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New online February 2010 – spiritual newsletter

Katinka - Spirituality — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:52:18 +0000

New blog (again) Spiritual India Trip

I’ve been fairly busy again this month. I went public with my plans to go to India next year and started a blog where I’ll be gathering my research and thoughts. Of course I’ll also use it to as a sort of diary once I am in India. And yes, I’ll keep you up to date about the newest posts on this blog on this newsletter.

All Considering

Katinka Hesselink Net

I did an short overview of my site stats last month, just to give a glimpse of the new Google analytics data. Now I’ve set up a page just for my site stats. I don’t think I’ll be updating it monthly, but twice a year should be doable. So here goes: my site statistics.

Squidoo

The rest of this spiritual newsletter contains:

Short Quotes
Notes From Orpheus Lodge Meeting: Brotherhood
Rounds with Jesus

New theme, search page added to All Considering

Katinka - Spirituality — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:22:19 +0000

Just letting you all know that I’ve finally added a search page to All Considering. Of course many of you will be aware that I already had a search page at Katinka Hesselink Net (or two: a Dutch one too).

But with 200+ readers here daily and almost 200 posts, it was time for a search page specific to this site.

I’ve also installed a new theme and customized it to this blog. The look is similar to what it was before – just a few tweaks here and there. Tell me what you think

For the technical details see my blogpost on the topic of choosing a Wordpress theme on my Marketing Spiritual blog. I think you’ll agree though: the result is a faster blog.

Freedom, statistics, Blavatsky news and more new online

Katinka - Spirituality — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:33:10 +0000

New online

On Blogger (aka, not by me)

This is not exactly a new blog. It’s just that I only became aware of it recently (thank you Michael Gomes). It’s called ‘Blavatsky News’,
but the subjects are far wider. It contains a lot of book reviews and (surprise) the authors seem to know what they are talking about.

Blavatsky News. They announce, among other things, that Reed Carson, the founder of Blavatsky.net has passed.

New theosophical blog by me: Modern Theosophy.
On this blog I share my posts about the future of the Theosophical Society, the issues it faces today and other such things. These are mostly posts I will also share elsewhere online. Where the main discussion is taking place elsewhere, I will link there. I just want to keep track of my own contribution to these things in one spot. Written new for this blog:

Note that while I WILL keep you all updated on new blogposts there in my spiritual newsletter Lucifer7,
I will NOT be posting new blogposts about it on my All Considering blog. For those of you who are subscribed only to All Considering, if
you want to stay informed about my specifically theosophical posts, do subscribe to this blog or my complete newsletter as well.

On Katinka Hesselink Net:

MAN: Fragments of a Forgotten History, by: “Two Chelas” in the Theosophical Society [Mohini Chatterji & Laura C.Holloway]

On All Considering

On Squidoo

The rest of my spiritual newsletter Lucifer7 contains:

Short Quotes
Katinka Hesselink Net statistics
The World Hungers For Light, Jiddu Krishnamurti
Ten Rules of Right

Spiritual Quotes, Buddhist texts, ACIM, You’re not crazy and Quizzes…

Katinka - Spirituality — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:25:43 +0000

New Online

New on All Considering

New on squidoo

Quiz: Dalai Lama facts and trivia
You’re Not Going Crazy…You’re Just Waking Up! Michael Mirdad
Quiz: Wicca and Paganism facts and trivia
A Course in Miracles – famous quotes and sayings
Buddhist Texts Through the Ages
A World Full Of Gods: The History of Early Christianity

New: My spiritual Quotes

The rest of my spiritual newsletter containing: Short Quotes, Editorial and Clara Codd on the Yoga of Motherhood.

A year of spiritual blogging: time for some statistics

Katinka - Spirituality — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:07:52 +0000

At the end of the year it’s time for statistics. All Considering has now been up about 18 months and is developing a steady readership. Over the whole year it had 48,542 visits from 155 countries according to google analytics. Most (29,284) of those visitors came from the USA. 215 people are now subscribed to this blog. I’ve blogged about Buddhism, Christianity, Spiritual Growth and more.

