Thought these 4 bullet points are good tips for life...found it while reading about something on Mindmapping...a technique to organize ideas and to facilitate problem solving, which I was reading about this morning as I was preparing for some work (coordinating a brainstorming session) for this coming week.

Anyways, here goes..

1. Learn to manage your time better.
2. Make your brain your hobby. When you invest interest in your brain it pays you back a much greater interest. It's the best investment you can make.
3. Stay physically fit. When you're physically fit, your brain gets as much as 50% more oxygen per second every day of your life.
4. Learn at least one new subject every year. Could be astronomy - go to the planetarium and drift around in the stars for a while. It could be Chinese archaeology. It could be the guitar. Could be learning about a different profession that you'd never really thought about before, like mushroom growing. But learn something new to keep the brain stimulated.

===
I do #2 and #4 a lot.. but keep trying to improve on #1 and #3...

P.S. As part of my continuing efforts on #4, here is my work for the day... I have heard his name before but am going to do my 'learning' today about Edward de Bono, who over the years has popularized the idea of Lateral Thinking through his books, lectures and courses and spawned a whole genre of lateral thinking puzzles!

Miscallaneous News from this weekend..

Sherpa breaks records by climbing Mt Everest for 16th time

A small, nondescript village in the central Doaba region of India's northern Punjab state has successfully turned the tide over the high number of male births.

The state governor of India's western state of Rajasthan has refused to sign a contentious religious freedom bill. Pratibha Patil's refusal comes amid widespread criticism of the bill, which would ban people from being converted to religions against their will. (Previously - India law bans forced conversion
and State to bar religious conversion)

http://web.mid-day.com/sports/international/2006/may/137612.htm DUJON

I finally read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (still on my to-read books list is his first book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference ) and I will write about my own thoughts about the book soon... in the meantime read Rachel Donadio's praise in the NYT for Malcolm Gladwell, wondering if The Tipping Point and Blink, which have made the author a global phenomenon, have made the author 'the Dale Carnegie, or perhaps the Norman Vincent Peale, of the iPod generation.'

She writes about the 'Gladwell effect', which has made the author 'an all-out international phenomenon — and has helped create a highly contagious hybrid genre of nonfiction, one that takes a nonthreatening and counterintuitive look at pop culture and the mysteries of the everyday. In the past year, several other books in the Gladwell vein have appeared. They include the best-selling Freakonomics (NYT Review, Authors' blog) a breezy collection of case studies by Steven Levitt, an economist at the University of Chicago, and the journalist Stephen Dubner'; The Wisdom of Crowds (The NYT Review), a business book for thinking people in which the New Yorker writer James Surowiecki argues that groups are collectively smarter and more innovative than individuals; and Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, Steven Johnson's case that pop culture is becoming increasingly sophisticated.' (Note: I've modified/added the hyperlinks but the words are from Donadio's article)

---

Link via Amit Varma's blog about a review by Malcom Gladwell on a book that looks at performance in sport in an entirely new way.

...what a long ways we have come..atleast on the ODI side.

Greg Chappell is India's new coach - May 20, 2005

We shall continue to strive for excellence.. ('Commitment to excellence will be the watchword' - Greg Chappell, May 20, 2005)

Ran into the phrase 'Masters of War' in context of reading something about Bush/Rumsfeld this morning and so did a search to see who came up with this phraseology. Looks like the original reference is a Bob Dylan song (if someone can find me an even earlier reference, please email me.) but it has been referenced in the last few years quite a few times with reference to Bush administration policies.

