Hokkaid, Japan Earthquake

Strong (moderately dangerous) earthquake below Hokkaido (Japan)

Last update: August 25, 2012 at 2:41 pm by By

 

Intensity during Hokkaido earthquake – Orange : strongest – image courtesy JMA Japan

Strong  (moderately dangerous) earthquake along the Hokkaido (Japan) coast
Preliminary Magnitude around M6.0, Depth approx. 60 km
NO tsunami danger
The earthquake’s epicenter is below the Hokkaido Island at a depth of 50 km
JMA Japan reports a 5- intensity, just below the level that Earthquake-Report.com considers as very dangerous.
The epicenter is below the south-western tip of the island, more precisely below Mt. Rakko. No city in the immediate vicinity of the epicenter. The relatively deep epicenter makes that the earthquake will be felt in a much wider area than in case of a shallow quake. The shaking has been felt not only all over Hokkaido, but also in the northern part of Honshu.
JMA 5- intensity has been experienced in the following localities : Urakawa-cho Shiomi, Urakawa-cho Tsukiji*, Samani-cho Sakaemachi*, Makubetsu-cho Churui-nishikimachi*, Urahoro-cho Sakuramachi*, Sarabetsu-mura Sarabetsu*, Tokachi Taiki-cho Seika*, Hiro-o-cho Nishi-yojo*

from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2012/08/24/major-earthquakes-list-august-25-2012/

Quiet Sun

LATLINING: WIth no sunspots actively flaring, the sun’s x-ray output has nearly flatlined. These data from NOAA’s GOES 15 satellite show how quiet things have been on August 23rd through 25th:

NOAA forecasters say there is no more than a 5% chance of strong flares today. However, a new sunspot is emerging that could break the quiet.

from:    spaceweather.com

Jeff Masters On Hurricanes and Hispaniola

Throughout hurricane history, numerous tropical storms and hurricanes have battered themselves against Hispaniola and Cuba. Some have been destroyed; others have survived and gone on to wreak additional havoc. Cuba’s most formidable barrier to hurricanes is the one Isaac will be running into–the eastern portion of the island, where mountains up to 6,000 feet high rear up out of the sea. I present here a history of five storms that crossed portions of both Hispaniola and Cuba, similar to Isaac’s track. These five storms strengthened by 5 – 20 mph in their first 24 hours after coming off the coast of Cuba, and one went on to become the deadliest disaster in American history–the Great Galveston Hurricane.

Tropical Storm Fay of 2008. This storm was so unpredictable, I nicknamed it “The Joker.” Fay got disrupted by passage over Haiti and Eastern Cuba, then slowly intensified to a 50 mph tropical storm as it tracked just south of Cuba. After crossing Central Cuba, Fay intensified from 50 mph to 65 mph in 36 hours over the Florida Straits, before making landfall in southwest Florida. Fay actually strengthened another 5 mph to a 70 mph tropical storm while its center was over land near the western end of Lake Okeechobee.


Figure 1. Tropical Storm Fay approaching Florida. Satellite: Aqua at 6:50 PM GMT on August 18, 2008

Hurricane Ernesto of 2006. Ernesto was a hurricane for the briefest of time, just six hours, before it encountered the rugged mountains on the southwest Peninsula of Haiti and Eastern Cuba, which weakened it to a 40 mph tropical storm. After popping off the north coast of Cuba, Ernest had 24 hours over the warm waters of the Florida Straits before making landfall on the southern tip of Florida, but Ernesto was only able to strengthen by 5 mph to 45 mph.


Figure 2. Hurricane Ernesto (05L) over Hispaniola. Satellite: Terra at 3:50 PM GMT on August 27, 2006

Hurricane Georges of 1998. This nasty Cape Verde hurricane cut a swath of destruction across the Caribbean and in the U.S., killing 602 people, mostly in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Passage over Hispaniola weakened Georges from a Category 3 storm to a Category 1, and Georges was able to maintain Category 1 status for over a day while traversing the eastern half of Cuba. After the center popped off the coast, Georges had 18 hours over water before it hit Key West, and the hurricane intensified from 85 mph winds to 105 mph winds during that time.


Figure 3. Inside the eye of Hurricane Georges, as seen from a NOAA WP-3D research aircraft on 19 September 1998.

Hurricane Two of 1928. This storm became a Category 1 hurricane with 90 mph winds before reaching Haiti, the got disrupted by close passage to Haiti’s southwest peninsula, and Eastern Cuba. After the storm crossed Cuba, it strengthened from 60 mph to 70 mph in the Florida Straits, before close passage by the landmass of South Florida weakened it back to a 60 mph tropical storm again. It eventually made landfall in the panhandle of Florida as a 45 mph tropical storm.

Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900. This deadliest hurricane in American history killed an estimated 8,000 – 12,000 people in Galveston, Texas when it hit as a Category 4 storm with 145 mph winds on September 8, 1900. On its way to Galveston, the storm crossed both Hispaniola and the greater part of the length of Cuba as a tropical storm with 40 – 50 mph winds. When the storm popped out into the Florida Straits, it intensified from a minimum strength 40 mph tropical storm to a 145 mph Category 4 monster in two-and-a-half days. There’s a very good chance the hurricane passed over a warm core Gulf eddy on its way to Galveston, allowing explosive deepening to occur. That situation does not exist in the Gulf at present for Isaac.


Figure 4. Aftermath of the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 on Galveston Island.

from:    http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2203

Nepal, Himalaya, Earthquake

Earthquakes Nepal Himalaya (Rukum and Rolpo districts) – 2 more earthquakes (aftershocks)

Last update: August 24, 2012 at 8:21 am by By

Update : USGS is confirming the Magnitude of M5.0 however at a less dangerous deeper depth of 38.3 km.

Based on the number of visitors in our site, we see a moderate earthquake in Nepal.
Please tell us by the form how the shaking was experienced.
Based on our preliminary findings, we expect a Magnitude in between M4.5 and M5.0
Preliminary epicenter is located in the western part of the Nepali Himalaya (West of Annapurna)
If people residing in Pokhara are reading this page, please let us know how the shaking was experienced.
A M5.1 is a moderate shaking but can create in the high mountains some serious avalanches/landslides of rock, snow, ice or even mud.

Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : M5.0 (USGS) – M5.1 (EMSC)
UTC Time : Thursday, August 23, 2012 at 16:30:23 UTC
Local time at epicenter : Thursday, August 23, 2012 at 10:15:23 PM at epicenter
Depth (Hypocenter) : 38 km (USGS) – 10 km (EMSC)
Geo-location(s) (USGS data):
101 km (63 miles) SSE (149°) from Jumla, Nepal
117 km (72 miles) ENE (64°) from Nepalganj, Nepal
128 km (80 miles) WNW (284°) from Pokhara, Nepal
272 km (169 miles) WNW (290°) from KATHMANDU, Nepal

Update 24/08 – 08:09 UTC : International seismological agencies are listing a huge number of earthquakes worldwide but unfortunately not enough to have a good picture of what is going on in the world. Developing nations press are often citing USGS as a certainty in the world of earthquakes and are that way diminishing the value of their own specialist agencies. Nepal is a good example. The Nepal National seismological Center has a fine network of seismographs, GPS stations and accelerometers. Data captures close to the epicenter is (mostly) more accurate than data captured at a greater distance. From the 4 earthquakes reported by the NSC, only 2 were reported by EMSC and USGS. The Magnitude differs so much in between local and international agencies (M5.6 vs M5.0 yesterday and M5.2 vs M4.4 earlier today for the 2 strongest shakes). Difference in scales cannot give this big difference in Magnitude Mb vs Ml.

Update 24/08 – 07:14 UTC : The Nepal National Seismological Center has updated the earthquake data and reports now a M4.4 as the new value for the initial M4.7. The M5.6 mainshock stands.
8 hours later an M4.4 occurred (00:17 UTC) and at 03:55 UTC the sequence was followed by another M5.2 earthquake, all in the same area.
The Nepalese press gives little attention to the earthquake and states only that there are no reports of damage or injuries. If the Nepalese data are correct, we do  not trust this general remark. Both the M5.6 and M5.2 are relatively strong earthquakes in mountainous areas and both M4.4 can be seen as moderate. We will follow this up and bring you further news if it reaches us.
We also make a request to our Nepali readers to report any news which they may find in the local or regional press.

Official earthquake data – courtesy Nepal National Seismological Center


Update 20:53 UTC : After a sluggish start, the monsoon’s active phase, observed in the last 24 hours, brought brief heavy downpours in most of the Western and Central regions of the country. This is bad news for earthquake shaking

Update 20:44 UTC : Today’s earthquake is not the first one in the area this year, as 3 earthquakes measuring M5.0, M4.8 and M4.2 occurred on July 31. No news of eventual damage or injuries was found for these earthquakes.

Update 20:42 UTC : The nearthquake was felt in many districts in Nepal like Kathmandu, Gorkha, Chitwan, Kaski, Dailekh, Parbat, Tanahun, and Syangja.

Update 18:35 UTC : Musikot, the village on the picture below is very close to the epicenter. The image is not taking away our fears.

Very Important Update 18:13 UTC : The Nepal National Seismological Center reports that not 1 but 2 earthquakes have rattled the mid-western Nepal area. The first one being a M5.6 earthquake at 10:15 PM local time (16:15 UTC) and a second M4.7 one at 10:27 PM (16:27 UTC) !!

