Constitutive Behavior of a Twaron®/Natural Rubber Composite
Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures 17 (4), 246-259 (2010)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15376490903277967

Oxymoron

One fine day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight,
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other,

One was blind & the other couldn't see,
So they chose a dummy for a referee.
A blind man went to see fair play,
A dumb man went to shout "hooray!"
A paralysed donkey passing by,
Kicked the blind man in the eye,
Knocked him through a nine inch wall,
Into a dry ditch and drowned them all,

A deaf policeman heard the noise,
And came to arrest the two dead boys,
If you don't believe this story’s true,
Ask the blind man; he saw it too!

[Source: Wikipedia (click on the title above); Photo by David (Bryan Lake, TX, 8.30.09)]

Ballistic Resistant Body Armor: Contemporary and Prospective Materials and Related Protection Mechanisms
Appl. Mech. Rev. 62, 50802 (2009)

http://link.aip.org/link/?AMREAD/62/50802/1

(Top 10 downloaded article since published online on July 2009)

silent wings...

H2O found on the moon - NASA. Validity and significance aside for a moment. Now, let's see who's going to claim that this 'discovery' was already 'said, written & compiled' many*many years ago. That's going to be interesting!

What really matters?

There are two ways of solving problems: 1. Solve it. 2. Ignore it. And it depends on what really matters.

I.O.U.S.A. Excerpt #1

In the US, the concept of sacrifice and building for a better tomorrow has been pushed aside by our live-for-today, easy credit and consumption-oriented society. As many are beginning to see, low savings rates can be a problem. In healthy, productive economies (like China?), savings result in increased investment, additional R&D, a stronger overall economy, and an improvement in the average citizen’s standard of living.

Think of the central bank (Federal Reserve System or Fed) as the bank of banks – the gatekeeper of the US economy. The Fed’s two main goals are to help stimulate economic growth and to try (yes, try) to keep inflation low. The Fed has a tremendous amount of power and a monopoly control over money and credit. The chairman of the Fed is more powerful (or accorded with more power?) than even the president because he (or she) has so much control over the economy. The Fed is the key to how much money and credit is in the US economy in any given time. This is due to the fact that the US currency (with due respect) is a fiat money – in other words, it is not backed by anything tangible, and therefore it can be created out of thin air. (The Bretton Woods lasted until 1971. Since then, the US dollar is used as a faith-based currency – the global economies just assume that the dollar possess a certain value useful for international trade and transactions. No coinciding amount of tangible treasure, for example gold, is used to back the dollar.)

It is important to understand how the international money system works. In the 19th century, and up until 1971, gold was beneath the paper money floating around the world. You can’t create gold. You have to dig it out of the ground; it’s hard to get; and there’s not very much of it. But paper money (fiat money) is different. Since 1971, with no gold to back up the paper, all we have is paper. That means that you can create a lot of paper and you don’t have to connect it to gold. They’ve been creating US dollars like crazy for the last 20 years (1988 onwards) and now they’re creating them even faster. They’re not down in the Treasury Building, with a little-bitty glazier printing press, printing out bills; they’re created by electronic transaction. They can just credit a bank with money and then the bank lends out money.

The whole thing now has gotten so out of control. Too much easy credit for too long can create a false sense of wealth, as we saw in the tech and real estate bubbles.


Our whole society is in trap where it is spending more than it can afford and is transferring its assets. Foreigners end up with our money and they use the money to buy US assets, and so Americans become less and less likely to own their own property. And we’ve seen this, of course, in a very fundamental and simple way in the housing market. The average American (barely) owns half of his (or her) house. Who owns the other half? The neighborhood bank has sold the mortgage to a financial company, which probably sold it to a hedge fund. Now it’s floating somewhere in the great wide world. It may be in the hands of the Chinese financiers or London speculators (what speculators?!). It doesn’t seem fair to me (Bill Bonner) that these poor children coming into the world should come in with so much debt on their shoulders.
_____________________________________________________
I.O.U.S.A. - One Nation. Under Stress. In Debt. is written by Addison Wiggin and Kate Incontrera (2008: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., NY)
Pix source:http://www.bulldogblog.net/articles/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/money.jpg

