why me worry

"When Sachin Tendulkar travelled to Pakistan to face one of the finest bowling attacks ever assembled in cricket, Michael Schumacher was yet to race a F1 car, Lance Armstrong had never been to the Tour de France, Diego Maradona was still the captain of a world champion Argentina team, Pete Sampras had never won a Grand Slam. When Tendulkar embarked on a glorious career taming Imran and company, Roger Federer was a name unheard of; Lionel Messi was in his nappies, Usain Bolt was an unknown kid in the Jamaican backwaters. The Berlin Wall was still intact, USSR was one big, big country, Dr Manmohan Singh was yet to "open" the Nehruvian economy. It seems while Time was having his toll on every individual on the face of this planet, he excused one man. Time stands frozen in front of Sachin Tendulkar. We have had champions, we have had legends, but we have never had another Sachin Tendulkar and we never will."

People! The fake IPL player on our channel is indeed the real deal! if you have not heard of the fake IPL player, google him! he's one of India's most popular blogger. He is so crazy about accessible content that he has actually started posting his entire book as audio files, free! Just for the members of inclusiveplanet.com!

With well wishers like these, what me worry!

Check out the Gamechangers on http://www.inclusiveplanet.com/en/group/495133

Best
Anant

recently, i was talking to I planet's developer's about removing the "x" and "y" are now friends thing, and though not completely, but the following post is kind of relates with it and tells why i want it to get removed.
originally, i've posted it few days back on my blog at
www.myfriendprateek.blogspot.com
just thought to post here as well, and gather your inputs.
so, read, and tell what do you think about it, do you agree?


Today when so many people we barely know are “friends” on our social networking sites, I am reminded of an episode long time ago. I think I was in class
4 or 5. I knew a girl in my class who I rarely interacted with. She had her own set of friends, belonged to a different state, spoke a different language,
and had nothing in common with me. We sat in opposite corners of the classroom. She was short and I was tall, and thus never even stood close to each other
in those queues we made during the assembly. The only time I heard her name and her voice was when the teacher took the class attendance every morning
and I heard her “present ma’am”.

It so happened that my father happened to know her father, which we discovered accidentally. My father had to go meet her father for some work and asked
me if I would like to tag along and visit my friend. I was not very excited at the thought of it and hence decided to stay home.

The rest of the story, we heard from my father. He was at their place when my friend entered to say hi. My father smiled and asked her if she knew he was
her school friend’s father. To which she smiled and said yes, and corrected my father saying “Although he is not a friend, he is a classmate”.

My father was very intrigued with the wisdom of a 11 year old. When I heard this, I was angry at first, but later realized that what she said was not to
demean or insult me, she just spoke the truth. We must have barely spoken 3 times in school, sat at different corners, never shared or food, never hung
out with the same set of friends, and had nothing in common.

Years later, I still appreciate the wisdom of what she said. We use the word “friend” in very general terms, referring to anyone we meet in the train,
work with, go to school with, are neighbors with, or even study in the same class with. You go to a class with classmates, go to work with colleagues,
and so on. Friend cannot be a generalized word used to describe classmates, colleagues, or contacts. Someone who is not a friend doesn’t necessarily have
to be an enemy. But not everyone you are civil to and in good terms with is a friend.

On the same note, it would be interesting to have categories like classmates, colleagues, contacts, neighbors, relatives, etc. on these social networking
sites. True, not everyone is a friend.

Constant change of moods is called mood swings.
But when it’s excessive?
People especially understanding pals try to channalise that person to come out of it.
But when it unexpectedly triggers?

The person experiencing such swings will suddenly blabber out something,
At the end, jabbers as sorry,
The person can’t help except stating it,
But the results would be?

This moody person will not think about the mind state of the other person.
However, once done, is considered over, isn’t it?

How can this moody, exceedingly gloomy person come out of it?
Is it so tough?
Is it impossible?
How can it be avoided?

The love of eating often come up in these pages, which made me wonder; do especially girls on the Planet [but also the boys]not worry about that infamous thing that women all over the World fear so much?

Of course, if you have been “reading” the correct magazines, you would have known that a little fat on a woman is actually very sexy, especially when that “fat” is situated in the right places! It has been scientifically proofed that fat stores more of the female hormone, and this may explain the sexiness of so many women.

