(SLICKER.....)

Creating Firework PNG files from HTML files

2008-08-02T19:18:00.002+07:00

Fireworks can open and import HTML content created in other applications. When you open or import an HTML file, Fireworks reconstructs the layout and behaviors defined by the HTML code, allowing you to re-create web pages that contain sliced graphics, JavaScript buttons, and other types of interactivity. This allows you to salvage inherited websites even if you don't have the source PNG files. With this feature, you can quickly open or import a web page to update graphics, change document layout, or alter navigational links, buttons, and other interactive elements, all without having to rebuild the page from scratch or modify its scripting.

Because Fireworks exports HTML content in the form of an HTML table, it also determines the document layout for imported HTML based on HTML tables. An HTML file must contain at least one table for Fireworks to be able to reconstruct it.

You can get HTML content into Fireworks in several ways:

You can open all the HTML tables in an HTML file.
You can open the first HTML table that Fireworks encounters in an HTML file.
You can import the first HTML table that Fireworks encounters into an existing Fireworks document.

Note: Fireworks can also import documents that use UTF-8 encoding and those that are written in XHTML.

The Right Brain vs Left Brain test

2008-03-31T23:35:00.005+07:00

Article from: AAP
The Right Brain vs Left Brain test ... do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.

"LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS"
uses logic
detail oriented
facts rule
words and language
present and past
math and science
can comprehend
knowing
acknowledges
order/pattern perception
knows object name
reality based
forms strategies
practical
safe

"RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS"
uses feeling
"big picture" oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can "get it" (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking

Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.

Top 10 Secluded Beaches

2008-03-08T19:00:00.003+07:00

If you would love to go outside to somewhere in this summer..
The beach is
the most beautiful place you would love to go, right?

Credit by: ShermansTravel.com Editorial Staff
We’ve dug deep into our arsenal of secret sands to present our top picks for secluded beaches around the globe, where quiet coasts invite in-the-know sunbathers to savor their relative solitude. Sure, some of these destinations are downright remote, and require off-the-path travel to far-flung locales in Thailand, Spain, and Down Under, but some of the most isolated shores are right under beachgoers’ noses, in popular stateside spots like Florida, California, and Hawaii. We’ve also included some secluded beaches in hotpots like the Caribbean, Brazil, and the Greek Isles for good measure. You’ll just have to plan a visit soon — while these semi-private sands remain undiscovered for the moment, the cat’s officially out of the bag.

1. Ao Phra Nang Beach, ThailandOften cited as “Phuket 10 years ago,” the beach resorts surrounding the Thai port town of Krabi remain, for the time being, far less trodden than those of its famous island neighbor, some 100 miles to the west. Accessible only by long-tail boat from Krabi or from the more frequented beach resort of Ao Nang, the far-flung headland of Laem Phra Nang, or Railay (also called Rai Leh) Beach, is our preferred destination, thanks to its stunning surroundings of karst cliffs (making it popular with rock climbers), lush jungle and the warm waters of the emerald Andaman Sea. Here, four neighboring white-sand beaches unfold, of which Ao Phra Nang Beach is the most secluded with its snorkeling-friendly reefs, soft sands and singular luxury hotel. Visitors are free to relax in relative solitude, or to seek out adventure with a swim to “Happy Island,” just offshore, or by poking about in Tham Prah Nang Cave at the cliff’s base. Go now before it’s discovered by the masses.

2. Baía de Sancho, Brazil Red-tinged sands and turquoise-trimmed shores define this pristine bay, which unfolds on the main and only inhabited island of Fernando de Noronha, an Atlantic archipelago off of Brazil’s northeastern coast. Protected as a UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site and a national marine park, the ecological sanctuary of the beach and its environs can be explored in near solitude, thanks to strict restrictions on commercial development and controlled visitation. The few visitors that do access the isle are thinned out even further by the precarious approach to the remote Baía de Sancho, which entails climbing down a cliff face along a series of ladders (although the faint of heart can arrange to arrive by boat on snorkeling or diving excursions). The waters here thrive with an array of marine life, from live coral to manta rays and sea turtles to dolphins. Just be sure to pack provisions, as there’ll be no bars, peddlers, or the like on these isolated shores.

3. Bowman's Beach, Florida The secret’s out about the beauty of Sanibel Island’s linen-white sand beaches — situated about 25 miles southwest of Fort Myers— so you won’t be alone in searching for a stretch of sand to call your own. But that’s just what you’ll get when you leave your car and make the quarter-mile walk to Bowman’s Beach, Sanibel’s most peaceful place. The island is well-known as one of the best shelling spots in the country, but you’ll find little competition here. There’s minimal development and ditto for amenities — though Bowman’s does have one perk not found on any other beach on Sanibel: barbecue grills. Enjoy the pristine sand at Casa Ybel Resort (http://www.casaybelresort.com/) and slurp down briny oysters at The Lazy Flamingo (http://www.lazyflamingo.com/), where staff let you bring a glass of wine to the beach to watch the sunset.

4. Costa de la Luz, Spain An Andalusian affair with sand and sea awaits at Spain's southernmost point, where from the small coastal cities of Huelva to Cadiz and on to Tarifa, over 50 miles of dune-backed beaches beckon with fine white sands trimmed by pine trees, animated fishing villages, and wide Atlantic-facing waters. Abundant year-round sunshine ensures that this Costa de la Luz, or “Coast of Light,” is well-deserving of its moniker. Yet its shores manage to remain blissfully crowd-free and devoid of unsightly high-rise development, a European rarity largely attributed to its lack of proximity to any major Spanish city (it’s about a three-hour drive to Seville), as well as to the forceful Levante (East) and Poniente (West) coastal winds that detract the masses, aside from the avid windsurfers who consider the area to be a sporting mecca. But come July and August, once the breezes die down and ocean ripples flatten, the sands heat up with the perfect combination of summer sunshine, sizzling Spanish bods, and coveted (relative) seclusion.

5. Enderts Beach, California Living as long as 2,000 years and growing as high as 35 stories, the imposing old-growth redwoods that make up Northern California’s Redwood National Park tend to overshadow the region’s sublimely quiet coast, which is separated from the lush forest by wide swaths of sand and marsh. That doesn’t bother the birds and occasional sunbathers at Enderts Beach, an idyllic stretch surrounded by wildflower-carpeted bluffs. The half-mile walk from the parking lot, about 500 feet above sea level, down to the driftwood-strewn beach is rewarded with bracing breezes and dramatic views of the Pacific and its denizens (migrating whales can be spotted in March and April), with nary a human in sight. Once you hit the sand, send the kids off on a ranger-guided tide-pool walk (the 2.5-hour walks meet at the parking lot) or pitch a tent at the Nickel Creek campground and spend the night in this land of giants.

6. Kaihalulu, HawaiiA hard-to-find location, dangerous surf, and a treacherous cliff-hugging path down to the shore make Kaihalulu, also known as Red Sand Beach, secluded indeed — and off limits to all but the most adventurous. South of Maui's Hana Bay on the far side of Ka'uiki Hill, this reddish cove — the product of an eroded volcanic cinder cone — is surrounded by tall black cliffs and lined with green ironwood trees. While the strong Pacific currents are somewhat tamed, thanks to a rocky lava seawall that acts as a natural barrier against the surf, swimming is still risky as the jagged rock wall can be as dangerous as it is protective. All the same, the striking sight of the stretch of red-and-black sand set against the turquoise-blue lagoon, and guarded by the black rock barrier, make the trip here worth it. Because of its seclusion, the beach is often clothing-optional. Come early in the morning for the utmost isolation.

7. Palmetto Point Beach, Barbuda While popular Antigua boasts 365 beaches along its shores, none is as secluded as the magnificent swaths found on its sister island of Barbuda, some 25 miles to the northeast. A rarity in the Caribbean, where building big resorts on spectacular sands is more the norm, Barbuda's miles of white- and pink-hued beaches have been largely left untouched, with only two full-service resorts — K Club (http://www.kclubbarbuda.com/) and Coco Point Lodge (http://www.cocopoint.com/) — to share them. Even the island's finest stretch, a seven-mile expanse from Palmetto Point to Coco Point, is typically so deserted that you can expect to share your day with sea shells instead of people. Seclusion like this certainly appealed to Princess Diana, who vacationed here four times during her lifetime.

8. Santa Teresa, Costa Rica While Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula may already be a bona fide surfer haven, mainstream tourism has yet to discover the largely untrampled stretch of Santa Teresa’s coast on the peninsula’s southernmost tip. You’ll have to endure a nearly six-hour trek to get here — a car-ferry combo from San José, much of which is on a barely drivable dirt road — which may be why the jungle-swathed stretch from the beach villages of Malpais to Santa Teresa is still so preserved. Fronted by the Pacific’s unruly waves and backed only by jungle, even the few bungalow boutiques and hammock hotels are set beneath the lush canopy, unseen from the sand. Besides a few surfers out by the breaks and perhaps some mischievous monkeys pillaging for fruit in the canopy, you’re likely to have the beach to yourself. Come in the off-season (summer through fall) for even more solitude; September brings migrating whales just offshore, often visible from the sand.

9. Shipwreck Beach, Greece One of the most photographed beaches in Greece is also one of its most remote, thanks to the towering cliffs that surround Shipwreck Beach’s sandy cove and make it accessible only by boat. Picture-perfect indeed, the Ionian island of Zakynthos is famous for its trademark beach — a perfect milky-white crescent where the wreckage of a marooned vessel, dating back to 1983, remains half-emerged in the sand; the beach was originally called Agios Georgios before the wreck became a fixture on the idyllic stretch, and Navagio (“shipwreck” in English) beach was born. Cruise tours departing from the northern village of Volimes will ferry passengers to the famous shore, as well as to the island’s other treasure, the Blue Caves at Skinari — massive airy grottos that are big enough to snorkel, swim, and boat through.

10. Whitehaven Beach, Australia Tucked away on Australia’s idyllic Whitsunday Island (the largest of the Whitsunday chain), Whitehaven Beach seems impossibly pure. The dove-white, four-mile-plus stretch owes its silky, talcum-powder softness to the 99.8-percent pure silica grains that swath its shore. Backed by lush acacia forest and fading into pristine, cerulean waters, the setting simultaneously calls to mind and transcends island clichés. Best of all, the sands border on deserted thanks to exacting visitation limits enforced by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (individuals must sign up with a tour operator to access the area). Consequently, Australia’s most photographed beach appears almost exactly the way it does in the pictures — inviting, relaxing and refreshingly empty.

"Analyzing Storyboards"

2008-02-22T04:46:00.010+07:00

A storyboard is a visual script designed to make it easier to for the director and cameraman to "see" the shots before executing. Furthermore it saves time and money for the producer. It is used for movies, commercials and animation.

Storyboards are mostly used to explain to film crews or actors effects and expensive solutions that would be difficult if not impossible to explain otherwise. For example big budget productions like Independence Day or Jurassic Park that rely on computer animation..

**Your storyboard will should convey some of the following information:

What characters are in the frame, and how are they moving?
What are the characters saying to each other, if anything?
How much time has passed between the last frame of the storyboard and the current one?
Where the "camera" is in the scene? Close or far away? Is the camera moving?

How do I make a storyboard?
Most commonly, storyboards are drawn in pen or pencil. If you don't like to draw you can also take photos, cut out pictures from magazines, or use a computer to make your storyboards. Keep in mind that your drawings don't have to be fancy! In fact, you want to spend just a few minutes drawing each frame. Use basic shapes, stick figures, and simple backgrounds. If you draw your storyboard frames on index cards, you can rearrange them to move parts of the the story around.

There is no place in the world like Sydney..

2008-02-19T18:47:00.005+07:00

Sign this guestbook

2008-02-10T09:32:00.002+07:00

Chess Titans: how to play

2008-01-08T09:09:00.000+07:00

Chess Titans is a complex strategy game, and success depends on planning ahead, paying attention to your opponent, and making adjustments as the game goes on.

Because the strategy used in a game of chess can be complicated, hundreds of helpful books have been written about mastering the game. As players become more interested in the game, they often look to these references for more advanced information. What we can explain to you here is limited the object of the game, how to start a game, and how to move each piece on the board.

The object of the game is to put your opponent's king in checkmate. Each player has one king. As you capture your opponent's pieces, you'll gradually make the opposing king more and more vulnerable to capture. When your opponent's king cannot move out of the way of your pieces before your next turn, you've won the game. When you see bold red square under your king, it's in check, and your opponent has won.

At the beginning of a game, the chess board features two groups of 16 pieces, each arranged in two rows, with one piece to a square. As you move your pieces forward across the board, you and your opponent will try to occupy the same squares. If you can move one of your pieces to a square that your opponent occupies, you capture that piece and remove it from the board. This reduces the size (and strength) of your opponent's set of pieces.

To play Chess Titans

To make your first move, click a piece and then click the square where you want to move it.

Players take turns moving their pieces across the board, moving one piece per turn. Squares where you can move your pieces will be blue; squares where you can capture an opponent's piece will be red. Players can't move to a square occupied by a piece from their own army, but any piece can capture any other piece from the opponent's army. The six types of pieces that make up your army can move in the following ways:

Pawns. Pawns can only move forward, and only one square at a time. On the first move, however, a pawn can move forward either one or two squares. Pawns move forward diagonally to capture opposing pieces.
Rooks. Rooks can move forward, backward, or sideways in either direction for as many squares as you decide to move them.
Knights. Knights can move two squares in any direction, and then turn 90 degrees and move one more square. Knights are the only piece that can jump over other pieces while moving. All other pieces must stop when another piece (of either color) is in their path.
Bishops. Bishops can move diagonally, in any direction, and for as many squares as you decide to move them.
Queens. Queens can move as far as you want to move them in any direction (forward, back, sideways, and diagonal) as long as they travel in a straight line. Next to the king, the queen is the most valuable piece in your army.
King. Kings can move one space in any direction. Slow moving and hard to project, the king is the prize you must guard from your opponent.

Tips

The first time you play the game, you'll select a difficulty level somewhere between one and ten.
Practice patience. If you see a good move, take the time to look for a better one before you take your turn.
Take advantage of castling. In a single move to protect your king, you can move your king two spaces sideways and your rook to the space that the king skipped over. You can only do this if there are no pieces in between them, neither piece has moved in the game, and your opponent does not gain a more direct attack at the king as a result of the move. If castling is available to you, the square that you can move the king to will turn purple and then, when you click that square, your king and rook will move.
En passant. If a pawn is about to capture one of your pawns that hasn't moved, you may decide to move that pawn forward two squares. If you do, it's more exposed for one turn. During the next turn, your opponent can move to the square where your pawn is, or to the square behind that, and capture your pawn. After that one turn, your pawn is normally vulnerable again. Both armies' pawns are vulnerable this way.
Pawn promotion. If you advance a pawn all the way to the back row of your opponent's army, you can promote that pawn to rook, knight, bishop, or queen. This increases the number of powerful pieces in your army. Choosing the queen is usually the best strategic option.

Bird Extinctions Likely to Rise with Climate Change

2007-12-21T20:18:00.000+07:00

From: Alana Herro, Worldwatch Institute
Published December 18, 2007 09:56 AM

As warming temperatures push organisms to seek cooler climates at ever-higher altitudes, habitat areas are shrinking, putting many species of plants and animals at risk. This trend could have particularly dire consequences for the world’s bird populations, according to a new report in the journal Conservation Biology. “It’s like an escalator to extinction,” says lead author Cagan Sekercioglu, a senior research scientist with the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University. “As a species is forced upwards and its elevational range narrows, the species moves closer to extinction.”

“Vegetational shift is the key issue here,” Sekercioglu says, noting that, “Birds will follow the shift in habitat.” As plants move upslope, the surface area of a bird’s habitat may diminish—and if the top of the mountain is still too warm, the species can die out. Problems also arise if there is too little moisture at higher altitudes to support vegetation or if changes in soil composition are incompatible with the vegetation creeping upward. Diseases from lower elevations may be more likely to infect highland bird species, and species already present at higher altitudes may clash with encroaching birds, the study notes.

The research team modeled changes to the elevational ranges of some 8,400 species of land birds (the vast majority of all bird species) using 60 scenarios that incorporate habitat loss estimates from the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment as well as the latest climate projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. With a “worst-case scenario” warming of 6.4 degree Celsius, up to 30 percent of land-bird species could go extinct by 2100. With an “intermediate” level of warming of 2.8 degrees Celsius, 400 to 550 land-bird extinctions are expected. “Of the land-bird species predicted to go extinct, 79 percent of them are not currently considered threatened with extinction, but many will be if we cannot stop climate change,” Sekercioglu warns.

Because of the remoteness of many mountain ranges and a lack of funding for ornithological studies in most tropical countries, there is little data on avian responses to climate change. While amateur bird-tracking databases like the new site Geobirds are growing on the Internet, remote sensing data are becoming less available as image distribution moves to the private sector. “To effectively monitor their rate of change as warming progresses, especially in the species-rich topics, we need a lot more data on birds’ distributions and on the speed and extent of birds’ elevational shifts in response to climate change,” says Sekercioglu.

This story was produced by Eye on Earth, a joint project of the Worldwatch Institute and the blue moon fund. View the complete archive of Eye on Earth stories, or contact Staff Writer Alana Herro at aherro [AT] worldwatch [DOT] org with your questions, comments, and story ideas.

Adsorbed Natural Gas: fuel storage solution?

2007-12-21T20:06:00.000+07:00

From: , Green Energy News
Published December 19, 2007 08:38 AM

Here’s a quiz to test your green car knowledge. Which is considered the greenest, most environmentally friendly, highway capable car sold by a major manufacturer in the US?

If you thought Toyota Prius you’d be wrong. According to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE), as well as the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it’s actually Honda’s Civic GX NGV, or Natural Gas Vehicle. The EPA has given the car that distinction since 1998 when it was first introduced, at that time to fleets only. (The ACEEE has done the same but only since 2000 when it was first offered to consumers.)

Why the Civic and not the Prius? Greenness is not just about CO2 emissions and fuel economy, it’s also about smog-producing pollutants. As a fuel, natural gas just burns cleaner than gasoline. (Which is why you can boil your potatoes on your gas-fired kitchen range without dying.)

In cars and trucks, noxious pollutants from natural gas are 60-90 percent less than petrol. And there is a greenhouse gas emission benefit as well, natural gas has 30-40 percent less carbon dioxide in its exhaust stream.

So between low smog-producing pollutants and low greenhouse gas emissions, natural gas used in vehicles, mostly in its compressed form - CNG (compressed natural gas) - is pretty green stuff.

If it’s so wonderful, why hasn’t natural gas taken off as a green fuel? For a time, along with propane (aka LPG), it was the darling of the green car community. Then hybrids came along giving better fuel economy than natural gas.

Further, at least for consumers, there are other concerns. Not everyone is enthusiastic about filling a vehicle with pressurized gas which requires slightly more expertise to pump safely than gasoline. From an engineering standpoint, too, there are challenges. The robustly-built pressurized cylinders are hard to squeeze into the confines of an automobile body, There’s a physical limit as how many can be squeezed into the trunk of car, like the Civic.

And there are cost, weight and safety considerations as well for those tanks which hold the gas under high pressure. The list price of a Civic GX NGV is about two thousand more than the Civic hybrid which, in part, may reflect the cost of the CNG storage tanks.

Now there’s an emerging storage technology that should make natural gas aficionados perk up. It’s called Adsorbed Natural Gas (ANG), and it’s surprising simple.

It goes something like this. If you fill a standard high pressure CNG cylinder with nanoporous material such as activated charcoal (the same stuff used in fish tank filters) the cylinder will hold MORE natural gas at high pressure than a tank would hold without being filled with the material.

Or, in more interesting and game-changing scenarios, the standard high pressure tank can hold the SAME amount of natural gas at LESS pressure, making filling the tank much easier, or ANG tanks can be free-shape containers since the pressures are a lot less and the cylindrical shape is not necessary.

To recap the ANG technology, with nanoporous material (that fish tank activated charcoal) more natural gas can be stored at high pressure, the same amount stored at less pressure, and or tanks can be designed with a free form shape.

It’s the last part of story that should perk up ears like a dog listening to a strange noise. Less pressure for adequate storage means high pressure cylinders are no longer needed. A lightly pressurized natural gas tank can look like just about anything and be fitted into the same location as a standard gasoline tank in a car. Tanks can be bigger, have greater volume and hold more gas, thus giving more driving range. Further, the low pressure tanks, being easier to fill make fueling infrastructure less costly. (High pressure pumps are expensive.)

One company working with the technology is Energtek of Valley Stream New York. That company has announced it is working with the Department of Energy of the Republic of the Philippines, along with the Philippines National Oil Company Exploration Corporation, to build an ANG three-wheeler in the hopes of commercializing the technology for two and three wheeled vehicles throughout Asia to help clean the air.

There’s more to the simple technology than just better tanks in cars. It can also be used to store natural gas at filling stations reducing the cost of these facilities.

Dreaming a bit, too; fuel cell vehicles could use ANG technology to store natural gas, not hydrogen. Some think that fueling a fuel cell vehicle with natural gas reformed on board into hydrogen would be easier than storing hydrogen itself. If ANG made it simpler, easier, and cheaper to store natural gas then it would also help move fuel cell vehicles forward.

A few other good points about natural gas. There’s more of it worldwide than oil. The US produces about 87 percent of its own natural gas. Much of the world’s natural gas is flared off and wasted. Further, the main component of natural gas - methane - is being made all the time. Check your local landfill site, sewage treatment plant, or the septic tank in your yard for sources. And while natural gas filling stations are rare, Honda offers its Phill home refueling station.

There’s a downside to natural gas, of course. If we suddenly started using it in cars and trucks on a wide scale the demand would increase, along with imports. But it is feasible that the greater efficiency of fuel cells would lessen that demand, at least for a while.

Still, there’s lots of natural gas on the planet, we’re making more all the time, and now there may be a really simple and cheap way to store it.

Links:

Energtek
http://www.energtek.com

Honda Civic GX NGV
http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-gx

It's Vista vs Linux..

2007-12-17T11:03:00.001+07:00

Bill Gates "signed" the first 20,000 copies of Windows
Vista consumer editions,yet they sold for about the regular
price of the software at Amazon.com

Linux for consumers got a boost like it never got before when a consortium of companies agreed to back the open source product; IBM, HP, Intel, Oracle, Novell and others said in effect: Don't buy Microsoft Windows Vista, download Linux for the desktop, a place rarely achieved by the otherwise popular operating system. Indonesia economist Faisal Basri said that if Indonesia weren't spending $2.5 billion a year on Microsoft software, it could spend all that money on poor people, hungry people, people in need; open source development would save exactly $2.5 billion, he reasoned.

Geeks and Slashdotters piled on Microsoft for being unethical when it hired an independent reporter to try to fix up an arcane article on Oops in Wikipedia; more to the point, no one has come up with an acceptable way to address the undoubted errors in the article, since story subjects are forbidden to edit (a rule put in when Wikipedia's founder succeeded in editing his biography); cf: the almost totally fact-free entry under "Bangkok Post".

The eager Malaysian government egged on a libel suit by the New Straits Times against the country's only two well known bloggers. Singapore licenced an Internet Protocol TV operator, putting government in the Internet broadcast movement for the first time. US senators Ron Wyden, John McCain and John Sununu, who represent the two major parties, introduced a bill to make the Internet tax moratorium a permanent law; chances of the law actually being passed range from slim to fat.

MySpace sued spam king Scott "make-p3nis-fast" Richter for hijacking accounts and sending millions of spam to their friends on the social site. MySpace executives said they want to double the number of nations in which it operates to 20, none of which begin with "T".

It will take China two years at the most to overcome the United States, Wang Enhai of the state-run Chinese Internet Network Information Centre told the official China Daily - in the number of Internet users; he figures Chinese Net use is increasing so fast that by New Year's Day, 2009, China will have close to 250 million people connected, almost one in five, while the United States will have just under four in five. Chinese Communist Party chief Hu Jintao was shocked to discover his ungrateful citizens are "often more interested in salacious pictures, bloodthirsty games and political scandal than Marxist lessons;" as a result, China (which never censors the Internet) will launch a campaign to purify it.

The Sun shone over Intel again, and we don't mean the recent upbeat forecasts from both; the firms decided to let bygones be bygones and end their testy standoff; Intel chips will go in Sun Microsystems computers, starting almost immediately.

Sun Microsystems looked at its books and saw a bright, joyous colour for the first time in five quarters - black; profits in Q4 2006 were $126 million, a welcome change from last year's loss of $223 in the same quarter.

The pr0n industry looked in the mirror and confronted its ultimate fear: high-definition TV, which will make the tiniest zits and smallest tufts of cellulite make them look like, well, ordinary people.

Yuppiephone makers shipped more than one billion handsets in 2006, for the first time since the end of the Sukhothai era. Profits at Nokia of Finland grew 19 per cent, both in 2006 (to $5.56 billion) and in the year's last quarter (to $1.55 billion) despite intense price pressure. Profits at Microsoft of Redmond dropped $1.13 billion on deferred revenues despite no price pressure whatsoever.

