Spelling Bee 100 (Monty Python, Ananda)

Mmm, is it S-U-P-E-R-C-A-L-A-F-R-A-G-E-L-I-S-T-I-C-E-X-P-I-A-L-I-D-O-C-I-O-U-S?

(Scripps National Spelling Bee) 2025: 100 YEARS OF THE BEE

Monty Python's Flying Circus competitive mass spectacle sport of Novel Writing (The Final Rip Off)

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A century of spelling keeps going strong

A field of 243 top young spellers will converge on National Harbor, Maryland, from [today] May 27 to May 29, 2025, to compete in a historic Scripps National Spelling Bee.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the iconic American competition, which was first held on June 17, 1925, with just nine participants.

• Bee Week starts today (May 27, 2025) | Scripps National Spelling Bee (spellingbee.com)
• L.A., Orange County students to begin competing in National Spelling Bee

“Reaching 100 years is more than a milestone — it’s a testament to the enduring power of words, learning and the human spirit,” said Corrie Loeffler, executive director of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Scripps National Spelling Bee declares first-ever group of co-champions

I always knew I'd do it! Yes! Thanks, Saraswati!

“For a century, this competition has brought people together through eras of profound change — from world wars to the digital age — and still, the Bee continues to inspire excellence, curiosity, and connection. It’s a living piece of American history, and we’re honored to celebrate its legacy.”

This year’s 243 national qualifiers advanced through local and regional bees that took place through the end of March. All rounds of this year’s national competition — preliminaries, quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals — will take place at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, Maryland.

Monty Python's Flying Circus - "Working Class Playwright"

Highlights of 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee field

Yes, well, it comes as no surprise really. *Yawn*

The spellers range in age from 8 to 14. Only 53 spellers return from the 2024 field, and 178 spellers – 73% – are competing in their first Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Only one 2024 finalist advanced to the 2025 national competition: Faizan Zaki, who finished second last year behind Bruhat Soma, following his record-breaking spell-off.

Tarini Nandakumar is competing in her fifth consecutive Scripps National Spelling Bee. She was a finalist and finished ninth in 2023.

Navtaj Singh, Micah Sterling and Avinav Prem Anand are competing in their fourth straight national competition. Harini Murali is in her fourth Bee overall, as is Zaki.

There are spellers from all 50 states and the [ruling imperial seat of power known as the] District of Columbia [Columbia being the original name of "America," after the titular goddess who was buried and erased from U.S. history, as if Amerigo Vespucci gave the Americas their name].

Texas has the largest representation with 22 national competitors. California is next with 20, followed by Ohio with 15, and Illinois with 13. Florida and New York have 12 each. There are 13 competitors from outside the 50 United States, representing the Bahamas, Canada, Germany, Ghana, Guam, Kuwait, Nigeria, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. More

Celebrating a 100-year tradition...

2025: 100 YEARS OF THE BEE

(Scripps National Spelling Bee) 2025 - For a century, the Scripps National Spelling Bee has been much more than a competition. It has become a symbol of perseverance, intellect, and community. From its humble beginnings to becoming a cornerstone of American culture, the Bee has empowered millions of students, fostered lifelong friendships, and united communities in the love of language and learning. Through the words we spell, we tell stories — stories of personal triumph, academic achievement, and the diverse fabric of the American experience. As we honor this incredible milestone, we celebrate not just 100 years of history but 100 years of making an impact on generations of learners and the communities they inspire. Join us in commemorating this momentous occasion, as we reflect on the past, celebrate the present, and look forward to an even brighter future.

What is spelling but memory? Memory, like most things, is due to karma: Ananda

Ananda recounting all the suttas, beginning each with, "Thus have I heard." (First Council)

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This is the Middle Way avoiding extremes

Among all the disciples of the Buddha, foremost in memorization was his personal assistant [and possibly one of his sons with a dancing girl named Mriga, according to some traditions, which would make him Ven. Rahula's half-brother] Venerable Ananda.