I.O.U.S.A. Excerpt #2

Most politicians enjoy being somebody important, and the best way to do that is promise people something for nothing and not have to worry about really paying for it. Today, if we had to pay for fighting this war and financing our welfare state, there would be a tax revolt in this country because it would cost so much. But they can delay this by borrowing, by inflating. That is literally just creating money out of thin air to pay the bills and delaying the payment. When you print that money, the value of that dollar has to go down and then one of consequences of inflating the money will be higher prices (besides financial bubbles and unemployment.)

Washington wants the dollar to be worth only 5.5 yuan instead of 8 yuan. Washington thinks that this would cause US exports to China to increase, as they would be cheaper for the Chinese, and for the Chinese exports to the US to decline, as they would be more expensive. This would end the large trade deficit that the US has with China. In order to force the yuan revaluation, the US was threatening to impose trade sanctions on Chinese goods. In response, China threatened to dump its Treasury holdings – a move that would destroy the US dollar. This struck a cord with US officials who were well aware (?) that the Chinese has them over a barrel.

If a politician wants to get reelected, he’ll get reelected by giving people something. And if you have to take it from them first, it’s not a very good deal. A voter will say, “Wait a minute, you took $10 in taxes from me, and now you’re giving me back $10? That’s not a very good deal.” The politician gets the vote when he gives the person $11. And where does the politician get that other dollar? He has to borrow it from somewhere. That’s a good deal for the taxpayer. But that one dollar is now hanging over the heads of the whole society. Over time, this system of buying power and buying votes becomes institutionalized and entrenched (see, for example, http://wallstreetwatch.org/reports/part2.pdf).
_____________________________________________________
I.O.U.S.A. - One Nation. Under Stress. In Debt. is written by Addison Wiggin and Kate Incontrera (2008: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., NY)

I.O.U.S.A. Excerpt #3

In the beginning, all the Earth was America. It was just open, and it was free, and it was available. When people came to America originally, they came for a lot of personal reasons, but they came with nothing, generally, and they came expecting to find a place where they could build a life that they wanted for themselves. They didn’t ask for a government handout (entitlement?), or a subsidy, or a license. They didn’t ask for anything; they just wanted to be left alone to do their own thing. It was a place where people could come and live freely. And it meant that they were free from the burdens of centralized government.

The fundamental difference that used to separate America from the rest of the world no longer exists, and that difference was that America was a free country. The rest all had their governments, they had rigidity, structure, establishments, institutions, and these required people to be a certain way. If you were in a certain segment of a society you had to play that role but in America you could be anything you wanted.

The US is an empire of freedom. It is an empire of the human spirit where people search for opportunities. The essence of the American Dream is allowing each of us and all of us the opportunity to discover and then develop our talents to the fullest. That is what opportunity is about.
_____________________________________________________
I.O.U.S.A. - One Nation. Under Stress. In Debt. is written by Addison Wiggin and Kate Incontrera (2008: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., NY)
Pix source: http://www.imigracjadousa.com/images/usa-01.jpg

...my alma mater, like never before!

(changes do not change :-), learn to deal with it!)

the result of meritocracy...

Jobs! my hero...

"almost everything..all external expectations, or pride or fear of embarrassment of failure...these things just fall away on the face of death leaving only what is truly important, even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there..."
~ Steve Jobs (at Stanford commencement 2005)

If God Created Everything, Who Created God?

