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Icons of the Theotokos: Panagia Pantanassa
Today's icon first became known to history in the 17th century. A young man, visiting the monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos, went to venerate the holy icon. Elder Joseph of Vatopedi reported that he saw a flash of light proceeding from the face of the Panagia on the icon. Immediately, an unseen force pushed the young man to the ground.
Rising to his feet, the young man was undeniably shaken, confessing that he was involved in the practice of dark magic. Nevertheless, he went away that day changed, later becoming an Orthodox Christian.
Among the Panagia Pantanassa's many recorded miracles are instances of instances of healing from cancer, particular after a Paraklesis service to the Panagia Pantanassa is recited. Among the icon's many copies in Russia, it is well known for the miracles performed in a children's oncology ward in Moscow.
The Feast of the Panagia Pantanassa is October 28th in Greece and August 18th (3 days after the Dormition) in Russia


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This is the fourth book in the John Dunning's "Bookman" series, with Cliff Janeway, an ex-cop turned book dealer as the protagonist. Janeway's lawyer girlfriend Erin has been contacted by her ex-best friend Laura to help defend her against a murder rap. The victim is Laura's husband; Laura had "stolen" him from Erin years ago. Erin asks Janeway to check it out, and, predictably, mayhem ensues.
I really liked the first book in this series, Booked to Die; the second and third, while good, let me down a little. This one, however, I liked a lot. It's full of interesting characters and tense situations, held together by sharp writing.

subset: commoncrawl


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... and neither would life itself! Or at least the social intercourse part of it. :)
Stein Nukes Dawkins, Then Freaks Out04/17/2008
By Heidi Martinuzzi
Richard Dawkins is going to be very sorry today. There's a moment in Ben Stein's new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed that the revered biologist is not going to like at all.
As the preeminent source on evolutionary theory and Darwinism, Dawkins is being interviewed by the dry, laconic Stein, who gets him to talk about why he's so vehemently opposed to any possibility of Intelligent Design in any way, shape or form.
And then suddenly Dawkins starts to muse. He wonders sometimes, he says, why all DNA has such a deliberate signature to it. It's almost as if someone, or something, put their "stamp" on it, and maybe even placed the seeds of this DNA, in cellular form, on the Earth, on purpose, intending that it would reproduce itself and spread. Dawkins wonders at who this "intelligence" might be. Aliens? From another planet? He's shy when he says it, blushing like a schoolboy, because he knows that he sounds a little silly. Yet he is not afraid to admit he thinks it's possible that someone, or some THING, more intelligent than we are, made us on purpose. And how fascinating is that?
Cut to Ben Stein, feigning a perplexed look: "Did Richard Dawkins just say he accepts the possibility of Intelligent Design?"
It's Stein's ultimate "Gotcha!" moment. Everyone learned how to do this from Michael Moore.
And yet the film is deeper than that. My own training is in anthropology and I'm a committed Darwinist, but I have to admit that this movie, skillfully directed by Nathan Frankowski, caused me to give Intelligent Design a second look. Explaining the difference between ID ("Life is so complex, I guess maybe it was planned!") and Creationism ("The Hebrew God made the world in six days"), Expelled interviews several scientists who actually lost their jobs because they considered Intelligent Design a worthwhile subject for study.
Richard Sternberg, a Ph.D. biologist, was fired from his job at the Smithsonian Institution after publishing a paper on the topic. Physicist Guillermo Gonzalez was refused tenure at Iowa State University because he documented a "design" he observed in the universe. Caroline Crocker, a biologist, was forced out of George Mason University for defining Intelligent Design in one of her classrooms. Expelled is definitely on the side of these scientists and against Dawkins and his crew, but Stein's narrative tries to convince us he's actually looking for "the Truth." Well, he is, but he's really looking for a strained truth of his own devising: that Darwinists are evil.
They're not evil, but perhaps what this film shows is that they've become so radicalized by the prejudices of their opponents that they're blind to their own lack of fairmindedness. While it's unlikely that aliens came down and planted us here as part of some great experiment, isn't it just as unlikely, in a common-sense kind of way, that life just "appeared" for no reason one day? Maybe, just maybe, something intelligent encoded the directions in DNA and placed it in a cell, where it would be safe, and then put the cell down on Earth and said "Go forth and multiply. Oh, and good luck, you'll need it." My first thought is: So, doesn't that make us all machines of some kind? My second thought is: Oh my God, am I a Cylon? Are we ALL Cylons?
What's going to make Richard Dawkins upset about his admission is that he is aggressively anti-religious, a "hater" of the Judeo-Christian God, and he has many times publicly denounced the theory of Intelligent Design as complete and utter hogwash. He frankly states, moments before his alien-musings, that the likelihood of God existing is about the same as "fairies, elves" and other fantastical creatures.
But apparently he's okay with aliens.
That one scene is enough to open anyone's eyes to the inherent hypocrisy not only of the scientific community but of humanity as a whole. Perhaps everything we think we know about our world should be put to the test more often by the scientific community. It's easy to take for granted that certain things become "common knowledge" (global warming is bad; unicorns never existed), but then again Newtonian law was once accepted as the only physics, too. Then Einstein came along. Weren't people once convinced that dinosaurs' bones were the remains of long-dead dragons, and that they breathed fire? Wasn't it not long ago that people died of common colds because science didn't permit the dissection of human bodies for study? Aren't we glad that people stood up to whoever was in charge only to arrive at greater and more complete truths?
So when Richard Dawkins, and many other scientists, heatedly deny the possibility of Intelligent Design because they claim it's "stupid," they are refusing to entertain possibilities other than Darwin's "survival-of-the-fittest," "mutations-happen-randomly," "environment-is-everything," "free-will-does-not-exist" concept (and, in essence, are being closed-minded jerks).
Ben Stein agrees, and Expelled does a great job of making this point. When he goes beyond that, the film stumbles. There's a very strange sequence in which Stein runs around Dachau and other Holocaust sites—we see the closeup tears on Stein's cheeks—claiming that Darwin is directly responsible somehow for Hitler. Moving from Darwinism to "social Darwinism," Stein insinuates that Darwinism leads to atheism, and that atheism leads to amorality and a devaluing of human life, and that leads to governments doing terrible things like sterilizing the mentally challenged (the eugenics movement of the 1920's), killing Jews (the Holocaust) and creating totalitarian Communist states (Russia—no, seriously, Communist Russia is somehow a direct result of Darwin). This is where Stein goes overboard. To portray scientific thinking without God as the root of all evil is just as bad as claiming that scientific thought with God is stupid.
Dawkins, echoing several of the scientists interviewed, says that his pursuit of Darwinian science made him lose any faith in a higher power. But Intelligent Design claims that God and modern evolutionary theory can coexist. Darwin never explained how that first cell was created, and neither has anyone since then. ID advocates accept the doctrine of evolution, but also believe in the possibility that its "first causes" are not random. Maybe there's a purpose?
So while Ben Stein's greater objective seems to be to make Richard Dawkins out to be pure evil and a hypocrite, Intelligent Design not only gets some much needed press but proves that those old-fashioned witch-hunt tactics used to stifle free-thinking scientists are still being used today to control the flow of scientific information. That's because a godless world that has no place for the sick, old, or imperfect is somehow less scary to science than a world where everyone is a Cylon: an organic and pre-programmed machine with a purpose.
I loved Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and I always watched Win Ben Stein's Money, but this is more like one of those speeches he used to write for Richard Nixon: so over-the-top that you can't totally trust it. It's also kind of shameless the way he inserts both a Ferris Bueller's Day Off moment and a Win Ben Stein's Money reference in the film. It's a good thing he accidentally makes some really good points.
Raquel, et al, it was a joke. I know I'm not always right...just 98.675% of the time.
"... perhaps what this film shows is that they've become so radicalized by the prejudices of their opponents that they're blind to their own lack of fairmindedness." Heidi M.
So if I espouse ID or a Biblical creation then it's my fault these Darwanists are closed-minded radical fools?
Nope - they are fools because they refuse to acknowledge God.
The Nam, I think you may have misunderstood. My point is that scientists who take darwinism for granted are closing themselves off to other ideas, some of which may have scientific merit and may go unexplored. This is not good, whether twhat they are closed from is ID or not.
My personal opinion is that ID IS worth exploring.
You would paint anyone who "refuses to acknowledge God" as a fool?
The stench of your elitism is overwhelming! I'm sure Jesus would agree with you 100% -- you freak.
I don't think it is an elitism. I am careful not to call people fools. However, I beleive in revelation and this has the unfortunate (for some) worldview attached to it that includes God.
The Bible is very clear that we have no right to call each other fools (Sermon on the Mount) but it is also pretty clear that he reserves that right when he says that a fool says in his heart that there is no God. (Psalms 14:1).
I think your problem is with him. Perhaps God is an elitist freak and you are barking up the wrong tree.
Belief in god yields no results whatsoever. None. It makes no testable predictions. There is absolutely nothing to commend it. The only point that believers can cling to, is that it makes them feel good. But huge numbers of people believe some other religion, often contradictory in crucial respects. Their belief appears to be as solid as yours. With a comparable feel-good factor. Sincere, fervent, blissful belief is obviously no indicator of truth.
Believers try to persuade us that if we switch off our critical faculties, and just BELIEVE, then we may become addicted to this self hypnosis. They're probably right, the mind is capable of self-deception. Including mine. But which religion should I pick? My local one? The one that suits my prejudices? I choose the only belief system which is capable of learning and changing to accommodate new knowledge. Science. You can keep your easy, delusional, blind religions with their promises of "no need to think, the answers are all in this old book." And yes, I feel good, too. :-)
ID is worth exploring as theology, but it isn't science, dagflabbit. It isn't.
