Most disappointing:

UK

1 Stonehenge

2 Angel of the North, Gateshead

3 Blackpool Tower

4 Land's End, Cornwall

5 Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain, London

6 The London Eye

7 Brighton Pier

8 Buckingham Palace

9 White Cliffs of Dover

10 Big Ben

Overseas

1 The Eiffel Tower, Paris

2 Mona Lisa at the Louvre, Paris

3 Times Square, New York

4 Las Ramblas, Barcelona

5 Statue of Liberty, New York

6 Spanish Steps, Rome

7 The White House, Washington DC

8 The Pyramids, Egypt

9 The Brandenburg Gate, Berlin

10 Leaning Tower of Pisa

But in their defense they do present an awesome set of photographs from the banks of the River Ganges, which is truly a beauty!

8 / 8

Bathers at the city of Varanisi, on the river's banks. Hindus believe that bathing in the river will absolve sins. Photograph: Toby Sinclair/BBC

Everyone seeks peace and harmony, because these are what we lack in our lives. From time to time we all experience agitation, irritation, disharmony, suffering; and when one suffers from agitation, one does not keep this misery limited to oneself. One keeps distributing it to others as well. The agitation permeates the atmosphere around the miserable person. Everyone who comes into contact with him also becomes irritated, agitated. Certainly this is not the proper way to live.

One ought to live at peace with oneself, and at peace with all others. After all, a human being is a social being. He has to live in society--to live and deal with others. How are we to live peacefully? How are we to remain harmonious with ourselves, and to maintain peace and harmony around us, so that others can also live peacefully and harmoniously?

One is agitated. To come out of the agitation, one has to know the basic reason for it, the cause of the suffering. If one investigates the problem, it will become clear that whenever one starts generating any negativity or defilement in the mind, one is bound to become agitated. A negativity in the mind, a mental defilement or impurity, cannot exist with peace and harmony.

How does one start generating negativity? Again, by investigating, it becomes clear. I become very unhappy when I find someone behaving in a way which I don't like, when I find something happening which I don't like. Unwanted things happen and I create tension within myself. Wanted things do not happen, some obstacles come in the way, and again I create tension within myself; I start tying knots within myself. And throughout life, unwanted things keep on happening, wanted things may or may not happen, and this process or reaction, of tying knots--Gordian knots--makes the entire mental and physical structure so tense, so full of negativity, that life becomes miserable.

Now one way to solve the problem is to arrange that nothing unwanted happens in my life and that everything keeps on happening exactly as I desire. i must develop such power, or somebody else must have the power and must come to my aid when I request him, that unwanted things do not happen and that everything I want happens. But this is not possible. There is no one in the world whose desires are always fulfilled, in whose life everything happens according to his wishes, without anything unwanted happening. Things keep on occurring that are contrary to our desires and wishes. So the question arises, how am I not to react blindly in the face of these things which I don't like? How not to create tension? How to remain peaceful and harmonious?

More...

Prequel: Near Ecstatic Communion [Jesus:] Wilt thou refuse to do this for me? ... You have become my Spouse for my love - you have come to India for Me. The thirst you had for souls brought you so far - Are you afraid to take one more step for Your Spouse - for me - for souls? Is your generosity grown cold? Am I a second to you?
[Teresa:] Jesus, my own Jesus - I am only Thine - I am so stupid - I do not know what to say but do with me whatever You wish - as You wish - as long as you wish. [But] why can't I be a perfect Loreto Nun - here - why can't I be like everybody else.
[Jesus:] I want Indian Nuns, Missionaries of Charity, who would be my fire of love amongst the poor, the sick, the dying and the little children ... You are I know the most incapable person - weak and sinful but just because you are that - I want to use You for My glory. Wilt thou refuse?

The Onset

Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love - and now become as the most hated one - the one - You have thrown away as unwanted - unloved. I call, I cling, I want - and there is no One to answer - no One on Whom I can cling - no, No One. - Alone ... Where is my Faith - even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness - My God - how painful is this unknown pain - I have no Faith - I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart - & make me suffer untold agony.

