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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The Weather-Makers, Meat-Consumption, and Climate Change


The devotees at Krsna Village (New Vraja Dham) in Hungary are glorified again for their positive, transcendent example, in a report on the clear link between the habit of meat consumption and the negative effects of climate change.

Read all about it here.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Goodbye Bland Affluence, Hello Transition Towns

The gradually lucid signs of the end of the industrial age has got peoples off all stripes thinking about what is going to come next. What can we do, if anything, to insure a future where morality, spirituality, and a real, locally-based culture beyond exploitation can sustain and thrive.

Click here to read a recent piece from the Wall Street Journal on the push for a simpler way of life that is being reflected even in the skyline of Manhattan.

Click here to read a piece from the April 19th edition of "The Green Issue" from the New York Times on the rising tide of The Transition Movement, which aims to create, in a very organized and positive way, Transition Towns. These Towns will re-localize the social and economic infrastructure in such a way to rise above the tide of the collapse of industrial civilization.

From the Transition Movement Wikipedia page:

"Central to the Transition Town movement is the idea that a life without oil could in fact be far more enjoyable and fulfulling than the present "by shifting our mind-set we can actually recognise the coming post-cheap oil era as an opportunity rather than a threat, and design the future low carbon age to be thriving, resilient and abundant – somewhere much better to live than our current alienated consumer culture based on greed, war and the myth of perpetual growth."

Simple Living, High Thinking!

Friday, April 24, 2009

From Our Friends At The Vedic Village...

Hare Krsna,

Last Saturday we had about 15 enthusiastic volunteers at Vedic Village. We cleared the field of rocks and weeds, built a greenhouse and outhouse. This week we will be planting crops on the field for the first time. It is our spring crop that will include potatoes and broccoli. We all had a lot of fun last week working in the fresh air and sunshine. It was exhilarating. We are starting at 9am and will work to about 7pm.

If someone can only come for an hour or two that is fine. But you don’t want to miss out on this historic event for our Krsna Consciousness movement in Michigan. The address is 6384 Walsh Rd, Whitmore Lake, Mi 48189. If you follow the “google” directions when you head east on Walsh Rd. the farm will be on the left soon after turning east on Walsh Rd.. It is the farm that has the plowed fields on your left. You can’t miss it. Pls. park on the left “before” the plowed fields. There is a rectangular enclosure on the same side as the farm. Pls. park there. You will see the sign for “Vedic Village” parking. Pls. do not pull into the driveway of the farm. Pls. park where the sign is. When you pull into the lot, pls. don’t park parallel to the fence pull all the way up so others can park. We are expecting quite a few people this Saturday because everyone had so much fun last Saturday. See you there.

If you would like to donate your time, join our team, or have any questions, please either call or email us at (313) 823-3815 / tommilano108@yahoo.com. According to your inquiry, you may be put in touch with either one of our two vice presidents, Antariksa dasa and Navadvipa dasa. If you would like to contribute towards any of our projects, please make your check out to MISCOWP and send it c/o Adiraja dasa, 313 Newport, Detroit, Michigan 48215. You will receive a receipt within two or three days. We also accept payment by credit card. In closing, we would like to thank you again for your interest in the success of Vedic Village and we look forward to your participation. Hare Krishna!

Navadwipa das

Vedic Village

One Molecule Away From Plastic

From our friends at the MISCOWP Vedic Village

Pass The Butter Please...This is interesting

Margarine was originally manufactured to fatten turkeys. When it killed
the turkeys, the people who had put all the money into the research wanted a
payback so they put their heads together to figure out what to do with this
product to get their money back. It was a white substance with no food appeal
so they added the yellow coloring and sold it to people to use in place of
butter. How do you like it? They have come out with some clever new
flavorings.

DO YOU KNOW? the difference between margarine and butter?

Read on to the end...gets very interesting!

Both have the same amount of calories.

Butter is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8 grams compared to 5
grams.

Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53% over
eating the same amount of butter, according to a recent Harvard Medical Study.

Eating butter increases the absorption of many other nutrients in other
foods.

Butter has many nutritional benefits where margarine has a few
only because they are added!