China broke a long silence by admitting it shot down one of its own satellites; the Chinese were gobsmacked by mean-spirited suggestions they meant any threat to other space-bound countries.

US federal investigators near broke a gut guffawing at the Apple "internal probe" by ex-vice president Al Gore that cleared Steve "President for Life" Jobs over stock options fraud allegations; the feds from the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission grilled Mr Jobs at length and warned him, "We'll be back."

Earnings at world No 2 yuppiephone maker Motorola of America fell 48 per cent in the fourth quarter to $624 million; company auditors and industry watchers agreed Motorola mispriced its Razr cash cows, selling them "six for a nickel" (1.8 baht) in some promotions; as a result, CEO Ed Zander will keep his job and 3,500 employees will be fired (5 percent of the work force) to make up the losses.

The Universally Lusted Quote of the Week and accompanying Solid Metal Hoistable Post Database QOW Trophy was won by Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro; accused by "movie and music industry" suits of a propaganda campaign to make them look bad, Mr Shapiro shot back: "I don't make you look evil - your lawsuits against old people around the country make you look evil."

Harlequin's Romance Report 2007 (really!) found that 55 per cent of men and 47 per cent of women who own a PDA or cell phone have sent a sexually explicit email, text or instant message.

A brief history of ICT in Thailand

2007-12-17T10:44:00.000+07:00

The Hercules graphic card

A former director of Nectec and NITC secretary-general looks back at four decades of computerization
STORY BY HUGH THAWEESAK KOANANTAKOOL

When Tony Waltham asked me to write about the development of IT in Thailand for the 20th anniversary of the Database section of the Bangkok Post, I thought that this is not an easy job. It reminds me of William Blake's poem:

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour

We will look back to see what were the major milestones of IT development in Thailand, when and who were the key players in those events. We will see this "eternity" in small sections.

Where are we now?

Thailand has never been late in adopting new technologies. In 1968, we adopted the German PAL colour television three years before the introduction of colour TV broadcasts in the UK. Today, Thailand has all kinds of mobile phone standards: GSM, CDMA, PHS. In addition, cell phone operators have already introduced "2.5G" services (GPRS, EDGE, CDMA 1X EV-DO), meaning that you can use the phone to use Internet faster, as a stop gap before moving to the third-generation (3G) mobile services.

There are plans to introduce 3G services, but that depends a lot on the licensing scheme to be announced by the telecommunications regulator, the NTC (National Telecommunications Commission).

We've never been early enough in regulating for the good standards for telecommunications and broadcasting.

On the computer side of ICT, the story is a bit different from the television and the telephone. In making the computer able to handle the Thai language, we require local national standards and resources. This is certainly slower than adopting TV and telephone because television and telephones are the same for every language - computers aren't. Computers must be "localised" into the local language before you can write and read in that language. We can see that using the Thai-language on computers is quite easy and straight-forward. To come this far, it is worth taking a look at the story, which covers over four decades of computerization in Thailand.

The Thai language and computers

In 1967, we had only a few computers in Thailand. They were very expensive, large and could handle the English language using only capital letters. To make the computer work in Thai, we had to spend millions of baht for mainframe computer companies to customise their programs and printers to handle the Thai language.

By the year 1972, there were at least four big computer companies (IBM, Univac, Control Data and Wang) that sold computers with basic Thai-language input and printing. We started to see some rudimentary implementation of Thai display terminals during the years 1976 to 1979. The terminals displayed only 8 lines of Thai text per screen.

Around 1979, I was working on a version of Thai graphics display on a Z-80 home-brew machine using the CP/M operating system and it was successful. I used that machine, together with a home-adapted Selectric typewriter, to edit and print my PhD thesis in the UK.

When I came back to Thailand in 1980, I met Asst Prof Yuen Poovorawan of Kasetsart University to learn that he and his team had been active in developing important software for use with microcomputers in Thailand since 1978. That was well before the popularity of the Apple II and the IBM PC.

Microcomputer graphics and simple electronics design came into the hands of researchers and developers. In 1982, Van Suwannukul, a Thai friend who was studying in the USA under the King's scholarship, developed the "Hercules Graphic Card" (HGC) for the IBM PC. It was a low-cost implementation of the display adapter that handles both text (80 columns by 25 lines) and monochrome graphics (720 x 384 pixels).

The display card was an overnight success in the world market. A year later, a Thai engineer named Pratheep added some electronic circuits on the HGC to create the world's first 25-line Thai display. In 1984, several Thai display cards came into the market and this marked the first time in Thailand we could enjoy a full-screen Thai display.

The Thai computer market was vibrant in 1984. More than 20 kinds of Thai language implementations were available on microcomputers: CP/M, DOS-86, MS-DOS (IBM-PC and compatibles) and Apple II computers. A number of people from the academia, including myself, Asst Prof Yuen, representatives from computer companies including IBM Thailand approached the Thai government for one standard code of Thai character set. We managed to convince the TISI (Thai Industrial Standards Institute) to set up a technical committee on IT (TC536) to develop the standard. In 1986, the first standard computer code for the Thai character set was announced in the Royal Gazette as the TIS 620-2529 standard. The number 2529 is the year 1986 expressed in Buddhist Era.

There were many other key persons who took part in Thai IT standards development. Dr Udom Warotesikhadit, Dr Vichit Lorjirachoonhakul, and Dr Kanchit Malaivongs chaired the TC 536 in succession.

TC536 members included Dr Suriyan Tisyathikom, Mr Chamnong Thongprasert, and Mr Boonklee Plangsiri and the committee issued several standards covering many aspects of Thai language processing, such as the code translation for Telex, standard keyboard layout, and a recommendation on Thai Combined Character Codes and Symbols for Line Graphics for Dot-Matrix Printers. I chaired one subcommittee of TISI/TC-536 on the development of the Thai input/output standard. The standard was published in 1998 as TISI 1566-2541.

Through those standards, the people behind the scenes such as TC-536 eliminated all known headaches for computer users in Thailand. Subsequently, Trin Tantsetthi helped TISI to register TIS-620 with key international agencies such as ECMA and Unicode/ISO 10646. The process was a crucial step to make sure that all subsequent implementations of MS Windows and the Macintosh OS could accommodate a Thai standard character set and input/output method consistently.

This interesting story is documented in Trin's article "Annotated Reference to the Thai Language Implementations on the Internet". (http://www.inet.co.th/cyberclub/trin/thairef)

Internet statisticcs in Thailand collected by
Truehits web site from January 2003 to October 2006
From top down: the operating system,
the search engine usage and what kind of web sites were mostly vivided.

The Internet and Thailand

I briefly encountered many operators of BBSs (bulletin board systems) in 1979. I remember Alan Dawson, Woody Khoman, Botter Reeves, Craig Emmott and Tony Waltham. Those were the experts in Thailand who networked many BBSs together and organised a lively monthly meeting to reinforce their regular electronic communications. I also met Wuthipong Techadamrongsin (from Prince of Songkla University), whose computer centre established a regular Unix email connection with Melbourne University, under the support of the Australian International Development Programme. I considered this connection as the first daily email exchange service for Thailand.

In December 1991, a very important meeting and a training course took place in the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT). The event was organised by Dr Kanchana Kanchanasut, the "mother of the Internet" in Thailand. Dr Kanchana has administered the .th domain since the beginning. The event was important in many ways: first, this was the first course about Unix computer networking; secondly, it dealt with the formation of an email working group in Thailand; and thirdly, the group united well and could raise research funding from Nectec plus some in-kind donations from IBM, DEC and HP. Robert Elz, from Melbourne University, came to give a lecture at AIT at that event.

The amazing thing about creating the Internet in Thailand was the degree of interaction and cooperation among the members of the working group, which was called "nwg.nectec.or.th", or the Nectec Email Working Group. That name became the first mail server for all of us.

Internet email and Usenet newsgroups were used extensively since the launch of ThaiSarn in April 1992. ThaiSarn stands for the Thai Social/Scientific, Academic and Research Network. At that time, I was using the fastest modem, 14,400 bps, to serve as the country's gateway to the Internet at Thammasat University, during the time of the May 1992 coup. Kamol Hengkiatisak shared Bangkok Post reports with the soc.culture.thai newsgroup to let the whole world read the most up-to-date news reports about the event.

The first Internet connection in Thailand was at the Centre of Academic Resources at Chulalongkorn University. Led by Dr Yunyong Teng-amnuay and Dr Charumatr Pinthong, the first 9,600 bps leased line to UUNET in Virginia in the US was up and running in June 1992. A few months later, Nectec received funding to run the first 64kbps international link. Both Chula and Nectec upgraded the line speeds many times after this.

By 1994, the full-time Internet in Thailand had reached 27 sites all over the country, with 1,200 registered hosts accessible by the Net. The first WWW, FTP, News and Gopher servers were set up in Thailand, mostly by Trin Tantsetthi as a dedicated volunteer for ThaiSarn.

The success of this growth was attributed to the leadership of then Nectec director Prof Dr Pairash Thajchayapong, and the relentless contribution of Nectec researchers such as Morragot Kulathamyothin, Passakon Pathombutr, Chalermpol Charnsripinyo and their team members. For full information, about this, please refer to http://www.nectec.or.th/bureaux/nectec/ThaiSarn.book.

It was exciting to be involved in the ever-growing Internet since its conception. I was inspired enough to move on from Thammasat University to Nectec to set up ThaiSarn. In March 1995, the very first commercial Internet service provider was established as the Internet Thailand Service Centre, a commercial joint venture among NSTDA, CAT and TOT. Only a few months later, the second ISP was established: KSC Comnet, led by Prof Dr Srisakdi Charmonman and Dr Kanokwan Wongwattanasin. A year later, many more ISPs were in service.

The ThaiSarn Network then refocussed into a high-speed research network. The first 2Mbps link between ThaiSarn and NACSIS of Japan was launched in October 1995. ThaiSarn later supported the Kanchanapisek Network and SchoolNet Thailand. Both projects were aimed at bridging the digital divide (even before the term came into existence). We followed guidance from Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn to make sure that information and knowledge could be created, verified, shared on the Net and improved.

The Kanchanapisek network was the first of its kind to allow free nationwide access to information without even the cost of a local phone call to the modem bank. The SchoolNet Thailand project later modified the free network concept into a high-capacity nationwide school network. SchoolNet supported up to 1,500 secondary schools in Thailand through the close collaboration among Nectec, CAT, TOT and the Ministry of Education. Over 150 local volunteers were involved in the nationwide support for schools, all without any charges.

How big is the Internet in Thailand and are we losing our edge against our neighbours?

Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore started the Internet at about the same time. However, the speed of development was different. Many investors in Thailand often blamed the high cost of leased circuits for the ISPs to connect to the international Internet. When we looked at the official statistics of APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre), the central body for allocating the IP numbers to each country in the region, we found that Thailand is ranked number 11 by the size of the IP numbers in use.

Nectec has been tracking all Internet communications links in Thailand (domestic and international connectivities) since 1992. The number of Internet users has been estimated by Nectec and later assisted by the National Statistical Office through its household surveys in 2003-2005. My current estimate of the Internet users in 2007 is about 13.15 million users (see http://www.nectec.or.th/internet).

Some nostalgic remarks: Siam Commercial Bank was first to become a corporate Internet node in Thailand (March 1995). The first online election report was carried out by the Bangkok Post (June 1995), and the first big Internet usage event was for the Asia-Europe Meeting (March 1996), where CAT, TOT and Internet Thailand Company (INET) jointly supported a 4.5Mbps Internet link for participants and the international press through the largest Internet cafe service at the Queen Sirikit Conference Centre

Content is the key

The first killer application for IT users in Thailand was the Thai word processor developed by Kasetsart University (Thai Easy Writer for CP/M machine) and Chulalongkorn University (CU-Writer, or CW, for the IBM PC with HGC).

According to Dr Wanchai Rivepiboon, CW version 1.1 was first released to the public in April 1989. It was a tremendous success because of the demands for quality printing of Thai documents. The Faculty of Engineering of Chulalongkorn University continued to support and improve the program for about five years before commercial word processing software running on the Windows platform took over in 1994.

The first web server of Thailand, http://www.nectec.or.th, provided comprehensive information about Thailand in the English language under the title "Thailand the Big Picture" between 1993 and 2002. Today, the three most popular content providers in Thailand are pantip.com, sanook.com and manager.co.th.

The statistics relating to the web site ratings were provided by http://truehits.net. Truehits keeps track of the browsing activities to its members' 9,400 web sites. Truehits serves more than 70 million user clicks per day. The results from truehits are amazingly clear: a third party web statistics provider at low cost to all members.

Truehits also gave us the information about the most popular search terms in Thailand, and the popularity of search engines. To my disappointment, the Truehits report found that the most popular terms relate to games, horoscopes, music and jobs. The seasonal words are related to the current affairs of that time, for example: Tsunami, Anna, Dae Jang Kum, Royal Floral Show, Mother's Day, Loy Kratong. It seems that most people are not doing any serious work on the Internet. Anna is the name of a TV star whose naked photos and video were being distributed on the net.

How about the "market share" among the Thai web sites? The majority of Internet users in Thailand are visiting entertainment and game web sites (50% of all clicks). About 20% are browsing the web for news, business and getting services from the Internet. Government and education content are scoring at about 3.4% (both not more than 1.75%). The indicators tell us that Thailand needs to develop e-government and online learning software and content seriously.

E-commerce in Thailand

Six IT laws were planned by the NITC in the year 1997, with two draft laws being enacted as one law, the Electronic Transactions Act of B.E.2544 (2001). The ETA2544 recognises the legal status of data messages by treating them as functionally equivalent of writing or evidence in writing, to promote the reliability of electronic transactions.

Through the ETA2544, the Electronic Transactions Commission was established to facilitate and regulate the use of e-transactions. A number of Royal Decrees have been planned, and they are emerging. These include the provisions of sub-laws to facilitate the standard practice for government electronic transactions, IT security, privacy, and e-payment handling.

Other IT laws were related to the provision of the National Information Infrastructure (NII), data protection, computer misuse and electronic funds transfer. The laws have been completely drafted, with the computer misuse law being considered by a special commission for the National Legislative Assembly.

One key enabler for e-transactions and paperless transactions was the use of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). A number of e-Certificate providers have been set up, and the e-Transactions Commission also laid down the root CA (certification authority) structure to handle the interoperability of all CAs. The Thailand PKI Forum was set up in 2005 to coordinate the unity of all PKI services in the country.

In 2006, the e-Transactions Commission issued the Information Security Standard for Thailand, based on ISO/IEC 17799 and ISO/IEC 27001. The document was widely distributed and voluntarily adopted by a number of organisations. It is anticipated that the Bank of Thailand and the Security Exchange Commission will adopt the standard and enforce the compliance.

Successful e-commerce sites in Thailand are http://www.thaigems.com, http://www.thaisecondhand.com, http://www.tohome.com, http://www.pramool.com.

Software industry - gaining speed

Software Park Thailand was established in 1997. Its mandate is to develop and strengthen the software industry in Thailand. The Software Park provided training and certification on software quality standard using the CMM and CMMi practice from Carnegie Mellon University. It also facilitates office incubation space for start up companies.

A number of new Software Parks are being planned and developed in the provinces of Thailand. Dr Rom Hirunpruk was appointed the first director of Software Park Thailand.

After the Ministry of ICT was established in 2002, it established the Software Industry Promotion Agency (SIPA). Mr Manoo Ordeedolchest was appointed as the first SIPA director. SIPA supports the software industry through exhibitions and trade shows, funding for government-led development projects and software contests. It's focus areas are enterprise software architecture, animation/multimedia, and embedded software.

Open source software significantly has gained some interest from large enterprises and universities in the past five years. About 60% of all web servers in Thailand are running on Apache. The most popular OSS applications for the desktop in daily use in Thailand are Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.Org and Freemind.

Large local software companies worth mentioning are Reuters (which incorporated Biznews), SoftSquare Group and Progress Software. For the emerging embedded software activities, the Thai Embedded System Association (TESA) was set up to establish the resource pool of embedded system experts to solve large problems from major manufacturing companies. TESA was founded and chaired by Dr.Pansak Siriruchtapong, who is currently the director of Nectec.

Bad News: spam email is on the rise

Modern computers are both convenient and fast. But they are constantly attacked by malicious computer viruses, worms and Trojan horses. In the past two years, spam email has grown significantly. Since January 2006, virus-infected email messages seemed fewer, but spam mail now accounts for more than four times the number of clean messages every day.

There is harmful content on the Internet, including pornographic video and chat rooms. These web sites attract young people. Often the media (TV and newspapers) become the main source of propagating the news about certain harmful content to the Internet users. As we have observed, "search keyword" statistics have often surged based on the names that have appeared in the newspapers. It is a hard decision for the authorities to control access to those web sites.

It is anticipated that the forthcoming Computer Misuse Act will help the authorities curb unlawful activities in Thailand. However, it is hard to block harmful content from abroad (except for child pornography, which is illegal in most countries).

Good News: HDD Champion, RFID and Broadband

Thailand became the world's largest exporter of hard disk drives in 2005 as the industry generated more than US$263 billion in exports. That's 9.4% of total Thai exports and 42% of the worldwide HDD market. HDD production volume has more than doubled from 54.1 million units in 2003 to 119.8 million units in 2006. More than 100,000 workers are currently employed by the industry. The Thai government has initiated several support programs to strengthen the industry. In 2006, 14 universities were funded by Nectec to run research projects that respond to the needs of the industry.

RFID has also seen a strong interest from Nectec, electronics, software and manufacturing industries, logistics firms and supply chains. The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has approved Nectec's recommendation in December 2005 to use the RF spectrum in the band 920-924 MHz for RFID, in addition to LF and HF which were approved by MICT in 2004.

Broadband users in 2005 were about 570,000 subscribers. According to Nectec's survey that year, about 39% of the respondents were using broadband connections. This translates to about 3.18 million broadband users, or about five users per subscription of ADSL.

Finally, the size of the ICT market in Thailand in 2005 was approximately US$11.09 billion, with the majority of the market being telecommunications. The software market was valued at $1.09 billion.

The future

The telecommunications market is at the stage of its highest growth, with plenty of room at the top. The IT market is still pretty small compared to the big picture of the country. There are limits to growth of the IT market due to the laggardly growth of the Thai software industry. Internet users' tastes will need to shift from an entertainment-bias towards something more productive. The lowest "click" market share for government and education web sites (less than 3.5%) leaves a lot of homework for those responsible for e-government and e-education. Computer vulnerabilities such as attacks by viruses, worms, spam and hackers will create a huge computer security services market.

All of the identified shortcomings are sufficient for future planning and market opportunities for the Thai electronics and software industries. Foreign software solution providers are welcome to invest and operate in Thailand.

The public policies relating to the development of e-Government, useful local content and economic risk protection from computer attacks are the top priorities. All remaining drafted laws should be submitted to the NLA for legislation. Perhaps, it's time to take a road that is different from what Thailand has taken in the past five years to get different results:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference
'The road less travelled,' by Robert Frost

About the Author: Hugh Thaweesak Koanantakool is an electrical engineer by training. His specialisation is digital communications, coding and Thai language processing. He headed Nectec for eight years and ran the NITC secretariat office for six years.

What is the difference between TOEFL iBT and TOEFL PBT?

2007-12-08T19:50:00.000+07:00

What is the difference between TOEFL iBT and TOEFL PBT?

TOEFL iBT measures reading, listening, speaking and writing skills and takes approximately 4½ hours. It is given on computer 30-40 times a year at test centers throughout the world.

TOEFL PBT measures listening, structure (grammar), reading and writing and takes approximately 3½ hours. It is given using paper and pencil 6 times a year at test centers where TOEFL iBT is not available.

Why Do 'Cool Kids' Choose Ruby or PHP to Build Websites Instead of Java?

2007-12-08T00:42:00.000+07:00

Why Do 'Cool Kids' Choose Ruby or PHP to Build Websites Instead of Java?

Why Isn't Facebook Built in Java?

By: Coach Wei

Dec. 7, 2007 03:15 AM

Coach Wei's Blog

Here is a question that I have been pondering on and off for quite a while: Why do "cool kids" choose Ruby or PHP to build websites instead of Java?

I have to admit that I do not have an answer.

Why do I even care? Because I am a Java developer. Like many Java developers, I get along with Java well. Not only the language itself, but the development environments (Eclipse for example), step-by-step debugging helper, wide availability of libraries and code snippets, and the readily accessible information on almost any technical question I may have on Java via Google. Last but not least, I go to JavaOne and see 10,000 people that talk and walk just like me.

The other reason that I ponder this question is that the power of Java is a perfect fit for the areas where websites may need more than markups or scripting, such as middleware logic. PHP and Ruby etc are cool for building pages, but they are not ideal candidates for building middleware logic. Given that Java covers the "high end" of the spectrum well (where sophisticated processing is needed), wouldn't it be great to use Java all the way?

Is it Java as a programming language too difficult to use, comparing with those scripting oriented interpreted languages? Yes, this maybe the reason. But there are 5 million Java developers out there already, and millions of developers make a living by write server side Java code. A lot of websites are built by these Java developers, and somehow they choose to use PHP or Ruby instead. Why? It is even more puzzling that I have seen quite a few Enterprise Java people decided against Java - when they decided to build their web 2.0 site, they went for PHP even though they have to learn PHP.

Is it the lack of tooling? I think there are more tools for Java than, say, Ruby.

Is it the lack of frameworks? I bet there are more Java frameworks than the population in China.

OK, a lot of websites are fairly simple, mainly composed of markup pages, scripts and some lightweight logic on the server side, where PHP and Ruby are good for. Java maybe an overkill for such websites. But there are a lot of websites that are much more sophisticated than "lightweight" logic on the server side. For example, FaceBook was relatively simple initially, but now with FaceBook API and Platform, its complexity is growing. Why not use Java for such websites?

So what is missing from the Java world? What is the ideal architecture to build a website using Java?

Option 1: JSP/Servlet with a Java Servlet engine (or even an application server): This is the dominant architecture for Enterprise web applications. But it clearly has not been appealing for building websites in comparison to PHP or Ruby;
Option 2: JavaServer Faces: JSF is the new kid on the block. Is it going to make building websites easier? Probably not. It is designed for simplifying building form-based applications.
Option 3: Using a Java based content management system (CMS)? I have come across many CMS systems over the last few years, and haven't been impressed by anyone of them.

So what is the ideal architecture for building a highly scalable, sophisticated (potentially. Your site will become sophisticated if your site is very successful), easy to build and easy to maintain website, while using Java?

King stresses unity..

2007-12-06T19:04:00.000+07:00

(BangkokPost.com, dpa)

His Majesty the King called on Thais to be united in his annual birthday-eve audience given at the Chitralada Palace on Tuesday evening.

His Majesty, the world's longest reigning monarch, turned 80 today (Wednesday, December 5).

This year's audience, granted to cabinet members and senior civil servants, was seen as having special significance because it comes at a time of great political uncertainty for the kingdom.

"If we are not united, the country will experience disaster," His Majesty said.

The king used his recent hospitalisation and difficulties walking to urge Thais to work together for the sake of the nation.

"My legs don't walk in union. I was saying the other day that the military and civilians need to be united. If we are not united, the country will face disaster."

His Majesty also touched on the age subject, and said that Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, who has been widely criticised as being too old to head a government, is in fact not that old.

"Who has said that the premier is boring cannot say that as he works actively...The premier is a little above 60, which is at an appropriate age. Unlike me. I'm too old," he said.

But then he joked: "Tomorrow I will be 80. I am still young and strong."

His Majesty also commented on his own health, saying that he stays healthy to welcome those who come to listen to his speech.

"Doctors said my brain wasn't working well. But I didn't feel anything wrong. Then they said my colon did not function well. But they later found out everything was fine," His Majesty said. "It's the doctors' brain that weren't right."

His Majesty admonished the navy for recently expressing the wish to buy a submarine, noting that submarines were unsuitable for Thailand. The Gulf of Thailand is a shallow body of water.

Known worldwide for his sufficiency economy theories, the king also encouraged the manufacture of bio-fuel from palm oil, which can be grown domestically, to reduce dependency on imported oil.

Thousands of people wearing yellow T-shirts gathered outside the palace in Bangkok to hear the King speak.

This year's audience began with royal humour, when the king playfully admonished his 2-year-old grandson Dipangkorn Rasmijoti - the son of Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn - for talking during the ceremony.

"He is like his father. He talks a lot," His Majesty said of his grandson's interruptions.

Plain White T - Hey There Delilah

2007-10-11T00:06:00.000+07:00

Plain White T - Hey There Delilah lyrics

Rihanna - Unfaithful ♪

2007-10-09T13:34:00.000+07:00

Rihanna Lyrics
Unfaithful Lyrics

Rihanna Lyrics

Monkey Idiom (test)

2007-09-29T02:35:00.000+07:00

In this episode, The Teacher introduces you to three idiomatic phrases connected with monkeys.

To monkey around
Monkey business
To make a monkey out of someone

Hello, I’m a very interesting and intelligent man.
And today these baboons and I will be monkeying around to teach you a thing or two about English.
I bet you’ve never been taught by a monkey before.
We’ll be monkeying around.
Hmm, to monkey around… What do you think that could mean?
In English, 'to monkey around' means to behave in a silly or careless way. Pen!
To monkey around.

