photo credit: Christopher Chan

Fantastic, truthful and insightful speech from our neighbor’s Prime Minister – Lee Hsien Loong.

This speech by Lee Hsien Loong is widely circulated on the Internet. As always, there will be those who miss out on it. This is published here specially for them. It may be late but it’s still a good read anytime.

“To live peacefully together, we need good sense and tolerance on all sides, and a willingness to give and take. Otherwise, whatever the rules there will be no end of possible causes of friction.” PM Lee, on how fragile religious and racial harmony is in Singapore and how crucial it is to be tolerant

SO what are these risks? Let me just highlight three of them.

Aggressive preaching – proselytisation. You push your own religion on others, you cause nuisance and offence. You have read in the papers recently about a couple who surreptitiously distributed Christian tracts which were offensive of other faiths, not just of non-Christians but even of Catholics. They were charged and sentenced to jail.

But there are less extreme cases too which can cause problems. We hear, from time to time, complaints about groups trying to convert very ill patients in our hospitals, who don’t want to be converted, and who don’t want to have the private difficult moments in their lives intruded upon.

Intolerance is another problem – not respecting the beliefs of others or not accommodating others who belong to different religions. You think of this one group versus another group, but sometimes it happens within the same family.

Sometimes we have parents from traditional religions whose children have converted. The parents have asked to be buried according to traditional rites and their children stay away from the funeral or the wake. It’s very sad. From a traditional point of view, it’s the ultimate unfilial act but it does happen occasionally.

Exclusiveness is a third problem – segregating into separate exclusive circles, not integrating with other faiths. That means you mix with your own people. You’ll end up as separate communities.

We foresaw these dangers 20 years ago. We passed the Bill, Maintenance of Religious Harmony, in 1989/1990.

Before we did that, then PM Lee Kuan Yew and the key ministers met all the religious leaders. We had a closed-door session at MCYS. We spoke candidly. We explained our concerns, why we wanted to move this Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act. The religious leaders spoke up candidly, they gave us their support. We moved with their support.

We continue to keep in close touch with them, to meet regularly. I do that personally, exchange views, keep the line warm and the confidence on both sides so that I know you, you know me. If there is a problem, we are not dealing with strangers but with somebody we know and trust.

Once or twice, I’ve had to meet them over specific difficult cases. No publicity, relying on mutual trust and the wisdom of our religious leaders to defuse tensions. I’m very grateful for their wisdom and for their support. Because of this active work behind the scenes, we’ve not needed to invoke the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act for 20 years. But it’s something which is important to us which we must keep for a long time.

Four basic rules

We can never take our racial and religious harmony for granted. We must observe some basic principles to keep it the way it is.
First, all groups have to exercise tolerance and restraint. Christians cannot expect this to be a Christian society, Muslims cannot expect this to be a Muslim society. Ditto the Buddhists, the Hindus and the other groups.

Many faiths share this island. Each has different teachings, different practices. Rules which only apply to one group cannot become laws which are enforced on everyone. So Muslims don’t drink alcohol but alcohol is not banned. Ditto gambling, which many religions disapprove of, but gambling is not banned. All have to adopt ‘live and let live’ as our principle.

Secondly, we have to keep religion separate from politics. Religion in Singapore cannot be the same as religion in America, or religion in an Islamic country.

Take Iran, an Islamic country. Nearly everybody is Shia Muslim. Recently, they had a presidential election which was fiercely contested between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, and the outcome was disputed. Both sides invoked Islam. So Mousavi’s supporters had a battle cry – Allahu Akbar (God is Great).

In Singapore, if one group invokes religion this way, other groups are bound to say: ‘I also need powerful support. We’ll also push back invoking our faith.’ One side insists: ‘I’m doing God’s work.’ The other side says: ‘I’m doing my God’s work.’ Both sides say: ‘I cannot compromise. These are absolute imperatives.’ The result will be a clash between different religious groups which will tear us apart.

We take this very seriously. The People’s Action Party reminds our candidates, don’t bring all the friends from your own religious group. Don’t mobilise your church or your temple or your mosque to campaign for you. Bring a multi-racial, multi-religious group of supporters. When you are elected, represent the interest of all your constituents, not just your religious group in Parliament. Speak for all your constituents.

