Edward Kennedy, 1932-2009
After cancer fight, Sen. Ted Kennedy dies at 77
Lawmaker to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery near D.C.
NBC News and news services
updated 2:26 p.m. ET Aug. 26, 2009
To the American public, Ted Kennedy was best known as the last surviving son of America's most glamorous political family, a father figure, and memorably, the eulogist of an Irish-American clan plagued again and again by tragedy.
BOSTON - Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate and haunted bearer of the Camelot torch after two of his brothers fell to assassins' bullets, has died at his home in Hyannis Port after battling a brain tumor. He was 77.
In nearly 50 years in the Senate, Kennedy served alongside 10 presidents — his brother John Fitzgerald Kennedy among them — compiling an impressive list of legislative achievements on health care, civil rights, education, immigration and more.
His only run for the White House ended in defeat in 1980. More than a quarter-century later, he handed then-Sen. Barack Obama an endorsement at a critical point in the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, explicitly likening the young contender to President Kennedy.
To the American public, Kennedy — known to friends and foes alike simply as Ted — was best known as the last surviving son of America's most glamorous political family, father figure and, memorably, eulogist of an Irish-American clan plagued again and again by tragedy.
His family announced his death in a brief statement released early Wednesday.
"We've lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever," the statement said. "We thank everyone who gave him care and support over this last year, and everyone who stood with him for so many years in his tireless march for progress toward justice, fairness and opportunity for all."
A few hours later, two vans left the family compound at Hyannis Port in pre-dawn darkness. Both bore hearse license plates — with the word "hearse" blacked out.
Kennedy will lie in repose Thursday and Friday at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston before his funeral at a city church, the senator's office said.
Kennedy is to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery near his slain brothers, said Kennedy spokesman Keith Maley.
Kennedy's funeral Mass will take place Saturday at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica — commonly known as the Mission Church — in the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston.
Obama, on vacation in Martha's Vineyard, Mass., said he and the first lady were “heartbroken” to hear of Kennedy's passing.
“An important chapter in our history has come to an end. Our country has lost a great leader, who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States Senator of our time,” Obama said.
Young senator Kennedy was elected to the Senate in 1962, taking the seat that his brother John had occupied before winning the White House, and served longer than all but two senators in history.
His own hopes of reaching the White House were damaged — perhaps doomed — in 1969 by the scandal that came to be known as Chappaquiddick, an auto accident that left a young woman dead.
He sought the White House more than a decade later, lost the Democratic nomination to President Jimmy Carter, and bowed out with a stirring valedictory that echoed across the decades: "For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die."
Kennedy was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor in May 2008 and underwent surgery and a grueling regimen of radiation and chemotherapy.
‘Ally and a dear friend’ Kennedy's death triggered an outpouring of superlatives. Former First Lady Nancy Reagan said in a statement that her husband and Kennedy "could always find common ground, and they had great respect for one another."
She added that she considered Kennedy "an ally and a dear friend. I will miss him."
Republican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose wife, Maria Shriver, was Kennedy's niece, praised “the rock of our family: a loving husband, father, brother and uncle.”
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said that both the Kennedy family and the Senate have "lost our patriarch" and vowed Congress would renew the push for the cause of Kennedy's life, health care reform.
Building a legacy In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Kennedy's son Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., said his father had defied the predictions of doctors by surviving more than a year with his fight against brain cancer.
The younger Kennedy also said his father's legacy was built largely in the Senate.
"He has authored more pieces of major legislation than any other United States senator," Patrick Kennedy said. "He is the penultimate senator. I don't need to exaggerate when I talk about my father. That's the amazing thing. He breaks all the records himself."
Ted Kennedy made a surprise return to the Capitol last summer to cast the decisive vote for the Democrats on Medicare. He made sure he was there again last January to see his former Senate colleague Barack Obama sworn in as the nation's first black president, but suffered a seizure at a celebratory luncheon afterward.
He also made a surprise and forceful appearance at last summer's Democratic National Convention, where he spoke of his own illness and said health care was the cause of his life. His death occurred precisely one year later, almost to the hour.
Kennedy was away from the Senate for much of this year, leaving Republicans and Democrats to speculate about the impact what his absence meant for the fate of Obama's health care proposals.
