Yin Yang...

This Symbol(Yin-Yang) represents the ancient Chinese understanding of how things work. The outer circle represents "everything", while the black and white shapes within the circle represent the interaction of two energies, called "yin" (black) and "yang" (white), which cause everything to happen. They are not completely black or white, just as things in life are not completely black or white, and they cannot exist without each other.

While "yin" would be dark, passive, downward, cold, contracting, and weak, "yang" would be bright, active, upward, hot, expanding, and strong. The shape of the yin and yang sections of the symbol, actually gives you a sense of the continual movement of these two energies, yin to yang and yang to yin, causing everything to happen: just as things expand and contract, and temperature changes from hot to cold.

Signs...

Horoscope Matches

Understanding the matching between different signs requires a basic knowledge of the elements in astrology. There are four elements;
Fire, Earth, Air and Water – there are three zodiac signs in each element, they are:

• FIRE signs: Aries, Leo and Sagittarius .

• Earth signs: Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn .

• AIR signs: Gemini, Libra and Aquarius .

• WATER signs: Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces.

The most advantageous blend for a sign is with one of the same element: i.e.: fire with fire, earth with earth, Air with Air and Water with water. However, a complementary match is the next choice as indicated below

Fire with Air - Fire’s drive and energy burns brightly with air’s intelligent ideas. Meanwhile, fire’s zest for life where combined with air’s playfulness can result in great times together.

Fire with Earth – The combination fire ambition and the organization of earth will often result in material success. However, there can be clashes in the ways both signs go about it.

Fire and Water - There will be hot steamy passion between these two, but some very emotional clashes too.

Earth and Air - There’s a mental meeting point here and these two will respect each other. But earth can feel uncertain with air’s changeability and unreliability, and air can find earth “a stick in the mud”

Earth and Water - water feels supported by the stability and constancy of earth. While earth is nourished by the emotional warmth and caring of water.

Air and Water - with water’s imagination and air’s ideas, these two will have big dreams together. Air’s need for emotional space can make water insecure, and water’s need for closeness and reassurance can crowd air.

Lucky stone Amethyst

Amethyst is the most highly valued member of the Quartz mineral family,and it has Purple hues that vary from very pale to dark. The medium-dark to dark tones are considered the most desirable and of course are quite a bit more expensive than the lighter tones. The finest gems usually come from the Elahara mines in Sri Lanka, and the Pau d'Arco mines in Brazil. Amethyst is said to bring serenity and calm, and to enhance one's ability to assimilate new ideas. It is also said to give strength and mental stability, and to provide balance between one's physical, emotional, and intelectual states.

Global Warming...

The impacts of the economic crisis are being felt in many ways. Most are naturally economic. Jobs are being lost in record numbers, and bankruptcies are on the rise with no end (or bottom) in sight. These are the obvious and immediate surface impacts. We can measure and quantify them on a daily basis. But there are deeper and less obvious effects.

The Great Depression impacted the psychology of an entire generation, and it had multi-generational ripple effects. We can recall having to clear our dinner plates, regardless of whether we were hungry or not. This ethos was passed down from our grandparents, who lived through the Depression, and it’s conceivable that it had something to do with the current obesity epidemic. Because, of course, you couldn’t have dessert unless you cleared your plate.

Feast or famine, right? That seems to be our pattern, whether it’s food or the economy. Either way, there’s no denying the psychological impacts of crises such as this, especially when it’s prolonged. Without the benefit of hindsight, we can’t know what they’ll ultimately be this time around, but we’re already noticing a shift in attention away from the need to address global warming and its root causes. It’s back-page news in the mainstream media. It’s as if we don’t have the luxury of worrying about such long-term threats, given the immediate and tangible economic meltdown. It’s also provided an opportunity for global warming skeptics to trumpet a victory of sorts.

The infamous Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma recently declared victory over the global warming conspiracy based on the observation that “his opponents won’t say global warming any more” and instead prefer “climate change”. His argument for victory is basically grounded in semantics coupled with the drop in global warming headlines and the fact that he’s giving this interview during the winter, when it happens to be cold. (He also refers to dubious science.)

The reality is that climate change more accurately describes the various phenomena caused by global warming. The latter simply refers to the increase in global temperature as a result of CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gases. We’re therefore seeing more droughts, floods, and a greater rate of anomalous weather events i.e. climate change. The effect of a warmer atmosphere might, in fact, cause more snow and colder temperatures in some areas with devastating, long-term effects. We don’t know precisely. This is uncharted territory for the planet (in terms of recorded CO2 concentrations) and mankind. Has the climate changed in the past? Yes. At this rapid pace without a reasonable explanation? No.

By the same token, global warming believers should be more thoughtful in how they casually refer to the proof. Just as skeptics cannot disprove global warming by pointing to a cold winter day, it’s foolish to cite an unseasonably warm winter day or a summer heat wave as proof that global warming is real. “I’m wearing shorts in January in Connecticut. Thank you global warming!” one might be tempted to exclaim sarcastically.

