On Jan 19, 1809, poet, author and literary critic Edgar Allan Poe is born in Boston, Massachusetts.

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

Edgar Allan Poe




Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

He was born as Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts; he was orphaned young when his mother died shortly after his father abandoned the family. Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia, but they never formally adopted him. He attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money. After enlisting in the Army and later failing as an officer's cadet at West Point, Poe parted ways with the Allans. His publishing career began humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian".

Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. His work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. In Baltimore in 1835, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845 Poe published his poem, "The Raven", to instant success. His wife died of tuberculosis two years after its publication. He began planning to produce his own journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced. On October 7, 1849, at age 40, Poe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents.

Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields, such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today. The Mystery Writers of America present an annual award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre.

Edgar Allan Poe one side of my soul.

Welcome to the forum Nuadormrac.

It is very good to see you here.

 

Welcome Carlos Pinho to the Musketeers.

The Musketeers are a relatively small but very powerful BOINC TeaM on crunching

You can now speak about your NFS passion to the Musketeers.

The Musketeers were made to help and I can bet that is what they will do with you also.

They will help you to help the project, just explain what you want and why is the project important as a tool to other projects research.

I just can not go to SETI USA forum. Is only me or the forum is out for everyone?

I have a new OS the Windows 7 64 and everything change place. I am a bit lost on this new OS. I don't know very well where to see if the site is blocked.

Can someone help me on this, thanks.

Ric

Splendour in the Grass


 What though the radiance

 which was once so bright

 Be now for ever taken from my sight,

 Though nothing can bring back the hour

 Of splendour in the grass,

 of glory in the flower,

 We will grieve not, rather find

 Strength in what remains behind;

 In the primal sympathy

 Which having been must ever be;

 In the soothing thoughts that spring

 Out of human suffering;

 In the faith that looks through death,

 In years that bring the philosophic mind.



William Wordsworth



It is time for me to stop posting and crunching so I will do that. It is time for the newest generation to make the world for them to live in. I have been delaying this decision for more than I should but will not delay anymore.

I couldn't change nothing in the world, the world is more cinical, lyer and materialist that have ever been before. People are so used to bad things that have habituated there minds to the new reality. A very sad one.

The thieves are in the banks, the lyers in the governments and good man are beeing thrown away from one side to the other. At the age of 45/50 years they are called old man and the system does anything to not let them give any production to the society and the world.

We are losing our old people and the experience of many lifetimes. We are losing old worlds, one for each person.

A bus stops and two Italian men get on. They sit down and engage in an animated conversation.
The lady sitting behind them ignores them at first, but her attention is galvanized when she hears one of the men say the following:

"Emma come first.
Den I come.
Den two asses come together.
I come once-a-more.
Two asses, they come together again.
I come again and pee twice.
Then I come one lasta time."
"You foul-mouthed swine, " retorted the lady indignantly. "In this country we don't talk about our sex lives in public!"

"Hey, coola down lady," said the man.
"Who talkin' abouta sexa? I'm a justa tellin' my frienda how to spella Mississippi."

Dozens of children lie covered with blood, their faces show the fear they felt before death, and their innocent lifeless bodies reveal an unspeakable massacre. These children were slaughtered by men under strict orders to sow terror. Yet all the diplomats have come up with so far is a few UN monitors 'observing' the violence.




108 people were killed in the onslaught, 49 of them children under the age of 10, and the youngest was a 2 year old girl. How can we be in silence with such a tragedy.


Let's not forget -- this bloodbath began over a year ago with thousands of people peacefully protesting on the streets -- calling, like their brothers and sisters across the region, for freedom and democracy.