That doesn't mean that rational beings can't see signs of their creator. But the pursuit of those evidences isn't something for which science is intended. This isn't a hypothesis to be proven or disproven based on the data.
In no way, no how, and under no circumstances are the tools of science going to yield proof of God...at least not until the Maker is good and ready. Then, probably any cheap digital camera will suffice.
And that's why schools should teach a basic ability to grok philosophical/theological arguments without being distracted by BS. "Intelligent Design" is an aesthetics-based theology/philosophy of science.
The problem is that the fundies would go apeshit over such a thing. Being able to see through the "seed-faith contribution" BS inherent to their worldview would be seen by them as "brainwashing children" (as if "Left Behind" and its related crock isn't).
This position (as common as it is) is baffling to me. No one is talking about trying to discover God, define him, or get a snapshot. ID is simply (in it's agenda-less form) looking at the cell (or the universe, or whatever) and determining what is the likeliest origin of it. If God is a possible origin, then you can shrug your shoulders and move on, or change your your major to theology, if you want.
Why is the acknowledgement of the possibility of a creator automatically unscientific while aliens seeding the planet (as long as they themselves evolved randomly) is somehow a compelling scientific notion.
Let me get this out of the way. I try to view the world from a scientific standpoint because it reveals God to me. Also, I believe God created the world and informed us of it in a need-to-know basis as to just "how" in the scriptures. I have no idea when exactly He did it. I wasn't there. Do I believe it was 6 literal days? Actually, since it's been shown that the speed of light is slowing down, I guess time could've been faster then and it could've been in less time than we would measure by today's standards. So yeah, He can do whatever He wants. The chicken came first, obviously.
I can read what some smart people, believers and non-believers have discovered about the Fertile Crescent as the cradle of civilization, and about floods and the geologic records and stuff. But again, it's hard to measure how old things are when we don't know how old they appeared to be when they were created or what catastrophes do to our interpretation. All I see are people fighting for their faiths. Everyone gets their knickers in a twist when some new thought is publicized that threatens their position. Lots of creationists or ID people don't like it when evolutionists gets press or sell their books or control the schools with a stranglehold so narrow-minded they can look through a key hole with both eyes.
Evolutionists wet their pants at the thought that someone might actually challenge their belief system by daring to state in a public forum that they disagree with them, and revert, oh so intelligently to calling names and spending way too much time trying to refute ideas with overreacting spin-PhDs. So what if Mount St. Helens proves that previously measured layers of some canyons that were thought to take, say "bunches" of more years to form, actually took a couple days to make. "So…" is their answer, "Not everything was formed by magma…(really?)…so we got that wrong, we're certainly not going to change our views or revise any books with the truth about that. You're just a bunch of dummies looking to prove a young earth, you,…you…dumbheads…. Only catastrophic measuring is suspect. Everything else is ours. Got it?" (Paraphrase)
So in my worldview, God created Planck to understand God's constant. Of course Planck gets all the credit and quantum physics eventually takes its lovely course. And I'm on board with this. It's really cool. But the trouble is, it's scientific. So evolutionists have to abandon science to maintain their faith. Things move from order to chaos. Let's say I start with a substrate of my clothes in a dryer. I'll even help things along by adding heat. If I could live, say, a billion years, and never run out of Cling Free, my clothes would never, ever, never come out sorted and folded. Socks would not pair up in the right colors, tee shirts would not be folded just the way I like them. It would never happen. It's a scientific fact. Physics says things become more disordered over time. A bunch of bricks in my backyard will never form a building with plumbing that works, even if I cheat and throw in some pipes. That would take intention and purpose. Ants don't one day suddenly decide to form a colony. Bees don't just say, hey, let's all work together and make a big thingy. We'll call it a hive. It would never, ever, ever, ever happen. That requires intention and purpose. But only if you think scientifically and mathematically. Which lots of Christians are afraid to do and lots of evolutionists simply refuse to do. Anyway, I have to go get my clothes out of the dryer and fold them.
1. Darwinj is not guilty of nazism. Were the nazis who misinterpreted Evolution theory in a way to support their "superior race" theory (just like the creationists of Ku-Klux-Klan misinterpreted the Bible in a way to support the idea of "WASP people are the God's people).
2. I'm both christian and evolutionist. I respect Dawkins, but I don't follow him, not only because of his atheism, but also because Dawkins is utterly and bitterly neodarwinist (ie: functionalism, reductionism, gradualism and a excesive gene-centered view of evolution). I'm more on the structuralist, punctualist, holist and not totally gene-centered view of evolution.
Maybe readers should check out the page at www.sciam.com, titled "Six Things Ben Stein Doesn't Want You To Know." To me the two most salient are that Stein lied about the purposes of his interviews and that the tales of persecution are bogus. The Smithsonian researcher wasn't fired - his appointment ended, and it was renewed. The Iowa astronomer wasn't fired, he didn't get tenure. He was hired to generate fundable research and support graduate students, and he didn't do it. Now I think the whole funding game is vile, but he was hired with certain expectations and didn't fulfill them. If he doesn't want to play by those rules he can choose a small campus not run on grants, like I did.
Jdog, you claim "there is no way that it [evolution] works at a cellular level." Where's your evidence from the scientific literature? Not an ID blog or an ICR newsletter, not something by Hans Behe or Ann Coulter, not something you intuitively dreamed up, but actual published science? Do any of you that are pronouncing evolution unworkable ever read any real science at all? Written by actual working scientists and reviewed for reliability by other scientists? Say Scientific American, which virtually every month has articles on how this that or the other evolutionary puzzle has been solved?
Somebody give me ONE scientific idea to come out of ID. By scientific I mean something (not already known) that can be tested and either verified or (here's the nasty part) disproven? Irreducible complexity? If you can define it rigorously so we can tell whether something has it or not, maybe. Show me how I can determine whether or not something is irreducibly complex?
Want I should play by my own rules? Fine, here are THREE tests that could play havoc with evolution:
1. Find undisturbed rocks with highly out of order fossils in the same layers. Say, modern pine cones in a Permian coal bed, or recent clams and Cambrian trilobites, or ichthyosaurs and placoderms. They have to be undisturbed and the fossils obviously in place, because creationists like to deny the existence of thrust faults and reworked pebbles.
2. Find a process that can accelerate radioactive decay under natural field conditions by millions or billions of times. Not only would you crash the geologic time scale, you'd get the Nobel Prize in chemistry and physics (for obvious reasons), as well as medicine and peace (for finding a way to neutralize radiation hazards). If you wrote it up well enough, you might even get the prize for literature and complete the hat trick.
3. Find organisms (fossil or living) with structures completely unrelated to existing ones. Say, they move with wheels or propellers, or birds with four wings, or mollusks with metal shells. If organisms are created in their present forms, why not?
Recently the head of Chi Alpha at a nearby campus spoke locally and lamented that once Christian kids reach college "they learn that everything they've been told is a lie." I wanted to raise my hand and ask if maybe not lying to them was on the table. Five minutes exposed to what evolution really teaches is enough to undo eighteen years of uninformed Sunday School taught out of ICR manuals. Five minutes exposure to what Buddhism or Islam really teach (oh, BTW, are you aware that widespread Internet rumor about verse 9:11 from the Koran is a hoax?) totally demolishes the scare stories they hear at church.
Papist Spy-
I think it is some what interesting that you call out Ben by saying the tales of persecution were hoaxes. Did you expect that the institutions (The Smithsonian and ISU) would tell these men something like, "We don't like you because of ID so get the heck out?" That's not at all how persecution usually works. The Black basketball coach wasn't fired because he was black but because he didn't win enough games, etc. If you are going to call Ben out then you have to put down a bit more than you did.
I do not know the story of the Smithsonian man, but I know the man from ISU personally. I was a student at ISU at the time, and I can say that it was clearly persecution. An atheist professor on campus had even started a petition to remove any faculty from campus that embraced ID. Mr. Gonzales is an incredible man, scientist, and instructor, so please check into your facts more before you speak up.
Respectfully Yours,
SciAm.com has details and the National Center for Science Education site (http://www.ncseweb.org/) has a ton more more. You can easily find the details at http://www.expelledexposed.com/. Asking me to supply more in a brief post is merely a smoke screen.
Of the six "expelled" scientists, only one (Gonzalez) had a seriously negative career outcome. He didn't get tenure because he wasn't doing any original research. He merely reworked research he'd done elsewhere. One other didn't get re-hired as a temporary instructor, something she had no right to demand anyway. The others merely experienced criticism, and not especially harsh criticism at that. Try writing a paper, spending weeks on it, then getting it back from a journal mauled to bits if you want to know what real criticism is all about. Criticism is not persecution.
Papist Spy, I love your three tests. Just made God that much bigger than me.
I will except the challenge of #2 listed by Papist Spy. To my knowledge, the rate of radioactive decay can only be changed by taking material and accelerating it to a very high speed where time would slow down for it. At close to the speed of light the rate would change considerably, at least from our viewpoint. That much is already generally accepted in the scientific community. Now about the geological time scale you mentioned. It is based on the supposed rock-solid reliability of various dating methods based on radioactive decay. The problem, as always, is a question of assumptions. Are the assumptions being made faulty or not? If the assumptions have a fault then the results will not be accurate either.
For example lets take one of the common ways used to date a rock sample--Uranium/Lead dating. Specifically, U238 decays into Lead-235 at a certain rate that is constant, at least while it remains on this earth. According to the latest theories, heavy elements are created when a star goes Nova. Both Uranium and Lead are created then in the blast and then hurled out in space as space dust, which then eventually accumulates with the pull of gravity into space rocks of various sizes. These collide with each other and form bigger rocks which eventually crashes into the mass of our planet. In this way our planet was seeded with star stuff and the heavy elements which are found on our planet. But by the time they have reached our planet, at least some of the U238 has already decayed into Lead.
