After The Pink Goat

A long waited post, sorry for the delay.
So, at first, this post was provoked by the first article, in which the Saudis want compensation for the oil we fail to use. I found this absolutely outrages since it goes against the very idea of efficiency - what's the point in minimizing your consumption, if the money you pay are the same. Even if you don't pay them directly, but trough taxes, it's the same. It's disgusting and it's even more disgusting because it happens on such a major scale. We have the same problem in Bulgaria, with basic needs like electricity and water increasing their prices to compensate for improving insulation and efficiency, but this is a problem of a country still striving to become normal. But the request that Saudis make is much more than that - it's global! And even though their black-mailing isn't successful so far, the very idea that they put it forward and discuss it openly, is very worrying. Because it's simply wrong. Sure, we could compensate them if they don't have the means to change their income sources, but they make plenty of money selling oil. They can do everything they want, without any help, so why the fuck do they think we owe them even more money?! And anyway, it's like Microsoft wanting compensation from Linux users for not using Windows. It's ridiculous. You pay for what you need and use, not for what you don't need.
You think this is controversy, but wait there's more!

Like the earnings of the Federal Reserve during crisis. Is it just me that finds something wrong in this? Let's see, the whole world is on its knees, producers barely surviving, the banking system in USA needs tons of money to be saved and yet the Feds manage to earn billions? What kind of financial system exactly is this? Note the other news too - that price of stocks on the financial markets across the world drop, because of the eventual ban of risky investment by president Obama.
You remember my posts "health care or health joke?" ? What about the financial system we live in, is it normal? I'm not an economist, but in my mind, money are just a measure of the usefulness of your service to others. And the financial system is supposed to act like a healthy environment for your money, so that you and your money are safe, secure and well-fed and the society can continue functioning flawlessly. But what it turns out to be - a system in which the less paid you are, the more money it makes? The less secure the world, the richer it gets? And not only this, but obviously, the very idea of banning highly risky investments by big institutions, is shaking markets all over the world! You don't have to be a genius to know that something is very wrong here. It's like the system became a breathing organism, living according to its own rules, not necessarily compatible with ours . And that's true, of course, but the question is, are we happy with it or no? Is this the best we can come up with? I'm perfectly realist that in any system, someone will win/earn and someone will have to lose and will follow its own dynamics after getting enough density of resources. But for me, it's a measure of our civilization the efficiency of that system in terms of number of winners/number of losers + over all effect on human life. And so far, I'm not convinced this system is the best. It's like too many ghost appeared in it and they move uncontrollably (or maybe not) and such our money and our time and our energy, for the sake of the unknown beneficiary. And this isn't a conspiracy! It's reality. And this reality is under our control, if we want to change it. The question is do we want to?

P.S. More or less unrelated to this is the last article, in which the charges against the Blackwater guards who did a little carnage in Iraq were dismissed. So much about justice.

1. Saudis Seek Payments for Any Drop in Oil Revenues
2. Asia stocks slide on Obama plan
3. Federal Reserve earned $45 billion in 2009
4. Judge Drops Charges From Blackwater Deaths in Iraq

Saudis Seek Payments for Any Drop in Oil Revenues

By JAD MOUAWAD and ANDREW C. REVKIN, October 13, 2009

Saudi Arabia is trying to enlist other oil-producing countries to support a provocative idea: if wealthy countries reduce their oil consumption to combat global warming, they should pay compensation to oil producers.

The oil-rich kingdom has pushed this position for years in earlier climate-treaty negotiations. While it has not succeeded, its efforts have sometimes delayed or disrupted discussions. The kingdom is once again gearing up to take a hard line on the issue at international negotiations scheduled for Copenhagen in December.

The chief Saudi negotiator, Mohammad al-Sabban, described the position as a “make or break” provision for the Saudis, as nations stake out their stance before the global climate summit scheduled for the end of the year.

“Assisting us as oil-exporting countries in achieving economic diversification is very crucial for us through foreign direct investments, technology transfer, insurance and funding,” Mr. Sabban said in an e-mail message.

Petroleum exporters have long used delaying tactics during climate talks. They view any attempt to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by developed countries as a menace to their economies.

Saudi Arabia is highly dependent on oil exports, which account for most of the government’s budget. Last year, when prices peaked, the kingdom’s oil revenue swelled by 37 percent, to $281 billion, according to Jadwa Investment, a Saudi bank. That was more than four times the 2002 level. At one point in 2008, the average gasoline price in the United States surpassed $4 a gallon.

