Fire Fox followed by Gmail

The 100 Best Products of 2005 from PCWorld

Child Labors... Do they have a choice?

Child workers refuse to quit jobs from BBC

"And for his pains, Tabrez was paid a pocket money of 50 rupees (just over
$1) a week, and at the end of the month, his employer sent 800 rupees (roughly
$17) to his parents.
Alam has never been to school and can neither read nor
write.
Tabrez Alam wants go back to work. He does not have many plans for the future.
"I will take up any work I can find. There is not much to do back home so I will have to go somewhere else to find work," he says.
Perhaps that explains why forcibly rescuing children from factories does not
work.
Most such children have nothing to go back to. Their parents are unable to provide for them, and many return to work once the dust settles."

good or bad?

Scientists close to producing baby from two dads from The Hindu

"Yet this startling idea is now a serious scientific prospect, say
researchers. Breakthroughs in stem-cell technology could soon lead to
`non-traditional' parents having their own offspring, not always with the help
of a woman's genes, some scientists saying within the next four years. The new
technology currently falls outside existing controls on human fertilisation
science."

[...]

"The technique behind this revolutionary science has been developed
over the past two years. "We still have several years to go before we can use it
on humans," said Professor Harry Moore, of Sheffield University's Centre for
Stem Cell Biology. Following pioneering work on mice carried out by American
researchers, teams — including Moore's — have used embryos donated by patients
undergoing IVF.
"You allow the embryo to develop for a short period in the
laboratory. Then you take out the cells from which it is composed," he said.

These cells are known as stem cells and they have the potential to turn
into cells of any type of tissue: skin, heart, kidney or brain, for example.
What researchers are now doing in laboratories round the world is developing
techniques to turn these stem cells into specialised cells.
Thus
insulin-secreting cells could be created for diabetics and brain cells for
Parkinson's patients."

thought

Sometimes you have to let it be, to let it change.

quotes

Never mistake motion for action.
-- Ernest Hemingway

Character develops itself in the stream of life.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Technology and cricket

Cricket can learn from American football from The Hindu

Some very good suggestions to reduce some very frustrating umpiring decisions.

"What to do? Obviously the idea of sending every appeal to a third umpire
must be rejected as slow and belittling. Instead, consideration could be given
to the sort of compromise reached in American Football whereby each coach is
allowed four challenges during a match. To question a decision he must throw a
red flag onto the field, a move that in other circumstances might provoke a riot
in George Bush country. If replays indicate that the ref was right then a
challenge is forfeited. Compelling evidence is needed before a decision is
overturned.
Applying the idea to cricket, captains could be allowed two
challenges an innings. Of course they must not waste them. Shane Warne could get
through the allocation in his first over. Unless all three stumps had been
flattened, Justin Langer would seek a second opinion. Just as well Steve Waugh
has retired. The captain must be firm."

Its all in your brain!!!

This Is Your Brain Under Hypnosis from NYTimes

"In medical hands, hypnosis was no laughing matter. In the 19th century,
physicians in India successfully used hypnosis as anesthesia,
even for limb amputations. The practice fell from favor only when ether was
discovered.
Now, Dr. Posner and others said, new research on hypnosis and
suggestion is providing a new view into the cogs and wheels of normal brain
function.
One area that it may have illuminated is the processing of sensory
data. Information from the eyes, ears and body is carried to primary sensory
regions in the brain. From there, it is carried to so-called higher regions
where interpretation occurs. "
...
"According to decades of
research, 10 to 15 percent of adults are highly hypnotizable, said Dr. David
Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford who studies the clinical uses of hypnosis.
Up to age 12, however, before top-down circuits mature, 80 to 85 percent of
children are highly hypnotizable.
One adult in five is flat out resistant to
hypnosis, Dr. Spiegel said. The rest are in between, he said."
...
"Brain scans show that the control mechanisms for deciding what to do in
the face of conflict become uncoupled when people are hypnotized. Top-down
processes override sensory, or bottom-up information, said Dr. Stephen M.
Kosslyn, a neuroscientist at Harvard. People think that sights, sounds and touch
from the outside world constitute reality. But the brain constructs what it
perceives based on past experience, Dr. Kosslyn said.
Most of the time
bottom-up information matches top-down expectation, Dr. Spiegel said. But
hypnosis is interesting because it creates a mismatch. "We imagine something
different, so it is different," he said."

Sounds like Imperious Curse... But only that is is not being used by dark wizards but Aurors of decease, the doctors. For those of you it seems gibberish check out the terms from A Harry Potter Dictionary.
Anything in itself is not good or bad it is its use that makes the difference!