How does God acting before time began get around the problem of God's creation? There are two possible interpretations of these verses. One is that God exists outside of time. Since we live in a universe of cause and effect, we naturally assume that this is the only way in which any kind of existence can function. However, the premise is false. Without the dimension of time, there is no cause and effect, and all things that could exist in such a realm would have no need of being caused, but would have always existed. Therefore, God has no need of being created, but, in fact, created the time dimension of our universe specifically for a reason - so that cause and effect would exist for us. However, since God created time, cause and effect would never apply to His existence.

what an i-Phone cannot do? (it does everything, huh?)

the Forgotten Technology!

understanding the magic of moment (force x perpendicular distance)...

Jarvis Island

What is the use of living in a country that claims sovereignty, operate within a political system of 'i-say-you-listen', collect taxes from all and exercise favoritism in spending it, sanctions the right to live (and to leave) on its people and still believe in God? One might as well live in the Jarvis Island, which is not even visible in the Google Map. Where is humakind heading to?

A R Rahman! ..the tunesmith

Second Law of Thermodynamics

"The implications of the Second Law of Thermodynamics are considerable. The universe is constantly losing usable energy and never gaining. We logically conclude the universe is not eternal. The universe had a finite beginning - the moment at which it was at "zero entropy" (its most ordered possible state). Like a wind-up clock, the universe is winding down, as if at one point it was fully wound up and has been winding down ever since.

The question is who wound up the clock?

The theological implications are obvious. NASA Astronomer Robert Jastrow commented on these implications when he said, "Theologians generally are delighted with the proof that the universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset. It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence." (Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, 1978, p.16)

Jastrow went on to say:

"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." (God and the Astronomers, p.116)

It seems the Cosmic Egg that was the birth of our universe logically requires a Cosmic Chicken (!)"

(Source: allaboutscience.org)
(Picture source: holon.se/folke/kurs/Distans/Ekofys/fysbas/LOT/entropy.shtml)

MLK

"In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. We must nor allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence."

it's about the music, and not only that....

The man, the event, the change! Don't let yourself be controlled.

Lord Macaulay (Thomas Babington Macaulay) was born on October 25, 1800, and died on December 28, 1859. He arrived in India (Madras) on 10th June 1834 as a member of the Supreme Council of India. He returned to England early 1838, and resumed his writing career there. Macaulay was in India, thus, only for nearly four years, but he was destined to impact the lives of millions of Indians forever.

LORD MACAULAY'S ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT, 2 FEBRUARY, 1835

"I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation."

Chanakya's Quotes

CHANAKYA ON FRIENDSHIP ~ the ultimate truth in all relationships!

There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no Friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth!

CHANAKYA ON PEOPLE
- A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are victimised first.
- Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous.
- The fragrance of flowers spreads only in the direction of the wind. But the goodness of a person spreads in all direction.
- A man is great by deeds, not by birth.

CHANAKYA ON WORK
* Once you start a working on something, don't be afraid of failure and don't abandon it. People who work sincerely are the happiest.
* The biggest guru-mantra is: Never share your secrets with anybody! It will destroy you.
* Do not reveal what you have thought upon doing, but by wise council keep it secret being determined to carry it into execution.

CHANAKYA ON EDUCATION
8. Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.
9. Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.
10. One whose knowledge is confined to books and whose wealth is in the possession of others, can use neither his knowledge nor wealth when the need for them arises.

CHANAKYA ON LIFE
~ It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment's grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one's life.

Bio: Chanakya Chandragupta (350BC - 275BC) was a professor at the Takshashila University and is believed to be responsible for the creation of the Mauryan empire. He is well known as a politician, a strategist and a writer. (Source: Wikipedia)

Chanakya's side note: The world's biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman..:-)

(click on this poster)

It was never between you and them anyway.

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, People may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, People may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, They may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

~ Mother Teresa
(Photo credit: http://www.monroegallery.com)

Management Lessons

1. To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.

2. Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.

3. You don't need brains to be a Boss - any as$#%ole will do.

4a. Not everyone who drops shit on you is your enemy.

4b. Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend.

4c. And when you're in deep shit, keep your mouth shut!

