shocking man, shocking; not funny. My classmate used to do that - didn't hurt his knees.


Ms. Harmony's 6 grade story just set off some bells; meaning what i thought was insignificant is no longer so.

The family moved during my 7th grade so I transferred to a new school / new town. In school final i was barred from sports. For the wrong reason (according to me) - was a bit dense on social matters (sorry to disappoint - nothing to do with girls - refused to do something and the headmistress felt slighted).

When a fella is solid on sports - sure to get some medals in final year - then barred; i think this cycle sets into a Karmic Cycle

Impressive. This jogs my memory.
In 6th Grade, we were such a large class (35) back-benches escaped noticed. (The girls in the front benches). I don't recall how we managed till the bell rang for sports.

It was a missionary school, very large grounds, sports every last hour - the brothers played football (soccer) with us. what a relief. Explains why i prefer / do better outdoors than in office.

I've been plodding through some school textbooks on math and science; trying to supplement here and there with interesting applications and it occurred to me that school teachers are the Single Most Important influence in a student's life; who he / she becomes, how well he does in future.

Leaving aside parents, (how many have time anyway to be of help in high school) -- I would like to know if you believe that a teacher had a positive influence in your life. I don't seem to have had anything significant except when they corrected my homework and got a laugh out of it. Funny, how i remember them all.

Or maybe its easier in UK, because there have a Queen(?)

Had to look up the word, okay,
Time to nucleotide up
Absolutely tru.

Hope late is not Too Late.

Wow!!

Neelam, hope the guy will be okay

you know Boys
Half the time we are searching for love; it is right besides us and we don't know it; because we are chasing someone far away.

And then when the person besides us leaves
We fall, into obsession and think it as love.

You don't have to reply.
Best wishes

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-6203539/Former-MP-Ann-Widdecombe-says-todays-women-making-pathetic-whines-special-privileges.html

The whine and the Whings,
The moan and the Groan
The mee and the Mee toos
Men, you are Corn

To explain Fuller's write to my younger relatives (in college) I had included comments. These I have retained in this post. (Explains why Fuller's write inspires me)

God is a Verb
By R Buckminster Fuller, published in The Whole Earth Catalog, 1968
Professor Fuller was the inventor of the Geodesic Domes.



Reminds when Kepler discovered the Planetary Laws - he felt God's hand.
Similarly inventing the domes - how could Fuller explain it?



The moment Fuller brought in Love (and as God's purpose) i thought it was time to leave but luckily...



So there is amidst chaos, order. To see this one has to include, refine and balance. One possible reason for Fuller to touch on chaos and order is because in the Dome he invented, the frames mimicked the cells laid out in plant tissues and so on.



finally to the message:



The phrase intellectually anticipatory competency - sounds like math (if only i had paid more attention)
Is there a way to rewrite this last para in English?

Oh, yeah; is God a Verb?
(or may be we are His verbs)

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-predicts-internet-split-china.html

What Schmidt doesn't say is interesting. Google is already offering censored version of it's search engine to China

Google China is likely to face an Aramco repeat.

For the price of staying neutral in one of the middle eastern wars, US Government awarded the share holding to the Saudis. Saudi Aramco is wholly Saudi owned.

Ha, ha, ha; thanks for clearing up on the 'paddle'. Used to play TT

As in real world, root cause is swept away. It's like the case of the thief who first complains to the police that somebody stole his watch. When the victim comes around - he gets the 3rd degree.

On a more serious note, while in Europe and in the East (India, China, Japan, S. Korea) there is considerable effort to improve the quality in the public schools; (inter-active teaching) things appear to be going downhill in US.

Chilling to read - what Americans have to say on reasons for not wearing school uniforms. In India, we consider uniforms as the great leveler.

https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-American-students-wear-uniforms

Schools interest me because I sometimes visit them as guest speaker, presenting importance of empirical reasoning and so on.

Legit - till you find the new place, suggest a wash clothes line with old curtains clipped on. Win-win.


Dog barking 5 am?
Obviously he's calling up your dog.

Had a neighbor (young and pretty) who locked in her dog for the weekend. Maybe she left food and water and TV on. One miserable weekend.

I don't think Americans (Trump supporters) have the knowledge on business with Russians. In India, we do a lot. Many of our government projects like the blast furnace within steel plants or metro underground where water table is high are contracted out to Russian government owned agencies. Normally, the head of this project is a secretary of the Communist Party (who keeps an eye on the site people).

The two ways of doing business is 1) with Russian government agency called the public sector who install hi-tech vertical turbines. If a turbine shipment arrives with broken package; the Russian technician will not erect it even when his checks confirm that the shaft is within its natural sag. Reason is, if the turbine performance fails, he could be sent to Siberia.