So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them - because of the blasphemy - If there be God - please forgive me - When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven - there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. - I am told God loves me - and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?
- addressed to Jesus, at the suggestion of a confessor, undated

Explanations Tell me, Father, why is there so much pain and darkness in my soul?

Integration I can't express in words - the gratitude I owe you for your kindness to me - for the first time in ... years - I have come to love the darkness - for I believe now that it is part of a very, very small part of Jesus' darkness & pain on earth. You have taught me to accept it [as] a 'spiritual side of your work' as you wrote - Today really I felt a deep joy - that Jesus can't go anymore through the agony - but that He wants to go through it in me.

A New Ministry

If this brings You glory - if souls are brought to you - with joy I accept all to the end of my life.
- to Jesus, undated

Out of your mind, not out of your body

Aug 23rd 2007
From The Economist print edition

Out-of-body experiences can now be created at will. Studying them sheds light on the nature of consciousness

Illustration by Stephen Jeffrey

“I HOPE to convince you that the time has come to take up consciousness as a strictly biological problem.” So rang out the opening address at the 1902 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). However Charles Sedgwick Minot, the anatomist who said those words, jumped the gun. Consciousness is still an enigma. That it is created within the brain, scientists agree. That it is biology's most intellectually glamorous problem, they also concur. But what it is and how to find it remain unclear. Which is why, despite Minot's aspiration, its study has remained fodder for the rambling final chapters of cognitive-science textbooks and those at the dusky end of distinguished scientific careers. Few have dared take it on without a tenured position under their belts and a Nobel-prize medal around their necks.

Recently, however, two youngish biologists without Nobel prizes have had a go. Working independently, Henrik Ehrsson of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and Olaf Blanke of Geneva University Hospital have been making inquiries into the notion of the bodily self—an important part of conscious experience.

A sense of self is what makes a person distinct from his environment and from other people in it. It is also the thing upon which more complex layers of consciousness appear to rest. Dr Ehrsson and Dr Blanke try to divorce this perceived self from the perceiver's body—in other words to create that phenomenon so beloved of mystics, an out-of-body experience. And in two papers published in this week's edition of Science, the AAAS's house journal, they report their latest results.

Reality is an illusion

The reason for this posting is also because Sainiks have attached the Outlook office for this posting.

Bal Thackeray  
This former cartoonist has reduced democratic politics to a poor caricature of what it was supposed to be—in style, in substance, and even rhetoric. He built his political following by demonising 'the other'. The South Indian in Bombay was his initial object of hate, later it became the Muslim. His speeches and articles following the demolition of the Babri Masjid sparked the ghastly 1992 Mumbai riots. His mindset is best revealed through these words of admiration for Hitler: "He did very cruel and ugly things. But he was an artist, I love him. He had the power to carry the whole nation, the mob with him. You have to think what magic he had. He was a miracle."

Updates: Outlook Under Attack

Act I

• Celia: Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.
  Rosalind: I would we could do so; for her benefits are mightily misplaced: and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women.
  Celia: 'Tis true; for those that she makes fair, she scarce makes honest; and those that she makes honest, she makes very ill-favouredly.
  Rosalind: Nay; now thou goest from Fortune's office to Nature's: Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of Nature.
  Celia: No? When Nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by Fortune fall into the fire? — Though Nature hath given us wit to flout at Fortune, hath not Fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument?
  • Scene ii

• How now, wit! whither wander you?
  • Celia, scene ii

• Hereafter, in a better world than this,
  I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.
  • Le Beau scene iii

 Act II

• Sweet are the uses of adversity,
  Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
  Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
  And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
  Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
  Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
  • Duke Senior, scene i

• If thou remember’st not the slightest folly
  That ever love did make thee run into,
  Thou hast not lov’d.
  • Silvius, scene iv

• Live a little; comfort a little; cheer thyself a little.
  • Orlando, scene vi

• I am ambitious for a motley coat.
  • Jaques, scene vii

• All the world's a stage,
  And all the men and women merely players:
  They have their exits and their entrances;
  And one man in his time plays many parts.
  • Jaques, scene vii

• Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
  Thou art not so unkind
  As man's ingratitude.
  • Amiens, scene vii

Act IV

• Can one desire too much of a good thing?
  • Rosalind, scene i

Act V

• The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
  • Touchstone, scene i

• Your If is the only peace-maker; much virtue in If.
  • Touchstone, scene iv

Enough Already, Rosalind, Let the Kooks Talk

Laurie Sparham/HBO

Bryce Dallas Howard, right, plays Rosalind, and Romola Garai is Celia, in Kenneth Branagh’s latest Shakespearean film, on HBO tonight.

