The term ‘dinosaur’ was coined by a biologist named Richard Owen sometime in the mid 19th century and it apparently means ‘terrible lizard’ in some language I am not familiar with. Richard Owen was apparently ‘an extraordinarily clever scientist’ and was ‘the leading comparative anatomist of his day’.
According to historians, people in the ‘west’ did not come up with the idea nor accept the existence of dinosaurs till then because the concept of an animal going extinct was not in line with their ‘great book’ which claims among others that this world was created for man and had been unchanging since the ‘great creation’. The ‘great creation’ according to that little book could be dated to be anything from 6,000 years ago to many many more years than that (these fellas with their ‘words of god’ at their finger tips could not finger when such an important event in the scheme of things actually took place!)
[Side Note:
For some background on the 6,000 year old ‘theory’, read my article on ‘Brief History of Dating’ to be out soon]
On the other hand, the Chinese is known to have records of dinosaur fossils for a few thousand years and grind them up for use as medicine. That may also be the origin of their concept of the ‘dragon’ – hey, China men like the others mentioned here do have a great sense of imagination.
We shall however stay with the history of the west for it is a lot more enlightening and funnier because of their ‘dedication’ to that particular little book for a good 2 millenia. Like some Asiatic simpletons I know today, people in that part of the world could not, up to that time, get themselves to accept anything not in line with concepts contained in that book.
[Side note:
For the same reason, they insisted (among many equally stupid concepts obvious to almost all China men today, simpletons included) that the sun and all the other celestial bodies went round the earth – whatever for, it was at least an ego boosting concept for these fellas. To be fair, according to modern science they were not 100% wrong. You see, according to the Big Bang theory every thing is moving away from the earth (the closest to the ‘earth-centric’ claim science can attest for these supposedly god enlightened simpletons). Since everything is moving away from earth, perhaps we can arguably say that earth is at the ‘center’ and therefore ‘special’? But then, Big Bang also says that everything is moving away from everything else. So, if we apply the same simplistic logic, the other celestial bodies should also be ‘special’. Wah, everything also special? In that case, could that include China men like me who claim no special links to Rome or other less earthly entities created by some people’s ego-boosting imaginations? Lucky me, no need for the other Chinamen to ‘bless me’ through Rome]
Things apparently started in the 18th century thanks to (who other than) the Americans. It started when some Americans found a large bone more than a meter in length in the land named after a Spanish fella called Amerigo Vespucci who had claimed the land for his Spanish King and his 'Lord' to no avail for the British had other ideas and were guided by a different divine force that proved to be more superior.
[Side note:
The ‘Americans’ above were not really Americans but British who by then had whacked the real British who in turn had earlier whacked and chased the Spanish down south. The Spanish had earlier whacked the real Americans including the Incans, Aztecs and Mexicans. If you think this is a case of what goes around comes around, you are wrong. The real Americans the Spanish whacked were not the same as the Americans of this story. According to some, the former were ‘red Indians’ who were not the same as the ‘non-red Indians’ in Asia which almost confuses the hell out of me. Conspiracy theory at work?]
When the first dinosaur bone was found, the Americans involved decided to send it to some supposed experts in Europe for study - apparently, at that time America was considered third world compared to its ‘big brothers’ in Europe. Of course, there were no dinosaur experts then. But there were well respected doctors of ‘anatomy’ of other kinds. And as it went, the experts to whom the bone was dispatched summarily declared it as nothing but just the leg bone of some over sized elephant. To them, the possibility of the bone belonging to a large specie entirely new to them and that had gone extinct did not cross their minds because their ‘great book’, if we had not forgotten, did not allow for it.
However, it did help the cause of ‘dinosaurship’ that at about the same time there happened to be some sort of a spat between the Americans and some ‘arrogant’ French fellas who claimed that all things American were inferior to ‘great’ Europe.
[Side note:
The British of which the Americans were part of had been vying with the French to be the ‘boss’ of Europe for hundreds of years which also explains why they like me also, foolishly some China men may say, don’t believe in the divinity of the pope and Rome. And today, if you believe George Bush, it is the reverse – the French is now part of the ‘Old World’, the reason being their unwillingness to whack the Afghans and Iraqis with Bush (and not because they follow the pope). But what about the pope, is he new or old world? Cheap thrill?