• [It makes sense that Ananda would also be the Buddha's son but that this would have been suppressed or discarded in most traditions. One shining piece of evidence is when Ven. Rahula (whom the Buddha had ordained at age 7) was 18, he was getting very frisky and overwhelmed by sensual craving, presumably due to hormones at that age and the luxurious life he had left behind in the palace in his former kingdom of Kapilavatthu. He was walking with the Buddha and Ananda, if memory serves, making comments about how at that moment there were in the world only three people with the past karma to become "world monarchs" (cakkavati or chakravartin rulers).

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  Ven. Rahula, the Buddha, and Ven. Ananda

  Prince Siddhartha had turned his back on that possibility, forecast by soothsayers when he was a child, much to his father King Suddhodana's delight. Ananda was already a monk for a long time. And there was him. If Rahula disrobed, returned to the palace, and let nature take its course, he could become king of this world. Such talk worried the Buddha, who instructed a monk that -- after 11 years in the robe learning the basics -- Ven. Rahula was now ready to intensively put the Teachings into practice. He did and thereby attained arahantship. If the other person there was Ananda, it would be among these three close relatives that the karma existed to attain to the status of a world-monarch.] Was Ananda the Buddha's son?

Ananda lived one kappa = 120 years

It is only because of Ananda that we have "Buddhism" as we do. When the Buddha passed into final nirvana, having established the Sangha (the Buddhist Monastic Community) and left in place the Noble Sangha (the community of enlightened disciples in any of the four stages of awakening), Ven. Maha Kassapa took it upon himself to begin a religion. He did this by calling together the First Buddhist Council of fully enlightened disciples (theras and, presumably, theris). The texts say 500 arahants (fully enlightened beings) attended, but this number simply means "a large number." It was almost 499, as it were, because Ananda was the most important person to be invited, but he did not qualify to attend. He was needed to recount the suttas (sutras, sermons, narrated teachings, the Buddha's "discourses").

Another monk was put in charge of the Vinaya (Monastic Disciplinary Code rules). But Ananda was only a stream enterer at the first stage of awakening. So he made a strenuous effort to put into practice all that he knew, had heard directly from the Buddha, and committed to memory. It was no use. He failed. This path cannot be accomplished simply by a "sense of urgency" (samvega), which is important to recognize the meaning of the Buddha's last words to be a lamp unto oneself and work out one's own salvation with diligence (to mindfully put into practice the theory of the Teaching in so consistent a manner that one makes an end of all suffering in no long time). Because he tried so hard, Ananda failed. He had slacked off for years, so he never attained arahantship, full realization.

Now the opposite problem was impeding him -- to much efforting, too much strain, too much craving and grasping. He needed santosha ("contentment") to ease his mind so it could blossom. The night before the Council was to meet, he practiced intensive meditation deep into the night. Finally, he recognized his failure with frustration and exhaustion, so he gave up and decided to go to sleep.

Laying off the pressure (surrendering, giving up, letting go of craving it and needing it), he began to lie down. He was going from the extreme of too much to the other extreme of too little, at one moment achieving balance between the two, the Middle Way that avoids extremes of austerity and luxury. He became the only disciple to achieve awakening outside of one of the "four bodily positions" (lying down, sitting, standing, or walking). He attained, because he let go, between sitting and lying down.

He sat right up and experienced the paths-and-fruits of self-realization (magga-phala). He was welcomed into the Council by the other fully enlightened beings and recited all the discourses he had heard over the preceding 25 years as the Buddha's chief assistant. This is why all sutras begin not with "once upon a time" but rather "thus have I heard" (Evam me sutam).

• Buddhist tradition maintains that the disciple Ānanda used the formula for the first time, as a form of personal testimony... [to say that he himself was attesting that this is what the Buddha had said]. Scholars may rightly doubt that this could be true for all sutras, certainly not applying to later apocryphal Mahayana inventions, which have become some of the most famous "sutras" [sutured together sermons with a single throughline or thread] of all, namely, The Heart Sutra, The Diamond Sutra, The Lotus Sutra... More

Nevertheless, it is undisputed that Ananda had a tremendous memory like a spelling bee champion. And one is forced to wondered what it is about India (ancient Maha Bharat, Jambudvipa, Asoka's Empire) that produces to many remarkable memory banks in little boys and girls of Indian origin.