A recent study by the International Energy Agency, which advises industrialized nations, found that the cumulative revenue of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries would drop by 16 percent from 2008 to 2030 if the world agreed to slash emissions, as opposed to the projection if there were no treaty.

But with oil projected to average $100 a barrel, the energy agency estimated that OPEC members would still earn $23 trillion over that period.

But not every oil-exporting country is falling in line with the Saudi position. Some have been trying a different approach that has earned the backing of environmental groups. For example, Ecuador, OPEC’s newest member, said last year that it was willing to freeze oil exploration in the Amazon forest if it got some financial rewards for doing so. source

Asia stocks slide on Obama plan

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Asian stock markets skidded on Friday and commodity prices fell across the board after U.S. President Barack Obama proposed new restrictions on banks that spurred selling of risky assets.

European shares <.FTEU3> were also expected to fall on the proposals, which would prevent banks or financial institutions that own banks from investing in, owning or sponsoring a hedge fund or private equity fund.

The restrictions could limit leverage in the financial system and the role of risk-taking by hedge funds, but analysts said passage of the proposals in the U.S. congress was not assured and it was too early to read too much into the market reaction.

Commodity prices fell because the proposed U.S. regulations were seen as diminishing capital flows from banks, which have provided liquidity for investors.

Oil and copper languished near four-week lows, gold flirted with a three-week low and platinum lost ground, while agricultural commodities sagged.

U.S. stocks fell as much as 2 percent overnight, the worst one-day percentage fall since October, as financial shares in particular were hit by Obama's plan.

The rules would also bar institutions from proprietary trading operations, unrelated to serving customers, for their own profit. These bets have been enormously profitable for the banks but can hold huge risks for the financial system if they go wrong.

Global markets had already recoiled in recent weeks on fears that Chinese demand would slow as Beijing taps the brakes on its roaring growth to stave off inflation and keep the economy from overheating.

Mixed data from the United States, meanwhile, have fueled concerns that the pace of its economic recovery may be slowing, and that corporate profits may not be as strong as first expected this year. source

Federal Reserve earned $45 billion in 2009

By Neil Irwin, January 12, 2010

Washington Post Staff Writer

The Federal Reserve made record profits in 2009, as its unconventional efforts to prop up the economy created a windfall for the government.

The Fed will return about $45 billion to the U.S. Treasury for 2009, according to calculations by The Washington Post based on public documents. That reflects the highest earnings in the 96-year history of the central bank. The Fed, unlike most government agencies, funds itself from its own operations and returns its profits to the Treasury.

The numbers are good news for the federal budget and a sign that the Fed has been successful, at least so far, in protecting taxpayers as it intervenes in the economy -- though there remains a risk of significant losses in the future if the Fed sells some of its investments or loses money on its stakes in bailed-out firms.

This turn of events comes as the banks that benefited from the Fed's actions are under the microscope. Starting at the end of the week, major banks are expected to announce significant earnings and employee bonuses.

As it happens, the Fed's earnings for the year will dwarf those of the large banks, easily topping the expected profits of Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase combined.

Much of the higher earnings came about because of the Fed's aggressive program of buying bonds, aiming to push interest rates down across the economy and thus stimulate growth. By the end of 2009, the Fed owned $1.8 trillion in U.S. government debt and mortgage-related securities, up from $497 billion a year earlier. The interest income on those investments was a major source of Fed profits -- though that income comes with risks, as the central bank could lose money if it later sells those securities to reduce the money supply.

The Fed also made money on its emergency loans to banks and other firms and on special programs to prop up lending, such as one that supports credit cards, auto loans, and other consumer and business lending. Those programs impose interest and fees on participants, with the aim of ensuring that the Fed does not lose money.

The Fed also charges fees for operating the plumbing of the financial system, such as clearing checks and electronic payments between banks.

From its revenue, the Fed deducts operating expenses, such as employee salaries, then returns to the Treasury almost all of the earnings that remain. The largest previous refund to the Treasury was $34.6 billion, in 2007.

"This shows that central banking is a great business to be in, especially in a crisis," said Vincent Reinhart, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Fed official. "You buy assets that have a nice yield, and your cost of funds is very low. The difference is profit."

