Seeing The Other Side Of The Story
Seeing things from the other person's point of view has a profound effect on our emotional health, since the totality of how we relate to others is dependent on this concept. When you master the ability to view others as they see themselves, you will gain the love of everyone.
Today, think of someone you find it difficult to get along with. See this person as he views himself and patiently talk to him from his perspective.
Love Yehuda Lave
A 'wonder' paint made from graphene could banish rust forever, scientists claim.
By combining it with oxygen they say they can create graphene oxide that, when applied as paint, provides an ultra-strong and non-corrosive coating.
And the breakthrough could apparently revolutionise the medical, nuclear and even transport industries.
Scientists at Manchester University say Graphene can be combined with oxygen to create graphene oxide and then applied as paint (stock image shown). This provides an ultra-strong, non-corrosive coat to metals, bricks and more. When exposed to water vapour the paint acts as a 'molecular sieve'
Graphene is a one atom thick sheet of carbon that has often been heralded as a 'miracle material'.
This latest study by scientists from Manchester University created coatings for metals or even bricks that behave like graphite in terms of chemical and thermal stability.
But they also become mechanically nearly as tough as graphene, the strongest material known to be in existence today.
The team led by Dr Rahul Nair and Nobel laureate Sir Andre Geim demonstrated previously that multilayer films made from graphene oxide are vacuum tight under dry conditions.
WHAT IS GRAPHENE?
Graphene is the world's thinnest substance, transparent but stronger than steel - a conductive super-material made of carbon just one atom thick.
There is a surge of interest in it to replace semiconductors in next-generation computers, touch screens, batteries and solar cells.
Graphene was aired as a theoretical substance in 1947.
But for decades, physicists thought it would be impossible to isolate, as such thin crystalline sheets were bound to be unstable.
The problem was resolved in 2004 by a pair of scientists who used ordinary sticky tape to lift a layer from a piece of graphite.
That layer was itself pulled apart using more tape, and the process repeated until just the thinnest of layers remained - a graphene sheet.
If exposed to water or its vapour however they act as molecular sieves, allowing passage of small molecules below a certain size.
The findings could also have huge implications for water purification.
This contrasting property is due to the structure of graphene oxide films that consist of millions of small flakes stacked randomly on top of each other but leave nano-sized capillaries between them.
Water molecules inside these nanocapillaries and can drag small atoms and molecules along.
In an article published in Nature Communications, the team showed it was possible to tightly close those nanocapillaries using simple chemical treatments, which makes graphene films even stronger mechanically as well as completely impermeable to everything: gases, liquids or strong chemicals.
For example, they demonstrated that glassware or copper plates covered with graphene paint can be used as containers for strongly corrosive acids.
Graphene (artist's illustration shown) is the world's thinnest substance, transparent but stronger than steel - a conductive super-material made of carbon just one atom thick. There is a surge of interest in it to replace semiconductors in next-generation computers, touch screens, batteries and solar cells
The exceptional barrier properties of graphene paint have already attracted interest from many companies who now collaborate with The University of Manchester on development of new protective and anticorrosion coatings.
Dr Nair said: 'Graphene paint has a good chance to become a truly revolutionary product for industries that deal with any kind of protection either from air, weather elements or corrosive chemicals.
'Those include, for example, medical, electronics and nuclear industry or even shipbuilding, to name but the few.'
Another author on the research Dr Yang Su added: 'Graphene paint can be applied to practically any material, independently of whether it's plastic, metal or even sand.
'For example, plastic films coated with graphene could be of interest for medical packaging to improve shelf life because they are less permeable to air and water vapour than conventional coatings. In addition, thin layers of graphene paint are optically transparent.'
These photo's are very interesting.
These are genuinely unique 'OLD' photos. I doubt if you have seen any of these. They are both interesting and truly historical.
The Statue of Liberty's torch is parked in front of the western side of Madison Square in 1876.
A German Tank almost falls off a Russian bridge on July 4, 1941.
The first armed airplane of the Serbian army in 1915.
Women welders at Lincoln Motor Company in 1918.
Times Square in 1922.
The dedication of the Washington Monument in 1885.
Race official Jock Semple tries to push Kathy Switzer off the road after she attempts to run the Boston Marathon, which at the time was men's only. Number 390 pushing Jock away was Kathy's boyfriend. 1967.
Trapeze mining in Bonne Terre Missouri 1917.
Julia Clark in her Exhibition Plane, 1911. Miss Clark was the third woman to receive a pilot's license from the Aero Club of America. She was the first female pilot to die in an air crash in the United States in 1912.
Greyhound in 1923.
The crew of the USS Lexington abandon ship following torpedo strikes on May 9th, 1942.
The first photo of the Earth from the moon taken by Lunar Orbiter in 1966.
The first image of Titanic since its sinking in 1912. Taken in 1986.
The attack on Pearl Harbor taken from one of the attacking Japanese aircraft on December 7, 1941.