• Is it Goddess Saraswati's doing?
• Is it the clean vegetarian (ahimsa) diet?
• Is it past study of the Vedas (in previous lives) as Brahmins memorizing countless slokas?
• Is it genetically handed down?
• Is it training and the way the Indian system chose to educate its children?
• Is it rich minerals in the soil coming down from the Himalayas nourishing the babies?
• Is it Hinduism (or Islam or Jainism or Sikhism)?
• Is it yogic magic?
• Is it British colonial rule, forcing everyone into a Western model of learning and punishment and stealing Indian and Islamic innovations (in mathematics and sciences, like the invention of "zero" and the Ayurveda or "health sciences") and calling them British?

No, it's not likely this last one, but possibly any of the previous ones.

The Buddha praises Ananda

“The foremost of my monastic disciples who are very learned is Ānanda… with a good memory is Ānanda. ...with an extensive range is Ānanda. ...[foremost] in retention [memory] is Ānanda. ...[foremost] as a personal attendant is Ānanda.” Source: AN 1.219–234: Catuttha Vagga—Ven. Sujato (trans)

• Scripps National Spelling Bee; Monty Python; Ven. Sujata (suttacentral.net); memory and the story of Ananda explained by Dhr. Seven; Ashley Wells, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

How life on Earth began, according to science

David Nield, ScienceAlert via msn.com, 3/4/24; Skeptic Central, Wisdom Quarterly

In the beginning, the Vesicle Blob. Like it or lump it, but thou shalt not question it (ScienceAlert)

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We may finally know how the first cells on Earth formed

In the beginning, rebirth ad infinitum.

The story of how life started on Earth [called the Agganna Sutra in Buddhism and Genesis or the Garden of Eden in the Abrahamic faiths] is one that scientists are eager to learn.

Researchers may have uncovered an important detail in the plot of Chapter One: an explanation of how bubbles of fat came to form the membranes of the very first cells.

A key part of the new findings, made by a team from The Scripps Research Institute in California, is that a chemical process called phosphorylation may have happened earlier than previously thought.

This process adds groups of atoms that include phosphorus to a molecule, bringing extra functions with it -- functions that can turn spherical collections of fats called protocells into more advanced versions of themselves, able to be more versatile, stable, and chemically active.

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  Diagram of life beginning on Earth

  We howl with laughter at religion for believing in fairytales but bow in solemn obedience to the inerrant utterances of white lab coat-clad priests in their lab-temples doing their lab stuff and coming out with papers about it. The sacred word, peer reviewed by fellow priests, spins a yarn and we all say, "Well, that's the way it has to be because Science don't make no junk." The figurative and metaphorical language a visionary (rishi) like the Buddha, Mahavira, Shankara, Moses, or Mohammed might have used, hah, that's of no use to us. It's fine if we want to throw out ancient written texts for new, but to ignore that Science tries to get away with explaining the universe by saying, "If you allow us just one unexplained miracle, the Big Bang, we can explain everything after that" is pitiful. Then anything observed as happening now is used to say, "This must have been what happened the first time, originating from nothing to everything we see now with no miracle at all and no anything before the something we now live and enjoy." Go on, Science, what else happened?

These protocells are widely thought to have been vital building blocks for biochemistry more than 3.5 billion years ago, perhaps emerging from hot springs under the ocean along the way to the evolution of more complex biological structures.

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  WTH? Science claims to know how life started?

  Science observer Lloyd Pye says we have examples of microevolution but not a single example of macroevolution. Along with Michael "The Forbidden Archeologist" Cremo we are getting quite an alternative view to world history and biological origins. Yet, no one notices how Science behaves like storytellers around the campfire, making "reasonable" speculations from data like shamans spinning origin myths based on whatever is at hand to comment on? A vat of skepticism is in order and perhaps an eyeroll. Was it a good idea to trade in one set of priests for another? "God is dead" was a really good slogan if people understood what it meant, so how about we launch, "Data interpreters, get stuffed"? The first laments the loss of a guide, the latter echoes the Who's "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" lyric. To think we're going to base our lives on what some blanketyblank opines from an ivory tower, as we grovel before the feet of impersonal objectivity and total rationality, unquestioned assumptions and men with mental defilements in charge of what we are allowed to believe? It's untenable.

