In the center of a stone circle,
Lies the legendary sunstone.
Oneness and perfection symbolized,
I hold it up to the heavens.
Like my viking ancestors,
It guides me on my way home,
And inspires this ancient rhythm of stone!
http://www.nberg.net/music/sunstone-Nora Berg-copyright2008.mp3
Dr. Gary Froyland
University of New South Wales
September 8, 2008
New studies of the Southern Ocean are revealing previously unknown features of giant spinning eddies that have a profound influence on marine life and on the world’s climate.
These massive swirling structures – the largest are known as gyres - can be thousands of kilometres across and can extend down as deep as 500 metres or more, a research team led by a UNSW mathematician, Dr Gary Froyland, has shown in the latest study published in Physical Review Letters.
“The water in the gyres does not mix well with the rest of the ocean, so for long periods these gyres can trap pollutants, nutrients, drifting plants and animals, and become physical barriers that divert even major ocean currents,” Dr Froyland says.
“In effect, they provide a kind of skeleton for global ocean flows. We’re only just beginning to get a grip on understanding their size, scale and functions, but we are sure that they have a major effect on marine biology and on the way that heat and carbon are distributed around the planet by the oceans.”
One of the best known large-scale gyres in the world’s oceans is that associated with the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, notes fellow researcher Professor Matthew England, co-director of the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre.
“This current pumps massive amounts of heat towards Europe, warming the atmosphere and giving the region a relatively mild climate: to see how important that is, you only have to compare Portugal’s climate to that of Nova Scotia, in Canada, which as roughly the same latitude,” says Professor England.
“After releasing heat to the atmosphere the waters re-circulate toward the equator, where they regain heat and rejoin the flow into the Gulf Stream. In this way the ocean’s gyres play a fundamental role in pumping heat poleward, and cooler waters back to the tropics. This moderates the planet’s extremes in climate in a profound way, reducing the equator-to-pole temperature gradients that would otherwise persist on an ocean-free planet.”
The East Australia Current has a similar, although more modest, impact on local climate on the Australia’s east coast. Eddies also regulate biologically important properties such as nutrient upwelling to the surface. They are also fundamental in mixing heat across the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.
The Australian team is working with German colleagues at the University of Paderborn and the Technical University of Dresden. The team discovered last year that these gyres can escape detection by traditional observational methods, which concentrate on scrutinising average water flow or sea surface height.
Instead of monitoring flow in the ocean point by point, the team applied a mathematical technique known as Lagrangian analysis, which allowed them to take into account all possible current movements simultaneously and pick out the least intensive mixing regions. Using computer simulations, they found that this technique clearly identified where gyres and eddies trap drifting surface material in the seas near Antarctica.
The work is presently being extended to assess how the three-dimensional flow in the gyres extends deep down into the ocean. This will reveal their potential to influence climate and marine life, Dr Froyland says.
As I get older I appreciate silence more and more. To escape the noises of our culture brings me peace and contentment. I hope my search for silence will save my ears so I will have many years ahead of me for music production activities! 
I found an article in Common Ground Magazine (August 2008) that expresses silence in a wonderful, transforming manner. I repost it here and the original posting is found at the following web page:
http://www.commonground.ca/iss/205/cg205_gwen.shtml
The language of silence
Common Ground Magazine - UNIVERSE WITHIN by Gwen Randall-Young
More than ever before, people seem to be searching for the way to “be” in this world. The power of the internet allows for large shifts in human consciousness, as millions of people are exposed to the same ideas and perspectives at the same time.
While the internet has certainly sped things up, groups of people subscribing to the same philosophy is not new. Have you noticed, though, that every couple of years a new path seems to enchant the masses? It seems a true shift in consciousness will occur. Within a couple of years or even months, however, that awareness seems to fade and something new comes along, with the hope that maybe this will be the answer.
Humans have been seeking for a long time and if there was an answer out there, we would have found it by now. It is the thinking mind that tries to figure it all out. The answers, however, are not “out there” and it is not the thinking mind that would lead us to them. The thinking mind rearranges ideas, which are the products of our own minds or the minds of others. It is basically our word processing program and it has limitations – the major one being language itself.
Think of the vastness of the universe and picture a tiny blue planet somewhere in the midst of it all. Humans have developed a way to communicate with each other and even speculate about things beyond our little world. Yet we no more possess the language to talk meaningfully about things “beyond the beyond” any more than ants can talk about the country they live in, much less the cosmos. Answers will not come from words, no matter how we rearrange them.
There is, however, another way of knowing. Because everything in our universe is connected, a part of us can tune in to all that is. It is a little like the oceans of the world. They are all connected. If we had the ability to “read” the energy in the water, we could dip our feet into the Pacific Ocean and “pick up” information from the Atlantic or the Indian Ocean.
The language of the universe is silence. An ocean of energy underlies everything. When we enter the silence, as in meditation, we can “tune in” to the larger frequencies. Energetically, we can “go” anywhere in the universe.