2)With the newly created Russian privately owned firms, it's the other way around. If payment is delayed; they will walk away from the project - midway. You are right, these guys are thugs. In some fairness, they have to be else they couldn't have started their firm with KGB and other officials waxing their mustaches. They buy up assets with ready cash and so cheaply. Cash is king. How did they get the initial cash? Example, selling smuggled goods - big market in Russia for western consumer products.

So what 33 year old Jack Bryan has written, is common knowledge here. As my project guide used to say, if you want to become a businessman, (in India); you have to begin by exploiting the poor. He should know, he got his PhD from Moscow University (way back, when it was still the USSR).

Met Americans, average Americans, no.

Anyway, i came across this link to the silent American in a CNN interview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUg5ud8eM-k

Staged? Maybe

-- xx --

With jobs being scarce world over it appears that traditionally socialists and liberals world over are leaning to the right..., Australia, France and of course India.

Another interesting observation i came across was from An American comparing politician's personal lives in US and France (from Quora)

In Trump’s World: Point 6 - US Visa and Green Card restrictions
Increased restrictions since 2016 reverberated as follows. Indian software firms having offices in the US began replacing Indians with US citizens.

Indian talent whose education was heavily subsidized by Indian taxpayers, (a 4 year college course in an elite institution costs less than $10,000) stopped chasing the dollar and turned to innovation in their home country. High time; since outsourcing our talent for decades had left us with a thinner soup.

On the American side: Going beyond the all time low in employment levels, the industry is staring at a shortfall of technically skilled. Paul Ryan mentions Mr. Trump facilitating (some subsidised) higher technical education scheme.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/watch-paul-ryan-news-conference-after-nyt-column-and-trump-shutdown-threat.html

From the several points so far I think the World is seeing a President who means business and not the usual politician who hold positions using questionable debating skills; but never worked a job or run a business that created jobs.

Rivers, you already a winner. In India, roughest job is on oil rigs,
3 months on, 1 month off (12 hour shift) - confined space

start planning for that vacation - 24/7
oops, hold off; no point wasting all that blood money

sorry, not including a hug; cause of garlic breath.
Anyway, Blondey's good for two.

In Trump's World = Point 7: Fake News - worldwide
We know the several variations of Fake News takes but consider this: Chinese Media almost started a border war!

This was as recently as last year, during the Indo-China border dispute, Chinese Media published a series on the confrontation and campaigned for 'inevitable war' which the Indian media duly printed.

Media Drive:
What powers the Indian Media is clear: Corporate Advertising.
But what powered Chinese Media sufficiently to influence Chinese public opinion and flare up their passion? Would it have impacted Chinese policy makers?

Fortunately not. President Xi and PM Modi maintained their silence and duly sorted it out. In fact, President Xi fired one of their leading generals (inside source).

The Headlines are common in Newspapers around the world!
The Guardian (UK) was the first to launch an attack on Mr Trump during campaign. (Surprising, since it was The Guardian who ‘made’ WikiLeaks public).

Does the Guardian, in the name of free speech have the right to attack a candidate in a foreign democratic process? We don't know because the US media followed it up with their broadside and all was lost in the bedlam (world over). This is how Media works - carry the same headline (with a predetermined tilt) - and the repetition makes them unaccountable.

'Fake News' - only the US President could have dared to say it and he has. It's become the most dreaded word. Now Indian news media and intellectuals are rethinking. I wouldn't be surprised if this term has also affected ISIS propaganda / recruitment.

In the following link, Sarah Sanders presents the numbers to a CNN reporter 'who complained about the protection of the first amendment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W03fVvEX8d0

Thank you, Mr. Trump

Trump’s World – contd.
8) Terrorism has come down several notches: For us to be on the same page lets backtrack a little to a few questions:

a) Was Syria betrayed?
b) What compelled Merkel and Europe to take in the refugees?
c) The psychological battering that Muslim ideologists world over have received from the new President

This is a long post, since either it is told the right way; or not at all. It is also based on my working in the Middle East - quite close to Syria in 2011 -12.

a) We begin with recent event: One salvo of 60 missiles was fired at select targets in Syria in response to Assad’s chemical attack. So what’s unusual? Russia was informed prior to the firing.

Why is Syria important? After all the battles there are between Muslims, right? More specifically between the two divisions of the believers of Islam; the Shia who consider themselves as the Progressives (Iraq) and are contemptuous of the Conservatives, the Sunni. The Sunni consider themselves as the true believers and constitute the majority in Syria (as in Saudi Arabia, Eygpt, Pakistan and in India). Assad and his military are Shia ruling over the majority Sunni Syrians.

The unexpected: Syria, home of the conservatives launched the Arab Spring. This shook the Emirate rulers. Eventually, there was arms supplied covertly but these were sophisticated and the civilians were not trained to use them. So in 2011-12; it was a stalemate. The UN refused to intervene.

Ancient Allepo was the Rome of Middle East; it is now in tatters. My friend (Indian) travelled from Beirut to Allepo by road recently and he was saying that the women were selling themselves on the streets, for food.