Like him. And me.
Anyway, down to some serious business. The English language.
What a wonderful thing… The language of Shakespeare, the language of…
Please stop talking, I’m trying to teach.
Where was I? … English, the language of …
Are you eating now? ! Enough of this monkey business!
That’s right. In English, we can call bad or dishonest behaviour 'monkey business'.
Monkey business.

Hello it’s me, the Teacher! I bet you didn’t recognise me for a minute.
What’s the matter? What do you mean I’m not taking this seriously?
I know you’re a hard-working student of English. Don’t worry, I’m not trying to make a
monkey out of you.
In English, if we're trying to make someone look stupid we can say we’re making a monkey
out of them.
To make a monkey out of someone.
The only person round here I’m making a monkey out of is me.

Embracing a Martian future

2007-09-28T03:34:00.000+07:00

A mock-up of how Phoenix will look entering the Martian atmosphere. Image: NASA

"Mars ain't no place to raise your kids," sang Elton John in "Rocket Man". And he was absolutely right. A balmy summer's day on the Red Planet is indistinguishable from mid-winter in Antarctica. But that does not mean Mars was inhospitable to life in the distant past – or that it will be inhospitable to life in the future. A new space probe that was launched in early August from Florida's Cape Canaveral could prove this to be the case.

Mars Phoenix is the next logical step in NASA's "follow the water" strategy for exploring Mars. The idea is that the calling cards of life, either past or present, are most likely to be found where there are indications of water, the substance essential to life as we know it.

And where better to look than the edge of Mars’s northern polar cap, which is strongly suspected to contain large amounts of permanently frozen water? After an 8-month journey, Mars Phoenix will enter the Martian atmosphere at a latitude equivalent to Alaska on Earth. It will plunge like a meteor through the thin Martian air, its descent braked by supersonic parachutes and retro-thrusters, until it comes to rest on its three spindly legs. Once its solar panels are unfurled and electricity courses through its circuits, Mars Phoenix will come to life and begin its scientific programme.

At the landing site it will be mid-afternoon, early summer, with a weak sun in a rose-pink sky. The temperature, beneath thin high-altitude clouds, will be about -50 degrees Celsius. The lander will have come to rest in a shallow valley with no more than half a dozen metre-sized boulders strewn over the area of a football pitch and the odd impact crater. But the most striking feature of the site will be the mosaic of polygonal shapes etched into the ground. Formed as extreme winter cold causes ice-cemented soil to contract until it ruptures, such "polygonal ground" is also seen in Antarctica.

It will be into this ice-hardened crust that Mars Phoenix's robot arm will dig, striking pure ice probably within a few centimetres. The samples it retrieves will be baked in an oven on board the lander to give off "volatiles" such as water vapour. A water molecule commonly contains atoms known as hydrogen-1 and oxygen-16, but it can also contain their heavier cousins, hydrogen-2 (deuterium) and oxygen-18. Phoenix will measure the abundance ratios of the hydrogen "isotopes" and of the oxygen isotopes.

"If the ratios do not match those in the current atmosphere, then the water cannot have come from present-day snow," says Ray Arvidson, a member of the Mars Phoenix team from the University of Arizona at Tucson. "It will be ancient water - perhaps from an ancient ocean."

Evidence is abundant that water flowed copiously on Mars during its first 500 million years of history. There are sinuous channels reminiscent of terrestrial river valleys, and great gorges similar to water-cut canyons. One, the Valles Marineris, is 10 times longer and about four times as deep as the Grand Canyon. Evidence of an ancient ocean is, however, more contentious.

Mars is believed to have gone bad because, at only about half the Earth's diameter, it was unable to retain the heat of its birth for as long. It is the "dynamo" action of molten material circulating deep inside a planet that creates a magnetic field, which shields its atmosphere from the ravages of the million-mile an hour "solar wind". Bereft of a magnetic shield, Mars's atmosphere was quickly stripped away so liquid water could no longer exist on its surface.

In the heated soil samples, the Mars Phoenix scientists will also be looking for evidence of "organic molecules", essential for terrestrial life along with water. These could tell them that the chemical ingredients once existed for life. Such life could either have begun but become extinct or, more excitingly, begun and lain dormant when Mars went bad. And Mars is known to undergo dramatic climate changes, warming up every 100,000 years or so.

"Water might exist briefly in liquid form and life (probably micro-organisms) might take advantage, bursting forth periodically," says Arvidson. Of course, it is always possible that the Martian soil contains desiccated bacteria, which might swim into view in images sent back to Earth from the lander's two microscopes. "We can always hope," says Arvidson.

If Mars Phoenix does find substantial quantities of water, it will be good news for future manned explorations of Mars. George W. Bush has called for the return of humans to the Moon by 2020, an essential first step on the long road to Mars.

Water on Mars could be used to drink, and water molecules could be split apart for oxygen to breathe and hydrogen for rocket fuel. This would avoid the prohibitive cost of carrying an estimated 20 tonnes of water from the Earth. But why go to Mars? After all, it could take six months and will be hundreds of times harder than going to the Moon. "If we find evidence of life on Mars, we are going," says Arvidson, "simple as that."

"The real excitement will come when we send a team of humans to Mars, because then the discoveries will increase exponentially," says Kim Stanley Robinson, author of a best-selling series of science fiction novels set on Mars. "We may discover living bacteria, which would be one of the greatest scientific discoveries ever, or signs of past life in the form of fossils, or no sign of any Martian life ever, which would be interesting in its own way."

Mars Phoenix will operate for 90 Martian days as summer turns into autumn then winter and flakes of carbon dioxide snow begin to waft down, gradually burying the lander. Nobody knows whether Mars Phoenix will survive. But, if it does, when men finally do go to Mars, and Mars does become a place to raise your kids, maybe people with snow shovels will uncover it (perfectly preserved) and put in a Martian museum. All this depends crucially on a successful landing next year.

* Marcus Chown is the author of “The Never-Ending Days of Being Dead" (Faber, 2007).

Give The Small Place For Our Childhood

2007-09-26T09:06:00.000+07:00

How long I have to sigh?
The real world is not being as I think.
We always follow the time that change.
When we grow up, everything will change.

Growing up is not easy.
It is not familiar and it mentally tired to think about it.
Don’t have any time to listen and think to whom.
What I have to do when grow up?

When the time change faster than mind till we may disappear.
When the childhood in mind has gone, where is he and why he gone from us?

Give a small place for our childhood.
Keep us the same although the times are change.
Keep the freshness with us and do not let anyone to grab it.
I just want to have a small place to be the kind for long time.
We want to dream. We want to smile.
Keep our childhood in mind though the real world will be good or bad?

There are the rainbows at the skyline.
When the truth meets the dream at that land, a child holds my hand and walk together.

When the time change faster than mind till we forget who we are.
Do not forget a little kid and do not let him alone. Are we heard that sound call us?

Give the small place for our childhood.
Keep us the same though the times are change.
Keep the freshness with us and do not let anyone to grab it.
I just want to have a small place to be the kind for long time.
We want to dream. We want to smile.
Keep our childhood in mind forever though the real world will be good or bad.

7 REASONS WHY YOUR SOFTWARE IS SO SLOW!!

2007-09-20T12:06:00.000+07:00

Ever wonder why your PC keeps choking on that slick, new corporate app? Here are the chief culprits bogging down the latest software's performance
By Neil McAllister

In terms of computing power, we've come a long way since 1981. Today's average desktop CPU is more than 600 times faster than that of the original IBM PC. Throw in blazing-fast graphics cards, mind-boggling amounts of RAM, multimegabit network connections, and hard drives that spin faster than a Ferrari engine, and you've got a machine that's powerful beyond the imaginings of the original PC pioneers.

So why doesn't it seem that way?

[ See Special Report: 15 IT performance problems and remedies ]

By all accounts, we live in a digital Golden Age, and yet for many of us, our day-to-day computing experience is more purgatory than paradise. Slow startup times, unresponsive applications, delays, crashes, and reboots bog us down at every turn. Upgrades seem to bring short-lived bliss at best, followed by a brand-new crop of frustrations. Our machines keep getting more powerful, but our experience using them hardly seems to have improved at all.

Why does computing have to be so painful? Where have we gone wrong? And more importantly, what can we do to get back on track? Unfortunately, there are no easy answers and no quick fixes. But because forewarned is forearmed, we present here a collection of top pain points experienced by enterprise PC users everywhere.

These seven computing pitfalls aren't going away any time soon. The solutions must come from hardware manufacturers, software vendors, and IT managers alike. Still, with luck, by recognizing the problems, we can avoid the most serious traps -- while doing what we can to steer the industry toward a more efficient, enjoyable computing experience for all.

Culprit No. 1: Chip advances leave developers in the dust

Ever since Gordon Moore's 1965 proclamation in Electronics Magazine, we've come to expect processing power to double every two years. So why don't the latest CPUs seem significantly faster than those made even five years ago? Has the lease on Moore's Law run out? Or has the science of silicon left software developers in the lurch?

Part of the answer lies in a popular misconception about what Moore's Law actually says. Moore never predicted that chips would steadily gain gigahertz, only that each new generation would be capable of holding more transistors than the last. He was talking about increases in complexity, not clock speed.

Current CPUs are certainly more complex than their predecessors, but chip designers are butting heads with the laws of physics when they try to push the envelope of overall speed. More cycles per second mean more heat. Too much heat and the circuits start to break down. As a consequence, electrical engineers have had to tweak chip designs to improve the processing power of CPUs running at modest clock speeds -- in short, to create chips that do more with less.

The results are marvels of electronics, to be sure. But the new chip designs, with all their performance-enhancing tricks, are unfamiliar territory for many software developers. As Bjarne Stroustrup, designer of the C++ programming language, explained in a recent public talk, "If you look at machine architectures, especially the really advanced stuff, you'll see I'm not exaggerating when I say it's weird."

When it comes to dual-core chips, that weirdness doubles. Etching two or more complete CPUs onto a single piece of silicon offers great potential for performance increases -- at least in theory. But to take advantage of these advances, software must be designed with multiprocessing in mind. Applications written by coders who have not been trained in parallel processing, for example, will see little benefit. What's more, developers need new tools such as those proposed by AMD to properly adapt their software to multicore chips. Unfortunately, very little of the software we use today measures well by these standards, including the leading operating systems.

Computer scientists predict that quantum computing may one day render today's silicon CPUs obsolete. Even if that happens, however, the software development downside will remain the same. Until the developer community can fully tap the latest hardware advances, much of the promise of these new technologies will go unrealized.

Culprit No. 2: Code bloat abounds

Application vendors love to wow customers with bells and whistles packed into each new version of their software. But after a few successive releases, the sheer number of features in an app can start to weigh it down. As "code bloat" sets in, user experience inevitably starts to suffer. It's little wonder why corporate users -- especially those unlikely to alter their application habits -- are growing increasingly reluctant to comply with IT mandates to hit the upgrade button.

To be fair, writing applications is a lot more demanding than it used to be. Developing software that performs effectively in a multithreaded, multitasking environment isn't easy. Neither is juggling all the elements of a windowing GUI. If it weren't for sophisticated frameworks that automate these chores, developers would spend a significant portion of their time reinventing the wheel. Too much reliance on these tools, however, can encourage lazy programming practices and poor design.

In the old days, programmers optimized code by hand, byte by byte. Today it's a different story. Whether they're building software for the desktop or the datacenter, modern application developers rely on huge libraries of third-party code, often with very little understanding of their inner workings.

Modern development environments are different, too. Languages such as Java and C# relieve programmers of the burden of housekeeping tasks, including memory management and security, but they further conceal the internals of the system behind layers of abstraction. It's hard to optimize code when you don't know what's going on at the lowest levels; no wonder so much software seems sluggish and cumbersome.

But developers shouldn't shoulder all of the blame for bloated upgrades that perform more slowly than their predecessors. After all, when software development cycles are driven more by sales than by sound engineering, it only makes sense to expect the worst. Rushing a product to market to meet a published ship date is a recipe for disaster, yet it happens so often that customers actually expect it. Massive bug fixes, service patches, and suboptimal out-of-the-box performance have become a way of life.

Will high-quality software ever become the norm? In part, that's up to us. As customers, it's time we voted with our wallets. So long as we're willing to skimp on code quality for the sake of the latest, up-to-the-minute upgrade, software vendors have little incentive to ship us anything but second-best.

Culprit No. 3: Usability remains an afterthought

Have you ever tried to do something with your PC only to discover that you couldn't? It isn't that the software can't handle it -- the function you need is in there somewhere, as advertised on the packaging or in the long e-mail chain of functionality added to an internal app. The problem is that you simply don't know how to find it.

Welcome to a new era in poor usability. As much as software vendors skimp on QA (quality assurance) testing these days, user case testing is being overlooked with even greater regularity. As publishers and IT departments race to meet shipping deadlines, too much of the overall product or project ends up being designed by programmers, rather than user interface experts. Unfortunately, that often means the software suits programmers' sensibilities better than our own.

Where software vendors do pay attention to appearances, the trend is to design flashy interfaces with lots of eye candy. Yet slick graphics don't necessarily translate into a pleasant user experience -- and it doesn't help when developers pile on feature after feature.

"In designing any user interface, one of your key decisions concerns the tradeoff between features and simplicity," writes usability expert Jakob Nielsen in a recent blog post. "The more features, the more complicated the system inevitably becomes."

Ironically, feature creep is coupled with another disappointing trend: the elimination of printed manuals or user guides. Users are expected to understand how software works, right out of the box, even as the user interface grows steadily more complex with each new version.

According to Nielsen, the problem with complex UIs is that the user is seldom really motivated to figure out an unfamiliar program. "To determine how much complexity you can afford in a user interface, you must analyze user engagement levels," he writes. "Do they care deeply, or do they just want to get something done as quickly as possible?"

And how can you tell when users will be adequately engaged with your software to allow you to pile on the features?

Nielsen's advice there is simple. "Typically, users care less than you think!"

Culprit No. 4: Security saps system performance

The tremendous benefits of computing in the Internet Age have come at a price. Viruses, worms, Trojan horses, DDoS attacks, spyware, phishing -- the list of network-based threats seems to grow longer every day. In response, IT managers pile security countermeasures onto servers and workstations, malware authors find ways around them, and the cycle continues.

Will we ever see an end to this arms race? "Probably not," says George Myers, director of product management at end-point security vendor Symantec. "To be certain, anti-virus technology alone does not provide adequate protection for today's threat landscape."

Securing network end points takes processing power, however -- cycles that could otherwise be devoted to running applications. Loaded up with spyware scanners, active virus screening, personal firewalls, and layers of encryption, a PC that was designed to be a race car ends up feeling more like an armored personnel carrier: It's safe, but hardly nimble.

Still, the cost of having too much security is outweighed by the consequences of having too little. Advanced, modern malware, including rootkits, can be extremely difficult to detect, and once it takes hold, it can be even harder to remove. With not just productivity but also sensitive data potentially at risk, locking down workstations is easily justified.

So what to do? How can IT organizations ensure that employees' PCs are protected without bogging them down with too much security?

"The right balance is really specific for each individual customer," says Myers. "Security is important to everyone, but the cost of security has to be weighed. Some security technologies are too costly to maintain and burdensome for users, but others are both simple and effective."

In other words, cross your fingers. Security vendors must constantly revisit and rethink their approaches to stay abreast of the latest threats, but they can only do so much. So long as the nature of network-based security threats is in constant flux, formulating an appropriate security policy for any given company will always involve trial and error -- with end-users caught in the crossfire.

Culprit No. 5: Lack of standards stifles agility

If you aren't happy with the performance of your software, the solution should be simple: Switch to different software. In practice, however, jumping ship is seldom that easy, and vendor lock-in is a reality with which most IT departments are far too familiar.

The company we love to hate remains one of the top offenders. "Microsoft talks a lot about listening to its customers," explains Andrew Updegrove, principal at technology law firm Gesmer Updegrove and author of The Standards Blog. "But the fact is that without competition it can pick and choose from what the customer says."

Microsoft Office is the most obvious example of how proprietary document formats end up limiting customer choices. Once a company has committed a large amount of data to an application suite and its accompanying file types, migrating to a different platform can be too costly to contemplate.

Lack of interoperability can be a problem for enterprise apps, too, -- particularly in loosely coupled SOA (service-oriented architecture) environments. When disparate legacy applications are linked haphazardly together in an SOA, data might need to be translated back and forth between incompatible XML formats or databases multiple times for each transaction.

The best solution to the IT interoperability blues is to standardize, preferably using industry-supported open standards. Unfortunately, this isn't always an option. Because standardization requires consensus -- often between competitors -- developing and ratifying workable standards can be a tedious process. Even when a standard is finalized, early revisions may not cover all the conditions and features that individual customers may require. Often, businesses can't afford to wait for a robust standard to emerge before deploying technology.

To achieve the best results, Updegrove recommends developing a master plan that outlines how standards fit into your organization's computing needs. "Take a systemic approach, apply that approach to the enterprise, be realistic and flexible," he says, "and then go to it."

By deploying open standards early and often, IT departments stand the best chance of forestalling vendor lock-in before it happens. In the long run, the only alternative is an IT organization left with no alternatives.

Culprit No. 6: Centralizing IT gives rise to bureaucracy

When you're having problems with your enterprise laptop or workstation, who do you call? Is your IT staff just down the hall, or are they on the other side of the globe?

At one time, staffing each branch office with its own IT manager and techs was standard practice. Today the pendulum has swung the other direction. With technology now a mission-critical component of most businesses, the trend is for IT to account directly to senior management. Centralizing IT has become the norm, and in some cases, IT functions are outsourced completely.

Unfortunately, IT organizations often handle the transition poorly. Where once they were free to concentrate on desktop support, now they are saddled with additional burdens such as regulatory compliance, management of zero-day security threats, and the need to generate real-time business performance metrics. Often they respond by taking an authoritarian approach, locking down workstations and establishing cast-iron IT policies.

Things only get worse from there. As more and more user requests require intervention from IT, bureaucracy sets in. Soon even the most basic reconfiguration requires a trouble ticket.

Ironically, heavy-handed IT administration can sometimes backfire. End-users, fed up with the burdensome restrictions of corporate IT policy, react by installing their own IM clients, P2P (peer to peer) software, application servers, and wireless LANs. Similarly, inadequate licensing policies can lead frustrated users to install pirated software -- all of which encourages IT to take an even heavier hand.

Reversing this trend will take serious effort. IT policy should not be drafted haphazardly, but instead with careful consideration of actual business needs and objectives. Senior management must stop viewing IT as a "business partner" and instead recognize it as an integral part of the organization. Greater emphasis must be placed on individual user needs, with a renewed focus on desktop support.

Of course, these measures will cost money. And that's the bottom line -- until businesses are willing to invest in IT commensurate with its role in day-to-day operations, we shouldn't expect IT to help improve our computing experience. In fact, it might even hinder it.

Culprit No. 7: Computing trends overburden the network

Don't call it "client/server." Today's database-driven applications are a world apart from the green-screen terminal apps of decades past. And yet, in this age when "the network is the computer," more and more data processing tasks are handed off to remote resources. Server-based applications, centralized content management, SOA (service-oriented architecture), and SaaS (software as a service) are all part of this trend -- and all put increased burden on enterprise network links.

Unfortunately, the network isn't always up to the task. Last year, top SaaS CRM provider Salesforce.com stumbled with a series of intermittent outages that deprived customers of access to their data. Not being able to read the news on your favorite Web page is one thing; when lack of access translates into lost sales, it's a serious problem.

Whether you lease them from a SaaS vendor or host them in-house, networked applications share the same basic weakness: The network is a primary point of failure. If your application uses a "fat client," at least the UI exists locally on your PC. With Web-based apps, on the other hand, every mouse click depends on a reliable connection.

Mobility only exacerbates the problems of the new, network-centric model. Intermittent connectivity means mobile employees' data is often poorly synchronized with the central datacenter, especially where security is a top concern. And current wireless networks are inherently less reliable than traditional ones, adding to user frustration. Many businesses may simply be asking too much of their networks, too soon.

Still, there's no turning back. Distributed, network-based applications are simply too useful. To truly succeed with this model, however, calls for significant adjustments. Multiple, redundant network links are just the beginning. Network administrators must become full-fledged participants in application deployment strategy.

Most important of all, however, is education. As enterprise apps increasingly go online, users must recognize that, though their PCs are faster than ever, the day when they can expect fast, consistent access to all their tools and data may still be a long way off.

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME...!!

2007-09-19T00:52:00.001+07:00

If you could go back in time and re-experience an event in your life, what would it be?
Would you go back to change an event that happened or to re-experience a happy time? Or something else?

^__^

It would be so interesting if we could go back in time. Sometimes, there may be things that I'd like to go back and change or fix or not do certain things, or do other things instead. However, then things wouldn't be the way they are now and who knows how they would be. You can't go back you have to learn from the past and go forward and try to stop putting blame on yourself and other people.

Sometimes, you probably do something that you regret like you have to choose between two ways. You have fifty-fifty to choose the one that it is going to be right. But you choose the one that you didn't like so it's only to go back in time to fix it and re-experience an event in your life.

So, if you want to go back in time, find someone who lived or actually experienced significant history and sit down and talk to them. Take notes, record the conversation because as time continues, those who witnessed will eventually be gone.

Why Scientists Are Talking About Global Warming!!

2007-09-19T00:23:00.000+07:00

By Dr. Ed Warde

You've seen the headlines, heard and seen the sound bites and learned what global warming and carbon credits are. You may have given Al Gore a pass on his pronouncements and movie since, after all, he is a politician and not a scientist. Besides he did invent the World Wide Web didn't he? As an enlightened student of the world you have taken note of what the media and pundits have said.

At the same time you feel that formulating hundred year plus projections on the basis of a few years of data gives you the same level of confidence that the campaign polls making prognostications about the 2008 election provides. For that matter you, and the rest of the world, have noticed the weather forecasters can't even forecast the weather more then a few days in advance. What's the story anyway?

So you have a healthy skepticism about global warming. But wait. You just read that on-the-air weather forecasters are on the global warming bandwagon. That must mean it's the real thing. I mean those folks put their reputation on the line during the nightly news and don't even flinch when they announce a massive 4" snow storm is going to hit New York City and the world as we know it will be coming to an end. Their message about global warming causes you to pause however. I mean after all Al Gore is one thing, but a real weather forecaster. Maybe there is something to this.

So now you're wavering. Should you pull the plug on your TiVo, grab your recyclable grocery sack and head to World Foods, on foot of course. Quick grab those incandescent bulbs before the global warming police raid your house and replace them with high efficiency fluorescent bulbs.

So what if they have a bunch of mercury in them. I mean, after all, they last longer so the intervals between your polluting contribution to the landfills will be less often. OK, where were you? You've downloaded the freeware program to conduct your own carbon audit and will start filling that out as soon as you get this year's tax extension cleared up. I mean we must have our priorities.

Then on the news, or the American equivalent of news, you hear that several scientists are starting to talk about global warming and the need to study it. Now you're really sold especially if those guys are jumping on the global warming bandwagon. With that you put down your taxes and boot up the carbon budget inventory and prepare for the end of the world, as we know it. Sound familiar? An increasing number of people are being swayed by what others, without necessarily having data or proof, are saying.

At this stage most of what they're saying has no particular validity in terms of holding up under scientific scrutiny. You may wonder then why some scientists are talking like global warming is real and must be studied. As a scientist who has published numerous articles in refereed journals, I feel you should keep in mind that in the majority of cases these same scientists who make their livelihood doing global warming research, do it with the help of funding from a variety of sources.

So, bottom line, it is in their interest to talk up global warming and the need to study it since that leads to government, corporate and organizational funding. Sound self-serving? Well it is but this priming of the pump has gone on for decades. If one looks back during the space race there was much of this that went on.

Since the Soviets had launched the Sputnik ahead of us, we were playing catch up. Once we could hold our own on putting satellites into orbit the scientists found they had these great tools to use in their research and all they needed to do was grab some of that government money to build experiments to ride in the payload and send publishable data back to earth. One of the early organized efforts at doing this was called the International Geophysical Year which took place in 1957-1958 with the stated goal '...to observe geophysical phenomena and to secure data from all parts of the world; to conduct this effort on a coordinated basis by fields, and in space and time, so that results could be collated in a meaningful manner.'

So be cautious when some scientists state conclusions such as global warming is man-made before the research has been done. They may be most interested in stimulating debate in hopes that lucrative study contracts and grants will follow. Ask the researchers whether the global warming is definitely man-made or naturally occurring. Are they willing to stake their reputation on it? In regards to global warming the message is, let's not put the conclusions before the hypothesis and research.

As quoted in the National Academies Press 'Climate Change: An Analysis of Some Key Questions' "Because of the large and still uncertain level of natural variability inherent in the climate record and the uncertainties in the time histories of the various forcing agents (and particularly aerosols), a causal linkage between the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the observed climate changes during the 20th century cannot be unequivocally established. Clearly more study is needed and will be forthcoming, however before making dramatic statements and gestures such as buying carbon offset credits from Al Gores carbon offset company, life style changes, and polluting the earth with mercury from fluorescent bulbs we should wait for some real science to be done.