Butter tastes much better than margarine and it can enhance the flavors of
other foods.

Butter has been around for centuries where margarine has been around for
less than 100 years .

And now, for Margarine..

Very high in Trans fatty acids.

Triple risk of coronary heart disease.
Increases total cholesterol and LDL (this is the bad cholesterol) and
lowers HDL cholesterol, (the good cholesterol)

Increases the risk of cancers up to five fold.

Lowers quality of breast milk.

Decreases immune response.

Decreases insulin response.

And here's the most disturbing fact.... HERE IS THE PART THAT IS VERY
INTERESTING!

Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC..

This fact alone was enough to have me avoiding margarine for life and
anything else that is hydrogenated (this means hydrogen is added, changing the
molecular structure of the substance).

You can try this yourself:

Purchase a tub of margarine and leave it in your garage or shaded area.
Within a couple of days you will note a couple of things:

* no flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go near it (that should
tell you something)

* it does not rot or smell differently because it has no nutritional
value ; nothing will grow on it. Even those teeny weeny microorganisms will not
a find a home to grow. Why? Because it is nearly plastic. Would you melt
your Tupperware and spread that on your toast?

Share This With Your Friends... (If you want to 'butter them up')!

Chinese Proverb:
'When someone shares something of value with you and you benefit from it,
you have a moral obligation to share it with others.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Humanity Even For Non-Humans

Happy Earth Day from Club 108!

We pray and hope that we are inspiring you to bring practical, responsible, soul-stirring ecological action into your spiritual lives. Please let us know any way we can improve our service to you and yours (and that also includes your soon-to-be sprouting seedlings in your garden)

Today we offer you a recent piece from our hometown New York Times by Nicholas Kristoff titled "Humanity Even For Non-Humans", detailing the emergence of a genuine animal-rights movement inspired by the work of Princeton scholar Peter Singer.

Here's an excerpt:

Professor Singer wrote a landmark article in 1973 for The New York Review of Books and later expanded it into a 1975 book, “Animal Liberation.” That book helped yank academic philosophy back from a dreary foray into linguistics and pushed it to confront such fascinating questions of applied ethics as: What are our moral obligations to pigs?

John Maynard Keynes wrote that ideas, “both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else.” This idea popularized by Professor Singer — that we have ethical obligations that transcend our species — is one whose time appears to have come.

“There’s some growth in numbers of vegetarians, but the bigger thing is a broad acceptance of the idea that animals count,” Mr. Singer reflected the other day.

Click here to read the article.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Michael Cremo on Coast to Coast AM!

We're just a podunk blog, but the prabhu himself, Micheal Cremo (Drutakarma Das), author of Forbidden Archeology and Human Devolution, is hitting the big-time airwaves, as he will make an appearance this Tuesday, April 21st, on Coast To Coast AM with George Noory, "celebrating" the 200th birthday of one Charles Darwin

Cremo is a regular on Coast To Coast, which is one of the most-listened to radio shows in the whole world, delving into all matter of paranormal and alternative topics of science and knowledge.

It promises to be a great evening and great chance for the Vedic paradigm, in the very capable hands and words of Cremo, to be revealed to millions and millions of people.

Click here
for the Coast To Coast website
Click here for Micheal Cremo's website
Click here for a great interview with Micheal Cremo

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Darwin Is Dead!-The Atlas of Creation

If you would like to contribute to our year-long "celebration" of Darwin's 200th birthday, please send your articles, editorials, or any other creative and informative pieces to nvclub108@gmail.com

He's known by the pen name of Harun Yahya. His legal name is Adnan Oktar. His proposed 15-volume work Atlas of Creation puts him in the middle of the worldwide controversy over the battle for the Darwinian soul.

Treading lightly over his views and means of expression, one can't help but admire at least his tenacity of research (and his team of laywers!). Still, the problem remains, that in his immense global visibility, his off-center personality and expressions cause harm to the cause of breaking down the stranglehold of the Darwinist establishment

Learn for yourself...
Here's an article from the Wall Street Journal on Oktar
Here's his Wikipedia page.