Rosalind, the droll heroine of “As You Like It,” doesn’t thrill Kenneth Branagh. Mr. Branagh maintains that Rosalind — the character who Harold Bloom has argued is the first modern lover in all of literature — talks too much."Mr. Branagh has set his “As You Like It” in 19th-century Japan, among British and other profiteers who have shown up to take advantage of its open ports (or so a prefatory card explains). The use of tatami mats and rice-paper screens allows for surprising, minimalist shapes, as in the scene when Celia and Rosalind lie together discussing their woes. The modernist décor sets off their Victorian costumes, and it’s a lovely collision."

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Her involvement with India is quite substantial. Nussbaum is the author of The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future published recently by the Harvard University Press.

The book seeks to point out to Americans that while America is focused on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, democracy has been under siege from religious extremists in another part of the world.

Throughout the book, Nussbaum challenges the vision of those who want to create a homogeneous India, and she bemoans the threat to the legacies of Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharal Nehru.

The author of a new book on religious freedom in India recently spoke to Rediff India Abroad Managing Editor (Features) Arthur J Pais.

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This poem starts off being political, historical but leaves you off with an abstract image of something peaceful yet fleeting.

Get Back to Where You Once Belonged

If you practice, the New Age guru said,
you can learn how to switch off synapses
to the amygdala and hippocampus,
open a door to the womb, even run
barefoot through the constellations!

Fidgeting in the back row,
I wondered if I could see the sun
on July 6,1954,
jimmy my eyelids in the maternity ward,
the moon sleepwalk with its lunch box
from a Siberian missile silo, Nixon
blow out candles on his party's cake.

Could I worm my way into the eye
of Pocahontas Boy at Roosevelt Raceway,
or was I doomed to enter the red speck
on the trout Eisenhower caught
during his Colorado vacation,
the wound on the French soldier
floating down the Mekong River?

I followed the guru's orders,
let my breaths seep slower
and slower from my nose.

When the spotlights dimmed
and the stage grew vast
and dark as at the beginning,
all I saw was a firefly
tap out a coded love song,
then bow and vanish behind a curtain.

Henry Hart
Denver Quarterly
Volume 40, Number 4 / 2006

— PHOTO: PTI

BEYOND BORDERS: China’s leading Bharatnatyam dancer, Jin Shan Shan, with her daughter Jessie in Beijing, where Jin has opened an Indian dance school.

In Search of Khan

AmericanWay Magazine, June 15, 2007

He’s been dead for almost 800 years, but the mystery surrounding the elusive tomb — and treasures — of Genghis Khan is as current as ever.

By Charles Runnette. Illustrations by Kako.

http://www.americanwaymag.com/tabid/2855/tabidext/3053/default.aspx

For those who know him only as a character in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the real Genghis Khan (known to the Mongols as Chinggis Khan) is the Asian-history equivalent of Napoleon or Alexander the Great.

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were all about Genghis and his descendants, the Great Khans. At its height, the Mongol empire stretched from modern-day Korea to Poland and from Iraq to Vietnam. By the end of the 1200s, Genghis’s sons and ­grandsons—including Marco Polo’s pal Kubilai—had amassed the largest contiguous land empire in world history. It was more than twice the size of the Roman Empire and more than four times the size of Alexander the Great’s.

So, considering that Genghis Khan has been dead for almost 800 years and that his empire is long gone, why does anyone care about him anymore? The obvious answer of “historical significance” aside, most of the fascination surrounding him has to do with his secret burial site (after all, who doesn’t love a mystery?) and one juicy word:—treasure.