Then our planet cools and rock solidify. Some are formed underground and in certain cases veins of heavy metals are formed which we later find and are mined. In other cases they erupt as lava or ash and cool to form the most basic types of rocks. Later on any type of rock at the surface is exposed to the elements, is weathered, and can be transformed into sedimentary rocks. Other rocks underground can be changed again into metamorphic rocks by an increase in heat and pressure. Fossils are usually found in the sedimentary types of rock. The heat and pressure of metamorphic rocks would destroy any fossils that they formerly contained.
The assumption is that every time any rock is formed, at least where fossils can be found, that that rocks contains U238 but never, ever even the slightest trace of Lead-235. The only process on the planet that I am aware of for sorting these two materials out from each other only occurs deep within the earth. At the surface trace amounts of both of these elements can be found in many different type of rocks and in many places. This is what makes it possible for this type of dating to be done on a sample. But because the dating only can yield an accurate date if no lead was present when the rock actually formed, dating only can give a maximum possible date. Any dating, therefore, would be exaggerated by the exact amount of how much lead was present when the rock was formed. And how much is something that no one can know.
If you have an answer to this little problem of what I call a faulty assumption big enough to drive a bus through, then I would be very open to hear it. The other radioactive dating techniques also have the same problem. How much of the daughter element was present when a given sample was formed? Only God knows, if He exists of course. To always assume that none was present, I suppose, only can make an ass of oneself. I find nothing at all "Scientific" about this basic assumption.
I'm glad you "excepted" my challenge, although "accepting" would have been better. And thank you for proving everything I said about the lack of scientific knowledge among ID advocates. Are you aware there are other dating methods than U-238 and you can use them on a rock to get consistent ages? Are you aware that there is no such thing as Lead 235? Uranium 238 decays to Lead 206 (the difference in mass results because of the emission of alpha particles). Natural lead also contains Lead 208 (from Thorium), lead 207 (from Uranium 235) and lead 204 (not formed by decay at all). So you can compare the ages from U-238/Pb-206, U-235/Pb/207 and Th/Pb-208 and see if they're consistent. Also you can compare them all with Pb-204 and tell whether or not there was any lead there to begin with. If there's no lead 204, all the lead formed from decay. And then there are potassium-argon and rubidium-strontium dating methods as well.
Anyway, I asked for a process that can speed up decay enough to fit the creationist time scale. Got one that you can demonstrate on a real rock?
I think the salient point that lots of us here are trying to make is that it wasn't that long ago when Newton rightly thought the atom was the smallest block we had, and now we have string theory, and who knows what else we'll have later...remember that it's only been about 100 years since the airplane was crazy hypothesis. It's always a good idea to mix a healthy dose of humility with science.
Humility? Where's the humility in writing "except" when you mean "accept," talking about "Lead 235," being utterly unaware of all the tests scientists use to ensure radiometric dates are accurate, and then thinking you can talk knowledgeably about science, as one of my other respondents did? Richard Dawkins is woefully uninformed about Christianity, but he's Thomas Aquinas compared to the level of scientific literacy I see in most of the posts on this topic.
Scientists are not self appointed experts. They are real experts. The people who are rushing to defend Ben Stein are the self appointed experts. "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much." (Luke 16:10, NIV). If ID believers can't even be trusted with the facts of this world, what possible reason is there to think they have anything useful to say about spiritual matters?
Papist, seriously dude, take a valium. First off, I think you're confusing my post with one by someone else, as I assure you, I know the difference between "accept" and "except." Besides, I didn't use either word in my post. Secondly, I never said a word about dating or the techniques involved. Thirdly, there are times when I have posted a typo (although not in my post to you) but that is different from a misspelling, or for that matter, a syntax or grammatical error; and besides, your entire response is only proof to me that you are not interested in dialogue, only somehow "proving" to everyone who reads your comments how unbelievably smart you are...snore. I couldn't care less, friend. Your attitude makes anything you have to say repulsive-not ideal in any attempt to win friends or influence people. Say, I bet they're offering a Dale Carnegie course at a community college near you...
Hey Calvinist,
I disagree with your characterization of the Papist's posts. He wrote some very intelligent material, and I think the thread was enhanced by having his insights. I don't think he was antagonizing, not even the least bit. His challenge was not arrogant, he was itemizing some ways that, if new evidence was found, the ID or even Creationist perspective would have some scientific evidence for their cause- I view that as being open and helpful. His response to the other guy may have been discourteous,but have you not responded sharply and forcefully when you have believed that someone has misrepresented Biblical text? Should he not have the same response when someone badly misrepresents fundamentals of science? I encourage you go back to his original post and read it without a predefined idea of his "agenda"....I think it was thoughtful work well done.
SST, I disagree. He apparently didn't read my post at all, because he accused me of things I didn't even say.
The whole pointing out other people's misspellings/typos to somehow prove their unintelligence thing is getting old. After reading through the responses I have seen it used three times. Spelling and science have no correlation in this argument. Apparently we have all reverted to 5th grate tactics in order to have the satisfaction of making us feel like we won. I agree with Doug. Tact is the only effective way to get your point across. Both sides need to grow up.
Has anyone here ever read a book by Thomas Kuhn called "Structures of Scientific Revolutions"? At the time that he wrote it he was a professor of Philosophy. His subject of study was history and the philosophy of science. The book itself examines how we as humans have responded to our own discoveries. In the book, through historical research he shows that scientific advancement doesn't happen in the Cartesian way that we believe it does. We like to believe that there is a continuing body of facts and knowledge that is always pointing in the same direction and growing as time progresses. But what history shows is that what happens is that there are successive dominating scientific paradigms. And what happens (and this is repeated throughout history) is that this paradigm becomes so dominant that anyone who questions it on any level is deemed a scientific heretic. But eventually enough people run into questions that violate the rules of the paradigm and push through the ostracizing attacks and gain a voice loud enough that eventually it is heard and there is a revolutionary scientific paradigm shift that becomes the new accepted norm. Eventually this paradigm becomes the one that excludes the next group of challengers. In each ruling paradigm the adherents of it see it as the definitive overarching story of scientific truth and treat the past theories with contempt. Any inconsistencies in the current theory are dismissed as "something that we haven't figured out yet, yet there is a firm belief that eventually all answers found will support the thesis of the current paradigm. Each paradigm that wins believes that it has arrived. That is until the crisis of too many inconsistencies reaches changing momentum and it is usurped.
I found this book to be a bit of a hard read yet the insights gained from it were extremely relevant to the debate at hand.
Here are two links that speak about Kuhn
The Wiki one is short and to the point-
The other is a bit more scholarly but more information to get through-
Kuhn was a pretty cool guy (he died in 1996)
You're right man. I didn't read the whole book, but what Kuhn says there is really important in those issues.
I find myself wondering this morning how we this burgeoning new line of ID research will inform other fields of human endeavor.
Like, say, pharmaceutical research. Or structural engineering.
And here I thought Ben Stein was a Rational person. Now I find he believes in the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. oh sorry wrong childish myth. He believes in some Giant Primate that created the entire universe 4500 years ago, who loves us and tortures us in unequal measure. I guess that rationality has no bearing here after all. You see, a Rational Mind, relies on evidence, observable, repeatable evidence, not books written by ignorant savages, back when every one thought the world was flat, that stars were holes in a backdrop and bad things happened because of Demons.
Sorry but if you claim to believe any part of this nihilistic superstition then you must accept it all. Sure I don't want to die either. But belief in immortality has no rational basis. It is just the biological urge to Not Die.
The problem with this immortality bit, is that it makes your life, your REAL and Verifiable Life, not very important. What the heck suffer 50-80 years, doing whatever the Medicine Men tell your ass you to do. WOW! how nice for them! work your ass to the grave, give them everything they need to live in privilege, and they will say some magic words, and you get to live forever.
So instead you do what they say , then die and exist no longer.
Life is Rare, precious, and FINITE. when you die, YOUR OVER! No afterlife, no angels, none of that pie in the sky when you die crap.
YOU ARE GOING TO DIE! so why let yourself be operated by a huge psycho-spacial Parasite. Why not live a fulfilling life? Why not make each day worth something special.
The only arguments FOR this ridiculous belief system are based on hearsay written in a language none of you can read. (aramaic etc.)
For thousands of years, many argued in favor of slavery, often quoting the scriptures. Oh yeah the same ones that condone and command murder, genocide, rape, incest, taxation and slavery, while forbidding haircuts, poly-cotton blends, companion planting, shrimp, and consensual sex, among other things. For thousands of years, those that spoke against slavery or universal human equality were viewed as dangerous radicals. Equal rights for women? Africans as real people? not according to holy writ.
If you were on trial, Mr Stein, for murder or child rape, how would you feel if the "evidence" against you were writings by persons dead over 1000 years? what if your perfect alibi, 100 pages of forensic evidence and the testimony of 10 experts with photos, fingerprints and physical evidence did not match the ravings of a desert maddened hermit's starvation induced hallucinations of a millennium ago.
Look Ben, I'm sorry your feeling old and closing in on the end. It's too bad you didn't live a life understanding its finitude, and talk to that cute girl or take that cruse or pursue an interesting life. But you made your choices, based on stupid ideas of superstitious, ignorant, sun-blinded primitives. Too Bad.
I understand your pissed off at all that waste. But it is at best wicked and cruel to try to get others to waste their precious finite lives serving the uber-parasite that is religious belief. But just as slavery and chattel treatment of women has been rolled back around the world, so to this venal, mean spirited, superstition will also be rolled back. It make take centuries, because of the ways religion preys and exploits the weak, the ignorant, the helpless, the hopeless, assimilating them onto this monster of a mindset that consumes human life and gives back only empty illusions of immortality.