Yet, for some stupid reason, all the magazines and books have always been telling us all that a girl should be very slim, and generally shapeless. And it seems the most women around the World were so stupid as to believe all this crap, leading to all kinds of money-making diets, courses and cosmetic operations. Some of them have done nothing else with their lifes, but try to get slim, and it led to only problems.

Nobody ever asked any man what he thinks, what he likes a woman to look like, they just went on trying to look like anorexia’s. I’m sure there must be men who would prefer a little fat on the right place; I mean, I myself am a big fan of the bra, especially of it’s contents! And I generally like softness, so maybe a bony creature could hurt the gentle skin of my hands. [HAHAHA!]

But, then, maybe, girls don’t really go through all that trauma of trying to be thin for the comfort of our men, but why then?

O no, don’t worry; eat what you feel like eating, your body will tell you what it wants, as long as you don’t overdo it. Like everything else in life, one can, of course, overeat, and therein could lay a problem…
But, generally I have found that girls, who don’t seem to worry much about fat, are generally more happy and relaxed.

And, I have had in my life, many fattish girl friends, which I really liked for their sunny personalities. After all, it wasn’t their looks that attracted me, it was their minds!

And, when it comes to men; well, according to my understanding, men are ugly, anyway, so I don’t much care what they look like, they’ve got nothing I’d like to touch.

Now, let us hear what YOU think about all this!!

Of course, how much you need to eat, depends on your size;
Elephant or mouse? Squeak up!!!

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley


- what me worry :)

Some unknown author wrote this; I agree with him/her, so I wish to share it with you:


CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE
1920's, 30's 40's, 50's, 60's, and 70's!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us
and lived in houses made of asbestos.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer. Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitch hiking!!!

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a Bakkie on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds, KFC, Steers, Nandos. Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on the weekends, somehow we didn't starve to death!

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Chappies, Wilson 's Toffees, Wicks Bubble Gum and some crackers to blow up frogs with.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!! We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and cubby houses and played
in river beds with matchbox cars.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on DSTV, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no Lawsuits from these accidents. Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time.......no really!

We were given pellet guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays!!

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

We played 3 tins, rounders, bare feet soccer, hide and seek, hopscotch and read comic books.

Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet!

RUGBY and CRICKET had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on MERIT AND NOT DUE TO BLACKMAIL, THREATS AND GUILT FROM THE PAST..... strange but true!

Our teachers used to belt us with big sticks and leather straps and bully's always ruled the playground at school.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of: They actually sided with the law!

Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'

Yet, this generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 70 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our 'own good'.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

PS -The big type is because your eyes are not too good at your age anymore …

So, Why me worry?

This next story was sent to me, I don't know who wrote it, or whether there was a message for me in it, yet I feel it interesting advice:

Despite your best intentions and efforts, the reality is that you have to play. If you want to get ahead, you have to pay as much attention to office politics as you do your job description. You will have to be aware of the shifting agendas, imbalances of power, hidden motives and swift-moving unseen forces that are shaping your workplace. No one checks their human nature at the door, so the quicker you become a student of human nature, the better off you are.

Office politics, however, don't have to be dirty. Here are a few sound rules that you can follow to keep on the safe side at all times:

• Always keep it professional. No back-stabbing, gossiping, sleeping your way to the top, taking credit for other people's work, and temper tantrums when you don't get your way.
• Play the game being played, not the one you think should be played. Things rarely are the way we think they should be or they way we want them to be. Take a step back, watch carefully, and determine who they players are and what their game is.
• Don't make enemies and don't burn bridges - you never know who you may need to work with! This doesn't only refer to your current job either. You may work with a current co-worker at a future company!
• Try to avoid bypassing your superior's authority unless ABSOLUTELY necessary. Even when you know you'll be hitting your head against the proverbial brick wall, it's always advisable to go that route first.
• Don't make others look bad - you'll be the one looking bad in the end.
• Don't criticise employees or bosses. If you have a performance-related issue, deal with it appropriately and tactfully.
• Establish mutually beneficial relationships with key people in your organisation.
• Ask a respected "higher-up" to be your mentor. You'll have someone on your side when you need someone to stand up for you.
• Deliberately go the extra mile. Stay late one night to help a co-worker on a deadline. Send a handwritten thank-you note to the person who helped you with your PowerPoint presentation.
• Do visible, important tasks. If such tasks aren't in your job description, volunteer to take on some extra responsibility. Be sure everyone knows you did the work. You might, for example, e-mail key employees a draft of your project's final report "for feedback" to ensure that no one steals the credit for your work.
• Gab is not always a gift! Don't assume everything you share with co-workers will remain secret.
• Cultivate a positive, professional image of yourself and maintain it. Decide on your goals, discover and define what sets you apart, and start marketing your personal brand.
• Be pleasant. Moaning and groaning will never get you anywhere.
• Be assertive and tough when required.

