Book Reviewed: Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are by Rebecca Boyle

The science and myths of moon Since the beginning of the solar system, the Moon has helped create life on earth, and evolved to advanced species. The Earth-Sun-Moon-Jupiter functions as a unit in this corner of the cosmos where the life was not only created but evolved that required a suitable cosmic environment for sustained evolution. This partly explains why there is no evidence of sustained evolution elsewhere in the solar system despite the fact that some of moons of Jupiter and Saturn show promising geological features for the birth of life. The Moon stabilizes Earth's tilt toward the Sun, making the Moon the captain of our seasons, and the consistency of this tilt stabilizes life and provides a habitat for a sustainable biological evolution. The Moon's unusually large size, one quarter of the size of earth, and its distance from Earth are ideal for sustained life with Jupiter watching out for mother earth from harmful collisions with cosmic bodies like comets and asteroids. And the sun providing the energy needed for life including the bountiful of water in liquid form. As the first civilizations arose in Indus Valley in India, and other parts of the Middle East, Moon took on importance as more than a marker of time. It became a recorder of events; a predictor of fates; an instrument of might. The Moon laid the foundations of philosophy and religion and set the course of history. Recent studies have demonstrated that certain aspects of mental health and the general well-being of a person are affected by the moon. The Vedic astrology and the deities of Navagraha have also been implicated to have impacts on the life of a human being. This book is a disorganized jumble of news, science and human culture associated with the moon. The writing is not focused, and readers may find the book boring.

Book Reviewed: The Divine World of the Alvars by Pravrajika Shuddhatmamata

The Tamil saints who championed bhakti yoga The Alvars were the Tamil poet-saints of South India who espoused bhakti and intense devotion to Lord Vishnu and his avatars in their songs of longing, ecstasy, and service. They were completely immersed in their devotion to Vishnu as the Ultimate Reality who were known to have lived between the 6th and 9th century CE. According to the legends the Alvars lived much earlier, between 4200 BCE and 2700 BCE. There were twelve Alvars including one female named Andal. Their hymns compiled as the Naalayira Divya Prabandham contained four-thousand verses, and 108 temples are revered in their hymns, which are called Divya Desams. The songs of the Prabandham are sung daily, and during many festivals in the Vishnu temples of South India. This is the first time in India where the devotees of God were establishing a human relationship with God; a relationship of a servant to a Master, of a friend to a Friend, of a mother to her Child, and of a lover to the Beloved. Though the Lord was transcendent and beyond all comprehension, He was also the Lord who resided in the nearby temple, Divya Desam. The poetry of the Alvars expresses ecstasy embodies the depth of feeling and the felicity of expressions. This form of worship was revolutionary for Hindu religion since this is the first time the Vedic traditions of performing rituals were sidelined. Hinduism was being transformed to a different level, the practice of bhakti as the only path for true freedom from the cycle of life, birth, death, and rebirth. According to the teachings of Bhagavadgita, the practice of Bhakti yoga is one of the principal methods to reach unity with Lord Krishna, one of the avatars of Vishnu. What was Alvars philosophy? It was pure ecstatic love of God, and they were not philosophers, but theologians, men and women from all classes and castes. During these historic times, the southern part of the country saw the 'folk' religion emerging more strongly than the rituals of the Vedic traditions. Part of this historical “uprising” may also be due to the challenges Hinduism faced as a religion from Buddhism and Jainism. These two faiths did not admit to the existence of a Personal God; however, they were very influential in South India during the first to the fifth centuries CE. Kanchipuram alone had three great Buddhist scholars; Dignaga, Bodhidharma, and Dharmapala. The relationships among followers of the three faiths were initially cordial, but as the kingdoms began to favor and patronize one religion over the others, rivalries emerged. Hinduism is a theistic religion that believes in God, and its followers longed for a God who symbolized love. The temples became the center of life for people in a literal sense. For instance, the whole city of Madurai was built around the Minakshi temple, and other places such as Srirangan and Tirupati became the cities of bhakti and for the ecstatic love of God. The emphasis is given to prapatti (self-surrender), unlike the Gaudiya Vaishnavas whose worship centers almost exclusively on Krishna, the Alvars worship Vishnu and his avatars. The Periyalvar and Andal's works remind of the love of gopis for Krishna in Vrindavan described in the Srimad Bhagavatam. It is likely that much of this material was adapted from Alvar songs. Srimad Bhagavatam is known to have been written in about the 10th century CE. Andal describes a ritual similar to one described in the Bhagavatam, where the gopis' vow to worship Goddess Katyayani to wed Krishna. Andal's poetry has a similar purpose to wed Lord of Srirangam and it was in his image that she is said to have merged. This is a short book of 127 pages that significantly condenses the extensive work of Alvars. The temples and the deities that so inspired Alvar poets should have been printed in the book so that the reader could connect with Alvar’s manifestation of ecstatic love for Lord Vishnu.

