Pattons speech (uncensored)

Warning: Contains profanity and foul language

Patton had a unique ability regarding profanity. During a normal conversation, he could liberally sprinkle four letter words into what he was saying and the listeners would hardly take notice of it. He spoke so easily and used those words in such a way that it just seemed natural for him to talk that way. He could, when necessary, open up with both barrels and let forth such blue-flamed phrases that they seemed almost eloquent in their delivery. When asked by his nephew about his profanity, Patton remarked, "When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag." "As for the types of comments I make", he continued with a wry smile, "Sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence."

Anyone who has ever viewed the motion picture PATTON will never forget the opening. George Campbell Scott, portraying Patton, standing in front of an immensely huge American flag, delivers his version of Patton's "Speech to the Third Army" on June 5th, 1944, the eve of the Allied invasion of France, code-named "Overlord".

Scott's rendition of the speech was highly sanitized so as not to offend too many fainthearted Americans. Luckily, the soldiers of the American Army who fought World War II were not so fainthearted. The movie Patton was a very good portrayal of Patton in that it was the way he wanted his men and the public to see him, as a rugged, colorful commander. There was one exception, however, according to the Major General. In reality, Patton was a much more profane speaker than the movie dared to exhibit.

This is the actual speech that Patton gave to the Third Army:

Be seated.
Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight. When you, here, every one of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.


You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all men. Yes, every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base. Americans pride themselves on being He Men and they are ‘He Men’. Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably more so. They are not supermen.


All through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what you call chicken shit drilling. That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don't give a fuck for a man who's not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready for what's to come. A man must be alert at all times if he expects to stay alive. If you're not alert, sometime, a German son-of-an-asshole-bitch is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sockful of shit!


There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily. All because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did. An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking!


We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity those poor sons-of-bitches we're going up against. By God, I do.


My men don't surrender I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back. That's not just bull shit either. The kind of man that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Luger against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the hell out of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German before they knew what the hell was coming off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There was a real man!

All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don't ever let up. Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain. What if every truck driver suddenly decided that he didn't like the whine of those shells overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly bastard could say, Hell, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands. But, what if every man thought that way? Where in the hell would we be now? What would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world, be like? No, Goddamnit, Americans don't think like that. Every man does his job. Every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important in the vast scheme of this war. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The Quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where we are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man on K.P. has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep us from getting the 'G.I. Shits'.


Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men. One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, “Fixing the wire, Sir”. I asked, “Isn't that a little unhealthy right about now?” He answered, “Yes Sir, but the goddamned wire has to be fixed.” I asked, “Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?” And he answered, “No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!” Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds. And you should have seen those trucks on the rode to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men weren't combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable.


Don't forget, you men don't know that I'm here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans. Some day I want to see them rise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the Goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton'.


We want to get the hell over there, The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit.


Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin, he yelled, I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I'd shoot a snake!


When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do!


I don't want to get any messages saying, I am holding my position. We are not holding a goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!


From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don't give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that.


There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON'T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, “Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.” No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, “Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!”

The Gripe Sheet

After every flight, pilots fill out a form called a gripe sheet, which conveys to mechanics the problems encountered with an aircraft during flight that need repair or correction. The mechanics read the sheet, correct the problems, and then respond in writing on the lower half of the form as to what remedial action was taken. The pilot reviews the gripe sheets before the next flight. Never let it be said that ground crew and engineers lack a sense of humor.

Here are some actual logged maintenance complaints and problems submitted by Qantas pilots and the solutions recorded by maintenance engineers.

By the way, Qantas is the only major airline that has never had an accident!
(P = the problem logged by the pilot;
S = the solution and action taken by the maintenance engineers.)

P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.

P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.

P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.

P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.

P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.

P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That's what they're there for.

P: IFF inoperative.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.

P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you're right.

P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.

P: Aircraft handles funny.
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.

P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.

P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.

P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
S: Took hammer away from midget.

Ardh Satya (half-truth)

ARDH-SATYA

Rating: Masterpiece
Genre: Crime/Drama
Director: Govind Nihalani
Cast: Om Puri, Smita Patil, Sadashiv Amrapurkar
Writing Credits: Vijay Tendulkar, S. D. Panwalker, Vasant Dev.
Cinematography: Govind Nihalani
Year of Release: 1983


Ek palde mein napunsakta, doosre palde mein paurush, aur theek tarazu ke kaante par, ardh satya
(On one side of the balance lies virility, muliebrity on the other and the needle in the center represents the half-truth.)

Ardh Satya (half-truth), Govind Nihalani’s third film as a director released at a time when the average film was a typical ‘masala’ fare. The 80s signified a period when commercial Hindi cinema embraced escapism like a vital life force. Most films that released in the 80s had nothing meaningful to say. Usually, they conformed to a particular formula: a larger than life hero, a buxom and somewhat intractable heroine, lots of action, quotidian musical numbers and a mandatory happy ending. That Ardh Satya did well commercially in those times (helped in part by its shoestring budget) is testament to how unerringly it struck a chord with the masses.

The same people, who flocked to see their dreams come true on screen, found solace in this gritty, dark film about rampant corruption, hooliganism and police atrocities. For a brief moment, it seemed that people were ready to accept alternative cinema steeped with realism, but it turned out to be just another false alarm, unfortunately.

The plot: Anant Velankar (Om Puri), a sub-inspector in Mumbai, is an honest cop. He tries his best to bust goons belonging to a local gang-leader Rama Shetty (Sadashiv Amrapurkar making his debut) but comes up empty because of the latter’s political influence. He also becomes a subject of inter-departmental politics, which further abets his fall from grace. Frustrated by the turn of events, he turns to alcohol, and from there on has trouble connecting with anyone except his sympathetic boss (Shafi Inamdar as Hyder Ali) and his girlfriend Jyotsna Gokhale (Smita Patil).

In a way, Anant Velankar is like Travis Bickle from Martin Scorsese’s brilliant treatise on urban alienation Taxi Driver. He is a loner; has trouble connecting with people, and carries several emotional scars from the past. Anant’s father (Amrish Puri), a tough authoritarian, is also a part of the Police Force. He has no qualms in beating his wife and absolutely rejects the notion that his son should become anything but a Police Officer. Anant fulfills his father’s wishes by sacrificing his own dream becoming a professor in arts.

The crux of the story therefore is Anant’s quest for virility. When his senior officers ridicule him (by setting goons captured by him free), he feels as if he is castrated. It affects him to such an extent that he becomes prone to sadistic outbursts. Small criminals held in captivity fall prey to his wrath, as he slowly loses control over his sanity. The sum of all these events leads to a catharsis that I won’t reveal. It is best to watch it first hand, in case you haven’t yet seen the film.



Govind Nihalani belongs to the rare breed of directors in India, who use the medium to highlight moral and spiritual dilemmas facing the common man. His films are not rich in populist craft (songs, flights of fantasy, happy conclusions etc) but use minimalist technique instead. The masses see it as a ‘distancing’ strategy and few people other than the intellectual class patronize his efforts in general. His films are also unfairly labeled as part of ‘parallel’ cinema a distinction from the commercial ventures that characterize Bollywood. Pity, because they are true examples of art just like Satyajit Ray’s masterworks.

Nihalani who started out as a cinematographer, knows how to trust his audience. His style is Spartan and his characters speak only when it is necessary. Key to his approach is the use of close up shots, used mainly to reveal inner feelings. There are several shots in the lock up room (prison cell), which highlight the effectiveness of using such an approach. They portray the brutal violence of third-degree torture, without having it to show it on screen. The same applies to scenes of anguish and indecision as applied to Anant and Jyotsna. Nihalani believes it is better to leave things unstated instead of belaboring the obvious.

Another noticeable Nihalani trait is to depict ordinary life in its complete richness, allowing us to be a part of the experience. There is nothing phony about any of his shots; each and every scene is shot with machine-like precision, adding texture to the main story. Notice for example, the scene where Shafi Inaamdar calls Om Puri on the phone, with a woman dressing up in the background. (Who is she? His wife? A prostitute?). A simple scene like that goes a long way in adding nuance to a character, without the need for extra exposition.



Ardh Satya also justifies its greatness in the performance arena. The greatness (typical as it is with all great films) stems from the complexity inherent in the script, instead of relying on individual brilliance. Om Puri as Anant Velankar, plays a flawed and tragic hero with great verve and simplicity. His pain, his anguish is palpable, but his sadistic behavior alienates him from us. There are moments of blistering intensity in his performance that will undoubtedly gain a round of applause, but to his credit, Om Puri also breathes life in scenes that portray the banal aspects of everyday life. It’s a performance that is both ‘natural’ and studied, just as we have come to expect from the master thespian.

Smita Patil is equally impressive in a supporting role. Her naturalistic and understated portrayals have gained her a legendary status over the years since her demise, and it’s easy to see why such is the case. Sadashiv Amrapurkar, plays his role with a quiet menace in sharp contrast to his tendency to go over-the-top in commercial films (Sadak, Akhree Raasta). He is slimy and self-effacing but deadly as a rattlesnake. It’s a measured performance that mirrors the characteristics of a scheming politician without ever jumping into the parody mode.

The rest of the supporting cast (Amrish Puri, Shafi Inaamdar et al) also acquits itself admirably. Of special note is the brief but extremely potent performance by the great Naseeruddin Shah. His character (Mike Lobo) is a cop under suspension a washed-up alcoholic, who functions as a portentous sign for things to come. His emotional and physical ruin, in the face of his naïve defiance against the corrupt system, adds to the tragic tone of the film and also forms a great cinematic moment.



Ardh Satya is an example of a film that is ‘real’, somewhat dry and detached, but packs tremendous emotional resonance. Twenty years after its first release, it still remains relevant because corruption in India has only increased, as the years have gone by. Films like Shool, Kurukshetra etc have tried to tap into the same idea but have fallen short in terms of emotional impact, and narrative fluidity despite the presence of heavy crowd-pleasing rhetoric in the two films.

The film plays like an existential nightmare, where callous indifference and mad rage for power co-exist peacefully. For the honest at heart, there is turmoil lurking beneath the cover of apparent calm, just like the occasional smile on Anant Velankar’s face. The question is, how does a person like Anant Velankar fit inside such a world? In Govind Nihalani’s view, he simply doesn’t.

The film practically screams for attention on the issue of everyday life in developing countries such as India. What should a person with an iota of conscience do in a hostile and corrupt environment? The movie offers a solution, but I don’t think it endorses it. We, the viewers, are left to draw our own conclusions or in the least, question our passivity and general indifference towards the world, outside of our own self-important imagination.

Ardh Satya is an essential film for any true fan of cinema. It is rich, layered and full of great performances. But above all, it’s a thinking man’s movie. It is provocative and challenging, without ever resorting to effusive melodrama and overt manipulation. To say that it does justice to its subject matter is an understatement; to know that people shy away from such films is nothing short of an atrocity.