Rukum Musikot courtesy Tubal Sapkota –

Update : EMSC has now changed the location of the epicenter after recalculation. The village of Thawang (Rolpa area) – see image below), should be very close to the epicenter following these data. The Geofon location has not been recalculated (automatic data) and remains at the moment in the high Himalaya.

Update : Based on the landslide risk, earthquake-report.com calls this earthquake as moderately dangerous

Update 17:29 UTC : Earthquake data is very preliminary at the moment. The USGS data are less dangerous than the EMSC or the Geofon data due to the depth of 38 km. EMSC and Geofon are holding to their 10 km (the shallower and earthquake is, the more dangerous it becomes).

Update : Earthquake-Report.com fears for a deadly cocktail of moderate shaking in combination with saturated ground layers of the monsoon rains. Lets hope that eventual landslides are not in or near villages.  People will mostly be in the village or sleeping at the time of the occurrence.

Update 17:24 UTC : Very weak shaking is normal in Kathmandu as the Nepali capital is 270 km away from the epicenter.

Thawang village following some agencies near the epicenter – Image courtesy PranjalDahal

Update : As it is dark right now and as the epicenter area is very remote we do not expect to receive any detailed news for another 24 hours unless mobile telecommunications are active in the Dolpo villages.

Update : The best known area in this part of Nepal, where following some agencies the epicenter would be is the Dolpo area? The most famous 8000+ mountain in the area is the Dhaulagiri. Dhaulagiri is a regular target for expeditions. As it is late monsoon at the moment, mountaineering will be at lowest. Distance from Dhaulagiri to the epicenter is approx. 20 km

Update : This earthquake has not been listed yet in the website of the Nepal National Seismological center, who should have definitely the best data as their instruments are installed the closest to the epicenter

Update : The epicenter location is still unsure as every seismological agency is referring to a different area which is in case of Nepal very tricky. USGS is putting the epicenter in the foothills. Geofon at the base of the high Himalaya and EMSC in the high Himalaya.

from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2012/08/23/moderate-shallow-earthquake-in-the-western-nepal-himalaya/

 

Ervin Lazlo on Religious Belief & Science

Why the Religious Fear–and Fight–Science… and Why it’s a Sad Mistake

by Ervin Laszlo on September 9, 2010

Religious people — and by this I mean people who are deeply committed to a religion and aspire to live in accordance with its scriptures — usually fear science: they suspect that science contradicts some of their cherished beliefs, beliefs they are asked to accept on faith. And because many believe that the best defense is offense, the religious often attack science and scientists, and widen the gulf that separates these branches of contemporary culture. This is regrettable, for throughout history every enduring culture embraced the best of its dominant religion, together with the rational and empirical ideas that made up the science of its time. The current gulf is all the more regrettable as it’s based on a fundamental misconception.  Indeed, on two misconceptions: of the nature of religion, as well as of science.

The average religious person identifies the religion that he or she espouses with the doctrines of that religion. These are the sacred scriptures created by the founders and prophets of that religion. For the most part they are centuries old, and contain sayings, episodes, and injunctions that are said to come from a higher, superhuman authority.

If it is its doctrines that make up a religion, then there are reasons for the faithful to fear science, or at least a dominant (mis)conception of science (and the misguided souls who embrace that misconception). It’s always possible that science will fail to recognize that the sayings, episodes, and injunctions that make up the literal content of the doctrines come from an undisputable superhuman authority. Scientists are not disposed to accept claims on faith; they are trained to ask for proof — for empirical proof.  If it’s not available, then they might say that the sayings, episodes and injunctions are unproven, and could be mistaken. In that case the religious would have good reason to fear science (or at least those who believe that science would pass judgment on the literal meaning of religious scriptures); their deepest convictions would be in question.

But this fear is unfounded.  It’s based on a misconception of the true nature both of religion, and of science.

Religion doesn’t simply consist of the doctrines that make up its sacred scriptures. There is far more to religion than that. And it’s not the case that science would take religious doctrines at face value and pronounce their content either true or false. There is far more to science than that.

Both religion and science are sourced in human experience. True, they are sourced in a different kind of experience, and science can tell us that they are conveyed by a different hemisphere of the brain: religion is right-hemispheric, and science, left-hemispheric. Human experience encompasses both.

Religion is based on the right-hemispheric experience of its founders, saints, and prophets. These must have been deep and vivid experiences, for they had a remarkable power to affect the heart and the mind of those around them. The founders, and even more their disciples, sought to communicate the substance of these experiences. They did so in the language, and with the concepts of their time. Their followers made the mistake of taking the record of the experiences for the essence of the experiences. They mistook the letter of religion for its spirit.

