If we have seen the possibilities and pitfalls in Big Science given to us by the American model, we also notice its results in other places,—for example in Japan. Japan's first experience with high-level business and industrial development forms a good illustration to see how one can get trapped on the economic path when something alien enters into the system. Yoshiro Hoshino writes: “There is nothing worse than war for bringing about the destruction of nature, human beings, factories, housing, and transportation systems, and for causing starvation and sickness, the discharge of untreated factory wastes, and the destruction of farm lands. When environmental destruction is understood in its broadest and most fundamental sense, the original culprit is war.” America, after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, invaded Japan in another way. It looks as though the evil found another soil to grow and flourish in a vigorous manner. The present article Japan’s Second Defeat after the Second World War forms a chapter of my yet unpublished book Big Science and its Impact on Society....   more »

The poet Shelley, who immortalised the skylark, would have been saddened to know that threatened songbirds in Spain are losing their voice. A study has found Dupont’s lark, a relative of the skylark, is losing its singing range because numbers are falling. Biologists from the Donana National Park in Andalucia found that when male larks had fewer birds from which to learn new notes or ranges their repertoire decreased. The number of notes a male uses is vital in attracting females. Dupont’s lark, Chersophilus duponti, is found in Europe only in southern, central and north-east Spain and there are thought to be only 2,000 birds remaining as their natural habitat has been destroyed by man...    more »

On 29 March 2008, people around the world will switch off lights for one hour from 8-9 pm to show a stand against global warming...   more »

The fingerprints of man-made climate change are evident in seasonal timing changes for thousands of species on Earth, according to dozens of studies and last year’s authoritative report by the Nobel Prize-awarded international climate scientists. More than 30 scientists told The Associated Press how global warming is affecting plants and animals at springtime across the country, in almost every state. What is happening is so noticeable that scientists can track it from space. Satellites measuring when land turns green found that spring “green-up” is arriving eight hours earlier every year on average since 1982 in the northeastern United States...    more »

We need a functioning world governance structure that is not only participatory but trustworthy and effective at the same time, says Amin Maalouf: “Only through the eyes of the present can we see meanings in the past.” Excerpts of the interview that appears in the Hindu dated 27 March 2008....   more »

The former President of India, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, cited an example from the life of Nobel laureate Sir C.V. Raman to stress the dedication needed by teachers, especially in research institutions. The name of Raman was included in the first batch of Bharat Ratna winners, the highest civilian award given by the President of India. The then President, Rajendra Prasad, wrote to Raman inviting him to be the personal guest in the Rashtrapati Bhavan when Raman came to Delhi for the award ceremony. Raman wrote a polite letter, regretting his inability to go. He had a noble reason for his inability to attend the investiture ceremony. He explained to the President that he was guiding a PhD student and that thesis was positively due by the last day of January…   more »

A wetland park will be set up at Poyang Lake, the country’s largest freshwater lake, if a local government initiative is approved by central authority. The national wetland park, to be set up in the Poyang Lake in the eastern province of Jiangxi, may cover some 400 sq km, consisting of a core preservation zone, a buffer zone and a sightseeing area, according to the initial plan released at a working conference here on Wednesday…   more »

Sri Aurobindo’s Beyond the Silence is essentially free quantitative verse with a predominant dactylic movement. It is being presented here along with a painting by Huta Hindocha which illustrates the following lines of the poem:

One with the Eternal, live in his infinity,
Drowned in the Absolute, found in the Godhead,
Swan of the supreme and spaceless ether wandering winged through the universe,
Spirit immortal. ...   more »

Among the giants of the imaginative promotion of the ideas of interplanetary travel, the colonising by man of nearby planets and the urgent need for peaceful exploration of outer space, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who has died aged 90, was pre-eminent, because of his hard and accurate predictions of the detailed technologies of space flight and the use of near-Earth space for global communications. Yet, in spite of his deep seriousness, JB Priestley described him in the 1950s as the happiest writer he had ever known. Tallish, bespectacled, rather big-eared and thinning on top, Clarke tended to be described by friends as a beaming and highly articulate shambles of a chap, a man to whom convention meant very little. Yet his mind was like a razor. Unlike earlier writers on space travel, his imagination and creativity sprang, not from fantasy, but from sharp scientific and technical insight, unfettered by the arbitrary limitations of the perceptions of his time. His amazing career was possible largely because he was never, in any ordinary sense, quite a part of this world. Indeed, he chose to live in Sri Lanka, partly because it helped him neutralise the influence of western culture. As he approached 80, it seemed that he had done almost everything that was possible in a lifetime…    more »

The Hindu dated 24 February 2008 carries the following report from New York about the grave threat faced by a large number of languages in the world. Here we may also note a few relevant facts about the International Mother Language Day. Its history is as follows: “On 21 February 1952, corresponding to 8 Falgun 1359 in the Bangla calendar, a number of students campaigning for the recognition of Bangla as one of the state languages of Pakistan were killed when police fired upon them. At a public meeting on 21 March 1948, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the Governor general of Pakistan, declared that Urdu will be the only language for both West and East Pakistan. The people of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), whose main language is Bengali, started to protest against this. A student meeting on 21 February called for a province-wide strike. But the government invoked Section 144 on 20 February. The student community at a meeting on the morning of 21 February agreed to continue with their protest but not to break the law of Section 144. Even then the police opened fire and killed the students.”