Thirdly, the Government has to remain secular. The Government’s authority comes from the people. The laws are passed by Parliament which is elected by the people. They don’t come from a sacred book. The Government has to be neutral, fair.

We are not against religion. We uphold sound moral values. We hold the ring so that all groups can practise their faiths freely without colliding. That’s the way Singapore has to be.

You may ask: Does this mean that religious groups have no views, cannot have views on national issues? Or that religious individuals cannot participate in politics? Obviously not.

Religious groups are free to propagate their teachings on social and moral issues. They have done so on the IRs, organ transplants, 377A, homosexuality.

And obviously many Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists participate in politics. In Parliament, we have people of all faiths. In the Cabinet too.

People who have a religion will often have views which are informed by their religious beliefs. It’s natural because it’s part of you, it’s part of your personality. But you must accept that other groups may have different views informed by different beliefs and you have to accept that and respect that.

The public debate cannot be on whose religion is right and whose religion is wrong. It has to be on secular, rational considerations of public interest – what makes sense for Singapore.

The final requirement for us to live peacefully together is to maintain our common space that all Singaporeans share. It has to be neutral and secular because that’s the only way all of us can feel at home in Singapore and at ease.

Common spaces

Let me explain to you with specific examples.

Sharing meals. We have different food requirements. Muslims need halal food. Hindus don’t eat beef. Buddhists sometimes are vegetarian. So if we must serve everybody food which is halal, no beef and vegetarian, I think we will have a problem. We will never eat meals together. So there will be halal food on one side, vegetarian food for those who need it, no beef for those who don’t eat beef.

Let’s share a meal together, acknowledging that we are not the same. Don’t discourage people from interacting. Don’t make it difficult for us to be one people.

Our schools are another example of common space where all races and religions interact. Even in mission schools run by religious groups, the Ministry of Education has set clear rules, so students of all faiths will feel comfortable.

You might ask: Why not allow mission schools to introduce prayers or Bible studies as compulsory parts of the school activity or as part of school assembly?

Why not? Then why not let those who are not Christian, or don’t want a Christian environment, go to a government school or go to a Buddhist school? Well, if they do that, we’ll have Christians in Christian schools, Buddhists in Buddhist schools, Muslims in schools with only Muslim children and so on. I think that is not good for Singapore .

Therefore, we have rules to keep all our schools secular and the religious groups understand and accept this.

For example, St Joseph ’s Institution is a Catholic brother school but it has many non-Catholic students, including quite a number of Malay students. The Josephian of the Year in 2003 was a Malay student – Salman Mohamed Khair.

He told Berita Harian that initially his family was somewhat worried about admitting him to a Catholic school. He himself was afraid because he didn’t know what to expect. But he still went because of SJI’s good record. He said: ‘Now I feel fortunate to be in SJI. Although I was educated in a Catholic environment, religion never became an issue.’

Indeed that’s how it should work. I know it works because I understand that Malay students in SJI often attend Friday prayers at Baalwie Mosque nearby, still wearing their school uniforms. SJI thinks it’s fine, the mosque thinks it’s fine, the students think it’s fine, and I think it’s fine too. That’s the way it should be.

Another example of common space – work. The office environment should be one which all groups feel comfortable with. Staff have to be confident that they will get equal treatment even if they belong to a different faith from their managers – especially in government departments, but in the private sector too.

I think it can be done because even religious community service organisations often have people who don’t belong to that religion working comfortably and happily together. This is one very important aspect of our meritocratic society.

Thus we maintain these principles: exercise tolerance, keep religion separate from politics, keep a secular government, maintain our common space. This is the only way all groups can live in peace and harmony in Singapore .

Aware and responsible church leaders

This is the background to the way the Government looked at one recent issue: Aware.

We were not concerned about who would control Aware because it’s just one of so many NGOs in Singapore. On homosexuality policy or sexuality education in schools, there can be strong differences in view but the Government’s position was quite clear.

But what worried us was that this was an attempt by a religiously motivated group who shared a strong religious fervour to enter civil space, take over an NGO it disapproved of, and impose their agenda. It was bound to provoke a push back from groups that held the opposite view, which indeed happened vociferously and stridently.

The media coverage got caught up and I think the amplifier was turned up a bit high.