Bear With A Beer Belly

Bear guzzles 36 beers, passes out at campground

SEATTLE, Washington (Reuters) -- A black bear was found passed out at a campground in Washington state recently after guzzling down three dozen cans of a local beer, a campground worker said on Wednesday.

"We noticed a bear sleeping on the common lawn and wondered what was going on until we discovered that there were a lot of beer cans lying around," said Lisa Broxson, a worker at the Baker Lake Resort, 80 miles (129 kilometers) northeast of Seattle.

The hard-drinking bear, estimated to be about two years old, broke into campers' coolers and, using his claws and teeth to open the cans, swilled down the suds.

It turns out the bear was a bit of a beer sophisticate. He tried a mass-market Busch beer, but switched to Rainier Beer, a local ale, and stuck with it for his drinking binge. Wildlife agents chased the bear away, but it returned the next day, said Broxson.

They set a trap using as bait some doughnuts, honey and two cans of Rainier Beer. It worked, and the bear was captured for relocation.

This is me! 

SMS marriage in 75 days

This is the true story of Himali and Kishor Saitwal (aka Saitya, Dada, Diddya). Kishor and I are best friends. We were together in undergrad at VIT, Pune. Kishor is currently at Colorado State University at Fort Collins where he is pursuing a Doctorate in Electrical Engineering. Send a congratulatulatory note to Himali and Kishor at: kishor_saitwal@yahoo.com

To visit Kishor's web-page, please go to http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~saitwalk/

The following contents have been taken from Kishor's web page at : http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~saitwalk/Marriage.html

Movie: SMS marriage in 75 days (Based on a true story)

Producer: Kishor, Himali

Director: Ashutosh

Story: The script was not ready until the end

Starring: Kishor, Himali, Amit, Ashutosh, Akka, Varsha, Anuradha, Himali’s family

Special appearance: Ashutosh, Anuradha

Guest appearance: Sonali, Nitin, Eric, Vinod, Vaishali, Samyak, Neel

Music: Samyak-Neel Lyrics: None (unique hindi drama without songs)
Genre: Drama, Thriller, Comedy, etc…

Recommended Audience: Mature (not for people like Amit Shah)
Released on: August 17, 2004

This is a story of a wonderful couple that came together for the lifetime in the span of 75 days. It’s about me (Kishor) and my better half (Himali). The story begins on a sunny afternoon of 30th May 2004. There was this marriage fair organized by Jain community (30th and 31st May 2004) in Pune (my home town) where highly educated guys and girls had gathered together to choose their spouses.

Let me give the background of both of us before continuing with the story. I am currently working for my PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. at Colorado State University, USA and will graduate in next 6-7 months. Hence on paper, I will graduate in May 2005. By that time, I will have a full-time job in my hands. Therefore, my basic intention behind looking for the girls during my India visit in May 2004 was that if I had liked any girl, I would get engaged and would get married in May 2005. Secondly, I was looking for the girl who was not very career oriented and was homely. On the other hand, Himali comes from a very small village (Pimpalner, Dist. Solapur) and has a post graduate degree with B.H.M.S. degree to start with. She has been working with ICU’s at two different hospitals in Pune for quite some time now. Obviously, she was looking for a person who would let her continue with her career. Also, it was difficult for her parents to wait until May 2005 for her marriage and on top of that, they didn’t want to get her married with an Indian residing in USA. Therefore there were major problems in the basic requirements of both of us.

Getting back to the story… On 30th May, my elder brother (Ashutosh) and my mom (Akka) saw Himali in the fair and told me that we should talk to her and her parents. She was the very first girl I was going to talk to, so I was little uncomfortable at first. But I had also liked her, so I did not hesitate much before we talked to her. We shared my expectations in that meeting, but soon realized that Himali was a doctor and she would not be able to do anything in USA. Although we didn’t get to know her expectations, we thought that this proposal was not going to materialize. However, I had realized that she was somebody special. Hence we asked them to think over the proposal and get back to us on 31st.

As I was one of the very few guys from America, I was one of the most wanted guys in that fair. Hence a lot of girls and their parents were approaching me for both the days of the fair. Although I was not interested in talking to few of them, I had to talk to them for at least some time and Himali thought that I had talked to her just like any other girl. Hence on 31st, she came to me and asked me if I was okay with the height difference we shared (I am 5’ 11’’ and she is 5’ 0’’). The way she asked me was so innocent that I thought that she might be THE ONE. I told her that I didn’t really bother about it and that I give more importance to inner beauty than the outer one.

During the fair, I had short-listed 4-5 girls. I had talked face-to-face to all of them except Himali. Hence I called her up on 1st June and asked her out for lunch. We met each other in “Trishnaj” (the place we will never forget). In that meeting, she told me that I was the only person she had liked in that fair. She was actually feeling bad when I was talking with the other girls. She also told me that she was ready to leave her career and was ready to wait for me for one year before we could get married. In that meeting, I realized that my wavelength had matched with hers like no other girl before. It was some weird feeling and I can't express it in words. But that time, I was thinking little too practically and didn't know if I should ask her to compromise on so many things for my sake. Also I didn’t want to take any decision in haste, as she was one of the very few girls I had seen for my marriage. Hence although I had liked her a lot, I didn’t give her any firm answer.

After our meeting, Himali kept telling her family members to at least see me once before taking any further decision. However, nobody supported her saying that I was little too overqualified for her and that I might not be interested in her. The basic reason for them not to take any interest in me was that I was an Indian residing in America and they had heard few bad cases when some hopeless Indians already had one wife in USA and got married to another girl from India.

I looked for few more girls in the next few days, but realized that Himali was THE ONE. Meanwhile, a guy named Amit Shah came into Himali’s life and without much deliberation, her family members got the two of them engaged on 9th June (the marriage was to be held on 24th Nov.). Himali didn’t have much choice but to agree with her family members’ decision. However, I was always there at the back of her mind. When I called her up on 11th June, she asked me why I didn’t give her any firm answer, so that she could have convinced her family members. At that time, I thought I had lost her, but I could not take her out of my mind.
After a lot of thinking, I called her up on 16th and asked her if she would like to break her engagement and marry me. (I knew it was not a right thing to do, but I didn’t want to lose her.) On that, she said that she could not spoil so many lives at the cost of her own. I really appreciated her mature ness, but realized that she was still badly involved in me. At the end, she said that she wanted to meet me for the last time before I left for USA.

We met on 18th (again in Trishnaj). The meeting was an informal talk and we just shared both of our mistakes. I also got the feeling that she was not very comfortable talking to Amit and that two of them might not be compatible, but I had now accepted the fact that she was somebody else's property. However, she handed few greeting cards to me, while we were departing. I was totally shattered after seeing them. They had no love messages, but were plain cards saying that she was sorry for what had happened. However, I was not stupid enough not to get the intended message.

When I showed those cards to my brother, he realized that it was indeed a serious matter. So we met Himali on 19th June. She bluntly said that she would like to marry me rather than Amit, but could not do so, as the matter had gone out of her hands. I asked her if she would support me in case I did something. However, she said that if I did anything, nobody from her family would support her. Her mother would ask her to leave her job and go back to their town. And they would get her married to Amit only. No good would have come from my actions. So I thought that it was better to stop thinking about her.

However on 20th night, Himali told Amit about me when they went for a movie. She told him that she had liked me from the very beginning of the fair and had no feelings for him. However that immature guy didn’t get the hint and was not willing to accept the fact that both of them would not be happy if they ever got married.

On 21st night, when I was on my way to USA, I just called her to say good-bye and she told me the incident she shared with Amit. I asked her if I should talk to Amit, but again she said that nobody would support her and she would have to abide by the decision she had taken. I thought, that was the end of the story and I started accepting the fact once I got back to USA.

However, Himali called my brother up on 27th and told him that she could not take me out of her mind and she would still like to marry me. So I talked to her on 28th night and she told me that she would talk to Amit and his parents on 29th afternoon about her feelings, if I supported her. On that, I replied to her positively. Meanwhile, Himali asked her mother if she could marry me. As expected, her mother didn’t agree with her and took Himali with her to Baramati (where Himali’s elder sister stays) on 29th morning. As a result, she could not talk to Amit and his parents on that afternoon. On 29th evening, Himali called me up and told me (under pressure) that she had to marry Amit.

On 29th night, Himali tried to convince almost all of her family members, but in vein. Hence at the end of the conversation, she convinced everybody that she would marry Amit so that she could keep working until her marriage and hence could come back in Pune on 30th morning. On 30th morning, I called her up to talk to her, potentially for one last time. I told her to try and understand Amit before they got married. Also we decided not to talk to each other anymore. That would have helped us to forget each other. At the end of the conversation though, I told her that I would wait for her until she got married!!!

I tried to convince myself by saying that whatever happens, happens for good, however I kept thinking about Himali for most of the time. I talked to few of my close friends (even my PhD advisor) and almost all of them were convinced that I was madly in love with her. Everybody kept suggesting me that I should elope her “if” she would support me. Hence I tried to call her on her cell phone again to check for that possibility. (By this time, I was willing to do anything to get her). However, she had changed her cell phone card and I didn’t have her new contact number. As a result, we didn’t talk to each other for almost three weeks after 30th June.
Meanwhile, Himali tried to convince her family members again, but in vein. Finally on 20th July, she sent one SMS to me saying that she didn’t know how she would forget me in her life. I replied back to her saying that she was running away from the reality and that she should let me talk to her. She took two days before she showed her willingness to talk over the matter. On 22nd July, I called her up and asked her directly if she was willing to marry me. She was affirmative on that. I also asked her if she would remain firm on her decision (I was really scared about the consequences if she had reverted back after this). Her reply on that was convincing enough for me. Hence I told her to try and act normally with her and Amit’s family members, until I saw her.

On the same day, I told my brother about what had happened. He talked to Himali to check if she was indeed firm on her decision. Once he was also convinced, he got the marriage date of 31st July (with the auspicious time between 1:15pm and 3:45pm). He contacted the lawyer who conducts such marriages and got all the information about how the marriage can be performed without any problems. I booked the ticket for India so that I could reach Pune on 30th morning. While boarding the plane, I was thinking whether I was doing the right thing or not. I was really scared with the consequences if she had reverted back, as my career was also at stake. Once I reached Pune, I met Himali; we bought a Sherwani for myself (her purchasing was already done) and then chatted for a long time in one of the isolated restaurant. It was a wonderful feeling to be with her. I had a girl friend for at least one day and I didn’t feel like leaving her on that day.