Also be careful where you plant those carbon offset credit trees since at certain latitudes the leaf canopy will actually absorb heat and exacerbate the very thing you are trying to offset.

What to Do About High Cholesterol Levels - Effective Changes to Your Diet that Will Lower Cholesterol

2007-09-18T23:45:00.000+07:00

Did your doctor recently give you the bad news that you have high cholesterol levels? Well hope is not lost, as there are many small but effective changes you can make to your diet in order to lower your cholesterol.

The first thing to do is to increase your vegetable intake. Be sure to eat lots of vegetables every day. Romaine lettuce and other green vegetables like broccoli, peas, and spinach are great choices. Some other excellent choices are corn, olives, soybeans, and carrots. If you cook with vegetable oil, you will want to switch to olive oil, canola oil or safflower oil. A good vegetable side dish to make is sweet green, yellow, and red peppers. You can cook these with a little olive oil and garlic.

The next thing to look at is your fruit intake. It really is true that an apple a day will keep the doctor away, as apples reduce cholesterol and blood pressure. Other great fruits to eat are oranges, tomatoes, kiwi fruit, strawberries, other berries, grapefruit, bananas, raisins, plums, and red grapes.

Make a conscious effort to include the following foods in your diet more often: fish, lean red meat, rice, avocados, pasta, white-meat chicken without skin, turkey breast, low-fat turkey bacon, turkey sausage, flaxseed, oat bran, dried beans, lentils, tofu, nonfat yogurt, and nuts, such as almonds, walnuts, and cashews.

A great way to start your day is with a large bowl of oatmeal or cream of wheat. Other cereals that are good to eat are rice bran, Wheaties, shredded wheat, and raisin bran. The best varieties of bread to eat are whole grain, whole wheat, raisin bread, 7 grain, and wheat berry bread. When making an omelet or scrambling eggs, use one whole egg with 3 egg whites.

One group of foods that has been shown to greatly benefit people wanting to lower their cholesterol is the onion and garlic group of foods. These include onions, garlic, shallots, pearl onions, leeks, chives, and asparagus.

Now this won't be total torture. You can even order pizza! Just limit your serving to 1 or 2 slices and make it a vegetable pizza so that you are getting your veggies.

As for beverages, it is wise to limit your milk intake, and when you do drink milk, make sure it is low-fat, fat-free, or even better, soy milk. Also, be sure to increase your water intake. Aim to drink an eight-ounce glass of water eight times a day. But if you are heavier than the average person, you may need more than that. It seems that most people do not enjoy the plain taste of water. You might want to drink water flavored with lemon or Crystal Light. Water has been shown to fight high blood pressure and decrease cholesterol levels. It is also recommended to drink one glass of grape juice daily to lower cholesterol levels.

Of course, with every dietary change, there is the list of no-no's (foods to avoid). Here is the list: ice cream (nonfat ice cream and sherbet are okay), egg yolks, cheese (reduced-fat cheese is okay), sausage, hot dogs, shortening, margarine (light margarine is okay), fried foods, fast food, potato chips, sugar, beer, and lunchmeat. Lunchmeat has preservatives that are dangerous to your heart. If you cannot completely avoid lunchmeat, at least reduce your intake to 2 pieces on a sandwich, and do not eat it frequently.

But don't let the list of no-no's discourage you. If you focus on all the good foods that you can eat that will benefit your health, you will not have time to notice what you are doing without. It's when our focus is on what we can't eat that we end up sabotaging our efforts. So I encourage you to implement these healthy changes to your diet and watch that cholesterol level come down.

Louis Armstrong - What A Wonderfull World

2007-09-17T23:03:00.000+07:00

I see trees of green........ red roses too
I watch 'em bloom..... for me and for you
And I think to myself.... what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue..... clouds of white
Bright blessed days....warm sacred nights
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world.

The colors of a rainbow.....so pretty ..in the sky
Are there on the faces.....of people ..going by
I see friends shaking hands.....sayin'.. how do you do
They're really sayin'......I love you.

I hear babies cry...... I watch them grow
They'll learn much more.....than I'll never know
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world

(instrumental break)

The colors of a rainbow.....so pretty ..in the sky
Are there on the faces.....of people ..going by
I see friends shaking hands.....sayin'.. how do you do
They're really sayin'...*SPOKEN* (I ....LOVE....YOU).

I hear babies cry...... I watch them grow

*SPOKEN*
(You know their gonna learn a whole lot more than I'll never know)

And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself .......what a wonderful world.

A Brief History of French Food

2007-09-16T07:47:00.000+07:00

Felipe Fernández-Armesto on the origins of the restaurant, haute cuisine and Champagne, and the sorry case of the tardy lobster.

1400ad

The first French cookbooks imitated Moorish cuisine. Sugar, still a luxury, made food sweet. Saffron gilded it, rose water perfumed it, and milk of almonds made it rich. Today's taste for tajines and couscous is an echo of the middle ages.

1500

The Renaissance: artists of the skillet discarded the Moorish palette. The new chefs were Italian, inspired by the sharp, salty, viscous preferences of ancient Rome. The physician at the court of Henri II (born 1519-died 1559) was alarmed at the rediscovery of fungi as food: these "phlegmy excretions", he warned, were ancient murder weapons, which massacred banqueters in antiquity. Fine wine, another Roman obsession, played a complementary part, stimulating appetites and aiding digestion. Château Latour was recommended as a digestif by the essayist Montaigne (1533-1592), a gourmand who ate so ravenously that he bit his fingers in his frenzy for his food.

1600

Royal patronage promoted French cooking. Henri IV (1553-1610), who aimed to put "a chicken in the pot" of each peasant, funded banquets as lubricants of policy. The table of Louis XIII (1601-1643) featured 22 kinds of fish and 28 of fruit. The "complaisant digestion" of his successor, Louis XIV (1638-1715), introduced enlightened gluttony to the court. Louis's sister-in-law saw him eat "four soups, a pheasant, a partridge, a plate of salad, sliced mutton with garlic, two lumps of ham, a plate of pastries, fruits and preserves" at one sitting. He incapacitated himself with food on his wedding night. A butler killed himself when his lobsters arrived late. The secrets of Louis's kitchen were divulged in cookbooks: by 1691, when François Massialot (1760-1733) published a book whose title, Cuisinier Royal et Bourgeois, summed up the process of social diffusion, the embourgeoisment of haute cuisine had begun. Meanwhile, Dom Pérignon (1639-1715) invented the art of making Champagne, storing his wine in bottles strong enough to contain the pétillance (effervescence) of secondary fermentation. Coffee, introduced in 1644, revived a taste for the exotic, while, in 1686, the development of the croissant celebrated a Christian victory in Austria over the crescent banners of the Turks.

1700

The appeal of French food grew with the prestige of French culture: only England resisted, patriotically loyal to roast beef and sceptical of superfluous sauces. The English even flirted with Portuguese wines in their trade wars against the French. Imperialism inaugurated the age of sugar, chocolate, global grocery. While abundance inspired extremes of gastro-nomic inventiveness for the elite, cooking became philosophy in 1765, when the restaurant movement began in a 'house of health' run by one M Boulanger, whose shop sign pledged: "Hasten unto me, all whose stomachs labour, and I will restore you." A new journalistic breed - food critics and restaurant reviewers - made Paris the shrine of foodie pilgrims. Later, the Revolution dispersed to the world the chefs of decapitated aristos: the French style, after spreading slowly for centuries, suddenly became universal.

1800

The 19th century consolidated French supremacy. Antonin Carême (1784- 1833), founder of grande cuisine, organised spectacular, Roman-style meals. In 1825, Jean-Anthèlme Brillat-Savarin wrote what is still the world's best food book, La Physiologie du Goï¿½t. Brillat-Savarin exalted cooking as art and science, inviting ladies of his acquaintance to experiment with aphrodisiacs, and advocating kitchens as the laboratories of the laws of nutrition. He justified gourmandism on the grounds that it showed "implicit obedience to the commands of the Creator, who, when he ordered us to eat in order to live, gave us the inducement of appetite, the encour-agement of savour, and the reward of pleasure". Industrialisation intervened, but the French exploited the new techno-logies to serve the table. In 1804, Nicolas Appert (1750-1841) began experiments in bottling: at first, the needs of the army were paramount but when, in 1810, he made his process public, he appealed to gourmets and housewives. Sardines were the commercial breakthrough: first canned in the 1820s, by 1880 they emerged from French canneries at the rate of 50 million tins a year. Hippolyte Mège-Mouriés (1817-1880) responded to the crisis in butter supplies in 1869, mixing beef fat with skimmed milk and stirring in a bit of cow's udder. He called his product 'margarine' because its anaemic tone resembled pearls known as 'margaritas'. Science even saved the wine industry, after phylloxera struck the vine-yards. American grafts restored French stocks, the first sign that France's near-monopoly was vulnerable to competition.

1900

Yet French food relied for its reputation on the inventiveness not of its industrialists, but of its chefs and gastronomes. Auguste Escoffier (1846- 1935), "the chef of emperors and Emperor of chefs", founded the grand hï¿½tel style, which left amateur cooks, and traditional and foreign cuisines on the wrong side of a chasm. His books were the most influential culinary texts since the writings of ancient Rome's top chef, Apicius. He created dishes for the celebrities of the new century: cuisses de nymphe Aurore (a dish of frogs' legs) for the Prince of Wales, and peach Melba, in honour of the owner of the smoothest stage voice of the day, whose memory survives only on menus. His showy, ingenious, liquor-lashed, cream-besotted dishes dominated haute cuisine until the Seventies, when light-handed, digestion-friendly nouvelle cuisine became the last French fashion to reshape the way we eat.

2000

Doom-mongers are trumpeting the decline of French pre-eminence. Inter-national cuisine and fashionable fusion are the gastronomic counterparts of cultural pluralism, while French wines are rivalled by the best of the rest. One country can no longer dominate the tables of the world, or even the west, but centuries of passion are not easily effaced. The French have accommodated every crisis of the past, without ever compromising on quality. At the world's table today, their hegemony may be unsustainable, but their excellence is unshaken.

"Life of Lord Buddha made into animated movie for kids"

2007-09-13T02:21:00.000+07:00

By ANJIRA ASSAVANONDA, Bangkok Post, Thursday, May 10, 2007

Thailand's first animated film on the Lord Buddha, Life of Buddha, will come out at the end of the year. The 100-minute movie, which is made in celebration of His Majesty the King's 80th birthday this year, will open in cinemas on Dec 5.

It has received full support from eight state agencies, including the ministries of Social Development and Human Security, Education, and Culture. The agencies signed an agreement yesterday to help promote the production.

Producer Valapha Pimthong, of Media Standard Ltd, said the film depicts the Lord Buddha's life story in full including his birth, his marriage, his spiritual quest and the path to his enlightenment, and his teaching of others.

The film's content has been screened by Maha Chulalongkorn Rajavidhayalai University to make sure there is nothing that contradicts the Tripitaka (canonical texts of Buddhism).

The film will be dubbed into English, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and German.

Ms Valapha, who has studied in India, said her inspiration for the film came when she visited the Buddha's place of enlightenment.

She chose to make it an animated movie to make it easy for viewers, especially young people, to understand the Buddha's teachings.

It has taken her four years to produce the film, which is now 80% complete. The total production cost is estimated at 108 million baht.

The firm is seeking additional funds for post-production work including work on the soundtrack and sub-titles.

''Producing a movie about the Lord Buddha is really a tough job. Funding is one of the problems as it proved impossible to get a bank loan for the project.

''In addition, the content had to be changed so many times that I almost gave up. But as we're close to finished now, I feel proud of what we have done,'' said Ms Valapha.

Phra Marut Voramangkalo, of Maha Chulalongkorn Rajavidhayalai University, praised the company for its devotion.

''The story of the Lord Buddha has rarely been made into a cartoon or a film because it's hard to create something from tales or imagination. Nobody knows what the Buddha looked like.

''The film producer must have a lot of courage to invest in this production,'' he said.

Soraj Asavaprapha, of Mono Group, the film distributor, said he will push for the movie to be shown in all theatre groups nationwide, with children as the main target group.

Bangkok Post, Thursday, May 10, 2007
http://archives.mybangkokpost.com/bkkarchives/frontstore/news.html?click_page=27&textcat=&cmd=keepbook_text

Clip VDO:
http://www.thelifeofbuddha.net/vdo2.html

Source:
http://www.thelifeofbuddha.net/index.htm

Sha La La La （Vengaboys)

2007-09-10T04:40:00.000+07:00

There's a girl on my mind

And she knows I'm thinking of her

On my way through the day and the night

The stars shine above me

She's been gone for some time

But I know I truly love her

And I'm singing the song

Hoping she'll be back when she hears it

My heart go sha la la la la

Sha la la in the morning

Woo～ sha la la la la

Sha la la in the sunshine

My heart go sha la la la la

Sha la la in the evening

Woo～ sha la la la la

Sha la la la la just for you

If your love's gone away just like mine

You feel like crying

Sing along may be once may be twice

Just try it together

Cause a day no one knows you return

And you'll be happy

Shadows fade in the sun

Listen to your heart and here is it

My heart go sha la la la la

Sha la la in the morning

Woo～ sha la la la la

Sha la la in the sunshine

Yeah～ sha la la la la

Sha la la in the evening

Woo～ sha la la la la

Sha la la la la just for you

Sha la la la la

Sha la la in the morning

Woo～ sha la la la la

Sha la la in the sunshine

My heart go sha la la la la

Sha la la in the evening

Woo～ sha la la la la

Sha la la la la just for you

Sha la la la la

Sha la la in the morning

Woo～ sha la la la la

Sha la la in the sunshine

Sha la la la la

Sha la la in the evening

Woo～ sha la la la la

Sha la la la la just for you

Sha la la la la

Sha la la in the morning

Woo～ sha la la la la

Sha la la in the sunshine

Sha la la la la

Sha la la in the evening

Woo～ sha la la la la

Sha la la la la just for you

Fidel Castro

2007-09-09T23:02:00.000+07:00

Fidel Castro was born on August 13, 1926. He attended Catholic schools before graduating from the University of Havana with a degree in law. Castro was a member of the Ortodoxo Party, a social-democrat party, and strongly criticized the government of Fulgencio Batista. On the 26th of July in 1953, Fidel Castro launched an attack on the Moncada army barracks. It failed, and most involved were killed or captured.

Fidel was captured and given a trial, which he used to make his famous speech, "History Will Absolve Me". Sentenced to 15 years, he was pardoned after just two. He then went into exile in Mexico, where he trained and assembled the 26th of July Movement. He gained support from Che Guevara and others before leaving aboard the Granma to invade Cuba in 1956. Returning to Cuba, the revolutionaries hid in the Sierra Maestra mountains, gaining support among the peasants. Eventually, Batista was forced to flee in 1959 and Castro took over. Many Cubans left when it became clear that the Revolution was a Marxist one.

Economic antagonism from the United States caused Castro to nationalize all American property. The United States Government tried various schemes to assassinate Fidel Castro and continues to economically isolate Cuba. The CIA even tried to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs to remove Fidel Castro from power, but the Cubans successfully fought it off. As a result, Castro became closely aligned with the Soviet Union. The Soviets bought large amounts of sugar and supplied Cuba with economic and military assistance. This money fueled many of Castro's social programs, such as his war on illiteracy and free universal health care.

Unfortunately, aligning Cuba with the USSR only led to more friction between Cuba and the United States. Castro has also successfully assisted foreign revolutions in Angola and Ethiopia. He was elected the head of Nonaligned Nations Movement and has been a strong critic of US imperialism. The destruction of the Soviet Union has left Cuba in a poor economic state and Castro less of an international figure, though he remains President of Cuba.

TAG: Freedom-fighters in History

Che Guevara

2007-09-09T22:55:00.000+07:00

Ernesto Guevara, affectionately known as Che, was born in Argentina on June 14, 1928. He would become an important leader in the Cuban Revolution and would later be an important figure in the Cuban government. Che Guevara studied medicine at Buenos Aires University, where he became involved in opposition to the Argentine leader Juan Peron.

"At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality."

Later, he left for Guatemala, where he joined the government of Jacabo Arbenz Guzman in 1953. A coup supported by the CIA overthrew the government, and Guevara left for Mexico. In 1956, Guevara joined Fidel Castro's revolutionary movement. He was an important strategist for Castro and led part of the army. He was aboard the yacht Granma when the revolutionaries made their trip to Cuba.

"When asked whether or not we are Marxists, our position is the same as that of a physicist or a biologist who is asked if he is a 'Newtonian,' or if he is a 'Pasteurian.'"

Che played an important role in Fidel's conversion to Communism, being extremely well read himself in the works of Marx, Engels, Mao Tse-tung, and others. Guevara took on many important jobs in the Cuban government after the Revolution. He was Cuba's Minister of Industry from 1961 to 1965, but stepped down when his relationship with Fidel Castro worsened. Che had favored industrialization and other reforms in Cuba that never occurred, but may have improved the economic conditions today. He led a force of 120 Cubans into the Congo, but the local revolutionaries were poorly trained, and the mission ended a failure. Che's last adventure took him to Bolivia. A small revolutionary movement had begun, so Guevara decided to take himself and a party of Cuban guerillas to whip up support for the movement among the locals. Unfortunately, Guevara had overestimated the support they would receive, and the US-trained Bolivian Army killed most of the group. Guevara was captured and executed by the Bolivian Army and CIA on October 9, 1967.

TAG: Freedom-fighters in History

Mao Zedong

2007-09-09T22:41:00.000+07:00

His ruthless vision united a fractured people and inspired revolutions far beyond China's borders
By JONATHAN D. SPENCE

Mao was a genius at not sinking. His enemies were legion: militarists, who resented his journalistic barbs at their incompetence; party rivals, who found him too zealous a supporter of the united front with the Kuomintang nationalists; landlords, who hated his pro-peasant rhetoric and activism; Chiang Kai-shek, who attacked his rural strongholds with relentless tenacity; the Japanese, who tried to smash his northern base; the U.S., after the Chinese entered the Korean War; the Soviet Union, when he attack ed Khrushchev's anti-Stalinist policies. Mao was equally unsinkable in the turmoil — much of which he personally instigated — that marked the last 20 years of his rule in China.

Mao was born in 1893, into a China that appeared to be falling apart. The fading Qin dynasty could not contain the spiraling social and economic unrest, and had mortgaged China's revenues and many of its natural resources to the apparently insatiable foreign powers. It was, Mao later told his biographer Edgar Snow, a time when "the dismemberment of China" seemed imminent, and only heroic actions by China's youth could save the day.

Mao's earliest surviving essay, written when he was 19, was on one of China's most celebrated early exponents of cynicism and realpolitik, the fearsome 4th century B.C. administrator Shang Yang. Mao took Shang Yang's experiences as emblematic of China's crisis. Shang Yang had instituted a set of ruthlessly enforced laws, designed "to punish the wicked and rebellious, in order to preserve the rights of the people." That the people continued to fear Shang Yang was proof to Mao they were "stupid." Mao attributed this fear and distrust not to Shang Yang's policies but to the perception of those policies: "At the beginning of anything out of the ordinary, the mass of the people always dislike it."

After the communist victory over Chiang Kai-shek in 1949, and the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Mao's position was immeasurably strengthened. Despite all that the Chinese people had endured, it seems not to have been too hard for Mao to persuade them of the visionary force and practical need for the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s. In Mao's mind, the intensive marshaling of China's energies would draw manual and mental labor together into a final harmonious synthesis and throw a bridge across the chasm of China's poverty to the promised socialist paradise on the other side.

In February 1957, Mao drew his thoughts on China together in the form of a rambling speech on "The Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People." Mao's notes for the speech reveal the curious mixture of jocularity and cruelty, of utopian visions and blinkered perceptions, that lay at the heart of his character. Mao admitted that 15% or more of the Chinese people were hungry and that some critics felt a "disgust" with Marxism. He spoke too of the hundreds of thousands who had died in the revolution so far, but firmly rebutted figures — quoted in Hong Kong newspapers — that 20 million had perished. "How could we possibly kill 20 million people?" he asked. It is now established that at least that number died in China during the famine that followed the Great Leap between 1959 and 1961. In the Cultural Revolution that followed only five years later, Mao used the army and the student population against his opponents. Once again millions suffered or perished as Mao combined the ruthlessness of Shang Yang with the absolute confidence of the long-distance swimmer.

Rejecting his former party allies, and anyone who could be accused of espousing the values of an older and more gracious Chinese civilization, Mao drew his sustenance from the chanting crowds of Red Guards. The irony here was that from his youthful readings, Mao knew the story of how Shang Yang late in life tried to woo a moral administrator to his service. But the official turned down Shang Yang's blandishments, with the words that "1,000 persons going 'Yes, yes!' are not worth one man with a bold 'No!'"

Mao died in 1976, and with the years those adulatory cries of "Yes, yes!" have gradually faded. Leaders Mao trained, like Deng Xiaoping, were able to reverse Mao's policies even as they claimed to revere them. They gave back to the Chinese people the opportunities to express their entrepreneurial skills, leading to astonishing rates of growth and a complete transformation of the face of Chinese cities.

Are these changes, these moves toward a new flexibility, somehow Mao's legacy? Despite the agony he caused, Mao was both a visionary and a realist. He learned as a youth not only how Shang Yang brought harsh laws to the Chinese people, even when they saw no need for them, but also how Shang Yang's rigors helped lay the foundation in 221 B.C. of the fearsome centralizing state of Qin. Mao knew too that the Qin rulers had been both hated and feared and that their dynasty was soon toppled, despite its monopoly of force and efficient use of terror. But in his final years, Mao seems to have welcomed the association of his own name with these distant Qin precursors. The Qin, after all, had established a united state from a universe in chaos. They represented, like Mao, not the best that China had to offer, but something ruthless yet canny, with the power briefly to impose a single will on the scattered emotions of the errant multitude. It is on that grimly structured foundation that Mao's successors have been able to build, even as they struggle, with obvious nervousness, to contain the social pressures that their own more open policies are generating. Surely Mao's simple words reverberate in their ears: As long as you are not afraid, you won't sink.

Jonathan Spence teaches at Yale and is the author of several acclaimed books on China

TAG: Freedom-fighters in History

Nelson Mandela

2007-09-09T22:29:00.001+07:00

Nelson Mandela Book Collection Stack

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in Transkei, South Africa on July 18, 1918. His father was Chief Henry Mandela of the Tembu Tribe. Mandela himself was educated at University College of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand and qualified in law in 1942. He joined the African National Congress in 1944 and was engaged in resistance against the ruling National Party's apartheid policies after 1948. He went on trial for treason in 1956-1961 and was acquitted in 1961.

After the banning of the ANC in 1960, Nelson Mandela argued for the setting up of a military wing within the ANC. In June 1961, the ANC executive considered his proposal on the use of violent tactics and agreed that those members who wished to involve themselves in Mandela's campaign would not be stopped from doing so by the ANC. This led to the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Mandela was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to five years' imprisonment with hard labour. In 1963, when many fellow leaders of the ANC and the Umkhonto we Sizwe were arrested, Mandela was brought to stand trial with them for plotting to overthrow the government by violence. His statement from the dock received considerable international publicity. On June 12, 1964, eight of the accused, including Mandela, were sentenced to life imprisonment. From 1964 to 1982, he was incarcerated at Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town; thereafter, he was at Pollsmoor Prison, nearby on the mainland.

During his years in prison, Nelson Mandela's reputation grew steadily. He was widely accepted as the most significant black leader in South Africa and became a potent symbol of resistance as the anti-apartheid movement gathered strength. He consistently refused to compromise his political position to obtain his freedom.

Nelson Mandela was released on February 11, 1990. After his release, he plunged himself wholeheartedly into his life's work, striving to attain the goals he and others had set out almost four decades earlier. In 1991, at the first national conference of the ANC held inside South Africa after the organization had been banned in 1960, Mandela was elected President of the ANC while his lifelong friend and colleague, Oliver Tambo, became the organisation's National Chairperson.

TAG: Freedom-fighters in History

Mahatma Gandhi

2007-09-09T22:19:00.000+07:00

Mahatma Gandhi became one of the pivotal figures, if not the main figure, in India's history in the Twentieth Century. Along with Jinnah and Nehru, Gandhi shaped India's history up to its independence in 1947.

Mahatma Gandhi was born in 1869 and he died in 1948.

Gandhi was born in Porbander in western India. In 1888, he went to London to study law. He returned to Bombay to work as a barrister but went to South Africa to work in 1907. In South Africa, he took part in passive protests against the Transvaal government's treatment of Indian settlers who were in the minority in the region. In 1915, he returned to India and, after joining the Congress movement, he emerged as one of the party's leaders.

Gandhi encouraged Indians to boycott British goods and buy Indian goods instead. This helped to revitalise local economies in India and it also hit home at the British by undermining their economy in the country. Gandhi preached passive resistance, believing that acts of violence against the British only provoked a negative reaction whereas passive resistance provoked the British into doing something which invariably pushed more people into supporting the Indian National Congress movement.