The decision to observe 21st February as the International Mother Language Day was unanimously taken at the 30th General Conference of the UNESCO held on 17 November 1999. The details as how this was proposed can be accessed at 21st February as the International Mother Language Day. The second entry given below highlights these. Researchers say that many languages are dying. Randolph E Schmid reports in The Huffington Post, dated 18 September 2007, that languages embody the history and traditions of people. He is concerned that they are dying. I’ve put his report as the third item in the present posting.   more »

This is a beautiful essay which first appeared in Dawn Karachi (10 March 2008), with its extraordinary precision and accuracy. The author rightly recognizes four giants of European literature in Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe, but then he also omits Aeschylus and Sophocles, and Virgil and Milton. On being prodded by Amal Kiran, Sri Aurobindo put in three rows eleven of the world’s top poets. They are as follows: Homer-Shakespeare-Valmiki-Vyasa; Dante-Kalidasa-Aeschylus-Sophocles-Virgil-Milton; and in the third row solitary Goethe. When asked about Firdausi for his famous Shah Nameh, Sri Aurobindo declined to opine anything as he was not in a position to read it in the original. About Goethe he wrote: “Goethe goes much deeper than Shakespeare; he had an incomparably greater intellect than the English poet and sounded problems of life and thought Shakespeare had no means of approaching even. But he was certainly not a greater poet… Goethe was a poet by choice.” He was indeed “the last true polymath to walk the earth,” as George Eliot says. Here is the Dawn-essay.   more »

We have here at the sciy an article Appreciating Arabic Science that predates Newton written by Jim Al-Khalili. Speaking of an early Muslim biologist it says the following: “…what surprises many even more is that a ninth-century Iraqi zoologist by the name of al-Jahith developed a rudimentary theory of natural selection a thousand years before Darwin. In his Book of Animals, Jahith speculates on how environmental factors can affect the characteristics of species, forcing them to adapt and then pass on those new traits to future generations.” Here I am presenting, by way of introduction, the work of this scientist belonging to the early Islamic period, the Dawn of its Golden Age. It is being reproduced from my book Narad’s Arrival at Madra in which there is a chapter dealing with scientific theories of evolution. The chapter has relevance in the book, even as the sage in his song presents the occult-spiritual aspects of the long story of evolution; he is on his way from his heavenly abode in Paradise to king Aswapati’s palace in Madra and is absorbed in meditative thought of the subject. I am also including two other connected pieces which may be relevant here. ...   more »

The mystic poetry of the Pondicherry school continues to be neglected, partly because of the media betrayal and chiefly of the lack of seriousness with regard to Sri Aurobindo's theory and practice of poetry. About eight decades ago, the theory of mantric poetry was explained first in the Arya, a little known journal to us. The theory was both revivalist and futuristic. To sum up Sri Aurobindo’s arguments: poetry has been deliberately incantatory in the Vedic age; poetry of incantation was returning through kavis like Whitman, Tagore and Carpenter, poetry will be more deliberately mantric in the future. Now some of us have read that, but we have forgotten to check whether the prophecy is turning true or not. Sri Aurobindo himself took the initiative, writing in that line, making poets in that line, correcting and clarifying the deliberate efforts of his poet-disciples like KD Sethna (Amal Kiran), Nirodbaran, JA Chadwick (Arjava), Dilip Kumar Roy, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, and others. He has repeatedly told us that beautiful poetry is beautiful poetry even if it is in the current style and that a new experience needs a new style of expression. I have chosen four living* poets from this school to place them before you, with my observation, and to ask for your opinion about them. The first two, KD Sethna and Nirodbaran, wrote poetry under the direct guidance of Sri Aurobindo. While RY Deshpande and Themis, the mystic poets of the 80s and 90s, have been continuing the tradition under the eyes of Sethna and Nirodbaran.   more »

The twin village Hanehalli-Bankikodla in North Kanara, Karnatak, South India, together form a community of people coming from different castes and religions. Literature, folk art, spiritual lore, music and sports keep thriving here. Just to the north of this village, the Gangavali River joins the Arabian Sea. The town of Gokarna, just to the south, is known as Kashi of the South and is a place of pilgrimage for Hindus. The surrounding Sahyadri Mountains hug the Arabian sea; the open fields provide lot of recreational opportunities to the locals. It has creeks, and shallow ponds, and bridges vulnerable to rainy season. For religious or spiritual people, there are lots of temples, Churches and Masjids to worship in.

It is a place rich in culture and education. During the British rule in India, the Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmins built the Anandrashram High School (1943) for their children, but a majority of them eventually moved out to Mumbai. The younger population is now moving out of village, they preparing for the careers of their choices. As the younger generations are moving out, the older generations, especially the retired communities, have started coming back to the village.

Anandashram High School is one of the oldest schools in Karwar, The Jai Hind High School Ankola and the Gibbs High School, Kumta, are other two schools. It has continued to do great work among weaker sections of the society. To keep the lamp of knowledge burning, the then leaders of Chitrapur Saraswats established the Rural Education Society (RES) and took the task of spreading education to the deserved here and in the surrounding villages. From then on, the School has been making steady progress in its curricular and co-curricular activities; in fact, it has given to society innumerable scholars. …   more »

About Keats Sri Aurobindo writes in The Future Poetry as follows: “Keats is the first entire artist in word and rhythm in English poetry,—not grandiose, classical and derived like Milton, but direct and original in his artistry, he begins a new era.” ...   more »

They take multiple pictures of the same scene under different exposures and combine them for detail. ...

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A new analysis of satellite images suggests that the ancient Maya used certain areas for agriculture, inducing drought that caused the downfall of the civilisation. The image, taken by the commercial satellite IKONOS, also reveals yellow discolorations in the dense forest canopy—probable sites of ancient Maya buildings. …   more »