Masters of War - A review of Todd S. Purdum's " A Time of our Choosing: America's War in Iraq" by Michael Lind (From the The New York Times, November 30, 2003)

Moments of Truth, Masters of War by Paul Street, March 18, 2003

Bush and His Masters of War, by Joyce Marcel, March 21, 2003

Iraq Heartache by David Corn, October 27, 2004

Masters of War; Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire by Carl Boggs (Also read excerpts from the book here)

Related Books:

Imperial Delusions : American Militarism and Endless War (Polemics) by Carl Boggs
The American Way of War by Russell F. Weigley
American Empire : The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy by Andrew Bacevich
The New American Militarism : How Americans Are Seduced by War by Andrew Bacevich
The Sorrows of Empire : Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic [The American Empire Project] by Chalmers Johnson
Blowback : The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (Second Edition) by Chalmers Johnson
America Right or Wrong : An Anatomy of American Nationalism by Anatol Lieven
Killing Hope : U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II-Updated Through 2003 by William Blum
The Politics of Truth by Joseph Wilson
Disarmament Sketches by Thomas Graham
Disarmament Sketches by Thomas Graham
Disarmament Sketches by Thomas Graham
Ghost Wars by Steve Coll
Disarmament Sketches by Thomas Graham
War Made Easy : How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death by Norman Solomon
Truth, Torture, and the American Way : The History and Consequences of U.S. Involvement in Torture by Jennifer K. Harbury
Lying for Empire : How to Commit War Crimes With a Straight Face by David Model
State of War : The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration by James Risen
The War On Truth: 9/11, Disinformation And The Anatomy Of Terrorism by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil by Michael C. Ruppert
The New American Empire by Rodrigue Tremblay

And finally the last word by Chomsky.
Failed States : The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy by Noam Chomsky

Masters of War
( Bob Dylan)

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave

'Til I'm sure that you're dead

© 1963 Bob Dylan

(Title is take-off on the TV show, 'Everybody Hates Chris' by Chris Rock, about his childhood growing up in Brooklyn. The show is on UPN and is not as popular as it should be..funny, funny show!)

--
Lara returns for 3rd stint as West Indies captain

Richardson disagrees with Lara' s appointment

Richards surprised by Lara's appointment


Everyone seems to be against Lara! Chanderpaul obviously was not fit to be captain and had been forced into the role because there was no one else to take over the job and so the choice of Lara makes sense to me as a temporary stop-gap measure till World Cup 2007 (nothing wrong with that, Viv!) instead of putting Sarwan through the same excercise as they did with Chanderpaul. Sarwan didn't really step up to the plate and seem excited to take on that responsibility. He seems more in the Chanderpaul mold as a leader (great individual player but not a leader*) than say a Lloyd or even a Richards and WI has more to lose if under the pressure of captaincy, Sarwan's batting suffers than what it will gain by having him as captain. The others in the team are either too junior or not too sure of their place in the side even!

* The same can be said about Tendulkar or even Lara maybe... two of the greatest batsmen ever but certainly not good stints as captains. Maybe with that individual streak of genius comes a self-obsession and self-commitment that kinda goes against the grain of being a good captain? Qualities needed in a good captain (Vaughn, Brearly, etc.) come not from being the best batsman or bowler in the team but the most astute and the best team player..

Halliburton earned a record $2.4 billion last year (2005 Annual report), but Houston executives will forgo Texas-sized luxury when they come to this rural Oklahoma county seat this week. Halliburton Co. says it moved its meeting to this company town of 22,500 to honor its southern Oklahoma roots. The company's critics accuse it of running to a prairie outpost to hide.

Re: 2004 Annual Report (pdf), Warprofiteers.com reported - On May 18,2005, Halliburton will hold its annual shareholders meeting at the Four Seasons hotel in downtown Houston. Inside, CEO David Lesar will be congratulating himself on the astonishing $7.1 billion revenue the company has made off its recent work in Iraq. This number is double what the company made in the war-torn country the previous year and boosts Halliburton 's overall revenue some 25 percent, bringing it to over $20 billion for 2004.

Last year... On March 19, more than 250 protesters demonstrated outside of the Halliburton shareholder meeting in Houston. The demonstrators far outnumbered the number of shareholders who attended the company's annual meeting at the Four Seasons hotel. Coinciding with the annual Halliburton shareholders meeting a report: "Houston We Still Have a Problem" was issued by CorpWatch. The report, which is an alternative annual Report on Halliburton is co-authored by by Andrea Buffa and Pratap Chatterjee.