On 31st morning, almost everybody from Himali’s family called her up (as if they wanted to clear the path for the marriage ceremony). The lawyer had booked the hall for us, where everybody showed up at 1:30pm. There were not more than 10 people for our wedding (including my immediate family). Obviously, there was nobody from Himali’s family. My brother, Sonali’s husband Nitin (Sonali was my undergrad classmate), and Himali’s roommate (Anuradha) signed the papers as the three witnesses. (I really appreciate my brother for supporting me wholeheartedly in this and Anuradha who was the only support Himali had.) Once the marriage ceremony was over, we went to the court and got the marriage certificate in our hands at around 7pm. I cannot explain the relief I had once I got that certificate in my hands. On 31st evening, I called up my other family members and informed them about the marriage. Everybody was shocked to hear that I had come all the way from America to get married in a court. It was an interesting and mixed reaction from all of them.

And here comes the climax… Himali called her parents up in the night and told them that she had got married. At first, nobody believed her, but when she said that she already had the marriage certificate and had shifted to my place, her mother started screaming at her. She was really pissed off. However, Himali’s father accepted the fact really quickly and even talked to me in a normal way. I invited him and his family members for the “Puja” (prayer) that was held at our place on 1st August. He said that it would not be possible for them to attend, as it was a shock for them and they needed to decide the further course of action before they could face the society. Although - he said that - Himali’s younger brother would make it to the “Puja”.
The “Puja” was held from 11am to 1pm. Surprisingly; everybody from my family was present for that ceremony. I was really happy to see all of them. Although they didn’t agree with my decision, they were happy for me. That meant a lot for me. In the meanwhile, Amit’s family members got to know about our marriage and started calling Himali on her cell. However, she was told not to receive any of their calls until her parents had settled the matter with them. After the “Puja”, we enjoyed a wonderful lunch together.

On 1st evening, Himali’s parents called me up and said that for the society sake, they had to get us remarried in front of their relatives and friends. We were really surprised to hear that reaction from her side in such a short period of time after our marriage. We were thinking that her family, being a well-reputed one in Pimpalner, would disown her.

We went to Pimpalner on 2nd night and stayed at Himali's place. At first, I was little bit scared to go to the small village during the night, but the hospitality we recieved from Himali's parents was unexpectedly good. The (re)marriage was held on 3rd August at Kunthalgiri (3 hours from Pimpalner). Again it was a short ceremony with a small crowd around. There were not more than 20 people from her side.

Now it was just a matter of patch-up between the two families. Himali’s parents came over to our place for lunch on 5th August and went to Amit’s place that afternoon to return everything they had given to Himali. When they saw Amit’s behavior on that day, Himali’s parents were really happy with Himali’s decision. They got to know that he had lied about his occupation and earning. Also he was really arrogant to talk…

After going to our relatives’ places on 6th and 7th, we went to Lonavala for a short and sweet 2-day honeymoon. Finally, I boarded the plane back to USA on 11th morning. I cannot believe that everything fell into place and we could still give some time to each other in the span of 12 days. It was 12th August when I reached USA and it was the 75th day after we met each other for the first time. I was still feeling like I was dreaming, but I trusted my instincts and everything happened in our favor. When we looked back to our affair, we could not categorize it even in love marriage, because we had hardly talked to each other face-to-face. The spark was created when Himali SMSed me on 20th July, hence the name of the story.

Himali still needs to get her passport and visa done before she can join me in America. It will take around 3-4 months. But I am happy that now she is mine and nobody can take her away from me. We are willing to wait for this time before we can get together again for the rest of our lives. We stayed together for 11 days after marriage and I realized that initial apprehension when I boarded the plane on 28th July was non-sense. We started loving each other even more after our marriage, because we actually think alike and I know that we are made for each other.
Although it’s the end of my story here, this is just the beginning of our lives. I would say that this is a wonderful example, which tells that anything can happen even in real life, if you are firm and true to your decision. So just trust your instincts and go for it…

Cheers…

From Himali and Kishor.

The value of synchronised swimming

HUNGARIAN GP - 2004 - RACE REPORT

(http://www.grandprix.com/race/r726racereport.html)

There are people who will tell you that synchonized swimming is not a proper sport and that a bunch of women prancing around in a swimming pool has no sporting value. But at least you have half-naked women to watch. No, that is not a sexist remark. It is a reality. It means that slightly more than half the population of the world will be interested.

One would love to write an exciting race report from the 2004 Hungarian Grand Prix but it was simply not possible. At the end of the first lap the running order was Michael Schumacher, Rubens Barrichello, Fernando Alonso, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jenson Button, Jarno Trulli, Kimi Raikkonen, Takuma Sato, Giancarlo Fisichella and Antonio Pizzonia. One hour and thirty-four minutes later the order was Schumacher, Barrichello, Alonso, Montoya, Button, Sato, Pizzonia and Fisichella. Trulli and Raikkonen retired when their cars broke down. Pizzonia overtook Fisichella during a pit stop sequence and no body noticed. For the rest of the afternoon the cars went round and round and the crowd struggled to get excited. TV and radio reporters heaved huge sighs of relief when the networks sent messages saying: "We are going to cross to the Olympics!"

And when we sat down at the end of the event to write the story of the race there was nothing to say. The race started, the race ended. The Ferrari mechanics fiddled with a refuelling machine; Ross Brawn ate a banana and Ferrari scored its seventh 1-2 in 13 races. Michael Schumacher scored his 12th win but the numbers mean nothing nowadays. Not many people noticed but Michael's victory was his 82nd. Ayrton Senna died 10 years ago with 41 wins. The sport is wiping out its own heritage, making it meaningless. The top teams have what it takes to win the races but most of them are not using their resources competently. No-one is willing to compromise. They say "Why should we?"

Why should you? Because the sport will die if this goes on much longer. The team bosses must understand that selling the sport is not about selling just their little bit of it. It is not about squeezing every stinking little shekel from the sport by whatever means possible (legal or otherwise). It is about having the intelligence to see beyond the end of their own noses.
What people in the blinkered and closeted world of Formula 1 fail to understand is that Ferrari's opposition is not Williams and McLaren. It is the girls in the swimsuits with the silly grins on their faces. That is what people are going to watch unless Formula 1 does something about the quality of its show.

It doesn't matter who comes up with the rules as long as they are thinking about them for the right reasons. It needs people with open minds and no hidden agendas. It needs people who are bigger than those who thrive on political point-scoring and ego battles which date back decades. The way things are now most of the current decision-makers should be shoved in a skip and the job of running the sport should be handed over to the catering staff, because they at least know how to deliver.

It is amazing that the TV viewing figures of today are as strong as they are and that tells you that this sport could be twice as big and twice as successful if attitudes were different.

In part the hopeless situation in Hungary was because of the nature of the Hungaroring circuit. It has always been useless for overtaking and if it can never produce a good race it should not have a place in the championship. Once it was ground-breaking but Hungary is part of the European Union these days. There are no Iron Curtains. Going to Hungary is about money. The new Hockenheim a few weeks ago showed that the nature of the racing is to a large extent due to the nature of the racing circuit and Hungary is a waste of time. The best thing that can happen would be for bulldozers to be sent in but no-one can afford to do that because all the available money is leeched away leaving them nothing to use to improve the show. What Hockenheim showed is that on the right circuit these cars can overtake one another if the drivers are any good. In Germany we had a stonking race and in Hungary it was horrible. Hopefully we will got to Spa in a fortnight and the majestic track will let there be racing again.
Hopefully, the other teams will mount a stronger challenge.

In all probability Michael Schumacher will win again because Spa is his circuit. A racer's circuit. If that is the case he will win the World Championship and no-one then needs to bother trying to navigate through Chinese bureaucracy. The journalists can stay at home and the F1 team bosses can go and sit in a vast folly in Shanghai and argue with one another and not notice that the sport around them is burning.

Life At 0 MPH

Falguni Bhuta was my class mate in school (IES). Way to go Falguni !

The original link for this article can be found at: http://www.tampatrib.com/MGBDAZR1OXD.html

Life At 0 MPH

By FALGUNI BHUTA and BRAD SMITH

The Tampa Tribune Published: Aug 9, 2004

TAMPA - It's a little before 9 a.m. on a weekday and Al McMillon breathes exhaust fumes on New Tampa's Bruce B. Downs Boulevard. He's going nowhere - fast. McMillon, 53, is stopped at Highwoods Preserve Parkway, site of one of Tampa's 574 traffic signals.
It's a thicket of lights where a person can age faster than the signals turn green to yellow to red and back.
Too long?
``If you're short on gas, yeah, it's too long,'' says the Temple Terrace resident, who navigates the aggravating gantlet five times a day.
If McMillon thinks Tampa's traffic signals take forever, that may be only a slight exaggeration.
Just up Bruce B. Downs, the cycle at Dona Michelle Drive can drag for 4 minutes, 14 seconds - long by national standards, says Larry Hagen, program director at the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida.
Once, traffic engineers say, two minutes was the maximum signal cycle across the United States.
Today, lights are longer for a lot of reasons.
Among them:
* Wider intersections mean pedestrians need more time to cross.
* More awkward left-turn lanes mean longer idle times.
* Yellow lights go longer to give high-horsepower vehicles more time to brake.
* Green lights stay green longer to move heavy traffic faster.
Hagen says Tampa's many traffic-slowing, left-turn signals and relatively few traffic-speeding one-way streets can make getting anywhere seem like a pain in the bumper.
Recent transplants from cities with better designed roads swear traffic lights in Tampa run longer than back home.
``If they can make them shorter,'' says former Massachusetts resident Katie Heaslip, ``at least you'll get the sense that you're going faster.''
The 20-year-old store clerk says she often wastes 10 minutes trying to penetrate the rush hour blur at the city's busiest intersection, Kennedy Boulevard and Dale Mabry Highway.
Traffic engineers say lights won't be retooled for speed without a major overhaul of the region's roads.
These days, Tampa's signal cycles range from 50 seconds in the off-hours at night to more than four minutes during daytime peaks, says Mike Scanlon, city traffic design engineer. Cycles in Orlando and Fort Lauderdale never exceed three minutes.
On average, at least one driver complains every day, Scanlon says.
Tampa's antiquated streets are part of the problem.
``There's not enough roadways and too many cars,'' which slows down traffic cycles, Scanlon says. While traffic has become much heavier the past five years, ``we're still dealing with the same roadway networks since 15 years ago.''
The number of vehicles in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater has risen dramatically in two decades. That means more idling time because of crowding.
A study by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University shows daily traffic on main arteries in the three cities jumped 69 percent from 1981 to 2001. At the same time, the report says, the average amount of time wasted in traffic jumped from eight hours per driver in 1982 to 24 hours in 2001.
``There will be times I'm sitting here for two minutes, and that's a very, very long time to wait for a light to change,'' says Sylvia Chapman, 48, of Lutz, as her car idles on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard. ``Sometimes, you won't get through the first time, so you're there a lot.''
Computer Controls Lights
Traffic controllers are not making lights longer out of spite.
The length of a traffic light cycle is usually calculated by the number of cars passing through the intersection, detected by sensors embedded in the pavement, says Peter Brett, manager of the traffic service division for Hillsborough County's public works department.
Tampa uses a software program called the Metropolitan Traffic Control System to manage traffic, Scanlon says. Used first in the late 1970s and updated several times since, the system employs a central computer to control most signals.
Tampa is working on getting an updated adaptive system and traffic management center in partnership with the Florida Expressway Authority, Scanlon says, but navigating the proposals and funding could take a few years.
The city traffic control room, where Scanlon works, is in a 1,600-square-foot office in the Old City Hall building downtown. Six engineers, working in shifts between 6:30 a.m. and 6 p.m., control about 16 million vehicles each day. Computer screens show complex traffic patterns and television screens display major intersections through 360-degree-angle cameras. Twenty-two cameras at different locations help with monitoring, Scanlon says.
The software uses traffic patterns called timing plans that are programmed to change with the time of day, Scanlon says. Signals are adjusted by morning, evening, peak, off-peak, nights, weekends and holidays.
Hillsborough County uses a similar system to control its traffic lights. The city and the county have an agreement that governs which agency controls which intersections, says Michael McCarthy of the county traffic division. If a county road crosses a city road within city limits, most likely the intersection is managed by the city, Scanlon says.
County Wants New System
County public works officials expect to adopt a new system within a few years that they say will improve traffic flow.
The Intelligent Transportation System, deployed at various levels throughout the country, will use traffic signals that can communicate conditions to a central system through video monitors.
``They give more information on traffic patterns [and] volumes and surveillance cameras can observe traffic backups and change signal timings,'' says Brett, of the county public works department. ``The motorist on the street will see some relief during backups during rush hours, with about 25 percent improvement.''
Improvements will cost more than $30 million in federal funds, grants and impact fees.
Not everyone is annoyed by Tampa's slow-changing signals.
Chris Johnson, 33, who works at Signs Now on Dale Mabry Highway, says the intersection is busy, but its traffic lights don't seem too long.
``You don't see one side piling up traffic more than the other,'' he says.
Cindy Kane, 51, of Hunter's Green in New Tampa, says she doesn't really notice the signal cycle at Bruce B. Downs and Dona Michelle.
``It's not a big deal,'' she says. ``Three minutes is not too long.''

