TripAdvisor names Naha 6th most popular city

Posted on by

TripAvisor, the biggest travel website in the world providing travel-related information, announced the world favorite tourist cities ranking list in 2014, titled Travelers choice for new trendy tourist cities in 2014.

On the list, Naha City was selected as the 6th most popular city in the world, in addition of being the 4th among the cities of the Asian countries. The top three cities on the list were Da Nang in Vetnam, Shihanoukville in Cambodia and Limassol in Cyprus.

Naha City was cited for being attractive for its Ryukyu history and culture while being a modern city. The Prefectural Museum, Shuri Castle, Shikina-en Garden and the stone path in Kinjo Town were cited as popular and interesting tourist sites in Naha.

TripAdvisor officials say that many people not only from within Japan but from the U.S. and Taiwan made comments on the website regarding Naha and expressing interest in the history of Okinawa.

Read the original:

TripAdvisor names Naha 6th most popular city

You must be joking – chucking a 15,000 super computer down the stairs? – Video

Posted on by


You must be joking - chucking a 15,000 super computer down the stairs?
Here is a glimpse of how a test was carried out on a new #39;concept #39; - the product in question is a #39;flight cluster #39; - the flight case #39;is #39; the outer case of t...

By: David Thompson

Follow this link:

You must be joking - chucking a 15,000 super computer down the stairs? - Video

Future of Care: The Future of Stem Cell Therapy (Full Presentation) – Video

Posted on by


Future of Care: The Future of Stem Cell Therapy (Full Presentation)
Watch our October 29, 2014 Future of Care presentation on the future of stem cell therapy featuring Dr. David Brenner, Vice Chancellor, UC San Diego Health Sciences, Paul Viviano, Chief Executive...

By: UCSDHSDEV

See more here:

Future of Care: The Future of Stem Cell Therapy (Full Presentation) - Video

THE DESTITUTE: A DISCUSSION ON THE SPIRITUALITY OF POVERTY | Shaykh Yusuf Talal De Lorenzo – Video

Posted on by


THE DESTITUTE: A DISCUSSION ON THE SPIRITUALITY OF POVERTY | Shaykh Yusuf Talal De Lorenzo
Shaykh Yusuf Talal De Lorenzo delivers his lecture at the Turath Destitute Book Launch held at SOAS University, Russell Square. - - Web | http://www.alwaqiah.co.uk ...

By: Al Waqi #39;ah

Read more here:

THE DESTITUTE: A DISCUSSION ON THE SPIRITUALITY OF POVERTY | Shaykh Yusuf Talal De Lorenzo - Video

Entheogens: What’s In a Name? The Untold History of Psychedelic Spirituality, and the CIA – Video

Posted on by


Entheogens: What #39;s In a Name? The Untold History of Psychedelic Spirituality, and the CIA
This video is a TEST VERSION ONLY and we #39;d like people #39;s feedback on the digital voices after hearing and viewing the entire video. This is the unabridged, Text Aloud DIGITAL AUDIO version,...

By: GnosticMedia

See the article here:

Entheogens: What's In a Name? The Untold History of Psychedelic Spirituality, and the CIA - Video

Can Spirituality Help You Age More Gracefully?

Posted on by

Aging may also come with new and different challenges, like the loss of independence or a debilitating illness. Research suggests that spirituality can help. At a recent meeting for the Gerontological Society of America (GSA), KALWs Rachel Dornhelm spoke with Lydia K. Manning, associate professor of Gerontology at Concordia University in Chicago, about spirituality and aging in older adults. Dornhelm produced this interview through a Journalism Fellowship from New America Media and GSA, supported by AARP.

RACHEL DORNHELM: How did you get interested in the subject of aging?

LYDIA MANNING: I had an experience when I was young. I was very close to my grandmother who ended up in a nursing home when I was seven. So from the ages of seven to about 14 or 15, I spent a lot of time visiting with her. As a result I had many friends who were actually residents in the nursing home. I realized early on that I had a connection, interest, and a fondness for being around and working with older adults.