This was hardly the way to conduct a mature discussion of a sensitive matter where views are deeply divided. But most critically of all, this risked a broader spillover into relations between different religions.

I know many Singaporeans were worried about this, including many Christians. They may not have spoken aloud but they raised one eyebrow.

Therefore, I’m very grateful for the very responsible stand which was taken by the church leaders. The National Council of Churches of Singapore issued a statement that it didn’t support churches getting involved. There was also the statement by the Catholic Archbishop. Had these statements not been made, we would have had a very serious problem.

The Government stayed out of this but after the dust had settled, I spoke to the religious leaders, first the Christians and then the religious leaders of all faiths, so that everybody understood where we stood and what our concerns were. So we can continue to work together to strengthen our racial and religious harmony.

Unusually serious subject

This is an unusually serious and heavy subject for a National Day Rally. Normally, you talk about babies, hongbaos, bonuses.

No bonuses tonight but a bonus lecture on a serious subject. We discussed this in Cabinet at length and decided that I should talk about this. I crafted the points carefully, circulated them many times. Different presentations in Mandarin, Malay and English, because different groups have different concerns, but a consistent message so that there’s no misunderstanding.

I also invited the religious leaders to come and spend the evening with us tonight. They can help us to help their flocks understand our limitations, to guide them to practise their faiths, taking into account the context of our society. Please teach them accommodation, which is what all faiths teach. I look forward to all the religious groups continuing to do a lot of good work for Singapore for many years to come.

Finally, let me share with you one true story which was published recently in an Indian newspaper, The Asian Age, and picked up by The Straits Times. It was about a young man from Gujarat , a Muslim, who migrated to Singapore after the Hindu-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002.

A train carrying Hindu pilgrims was stopped in Ahmadebad and set on fire. The circumstances were unclear but 50-odd men, women and children burnt to death, trapped in the train. The Hindus rioted. They had no doubt what the cause was. One thousand people died, mostly Muslims because Ahmadebad has a large Muslim community.

So this young Muslim decided to come to Singapore after the riots. We call him Mohammed Sheikh. It’s not his real name because he still has family there. The article said: ‘During the bloody riots, he watched three of his family members, including his father, getting butchered. His family had to pay for being Muslim.

‘Besides losing his family and home, Mohammed lost confidence and faith in the civil society. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life cursing his destiny. He wanted to move on.’

So seven years ago, Mohammed came to Singapore and got a diploma in hospitality management. Now he is working in an eatery and he hopes to open his own business one day. He told the interviewer, had he stayed in Gujarat , ‘I would have been hating all Hindus and baying for their blood, perhaps.’

Now ‘he loves it when his children bring home Hindu friends and share snacks’. He told the interviewer proudly, ‘My children have Christian, Buddhist, Hindu friends.’

He even hopes to bring his mother to Singapore so she can see for herself that people of different races, different faiths can be friends. The interviewer asked him what Muslim sect he belonged to and which mosque he went to in India. He said: ‘I don’t want to get into all that. Now I am just a Singaporean. And I am proud of it.’

This story reminds us that while we must not neglect to strengthen our harmonious society, we are in a good position.
So let us rejoice in our harmony but let us never forget what being a Singaporean means. It’s not just tolerating other groups but opening our hearts to all our fellow citizens.

Our future

If we stay cohesive, then we can overcome our economic challenges and continue to grow.

This is how we’ve transformed Singapore over the last half century – solving problems together, growing together, improving our lives.

From the Singapore River to Marina Bay, we’ve totally transformed Singapore over the last half century. 1959 was a moment of great change but nobody at the Padang in June 1959 imagined the change in today’s Singapore.

We will continue to improve our lives, provided we work together and remain a harmonious and a cohesive society so that in another 50 years, we would have built another Singapore, which is equally unimaginable today.

The key is to stay united through rain or shine.

via MalaysianMirror.com.

Thanks to oldfart50 for sharing.

Five essential addons for new Firefox users (Happy fifth birthday, Firefox!)


Five years ago today, a new web browser arrived on the scene. Yes, it was Firefox 1.0. At the half-decade mark, Firefox has become a force to be reckoned with. Nearly one in four people on the Internet is now using Firefox – and that includes the entire population of Antarctica!