Reporter Falguni Bhuta can be reached at fbhuta@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7620

Maggots make medical comeback

Think of these wriggly little creatures not as, well, gross, but as miniature surgeons: Maggots are making a medical comeback, cleaning out wounds that just won't heal.

Wound-care clinics around the United States are giving maggots a try on some of their sickest patients after high-tech treatments fail.

It's a therapy quietly championed since the early 1990s by a California physician who's earned the nickname Dr. Maggot. But Dr. Ronald Sherman's maggots are getting more attention since, in January, they became the first live animals to win Food and Drug Administration approval -- as a medical device to clean out wounds.

A medical device? They remove the dead tissue that impedes healing "mechanically," FDA determined. It's called chewing.

But maggots do more than that, says Sherman, who raises the tiny, wormlike fly larvae in a laboratory at the University of California, Irvine. His research shows that in the mere two to three days they live in a wound, maggots also produce substances that kill bacteria and stimulate growth of healthy tissue.

Still, "it takes work to convince people" -- including hospital administrators -- that "maggots do work very well," said Dr. Robert Kirsner, who directs the University of Miami Cedars Wound Center.

"They'll probably be easier to use now that they're FDA-approved, and we'll talk about it more and think about it more," Kirsner said. He estimates he uses maggots in about one in 50 patients where conventional therapy alone isn't enough.

This has been quite a year for wormlike critters. In June, FDA also gave its seal of approval to leeches, those bloodsuckers that help plastic surgeons save severed body parts by removing pooled blood and restoring circulation. And in the spring, University of Iowa researchers reported early evidence that drinking whipworm eggs, which causes a temporary, harmless infection, might soothe inflammatory bowel disease by diverting the overactive immune reaction that causes it.

There's a little more yuck factor with maggots. Most people know of them from TV crime dramas, where infestations of bodies help determine time of death.

Actually, maggots' medicinal qualities have long been known. Civil War surgeons noted that soldiers whose wounds harbored maggots seemed to fare better. In the 1930s, a Johns Hopkins University surgeon's research sparked routine maggot therapy, until antibiotics came along a decade later.

Today, despite precise surgical techniques to cut out dying tissue, artificial skin and other high-tech treatments, hard-to-heal wounds remain a huge problem. Diabetic foot ulcers alone strike about 600,000 people annually and lead to thousands of amputations.

It's not unusual to spend two years and $30,000 treating one, says Dr. David G. Armstrong, a Chicago specialist who first tried maggot therapy in frustration about seven years ago and says he's now used it on several hundred patients.

Drop maggots into the wound and cover with a special mesh to keep them in place. Two to three days later, after the maggots have eaten their fill, lift them off and dispose.

Wound size determines how many maggots, and how many cycles of therapy, are needed. It typically costs a few hundred dollars, says Armstrong, of the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science.

One of Sherman's studies found 80 percent of maggot-treated wounds had all the dead tissue removed, compared with 48 percent of wounds surgically debrided. Armstrong is about to publish research that suggests maggot-treated patients also spend fewer days on antibiotics.
Patients say it's not that hard to accept. Pamela Mitchell of Akron, Ohio, begged to try maggots when surgeons wanted to amputate her left foot, where infection in an inch deep, 2-inch-wide diabetic ulcer had penetrated the bone. It took 10 cycles of larvae, but she healed completely.
How did they feel? On day 2, when the maggots were fat, "I could feel them moving, because they were ready to come out," she recalls. But, "if you're faced with amputation or the maggots, I think most people would try the maggots."

Wound-care clinics around the country are giving maggots a try on some of their sickest patients after high-tech treatments fail.

Look in your own backyard first.....

Digging for life in the deadest desert. Driest spot on Earth may hold clues to Mars

Specialized microorganisms called extremophiles thrive in nuclear waste, volcanic vents, boiling geothermal geysers and even deep inside rocks. Their unique biology allows them to feast on chemicals and radiation that would kill most organisms.

But there is a place on Earth so hostile to life that even extremophiles perish: Chile's Atacama Desert.
"Here is the only place where we've really crossed a threshold where we find no life," says Chris McKay a NASA geologist studying the Atacama.

"You go to the Antarctic, the Arctic, any other deserts we've been, scoop up dirt and you find bacteria. This is the only place that you would find nothing."

The rocky desert on a high plateau along South America's Andes mountain range appears lifeless.
Scientists have been unable to find plants or cells living in many parts of the desert. Even bacteria do not last long in the barren, acidic soil.

The reason, at least in part, is that the Atacama Desert lacks water. It is the driest place on Earth. Rainfall is measured in millimeters per decade, and some areas have not seen precipitation in hundreds of years, scientists say.

At its arid core, the Atacama -- about two-thirds the size of Italy -- is the closest thing to Mars on our planet.
That characteristic is attracting a horde of at least one unique life form: NASA scientists.

"This is a very good place to be testing exploration strategies for Mars," says Nathalie Cabrol, a planetary geologist with NASA and the SETI Institute which searches for extraterrestrial life.

The space agency is examining how moisture levels in the desert define where life exists and where it dies out.
By understanding the absolute limits of life on Earth, scientists hope their search for life on other planets such as Mars will be more likely to succeed.

"Where does life check out and say, 'This is too much for us,'" says McKay. "We can by driving across this desert take a trip in time on Mars. ... And we can chart where that transition occurred and then we can apply it to Mars."
A habitable MarsWhen the solar system was younger, the conditions on Mars were more like those on Earth today.
"[Ancient Mars] is equivalent to what we find in the Andes at 20,000 feet," said Cabrol. "It's totally equivalent to life on Mars 3.5 billion years [ago]."

Discoveries made by the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are confirming these theories. Their observations suggest Mars was once a much wetter planet with an atmosphere, salty seas and flowing streams. New evidence across Mars is popping up from ancient deltas and gullies that crisscross the planet to fossilized ripples of waves frozen in stone. But there is a crucial difference.

The evolution of life on Mars would have been totally different from that on Earth, where a "habitable" zone has existed for 4.5 billion years, says Cabrol.

On Mars, it lasted perhaps 1 billion years before reappearing only episodically. Also, the substance essential to life as we know it -- water -- is even less abundant on Mars than in the Atacama desert.

As a result, any life would probably have to hunker down away from the radiation and aridity.

Scientists are probing the Atacama Desert trying to understand why there is nothing living in the dirt. But scientists say if the three ingredients for life exist together on Mars -- energy, nutrients and water -- then life can exist too. But it won't be easy to find.

"It's probably hiding from surface conditions," says Cabrol. "We'll have to be even smarter on Mars than in the Atacama."

Researchers hope the Atacama will refine the techniques to detect extraterrestrial life. Assays to identify chemical signatures of life are becoming ever more sensitive to find the hardiest biological specimens.

"What we are looking for is the toughest form of life on Earth: spores," says Adrian Ponce, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Spores, the dormant form of some species of bacteria, exist to survive hard times. This type of hibernation shields microorganisms from the effects of dehydration, radiation and lack of nutrients.

It also makes them superb astronauts. Spores are so resilient, they have survived direct exposure to space with virtually no protection.

The Long Duration Exposure Facility, deployed in orbit in 1984, carried microorganisms among its array of experiments. It remained in orbit longer then expected until it was finally retrieved in 1990 about six years later.
NASA scientists found that the bacterial spores had lain dormant on the facility. Except for those directly exposed to solar radiation, the spores showed few problems reviving after their six-year voyage.

Scientists were "impressed," said Michael Meyers, NASA's senior scientist for astrobiology.

"Spores are pretty good at survival," he said. "It's a combination of drying out and reducing the number of mutations caused by radiation. They have fairly robust repair mechanisms."

"It's sort of a crime scene investigation. There was life here. ... We've got to pull that out," says NASA geologist Chris McKay. That evidence adds credence to a theory called panspermia, which suggests life could hitch a ride inside meteors and comets and move between planets relatively insulated from space.

"I think its reasonable that you can have panspermia in the solar system," said Meyers. He added that interstellar travel -- between solar systems -- was far less likely. "Getting hit by cosmic radiation pretty much wipes you out," he said.

NASA has taken the theory seriously enough to establish a Planetary Protection Office. The official in charge, our Planetary Protection Officer, ensures spacecraft are clean of biological organisms and protects the Earth from lifeforms retrieved in samples from space and other planets.

That's one reason scientists are trying to boost the sensitivity of their instruments. The last such experiment, the Mars Viking probe, failed to detect life on Mars. Yet if Viking had landed in the Atacama Desert on Earth, it would also have concluded that Earth was a dead and desiccated planet.

Ponce is committed to making sure that mistake is not made if life exists on Mars. "If there is a single spore, we want to be able to detect it," he says.

At the moment, the instrument he has designed is a table-top device that must be miniaturized and refined before it is ready to fly. It won't arrive on Mars any time soon.