Monday, April 13, 2009

The Future of Food

The surge and scourge of genetically modified foodstuffs finding their way into our bodies is a cause of immense concern-on levels of personal health and political power for people all over the world.

We offer you links to two films below that will hopefully enlighten and empower you with knowledge and a call to action to keep these "scientific experiments" off our plates and out of our stomachs until we can understand their effects and responsibly use the power of the genome only for positive benefits.

The Future of Food

GMOs in India

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Darwin Is Dead!-No Evidence

If you would like to contribute to our year-long "celebration" of Darwin's 200th birthday, please send your articles, editorials, or any other creative and informative pieces to nvclub108@gmail.com

HG Narasingha Gurudas (a.k.a Martin Lyons) was gracious enough to share with us a few excerpts from his upcoming book, in which he plans to establish the positions of the Vedic paradigm on evolution and the origin of species, in opposition to some of the unproven dogmas of modern religion and science.

Here is the third excerpt he shares with us, about the unavoidable lack of e

Fourth Argument: No Evidence

In the rivers of Malaysia lives a fish that is able to invite insects for its dinner by a very extraordinary means. It shoots a powerful jet of water from its mouth with amazing accuracy at bugs resting on the leaves of tree-branches overhanging the river. I say ‘amazing accuracy,’ because the archer fish’s optical sense is compensating for the differences between how light is refracted through the two different media of water and air. We know that if we look towards the bottom of a swimming-pool, for example, we have a much distorted sense of depth as well as of the actual location of anything that might be lying down there. The archer fish’s optical compensatory mechanism is but one example of the vast array of hugely intricate and sophisticated devices and systems found throughout the entire spectrum of nature.

Evolutionists claim that however unlikely it is that such perfection and complexity could arise at random, it still must have happened that way. Just as there is no possibility of religion without a belief in the existence of God, similarly there can be no theory of evolution without a belief that random mutation is at the bottom of it. The atheistic challenge to religious believers is that they cannot point to any distinct entity identifiable as God, meaning that any deity could only be considered a figment, an ideological concept, and so quite irrelevant to any scientific investigation as to the nature of reality.

Whether or not such a challenge can be properly met (and this is certainly a topic to be discussed later in this book), the question we may ask here is whether random mutation is itself a legitimate topic for scientific discussion. Is there evidence where we can actually see it taking place, and that also supports its candidacy for being the source from which functional evolutionary adaptations may arise; or is belief in random mutation no less an ideological expression than is belief in a supernatural designer?

The fundamental assumption behind the theory of evolution is that there is no intelligent purpose or design guiding its developments. Hence the conviction that it must take place by random mutation: random as in without specific direction or purpose; and mutation as in such widespread and substantial change of form and structure as to occasionally and haphazardly produce properly useful and coordinated evolutionary features. And this necessitates that one predictable and highly visible result of random mutation would be an enormous profusion of aberrant and useless evolutionary mutations in evidence everywhere.

It’s like the old proposal that if we had enough monkeys who had somehow all been convinced to keep typing, then one of them may be reasonably expected to reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare. That may be so, although we would expect the necessary number of monkeys involved to be enormous. So that while Shakespeare’s complete works might be thus reproduced, they would be practically drowned out by the accompanying vast quantity of gibberish as produced by all the other monkeys. The complete works of Shakespeare can be compared to the complexity of any functioning biological structure; and all the incomprehensible gibberish resulting from the rest of the monkeys’ frenetic typing represents the overwhelming majority of results that would be produced by purely random mutation, unguided by any intelligent understanding or sense of purpose.

In other words, one predictable result of evolution is that we should be seeing all around us a kind of cosmic version of ‘Nature’s Bloopers,’ with each new generation affording us a visible enormity of examples of hapless mutants.

But we don’t. The evidence for random mutation is conspicuous only by virtue of its absence. And why is this? Because the actual scientific fact that naturalists have ever observed is that species are by nature fixed. The word ‘species’ is connected, for good reason, to the word ‘specific.’ We recognize different species because of their specific characteristics, recognizable on account of their being basically fixed. There is certainly room for some variety within these characteristics, in terms of color, size and so on; but as the esteemed plant breeder Luther Burbank noted, there are very definite limits to such flexibility, as determined by the fundamental nature of the species involved.

