Grammar's speaking for itself!

"Dear people, I don't mean to sound slutty but please use me all the time. Sincerely, Correct Grammar."

The bull's shit of Social Networking sites!

A comment I found on disinfo.com's "Assange: Facebook, Google, Yahoo spying tools for US intelligence" video:
'Let’s be honest Facebook would have to be the biggest compilation of bullshit on the face of the planet. The race to have most friends as some kind of score, exaggerations about who people are and what they do, false compliments, claims of liking something because it is marketed as being cool to like it and the list goes on. A flood of data mixed with a huge amount less than truthful entries makes it contaminated database.' [sic]

Third citation!

Just received this from ISI-WoK Citation Alert: "One new citation record this week". That makes it three so far after topping the Top Ten Most Downloaded Articles list for 20 months straight since July 2009!
{Appl. Mech. Rev., ISI 5-year IF = 6.4 (2010), h-Index = 53}

Difficult years are greatest years!

"Everybody has difficult years, but a lot of times those difficult years end up being the greatest years of your life, if you survive them."

Confucius

Woman asks:
If I sleep with 3 men, everyone calls me a slut. But when a man sleeps
with 8 girls, everyone calls him a real man. How come?

Man replies:
It's very simple. Confucius says 'When one lock can be opened by 3
different keys, it's a bad lock. But when one key can open 8 different locks, we call it a master key'.

Bonini's paradox

Models or simulations that explain the workings of complex systems are seemingly impossible to construct.

"As a model of a complex system becomes more complete, it becomes less understandable; for it to be more understandable it must be less complete and therefore less accurate. When the model becomes accurate, it is just as difficult to understand as the real-world processes it represents."

Truth is, at best, relative!

How to sell an Eskimo a freezer?

1. "When you throw a lot of money at something, you can sell an Eskimo a freezer."

2. The greatest teacher is not the man who supplies the most facts but the one in whose presence we become different people.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

3. The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

4. Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
~ Benjamin Franklin

5. The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand, as in what direction you are moving.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

The magic of nine

yn - ny = 9*(y-n)

y = 1, 2, 3,....,9
n = 1, 2, 3,....,9

Condition: 'y' must not be identical to 'n'

E.g., y = 5, n = 2 => yn = 52 (NOT 5*2=10)

DavidNV (c)2010

(You may post your thoughts / arguments in the comments link below.)

Stress Relaxation of a Twaron®/Natural Rubber Composite
Journal of Engineering Materials and Technology (Transactions of the ASME) 133, 011001:1-9 (2011)

http://link.aip.org/link/?JEMTA8/133/11001/1

What we don't know about iPhone (3GS)...

p6.
When on a call using the built-in audio receiver in iPhone, hold iPhone with the dock connector pointed down toward your shoulder to increase separation from the antenna.

When using iPhone near your body for voice calls or for wireless data transmission over a cellular network, keep iPhone at least 15 mm (5/8 inch)away from the body, and only use carrying cases, belt clips, or holders that do not have metal parts and that maintain at least 15 mm (5/8 inch) separation between iPhone and the body.

p8.
iPhone’s SAR measurement may exceed the FCC exposure guidelines for body-worn operation if positioned less than 15 mm (5/8 inch) from the body (e.g., when carrying iPhone in your pocket).

(Pix: macrumors.com)

An era without cell phones and the internet...

Do You Know? - वेद Veda

Childhood

'You're never too old to enjoy childhood'

Conversation between Claude Shannon and John von Neumann regarding what name to give to the “measure of uncertainty” or attenuation in phone-line signals (1949).

My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it ‘information’, but the word was overly used, so I decided to call it ‘uncertainty’. When I discussed it with John von Neumann, he had a better idea.

Von Neumann told me, ‘You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, nobody knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage. ”

Quote of all quotes

We r judged by what we finish not by what we start. ~ SRK

Get your free icons here

http://icons.mysitemyway.com/

Approved!! Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) - FRGS/2/2010/TK/UITM/02/15: Experimental Response Spectrum Investigation of the Shock Characteristics of Bio-based Foam Composites
__________________________________________________

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.
~ Francis Bacon (English statesman and philosopher, 1561-1626)

Steve Jobs on the stolen next-gen i-Phone

"This is a story that’s amazing. It’s got theft. It’s got buying stolen property. It’s got extortion. I’m sure there’s sex in there somewhere. Somebody should make a movie out of this."
(Quoted from Reuters, 6.2.10)

Blogging from iPhone

Hey thissa awesome!

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]