If the hardware passes a field test in the Atacama Desert this year and funding follows, Ponce says the technoloy could be ready to fly next decade after the Mars Science Laboratory arrives on the Red Planet in 2010.

Now Ireland may be Atlantis....

Scientist says Ireland is lost island of Atlantis

Atlantis, the legendary island-nation whose existence has been debated for thousands of years, was actually Ireland, according to a new theory by a Swedish scientist.
Atlantis, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote in 360 B.C., was an island in the Atlantic Ocean where an advanced civilization developed some 11,500 years ago until it was hit by a cataclysmic natural disaster and sank beneath the waves.
Geographer Ulf Erlingsson, whose book explaining his theory will be published next month, says the measurements, geography, and landscape of Atlantis as described by Plato match Ireland almost exactly.
"I am amazed no one has come up with this before, it's incredible," he told Reuters.
"Just like Atlantis, Ireland is 300 miles long, 200 miles wide, and widest across the middle. They both have a central plain surrounded by mountains.
"I've looked at geographical data from the rest of the world and of the 50 largest islands there is only one that has a plain in the middle -- Ireland."
Erlingsson believes the idea that Atlantis sank came from the fate of Dogger Bank, an isolated shoal in the North Sea, about 60 miles off the northeastern coast of England, which sank after being hit by a huge flood wave around 6,100 B.C.
"I suspect that myth came from Ireland and it derives from Dogger Bank. I think the memory of Dogger Bank was probably preserved in Ireland for around 3,000 years and became mixed up with the story of Atlantis," he said.
Erlingsson links the boundaries of the Atlantic Empire, as outlined by Plato, with the geographic distribution of megalithic monuments in Europe and Northern Africa, matching Atlantis' temples with well-known burial sites at Newgrange and Knowth, north of Dublin, which pre-date the pyramids.
His book, "Atlantis from a Geographer's Perspective: Mapping the Fairy Land," calculates the probability Plato would have had access to geographical data about Ireland as 99.98 percent.
Previous theories about Atlantis have suggested it may have been around the Azores islands 900 miles west of the Portuguese coast, or in the Aegean sea. Others locate it solely in the long-decayed brain of Plato.

Cidade de Deus

City of God (Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller)
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Starring: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino da Hora, Phellipe Haagensen, Douglas Silva, Jonathan Haagensen, Matheus Nachtergaele, Seu Jorge, Jefechander Suplino, Alice Braga, Emerson Gomes, Edson Oliveira, Michel de Souza, Roberta Rodrigues, Luis Otávio, Maurício Marques

"15 miles from paradise...one man will do anything to tell the world everything"
"Fight and you'll never survive..... Run and you'll never escape"

Alexandre Rodrigues stars as Busca-Pé or 'Rocket', a boy who lives in the Cidade de Deus or City of God, a 1960s favela (housing project) in Rio de Janeiro. The favela is home to the poorest and most desperate of Rio's citizens and becomes a haven of violence and crime. As a child, Busca-Pé watches the infamous Tender Trio - a group of older boys - robbing motels and gas trucks. As he grows up, he sees his peers graduate from being petty thieves through drug dealers into cold-blooded killers. In time, vicious gang leader Li'l Ze (Leandro da Hora) and his companions prosper and come to rule much of the favela.

A little too sensitive and scared to become a real violent criminal, Busca-Pé finds himself at the centre of the favela's action, but separate from it. As he grows older, he begins to understand that he sees things differently. Fascinated by cameras and photography, he eventually acquires a camera of his own, and his photographs come to the attention of a local newspaper. As the last two remaining favela gangs do battle in the 1980s, Busca-Pé takes some of the only photographs that the press will see of the events that take place and the people involved. Through his camera and his special perspective on favela life, he seeks to document and explain what life is really like for the poorest people in Rio.

Based on a true story, 'City of God' is a tale that has impact not just because of the level of violence it portrays but the fact that the violence is merely a reflection of real events. The cinematic values are extremely high, with the director making the most of real favela children to fill much of his cast. All the main cast do a truly convincing job, and really seem to belong in their environment. The film looks wonderful, gritty and authentic, exposing the raw side of Rio life. The story is violent and laden with death, but oddly enough still seems to offer a message of hope by the time it reaches its conclusion.

Also known by its Portuguese title 'Cidade de Deus', the film is based on the novel by Paulo Lins who spent decades living in the favela himself.

It's Got: Bags of authenticity.

It Needs: An English-dubbed version to make it accessible to wider audiences, although doubtless that would fail to live up to the subtitled version.

Summary: Gripping and authentic true story of life amongst Rio's forgotten poor, where violence is a way of life even amongst children.

Not to be missed.

Who's the Worlds favorite Robot? R2D2 of course

Robots might have taken the world by storm nowadays, but it seems movie audiences are still smitten by R2D2, the spunky adventurous robot in the George Lucas directed 1977 classic Star Wars' , who has been voted the world's favourite robot in a poll conducted amongst 8000 people for Amazon.co.uk and IMDB.com .
According to Ananova , in the second place is the cigar chomping and booze-loving Bender from the hit cartoon Futurama . While overtly anxious C3PO from Star Wars makes it to the fourth slot.
According to Amazon spokeswoman Fiona Buckland, "R2D2 and C3PO add a certain degree of comic relief to the Star Wars films.
However, as well as making us laugh, they also represent loyalty and friendship."
Other robots to make it to the top 15 include the polite and gracious part-man part-machine Robocop in the sixth place, Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet, the 7ft creature who can speak 188 languages, in eighth place and Dr Who's Daleks in 12th place.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

by Richard Bach
 
Part One

It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.
A mile from shore a fishing boat chummed the water, and the word for Breakfast Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of a thousand seagulls came to dodge and fight for bits of food. It was another busy day beginning.

But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard twisted curve through his wings. The curve meant that he would fly slowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, until the ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath, forced one ... single ... more ... inch ... of ... curve .... Then his feathers ruffled, he stalled and fell.

Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for them disgraced and it is dishonor.

But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings again in that trembling hard curve - slowing, slowing, and stalling once more - was no ordinary bird.

Most gulls didn't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight - how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, through, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.

This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one's self popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent whole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting.

He didn't know why, for instance, but when he flew at altitudes less than half his wingspan above the water, he could stay in the air longer, with less effort. His glides ended not with the usual feet-down splash into the sea, but with a long flat wake as he touched the surface with his feet tightly streamlined against his body. When he began sliding in to feet-up landings on the beach, then pacing the length of his slide in the sand, his parents were very much dismayed indeed.

Why, Jon, why?" his mother asked. "Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why can't you leave low flying to the pelicans, the albatross? Why don't you eat? Jon, you're bone and feathers!"

"I don't mind being bone and feathers, Mum. I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I just want to know."

"See here, Jonathan," said his father, not unkindly. "Winter isn't far away. Boats will be few, and the surface fish will be swimming deep. If you must study,. then study food, and how to get it. This flying business is all very well, but you can't eat a glide, you know. Don't you forget that the reason you fly is to eat."

Jonathan nodded obediently. For the next few days he tried to be behave like the other gulls; he really tried, screeching and fighting with the flock around the piers and fishing boats, diving on scraps of fish and bread. But he couldn't make it work.

It's all so pointless, he thought, deliberately dropping a hard-won anchovy to a hungry old gull chasing him. I could be spending all this time learning to fly. There's so much to learn!

It wasn't long before Jonathan Gull was off by himself again, far out at see, hungry, happy, learning.

The subject was speed, and in a week's practice he learned more about speed than the fastest gull alive.

From a thousand feet, flapping his wings as hard as he could, he pushed over into a blazing steep dive toward the waves, and learned why seagulls don't make blazing steep power-dives. In just six seconds he was moving seventy miles per hour, the speed at which one's wing goes unstable on the upstroke.

Time after time it happened. Careful as he was, working at the very peak of his ability, he lost control at high speed.

Climb to a thousand feet. Full power straight ahead first, then push over, flapping, to a vertical dive. Then, every time, his left wing stalled on an upstroke, he'd roll violently left, stall his right wing recovering, and flick like fire into a wild tumbling spin to the right.

He couldn't be careful enough on that upstroke. Ten times he tried, but all ten times, as he passed through seventy miles per hour, he burst into a churning mass of feathers, out of control, crashing down into the water.

They key, he thought as last, dripping wet, must be to hold the wings still at high speeds - to flap up to fifty and then hold the wings still.

From two thousand feet he tried again, rolling into his dive, beak straight down, wings full out and stable from the moment he passed fifty miles per hour. It took tremendous strength, but it worked. In ten seconds he has blurred through ninety miles per hour. Jonathan had set a world speed record for seagulls!

But victory was short-lived. The instant he began his pullout, the instant he changed the angle of his wings, he snapped into that same terrible uncontrolled disaster, and at ninety miles per hour it hit him like dynamite. Jonathan Seagull exploded in midair and smashed down into a brick-hard sea.

When he came to, it was well after dark, and he floated in moonlight on the surface of the ocean. His wings were ragged bars of lead, but the weight of failure was even heavier on his back. He wished, feebly, that the weight could be just enough to drag him gently down to the bottom, and end it all.

As he sank low in the water, a strange hollow voice sounded within him. There's no way around it. I am a seagull. I am limited by my nature. If I were meant to learn so much about flying, I'd have a falcon's short wings, and live on mice instead of fish. My father was right. I must forget this foolishness. I must fly home to the Flock and be content as I am, as a poor limited seagull.

The voice faded, and Jonathan agreed. The place for a seagull at night is on shore, and from this moment forth, he vowed, he would be a normal gull. It would make everyone happier.

He pushed wearily away from the dark water and flew toward the land, grateful for what he had learned about work-saving low-altitude flying.

But no, he thought. I am done with the way I was, I am done with everything I learned. I am a seagull like every other seagull, and I will fly like one. So he climbed painfully to a hundred feet and flapped his wings harder, pressing for shore.

He felt better for his decision to be just another one of the flock. there would be no ties now to the force that had driven him to learn, there would be no more challenge and no more failure. And it was pretty, just to stop thinking, and fly through the dark, toward the lights above the beach.

Dark! The hollow voice cracked in alarm. Seagulls never fly in the dark!

Jonathan was not alert to listen. It's pretty, he thought. The moon and the lights twinkling on the water, throwing out little beacon-trails though the night, and all so peaceful and still...

Get Down! Seagulls never fly in the dark! If you were meant to fly in the dark, you'd have the eyes f an owl! You'd have charts for brains! You'd have a falcon's short wings!

There in the night, a hundred feet in the air, Jonathan Livingston Seagull - blinked. His pain, his resolutions, vanished.

Short Wings. A falcon's short wings!

That's the answer! What a fool I've been! All I need is a tiny little wing, all I need is to fold most of my wings and fly on just the tips alone! Short wings!

He climbed two thousand feet above the black sea, and without a moment for thought of failure and death, he brought his forewings tightly in to his body, left only the narrow swept daggers of his wingtips extended into the wind, and fell into a vertical dive.

