"Discovered" pineapples?

Excerpt from a Wikipedia entry on pineapples:

The plant was brought to the Hawaiian islands by the Polynesians and formally discovered there by Captain Cook in 1778. Although it was discovered by Cook, John Kidwell is credited with the introduction of the pineapple industry in Hawaii.

I find the part I bolded ha-larious! If it was BROUGHT there by the Polynesians then how can it be DISCOVERED by Captain Cook?  My thought is if someone else brought it there, then it really can't be discovered <--- just sayin...

A beautiful sound....

One of the most beautiful sounds to me, is the deep rhythmic sound of human breath. That breath means chance, opportunity, growth and most importantly, life!

That simple sound means everything!

111

Chinese numerology and Feng Shui for 2011, Check this out:, This year we are going to experience four unusual dates: 1/1/11, 1/11/11, 11/1/11, 11/11/11, and that's not all;, Take the last two digits of the year you were born and the age you will be this year and the result will add up to 111 for everyone!!!! This is the year of MONEY., Also, this year, October will have 5 Sundays, 5 Mondays & 5 Saturdays. This happens only once every 823 years. These particular years are known as Moneybag years., The proverb goes that if you send this to eight good friends, money will appear in the next four days, as is explained in the Chinese feng shui., Those who don't continue the chain, won't receive It's a mystery, but it's worth a try. Good luck to you.

Stones...

You can either throw STONES, complain about them, stumble on them, climb over them or build with them.

Which one will you pick?  For that matter, which one will *I* pick?

Divine Creation

Over the years, different ideas and beliefs have evolved among different sections of the world population. Some of the more popular Christian beliefs include the idea that the Universe is God’s work, that man was created by God and woman from Adam’s rib. On the other hand, Science puts forth the idea that all life forms including man evolved from a single sludge. When we put together the two conflicting theories, we come up with Metaphysics.

At the very beginning, there was only one entity which has been given several names over thousands of years by spiritual thinkers. ‘The All’, the Divine, the Goddess, God and ‘the Everything’ are just some of the names that are coined all pointing to the same essence or energy that caused the Universe to be created by causing its energy to expand in the shape of physical mass.

It is next to impossible to state with any certainty the period which was needed by the Great Spirit or the Consciousness to make this happen. Whether it happened in the fraction of a second or in tens of millions of years, what can be said with assurance is that the occurrence of this event is still retained by mankind as a whole in their memory.

Pleased at what the Divine had created by expanding itself, it decided to go further and expand the initially created mass from within itself to outside in all directions, and this event is often referred to as by modern scientists as ‘the Big Bang’. It is precisely at this point that mere faith and hard science converge beautifully. This convergence only goes on to solidify the claim that Metaphysics makes by stating that religion and science are just the same.

Once the Universe was created as a result of ‘the Big Bang’ life was created on different planets, starting an evolutionary process that continues to this day. Once the ball was set rolling, it was time for the spiritual evolution which could never have happened if it were not for the ‘touch of the Divine hand’ or the ‘Divine Intervention’.

We see God in everything, because the Universe and those who live in it were created from a miniscule part of the Divine. Hence, individuals like the readers of this article cannot claim to be God themselves, but when we take a step back and look, we see a part of God or the Divine. This forces us to conclude that all life forms especially humans are interconnected with each other because out origin is the same.

The Divine Universe in which we reside today continues to evolve just like it nurtured life from the very first day. As different groups or civilizations went through different evolutionary stages, some reached advanced stages and became more enlightened as compared to others. This was all part of the ‘Grand’ plan of the Divine power that created the Universe and life itself. Creation of Soul Groups or the Celestial Star was all carried out by the Divine Hand. And it was Divine Intervention when these Soul Groups were

guided to impart their knowledge with those groups that were less evolved or less enlightened.

Confluences and their combined confluence

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption]

Looking back at the first decades of the third millennium, humans will see them as the era of the Great Transition, an unexpected result brought to us by a confluence of many confluences.