Gandhi was imprisoned in 1922, 1930, 1933 and in 1942. While in prison, he went on hunger strike. His fame was such that his death in prison would make international headlines and greatly embarrass the British at a time when Britain was condemning dictators in Europe.

In 1931, Gandhi came to Britain for the Round Table conferences. Nothing was achieved except for the publicity that Gandhi received for dressing in the clothes of an Indian villager; Gandhi saw this type of dress as perfectly normal for a man who represented the Indian people. The British representatives at the conference were more soberly dressed in formal morning dress.

When in India, Gandhi took on the British where possible. He famous walk to the sea to produce salt was typical of his actions. Britain had a monopoly on salt production in India and Gandhi saw this as wrong. Hence his decision to produce salt by the sea.

He realised that the religious issues of India were too deep for any remedy to work. Hence he collaborated with Mountbatten and Wavell in the build up to independence in 1947. This association with the break-up of India was to cost him his life. There had been one assassination attempt on Gandhi on January 20th 1948 - it had failed. Just ten days later on the 30th January, he was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic who could not forgive Gandhi for his belief that Muslims had equal value to Hindus and no-one was better than anybody else.

TAG: Freedom-fighters in History

Coffee drinkers at risk for high blood pressure!!!

2007-09-06T05:17:00.000+07:00

Whether it’s 1 or 8 cups a day, java jolts likelihood of hypertension

NEW YORK - The likelihood of having to start drug treatment to control high blood pressure, or hypertension, seems to be increased among coffee drinkers. However, researchers also found no relationship between how much coffee one drinks and increased risk of hypertension, whether one drinks one or eight cups or more per day.

Although there have been previous studies, the association between coffee consumption and hypertension is still not clear, Dr. Gang Hu, of the National Public Health Institute, Helsinki, Finland, and colleagues report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The researchers therefore followed 24,710 Finnish subjects between the ages of 25 and 64 years with no history of drug treatment for hypertension, coronary heart disease, or stroke. Self-administered questionnaires were used to assess daily coffee consumption.

The subjects were followed for an average of 13.2 years. During that time, a total of 2,505 individuals started antihypertensive drug treatment.

The risk of needing to start on antihypertensive drug treatment was higher in coffee drinkers than in the noncoffee drinkers, with the highest increased risk of 29 percent, being associated with drinking two to three cups daily. However, drinking more than eight cups per day only increased the risk by 14 percent.

"Even though the risk of hypertension associated with coffee consumption was relatively small, it may have some public health importance because coffee is the most consumed drink, other than water, and hypertension is a major health problem in the world,” Hu and colleagues point out."

“On the other hand,” they add, “coffee consumption seems to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, the relation between coffee consumption and cardiovascular disease risk is complicated, and further studies are needed.”

Exercise can help a bad heart repair itself.

2007-09-06T05:11:00.000+07:00

VIENNA, Austria - Having a bad heart doesn't mean you can skip exercise, doctors said Wednesday. In fact, it may even help your heart to repair itself. Research presented at the European Society of Cardiology meeting showed that exercise sparks the creation of new heart vessels.

In a small study of 37 people at Leipzig University in Germany, Dr. Robert Hollriegel found that people with serious heart failure who rode a bike for up to 30 minutes a day for four months produced new stem cells in their bones.

They also had more small blood vessels in their muscles. Those who didn't exercise had no change in their vessels or muscles.

Most patients with heart failure are over 70 years old, and some can barely walk a few steps without stopping for rest. Doctors think that even these patients would benefit from light exercise such as walking or cycling. To ensure that patients will be able to handle a certain level of physical activity, doctors conduct a test first to determine their maximum limits and to ensure they would not be exceeded. Some exercise regimens also are supervised by health professionals.

"We're not talking about patients with acute heart problems," said Dr. John Cleland, a heart failure specialist at the University of Hull in Britain who is spokesman for the European Society of Cardiology. Cleland was not involved in Hollriegel's research.

"This is to prevent people from getting into a cycle of deterioration where they're afraid to exercise and they just avoid any activity that leaves them out of breath," he said.

Physical activity strains the heart's arteries and muscles by sending 10 times the normal amount of blood to the muscles being used. Stem cells then are dispatched to relieve this stress and may repair any damaged parts. If you continue to exercise, these stem cells help the body adapt to the stress, by building new blood vessels and strengthening muscles. But to maintain such benefits, you must exercise regularly.

Cleland said that people with heart failure should exercise to a state where they're breathless at least once a day. Pushing the limits of their heart's capabilities should help make it stronger.

"People think that if they have heart failure, then they're at the end of the road and they can't exercise," said Dr. Freek Verheugt, a cardiologist at the University of Nymegen in the Netherlands. "But this study shows that exercise can work to produce new blood vessels, even in patients with serious heart disease."

Because no drugs exist to produce new stem cells, exercise may be the only method for some patients to rebuild their hearts.

"We are not saying that patients should run marathons, but there is no other way to augment your arteries," said Dr. Francois Carre of Rennes University Hospital in France. "Patients have to exercise if they want that."

Previous studies have shown that people who do physical therapy after a heart attack live longer than those who don't. Experimental studies in rats have also suggested that exercise can even be more effective than statins, drugs that are commonly used to treat heart disease.

Though doctors routinely recommend that patients exercise, it is not an actual treatment. Carre thinks that should change. "We need to write patients prescriptions to exercise the same way we write prescriptions for drugs," he said.

"People have been trying for years to create a polypill to treat many different parts of heart disease," Carre said. "But that already exists. It's exercise."

How to Get a Good Night's Sleep!!

2007-09-06T05:01:00.000+07:00

What causes insomnia?

Insomnia is the body's way of saying that something isn't right. Things that may cause insomnia include stress, too much caffeine, depression, changes in work shifts, and pain from medical problems, such as arthritis. Many people have insomnia. People who have insomnia may not be able to fall asleep. They may wake up during the night and not be able to fall back asleep, or they may wake up too early in the morning.

Is insomnia a serious problem?

It's not really a serious problem for your health, but it can make you feel tired, depressed and irritable. It can also make it hard to concentrate during the day.

How much sleep do I need?

Most adults need about 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night. You know you're getting enough sleep if you don't feel sleepy during the day. The amount of sleep you need stays about the same throughout adulthood. However, sleep patterns may change with age. For example, older people may sleep less at night and take naps during the day.

What can my doctor do to find out why I'm not sleeping?

Your family doctor may ask you and your bed partner some questions about your sleep habits (such as when you go to bed and when you get up), any medicine you take, and the amount of caffeine and alcohol you drink. Your doctor may also ask if you smoke. Other questions may include how long you've been having insomnia, if you have any pain (such as from arthritis), and if you snore while you sleep. Your doctor may also ask about events or problems in your life that may be upsetting you and making it hard for you to sleep.

What is a sleep diary?

If the cause of your insomnia is not clear, your doctor may suggest that you fill out a sleep diary. The diary will help you keep track of when you go to bed, how long you lie in bed before falling asleep, how often you wake during the night, when you get up in the morning and how well you sleep. A sleep diary may help you and your doctor identify patterns and conditions that may be affecting your sleep.

How is insomnia treated?

The treatment of insomnia can be simple. Often, once the problem that's causing the insomnia is taken care of, the insomnia goes away. The key is to find out what's causing the insomnia so that it can be dealt with directly. Simply making a few changes in their sleep habits helps many people.

What can I do to improve my sleep habits?

Here are some things you can do to help you sleep better:

Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, including weekends, even if you didn't get enough sleep. This will help train your body to sleep at night.
Develop a bedtime routine. Do the same thing every night before going to sleep. For example, take a warm bath and then read for 10 minutes every night before going to bed. Soon you'll connect these activities with sleeping, and doing them will help make you sleepy.
Use the bedroom only for sleeping or having sex. Don't eat, talk on the phone or watch TV while you're in bed.
Make sure your bedroom is quiet and dark. If noise is a problem, use a fan to mask the noise or use ear plugs. If you must sleep during the day, hang dark blinds over the windows or wear an eye mask.
If you're still awake after trying to fall asleep for 30 minutes, get up and go to another room. Sit quietly for about 20 minutes before going back to bed. Do this as many times as you need to until you can fall asleep.

Will sleeping pills help?

Sleeping pills can help in some cases, but they are not a cure for insomnia. They're only a temporary form of relief. They're best used for only a few days. Regular use can lead to rebound insomnia. This occurs when a person quits taking sleeping pills and his or her insomnia comes back.

Sleeping pills can be unsafe to use if you have certain health problems. Ask your doctor if sleeping pills would be helpful for you.

Tips to help you sleep

Avoid or limit your use of caffeine (coffee, tea, sodas, chocolate), decongestants, alcohol and tobacco.
Exercise more often, but don't exercise within a few hours before going to bed.
Learn to reduce or manage the stress in your life.
Don't lie in bed worrying about things. Set aside another time just for worrying. For example, spend 30 minutes after dinner writing down what's worrying you and what you can do about it.
Try eating a light snack before going to bed, but don't eat too much right before bedtime. A glass of warm milk or some cheese and crackers may be all you need.
Don't nap during the day if naps seem to make your insomnia worse.

Virus could combat deadly bacteria in hospitals!!

2007-09-06T04:49:00.000+07:00

cientists identify ‘phages’ that eliminate superbugs without antibiotics

Updated: 11:07 a.m. ET Aug. 29, 2007

Viruses that are harmless to humans could help kill fatal drug-resistant bacteria lurking in hospitals, research now reveals.

The bacterium Staphylococcus aureus may cause anything from minor skin lesions to life-threatening pneumonia, meningitis and toxic shock syndrome. In the past 15 years or so, it has become one of the most common germs to get spread around hospitals, with some 500,000 patients in U.S. hospitals contracting a "staph" infection each year.

Disturbingly, one strain of the microbe, dubbed MRSA , has evolved into a widespread "superbug" that has become resistant to many commonly used antibiotics. This variant is nearly three times more lethal than less drug-resistant strains.

Instead of attacking the bacterium with new antibiotics that it could evolve a resistance against over time, immunologist Domenico Iannelli at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy and his colleagues tried using bacteria-killing viruses known as bacteriophages or phages. These do not infect humans.

The researchers identified a phage that preys on Staphylococcus aureus. They next experimented with the virus on mice given either lethal or non-lethal doses of the bacterium, including MRSA strains.

Iannelli and his colleagues found phage therapy could rescue 97 percent of mice given lethal doses from death. When given to mice with nonlethal doses, the virus fully eliminated the infections.

Although bacteria eventually develop resistance against phages as they do against antibiotics, "phage resistance is a rare event, rarer than antibiotic resistance," Iannelli told LiveScience. "New phages can be rapidly isolated from nature, while new antibiotics are very slow and costly to develop."

A complaint often leveled against phage therapy is that phages typically each only attack very specific targets.

"If you use just a single phage, it's unlikely to kill all MRSA strains," said Alexander Sulakvelidze, chief scientist at biotechnology company Intralytix in Baltimore, who did not participate in this study. "The solution is to use a cocktail of phages, each targeting different strains. Phage therapy could provide a good, necessary alternative to antibiotics, another weapon against bacteria."

The researchers suggest the phage could help control human staph infections, taking phage therapy "closer to the patient's bed," Iannelli said.

"I was very pleased to see work of this scientific caliber," Sulakvelidze said. "I hope to see their research benefit people in the not-too-distant future."

Iannelli and his colleagues detailed their findings in the August issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

How meningitis affects our bodies?

2007-09-06T04:38:00.000+07:00

Bacterial meningitis is a serious infection of the fluid in the spinal cord and the fluid that surrounds the brain.
Bacterial meningitis is most commonly caused by one of three types of bacteria: Haemophilus influenzae type b, Neisseria meningitidis, and Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria.
The bacteria are spread by direct close contact with the discharges from the nose or throat of an infected person.
Bacterial meningitis can be treated with antibiotics.
Prevention depends on use of vaccines, rapid diagnosis, and prompt treatment of close personal contacts.

What is bacterial meningitis?

Meningitis is an infection of the fluid in the spinal cord and the fluid that surrounds the brain. Meningitis is usually caused by an infection with a virus or a bacterium. Knowing whether meningitis is caused by a virus or a bacterium is important because of differences in the seriousness of the illness and the treatment needed.

VIRAL MENINGITIS is usually relatively mild. It clears up within a week or two without specific treatment. Viral meningitis is also called aseptic meningitis.

BACTERIAL MENINGITIS is much more serious. It can cause severe disease that can result in brain damage and even death.

What bacteria cause bacterial meningitis?

Bacterial meningitis is most commonly caused by one of three types of bacteria: Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), Neisseria meningitidis, and Streptococcus pneumoniae.

Before the 1990s, Hib was the leading cause of bacterial meningitis, but new vaccines being given to children as part of their routine immunizations have reduced the occurrence of serious Hib disease. Today, Neisseria meningitidis and Streptococcus pneumoniae are the leading causes of bacterial meningitis. Meningitis caused by Neisseria meningitidis is also called MENINGOCOCCAL MENINGITIS. Meningitis caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae is called PNEUMOCOCCAL MENINGITIS.

It is important to know which type of bacteria is causing the bacterial meningitis because antibiotics can prevent some types from spreading and infecting other people.

Where is bacterial meningitis found?

Bacterial meningitis is found worldwide. The bacteria often live harmlessly in a person's mouth and throat. In rare instances, however, they can break through the body's immune defenses and travel to the fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord. There they begin to multiply quickly. Soon, the thin membrane that covers the brain and spinal cord (meninges) becomes swollen and inflamed, leading to the classic symptoms of meningitis.

How do people get bacterial meningitis?

The bacteria are spread by direct close contact with the discharges from the nose or throat of an infected person. Fortunately, none of the bacteria that cause meningitis are very contagious, and they are not spread by casual contact or by simply breathing the air where a person with meningitis has been.

What are the signs and symptoms of bacterial meningitis?

In persons over age 2, common symptoms are high fever, headache, and stiff neck. These symptoms can develop over several hours, or they may take 1 to 2 days. Other symptoms can include nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light, confusion, and sleepiness. In advanced disease, bruises develop under the skin and spread quickly.

In newborns and infants, the typical symptoms of fever, headache, and neck stiffness may be hard to detect. Other signs in babies might be inactivity, irritability, vomiting, and poor feeding.

As the disease progresses, patients of any age can have seizures.

Who is at risk for bacterial meningitis?

Anyone can get bacterial meningitis, but it is most common in infants and children. People who have had close or prolonged contact with a patient with meningitis caused by Neisseria meningitidis or Hib can also be at increased risk. This includes people in the same household or day-care center, or anyone with direct contact with discharges from a meningitis patient's mouth or nose.

How is bacterial meningitis diagnosed?

The diagnosis is usually made by growing bacteria from a sample of spinal fluid. The spinal fluid is obtained by a spinal tap. A doctor inserts a needle into the lower back and removes some fluid from the spinal canal. Identification of the type of bacteria responsible for the meningitis is important for the selection of correct antibiotic treatment.

What complications can result from bacterial meningitis?

Advanced bacterial meningitis can lead to brain damage, coma, and death. Survivors can suffer long-term complications, including hearing loss, mental retardation, paralysis, and seizures.

What is the treatment for bacterial meningitis?

Early diagnosis and treatment are very important. If symptoms occur, the patient should see a doctor right away. Bacterial meningitis can be treated with a number of effective antibiotics. It is important, however, that treatment be started early.

How common is bacterial meningitis?

In the United States, bacterial meningitis is relatively rare and usually occurs in isolated cases. Clusters of more than a few cases are uncommon.

In parts of Africa, widespread epidemics of meningococcal meningitis occur regularly. In 1996, the biggest wave of meningococcal meningitis outbreaks ever recorded hit West Africa. An estimated 250,000 cases and 25,000 deaths in Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and other countries paralyzed medical care systems and exhausted vaccine supplies.

Is bacterial meningitis an emerging infectious disease?

With the decline in Hib disease, cases of bacterial meningitis have decreased since 1986. Meningococcal meningitis is a continuing threat in day-care centers and schools. Healthy children and young adults are susceptible, and death can occur within a few hours of onset.

How can bacterial meningitis be prevented?

Vaccines -- There are vaccines against Hib, some strains of Neisseria meningitidis, and many types of Streptococcus pneumoniae.
The vaccines against Hib are very safe and highly effective. By age 6 months of age, every infant should receive at least three doses of an Hib vaccine. A fourth dose (booster) should be given to children between 12 and 18 months of age.

The vaccine against Neisseria meningitidis (meningococcal vaccine) is not routinely used in civilians in the United States and is relatively ineffective in children under age 2 years. The vaccine is sometimes used to control outbreaks of some types of meningococcal meningitis in the United States. New meningococcal vaccines are under development.

The vaccine against Streptococcal pneumoniae (pneumococcal vaccine) is not effective in persons under age 2 years but is recommended for all persons over age 65 and younger persons with certain medical problems. New pneumococcal vaccines are under development.
Disease reporting -- Cases of bacterial meningitis should be reported to state or local health authorities so that they can follow and treat close contacts of patients and recognize outbreaks.
Treatment of close contacts -- People who are identified as close contacts of a person with meningitis caused by Neisseria meningitidis can be given antibiotics to prevent them from getting the disease. Antibiotics for contacts of a person with Hib disease are no longer recommended if all contacts 4 years of age or younger are fully vaccinated.
Travel precautions -- Although large epidemics of bacterial meningitis do not occur in the United States, some countries experience large, periodic epidemics of meningococcal disease. Overseas travelers should check to see if meningococcal vaccine is recommended for their destination. Travelers should receive the vaccine at least 1 week before departure, if possible.

Where can I find more information about bacterial meningitis?

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/bactmen.htm

8 Foods You Should Eat Every Day!

2007-09-06T04:20:00.000+07:00

It sometimes seems as if the internal politics of Baghdad are easier to sort through than the latest thinking on nutrition. So here's the simple answer: Just eat these eight foods--along with a little protein such as salmon, turkey, or lean steak--every day. And relax. Let our all-star panel of doctors, scientists, nutritionists, and chefs tell you why and show you how.

By Ben Hewitt, Best Life

1. Spinach

Sexual enhancement, Muscle growth, Heart healthy, Bone builder, Enhances eyesight

It may be green and leafy, but spinach is also the ultimate man food. This noted biceps builder is a rich source of plant-based omega-3s and folate, which help reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, and osteoporosis. Bonus: Folate also increases blood flow to the penis. And spinach is packed with lutein, a compound that fights age-related macular degeneration. Aim for 1 cup fresh spinach or 1/2 cup cooked per day.

SUBSTITUTES: Kale, bok choy, romaine lettuce

FIT IT IN: Make your salads with spinach; add spinach to scrambled eggs; drape it over pizza; mix it with marinara sauce and then microwave for an instant dip.

PINCH HITTER: Sesame Stir-Braised Kale Heat 4 cloves minced garlic, 1 Tbsp. minced fresh ginger, and 1 tsp. sesame oil in a skillet. Add 2 Tbsp. water and 1 bunch kale (stemmed and chopped). Cover and cook for 3 minutes. Drain. Add 1 tsp. soy sauce and 1 Tbsp. sesame seeds.

2. Yogurt

Cancer fighter, Bone builder, Boosts immunity

Various cultures claim yogurt as their own creation, but the 2,000-year-old food's health benefits are not disputed: Fermentation spawns hundreds of millions of probiotic organisms that serve as reinforcements to the battalions of beneficial bacteria in your body, which boost the immune system and provide protection against cancer. Not all yogurts are probiotic though, so make sure the label says "live and active cultures." Aim for 1 cup of the calcium and protein-rich goop a day.

SUBSTITUTES: Kefir, soy yogurt

FIT IT IN: Yogurt topped with blueberries, walnuts, flaxseed, and honey is the ultimate breakfast — or dessert. Plain low-fat yogurt is also a perfect base for creamy salad dressings and dips.

HOME RUN: Power Smoothie Blend 1 cup low-fat yogurt, 1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries, 1 cup carrot juice, and 1 cup fresh baby spinach for a nutrient-rich blast.

3. Tomatoes

Cancer fighter, Heart healthy, Boosts immunity

There are two things you need to know about tomatoes: Red are the best, because they're packed with more of the antioxidant lycopene, and processed tomatoes are just as potent as fresh ones, because it's easier for the body to absorb the lycopene. Studies show that a diet rich in lycopene can decrease your risk of bladder, lung, prostate, skin, and stomach cancers, as well as reduce the risk of coronary artery disease. Aim for 22 mg of lycopene a day, which is about eight red cherry tomatoes or a glass of tomato juice.

SUBSTITUTES: Red watermelon, pink grapefruit, Japanese persimmon, papaya, guava

FIT IT IN: Pile on the ketchup and Ragu; guzzle low-sodium V8 and gazpacho; double the amount of tomato paste called for in a recipe.

PINCH HITTER: Red and Pink Fruit Bowl Chop 1 small watermelon, 2 grapefruits, 3 persimmons, 1 papaya, and 4 guavas. Garnish with mint.

4. Carrots

Cancer fighter, Boosts immunity, Enhances eyesight

Most red, yellow, or orange vegetables and fruits are spiked with carotenoids — fat-soluble compounds that are associated with a reduction in a wide range of cancers, as well as reduced risk and severity of inflammatory conditions such as asthma and rheumatoid arthritis — but none are as easy to prepare, or have as low a caloric density, as carrots. Aim for 1/2 cup a day.

SUBSTITUTES: Sweet potato, pumpkin, butternut squash, yellow bell pepper, mango

FIT IT IN: Raw baby carrots, sliced raw yellow pepper, butternut squash soup, baked sweet potato, pumpkin pie, mango sorbet, carrot cake

PINCH HITTER: Baked Sweet Potato Fries Scrub and dry 2 sweet potatoes. Cut each into 8 slices, and then toss with olive oil and paprika. Spread on a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes at 350°F. Turn and bake for 10 minutes more.

5. Blueberries

Brain stimulant, Cancer fighter, Heart healthy, Boosts immunity

Host to more antioxidants than any other popular fruit, blueberries help prevent cancer, diabetes, and age-related memory changes (hence the nickname "brain berry"). Studies show that blueberries, which are rich in fiber and vitamins A and C, boost cardiovascular health. Aim for 1 cup fresh blueberries a day, or 1/2 cup frozen or dried.

SUBSTITUTES: Açai berries, purple grapes, prunes, raisins, strawberries

FIT IT IN: Blueberries maintain most of their power in dried, frozen, or jam form.

PINCH HITTER: Açai, an Amazonian berry, has even more antioxidants than the blueberry. Mix 2 Tbsp. of açai powder into OJ or add 2 Tbsp. of açai pulp to cereal, yogurt, or a smoothie.

6. Black Beans

Muscle growth, Brain stimulant, Heart healthy

All beans are good for your heart, but none can boost your brain power like black beans. That's because they're full of anthocyanins, antioxidant compounds that have been shown to improve brain function. A daily ½cup serving provides 8 grams of protein and 7.5 grams of fiber, and is low in calories and free of saturated fat.

SUBSTITUTES: Peas, lentils, and pinto, kidney, fava, and lima beans

FIT IT IN: Wrap black beans in a breakfast burrito; use both black beans and kidney beans in your chili; puree 1 cup black beans with ¼cup olive oil and roasted garlic for a healthy dip; add favas, limas, or peas to pasta dishes.

HOME RUN: Black Bean and Tomato Salsa Dice 4 tomatoes, 1 onion, 3 cloves garlic, 2 jalapeños, 1 yellow bell pepper, and 1 mango. Mix in a can of black beans and garnish with 1/2 cup chopped cilantro and the juice of 2 limes.

7. Walnuts

Muscle growth, Brain stimulant, Cancer fighter, Heart healthy, Boosts immunity

Richer in heart-healthy omega-3s than salmon, loaded with more anti-inflammatory polyphenols than red wine, and packing half as much muscle-building protein as chicken, the walnut sounds like a Frankenfood, but it grows on trees. Other nuts combine only one or two of these features, not all three. A serving of walnuts — about 1 ounce, or seven nuts — is good anytime, but especially as a postworkout recovery snack.

SUBSTITUTES: Almonds, peanuts, pistachios, macadamia nuts, hazelnuts

FIT IT IN: Sprinkle on top of salads; dice and add to pancake batter; spoon peanut butter into curries; grind and mix with olive oil to make a marinade for grilled fish or chicken.

HOME RUN: Mix 1 cup walnuts with ½ cup dried blueberries and ¼ cup dark chocolate chunks.

8. Oats

Muscle growth, Brain stimulant, Heart healthy

The éminence grise of health food, oats garnered the FDA's first seal of approval. They are packed with soluble fiber, which lowers the risk of heart disease. Yes, oats are loaded with carbs, but the release of those sugars is slowed by the fiber, and because oats also have 10 grams of protein per ½-cup serving, they deliver steady muscle-building energy.

SUBSTITUTES: Quinoa, flaxseed, wild rice

FIT IT IN: Eat granolas and cereals that have a fiber content of at least 5 grams per serving. Sprinkle 2 Tbsp. ground flaxseed on cereals, salads, and yogurt.

