Summer 2012 begins!

Surya the Sun (CBS)

Earth as a 121-megapixel snapshot from 22,369 miles up (Russian satellite Electro-L No. 1)

   
Amazing Earth!

(Mashable) We’ve seen Earth, but we’ve never seen it like this. Suomi NPP, NASA’s newest Earth-watching satellite, has taken a high-res image of the third planet from the Sun... And it’s available at a resolution of 8000×8000 pixels.
  
The World's Final Summer
Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

Not having been... once having been...

Notice that according to the calendar, the "end of the world" is a Friday night? People will party like it's 1999, except it'll be Year 0 - 1 (year zero minus one), final day, zero hour. Midnight will hit. People will hold their breath. And suddenly, with lots of warning, it will be December 22, 2012. The ancestral Maya will say, "It's what we've been trying to tell you! All the hubbub was nothing more than speculative calculations and interpretations by non-Mayans. After all, the Mayan Calendar has ended lots of times." And with that, people will sleep. And things will carry on. So with all that excitement in the offing, it's time to make the most of summer break. Climb a mountain, read a sutra, notice a nimitta. For as many arhats have figured out, "Not having been, they come to be; once having been, they cease." They? Phenomena, things, composite entities (animate and inanimate), even those closest to us -- the constituents of being (becoming). Everything is hurtling towards destruction. Is that not reason enough to strive for real safety, namely, nirvana?

• A very Buddhist summer
• Forests depend on large mammals 
• When Noam Chomsky wept
• Mila Kunis: I don't think I'm attractive

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Suu Kyi's Engaged Buddhism (audio)

NPR.org (Morning Edition), June 20, 2012
Burmese opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is getting an honorary doctorate from Oxford Wednesday. Last week, she formally accepted the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. As she tours Europe, Suu Kyi is being honored for her nonviolent political protest against a military junta that kept her under house arrest [and continues to operate as dictators of Burma] for most of the last 20 years. But her philosophy of civil disobedience might have to change to fit her new role as a politician back home.
  
  

• A Life Beyond Money
• Closer look at Daw Suu Kyi and ethnic turmoil
• Sonali Kolhatkar welcomed a thoughtful guest to explore what's really going on in Burma -- from new "freedoms" within an impoverished police state to its government-fomented turmoil between Buddhists and extremely marginalized non-Buddhist ethnic minorities like the Rohingyas. The audio is archived for 90 days (Uprising! Wednesday, June 20, 2012 8:00 am). 
• Aung San Suu Kyi finally gets honorary doctorate 
• Oxford to honor Suu Kyi after years of house arrest 
• Burma's Suu Kyi visits London, Oxford on UK tour 
• Burmese journalists win battles, but war not over 
• Suu Kyi walks on with "star-struck" Bono 
• PHOTOS: Bono's many brushes with greatness (AP) 
• Suu Kyi' bittersweet return to her alma mater Oxford

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Protecting Dalai Lama from chemicals, poisons

IndianExpress.com; Wisdom Quarterly

People mistake poison chemtrails for rare rainbows or "Buddha lights" (zhaxihuoma.net)

  

14th Dali Lama (AFP)

The Dalai Lama -- who has made Dharamsala, India, his home ever since he fled China decades ago -- is possibly the most protected VIP in the state of Himachal Pradesh. Now a new perceived threat has taken his security to levels never before seen. These measures have been ramped up in the weeks since the 76-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner [who recently met fellow laureate Aung San Suu Kyi for the first time] went public with a claim that Chinese agents may be plotting to poison him. Among the most significant of these new steps is the screening of the Dalai Lama’s food and medicines, while there is also a proposal to use chemical detectors on visitors. More

• Climbers dead on US's tallest mountain
• Human-Animal hybrids growing in UK labs 
• Site older than egyptian pyramids found in Wales
• Lights of Lake Erie: UFO footage (PHOTOS) 
• 3 reasons young Americans are giving up on God
• AUDIO: Mindfulness grows in popularity, profits
• Humanity (officially) escapes solar system
• Taft's Magic Tree 

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Brains are cool! (Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor)

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor (drjilltaylor.com); Wisdom Quarterly

Dr. Jill "Brain Eye to Eye" (Kip May)

The Brain Extravaganza! was launched in Bloomington, Indiana, in April 2012. Brains, brains, brains! Big beautiful anatomically correct brains with 12 pairs of cranial nerves and all the gyri and sulci one could ever want.

  

There are 22 enormous fiberglass brains (5 feet long, 5 feet high, and 4 feet wide) in the hands of the artists who painted/decorated them for the extravaganza. This thrills Dr. Jill's heart, she explains.

   

Every brain will have a sign attached. On the sign will read five facts about the brain and a special question. Download a really cool mobile app at jbtbrains.org to paint your own brain. Then compare it to other brains, upload the image to Facebook [so the government can get a copy for your file], and talk brains, brains, brains. "YaY! Brains are cool!" the doctor and author of My Stroke of Insight insists. More

• Enlightenment by stroke
• On the heels of her viral sensation TED Talk, Harvard neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor wrote My Stroke of Insight. She was interviewed by Teri Gross on "Fresh Air."
• Hemorrhaging Nirvana
• Top 10 quirky facts about mass-produced food
• PHOTOS: Thai novices and the "Second King Monk" 

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Love Chemistry and finding The One

Spring is for spunk, but summer’s for lovin. Dr. John Sharp, Harvard psychiatrist and the author of The Emotional Calendar: Understanding Seasonal Influences and Milestones to Become Happier, More Fulfilled, and in Control of Your Life, claims it's all about timing. The time of year, that is. Summer months send us in search of The One. For advice on "seasonal dating, mating, and relating," Match.com asked Dr. Sharp for advice on each season’s potential.

Q: Are certain seasons better or worse for finding love?

A: Some people make the mistake of waiting for the most favorable of circumstances to embark on romance; others take whatever works in the moment. I am for the latter strategy -- enhanced, however, by “seasonal awareness.” More

The Chemistry of Love

When sparks fly between two people, we're quick to say they have "chemistry." Not everyone realizes that such couples literally have do have chemistry... More

• Liberal atheist and Conservative religious nut write book
• Enslaved in Asia to fish for American seafood eaters
• Thailand supplies a large portion of America's seafood. But Thailand's giant fishing fleet is chronically short of up to 60,000 fishermen per year, leaving captains scrambling to find crew. Human traffickers have stepped in, selling captives from Cambodia and Burma to the captains for a few hundred dollars each. Once at sea, the men often go months, or even years, without setting foot on land.
• Dream Job: What's it like to be an astronaut
• PHOTOS: Wild times in Thailand and Vietnam 
• Atheist Planet

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