One America-is-inferior example given by the French then was the ‘natives’ in America had smaller male genitalia, and less body hair – if this sounded like China men too you are not far off, the ‘west’ then also considered Africans and Asians uncivilized and sub-humans to be ‘saved’ through Christianisation. In fact, in exhorting the Bush-type Americans to ‘take up the responsibility’ and ‘annex’ the Philippines after they (the Americans and not British) have whacked the Spaniards in the late 19th century, the English poet Rudyard Kipling (that some China men of ‘literature’ may be familiar with) famously called these other people ‘the White man’s burden’ - which explains why some China men are so proud they have some claim to the big ‘C’ or whatever little minor role in it. Lesser beings should always try to be a lesser burden to anyone, not just the white man.]
Apparently the French claim pissed off a certain Thomas Jefferson (who by then had considered himself ‘American’) enough for him to dispatch an expedition into the American hinterland to search for proof that things American are indeed ‘bigger’ and therefore greater than ‘old Europe’.
[Side Note:
Jefferson felt insulted because like his ‘puritan’ forefathers he believed that they were creating ‘a shining city upon the hill’ (copied from a certain Sermon of the Mount in their little book) that will be a shining example to the ‘Old World’ (you are right, idiot Bush could not have come up with this term himself) and guide the ‘decadent’ Europeans to ultimate ‘redemption’.
On the other hand, the Holy Alliance (which meant almost the whole of continental Europe listening to the various popey ones based in Rome and other places like Moscow) who saw this as part of these fellas on-going 'protests' then wanted to whack the audacious Americans for their claim to greater divinity. In any case, the Holy Alliance ‘lost’ in this case thanks to the greater powers of the British Protestant guns compared to those allied to the popes. You see, arguments of divinity are always won by the power of the sword or gun – that’s how respect is gained by such people. Those who wish protest about this little observation better get some firepower behind them, divinity has no use without such powers.
In this context, some Australians as example are quite smart – they live in Anglo-Saxon run Australia but also submit to Rome. A classic case of ‘if you are not sure hedge your bets’. But surprisingly, they don’t believe in Krishna, Kuan Yin and Mohammad lah. Ha, a ‘partial hedge’ only, what silly fellas…]
Thomas Jefferson was of course expecting the expedition to find live samples of super-large elephants. To his dismay, the expedition did not return with over-sized live elephants. But they did bring back loads more of those big bones. This time, the bones included that from the other parts of the dinosaur’s anatomy.
[Side Note:
As Steve Irwin enthusiasts would know, there is no elephants in America. The gods work in strange ways, to quote certain people. Asia and Africa have elephants and sub-humans but Rome and the west have the ‘great book’ and popey ones, and forever the twines shall never meet – according to the same Kipling fella. For the same reason, that perhaps explains why there was no China man pope.]
So, as it went, as they collected more and more of those ‘big bones’ and slowly pieced them together, the entire ‘west’ slowly began to realize that those bones were not from any animal living then. Among them was a 'notable expert’ by the name of Dr Gideon Mantell - the term ‘paleonthologist’ was not coined yet (the gods would not divulge such things ahead of their time?).
By the mid 19th century our Richard Owen had ‘hijacked’ the works of people like Mantell, and came up with the term ‘dinosaur’ (history is full of hijacking stories – see Virgin Fathers for some examples http://cckplanetblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/virgin-fathers.html).
How not to? Put those bones together and instead of long thick nose trunks, these things had long thick tails unknown to all them ‘enlightened’ fellas – even their greatest boatman that saved the entire earth in one super-boat never mentioned these different-tail things in that great flood tale! (read the Story of Nolah)
And that was how we got animals like Tyranosaurus and a whole lot of other sauruses that I cannot remember – ha, may be that is also why their great boat-man Nolah missed these animals out of his great flood tale (such undivine characteristics like mine, not impressive at all hor?).
But one particular Stegosaurus I do remember for its comparative value. Apparently, the Stegosaurus grew to a height of 10m but had a brain the size of a walnut (if you don’t believe this you go dig for the bones in America lor – we know for sure you cannot get such ‘details’ from one particular ‘great book’).