We are like drops of water that have separated out of the oneness to experience individuality. We developed our own separate ego selves to differentiate from the other drops. The problem arose when we identified with that ego self, thinking it was the real “us.” We forgot about the true essence. Ego is on a continuous quest to feel better, understand more, reduce suffering, be evolved, or to “get it.”
The truth is that what we yearn for is not answers or even understanding. It is connection. When we shed ego like a suit of clothing and go naked into the silent ocean, we merge back into the home from which we came. We experience our own soul – that drop of cosmic consciousness – that belongs to the whole. That is where we experience peace, contentment and even joy. When we re-enter the world, having tasted the sweetness of home, we realize nothing here need bother us. We see all the machinations of ego; how it creates dramas, polarities, unhappiness and stress and we can choose to no longer identify with that aspect of our being. When we cease to identify with it, it loses all power.
There is nothing to seek, nothing to find, no answers. It is all about where we choose to put our consciousness. Shall we let it energize ego and take us on a wild ride, or do we use it to maintain an open connection with the oneness and live our lives as our true soul selves?
Gwen Randall-Young is a psychotherapist in private practice and author of Growing Into Soul: The Next Step in Human Evolution. For articles and information about her books and “Deep Powerful Change” personal growth/hypnosis CDs, visit www.gwen.ca
This is an incredible event that will certainly change the world we live in!
Thanks to National Geographic for the original posting here:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news
www.nationalgeographic.com
August 22, 2008—Greenland’s glaciers are breaking up at a worrisome pace, new satellite images show.
A gigantic, 11-square-mile (29-square-kilometer) chunk of the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland broke off between July 10 and July 24.
The collapsed section is comparable in size to half of Manhattan Island (see the breakup in three images above).
Petermann covers 500 square miles (1,295 square kilometers).
The broken chunk has led scientists to predict a section of Petermann, the Northern Hemisphere’s longest-floating glacier, will disappear by 2009.
But the most alarming sign, according to Jason Box of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, is a huge 7-mile (11.3 kilometer) crack, seen above in the center right of the July 25 image, that has appeared farther back on the margin of the glacier.
The groove could create an imminent and even bigger breakup—up to a third of the ice field, he said in a statement.
“The pictures speak for themselves,” Box told the Associated Press. “This crack is moving, and moving closer and closer to the front. It’s just a matter of time till a much larger piece is going to break off … ”
more here:
Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly I awoke, and there I lay, myself again.. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming that I am a man.
Chuang-Tzu, 3rd century BC
An amazing article on how to construct a simple solar cooker by Steven E. Jones Professor of Physics at Brigham Young University (BYU)!
http://solarcooking.org/plans/funnel.htm
“A few years ago, I woke up to the fact that half of the world’s peoples must burn wood or dried dung in order to cook their food. It came as quite a shock to me, especially as I learned of the illnesses caused by breathing smoke day in and day out, and the environmental impacts of deforestation -not to mention the time spent by people (mostly women) gathering sticks and dung to cook their food. And yet, many of these billions of people live near the equator, where sunshine is abundant and free. Ergo…
As a University Professor of Physics with a background in energy usage, I set out to develop a means of cooking food and sterilizing water using the free energy of the sun. First, I looked at existing methods.
The parabolic cooker involves a reflective dish that concentrates sunlight to a point where the food is cooked. This approach is very dangerous since the sun’s energy is focused to a point which is very hot, but which cannot be seen. (BYU students and I built one which will set paper on fire in about 3 seconds!) I learned that an altruistic group had offered reflecting parabolas to the people living at the Altiplano in Bolivia. But more than once the parabolas had been stored next to a shed — and the passing sun set the sheds on fire! The people did not want these dangerous, expensive devices, even though the Altiplano region has been stripped of fuel wood.
The box cooker: Basically an insulated box with a glass or plastic lid, often with a reflecting lid to reflect sunlight into the box. Light enters through the top glass (or plastic), to slowly heat up the box. Problems: energy enters only through the top, while heat is escaping through all the other sides, which have a tendency to draw heat away from the food. When the box is opened to put food in or take it out, some of the heat escapes and is lost. Also, effective box cookers tend to be more complicated to build than the funnel cooker.”
This is a great beach to go for a nice evening walk! Interesting wood always washes up on the shore and eagles are often seen soaring above!
Nora
Bamboo
family Poaceae
tribe Bambuseae
-woody perennial evergreen
symbolic of: adaptability, strength, longevity, and endurance
Bamboo is green throughout the year.
Green is often symbolic of love, nature, balance, and harmony.
I have recently acquired a small bamboo plant which in turn inspired this mandala!
Nora
photo credit: Kenny Maths
flickr.com/photos/kennymathieson/115042421/
I came across an interesting article on breathtaking Monasteries around the world! It is easy to understand how one can be enlightened surrounded by such beauty!
Great photos! Check out the article here: