Conglomeration of wonders

To the best of my knowledge the only times the United States has had to defend “it’s self” (sic) – that is defend its own territory from an invader, in fully 240 years of US history, is 69 years ago when Pearl Harbor was attacked. I’d be happy to be corrected but, to the best of my knowledge, this is the only time US soil has been attacked by an aggressing invader (Mexico-US war doesn’t count because the US was the invader nor does the War of Independence, which happened before the US was a country and should be classified as a colonial power attempting to subjugate colonies in revolt, or defending those colonies not in revolt. Which I’m not suggesting is a good thing). There have been a few times US ships were attacked unprovoked and, although this was piracy 200 years ago, the US went to war over it with the Barbary Coast so that could be considered ‘self defense’ – but not of territory, of ships. Terrorist attacks, prior to 9/11, were never classified as attacks by one sovereign state on another (except by Israel – although until recently those terrorist groups were not in Government) By no means is the USA all bad nor were all invasions led by the US – Kosovo stands out as a decent reason - but we must not let rhetoric paint over the truth. Of approximately 170 foreign military excursions I am aware of in 240 years of US history, averaging one about every 18 months for 240 years, ‘self defense’ has been virtually unnecessary, pursuit of strategic or ideological goals via military conquest has been quite prominent and periodically there has been legitimate 'defense of another'. The latter two are what the US has used guns for, not self defense

The current generations have been influenced in their thinking about space travel by science fictions such as Star Trek, Star Gate, Star Wars, and UFOs. However, besides the limitations of physics, distance, time, and environmental limitations such as extreme temperatures, lack of oxygen, time of travel, storage space for food, and random space debris such as meteors, asteroids, and comets, there are the practical limitations of the laws of economics. The cost of extensive space travel by humans is probably not economically feasible. That is why unmanned space exploration is currently used. Large scale human operations on the Moon or other bodies in our solar system are to all intents and purposes economically unfeasible. Satellites, unmanned exploration vehicles with robotic devices, and unmanned rocket ships are the only economical means to explore bodies in space.

The prize money for 2010 Wimbledon winners for singles events (men's and women's) is £1,000,000.
And Runner-up is £500,000, if players reach the Semi-finalists they got £250,000 for Quarter-finalists £125,000 for Fourth round Losers £62,500 for Third round Losers £31,250 for Second round Losers for £18,750 for First round Losers £11,250.
The prize money for Doubles (men's and women's) Winners (per pair) is £240,000, for Mixed doubles
Winner (per pair) £92,000.
In Qualifying singles (men's and women's) the Third round losers got £7,000 and for Second round losers £3,500 and First round losers £1,750.
For the Wheelchair doubles the Winner (per pair) prize money is £7,000 .

At last the European country reopens the airspace. Well British Airway, Lufthansa and the other airlines must be receiving very well selected information.
Two Finnish Jets flying, unwittingly, through the ash yesterday had damaged engines from the ash content! Consequently Finland has enforced a further stop on flights.
Where did British Airway and the others conduct their tests?
While I feel for passengers, crew and even a bit for the airline companies, something is very wrong here and one can only suspect profit before safety. I hear that conditions have worsened over Britain

The latest edition of Sony cyber shot family is the shot DSC HX5V. It has specific features and easily fulfills the requirement of most non professional photographers.
The specific details are 10.2 mega pixels, ½.4 inch Exmor R CMOS image sensor, BIONZ processor, Sony G lens, 10X optical zoom, it has better battery life back up to 155 mins. And the LCD screen size is 7.6 cm i.e 3.0” , video recording 1920x1080 50i AVCHD format, internal memory up to 45 mb, weight 170g, and black and gold color are available.

Chennai super kings entered into semi final. The nail biting match turns with favor of Chennai super kings. The man mahendra singh dhoni strike at two big big six at the end of last over to won the match. The Indian premier league 54th match played between Chennai super kings and kings 11 Punjab. The toss won the Chennai and elect to field first, the Punjab end the innings with 192/3, SE marsh score 88 runs in 57 balls include 5 six and 8 four.
And Chennai continues his second innings with sparkling start at the end of 19.4 over Chennai achieved the target with 2 balls remaining. MS dhoni score 54 from 29 balls.

Those people whose aim is always low generally hit what they shoot at – nothing. Life need not be lived that way. I believe that one of the most powerful forces in the world is the will of the man who believes in himself, who dare to aim high and confidently goes after the things he wants from life… I can! It is powerful sentence… the gap between what a man thinks he can achieve and what is actually possible to him is very, very small. But first he must believe that he can.

“I CAN, I WILL”

I beg to differ with the phrase 'hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded'. There were 18, 600 flights cancelled alone yesterday. Assuming each aircraft had only 100 passengers that would be 1.8 million and most narrow body aircraft have typically 150 or more seats and wide body aircraft up to 3 times that. If we then factor in this is the third day of cancelled flights I would put a reasonable estimate of around 5 million passengers stranded. The math doesn’t add up with what's reported. The impact or consequence of delays is going to cost 1$Billions. Who is going to pay for his hotel bill for instance, the client? Lost productivity? Airlines already almost insolvent are going to have to pay wages, operating overheads and pay passenger compensation; it’s not looking good economically and could cause Europe to revert into recession if we don't get flying soon.