By comparison we can think of a child’s construction kit, for example a collection of cubes with holes drilled on each side and so many small dowel rods by which the cubes can be connected. There are many, many different structures that could be made from such a kit, but there are definite limits regarding the kind of shapes that could be thus made. They would all be very angular, for example, and necessarily right-angular; but we would not be able to create fluid circular forms from such basic building blocks. In other words, although much variety of form is allowed and indeed provided for according to the specific shape of the building blocks involved, still, there are very definite limits within which the finished constructs must conform.

We can compare different varieties within a species to the different shapes allowed from the same fundamental building blocks; whereas different species are represented as different constructs resulting from differently shaped blocks and differently aligned dowel holes. And so we can breed so many different species of dog, which are all closely related to each other; or we can breed many varieties of cat, which are similarly intimately connected. But we can’t hope to produce a cat from breeding dogs, or vice versa. Rather we see one generation of any particular species of flora or fauna giving rise to the next generation of the same, true to type in all the fundamental details.

So as humans we can have so many different shades of hair, for example; but it is always human hair, it’s not that someone can sprout rabbit fur or tendrils or feathers or something previously unknown. And we can get together and mate and look forward to having children, confident that this is in fact what we will have: children. In other words, never mind speculations about random mutation and other such intellectual abstractions; we have a basic instinct regarding such actual facts of life as the fixity of species, for instance. Or we would quail at the very idea of having children: “I don’t know John; I mean, will we have a boy or a girl … or maybe something else entirely?”

Let us be clear that all the evidence, all of it, proves only the stability and fixity of species: frogs are birthing frogs, fish fish, reptiles reptiles, birds birds, chimpanzees chimpanzees, humans humans. How would one species spawn another at some distant historical point, as evolutionists claim, and then continue to be true to itself, without apparently again diverting from basic type? So many species have been faithfully reproducing true to type for many millennia, such as Gingko trees and alligators, for example. Why? Why, if mutation and evolution is the natural way, are they not mutating and evolving? If evolution is indeed a scientific principle, then what are its laws, and how come all the species we can observe are exempt from such laws, which apparently operate only when no-one is looking?

Let’s re-cap the present argument: the necessary context in which the possibility of evolution could occur would be such frequency of random mutation that every species should be in a constant state of flux. And the primary product of such a flux would necessarily be an enormous volume of dysfunctional mutations or ‘birth defects,’ i.e. useless if not harmful aberrations from the species norm.

The entire natural world would be like one enormous Larson cartoon. Imagine multitudes of hopeful archer fish lacking the essential optical compensatory mechanism to support their newly evolved water pistol-like mouthparts, just squirting water virtually everywhere except at their insect targets. And whole populations of centipedes tripping all over the umpteen pairs of feet random mutation has blessed them with while neglecting to also evolve the unimaginably complex integrated network of all the nerve-blood-‘ligament’ connections necessary for all those legs to move in harmony. These are but two examples among millions and millions, because the simple fact is that every single life-form has so many specific and complex mechanisms and functionalities by which it is perfectly suited to surviving in its environment.

Random mutation exists as an idea only, a proposal that is neither supported by physical evidence nor by common sense. Even if we overlook that most mutations would be dysfunctional, still there is no evidence for evolution in the form of new features that are not true to the previous generations, that do not merely represent some minor variation in a feature that the parents already possess and that are thus still indicative of the parent species … but that are new and distinct, as is a feather from a scale, for example.

In conclusion: there is no evidence to show that random mutation is anything other than mere figment, ideological concept. Not only that, but it is indeed also hopelessly irrational. After all, the theory of evolution purports to explain, as per the title of Darwin’s book, the origin of species. And yet its underlying operating principle is that there must be an incessant and massive volume of mutations necessary to provide for it. In other words, the offspring from one generation to the next would have to be continually and randomly mutating so as to allow for the occasional appearance of a useful coordinated evolutionary feature: this constant variation is absolutely fundamental to the theoretical possibility of evolution. But this completely opposes the fact of stasis, of distinct species as preserved by reproductive stability: re-productive literally meaning producing again, or copying. So this argument offers another demonstration of the hopeless irrationality and self-contradiction that is so intrinsic to the entire evolutionary non-science.