The human consciousness is evolving past these primitive mythologies ( oh maybe you don't believe in evolution either? perhaps you'd prefer to use all the old, now useless antibiotics that the disease organisms have evolved beyond)
Face it, be part of a rational world, or go back to the 7th century with all the other po'bucker hilbillies, sand raddled islamo-fascists, and bat potioned witches.
I dare ya to debate my ass, much less my brain. hell, I'll even pay
my own air fare.
But then rational debate is not part of the superstitious system
"Sorry but if you claim to believe any part of this nihilistic superstition then you must accept it all."
So, according to you every christian must be a six-day creationist? Heyy! you're as biased as any dangerous fundamentalist. Hahahahaha, some atheists are a lot more "literalists" than the most fundamentalists. Off course, you're not a religious fundy who would like to burn up heretcis. Its just funny to see that your hermeneutics are not much diferent than fundy's ones.
If you speak to a Frenchman, you speak French, so if my "hermeneutics" seem similar to those of the "Fundies"it is to make sure the message achieves its chosen receptors. As far as belief systems go, I have no problem with picking your favorite bits out of a text or scripture, I do so myself, borrowing from many sources to give myself an ethical code that is satisfactory and meaning full. But I don't call myself by a label reserved for those that are adherents to a particular belief. So though I may incorporate teachings of Jesus, Lao Tzu, Epicurous and Marx (Groucho, not Karl), I do not call myself a Christian, Taoist, pre-socratic or Marx Brother. I suppose the disconnect I encounter is indeed from the surge of the fundamentalist/literalist. So those that may use the label, Christian should be considered to accept the entire philosophy as a whole. Revelation 3:16 "So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth."
Also since you like the word-hermeneutics (literally the study of Hermes, a greek pagan god) - consider that if I abandoned this linguistic absolutism that pervades modern Christian thought, then I could be proclaimed guilty of relativism. So yes I use the absolute Aristotelian, Manichaean-dualism that pervades this belief system.
Now I need to be fair. It is obvious that this site is not a ravening fundy spot, for which I am grateful, but indeed a venue for more civilized discourse. So I offer you, dear reader, these questions.
In a high quality tomato patch, the soil is rich and brown and perfect for said garden. Now take a handfull of it and rub it into grandma's couch. Is the soil "good" or "bad" or is it conditional upon where it is?.
Faith, belief without evidence, or even in the face of contrary evidence, seems to me an irrational concept. Any "miracle" sufficiently examined always shows some phenomenological basis. The very real feelings people have and quote as proof of the divine are no different than the very real feelings some experience at a particularly good monster movie. I have experienced similar phenomena my self, from a great variety of religious practices, as well as some very secular ones. So my question is, at what point does a rational educated mind abandon that rationality in favor of "faith"? Is it merely a response to overwhelming fear? Or to fill in the missing pieces of a reality that we might wish to be finite, but extends far beyond our ken?
And finally, what's wrong with being and doing good for it's own sake? If the reason we behave is based on the punishment and reward system of heaven and hell, are we realy being moral? Or are we just trying to gain favor and avoid punishment.
Our Mythological heritage is very important. It can transmit to us valuable lesson about ourselves, reveal moments of history and inspire great works of art and culture. But when we treat myth as absolute truth then we open the door to the most venal behaviors of mankind, tribal superiority, designation of unbelievers as non-persons, adoption of barbaric social realities like slavery and woman trading.
Rational thought and the processes of science are revealing a universe far more wondrous than anything every imagined by those scribes of centuries ago, secular intercultural exchanges are making the best social inventions of the world available to anyone to adapt adopt and implement.
We can venerate what came before, what made us who we are, but to adopt as a whole such beliefs is tantamount to accepting that since great granddad owned some africans that it is alright that we do to.
Oh and Mountain Guy,, am I biased? Yes I am, everyone is. But the point is to be able to look critically at bias, and to use our intellect to evolve new understandings. You assume that I am an atheist, that's bias on your part.
I welcome further dialog, and thanks for reading.
"Oh and Mountain Guy,, am I biased? Yes I am, everyone is. But the point is to be able to look critically at bias, and to use our intellect to evolve new understandings. You assume that I am an atheist, that's bias on your part."
mea culpa. Yes, we are always biased (is this just psycological?).
"In a high quality tomato patch, the soil is rich and brown and perfect for said garden. Now take a handfull of it and rub it into grandma's couch. Is the soil "good" or "bad" or is it conditional upon where it is?."
Nice question. If you ask me, the concept of absolut is very religious. Off course there are things that can be "good" in a context, and "bad" in another. Then I ask: Is there any sense talking about the soil being good or bad itself? If we talk about agronomy, then the soul is "bad" or "good" according to our needs, or to one species of plant, or to a kind of vegetation-floristic formation. If we talk about ethics, the soil is not good or bad; then, we use good and bad as an ethical judgment. In this case, we probably would say something like "the boy did bad when he rubbed soil into grandma's couch". Or "it is bad to rub soil into grandma's couch". See, we use "good" and "bad" for our actions (off course, we must always think about the context... that's pretty important).
"Our Mythological heritage is very important. It can transmit to us valuable lesson about ourselves, reveal moments of history and inspire great works of art and culture. But when we treat myth as absolute truth then we open the door to the most venal behaviors of mankind, tribal superiority, designation of unbelievers as non-persons, adoption of barbaric social realities like slavery and woman trading."
I agree. We religious (I prefer to be called "(christian)-believer") shouldn't be much sectarian. I think that "THE absolute truth" itself is God (Or maybe absolut truth is one atribute of God). But this seems to be a very "deeply-spiritual term". We can't say "hey, I have the absolut truth", or "My way of reading the Bible is the absolut truth", or "My worshipping is more according to absolute truth than other's worshipping", or "My way of dressing is the correct".., off course, there are dogmas, but the most of the times we've been sectarian for things that are not that important.
"Rational thought and the processes of science are revealing a universe far more wondrous than anything every imagined by those scribes of centuries ago, secular intercultural exchanges are making the best social inventions of the world available to anyone to adapt adopt and implement."
I don't think that secularism is the best (I totally agree with church-state separation; in fact, I hate the concept of state, so I hate this "We are a christian nation" stuff), but its true that science and rational though have gave us a lot of good things, a lot of discovers, they have shown some truths about the nature of universe.
Ps: Spanish is my mother tongue... my english is not the best.
Hey Plaguewatcher: this anonymous its me (mountainguy). I made a mistake at posting mi nick...
Dude...three points:
1. My wife works in Xian ministry. I assure you, there is no money in it. :)
2. If I'm really going to die and completely cease existing, I don't really much care whether I live my life "ignorant" or "suffering" or whatever words you want to use. After all, I won't be around to regret it.
3. If you feel the need to troll Internet message boards trying to convince people they should believe the exact same things as you, even though you have no evidence for them, you're still a slave to religion.
Just sayin'.
wow thanks a bunch, I am now enlightened, I think I'll go back to atheism now because you have shown me that I am foolish for being a theist of any sort.
So is your point that anyone who doesn't adopt a completely naturalistic world view is irrational and needs come over to your side or be deemed an idiot?
Poor Einstein, that guy was dumb.
BTW- Why do you assume that no one is able to read or study the original languages? For my BS and Masters I had to take Greek for two years, Hebrew for two years, and a couple classes of Aramaic.
"The only arguments FOR this ridiculous belief system are based on hearsay written in a language none of you can read. (aramaic etc.)"
Heidi I don't think you understood Dawkins. Speculating that aliens caused us isn't the same as believing in a supernatural causal agent. He means that the aliens would have to have been evolved beings also. The aliens would have been an evolved intelligence whereas a god would have to have been a "just is" agent which is incoherent since "anything" can be "just is". Dawkins doesn't pretend to know how the first causal agent came into being, if indeed there was one but if there was it couldn't be complex. He has said this many times in other arenas. Also, go to the NCSE's (National Center for Science Education) web site for an accurate over view of what REALLY happened to those "persecuted" science folks. It's not what's portrayed in the movie.
I find it strange that Heidi Martinuzzi fails to mention the seminal sociology/philosophy of science work written by Thomas Kuhn in 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn clearly demonstrates that so-called "objective" science is as much influence by peer pressure, prevailing hierarchies of the scientific community, and generally accepted views in society at large as it is by the scientific method itself. In fact, even the process of choosing what subjects to study, what experiments to perform, and what results are expected are all subjectively selected. Hence, there is no such thing as a purely "objective" scientific method or theory.
Science, like historiography, has been exposed as influence by presuppositions and prejudices of those in power in the scientific community. In essence, science, like religious authorities, has dogma that cannot be challenged until a paradigm shift occurs when prevailing scientific dogam is challenged. It is at this point that all that was generally accepted as true before is now shifted and changed to a new prevailing theory or paradigm.
Any human endeavor is inherently subjective, no matter how objective the scientists involved try to be. A historical review of scientific theories and corrections is more than adequate to demonstrate this. Just my opinion.
I agree, Kuhn's work was pretty impressive. And it made a lot of sense to me because thats what we as human beings have done with every subject under the sun. Thanks for mentioning Kuhn as well.
"Ifind it strange that Heidi Martinuzzi fails to mention the seminal sociology/philosophy of science work written by Thomas Kuhn in 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions."
You do? I don't. I've never even heard of what you just said. There's no reference in it anywhere in the film.