This year, CorpWatch and its partners today released an alternative annual report on Halliburton titled: "Hurricane Halliburton - Conflict, Climate Change and Catastrophe." The new report was prepared in association with Asociacion Civil Labor in Peru, Environmental Rights Action Nigeria (members of the Friends of the Earth International network), HalliburtonWatch and the Oil & Gas Project. - May 15th, 2006

Yesterday had read this link about a Malaysian wingnut.... (Obviously, wingnuts are in all countries ... )

A Malaysian opposition Islamist lawmaker drew heavy criticism from his own party and government lawmakers Friday after he called divorced women prostitutes and lustful. Abdul Fatah Harun, a Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party member, said most divorced women were not 'sad and quiet' like widows, but were 'easily spotted'' at parties displaying 'gatal' behavior (Malay-language word meaning 'lewd' or 'lustful' and is usually used in a derogatory manner), his party's newspaper quoted him as telling parliament on Wednesday. He also said most divorced women were prostitutes.

Today, I ran into this odd story also from Malaysia. Now this is someone they'd deem a "Gatal" and some may not argue against it .. ;) Uggh..see the picture in the link!! I am all for freedom to love and marry anyone you please but they sure do make an odd couple..

Woman, 104, takes man, 33, as husband No. 21

A 33-year-old man in northern Malaysia has married a 104-year-old woman, saying mutual respect and friendship had turned to love...

Absolutely unbelievable story via India Uncut (reproducing his post here in full - in italics)...

Scammed by a Nigerian

There's one thing that you can take for granted for common spam: people fall for them. If they didn't have victims, the costs of sending those mails, however negligible they may be, wouldn't be worth it for the spammers. So somewhere on the net there are people who want their thingies enlarged, who try to encash winning lottery tickets they never bought, who buy OEM software, and who help Ngbobe Obucha get his millions out of Nigeria. What are these people like, one wonders.

Well, the New Yorker relates the fascinating story of John W Worley, a psychotherapist from Massachusetts who was both victim and accomplice of a Nigerian email scam. I wonder if it's just a coincidence that Worley was a deeply religious man, for that would indicate a certain readymade gullibility. After all, if you are so eager to believe in one kind of fiction for your salvation...

I am amazed that there actually are scammers, whole hordes of them in Lagos, who are planning out these scams in great intricacy and moreso that there are thousands of people (even so-called men of “integrity and honesty') who actually fall for this too! I always dismissed emails I get like this as dead-end spam mails that go nowhere... obviously, all scam has a source and the source has an intent, which some people, in their naivete and/or greed, help them fulfill....

Particularly interesting is this paragraph from the New Yorker article..

Robert B. Reich, the former Labor Secretary, who has studied the psychology of market behavior, says, “American culture is uniquely prone to the ‘too good to miss’ fallacy. ‘Opportunity’ is our favorite word. What may seem reckless and feckless and hapless to people in many parts of the world seems a justifiable risk to Americans.” But appetite for risk is only part of it. A mark must be willing to pursue a fortune of questionable origin. The mind-set was best explained by the linguist David W. Maurer in his classic 1940 book, “The Big Con”: “As the lust for large and easy profits is fanned into a hot flame, the mark puts all his scruples behind him. He closes out his bank account, liquidates his property, borrows from his friends, embezzles from his employer or his clients. In the mad frenzy of cheating someone else, he is unaware of the fact that he is the real victim, carefully selected and fatted for the kill. Thus arises the trite but none the less sage maxim: ‘You can’t cheat an honest man.’ ”

Although I take a very serious view of such religious dogma and bigotry at my Religious Dogma compilation, maybe I should add a link to your post there...as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on my aversion to believe-in-my-god-or-go-to-hell bigots - espcially holier-than-thou bigots who scream from their pulpits about Satan 'going to be trying to destroy you every inch of the way.' Looks like though he took it to be God's will, Satan misled him here, huh? :)

... NOT!

Four planeloads of AK-47 assault rifles that had been used in the Bosnian war were bought by the US military and were supposed to be shipped to Iraq. But the Iraqi security forces never got them. No-one knows for sure who did get the 200,000 rifles, but many fear that they wound up in the hands of terrorists - via LiberalAvenger.com and also cross posted at appletree

New York Times ponders, What Is the Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years?

