Another one, from the Wall Street Journal is a brief, but very accurate and current, exploration of the Faith, which contains some of the history of the persecution of the Baha’is, mainly in Iran. The author resides in Haifa, Israel, where the spiritual and administrative centers of the Baha’i Faith are found: the spiritual center because the physical remains of the Bab and Baha’u'llah are kept in Shrines in these properties and the administrative center because the Seat (meeting place) of the Universal House of Justice

Both are very good reads. At this point, I will pause and give you some time to go read them.

…

Reading the collection of blogs found on my favorite RSS reader today, I came accross a cool use of Google Insights for Search (it was new to me, mainly because I didn’t look into it much when it came out). TechCrunch was highlighting the use of this tool to track several Web 2.0 sites/concepts. The maps looked cool so I decided to try a few of my own. Let’s see what insights Google has for the search term: bahai

and

Top Ten Countries (by Search Volume Index)
Iran, Jamaica, Israel, Canada, Kenya, Australia, Bolivia, Panama, New Zealand, Norway

leads me to a few observations:

• Iran and Israel for sure (for reasons mentioned above and more)
• Kenya is a nice surprise (there are clusters in Kenya that are 4% Baha’i by population)
• Australia and Panama both have temples
• Jamaica, Canada, Bolivia, New Zealand, Norway cool!
• Two of the top three countries with largest Baha’i population: US and India didn’t make it, probably due to the normalization. Volume is probably up there, though.

Top Ten Cities (by Search Volume Index)
Vancouver, Chicago, Toronto, Sydney, Seattle, Washington, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Francisco

San Francisco is #10!! Hmm… If you are from San Francisco and you searched because you are investigating, give me a call, or write at least a comment. We’ll meet up with you! :)

All these cities: it makes a lot of sense. They all are part of A clusters, which means many many prayers and energies are being dispensed to allow the message of Baha’u'llah to reach more and more people.

Thanks for revealing this Google!

One of the pictures stood out to me because I had never seen it before. It is a picture from “Le Petit Journal” (a small magazine?) presumably from France showing ‘Abdul’l-Baha giving a talk around a crowd of people in Constantinople (now Istanbul), Turkey.

The image came from the Mary Evans Picture Library which seems to be a collection of pictures/photos/images from one or two centuries ago.

The title may imply that ‘Abdu’l-Baha is a new prophet of Islam or that ‘Abdu’l-Baha is talking about a new prophet of Islam, Baha’u'llah. The perception at the time in many places around the world and even currently in many textbooks, news articles, essays, etc. is that the Baha’i Faith is a sect of Islam and that Baha’u'llah and maybe even ‘Abdu’l-Baha are prophets of Islam. Though it is correct that Baha’u'llah was raised in the Islam tradition, it is very clear that he came to establish a new and independent world faith. This says it best:

The Bahá’í Faith is a world religion whose purpose is to unite all the races and peoples in one universal Cause and one common Faith. Bahá’ís are the followers of Bahá’u’lláh, Who they believe is the Promised One of all Ages. As you know, the traditions of almost every people include the promise of a future when peace and harmony will be established on earth and humankind will live in prosperity. We believe that the promised hour has come and that Bahá’u’lláh is the great Personage Whose Teachings will enable humanity to build a new world. In one of His Writings, Bahá’u’lláh says:

“That which the Lord hath ordained as the sovereign remedy and mightiest instrument for the healing of all the world is the union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith.”

After the passing of Baha’u'llah, ‘Abdu’l-Baha continued to spread the faith his father revealed to humanity throughout the world. In 1911, he went to Paris, France where he gave a series of talks, many of which were recorded and compiled in this book, Paris Talks:

In 1912, he came to the United States where he continued to give talks and to meet with the Baha’i Community that had recently started to grow here.

P.S. I’m back, hopefully to be more constant. BahaiNine has been keeping me busy, be sure to check it out.

The EARTH is one country and mankind its citizens.

Can your EAR HEAR this?

Can your HEART feel it?

Can you BEAR to understand it?

Are we BEARINGS in the axles of one wheel?

Are we RINGS on one hand?

Do we BRING joy to the hearts of the SOBBING, the SORROWFUL?

I am SORE from the walking…

I’m SORRY, I wish I could do more.

I WORRY everyday for the WORLD.

It looked better than it reads, and it didn’t look that good anyway. I’ll continue working on it.

That’s number 3. Peace.

Anyway, I was reading this About.com interview with Paul Van Dyk, number 1 DJ in the world for 2006 according to DJ Magazine and number 2 at the DJList.com, about his latest album “In Between” which is scheduled to come out on August 14th. He said this about title:

The music came together over a period of two or three years. There have been all these changes - the whole globalization thing, the climate change, and just as much me growing up. This is why it’s called In Between – as in between phases. Every single track has its own little story, and since I traveled all around the world through the timeframe of producing the music, the influences are from all over the world.

