Book Reviewed: Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary by Charles W. Draper

A concordance to the Bible I was researching on the topic of abortion and slavery in the Old and New Testaments. Then, I came across this book in the local library which helped me immensely in my research. It provided useful information, and extensive cross-referencing on the topics I searched. I recommend this book to students, scholars, and any reader interested in studying the Bible.

Book Reviewed: The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World by Riley Black

The day dinosaurs died The last day of the dinosaurs began as any morning during the Spring season 66.043 million years ago in the Northwestern states of the Unted States. Tanis is part of the heavily studied Hell Creek Formation, a group of rocks spanning four states renowned for significant fossil discoveries from the Upper Cretaceous (Cretaceous era;100.5–66 million years ago) and lower Paleocene (Paleocene era; 66-56 million years ago). Tanis is a significant site because it recorded the events 15 minutes after the impact of the giant seven-mile-wide Chicxulub asteroid in palaeobiological detail. This impact which struck the Gulf of Mexico wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs. Tanis resides in the state of North Dakota about 2,000 miles from the impact site in the Gulf of Mexico. The globe burned with wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, and seismic waves ravaged life at Tanis. The life at Tanis was entombed in sediment by seismic waves that was travelling at 11,000 miles per hour. These fossils were recently discovered and first reported in New Yorker Magazine in March 2019. The fossils of sturgeon and paddlefish hold the key which had small particles stuck in their gills. These are the glass spherules of molten rock kicked out from the impact site in the Gulf of Mexico that then fell back across the planet. The Tanis fishes breathed these particles as they were thrown out of the river as the big surge dismantled and disoriented the entire ecosystem with tens of miles on the land from the river. On this Earth-shattering day, sulfur ejected by the asteroid blocked all sunlight. The atmosphere turned acidic due to sulfuric acid and the oceans became unhabitable. The planet was plunged into darkness for decades, and temperatures dropped dramatically. The Western Interior Seaway was a large inland sea that existed from the early Late Cretaceous to earliest Paleocene, splitting the continent of North America into two landmasses, Laramidia to the west and Appalachia to the east. Tanis in North Dakota was the northern end of the seaway where the catastrophic events occurred. The author is a well-known journalist covering the paleontological significance of the death and destruction caused on the same day of the asteroid impact. There are numerous blogs and even discussions on TV about fossil evidence on the last day of the dinosaur. This book reads effortlessly despite the lack of illustrations and photographs in this book. Parts of book material has already appeared in Smithsonian Magazine.

Book Reviewed: Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth by Avi Loeb

Oumuamua, the interstellar visitor to solar system, is that an alien ship? Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb is one of the enthusiastic alien searchers who dares to investigate and examine anything that resembles like an alien technology or alien-made spacecraft. In this book, he proposes that Oumuamua is alien spacecraft that came from a distant planet. This was discovered on Oct. 19, 2017, by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS1 telescope funded by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations (NEOO) Program, which finds and tracks asteroids and comets in Earth’s neighborhood. Oumuamua was travelling at a speed of 196,000 miles per hour. This is the first confirmed object from another star to visit our solar system which is rocky, cigar-shaped with a reddish hue. It was one-quarter mile long and 10 times as long as it is wide. That ratio is greater than that of any asteroid or comet observed in the solar system. This cosmic craft is wandering through the Milky Way Galaxy, unattached to any star system, for hundreds of millions of years before it reached our solar system. It also varied in brightness by a factor of 10 when it spun on its axis every 7.3 hours. No known asteroid or comet from our solar system varies so widely in brightness. These properties suggest that Oumuamua is dense, composed of rock and possibly metals, has no water or ice, and that its surface was reddened due to the cosmic radiation. Its outbound path is about 20 degrees above the plane of planets that orbit the Sun. It left solar system in early 2019. The Pan-STARRS team dubbed it Oumuamua (pronounced Oh MOO-uh MOO-uh), which is Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first.” It deviated from a trajectory explicable by gravity alone, and it did so without visible outgassing or disintegration. Based on these facts, author Loeb concludes that it is a spacecraft from an alien world. The argument is interesting but not too convincing. Loeb is known to discuss even with UFO enthusiasts to investigate extra-terrestrial objects to study possible alien-technology or LightSail technology. He is currently involved in a meteor that fell into the South Pacific eight years ago, Avi Loeb believes that it was from another star system. He is currently exploring to recover the metallic debris. He suggests that this is made from an alien technology from another solar system possibly made of some alloy that humans are not aware of.