During their reign, the Khans pillaged the wealthiest cities of their era, including a string of shimmering gilded citadels along the legendary Silk Road: Samarkand, Bukhara, and Tashkent. And while much of the plunder was undoubtedly used to maintain the vast empire and to pay off debts, scholars know that some of the priceless objects Genghis was accused of looting in his lifetime of conquest did indeed make it back to Mongolia. Even though much was given away, it is believed that he may very well have collected a stunning treasure, one unrivaled in history—and taken some of it with him to the grave.

But finding the final resting spot of this fearsome conqueror was never going to be easy, especially since he went to great lengths to make sure his grave was undisturbed. According to Chinese texts, Genghis issued detailed orders to his trusted generals instructing them to make certain that his tomb remain hidden for all time. Legend goes that when Genghis’s cortege brought his corpse back to Mongolia from the Chinese region where he had died in battle (or in bed), every living creature they encountered was killed. And, just as pirates dispose of those who help to bury their treasure, the generals slaughtered the people who dug Genghis’s tomb and buried them in a nearby mass grave.

Imagine the history world’s surprise, then, when in August 2001, a group of American and Mongolian entrepreneurs and academics calling themselves the Genghis Khan Expedition claimed that they had zeroed in on the burial spot of Mongolia’s founding father. Was it possible that one of the world’s greatest mysteries was about to be solved? Answer: not ­really. Or at least a highly probable not really. But, being the intrepid reporter and archaeology buff that I am, I decided to drop everything and head out to see this discovery for myself.

MONGOLIA SHOCKS first-time visitors, and not just because things like the local drink (a beverage traditionally made with fermented mare’s milk, called kumis) are slightly less than appetizing, but because the whole experience feels a lot like an interplanetary journey — to planet Genghis. Imagine combining George Washington with Justin Timberlake. Genghis is that ubiquitous, and that revered.

Less than two weeks after the news of the discovery broke in the United States, I flew from New York to Seoul and then hopped on a MIAT (Mongolian Airlines) flight to Ulaanbaater, the capital of Mongolia. I dropped my bags off at my room in the Chinggis Khaan Hotel and grabbed my equipment so I could rush across town to interview the local team members of the expedition. That’s when my initial shock at the fact that a group headed by a Chicago personal-injury lawyer and a professor of Islamic history at the University of Chicago had made this stunning discovery quickly turned into a panicky dread.

Sitting in an office that overlooked the parliament building and Sukhbaatar Square, Shagdar Bira, PhD, secretary general of the International Association for Mongol Studies and a member of the expedition, began to carefully backtrack from their find. “We are not sure this is his tomb,” he said, exchanging meaningful, furtive glances with his deputy, Tsogt-Ochir Ishdorj, PhD, department head at the Institute of History, Mongolian Academy of Sciences. I convinced myself to assume the best (being ever the optimist) and hoped that they were merely uncomfortable at the possibility of being perceived locally as modern-day grave robbers disturbing the resting place of the country’s revered leader. Against his wishes.

Within a day, I had talked Ishdorj into leading my English-speaking (yet mute) driver and me to their guarded site, deep in the countryside.

Mongolia is three times the size of California and has about 2.83 million people, about half of whom are concentrated in the capital, so a journey into the sparsely populated countryside can seem like a trip back in time. Many rural Mongolians still live the same way as those who lived during the time of the Khans. They learn to ride horses before they can walk; they dress in traditional deels (gowns); and they dwell as nomads, moving their circular gers (yurts) from valley to valley, just as their famous ancestor did. Genghis is omnipresent. Everyone knows the story of his life, death, and secret burial.

Two hundred miles has never felt as long as it did on that off-road venture through the Mongolian countryside in the back of a shock-absorber-free Russian jeep. After 14 kidney-crushing hours of bumping around the carpet-covered backseat, we pulled up to the middle of nowhere, and I suddenly saw it: the Oglogchiin wall surrounding the supposed grave site. I got goose bumps. Then my doubts came rushing back.—Popping a Tums to ease my pre-ulcerous condition, I wondered how previous searches could have possibly overlooked such a massive ancient wall circling a hillside.