The wind was a monster roar at his head. Seventy miles per hour, ninety, a hundred and twenty and faster still. The wing-strain now at a hundred and forty miles per hour wasn't nearly as hard as it had been before at seventy, and with the faintest twist of his wingtips he eased out of the dive and shot above the waves, a grey cannonball under the moon.

He closed his eyes to slits against the wind and rejoiced. A hundred forty miles per hour! and under control! If I dive from five thousand feet instead of two thousand, I wonder how fast...

His vows of a moment before were forgotten, swept away in that great swift wind. Yet he felt guiltless, breaking the promises he had made himself. Such promises are only for the gulls that accept the ordinary. One who has touched excellence in his learning has no need of that kind of promise.

By sunup, Jonathan Gull was practicing again. From five thousand feet the fishing boats were specks in the flat blue water, Breakfast Flock was a faint cloud of dust motes, circling.

He was alive, trembling ever so slightly with delight, proud that his fear was under control. Then without ceremony he hugged in his forewings, extended his short, angled wingtips, and plunged directly toward the sea. By the time he had passed four thousand feet he had reached terminal velocity, the wind was a solid beating wall of sound against which he could move no faster. He was flying now straight down, at two hundred fourteen miles per hour. He swallowed, knowing that if his wings unfolded at that speed he'd be blown into a million tiny shreds of seagull. But the speed was power, and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty.

He began his pullout at a thousand feet, wingtips thudding and blurring in that gigantic wind, the boat and the crowd of gulls tilting and growing meteor-fast, directly in his path.

He couldn't stop; he didn't know yet even how to turn at that speed.

Collision would be instant death.

And so he shut his eyes.

It happened that morning, then, just after sunrise, that Jonathan Livingston Seagull fired directly through the centre of Breakfast Flock, ticking off two hundred twelve miles per hour, eyes closed, in a great roaring shriek of wind and feathers. The Gull of Fortune smiled upon him this once, and no one was killed.

By the time he had pulled his beak straight up into the sky he was still scorching along at a hundred and sixty miles per hour. When he had slowed to twenty and stretched his wings again at last, the boat was a crumb on the sea, four thousand feet below.

His thought was triumph. Terminal velocity! A seagull two hundred fourteen miles per hour! It was a breakthrough, the greatest single moment in the history of the Flock, and in that moment a new age opened for Jonathan Gull. Flying out to his lonely practice area, folding his wings for a dive from eight thousand feet, he set himself at once to discover how to turn.

A single wingtip feather, he found, moved a fraction of an inch, gives a smooth sweeping curve at the tremendous speed. Before he learned this, however, he found that moving more than one feather at that speed will spin you like a rifle ball ... and Jonathan had flown the first aerobatics of any seagull on earth.

He spared no time that day for talk with other gulls, but flew on past sunset. He discovered the loop, the slow roll, the point roll, the inverted spin, the gull bunt, the pinwheel.


When Jonathan Seagull joined the Flock on the beach, it was full night. He was dizzy and terribly tired. Yet in delight he flew a loop to landing, with a snap roll just before touchdown. When they hear of it, he thought, of the Breakthrough, they'll be wild with joy. How much more there is now to living! Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there's a reason to life! We can list ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!

The years head hummed and glowed with promise.

The gulls were flocked into the Council Gathering when he landed, and apparently had been so flocked for sometime. They were, in fact, waiting.

"Jonathan Livingston Seagull! Stand to Centre!" The Elder's words sounded in a voice of highest ceremony. Stand to Centre meant only great shame or great honor. Stand to Centre for honor was the way the gulls' foremost leaders were marked. Of course, he thought, the Breakfast Flock this morning; they saw the Breakthrough! But I want no honors. I have no wish to be leader. I want only to share what I've found, to show those horizons out ahead for us all. He stepped forward.

"Jonathan Livingston Seagull," said the Elder, "Stand to Centre for shame in the sight of your fellow gulls!"

It felt like being hit with a board. His knees went weak, his feathers sagged, there was a roaring in his ears. Centred for shame? Impossible! The Breakthrough! They can't understand! They're wrong, they're wrong!

"...for his reckless irresponsibly," the solemn voice intoned, "violating the dignity and tradition of the Gull Family..."

To be centred for shame meant that he would be cast out of gull society, banished to the solitary life on the Far Cliffs.

"...one day, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, you shall learn that irresponsibly? My brothers!" he cried. "Who is more responsible than a gull who finds and follows a meaning, a higher purpose for life? For a thousand years we have scrabbled after fish heads, but now we have a chance, let me show you what I've found..."

The Flock might as well have been stone.

"The Brotherhood is broken," the gulls intoned together, and with one accord they solemnly closed their ears and turned their backs upon him.


Jonathan Seagull spent the rest of his days alone, but he flew way out beyond the Far Cliffs. His one sorrow was not solitude, it was that other gulls refused to believe the glory of flight that awaited them; they refused to open their eyes and see.

He learned more each day. He learned that a streamlined high-speed dive could bring him to find the rare and tasty fish that schooled ten feet below the surface of the ocean: he no longer needed fishing boats and stale bread for survival. He learned to sleep in the air, setting a course at night across the offshore wind, covering a hundred miles from sunset to sunrise. With the same inner control, he flew through heavy sea-fogs and climbed above them into dazzling clear skies... in the very times when every other gull stood on the ground, knowing nothing but mist and rain. He learned to ride the high winds far inland, to dine there on delicate insects.

What he had once hoped for the Flock, he now gained for himself alone; he learned to fly, and was not sorry for the price that he had paid. Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with these gone from his thought, he lived a long and fine life indeed.

They came in the evening, then, and found Jonathan gliding peaceful and alone through his beloved sky. The two gulls that appeared at his wings were pure as starlight, and the glow from them was gentle and friendly in the high night air. But most lovely of all was the skill with which they flew, their wingtips moving a precise and constant inch from his own.

Without a word, Jonathan put them to his test, a test that no gull had ever passed. He twisted his wings, slowed to a single mile per hour above stall. The two radiant birds slowed with him, smoothly, locked in position. They knew about slow flying.

He folded his wings, rolled, and dropped in a dive to a hundred nd ninety miles per hour. They dropped with him, streaking down in flawless formation.

At last he turned that speed straight up into a long vertical slow-roll. The rolled with him, smiling.

He recovered to level flight and was quiet for a time before he spoke. "Very well," he said, "who are you?"

"We're from your Flock, Jonathan. We are your brothers." The words were strong and calm. "We've come to take you higher, to take you home."

"Home I have none. Flock I have none. I am Outcast And we fly now at the peak of the Great Mountain Wind Beyond a few hundred feet, I can lift this old body no higher."

"But you can, Jonathan. For you have learned. One school is finished, and the time has come to another to begin."

As it had shined across him all his life, so understanding lighted that moment for Jonathan Seagull. they were right. He could fly higher, and it was time to go home.

He gave one last long look across the sky, across that magnificent silver land where he had learned so much.

"I'm ready," he said at last.

And Jonathan Livingston Seagull rose with the two starbright gulls to disappear into a perfect dark sky.



Part Two

So this is heaven, he thought, and he had to smile at himself. It was hardly respectful to analyse heaven in the very moment that one flies up to enter it.
As he came from Earth now, above the clouds and in close formation with the two brilliant gulls, he saw that his own body was growing as bright as theirs. True, the same young Jonathan Seagull was there that has always lived behind his golden eyes, but the outer form had changed.

It felt like a seagull body, but already it flew far better than his old one had ever flown. Why, with half the effort, he though, I'll get twice the speed, twice the performance of my best days on earth!

His feathers glowed brilliant white now, and his wings were smooth and perfect as sheets of polished silver. He began, delightedly, to learn about them, to press power into these new wings.

At two hundred fifty miles per hour he felt that he was nearing his level-flight maximum speed. At two hundred seventy-three he thought that he was flying as fast as he could fly, and he was ever so faintly disappointed. There was a limit to how much the new body could do, and though it was much faster than his old level-flight record, it was still a limit that would take great effort to crack. In heaven, he though, there should be no limits.

The clouds broke apart, his escorts called, "Happy landings, Jonathan," and vanished into thin air.

He was flying over a sea, toward a jagged shoreline. A very few seagulls were working the updraughts on the cliffs. Away off to the north, at the horizon itself, flew a few others. New sights, new thoughts, new questions. Why so few gulls? Heaven should be flocked with gulls! And why am I so tired, all at once? Gulls in heaven are never supposed to be tired, or to sleep.

Where had he heard that? The memory of his life on Earth was falling away. Earth had been a place where he had learned much, of course, but the details were blurred - something about fighting for food, and being Outcast.

The dozen gulls by the shoreline came to meet him, none saying a word. He felt only that he was welcome and that this was home. It had been a big day for him, a day whose sunrise he no longer remembered.

He turned to land on the beach, beating his wings to stop an inch in the air, then dropping lightly to the sand. The other gulls landed too, but not one of them so much as flapped a feather. they swung into the wind, bright wings outstretched, then somehow they changed the curve of their feathers until they had stopped in the same instant their feet touched the ground. It was beautiful control, but now Jonathan was just too tired to try it. Standing there on the beach still without a word spoken, he was asleep.

In the days that followed, Jonathan saw that there was as much to learn about flight in this place as there had been in the life behind him. But with a difference. Here were gulls who thought as he thought. For each of them, the most important thing in living was to reach out and touch perfection in that which they most loved to do, and that was to fly. They were magnificent birds, all of them, and they spent hour after hour every day practicing flight, testing advanced aeronautics.

For a long time Jonathan forgot about the world that he had come from, that place where the Flock lived with its eyes tightly shut to the joy of flight, using its wings as means to the end of finding and fighting for food. But now and then, just for a moment, he remembered.

He remembered it one morning when he was out with his instructor, while they rested on the beach after a session of folded-wing snap rolls.

"Where is everybody, Sullivan?" He asked silently, quite at home now with the easy telepathy that these gulls used instead of screes and gracks. "Why aren't there more of us here? Why, where I came from there were..."

"... thousands and thousands of gulls. I know." Sullivan shook his head. "The only answer I can see, Jonathan, is that you are pretty well a one-in-a-million bird. Most of us came along ever so slowly. we went from one world into another that was almost exactly like it, forgetting right away where we had come from, not caring where we were headed, living for the moment. Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone though before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand! And then another hundred lives until we began to learn that there is such a thing as perfection, and another hundred again to get the idea that our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth. The same rule holds for us now, of course; we choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome."

he stretched his wings and turned to face the wind. "But you, Jon." he said, "learned so much at one time that you don't have to go through a thousand lives to reach this one."

In moment they were airborne again, practicing. The formation point-rolls were difficult, for through the inverted half Jonathan had to think upside down, reversing the curve of his wing and reversing it exactly in harmony with his instructor's.

