29th:

“I was shooting the sunset when, suddenly, just as the sun was about to disappear behind the treetops, there was a mighty blue flash,” says Rosén.

Blues flashes are formed in the same way as green flashes: a mirage magnifies tiny differences in the atmospheric refraction of red, green and blue light. Blue flashes are generally harder to see than green flashes, because blue flashes blend into the surrounding blue sky. When the air is exceptionally clear, however, the blue flash emerges.

Verne described the green flash as something “which no artist could ever obtain on his palette, a green of which neither the varied tints of vegetation nor the shades of the most limpid sea could ever produce the like! If there is a green in Paradise, it cannot be but of this shade, which most surely is the true green of Hope.”

Ditto the blue.

The Joy of Rescued Pets

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Dr. Patricia Fitzgerald

Wellness Editor, The Huffington Post; doctor of acupuncture and Oriental medicine; nutritionist; author

Happy Tails: Amazing Stories of Rescued Pets

Posted: 02/29/2012 8:48 am

It was love at first sight. When I went to my local animal shelter more than six years ago, I thought of it as a first step — I was planning on researching carefully all of my options, visiting several shelters and rescues, and taking my time to find my new canine companion. Ten minutes later, I was on the phone with my husband, explaining why we had to bring home a 7-year-old Beagle-German Shepherdish-looking mutt with advanced cataracts named Charlie. He was found as a stray, so I had to wait a week until he was available for adoption in case his owner came to claim him. I visited him every day, leading up to the day he was available. I was super nervous and couldn’t sleep the night before, worried that other people would want to adopt him, too. I had already become so attached!

When we went to the shelter the next morning (a half an hour before they opened, just in case), I remember worrying that everyone else at the shelter was also there to adopt Charlie. After all, he was the cutest dog ever.

Boy, was I naïve! Like so many things in life, you don’t know until you know. It didn’t really occur to me that older dogs at shelters are often the last ones to be adopted, if at all. I also didn’t know that most animals don’t make it out of shelters alive.

It turned out that nobody else had come to adopt Charlie, so he was mine (for all of $28.00, including a microchip and shots, and he was already neutered). That same morning, my husband fell in love with an 8-year-old adorable Beagle-Bassett named Simba. We left that shelter that day with two dogs, and it has been a love affair ever since!

The decision to be a pet guardian is an enormous one. There are many factors to consider when deciding what kind of pet to bring home — large or small, young or old, dog, cat, or tortoise — and especially where to find your new animal companion.

According to the ASPCA, there are between 5 and 7 million animals in shelters across the country. And of those, 3-4 million will be euthanized — that’s 60 percent of dogs and 70 percent of cats. Most of those animals are euthanized simply because there is no one to adopt them. And yet, despite this overwhelming need, 15-20 percent of new pets are purchased from breeders, while only around 10 percent are adopted from shelters.

And it’s not just mutts who suffer. On Valentine’s Day of 2012, a Pekingese was named Best in Show at Westminster — which, sadly, will likely mean pain and suffering for thousands of Pekingese in years to come. Each year, Westminster contributes to Americans’ desire for purebred puppies — often bred in inhumane puppy mills. Then, sadder still, millions of these dogs end up housed in shelters after their novelty wears off, and are eventually put to sleep. Over a quarter of dogs euthanized in shelters are purebred.

This tremendous need may be the best reason to bring a rescue pet into your home — but it’s far from the only one. There have been literally hundreds of studies showing that pet companionship is good for humans — from a physical level to a spiritual one. Recent studies have shown that pet owners have lower levels of risk factors for cardiovascular disease, spend less on health care, and have stronger immune systems. Beyond that, pet ownership contributes to physical fitness, sociability (so easy to talk to a stranger who is walking a dog), self-esteem — and pure joy and bliss.

On a wider, societal level, rescued pets have been the catalyst of some profound healing of the hearts of those often marginalized. A great example is K9 Connection, a California-based group that came up with an innovative way to tackle two problems at once — alongside the millions of dogs and cats euthanized each year, there are thousands of teenagers who take their lives each year. At K9 connection, at-risk teens train homeless shelter dogs. Dogs who were doomed for death are adopted into loving homes. The impact on the teens is profound as the healing power of the human-animal bond does its work.