(Source: Email)

Veenai - the 4000 years old string instrument

"Nobel Prize-winning physicist C.V. Raman has described the veena as having a unique construction. The string terminations at both ends are curved and not sharp. Also, the frets have much more curvature than any other instrument. This design produces more harmonics than any other instruments." - source: Wikipedia

be Blessed, if you can't get one..

1. The winds of grace are always blowing, but it is you who must raise your sails.
2. A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
~ Rabindranath Tagore (Nobel Prize in Literature 1913), author of India's national anthem.

1st Amendment to the US Constitution

RELIGION: Freedom to believe what you want to believe
SPEECH: Freedom to speak what you want to speak
PRESS: Freedom to write what you want to write
ASSEMBLY: Freedom to gather how you want to gather
PETITION: Freedom to protest what you want to protest

Sourcing sources!

"An oligarchy of private capital cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society because under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information."
~ Albert Einstein

Kitaro-Caravansaray

[Copyright belongs to LiveVideo.com]

Hurricane shines...(Ike, Sept. 13, 2008)

The 9th storm of the Atlantic hurricane season (2008) made a gentle trip to Bryan, TX too...

Our Destiny - ordered randomness

A beautiful composition by Vasanth Vaseegaran and thoughtful lyrics by Prashanth Nair.
"Are we destined to have a destiny? Who is the master of the plot? Is Karma a working model? Why are we here? Well this song won't answer all these questions but the better truth is 'Life is not predestined and ordered, it is chaotic rather. Perhaps living every moment and following your instinct is the best way of playing it.'"

{Vasanth & Prasanth, congrats on the superb rendition. Thanks for the permission too. All the best guys!}
[Photo credit: IR picture from cinesouth.com]

A dedication to human rights

The Internet has brought incredible gifts of self-expression to many people in the world, but as we celebrate and defend online freedom, we should remember that this is a very special condition of our circumstances. Not everyone in the world enjoys the freedom we are sharing right now. Many people in the world have to endure the indignity of forced silence, the fear of violence, the dread of arrest, the despair of imprisonment, the pain of torture, or the destruction of their natural environment.
Will history record the Internet revolution as the beginning of a new age of human freedom and human rights, or as the beginning of an irreversible global inequality in access to information and discourse? The choices we make now will determine the answer.
[from the official website of the String Theory]

our contributions, ignored?

"The children of the migrants of yesteryears have done no sin for their fundamental rights to be so questioned and they be decreed to the level of second-class citizens. We would have expected that after 50 years of independence we would have overgrown such suspicions and be capable of acting with a greater degree of maturity"
~ Human Resources Minister (Malaysia), Dr. S. Subramaniam

What the heck about being normal?

"Lately I have become nostalgic for the 'normal times'. I'm not sure how to define that except to say that those were the times when we Malaysians hung out with each other without things like race and religion constantly hanging over our heads. I don't understand the constant air of suspicion that arises these days, especially among the young."
~ Marina Mahathir

the Right for Trial

The fight for justice transcends racial boundaries. Nice to see the spirit I always wanted to in what I call my home country! ("since 1960, an estimated 10,000 Malaysians have been detained without being allowed their right to a fair trial in an open court")

Integration with distinction

Mahatma Gandhi has made it clear that he disapproved of seeking to convert people from one religion to another. Conversion would mean asking them to give up the use of names, symbols and rituals in which they were brought up from childhood and inducing them to adopt a new set of names, symbols and rituals. At the same time, people who follow one religion should understand the other religions professed by their fellow citizens. Most certainly, at least the religion of the vast bulk of our people which necessarily influences the life of the nation, should be understood by those who have been following other faiths. Integration does not mean the giving up of any creed or customs or the adoption of those of others but consists in all round sympathetic understanding.
~ C. Rajagopalachari

Corruption - legitimate!