True scientists would not confound the record of a religious experience with the meaning of that experience. They would not judge a religion by the literal veracity of the sayings, episodes, and injunctions contained in its doctrines; they would ask about their roots in lived experience. And they would seek to understand that experience.

Analyzing the nature and meaning of religious experience is not a threat to the religious. On the contrary, it can prove to be a support. Because when the deep religious experience is analyzed with the methods of a science, a remarkable finding comes to light. The religious experience has aspects and elements that make it consistent with the world scientists discover on the basis of empirical experience.

Strange? Perhaps, but it is so. Psychiatrists such as Stanislav Grof find that in meditative, prayerful, or otherwise altered states of mind and consciousness people have access to the kind of mystical or transcendent realities that make up the substance of all great religions. This doesn’t mean that science can “verify” the metaphysical reality of these visions and entities. To establish their reality is not simply to see whether they correspond to the entities and processes that make up the content of valid scientific theories. It calls for careful reasoning and a further development of our understanding of the perceptual and cognitive powers of the brain, and of the consciousness associated with it. This development is already under way — among other things, recent attempts to discover the quantum-receptivity of microtubules and other subneuronal arrays in the brain point to it. It appears that we can apprehend far more of the reality in which we are embedded than we had thought. In addition to its standard information-processing circuits, the brain has quantum-receptive capacities, picking up information that’s instantaneous, multidimensional, and “nonlocal.”

Work in this area is still in progress, but we can be reasonably certain already that there are aspects and planes of human experience that far transcend the limits of everyday experience. As Shakespeare remarked, there are more things in this world than you and I had ever conceived.

Entering on a plane that is deeper or higher than that of everyday experience is what the religious experience is all about.  And trying to understand how we can connect with that plane is one of the most exciting tasks facing science today.

The sincere religious has nothing to fear from the genuine scientist. On the contrary, the religious and the scientist have much to learn from each other. Together they will achieve a better understanding of the deep reality that surrounds us, and grounds our own existence. Isn’t it time to begin to explore that reality together — instead of fearing and fighting each other?

Published at Huffington Post

from:    http://ervinlaszlo.com/notebook/2010/09/09/why-the-religious-fear/

Latest Volcanic Eruptions

Eruption Update for August 21, 2012: Cleveland, Tungurahua and More

  • By Erik Klemetti
  • Email Author
  • August 21, 2012 |
  • The plume from Tungurahua in Ecuador as seen on August 19, 2012. Webcam capture by Eruptions reader Kirby.

    It is that time of year again – the summer is ending and classes begin within a week. Now, I am on leave for the fall, but that doesn’t mean the pace of things isn’t picking up. I spent the end of last week blasting zircons with a laser up at Michigan State in order to get some ages on those crystals and in about 2 weeks from now, I’ll be headed back to California for a week of field excursions across the Sierras. So, busy indeed.

    Things have also settled down a smidge volcanically as well. After the New Zealand trifecta, we’ve had some rumblings around the globe … so I thought I’d just use today’s post to catch up with some news I’ve seen (or posted links to on Twitter).

    Alaska

    Cleveland has continued its 2012 pattern of explosive destruction of the summit dome – the volcano experienced yet another small explosion according to AVO. The volcano is remote, so the threat is mainly to air traffic, so Cleveland is watched via satellite for these explosions.

     

    Ecuador

    Another restless volcano was moved into a higher alert status after new explosions produced ash fall from a 1.5 km / 5,000 foot plume and pyroclastic flows from Ecuador’s Tungurahua. Most of the english-speaking media on the activity seems to be a string of images from previous eruptions with no real information, but spanish-speaking reports tell of evacuations near the volcano due to the heightened activity. This renewed activity at Tungurahua has apparently caused significant damage to crops and livestock in the area surrounding the volcano.

  • from:    http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/eruption-update-for-august-21-2012/#more-125988

Women w/ an Agenda Against Abortion —REALLY!!!!

Wham, Bam, Sonogram! Meet the Ladies Setting the New Pro-Life Agenda

From transvaginal ultrasounds to attacks on Planned Parenthood, Americans United for Life is targeting reproductive rights one state at a time.

—By

Edwin Fotheringham

“We’re having a party,” Charmaine Yoest tells me when I arrive for a lunch meeting at her office on a sweltering summer day in Washington, DC. I’d expected a one-on-one interview with the charismatic president and CEO of Americans United for Life, the legal arm of the pro-life movement, but she’s brought along four other women: AUL’s vice president of external affairs, two staff attorneys, and her 19-year-old daughter, Hannah.