If you abide by these suggestions, you will not slip under the radar - and you should keep off other people's toes. However, we're all only human, and you are likely to be on the wrong side of someone at some point during your career. Don't revert to dirty tricks and back-stabbing then either. Deal with it early and effectively.

An interesting post on a mailing list i was following the other day

On 26 February 2010 00:21, John Rae wrote:

The Utility of Assassination

By George Friedman
Globe and Mail, Feb. 25, 2010

The apparent Israeli assassination of a Hamas operative in the United Arab
Emirates turned into a bizarre event replete with numerous fraudulent
passports, alleged Israeli operatives caught on videotape and international
outrage (much of it feigned), more over the use of fraudulent passports than
over the operative's death. If we are to believe the media, it took nearly
20 people and an international incident to kill him.

STRATFOR has written on the details of the killing as we have learned of
them, but we see this as an occasion to address a broader question: the role
of assassination in international politics.

Defining Assassination We should begin by defining what we mean by
assassination.

It is the killing of a particular individual for political purposes. It
differs from the killing of a spouse's lover because it is political. It
differs from the killing of a soldier on the battlefield in that the soldier
is anonymous and is not killed because of who he is but because of the army
he is serving in.

The question of assassination, in the current jargon "targeted killing,"
raises the issue of its purpose. Apart from malice and revenge, as in
Abraham Lincoln's assassination, the purpose of assassination is to achieve
a particular political end by weakening an enemy in some way. Thus, the
killing of Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto by the Americans in World War II was a
targeted killing, an assassination. His movements were known, and the
Americans had the opportunity to kill him.

Killing an incompetent commander would be counterproductive, but Yamamoto
was a superb strategist, without peer in the Japanese navy. Killing him
would weaken Japan's war effort, or at least have a reasonable chance of
doing so.

With all the others dying around him in the Midst of war, the moral choice
did not seem complex then, nor does it seem complex now.

Such occasions rarely occur on the battlefield. There are few commanders who
could not readily be replaced, and perhaps even replaced by someone more
able. In any event, it is difficult to locate enemy commanders, meaning the
opportunity to kill them rarely arises. And as commanders ask their troops
to risk their lives, they have no moral claim to immunity from danger.

Now, take another case. Assume that the leader of a country were singular
and irreplaceable, something very few are. But think of Fidel Castro, whose
central role in the Cuban government was undeniable. Assume that he is the
enemy of another country like the United States. It is an unofficial
hostility - no war has been declared - but a very real one nonetheless. Is
it illegitimate to try to kill such a leader in a bid to destroy his regime?


Let's move that question to Adolph Hitler, the gold standard of evil. Would
it be inappropriate to have sought to kill him in 1938 based on the type of
regime he had created and what he said that he would do with it?

If the position is that killing Hitler would have been immoral, then we have
a serious question about the moral standards being used. The more complex
case is Castro. He is certainly no Hitler, but neither is he the romantic
democratic revolutionary some have painted him as being. But if it is
legitimate to kill Castro, then where is the line drawn? Who is it not
legitimate to kill?

As with Yamamoto, the number of instances in which killing a political
leader would make a difference in policy or in the regime's strength is
extremely limited. In most cases, the argument against assassination is not
moral but
practical: It would make no difference if the target in question lives or
dies. But where it would make a difference, the moral argument becomes
difficult.

If we establish that Hitler was a legitimate target, then we have
established that there is not an absolute ban on political assassination.
The question is what the threshold must be.