Malaysia could take comfort in that the blights of crony capitalism and political corruption, in their infinite variations, are universal. In America, the transfer of money from interested parties to politicians is ‘political contributions'; in Malaysia, outright corruption. The intent is the same in both. Presumably when the transfer of money is receipted and duly claimed as ‘business expense,’it all miraculously becomes legitimate.
~ Bakri Musa

reality and perception

There is no actual racial issue in Malaysia, it is only incited and seeded into the public to create a scenario that best serves an authoritarian state to serve its own agenda against the goodwill and humanity for the Malaysian society that have co-existed irrespective of their colour, race, religion and creed.
~ Waythamoorthy

World: one land, abridged by water, fought for by many! (click on title for direct link)

Who says our Malay Rulers are new? The Malay Rulers had been established long before the portugese came in 1511.Our Malay Rulers are unique too and I would never want to compare our Malay Rulers with the Briton's. And I will never underestimate the events that shaped the Malays rulers as we see today.

Proto-Malays originating from Java began arriving between 1500 BC and 500 BC. There were numerous Malay kingdoms in the 2nd and 3rd century CE—as many as 30 according to Chinese sources.

There are reports of other areas older than Kedah—the ancient kingdom of Gangganegara, around Bruas in Perak, for instance, pushes Malaysian history even further into antiquity. If that is not enough, a Tamil poem, Pattinapillai, of the second century CE, describes goods from Kadaram heaped in the broad streets of the Chola capital; a seventh century Sanskrit drama, Kaumudhimahotsva, refers to Kedah as Kataha-nagari. The Agnipurana also mentions a territory known Anda-Kataha with one of its boundaries delineated by a peak, which scholars believe is Gunong Jerai. Stories from the Katasaritasagaram describe the elegance of life in Kataha.

Most of the history book only goes to the early 15th century, where the Sultanate of Malacca was established under a dynasty founded by Parameswara, a prince from Palembang with bloodline related to the royal home of Srivijaya, who fled from the island Temasek (now Singapore).

The first evidence of Islam in the Malay peninsula dates from the 14th century in Terengganu, but according to the Kedah Annals, the 9th Maharaja Derbar Raja di of Sultanate of Kedah converted to Islam and changed his name to Sultan Muzaffar Shah. Since then there have been 27 Sultans who ruled Kedah.

When Malacca was conquered by Portugal in 1511, the sons of the last Sultan of Malacca established two sultanates elsewhere in the peninsula—the Sultanate of Perak to the north, and the Sultanate of Johor (originally a continuation of the old Malacca sultanate) to the south.

After the fall of Malacca, three nations struggled for the control of Malacca Strait: the Portuguese (in Malacca), the Sultanate of Johor, and the Sultanate of Aceh. This conflict went on till 1641, when the Dutch (allied to the Sultanate of Johor) gained control of Malacca.

Britain established its first colony in the Malay peninsula in 1786 (in a way they cheated the sultan of Kedah to take over Penang)

During the late 19th century, many Malay states decided to obtain British help in settling their internal conflicts. British gunboat diplomacy was employed to bring about a peaceful resolution to civil disturbances caused by Chinese gangsters, and the Pangkor Treaty of 1874 paved the way for the expansion of British influence in Malaya.

Conscientious Personality Style

1. Hard work. The Conscientious person is dedicated to work, works very hard, and is capable of intense, single-minded effort.


2. The right thing. To be Conscientious is to be a person of conscience. These are men and women of strong moral principles and values. Opinions and beliefs on any subject are rarely held lightly. Conscientious individuals want to do the right thing.


3. The right way. Everything must be done "right," and the Conscientious person has a clear understanding of what that means, from the correct way to balance the checkbook, to the best strategy to achieve the boss's objectives, to how to fit every single dirty dish into the dishwasher.


4. Perfectionism. The Conscientious person likes all tasks and projects to be complete to the final detail, without even minor flaws. (A punctilious person?)