PINCH HITTER: Quinoa Salad Quinoa has twice the protein of most cereals, and fewer carbs. Boil 1 cup quinoa in a mixture of 1 cup pear juice and 1 cup water. Let cool. In a large bowl, toss 2 diced apples, 1 cup fresh blueberries, ½ cup chopped walnuts, and 1 cup plain fat-free yogurt.

All-Star Panel: Joy Bauer, author of Joy Bauer's Food Cures and nutrition advisor on NBC's Today show; Laurie Erickson, award-winning wellness chef at Georgia's Sea Island resort; David Heber, MD, PhD, author of What Color Is Your Diet?; and Steven Pratt, MD, author of the best-selling SuperFoods Rx

Probiotics for Cancer Prevention?

2007-09-06T04:12:00.000+07:00

by Karen Collins, R.D., American Institute for Cancer Research

Probiotics may offer other health benefits, but one receiving more support recently is the possibility of helping to prevent colon cancer. If results of a small but well-controlled study in Ireland are repeated, probiotics – live bacteria that can benefit health – might have a place alongside vegetables, legumes, whole grains and regular exercise in our strategies to lower risk of cancer.

Your digestive tract is home to hundreds of different types of bacteria. Most of them are considered beneficial, crowding out harmful bacteria, speeding digestion and perhaps even enhancing immune function. One of the most accepted health benefits of probiotics comes from taking the probiotics along with or following antibiotic treatment. Antibiotic medicines can sometimes kill the gut’s beneficial bacteria along with the illness-causing bacteria. Without the “good” bacteria in control, sometimes harmful bacteria can multiply, leading to diarrhea. Studies suggest that probiotics restore a healthy bacteria population in the gut and prevent diarrhea.

The recent study focusing on probiotics and colon cancer was published in February. Because colon cancer takes years to develop, the scientists looked at various signs of its early development. This study included 80 people who either had colon cancer tumors or non-cancerous colon polyps (precursors to cancerous tumors) recently removed. Participants were randomly assigned to receive either a probiotic or placebo (an inactive substance). The probiotic contained two types of bacteria often seen as protective of colon health (Lactobacillus rhamnosus and Bifidobacterium) combined with a prebiotic. Prebiotics are nondigestible food ingredients that feed the growth of healthful bacteria in the colon. The combination of probiotics and prebiotics is called synbiotics.

After 12 weeks, researchers found that the balance of colon bacteria had changed in those receiving the synbiotic, with more Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium and less of the bacteria (Clostridium) that is linked with increasing cancer risk. Compared to patients who received placebos after polyp removal, those who received synbiotics showed decreased DNA damage in the lining of the colon and decreased growth and reproduction of colon cells (which increase in colon cancer). Neither of the groups reported adverse effects of synbiotics. These findings are consistent with earlier studies showing that “bad” bacteria can produce substances that initiate or promote development of colon cancer. Probiotics have been shown to decrease abnormal colon cell development and DNA damage in animals.

Research studies often investigate probiotics using controlled doses of supplements, but you can also get probiotics from foods. Most fresh yogurts contain live, active cultures; check labels to be sure. Drinks that provide probiotics include dairy and soy versions of kefir and acidophilus milk. Fermented soy products (including miso and tempeh) and sauerkraut may also supply probiotics, but little data is available to confirm the amounts or types of bacteria.

What about prebiotics to support growth of healthful bacteria? Inulin (which is extracted from chicory root) and oligofructose are found in prebiotic and synbiotic supplements. But so far research does not show that these prebiotics offer any advantage over the dietary fiber found in vegetables, fruits, whole grains and dried beans.

Probiotic and synbiotic supplements come in capsules, powders and liquids. If you’re going to use one of these products, check the label to be sure you will get at least one billion live bacterium per day. Because supplements are not regulated by the government, look for products with USP-Verified or CL-approved on the label, which means they have undergone testing by the U.S. Pharmocopeia or Consumer Lab, respectively. Probiotic and synbiotic supplements are considered safe, and no health risks have been reported related to their use. Yet benefits are far from certain, especially since results may differ with different types of bacteria. While we wait for more research, use probiotics and/or synbiotics if you wish but make sure to focus on other, more proven cancer prevention strategies, such as exercise, weight control and eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables.

New Method of Gene Therapy Alters Immune Cells for Treatment of Advanced Melanoma; Technique May Also Apply to Other Common Cancers

2007-09-05T23:48:00.000+07:00

A team of researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, has demonstrated sustained regression of advanced melanoma in a study of 17 patients by genetically engineering patients' own white blood cells to recognize and attack cancer cells. The study appears in the online edition of the journal Science on August 31, 2006*.

"These results represent the first time gene therapy has been used successfully to treat cancer. Moreover, we hope it will be applicable not only to melanoma, but also for a broad range of common cancers, such as breast and lung cancer," said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D.

Autologous lymphocytes -- a person's own white blood cells -- have previously been used to treat metastatic melanoma. In a process called adoptive cell transfer, lymphocytes are first removed from patients with advanced melanoma. Next, the most aggressive tumor-killing cells are isolated, multiplied in the lab, and then reintroduced to patients who have been depleted of all remaining lymphocytes. While reasonably successful, this method can only be used for melanoma patients and only for those who already have a population of specialized lymphocytes that recognize tumors as abnormal cells.

Thus, NCI researchers, led by Steven A. Rosenberg, M.D., Ph.D., sought an effective way to convert normal lymphocytes in the lab into cancer-fighting cells. To do this, they drew a small sample of blood that contained normal lymphocytes from individual patients and infected the cells with a retrovirus in the laboratory. The retrovirus acts like a carrier pigeon to deliver genes that encode specific proteins, called T cell receptors (TCRs), into cells. When the genes are turned on, TCRs are made and these receptor proteins decorate the outer surface of the lymphocytes. The TCRs act as homing devices in that they recognize and bind to certain molecules found on the surface of tumor cells. The TCRs then activate the lymphocytes to destroy the cancer cells.

In this study, newly engineered lymphocytes were infused into 17 patients with advanced metastatic melanoma. There were three groups of patients in this study. The first group consisted of three patients who showed no delay in the progression of their disease. As the study evolved, the researchers improved the treatment of lymphocytes in the lab so that the cells could be administered in their most active growth phase. In the remaining two groups, patients received the improved treatments. Two patients experienced cancer regression, had sustained high levels of genetically altered lymphocytes, and remained disease-free over one year. One month after receiving gene therapy, all patients in the last two groups still had 9 percent to 56 percent of their TCR-expressing lymphocytes. There were no toxic side effects attributed to the genetically modified cells in any patient.

Approaches to increase the function of the engineered TCRs -- including the development of TCRs that can bind to tumor cells more tightly -- and to further optimize delivery methods using retroviruses are under investigation. In addition, the researchers believe it may be beneficial to further modify lymphocytes by inserting molecules that assist in directing lymphocytes to cancerous tissues. Clinical trials are being conducted to enhance treatment effectiveness using total body radiation therapy to deplete a patient's supply of non-altered lymphocytes before replacing them with purely engineered cells. The researchers also have isolated TCRs that recognize common cancers other than melanoma.

"We are currently treating advanced melanoma patients using adoptive transfer of genetically altered lymphocytes, and we have now expressed other lymphocyte receptors that recognize breast, lung, and other cancers," said Rosenberg.

"These very exciting successes in treating advanced melanoma bring hope that this type of gene therapy, altering lymphocytes, could be used in many types of common cancers and could be achievable in the near future," said Acting NCI Director John E. Niederhuber, M.D. He acknowledged Rosenberg for his persistent and visionary study of the role of the immune system in the treatment of cancer. "He is one of the leaders we all look to for moving us forward," Niederhuber said.

Skin cancer is the most common of all cancers. According to the American Cancer Society, melanoma accounts for about 4 percent of skin cancer cases, but it is also the most serious and most aggressive type. In the United States, an estimated 62,190 new cases of melanoma will be diagnosed and approximately 7,910 people will die of the disease in 2006.

Scientists Crack DNA Code of Rice

2007-09-05T23:37:00.000+07:00

NEW YORK — An international team of scientists has deciphered the genetic code of rice, an advance that should speed improvements in a crop that feeds more than half the world's population.

It's the first crop plant to have its genome sequenced, which means scientists identified virtually all the 389 million chemical building blocks of its DNA. Certain sequences of these building blocks form genes, like letters spelling words.

The advance will help breeders produce new rice varieties with traits such as higher yield, improved nutritional content and better resistance to disease and pests, said one of the project's leaders, W. Richard McCombie of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.

"I would think this is going to help people find genes and probably enhance the crop in well under 10 years," McCombie said.

The work is reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature by the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project, which was established in 1998 and includes scientists from 10 nations. The effort was led by Japanese researchers.

In the Nature report, scientists estimated rice contains 37,544 genes but said that figure will no doubt be revised with further research. Humans, by contrast, have only 20,000 to 25,000 genes.

They also said having the genome sequence in hand will be crucial for breeding and biotechnology advances to increase rice yield, noting that by one estimate the world's rice production must increase by 30 percent over the next 20 years to keep up with demand.

Besides Japan and the United States, participating scientists came from Brazil, China, France, India, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the United Kingdom.

Pamela Ronald of the University of California, Davis, who studies disease resistance in rice but didn't participate in the project, said the sequencing of the rice genome lets scientists do new experiments to unlock secrets of the plant.

"A lot of people are building on this work," she said.

For example, her laboratory used data released earlier from the sequencing project to develop a way to identify rice genes that become active when the plant deals with stresses like a germ attack or drought. That can help scientists track down particular genes for targeting in breeding programs, she said.

Source: Associated Press

Lesson19: Final Thoughts

2007-09-05T02:32:00.000+07:00

My family loves horse racing. They pour over the statistics on the horses to see if they can pick the winner for each race. Sometimes I go with them and bring a friend who has never been to the races before. Invariably, I wind up sitting between my family, picking winners from experience, and my friend, picking winners from beginner's luck. I'm in the middle with no winners and just enough knowledge to be ineffective!

If you feel the same way right now about the tarot, don't be discouraged. At this point, you have a firm foundation of knowledge about the cards that will sustain you in the days ahead. If you continue to practice, you'll find the techniques become more and more invisible as your intuition takes over. Eventually you will reach a point where you can rely on your tarot abilities consistently. You won't have to continue working with the cards as intensely unless you want to. These days I go to the cards only when I have a puzzling problem or situation that I know they can help me with. The tarot is a tool I can count on.

I'm sure you've found already that you do not feel neutral about your readings. No matter what the situation, as you lay out the cards, you hope for ones that will be positive and encouraging. This is only natural. In my experience, people want to know right away if their situation looks good. They respond cheerfully to the pleasant cards, but recoil in disappointment if a nasty one appears. Indeed, it is difficult to look at a card such as the Tower and accept it calmly. We don't want something scary to happen; we want the good!

In fact, the good and the bad are so mixed in life that these terms finally become meaningless. If you were to lose a leg in an accident, but then develop great inner strength during recovery, could you really say the accident was completely bad? If you were to be fired from your job, but then find a better one on the rebound, where is the positive and negative in this situation?

The cards in the tarot are not good or bad in themselves. They only describe certain energies or influences. It is up to you to use this information to make conscious choices about your life. Although the Tower can show a shattering breakup or downfall of some kind, you do not have to view this negatively. Sometimes an explosion of feeling or dramatic shakeup provides welcome relief, clearing the air and freeing up new energy.

It is your concentrated clarity about a situation that gives you the power to mold events along the lines of your choosing. This clarity comes from the wisdom of your Inner Guide paired with the fearless confidence you have in yourself. A reading does not deliver news to you as a passive victim, but as a powerful agent who can use that information creatively. It gives you a picture of the energy patterns in and around you so that you can work with them as you see fit.

Always remember that the outcome pictured in a reading is the one projected for now from all the influences of the present moment. If you can identify those forces, you can alter or encourage them as you wish. The future is never fixed. The outcome of your story is not a certainty, but a possibility. You can always embrace or change a direction provided you have the desire and courage to take the necessary steps. At the deepest level, you know what your situation is all about. Your tarot story simply lets you recognize what you already know so you can act consciously.

Perhaps you are concerned that you aren't objective enough when reading the cards. You suspect that you only see in a reading what you want to see, and not the truth. In fact, that is exactly the point! The tarot helps you find out what it is you do believe, so you can acknowledge it. Your unconscious becomes conscious. You can't interpret falsely, but you can fail to perceive all that is there. The tarot is a mirror that reflects your own consciousness back to you. As you learn, that mirror becomes clearer, and you perceive at ever deeper levels.

A tarot practice is based on the understanding that wisdom from some Source will come to you through the cards. At first, you may have to accept this on faith, but after awhile you will receive the "proof" you need in the results you experience in your life. If you can approach the cards with trust, your tarot practice will take off. Good luck!

Lesson18: Creating the Story

2007-09-05T02:31:00.002+07:00

In this lesson, you will learn how to pull together the elements of a reading - to create a tarot story. This is not an easy process to describe because storytelling is an art. Even though you can be shown a few techniques, in the end, you must develop your own style as a tarot artist. This is the challenge (and fun!) of card interpretation.

First, I want you to set aside everything you've learned so far! That's right, just disregard all those fancy principles. In the last seventeen lessons, you've been exposed to pages of information about the cards, and I've only touched on the possibilities! Other tarot books contain system after system for relating the cards to each other. This is fascinating stuff, but what is its real purpose? It is to find a way to release your inner knowing through the cards.

The techniques you've learned so far have been based on the idea that you must figure out what the cards are saying, but this is not really the case. If you think of a tarot reading as an object to be dissected, you will have trouble grasping its full meaning. A tarot story doesn't come from without; it arises from within. Your stories are come from a part of you that is seeking expression and conscious realization.

Of course, I don't really want you to discard your tarot principles. They are valuable, but not because they hold the key to readings in themselves. They simply help you recognize what you already know. They draw you in so you can set up the circumstances to release your story.

The secret of creating a tarot story is getting from intellectual understanding to knowing, from a piecemeal grasp to a unified vision. To do this, you need to learn to recognize and honor your feelings. Feelings in this sense are not moods or emotions. They are the language of your Inner Guide. They are the outward expression of a knowing that is deeper than thought. The main feature of knowing is a sense of rightness. You know your insights are correct when you feel complete and satisfied with them.

The best way I've found to release inner knowing is through stream-of-consciousness talking - saying your thoughts out loud as they occur, uncensored and uncontrolled. You make no attempt to organize or clean up your speech. You simply let the words come out.

This technique is effective because it bypasses the critical ego. It allows the wisdom of your Inner Guide to come forth spontaneously. You feel as if something within has been set free. Your first attempts will probably be awkward, but your stories will improve with practice. You will develop an ability to guide the flow of words without imposing your will on them. Sometimes insights will surface that completely surprise you!

It's not necessary to rush or talk continually. You can pause whenever you want, but avoid thinking when this happens. Simply wait patiently until you feel the impulse to continue. Sometimes repeating the name of a card a few times can help. Queen of Cups....Queen of Cups....Queen of Cups. After each repetition, wait to see if anything comes to mind in the form of a thought or image.

Sometimes your story will just flow. You will have no trouble fitting everything together. Other times there will be gaps and empty places. Certain cards will stay stubbornly obscure. The moment may not be right for you to fully grasp these cards, or all the pieces of the story may not yet be in place.

Don't be concerned if you can't always create a beautiful narrative. Sometimes knowing comes in fragments. Stay with a reading only as long as the effort seems worthwhile. A partial understanding may be all you need.

I once drew the Ace of Pentacles reversed in Position 9. I knew right away that this card was telling me not to focus on money or material concerns. This realization hit me as soon as I saw the card. Everything I needed to know was in that one Ace, so interpreting the other cards was not all that necessary.

A good tarot spread makes weaving the pattern of the cards easy. By following the spread's built-in structure, your story unfolds naturally. Each spread has its own character based on its history, form and purpose. In the Spread Section, I discuss some features of the Celtic Cross and Yin Yang spreads.

Your tarot story ends when your talking begins to wind down and come to a stop. A few stray thoughts may still occur to you, but the main theme will have been established. You will know the essential message of the reading.

Stream-of-consciousness talking is an effective style for me, but you may not like it. You may prefer to sit quietly and absorb the meaning of the cards. Some people like to write out their reactions or create charts that cross-correlate the cards in a systematic way. Each of us is different, and our approaches to the tarot will be different too.

I'd like to leave you with one final thought about tarot stories. Trust yourself and your intuition completely. Banish right now any concerns you have about reading the cards correctly. You really can't make mistakes. Your tarot realizations are always the right ones for you at a given time and place. They are meaningful because they are yours. Know that you are truly connected to all that is. You can access an understanding that is far greater than your everyday awareness. Trust that this is so.

Lesson17: Reversed Cards

2007-09-05T02:31:00.001+07:00

When you shuffle the tarot cards, they often end up facing in different directions. So far, I've suggested that you ignore this effect and simply turn the upside-down cards around. Now you are ready to learn more about reversed cards and what they have to offer.

All life is energy - currents of force that mix and blend to form the patterns of our lives. Each tarot card symbolizes a particular energy, and a tarot reading shows the collective energies that make up a situation. When you do a reading, your actions and intentions align the energies of the moment with the cards to form a picture. The cards capture the energy currents in and around you as you shuffle and cut.

At any given moment, these energies will be at different levels. Some will be strong and powerful, others less so. Some will be just entering your life, others, moving away. How you use these energies depends on all the factors that bear on your situation.

When a card is upright, its energy is free to manifest. Its qualities are available and active. When a card is reversed, its energy is not fully developed. It may be in its early stages, or losing power. It may be incomplete or unavailable. The qualities of the card are present, at least in potential, but they can't express completely.

The Sun's energy is just what you would imagine - expansive and enlightening. An upright Sun shows the energy of vitality is openly available. You feel confident and successful. Now is your chance to shine. A reversed Sun shows this same energy is present, but at a lower level. The vitality is reduced or limited in some way. You may feel lowered pep or enthusiasm. You may have a desire for greatness that is frustrated. You want success, but something is holding you back.

The Empress reversed once appeared in a reading for a man who wanted to know if he and his wife might have a child. I guessed they had been trying to have a baby for some time. This card showed that the energy of mothering and birth was present, but held down in some way. This pregnancy was blocked. I told this man that once the block was removed, the chances for a child were good. Something must have happened to free up that energy because now they have a beautiful baby girl!

It is tempting to view a reversed card as undesirable. This man wanted a baby, so he was disheartened by the reversed Empress. Someone else might have viewed the same card differently. Reversed cards are not negative in and of themselves. Everything depends on what you hope to achieve.

The Three of Swords represents the energy of heartbreak and betrayal. If this card is upright, hurtful feelings are a feature of the situation. Reversed, they are also present, but reduced. Perhaps the intensity of a painful episode is fading, or you are feeling lonely, but just a little. A reversed Three of Swords is more agreeable than an upright one, but it is still a cautionary sign. The fact that an unpleasant card appears at all means that its energy is present in some way.

Sometimes a card is reversed even though you are experiencing a high level of its energy. In this case, the reversal hints that you can improve your situation by making a conscious effort to lower the energy.

You have drawn the Seven of Wands reversed in a reading about being pressured to do something you don't want to do. This card represents defiance. Since you are being pushed against your will, you are probably feeling defiant in this situation. The Seven of Wands reversed suggests that you try to subdue your strong emotions. Lessen your feelings of defiance and find a different way to deal with the problem. (Of course, it's possible that the energy is low because your defiance is being squelched! Only you can tell which interpretation is best.)

The meaning of a reversed card sometimes comes from a twist in the usual interpretation. In this sense, the Emperor reversed could show a powerful authority figure toppled from his throne. The Ten of Wands reversed might remind you to get out from under burdensome responsibilities. It's surprising how often such meanings apply, but you can't force them. They tend to occur as needed.

You can form pairs that contain reversed cards. Here is an example:

The Sun and Moon are opposites in the area of clarity - the Sun is enlightenment, the Moon, confusion. In a reading, a reversed Sun/upright Moon could show that certainty is low (Sun), and uncertainty is high (Moon), or you are bewildered now (Moon), but greater clarity is possible (Sun).

It's helpful to look at the proportion of reversed and upright cards in a reading. When many cards are upright, all your energies are expressing freely and powerfully. The overall situation is well developed, and your purpose is clear. When many cards are reversed, your energies are low, and the situation is not clearly defined. You may lack direction or feel blocked, discouraged and restricted. You could be in a topsy-turvy state where change is likely. Since energies are not well developed, they are free to go in new directions.

I encourage you to try using reversed cards. When you feel ready, state out loud your intention to use them. You might say, "I have decided to interpret reversed cards in my tarot readings." In this way, you acknowledge your decision with conviction. After a time, if you decide you like using reversed cards, add them to your practice permanently. If not, just let them go. It's better to decide one way or the other, as switching back and forth can be confusing.

Life is a constant energy flow - a marvelous dance guided by Spirit. When we understand that flow and move with it creatively, all things are possible. We can direct energy consciously or just let it take us where it will. In either case, reversed cards add an extra dimension to a reading that will help you appreciate the play of energy in your own life.

Lesson16: Position Pairs in the Celtic Cross Spread

2007-09-05T02:29:00.000+07:00

The Celtic Cross is a powerful spread because it contains many natural pairings. Certain positions complement each other, so the cards that fall there relate in meaningful ways.

Position 1 and Position 2 - The Core Situation

The 1-2 Pair is at the very center of the Celtic Cross. These cards form an obvious pair because Card 2 sits right on top of Card 1, turned 90 degrees! The 1-2 pair symbolizes the heart of a situation. It shows two factors coming together, either on a collision course [example 1] or for mutual support [example 2]. Sometimes Card 1 shows the central issue and Card 2 what you must do about it. [example 3]

Position 3 and Position 5 - Levels of Consciousness

Cards 3 and 5 represent two levels of awareness. You can learn much about a situation by comparing your innermost knowledge with your conscious attitudes. You can find out:

Card 3	Card 5
real feelings	expected feelings	example 1
deeper truth	surface appearances	example 2
wisdom of higher self	beliefs of ego-self	example 3

Position 4 and Position 6 - Time

Cards 4 and 6 are mirror images. Time is the theme of these two cards. Card 4 the past, and Card 6, the near future. Together they form the two halves of the circle of time that surrounds the present (Card 1). These two cards can show something that is:

Card 4	Card 6
moving away	approaching	example 1
to be released	to be embraced	example 2
already experienced	to be experienced	example 3

Position 7 and Position 8 - Self and Other

We may experience ourselves as separate from an outside world, but we are linked to our environment by countless threads of cause and effect, emotion and thought. The 7-8 Pair can show us these connections. Card 7 represents you; Card 8, the other. Card 8 can stand for another person [example 1], a group [example 2], or the environment in general [example 3].

Position 5 and Position 10 - Possible Futures

Three cards refer to the future: Card 6 (near future), Card 10 (long-range future), and Card 5 (possible alternate future). The 5-10 pair lets you compare what you think will happen (5) with what is actually projected to happen (10), if all energies continue as they are. There are several possibilities:

Card 5	Matches?	Card 10
positive vision	does not match	negative outcome	example 1
negative vision	does not match	positive outcome	example 2
vision	matches/reinforces	projected outcome	example 3

When Card 5 reinforces Card 10, your beliefs are flowing with the thrust of events. If you react positively to both cards, you can stay the course. If you react negatively, you can change your beliefs to change the outcome.

Position 9 - Wild Card

Traditionally, Card 9 represents your "hopes and fears," but it can also be a guidance card. When you read the cards for yourself, you need a card that can help you put everything together. Card 9 can explain and integrate the other cards by showing:

approach to take or way to proceed [example 1]
key person, problem or obstacle [example 2]
element of surprise [example 3]

The cards in a reading do not always form pairs. Looking for them is just one technique among many. The pairings in this lesson are only suggestions. Let your intuition guide you to combinations that are meaningful to you.

Lesson15: Card Pairs

2007-09-05T02:27:00.002+07:00

There is a game called Labyrinth that consists of a square box with a platform inside. On the platform is a maze punctuated by little holes. The object is to move a ball from one end of the maze to the other without letting it fall into one of the holes. Knobs on the outside let you guide the ball by rotating the platform in any direction.

A simple game, but difficult in practice! The slightest miscalculation, and the ball goes down. If you lean the platform too far in one direction, you lose control. If you try to compensate, you lose control in the other direction. The only strategy that works is a patient shepherding of the ball along the path as you maintain a balance of movement and force in all directions.

I see in Labyrinth a metaphor for our navigation along the pathway of life. We travel from birth to death negotiating around the "holes" by continually balancing our approaches. We maintain steady progress forward by making countless life adjustments - first here, then there. Our actions offset each other in a dance that is sometimes delightful, often challenging.

The key is always balance. To achieve balance, we must know how to express all the energies available to us. Personal balance is never static. It comes from the ability to choose dynamically the option that will work in any given moment.

