I read today on the Al Jazeera website that google are expanding their news search engine to include news archives from the last 200 years. I guess this will be a fantastic thing for journalists and researchers alike - giving them access to a wonderful perspective of history when writing articles.

Then I looked a little closer at which archives would be covered - “The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time magazine and The Washington Post.” - all notoriously american publications.

Google is fast becoming (or already is) the global search engine of choice, does their american orientation mean that our global history will start to be viewed increasingly through star-spangled lenses?

A few days ago, while browsing the shelves of a closing-down sale at a second-hand bookshop, I stumbled across a copy of Geraldine Brooks’ novel, Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague (2001). On a whim I decided to buy it, not knowing quite what to expect.

Very quickly, the engaging narrative brought me under its spell. It weaves a fiction based on the real experiences of the Peak District ‘plague village’ of Eyam, which, in an act of self-sacrifice, voluntarily quarantined itself when it became infected with the Great Plague in 1666.

The story is told from the point of view of a seemingly common young woman, Anna Frith, who works as a housemaid to the visionary rector and his wife. However, as the tale unfolds, this young woman, amidst the great loss and suffering brought by the disease, undergoes a startling transformation. Read more…

“So many scriptures say so many things, and they are sometimes contradictory to one another. Now what to do? What is an ordinary man to do? Whom to follow and whom not to follow?

There are so many social codes in the world. And amongst intellectuals there are so many diversities of opinion. One intellectual doesn’t express, doesn’t recommend, doesn’t support, the views of others. And it is the greatest weakness of intellectuals that they always encourage disunity. They always support heterogeneity.

Then where lies the secret of Dharma [the innate nature of humanity]? ‘Dharma’ means ’spirituality’ - not ’spiritualism’, but spirituality’.

Now the Supreme Entity [the One Infinite Consciousness], the Controlling Entity, the final stance of Dharma, lies covert within one’s own ‘I’ feeling. That is, you are to search internally and not externally.

Everything is within you, because the Supreme always remains with you, within the very core of your heart. So search within, O spiritual aspirant, not without, but within - within your very existence.

Your only object of ideation is the Supreme, and not any dogma, not any scripture.”

- Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, 13 May 1979, Fiesch, Switzerland

In a moment of testosterone-fuelled animality, a billion viewers cried in shocked unison, “what on earth is Zidane doing?” For, the captain of France’s football team, in their chase for the World Cup, had just launched a charging headbutt at Italian player Materazzi, knocking him to the ground. The Frenchman was shown the red card and sent off the pitch.

It was an iconic moment – one that will surely be stamped into the collective memory of this year’s tournament and of Zidane’s largely brilliant career. This was his last game before retirement and the manner in which he chose to exit left the crowd dazed with tension and confusion.

The game seemed to sour from that moment on. It became difficult to root for France… They had lost the moral advantage. Read more…

“The darkness of evolutionary night began to fade centuries ago when the first ape-like creature deserted his tree-branch kingdom and shambled out into the light of the plain. He was guided by something he could not understand: something un-apelike and impossible for his comrades. Somehow, somewhere in his seething body chemistry, something had changed. In his brain lay the seed of humanity; in his strangely bright eyes, the dark shadow of a hidden dream.
Read more…