Fed officials do not make policy with an eye toward maximizing profits. They are charged by law with managing the nation's money supply to keep employment high and prices stable, and earnings fluctuate depending on a wide range of factors as they pursue that goal. In the crisis, the central bank's policy has been to create money and use it to buy a wide variety of assets, which in turn pay interest.

In effect, the unprecedented range of actions taken to address the crisis has made the Fed's balance sheet more like that of a private bank. A firm such as Bank of America takes money from depositors, whom it pays little or nothing in interest, and lends it out at significantly higher rates. The Fed, similarly, takes money that banks keep on deposit, at a rate of 0.25 percent, and lends it to the U.S. government by buying Treasury securities and, lately, to home buyers and other private borrowers though more exotic investments.

While that resulted in higher earnings in 2009, it exposes the Fed to more risks down the road. source

Judge Drops Charges From Blackwater Deaths in Iraq

By CHARLIE SAVAGE, December 31, 2009

WASHINGTON — In a significant blow to the Justice Department, a federal judge on Thursday threw out the indictment of five former Blackwater security guards over a shooting in Baghdad in 2007 that left 17 Iraqis dead and about 20 wounded.

The judge cited misuse of statements made by the guards in his decision, which brought to a sudden halt one of the highest-profile prosecutions to arise from the Iraq war. The shooting at Nisour Square frayed relations between the Iraqi government and the Bush administration and put a spotlight on the United States’ growing reliance on private security contractors in war zones.

Investigators concluded that the guards had indiscriminately fired on unarmed civilians in an unprovoked and unjustified assault near the crowded traffic circle on Sept. 16, 2007. The guards contended that they had been ambushed by insurgents and fired in self-defense.

The mass shooting eventually led Iraq to insist, during negotiations on a new status of forces agreement in 2008, on a provision that eliminated immunity from Iraqi law for American contractors. source

I'm sure you already know how fascinated I am on brain and its functioning. So here are some shortened by me articles that offer interesting new ways to think about brain.
I suggest if you're not interested to at least read the last two articles which suggest a way to improve memory and ability to learn by combining memory exercises with physical exercises. And also, if you suffered a brain trauma, like me, to be able to recover faster by a specific diet. I think this information is pretty important for everyone.
As for the other articles, they are all very interesting. Why? Because I think people often underestimate the effect our physiology and especially brain chemistry has on our actions and thoughts. We consider ourselves as independent creatures who merely use our bodies as vessels for our spirit/personality. But if you check the articles, you'll see that they prove there is a lot of interference between brain and personality. The chemicals in our brain can change our mood, space-time perceptions, our desires and vice versa - our psychological states do affect our body chemistry. And this is so powerful knowledge. From the one side, it's clear we're extremely dependent over the balance of substances in our brains. Think of the first article - to kill your wife while you sleep. You may not even hate her. You dream of violence, because of the incorrect balance in your brain, your body isn't paralised (something that is normal while you sleep) and you commit something horrible. Can you be blamed? The court in this case obviously decided that no, you cannot be blamed. If you ask me, that's a bit of an underestimation of the situation - if you have a medical problem that led to hurting someone, you should be treated in an appropriate institution, until the problem is fixed. Otherwise, this could repeat. Anyway.
From the other side, we know that chemicals in our brain can be change consciously by our will - for example, sex/chocolate/diet/exercises increase the concentration of important neurotransmitters and oxygen. Which mean that if their lack (as in depression) can damage our perception of details and so on, then by doing specific things we can improve our perception. One article I didn't include claimed that even our time perception is modified by our experience - the more details on 2 time-separated events people have (more intervening memories), the more time they think that has passed.
The main question for me is if our perception of everything is so dependent on the chemistry in our heads then how we can be sure of anything at all. Sure, the major things are usually not affected, but the details often are crucial for our lives. For example, if someone has looked at us in a bad or a good way, what exactly certain intonation of his/her voice mean - such things are very dependent on our mood. Maybe the moral is that we have to be more moderate in our reactions to other people. Maybe the moral is other. But those articles were very interesting for me. Enjoy!

• Can you be blamed for sleepwalking crimes?
• The world looks different if you're depressed
• Older brains make good use of 'useless' information
• Protein drink may aid brain injury
• Aerobic exercise grows brain cells
  

Can you be blamed for sleepwalking crimes?

• 16:17 24 November 2009 by Linda Geddes

A man strangles his wife while dreaming about fighting off intruders in his sleep. Does that make him mad, bad or innocent? Recent research is helping to unpick these issues, and may help reveal who, if anyone, bears responsibility in such cases.

