Unconditional Love....

A story is told about a soldier who was finally coming home after having fought in Vietnam. He called his parents from San Francisco.
"Mom and Dad, I'm coming home, but I've a favor to ask. I have a friend I'd like to bring home with me."

"Sure," they replied, "we'd love to meet him."

"There's something you should know the son continued, "he was hurt pretty badly in the fighting. He stepped on a land mind and lost an arm and a leg. He has nowhere else to go, and I want him to come live with us."

"I'm sorry to hear that, son. Maybe we can help him find somewhere to live."

"No, Mom and Dad, I want him to live with us."

"Son," said the father, "you don't know what you're asking. Someone with such a handicap would be a terrible burden on us. We have our own lives to live, and we can't let something like this interfere with our lives. I think you should just come home and forget about this guy. He'll find a way to live on his own."

At that point, the son hung up the phone. The parents heard nothing more from him. A few days later, however, they received a call from the San Francisco police. Their son had died after falling from a building, they were told. The police believed it was suicide. The grief-stricken parents flew to San Francisco and were taken to the city morgue to identify the body of their son. They recognized him, but to their horror they also discovered something they didn't know, their son had only one arm and one leg.

The parents in this story are like many of us. We find it easy to love those who are good-looking or fun to have around, but we don't like people who inconvenience us or make us feel uncomfortable. We would rather stay away from people who aren't as healthy, beautiful, or smart as we are. Thankfully, there's someone who won't treat us that way. Someone who loves us with an unconditional love that welcomes us into the forever family, regardless of how messed up we are.


There's a miracle called Friendship That dwells in the heart You don't know how it happens Or when it gets started But you know the special lift It always brings And you realize that Friendship Is God's most precious gift!

Friends are a very rare jewel, indeed. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed They lend an ear, they share a word of praise, and they always want to open their hearts to us.

YOUR LIFE IS NOT A COINCIDENCE. IT'S A REFLECTION OF YOU!

A son and his father were walking on the mountains.

Suddenly, his son falls, hurts himself and screams: "AAAhhhhhhhhhhh!!!"

To his surprise, he hears the voice repeating, somewhere in the mountain: "AAAhhhhhhhhhhh!!!"

Curious, he yells: "Who are you?"
He receives the answer: "Who are you?"

And then he screams to the mountain: "I admire you!"
The voice answers: "I admire you!"

Angered at the response, he screams: "Coward!"
He receives the answer: "Coward!"

He looks to his father and asks: "What's going on?"
The father smiles and says: "My son, pay attention."

Again the man screams: "You are a champion!"
The voice answers: "You are a champion!"

The boy is surprised, but does not understand.

Then the father explains:
"People call this ECHO, but really this is LIFE.
It gives you back everything you say or do.
Our life is simply a reflection of our actions.
If you want more love in the world, create more love in your heart.
If you want more competence in your team, improve your competence.
This relationship applies to everything, in all aspects of life;
Life will give you back everything you have given to it."

YOUR LIFE IS NOT A COINCIDENCE. IT'S A REFLECTION OF YOU!"

Hilarous Cartoon...

Correct answer in the Exam

TWELVE BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

From "The Sunday Times",UK:


Principia Mathematica (1687) by Isaac Newton

Married Love (1918) by Marie Stopes

Magna Carta (1215) by members of the English ruling classes

Book of Rules of Association Football (1863) by a group of former English public-school men

On the Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin

On the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1789) by William Wilberforce in Parliament, immediately printed in several versions
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) by Mary Wollstonecraft

Experimental Researches in Electricity (three volumes, 1839, 1844, 1855) by Michael Faraday

Patent Specification for Arkwright’s Spinning Machine (1769) by Richard Arkwright

The King James Bible (1611) by William Tyndale and 54 scholars appointed by the king

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) by Adam Smith
The First Folio (1623) by William Shakespeare

Quote for the month

I spelt and dreamed that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted, and behold, service was joy.
-Rabindranath Tagore.

Formula for Success

A man approached JP Morgan, held up an envelope, and said,“Sir, in my hand I hold a guaranteed formula for success, which I will gladly sell you for $25,000.”

“Sir,” JP Morgan replied, “I do not know what is in the envelope, however if you show me, and I like it, I give you my word as a gentleman that I will pay you what you ask.”

The man agreed to the terms, and handed over the envelope. JP Morgan opened it, and extracted a single sheet of paper. He gave it one look, a mere glance, then handed the piece of paper back to the gent. And paid him the agreed-upon $25,000.

The Paper:1. Every morning, write a list of the things that need to be done that day.
2. Do them.

The Worst: Stupid Engineering Mistakes

Taken from wired magazine:

1. St. Francis Dam, 1928
Self-taught engineer William Mulholland built this LA dam on a defective foundation and ignored the geology of the surrounding canyon. He also dismissed cracks that formed as soon as the reservoir behind it was filled. Five days later, it ruptured, killing 450 people and destroying entire towns (along with Mulholland’s career).