All reviews, otherwise mentioned, are NY Times reviews

Early this year, the Book Review's editor, Sam Tanenhaus, sent out a short letter to a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify "the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years." [Read A. O. Scott's essay. See a list of the judges.] Following are the results.

THE WINNER:

§ Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987) - Review

THE RUNNERS-UP:

§ Underworld, Don DeLillo - Review

§ Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy (1985) - Review

§ Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels, John Updike (1995)

o Review: 'Rabbit at Rest' (1990)

o Review: 'Rabbit Is Rich' (1981)

o Review: 'Rabbit Redux' (1971)

o Review: 'Rabbit, Run' (1960)

§ American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997) - Review

THE FOLLOWING BOOKS ALSO RECEIVED MULTIPLE VOTES:

§ A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole (1980) - Review

§ Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson (1980) - (This book was not reviewed by The Times. Read a review from the Guardian here.)

§ Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin (1983) - Review

§ White Noise, Don DeLillo (1985) - Review

§ The Counterlife, Philip Roth (1986) - Review

§ Libra, Don DeLillo (1988) - Review

§ Where I'm Calling From, Raymond Carver (1988) - Review

§ The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990) - Review

§ Mating, Norman Rush (1991) - Review

§ Jesus' Son, Denis Johnson (1992) - Review

§ Operation Shylock, Philip Roth (1993) - Review

§ Independence Day, Richard Ford (1995) - Review

§ Sabbath's Theater, Philip Roth (1995) - Review

§ Border Trilogy, Cormac McCarthy (1999)

o Review: 'Cities of the Plain' (1998)

o Review: 'The Crossing' (1994)

o Review: 'All the Pretty Horses' (1992)

§ The Human Stain, Philip Roth (2000) - Review

§ The Known World, Edward P. Jones (2003) - Review

§ The Plot Against America, Philip Roth (2004) - Review

Briefly blogged about this before.. but more details and an update here.

S. Korean Cloning Scientist Hwang Indicted
South Korean prosecutors indicted disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk Friday on charges of fraud, embezzlement and bioethics violations in a scandal over faked stem cell research that shook the scientific community. Five members of Hwang's research team were indicted on lesser charges, prosecution official Lee In-kyu said in a nationally televised news conference. The 52-year-old scientist faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted. The first hearing is expected in mid-June, said prosecutor Hong Man-pyo.

I say, good riddance to a guy who brought a lot of infamy to Korea and a big setback to the already controversial field of embryonic cloning and stem cell research. Life in prison does seem a harsh verdict though ...maybe he can clone himself and leave his clone to rot in jail, huh? :)

---

Background

Read the BBC's Profile & the Wikipedia entry for Hwang, from the Seoul National University

Timeline of a controversy

• August 3, 2005 came the big announcement: South Korean scientists unveil first dog clone
  

  Meet Snuppy Scientists in South Korea have produced the first dog clones, they report (subscription to magazine needed to access this link) in Nature magazine... - via BBC News. Also read the Onion's take on dog cloning :) Apparently, the dogs are chasing the cats in the cloning worldalso.. Feb 15, 2002: Copy Cat: Cat Cloning success at Texas A&M.

• 11/24/05: South Koreans campaigned 'to save the country's pioneer in cloning, Hwang Woo-suk, who is facing a tough challenge in his stem-cell work in the wake of a scandal over violation of ethics guidelines.'

And then everything went downhill with these reports...

• 12/2/05: Truth vs. Nationalism: Hwang Cloning Scandal Invokes Nationalism
• 12/3/05: S Korea cloning research was fake
• 12/15/05: Dr. Hwang Dropped from Scientific American 50 for Faking Research
• 12/16/05: New York Times analysis: Scandal for Cloning Embryos: 'A Tragic Turn' for Science by Gina Kolata. Also read related articles in NYT:
  