Last week, British man Brian Thomas appeared in court on a murder charge after strangling his wife as they slept in their camper van. The prosecution withdrew the charges after three psychiatrists testified that locking him up would serve no useful purpose. The judge said that Thomas bore no responsibility for his actions.

The case has cast a spotlight on the use of such sleepwalking defences in court. n Minneapolis.

Thomas had a genuine sleep disorder, but Cramer-Bornemann is concerned that in many other cases, the sleepwalking and other sleep-related defences are misused. Studies on the causes of sleepwalking may eventually make it easier to identify who has a genuine sleep disorder that could occasionally result in violence, and who is making it up.

Last month, Ursula Voss of Bonn University in Germany and colleagues reported that even during lucid dreaming – a state in which some people claim to be able to control their dreams – some areas of the brain associated with intent stayed offline, while other areas associated with consciousness were active. "As long as you are in a dream, you have no free rein on your actions and emotions," says Voss (Sleep, vol 32, p 1191).

Although this research didn't look specifically at sleepwalkers, it tallies with a previous study by Claudio Bassetti at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, who once managed to manoeuvre a sleepwalker into a brain scanner during a sleepwalking episode. He found the sleepwalker also showed no activation in the areas of the brain associated with intent, though emotional areas and those associated with movement were active (The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(00)02561-7).

"Our judgement is off and our ability to act out emotionally is on," says Rosalind Cartwright of the Sleep Disorder Service and Research Center in Chicago. She believes a confirmed diagnosis of sleepwalking would make a strong defence in court, but says better tests are needed to establish who has a genuine sleep disorder.

source

The world looks different if you're depressed

• 30 November 2009 by Jessica Hamzelou

DEPRESSION really does change the way you see the world. People with the condition find it easy to interpret large images or scenes, but struggle to "spot the difference" in fine detail. The finding hints at visual training as a possible treatment.

Depressed people have a shortage of a neurotransmitter called GABA; this has also been linked to a visual skill called spatial suppression, which helps us suppress details surrounding the object our eyes are focused on - enabling us to pick out a snake in fallen leaves, for instance.

Now Julie Golomb and colleagues at Yale University are trying to link this ability with major depressive disorder (MDD). Golomb asked 32 people to watch a brief computer animation of white bars drifting over a grey and black background, and say which way they were moving. A quicker response gave a higher score. Half of the group had good mental health, while the rest had recently recovered from depression.

When the image was large, the recovered volunteers found the task easier, which means they would do better in the forest scenario. But they performed less well than the other group when looking at a small image. "Their ability to discriminate fine details was impaired, which is the sort of perception that we tend to use on a daily basis," says Golomb. source

Older brains make good use of 'useless' information

January 20, 2010

A new study has found promising evidence that the older brain's weakened ability to filter out irrelevant information may actually give aging adults a memory advantage over their younger counterparts.

A long line of research has already shown that aging is associated with a decreased ability to tune out irrelevant information. Now scientists at Baycrest's world-renowned Rotman Research Institute have demonstrated that when older adults "hyper-encode" extraneous information - and they typically do this without even knowing they're doing it - they have the unique ability to "hyper-bind" the information; essentially tie it to other information that is appearing at the same time.

"We found that older brains are not only less likely to suppress irrelevant information than younger brains, but they can link the relevant and irrelevant pieces of information together and implicitly transfer this knowledge to subsequent memory tasks," said Campbell.

"This could be a silver lining to aging and distraction," said Dr. Hasher, senior scientist on the study. "Older adults with reduced attentional regulation seem to display greater knowledge of seemingly extraneous co-occurrences in the environment than younger adults. As this type of knowledge is thought to play a critical role in real world decision- making, older adults may be the wiser decision-makers compared to younger adults because they have picked up so much more information." source

Protein drink may aid brain injury

Monday, December 7 08:45 pm

Drinks containing a cocktail of protein components could prove an effective treatment for mental impairment caused by brain injuries, a study has suggested.

Scientists came to the conclusion after feeding a mixture of amino acids to brain-damaged mice.

The right balance of brain chemicals was restored in the animals and their learning ability returned to normal levels. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins and an essential part of the diet.

