In this TED talk, Dr. Dean Ornish briefly describes factors that can cause neurogenesis besides exercise and that includes chocolate, tea, blueberries, alcohol in moderation, stress management and cannabinoids. He also has a list of things which decrease brain cells, which surprisingly does not include too much web browsing.

MC writes about politics in schools and colleges in Kerala

Kerala has been witness to countless student agitations at the behest of their political masters. Violence and senseless destruction of public and private property worth crores occurs every time, and all that we have done is sympathize with them for their criminal acts. Each time we find some justification and excuse to pardon such acts, while blaming police excesses. It is the same senselessness that allows a banner like that in the picture in front of an old reputed institution, now successfully eroded of its reputation and quality. I wonder why the teachers and the principals of these schools and colleges are not ashamed to see that every morning. What is the message we are trying to send across to our children? Where do we put an end to it?

Sony Vellayani writes about the Coliform bacteria found in tap water in Kerala (via DesiPundit)

I am very much interested in finding out what Kerala Government does next. This is the government that banned Coke/Pepsi from Kerala based on an unscientific result published by an NGO. The experts have argued that if the same NGO sampled the water samples in and around the country that common people are using they could have found more deadly impurities. Now a study by a reputed institution in India has found that 99% of the tap water supplied by Kerala Government is polluted or has bacteria level greater than one mandated by WHO. Now there is a good chance that since the findings are against the state government they will question the intention of Malayala Manorama or other people involved rather than trying to solve the real issue at hand.

Ratheesh writes about the ban on plastic bags

Kerala government recently banned thin plastic bags in the state. However, the ban is only for bags with less than 30 microns (?) in thickness, as these are the bags that are not bio-degradable or recyclable. So, shopkeepers are selling their items in special plastic bags which have some sort of a sign (a seal from the bag manufacturers, for example) on the bags certifying that they are more than 30 microns thick. These bags are freely used by people and are dumped at any place of choice.

Without establishing a system and process for collection and recycling/disposal of all the plastic items (or any wastage for that matter), just enforcing a ban on certain plastic items may not be of much use, I am afraid.

See Also: Notes from Kerala

Two years back The New York Times began a subscription program called Times Select in which access to some parts of the online site was restricted to subscribers. Besides stopping this program, the newspaper is also giving free access to  the archives from 1987 to present.

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

“What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” Ms. Schiller said. [Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site]

This means that we can get our regular dose of Friedmanism for free from Tuesday.

When it comes to understanding the life of Jesus, one has to rely on the Gospels which were composed decades later. Considering that the Gospels, both the canonical and the heretic like the Gospel of Judas were written with the aim of glorifying Jesus, the bias in it would not be, let us say, minuscule.

The Gospels were not first hand accounts, but oral tradition written down much later and from the Gospels it cannot be decided what is historical and what is not, for the authors of Gospels were evangelists, not historians. Students of Israel’s history and early Christianity are warned not to confuse the events described in the Old Testament and New Testament as actual events.

Pope Benedict in his new book on Jesus of Nazareth claims that the tale of Jesus is not myth, but then suggests that since the Gospels  are divinely inspired, faith is required for understanding the text. There is no problem with such a statement coming from a religious leader writing a book for liturgy, but it looks odd in a book which claims to be about the historical Jesus. This has upset the New Testament scholars because the Pope asks for inner openness to understand the spiritual insights and the divinity of Jesus.

Fourth, Jesus did not understand himself to be God. According to Mark 10:18, when someone addressed him as “good teacher,” Jesus responded by insisting, “No one is good except God alone.” Whether this reflects Jesus or Mark or both (scholarly opinion is divided), such a statement cannot be twisted by theological exegesis to support a claim for Jesus’ divinity. Therefore, the pope does not deal with such passages, since they clearly contradict his fundamental thesis.