The Volcano ash problem looks pretty bad. As an aerospace expert I say we should thank the Russian airline which showed it can be done. It has done us a favor and demonstrated that it is SAFE to fly underneath the cloud of volcanic ash. However it means a lot more fuel has to use because of the higher air resistance at low levels. If the volcano keep spewing out ash like now for months there is no choice but to fly below the cloud of ash. Qantas please take note and put up a big fuel surcharge for flights to Europe!! You may even have to make new stopovers to top the extra fuel needed.

So, reading the Guardian sports pages for the past three days, it makes you wonder if all their sportswriters are getting payoffs from one of the big bookies - because they had practically placed the trophy in Murray's hands already, when anyone with half a brain knows that Federer in a slam final against a relatively inexperienced youngster, is always going to be the overwhelming favorite. I admire Federer's genius, but his mouth seems to have got the better of him lately - he seems to love the psychological aspects, pre-match. Is tennis now the new boxing?
And to the poster who said that Murray didn't beat Nadal - talk about trying to take the shine off Murray's tournament. He outfought and out thought Nadal. If Nadal really thought he might have a chance, he would have carried on, but you carry on believing that he was about to pull off a Tennis Houdini act, the rest of us will give Murray the credit for a valiant effort.

The 12th edition of women’s hockey world cup in 2010 will be hosted by Rosario.
The tournament is controlled by the international hockey federation (FIH), who has appointed the Argentina hockey federation as the official organizers.
Rosario city mayor Miguel lifschitz and the Argentina federation have signed a contract to designate Rosario as the venue of the tournament.
The city’s local government has committed to supply the necessary logistics and infrastructures for the tournament, which will be held between august 30 and September 10 in this year.

Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan tsvangirai is set to become prime minister, joining President Robert Mugabe in a unity government after decades of struggle to push him from power.
“Tsvangiral’s swearing in symbolizes a new era for the people of Zimbabwe, said Daniel making, a political analyst at the university of South Africa. More than half of the people need emergency food aid. Unemployment is at 94 percentages, only 20 percentages of children go to school because teachers haven’t been paid and exam not graded.

Positive attitude is essential for success and faith is important before you can see success. It is your attitude that will define how fast and how high you will grow in the business. The good news is that you don’t need to be born with it, but positive attitude can be developed. Positive attitude is determined by the association you keep. To development a positive attitude associative with positive people, read and listen to positive mental attitude books and tapes. This association of right minded people will lead you towards achieving your dreams and goals.
Faith can move mountains; faith is a very important part of leading a happy and successful life. You need to have faith in good.

Iran has successfully placed his satellite into orbit its first domestically made satellite, using an indigenous launcher.
Iran’s state media reported that the safir-2 rocket carried into space the satellite, named omid (hope). According to Iran’s press safir 2 rocket is an upgraded version of safir 1, which has been tested earlier.
The light weight satellite can carry out remote sensing and satellite telemetry operations. It is expected to have a maximum life of three months and will orbit the earth 15 times per day. The launch of the satellite coincides with the 30th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Legendary bollywood actor amitabh bachchan has been honored with the world economic forum’s crystal award at davos for his contribution to the world of cinemas.
Bachchan received the award along with another Indian artist Mallika sarabhai a kuchipudi and abharathnatayam danseuse.
Bachchan and sarabhai would be joining the league of farmed US cellist Yo-Yo Ma and British actress Emms Thompson, who bagged the award in 2008.

There is there is something to be said for a bowler at any level whether it be village, county or country to be able to hit off stump time and time again. And the value of such bowlers to a side is Cleary shown in the lack of consistently in the Australian attack since G.McGrath retired. The Australian side was using S. Clarke in a almost similar role but it value not on effort but more on injuries, and without a strong seamier to hold an end up it makes using spinners difficult to put pressure on, as was seen in that great combination of S.K.Warne/G.McGrath.

I think as 20/20 starts to engulf the cricket landscape bowlers such as this will die out in general - or end up being once in a generation. The only future stars from an Australian point of few I can see P.Siddle.

It was interesting to note that the thrust of this preview was towards increasing application use – I suspect Apple must be making profit from its app store. Developers will have access to Thousands of new APIs (which the developer can use to develop new types of app). App development will be restricted to Objective-C, C, and C++.
To clarify
User Pros

Multi-tasking - Full and partial - including seven background services: fast app switching, Audio, Video, Location, Push and local notifications.
App Folders – to increase handset available apps to 2160
Wallpaper, Mail – unified inbox, better encryption.
SSL VPN, eBooks, social gaming for games apps
hopefully, many new types of app to become available.
Cons
iAd (in HTML5) the ads will have access to your private information?, are fully interactive, but will only interrupt you 10 times a day! The profit from the ads will be split 60/40 between developers and Apple.

The full update will only be available to 3gs users (during the summer – about the same time as the iPhone 4 is released), and iPad users in the autumn.
The reality is that this update should bring the iPhone up to the level of functionality (rather than usability at which it beats all comers) to the latest non Apple Smartphone's of six to twelve months ago.

Not very en lightening. But then, even proper reviews never get to the heart of the matter. Nearly all high tech phones have the same functions. What is important is how easy, fast, convenient they are to use. I am still using a Treo 650 Smartphone, launched circa 2005, because nothing comes close to the Palm OS (now de function) for ease of use, speed of navigation, speed of loading apps, availability of apps. It remains one of the smartest of smart phones. But then Palm came from a PIM/PDA history and got these things right early. Trouble is, they seem to have forgotten it all with their latest dreadful Web OS. Pull your socks up Palm.