Some say that would make the Stegosaurus a really big and stupid animal. When I read that, I wondered how on earth those people figured that out. Then Richard Owen’s ‘leading comparative anatomist’ idea came to my mind.
Perhaps, these people thought that since humans are so god-like (and therefore should be ‘most smart’), anything with brain size smaller than the human’s would therefore be more stupid than human. What more if, as we can also prove from the various histories of such god-like animals, there are indeed very stupid humans with brain sizes much bigger than a walnut.
Oh gods, what size are yours that they so proudly compare their little ones to?
Perhaps I should write about the size of your Universe another day just to have some fun together…not with you the gods who surely don’t need my little fun stories, but with all those who wish to understand the limited powers of the little human brain.
[Side Note:
Richard Owen had originally enjoyed a working relationship with the younger Charles Darwin, but having been a devout Christian from the beginning, Owen saw creation as a series of experiments by a Creator, and he was outraged by Darwin's masterwork On the Origin of Species.
Mr Owen probably thought that dinosaurs were just one big godly experiment went wrong and terminated by the gods. What made Mr Owen so cock-sure he was the right experimental result of god-play, only the gods know. That is also why present day Asiatic co-believers of Mr Owen, who would otherwise not be able to tell a stegosaurus brain’s size from that of a tyrannosaurus but is as cock-sure as Mr Owen of their god-like features nevertheless, is the perennial feature in my own little ‘crusade’ to prove that their brains although bigger than a walnut is nowhere near god-like.
It is proving to be a piece of cake, which also happens to be bigger than the size of the human’s brain. ]
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Where Got No Nice Con?
5 Nov 2006
My first experience with a con man took place when I was a young kid growing up in a kampong house in KL – my memories of the area and the character involved in this story are still vivid. In those days, traveling vendors – mobile shops - were common and they came by at regular times and days selling things like pork, fish, veggies, pots, rojak etc. A daily regular then was the ‘roti’ man who was typically an Indian.
The particular roti man involved in this story came by in the early evenings. As part of his ‘service’ he would chat with his customers – a kind of customer relationship building – and I would hear from him ‘news’ from other neighborhoods (he was also a kind of modile CNN for people like me who did not yet know of the existence of newspapers and libraries). Over time, I got to know him as a ‘regular’, and to me he was a ‘nice man’.
One day, a couple of years later when I was about 7 years old, this roti man asked if I could lend him some money as he needed it for some purpose that I cannot now remember. He promised to pay a good 20% interest a month later. Immediately appreciating the ‘good ROR’, I lent him $5 after consulting my mother who did not object nor warn me about the ‘risks’ involved. The money was promptly returned one month later with the promised interest – not bad return and ‘what a nice man’ was what I remembered telling myself then.
My ‘nice’ roti man did that a second time and again kept his promise. On the third occasion, I was hooked and lent him my entire savings which was $20 plus (a lot of money for me then). That was the last time I saw this nice roti man of mine.
At that young age I was not fully aware of the implications of the practice of ‘fan tong san’ (literally meaning returning to the Chinese homeland but generically applied sometimes to mean returning to homeland) common to both Indian and Chinese immigrants alike. What the roti man did was before his departure home to India he had built up sufficient trust in him for gullible customers (fools) like me to part with their money as loans which he finally ran away with.
Although I lost my entire savings, I learnt some important life lessons early in life. I learnt to understand the need to understand, spot and manage risks, and to not just be skeptical of ‘nice people’ but also to spot a ‘con’. For example, I learnt to spot potential pick pockets at crowded bus stops and bus stations (a major problem in KL back when buses were so packed people had fight to get on and had to cling onto them from the sides) by the time I was a teenager. That was the reason I had never lost a wallet this way in my whole life.
I also learnt that that awareness of mine would make a difference to what happened around me. For example, at bus stops I would scan the crowd around me to pick out such people - they would also be doing their own ‘scans’ to pick out potential victims. Once I picked them out I would intentionally look at them long enough to make them realize that they were on my ‘radar’. I would do that more obviously when I knew they were joining in to ‘rush’ for the same bus I was about to take. Often times I learnt that if I gave them a sharp stare they would ‘skip’ the bus and pull out of the rush. That was how I knew that my ability to spot such people actually worked – the logic was simple, grown men choosing to miss out on their buses at a time when the frequency and level of services were terrible, and everyone else had to ‘fight’ to get on? Not so many gentlemen in KL. Not with the ‘let’s see which one to pick’ behaviors spotted earlier. In a way, I was learning from ‘history’.
The reason I am sharing this personal story is to share my views on some common comments I come across many times in various forms or contexts.
For example, I often hear comments like ‘I did not expect such and such a person to do that as he or she was so nice’, or ‘I got burnt but everything made sense to me’. My comments are always ‘how do you know the other person is nice? all con men or women are always nice to the ones conned, that is how the cons managed to work!’, and ‘every con comes with a nice/great idea and has to make some sense for it to work, and would always make most sense to those that it suckered’.
The reaction I often get after that is a ‘how do you know that you….’ look on the faces. I would then volunteer the explanation: I had experienced it before myself but mostly I learnt from others the best source of which is history. History is full of all kinds of ‘great cons & suckers that come with nice/great ideas’ which I learn from without having to directly pay for. But what amazes me is the number of suckers that continue do so despite the historical ‘evidences’ available. What I do learn is that such people are inevitably historically ignorant and cannot see from the thousands of years of recorded history that the basic characteristics of humans have not changed one bit (this is not a new idea that needs divine inspiration) – which explains why thousand year old cons still work.
Below is just one of the many divine examples I had been trying to share with people I know – these 'first world' fools always inspire me. I am sure many 3rd world fools of such 2nd hand divinity out there would be asking similar questions like above when they come across reports like this. My learning question is always the same – let me see what kind of a sucker who bought this con?
Perhaps, you too can learn from them - this short report is full of 'aha I know why they are suckers' revelations - only if you can spot them.... first hand.
Evangelical leader agrees to resign from church
By Associated Press
3:48 PM PST, November 4, 2006
The Rev. Ted Haggard was forced out today as leader of the megachurch he founded after a board determined the influential evangelist had committed "sexually immoral conduct," the church said Saturday.
Haggard had resigned two days earlier as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, where he held sway in Washington and condemned homosexuality, after a Denver man named Mike Jones claimed to have had drug-fueled trysts with him.
"Our investigation and Pastor Haggard's public statements have proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct," the New Life Church's Overseer Board said in a statement.
Haggard on Friday acknowledged paying Jones for a massage and for methamphetamine, but said he did not have sex with him and did not take the drug.
The church's statement said the investigation would continue, to determine how extensive Haggard's misconduct was.
The Rev. Ross Parsley will lead the church until a permanent replacement for Haggard is chosen by the end of the year, the statement said. A letter explaining Haggard's removal and an apology from him will be read at Sunday services.
"The language of our church bylaws state that as Overseers we must decide in cases where the Senior Pastor has 'demonstrated immoral conduct' whether we must 'remove the pastor from his position or discipline him in anyway they deem necessary,"' the statement said.James Groesbeck, a church elder, said he was glad the investigative board acted quickly.
"I'm saddened by what came out, but I think they've done their job," Groesbeck said by telephone. Church members are drawing strength from one another and are caught up in the activity, but that likely will change, he said.
"I think it's going to be really difficult in a week or two," Groesbeck said.
Jones, who said he is gay, said he was upset when he discovered who Haggard was and found out that the New Life Church had publicly opposed same-sex marriage -- a key issue in Colorado, with a pair of issues on Tuesday's ballot.
"It made me angry that here's someone preaching about gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex," Jones said.
Jones also said Haggard snorted methamphetamine before their sexual encounters to heighten his experience.
Haggard told reporters he bought meth but never used it; he said he received a massage from Jones after being referred to him by a Denver hotel. Jones said that no hotel referred Haggard and that he advertises only in gay publications.
In a TV interview this week, Haggard said: "Never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I'm steady with my wife, I'm faithful to my wife.
"Matt O'Connor, 21, a member of New Life Church for 12 years, said Saturday that he knew weathering the fallout was going to be bad, but that "we're still a church, and we are not going to fall apart."
My first experience with a con man took place when I was a young kid growing up in a kampong house in KL – my memories of the area and the character involved in this story are still vivid. In those days, traveling vendors – mobile shops - were common and they came by at regular times and days selling things like pork, fish, veggies, pots, rojak etc. A daily regular then was the ‘roti’ man who was typically an Indian.