Global warming isn’t something happening today. That snow storm or tornado or heat wave was not caused by global warming. This is part of the problem in addressing it. It’s a long-term trend that has been building over decades and will continue. We don’t quite know where it’s headed, but we do know that something has to be done, whether in trying to reverse it, slow it down, or just plain deal with it. (Incidentally, 2009 will be the year we decide that we have to live with it at some level and then consider the best ways of addressing life with climate change.) Weather patterns fluctuate regardless. The fluctuations are occurring within the context of atmospheric warming, but you can’t point to global warming as the cause for a given day’s temperature or a single weather event. That’s not how it works.

Now if both sides would stop with the foolishness, we might be able to actually deal with it. Just as soon as this economic tsunami subsides.

Sensors turn skin into gadget control pad

Tapping your forearm or hand with a finger could soon be the way you interact with gadgets.

US researchers have found a way to work out where the tap touches and use that to control phones and music players.

Coupled with a tiny projector the system can use the skin as a surface on which to display menu choices, a number pad or a screen.

Early work suggests the system, called Skinput, can be learned with about 20 minutes of training.

"The human body is the ultimate input device," Chris Harrison, Skinput's creator, told BBC News.

Sound solution

He came up with the skin-based input system to overcome the problems of interacting with the gadgets we increasingly tote around.

Gadgets cannot shrink much further, said Mr Harrison, and their miniaturisation was being held back by the way people are forced to interact with them.

The size of human fingers dictates, to a great degree, how small portable devices can get. "We are becoming the bottleneck," said Mr Harrison.

To get around this Mr Harrison, a PhD student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon and colleagues Desney Tan and Dan Morris from Microsoft Research, use sensors on the arm to listen for input.

A tap with a finger on the skin scatters useful acoustic signals throughout the arm, he said. Some waves travel along the skin surface and others propagate through the body. Even better, he said, the physiology of the arm makes it straightforward to work out where the skin was touched.

Differences in bone density, arm mass as well as the "filtering" effects that occur when sound waves travel through soft tissue and joints make many of the locations on the arm distinct.

Software coupled with the sensors can be taught which sound means which location. Different functions, start, stop, louder, softer, can be bound to different locations. The system can even be used to pick up very subtle movements such as a pinch or muscle twitch.

"The wonderful thing about the human body is that we are familiar with it," said Mr Harrison. "Proprioception means that even if I spin you around in circles and tell you to touch your fingertips behind your back, you'll be able to do it."

"That gives people a lot more accuracy then we have ever had with a mouse," he said.

Early trials show that after a short amount of training the sensor/software system can pick up a five-location system with accuracy in excess of 95%.

Accuracy does drop when 10 or more locations are used, said Mr Harrison, but having 10 means being able to dial numbers and use the text prediction system that comes as standard on many mobile phones.

The prototype developed by the research team sees the sensors enclosed in a bulky cuff. However, said Mr Harrison, it would be easy to scale them down and put them in a gadget little bigger than a wrist watch.

Mr Harrison said he envisages the device being used in three distinct ways.

The sensors could be coupled with Bluetooth to control a gadget, such as a mobile phone, in a pocket. It could be used to control a music player strapped to the upper arm.

Finally, he said, the sensors could work with a pico-projector that uses the forearm or hand as a display surface. This could show buttons, a hierarchical menu, a number pad or a small screen. Skinput can even be used to play games such as Tetris by tapping on fingers to rotate blocks.

Mr Harrison would not be drawn on how long it might take Skinput to get from the lab to a commercial product. "But," he said, "in the future your hand could be your iPhone and your handset could be watch-sized on your wrist."

Lord Shiva statue...

The Cleveland Museum of Art has revealed it was the secret buyer of a rare, 1,000-year-old Indian sculpture of the Hindu god Shiva, sold by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo in a highly controversial auction on March 23.

Bidding at Sotheby's in New York through the London art dealer John Eskenazi, the Cleveland museum paid $4.072 million for the work, a record price for an Indian sculpture.

"I'm elated," Timothy Rub, director of the Cleveland museum, said Monday by phone from New York, calling the sculpture a new centerpiece of Cleveland's highly regarded collection of Asian art.

"This is the crowning of my career," said Stanislaw Czuma, who retired in 2005 after 33 years as the museum's curator of Indian and Southeast Asian art, and who urged the museum to buy the work. "From every level you approach it, this is a fantastic acquisition."

In a written statement, Martin Lerner, a retired curator of Indian and Southeast Asian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, called the Shiva "one of the most important Indian sculptures to have come on the market in recent memory."

Carved and polished in dark gray granite, the life-size sculpture depicts the Hindu deity Shiva, known as "the Destroyer," as he shares identity with the deity Brahma, known as "the Creator."

Czuma called the work a superb example of best artistic period of the Chola Dynasty, which dominated southern India from the 10th to the 13th centuries.

The Albright-Knox set off a bitter civic controversy in Buffalo last year when it decided to sell the Shiva and dozens of other important pre-modern works to raise money for its relatively modest endowment of $58 million.

"We sort of went through a war here," said Louis Grachos, director of the Buffalo museum.