I’ve always been a fan of the smooth-sounding beats and incredibly-flowing transitions of trance. This album, I’m sure, will be just as good. Trance music, as expressed by this artist, now reflects some of the changes that this world is going through, that this world is in between phases… It’s so true.

History thus far, with the greed of man at its forefront, has led us to an organization of humans where billions are in poverty and a few thousand have the vast majority of the wealth. At the same time, we’ve seen in the last 50 years huge technological advances. How do we better the world with all this knowledge?

Baha’u'llah has said:

The world is in great turmoil, and the minds of its people are in a state of utter confusion. We entreat the Almighty that He may graciously illuminate them with the glory of His Justice, and enable them to discover that which will be profitable unto them at all times and under all conditions.

Shoghi Effendi, the great grandson of Baha’u'llah, said:

Beset on every side by the cumulative evidences of disintegration, of turmoil and of bankruptcy, serious-minded men and women, in almost every walk of life, are beginning to doubt whether society, as it is now organized, can, through its unaided efforts, extricate itself from the slough into which it is steadily sinking. Every system, short of the unification of the human race, has been tried, repeatedly tried, and been found wanting.

He also said elsewhere:

This will indeed be the fitting climax of that process of integration which, starting with the family, the smallest unit in the scale of human organization, must, after having called successively into being the tribe, the city-state, and the nation, continue to operate until it culminates in the unification of the whole world, the final object and the crowning glory of human evolution on this planet.

Disintegration to integration… Good thing we are optimists. :) For more discussion, join us this Sunday at my place at 7pm.

As for me, well I like this:

And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

“And what of Marriage, master?”

You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore.
…
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
…
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
…
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

Related to work:

Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with your distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy…

As my “hermanote” George would say, “What a genius.” :)

To be continued… (when I finish reading)

* *** *

Titled: Hidden

Another morning I am blessed to awake.

Day will be filled with sunlight and warmth and

I must ARISE and make the most of it.

Will I go out of my “cave” and experience life? or

Tell everyone that I did but stay behind instead.

My mind tells me “truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues” but a

Secret is ok… is just for me… is my treasure… yet

To live without experiences is like having a blank sheet:

The hand can write, the pen has ink, the surface is sturdy, the

World is ready, ready for me to go out and… touch it.

* *** *

Hint: Read vertically too. :)

UPDATE: btw I’m straight. :)

All-in-One Sidebar - Puts all of Firefox’s separate windows (Add-ons, Downloads, History) in the Sidebar. Toggle with F4.

Auto Copy - Select text in Firefox and its automatically copied to the Clipboard. So useful, that I do it in other applications and forget to press Control-C.

Download Statusbar - Creates a new status bar at the bottom of Firefox that appears when you download a file. No more Downloads Window (or Sidebar). Double click to open the file.

Flat Bookmark Editing - In the Bookmarks Manager, it enables easy editing of Bookmark information.

Mouse Gestures - Control Firefox by rightclick-dragging your mouse in certain directions. I pretty much only use the rightclick-drag to the left for Back.

PDF Download - Short circuits PDF links and asks you if you want to download it to your computer, view it in the browser or open with Adobe Reader.

Tab History - Click a link that opens a new tab, and that tab will keep the history of the parent tab!

Tab Mix Plus - Tons of Tabbed Browsing preferences, defaults are cool, but you can download my settings file and import it (in this extension’s Settings) to get a few more tweaks. This extension’s Session Saver is better than Firefox’s default.

Table Tools - Sorting of tables in any webpage by Control-Click the header, right click the table to copy it as tab-delimited text for easy import into Excel.

For further (and possibly geeky) Firefox tweaking, check out these 15 cool tips. Ask any questions in the comments and I’ll be sure to try to help you out. :)

The freezer in the movie is used by Caltech’s Student Operated Coffeehouse where I slaved away lovingly worked at for three years. It actually was pretty fun most of the time. The employee’s (and manager = me for 2 years) were allowed to blast whatever music we wanted (usually trance in my case) and the venue was really cool looking.

The freezer was located under the Undergraduate Housing, where there are many tunnels to get to many of the campus buildings from the houses.

* Be sure to check his website real soon, it’s gonna be awesome and he made it entirely in Flash, which, let me tell you, is not an easy task. I know and I spent a ton of time figuring out the basics.

From the US Baha’i site:

One of only seven Baha’i temples in the world at present, this unique structure stands for unity and invites prayer to God.

The groundbreaking for the House of Worship occurred on May 1, 1912, in a ceremony blessed with the presence and participation of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, son of the Founder of the Baha’i Faith.

Like all Baha’i Houses of Worship, the Temple in Wilmette has nine sides and a dome. It is surrounded by exquisite gardens and fountains.

Photos by my good friend David Ma taken during a trip last year.

Thus, today, the no-longer-new-but-hopefully-still-fresh Kevin’s Blog becomes Revelations, something new is revealed everyday. I’m not convinced about the tagline so any suggestions are welcome. :S