You have asked me, Lucilius, why, if a Providence rules the world, it still happens that many evils befall good men. This would be more fittingly answered in a coherent work designed to prove that a Providence does preside over the universe, and that God concerns himself with us. But since it is your wish that a part be severed from the whole, and that I refute a single objection while the main question is left untouched, I shall do so; the task is not difficult, - I shall be pleading the cause of the gods.
... ...
     Do you not see how fathers show their love in one way, and mothers in another? The father orders his children to be aroused from sleep in order that they may start early upon their pursuits, - even on holidays he does not permit them to be idle, and he draws from them sweat and sometimes tears. But the mother fondles them in her lap, wishes to keep them out of the sun, wishes them never to be unhappy, never to cry, never to toil. Toward good men God has the mind of a father, he cherishes for them a manly love, and he says, "Let them be harassed by toil, by suffering, by losses, in order that they may gather true strength." Bodies grown fat through sloth are weak, and not only labour, but even movement and their very weight cause them to break down. Unimpaired prosperity cannot withstand a single blow; but he who has struggled constantly with his ills becomes hardened through suffering; and yields to no misfortune; nay, even if he falls, he still fights upon his knees. Do you wonder if that God, who most dearly loves the good, who wishes them to become supremely good and virtuous, allots to them a fortune that will make them struggle? For my part, I do not wonder if sometimes the gods are moved by the desire to behold great men wrestle with some calamity. We men at times are stirred with pleasure if a youth of steady courage meets with his spear an onrushing wild beast, if unterrified he sustains the charge of a lion. And the more honourable the youth who does this, the more pleasing this spectacle becomes. But these are not the things to draw down the gaze of the gods upon us - they are childish, the pas-times of man's frivolity. But lo! here is a spectacle worthy of the regard of God as he contemplates his work; lo! here a contest worthy of God, - a brave man matched against ill-fortune, and doubly so if his also was the challenge. I do not know, I say, what nobler sight the Lord of Heaven could find on earth, should he wish to turn his attention there, than the spectacle of Cato, after his cause had already been shattered more than once, nevertheless standing erect amid the ruins of the commonwealth. "Although," said he, "all the world has fallen under one man's sway, although Caesar's legions guard the land, his fleets the sea, and Caesar's troops beset the city gates, yet Cato has a way of escape; with one single hand he will open a wide path to freedom. This sword, unstained and blameless even in civil war, shall at last do good and noble service: the freedom which it could not give to his country it shall give to Cato! Essay, my soul, the task long planned; deliver yourself from human affairs. Already Petreius and Juba have met and lie fallen, each slain by the other's hand./a Their compact with Fate was brave and noble, but for my greatness such would be unfit. For Cato it were as ignoble to beg death from any man as to beg life." I am sure that the gods looked on with exceeding joy while that hero, most ruthless in avenging himself, took thought for the safety of others and arranged the escape of his departing followers; while even on his last night he pursued his studies; while he drove the sword into his sacred breast; while he scattered his vitals, and drew forth by his hand that holiest spirit, too noble to be defiled by the steel./b I should like to believe that this is why the wound was not well-aimed and efficacious - it was not enough for the immortal gods to look but once on Cato. His virtue was held in check and called back that it might display itself in a harder role; for to seek death needs not so great a soul as to reseek it. Surely the gods looked with pleasure upon their pupil as he made his escape by so glorious and memorable an end! Death consecrates those whose end even those who fear must praise. But as the discussion progresses, I shall show how the things that seem to be evils are not really so. This much I now say that those things which you call hardships, which you call adversities and accursed, are, in the first place, for the good of the persons themselves to whom they come; in the second place, that they are for the good of the whole human family, for which the gods have a greater concern than for single persons; again, I say that good men are willing that these things should happen and, if they are unwilling, that they deserve misfortune. I shall add, further, that these things happen thus by destiny, and that they rightly befall good men by the same law which makes them good. I shall induce you, in fine, never to commiserate a good man. For he can be called miserable, but he cannot be so.
... ...
     Success comes to the common man, and even to commonplace ability; but to triumph over the calamities and terrors of mortal life is the part of a great man only. Truly, to be always happy and to pass through life without a mental pang is to be ignorant of one half of nature. You are a great man; but how do I know it if Fortune gives you no opportunity of showing your worth? You have entered as a contestant at the Olympic games, but none other besides you; you gain the crown, the victory you do not gain. You have my congratulations - not as a brave man, but as if you had obtained the consulship or praetorship; you have enhanced your prestige. In like manner, also, I may say to a good man, if no harder circumstance has given him the opportunity whereby alone he might show the strength of his mind, "I judge you unfortunate because you have never been unfortunate; you have passed through life without an antagonist; no one will know what you can do, - not even yourself." For if a man is to know himself, he must be tested; no one finds out what be can do except by trying. {knowing_self+} and so some men have presented themselves voluntarily to laggard misfortune, and have sought an opportunity to blazon forth their worth when it was but to pass into obscurity. Great men, I say, rejoice oft-times in adversity, as do brave soldiers in warfare. I once heard Triumphus, a gladiator in the time of Tiberius Caesar, complaining of the scarcity of shows. "How fair an age," he said, "has passed away!"
     True worth is eager for danger and thinks rather of its goal than of what it may have to suffer, since even what it will have to suffer is a part of its glory. {Hotspur+} Warriors glory in their wounds and rejoice to display the blood spilled with luckier fortune+. Those who return from the battle unhurt may have fought as well, but the man who returns with a wound wins the greater regard. God, I say, is showing favour to those whom he wills shall achieve the highest possible virtue whenever he gives them the means of doing a courageous and brave deed, and to this end they must encounter some difficulty in life. You learn to know a pilot in a storm, a soldier in the battle-line. How can I know with what spirit you will face poverty, if you wallow in wealth? How can I know with what firmness you will face disgrace, ill fame, and public hatred, if you attain to old age amidst rounds of applause, - if a popularity attends you that is irresistible, and flows to you from a certain leaning of men's minds? How do I know with what equanimity you would bear the loss of children, if you see around you all that you have fathered? I have heard you offering consolation to others. If you had been offering it to yourself, if you had been telling yourself not to grieve, then I might have seen your true character. Do not, I beg of you, shrink in fear from those things which the immortal gods apply like spurs, as it were, to, our souls. Disaster is Virtue's opportunity. Justly may those be termed unhappy who are dulled by an excess of good fortune, who rest, as it were, in dead calm upon a quiet sea; whatever happens will come to them as a change.