All of this is a preface to the killing in the United Arab Emirates, because
that represents a third case. Since the rise of the modern intelligence
apparatus, covert arms have frequently been attached to them. The
nation-states of the 20th century all had intelligence organizations. These
organizations carried out a range of clandestine operations beyond
collecting intelligence, from supplying weapons to friendly political groups
in foreign countries to overthrowing regimes to underwriting terrorist
operations.

During the latter half of the century, nonstate-based covert organizations
were developed.
As European empires collapsed, political movements wishing to take control
created covert warfare apparatuses to force the Europeans out or defeat
political competitors.

Israel's state-based intelligence system emerged from one created before the
Jewish state's independence. The various Palestinian factions created their
own.
Beyond this, of course, groups like al Qaeda created their own covert
capabilities, against which the United States has arrayed its own massive
covert capability.

Assassinations Today The contemporary reality is not a battlefield on which
a Yamamoto might be singled out or a charismatic political leader whose
death might destroy his regime. Rather, a great deal of contemporary
international politics and warfare is built around these covert
capabilities. In the case of Hamas, the mission of these covert operations
is to secure the resources necessary for Hamas to engage Israeli forces on
terms favorable to them, from terror to rocket attacks.

For Israel, covert operations exist to shut off resources to Hamas (and
other groups), leaving them unable to engage or resist Israel.

Expressed this way, covert warfare makes sense, particularly for the
Israelis when they engage the clandestine efforts of Hamas. Hamas is moving
covertly to secure resources. Its game is to evade the Israelis.

The Israeli goal is to identify and eliminate the covert capability. Hamas
is the hunted, Israel the hunter here. Apparently the hunter and hunted met
in the United Arab Emirates, and the hunted was killed.

But there are complexities here. First, in warfare, the goal is to render
the enemy incapable of resisting. Killing just any group of enemy soldiers
is not the point.

Indeed, diverting resources to engage the enemy on the margins, leaving the
center of gravity of the enemy force untouched, harms far more than it
helps.

Covert warfare is different from conventional warfare, but the essential
question stands:
Is the target you are destroying essential to the enemy's ability to fight?
And
even more important, as the end of all war is political, does defeating this
enemy bring you closer to your political goals?

Covert organizations, like armies, are designed to survive attrition. It is
expected that operatives will be detected and killed; the system is designed
to survive that.

The goal of covert warfare is either to penetrate the enemy so deeply, or
destroy one or more people so essential to the operation of the group, that
the covert organization stops functioning. All covert organizations are
designed to stop this from happening. They achieve this through redundancy
and regeneration.

After the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972, the Israelis mounted an
intense covert operation to identify, penetrate and destroy the movement -
called Black September - that mounted the attack.

Black September was not simply a separate movement but a front for various
Palestinian factions. Killing those involved with Munich would not paralyze
Black September, and destroying Black September did not destroy the
Palestinian movement.

That movement had redundancy - the ability to shift new capable people into
the roles of those killed - and therefore could regenerate, training and
deploying fresh operatives.

The mission was successfully carried out, but the mission was poorly
designed. Like a general using overwhelming force to destroy a marginal
element of the enemy army, the Israelis focused their covert capability to
destroy elements whose destruction would not give the Israelis what they
wanted - the destruction of the various Palestinian covert capabilities. It
might have been politically necessary for the Israeli public, it might have
been emotionally satisfying, but the Israeli's enemies weren't broken.

Consider that Entebbe occurred in 1976. If Israel's goal in targeting Black
September was the suppression of terrorism by Palestinian groups, the
assault on one group did not end the threat from other groups. Therefore,
the political ends the Israelis sought were not achieved. The Palestinians
did not become weaker.

The year 1972 was not the high point of the Palestinian movement
politically. It became stronger over time, gaining substantial international
legitimacy.

If the mission was to break the Palestinian covert apparatus to weaken the
Palestinian capability and weaken its political power, the covert war of
eliminating specific individuals identified as enemy operatives failed. The
operatives very often were killed, but the operation did not yield the
desired outcome.

And here lies the real dilemma of assassination. It is extraordinarily rare
to identify a person whose death would materially weaken a substantial
political movement in some definitive sense - i.e., where if the person
died, then the movement would be finished. This is particularly true for
nationalist movements that can draw on a very large pool of people and
talent. It is equally hard to reduce a movement quickly enough to destroy
the organization's redundancy and regenerative capability.