You can argue about this subject, but in the bigger scheme of things, what does it really matter? I'm happy I'm still breathing and am alive, for God's sake!
i think the whole debate is kinda silly... Darwinism, is just another belief structure. PK Meyers (or one major Darwinist) and Dawkins go at it over the whole spontaneous versus non-spontaneous evolutionary theory all the time. That the plain simple fact is that in some species they're are "missing links" and Dawkins claims the links haven't been found because of migratory patterns, while Meyers, says why not a jump in evolution thus skipping a "missing link."
So are the "christians" any better? except we have WAY too many other crappy things to argue amongst ourselves about, post-trib-mid-trib, armenian, calvinist... the list goes on and on.
So my question is, who really cares anymore. Everyone everywhere wants everyone to believe in whatever they're selling.
Only the 'ol ID Vs Evolution debate can bring heaps of not-funneh to the door. Complete with a couple of the 'new' militant Atheist types as well I noticed, well, new atheists with the same old arguments.
Personally, I've been looking at this debate for around twenty years and I think I've reached a conclusion. That conclusion is that like a lot of other controversial topics, the actual evidence is kinda-sorta ambiguous (but to me it screams "OH HAI! Ceiling Cat was here!)which gives us the 'liberty' of being able to squeeze it into our own predefined worldview.
It think it's kinda clever of God to set things up so that all of our human expertise counts for squat.
Or in the words of Bender's God:
"When you do things right people won't be sure you've done anything at all"
Peace out homies.
AMEN that the debate is silly! Anyone who sees conflict between the theory of evolution and faith in God understands neither. Do you suppose that "HOW?" and "WHY?" are the same Question? Of course not. Are mind and soul the same? Of course not again. Some try to make a religion of science, others a science of religion. Both are (please excuse the crudity) mental masturbation: exciting to experience but fruitless.
No, I think you missed my point. My point is that there IS NO evolution to be reconciled with ID in the first place. The actual evidence we have that 'things change' is is so far from the extrapolated conclusion that 'thing change into other things' that it requires much more faith to believe in that than almost anything else I can think of. Well, maybe scientology. ;-)
O.K. Say it's silly for reasons you don't see. Of course things change! "When I was a child..." etc. Also consider the rhinovirus (common cold) which can not be immunized against because it almost continuously changes. Give up your medical treatment if all is as it was. Give up a New Testament if you wish to live in a past that has passed you by.
And yet the virus is still a virus after all these years.
That's all I'm trying to say.
When someone sees it change into an armadillo then I'll take Darwinism seriously. Until then it's just another faith system competing against all the others.
CHeers ;-)
A sophomoric argument. Transition is still transition. Again -- How not Why. Open your eyes and heart. Do you not believe God expects us, the universe, etc. to reach maturity? Or were you born a man (not being sexist, let's just say adult human) knowing and being all you will ever be?
Sorry, no cute icon to bring up the end of this entry.
Sure a transition is a transition, but those observed transitions do not warrant the conclusion that Darwinism demands. And why do you assume that it more mature to accept an idea which I see little evidence for over and above one which I see tons of evidence for? Wouldn't that involve me being dishonest?
For me it's not even a question of 'how' or 'why' but 'if', and if 'if' can't be presented then 'how' and 'why' dont even need to come out of the house. ;-)
"The Essential Nature of the Mind," by Dudjom Rinpoche.
No words can describe it
No example can point to it
Existence does not make it worse
Nirvana does not make it better
It has never been born
It has never ceased.
It has never been liberated
It has never been deluded
It has never existed.
It has never been non-existent
It has no limits at all
It does not fall into any kind
of category.
If ID is not necessarily the same as "young-earth creationism"... then why the debate is evolution vs ID? The conflicting views are evolutionism vs creationism (i.e.: "non evolution"); atheism vs theism (and even, atheism vs deism, and maybe atheism vs pantheism).
All this bunch of bulls-t I've just wrote in the former paragraph is that I don't see that evolutionsm is totally against any sort of belief in any divinity. Off course, it's an easy way to use evolutionism against creationism as "atheistic evolution vs existence of any god".
BTW, I'm a christian believer (just clarifying)


text:
A federal appeals court has demanded that Justice Department prosecutors explain their ''arguably inconsistent'' statements about their involvement in the interrogation of captured terrorists of Al Qaeda who might provide valuable information to lawyers defending Zacarias Moussaoui, according to a court order made public Friday.
In the bluntly worded order, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., said disclosures this week by the department suggested that it might now be possible for Mr. Moussaoui's lawyers to submit written questions directly to the Qaeda detainees.
The issue is important in the prosecution of Mr. Moussaoui, the only person charged in a United States court with conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks, because the Bush administration is refusing to make the captured terrorists available to testify on Mr. Moussaoui's behalf. Court records show that the prisoners have provided information in interrogations that suggests that Mr. Moussaoui had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks.
Prosecutors have argued in the past that they, like Mr. Moussaoui's defense lawyers, have no ability to question the detainees, who are reported to be under intensive interrogation overseas by the C.I.A. They also say it would be impossible to submit written questions to the detainees about their knowledge of Mr. Moussaoui and his purported ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers.
But in a letter to the court on Wednesday that the Justice Department said would ''provide clarification'' on the issue, the department said ''members of the prosecution team have of course been 'privy' '' to information about the captured terrorists and have provided information that may have been used in their interrogations.Continue reading the main story
The letter, heavily edited to remove potentially classified information, was made public on Friday by the appeals court. The court ordered a special closed hearing on the issue next month, saying that the Justice Department's new account was ''arguably inconsistent with statements previously made to the court.''
The court said that the issue of whether written questions could be submitted to the detainees had been raised repeatedly in court hearings and that ''the government unequivocally rejected such a possibility.''
In its order, which was dated Thursday, the court demanded that the Justice Department prepare a statement explaining ''why the information in the May 12 letter was not provided to this court or the district court prior to May 12.''
''In light of the information contained in the May 12 letter and any other pertinent developments, would it now be appropriate to submit written questions to any of the enemy combatant witnesses?'' the court said in listing the questions it wanted answered. ''If circumstances have changed such that submission of written questions is now possible, when did the circumstances change and why was neither this court nor the district court so informed at the time?''
The trial of Mr. Moussaoui, who was arrested in August 2001 after arousing the suspicions of a Minnesota flight school, has been repeatedly delayed because of legal disputes over his access to captured members of Al Qaeda, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has been described by intelligence officials as the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks.
At a news conference on Friday, Attorney General John Ashcroft said, ''We welcome the opportunity through both pleadings and through the oral argument to be offered next month to make sure that the position of the department is clear.''
Although Mr. Moussaoui has acknowledged that he is a member of Al Qaeda and is loyal to Osama bin Laden, he has denied any involvement in the Sept. 11 conspiracy.
The Bush administration has refused to say where Mr. Mohammed and other high-profile Qaeda leaders and operatives are being questioned. The circumstances of their confinement and what some have said are the coercive interrogation methods being used against them have been the subject of growing concern within the C.I.A.Continue reading the main story


text:
Slattery, T., Sturt, P., Christianson, K., Yoshida, M. and Ferreira, F., 2013. Lingering misinterpretations of garden path sentences arise from competing syntactic representations. Journal of Memory and Language, 69 (2), 104 - 120 .
Full text available as:
SlatteryetalJML3final.docx.pdf - Accepted Version
DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2013.04.001
Recent work has suggested that readers 19 initial and incorrect interpretation of temporarily ambiguous ("garden path") sentences (e.g., Christianson, Hollingworth, Halliwell, & Ferreira, 2001) sometimes lingers even after attempts at reanalysis. These lingering effects have been attributed to incomplete reanalysis. In two eye tracking experiments, we distinguish between two types of incompleteness: the language comprehension system might not build a faithful syntactic structure, or it might not fully erase the structure built during an initial misparse. The first experiment used reflexive binding and the Gender Mismatch paradigm to show that a complete and faithful structure is built following processing of the garden-path. The second experiment used two-sentence texts to examine the extent to which the garden-path meaning from the first sentence interferes with reading of the second. Together, the results indicate that misinterpretation effects are attributable not to failure in building a proper structure, but rather to failure in cleaning up all remnants of earlier attempts to build that syntactic representation.
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California Polyphony
Ethnic Voices, Musical Crossroads
Probing the intersection of music and racial politics in California
What does it mean to be "Californian"? California Polyphony: Ethnic Voices, Musical Crossroads suggests an answer that lies at the intersection of musicology, cultural history, and politics. Consisting of a series of musical case studies of major ethnic groups in California, this book approaches the notion of Californian identity from diverse perspectives, each nuanced by class, gender, and sexuality.
In the early twentieth century, the concept of the Pacific Rim and an orientalist fascination with Asian music and culture dominated the popular imagination of white Californians, influencing their interactions with the Asian Other. Several decades later, as tensions rose between the Los Angeles Police Department and the African American community, the once-thriving jazz and blues nightclub scene of 1940s Central Avenue became a primary target for law enforcement's anti-vice crusade. The reactionary nature of the musical scores for Hollywood's noir films of the World War II and postwar eras negotiated the perceived demise of white female sexuality in the face of black culture and urban corruption. Mina Yang also considers Mexican Americans' conflicted assimilation into the white American mainstream from the early 1900s through the 1970s, as well as contemporary Korean Americans' struggles to express their cultural and national identities through hip-hop, a genre usually associated with African Americans.
According to Yang, there has never been a straightforward definition of "Californian." This most populous and most affluent state in the Union has been setting musical and cultural trends for decades, and Yang's study thoughtfully illuminates the multicultural nature of its musics.