The particular roti man involved in this story came by in the early evenings. As part of his ‘service’ he would chat with his customers – a kind of customer relationship building – and I would hear from him ‘news’ from other neighborhoods (he was also a kind of modile CNN for people like me who did not yet know of the existence of newspapers and libraries). Over time, I got to know him as a ‘regular’, and to me he was a ‘nice man’.
One day, a couple of years later when I was about 7 years old, this roti man asked if I could lend him some money as he needed it for some purpose that I cannot now remember. He promised to pay a good 20% interest a month later. Immediately appreciating the ‘good ROR’, I lent him $5 after consulting my mother who did not object nor warn me about the ‘risks’ involved. The money was promptly returned one month later with the promised interest – not bad return and ‘what a nice man’ was what I remembered telling myself then.
My ‘nice’ roti man did that a second time and again kept his promise. On the third occasion, I was hooked and lent him my entire savings which was $20 plus (a lot of money for me then). That was the last time I saw this nice roti man of mine.
At that young age I was not fully aware of the implications of the practice of ‘fan tong san’ (literally meaning returning to the Chinese homeland but generically applied sometimes to mean returning to homeland) common to both Indian and Chinese immigrants alike. What the roti man did was before his departure home to India he had built up sufficient trust in him for gullible customers (fools) like me to part with their money as loans which he finally ran away with.
Although I lost my entire savings, I learnt some important life lessons early in life. I learnt to understand the need to understand, spot and manage risks, and to not just be skeptical of ‘nice people’ but also to spot a ‘con’. For example, I learnt to spot potential pick pockets at crowded bus stops and bus stations (a major problem in KL back when buses were so packed people had fight to get on and had to cling onto them from the sides) by the time I was a teenager. That was the reason I had never lost a wallet this way in my whole life.
I also learnt that that awareness of mine would make a difference to what happened around me. For example, at bus stops I would scan the crowd around me to pick out such people - they would also be doing their own ‘scans’ to pick out potential victims. Once I picked them out I would intentionally look at them long enough to make them realize that they were on my ‘radar’. I would do that more obviously when I knew they were joining in to ‘rush’ for the same bus I was about to take. Often times I learnt that if I gave them a sharp stare they would ‘skip’ the bus and pull out of the rush. That was how I knew that my ability to spot such people actually worked – the logic was simple, grown men choosing to miss out on their buses at a time when the frequency and level of services were terrible, and everyone else had to ‘fight’ to get on? Not so many gentlemen in KL. Not with the ‘let’s see which one to pick’ behaviors spotted earlier. In a way, I was learning from ‘history’.
The reason I am sharing this personal story is to share my views on some common comments I come across many times in various forms or contexts.
For example, I often hear comments like ‘I did not expect such and such a person to do that as he or she was so nice’, or ‘I got burnt but everything made sense to me’. My comments are always ‘how do you know the other person is nice? all con men or women are always nice to the ones conned, that is how the cons managed to work!’, and ‘every con comes with a nice/great idea and has to make some sense for it to work, and would always make most sense to those that it suckered’.
The reaction I often get after that is a ‘how do you know that you….’ look on the faces. I would then volunteer the explanation: I had experienced it before myself but mostly I learnt from others the best source of which is history. History is full of all kinds of ‘great cons & suckers that come with nice/great ideas’ which I learn from without having to directly pay for. But what amazes me is the number of suckers that continue do so despite the historical ‘evidences’ available. What I do learn is that such people are inevitably historically ignorant and cannot see from the thousands of years of recorded history that the basic characteristics of humans have not changed one bit (this is not a new idea that needs divine inspiration) – which explains why thousand year old cons still work.
Below is just one of the many divine examples I had been trying to share with people I know – these 'first world' fools always inspire me. I am sure many 3rd world fools of such 2nd hand divinity out there would be asking similar questions like above when they come across reports like this. My learning question is always the same – let me see what kind of a sucker who bought this con?
Perhaps, you too can learn from them - this short report is full of 'aha I know why they are suckers' revelations - only if you can spot them.... first hand.
Evangelical leader agrees to resign from church
By Associated Press
3:48 PM PST, November 4, 2006
The Rev. Ted Haggard was forced out today as leader of the megachurch he founded after a board determined the influential evangelist had committed "sexually immoral conduct," the church said Saturday.