Everyone is charming and chatty; they ask me about my wedding a few days earlier. There’s salad all around, which seems to be AUL’s lunch of choice when female reporters are invited over. It’s all part of the girls club environment that Yoest and her colleagues cultivate, distancing AUL from other, largely male-dominated pro-life organizations.

Outside Yoest’s fourth-floor corner office hangs a large print that could pass for a Mondrian in black and white. She informs me that it depicts a human DNA sequence. “We wanted to do something that was nonbaby,” she says. Keeping things nonbaby is one of Americans United for Life’s main strategies for promoting anti-abortion legislation, and it’s made AUL one of the most effective anti-abortion organizations in the country, even though its $4 million budget is less than half that of the National Right to Life Committee. No pictures of infants decorate its headquarters, and the bloody fetus posters common at anti-abortion rallies are conspicuously absent. The only obvious nod to the unborn is a Dr. Seuss quote on the wall above Yoest’s desk: “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

Understated rhetoric aside, AUL’s mission is to end all abortions in the United States. Founded in 1971 by a Unitarian minister from Harvard Divinity School, AUL first focused on reversing Roe v. Wade flat out, but in the 1990s it turned its attention to rolling back reproductive rights incrementally at the state level. Lately, it’s been chipping away at abortion access at an ever-faster pace. Its team of lawyers has written dozens of model bills, which are collected in a playbook, Defending Life, and delivered to every state and federal legislator.

All told, 92 anti-abortion restrictions were passed throughout the country last year, an all-time record; AUL can claim credit for 24 new laws. So far in 2012, 17* laws promoted by AUL or based on its model legislation have been passed. Invasive vaginal ultrasounds in Virginia? That was AUL’s bill. Trying to shut down all the abortion clinics in Kansas? That was AUL, too.

“Our model legislation enables legislators to easily introduce bills without needing to research and write the bills themselves,” AUL’s website boasts. The organization’s foes see it as the pro-life equivalent of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the corporate legislation mill. “It’s troubling when you see the same bill language introduced in 27 states that you know came out of an anti-abortion think tank in Washington instead of coming from the concerns of the sponsor or that particular state,” says Jordan Goldberg, a lawyer at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is trying to block AUL-backed laws in Arizona, Kansas, and Texas.

Source: Americans United for LIfe. Current as of June 28, 2012Source: Americans United for Life. Current as of June 28, 2012.

Yoest says her focus is on a “post-Roe nation” in which states will again be the sole arbiters of when, where, and whether women can get abortions. “The real question is what do the states do,” she says. “And so in a sense, we’re leapfrogging over [Roe].” She believes AUL’s growing body of state laws will set precedents with the potential to eventually change federal abortion law. As she explained to National Catholic Register, “We don’t make frontal attacks. Never attack where the enemy is strongest.”

The Supreme Court opened a critical avenue in its 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, which upheld Roe while giving states greater leeway to regulate abortions. Echoing AUL’s women-centered approach, the group’s bills often cite the court’s finding that the government “has legitimate interests from the outset of pregnancy in protecting the health of the woman.” Its Women’s Ultrasound Right to Know Act clearly aims to prevent women from terminating pregnancies. But its framing—that a woman deserves to know what’s inside her body and must give her “informed consent”—centers on the mother rather than the fetus. A controversial version of this prefab legislation was introduced in Virginia this spring. Only after abortion rights supporters pointed out that it could effectively require doctors to stick a wand in pregnant women’s vaginas did its Republican sponsors amend it to require abdominal ultrasounds.

See Virginia Del. David Albo explain how his wife spurned his romantic advances after seeing a report about the AUL-based ultrasound bill that he and other Republican lawmakers backed.

Then there’s AUL’s bill for banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy—often performed when tests that can only be done at this stage reveal severe birth defects. Though bans on late-term abortions are often pitched on the medically dubious premise that a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks, AUL’s model bill, the Women’s Health Defense Act, emphasizes the potential harm to women, citing the health risks as well as potential “emotional complications” such as depression and anxiety. Arizona passed a version of the bill earlier this year; AUL consulted on a similar law passed in Georgia.

Another AUL bill, the Women’s Health Protection Act, places tight restrictions on the physical offices in which abortions are performed, asserting that abortions are “distinct from other routine medical services” due to their potential health and psychological effects. The version of the law that passed in Kansas in April 2011 was so onerous (it even mandated specific room temperatures at clinics) that it threatened to shut down every abortion provider in the state. (A court has blocked it.)

When I ask Yoest about her favorite model bills, she promptly mentions telemed abortions. In 2010, AUL first proposed banning such abortions, wherein a physician prescribes the drug RU-486 via a video connection. Since then, eight states have passed laws prohibiting doctors from remotely administering RU-486; never mind that there were no clinics actually doing this in those states at the time (PDF). “This is Planned Parenthood’s new business model, because they’re having such a hard time finding doctors to do abortion, for all kinds of good reasons,” Yoest says.

All told, 92 anti-abortion restrictions were passed throughout the country last year, an all-time record. AUL can claim credit for 24 new laws.

Indeed, AUL’s greatest success may be its push to take down America’s largest abortion provider. In July 2011, AUL released “The Case for Investigating Planned Parenthood,” a 174-page report detailing dozens of alleged abuses, ranging from poor patient care to the misuse of federal funds. Two months later, the House Energy and Commerce Committee started looking into Planned Parenthood’s “compliance with federal restrictions on the funding of abortion.” A spokesman for Rep. Cliff Stearns, the Florida Republican heading the investigation, confirmed that the AUL report was a contributing factor in the decision to launch the probe. (AUL’s legislative arm gives Stearns a 100 percent pro-life vote rating.) Stearns’ investigation, in turn, inspired Susan G. Komen for the Cure to cut funding for breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood clinics.

Komen reversed its decision amid public outcry, but the cumulative impact of AUL’s efforts has abortion rights advocates worried. In 2000, the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health research nonprofit, rated 13 states as “hostile” to reproductive rights; in 2011, it gave 26 states that designation. “We’re seeing states that go in and make their laws worse, and we’re seeing states that are adopting more extreme, more onerous, and more creative laws,” says Elizabeth Nash, Guttmacher’s state issues manager. By putting up more hurdles for women who want abortions and the doctors who provide them, “at some point, someone will cry uncle.”

But making abortions all but impossible is only half the battle. Ultimately, AUL would like to see the Supreme Court legally enshrine its restrictions—all in the name of protecting women. “It’s really, really critical that we start establishing this in the legislative record,” Yoest tells me. “Repeatedly, the Supreme Court has turned away from the threat that abortion poses for the baby, because the Supreme Court has said repeatedly they’re concerned about the woman. So we basically want to say to the court, ‘We share your concern for women. You need to look at the fact that abortion itself harms women.'”

*This number has been updated since the article originally appeared in our September/October 2012 print issue.

from:   http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/08/americans-united-for-life-anti-abortion-transvaginal-ultrasound

 

pro-life or pro-lie.

Deepak Chopra on Staying Healthy —Part 1

Deepak Chopra: Part 1 -The Real Secret to Staying Healthy for Life

Deepaknew    If you want to stay healthy for life, you need to take care of yourself. That’s the conventional wisdom. It’s a frequent guilty reminder when we look in the mirror and realize that we aren’t in the best shape. “I’ve got to start taking better care of myself.”

From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/healthy-lifestyle_b_1694029.html

But the real secret to lifelong good health is actually the opposite: Let your body take care of you. I’m not being contrary. The human body consists of hundreds of billions of cells that function perfectly, and if we were single-celled creatures, immortality would be normal. An amoeba or blue-green algae keeps on living indefinitely by constantly dividing in two to produce the next generation of cells. Absent death from external circumstances, such as being eaten or drying up in the sun, one-celled organisms exist in a state of perpetual well-being.

Instead of being disadvantaged by having many cells instead of one, the human body has made tremendous evolutionary leaps. Our cells have perfected special functions for each organ and tissue. They’ve learned to cooperate with one another by staying in constant communication. An immune system keeps watch on threats from the outside world, and if an injury or disease occurs, the healing system rushes in to repair it.

Modern medicine, for all its advances, knows less than 10 percent of what your body knows instinctively. Humbling as it is to realize, a doctor doesn’t heal his patients. He facilitates the body’s healing system, adding whatever is lacking when self-healing falters. By the same logic, everything you and I do to take care of our bodies is actually just an adjunct to letting our bodies take care of us. Our active role is quite secondary. Yet there is no doubt that it is vital.

What makes it vital is the brain and nervous system. They send a constant stream of messages to the rest of the body, creating a feedback loop of information. One side of the feedback loop runs automatically. The other side supports free will and choice, which means that what you decide to do with your life enters the body’s feedback loop, gets communicated to every cell, and has repercussions. If you ran your body entirely on its automatic processes, you’d be in a coma. As long as you are awake and alive, making choices, you are adding to the feedback loop.

This picture is simple but not simplistic. Despite the incredible complexity of the brain and nervous system, it forms an information highway teeming with messages, and these are either positive (enhancing your health and well-being) or negative (injurious to health and well-being). Your body will take care of you for life if you maximize the one and minimize the other. I doubt that anyone would seriously disagree with that proposition, but then we reach a fork in the road. Modern medicine looks at the body’s feedback loop almost entirely in physical terms. The subjective world of thoughts, feelings, hopes, wishes, and dreams is discounted. If that world intrudes, as it does in depression, for example, the conventional solution is still physical — take an antidepressant.