To improve a living organism by random mutation is like saying you could improve a Swiss watch by dropping it and bending one of its wheels or axis. Improving life by random mutations has the probability of zero.” (Nobel prize-winning biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgi)


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


Sunday, April 5, 2009

Darwin Is Dead!-Messing With Darwin in Texas

If you would like to contribute to our year-long "celebration" of Darwin's 200th birthday, please send your articles, editorials, or any other creative and informative pieces to nvclub108@gmail.com

In the science classrooms of Texas, a battle of wills between the supporters of Darwin's theory of evolution and those who support the theory of intelligent design met with an unclear and unsatisfying conclusion for both sides in a recent court decision on new "open-minded" language to be included in upcoming versions of state science textbooks.

You can read all about it here.

Those of us who are advocating a new, critical examination of the theories of evolution face an uphill battle-by all sincere standards of scientific examination, there should be no problem in advocating for an open-minded approach for these students in studying the yet-as-unproven aspects in Darwin's master work.

But as we see here, there is an intellectual and social brick wall of elitism and dare I say, fundementalism, that just about nearly prevents any "alternative" approach to the study of Darwin's theory (and by "alternative" we mean anything other than a blind acceptance of its indisputable fact in explaining the development of species) from being introduced to the students of America.

On top of that, we also often deal with the theory of intelligent design being instinctively lumped in with Biblical creationism. These obstacles require those of us coming from the Vedic paradigm to use all of our intelligence and blessings to help clear the path for a true and strong dialogue on the theories of evolution. It is what Prabhupada wanted us to do.

Friday, April 3, 2009

The Latest News from the MISCOWP Vedic Village

Dear Friends of The Michigan Society for Cow Protection, April 2, 2009

Greetings! As the weather gets warmer and the days grow longer, we are focusing on getting our crops started. Last Saturday 8 people came to my upstairs apartment at 313 Newport Street, just five blocks from the temple, to help plant seeds in flats. This Saturday at 1pm, we will expect at least 10 people to come to continue planting the seeds of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and chillis. We will also transplant many of the new seedlings into larger containers.

At the farm we are almost finished building a new fenced-in enclosure for Dharma and Bhima, our two Gir bull calves, who by the way, are being regularly trained by Navadwipa dasa. Within a week or two, they will start learning how to help around the farm by pulling a wagon and stone sled.

Good news! A devotee couple from Atlanta Georgia is coming here this weekend to meet us and look at the farm with the intent of possibly moving to the farm. They are expert preachers, organic gardeners, beekeepers and would also like to start a varna-asrama college. Today I am meeting Betsy, a woman who lives in Dexter, to make plans for the farm to adopt two steers she purchased from the slaughterhouse meat industry. Betsy and her friends established a non-profit organization to raise funds to take care of these two animals for the rest of their lives.

Dear friends, we need your assistance, both volunteer and financial. By the end of next week, when the seven acres of gardens are plowed, we will need as much help as possible to amend and prepare the fields for 30 different crops. You could also help us with much needed financial help in the following ways:

  1. Become a CSA member and recruit other CSA members.
  2. Help us purchase 60 fruit trees at $30 a tree.
  3. If you have good credit and a job, could you get us a loan for $3,000 to $5,000 that we will pay back monthly at probably only $30 to $50 a month. MISCOWP could pay the loan off completely in six months. This money will help us catch up with all of our expenses.
  4. We need $800 to pay for perennial plants, including 1500 asparagus, 200 berry bushes, 1000 strawberry and 100 rhubarb plants.
Remember that all donations are tax-deductible. We even accept payments or donations by credit card. If you would like more information or have any ideas or suggestions, please feel free to call Adiraja dasa (Tom Milano) at 313 823-3815, or email tommilano108@yahoo.com. I hope this meets you well and in happy God consciousness.

Hare Krsna,

Adiraja dasa