In March, a N.Y. State Supreme Court judge dismissed a last-minute lawsuit filed by an ad hoc group called the Buffalo Art Keepers, which tried to stop the auctions.

The Albright-Knox has raised $22 million so far by selling works of ancient and Asian art, with the Shiva fetching one of the highest individual prices. The museum will use the money to boost the portion of the endowment restricted to art purchases and will focus on buying works of Modern and contemporary art, its principal focus.

Grachos said there was "absolutely" no other way to raise millions of dollars for the endowment than by selling artworks that no longer fit the museum's core mission.

He said he was delighted that the Shiva will go to Cleveland, rather than in a private collection or a museum overseas. Knowing that the work is a short drive away from Buffalo takes some of the sting out of the sale, he said.

"Although it's left home, it's not gone far away," he said.

Rub said he hoped to exhibit the sculpture later this year alongside other important works from the museum's collection of Indian art. The museum is mostly closed for a $258 million expansion and renovation, although it is open for special exhibitions and classes.

The Albright-Knox acquired the Shiva in 1927 as a gift from a donor who bought it from the respected dealer, C.T. Loo. The work's "provenance," or ownership history, places it beyond the reach of contemporary laws aimed at preventing the looting of ancient artworks.

Czuma said the sculpture probably adorned an outdoor niche on the north side of a major temple in southern India, but it is not known when the work was removed. He said it was the finest of a group of five major stone statues of Shiva as Brahma acquired by American museums before World War II.

The sculpture combines the attributes of Shiva as the destroyer and Brahma as the creator to encapsulate the Hindu belief in death, reincarnation and progress toward perfection, Czuma said.

In the sculpture, Shiva is sitting on a double lotus blossom. He has a third eye and four heads, each looking in one of the cardinal directions, Czuma said. The deity's four arms indicate his special powers. Two of his hands hold a lotus and a rosary. The other two hands are positioned in gestures of blessing and teaching.

"The carving is fantastic," Czuma said. "You almost feel the flesh of the image. It was a really great master that created it."

Pottery...

Pottery is the ceramic ware made by potters. Major types of pottery include earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain. The places where such wares are made are called potteries. Pottery is one of the oldest human technologies and art-forms, and remains a major industry today. Ceramic art covers the art of pottery, whether in items made for use or purely for decoration.

Pottery is made by forming a clay body into objects of a required shape and heating them to high temperatures in a kiln to induce reactions that lead to permanent changes, including increasing their strength and hardening and setting their shape. There are wide regional variations in the properties of clays used by potters and this often helps to produce wares that are unique in character to a locality. It is common for clays and other minerals to be mixed to produce clay bodies suited to specific purposes.

Prior to some shaping processes, air trapped within the clay body needs to be removed. This is called de-airing and can be accomplished by a machine called a vacuum pug or manually by wedging. Wedging can also help to ensure an even moisture content throughout the body. Once a clay body has been de-aired or wedged, it is shaped by a variety of techniques. After shaping it is dried before firing. There are a number of stages in the drying process. Leather-hard refers to the stage when the clay object is approximately 75-85% dry. Clay bodies at this stage are very firm and only slightly pliable. Trimming and handle attachment often occurs at the leather-hard state. Clay bodies are said to be "bone-dry" when they reach a moisture content at or near 0%. Unfired objects are often termed greenware. Clay bodies at this stage are very fragile and hence can be easily broken.

Miss You...

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell. ~Edna St Vincent Millay

Love is missing someone whenever you're apart, but somehow feeling warm inside because you're close in heart. ~Kay Knudsen

Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated. ~Lamartine

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness everywhere!
~William Shakespeare, "Sonnet XCVII"

I Miss You....

Romantic gift ideas...

For some guys, gift giving is mind numbing. Should you get her a card? Flowers? Jewelry? What did she mean by "you don't have to get me anything?" (Hint: "you had better get me something really awesome this time, or else.") Where should you take her? Instead of falling back on old ideas, try something truly unique that will wow her and keep her bragging to her friends for months.

Women like to be impressed. We may say that we don't know what we want or that we don't want anything at all. Lesson number one: we are lying. L-Y-I-N-G. What we really mean is that we want something, but we want you to pick it out so that we are surprised and know you were thinking about us.



Falling back on the old tried-and-true gifts may be okay early on in a relationship, but only because those gifts say "I really care about you, but I don't know much about you, so I'm unsure of what to get." Women have grown to expect these trite gifts year after year. These giftsinclude perfume, candy, flowers, stuffed bears, and jewelry. I'm not saying you should never give these as gifts. On the contrary, most women adore chocolate and roses, we just don't want to get them all the time. This shows lack of effort and while we may act (and truly be) thrilled, we will feel a little disappointed at having gotten the same thing that every man gives to every other woman and that you may have even gotten for all of your ex girlfriends.


If she is an artist or likes to write, this gift will be a big hit. Get her a well-made leather journal, preferably with a strap or clasp to keep it closed. The journal should be about 6"x8" and absolutely must have unlined pages. (Hint: If she is a vegetarian, don't get her leather.) If she is a writer, you will want to buy a beautiful fountain pen and some fountain pen ink.