Writing about an omni-present, planet-scale sensor network that will dwarf the Internet by many orders of magnitude, and its implications for biological and computing ecologies, John Seely Brown mentioned:

“The transformational force underlying this change is the confluence of recent rapid technological advances such as micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) sensors and actuators, wireless and mobile networking, and low-power embedded microprocessors… When the sensor grid becomes ubiquitous it becomes like an enormous digital retina stretched over the surface of the planet.”

The idea of a planet-scale sensor network evokes an orbital view of not only the confluence of technological developments that make it possible but also, the other confluences that such network contributes to and mingles with. For example, the confluence of shifts from authority to authenticity as driver of social organization, from scarcity to wide availability of knowledge, and from groupware to massively distributed social media that link up mega-millions of minds.

“Let's add intelligent browsers to this vast sensing system that lets scientists, government regulators, or environmental advocates use the internet to ask questions never before imaginable.”

When we’ll use such browsers for navigating on the ocean of data obtained from networked indicators of social well-being, collective moods, diseases in the global social body, and challenges to collective intelligence and wisdom, then we’ll have made a decisive step towards the bulk of humankind joining in a self-aware meta-being.

Risk and mistakes...

Risk:
“You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you. If you don't have that kind of feeling for what it is you are doing, you'll stop at the first giant hurdle.”


Mistakes:
"The man who makes no mistakes
does not usually make anything.”
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="220" caption="Edward J Phelps"][/caption]
~Edward J. Phelps

"Mistakes are a fact of life.
It is the response to error that counts."
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Nikki Giovanni"][/caption]
~Nikki Giovanni

"The greatest mistake a man can ever make
is to be afraid of making one."
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="240" caption="Elbert Hubbard"][/caption]
~Elbert Hubbard

(Thanks Ace)

What DOES god need?

Here is a bit of interesting fodder I read a bit ago. This text doesn't questions whether there IS a God, but rather the sustenance of God.

*************************************************

“Question: Why would you tell us to follow God’s Law, to obey your wishes, and then not tell us what you really want?

God:

Because there is nothing that I do want. And this is what you cannot understand or refuse to accept.

There is nothing God wants or needs.

God demands nothing, commands nothing, requires nothing, compels nothing. Teach this in your seminaries and your madrasas.

God neither orders nor requests, insists nor expects anything. Tell this to your young.

I am the Author of Everything. I am the creator and the Created. There is nothing that is, that I am not. I have no need to give orders to anyone.

To whom would I give orders? There is no one to command but Me. I am the All in All. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And whom would I punish were my orders not kept? Would I use my right hand to slap my left? Would I bite my nose to spite my face?

Your teachers and doctors of law, your priests and your ulamas, tell you that God is to be feared, for He is a vengeful God. You are to live in fear of God’s wrath, they say. You are to tremble in His presence. Your whole life you are to fear the terrible judgment of the Lord. For God is “just,” you are told. And God knows, you will be in trouble when you confront the terrible justice of the Lord. You are, therefore, to be obedient to God’s commands. Or else!

Most of you, therefore, spend much of your adult lives searching for the “right way” to worship God, to obey God, to serve God. The irony of all this is that I do not want your worship, I do not need your obedience, and it is not necessary to serve me.

These behaviors are the behaviors historically demanded of their subjects by monarchs–egomaniacal, insecure, tyrannical monarchs at that. They are not Godly demands in any sense, and it seems remarkable that the world hasn’t by now concluded that the demands are counterfeit, having nothing to do with the needs of Deity.

Deity has no needs. All That Is, is exactly that: all that is. It therefore wants, or lacks, nothing—by definition.

If you choose to believe in a God who somehow needs something—and has such hurt feelings if He doesn’t get it that He punishes those from who He expected to receive it—then you choose to believe in a God much smaller than I. You truly are Children of a lesser God.”

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="250" caption="Neal Donald Walsh"][/caption]

Source: The New Revelations – A Conversation with God by Neale Donald Walsch pg.116

Float your ship...

A ship is safe in harbour, but that's not what ships are for."

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="178" caption="William Shedd"][/caption]

~ William Shedd

(Thanks for this AI)

The Brink of Disaster

We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Thomas Merton"][/caption]


~Thomas Merton

Be grateful

Feeling grateful towards someone or something in your life actually attracts more of the things that you appreciate and value into your life.