DORNHELM: So what was your dissertation topic and what are you researching now?

MANNING: For my dissertation topic I interviewed women in late, late life. All of the participants were over 85 years old. I was very interested in their spiritual experiences and how that factored into late, late life and approaching death. How they were making meaning as they approached their end of life? From that, I realized there was something happening with spirituality and resilience. The women I talked to described having the ability to withstand profound hardship and adversity, particularly in late, late life. In many ways their spirituality was a buffer and a tool.

DORNHELM: Were these people who always self-identified as spiritual?

MANNING: The women I talked to for my dissertation were all 85 and over, and for most of them spirituality reflected some kind of continuous narrative in their lives.

DORNHELM: Im curious how you define spirituality in your work.

MANNING: With the women I interviewed, I came to the table with a broad definition rooted in the [social-science] literature. It was:

1. Intense awareness of the present;

Go here to read the rest:

Can Spirituality Help You Age More Gracefully?

Child sexual abuse royal commission: Woman denies procuring girls for sex, admits witnessing assaults at yoga ashram

Posted on by

A woman has told an inquiry that she was sexually assaulted with a double-barrelled shotgun at a New South Wales Central Coast yoga ashram, and was not sure the man who did it would not pull the trigger.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is investigating allegations of sexual and physical abuse made against the former spiritual leader and director of the Satyananda Yoga Ashram in New South Wales, Swami Akhandananda Saraswati, in the 1970s and 80s.

The 57-year-old woman known as Shishy cared for children who were separated from their parents at the ashram where family relationships were broken down.

Shishy met Akhandananda when she was 16 and he was aged about 22. She was initiated at the age of 19 to a full swami and went to live at the Central Coast ashram, sleeping in the same quarters as Akhandananda.

The commission has heard that Akhandananda's behaviour towards her became increasingly threatening as the years passed, and he began cutting at her vagina with nail scissors and threatening her with a pocket knife.

He also used the pocket knife to cut out her moles, at times leaving deep wounds.

"He wouldn't allow me to get medical attention so I sewed those two [cuts] up with fishing wire," she said.

Shishy said she was "terrified" when Akhandananda sexually assaulted her with a double-barrelled shotgun, in the lead up to her fleeing the ashram in 1984.

"I felt like if I moved or did anything other than receive it that I wasn't 100 per cent sure that he wouldn't fully pull the trigger," she said.

Shishy has told the inquiry that she did not procure girls for sex at the yoga ashram but was present when two young girls were sexually assaulted.

Original post:

Child sexual abuse royal commission: Woman denies procuring girls for sex, admits witnessing assaults at yoga ashram

Dec 05, 2014 | International Space Station Passes Over the Eastern Flank of Super Typhoon Hagupit – Video

Posted on by


Dec 05, 2014 | International Space Station Passes Over the Eastern Flank of Super Typhoon Hagupit
BREAKING: #Hagupit (#RubyPH) strengthens to super #typhoon again. 150 mph max sust #39;d winds, per latest JTWC advisory. Note: Eye of the typhoon not visible in...

By: earthspace101

Continue reading here:

Dec 05, 2014 | International Space Station Passes Over the Eastern Flank of Super Typhoon Hagupit - Video

No Man’s Sky News: Gameplay Walkthrough Trailer: Space Stations, Planets, & Galaxy Map – Video

Posted on by


No Man #39;s Sky News: Gameplay Walkthrough Trailer: Space Stations, Planets, Galaxy Map
NEW! No Man #39;s Sky gameplay walkthrough trailer shows No Man #39;s Sky space station, ships, planets, on PS4 PC. Stay tuned to Open World Games for more No Man #39;s Sky let #39;s play, space combat ...