If Firefox users were a country, they'd be the third most populous in the world – behind only China and India – at 330 million people! 2009 has certainly been a big year for the Fox.

Mozilla's add-on site reports 4.3 million registered users using nearly 164 million add-ons. That's a lot of people using a lot of add-ons. If you're a new Firefox user, you might be having trouble deciding which are worth installing.

Since this is Firefox's fifth birthday, here are five add-ons that can make browsing better for just about anyone!

Intel: The Human Element Inside


Let's be honest – when you think of a computer chip processor, you don't get the touchy feelies. But Intel is trying to change end user perception with its humanizing branding campaign, as well as clearer communication and streamlined offerings.

Before Intel crafted its new campaign, there were five basic challenges inhibiting the brand, Nancy Bhagat, vice president of sales and marketing and director of integrated marketing for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company, told attendees at the Business Marketing Association's Chicago Chapter's MarketingMasters Luncheon yesterday. Among the five, one stands out: awareness was high, but relevance was low, with research showing some consumers simply assumed their computers came with Intel processors. Intel also conducted focus groups where participants described the company as monolithic and expressed an uncertainty for what Intel stood for.

Pick a number – but not just any number


Mathematics can actually help you to avoid what happened in the ninth week of the National Lottery, after it started in 1994. The prize money on offer that week was a fantastic £16,293,830 jackpot. There is a one in 13,983,816 chance that the six numbers you choose will match the six numbers that appear on the balls that pop out of the lottery machine. So those that chose the winning numbers that week must have been jumping up and down on the settee as they discovered that, out of the 13,983,816 different possibilities, they’d picked the correct combination. But when they phoned the National Lottery to claim their millions, they discovered that they had to share their winnings with 132 other winners. Amazingly, 133 people had chosen the correct six numbers. Each winner went away with a paltry £122,510.

What do "stable," "critical," and other medical conditions mean?


Most hospitals adhere to American Hospital Association guidelines when describing a patient's condition to the media. Those guidelines instruct hospital spokespersons to give out only a one-word description of a patient's condition. The recommended conditions, which are excerpted from the AHA's "General Guide for the Release of Information on the Condition of Patients," are:

Why dolphins are deep thinkers


At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, Kelly the dolphin has built up quite a reputation. All the dolphins at the institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. In this way, the dolphins help to keep their pools clean.

Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on. This behaviour is interesting because it shows that Kelly has a sense of the future and delays gratification. She has realised that a big piece of paper gets the same reward as a small piece and so delivers only small pieces to keep the extra food coming. She has, in effect, trained the humans.

Timeline of Obama's First Year


I have figured out The Problem With America Today. My inspiration was the recent one-year-later cover of Newsweek, which encapsulates the current conventional wisdom about President Obama in a single headline: YES HE CAN (BUT HE SURE HASN'T YET). Or, as Saturday Night Live put it, President Obama's two biggest accomplishments thus far are "Jack and Squat." You can find other versions of this perspective from Matt Lauer and David Gregory on NBC, from thousands of obnoxious bloggers, even from the hapless governor of New York.

How to Edit PDF Files – Free Tools for Manipulating PDF Documents


The PDF file format was originally created by Adobe in the early ’90s and there are now over 450+ million PDF documents on the Internet according to Google. Compare this with the DOC format that was created in early ’80s (much before PDF) but there are only 75 million .doc files on the web today.

100 years of Big Content fearing technology—in its own words – Ars Technica


It's almost a truism in the tech world that copyright owners reflexively oppose new inventions that do (or might) disrupt existing business models. But how many techies actually know what rightsholders have said and written for the last hundred years on the subject?

The anxious rhetoric around new technology is really quite shocking in its vehemence, from claims that the player piano will destroy musical taste and the "national throat" to concerns that the VCR is like the "Boston strangler" to claims that only Hollywood's premier content could make the DTV transition a success. Most of it turned out to be absurd hyperbole, but it's interesting to see just how consistent the words and the fears remain across more than a century of innovation and a host of very different devices.

So here they are, in their own words—the copyright holders who demanded restrictions on player pianos, photocopiers, VCRs, home taping, DAT, MP3 players, Napster, the DVR, digital radio, and digital TV.