Were its author not the pope, this book would garner no other academic attention than to be cited as an embarrassing gaffe that would soon gather dust even on church bookshelves. But because it comes from the pen of the pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, and casts reason squarely before the juggernaut of faith, the intellectual scandal it represents must be denounced—if only on behalf of those Roman Catholics whose native honesty compels them to engage in historical-critical exegesis [AN EMBARRASSING MISREPRESENTATION via Forbidden Gospels]

The proto-Siva seal found in Harappa (shown on the left) was treated as one of the proofs that Hinduism had its roots in Indus Valley. Analysis of the seal has led to various contradictory theories about the origins of religion, but a 1987 paper says that the posture of the depicted character has been overlooked and new analysis reveals something interesting.

The body of the figure shown in the seal is naked, except for many bangles and what appear to be necklaces. He wears a peculiar headdress consisting of horns and a plant like object between them. This pattern was found in five seals and in one of them he is surrounded by an elephant, tiger, rhinoceros and a buffalo while beneath his stool are two deer’s which is also found in the representations of Buddha teaching his first sermon in the Deer Park in Varanasi.

The name proto-Siva was given by Sir John Marshall who led excavations that led to the discovery of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa in 1920s. Marshall thought that the protuberances on the sides were the second and third faces and  Siva is often depicted with three faces and is also known as Pasupati (The Lord of Beasts). From this Marshall concluded that Saivism has a history of five thousand years making it the longest living faith in the world.

While Marshall identified the image as Siva, others have suggested that it is Agni. This was countered by others who thought that the the horns on the head-dress are suggestive of the trident and fertility aspect of Siva. Other interpretations include

• figure depicted on the seal is neither three faced, nor human but is a combination of various animals 
• since the Indus religion was centered around the Mother Goddess cult, the figure on the seal is female.
• the figure is not Siva, but divine bull-man

While the head-dress, animals and other symbols depicted on the seal have been interpreted in various ways, Yan Dhyansky of University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the posture, which Marshall and few others called “yogic posture” has never been carefully examined. In his paper, The Indus Valley Origin of Yoga Practice, he suggests that Yoga was known and practiced by the people of Indus Valley civilization.

The person on the seal is seated with his legs drawn close to the body with two heels touching, which A L Basham calls, “a posture quite impossible for the average westerner”. This posture, has been identified by Yan as Mulabandhasana, which is difficult even for people who practice Yoga. (See this video and try it).  The same posture has been depicted on all five proto-Siva seals found disproving the theory that it was the work of an imaginative artist. Besides this other seals have been found with figures in other yoga postures suggesting that people in the Indus valley were the practitioners of Yoga.

• Let
  Your Blog Posts Marinate (4 Steps to Forming Great Ideas): Glen
  Stansberry gives four steps to create better blog entries
• Paul
  Graham’s guide to writing

  …expect 80% of the ideas in an
  essay to happen after you start writing it, and 50% of those you start with
  to be wrong; be confident enough to cut; have friends you trust read your
  stuff and tell you which bits are confusing or drag; don’t (always) make
  detailed outlines; mull ideas over for a few days before writing; carry a
  small notebook or scrap paper with you; start writing when you think of the
  first sentence…

• Booker
  prize winner Kiran Desai

  I work in the mornings and
  evenings. In the mornings, I am more clear-headed and focused. In the
  nights, it is my wild, dark imagination that is working. I also listen to
  Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and keep nibbling at my kababs. In the morning, I
  work on what I have written in the night, revise and revisit my
  characters.

• So
  you want to be a writer

  In good
  writing, he observed, “every sentence shall palpitate and thrill with the
  mere fascination of the syllables.” To achieve this effect, one must employ
  certain “rules of style.” He warned budding writers, for example, “not [to]
  habitually prop your sentences on crutches, such as Italics and exclamation
  points, but make them stand without aid; if they cannot emphasize
  themselves, these devices are commonly but a confession of
  helplessness.”