�A fascinating and groundbreaking glimpse into a complicated musical geography.�--Journal of American History
"[A] compelling new study ... Yang successfully demonstrates that many elements can and must be taken into account when addressing the formation of any modern musical identify."--American Music Review
"Mina Yang offers a musical message of social hope without stepping back from fierce historical inequities. She shows how the meeting grounds and collisions marking California's racial landscape add up to far more than accidents. California Polyphony will sit on my bookshelf between Mike Davis's City of Quartz and George Lipsitz's Dangerous Crossroads."--Deborah Wong, author of Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music
"A landscape of California's musical history that draws upon sociocultural and political forces that led to the creation, innovation, and appropriation of musical styles, genres, and forms. This welcome addition to music and cultural studies combines the musical contributions of African Americans, East Asian Americans, and Mexican Americans in a unique and refreshing way."--Cheryl L. Keyes, author of Rap Music and Street Consciousness
To order online:
To order by phone:
(800) 621-2736 (USA/Canada)
(773) 702-7000 (International)
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from 0 review
3 hours
Up to 7 days
5 peoples
Ayurveda is a way of life for maintaining health and curing diseases through adherence to natural rhythms and cycles. It employs a variety of natural elements to bring harmony to the physiology including diet, herbs, spices, minerals, exercise, meditation, yoga, sounds, smells and mechano- procedures to eliminate toxic substances from the body.
Ayurveda is the science that indicates the appropriate and inappropriate, happy and sorrowful conditions of living, auspicious or inauspicious for longevity and as well as the measure of life bitself. Vata, Pitta and Kapha (group of the three doshas), in their natural and undisturbed ststed, gives life to the body.
Relax your spirit, body and mind on an Ayurveda break in naturally Nepal. Ayurveda has been practiced in Nepal since the beginning of time. The Himalaya is the base of purity, clarity and harmony, which is the goal of every living creature. Nepal is one of the richest countries in flora ranging from tropical to alpine in such a small area. A lot of the flora is use for medicinal use and is considered part of the cultural heritage of the country.
Ayurveda is a Sanskrit word meaning "the science of life" or "a natural way of living". Ayurveda includes yoga, meditation and the natural and spiritual sciences. The objectives of Ayurveda are the development of awareness to lead to desirableness, the promotion of health and long life, prevention and curing of disease, and to understand and to correct imbalances and restore harmony in the person.
Deep penetrating strokes are combined with special Ayurveda herbal oil. Muscles become relaxed and joints more open, blood circulation and vital energy is strengthened and toxins are released. Pressure points are used to open the meridians and stimulate the flow of energy recharging the nervous system so it can find it natural balance. Chronic problems can be healed in a series of sessions. the package included full body massage and Shirodha.
What You Can Expect:
11:30 AM: The tour consultant will pickup from customer's hotel within Kathmandu Valley and transfer to Ayurveda Centre.
12:00 PM: to 14:00 PM Start Ayurveda massage.
Relaxation – Whole Body Massage
Head Massage
14:15 PM: The tour consultant will pick you up from Ayurveda centre and transfer to customer's Hotel
What's included:
• Pickup and drop services from Customer's Hotel.
• Full Body Massage and Shirodhara about 90 minutes.
What's Not Included:
• Hotels
• Meals
• Visa
• Airfares
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Chimbonda, 28, was arrested and questioned by City of London police on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and bailed until October, but McKay has defended the loan to Chimbonda and admitted that he has made similar loans to other players.
"Pascal had just joined Spurs and was a bit short at the time, so I gave him some money," McKay told The People. "He rang me up and asked if I could lend him £18,000 so I said ´no problem, just come up and get it´."
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Jerks of the Bible/
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• Safehouse Church is far from safe
• Steven Furtick Biblically Biffs It...Again
• Sermon Review: Jerks of the Bible: Pharaoh by Stan Killebrew, Northview Church, Carmel, IN
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Person › Details
Todd Fruchterman (3M Healthcare (business segment of 3M))
Fruchterman, Todd (3M 201306 SVP RnD + CMO at 3M Health Care)
|3M Healthcare (business segment of 3M)
|3M (Group)
Bruker Corporation. (6/4/13). "Press Release: Bruker and 3M Sign Exclusive Patent License Agreement". Bremen.
Bruker Corporation today announced that it has signed an exclusive patent license agreement with 3M Company, which allows Bruker to include 3M patented innovations relating to matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry imaging.
The licensed 3M patents are directed to a technique for performing mass spectrometry analysis on proteins in tissue that has been preserved in paraffin. The technology enables researchers to more easily study formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue for life-science research and drug development.
MALDI imaging has been increasingly used to analyze clinically relevant tissues such as tumor biopsies. The molecular phenotypes observed by MALDI imaging have been shown to correlate with parameters such as disease status or patient outcome, and have been successfully applied to the classification of tissue samples.
MALDI imaging was originally developed for the analysis of fresh, frozen tissue sections, but the analysis of preserved FFPE tissue sections is becoming increasingly important due to methodological improvements. In the MALDI imaging community it is widely accepted that a meaningful analysis of FFPE tissue requires a pretreatment called antigen-retrieval.
Dr. Sören-Oliver Deininger, Market Manager for MALDI imaging at Bruker, stated: "The interest in the analysis of FFPE tissue by MALDI imaging is increasing strongly. Bruker has developed innovative technology to make MALDI imaging viable in histopathology by the integration of virtual microscopy and the possibility to classify tissue based on the molecular phenotypes (class-imaging). Our license agreement with 3M shows our ongoing commitment to the MALDI imaging field, and gives our customers the necessary freedom to conduct their research and advance the field."
"We are pleased to license these patents to Bruker, a leader in the field of MALDI imaging, and see this technology applied in the market," said Dr. Todd Fruchterman, Senior Vice President of Research & Development and Chief Medical Officer for 3M Health Care. "We hope that this license agreement will accelerate the research in MALDI imaging of FFPE tissue, and enable it to ultimately become a valuable diagnostic tool."
Dr. Hartmut Schlüter, Professor at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, has recently published a MALDI imaging study on more than 1,000 FFPE prostate cancer samples using Bruker's MALDI Molecular Imager solution. He explained: "FFPE tissue is particularly important for the analysis by MALDI imaging because of the large available archives of such tissue with patient follow-up data and the possibility to use tissue microarrays for the analysis. Furthermore, FFPE tissue is the standard for histopathological diagnosis. Any future diagnostic application of MALDI imaging will likely need to be established on FFPE tissue."
Note: Bruker MALDI imaging systems and solutions are for research use only (RUO).
3M captures the spark of new ideas and transforms them into thousands of ingenious products. Our culture of creative collaboration inspires a never-ending stream of powerful technologies that make life better. 3M is the innovation company that never stops inventing. With $30 billion in sales, 3M employs about 88,000 people worldwide and has operations in more than 70 countries. For more information, visit www.3M.com or follow @3MNews on Twitter.
Bruker is a leading provider of high-performance scientific instruments and solutions for molecular and materials research, as well as for industrial, diagnostics and applied analysis. For more information: www.bruker.com
Source: Bruker Corporation
Bruker Daltonik GmbH, Bremen, Germany
Dr. Sören Deininger, +49-421-2205-270
Bruker Daltonics
Vicky Lander, +1-978-663-3660
Director of Global Marketing Communications Services
Record changed: 2016-03-19
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MusikFest 2014 is bringing in the likes of WEEZER, THE AVETT BROTHERS, ZZ TOP, JASON DERULO, ALL AMERICAN REJECTS, and others. We are totes pumped to be playing there on 8/9, 11pm, @ TD Community Stage. Come-get-"cray"-if-yer-in-PA.
Also, check this out...
"insightful songwriting... it's no wonder that the band has been gaining so much momentum and snagging to-die-for performance opportunities such as CMJ and SXSW."
Spotlight // Sonicbids


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Click Here to Watch Our TV Show Karma Kundali aur Jyotish on YouTube
हिंदी में पढ़ने के लिए यहॉ किल्क करें
Related Articles : Gemstones Astrology
Vedic astrology recommends 9 gemstones, one for each planet among navagraha. These nine gemstones are called Ruby, Pearl, Yellow Sapphire, White Sapphire or Diamond, Red Coral, Emerald, Blue Sapphire, Hessonite and Cat's Eye, and they are worn for Sun, Moon, Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu respectively. Through this series of chapters, we will look at certain characteristics possessed by each one of these gemstones and in the present chapter; we will discuss some important facts associated with Blue Sapphire, which is the gemstone for Saturn.
Saturn as we know is an important planet in each horoscope and the nature as well as the strength of Saturn can vary from horoscope to horoscope. It means that in some horoscopes, Saturn may be very strong, it may be having average strength in some horoscopes and it may be weak or very weak in some other horoscopes. The strength of Saturn is measured by various methods available in Vedic astrology though some astrologers still think that the presence of Saturn in a particular sign is the only factor that can affect the strength of Saturn in a horoscope.
This is not true as there are many factors which can affect the strength or weakness of Saturn in a horoscope and the placement of Saturn in a particular sign is just one of them. Moving ahead, sometimes Saturn can become weak in a horoscope due to its placement in its sign of debilitation or in another sign which is not friendly towards it, due to affliction from one or more than one malefic planet in the horoscope, due to weak placement in some specific houses of the horoscope and various other factors. When Saturn becomes weak in a horoscope, it may not be fully capable of protecting its general as well as specific significances and hence the native may see bad results or decreased number of good results related to the significances of Saturn.
If such weak Saturn is working as a benefic planet in a horoscope, some extra strength must be provided to such weak Saturn so that it may start working properly in the horoscope and it may protect its significances. This may result in good things happening to the native in various spheres of his life with increased frequency and increased quantum. This extra strength is provided with the help of a specific gemstone called Blue Sapphire which transfers the energy of Saturn from the planet itself into the body of the native who wears this gemstone.
Blue Sapphire is called Shani Ratna or NeelRatna in Sanskrit and Neela Pukhraaj or Neelam in Hindi. This gemstone captures the energy of Saturn from its upper surface and it transfers this energy into the body of the native who wears it. The additional energy of Saturn transferred by Blue Sapphire into the body of the native provides extra strength to Saturn and it starts working in a stronger way in the horoscope, body as well as in the aura of the native. This increase in strength of Saturn affects two major energy equations in the horoscope of the native.
The first energy equation is that of the house in which Saturn is placed in the horoscope of the native and the second energy equation is the net energy equation of his horoscope. Looking at the first energy equation, the house in which Saturn is placed witnesses more energy due to which, the results produced by Saturn by virtue of its placement in this house may increase in number as well as in quantum. If Saturn is present along with one or more than one planet in this house, the net share of Saturn's energy in the overall energy equation of this house may also increase, as it receives more strength through its gemstone. This theory has been discussed in details in the previous chapter and interested readers may read it from there.
As Saturn gains strength through its gemstone, its net share in the overall energy equation of the horoscope also increases. Since Saturn is positive in the horoscope, the overall energy equation of its house of placement as well as that of the entire horoscope shifts towards positivity. This is due to the fact that negative energy in this horoscope has the same strength whereas positive energy has increased in strength. As a result, the native may witness better results in many spheres of his life, depending on the overall tone of his horoscope. It should be noted that a Blue Sapphire is only capable of increasing the strength of Saturn within the body and aura of a native by transferring additional energy of Saturn and this gemstone is not capable of changing the working nature of Saturn in a horoscope.
It means that if Saturn is working positively in a horoscope, wearing a Blue Sapphire may increase the strength of Saturn and as such positive Saturn gains strength, it may start producing good results for the native with increased quantum and frequency. On the other hand if Saturn is working negatively, which means that Saturn is malefic in the horoscope, wearing a Blue Sapphire may provide additional strength to this negative Saturn. As this negative Saturn gains strength, it may start causing problems and losses for the native with increased frequency and quantum. Hence utmost care should be taken that only those people should wear a Blue Sapphire; who have benefic Saturn in their horoscopes whereas the natives having malefic Saturn in their horoscopes should not wear Blue Sapphire as wearing this gemstone can cause serious problems related to many spheres of their lives.
Looking at the composition of this gemstone, Blue Sapphire belongs to the family of corundum which is a type of gemstones. Blue Sapphire is found available in different colors and shades of Blue like light Blue, medium dark Blue and dark Blue. The color and clarity of this gemstone are two important aspects to look for when purchasing a Blue Sapphire, though color and clarity are not the only aspects which decide the quality of this gemstone and there are many other aspects which can affect the final quality and efficiency of this gemstone.
Hence it is very difficult for a common man to test or check the exact quality of a Blue Sapphire but even then, making a check for proper color and proper clarity can still make a difference in the kind of Blue Sapphire you are going to purchase. It should be noted that different colors of Blue Sapphire may be suitable for different natives and hence every native should wear a Blue Sapphire belonging to a color which has been recommended by his astrologer. Changing the color of this gemstone against the recommendation of your astrologer can result in some side effects which may keep bothering you along with the benefits, though the change in color of this gemstone alone is not likely to make this gemstone produce all negative effects for you, if Saturn if benefic in your horoscope.
For example, based on the working of positive Saturn in your horoscope, your astrologer may recommend a light colored Blue Sapphire for you. This may be because of many reasons, one of which may be the fact that the placement of Saturn may be such in your horoscope that it may not do well with intense energy radiations of this planet, which are supplied through a dark colored Blue Sapphire. Hence your astrologer may recommend a light colored Blue Sapphire which provides relatively less intense energy radiations of Saturn, in order to avoid some side effects which may arise due to you not being able to properly handle such intense energy radiations of Saturn by wearing a dark colored Blue Sapphire.
Similarly, based on the working of positive Saturn in your horoscope, your astrologer may recommend a dark colored Blue Sapphire for you. This may be because of many reasons, one of which may be the fact that the placement of Saturn may be such in your horoscope that it may do particularly well with intense energy radiations of this planet, which are supplied through a dark colored Blue Sapphire. Hence your astrologer may recommend a dark colored Blue Sapphire which provides intense energy radiations of Saturn, instead of suggesting a light colored Blue Sapphire which may provide less intense energy radiations of Saturn. In this case, you may witness fewer benefits if you choose to wear a light colored Blue Sapphire, though you are still likely to witness benefits as Saturn is positive in your horoscope.
Hence due attention should be paid to the color of your Blue Sapphire when wearing this gemstone. Due attention should also be paid to the weight of this gemstone recommended by your astrologer and it is strongly advised to wear a Blue Sapphire which falls within the weight range recommended by your astrologer. This is because changing the weight of your Blue Sapphire at your own discretion or on the advice of your jeweler can bring unwanted results for you.
For example, wearing a Blue Sapphire much less in weight than the weight of this gemstone recommended by your astrologer may not bring significant good results whereas wearing a Blue Sapphire which is much higher in weight compared to the weight of this gemstone recommended by your astrologer can cause mild or serious side effects. In some extreme cases, a Blue Sapphire can also produce negative effects due to the native not being able to handle so much extra energy of Saturn, which may be transferred into his body through this gemstone, if he ignores the advice of his astrologer and chooses to wear a much bigger Blue Sapphire. Hence due attention should be paid to the weight of Blue Sapphire recommended by your astrologer when purchasing this gemstone.
Vedic astrology recommends practicing some procedures before wearing a Blue Sapphire, which may include the steps like purification and energization of this gemstone. Purification of a Blue Sapphire is the process through which any negative energy attached to this gemstone is removed with the help of Mantras and some specific Vedic procedures whereas energization of a Blue Sapphire is the process through which this gemstone is charged with the help of Mantras and some specific Vedic procedures so that it may produce its optimum results. The processes of purification and energization of a Blue Sapphire are technical processes and they should be conducted only by expert pandits who know the proper procedures to carry out these processes. Once the native has got his duly purified and energized Blue Sapphire fitted in a ring or in a pendant, the next step is to wear this gemstone, which also involves some specific procedures.
Vedic astrology recommends that a Blue Sapphire should be worn on a Saturday morning, if the native is wearing this gemstone for the first time in his life. Before wearing a Blue Sapphire on a Saturday morning, the native should put this gemstone in Gangajal (water of Holy River Ganga) or in a mixture of unboiled milk and pure water about 8 to 12 hours before the time of wearing this gemstone, which comes out to be Friday evening in most cases as this gemstone is recommended to be worn on a Saturday morning.
The native should take his bath on such Saturday morning, say his prayers and then he should sit or stand in front of the ring or pendant and he should first chant Mool Mantra or Beej mantra of Saturn for 108 times or 27 times. After doing so, he should pray to Saturn and ask it to provide best possible results from this gemstone. After doing so, the native should take the Blue Sapphire ring or Pendant, he should rinse it with clean water in case he had put it in a mixture of unboiled milk and water, he should then wipe it with a clean cloth and after completing all these procedures, the native should wear his Blue Sapphire ring.
It should be noted that a Blue Sapphire should be worn on a Saturday morning and this gemstone should not be worn on a Saturday evening when wearing it for the first time as doing so can cause some unwanted side effects or initial problems for the native. However once this gemstone is worn, the native should keep wearing it for the rest of his life unless otherwise directed by his astrologer. It should be noted that removing your Blue Sapphire few times during a day for short durations of time is allowed and there is no harm in that. For example, you may remove it while bathing or while doing another job which may require you to remove your gemstones.
Mool Mantra and Beej Mantra of Saturn are given below for the convenience of readers:
Saturn Mool Mantra : Om ShaniChraay Namah
Saturn Beej Mantra : Om Praam Praum Praum Sah ShaniChraay Namah
Wearing a Blue Sapphire with proper procedures recommended by Vedic astrology can bless the native with a number of good results which come under the general as well as the specific significances of Saturn, according to the horoscope of the native. Therefore, all natives choosing to wear Blue Sapphire are advised to wear this gemstone with proper procedure in order to get maximum benefits from this gemstone. After initially wearing this gemstone, the native should regularly clean his Blue Sapphire in order to keep getting optimum results from this gemstone.
A good frequency to clean a Blue Sapphire is once every one to two months depending on the nature of job of the native and depending on how fast this gemstone accrues greasy deposits of oil and dust on its surfaces. Not cleaning your Blue Sapphire for a long period of time can result in big deposits on the surfaces of this gemstone, particularly on the lower surface of this gemstone. Such deposits can temper with the working of your Blue Sapphire in a negative way by blocking the energy radiations of Saturn which are supposed to be transferred into your body through this gemstone. Hence all the natives wearing a Blue Sapphire should regularly clean it in order to keep getting optimum benefits from this gemstone.
Himanshu Shangari


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- Gordon Ramsay
Wild Harvest is a critical part of the Fresh Direct Family; a set of four food brands brought together to offer the foodservice industry the most comprehensive fresh food supply offer on the market.
Our product range began with wild mushrooms and truffles, but over the years our specialist buyers created one of the most diverse selections of first-class ingredients, including the finest fruit and vegetables, plus plenty more.
Here at Wild Harvest we can provide chocolate with the most intense range of flavours that cocoa can bring.
This is a great reward for our team that is constantly striving to introduce new and innovative combinations of pasta as well as make sure to provide consistency and high quality for all the classic flavours.
With the aim in mind of maintaining an innovative and exciting product range, we have now added Clarence Court eggs to our product offering. Give us a call to find out all about this mouthwatering range!