Cruel fortune bears hardest upon the inexperienced; to the tender neck the yoke is heavy. The raw recruit turns pale at the thought of a wound, but the veteran looks undaunted upon his own gore, knowing that blood has often been the price of his victory.
... ...
I am under no compulsion, I suffer nothing against my will, and I am not God's slave but his follower, and the more so, indeed, because I know that everything proceeds according to law that is fixed and enacted for all time. Fate guides us, and it was settled at the first hour of birth what length of time remains for each. Cause is linked with cause, and all public and private issues are directed by a long sequence of events. Therefore everything should be endured with fortitude, since things do not, as we suppose, simply happen - they all come. Long ago it was determined what would make you rejoice, what would make you weep, and although the lives of individuals seem to be marked by great dissimilarity, yet is the end one - we receive what is perishable and shall ourselves perish. Why, therefore, do we chafe? why complain? For this were we born. Let Nature deal with matter, which is her own, as she pleases; let us be cheerful and brave in the face of everything, reflecting that it is nothing of our own that perishes.
     What then, is the part of a good man? To offer himself to Fate. It is a great consolation that it is together with the universe we are swept along; whatever it is that has ordained us so to live, so to die, by the same necessity {Lucy_poem+} it binds also the gods. One unchangeable course bears along the affairs of men and gods alike. Although the great creator and ruler of the universe himself wrote the decrees of Fate, yet he follows them. {Prom_Unbound+} He obeys for ever, he decreed but once. "Why, however," do you ask, "was God so unjust in his allotment of destiny as to assign to good men poverty, wounds, and painful death?" It is impossible for the moulder to alter matter; to this law it has submitted. Certain qualities cannot be separated from certain others; they cling together, are indivisible. Natures that are listless, that are prone to sleep, or to a kind of wakefulness that closely resembles sleep, are composed of sluggish elements. It takes sterner stuff to make a man who deserves to be mentioned with consideration. His course will not be the level way; uphill and downhill must he go, be tossed about, and guide his bark through stormy waters; he must keep his course in spite of fortune. Much that is hard, much that is rough will befall him, but he himself will soften the one, and make the other smooth. Fire tests gold, misfortune brave men. See to what a height virtue must climb! you will find that it has no safe road to tread:
     The way is steep at first, and the coursers strain
     To climb it, fresh in the early morn. They gain
     The crest of heaven at noon; from here I gaze
     Adown on land and sea with dread amaze,
     And of my heart will beat in panic fear.
     The roadway ends in sharp descent - keep here
     A sure control; 'twill happen even so
     That Tethys, stretching out her waves below,
     Will often, while she welcomes, be affright
     To see me speeding downward from the height./a
     {Ovid_Phaeton+}