Southwest Airlines stewardesses in 1962.
Inside the turrets of the USS Massachusetts, 1898.
The funeral of Victor Hugo in 1885.
Hannah Stilley, born 1746, photographed in 1840. More than likely the earliest born individual captured on film.
A balancing act atop the Empire State Building in 1934.
Ansel Adams, 1979. He broke his nose during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and never had it fixed.
"H�gertrafikoml�ggningen" - the day Sweden switched from driving on the left to driving on the right (1967).
The Dalai Lama at age 2 in 1937.
The London Underground in 1890.
Paul McCartney takes a selfie in 1959.
Smuggling beer during prohibition sometime between 1920 and 1933.
Illuminated tires invented by Goodyear in 1961.
Directional sound finders used to detect incoming enemy planes in 1917.
The aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.
The PGM-11 "Redstone" - the World's First Nuclear Missile displayed in Grand Central Station, July 7, 1957.
Construction of The Lincoln Memorial in 1921.
Op-Ed: Why and When was the Myth of al-Aqsa Created?
How did Jerusalem become so important to Muslims?
The importance of Jerusalem for Jews and Christians is beyond dispute, since the connection of this city to Judaism and Christianity is part of universal concepts about history and theology. However, when it comes to modern politics, we hear over and over that Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims demand that Jerusalem become the capital of the future Palestinian state, owing to its holiness to Islam. The question is how and when this city became holy to Muslims.
After Palestine was occupied by the Muslims, its capital was Ramle, 30 miles to the west of Jerusalem, signifying that Jerusalem meant nothing to them.When the Prophet Muhammad established Islam, he introduced a minimum of innovations. He employed the hallowed personages, historic legends and sacred sites of Judaism, Christianity, and even paganism, by Islamizing them. Thus, according to Islam, Abraham was the first Muslim and Jesus and St. John (the sons of Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron) were prophets and guardians of the second heaven. Many Biblical legends ("asatir al-awwalin"), which were familiar to the pagan Arabs before the dawn of Islam, underwent an Islamic conversion, and the Koran as well as the Hadith (the Islamic oral tradition), are replete with them.
Islamization was practiced on places as well as persons: Mecca and the holy stone - al-Ka'bah - were holy sites of the pre-Islamic pagan Arabs. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and the Great Mosque of Istanbul were erected on the sites of Christian-Byzantine churches - two of the better known examples of how Islam treats sanctuaries of other faiths.
Jerusalem, too, underwent the process of Islamization: at first Muhammad attempted to convince the Jews near Medina to join his young community, and, by way of persuasion, established the direction of prayer (kiblah) to be to the north, towards Jerusalem, in keeping with Jewish practice; but after he failed in this attempt he turned against the Jews, killed many of them, and directed the kiblah southward, towards Mecca.
Muhammad's abandonment of Jerusalem explains the fact that this city is not mentioned even once in the Koran. After Palestine was occupied by the Muslims, its capital was Ramle, 30 miles to the west of Jerusalem, signifying that Jerusalem meant nothing to them.
Islam rediscovered Jerusalem 50 years after Muhammad's death. In 682 CE, 'Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr rebelled against the Islamic rulers in Damascus, conquered Mecca and prevented pilgrims from reaching Mecca for the Hajj. 'Abd al-Malik, the Umayyad Calif, needed an alternative site for the pilgrimage and settled on Jerusalem which was then under his control. In order to justify this choice, a verse from the Koran was chosen (17,1 = sura 17, verse 1) which states (trans. by Majid Fakhri):
"Glory to Him who caused His servant to travel by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, whose precincts We have blessed, in order to show him some of Our Signs, He is indeed the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing."
The meaning ascribed to this verse (see the commentary in al-Jallalayn) is that "the furthest mosque" (al-masgid al-aqsa) is in Jerusalem and that Muhammad was conveyed there one night (although at that time the journey took three days by camel), on the back of al-Buraq, a magical horse with the head of a woman, wings of an eagle, the tail of a peacock, and hoofs reaching to the horizon. He tethered the horse to the Western Wall of the Temple Mount and from there ascended to the seventh heaven together with the angel Gabriel. On his way he met the prophets of other religions who are the guardians of the Seven Heavens: Adam, Jesus, St. John, Joseph, Idris (=Seth?), Aaron, Moses and Abraham who accompanied him on his way to Allah and who accepted him as their master.
Thus Islam tries to gain legitimacy over other, older religions, by creating a scene in which the former prophets agree to Muhammad's mastery, thus making him Khatam al-Anbiya' ("the Seal of the Prophets"). According to this legend, Islam came to the world in order to replace Judaism and Christianity rather than to live side by side with them.
Not surprisingly, this miraculous account contradicts a number of the tenets of Islam: How can a living man of flesh and blood ascend to heaven? How can a mythical creature carry a mortal to a real destination? Questions such as these have caused orthodox Muslim thinkers to conclude that the nocturnal journey was a dream of Muhammad's. The journey and the ascent serves Islam to "go one better" than the Bible: Moses "only" went up to Mt. Sinai, in the middle of nowhere, and drew close to heaven, whereas Muhammad went all the way up to Allah, and from Jerusalem itself.