"Let's try it again," Sullivan said, over and over: "Let's try it again." Then, finally, "Good." And they began practicing outside loops.


One evening the gulls that were not nightly-flying stood together on the sand, thinking. Jonathon took all his courage in his head and walked to the Elder Gull, who, it was said, was soon to be moving beyond this world.

"Chiang..." he said, a little nervously.

The old seagull looked at him kindly. "Yes,. my son?" Instead of being enfeebled by age, the Elder had been empowered by it; he could outfly any gull in the Flock, and he had learned skills that the others were only gradually coming to know.

"Chiang, this world isn't heaven at all, is it?"

The Elder smiled in the moonlight. "You are learning again, Jonathan Seagull," he said.

Well, what happens from here? Where are we going? Is there no such place as heaven?"

"No, Jonathan, there is no such place. Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect." He was silent for a moment. "You are a very fast flier, aren't you?"

"I... I enjoy speed," Jonathan said, taken aback but proud that the elder had noticed.

"You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there."

Without warning, Chiang vanished and appeared at the waters edge fifty feet away, all in the flicker of an instant. Then he vanished again and stood, in the same millisecond, at Jonathan's shoulder. "It's kind of fun," he said.

Jonathan was dazzled. He forgot to ask about heaven. "How do you do that? What does it feel like? How far can you go?"

"You can go to any place and to any time that you wish to go," the Elder said. "I've gone everywhere and everywhen I can think of." He looked across the sea. "It's strange. The gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go anywhere, instantly. Remember, Jonathan, heaven isn't a place or a time because place and time are so very meaningless. Heaven is..."

"Can you teach me to fly like that?" Jonathan Seagull trembled to conquer another unknown.

"Of course, if you wish to learn."

"I wish. When can we start?"

"We could start now, if you'd like."

"I want to learn to fly like that," Jonathan said, and a strange light glowed in his eyes. "Tell me what to do."

Chiang spoke slowly and watched the younger gull ever so carefully. "To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is," he said, "you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived..."

The trick, according to Chiang, was for Jonathan to stop seeing himself as trapped inside a limited body that had a forty-two-inch wingspan and performance that could be plotted on a chart. The trick was to know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number, everywhere at once across space and time.


Jonathan kept at it, fiercely, day after day, from before sunrise till past midnight. And for all his effort he moved not a feather-width from his spot.

"Forget about faith!" Chiang said it time and again. "You didn't need faith to fly, you needed to understand flying. This is just the same. Now try again..."

Then one day Jonathan, standing on the shore, cloising his eyes, concentrating, all in a flash knew what chiang had been telling him. "Why, that's true! I am a perfect, unlimited gull!" He felt a great shock of joy.

"Good!" sad Chiang, and there was victory in his voice.

Jonathan opened his eyes. He stood alone with the Elder on a totally different seashore - trees down to the water's edge, twin yellow suns turning overhead.

"At last you've got the idea," Chiang said, "but your control needs a little work..."

Jonathan was stunned. "Where are we?"

Utterly unimpressed with the strange surroundings, the Elder brushed the question aside. "We're on some planet, obviously, with a green sky and a double star for a sun."

Jonathan made a scree of delight, the first sound he had made since he had left Earth. "IT WORKS!"

"Well, of course it works, Jon." said Chaing. "It always works, when you know what you're doing. Now about your control..."


By the time they returned, it was dark. The other gulls looked at Jonathan with awe in their golden eyes, for they have seen him disappear from where he had been rooted for so long.

He stood their congratulations for less than a minute, "I'm the newcomer here! I'm just beginning! It is I who must learn from you!"

"I wonder about that, Jon," said Sullivan, standing near. "You have less fear of learning than any gull I've seen in the thousand years." The Flock fell silent, and Jonathan fidgeted in embarrassment.

"We can start working with time if you wish," Chiang said, "till you can ffly the past and the future. And then you will be ready to begin the most difficult, the most pwerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready to begin to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love."

A month went by, or something that felt about like a month, and Jonathan learned at the tremendous rate. He always had learned quickly from ordinary experience, and now, the special student of the Elder Himself, he took in new ideas like a streamlined feathered computer.

But then the day came that Chiang vanished. He had been talking quietly with them all, exhorting them never to stop their learning and their practising and their striving to understand more of the perfect invisible priciple of all life. Then, as he spoke, his feathers went brighter and brighter and at last turned so brilliant that no gull could look upon him.

"Jonathan," he said, and these were the last words that he spoke, "keep working on love."

When they could see again, Chiang was gone.

As the days went past, Jonathan found himself thinking time and time again of the Earth from which he had come. If he had known there just a tenth, just a hundredth, of what he knew here, how much more life would have meant! He stood on the sand and fell to wondering if there was a gull back there who might be struggling to break out of his limits, to see the meaning of flight beyond a way of travel to get a breadcrumb from a rowboat. Perhaps there might even have been one made Outcast for speaking his truth in the face of the Flock. And the more Jonathan practised his kindness lessons, and the more he worked to know the nature of love, the more he wanted to go back to Earth. For in spite of his lonely past, Jonathan Seagull was born to be an instructor, and his own way of demonstrating love was to give something of the truth that he had seen to a gull who asked only a chance to see truth for himself.

Sullivan, adept now at thought-speed flight and helping the others to learn, was doubtful.

"Jon, you were Outcast once. Why do you think that any of the gulls in your old time would listen to you now? You know the proverb, and it's true: The gull sees farthest who flies highest. Those gulls where you came from are standing on the ground, squaking and fighting among themselves. They're a thousand miles from heaven - and you say you want to show them heaven from where they stand! Jon, they can't see their own wingtips! Stay here. Help the new gulls here, the ones who are high enough to see what you have to tell them." He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "What if Chiang had gone back to his old worlds? Where would you have been today?"

The last point was the telling one, and Sullivan was right. The gull ses farthest who flies highest.

Jonathan stayed and worked with the new birds coming in, who were all very bright and quick with their lessons. but the old eeling cam back, and he couldn't help but think that there might be one or two gulls back on Earth who would be able to learn, too. How much more would he have known by now if Chaing had come to him on the day that he was Outcast!

"Sully, I must go back," he said at last. "Your students are doing well. They can help you bring the newcomers along."

Sullivan sighed, but he did not argue. "I think I'll miss you, Jonathan," was all that he said.

"Sully, for shame!" Jonathan said in reproach, "and don't be foolish! What are we trying to practise every day? If our friendshop depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?"

Sullivan Seagull laughed in spite of himself. "You crazy bird," he said kindly. "If anybody can show someone on the ground how to see a thousand miles, it will be Jonathan Livingston Seagull.: He looked at the sand. "Good-bye, Jon, my friend."

"Good-bye, Sully. We'll meet again." And with that, Jonathan held in thought an image of the great gull-flocks on the shore of another time, and he knew with practiced ease that he was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and fight, limited by nothing at all.

Fletcher Lynd Seagull was still quite young, but already he knew that no bird had ever been so harshly treated by any Flock, or with so much injustice.

"I don't care what they say," he thought fiercely , and his vision blured as he flew out toward the Far Cliffs. "There's so much more to flying than just flapping around from place to place! A.....a....mnosquito does that! One little barrel-roll around the Elder Gull, just for fun, and I'm Outcast! Are they blind? Can't they see? Can't they think of the glory that it'll be when we really learn to fly?

"I don't care what they think. I'll show them what flying is! I'll be pure Outlaw, if that's the way they want it. And I'll make them so sorry..."

The voice came inside his own head, and though it was very gentle, it startled him so much that he faltered and stumbled in the air.

"Don't be harsh on them, Fletcher Seagull. In casting you out, the other gulls have only hurt themselves, and one day they will know this, and one day they will see what you see. Forgive them, and help them to understand."

An inch from his right wingtip flew the most brilliant white gull in all the world, gliding effortlessly along, not moving a feather, at what was very nearly Fletcher's top speed.

There was a moment of chaos in the young bird.

"What's going on? Am I mad? Am I dead? What is this?"

Low and calm, the voice went on within his thought, demanding an answer. "Fletcher Lynd Seagull, do you want to fly?"

"YES, I WANT TO FLY!"

"Fletcher Lynd Seagull, do you want to fly so much that you will forgive the Flock, and learn, and go back to them one day and work to help them know?"

There was no lying to this magnificent skilful being, no matter how proud or how hurt a bird was Fletcher Seagull.

"I do," he said softly.

"Then, Fletch," that bright creature said to him, and the voice was very kind, "Let's begin with Level Flight..."





Part Three
Jonathan circled slowly over the Far Cliffs, watching. This rough young Fletcher Gull ws very nearly a perfect flight-student. He was strong and light and quick in the air, but far and away more important, he had a blazing drive to learn to fly.
Here he came this minute, a blurred grey shape roaring out of a dive, flashing one hundred fifty miles per hour past his instructor. He pulled abruptly into another try at a sixteen-pint vertical slow roll, calling the points out loud.

"...eight ...nine ...ten ...see-Jonthan-I'm-running-out-of-airspeed ...eleven ...I-want-good-sharp-stops-like-yours ...twelve ...but-blast-it-I-just-can't-make ...thirteen ...these-last-three-points ...without ...fourteen ...aaakkk!"

Fletcher's whipstall at the top was all the worse for his rage and fury at failing. He fell backward, tumbled, slammed savagely into and inverted spin, and recovered at last, panting, a hundred feet below his instructor's level.

"You're wasting your time with me, Jonathan! I'm too dumb! I'm too stupid! I try and try, but I'll never get it!"

Jonathan Seagull looked down at him and nodded. "You'll certainly never get it as long as you make that pullup so hard. Fletcher, you lost forty miles an hour in the entry! You have to be smooth! Firm but smooth, remember?"

He dropped down to the level of the younger gull. "Let's try it together now, in formation. And pay attention to that pullup. It's a smooth, easy entry"


By the end of three months Jonathan had six other students, Outcasts all, yet curious about this strange new idea of flight for the joy of flying.

Still, it was easier for them to practice high performance than it was to understand the reason behind it.

"Each of us is in truth an idea of the Great Gull, and unlimited idea of freedom," Jonathan would stay in the evenings on the beach, "and precision flying is a step toward expressing our real nature. Everything that limits us where we have to put aside. That's why all this high-speed practice, and low-speed and aerobatics..."

...and his students would be asleep, exhausted from the day's flying. They liked the practice, because it was fast and exciting and it fed a hunger for learning that grew with every lesson. But not one of them, not even Fletcher Lynd Gull, had come to believe that the flight of ideas could possibly be as real as this flight of wind and feather.

"Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip," Jonathan would say, other times, "is nothing more than your thought itself, in a form you can see. Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body, too . . ." But no matter how he said it, it sounded like pleasant fiction, and they needed more to sleep.

It was only a month later that Jonathan said the time had come to return to the Flock.

"We're not ready!" said Henry Calvin Gull. "We're not welcome! We're Outcast! We can't force ourselves to go where we're not welcome, can we?"