In terms of traffic the most significant event was my post about mindfulness, which drew 7000 visitors from stumbleupon on one day. In the two weeks that followed, it got about 30,000 visits, dwarfing all my other traffic.

Taking that post out of the equation, the following posts were popular as well (some written in 2008):

In terms of comments the following posts were popular in 2009, with each over 10 responses and contributions:

Mindfulness exercises, religion trivia, buddhism gifts, etc.

Katinka - Spirituality — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:53:03 +0000

I’ve had a very active month. Here’s what I put online:

New on Katinka Hesselink Net

New on All Considering

Spiritual evolution, cycles, 2012 and wisdom (7 comments)
When yoga increases stress: about the teacher (5 comments)
10 simple mindfulness exercises (12 comments) (massively popular on stumbleupon)

New on squidoo

The rest of my spiritual newsletter contains:

Short Quotes
Editorial
What is a Medium?
Peace – To Men of Good Will
106 years ago, anonymous internet communication

Spiritual newsletter – Religious symbolism, organised religion vs atheism, global warming …

Katinka - Spirituality — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:37:56 +0000

New online

On Katinka Hesselink Net

Buddhism banners

New on All Considering

New on Squidoo

Just to remind you, with the gift season coming up:

The rest of my spiritual newsletter contains:

New online
Short Quotes
Space
Is Buddhism a Religion?

The carbon cycle: global warming explained

Katinka - Spirituality — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:08:41 +0000

It’s Blog Action Day today. This year the theme is Global Warming. Since I’ve recently been in a discussion with people who still don’t believe it’s real, I decided to share with you the main arguments why I do believe Global Warming is a real threat. Let me start out with some basic facts I’ve learned in the many classes I took about the environment when in teachers college.

There is only 0.0383% CO2 or Carbon dioxide in the earth atmosphere. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air varies with the season because plants in the northern hemisphere use it to grow in summer, and their leaves decomposing in winter brings back carbon dioxide into the air in winter. This effect is strong enough to be measurable. Plant life in all its forms is the main part of the carbon cycle. Trees convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrates (aka sugars and fibers) during photosynthesis, releasing oxygen in the process. Plants and trees decomposing bring back carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, except when they turn into fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas (usually containing a lot of methane which is also a greenhouse gas btw).

The main issue with fossil fuels is that they took between 350 and 50 million years to form. We’ve been using them intensively for the past hundred years or so, and every decade brings a more intensive use as developing countries like China and India become more and more industrialized. The fact is, oil is a finite resource. It is not being produced by nature nearly as fast as we’re using it up. The economic result is of course rising oil prices. In 2004 a team of experts announced to the world that oil needed to be priced very much higher than the then standard of $40,- a barrel to make sure that alternative energy got developed fast enough to be able to take over when the oil really ran out. Since then oil prices have gone up, and then down, because of the economic crisis. Here are a few other articles warning about the same: 2009, 2005. We’re now back up to $75 a barrel. One should compensate slightly for the dollar being lower than it was in 2004, but still the difference is almost 100% and that with the economy not recovered yet.

What does that have to do with global warming? It’s a sign how much of the store of oil that the earth had kept for us is already depleted. And given that this store of fossil fuels also locked in millions of years of CO2, it’s reasonable to ask: what is the effect of all that CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere within a hundred years or so?

Well, what happens is this:

About a third goes missing, probably dissolving into the oceans. This may sound like good news, but CO2 plus water gives acid. And acid is NOT good for the many species of animals and seafood that have hard shells. But recently scientists found that in Japan the heating up of the oceans due to global warming is already having a measurable effect on the amount of carbon dioxide the seas can take in. That is: warmer water, less carbon dioxide gets dissolved into it. This may be good news for crustations and molluscs, but it’s not good for our climate.

The rest goes into the atmosphere. Some of it helps plant life grow faster, which takes it out of the air again, luckily.

But now for the clincher. If you didn’t believe that CO2 was being released into the atmosphere, you had to ignore a lot of commonly available knowledge. To deny that this Carbon Dioxide is a green house gas, capable of helping to increase the earth temperature you have to deny some less easily explained chemical facts. Luckily I’m a chemistry teacher, so I’ll do my best to explain.