Having heard the words, that noble youth replied, I like the road, I shall mount; even though I fall, it will be worth while to travel through such sights." But the other did not cease from trying to strike his bold heart with fear:
     And though you may not miss the beaten track,
     Nor, led to wander, leave the zodiac,
     Yet through the Bull's fierce horns, the Centaur's bow
     And raging Lion's jaws you still must go./b

In reply to this he said, "Harness the chariot you offered; the very things that you think affright me urge me on. I long to stand aloft where even the Sun-god quakes with fear." The groveller and the coward will follow the safe path: virtue seeks the heights.
     "But why," you ask, does God sometimes allow evil to befall good men? Assuredly he does not.

http://www.stoics.com/seneca_essays_book_1.html#PROVIDENCE1

A Portuguese student won this year for the first time, the international competition of Latin Horatianum Contest, held in Venosa, Italy.

Antonio Gil Cucu, student of th 11th year. The first year in high school Rodrigues de Freitas, was considered the best student of the world in the proof of the contest aimed at students, said Alexandra Azevedo, a teacher at that school.

According to the Latin teacher, who taught the student in 10th Grade, youngsters from ten countries ran into this competition. The competition involves a proof only for Italian students.

For the first time a student of Portugal won the Contest Horatianum, a title it "is highly valued in other countries" that are national competitions to select the best students.

In Portugal, the teacher explained, are usually chosen for the competition students with scores above 16.

Antonio Gil Cucu is in the second year of learning Latin, with the teacher Jorge Strawberry, and surpassed competitors who "studied at least four years" this dead language.

"For Antony is the recognition of his work and that the humanities have still some importance. For us teachers, it is an immense pride, said Alexandra Azevedo.

According to her, the young man "is a very good student" and wants to join in Classical Studies at the Faculty of Arts of University of Coimbra.

In the perspective of teachers, Latin students helps a lot "in performance of the mother language" and also the cultural level. "In recent years we have been watching the abolition of Latin in schools, progressively," he lamented.

The prizes were awarded Horatianum Contest yesterday in Venosa, birthplace of the poet Horace.

According to Claudia Nagel, professor at the University of Coimbra, the award is usually won by the Germans and Austrians, who learn this language from a very small age.

Congratulations Antonio Gil Cucu.

Our friends, each time we see them less. It seems it was only when we were young, worked and drank together that we met as often as wanted, always daily. And in the greatest luxury of all, lost for so long: Because we had nothing better to do.

This week I have lunch with my great friends, that for the first time in our lives, I do not see for so many years. Each one of them starts talking to me as if I had not spent a day without seeing them.

Nothing fails. All fires out as if this was in our blood: the excitation of counting things and the joy of sharing trifles; LOL of the oft-repeated jokes; and the promises of hopes that are decades for accomplish.

There are great friends that I am lucky to have that insist in the importance of the PRESENCE in capital letters. So far never agreed, thinking that nostalgia makes jokes of the time and that the heart is more sensitive to the reminder than to repetition. I was wrong.

The best friends have to do is to see themselves whenever they can. It is true that, even if ten years have passed, is like we have seen each other yesterday. But even then we can feel the pleasure of finding who we never thought to find.