Those given to the mice in their drinking water, leucine, isoleucine and valine, are known as branched chain amino acids (BCAAs). They are vital for the creation of two brain chemicals which play a key role in the functioning of nerves.

The two neurotransmitters glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) work together to keep brain activity in balance. Glutamate excites neurons, stimulating them to fire, while GABA inhibits them. If neurons are too excited or not excited enough, the brain does not function properly. This often occurs after a traumatic brain injury (TBI) of the sort that can happen in road accidents or on the battlefield.

Examination of slices of tissue from the hippocampus - the brain's memory centre - showed that BCAA restored the normal balance of neural activity in injured mice. Dr Cohen said if the results were reproduced in humans, patients with traumatic brain injuries could be given the amino acids in a drink.

Providing BCAAs in the diet may prove more effective than injecting them, he said. source

Aerobic exercise grows brain cells

(PhysOrg.com) -- Aerobic exercises such as running or jogging have long been known to be good for the health, but now new research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has shown that it also stimulates the growth of new brain cells and improves the memory and ability to learn. source

Today:

1. World's oldest submerged town dates back 5,000 years (w/ Video)
2. Giant impact near India -- not Mexico -- may have doomed dinosaurs
3. Indus script linguistically Dravidian: expert
4. Frieze dated from 5,000 years ago found in Peru (picture)
   
5. Genetic evidence for human-Neanderthal hanky panky?
6. Did India invent the nose job?

World's oldest submerged town dates back 5,000 years (w/ Video)

October 16th, 2009

Archaeologists surveying the world's oldest submerged town have found ceramics dating back to the Final Neolithic. Their discovery suggests that Pavlopetri, off the southern Laconia coast of Greece, was occupied some 5,000 years ago -- at least 1,200 years earlier than originally thought.

These remarkable findings have been made public by the Greek government after the start of a five year collaborative project involving the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and The University of Nottingham.

As a Mycenaean town the site offers potential new insights into the workings of Mycenaean society. Pavlopetri has added importance as it was a maritime settlement from which the inhabitants coordinated local and long distance trade.

This summer the team carried out a detailed digital underwater survey and study of the structural remains, which until this year were thought to belong to the Mycenaean period — around 1600 to 1000 BC. The survey surpassed all their expectations. Their investigations revealed another 150 square metres of new buildings as well as ceramics that suggest the site was occupied throughout the Bronze Age — from at least 2800 BC to 1100 BC.

Dr Jon Henderson said: "This site is unique in that we have almost the complete town plan, the main streets and domestic buildings, courtyards, rock-cut tombs and what appear to be religious buildings, clearly visible on the seabed. "

Possibly one of the most important discoveries has been the identification of what could be a megaron — a large rectangular great hall — from the Early Bronze Age period. They have also found over 150 metres of new buildings including what could be the first example of a pillar crypt ever discovered on the Greek mainland. Two new stone built cist graves were also discovered alongside what appears to be a Middle Bronze Age pithos burial.

Dr Gallou said: "The new ceramic finds form a complete and exceptional corpus of pottery covering all sub-phases from the Final Neolithic period (mid 4th millennium BC) to the end of the Late Bronze Age (1100 BC). ". source

My comment:Absolutely awesome! I hope the Greek guys will manage to make the distinction between Mycenaean and Greek, because there were no Greeks at that point of space-time. Not on the Balkans at least. But the underwater city is stunning and I'm waiting for new discoveries to come. It's not very good that they work with British specialists, but let's hope that the Truth will dominate their work. I'm saying that because there is a suspicious silence on Thracians and the people who lived on the Balkans before them in main-stream science and I cannot but wonder if those scientists will be brave enough to connect their discoveries with the Pelasgian people or they will jut make up a new civillization.

Giant impact near India -- not Mexico -- may have doomed dinosaurs

A mysterious basin off the coast of India could be the largest, multi-ringed impact crater the world has ever seen. And if a new study is right, it may have been responsible for killing the dinosaurs off 65 million years ago.

Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University and a team of researchers took a close look at the massive Shiva basin, a submerged depression west of India that is intensely mined for its oil and gas resources. Some complex craters are among the most productive hydrocarbon sites on the planet. Chatterjee will present his research at this month's Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Portland, Oregon.

"If we are right, this is the largest crater known on our planet," Chatterjee said. "A bolide of this size, perhaps 40 kilometers (25 miles) in diameter creates its own tectonics."