Haggard had resigned two days earlier as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, where he held sway in Washington and condemned homosexuality, after a Denver man named Mike Jones claimed to have had drug-fueled trysts with him.
"Our investigation and Pastor Haggard's public statements have proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct," the New Life Church's Overseer Board said in a statement.
Haggard on Friday acknowledged paying Jones for a massage and for methamphetamine, but said he did not have sex with him and did not take the drug.
The church's statement said the investigation would continue, to determine how extensive Haggard's misconduct was.
The Rev. Ross Parsley will lead the church until a permanent replacement for Haggard is chosen by the end of the year, the statement said. A letter explaining Haggard's removal and an apology from him will be read at Sunday services.
"The language of our church bylaws state that as Overseers we must decide in cases where the Senior Pastor has 'demonstrated immoral conduct' whether we must 'remove the pastor from his position or discipline him in anyway they deem necessary,"' the statement said.James Groesbeck, a church elder, said he was glad the investigative board acted quickly.
"I'm saddened by what came out, but I think they've done their job," Groesbeck said by telephone. Church members are drawing strength from one another and are caught up in the activity, but that likely will change, he said.
"I think it's going to be really difficult in a week or two," Groesbeck said.
Jones, who said he is gay, said he was upset when he discovered who Haggard was and found out that the New Life Church had publicly opposed same-sex marriage -- a key issue in Colorado, with a pair of issues on Tuesday's ballot.
"It made me angry that here's someone preaching about gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex," Jones said.
Jones also said Haggard snorted methamphetamine before their sexual encounters to heighten his experience.
Haggard told reporters he bought meth but never used it; he said he received a massage from Jones after being referred to him by a Denver hotel. Jones said that no hotel referred Haggard and that he advertises only in gay publications.
In a TV interview this week, Haggard said: "Never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I'm steady with my wife, I'm faithful to my wife.
"Matt O'Connor, 21, a member of New Life Church for 12 years, said Saturday that he knew weathering the fallout was going to be bad, but that "we're still a church, and we are not going to fall apart."
A Happy Deepavali!
20 Oct 2006
Hi all,
A happy Deevali/Deepavali to you.
In line with the spirit of Deevali, here’s to share some more light on Susmit’s note below:
Deevali is probably more alike the Chinese festival of Dong Jie (Winter festival) celebrated around Dec 20. Reason is they are related to the winter solstice where the northern hemisphere experiences its longest night of the year (thus need to set more lights on in case of Deevali or Deepavali).
All agrarian cultures in regions that go through the 4 seasons, winter/summer solstices can be quite easily determined by tracking where in the horizon the sun rises/sets and is already well noted for thousands of years.
In the northern hemisphere, winter solstice is significant as after this day the sun ‘begin to return’ to the northern hemisphere and brings along with it ‘life’ – plants/crops/flowers will start to grow and animals/birds will ‘return’ soon after that day (as mother earth in northern hemisphere warms up). This day is thus well known and celebrated in all great cultures from the Romans, Persians, Egyptians, Indians to Chinese for a long long time.
Over time either because societies grew ‘less’ agrarian or due to ‘calendar drifts’ as some cultures follow a non-fully solar calendar (like the Indian calendar), some cultures lost track of the ‘origins’ of such festivals and/or the day of celebration gets ‘misaligned’ with the astronomical event.
The Romans used to celebrate this event for 1 week (starting from the solstice which falls around Dec 20/21). The Christians that ‘inherited’ things from the Romans hijacked the last day of this festival for another purpose which most people today ‘ignorantly’ celebrate as X’mas.
Quiz:
If the pre-christianity Romans began their 1 week celebration on Dec 20/21, how come the ‘last day’ per the hijack above fell on Dec 25 instead of Dec 27/28? (clue: another piece of dust from history)
Indira Gandhi once told LKY “we are all covered by the dust of history….”
I say “we all need to see through the thick layer of dust covering us and discover how humans behave – how mother Nature and its greatness/beauty can be mis-interpreted/mis-represented or even manipulated by some human minds often to the long term detriment of not just ourselves but Earth itself”.
Man-made festivals aside, we should all celebrate all of Nature and all that it gives… everyday. It is that beautiful.