The earth gets warmed by the sun in the day time. At night, heat radiation cools it off. Heat radiation is actually a form of invisible light, otherwise known as infrared. One of the capacities of any chemical is which forms of radiations it absorbs. In the visible spectrum we call that ‘color’ (roughly). When it comes to invisible radiation you’ll have to take my word for it: any substance has forms of light radiation it absorbs. Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, means more heat radiation gets absorbed by the molucules in the air, and that stops the radiation from going into space. As it hasn’t left our atmosphere, it’s still available as heat, and the earth doesn’t cool off at night.

Since this nightly cooling down has only an indirect effect on day temperature, but is more directly linked to greenhouse gasses, you’d expect the night temperatures to go up faster than day temperatures. And so it is. Here’s the stats for the US for instance.

Summing up: the line of evidence is clear. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that keeps heat energy in the earth system when the earth ought to cool down at night. We’ve collectively been sending a lot of carbon dioxide into the air in the past century, there is no reason to think that would not effect the climate. Recent evidence includes the disappearance of the polar bear, the last few years being the hottest in recorded history, despite the fact that we’ve now entered a low sun activity period. [More on sun activity and the climate.]

Spiritual fantasy; spirituality lifestyle or quest? harry potter; a buddhist…?

Katinka - Spirituality — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:42:32 +0000

Online

On Katinka Hesselink Net

On All Considering

On Squidoo

Just to remind you, with the gift season coming up:

The rest of this spiritual newsletter contains spiritual quotes and an article about The Occultism of S. Paul.

Previous issues of Lucifer7 can be found at the online index of Lucifer7

I want to thank all of you who support me, whether financially, by asking questions, commenting or just be reading and enjoying what I put online. To those who wonder: no, I don’t mind if people link to my website(s). In fact: it’s appreciated. For instance: my blog will find new readers faster if people share it with friends and link to it.

Spiritual fantasy: The Curse of the Tahiéra

Katinka - Spirituality — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:28:52 +0000

I met Wendy Gillisen online. It turned out we have a lot in common: an interest in fantasy fiction and spirituality and what’s more, she’s also Dutch. So she sent me her novel ‘Curse of the Tahiéra. I was of course surprised that she would have written a novel in English when her first language was Dutch (it is available in Dutch as well). I have to admit, I was also skeptical of the quality. I get sent books a few times a year and they are generally not worth discussing.

The first and only ‘dutch-ism’ I could find was on the first page. The book gets better and better as you read on. Once I’d passed the first chapter, I was totally hooked. The world Wendy has created reminds one of the Middle Earth of Tolkien, but more natural. It’s reminiscent of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s interpretation of the myths of Arthur, except that this is not about king Arthur. It is clearly inspired partly by the stories of Atlantis, except that it’s not about Atlantis.

In short: Gillissen created her own world, though heavily using themes from the myths and history of Great Britain.

In this world three races of people have lived together for centuries, mixing yet always in conflict. Our main character young ‘Rom’ is of mixed descent and in consequence has had a very difficult life. It’s about to get even harder as he meets a stranger on one of his travels. That’s the start of the story. Together they get into more trouble and Rom learns the magic that is his inheritance. Together they travel their world because the wise stranger has noted a danger that he feels only Rom can avert.

The magic of this world has everything to do with dreams. Dreams which constantly mix with reality. This is a reality which Rom has to face head on and explore. Rom is a strange character: like Harry Potter he is giving, yet sometimes aggressive. As we (and he) learn more about him, the mystery deepens. Facing himself will determine the future of this world. I won’t give the plot away, but I can tell you that it will move you AND make you curious about the sequel.

The best fantasy fiction creates a world that is internally consistent and convincing. It makes us feel, if only for a few hours, that what is described could very well be. Wendy Gillissen has created such a world and I’m looking forward to the sequal which should come out this autumn.

All Considering » Uncategorized

New online February 2010 – spiritual newsletter

New blog (again) Spiritual India Trip

All Considering

Katinka Hesselink Net

Squidoo

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