Under state law, Kennedy's successor will be chosen by special election. In his last known public act, the senator urged state officials to give Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick the power to name an interim replacement. But that appears unlikely, leaving Democrats in Washington with one less vote for the next several months as they struggle to pass Obama's health care legislation.
His death came less than two weeks after that of his sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver on Aug. 11. Kennedy was not present for the funeral, an indication of the precariousness of his own health.
Tragic figure After Chappaquiddick especially, Kennedy gained a reputation as a heavy drinker and a womanizer, a tragically flawed figure haunted by the fear that he did not quite measure up to his brothers. As his weight ballooned, he was lampooned by comics and cartoonists in the 1980s and '90s as the very embodiment of government waste, bloat and decadence.
But in his later years, after he had remarried, he buckled down and came to be regarded as a statesman on Capitol Hill, seen as one of the most effective, hardworking lawmakers Washington has ever seen.
A barrel-chested figure with a swath of white hair, a booming voice and a thick, widely imitated Boston accent, he coupled fist-pumping floor speeches with his well-honed Irish charm and formidable negotiating skills. He was both a passionate liberal and a clear-eyed pragmatist, unafraid to reach across the aisle to get things done.
Over the decades, he managed to put his imprint on every major piece of social legislation to clear the Congress. In fact, for all his insecurities, he ended up perhaps the most influential liberal voice of his time.
He arrived at his place in the Senate after a string of family tragedies so terrible it sometimes seemed as if the Kennedys — America's foremost political dynasty — were as cursed as they were charmed. He was the only one of the four Kennedy brothers to die of natural causes.
Kennedy's eldest brother, Joseph, was killed in a plane crash in World War II. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down in Los Angeles as he campaigned for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination. John F. Kennedy Jr. was killed in a plane crash at age 38 along with his wife in 1999.
It fell to Ted Kennedy to deliver the eulogies, to comfort his brothers' widows, to mentor fatherless nieces and nephews. It was Ted Kennedy who walked JFK's daughter, Caroline, down the aisle at her wedding.
Eloquence and scandal Tragedy had a way of bringing out his eloquence.
Kennedy sketched a dream of a better future as he laid to rest his brother Robert in 1968: "My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."
After John Jr.'s death, the senator eulogized the young man by saying: "We dared to think, in that other Irish phrase, that this John Kennedy would live to comb gray hair, with his beloved Carolyn by his side. But like his father, he had every gift but length of years."
His own legacy was blighted on the night of July 18, 1969, when Kennedy drove his car off a bridge and into a pond on Chappaquiddick Island, on Martha's Vineyard. Mary Jo Kopechne, a 28-year-old worker with RFK's campaign, was found dead in the submerged car's back seat 10 hours later.
Kennedy, then 37, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and received a two-month suspended sentence and a year's probation. A judge eventually determined there was "probable cause to believe that Kennedy operated his motor vehicle negligently ... and that such operation appears to have contributed to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne."
At the height of the scandal, Kennedy went on national television to explain himself in an extraordinary 13-minute address in which he denied driving drunk and rejected rumors of "immoral conduct" with Ms. Kopechne. He said he was haunted by "irrational" thoughts immediately after the accident, and wondered "whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys." He said his failure to report the accident right away was "indefensible."
In 1980, Kennedy took the extraordinary step of challenging a sitting president, Carter, for the party's nomination. Kennedy's left-of-center politics made him an unlikely choice. But Chappaquiddick — and lingering suspicions that the famous Kennedy money and clout had gotten him out of the trouble — damaged his chances, too.
Wide-ranging legislative record First elected to the Senate in 1962, easily re-elected in 2006, Kennedy served close to 47 years, longer than all but two senators in history: Robert Byrd of West Virginia (more than 50 1/2 years and counting) and the late Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who put in nearly 47 1/2 years.
His legislative achievements included bills to provide health insurance for children of the working poor, the landmark 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, Meals on Wheels for the elderly, abortion clinic access, family leave, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
He was also a key negotiator on legislation creating a Medicare prescription drug benefit for senior citizens and was a driving force for peace in Ireland and a persistent critic of the war in Iraq.
Kennedy did not always prevail. In late 2008, he unsuccessfully lobbied for niece Caroline's appointment to the Senate from New York.