A tarot reading is a map of all the counterbalancing tendencies that are or could be operating in your life at one time. To read this map, you must understand the Law of Opposition - that any quality, once identified, implies its opposite. This is a basic principle of the material universe. The Fool discovers this principle at the very beginning of his journey when he meets the Magician and the High Priestess. These two show him that nothing can be defined in isolation, only as one pole of a balancing pair.

At the deepest level, opposition does not exist. There is just Oneness, but, in physical life, we perceive Oneness as broken up into countless different energies. These are the forces we navigate in our search for balance.

One way to discover your balance issues is by looking for two cards in a reading that oppose each other. One meaning of the Eight of Swords is restriction - being trapped in an oppressive or limiting situation. If you ponder this meaning for awhile, you realize that simply by acknowledging the idea of restriction, you imply the opposing idea of freedom - the breaking out of bonds and limitations. This quality is represented by the Four of Wands.

In a reading, these two cards could be showing you the importance of the restriction/freedom issue in your life. They define the extreme ends of a continuum of experience from which you choose the best balance point for yourself. There are three types of card pairs.

Permanent Pairs
Certain cards form clear and obvious permanent opposites. The Eight of Swords and Four of Wands are this type of pair. The Magician and the High Priestess are another. The Magician represents action and conscious awareness; the High Priestess, nonaction and unconscious awareness.

Court Card and Ace Pairs
You can create a pair between any two court cards or two Aces. These pairs reflect the balance patterns that emerge when you contrast two suits or ranks.

Consider the King of Pentacles and the Queen of Cups. Here are the keywords for these cards:

Card	Meanings	Picture
King of Pentacles	enterprising adept reliable supporting steady
Queen of Cups	emotional tenderhearted intuitive psychic

The King of Pentacles acts outwardly (King) in an enterprising, adept way based on his interest in the material world (Pentacles). The Queen of Cups has an inner focus (Queen) that is emotional and intuitive based on her concern with feelings (Cups).

In a reading, this pair could represent a conflict between two people - a can-do type who wants to get the job done, and a dreamer who first wants to see how everyone feels. This pair could also represent a dual approach within you - perhaps a need to focus on worldly concerns vs. a desire to concentrate on the spiritual. There are many possibilities, all based on the dynamic between these two styles. Check the court card and suit pair charts for some ideas on how the suits and ranks interact.

Occasional Pairs
You can interpret any two cards as a pair, even if their meanings are not clearly opposites. There is so much meaning in every card that useful comparisons can almost always be made. Occasional pairs arise by chance, and their relationship lasts for only that one instance.

The Four of Cups shows a solitary man sitting under a tree. The Ten of Cups shows a happy family celebrating together. If the idea were meaningful to you, you might see these two cards as defining the opposites of "being alone" vs "being with others." This understanding might occur to you out of the blue as a possibility.

Reinforcing Pairs
Two cards do not have to oppose each other to form a pair. They can reinforce each other. Both the Empress and the Nine of Cups suggest pleasure, sensuality and physical enjoyment. Reinforcing pairs show that a certain energy is or could be having an extra impact. Sometimes we have to face circumstances in an unbalanced way for the moment in order to achieve our goals.

Balance issues are everywhere. Your tarot readings can help you identify them through the action of card pairs. In the next lesson, we will see how these pairs operate in the Celtic Cross.

Lesson14: Court Cards

2007-09-05T02:27:00.001+07:00

You have probably noticed that people tend to fall into types. Their traits cluster together in familiar ways. We sometimes give these clusters names, such as "loner," "dreamer" or "life of the party." Psychologists have devised elaborate systems that categorize types of people. The popular Myers-Briggs is one such system.

The tarot has its own system of personalities represented by the 16 court cards - the King, Queen, Knight and Page of each suit. In lesson 3, you learned about the four suits and court card ranks. These are the keys to understanding the court cards because the personality of each one is a combination of its suit and rank.

Kings

The King of Wands is creative, inspiring, forceful, charismatic and bold. These are typical positive traits of the Wands suit. They are prime examples of its dynamic fire energy, but they also reflect the character of a King. Kings are active and outgoing. They want to impact the world through the force of their personality.

Queens

The Queen of Wands is attractive, wholehearted, energetic, cheerful and self-Assured. These are also Wands qualities. This Queen is upbeat and lively, but she does not wield her personality as a force directed outward. Queens express their suits from the inside, setting a tone without imposing it.

Knights

Knights are extremists; they express their suit qualities to the maximum. Such excessive feelings and behavior can be either positive or negative depending on the circumstances.

For example, the Knight of Pentacles has an excess of caution - a trait typical of the steady, conservative Pentacles nature. This Knight prefers to check and double-check everything. He always proceeds slowly before committing himself - the kind of person you would ask to fold your parachute or guide you through a mine field.

On the other hand, you could also say the Knight of Pentacles is unadventurous. He will never double his money in two months through a risky investment or propose a surprise trip to Paris on a whim. Such daring moves are not in his nature. You would have to check with the Knight of Wands for that!

The keywords for the Knights are positive and negative word pairs (cautious/unadventurous). In readings, you must consider both views when interpreting a Knight. Does he represent a beneficial or harmful approach? The other factors in the reading (and your own honesty!) will help you decide.

Pages

Each page shows a happy child holding the token of his suit. He is fascinated by his plaything. The Pages inspire us to enjoy their interests with them. The Page of Swords can represent the thrill of intellectual discovery or other mental challenges.

Pages also encourage you to "Go for it!" Children do not hesitate when they want something. They just reach out and grab. If you want what the Page is offering, don't be afraid. Seize the day!

If the Page of Cups is your card of the day, and a fellow student smiles at you, take this opportunity for friendship. Strike up a conversation, or suggest getting a cup of coffee after class. This Page encourages you to bring some love and sharing into your life.

In many tarot systems, the court cards represent people of a certain age and type. For example, the Queen of Swords is often a divorced woman. To me, this way of looking at court cards is too limiting. Traits are not limited to certain groups. The King's approach may be more typically masculine, but his style is also available to women. Children are more often playful, but that doesn't mean that a Page must always represent a child.

A court card in a reading is showing you how a certain approach to life is (or could be) impacting your situation. There are several possibilities.

First, a court card shows you a side of you that is being expressed or seeking expression. It may be a side you value, or one you neglect. It may be an approach you recognize, or one you deny. How you view it depends on your question, the other cards and the situation.

Let's say you are trying to decide whether or not to enter into a business partnership. If you draw the King of Swords, you could interpret him as a way to act in this situation - to be fair and ethical, to review everything carefully and to articulate your needs. If you are already taking this approach, the King of Swords affirms your position, but, if you are lying or hiding something, this card asks you to reconsider.

A court card can also represent another person. If you look at a court card and say to yourself, "I know who that is!" then it probably does represent that person. It may also indicate someone of whom you are not yet aware.

Let's say you have met someone who is very romantic. You spend long hours together and connect on a deep level. In a reading, the Knight of Cups could represent this new lover, but, since he is a Knight, you should look at this relationship closely.

What are you hoping to experience with your lover? You may be enjoying the romance, but are you also looking for dependability and commitment? The Knight of Cups is a signal to you that this relationship may be lopsided: abundant in intimate sharing, but deficient in other ways.

Finally, a court card can reflect the general atmosphere. Sometimes, an environment seems to take on a personality of its own - one that matches a court card type.

Let's say you consulted the tarot to find out about the group house you just joined and drew the Queen of Pentacles. You wonder if you will get along with your future housemates. This card could be telling you that the atmosphere will be nurturing. Your housemates will be warm and generous with a sensible approach to problems.

On the other hand, you may meet someone in the house who is similar to the Queen of Pentacles, or you may be like her yourself in this situation. Such is the subtle play of the tarot!

The court cards have a human dimension that the other cards do not, so they can give you clear messages about who you are and what you want. The trick is to understand yourself and the situation so you can accept the messages when they come.

Lesson13: Aces

2007-09-05T02:26:00.001+07:00

Each Ace represents the qualities of its suit in their purest form. An Ace always adds something special to a reading. It stands out from the other cards as if in a circle of its own light. The images on the Aces are all similar. A strong hand, glowing with energy, comes out of a cloud grasping the token of its suit. An Ace "hands" you a gift that comes from some unknown source hidden in the clouds. The nature of the gift is symbolized by the suit token.

Ace of Wands

A wand is a strong, masculine object, alive with potent force. Leaves are growing as new life bursts forth. The wand reminds us of a magic wand used to perform miracles and create wonders. The gift of the Ace of Wands is creativity, enthusiasm, courage and confidence.

Ace of Cups

A cup is an open, feminine object - a receptacle designed to hold nourishing liquids. Water pours from the cup showing there is a never-ending supply of refreshment flowing into the world. The gift of the Ace of Cups is emotion, intuition, intimacy and love.

Ace of Swords

A Sword is a weapon - a finely crafted tool to cut through any obstacle or confusion. A sword extends the power of its user to fight and prevail. It can wield a cruel force, but also a clean, sharp one. The gift of the Ace of Swords is mental clarity, truth, justice and fortitude.

Ace of Pentacles

The pentacle is a magical sign for the mystery of nature and the everyday world. It is stamped on a coin, the token of material exchange. With money and raw materials, we have the wherewithal to make our dreams real. The gift of the Ace of Pentacles is prosperity, practicality, security and the ability to manifest.

Aces are portals between the realms of the major and minor arcanas. They allow powerful, but impersonal forces to come into your life. An Ace in a reading shows that its qualities are becoming available to you. If you take advantage of them, you will achieve greater happiness and success. An Ace is always interpreted as beneficial, positive and life-enhancing.

An Ace can indicate a new adventure is beginning. I once saw the Ace of Cups in Position 1 for a friend's reading about her new love affair. What better card to signal the beginning of love and intimacy? (Well ... possibly the Fool, but that's another story!)

An Ace can also represent a window of opportunity that is opening. The Ace tells you to pay attention so you don't miss it. Think of an Ace as a seed of possibility that will grow given your attention and care.

A relative once drew the Ace of Pentacles in Position 1 and the Ace of Wands in Position 2 - a dynamic combination that says "Look for a real, creative outlet for your energies that will bring greater prosperity." Several months later, she told me that - encouraged by this sign - she pursued a challenging opening at her workplace and was now making more money with greater personal satisfaction.

When you are working with an Ace, look for the potential in every situation. See how you might take advantage of whatever comes your way because you will have the chance to make real and important changes in your life.

Lesson12: Major and Minor Arcana Cards

2007-09-05T02:24:00.000+07:00

Certain cards in the tarot naturally form into groups. These cards have unique meanings, but they also have a common identity with the other cards in their group. The two largest subgroups are the major and minor arcanas. The terms major and minor reflect the relative weights of these two groups.

A major arcana card represents an energy that is deep, strong, decisive or long-term. When a major arcana card appears in a reading, you have tapped into a powerful energy in some area of your life. The minor arcana cards do not carry the same weight, but they are still important. They chart the ups and downs of daily life and register changes in feelings and thoughts. These dramas are gripping while they occur, but they pass with time as new concerns take their place.

Compare the interpretation of two cards with similar meanings, but different weights - the Hermit (major) and the Eight of Cups (minor). The Hermit is the archetypal symbol of one who seeks truth and deeper meaning. He stands for the impulse to renounce superficial pleasures to seek understanding within. In a reading, the Hermit could hint that you are feeling a strong urge to find answers even if it means giving up aspects of your current way of life. This is not a passing fancy, but a major desire that could last for some time.

With the Eight of Cups, your interpretation might be much the same, but, as a minor arcana card, this card implies your search does not have the same force. Maybe you've been a little bored at work. Some days you feel like chucking everything to go make hats on the beach, but you don't really mean it. You are seeking, but the urge is not yet a heartfelt desire.

Let's say you have been happily married for many years, but suddenly find yourself attracted to an acquaintance. You consult the tarot and draw the Two of Cups in Position 1.

One of the meanings of this card is attraction - being drawn toward a person, place or idea that is pleasing. As a minor arcana card, the Two of Cups tells you your attraction is probably based on surface elements such as common interests or sexual desire. The feelings are strong, but they're mainly coming from the give-and-take of everyday adventure - for now.

If you had drawn the Lovers instead, you would have to give this attraction greater weight. As a major arcana card, the Lovers implies this relationship is not simple. The attraction is coming from a deeper place. There are elements that go beyond the casual and require more understanding.

You could draw a minor arcana card in one reading and then draw a major arcana card about the same subject in a later reading. What started as minor has become more important over time. Similarly, a major matter can fade and lose its urgency as your life changes. You can assume that a major arcana card brings greater energy to whatever area it represents. Give that aspect extra consideration and take advantage of the power building there.

Lesson11: Interpreting a Single Card

2007-09-05T02:23:00.000+07:00

When I interpret a reading, I go back and forth between sensing the cards as a whole and examining each one individually. The two approaches reinforce each other. In this lesson, we will look at how to interpret one card in a reading on its own. There are four sources of meaning:

The first is your unique response to the card based on your background, personality and state of mind. This element keeps the meaning of the card personal and fresh.
The second is the set of meanings that have built up around the card over the years. These vary with different tarot writers and teachers. My suggestions for each card are given in the Card Section.
The third is the set of meanings associated with the position of a card. These are also based on convention and common experience. My suggestions for the Celtic Cross are given in that section.
The fourth is your question or life circumstances. This element provides a framework for your responses. It sets boundaries and helps you relate a card to one area of your life.

To interpret a card, you need to combine these four sources of meaning into some composite that makes sense to you. This is a fluid process. These areas seem separate, but in practice, they blend together, and your response just happens.

At first, you will probably rely on the card and position meanings to guide you. Later, your personal reactions will be more important. Your reaction may be triggered by a card's image. The scenes on the cards can seem to relate to your situation very directly. For example, if you are building a house, the document on the Three of Pentacles might strike you as a set of blueprints.

Assume that you have drawn the upright Seven of Cups in Position 5. Your question is:

"How can I improve my chances of receiving a bonus this year?"

To begin reviewing this card, you would first note your reactions. Perhaps your glance falls on the cup filled with jewels. The figure in the foreground seems to be looking directly at this cup. You identify with him as he reaches out for treasure. This fits your question - you're reaching out for a bonus.

Next, you look at the keywords for the Seven of Cups. They are:

wishful thinking
options
dissipation

When you read through the actions, you are struck by the following:

kidding yourself about the facts
waiting for your ship to come in
lacking focus and commitment

These phrases suggest someone who is passive and unrealistic, someone who lacks the energy and desire for success. They reinforce the idea of wishful thinking.

On reading over the meanings for Position 5, you feel a pull toward:

your delusions and illusions
what you're obsessed about
what you've set your heart on

The sense of this card is beginning to take shape for you. The card seems to be suggesting that you are too busy daydreaming to act constructively. The figure now strikes you as awed by the cup dangled in front of him. You decide that this card represents for you at this time an attitude of unreasonable hopes and unproductive dreaming. This is your first feeling about what the card is saying. You may modify your assessment later when you examine the other cards.

Clearly there are other possibilities. You might have been struck by the array of delights floating in front of the shadowy figure. He seems to have many options, another meaning of the Seven of Cups.

There is never just one right answer in tarot work! Both of these interpretations make sense. You may wonder how you can decide on the best meaning when there are so many possibilities. You must trust your intuition. Your Inner Guide will give you hints that will lead you toward the ideas that are most important for you. An insistent thought may keep popping into your mind. You may circle around a meaning - thinking about it, moving off, then finally coming back. When one meaning hits you with particular force, you know you are on the right track. This is the "Aha" reaction. An "Aha" reaction may not happen for every card, but when it does, you know it is important. These are the ways that inner knowing manifests.

Lesson10: The Open Reading

2007-09-05T02:22:00.000+07:00

An Open Reading is a request for guidance that is not tied to a particular problem. You don't write a question. You simply give your Inner Guide an opportunity to communicate what you most need to know at a given moment.

For most occasions, the Question Reading is the best type because it zeroes in on the issue that is most important to you. Just as with the telephoto lens of a camera, a question lets you move in to focus more narrowly on a subject, but it also keeps you from seeing the bigger picture. An Open Reading has more scope. It covers your long-term growth and development. It offers a higher level of guidance that embraces the larger patterns that are shaping your everyday experiences.

Open Readings can be quite powerful. I try to use them sparingly to preserve their out-of-the-ordinary quality. Consider them for special occasions, such as: birthdays, anniversaries, ceremonial days, equinoxes and first days (new job, date, trip).

Open Readings are useful when you are standing on the threshold of a new phase, such as after the birth of a child or move to a new house. Open Readings can help you adjust to new or unpredictable situations ahead of time. Whenever an expanse of unknown is opening out before you, that is a perfect time for an Open Reading.

The procedure is basically the same as the one in lesson 8. The few differences are noted here. (There is also a step-by-step outline.)

Setting the Mood
To prepare for an Open Reading, you want to avoid the analysis that goes into writing a question. Simply let your mind empty of all cares and concerns. There is nothing you have to do or arrange except a gentle quieting of the mind.
Making A Statement
Instead of reading a question, say a more general message of intent such as:
I welcome a message of wisdom and open myself to receive the guidance that I most need at this time.
You can narrow the focus a little as long as you avoid specific people and events. If you're interested in your health, you can add a phrase to that effect:
I welcome a message of wisdom about my health and open myself to receive the guidance that I most need at this time.
Shuffling the Cards
Keep your mind free and open while you shuffle. If a thought drifts by, let it gently pass without fixing on it. Ideally, you should feel like an empty house with all the windows open to every soft breeze.
Cutting the Cards
Laying Out the Cards
Responding to the Cards
Analyzing the Cards
As a rule, when analyzing the cards, you want to step back from the details of your life and let the cards show you the larger themes. Concentrate on the patterns as revealed in the reading. View everything in a wider context. Open Readings are not about the everyday.
Creating the Story
Writing the Summary Statement
Finishing Up
Using What You Have Learned
It is not necessary to commit to specific actions. Simply absorb the spirit of the message and allow it to guide you in a general way.

Lesson9: The Other Reading

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You can do a tarot reading that is centered on another person or subject. I call this the Other Reading. An Other Reading is appropriate whenever you are simply curious about someone or something that doesn't involve you directly. Other Readings are about someone, not for him or her. When a reading is for someone, that person writes the question and you simply help interpret the cards.

Other Readings are fun and informative. They are also a good way to learn the tarot. When you use the cards for yourself, you only get to look at a limited set of problems - your own! Other Readings let you explore much more.

Except for choosing the subject, the procedure for an Other Reading is basically the same as the one in lesson 8. The few differences are noted here. (There is also a step-by-step outline.)

Choosing the Subject
Your first step is to decide on the subject of your reading. You can focus on just about anything - a person, animal, place, problem, or news event - as long as you identify the subject ahead of time. Usually it will be the central figure in a situation, but it doesn't have to be.
Your subject can be a group entity, such as a marriage, family, team or neighborhood. You can focus on a country or the Earth, but, for such large entities, the information will be very general.
You may be tempted to do an Other Reading about someone who is close to you - a relative, friend or colleague. In lesson 7 I talk about the importance of focusing on yourself in readings that concern you. Here is a simple test you can take to decide whether an Other Reading is advisable. Ask yourself three questions:
- Do I feel strong emotions when I think about this person in this situation?
- Do I have a vested interest in this situation?
- Do I desire a particular outcome in this situation?
If your answer is yes to any of these questions, you should probably do a reading centered on yourself rather than an Other Reading.
You now need to write a question. Follow the suggestions in lesson 7, but write the question about your subject. Focus on the aspect of your subject that interests you. If you are wondering about a politician who is running for president, your question might be:
"What are the factors impacting Mr. or Ms. Candidate's chances to become the next president?"
Setting the Mood
You can place a picture of your subject nearby to help you focus during your reading. An object that reminds you of your subject works well too.
Asking Your Question
Say something about the other person or why you are doing an Other Reading. Request guidance that is in the best interest of all concerned, and mention that you hold only good intentions toward your subject. (If you can't say this truthfully, consider a reading for yourself instead!)
Shuffling the Cards
Cutting the Cards
Laying Out the Cards
Responding to the Cards
As you respond to the cards, remember that they refer to the other person, not you. However, don't be surprised if you see in the cards some interesting correspondences with your own life!
Analyzing the Cards
In an Other Reading, you are seeing the situation from your own point of view. What you see in the cards may or may not be related to what the subject actually experiences.
Creating the Story
Writing the Summary Statement
Finishing Up
Using What You Have Learned
Even though an Other Reading focuses on someone else, there is still a lesson for you in the cards. Try to identify this lesson so you can apply it in your own life.

Lesson8: The Question Reading

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In this lesson, you will finally learn how to do a full tarot reading for yourself. I describe a simple procedure you can use to explore a personal question. Having a procedure to follow is important in tarot work. When you follow the same steps over and over in a certain way, they help you center yourself in the moment. The details of the steps are not that important; in fact, you can change any of them if you wish. The goal is to maintain a spirit of mindfulness. Doing a reading with loving concentration will make your tarot practice very powerful.

Here is the procedure for a Question Tarot Reading. (See also a step-by-step outline.)

Setting the Mood

Your first step is to create a conducive mood. Lesson 6 offers some suggestions on how to set up a pleasing environment. You can try these ideas, if you like. Focus on what will make you feel comfortable and secure.

When you are ready, sit down on the floor or at a table leaving some empty space in front of you. You should have your tarot cards and your question written on a piece of paper. (See lesson 7 for how to write a question.) At first, a full reading will probably take at least thirty to forty minutes. Try to arrange your affairs so you won't be interrupted. With experience, you will be able to shorten this time, if you wish, but it is always better to feel unhurried.

Begin to relax and still your mind. Put aside your worries and concerns for now. (You can always get them back later!) Settle fully into the present moment. Take a few deep breaths, relax all your muscles and feel the quiet as you turn away from the outside world. Take as much time as you need for this calming process.

Asking Your Question

When you feel centered, take your cards out of their container. Hold them cupped in one hand while you place the other hand on top. Close your eyes and bring the cards into the circle of your energy.

Now, make an opening statement, if you wish. Some possibilities are:

a prayer
an affirmation
a description of how you are feeling
a simple hello to your Inner Guide

You can write a phrase to say every time, or you can speak spontaneously. It is more important to speak from your heart than to mouth an empty formula. Say your statement out loud, as sound adds energy and conviction.

Next, ask your question, either from memory or by reading it. Be sure to say your question exactly as you wrote it. One of the mysteries of the unconscious is that it is very literal; the cards you choose will often reflect the precise wording of your question.

Shuffling the Cards

Open your eyes and begin shuffling. It is important to shuffle the cards because this is how you sort through all the forms your reading could take and arrange at a subtle level the one you will receive.

There are a number of ways to shuffle the cards. Each method has its pros and cons. Choose one that is most comfortable for you. Certain methods mix the cards so some are right side up (upright) and some, upside-down (reversed). If this is your first reading, do not worry about reversed cards. I will explain these in lesson 17.

Concentrate on your question while you shuffle. Focus on the overall intent rather than the details. Don't strain to stay fixed, but do keep the question in mind as much as you can.

Cutting the Cards

When you feel you have shuffled long enough, stop and place the cards face down in front of you with the short edge closest to you. Cut the deck as follows:

Grab some number of cards from the pile.
Drop this smaller pile to the left.
Grab some part of this second pile and drop it further to the left.
Regroup the cards into one pile in any fashion.

It's best to regroup the cards in one quick motion. Don't try to figure out which pile should go where. Just let your hand move where it will. The cut is an important finishing step that marks the end of the card-arranging stage. Once you have regrouped the cards, the pattern of the reading is fixed, and all that remains is to lay out the cards and see what they reveal.

Laying Out the Cards

Follow the steps for the spread you have chosen. If this is your first reading, use the Celtic Cross. (Before actually laying out the cards, read the next step, "Responding to the Cards.")

Pick up the deck and hold it in one hand with the short edge closest to you.
With your other hand, turn over the first card as you would the page of a book.
Place this card in Position 1.
(The position number corresponds to the placement order.)
Turn over the second card, and place it in Position 2.
Continue in this way until you have placed all the cards.
Turn any reversed cards around if you are not using them.

Responding to the Cards

Pay attention to your reactions to each card as you lay it out. At first, you will not know or remember the usual meaning of a card. Your thoughts and feelings will be based mainly on the images. As you practice, your reactions will become more informed, but also more predictable. Try to keep some of your original openness as much as possible. Pay attention to any responses that seem unusual or out-of-place.

When all the cards are laid out, take a moment to respond to them as a whole. Do you get an overall impression? Do you have any new reactions? Jot down some of your thoughts, if you wish. Don't worry if you can't remember all of them. Just as with dreams, you will recall the most important. Try not to get too involved in your notes as that can break the flow of the reading. You simply want to capture a few ideas quickly.

Analyzing the Cards

In the beginning, use the section about individual cards for help. Later, you can examine the cards on your own, but you may still find this section useful. (I use it myself from time to time!)

Begin your review with Position 1 and proceed in position order. Here are the suggested steps:

Look up the card in the Card Section.
Read through all the keywords and actions.
Look for actions that make you say "Yes, that one really fits!" I experience a kind of jolt of recognition when I see one. Don't shy away from actions that seem less pleasant. Trust your reactions, and reserve judgment until you've seen all the cards. Note any stray thoughts or "irrelevant" feelings that come to mind.

When you've considered each card, look for relationships between them. Apply the principles of interpretation. (These are covered in lessons 11-18.)

You could ponder a reading for hours without running out of insights, but, of course, this isn't practical or desirable. Do try to spend some time, however. Your reward will be equal to your effort.

Creating the Story

At some point, you need to pull everything together. I call this creating the story. (See lesson 18.) Your story will help you understand your situation and give you guidance for the future - what you have been seeking all along.

I recommend that you create your story spontaneously. Once you have finished your card review, let that analytical approach go. It's no longer appropriate. Your story will be more authentic if it arises freely from within. When you feel ready, simply begin speaking your story, saying whatever comes to mind. Use any notes you have to help, but don't focus on them too much.

I encourage you to tell your story out loud. Writing is too slow, and just thinking your ideas is too vague. Your story will gather strength and power as it is spoken. If you begin to ramble or lose your train of thought, don't be concerned. Simply pause, regroup and start again. As you practice, you will get better at speaking on the fly. You may want to tape your story. When you play back the tape, you will be amazed at what you hear. You will truly feel you are your own best tarot reader.

Writing the Summary Statement

Your story is done when your words slow down and stop naturally. Your next step is to distill the main theme of your story. What is the essence of your guidance? Ask yourself these questions:

What is the problem or conflict?
What is my role?
What does my Inner Guide want me to understand?
What is the projected outcome?
How do you feel about that?
Do I sense any recommendations for action?

What you are doing is forming the answer to your question. Before the reading, you posed a question that had meaning for you. Your Inner Guide has responded, and now you want to capture that wisdom in a form you can remember. Try to summarize your story in one or two sentences. Concentrate on the message in the cards and not the mechanics of your interpretation.

Finishing Up

The main event is over, but, as with any ceremony, there are a few final steps to take to end your reading and leave your cards ready for next time.

If you have not already done so, write down the cards you selected and their positions. It is easy to forget them. Then, clear the deck to remove all traces of the energy patterns of this reading. I clear a deck by scrambling the cards together gently. It reminds me of erasing letters in the sand with a sweep of my hand. You may enjoy this technique as well, but any shuffling method will do. Take a few moments now to clear your deck. Make sure the cards are face down or turned away from you. Stop when you feel you've shuffled long enough, and gather the cards together. Your deck is now ready for your next reading.

Before putting the cards away, hold them again for just a moment. Place your deck in one hand with the other hand on top, and close your eyes. Say what you feel you have learned from this reading. Express your gratitude to your Inner Guide for helping you via the tarot cards. Gratitude is a wonderful sentiment. It provides the ideal frame of mind in which to end your reading.

When you began, you initiated a cycle. You created meaning in the form of a reading, and now you have completed that cycle by returning the cards to their resting state.

Using What You Have Learned

The reading proper is over, but the inner work is just beginning. Your goal is to integrate what you have learned into your life in some way. If you don't, your tarot practice will remain a beautiful pastime with no power to help you.

Decide on one or more actions you can take to put your guidance to work. You can reinforce what you're doing now or make some changes, either radical or minor. Specific actions are usually more helpful than vague plans.

If you are keeping a journal, write down what you intend to do. Commit only to what you know you will actually carry out. I know how easy it is to lay out some cards, look at them briefly and then never think about that reading again, especially when your reaction is less than positive!

As the days go by, think about your reading and how it meshes with your life. Ask yourself these questions:

How meaningful was my story?
How well did the guidance fit?
Did I miss any clues?
Did I carry out an action, and, if so, what happened?
Did something unexpected occur?
Do my Daily Readings add anything?

You may be tempted to do another reading, but it's probably best to wait until there are important changes in your situation. Assume that your first reading covers all you need to know. If you are puzzled about certain elements, mine your first reading for more insights. By going deeper, you will get closer to the heart of the matter.

Using what you have learned in a reading is probably the most important step - and the most difficult. It involves moving beyond playing with the cards. When you actually commit to integrating your tarot insights into your life, you have realized the true and lasting benefit to be gained from the cards.

This is my ideal tarot session, but, to be truthful, I don't always follow it. Sometimes I linger over these steps, sometimes I neglect quite a few of them. I encourage you to adopt whatever procedure suits your interests and needs. If you don't enjoy the cards, they'll just gather dust on the shelf. The details aren't that important; it's the intention that counts!

Lesson7: Writing a Question

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Most of the time you will want to consult the tarot because you are facing a problem or challenge. Something about your life is troubling you, and you want to understand why it is happening and what you can do about it. The best kind of tarot reading for this situation is the Question Reading. You write a question about your problem, and you receive your answer by interpreting the cards. The question helps you relate the guidance you receive to your situation in a way that makes sense. In this lesson, I describe how to create a question for a reading you do for yourself.

The first step is to review your situation thoroughly. Think about all the people involved, directly or indirectly. Go over your options for the future. Let your mind wander freely. You want to look at your problem without judging or censoring any part. Jot down the ideas that occur to you, but try not to be too systematic. You want to use your intuition, not logical analysis.

Once you have finished your review, you can write your question. Here are some suggestions:

Accept Responsibility

Write your tarot question to show that you accept responsibility for your situation. Consider these two questions:

Should I put my father in a nursing home, or take care of him in my house?
What do I need to know to decide on the best living arrangements for my father?

In the first question, the writer gives up her responsibility for making a decision. She wants the cards to tell her what to do. In the second question, she is simply asking the cards to give her more information. She knows the decision lies with her.

It's tempting to write the first kind of question. We all seek the certainty that we're making good choices, but the tarot can't make our decisions for us. Avoid questions that deflect responsibility, such as:

Questions to be answered "Yes" or "No"
Will I get the job at the ad agency?
Can I stick to my diet this month?
Am I ready to retire?
Questions beginning with "Should..."
Should I let my daughter live at home?
Should I go out with Jose?
Should I apply to more than one university?
Questions asking only about time
When will George ask me to marry him?
How long will it take to find a new car?
When will I get my promotion?

Instead, begin your questions with phrases such as these:

Can you give me insight into ...
What do I need to understand about ...
What is the meaning of ...
What is the lesson or purpose of ...
What are the circumstances underlying ...
How can I improve my chances of ...
How might I ...

Keep Your Options Open

Write your question to show that you are keeping your options open. Consider these:

How might I encourage my mother-in-law to move out?
What do I need to know to get along better with my mother-in-law?

In the first question, the writer is not keeping his options open. He has decided on one solution - having his mother-in-law move out. The second question is more open-ended. It's OK to narrow the scope of a question as long as you don't decide on the answer ahead of time. Both of the following are open questions, but the second is more specific:

How would a switch to sales impact my career?
How would a switch to a sales position at Purdue Insurance impact my career?

Find the Best Level of Detail

Seek the fine line between wording that is too vague and too detailed. Here are three questions on the same topic:

How can I improve my work situation?
How can I reorganize my desk so that Tom can find my files?
How can I improve the flow of work between Tom and me?

The first question is unfocused. It doesn't specify which work area is of interest. The second question is too detailed. It looks at one minor aspect of the problem. The third question is best because it finds the balance between the two. Include only the details necessary to make clear what you want to know.

Focus On Yourself

When you do a reading for yourself, you are always the central character. Your question should focus on you. There are times when questions about others are fine (see lesson 9), but not when you are concentrating on your own concerns.

Sometimes you may not realize you are orienting your question around someone else. Consider these:

What is behind Arthur's drinking problem?
How can I assist Arthur with his drinking problem?
What role do I play in Arthur's drinking problem?

The first question focuses totally on Arthur and his problem. In the second question, the writer is included, but his attention is still on Arthur. The third question is best because it is grounded solidly in the writer's own experience.

Stay Neutral

You want to stay as neutral as possible when writing your questions. It is easy to begin a reading convinced that your position is the right one, but if you truly want to receive guidance, you need to be open to other points of view. Consider these sets of questions:

Why am I the only one doing chores?
How can I foster a spirit of cooperation concerning the chores?

How can I make people listen when I'm talking?
What is going on when I try to communicate, but feel others aren't listening?

How can I make my boss stop asking me to do overtime?
Why have I had to do so much overtime recently?

In the first questions, the writer feels his position is the correct one - others are not getting with the program! The second questions are more neutral and open-ended.

Be Positive

Be positive when writing your questions. Consider these:

How come I can never get my research published?
How can I locate the ideal forum in which to publish my research?

Why can't I overcome my fear of public speaking?
How can I improve my ability to speak to groups effectively?

Can you help me understand why I always blow a tournament in the last round?
Can you help me find a way to push on to victory in a tournament?

The first questions have an air of defeat. The second questions are more confident. The writer knows she will be successful given useful advice.

You may be wondering why I have gone into so much detail about writing a question. This process is a focusing exercise that prepares you for the reading that follows. Writing a question usually takes no more than three or four minutes, but, for that small investment in time, you reap big rewards. You understand your situation better and can interpret your reading with more insight.

Lesson6: The Environment

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The environment of a tarot reading includes the physical setting and your internal state. There are five inner qualities that are beneficial. These are:

Being Open
Being open means being receptive. It is an attitude of allowing - being willing to take in what is offered without denial or rejection. By being open, you give yourself the chance to receive what you need to know.
Being Calm
It is hard to hear the whispers of your Inner Guide when you are in turmoil. Tarot messages often arrive as gentle hints and realizations that can be easily overwhelmed by a restless mind. When you are calm, you are like a peaceful sea in which every ripple of insight can be perceived.
Being Focused
Focus is very important for a tarot reading. I have found that whenever I feel a question strongly, I receive a direct and powerful message. When I'm scattered and confused, the cards tend to be the same. Your most insightful readings will be those you do when the desire is very strong.
Being Alert
When you are alert, all your faculties are alive and awake. A cat is alert when it is watching a mouse or bug. Of course, you won't be pouncing on your cards, but you will find them difficult to read if you are tired or bored.
Being Respectful
Being respectful means treating the cards as you would any valued tool. You acknowledge their role in helping you understand yourself better. You honor the choice you have made in deciding to learn the tarot and handle the cards accordingly.

Even though these five qualities are important, they are not necessary. You can have a meaningful reading without them, but it may be more difficult. The best way to decide if the time is right for a reading is to look inside. If something feels wrong, postpone the effort, but if your inner sense says go ahead, then all is well.

Besides the inner environment, there is also the setting of a reading to consider. The ideal place is one that elicits feelings of quiet, peace, even reverence. You could do a reading in a crowded airport, but the noise and distractions would make inner attunement difficult. Since you will probably be doing most of your readings at home, let's look at how you might create a agreeable environment there.

Set aside a place in your home where you will do your readings. By using the same spot over and over, you build up an energy that reinforces your practice. If you meditate or pray, you can do these activities here as well as they harmonize with the tarot in spirit and intent.

Try to create a sense of separateness about your spot. When you use the cards, you want to turn away from the everyday world and go into a space that is outside time and the normal flow of events. A separate room is ideal, but a corner set off by a screen, curtain, pillows or other divider can work too.

Try also to create an atmosphere of beauty and meaning. Place some items nearby that are special to you. Objects from nature, such as shells, stones, crystals, and plants are always appropriate. A talisman, figure or religious icon can help you shift your focus from the mundane to the inspirational. Consider pictures and artwork, especially your own, and appeal to your senses with such items as flowers, incense, candles, textured materials and quiet, meditative music.

These touches are nice, the only thing you really need is a space large enough to lay out the cards. You can use either a table or the floor. There is a grounded feeling to the floor, but, if that position is uncomfortable, a table is better. Choose a table of natural materials such as wood or stone.

If you like, you can cover the table or floor with a cloth to create a uniform area. The material should be natural, such as silk, cotton, wool or linen. Choose the color with care as colors have their own energies. Black, dark blue and purple are good choices. There should be little or no pattern, so the images on the cards stand out from the background.

Store your cards in a container to protect them and contain their energies. Any natural substance is fine, such as wood, stone, shell, or a natural cloth. I know of one woman who sewed herself a silk, drawstring bag and embroidered it with stars, moons and other designs. Consider keeping your cards wrapped in silk cloth when inside their container. Silk has a luxurious feel that will remind you of the value you place on your cards.

Tarot cards pick up the energy and character of those who use them. For this reason, set aside a tarot deck that is just for you, if you can. These cards are going to be your personal tool of communication with your Inner Guide. You want to bond to them closely.

When you do your tarot work in a place of your own, the experience can be quite powerful, but extra preparations are never necessary. All you have to do is use the cards. That's the important part.

Lesson5: The Daily Reading

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You are now ready to begin putting your tarot knowledge to work. Lesson 5 describes the Daily Reading. In this reading, you select a single card that becomes your theme for the day. The purpose is to heighten your awareness of one approach to life for a single twenty-four-hour period. It also helps you learn the tarot without strain or tedium.

Let's say you have drawn the Two of Cups for a daily reading. As you go through the day, you will watch for signs of this card's special energy. The keywords for the Two of Cups card are connection, truce and attraction. In the morning, you notice that a colleague, who has been rather hostile, comes to your office to talk. You sense a truce, and you take advantage of it. In the afternoon, while working on a problem, you look for the connection between two approaches and find your solution. Later, at a party, you talk to someone who attracts you. On each occasion, you access the energy of the Two of Cups and allow it to guide your decisions.

At first, you may want to choose your daily card deliberately so you can avoid repeat selections and learn the deck more quickly. (See exercise 5.1.) If you prefer, you can choose your card without conscious intervention. (See exercise 5.2.) Here is the procedure:

Shuffle the deck once or twice.
Hold the deck face down in one hand and cover it with your other hand.
Pause a moment to become calm and centered.
Ask your Inner Guide to give you the guidance you need for the day.
Place the deck face down in front of you.
Cut the deck to the left and restack it.
Turn over the top card as your card of the day.
Return this card to the deck, and shuffle once or twice.

This procedure is easy to do on a daily basis, and it gives you an opportunity to connect with your Inner Guide regularly. Choose a time that works for you. Mornings are good because you can pick a card during your wake-up routine. You can also select one at night. You will be ready to put your card to use as soon as you wake up. It isn't necessary to pick one time since your schedule may change. The main goal is to make the Daily Reading a part of your day so that your tarot work progresses.

Keep a journal of your selections. Later, you will find it interesting to trace the pattern of your choices. I started studying the tarot in earnest when I was spending my days caring for my two boys, then under five. One day I calculated the distribution of my daily cards to that point and found the following:

Wands - 24
Cups - 44
Swords - 41
Pentacles - 57
Major Arcana - 56

How clearly this describes my life at that time - heavy on the real world (Pentacles) and basic forces (major arcana) and not so heavy on individual creativity (Wands).

In your journal, jot down a few highlights of the day next to your entry. This will help you correlate the cards with your moods and activities; but keep it simple, or you will soon tire of the effort.

I wrote my journal entries using five pens of different colors - one for each category:

Wands = Red (Fire, passion)
Cups = Blue (Water, moods, emotion)
Swords = Yellow (Air, mentality)
Pentacles = Green (Earth, growth, plants, nature, money)
Major Arcana = Purple (spirituality, higher purpose)

Color coding helps you see at a glance the shifting tarot patterns of your weeks and months.

You will probably be surprised to find that you draw certain cards over and over. Of the fifty-seven Pentacles I recorded early on, I drew the Ace and Queen eleven times each! At home with my children, so many of my days reflected the themes of these two cards. The Queen of Pentacles is the ultimate nurturing mother. The Ace of Pentacles offers opportunities to enjoy the material side of life, and it doesn't get more material than cleaning dirty diapers!

I picked these two cards so often that I became suspicious about them. I examined them closely one day to see if I had damaged them in such a way that I would be more likely to select them. They appeared no different from the others. I was simply drawn to them because they expressed my situation at that time. The cards you select frequently will also tell you about your concerns.

The most important step in learning the tarot is to take the cards out of the box regularly. The Daily Reading is the ideal solution. If you do one each day, you will absorb the character of each card quickly and easily. :D

Lesson4: The Spread

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A spread is a preset pattern for laying out the tarot cards. It defines how many cards to use, where each one goes, and what each one means. A spread is a template guiding the placement of the cards so they can shed light on a given topic. It is within this template that the meanings of the cards come together so beautifully.

The most important feature of a spread is the fact that each position has a unique meaning that colors the interpretation of whatever card falls in that spot. For example, the Four of Pentacles stands for possessiveness, control, and blocked change. If this card were to fall in Position 4 of the Celtic Cross Spread (the "Past" position), you would look at how these qualities are moving out of your life. In Position 6 (the "Future"), you would instead view them as coming into your life - a quite different interpretation.

Tarot spreads can be any size or pattern. Rahdue's Wheel includes all 78 cards and creates a vast tableau of one person's life. A spread can also contain just one card. In lesson 5 I show how a one-card spread is useful for daily readings.

Most spreads contain between six and fifteen cards. This range is small enough to be manageable, but large enough to cover a topic in some depth. The pattern of a spread often forms a design that reflects its theme. For example, the Horoscope Spread is in the shape of the traditional circle that forms a person's birth chart. The twelve cards of this spread correspond to the twelve houses of astrology.

When cards are related to each other in a spread, an entirely new level of meaning is created. Combinations appear, and a story line develops with characters, plots and themes. The weaving of a story from the cards in a spread is the most exciting and creative aspect of a tarot reading. It is an art, but there are many guidelines you can follow. I discuss these in later lessons and give examples of the story-making process.

In these lessons, I refer to just the Celtic Cross Spread. I think you will be able to concentrate more on developing your intuition if you stick to just one spread at first. Once you know the cards well and feel comfortable reading them, you can expand your tarot practice by exploring other layouts. Before you continue with the lessons, read over the Celtic Cross Section. (See exercise 4.1.) We'll be using this spread throughout the course.

Lesson3: The Minor Arcana

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While the major arcana expresses universal themes, the minor arcana brings those themes down into the practical arena to show how they operate in daily events. The minor arcana cards represent the concerns, activities and emotions that make up the dramas of our everyday lives.

There are 56 cards in the minor arcana divided into four suits: Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles. [Note] Each of these suits stands for a particular approach to life.

Wands
The Wands are the suit of creativity, action and movement. They are associated with such qualities as enthusiasm, adventure, risk-taking and confidence. This suit corresponds to the yang, or masculine principle, in Chinese philosophy and is associated with the element Fire. A flickering flame is the perfect symbol of the Wands force. This energy flows outward and generates passionate involvement.
Cups
The Cups are the suit of emotions and spiritual experience. They describe inner states, feelings and relationship patterns. The energy of this suit flows inward. Cups correspond to the yin, or feminine principle, in Chinese philosophy and are associated with the element Water. The ability of water to flow and fill up spaces, to sustain and to reflect changing moods makes it the ideal symbol of the Cups suit.
Swords
The Swords are the suit of intellect, thought and reason. They are concerned with justice, truth and ethical principles. Swords are associated with the element Air. A cloudless sky, open and light-filled, is a symbol of the mental clarity that is the Swords ideal. This suit is also associated with states that lead to disharmony and unhappiness. Our intellect is a valuable asset, but as an agent of ego, it can lead us astray if it is not infused with the wisdom of our Inner Guide.
Pentacles
The Pentacles are the suit of practicality, security and material concerns. They are associated with the element Earth and the concrete requirements of working with matter. In Pentacles, we celebrate the beauty of nature, our interactions with plants and animals and our physical experiences in the body. Pentacles also represent prosperity and wealth of all kinds. Sometimes this suit is called the Coins, an obvious symbol of the exchange of goods and services in the physical world.

Each minor arcana suit has a distinct quality all its own. Our everyday experiences are a blend of these four approaches. Your tarot readings will show you how the different suit energies are impacting your life at any given moment. (See the lists of suit qualities.)

The suits are structured much as our everyday playing cards with ten numbered cards (Ace - Ten) and four court cards (King, Queen, Knight and Page). Each card has a role to play in showing how its energy expresses in the world.

Aces
An Ace announces the themes of its suit. The Ace of Cups stands for love, emotions, intuition, and intimacy - ideas that are explored in the other cards of the Cups suit. An Ace always represents positive forces. It is the standard-bearer for the best its suit has to offer.
Middle Cards
Each of the middle, numbered cards presents a different aspect of a suit. The Wands explore such themes as personal power (card 2), leadership (card 3), excitement (card 4) and competition (card 5). A card may approach an idea from several angles. The Five of Pentacles shows the many faces of want - hard times (material want), ill health (physical want), and rejection (emotional want).
Tens
A Ten takes the themes introduced by an Ace to their logical conclusion. If you take the love, intimacy and emotions of the Ace of Cups to their ultimate, you have the joy, peace and family love of the Ten of Cups.
Court Cards
The court cards are people with personalities that reflect the qualities of their suit and rank. The court cards show us certain ways of being in the world so that we can use (or avoid!) those styles when appropriate.
- A King is mature and masculine. He is a doer whose focus is outward on the events of life. He demonstrates authority, control and mastery in some area associated with his suit. A King's style is strong, assertive and direct. He is concerned with results and practical, how-to matters.
- A Queen is mature and feminine. She embodies the qualities of her suit, rather than acting them out. Her focus is inward, and her style, relaxed and natural. A Queen is less concerned with results than with the enjoyment of just being in the world. She is associated with feelings, relationships and self-expression.
- A Knight is an immature teenager. He cannot express himself with balance. He swings wildly from one extreme to another as he tries to relate successfully to his world. A Knight is prone to excess, but he is also eager and sincere, and these qualities redeem him in our eyes. We admire his spirit and energy.
- A Page is a playful child. He acts out the qualities of his suit with pleasure and abandon. His approach may not be deep, but it is easy, loose and spontaneous. He is a symbol of adventure and possibility.

You now have a basic idea of the role of each card in the tarot deck. You have a feel for how they all fit together and what each one contributes to the whole. In the following lessons, you will learn more about these cards and how to interpret them in your readings.

Lesson2: The Major Arcana

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The standard tarot deck consists of 78 cards divided into two sections, the major and minor arcanas. The word arcana is the plural of arcanum which means "profound secret." To the alchemists of the Middle Ages, the arcanum was the secret of nature. The tarot cards are therefore a collection of the "secrets" that underlie and explain our universe.

The 22 cards of the major arcana are the heart of the deck. Each of these cards symbolizes some universal aspect of human experience. They represent the archetypes - consistent, directing patterns of influence that are an inherent part of human nature.

Each card in the major arcana has a name and number. Some names convey a card's meaning directly, such as Strength, Justice and Temperance. Other cards are individuals who personify a particular approach to life, such as the Magician or the Hermit. There are also cards with astronomical names, such as the Star, Sun and Moon. They represent the elusive forces associated with these heavenly bodies.

The major arcana cards are special because they draw out deep and complex reactions. The images on the Rider-Waite deck are evocative because they combine esoteric symbolism with recognizable figures and situations. The symbolism is subtle, but effective.

A major arcana card is always given extra weight in a reading. When one of these cards appears, you know the issues at stake are not mundane or temporary. They represent your most basic concerns - your major feelings and motivations. In later lessons, I show in more detail how you can recognize and interpret the themes of the major arcana in a reading.

The major arcana is often considered as a unit. Different schemes have been developed to show how the cards form patterns that cast light on the human condition. Numerology, astrology and other esoteric sciences often play a role in these schemes.

Many interpreters view the major arcana as showing the different stages on an individual's journey of inner growth - what some call the Fool's Journey. (See exercise 2.2.) In these systems, each card stands for some quality or experience that we must incorporate before we can realize our wholeness.

We all travel this road to self-actualization, though our trips more often involve detours, backups and restarts than smooth progression! Our specific paths are unique, but our milestones are universal. The 22 major arcana cards are markers on the path of inner development leading from earliest awareness (card 0) to integration and fulfillment (card 21).

The Fool's journey seems to move smoothly from one order of experience to the next, but our learning adventures are usually not so tidy. We make mistakes, skip lessons and fail to realize our potential. Sometimes we lack the courage and insight to discover our deepest levels. Some never feel the call of the Hermit to look inward or never experience the crisis of the Tower that might free them from their ego defenses.

Many times we try to overcome our difficulties, but fail repeatedly. The lesson of the Hanged Man - to let go and surrender to experience - is one that is particularly hard and may need to be faced over and over before it is fully incorporated.

Often we experience lessons out of order. A person may absorb the qualities of Strength early in life due to a difficult childhood, but only later develop the Chariot's mastery and control. Someone may overcome the attraction of the Devil's materialism through a life of seclusion, but then need to learn about relationships and sexuality - a lesson of the Lovers - at a later time.

The major arcana contains many levels and models of experience. These cards hold all the patterns of growth, whether they occur within one segment of a life or a whole life span. We could even say that an entire lifetime is really just one growth episode within the larger saga of our soul's development.

No matter what our pattern of self-discovery, the major arcana shows us that wholeness and fulfillment are our destiny. If we keep this promise as our polestar, we will eventually realize our true nature and gain the World.