5. Perseverance. They stick to their convictions and opinions. Opposition only serves to strengthen their dogged determination.


6. Order and detail. Conscientious people like the appearance of orderliness and tidiness. They are good organizers, catalogers, and list makers. No detail is too small for Conscientious consideration.


7. Prudence. Thrifty, careful, and cautious in all areas of their lives, Conscientious individuals do not give in to reckless abandon or wild excess.


8. Accumulation. A "pack rat," the Conscientious person saves and collects things, reluctant to discard anything that has, formerly had, or someday may have value for him or her.

by John M. Oldham and Lois B. Morris (1995) in "The New Personality Self-Portrait: Why You Think, Work, Love and Act the Way You Do," New York: Bantam.
Cross-ref: http://www.ptypes.com/conscientious.html

Stones alone do not make a house...

Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.
~ Henri Poincare

the Causal explanation..

All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions.
Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.
~ Gautama Buddha (400 B.C.)

I.D.

The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. ID is thus a scientific disagreement with the core claim of evolutionary theory that the apparent design of living systems is an illusion.

In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection - how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose. Design detection is used in a number of scientific fields, including anthropology, forensic sciences that seek to explain the cause of events such as a death or fire, cryptanalysis and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). An inference that certain biological information may be the product of an intelligent cause can be tested or evaluated in the same manner as scientists daily test for design in other sciences.

ID is controversial because of the implications of its evidence, rather than the significant weight of its evidence. ID proponents believe science should be conducted objectively, without regard to the implications of its findings. This is particularly necessary in origins science because of its historical (and thus very subjective) nature, and because it is a science that unavoidably impacts religion.

(Source: http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/)

Human behavior!

Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this, e.g., no dog exchanges bones with another.
~ Adam Smith

Which came first - O2 or CO2?

Modern science now knows that there was no free oxygen in the early atmosphere, so that plants and trees HAD TO exist before any of the others, BECAUSE plants and trees GIVE OFF OXYGEN into the atmosphere. It is also now known that the early atmosphere could not have stopped most of the deadly incoming ultraviolet and cosmic rays from getting to the Earth's surface. So land-based animals would certainly have soon died. It was possible for fish to arise and to multiply and fill the seas, because the water protected them from that radiation. (The oxygen given off by plants and trees had first gradually gotten dissolved in the water by waves and such.)

(Source: http://mb-soft.com/believe/text/argument.htm)

listen about E=mc-squared from Einstein himself..!!

The Spacetime Fabric

by Franklin Delano Roosevelt

FDR's Four Freedoms (January 6, 1941):

1. Freedom of speech and expression-everywhere in the world.
2. Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way-everywhere in the world.
3. Freedom from want;economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.
4. Freedom from fear-anywhere in the world.

SOURCE: America - Our Next Chapter (C) 2008 by Chuck Hagel (ISBN: 978-0-06-143696-3)

A maturing democracy

The following are excerpts from the "America - Our Next Chapter" book:

1. The results have been of the greatest foreign policy fiascos in the history of our republic, thehemorrhaging of our national treasure and the sacrifice of thousands of young lives. Those who died gave their lives for the noble purpose of defending America. It was their leaders who failed them by committing them to a strategy that was flawed in its premises and botched in its execution.

2. Dialogue and engagement are the only way to strengthen the forces of moderation in a very complicated and dangerous world, the only way to convert mistrustful strangers into neighbors who-while they may not love each other-can at least coexist.

3. The administration adopted a unilateralist policy, pushed it through a politically cautious Congress, and sold it through the lens of fear to the American people, who were inclined to trust their elected leaders in the aftermath of nine eleven. Like most of the nation, Washington was caught up in the pervasive sloganeering. Congress was told to support our commander-in-chief. Don't ask questions; line up behind the president. Some of us in Congress who dared to question the president's policies were vilified as unpatriotic, as traitors, and of course as disloyal Republicans.