• A
  Guide to Becoming a Better Writer: 15 Practical Tips

  9. Revise. If you really crank out the text,
  and experiment, and just let things flow, you’ll need to go back over it.
  Yes, that means you. Many writers hate revising, because it seems like so
  much work when they’ve already done the writing. But if you want to be a
  good writer, you need to learn to revise. Because revision is where good
  writing really is. It separates the mediocre from the great. Go back over
  everything, looking not only for grammar and spelling mistakes, but for
  unnecessary words and awkward structures and confusing sentences. Aim for
  clarity, for strength, for freshness.

The area around the shore temple has changed a lot since I visited the place almost 15 years back. Now that it has been declared a World Heritage Site, the area around Narasimhavarman’s 7th century Shiva temple is beautifully maintained.

That was a question from the first Republican debate held in the Reagan Presidential Library in California. Among the 10 candidates, the people who raised their hands to say that they do not believe in evolution are Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback and Tom Tancredo (who?).

These people want to be the President of a county which  decoded the DNA, and the country which has the largest number of Nobel Prize winners. People in India and China, leaders of Tom Friedman’s flat world, would think this is one of those late night comedy sketches.

When you see the word, Christian Conservative in the website of any candidate, you should be scared.

A 2000-year-old aesthetically carved sculpture of dancing Yakshas has been excavated from a famous Buddhist site in the State’s Krishna district close to a National Highway that runs between Vijayawada and Hyderabad.
The fragmented sculpture on a stone slab measuring 15 x10 x5 cm had once adorned the roof of the Maha Stupa at Gummadi Durru in the district.
Giving details of the recent exploration at the site, he said that the sculpture depicts the Yakshas playing instruments and dancing.
“The garments and facial expressions of the Yakshas in the sculpture are akin to the Amaravathi school of Buddhist art,” he said.
The site was first discovered during the excavation made by East India Company during British Raj and has been unapproachable till recently as it was covered with thick bushes and shrubs.
After cutting the thick forest strip embracing a hillock at the site, ASI has taken up the excavation work for the conservation of the antiques, Das said.[Sculpture of dancing Yakshas excavated in Hyderabad]

In Hinduism besides the pantheon of main Gods, there are a large number of lesser ones like the snake-spirits (Nagas) and earth-spirits (yakshas). Of these the Yakshas associated with Kubera and are considered friendly, but those of the female gender, the Yakshis, would sometimes have you for dinner. Some Yakshas are romantic, like the one who convinces a cloud to take a message to his wife in Kalidasas’s Meghadūta, while some are quiz masters, like the one Yudhistira encountered near a lake.

From Hinduism, Buddhism too inherited the yakshas and they are the attendants of Vaiśravaṇa, a chief modeled like Kubera. One famous sculpture from the Mauryan era is that of the Didarganj Yaksi (pic). The stupa railings in Bharhut in Madhya Pradesh are carved with both yakshas and yakshis besides scenes from the Jataka tales.

See Also: Buddhist Art at Amaravati

Hindustan Times: ASI to carry out major excavations in Nalanda

According to Director (Exploration and Excavation) RS Fonia of ASI, “The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) gave us detailed satellite imagery of about 16 square kilometre area around the ancient site of Nalanda. Till date excavations have been carried out only in 1.5 sq km area.”

“The satellite data helped us to understand the topography and structural remains around Nalanda and this year during August-September ASI carried out initial explorations leading to the discovery of a number of mounds in villages of Baragaon, Begampur, Machhardiha, Juafardih, Rukministhan,

Paparnausa, Jagdishpur, Sarichak, Kul, Bhadari, Nanana, as also remains of ancient sculptures, gates, pillars, potsherds of Red ware of medieval period,” he said.

Fonia said, “Baragaon used to be part of the trade route to Nepal and Lhasa from eastern India to reach China and Central Asia.”

History of Nalanda goes back to the days of Mahavira and Buddha in the sixth century BC. It was the place of birth and nirvana of Sariputra,one of the most famous disciples of Buddha.

See Also: Reconstructing Nalanda,  Along Huen Tsang’s path, again