The healing that takes place at prisons across the country which have programs pairing rescue dogs with inmates is extraordinary. Shelter dogs are saved from euthanasia and given training, and the prisoners benefit from the companionship, responsibility, and the satisfaction that they are helping to save the life of such a beautiful, vulnerable creature. Some prisoners report that they had never had the experience of unconditional love until they started training a rescue dog.

Some groups that facilitate these amazing programs include Project POOCH, Prison Tails, and Paws in Prison.

Nationally, rescued pets are becoming increasingly visible. Since the world’s first viral video of a kitten doing something adorable was posted on YouTube, it’s been well recognized that watching cute animal antics is perhaps second to none among our favorite activities. This year at the Super Bowl, Budweiser capitalized on that love, running a commercial with a tiny dog named Weego, trained to fetch beer. However, their interests were in more than just selling six-packs: Weego was a rescue dog, and the commercial raised more than a quarter of a million dollars for the Tony La Russa Animal Rescue Foundation. Moreover, it’s done a great job drawing attention to how great rescue pets can be; Bud Light’s Facebook page tells the story of Weego, and has gotten amazing engagement from tens of thousands of people, sharing stories about rescue pets.

from:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-patricia-fitzgerald/pet-adoption_b_1308093.html?ref=mindful-living&ir=Mindful%20Living

Deepak Chopra on The Brain & Consciousness

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  • Deepak Chopra

Author, ‘War of the Worldviews’; Founder, The Chopra Foundation

A New Era for the Brain — Guiding Your Own Evolution

Posted: 03/ 1/2012 8:20 am
 One of the great abilities of the human brain is to boost itself into a higher function. No one can explain how this happens. By the time early humans discovered fire and simple tools like the wheel and lever, our brains were already the most complex structure in the universe. We then proceeded to use this structure in unprecedented ways. Somewhere in our DNA was the potential for higher mathematics, for example, even though Homo sapiens existed for 200,000 years without tapping that capacity.

The reason that we are able to accomplish huge, never-ending leaps needs to be solved. If it can, then a new era will open up for the brain. The key is not materialistic, to my mind. One needs to begin, in fact, by turning away from the brain, whose intricate workings have mesmerized researchers for three decades, ever since the development of feasible brain scans. Such advances are fascinating, but we run the risk of sitting around a radio as it plays Mozart, staring at how the transistors work while imagining that we are uncovering the secrets of music.

Once you stop staring at the brain and start exploring the music it plays — i.e., the richness of human thoughts, feelings, images and sensations — a simple truth emerges. There is something more complex in the cosmos than the human brain: the process that makes the brain work. This process involves consciousness. It is our mind that is using the brain, not the other way around. (I would argue that the brain is a creation of the mind, a physical projection of consciousness. But that argument can be set aside for another day.) If we could understand the process that underlies the entire brain, instead of focusing in reductionist fashion on bits and pieces of brain function, doors would suddenly be flung open.

Let me suggest a beginning.

What we already know are a few fundamentals that apply to everything happening in the brain. Some functions are already confirmed by brain scans; others arise from deduction, working form observed facts to larger principles.

1. The process always involves feedback loops.

2. These feedback loops are intelligent.

3. The dynamics of the brain go in and out of balance but always favor overall balance, known as homeostasis.

4. We use our brains to evolve and develop, guided by our intentions.

5. Self-reflection pushes us forward into unknown territory.

6. Many diverse areas of the brain are coordinated simultaneously.

7. We have the capacity to monitor many levels of awareness, even though our focus is generally confined to one level (i.e., waking, sleeping, and dreaming).

8. All the qualities of the known world, such as sight, sounds, textures, and tastes, are created mysteriously by the interaction of mind and brain.

9. Mind is the origin of consciousness, not the brain.

10. Only consciousness can understand consciousness. There is no mechanical explanation that suffices, working from facts about the brain.

