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POPSBBC Save the Sounds What is BBC World Service?World Service Newsroom We are the world’s leading international broadcaster providing programmes and content for radio, television, online and mobile phones in English and 31 other languages. Hundreds of reporters and specialist correspondents bring impartial news reports, documentaries and analysis from around the globe. We also offer a rich mix of other programming from arts, business and culture to drama, science and sport. BBC World Service is one part of the collected international-facing television, radio and online services which form BBC Global News.
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POPS The Object at Hand: His Majesty King Mongkut of Siam
It was there that royal emissaries found him one steamy April morning in 1851, when they brought the news that his half brother, King Rama III, was dead. Within days, the 47-year-old monk stepped from monastic life into the rich temptations and intricacies of the palace, with its inner city thronging with hundreds of women, its precincts patrolled by female guards and its life revolving entirely around his royal person. The holy man was now officially the "Lord of Life," the fourth ruler in Siam's Chakri dynasty, able to exert life-or-death control over some 5.5 million subjects. (As king, he banned the death penalty for monks who broke their vows of celibacy, putting them to work, instead, cutting grass for the royal elephants.) A spectacular coronation inaugurated the reign with great pomp. Brahmin priests sounded ceremonial conch shells. The new monarch, clad in golden robes, was carried off in a gilded palanquin. Even in that moment of glory, though,
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POPSTibetan Sky Burial - DO NOT LOOK!! if you are sensitive believe that a person re-incarnates after dying the body serves no real purpose. There is no need to preserve the body, as it is now an empty vessel. Birds may eat it, or nature may let it decompose. The body is cut in specific places, and left on a mountain top, exposing it to the elements. According to Buddhist teaching, this makes it easier for the soul of the deceased to move on from the uncertain plane between life and death onto the next life. So as barbaric as this might look, there is an actual purpose to this.
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POPSHome Decoration Ideas And House Decor Color Trends Home Decoration Ideas and House decor color trends - Orange is a very hot and fickle paint, which evokes extremely different responses around the world. In the Netherlands. Orange writ a national pride; in Asia it is a holy blush worn only for Buddhist monks robes; and in the US our urgent corollary is Halloween! Only just has this brighter, more shadowy appear of the Orange family been more openly expected in America.
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POPSResearcher uncovers secrets of Kells 'angels' more (at source): The monks could then refine any disparities by minimizing the apparent vertical depth of the images -- ultimately replicating the design element to submillimeter precision. Cisne proposed the idea in the July 17 issue of the journal Perception (Vol. 38, No. 7). The paper suggests that the technique, called free-fusion stereocomparison, which takes advantage of the brain's ability to perceive depth by integrating the slightly different views from each eye, was known nearly a thousand years before it was articulated by stereoscope inventor Sir George Wheatstone in the 19th century. Cisne analyzed the most detailed illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, created between 670 and 800 A.D., including the Book of Kells (circa 800 A.D.); some have as many as 30 lines per centimeter.
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POPSDownload Cursed Mountain - Wii Trailer: Lost In the Mountains learn how to download Wii games online. link:http://Download-Wii-Games.Notlong.Com Cursed Mountain Trailer: Designed Exclusively for Wii, Cursed Mountain is Set for Worldwide Release in 2009 Set in the late 1980s, gamers will take on the role of a fearless mountaineer as he climbs into the Himalayas on a quest to find his lost brother. As he ascends the mountain, he encounters an ancient curse: the souls of the people who died in that region are stuck in limbo, caught in the Shadow World. Villagers, pilgrims, mountaineers and Buddhist monks â dead but not yet reincarnated â are all that is left on the mountain. Terrible visions will disorient him, and ghosts and demons block his path. But the question remains â is his brother still alive? Link: http://Download-Wii-Games.Notlong.Com Visit the link to find out how easy it is to download Wii games online. No illegal modding needed.
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POPSPope Quits: Says One Billion Catholics Are Wrong Jesuit priest Hal Head heads up a group of former priests and nuns who made similar decisions to marry. "I'm very happy the Pope has decided to lead from the front in this issue," he said. "There are too many back door men among us," he concluded. Rank and file Catholics are uncertain how the Pope's resignation will affect local congregations, but many are certain the change was long overdue. Bill Phaser, chief of the Marmet, West Virginia Knights of Columbus group, told me, "Priests are real men, just like us. It's high time for all men to be real men, and altar boys to be terrified."
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POPSSacrificial virgins of the Mississippi
As archaeologist Timothy Pauketat's cautious but mesmerizing new book, "Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi," makes clear, Cahokia -- the greatest Native American city north of Mexico -- definitely belongs to human history. (It is not "historical," in the strict sense, because the Cahokians left no written records.) At its peak in the 12th century, this settlement along the Mississippi River bottomland of western Illinois, a few miles east of modern-day St. Louis, was probably larger than London, and held economic, cultural and religious sway over a vast swath of the American heartland. Featuring a man-made central plaza covering 50 acres and the third-largest pyramid in the New World (the 100-foot-tall "Monks Mound"), Cahokia was home to at least 20,000 people. If that doesn't sound impressive from a 21st-century perspective, consider that the next city on United States territory to attain that size would be Philadelphia, some 600 years later.
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POPSThis is Laos - An Overview for Travellers Some people call this country "South East Asia's Best Kept Secret" but the truth is, according to Lonely Planet, that the only country in South East Asia that doesn't have a coastline is fast earning cult status among travellers. So if you want to visit before the masses arrive hand in hand with Burger King, Coca Cola and all that jazz - Now is the time to do so. Laos will not remain a secret for much longer.
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POPSAn Adoption Tragedy The adopted son planned to kill his parents for being over-protective and they still trust him. That's a miracle, but the planning is a tragedy.
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POPSAdventure Holiday in Laos If temples are your thing then Angkor Wat and Luang Prabang will blow you away; if you are a fan of rural scenery then there isn’t much that can beat the karst peaks of Vang Vieng or the lush paddy fields and village scenes on Don Khong; and if you just want to get into the culture of the region then you’ll love the village homestay at Hinboun and watching the saffron-robed monks of Luang Prabang collect alms at dawn.
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POPSMysterious Book: Codex Gigas more (at source): The legend surrounding the Codex is that one of the monks from the Bohemian Benedictine Monastery had committed a terrible sin and was facing the ultimate punishment from the monastery...... to be walled up alive in is cell. To redeem himself from a terrible slow death, the monk offered a deal to the monastery leaders.....if he were to write the biggest book that the world had ever seen, in one single night, then he should be allowed to live.
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POPSBoy chosen by Dalai Lama turns back on Buddhist order more at source: "It was like living a lie," he told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. Despite his rebelliousness, he is still known as Lama Tenzin Osel Rinpoche and revered by the Buddhist community. A prayer for his "long life" still adorns the website of the Foundation to Preserve the Mahayana Tradition, which has 130 centres around the world.
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