Ehem, our sacred garments are now blue

"At some point, we all wonder where we came from," says chemist Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, from The Scripps Research Institute. "This finding helps us better understand the chemical environments of early Earth so we can uncover the origins of life and how life can evolve on early Earth."

• Scripps Research scientists reveal how first cells could have formed on Earth (Scripps Research)

Krishnamurthy and his colleagues hypothesized that because the process is so widespread in the body's biological functions, phosphorylation ought to have been involved in early stages of protocell formation.

Replicating conditions likely to match Earth's early days in the lab, the team combined chemicals such as fatty acids and glycerol to try and create more complex vesicles -- bubble-like structures similar to protocells that facilitate cellular processes.

With some tweaking of temperature and acidity, the researchers were able to get the chemical reactions they were looking for, proving that phosphorylation may have been at work as protocells developed in the primordial ooze.

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  Agganna Sutra and science

  The "Discourse on Beginnings" (Aggañña Sutta, DN 27) is neither satire nor parody, claims author Dr. Sugunasiri, Ph.D., as viewed by Buddhist scholars. Drawing on cosmology, Darwinism, psychology, and linguistics, this sutra paints a historically and scientifically accurate picture of Devolution and Evolution, going beyond the Big Bang. Sentient beings emerge with defilements, such as passion and craving, physically nourished with greater and greater difficulty by devolving plant life. Compatible with Western science, Dr. S, had an insight, a breakthrough in his understanding of this origin myth. What if the "beings" that first came to this earth, the âbhassara brahmas (or "supremos," a class of devas, lit. "shining ones") are understood to be PHOTONS? Why? This is true if we take the term âbhassara in its literal etymological sense of "hither-come-shining-arrow," described as "self-luminous" and "moving through the air" (akasha, "space"), "glorious" (streaming), "feeding on delight," where they remain for a very long time, "mind-made" (spontaneous), floating above and around earth before the appearance of moon and sun, before night and day. However, as accurate as this picture may be, the Buddha’s point is that knowledge of Dhamma overrides it all, explaining the title [of Dr. S's book]. More

"The vesicles were able to transition from a fatty acid environment to a phospholipid environment during our experiments, suggesting a similar chemical environment could have existed four billion years ago," says chemist Sunil Pulletikurti, from The Scripps Research Institute.

The team describes it as a "plausible pathway" for the creation of phospholipids, the more complex type of vesicle membrane. However, there's lots more study to do before we can be sure about how life came to be on Earth, [science's favorite sentence].

Looking back billions of years isn't easy, of course, but scientists continue to make discoveries...

• [Do they, with their time machines or mystic powers? They see something now and project it back, neither understanding what they're seeing nor gaining evidence for what actually happened then.]

[And these "discoveries" are] about what happened right after Earth formed, and it all plays into our investigations into life on other planets, too.

• [Q: Oh, are we now allowed to believe in life on other planets, according to our gatekeepers? A: "It's out there, it just doesn't come here and has never been here in any way whatsoever" is the official word. So obey and repeat this mantra until told otherwise, and never mind those pesky tardigrades on the moon.]

"It's exciting to uncover how early chemistries may have transitioned to allow for life on Earth," says biophysicist Ashok Deniz, from The Scripps Research Institute.

"Our findings also hint at a wealth of intriguing physics that may have played key functional roles along the way to modern cells."

The research has been published in Chem. Source

Voices of Women in Sacred Music (video)

Prof. Anne Harley, Scripps College (voicesofthepearl.org), YouTube, John Schneider ("Global Village," June 21, 2018, KPFK 90.7 FM); Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The Buddhist Therigatha is 2,600 years old.

On today's episode of Global Village, John Schneider hosts some incredible female musicians. The first is Yale-educated Anne Harley talking about ancient Buddhism in Dunhuang (Central Asia as it abuts Western China with its own Research Academy). She talks about Buddhist nuns of the two dominant schools and Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, a Western mystic, poet, composer, and musician. Hildegard opened scholars' minds as to how much women contributed to spirituality through music. Are women capable of enlightenment and mysticism (direct experience of the divine)? These women prove they are. LISTEN (Global Village - Thurs, June 21, 2018, 11:00 AM)

 

Professor of Music Anne Harley (Scripps)

Voices of the Pearl, in newly commissioned song cycles,  traces the tenuous lineage of women who dared to encounter the unmediated divine.