"We're free to go where we wish and to be what we are," Jonathan answered, and he lifted from the sand and turned east, toward the home grounds of the Flock.

There was a brief anguish among his students, for it is the Law of the Flock that an Outcast never returns, and the Law had not been broken once in ten thousand years. The Law said stay; Jonathan said go; and by now he was a mile across the water. If they waited much longer, he would reach a hostile Flock alone.

"Well, we don't have to obey the law if we're not a part of the Flock, do we?" Fletcher said, rather self-conciously. "Besides, if there's a fight, we'll be a lot more help there than here."

And so they flew in from the west that morning, eight of them in a double-diamond formation, wingtips almost overlapping. They came across the Flock's Council Beach at a hundred thirty-five miles per hour, Jonathan in the lead, Fletcher smoothly at hi right wing, Henry Calvin strugling gamely at his left. Then the whole formation rolled slowly to the right, as one bird ... level ... to ... inverted ... to ... level, the wind whipping over them all.

The squawks and grockles of everyday life in the Flock were cut off as though the formation were a giant knife, and eight thousand gull-eyes watched, without a single blink. One by one, each of the eight birds pulled sharply upward into a landing on the sand. Then as though this sort of thing happened every day, Jonathan Seagull began his critiqué of the flight.

"To begin with," he said with a wry smile, "you were all a bit late on the join-up . . ."

It went like lightning through the Flock. Those birds are Outcast! And they have returned! And that . . . that can't happen! Fletcher's predictions of battle melted in the Flock's confusion.

"Well, O.K., they may be Outcast," said some of the younger gulls, "but where on earth did they learn to fly like that?"

It took almost an hour for the Word of the Elder to pass through the Flock: Ignore them. The gull who speaks to an Outcast is himself Outcast. The gull who looks upon an Outcast breaks the Law of the Flock.

Grey-feathered backs were turned upon Jonathan from that moment onward, but he didn't appear to notice. He held his practice sessions directly over the Council Beach and for the first time began presing his students to the limit of their ability.

"Martin Gull!" he souted across the sky. "You say you know low-speed flying. You know nothing till you prove it! FLY!"

So quiet little Martin William Seagull, startled to be caught under his instructor's fire, suprised himself and beacme a wizard of low speeds. In the lightest breeze he could curve his feathers to lift himself without a single flap of wing from sand to cloud and down again.

Likewise Charles-Roland Gull flew the Great Mountain Wind to twenty-four thousand feet, came down blue from the cold thin air, amazed and happy, determined to go still higher tommorow.

Fletcher Seagull, who loved aerobatics like no one else, conquered his sixteen-point vertical slow roll and the next day topped it off with a triple cartwheel, his feathers flashing white sunlight to a beach from which more than one furtive eye watched.

Every hour Jonathan was there at the side of each of his students, demonstrating, suggesting, pressuring, guiding. He flew with them through night and cloud and storm, for the sport of it, while the Flock huddled miserably on the ground.

When the flying was done, the students relaxed on the sand, and in time they listened more closely to Jonathan. He had some crazy ideas that they coudn't understand, but then he had some good ones that they could.

Gradually, in the night, another circle formed around the circle of students - a circle of curious gulls listening in the darkness for hours on end, not wishing to see or be seen of one another, fading away before daybreak.

It was a month after the Return that the first gull of the Flock crossed the line and asked to learn how to fly. In his asking, Terrence Lowell Gull became a condemned bird, labelled Outcast; and the eighth of Jonathan's students.

The nedt night from the Flock kame Kirk Maynard Gull, wobbling across the sand, draggin his left wing, to collapse at Jonathan's feet. "Help me," he said very quietly, speaking in the way that the dying speak. "I want to fly more than anything else in the world . . . "

"Come alonjg then," said Jonathan. "Climb with me away from the ground, and we'll begin"

"You don't understand. My wing. I can't move my wing."

"Maynard Gull, you have the freedon to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way. It is the Law of the Great Gull, the Law that Is."

"Are you saying I can fly?"

"I say you are free."

As simply and as quickly as that, Kirk Maynard Gull spread his wings, effortlessly, and lifted into the dark night air. The Flock was roused from sleep by his cry, as lous as he could scream it, from five hundred feet up; "I can fly! Listen! I CAN FLY!"

By sunrise there were nearly a thousand birds standing outside the circle of students, looking cusiously at Maynard. They don't care whether they were seen or not, and they listened, trying to understand Jonathan Seagull.

He spoke of very simple things - that it is right for a gull to fly, that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form.

"Set aside," came a voice from the multitude, "even if it be the Law of the Flock?"

"The only true law is that which leads to freedom," Jonathan said. "There is no other."

"How do you expect us to fly as you fly?" came another voice. "You are special and gifted and divine, above other birds."

"Look at Fletcher! Lowell! Charles-Roland! Are they also special and gifted and divine? No more than you are, no more than I am. The only difference, the very only one, is that they have begun to understand what they really are and have begun to practise it."

His students, save Fletcher, shifted uneasily. They hadn't realised that this was what they were doing.

the crowd grew larger every day, coming to question, to idolize, to scorn.


"They are saying in the Flock that if you are not the Son of the Great Gull Himself," Fletcher told Jonathan one morning after the Advanced Speed Practice, "then you are a thousand years ahead of your time."

Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he thought. They call you devil or they call you god. "What do you think, Fletch? Are we ahead of our time?"

A long silence. "Well, this kind of flying has always been here to be learned by anybody who wanted to discover it; that's got nothing to do with time. We're ahead of the fashion, maybe. Ahead of the way that most gulls fly."

"That's something," Jonathan said, rolling to glide inverted for a while. "That's not half as bad as being ahead of our time."


It happened just a week later. Fletcher was demonstrating the elements of high-speed flying to a class of new students. He had just pulled out of his dive from seven thousand feet, a long grey streak firing a few inches above the beach, when a young bird on its first flight glided directly into his path, calling for its mother. With a tenth of a second to avoid the youngster, Flectcher Lynd Seagull snapped hard to the left, at something over two hundred miles per hour, into a cliff of solid granite.

It was, for him, as though the rock were a giant hard door into another world. A burst of fear and shock and black as he hit, and then he was adrift in a strange strange sky, forgetting, remembering, forgetting; afraid and sad and sorry, terribly sorry.

The voice came to him as it had in the first day that he had met Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

"The trick, Fletcher, is that we are trying to overcome our limitations in order, patiently. We don't tackle flying through rock until a little later in the programme."

"Jonathan!"

"Also known as the Son of the Great Gull," his instructor said dryly.

"What are you doing here? The cliff! Haven't . I . . . didn't I . . . die?"

"Oh, Fletch, come on. Think. If you are talking to me now, then obviously you didn't die, did you? What you did manage to do was to change your level of consciousness rather abruptly. It's your choice now. You can stay here and learn on this level - which is quite a bit higher than the one you left, by the way - or you can go back and keep working with the Flock. The Elders were hoping for some kind of disaster, but they're startled that you obliged them so well."

"I want to go back to the Flock, of course. I've barely begun with the new group!"

"Very well, Fletcher. Remember what we were saying about one's body being nothing more than thought itself . . . ?"


Fletcher shook his head and stretched his wings and opened his eyes at the base of the cliff, in the centre of the whole Flock assembled. There was a great clamour of sqawks and screes from the crowd when first he moved.

"He lives! He that was dead lives!"

"Touched him with a wingtip! Brought him to life! The Son of the Great Gull!"

"NO! He denies it! He's a devil! DEVIL! Come to break the Flock!"

There wre four thousand gulls in the crowd, frightened at what had happened, and the cry DEVIL! went through them like the wind of an ocean storm. Eyes glazed, beaks sharp, they closed in to destroy.

"Would you feel better if we left, Fletcher?" asked Jonathan.

"I certainly wouldn't object too much if we did . . . "

Instantly they stood togeher a half-mile away, and the flashing breaks of the mob closed on empty air.

"Why is it, " Jonathan puzzled, "that the hardest thing in the world is to convince a bird that he is free, and that he can prove it for himself if he'd just spend a little time practising? Why should that be so hard?"

Fletcher still blinked from the change of scene. "What did you just do? How did we get here?"

"You did say you wanted to be out of the mob, didn't you?"

Yes! But how did you . . ."

"Like everything else, Fletcher. Practice"


By morning the Flock had forgotten its insanity, but Fletcher had not. "Jonathan, remember what you said a long time ago, about loving the Flock enough to return to it and help it learn?"

"Yes!"

"I don't understand how you manage to love a mob of birds that has just tried to kill you."

"Oh, Fletch, you don't love that! You don't love hatred and evil, of course. You have to practise and see the real gull, the good in everyone of them, and to help them see it in themselves. That's what I mean by love. It's fun, when you get the knack of it.

"I remember a fierce young bird, for instance, Fletcher Lynd Seagull, his name. Just been made Outcast, ready to fight the Flock to the death, getting a start on building his own bitter hell out on the Far Cliffs. And here he is today building his own heaven instead, and leading the whole Flock in that direction."

Fletcher turned to his instructor, and there was a moment of fright in his eye. "Me leading? What do you mean, me leading? You're the instructor here. You couldn't leave!"

"Couldn't I? Don't you think that there might be other flocks, other Fletchers, that need an instructor more than this one, that's on its way toward the light?"

"Me? Jon, I'm just a plain seagull, and you're . . ."

". . . the only Son of the Great Gull, I suppose?" Johnathan sighed and looked out to sea. "You don't need me any longer.. You need to keep finding yourself, a little more each day, that real, unlimited Fletcher Seagull. he's your instructor. You need to understand him and to practice him."

A moment later Jonathan's body wavered in the air, shimmering, and began to go transparent. "Don't let them spread silly rumours about me, or make me a god. O.K., Fletch? I'm a seagull, I like to fly, maybe . . ."

"JONATHAN!"

"Poor Fletch. Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out waht you already know, and you;ll see the way to fly."

The shimmering stopped. Jonathan Seagull had vanished into empty air.

After a time, Fletcher Gull dragged himself into the sky and faced a brand-new group of students, eager for their first lesson.

"To begin with," he said heavily, "you've got to understand that a seagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the Great Gull, and your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip, is nothing more than your though itself."

The young gulls looked at him quizzically. Come on, they thought, this doesn't sound like a rule for a loop.

Fletcher sighed and started over. "Hm. Ah . . very well," he said, and eyed them critically. "Let's begin with Level Flight." And saying that, he understood all at once that his friend had quite honestly been no more divine than Fletcher himself.

No limits, Jonathan? he thought. Well, then, the time's not distant when I'm going to appear out of thin air on your beach, and show you a thing or two about flying!

And though he tried to look properly severe for his students, Fletcher Seagull suddenly saw them all as they really were, just for a moment, and he more than liked, he loved what it was he saw. No limits, Jonathan? he though, and he smiled. His race to learn had begun.