Swastika - is it ours?

I had accepted this symbol to be the soul of Hinduism and good charm for Jainism and Buddhism, but it was lost in the memories of the recent past. Lately, it drew my attention after Prince's unscrupulous attempt to display it in public and after Hindus' push over getting its reverence back to their culture.

is it revered or cursed? Or has it lost its innate respect b/c of the mindless use of it to merge the past with the present? I believe that it has become difficult to maintain the profoundness of ones culture in this rapidly changing world. Who would have thought of moving tattoes from thai province to the depths of western land?

is sacrifice the only way to lure god?

nanotechnology - i am astonished

am I going nuts, or is science pulling in the exteremes? does our future, really, hold nanotechnology?

It's a question to which only the future can provide the answer. The human race to reverse the nature's laws, or mould them, has surpasses any known revolution or evolution on earth. Does the ultimate cure to all the diseases lies in *nanotechnology*?

The push to this comes from we human's curiosity to delve into wild human thoughts. From the Newton's to the Star Wars era, we always tried to replicate the thoughts into reality. The idea of saucers came from the movies and became a legend-never-explored. And the very idea of a device digging into the human body and curing a disease - as deadly as cancer - before its onset, led to a research in nano-technology.

Idea is to build nano-robots, which will act as a sentry and guard smallest building blocks from foreign attack of virus/bacteria and the likes. NanoRobots in millions will be injected in human body through capsules or syringe injections and will make their way with the white and red blood cells - with and ability to do much more than natural blood cells. These robots may dig into a molecule and protect it 24/7. But, who is going to build these nano-robots - diameter may vary from 0.5 micron to 3 microns? How we gonna make sure that we have made a fail-proof robot?

The basic will be based on making a queen robot and giving it the authority to guide other robots to come and fight the intruder. The queen robot may get the commands from an external device or a doctor and vice-versa. Can the things fails as they did in i-Robot? The time will tell. It will be like an ants mound where the breeding ant gives the command to the army of millions of ants. Scientists have taken inspirations from smallest of the natural phenomenon to divulge a man-made restoration over it.

So how these nano-robots will be powered? I guess, solar cells :o) but the scientists beg to differ.

These nanorobots will have the ability to take control of body's intricate tasks such as respiration. They wil carry the O2 and CO2 sensors and depending on the need of a cell these nanorobots will release or absorb O2. Consider this: What if you added 1 liter of respirocytes (nano-robot) into your bloodstream, the maximum that could possibly be safe? You could then hold your breath for nearly 4 hours if sitting quietly at the bottom of a swimming pool. Or if you were sprinting at top speed, you could run for at least 15 minutes before you had to take a breath! (© Copyright 1998, Robert A. Freitas Jr.)

Who will guide the laws of human natural strengths? How much fun will football be? Will tennis rise upto 20 setters? Scary! but our next generations will exprience this one-on-one. I am certain.

Towards the hindsight, most of the third world countries rely on Karma, Veda, Meditation and the likes to strenghten the immune system. And in the journey leaving all the bad habits known to the human being. The research towards touching the extreme will further broaden the gaps b/w the Occident and the Orient. Will these civilizations be a part of conquering the common goal of healthy and rich human life? Will all the countries dive in to support the nano-research for common good? I hope somebody will answer this sometime.

Or has this already been researched and developed on some other living planet in a distant galaxy and we earth-dwellers are just trying to re-invent the wheel (well, nano-wheel)?

some examples are excerpts from www.foresight.org © Copyright 1998, Robert A. Freitas Jr.

I am amazed by this developement and gonna research more on this... lets see where we end up. Till then, explorations prevails.

American Presidents

had a discussion with my friends over the number of terms that a prez can assume the office. here is an excerpt from wikipedia :

After Franklin Roosevelt's death, many desired to establish a firm constitutional provision barring presidents from being elected more than twice; hence, the Twenty-second Amendment was adopted. Under the amendment, no person may be elected president more than twice. Furthermore, no vice president or other person who has succeeded to the presidency, and served as president or acting president for more than two years, may be elected president more than once. Consequently, the amendment, while limiting a person to two elected four-year terms as president, theoretically does allow a person to serve up to ten years in office. If a person serving as vice president succeeds to the presidency, and serves for less than two years of the original president's term, he or she may still be elected twice and thus serve eight more years in office. As of 2005, the only president to have been eligible to serve more than eight years under the amendment was Lyndon Johnson. Johnson succeeded to the presidency when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and served less than two years of Kennedy's term. Had he run in 1968 and won, he could have been in office for ten years.

Some have questioned the interpretation of the Twenty-second Amendment as it relates to the Twelfth Amendment. The Twelfth Amendment provides that anyone constitutionally ineligible to the office of President is ineligible to that of Vice President. Clearly, the original constitutional qualifications (age, citizenship and residency) apply under the Twelfth Amendment to both the President and Vice President. It is unclear, however, if a two-term President could later be elected—or appointed—Vice President. Some argue that the Twenty-second Amendment and Twelfth Amendment bar any two-term President from later serving as Vice President and from succeeding to the Presidency from any point in the line of succession. Others suggest that the Twelfth Amendment concerns qualification for service, while the Twenty-second Amendment concerns qualifications for election. No two-term President has later sought to become Vice President since the ratification of the Twenty-Second Amendment; thus, the courts have never had an opportunity to decide the question.

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton has recently voiced his opinion in favor of modifications to the 22nd Amendment. According to Mr. Clinton, former presidents and vice presidents who have already served two terms should be allowed to run for the office again, after some interim period has passed. He reasoned the country may wish to trust leadership onto an already tried and proven candidate in times of great need.

the next big thing...

I stayed till 3 in the morning to watch India's first and, possibly, a
women tennis torch-bearer's clash with Sarena at Vodafone's court in
Melbourne. I accept that I didn't have high expectation from what Sarnia
could play, but I must say, I was astonished. She is a wounderful player.
And that from a place where no women tennis player has emerged and became
glorious. I certainly have high bets on her.

She is young and has a long way to go before she can prove her worth to the
world, but I am sure that she can do it only with a single eyed aim to
play. If she stumbles between a typical bourgeois and a players life.
Former seems obvious if she don't get a push from her parents. And I can
tell you that lots of Indians have high hopes with her - I guess we humans
see ourselves in someone else's act, which we couldn't (didn't) achieve. If
she stays firm, she can get all the support from each of the billion
people. All she need to do is 'play'.

What I think: she has a good court game; she can play wonderful on the base
lines and the service lines. No doubt, she has a nice overall tennis game,
but what she is missing is the athleticism behind the lines.
Understandably, this was her first high-profile clash and she seemed more
joyous than serious to play her natural game. Often, a smile tried to show
on her face, but she resisted. Ponderously, she has a very good back hand
control and she can leverage that to take any challenger on the court.

What I feel: she should work more on her service game - others will follow.
She doesn't variate her serves; they are kind of flat services, which even
a naive can handle, set aside Henins or Williams. She has a good pace in
the serve, which she can make count with a little variation for some easy
points. With a good fit and some dirty tricks, she can use the court like
no other Indian did.

One thing she need to understand, which I think see do, is that this game
is not all about money, it is about performace, it is all about managing
onself over the competitor, it is all about finding faults in others and
exploiting them for own good, it is a dirty business, which does lead to the
money, but counts much on the image.

hope she gets the message with an unintentional mutiny...