Their efforts span time, religion, nation, and culture. This project commissions, performs, and records musical works from composers across the world, setting text by and about female esoterics from world traditions throughout history, reclaiming these lost voices and the tradition of female spirituality.

By juxtaposing and performing four to five cycles by living composers, a full-length evening of portraits is created of female esoterics, traversing time and geography.

 

Ayya Tathaloka, California Theravada nuns

The performance of several different cycles over the course of an evening focuses audiences' attention on the musical portraits of women negotiating the intersection of heaven and earth, in a variety of world traditions: Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Taoist, Buddhist.

• [The section on Buddhist nuns is particularly striking as it sets to music rare and ancient Buddhist texts known as the Therigatha or "Verses of the Nuns," which are songs about individual enlightenment experiences of theris or female-elders, an "elder" being anyone with ten or more rains retreats in the robe. Harley gathered these texts from "female monks" in Theravada Thailand, the are fully ordained nuns. But "nun" has another, lower-status meaning of the Maechi or White-Clad Ten Precept Nuns, like Srirasmi Suwadee is treated, who are not fully ordained.]

Goddesses (devis) can teach and sing.

The female esoteric practitioner is twice marginalized in the world’s traditions. First, the mystic’s direct contact with the divine threatens the hierarchical [and patriarchal] structures of organized religion, so they are sometimes labeled heretical.

Second, women are often considered by religious traditions incapable, due to their female bodies, to attain an authentic [enlightenment or] direct mystical contact with the divine.
 
[The Buddha said they could and made them "nuns," wandering female ascetics, but that did not stop sexist societies from doubting them and them doubting themselves.] 

Voices of the Pearl traces the tenuous lineage of women who dared to encounter the divine directly. More

Voices of the Pearl: Vol. 1, Secret Book of Sun Bu'er: Step 5: Cultivating the Elixir (養丹)

Global Village, Thursday, June 21, 2018, 11:00 AM

Listen now: This episode will only be available for 90 days in the KPFK Archives

Artist	Song Title	Album	Label	Played
Joan Huang	Along the River During the Gingming Festival (Bustling Market)	Festive River, East Meets West	Cambria Music	11:01 AM
Anne Harley, Steve Thachuk	Voices of the Pearl, excerpts	Live In-Studio	Live In-Studio	11:15 AM
Anne Harley, Steve Thachuk	Voices of the Pearl, excerpts	Live In-Studio	Live In-Studio	11:

Scientists study plastic patch in Pacific

Plastic debris gathering underwater in the Pacific Ocean Gyre (yourdailythread.com)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Marine scientists from California are venturing this week to the middle of the North Pacific for a study of plastic debris accumulating across hundreds of miles (km) of open sea dubbed the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch."

(gsc.edu)

A research vessel carrying a team of about 30 researchers, technicians, and crew members embarked on Sunday on a three-week voyage from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, based at the University of California at San Diego. The expedition will study how much debris -- mostly broken down plastic fragments -- is collecting in an expanse of sea known as the North Pacific Ocean Gyre, how that material is distributed, and how it affects marine life.

Plastic debris contaminating the Pacific Ocean around Hawaii (people.tribe.net)

The debris ends up concentrated by circular, clockwise ocean currents within an oblong-shaped "convergence zone" hundreds of miles (km) across from end to end near the Hawaiian Islands, about midway between Japan and the West Coast of the United States. More>>

13-year-old wins National Spelling Bee

Kavya Shivashankar from Olathe, Kansas is presented the winner's trophy at the 2009 National Spelling Bee on 5/28/09 after spelling "Laodicean" (Reuters/Jim Young).

• Slideshow: National Spelling Bee

WASHINGTON, D.C. – It's safe to say the best is yet to come for the new national spelling champion. She's only just become a teenager. She'll probably keep her competitive juices flowing by entering the International Brain Bee, the perfect contest for an aspiring neurosurgeon. More>>