Wildly popular among Democrats, Kennedy routinely won re-election by large margins. He grew comfortable in his role as Republican foil and leader of his party's liberal wing.
President George W. Bush welcomed Kennedy to the Rose Garden on several occasions as he signed bills that the Democrat helped write.
"He's the kind of person who will state his case, sometimes quite eloquently and vociferously, and then on another issue will come along and you can work with him," Bush said shortly before his first term began in 2001.
But Bush was also the target of some of Kennedy's sharpest attacks. Kennedy assailed the Iraq war as Bush's Vietnam, a conflict "made up in Texas" and marketed by the Bush administration for political gain.
Passing the torch Kennedy and his niece Caroline shook up the Democratic establishment in January 2008 when they endorsed Obama over Hillary Rodham Clinton for the nomination for president. The ailing Massachusetts senator electrified delegates when he made a surprise trip to Denver last August to address the Democratic convention and press for Obama's election.
After Obama won in November, Kennedy renewed words once spoken by his brother John, declaring: "The world is changing. The old ways will not do. ... It is time for a new generation of leadership."
Born in 1932, the youngest of Joseph and Rose Kennedy's nine children, Edward Moore Kennedy was part of a family bristling with political ambition, beginning with maternal grandfather John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, a congressman and mayor of Boston.
Round-cheeked Teddy was thrown out of Harvard in 1951 for cheating, after arranging for a classmate to take a freshman Spanish exam for him. He eventually returned, earning his degree in 1956.
In 1955, Kennedy's performance on the football field for Harvard earned him the notice of the Green Bay Packers, who suggested he could have a professional sports career. Kennedy declined the approach, however, saying he planned to to "go into another contact sport, politics."
He went on to the University of Virginia Law School, and in 1962, while his brother John was president, announced plans to run for the Senate seat JFK had vacated in 1960. A family friend had held the seat in the interim because Kennedy was not yet 30, the minimum age for a senator. He ultmately won the general election.
But devastated by his brothers' assassinations and injured in a 1964 plane crash that left him with back pain that would plague him for decades, Kennedy temporarily withdrew from public life in 1968. He re-emerged in 1969 to be elected majority whip of the Senate.
Then came Chappaquiddick.
Kennedy still handily won re-election in 1970, but he lost his leadership job. He remained outspoken in his opposition to the Vietnam War and support of social programs but ruled out a 1976 presidential bid.
Kennedy married Virginia Joan Bennett, known as Joan, in 1958. They divorced in 1982. In 1992, he married Washington lawyer Victoria Reggie. His survivors include a daughter, Kara Kennedy Allen; two sons, Edward Jr. and Patrick, a congressman from Rhode Island; and two stepchildren, Caroline and Curran Raclin.
In 1991, Kennedy roused his nephew William Kennedy Smith and his son Patrick from bed to go out for drinks while staying at the family's Palm Beach, Fla., estate. Later that night, a woman Smith met at a bar accused him of raping her at the home.
Smith was acquitted, but the senator's carousing — and testimony about him wandering about the house in his shirttails and no pants — further damaged his reputation.
Later on, his second wife appeared to have a calming influence on him, helping him rehabilitate his image.
Memoir forthcoming Kennedy's family life has been marked by illness.
Edward Jr. lost a leg to bone cancer in 1973 at age 12. Kara had a cancerous tumor removed from her lung in 2003. In 1988, Patrick had a noncancerous tumor pressing on his spine removed. He has also struggled with mental problems and addiction and announced in June that he was re-entering rehab.
In 2005, the senator's ex-wife underwent surgery for breast cancer. She has also battled alcoholism.
Kennedy's memoir, "True Compass," is set to be published on Sept. 14.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32491712/ NBC News and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
KFC's shocking (new) sandwich (video)
Aug. 25: KFC launches a sandwich that uses fried chicken filets instead of buns. Seriously. Willie Geist has the pictures and the story.
留英心臟病誤診肝炎 回港惡化心臟衰竭
15歲男生求心續命 2009年08月27日 Thu 8:58:01 / 15:12:41
以下呢部戲好似先上咗一、兩個禮拜就似乎已經喺百老匯落咗畫喇 (尋日重被nowTV邀請個影評人又插又讚添 ......