Time doesn`t pass for friendship, but friendship passes to time. You have to hold it while is there. We are friends forever but between day of staying friends and the day of die is a great distance. A distance as large as life.

WHAT'S HAPPENING?

The "Four Corners"

According to a Hopi prophecy, dating back to that nation's origin as the first inhabitants of the North American continent, almost all life will stop on this, our planet, unless men come to know that every-one must learn to live in peace and harmony with Nature, the Mother of us all. Today, as many of the Hopi prophecies of destruction and desecration have already come to pass, these prophecies take on a profound meaning: the very survival of humanity and Planet Earth. For the Hopis live in a sacred place in the Southwest known to them as the spiritual center of our continent-and now known to scientists as a key center of electromagnetic forcefields that are essential to the health and well-being of all life.

According to Hopi legend, passed on from generation to generation, it is that nation's central responsi- bility to protect Mother Earth by preserving the Four Corners (centered in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico) and to remain custodians of that mineral-rich reserve while war still stalks the world.

Yet as of this minute, even as science is recognizing the Four Corners to. be one of the few key focal centers in the world where the energy currents must be kept in balance to maintain a life-giving bio-sphere, over 6,000 Hopis and Navajos are being forcibly removed to a barren, uninhabitable area through the wanton passage of Public Law 93-531. While science is discovering that radioactive minerals and rushing underground streams, along with solar radiation (all present at the Four Corners), are the main sources of positive and negative ions in the atmosphere, which are essential to humanity for physical and mental health, a newly erected barbed wire fence is cruelly separating these Native Americans from their homeland and their trust. Unthinkably, these sacred lands are being mined to remove the valuable radioactive minerals, the water table is drastically being reduced through wasteful stripmining (at 1,110 gallons per minute), and the area is being contaminated by radioactive wastes.

Because of the Hopis' deep spiritual qualities and sensitivity to nature, they know that the essential electromagnetic balance of life forces is maintained not only through nature's gifts of minerals, water, and sunlight and by the atmospheric currents and charged ion fields, but also by their sacred rituals and ceremonial dances. Their very presence in Hopi land, their demeanor and their reverence for life, is a protection for the people of the earth, for all are bound together in a global grid pattern of energy. Despite their warnings, a resource-hungry civilization is unwittingly and unknowingly moving in upon itself, to destroy the very life's breath of the planet that embraces it and alter the earth's delicate bio-electric balance. And fear for all of humanity, as well as for their own people and the Navajos, grips the Hopis.

The Traditional Hopi Elders tell us: "Everything depends upon the proper balance being maintained. They realize that if the mining and stripmining continue unabated, that if technology becomes a mind-less god to this great country and remembers not the heart of the Earth Mother, that not only the Hopi will die, "...but all will disintegrate to nothing ... time is very short." Time is very short indeed. Perhaps ironically, perhaps cosmically, the planetary conjunction forecast for the year 1982 coincides with the deadline set for the final Hopi and Navajo eviction. Is it possible that the sacrifice of the Hopi "place of power," this vital electromagnetic source point, could affect the earth's ability to withstand the pull of the planetary alignment, resulting in an instability that could spin it out of control?

TO WHOM IS IT HAPPENING?

A polar shift has been predicted by many respected individuals, yet, according to John White, author of Pole Shift, a shift of the earth's axis is not inevitable. He claims, "The predictions and prophecies say that human consciousness itself will be the critical factor." It is human consciousness, then, that must awaken to the danger and demand the safety and protection of the Four Corners area and its people, currently the most vulnerable to annihilation in the entire world. Perhaps the imminent loss and destruction of the "heart of the Earth Mother" is our early warning system that it is a united "we" who must preserve the earth's stability to sustain the delicate balance of power in the planetary grid structure. For it is a united "we" who form human consciousness.