The Lost Decade


Ten years ago, when Gates appointed his longtime second in command, Steve Ballmer, as his replacement as CEO, Microsoft was still the meanest, mightiest tech company in the world, a juggernaut that bullied friends and foes alike and which possessed an operating-system franchise that was practically a license to print money. Techies likened Microsoft to the Borg on Star Trek, the evil collective that insatiably assimilates everything around it, with the slogan, "Resistance is futile."

Nine Worst Résumé Mistakes


1. Heavy résumé paper, elaborate design and other embellishments help job seekers stand out.
2. Include an objective at the top of your résumé.
3. Including a paragraph summarizing your skills.
4. A "functional" résumé will do a better job of highlighting your unique skills and expertise than one that simply lists your positions in chronological order.
5. Submit your résumé for jobs that you know you're not qualified for, if they're at companies where you'd like to work.
6. Keep résumé length down to one page.
7. Sharing information about yourself as a person–such as hobbies and memberships–creates the image of a well-rounded individual that employers prefer to hire.
8. Note that references are available upon request.
9. For each position you've held, you only need to list the name of your employer and their location.

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photo credit: Jasmic

Amazing. Just amazing.

At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, Kelly the dolphin has built up quite a reputation. All the dolphins at the institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. In this way, the dolphins help to keep their pools clean.

Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on. This behaviour is interesting because it shows that Kelly has a sense of the future and delays gratification. She has realised that a big piece of paper gets the same reward as a small piece and so delivers only small pieces to keep the extra food coming. She has, in effect, trained the humans.

Her cunning has not stopped there. One day, when a gull flew into her pool, she grabbed it, waited for the trainers and then gave it to them. It was a large bird and so the trainers gave her lots of fish. This seemed to give Kelly a new idea. The next time she was fed, instead of eating the last fish, she took it to the bottom of the pool and hid it under the rock where she had been hiding the paper. When no trainers were present, she brought the fish to the surface and used it to lure the gulls, which she would catch to get even more fish. After mastering this lucrative strategy, she taught her calf, who taught other calves, and so gull-baiting has become a hot game among the dolphins.

Continue reading here.

Giz Explains: Why Every Country Has a Different F#$%ing Plug – Worldwide electric plugs – Gizmodo


Ok, maybe not every country, but with at least 12 different sockets in widespread use it sure as hell feels like it to anyone who's ever traveled. So why in the world, literally, are there so many? Funny story!

The more you look at the writhing orgy of plugs in the world, the sillier it seems. If you buy a phone charger at the airport in Florida, you won't be able to use it when your flight lands in France. If you buy a three-pronged adapter for le portable in Paris, you might not be able to plug it in when your train drops you off in Germany. And when your flight finally bounces to a stop on the runway in London, get ready to buy a comically large adapter to tap into the grid there. But that's cool! You can take the same adapter to Singapore with you! And parts of Nigeria! Oh yeah, and if said charger doesn't support 240v power natively, make sure you buy a converter, or else it might explode.

Why computers suck at maths


Computers might struggle to exhibit intelligent behaviour, but blindly performing arithmetic calculations is surely their forte. Or is it?

The failure of Google's online calculator and Excel's apparent inability to give correct answers to simple calculations are both well-known problems among programmers, but these aren't really bugs in the normal sense of the word. Instead they're just a consequence of the fact that computers suck at maths.

Computers perform calculations in quite a different way from the methods that humans use to do arithmetic – and that means that they habitually come up with the wrong answer. Here we investigate some of the shocking consequences of this revelation before delving into the reason why computers suck at maths.

The universality of war propaganda


I'm traveling still today, but I wanted to note an amazing Op-Ed that was referenced in a book I'm reading: the Op-Ed is by Nikolai Lanine, published in The Toronto Globe and Mail in November, 2006. Lanine was drafted into the Russian Army at the age of 18 and spent several years as part of the Russian occupying force in Afghanistan. Thereafter, he moved to Canada, and in 2006, his wife's first cousin, a medic in the Canadian Army, was killed in Afghanistan. Lanine wrote this column after attending his funeral, and recounted what he and his comrades in the Russian Army believed they were doing in Afghanistan:

Alaa Al-Aswany: When women are sinners in the eyes of extremists


Some days ago these extremists carried out a strange operation: they arrested a Somali woman and whipped her in public because she was wearing a bra. They announced clearly that wearing these bras was unIslamic because it is a form of fraud and deception.