The other road is holistic, which doesn’t deny the physical but refuses to discount the subjective world. The body doesn’t recognize that there is a fork in the road. A chemical signal sent from the brain fits into a receptor site in the outer membrane of the cell wall. The entire feedback loop runs on that mechanism, and as far as the cell is concerned, there is no difference between a message that began as an emotion or mood and one that began as growth hormone or estrogen. Your body couldn’t survive a single day without being holistic.

Fixating on the physicalist approach, modern medicine has constructed a map to health that puts almost the whole emphasis on physical measures. Exercise is physical, obviously, but so is proper nutrition. Although we take it for granted, sanitation is a physical measure that has probably done more to increase human life span than any kind of drug or surgery. Avoiding toxins is physical, and beyond not smoking and overusing alcohol, there is a growing awareness that environmental toxins we take for granted because our exposure is minuscule may still have harmful effects. (These include pesticides, herbicides, and hormones that are routinely introduced into the food chain.)

But if you adhered rigorously to the entire physical side, as beneficial as the results might be, you are not really letting your body take care of you. You are basically minimizing risks. A risk-free life is far from being a healthy life. To begin with, the very word “risk” implies worry, and people who worry about every bite of food, sip of water, the air they breathe, the gym sessions they have missed, and the minutiae of vitamin doses, are not sending positive signals to their cells. A stressful day sends constant negative messaging to the feedback loop, and popping a vitamin pill or choosing whole wheat bread instead of white bread does close to zero to change that.

To let your body take care of you, two things are vital:

1. Create a matrix for a positive lifestyle. You can’t make positive choices for the rest of your life without an environment that makes those choices easy, natural, and enjoyable.

2. Create the best inner environment for your brain. The brain processes every experience you have, and it must function well in order for the real controller of your life — the mind — to make its best intentions known.

from:    http://www.newrealities.com/index.php/articles-on-health/item/2333-deepak-chopra-the-real-secret-to-staying-healthy-for-life-part-1

Bashar on Life Within Our Solar System, Octaves, etc.

Bashar on: Civilizations within this Solar System

bashar
Question from audience:  Can you discuss the concept of octaves?

Bashar:  There are many octaves of octaves. It goes on forever. The idea from your particular perspective may make it seem as if the limit, the upward ceiling so to speak, is the eighth density. But that is only a reference to your specific realm. Do you follow me? There are many different manifestations. Anything at all, any variation, any vibration, any subtle frequency, is, in and of itself, a completely different reality, a completely different universe, a completely different dimension of experience. They are infinite. Does that assist you?

Q:  Yes, thank you for sharing this with us. I have a question.

B:  Yes.

Q:  Are there any other civilizations within this particular solar system that reside on other planets other than Earth?

B:  Not indigenous in your dimension. Now understand there are many different dimensional planes in your own “solar system.” And in this way, you will find, that perhaps in certain other dimensional planes there are habitations, there are forms of consciousness. But in your-third-density plane, so to speak, you are the only form that is indigenous.

There have been other civilizations that have utilized many of the planets in your solar system from time to time, temporarily, perhaps — as you would call them, reconnaissance bases — from time to time, including what you call your own moon.

But you will find that in order to experience the indigenous life that may or may not be attached to any other planet within your immediate solar system, you would have to create yourself to walk through a dimensional vibratory frequency shift in order to experience them. And then once you do that, your own planet may not seem to contain life.

Q:  Do they exist as another civilization in another vibratory rate?

B:  Yes, some of them.

Q:  Then they do live in this solar system?

B:  Some. But again — not in your dimensional plane. You will not see them with your physiological instruments.

Q:  Thank you very much.

B:  Thank you. “You know that no matter how well you plan, you’re always in the unknown. So it might as well be a place to enjoy because it’s the only place that exists.”

It’s not about creating that reality – it’s really about attracting that reality. Everything already exists. It was already done by Creation, you don’t have to do it again. All you have to do is manifest it through you, in your unique way. That is how you are a co-creator. Don’t confuse the semantics of your language that says you are a creator, that you have to create the reality from scratch. No. You create the manifestation, the expression of a reality, an idea that already exists, through you, by acting like that reality. So it can ‘channel’ through you. You have to become the vibration before you can become magnetically attractive to that reality, so it can express itself through you. That’s why it excites you so much. If it were not so easily manifestable something else would excite you, instead. Because the universe does not do pointless things. The universe does not say, “I will make this your heart’s desire but you can’t have it!” Trust your heart’s desire.