  • Korean Scientist Said to Admit Fabrication in a Cloning Study (December 16, 2005)
  • American Co-Author Wants His Name Off Stem Cell Paper (December 14, 2005)
  • New Criticism Rages Over South Korean Cell Research (December 10, 2005)
  • New Questions on a Breakthrough in Human Stem Cell Research (December 6, 2005)
  • South Koreans Rush to Defend Cloning Researcher Against Criticism (November 29, 2005)
• 1/1/06: South Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk, who has been indicted of faking his research data on human cloning, yesterday denied he had any involvement in doctoring data in his famous paper on human embryo cloning, published in May 2005 in the journal Science.
• 1/10/06: Nature magazine reports with the Verdict: Hwang's human stem cells were all fake - Landmark papers shown to be fraudulent, but Snuppy turns out to be a real cloned dog. Also read this viewpoint from the BBC on 'The fall of a scientific 'rock star'' and the BBC Science editor's article on this controversy: Only last summer his government gave him the Orwellian title of "Supreme Scientist". They promised funding of up to $15m after he claimed to have extracted human stem cells from embryos he had cloned. The investigation panel did offer Dr Hwang one small saving grace - finding that Snuppy, his claimed "world first" cloned dog, is genuine.
• 1/10/06: Science takes stock after clone row
• 1/10/06: A good article on the issue: It was late on a Wednesday night in February 2004 that Dr Hwang Woo-suk and his entourage swept into the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Seattle to meet the BBC. The South Korean scientists had just flown in to the US city to announce an astonishing breakthrough: they had cloned 30 human embryos and managed to extract stem cells from one of them. Not only was that landmark 2004 work highly dubious, Hwang's research published a year later on cloned personalised stem cell lines was also built on fabricated data.
• 1/12/06: Prosecutors Raid Hwang’s House - Disgraced Scientist Faces Fraud, Embezzlement Charges
• 1/12/06: Hwang apologises to South Koreans
• 1/13/06: Disgraced gene scientist puts blame on team
• 1/13/06: Korea's national shock at scandal
• 1/13/06: Journal retracts Hwang research
• 1/23/06: S Korea probes stem cell trials
• 2/26/06: An Internet-based group of young Korean science researchers plan to document scandal surrounding discredited gene scientist Hwang Woo-suk. the
• 3/21/06: University fires professor at centre of cloning fraud

Update: August 2006 - Researcher who faked cloning data gets new job

Expect oil companies to say price of oil has gone up again due to some Nigerian oil blast... (sarcasm)

A ruptured gas pipeline exploded as villagers collected fuel in southwestern Nigeria Friday, killing up to 200 people and leaving charred bodies scattered around the blast site.

Grr..this has happened before too! How many times does this have to happen before the buffoons (aah..there's another applicable word to rhyme with loon-goon-cartoon from before!) realize not to go to leaking conduits to get gas... i guess the greed/temptation is too much!

By the way, very interesting today - it seems, Nigeria 'has the world's third largest film industry after Hollywood and Bollywood. Most of the movies are dirt cheap, straight-to-video voodoo horror flicks - but millions of fans can't get enough of them.'

---

First three news items here are from this week alone..

Series of Bombs Hit Ethiopia's Capital

SOMALIA: More deaths in third day of Mogadishu fighting

In Uganda today: African leaders turned out in force on Friday for the inauguration of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, showing solidarity with a leader accused by the West of using undemocratic means to cling to power.
Just couple weeks back: Uganda: War-torn northern region faces Cholera break
Also read: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002988325_reneestearns12.htm

What a war-ravaged disease & AIDS-ridden mess Africa is. Dukhad..

It seems 'There are currently fifteen African countries involved in war, or are experiencing post-war conflict and tension. In West Africa, the countries include Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Togo. In East Africa, the countries include Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda. In Central Africa, the countries include Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda. In North Africa, the country is Algeria and in South Africa, the countries include Angola and Zimbabwe.'

Seirra Leone, Democratic Rep. of Congo, Rwanda's horrors, Sudan (Darfur)...and so on ...the story is the same everywhere... nepotism, corruption of the highest level, tribal warfare, and a handful of people looting the natural resources of the continent (environmental disasters galore) at the expense of the horrifying rape, mutilation, murders, and unimaginable suffering of millions. What a sad state of affairs :(