We may well ask what wearing bras has to do with religion, why they would consider them to be a form of fraud and deception, and how they managed to arrest the woman wearing the bra when all Somali women go around with their bodies completely covered. Did they appoint a special female officer to inspect the breasts of women passing by in the street? One Somali woman called Halima told the Reuters news agency: "Al Shabaab forced us to wear their type of veil and now they order us to shake our breasts… They first banned the former veil and introduced a hard fabric which stands stiffly on women's chests. They are now saying that breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat."

A people's history of the internet: from Arpanet in 1969 to today


To mark the 40th anniversary of the first stirrings of the internet we asked you to tell us your experiences of life online. Hundreds of you responded, and here we present an interactive documentary of your stories and videos, alongside our own research and interviews with key figures

100 Useful, Free, Open Courses and Lectures for Small Business Owners


Starting a small business in today’s economy can be a tough challenge. Stay a step ahead of accounting, finance, marketing, and other topics by utilizing the courses, lectures, and tools below.

Steven Dworman, the Infomercial and Direct Response Industry Expert


This report contains the most important information I’ve learned over the past 15 years in this business. It’s never been printed in any book, report, or literature previously. In fact, fewer than 10 people in the world probably know it. This isn’t an exaggeration. When I printed this information in the final issue of The Infomercial Marketing Report, the most successful company in the industry, The Guthy-Renker Corporation, made this mandatory reading for all of their employees. Everything in this report is based solely on what has been proven to work in the real world. Companies have literally spent millions of dollars discovering the secrets I lay before you. Properly applied, this inside information will be a gold mine to your marketing efforts.

10 Things You Didn't Know About Sexual Biology (Male Edition)


The Female Edition of this article was well-received and it got me excited to start working on this, the Male Edition. Turning my focus to the obscure factoids related to male sexual biology was certainly fun, but something bugged me throughout the process. In comparison with the attention that women get when it comes to scientific studies, men are neglected. The very fact that there is no universal or scientifically accepted way to measure the size of a penis should tell you all you need to know about that. Furthermore, studies on penises are usually done on patients for sexual dysfunction, rarely on subjects who are perfectly healthy. With that said, I think I have 10 really interesting facts that you might like hearing about. Here we go!

10 Things You Didn't Know About Sexual Biology (Female Edition)


I've collected these little bits of information in my research into sexuality and I thought they'd be interesting to know. This is the female edition, with details normally pertaining to those of the fairer sex.

Deploying Windows® 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine


Microsoft’s eBook Deploying Windows® 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine combine selected chapters written by industry experts Mitch Tulloch, Tony Northrup, Jerry Honeycutt, Ed Wilson, and the Windows 7 Team with select Windows 7 articles from TechNet Magazine. Sample topics include: Deployment Platform, Planning Deployment, Testing Application Compatability, and 8 Common Issues in Windows 7 Migrations.

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Could you give an example, from your own experience, of how leaders should manage failure?

Answer:

Let me tell you about my experience. In 1973 I became the project director of India ’s satellite launch vehicle program, commonly called the SLV-3. Our goal was to put India ’s ‘Rohini’ satellite into orbit by 1980. I was given funds and human resources — but was told clearly that by 1980 we had to launch the satellite into space. Thousands of people worked together in scientific and technical teams towards that goal.

By 1979 — I think the month was August — we thought we were ready. As the project director, I went to the control center for the launch. At four minutes before the satellite launch, the computer began to go through the checklist of items that needed to be checked. One minute later, the computer program put the launch on hold; the display showed that some control components were not in order. My experts — I had four or five of them with me — told me not to worry; they had done their calculations and there was enough reserve fuel. So I bypassed the computer, switched to manual mode, and launched the rocket. In the first stage, everything worked fine. In the second stage, a problem developed. Instead of the satellite going into orbit, the whole rocket system plunged into the Bay of Bengal . It was a big failure.

That day, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, Prof. Satish D hawan, had called a press conference. The launch was at 7:00 am, and the press conference — where journalists from around the world were present — was at 7:45 am at ISRO’s satellite launch range in Sriharikota [in Andhra Pradesh in southern India ]. Prof. Dhawan, the leader of the organization, conducted the press conference himself. He took responsibility for the failure — he said that the team had worked very hard, but that it needed more technological support. He assured the media that in another year, the team would definitely succeed. Now, I was the project director, and it was my failure, but instead, he took responsibility for the failure as chairman of the organization.