By: Open World Games

Go here to see the original:

No Man's Sky News: Gameplay Walkthrough Trailer: Space Stations, Planets, & Galaxy Map - Video

Chris Hadfield: Celebrity is not that big a deal for me

Posted on by

International Space station commander Chris Hadfield looks down at the Earth from orbit. Photograph: NASA/REX

Youre in Saskatchewan at the moment, but by the time Observer readers see this, youll be in London and then off to various points of the UK and Ireland. Are you looking forward to it? Im really looking forward to it. And its where my familys all originally from we only came to Canada a hundred years ago.

Youll be talking about your new book, You Are Here, a collection of your photographs from the International Space Station. Was it fun to put together? It was a delight. It was a lot of work, because there are tens of thousands of pictures that you take over the month up there, most of them in a hurry you just had a few rushed minutes at the window. It wasnt until over a year later that I actually had time to filter through them all it was like looking at pictures from your childhood or from your wedding and going, oh, look at this! I hadnt even noticed that!

The pictures are amazing from the Yorkshire moors to the deserts of Iran, the Bolivian rainforest and fishing boats in the East China Sea... So many people ask: so what does it look like? And even when I was up there, there was a huge clamouring for people to see their own home town, their own part of the world, places that theyd been. And so I felt a great compunction to do my best to take everybody on one tour around the world, as if we were floating elbow to elbow there, and I was being their tour guide to the world.

One thing the book seems to say is were all connected. Were all co-existing on this planet, and that sense of our little circle and everything else being some big, nebulous them, I think is a dangerous one for us all. Im very pleased to have seen something different for myself. This is my best effort to show everybody what the world truly looks like, and let them draw their own conclusions.

Youve done something that only a tiny number of people will ever do and it started when you saw the moon landings as a child. What was that like? It was pivotal. It was probably most like an enormous door of invitation opening. The improbability of it, but the realisation that impossible things happen, was a wonderful thing to learn at nine years old.

You resolved then to become an astronaut - even though youre frightened of heights, arent you? Well, I think everybody should be! Thats self-preservation. If youre standing on the edge of a cliff, your body ought to be screaming at you to get back, because one small gust of wind or loose pebble and youre off and done. Im not afraid if I know I cant fall, and I think thats the difference. Its not an irrational fear: its just a self-protecting fear. But its what you do with fear that really matters.

You once temporarily lost your vision on a spacewalk. Surely that must have been frightening? In order to accomplish something youre dreaming about, youre probably going to have to face some sort of fear, and the difference between fear and danger is the real key. What is the actual danger? And that applies whether youre referring to crossing a busy street, or doing a spacewalk. I stopped for a moment and thought: OK, so I cant see, but theres really not any increased danger, I can still talk and think and hold on. The guy whos out here with me can help stuff me back into the air lock, and I can sort of feel my way back in.

So you conquered the fear and carried on... And the counterpoint to being blind during that spacewalk was the 10 orbits of the world that I did where I could see fine. The view is revelationary; it is stupefyingly beautiful. Youre not on the world looking up, youre in the universe, its all around you, and youre looking at the world as a separate form. Its turning so relentlessly, and it looks nothing like a globe, its not smooth and shiny, where all the countries are different colours, its this big, complex, textured, multicoloured living thing next to you, and the blackness of everything else is just on the other side. And if I had justallowed fear to dominate my life, I would never have seen any of that.

Now that youve retired from going into space, how much do you miss it? Its not over for me at all. It wasnt a singular event, it was part of the 21years that I served as an astronaut. Its not like I was sitting about twiddling my thumbs and then I was doing a spacewalk, and that was the peak and everything else was some sort of ditch or valley. It just wasnt that way. I see it as just a richness, a great experience that I count on in order to be who I am now. Just because youve eaten ambrosia or truffles or Black Forest cake once doesnt mean that youll never eat again, or that no other food is good.

Read the original:

Chris Hadfield: Celebrity is not that big a deal for me