Thus, if human consciousness is to be alerted, we of the human race must become instantly . aware not only of what is happening but also to whom. For:

    It is happening to the Hopis and the Navajos who, stripped of their pride as independent nations, will no longer have a home that will sustain life, and many of whom are already dying from radioactive poisoning,

    It is happening to all sensitive and compassionate individuals who feel their pain, and a responsibility for the ill-treatment of all Indian nations since North America first knew a United States.

    It is happening to the integrity and honor of a great nation which broke 371 treaties with Indian nations, and to respect once held for those corporations that have allowed human greed to violate their ethics.

    It is happening to a planet, which, already polluted and suffering from irreverent use of its rich natural resources, cannot withstand the final injury to delicate atmospheric and energy balances.

    But, above all, it is happening to us, to all countries and all people, to our children, and our children's children, and to all life. For, if the earth shall perish, personal self-interest and acquisition, and even our injustices to one another, will be as nothing. If we are to have a planet on which to live, and live abundantly, this is a time to fully forgive one another for all past grievances and errors of ignorance and together take full responsibility for restoring our earth to its Divinely ordainned state. How are we to do this? Through personal action NOW.

Earth Day is a day early each year on which events are held worldwide to increase awareness and appreciation of the Earth's natural environment. Earth Day is now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network, and is celebrated in more than 175 countries every year. In 2009, the United Nations designated April 22 International Mother Earth Day. Earth Day is planned for April 22 in all years at least through 2015.

The name and concept of Earth Day was allegedly pioneered by John McConnell in 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco. Earth Day was first observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a Proclamation signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations where it is observed each year. About the same time a separate Earth Day was founded by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in first held on April 22, 1970. While this April 22 Earth Day was focused on the United States, an organization launched by Denis Hayes, who was the original national coordinator in 1970, took it international in 1990 and organized events in 141 nations. Numerous communities celebrate Earth Week, an entire week of activities focused on environmental issues.




The equinoctial Earth Day is celebrated on the March equinox (around March 20) to mark the precise moment of astronomical mid-spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and of astronomical mid-autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. An equinox in astronomy is that moment in time (not a whole day) when the center of the Sun can be observed to be directly "above" the Earth's equator, occurring around March 20 and September 23 each year. In most cultures, the equinoxes and solstices are considered to start or separate the seasons.

John McConnell[45] first introduced the idea of a global holiday called "Earth Day" at the 1969 UNESCO Conference on the Environment. The first Earth Day proclamation was issued by San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto on March 21, 1970. Celebrations were held in various cities, such as San Francisco and in Davis, California with a multi-day street party. UN Secretary-General U Thant supported McConnell's global initiative to celebrate this annual event; and on February 26, 1971, he signed a proclamation to that effect, saying:

    May there be only peaceful and cheerful Earth Days to come for our beautiful Spaceship Earth as it continues to spin and circle in frigid space with its warm and fragile cargo of animate life.

United Nations secretary-general Kurt Waldheim observed Earth Day with similar ceremonies on the March equinox in 1972, and the United Nations Earth Day ceremony has continued each year since on the day of the March equinox (the United Nations also works with organizers of the April 22 global event). Margaret Mead added her support for the equinox Earth Day, and in 1978 declared:

    "Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space.
    Earth Day draws on astronomical phenomena in a new way – which is also the most ancient way – by using the vernal Equinox, the time when the Sun crosses the equator making the length of night and day equal in all parts of the Earth. To this point in the annual calendar, EARTH DAY attaches no local or divisive set of symbols, no statement of the truth or superiority of one way of life over another. But the selection of the March Equinox makes planetary observance of a shared event possible, and a flag which shows the Earth, as seen from space, appropriate."

At the moment of the equinox, it is traditional to observe Earth Day by ringing the Japanese Peace Bell, which was donated by Japan to the United Nations. Over the years, celebrations have occurred in various places worldwide at the same time as the UN celebration. On March 20, 2008, in addition to the ceremony at the United Nations, ceremonies were held in New Zealand, and bells were sounded in California, Vienna, Paris, Lithuania, Tokyo and many other locations. The equinox Earth Day at the UN is organized by the Earth Society Foundation.