Rgds
CCK
From: Susmit GUPTA
Subject: Happy Deepavali!
Hi All,
I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a Very Happy Deepavali!
A little background for those who are ignorant as to why Deepavali is celebrated. Alike the Chinese New Year, the Hindus in India also follow a Hindu Calendar. Deepavali marks the beginning of a New Year according to the Hindu Calendar.
In India, Deepavali is also known as the festival of lights because the families decorate their houses with lots of candles and every possible light in the house is switched on. The new year is welcomed by bursting fire crackers is almost all the houses and is the highlight for most of the youngsters of the family. We also pray to the Hindu deities for fortune and good health. For almost a week after Deepavali friends and families visit each other to celebrate and eat lavish meals. The younger family members will always be given some money by the elders of the family (Another highlight of the occasion).
There is a lot more history behind the day (I will not get into it) and is referenced in the Hindu mythological book The Ramayana! For those interested can read the English translation available at the National Library. :)
I would like to wish all of you good health and a prosperous year ahead!
Best Regards,
Susmit Gupta
Hi all,
A happy Deevali/Deepavali to you.
In line with the spirit of Deevali, here’s to share some more light on Susmit’s note below:
Deevali is probably more alike the Chinese festival of Dong Jie (Winter festival) celebrated around Dec 20. Reason is they are related to the winter solstice where the northern hemisphere experiences its longest night of the year (thus need to set more lights on in case of Deevali or Deepavali).
All agrarian cultures in regions that go through the 4 seasons, winter/summer solstices can be quite easily determined by tracking where in the horizon the sun rises/sets and is already well noted for thousands of years.
In the northern hemisphere, winter solstice is significant as after this day the sun ‘begin to return’ to the northern hemisphere and brings along with it ‘life’ – plants/crops/flowers will start to grow and animals/birds will ‘return’ soon after that day (as mother earth in northern hemisphere warms up). This day is thus well known and celebrated in all great cultures from the Romans, Persians, Egyptians, Indians to Chinese for a long long time.
Over time either because societies grew ‘less’ agrarian or due to ‘calendar drifts’ as some cultures follow a non-fully solar calendar (like the Indian calendar), some cultures lost track of the ‘origins’ of such festivals and/or the day of celebration gets ‘misaligned’ with the astronomical event.
The Romans used to celebrate this event for 1 week (starting from the solstice which falls around Dec 20/21). The Christians that ‘inherited’ things from the Romans hijacked the last day of this festival for another purpose which most people today ‘ignorantly’ celebrate as X’mas.
Quiz:
If the pre-christianity Romans began their 1 week celebration on Dec 20/21, how come the ‘last day’ per the hijack above fell on Dec 25 instead of Dec 27/28? (clue: another piece of dust from history)
Indira Gandhi once told LKY “we are all covered by the dust of history….”
I say “we all need to see through the thick layer of dust covering us and discover how humans behave – how mother Nature and its greatness/beauty can be mis-interpreted/mis-represented or even manipulated by some human minds often to the long term detriment of not just ourselves but Earth itself”.
Man-made festivals aside, we should all celebrate all of Nature and all that it gives… everyday. It is that beautiful.
Rgds
CCK
From: Susmit GUPTA
Subject: Happy Deepavali!
Hi All,
I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a Very Happy Deepavali!
A little background for those who are ignorant as to why Deepavali is celebrated. Alike the Chinese New Year, the Hindus in India also follow a Hindu Calendar. Deepavali marks the beginning of a New Year according to the Hindu Calendar.
In India, Deepavali is also known as the festival of lights because the families decorate their houses with lots of candles and every possible light in the house is switched on. The new year is welcomed by bursting fire crackers is almost all the houses and is the highlight for most of the youngsters of the family. We also pray to the Hindu deities for fortune and good health. For almost a week after Deepavali friends and families visit each other to celebrate and eat lavish meals. The younger family members will always be given some money by the elders of the family (Another highlight of the occasion).
There is a lot more history behind the day (I will not get into it) and is referenced in the Hindu mythological book The Ramayana! For those interested can read the English translation available at the National Library. :)
I would like to wish all of you good health and a prosperous year ahead!
Best Regards,
Susmit Gupta
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