We are a company that has flourished by providing the very best seasonal foods to some of the UK's top chefs. Our team of experts are committed to offering the highest levels of care and flexibility that's demanded by London's finest eateries.
Wild Harvest is a leading fine food specialist, distributing premium foods to discerning customers around the UK since 1993. We are a critical part of the Fresh Direct Group; a set of four food brands brought together to offer the foodservice industry the most comprehensive fresh food supply offer on the market. Our multilingual customer service team are recruited for their experience in top-ranking restaurants to ensure that they have a firm understanding of the circles of service and a vast knowledge of the products we supply.
We started life as a truffle and wild mushroom supplier, selling the very finest mushrooms and white and black truffles to the UK's leading dining establishments. Over the years our product range has grown significantly, but we're still the experts when it comes to truffles and we still source the finest varieties on the market.Find out more...
Wild Harvest prides itself on providing the best seasonal produce to our customers all year round. Our team of buyers are all connoisseurs of procuring gourmet food, so we source speciality produce ranging from wonderful fruit and vegetables to delicious meat and dairy from producers around the UK and internationally.Take a look at our range...
The New York Times recently ran an insightful article about saffron, explaining how in such a lucrative market, there are people buying up vast quantities and stowing it away. More worryingly, is the amount of fake saffron on the market, highlighting the importance of a trusted supplier.Find out more about this on our blog section...


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On our way to meet Eva Jorgensen we seriously felt like we were in a dream. The drive was incredibly beautiful and a direct reflection of the lifestyle that Eva and Kirk had created for themselves and their sweet family … "Minimal Bohemian."
When we arrived we could hear Ingrid behind a closed door through the kitchen calling out "Eva… Eva… who is visiting?" We thought we would melt when Eva opened the door to check on Ingrid taking a nap in a tent. What a dream. Everything about it, this adorable little girl napping in one room, while Eva & Kirk worked hard to fulfill orders and answer customer phone calls around the corner in the garage of a lovely home tucked away in Heber, UT.
Eva has a beautiful collection of photographs she takes of her life in the mountains and uses #mymountainlife and it is just that. The road to their home forces you to unwind and to enjoy the journey and to forget the destination.
When you walk inside it's impossible not to notice that everything has been curated. Eva has an incredible eye for design and bringing out the beauty in everyday objects.
We immediately sensed that the partnership that Eva and Kirk had cultivated ran a lot deeper than love. There is an ultimate amount of respect that they have for one another and a commitment to not only each other but also to their family, business, and quality of life. It was evident that their priorities include doing what they love and loving each other. An inspiring thing to see two so committed to their dreams that they have actually made it their reality.
We were so inspired and wanted to just shoot a photo essay to tell their story… but, we didn't know how to begin… so we started by asking questions and took up so much of Eva's time getting to know her that we didn't even shoot. All images here are from @sycamorestreetpress a beautiful feed to follow.
What brought you to Utah?
At the end of my sophomore year in high school, I moved here with my family. My dad had a brutal 90 mile commute into Los Angeles and had been looking to get out of California for awhile. He and my mom bought some land up in the mountains with the goal of building their dream house. I've moved away a couple of times since then, but felt drawn back. Now I don't plan on leaving again — at least not permanently. I love it here.
How did you and Kirk meet?
His sister Kari, and I were good friends — both into art and music. I went over to her house one day, and she showed me a photo on her fridge of her brother. She said he was coming to visit her and that she thought we should get married. I laughed. The next week I met him, though, and I knew the very first night that that was it.
What made you choose the University of Utah for your Masters Program?
To be honest, Kirk was going there for his undergrad and still had a couple of years left. I knew I wanted to go to grad school, that I didn't want to wait around until he was done, but that I also didn't want to uproot him. Luckily, I met the printmaking professor at the U — Justin Diggle — and thought he was great. So that was that. It's the only place I applied.
Would you say your passion for travel influences your work?
Definitely. Whenever I travel, I gather inspiration for my work. Even when I'm not traveling, I'm reading travel magazines, blogs, watching films that are made in interesting locations… I'm sure it all influences what I do — sometimes more directly than other times. For instance, the Versailles collection of stamps was directly influenced by our trip there a couple of years ago.
Tell us about Sycamore Street Press and how it all started.
When I finished grad school in 2007, the modern letterpress renaissance was really taking off. I noticed that and started to wonder about starting my own letterpress stationery company, since I had been doing so much letterpress in school (and loving it). I brought it up with my dad, who is an entrepreneur, and he encouraged me and gave me the confidence to go for it.
At first, I thought it would be a little side business, but within 6months,ithad become a more than full time occupation. I would draw, draw, draw, and then print for days on end — sometimes for as long as 12 hours a day cranking the press back and forth. (My right arm and shoulder got really strong.) I loved it. 6 months after that, Kirk and I made the decision that he would join me full time. It had always been a dream of ours to work together, and we realized that Sycamore Street Press was our way to make that happen.
You are clearly an artist regardless of what medium you choose. Do you have a favorite medium?
Thank you! Clearly, letterpress was my favorite medium for many years. Lately, though, I've been beginning to branch out again and see myself in a more multidisciplinary way. I tend to think of ideas first and figure out what medium works best to make it happen. I've been doing a lot of watercolor painting (which we then reproduce with high quality offset printing) recently, and I've also been taking a lot of photos — mainly with my iPhone. But I don't think I can pick a favorite.
What led you to letterpress?
My mom is an artist, and I grew up admiring her creations and painting alongside her. After trying out several other more "practical" majors in college, I applied to the art program because I couldn't NOT do art. I ended up getting a BFA and MFA in printmaking. I loved the way printmaking walks the line between fine art and graphic arts, and I loved the communal aspect of the printshop. From the time I started doing printmaking, I was fascinated by letterpress… but I wasn't able to study it until grad school.
It looks like you paint and then scan the paintings and use that as the foundation for your cards and gift-wrap? Can you explain your process a bit?
Yes! I've been doing lots of paintings with watercolor and dyes. I just get into a zone where I do huge amounts of small, quick paintings. I want the brushstrokes to look quick and effortless. But I end up having to do a ton in order to get the one that looks just right. After I pick my favorites and get them scanned in, I work with my assistant designer — Allison Cornu — to manipulate them into patterns for gift wrap, layouts for greeting cards, etc…
We love your #Evaseverydaylettering collection of handwritten quotes. How did that series begin?
I had a series on my blog back in 2010 – 2011 where I would post a hand lettered quote each week. In November 2013, I decided to bring it back, but this time to Instagram. In addition, I wanted to up the ante and post something every weekday instead of once a week. It's been a great creative exercise, and I've loved getting all the wonderful feedback from people on which ones are their favorites, how the quotes affect them, etc… I want to start offering some of them as free downloadable prints soon as a thank you to the super-supportive Sycamore Street Press community.
Your style is so evident in everything you do. You have a signature to your work. Has that been difficult to develop?
Wow, thank you! That's something I'm constantly working on. I love a lot of different styles/eras/colors/etc… so it can be easy to get pulled in a bunch of different directions. Starting in college, I really tried to hone in on what felt really authentic to me. But it's something I still struggle with and have sometimes stumbled with, for sure. This year I've made an extra effort to really focus again. I am constantly asking myself if the photo I'm posting, card I'm designing, or image I'm pinning really fits with my signature aesthetic.
Who or what influences you?
My family, the natural landscape, art, fashion, interior design, film, books, travel, music, etc… I look outside the world of paper for my inspiration, so my designs will have a better chance of standing out. A few things inspiring me this week: Elk, the landscape of southern Utah, and Serena Mitnik-Miller.
Tell us a little bit about Ingrid and Lars. Are they complete opposites or quite similar in personality?
Ingrid is really spunky, dramatic, and imaginative. Lars is quick to laugh, cuddly, and tough. They're both very sweet and very stubborn at the same time. They love each other to pieces but they also have a bit of sibling rivalry at times (especially when it comes to who's sitting on their mama's lap!) It'll be interesting to see how they interact even more once Lars really starts talking and carrying on conversations… I can't wait! I love seeing them together.
What is the biggest challenge in parenting and running your own business? How do you juggle it all?
It feels like there's never enough time. I've had to learn to say no to a lot — even to things that I love — in order to have room for the things I love most and/or are the most important. My family comes first, so everyday — and multiple times throughout the day — I think hard about what's the most important thing for me to be doing for them. Sometimes it means tuning out distractions and just getting to work. Other times it means putting aside my work and spending the day with the kids. Once in a while, it means taking a bit of time to myself to recharge. I'll be honest — I often I feel like I'm in survival mode. But I just try to take each day as it comes and do the best that I can. That's all I can do.
Words of advice?
I recently read Seth Godin's book Linchpin, and he talks about being discerning rather than being attached. He says not to get too attached to the way things used to be, the way things are supposed to be, or the way you've always envisioned the future. Instead, look with discerning eyes at the way the world is evolving and the way you can make a place for yourself in it. Be flexible and nimble and open to change. Everything is always changing all the time, and you may as well make the most of it.
All photographs from Eva Jorgensen's Instagram feed @sycamorestreetpress


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Quick post for you this evening. This is pretty much stuff that I've wanted for a while now. When I say for a while, I mean a few months. I figured putting it all in one spot will make me take the plunge and actually get around to buying this stuff. Especially number three. That one I've just said flat out no to for various reasons. I still want it, but I'm trying to figure out if it's because of the movie it's attached to, or if I actually want it. I don't think this is the first time the lotion has been on this list.
1. Real Techniques Stippling Brush - Ulta
2. iPad Mini Sleeve - Kate Spade
3. NYX Parallel Worlds Box - Ulta
4. Aromatherapy Sleep lotion - Bath and Body Works
5. Clinique CC Cream - Clinique