4. Lest we judge too harshly, we would do well to remember that nations develop in stages - just as American democracy advanced in stages: Less than 100 years ago American women did not have the right to vote, and until the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act (1960), African American citizens had limited rights.

5. The more I have traveled, meeting with world leaders and everyday people, the more I marvel at our system of government. There is no way that the Founders could have known that the Constitution they put in place would lead to a society of unlimited productivity and opportunity. How could they? There was no precedent. What they did know was that freedom under the rule of law is the basis for a society that is both just and dynamic.

6. Sitting by and passively enjoying the priviledges of citizenship in a free society without in some way serving the common good is the first step down the path to the decline of any republic. We are put on this earth to do something. In the words of Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing."

7. The Founders of our nation and authors of the Constitution conceived a beautiful, workable, and accountable system of government called "checks and balances." Sometimes we must check in order to balance. Members of the Congress take the same oath of office that the president does: to uphold and defend the Constitution of the US, not the president's (or anybody's) poll numbers. We all carry sacred constitutional responsibilities to protect America's individual liberties enshrined in the Constitution.

8. We can no longer take it for granted that our country will automatically continue to prosper if we do not plan for significant and wise investment to maintain the capabilities of our people and the infrastructure that has served us so well. After all, our infrastructure, as well as America's unique free-market economy, was built through investment.

9. While US freshman and sophomores in high school ranked near the bottom one-fifth in applying math concepts to the real world, a recent survey found that American youngsters spend more time watching television than they do in school. In 2005, 6 ouf of 10 corporate patent recipients in the US were not US companies. For 60 years, an enlightened immigration policy attracted the best and the brightest to our shores.

10. The money Congress spends is not the government's money. It's the people's money. They earned it. They worked for it. It's up to us to spend it wisely and responsibly. The impending retirement of the 70 million-strong "baby boom" generation will impact every aspect of our economy, government, and society.

11. There is a vacuum waiting to be filled. It will be filled, but whether it will be filled by good leaders or bad leaders-that is the issue. Leadership is an instinctive recognition. It is much more than world leaders or how they deliver them. Many politicians have a gift for language and eloquence, but they are not necessarily leaders. Nor does it have to do with just brainpower. Granted you need to have some intelligence, but there are many more intelligent people than there are leaders.

SOURCE: America - Our Next Chapter (C) 2008 by Chuck Hagel (ISBN: 978-0-06-143696-3)

Research, commerce and progress

Protecting that future starts with understanding that much of the wealth in this country (USA) comes from scientific research and technological innovation. Translating science into commerce has opened up vast new fields of endeavor and has raised the standard of living in America. The country that is on the cutting edge of developing new technology is the country best positioned to benefit from that new technology.

A clear example is biotechnology. The U.S. is a leader here, and is able to capitalize on its pre-eminence with disease-resistant crops, anticancer drugs and much more. By developing a strong understanding of the basic science that underlies advances in biotechnology, we are also creating a good training ground for a future generation of scientists and innovators.

But America cannot simply assume its lead in science will continue. In recent years the science community has been starved of the resources it needs. Young, new, energetic scientists are the seed corn of nearly all new scientific development. However, our schools, laboratories and granting agencies all, in one way or another, discourage launching a career in the sciences. There are few grants to live on; and both schools and laboratories have long since lost the sense of joy we remember from our younger days. Science can be exciting and attractive. But convincing bright students to become scientists requires a lot more than we are now providing.

A young university scientist today spends much of his or her time scouring up funding rather than wrestling out the secrets of nature. And the young are not so young. At the National Institutes of Health, the average age of a first grant is 42 for a Ph.D. and 44 for an M.D. We need policies that nurture excellence and give scientists independence at a younger age. And we need to make American science attractive to both those who were born here and those who were born abroad.

Source: Wall Street Journal, Thursday, April 17, 2008, pp. A 18
Cross-ref.: http://www.thedigitalghost.com/Brad/blog/?p=5130
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