Book Reviewed: Breaking Twitter: Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History by Ben Mezrich

The power and fragilities of Twitter takeover Author Ben Mezrich calls his work a dramatic narrative of the aftermath of the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk, one of the wealthiest persons in the world. Much of the story you read in this book is not factual but reimagined on author’s speculation. This is not an honest appraisal of the enormous challenges Elon Musk faced when he bought the social media giant to restore free speech. The legacy of Jack Dorsey and his aides had heavy leftist bias that imposed censorship targeting conservative users of Twitter while giving a free hand to Islamists and antisemites to express their hatred of Israel and India. Musk believed in moderation of Twitter led by Yoel Roth's team, but he also believed that it should be done without limiting "legal" free speech. He wanted to expand Twitter's user base-giving more people the opportunity to join in on the conversation. The Twitter Files, a series of tweet-threads filled with data, messages, emails, and dramatic postulation, all derived from Twitter's internal communication channels were curated, and posted by respected journalists like Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and others. The files focused on controversial bans, shadow bans, and account suspensions, the deliberations that resulted in silencing of the New York Post's Hunter Biden Laptop story, and the ban of President Donald Trump. The Twitter Files revealed the platform's relationship with national intelligence agencies such as FBI and individual political heavyweights. They pressured Twitter or made requests for information, account bans, and the elimination of individual tweets. Most leading news media like ABCNews, NBC News, CBS News, NYTimes and Washington Post never reacted to these stunning revelations. It was simple, they were the main actors of the foul play of promoting misinformation during the Jack Dorsey legacy. Another important story that developed but not covered in this book is Elon Musk’s X sued the State of California challenging the constitutionality of a state law establishing new transparency requirements for social media companies, including how they police disinformation. X said the law, known as Assembly Bill 587, violates its free speech rights under the US constitution’s first amendment and California’s state constitution. Musk who supported Obama administration and had moderate leanings came to realize the existence of leftist bias in major news media and prompted him to fight for free speech harder. He is a fearless manager who dares to act against unfair practices and the employees at X who dared to impose their own leftist bias clearly ignoring the corporate policies. This book is largely based on the imagination of a leftist journalist who likes to see Elon Musk fail. All Musk is doing is to fight the misinformation produced and printed by the NYTimes, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, and others. As you read the book, you will realize how hard it is to fight for free speech in a polarized world that promotes wokism and leftist bias.

Book Reviewed: The Origins of Early Christian Literature by Robyn Faith Walsh

Synoptic composition The voice of Jesus has been obscured for over two millennia, and his vision skewed by gospel writers who transmitted his message to serve their own goals. Numerous academics and scholars, over centuries, have examined the historical events to assess if the gospel narratives are real or fictious. The essence of the problem is that the four canonical gospels, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were composed within the Roman Empire between 70 and 110 CE as biographies of Jesus of Nazareth. Mark is supposed to have been written around 70 CE, later, Mathew, and Luke in that order, and finally John around 105 CE. The fact that the very first gospel was written 40 years after the death of Jesus calls into question, the veracity, and the integrity of the sources, and the so called “oral traditions” whereby the event narratives were passed on by a small community of people over 40 years. In fact, the Christian communities in the first century were scant, sparsely populated, and lived in different parts of ancient Israel. Jesus’s acts and sayings were remembered more as biographical and historical events than as a religious doctrine. The most significant event in the scholarship and the hermeneutics of gospels is the founding of “Jesus Seminar” by a group of biblical scholars led by Robert Funk in 1985 under the auspices of the Westar Institute. The seminar actively investigated the teachings of Jesus, which is illustrated by about thirty-three parables in the first three gospels, also known as synoptic gospels, because they include same stories, often in a similar sequence and wording. They are contrasting to the gospel of John whose narratives and the tone are different. The current opinion among scholars is that gospels are based on two sources, the Marcan priority that proposes the gospel of Mark was used as a source by the other two (Matthew and Luke). And the second is the oral gospel traditions (also referred to as sayings traditions or the Q source) In this work, the author takes a fresher look at the writers of the synoptic gospels in which she suggests that the writers were literate spokespersons for their communities. They were documenting intragroup "oral traditions" and preserving their perspectives of the fellow Christ-followers like the Markan, Matthean, Lukan, Nazarenes, and other Judeo-Christian communities of the first century. It is observed that these are educated peers who specialized in biographical work. Some of them did not understand of being "in Christ." A study of ancient biographies of historical figures, and novels, this study demonstrates that the gospels are creative literature of the first century. These ideas of the author are largely speculative and do not provide convincing evidence to show that Mark was an intellectual figure. The book is written in academic style which may help divinity school students, and other readers interested in the study of the first century synoptic gospels. The take-home message from this work is that the gospels are the work of few authors who documented the life of Jesus as a biography, and not as a religious message.