What are the difficulties with the belief that the al-Aqsa mosque described in Islamic tradition is located in Jerusalem? For one, the people of Mecca, who knew Muhammad well, did not believe this story. Only Abu Bakr, (later the first Caliph), believed him and thus was called al-Siddiq ("the believer"). The second difficulty is that Islamic tradition tells us that al-Aqsa mosque is near Mecca on the Arabian peninsula. This was unequivocally stated in "Kitab al-Maghazi" (Oxford University Press, 1966, vol. 3, pp. 958-9), a book by the Muslim historian and geographer al-Waqidi. According to al-Waqidi, there were two "masjeds" (places of prayer) in al-Gi'irranah, a village between Mecca and Ta'if, one was "the closer mosque" (al-masjid al-adna) and the other was "the further mosque" (al-masjid al-aqsa), and Muhammad would pray there when he went out of town.
This description by al-Waqidi which is supported by a chain of authorities (isnad), was not "convenient" for the Islamic propaganda of the 7th century. In order to establish a basis for the awareness of the "holiness" of Jerusalem in Islam, the Caliphs of the Ummayad dynasty invented many "traditions" upholding the value of Jerusalem (known as "fadha'il bayt al-Maqdis"), which would justify pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the faithful Muslims. Thus was al-Masjid al-Aqsa "transported" to Jerusalem. It should be noted that Saladin also adopted the myth of al-Aqsa and those "traditions" in order to recruit and inflame the Muslim warriors against the Crusaders in the 12th century.
Another aim of the Islamization of Jerusalem was to undermine the legitimacy of the older religions, Judaism and Christianity, which consider Jerusalem to be a holy city. Islam is presented as the only legitimate religion, destined to replace the other two, because Jews and Christians had changed and distorted ("ghyyarou wa-baddalou") the Word of God, each in their turn. On the alleged forgeries of the Holy Scriptures, made by Jews and Christians, see the third chapter of: M. J. Kister, "haddithu 'an bani isra'il wa-la haraja", IOS 2 (1972), pp. 215-239. Kister quotes dozens of Islamic sources).
Though Judaism and Christianity can exist side by side in Jerusalem, Islam regards both of them as betrayals of Allah and his teachings, and has always done, and will continue to do, all in its power to expel both of them from this city. It is interesting to note that this expulsion is retroactive: The Islamic broadcasters of the Palestinian radio stations consistently make it a point to claim that the Jews never had a temple on the Temple Mount and certainly not two temples. (Where, then, according to them, did Jesus preach?)
Arafat, himself a secular person (ask the Hamas!), did exactly what the Caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty did 1300 years ago: he marshaled the holiness of Jerusalem to serve his political ends. He could not give control of Jerusalem over to the Jews since according to Islam they are impure and the wrath of Allah is upon them ("al-maghdhoub 'alayhim"; Koran 1,7, see al-Jalalayn and other commentaries; note that verse numbers may differ slightly in the various editions of the Koran). The Jews are the sons of monkeys and pigs (5,60). (For the idea that Jews are related to pigs and monkeys see, for instance, Musnad al-Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, (Beirut 1969) vol. 3, p. 241. See also pages 348, 395, 397, 421, and vol. 6, p. 135.) The Jews are those who distorted the holy writings which were revealed to them (2,73; 3,72) and denied God's signs (3,63). Since they violated the covenant with their God (4,154), He cursed them (5,16) and they are forever the inheritors of hell (3,112). So how could Arafat abandon Jerusalem to the Jews?
The Palestinian Arab media these days are full of messages of Jihad, calling to broaden the national-political war between Israel and the Palestinians into a religious-Islamic war between the Jews and the Muslims. READ THEIR LIPS: for them Christianity is no better than Judaism, since both "forfeited" their right to rule over Jerusalem. Only Islam - Din al-Haqq ("the Religion of Truth") - has this right, and forever. This was and still is the leitmotiv in Friday sermons in Palestinian mosques and official media. (Note: photo acccompanying this article is a keffiya showing the hoped-for taking Jerusalem from Israel and the destruction of Israel on the scarf. On the right side it says "Jerusalem is ours" and the left: "Palestine" with no Israel on the map.)
Since the holiness of Jerusalem to Islam has always been, and still is no more than a politically motivated holiness, any Palestinian Arab politician would be putting his political head on the block should he give it up. Must Judaism and Christianity defer to myths related in Islamic texts or allegedly envisioned in Muhammad's dreams, long after Jerusalem was established as the ancient, real center of these two religions which preceded Islam?
Should the world reshape the Middle East map just because Muslims decided to recycle the political problems of the Umayyads 1250 years after the curtain came down on their role in history?