Book Reviewed: Estate Planning Basics Eleventh Edition by Denis Clifford

Planning for your assets I did not learn much from this book about making trusts or will. The author provides an overall picture about estate planning without going into any significant details. In fact, I learnt more from blogs and estate planning websites. I was researching about making a Trust that protect my beneficiaries, and learn about federal and state laws, estate, and inheritance taxes. I was also considering situations, like health, debt flow to the beneficiaries, pet care, charitable trusts, living trusts, and avoiding the generation skipping transfer taxes and making a comprehensive estate plan. An estate is everything you own, money, property, and other personal belongings. An estate plan is not only for wealthy, but everyone who own anything of value or if you have dependents who need to be cared for. A living trust is a legal document, or trust, created during an individual's lifetime (the trustor or grantor) where a designated person, the trustee, is given responsibility for managing that individual's assets for the benefit of the eventual beneficiary. A living trust is designed to allow for the easy transfer of the trust creator bypassing the complex legal process of probate. I found that opting for revocable trust over irrevocable trust has some major benefits.

The Stories Behind the Poses: The Indian mythology that inspired 50 yoga postures by Raj Balkaran

Awakening the divine avatar The postures of yoga practice include many ancient Vedic traditions. Most Hindu deities worshipped at temples, sacred and spiritual sanctuaries demonstrate a belief in a divine consciousness. Yoga in Rigveda means the spiritual yoking, the synchronizing of the divine thoughts/speech with the spiritual mind to seek Pure Consciousness. The vision of Vedic sages set forth mystical paths for humanity, and the Vedic mantras contained the key to cosmic evolution, metaphysical unfoldment, unlocking the laws of cosmos that condenses Prakriti and Purusha into One Pure Consciousness called Brahman. Consciousness that pervades spacetime in which matter and energy play according to the laws of physics, when they cease to act, then matter/energy with spacetime descends to its beginning, the Brahman. The Vedic traditions lifts the veil into the vastness of the cosmos through the philosophies of Sankhya, Yoga and Vedanta. It opens the door of the heart to unite with the Gods and Goddesses. It paved the way for our imagination to enter the temples of the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and Puranas from ancient Vedic traditions. This is what we see when see the deities of Hindu belief system. When we see the murti (deities) of Kali, Durga, Parvati, Lakshmi, Saraswati, and Shakti―the sacred feminine principles, they represent different forms of One creator that encompasses omniscience (infinite knowledge), omnipotence (unlimited power), omnipresence (present everywhere), Omni benevolence (perfect goodness), immutable, divine simplicity, and eternal existence. Rigveda 1.18.7 states that, sa dhīnāṁ yogaṁ invati, which translates into He (saH) promotes (invati) the yoga (yogam) of thoughts (dhInAm). Each deity is known to represent specific qualities in our mortal existence; the worship of Kali is known to bring strength, fierce love, and untamed freedom; the worship of Lakshmi is known to confer prosperity and beauty; and the worship of Parvati is to awaken creativity and the capacity to love. The illustrations of Hindu deities represent aspects of the Brahman or the Supreme Self that includes the value of dharma, bhakti, blessings, and compassion to the devotees. A positive nature must be reflected in all illustrations, but this is prominently lacking in this book. Some of the depictions are unacceptable. I suggest the authors to consider a revision.