2. Kansas City Hyatt walkways, 1981
Walkways crisscrossing the hotel’s multistory atrium collapsed, domino-style, raining debris and hundreds of people onto the packed dance contest below. The cause: grossly negligent design and use of beams that could support only 30 percent of the load.

3. Vasa, 1628
Three hundred years before the Titanic, the Vasa was the biggest sailing vessel of its day. The overloaded ship ruled the seas for all of a mile before she took on water through her too-low gun ports and promptly capsized.

4. Northeastern US power grid, 1965
A single protective relay tripped in Ontario, overloading nearby circuits and causing a cascade of outages that left 30 million homes without power for up to 13 hours. A fragile, redundancy-free design ensured that it would happen eventually. After decades of repairs and upgrades, it happened again in 2003.

5. McDonnell Douglas DC-10, 1970s
Nearly a thousand people around the world lost their lives while the kinks were being ironed out of this 290-ton competitor to Boeing’s 747. Blown-out cargo doors, shredded hydraulic lines, and engines dropped midflight were just a few of the behemoth’s early problems.

6. Firestone 500 tires, 1970s
These steel-belted radials allowed water to seep under the tread, which caused the belting to rust and the tread to separate, typically at high speeds. Dozens of deaths later, Firestone blamed consumers, then recalled 10 million tires.

7. Purity Distilling Company tank, 1919
You gotta keep your molasses somewhere – how about a rickety tank 50 feet tall and 90 feet in diameter in the middle of Boston? The structure was painted brown to hide the leaks. Eventually it burst (possibly exploding from fermentation), sending waves of molasses up to 15 feet high into the city and killing 21.

8. Skylab, 1973
America’s first space station was hopelessly damaged at launch because designers failed to account for the aerodynamics of the meteoroid shield and solar panels. When crews weren’t busy making repairs, they complained of the extreme heat on board.

9. Citigroup Center, 1978
Last-minute changes to structural braces of this Manhattan tower left it vulnerable to collapse in high winds. With a hurricane bearing down on the city, builders rushed to strengthen it by welding 2-inch steel plates over 200 weakly bolted joints.

10. R101 airship, 1930
Seven years before the Hindenburg disaster, the British thought 5.5 million cubic feet of hydrogen in a bubble of fabric would make for a fun way to get around. On her maiden flight, the airship’s cover was blown open by wind, and from there it was oh-the-humanity city

Some Favorite Quotes

Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it -Alan Kay

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth but supreme beauty -- a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trapping of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry- Bertrand Russell

There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses. (Bjarne Stroustrup)

Style is time’s fool. Form is time’s student.(Stewart Brand )

You can accomplish anything you want in life provided you don’t mind who gets the credit.(Harry S Truman)

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.( Gandhi)

Remember what the fellow said: In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. And in Switzerland they had brotherly love and 500 years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock -Harry Lime (Orson Welles), The Third Man

The mathematician's patterns, like those of the painter's or the poet's, the ideas, like the colours or words, must fit together in a harmonious way. There is no permanent place in this world for ugly mathematics. - G.H. Hardy (in "A Mathematician's Apology")
Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler -Albert Einstein

Omit needless words - Strunk & White, The Elements of Style

If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is - John von Neumann

In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them - John von Neumann

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
- Alan Perlis

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...' - Isaac Asimov
I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours - Henry David Thoreau

To be original you must listen to the voice of your heart rather than the clamor of the world — and have the courage to teach publicly what you have learned. The source of all genius is sincerity; men would be wiser if they were more moral - Ludwig Borne

I was worth about a million dollars when I was twenty-three, and about ten million when

I was twenty-four, and about a hundred million when I was twenty-five, but it didn't matter because I never did it for the money - Steve Jobs

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man - Bertrand Russell

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, or seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you'll get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man. - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Adolescent

We should forget about small efficiences, say, about 97% of the time. Premature optimization is the root of all evil. - Donald E. Knuth

The world would be a better place if Larry Wall had been born in Iceland, or any other country where the native language actually has syntax.- Anon.

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare

Computers work. People think. - IBM Poster

Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him? ~Chuang Tzu
Jamal: They have this writing contest at school. You ever enter one of those?
Forrester: Yes, once.
Jamal: Yeah? Did you win?
Forrester: Of course I won.
Jamal: What, like money or something?
Forrester: The Pulitzer.
(Finding Forrester)

The world I see -- you're stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You climb the wrist-thick vines that wrap the Sears Tower. You see tiny figures pounding corn and laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of an abandoned superhighway.

The things you own end up owning you.

This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything.

On a long enough timeline, the survival rate of everything drops to zero.

Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.

Losing all hope is freedom.
( Fight Club)