Now imagine if the Arab Spring had succeeded – it would have been the first civilian rule in the Middle Eastern world. But President Obama limited American assistance to no-fly zones, restraining Assad from airborne chemical attacks. Putin took advantage of this and allowed the Islamic Caliphate from Iraq. This twofold attack on the civilians exacerbated the crisis leading to the exodus of refugees to EU (2013). In effect, Syrian Resistance that was armed by Obama government, was left to themselves, betrayed.

This was not the first instance of betrayal in the Arab world.


--xx—
b) And so EU’s Merkel opened the doors to immigrants, decent people who had left their homes under threat from Assad / ISIS combo; and then imposed immigration quota on other EU countries as Germany got overwhelmed. What else could she do? Go to war and remove the root cause ‘Assad’ because American leadership refused to do more than create no-fly zones? All she could do and did convince Canada and the US to take in the refugees.

US agreed to 10,000 refugees; this was before the Boston Bombing. So why then the bombing?
Because if you help the Sunni refugees, the Shia are outraged and vice-a-versa.
--xx--

Now to the Sunni refugees in their new homelands; great, but no jobs. So predictably youth formed gangs and began to bite the hand that was feeding them; harassing women on the streets.
--xx –

c) Then comes the new American President and all he says is “Muslim Ban”. The world sits up. This includes, the field terrorists, their financial sponsors and ideologists; and of course the Muslim Mayor of London who retaliates by banning the American President from entering London!!

ISIS threats are real and present. As recently as a week ago, we in India received a threat from ISIS on bombing a Krishna temple in a southern state that is now reeling under unprecedented floods. (ISIS looks for soft targets).

So while these threats hang; the one thing that has been achieved on Muslim community is a psychological shakeup. President Trump has battered Islamic ideology by exposing its basic flaw that is, a Muslim may kill a non believer to find his place in Paradise.

In what has been a socially sensitive and politically correct world; President Trump has declared that he will search, locate and wipe out ISIS. No world leader had till date declared war on ISIS / terrorism; because ISIS field operatives live in their midst.

Corollary 1: President Trump may be termed as a braggart by his people but ISIS believe that the President’s threat is for real. Terrorism has dropped down several notches since his assuming the Office.

Corr 2: States sponsoring Terrorism are now on world radar. Pakistan's proxy military government, for instance.
---xx---

Apologies for writing in so pompous a manner – on terrorism, seems there’s no other way

Don't see any thumbs up (or down) so question remains; should we move onto the more important Point 7 - or leave it here.

In Trump's World - contd.

9) US Dollar: S&P appears to be debating on downgrading US based on 21.46 trillion Debt. What happens then?

China has a GDP of 14 trillion and 5 trillion Debt.
USA GDP is at 20 trillion with 21.46 Debt

IMF forecasts:
Chinese GDP to grow to 21.5 trillion by 2023
and US to 24 trillion by 2022

- source Statista.com



So President Trump raising taxes on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports means bicycles would become costly in the US. This may not be much, still a beginning.

Else, within next 5 years, the World may shift from the dollar and peg their currency to the Yen.

--xx --

As I said, i am an admirer of Bill Clinton. It was Bill who stopped India from retaliating on Pakistan after the attempted attack on our Parliament. I'm glad we were stopped.

We know Mr Clinton pondered over the economy to a level of obsession; closing down naval bases and other cuts on Federal spending. I believe Mr. Clinton may have done better than applying Tariff over cheap Chinese goods. If only the Republicans (Starr) had not walled him down during his second term.

Corollary: Under Clinton's watch, and subsequently; World economy would have been chasing real assets instead of buying into Wall St. subprime.

Of course 9/11 came in the way.

if this post makes sense, thumbs up and we will move to Point 8.

Very insightful. TY
These days its children who believe in marriage.
They want to see both parents together, at least till they reach their teen years.

In Trump's World:

As far as US domestic issues are concerned, I have limited knowledge and no interests but if we look up the influence the current US President is having on the world stage then there are 10 solid events if not more. You already know them but when you keep aside party polarization you may agree or amend this Indian’s point of view. So here goes:

10) N. Korea: NK’s third missile test blew up at launch – resulting in a massive crater caught by satellites. Anybody could see that if that missile had been armed with nuclear war heads…,

The point here is, Trump’s Government instead of parodying NK warmed up an opening by sending his daughter to the winter games in SK (correct me if I’m wrong). You see, South and North Koreans actually think as one nation; one has the money and the other the arms. This is based on my friends who are S. Koreans (SK companies in India). So it was a real relief for them that this war was won without a shot. What is India’s interest? NK was selling nuclear know how to our brother Cain.

Corollary: In this context when the President insists that NATO allies, Japan and others should contribute more to their defense: makes good sense because 20 years from now the alignments may change. After all these years, my brother Cain is no longer in US good books. Right?

Question is why didn't earlier Presidents including Bill Clinton (whom I admire) did not move to plug this major fiscal leak?