Life, Nature, Society

Original Source: Associated Press

"MOSCOW (AP) — Missiles, tanks and other heavy weaponry rolled through Moscow's Red Square in the Victory Day parade Friday, the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union that they have appeared in the annual event.

Victory Day, marking the defeat of Nazi Germany, is Russia's most important secular holiday, both honoring the enormous sacrifices of World War II, in which nearly 9 million Red Army soldiers are estimated to have died, and asserting the country's military strength.

Russia has nearly quadrupled its defense spending in recent years, aiming to resuscitate the military forces that deteriorated in the post-Soviet period.

Topol missiles, which have the capacity to carry nuclear warheads, were part of the display of more than 100 tanks, mobile missile units and armored vehicles that was aimed at underlining the military revival. But many of the heavy weapons shown were only slightly modernized versions of equipment developed decades ago.

Although the display was significantly smaller than in Soviet-era parades, the return of the tradition has raised concerns that Russia harbors aggressive ambitions."

Photos courtesy of AP

"Q: What is the difference between the Debt and the Deficit?

A: The National Debt is the total amount of money owed by the government; the federal budget deficit is the yearly amount by which spending exceeds revenue. Add up all the deficits (and subtract those few budget surpluses we've had) for the past 200+ years and you'll get the current National Debt.

Q: How has the National Debt grown over time?

A: The National Debt on January 1st 1791 was just $75 million dollars. Today, it rises by that amount every hour or so. "

Original Source

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BEIJING (AP) — An Olympic flame reached, and was lit up on, the top of the world Thursday. The 19-member mountaineering team was comprised of both ethnic Han Chinese and Tibetan members and also included university students - the team captain, Nyima Cering, is a Tibetan, while deputy Luo Shen is Han Chinese. All dressed in red parkas emblazoned with Olympic logos, broke camp before dawn and reached the top of the 29,035-foot mountain a little more than six hours later.

The Everest torch is separate from the main Olympic flame, which was not taken up the mountain because of weather concerns. A delay due to bad weather would have thrown the schedule off for the whole torch relay. The Olympic flame had been carried in a special metal canister during the ascent. As the team neared the top, they used a wand to pass the flame from the canister to the torch, which had been designed to withstand the strong winds and low oxygen levels at the top of Everest.

A colorful Tibetan prayer flag lined the path and fluttered in the wind. The climbers could be heard struggling for breath (live television) as five torchbearers each inched a few feet before passing on the flame to the next person. The final torchbearer, a Tibetan woman named Cering Wangmo, stood on the peak with the torch while other team members unfurled flags Chinese and Olympic flags. They then clustered together, cheering "We made it," and "Beijing welcomes you." One person was heard breathing heavily, murmuring "not enough oxygen." The head of the Everest leg of the relay, Li Zhixin, was overcome with emotion as the flame reached the top. "It's so hard," he said at the CCTV studio set up at base camp, choking on tears.

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Photos courtesy of Xinhua News

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stephen Colbert, whose U.S. presidential campaign was cut short, came out a winner on Tuesday when he walked away with a Webby award as the Internet's "Person of the Year."

The Webby awards, which honor excellence on the Internet, are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 550-person judging academy. Winners will be honored at ceremonies on June 9th and 10th in New York, and, as always, will be limited to just a five-word acceptance speech.

Colbert won the highest honor for "the innovative way he has used the Internet to interact with fans of The Colbert Report."

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Photo courtesy of Reuters

Original Source

“There is pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.”

Above excerpt from poem by Lord Byron (1788–1824) is the beginning of the movie based on a true story, of a young top student and athlete Christopher McCandless from Emory University, who donated his savings (all $24,000) to charity and abandoned his car, walked by himself, alone, “Into the Wild”, into Alaska. He burned his social security card, all personal IDs, and family photos, leaving no clue for his well-off family to find him. A very sad journey of a young man at 24 to disconnect himself entirely from society from the moment he burnt the remaining cash in his wallet, a “new birth”, in his words… The perceived hypocrisy in his parents’ and family relationships that he hates most has buried, in a little boy’s heart, a secret bomb of pain, not unlocked in time. He did not make one phone call even to his younger sister, nor did love from acquaintances on the road stop him from a journey obviously leading an innocent to apparent danger. Does the young man “love not man the less, but Nature more”?

Released by Paramount Vantage. Running time: 140 minutes. Starring Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, and William Hurt. (screenshots) -

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"YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar's official media said Tuesday that 10,000 people were killed by a cyclone in just one town, confirming fears of a spiraling death toll from the storm's 12-foot tidal surges and high winds that swept away bamboo homes in low-lying coastal regions... Fishing boats were crushed by the tropical cyclone in the port of Yangon, Myanmar, on Sunday. Winds reached 120 miles per hour."

Images courtesy of Associated Press

Original Source

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Bob Dylan came up with one way to remember Albert Einstein: “Now you would not think to look at him/But he was famous long ago/For playing the electric violin/On Desolation Row.”

This is the pure distillate of celebrity. Dylan’s folk-rock vision of “Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood” is one in which the original man has disappeared into a symbolic fog where more or less any meaning may be found. Nowadays, such content-less fame has become common, though there aren’t many out there who match Einstein for resonance. But when he first exploded into public view, there were no precedents. No scientist before or since has so completely transcended the role of expert to become a universal emblem of reason.

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Photographers caught that wit as well as the gravitas. It helped that he was astonishingly willing to play along. No one made him ride that bicycle or stick out his tongue straight into the barrel of an oncoming lens. Whatever weariness he felt at the crush of the public gaze, he was almost always willing to pause for the shot. There is a story that he was once asked—by perhaps the only person on earth who did not recognize him—what he did for a living. He replied that he was a photographer’s model.

He was just as open to sharing his ideas. Einstein took seriously questions about his science, up to the point of writing one of the best introductions to relativity for the lay reader. (Called Relativity, it’s still in print.) He handled the ridiculous questions, too, with humor and enormous stamina. He told his interrogators what he thought of Prohibition (against, though he didn’t drink), the death penalty (against, at least some of the time), and abortion (for, up to a certain point in the pregnancy). No scientist before Einstein had been so willing to stand before his public.

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Images courtesy of NASA

Original Source