《機器俠》/ 《Kungfu Cyborg_Metallic Attraction》 故事簡介:
西元2046年。高科技正不斷改變人類的習慣,同時也更新著人類的欲望。於是,爲人類服務的機器人應運而生。
第一代人工智慧機器人,代號K-1,在天安科研局的秘密研製下橫空出世,目的是爲代替警察執行危機任務,以保障執法人員的安全。爲了測試性能,局長林祥決定派它到一個偏遠的小鎮實習,並由當地的警察隊長徐大春秘密監管。
K-1以“德明”的身份加入警局,立刻大顯神通,成爲破案神手。由於體內有完美的社交程式,德明很快就成了小鎮上的人氣偶像,而女警素梅也對他芳心暗許,讓一直暗戀素梅的大春鬱悶不已。大春看不起德明只是個機器,二“人”明爭暗鬥,笑話百出。
德明與大春受命追擊智慧系統出現偏差的機器人K-88,一番上天入地、七十二變的高科技機器人大戰後,K-88道出他叛逃的原因是“要自由、不想永遠做一部機器”,認爲”上帝造人,人製造機器人;人能懷疑上帝,機器人爲什麽不能懷疑人?” 並痛斥德明爲 “電子奴隸”。大春深受震撼。爲保護德明,也爲維護人類的尊嚴,大春奮不顧身的
Officer De Ming is the pinnacle of modern law enforcement. Courteous. Courageous. Committed.
Almost human.
Designed to handle assignments too dangerous for traditional methods, De Ming is the first in the TN Research Bureau’s “K Series”—a revolutionary cybernetic organism programmed with a sophisticated social conscience.
Sent to a remote town as part of a covert training operation, De Ming is placed under the supervision of the local police captain, Xu Dachun. Xu’s mission: facilitate De Ming’s integration into the community while protecting the secret of his young protégé’s true identity.
Charmed with a talent for delivering both justice and compassion, De Ming is quick to win the hearts of the town residents—though none more completely than that of Su Mei, a fellow officer who also happens to be the object of the captain’s secret affection.
導演 : 劉鎮偉 Director : Jeff Lau
演員 : 胡軍、孫儷、方力申、鄭中基 Cast : Hujun, Sunli, Alex Fong, Ronald Cheng
片長 : 103 分鐘 級數 : IIA 語言 : 粵語 (中英文字幕) 08月27日 Thu 15:57:32
愛德華癌病逝世 甘迺迪王朝終結
Streaks of stratocumulus clouds created a dramatic end to the day above Pentylands Country Park near Swindon. Tony Strover took this picture on the evening of 19th August.
Marshall Calvert was on Alnmouth beach in Northumberland when he photographed a dissolving cumulus and part of what would later be a wonderful double rainbow in the distance on 1st August.
Dawn over Chigwell Row in Essex was a beautiful sunrise on 19th August, as cirrus clouds reflected the sunlight. Picture taken by Ian Dalgliesh.
A large cumulonimbus engulfed much of the 'Old Man of Coniston' in Cumbria. Robin Watts took this picture on 17th August.
A double rainbow appeared over Holywood in County Down, heralding the end of a spell of heavy rain. Nanno Stokes captured this image on 20th August.
This rainbow provided the perfect backdrop to the town of Bundoran, County Donegal on 7th August. Picture taken by John Kelly.
Another rainbow made an appearance over moored yachts in Ballycastle in Northern Ireland on 20th August. This picture was taken by Amanda Davidson.
Ian Lord was at the Brough Agricultural Show in Cumbria on 20th August when ominous-looking cumulus clouds gathered overhead.
Britain’s latest UFO files raise new puzzles
No ‘smoking guns’ in fresh batch of declassified documents, however By Jill Lawless updated 6:18 p.m. ET Aug. 17, 2009
LONDON - The deputy commander of a U.S. Air Force base in England was baffled by what he'd seen: bright, pulsing lights in the night sky.
Britain's defense ministry couldn't explain it either, but concluded that the unidentified flying object posed no threat.
The National Archives on Monday released the government's complete file on the "Rendlesham Forest Incident" of December 1980, one of Britain's most famous UFO sightings.