The next year, in July 1980, we tried again to launch the satellite — and this time we succeeded. The whole nation was jubilant. Again, there was a press conference. Prof. Dhawan called me aside and told me, ‘You conduct the press conference today.’

I learned a very important lesson that day. When failure occurred, the leader of the organization owned that failure. When success came, he gave it to his team.

The best management lesson I have learned did not come to me from reading a book; it came from that experience.

As answered by Former President of India APJ Abdul Kalam at Wharton India Economic forum, Philadelphia, March 22, 2008.

Thanks to Cakap Tak Serupa Bikin.

photo credit: atomicjeep

TimesOnline UK have published a list of 50 movies that are most likely to dominate the box-office charts next year. The list is pretty good – I’ve watched trailers of some movies. Here’s the list of movie that I’m anticipating for the year 2010.

• Unstoppable – Denzel Washington & based on real event
• Wall Street 2 (sequel) – Michael Douglas + stock market + prevent global financial crash.
• Highlander – it is Highlander!!! But – it is directed by Justin Lin of Fast & Furious – a bit skeptic.
• Edge of Darkness – Mel Gibson + political conspiracy thriller + CIA. Directed by Martin Campbell of Casino Royale!
• Legion – I’ll let the synopsis do the convincing – The basic premise of Legion is this: God, specifically the God of the Christians, is the bad guy. As he periodically does, he’s decided to kill everyone on Earth. A fallen angel is humanity’s only defence against a horde of destroying angels, a foul-mouthed old lady vampire thing and a demonic ice cream man. It’s three parts Dogma to one part I am Legend with a dash of Left Behind. The angels appear to be armed with maces. The plucky American resistance holed up in a diner have guns. Lots of guns.
• Oobermind – animation movie from Dreamworks. Voice over by Will Ferrell, Brat Pitt and Tina Fey.
• Predators – remake sci-fi action – The story involves a group of the toughest humans alive abducted and taken to the home planet of the invisible super-hunters.
• The Book of Eli – Denzel Washington – post-apocalyptic adventure.
• Tron Legacy – sequel.
• Alice in Wonderland – Johnny Depp and directed by Tim Burton – you can’t go wrong here.
• Inception – sci-fi thriller starring Leonardo Di Caprio and directed by Christopher Nolan.
• The A Team – Starring Liam Neeson, Jessica Biel & Patrick Wilson. Skeptic it will be good.
• Shutter Island – Eerie psycho-chiller from Martin Scorsese starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Kingsley.
• Robin Hood – Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott. I’m sold!
• Iron Man 2 (sequel) – obviously!

Other honorable mentions include, Sex and The City 2, Shrek, Red Sonja, Harry Potter etc. Read the complete list here.

photo credit: mathoov

Before you continue, get this – Paul Buchheit has worked at Microsoft, Intel and Google. He has worked with these tech giants who are responsible in shaping the IT world as we know today; and he is only 32 years old. He, created the Gmail and co-founded FriendFeed. During a recent event at Berkeley, he shared some of his valuable life experience on various subject matters ranging from high school to retiring. Here are my favorite parts.

On Gmail: “On the first day, I actually wrote the whole thing. But it was really bad. When I first created Gmail, it only indexed my own mail.” Then he put it out to the company and “everyone else gave me really good feedback like: I want to read my e-mail, not yours.”

On Facebook: The most interesting part of Facebook is that it’s not Google. The risk of working in one place for too long is that you begin to believe — inside a company are all these shared delusions, they develop all these corporate superstitions. In Google, there are all these rules. And they keep using them because they’ve made them successful before.

Even if you’re not going to start a startup right away. If you’ve been in your job for awhile, you should quit. Google was really comfortable. I knew all the people. It’s important to do things that will make you uncomfortable. So there’s a couple of other points.

My only advice is: If you care about something, do it now. Don’t sit here reading about it. You can’t really fail reading a book. There has to be some risk you’re not going to succeed.

Don’t miss the article!

Part 1:

Part 2