www.newindpress.com

TIRUPATI, INDIA, March 19, 2008: In a novel initiative, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) has launched a crash course for temple priests to help them hone their skills in performing the temple rituals. The five-day training program is being executed by TTDs Sri Venkateswara Employees Training Academy (SVETA), in a bold attempt to make the priests ward off the modern-day professional hazards such as stress. Besides, it teaches the priests how to keep themselves physically fit and inculcate a sense of social responsibility in their work. The intensive training includes the corporate style thought-provoking lectures and Powerpoint presentation on personality development, maintaining mental and physical peace and adopting healthy lifestyles by a team of experts comprising physicians and personality development trainers.

Another salient feature of the course is that the senior Agama pundits requisitioned from outside, stay with the trainees for five days, giving them an opportunity to discuss matters related to temple rituals and clear their doubts. Under a program launched in June 2007, 300 priests from various districts, were trained in 14 batches, including 13 in Vaikhanasa Agama and the one in Pancharatra system of temple worship. Plans were afoot for covering the priests from the other southern states, he explained.

psenthilraja.wordpress.com

CHIDAMBARAM, INDIA, March 20, 2008: For those interested in the background of the recent dispute at the famed Chidambaram Temple over singing of Tamil songs, the article at the URL above will be most informative. It explains the mostly political motivations behind what appeared to be a religious or linquistic issue.

www.edutopia.org

USA, March 25, 2008: (The following article from 2004 will be of deep interest–essential, actually–to any Hindu in the US who has been involved in trying to change the teaching of Hindu and Indian history in American schools. It is an insiders view of the sometimes very strange process by which elementary and secondary textbooks are written and adopted.)

Some years ago, I signed on as an editor at a major publisher of elementary school and high school textbooks, filled with the idealistic belief that I’d be working with equally idealistic authors to create books that would excite teachers and fill young minds with Big Ideas.

Not so.

I got a hint of things to come when I overheard my boss lamenting, “The books are done and we still don’t have an author! I must sign someone today!”

Every time a friend with kids in school tells me textbooks are too generic, I think back to that moment. “Who writes these things?” people ask me. I have to tell them, without a hint of irony, “No one.” It’s symptomatic of the whole muddled mess that is the $4.3 billion textbook business.

Textbooks are a core part of the curriculum, as crucial to the teacher as a blueprint is to a carpenter, so one might assume they are conceived, researched, written, and published as unique contributions to advancing knowledge. In fact, most of these books fall far short of their important role in the educational scheme of things. They are processed into existence using the pulp of what already exists, rising like swamp things from the compost of the past. The mulch is turned and tended by many layers of editors who scrub it of anything possibly objectionable before it is fed into a government-run “adoption” system that provides mediocre material to students of all ages.

For the rest of this very informative article click URL above.

www.theaustralian.news.com.au

AUSTRALIA, March 11, 2008: South Australia’s largest cemetery commissioned a study into the environmental impacts of cremations and burials. The study found it was better for people to be cremated, compared with the long-term impact of burials, even though four times as much carbon dioxide was produced during the initial cremation process.

“On the day that a cremation or burial takes place, the volume of carbon dioxide produced is higher for cremation than for burial,” Centennial Park chief executive Bryan Elliott said. “The report found that each cremation at Centennial Park generates approximately 160kg (352 pounds) of carbon dioxide equivalent.

“Each burial at Centennial Park generates approximately 39kg (86 pounds) of CO2. “However, when the long-term environmental footprint is considered, burials at Centennial Park have a 10 per cent greater impact than cremations. “This is because we must look after the gravesite for a number of years by watering and mowing the surrounding lawn area and maintaining the concrete beam on which the headstone is placed.

HPI note: For those who like to know these things, driving a midsize car 1,000 miles a month produces 19.45 pounds of CO2/day. Therefore, your cremation will produce the same amount of CO2 as driving your car for no more than 18 days.

www.hinduismtoday.com

Nothing ever will be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Samuel Johnson