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Category Archives: READING MATTER
Books I read & recommend
HINDU THEORY OF EVOLUTION
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In Hindu mythology, its origin is found in one of the popular creation myths and the Hindu theories on evolution, the Samudra manthan episode (Churning of the ocean of milk), which finds mention in the Bhagavata Purana, Vishnu Purana, the Mahabharata, and the Ramayana.
The Gods had lost their strength, and to regain it, they thought of churning the Ksheera Sagara (primordial ocean of milk) for amrit (the nectar of immortality), this required them to make a temporary agreement with their arch enemies, the demons or Asuras, to work together with a promise of sharing the nectar equally thereafter. However, when the Kumbha (urn) containing the amrita appeared, a fight ensued. For twelve days and twelve nights (equivalent to twelve human years) the gods and demons fought in the sky for the pot of amrita. It is believed that during the battle, Lord Vishnu flew away with the Kumbha of elixir, and that is when drops of amrita fell at four places on earth: Prayag, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nashik, and that is where the Kumbh Mela is observed every twelve years.
First written evidence of the Kumbha Mela can be found in the accounts of Chinese traveller, Huan Tsang or Xuanzang (602 – 664 A.D.) who visited India in 629 -645 CE, during the reign of King Harshavardhana. (Source: Wikipedia.org)
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This photograph was shot it at Kumbha Mela 2010.
For more photos,click the artists website: subirbasak.orgfree.com
Copyright © – Subir Basak. http://subirbasak.orgfree.com/
GENERIC GOD MEME
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MEME [noun]
1. a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition and replication in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.
2. a cultural item in the form of an image, video, phrase, etc., that is spread via the Internet and often altered in a creative or humorous way.
Etymology: 1976, introduced by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in “The Selfish Gene,” coined by him from Greek sources, e.g. mimeisthai, “to imitate” (see mime), and intended to echo gene.
CARNIVORE CANNIBAL COWS
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“You may remember a science fiction movie starring Charlton Heston called “Soylent Green”. (Winner Best Science Fiction Film of Year, 1973 – Saturn Award, Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films )
In the movie the character played by Heston discovers that the green pellets being served to people as food each day were being produced from the recycled remains of dead human bodies, making everyone into unwitting cannibals! Is this type of food production just science fiction?
Today, public relation campaigns and catchy slogans notwithstanding, we have a new food chain. For reasons of efficiency and economics, many cattlemen feed their animals anything. Repeat: anything.
Environmental reporters, Satchell and Hedges, tell us: “Agricultural refuse such as corncobs, rice hulls, fruit and vegetable peelings, along with grain byproducts from retail production of baked goods, cereals, and beer, have long been used to fatten cattle.”
The authors continue, “In addition, some 40 billion pounds a year of slaughterhouse wastes like blood, bone, and viscera, as well as the remains of millions of dead cats and dogs passed along by veterinarians and animal shelters, are rendered annually into livestock feed–in the process turning cattle and hogs, which are natural herbivores, into unwitting carnivores.”
Many of America’s once proud cattlemen have not only turned herbivores into carnivores, but have also turned their cows into cannibals!”
— excerpt from THE OZ FACTORS by Lawrence R. Spencer
MURDER
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“It occurred to me at some point this fall that I had written similar deaths in at least two of my books, and popular fiction is heaped with other examples of the same thing. Have you set up a moral dilemma you don’t know how to solve? Is the protagonist sexually attracted to a woman who is much too young 
for him, shall we say? Need a quick fix? Easiest thing in the world. ‘When the story starts going sour, bring on the man with the gun.’ Raymond Chandler said that, or something like it — close enough for government work, kemo sabe.
Murder is the worst kind of pornography, murder is “let me do what I want” taken to its final extreme. I believe that even make-believe murders should be taken seriously; maybe that’s another idea I got last summer. Perhaps I got it while Mattie was struggling in my arms, gushing blood from her smashed head and dying blind, still crying out for her daughter as she left ”
~ Stephen King, Bag of Bones