Why base your happiness on what you think must happen outside you? BE HAPPY! And as you are happy you become the vibration of happiness, attracting all the circumstances and situations in life that reflect the concept of happiness. But – be happy because that is what you prefer to be – not just so you will attract those things. Be happy and you will attract those things that are representative of happiness. This is not philosophy, this is physics! What you put out is what you get back. The energy level or frequency you operate on determines the kind of reality you will experience. It’s physics. You have to become a particular frequency in order to be the antennae that will receive an echo of the same frequency. Keep it simple.

It is ALL about vibration – about states of being.

Become as transparent as glass and all that is not of your frequency shall pass right through you.

When you are operating properly in your super conductive state, the physiological cellular structure and molecular structure vibrates at it’s maximum capacity, and in that high frequency range has total
access to the electro-magnetheric level and all the dimensional levels above it.  Since it is all made of light in that sense.

What makes a super-conductor a super-conductor is that it vibrates at one coherent frequency, a pure resonant tone.  That’s why it works as it does.  Super-conductors are in that sense the electro-magnetheric version of what you understand on your planet to be lasers.  Laser light being coherent light of one frequency only.Thank you.

Q:  Can you discuss the concept of octaves?

B:  There are many octaves of octaves. It goes on forever. The idea from your particular perspective may make it seem as if the limit, the upward ceiling so to speak, is the eighth density. But that is only a reference to your specific realm. Do you follow me? There are many different manifestations.

Anything at all, any variation, any vibration, any subtle frequency, is, in and of itself, a completely different reality, a completely different universe, a completely different dimension of experience. They are infinite. Does that assist you?

Q:  Yes, thank you for sharing this with us. I have a question.

B:  Yes.

Q:  Are there any other civilizations within this particular solar system that reside on other planets other than Earth?

B:  Not indigenous in your dimension. Now understand there are many different dimensional planes in your own “solar system.” And in this way, you will find, that perhaps in certain other dimensional planes there are habitations, there are forms of consciousness. But in your-third-density plane, so to speak, you are the only form that is indigenous.

There have been other civilizations that have utilized many of the planets in your solar system from time to time, temporarily, perhaps — as you would call them, reconnaissance bases — from time to time, including what you call your own moon.

But you will find that in order to experience the indigenous life that may or may not be attached to any other planet within your immediate solar system, you would have to create yourself to walk through a dimensional vibratory frequency shift in order to experience them. And then once you do that, your own planet may not seem to contain life.

Q:  Do they exist as another civilization in another vibratory rate?

B:  Yes, some of them.

Q:  Then they do live in this solar system?

B:  Some. But again — not in your dimensional plane. You will not see them with your physiological instruments.

Q:  Thank you very much.

B:  Thank you. You know that no matter how well you plan, you’re always in the unknown.
So it might as well be a place to enjoy because it’s the only place that exists.

It’s not about creating that reality – it’s really about attracting that reality. Everything already exists. It was already done by Creation, you don’t have to do it again. All you have to do is manifest it through you, in your unique way. That is how you are a co-creator. Don’t confuse the semantics of your language that says you are a creator, that you have to create the reality from scratch. No. You create the manifestation, the expression of a reality, an idea that already exists, through you, by acting like that reality. So it can ‘channel’ through you. You have to become the vibration before you can become magnetically attractive to that reality, so it can express itself through you. That’s why it excites you so much. If it were not so easily manifestable something else would excite you, instead. Because the universe does not do pointless things. The universe does not say, “I will make this your heart’s desire but you can’t have it!” Trust your heart’s desire.

Why base your happiness on what you think must happen outside you? BE HAPPY! And as you are happy you become the vibration of happiness, attracting all the circumstances and situations in life that reflect the concept of happiness. But – be happy because that is what you prefer to be – not just so you will attract those things. Be happy and you will attract those things that are representative of happiness. This is not philosophy, this is physics! What you put out is what you get back. The energy level or frequency you operate on determines the kind of reality you will experience. It’s physics. You have to become a particular frequency in order to be the antennae that will receive an echo of the same frequency. Keep it simple.

It is ALL about vibration – about states of being.

Become as transparent as glass and all that is not of your frequency shall pass right through you.

When you are operating properly in your super conductive state,
the physiological cellular structure and molecular structure vibrates
at it’s maximum capacity, and in that high frequency range has total
access to the electro-magnetheric level and all the dimensional levels
above it.  Since it is all made of light in that sense.

What makes a super-conductor a super-conductor is that it vibrates at
one coherent frequency, a pure resonant tone.  That’s why it works as
it does.  Super-conductors are in that sense the electro-magnetheric
version of what you understand on your planet to be lasers.  Laser
light being coherent light of one frequency only.Thank you.

from:    http://www.newrealities.com/index.php/articles-on-ufos/item/2322-bashar-on-civilizations-within-this-solar-system