This list bridges two worlds, biology and philosophy. Biology is great at explaining physical processes but totally inadequate to tell us about the meaning and purpose of our subjective experience. Philosophy delves deeply into meaning but has made only tentative forays into the brain. Both worlds are needed to understand ourselves. Otherwise, we fall into the biological fallacy, which holds that humans are controlled by their brains, or the philosophical fallacy, which treats experience devoid of its physiological connection. Leaving aside countless arguments between various theories of mind and brain, the goal is clear: We want to use our brains, not have them use us.

I’d like to expand on the practical uses of the 10 principles listed above — they would be merely intriguing if they remained abstractions but incredibly practical if they lead to the next phase of human evolution. That phase involves using the brain better, something that human beings excel at. We are driven to greater creativity, complexity, imaginative leaps and unknown horizons. “Better” doesn’t mean more efficiently, the way technology improves a computer. In fact, by giving technicalities over to machines, we left more room for using our brains outside technology. In a world where every sort of calculation is done automatically, at the push of a button or the stroke of a keypad, assigning the brain a more evolved role poses the hugest challenge.

In the following posts I’ll suggest a new synthesis that takes the most basic aspects of brain function — feedback, self-reflection, homeostasis and multi-dimensional consciousness — to show that the era of higher brain function has arrived, awaiting only how you and I choose to participate.

from:    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/brain-mind_b_1304000.html?ref=mindful-living&ir=Mindful%20Living

Women’s Rights and the Blunt Amendment

Posted on by
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand

U.S. Senator from New York

 Standing Strong Against the Extreme Blunt Amendment
Posted: 03/ 1/2012 10:12 am

In recent weeks, I’ve said repeatedly that I was dumb-founded that in 2012 we are actually debating whether women should have access to contraception. I had no idea I’d be even more dumb-founded today, when, instead of coming together to fix our economy and strengthen the middle class, the Senate is considering a measure so extreme that it would allow any employer — religious or secular — to deny their employees coverage of any preventive service, including contraception, mammograms –anything the employer deems unfit to be covered.

Let me say this once and for all: the power to decide whether to use contraception or any other preventive care service should be up to each individual woman, not her boss.

Of course, the Blunt Amendment is just the latest attack on women’s health from the far right wing in Congress. Whether it’s their attempt to defund Planned Parenthood or to roll back a common sense preventive care provisions in the Affordable Care Act, make no mistake about it, this concerted effort to reduce women’s access to essential preventive care demonstrates a callous disregard for the health and safety of women.

Attacks like these are why Senator Boxer and I started One Million Strong For Women, to build a grassroots movement of Americans fed up with the far right’s attempts to undermine women’s health. We’ve been joined by several champions in the Senate including Senator Schumer, Senator Reid, Senator Franken, Senator Blumenthal, Senator Murray, the DSCC as well as over 260,000 of you. I hope you’ll add your voice today as well.

Let’s be clear. Neither the recent controversy over the HHS contraception rule or this week’s Blunt Amendment has anything to do with religious freedom. You don’t have to take it from me, just ask Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In the majority decision of the 1990 case Employment Division v. Smith, Justice Scalia wrote, “We have never held that an individual’s religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting that the State is free to regulate.”

The extreme amendment Republicans are bringing up for a vote makes it clear as day — this is a political and ideological overreach — not a religious issue. The fact they want to exempt all businesses from providing any preventive care for women is outrageous.

Please know that we will not stand for these attempts to undermine the ability of women to make their own decisions. If our Republican colleagues want to continue to take this issue head on, we will stand up as often as necessary to draw a line in the Senate and oppose these attacks against women’s rights and women’s health.

I hope you’ll join us at OneMillionStrongForWomen.com.

It is time to agree that women deserve access to preventive health services, regardless of where they work. And it is time to agree to get back to work on legislation that can create jobs and grow the economy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-kirsten-gillibrand/standing-strong-against-t_b_1313090.html?ref=impact&ir=Impact