AFTER SPENDING THE NIGHT in a yurt belonging to a local family, we trotted up the hill on horseback the next morning. Mongolians ride either on wooden saddles or with no saddle at all. I opted for the wooden saddle. For future reference: bad choice. I was jet-lagged, haggard from a lack of food, and more anxious than I’ve ever been — and the sharp pain from the saddle was not helping. Still, my wild anticipation started to block it all out as our horses tiptoed up the rocky path to the secret, (hopefully) sacred spot. I was so breathless that I had to remind myself to focus on getting some great shots in the morning light. Yes, I was finally about to see these tombs that had brought me from the other side of the globe, but I was also here to get a story.

I stopped picturing that Pulitzer and popped a few more Tums when we reached the top of the rock-strewn hill. After climbing down off his horse, Ishdorj began jumping up and down on a heavy stone slab that sounded as though it were resting above a hollowed-out section of ground. “Heyyy! It’s, you know, something in it. Over there is not,” he said to me, pointing down with an excited look. “It looks like natural rocks, but I think this is a tomb.” My heart sunk. Not the most convincing moment in archaeology. And definitely not the peek at a gauze-wrapped mummy lying among gold chalices that I had been hoping for.

IN THE FOLLOWING WEEKS, everyone I interviewed—from Mongolia’s prime ­minister to top Mongolian specialists at universities around the globe to Japanese archaeologists who had searched for Genghis’s tomb in the 1990s—poured buckets of cold water on the Genghis Khan Expedition’s claim. They each gave reasons why this “find” was nothing new and most likely not even close to true. Shimpei Kato, the chief Japanese archaeologist from a well-funded, high-tech expedition that had visited the Oglogchiin site in 1996, told me, “Inside, there was a relatively small Mongol-era grave, but, for sure, that was not Genghis’s tomb.” And Christopher Atwood, PhD, a respected Mongol from Indiana University, actually laughed when I asked him about it, saying, “The [Mongolian] government only approves digs if they know the teams are looking [for the tomb] in the wrong place.”

Thus the catch-22: No one—not even those in the government—is absolutely positive of the grave’s location. There is one spot that many suspect is the tomb’s location—a sacred mountain that’s in the Khentii district and off-limits to digging—but, in the end, it’s all speculation. Add to that fact the objections of Genghis’s descendants, the Mongols, to disturbing the remains of the founder of their nation, and anyone searching for his elusive tomb has some pretty big obstacles to overcome. Granted, the government realizes that extending the permits to dig has some economic benefit to them (e.g., bringing wealthy foreigners in, providing jobs for translators); however, the people of Mongolia seem overwhelmingly against disturbing their ancestor’s remains. They don’t want him dug up —for the same reason that people in Britain would object to anyone rummaging around the tombs of the English kings in Westminster Abbey. Genghis was their first king. He is the revered ancestor of a living people.

As a result, the American team’s initial 2001 announcement and a subsequent one in 2003 about unearthing skeletons dating to the thirteenth century (the time period in which many of the Khans lived) were greeted with a bit of nervousness. Then came the news, in 2004, that the returning Japanese-Mongolian team of bona fide archaeologists had discovered a site that they claimed was Khan’s palace—about 50 miles east of the Oglogchiin site—and the government felt the heat once again.

Since then, things have been quiet on the Khan front, but this summer, the race to be the next Heinrich Schliemann continues. And the good news for those looking for a different kind of vacation is that the American-Mongolian Genghis Khan group is currently enlisting the help of tourists. Over the course of the next five and a half months, through the adventure-travel company iExplore, the Genghis Khan Expedition is inviting in-shape globe-trotters to spend at least $4,295 (airfare not included) to take part in one of history’s last great treasure hunts.

  Who knows, you might just end up in a vast tomb, knee-deep in a pile of riches from all across Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. More likely, though, you will have one of the most memorable trips of your life and leave feeling the same way many Mongols (and I) do—rooting for Genghis to stay hidden, undisturbed. Just as he wanted.

Long Branch, New Jersey

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The city of Minnetonka has a convenient location with ready access to I-394, I-494 and other major highways, placing it within easy driving distance of downtown Minneapolis and the airport. Minnetonka has a diverse mix of homes and businesses, including the corporate headquarters for major local and national companies. The community's natural setting of woods, hills and wetlands are the backdrop to Minnetonka's network of parks and trails