It was among more than 4,000 pages posted online Monday documenting 800 alleged encounters during the 1980s and 1990s. Over the past three years the Ministry of Defense has been gradually releasing previously secret UFO papers after facing Freedom of Information demands.
The Rendlesham file contains U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Charles Halt's firsthand account of the event, which has been public knowledge for many years. The file includes the conclusions of a British government investigation and a letter from a former defense chief urging officials to take UFOs more seriously.
Halt reported that two servicemen had noticed "unusual lights" about 3 a.m. in the woods outside the gates of RAF Woodbridge, a U.S. base in eastern England. He wrote that patrol officers sent to investigate saw "a strange glowing object" in the forest.
The metallic, triangular object "illuminated the entire forest with a white light," he wrote.
The next day, investigators found depressions in the ground and unusual radiation readings. That night many personnel — including Halt himself — saw a pulsing "red sunlike light" in the trees that broke into five white objects and disappeared.
The Ministry of Defense could offer no definitive explanation for what the Air Force officers had reported seeing, but also found no evidence of "any threat to the defense of the United Kingdom."
Nothing had registered on radar, and "there was no evidence of anything having intruded into U.K. airspace and landed near RAF Woodbridge."
A 1983 letter in the file proposes a possible explanation involving a combination of the nearby Orford Ness lighthouse, a fireball and bright stars.
Case closed, as far as the ministry was concerned. But not everyone was convinced.
A 1985 letter from Lord Hill-Norton, former head of Britain's armed forces, to then-Defense Secretary Michael Heseltine, complained that the "puzzling and disquieting" episode had never been explained properly.
Hill-Norton said if the sighting was genuine, "British airspace and territory are vulnerable to unwarranted intrusion to a disturbing degree." The alternative explanation was that "a sizable number of USAF personnel at an important base in British territory are capable of serious misperception, the consequences of which might be grave in military terms."
Britain's defense ministry has charted UFO sightings since the 1950s, when a Flying Saucer Working Party was established. More files are due to be released by the archives through 2010.
Airships and railcars Some of the newly released events came with easy explanations.
In 1993 and 1994, the ministry received numerous reports of a "brightly illuminated oval object" over London. It turned out to be an airship advertising a new car.
More mysterious was a UFO "attack" on a cemetery in Widnes, northwest England, in July 1996. A police report said a young man — "a sensible sort of lad and genuine" — reported seeing a UFO firing beams of light into the ground.
A police officer sent to the scene found a smoldering railway sleeper. "It does look rather odd," reported the officer, whose name was blacked out in the document.
Conspiracy theorists, take note The files include a little grist for conspiracy theorists.
The head of the ministry's UFO desk wrote briefing notes in 1993 reporting a spate of sightings in southwest England and speculating whether they might be connected to Aurora, a secret U.S. spy plane whose existence has never been officially admitted.
Atop one of his letters, someone scrawled: "Thank you. I suggest you now drop this subject."
The files reveal a 1996 spike in UFO sightings: 609 that year, up from 117 the year before.
Aliens Exist In Hollywood, extraterrestrials always seem to favor the grand entrance. They land on the White House lawn and implore us to end our violent ways (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951). They replace the citizens of a California town with listless pod people (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956). They persuade Richard Dreyfuss to play with his mashed potatoes (Close Encounters, 1977). They even look like David Bowie (The Man Who Fell to Earth, 1976). Right now, in fact, two unrelated alien posses are invading theaters near you: the insectoid stars of District 9, who make their presence known by parking a UFO above Johannesburg, and the hyperactive green gremlins of Aliens in the Attic, who battle a group of plucky tweens over a Midwestern rental home. (Listen to Andrew Romano on our fascination with whether aliens exist.) But even if E.T. exists off the silver screen, the chances that he'll discover us any time soon are vanishingly slim (Reese's Pieces or not). After all, projects like SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) have been waiting since 1960 for aliens to make contact—without hearing the slightest peep. The good news, however, is that some scientists are finally focusing on the other side of the equation: a series of high-tech missions designed to help us find them. And even at this early stage, the circumstantial evidence they've gathered has made it clear that we're probably not alone in the universe.