Doing so requires extraordinary intelligence penetration as well as a
massive covert effort, so such an effort quickly reveals the penetration and
identifies your own operatives.

A single swift, global blow is what is dreamt of. Covert war actually works
as a battle of attrition, involving the slow accumulation of intelligence,
the organization of the strike, the assassination. At that point, one man is
dead, a man whose replacement is undoubtedly already trained. Others are
killed, but the critical mass is never reached, and there is no one target
who if killed would cause everything to change.

In war there is a terrible tension between the emotions of the public and
the cold logic that must drive the general. In covert warfare, there is
tremendous emotional satisfaction to the country when it is revealed that
someone it regards as not only an enemy, but someone responsible for the
deaths of their countryman, has been killed.

But the generals or directors of intelligence can't afford this
satisfaction. They have limited resources, which must be devoted to
achieving their country's political goals and assuring its safety. Those
resources have to be used effectively.

There are few Hitlers whose death is morally demanded and might have a
practical effect. Most such killings are both morally and practically
ambiguous. In covert warfare, even if you concede every moral point about
the wickedness of your enemy, you must raise the question as to whether all
of your efforts are having any real effect on the enemy in the long run. If
they can simply replace the man you killed, while training ten more
operatives in the meantime, you have achieved little. If the enemy keeps
becoming politically more successful, then the strategy must be re-examined.

We are not writing this as pacifists; we do not believe the killing of
enemies is to be avoided. And we certainly do not believe that the morally
incoherent strictures of what is called international law should guide any
country in protecting itself.

What we are addressing here is the effectiveness of assassination in waging
Covert warfare. Too frequently, it does not, in our mind, represent a
successful solution to the military and political threat posed by covert
organizations. It might bring an enemy to justice, and it might well disrupt
an organization for a while or even render a specific organization
untenable. But in the covert wars of the 20th century, the occasions when
covert operations - including assassinations - achieved the political ends
being pursued were rare. That does not mean they never did. It does mean
that the utility of assassination as a main part of covert warfare needs to
be considered carefully. Assassination is not without cost, and in war, all
actions must be evaluated rigorously in terms of cost versus benefit.


_______________________________________________

viewpoints@screenreview.org
http://screenreview.org/mailman/listinfo/viewpoints

my take is this, sometimes, the most oppresive of despots, the craziest of revolutionaries, the bloodiest of military campaigns... can have a silver lining.

If Chengis Khan died when he was 30, renaissance would have taken a little longer, Had Cortez not been crazy about El Dorado, we wouldn't have had carnivals. Heck, if Mr. Stalin had been assassinated as plotted, the world would still have it's sympathies for a system as corruptable as communism!

Moral of the story: what me worry!

Best
Anant

Now that our friend Tomi, has mentioned it, it got me thinking. He mentioned something, somewhere about his eyes, which are rolling, and the effects it may have on others. This has always happened to me; when I’m talking to someone in front of me, he/she starts acting all funny, looking around him/her, or completely ignoring what I’m trying to say.

Maybe, they don’t understand; my eyes may look normal, except for their rolling around. You see, they are trying their utter best to see you, so they have to roll around until they can see at least a bit of you, although not much. And that seems to put others off. I don’t walk with a cane or a dog, so most of the time they think there’s nothing wrong with my eyes, and very often, they seemed to think I’m just plain mad or stupid. Until they got the surprise of their lifes!

You see, I believe you should use what you have, as best as possible, so I am always trying my best to use every little bit of eyesight I still have left, which is not much, but at least it is not completely black around me And I have noticed. That some times I can see a little more than other times.

Maybe I should wear dark glasses, so others cannot see my eyes, but I don’t find that very comfortable.

What irritates the hell out of me, is when I’m talking to someone, he/she would suddenly start talking to someone else who had just arrived, completely cutting off the conversation he/she was having with me; as if I’m not important, what I say or think means nothing, is just not important; he/she has caught the eye of another, and now they are chatting. And often, they don’t even notice it if I slip away. I think this is real bad manners!

Has it happened to you? How do you effectively communicate with sighted people in your immediate surroundings?

Or is it just that I have a face for radio?