By contrast, the object that struck the Yucatan Peninsula, and is commonly thought to have killed the dinosaurs was between 8 and 10 kilometers (5 and 6.2 miles) wide.

It's hard to imagine such a cataclysm. But if the team is right, the Shiva impact vaporized Earth's crust at the point of collision, leaving nothing but ultra-hot mantle material to well up in its place. It is likely that the impact enhanced the nearby Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions that covered much of western India. What's more, the impact broke the Seychelles islands off of the Indian tectonic plate, and sent them drifting toward Africa.

The geological evidence is dramatic. Shiva's outer rim forms a rough, faulted ring some 500 kilometers in diameter, encircling the central peak, known as the Bombay High, which would be 3 miles tall from the ocean floor (about the height of Mount McKinley). Most of the crater lies submerged on India's continental shelf, but where it does come ashore it is marked by tall cliffs, active faults and hot springs. The impact appears to have sheared or destroyed much of the 30-mile-thick granite layer in the western coast of India. source

My comment: Nice, now compete for the site of the impact. What would be really interesting, if all of those craters are with the same age. Which wouldn't very unexpected if they were parts of a body that passed near Earth. But it has to be checked.

Indus script linguistically Dravidian: expert

S. Ganesan

The Indus script is Dravidian linguistically and culturally closer to the old Tamil polity than what has been recognised so far, eminent epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan has said.

He shared some of his recent and still-not-fully-published findings relating to the interpretation of the Indus script, in an endowment lecture on ‘Vestiges of Indus Civilisation in Old Tamil’ at the 16th annual session of the Tamil Nadu History Congress, which opened here on Friday.

Mr. Mahadevan said that though the claim could be met with incredulity, the evidence he had gathered over four decades of intensive study of the sources — the Indus texts and old Tamil anthologies — had led him to the conclusion.

Mr. Mahadevan, who specialises in the Indus script and Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions, said there was also substantial archaeological evidence to support the view that Indus Civilisation was pre-Aryan. The Indus Civilisation was urban, while the Vedic culture was rural and pastoral.

The Indus seals, he said, do not depict the horse and the chariot with ‘spooked wheels,’ which were the defining pieces of the Aryan-speaking societies. “The Indus religion as revealed by the pictorial depiction on seals included worship of a buffalo-horned male god, mother-goddesses, the pipal tree and the serpent, and possibly the phallic symbol. Such modes of worship present in Hinduism are known to have been derived from the aboriginal population and are totally alien to the religion of the Rig Veda.”

There was also substantial linguistic evidence “favouring Dravidian authorship of the Indus Civilisation,” he said, citing Brahui, a Dravidian language still spoken in the Indus region, Dravidian loan words in the Rig Veda, the substratum influence of Dravidian on Indo-Aryan as shown by the presence of retroflex consonants in the Rig Veda and major modifications in the Prakrit dialects moving them closer to the Dravidian than the Indo-European family of languages. Computer analysis of Indus texts has also revealed that the language had suffixes only as in Dravidian and no prefixes as in Indo-Aryan or infixes as in Munda.

Clarifying that he was employing the terms, ‘Aryan’ and ‘Dravidian,’ only in linguistic sense, he said speakers of the Aryan languages indistinguishably merged with Dravidian and Munda-speaking people millennia ago, creating a composite Indian society.

Referring to the ‘BEARER’ ideograms in the Indus script, he said the frequent Harappan title, ‘Bearer,’ originally meant a priestly functionary ceremonially carrying, on a yoke, food offerings to the deity. The corresponding Dravidian expression, ‘poray’ (bearer) was translated in the Rig Veda as Bharata (bearer).

The symbols inscribed on a Neolithic axe found at Sembiyan Kandiyur near Mayiladuthurai in 2006, a most significant discovery connecting Indus Civilisation with Tamil Nadu, corresponded to the signs of the Indus script. Symbols found on megalithic pottery and potsherds from Sanur and Mangudi in Tamil Nadu also resembled the signs of the Indus script. source

My comment: Ok, that is certainly interesting. Though I find it hard to understand, why, if Harappa and Mohenjo-daro are so old, they try to connect them with the Aryans. Maybe it has something to do with the Indo-european languages, but still, I get very annoyed when people try to stick Aryans everywhere. So what if that civilisation has nothing to do with them, do this make it worst? It's ridiculous! And I hope that guy did the research right, because we know what kind of attacks the previous similar research had to take. It's a war out there!