Here's what we know. In 1995, Swiss astronomers pinpointed the first-extrasolar planet. Unfortunately, it was a giant ball of gas orbiting so close to its sun that it glowed with enough heat and radiation to vaporize even the hardiest little green men. But at least the discovery proved that planets occurred outside our own cozy solar system. A few years later, "super-Earths" started to reveal themselves—smaller, firmer, at a discrete distance from their companion stars. Although these planets are much larger and less temperate than ours, they prompted some astronomers to estimate that perhaps half of the 200 billion or so suns in the Milky Way support terrestrial, Earth-like worlds. We've also discovered that water, the essential ingredient for life, exists elsewhere in the universe—starting with our own solar backyard. Robots have spotted gullies freshly carved in the sides of Martian hills—evidence of recent upwellings. In June, astronomers observed geysers of water vapor on Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons. Even ghastly Jupiter is a candidate—or at least its moons Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, the last of which may have oceans larger than ours hidden beneath its crust of perpetual ice.
The question now is how many of those 100 billion potential Earths can we reasonably expect to have harbored H2O and served as a cradle of life, intelligent or not? Enter Kepler, an ambitious new NASA mission. Launched via satellite in March, Kepler's $600 million space telescope uses a sophisticated photometer to stare at all 100,000 stars located in a particularly promising region of the Milky Way while measuring the size and orbit of every planet that passes in front of them. The larger the shadow, the larger the planet; the more often it appears, the closer the orbit. The point is to isolate for the very first time alien worlds orbiting alien suns at distances where temperatures are right for liquid water and possible life. "This mission is like Columbus," says principal investigator Bill Borucki. "We will get Earth-sized planets, terrestrial planets, in the habitable zone. It won't be 'close.' We will know."
The concept behind Kepler isn't new. Borucki—the sort of guy who skipped high-school projects to build elaborate UFO transmitters—constructed his first photometer in college; he started thinking about how to apply the technology to the search for extraterrestrial life shortly after arriving at NASA in 1962. It wasn't until the early 1980s, however, that Borucki began publishing papers on photometry and pushing his bosses to finance a photometric mission. Their response? It's impossible. Undeterred, his team slaved over the project for the next two decades, inventing new technologies, showing they could achieve the necessary precision, and applying for additional funding at every turn, until finally, in 2001, NASA "said uncle," as Borucki puts it. After only 10 days in orbit, the satellite measured a dip in starlight of a few parts per million caused by a distant Jupiter, proving that it's sensitive enough to detect Earth-like planets. By 2013, says Borucki, Kepler is likely to have located "hundreds or even thousands" of potentially habitable worlds.
Where we'll go from there is still unclear. But assuming that people are as fascinated by the discovery of real-life Earths as they are by, say, Will Smith fighting off alien invaders, we might launch a telescope designed to scan auspicious planets for the presence of CO2 and ozone, then invent a more intricate device to suss out whether these atmospheres contain isotopes of oxygen consistent with living systems. The final step, says Borucki, is "a probe that can travel near the speed of light and gets there, shows us pictures, listens to their radio stations and television stations, and gives us a much better understanding of this new planet."
We're not at the Star Trek stage yet. But given enough time and interest—and enough money—scientists believe the possibilities are limitless. "I've suggested nothing that we don't know pretty much how to do currently," Borucki says. "After Kepler, I cannot imagine people saying, 'I don't care about life. I don't care about these wonderful civilizations that might exist.' " So let the search continue—assuming, of course, that E.T. doesn't show up at the White House first.
With Fred Guterl
We Are All Hindus Now America is not a Christian nation. We are, it is true, a nation founded by Christians, and according to a 2008 survey, 76 percent of us continue to identify as Christian (still, that's the lowest percentage in American history). Of course, we are not a Hindu—or Muslim, or Jewish, or Wiccan—nation, either. A million-plus Hindus live in the United States, a fraction of the billion who live on Earth. But recent poll data show that conceptually, at least, we are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians in the ways we think about God, our selves, each other, and eternity.
The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: "Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hindu believes there are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur'an is another, yoga practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The most traditional, conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me."
Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of us believe that "many religions can lead to eternal life"—including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing. Thirty percent of Americans call themselves "spiritual, not religious," according to a 2009 NEWSWEEK Poll, up from 24 percent in 2005. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, has long framed the American propensity for "the divine-deli-cafeteria religion" as "very much in the spirit of Hinduism. You're not picking and choosing from different religions, because they're all the same," he says. "It isn't about orthodoxy. It's about whatever works. If going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works, great. And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist retreat works, that's great, too."
Then there's the question of what happens when you die. Christians traditionally believe that bodies and souls are sacred, that together they comprise the "self," and that at the end of time they will be reunited in the Resurrection. You need both, in other words, and you need them forever. Hindus believe no such thing. At death, the body burns on a pyre, while the spirit—where identity resides—escapes. In reincarnation, central to Hinduism, selves come back to earth again and again in different bodies. So here is another way in which Americans are becoming more Hindu: 24 percent of Americans say they believe in reincarnation, according to a 2008 Harris poll. So agnostic are we about the ultimate fates of our bodies that we're burning them—like Hindus—after death. More than a third of Americans now choose cremation, according to the Cremation Association of North America, up from 6 percent in 1975. "I do think the more spiritual role of religion tends to deemphasize some of the more starkly literal interpretations of the Resurrection," agrees Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion at Harvard. So let us all say "om."
今屆港姐放眼國際,請來年僅 8歲的英國歌唱神童 Connie Talbot以公主裝獻唱《 You raise me up》,帶領 10位身穿宮廷裝的港姐出場揭開序幕。 Connie曾參加《 Britain's Got Talent》,演唱《 Over the Rainbow》,被譽為擁有天使般的歌聲。
無敵靚位睇穿後台
The dark stratocumulus clouds above failed to completely steal away the sunlight over the fields just outside Northallerton in North Yorkshire on 16th August. Photographer Allan Waton says; "I just liked how the evening light lit up the cattle and fields."
Storm clouds above St. Louis, Missouri rapidly turned day to night, which preceded strong winds and heavy rain. Dennis Dill took this photograph on 17th August.
Sunset over Menorca in Spain was made spectacular as the fading light reflected against altocumulus and cirrus clouds above. Norman Geddes took this picture on the evening of 17th August.
Very few people seemed willing to brave the unsettled weather over Brancaster Beach in Norfolk on 17th August. However, Margaret Young did venture out to take this picture of rain in the distance.
The beach at Seaton Sluice in Tyne and Wear took on a similar unseasonally grey hue as rain moved in overhead on 17th July. Picture taken by Les Calvert.
In contrast to the wet weather over beaches in Norfolk and Tyne and Wear, the clear skies above Lochdon, Isle of Mull were interrupted only by a few non-threatening cumulus and altocumulus lenticularis clouds. Photographed by John Cable on 16th August.
Page last updated at 15:57 GMT, Friday, 14 August 2009 16:57 UK 23:57 HK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/hi/gallery/ The light of the setting sun reflecting on a combination of cirrus and altocumulus clouds gave the sky above Neath a dream-like quality. This picture was taken on 13th August by Mike Davies.
Sunrise at Minehead on 14th August was equally breathtaking. David Cronin was up early to capture the light of daybreak reflecting from a combination of altostratus, altocumulus and stratocumulus clouds.
Chris Campbell was in Valencia, Spain when he captured this dramatic picture of cloud-to-cloud lightning overhead on the evening of 9th August.
The last rays of the setting sun pushed their way through a layer of stratocumulus clouds, creating this breathtaking effect. Chris Sharp captured this image from Limpsfield in Surrey, looking towards Gatwick Airport.
Residents in Burrelton, Scotland were treated to this sight of a rosy-cheeked towering cumulus cloud as the sun set on 10th August. Picture taken by Stewart Malecki.
Kevin Grierson was watching the sunset on 7th August when he captured this image of the delicate-looking stratocumulus clouds above partly reflecting the light. He was standing on the beach in Troon looking towards the Isle of Arran.
Carol Palin photographed ominous-looking stratocumulus clouds overhead from her narrowboat on the Grand Union Canal at Stoke Hammond, Buckinghamshire on 6th August.
The light of the setting sun reflected dramatically against the cloud cover of a clearing cold front over Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire on 6th August. Photographed by Peter Smith.
The double rainbow that appeared over Botany Bay in Sydney, Australia looked striking against the dark sky. Mick Handcock took this picture on 7th August. 08月15日 Sat 23:21:30