FREE EDUCATION ON THE WEB

On the right side of this blog page, there is a list of recommended sites. The second site listed is Open Culture. This is the most amazing site that I have found on the web. It brings together all the free, high-quality educational media that is scattered across the web. Its mission is to centralize all this media and give you access to this content whenever you want it. Free courses, free lectures, free audio books, free eBooks, and free movies, are all available. If you are interested in lifelong learning, this is the site for you. There are 250 online courses from top universities on every subject you can think of! And, did I mention they are FREE? I am currently enrolled in a Computer Science class at Harvard University. I listen to lectures, do workshops, and watch videos, all on line. It is truly an amazing experience. I am learning about hardware, software, the Internet, Multimedia, security, Website Development, as well as programming. I am now a “Harvard Man”. You may want to go to Yale or Stanford or any one of a number of first class universities. You can download these audio and video courses straight to your computer or mp3 player. Check it out! Apache JavaScript Tag a Packet on Gnutella! (Programing jargon)

AN EXCITING WEEK IN MY LIFE

Last week I was in Russia playing simultaneous chess games against Vladimir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov. They are, respectively, the Classical World Chess Champion and the FIDE World Chess Champion. Both are highly rated Russian Grand Masters. Russians are famous for being good at chess but Americans have had some great players as well. Remember Bobby Fischer? He beat all the Russians to become World Champion. My goal was to embarrass the Russian Champions by beating both of them at the same time in an exhibition match while being blindfolded. It was quite an ambitious undertaking but I managed to pull it off. I checkmated both champions on move number 18 with a clever combination involving both of my knights. When I removed my blindfold, the crowd roared its approval! Of course, the victory celebration involved a huge quantity of vodka, which left me with a brutal hangover.

Two days later I was in New York to play in a duplicate bridge tournament with my partner, George Teller. In the last round of play, we were matched against Omar Sheriff and Phillip Alder. I opened the bidding with 2 clubs and George answered with a jump bid in spades. After using the Blackwood convention, I bid 7 no trump. Alder doubled and George redoubled. After two brilliant finesses, I not only made the bid, but  also took an overtrick. It was the first time, in the history of bridge, that there was an overtrick in a 7 no trump contract. It happened because of a renege by that sneaky Arab, Sheriff. Needless to say we won the tournament. At the victory celebration, George and I consumed a large number of Manhattan cocktails (after all, we were in Manhattan). The next day I had a brutal hangover.

Two days later, I was walking backwards while rubbing my head and patting my stomach, and reciting the 12 steps program, as I climbed to the summit of Nanga Parbat. Top-flight alpinist considers this mountain to be more difficult to scale than either Everest or K2. Reinhold Messner, recently back from a 1000 mile walk in the Gobi desert, served as my porter. He used conventional climbing methods but I still had to stop and wait for him. Mountain Climber Magazine declared that I was the greatest climber of all time. My picture appears on the cover.

Laetitia Maria Laure Casta read of my exploits and was so impressed; she invited me to stay with her for a weekend on the island of Corsica. She is a beautiful model who ‘Rolling Stone Magazine’ calls “the hottest thing alive”. Just as I was packing to go, my wife woke me up and said, “you did not take the trash out last night so, get up and take care of it.

Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go, life is a barren field. Shakespeare said that sleep and dreams are the “chief nourishers in life’s feast”. Dreams do offer opportunities for fun, adventure, wish fulfillment, creativity, deep personal insight and healing. Dreams offer all this at no cost and with no line-ups! Keep on dreaming.

THEY HATE US

Islam, as practiced by the Fundamentalist Muslims, is intrinsically an intolerant and violent religion. Fundamentalists have a deep hatred of America. They see us as the supreme obstacle to their goal of applying Islamic Law. Their goals are a penal code based on the Koran, taxation according to Islamic law, and warfare against non-Muslims and ultimately a union of all Muslims living under one ruler. The success of the United States has caused a steep fall in the power and wealth of the Muslim world. The Middle East does not have a modern society with political parties, the rule of law, a free press and a free market. It has dictators, oil money, a few very wealthy Sheiks and lots of poor people with no political rights. This is the land of suicide bombers, flag-burners, and fiery Mullahs. There is something stronger at work here than deprivation, and jealousy. According to the Fundamentalist Muslims, it is a holy war between Islam and the Western world. They want to go back to medieval times. American culture is threatening, its ideology is alien, and its power is feared. (And we are evil people who drink booze and produce pornography!) The Fundamentalist Muslims condemn American culture as loathsome and morally decadent.

The United States is not without fault. The US invaded a country that had not attacked us, dismantled the regime, and took hardly any precautions to prevent the outbreak of violence. In the last 30 years, the United States has killed a large number of Muslims (288,000). Even though we had just cause in some cases (as in the first Gulf War), our actions were indefensible and criminal in others. It is also striking to observe that virtually all of the Muslim deaths were the direct or indirect consequence of official U.S. government policy. By contrast, the small number of Americans (10,325) killed by Muslims was the victim of non-state terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda or the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. The figures reported above, do not include the Muslims killed by Israel in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. Because of our generous support of Israel’s policy toward Arabs, Muslims hold us responsible for those victims, too. Our problem in the Middle East is partly caused by our actions in recent years. Whitewashing our own misconduct makes it harder for Americans to figure out why their country is so hated. It makes it harder to consider different and more effective approaches. When you kill thousands of people in other countries _ and sometimes for no good reason _ you shouldn’t be surprised when people in those countries are enraged by this behavior and interested in revenge. After all, how did we react after September 11? 

I recommend that we stop killing Muslims and become neutral in the endless war between Israel and the Arab nations. Let them settle their differences without our special interest intervention. Don’t ‘mess’ with the Middle East. Eventually, the Arabs will run out of oil and have very little influence on the rest of the world. Any future terrorist acts against Americans must be met with relentless pursuit of the people who plan and help in the operation. They should be punished, their operations disrupted, their finances drained, and their hideouts destroyed. That should be our total focus. We need to let the rest of the world know that we are committed to this narrow and focused response to terrorism. No more ‘messing’ with the Middle East unless we have to go there to find the terrorists that ‘mess’ with us.

The Fundamentalist Muslims are on a dark, evil road to extinction. They are destroying Islam. My question is: Why do the Traditional and Secular Muslims allow this to happen? Why don’t the ‘good’ Muslims stop the ‘bad’ Muslims? Is it because there are really no ‘good’ Muslims? I hope that is not the case!

CHARACTER FLAWS OF CELEBRITIES

Tiger Woods has a lot of “shoulds” and Charlie Sheen, to his wife, is mean. Celebrity character flaws are always in the news. If it isn’t drugs or booze, it is neurosis, psychosis, or immoral behavior. I am thankful for not being famous. Only my friends know about my flaws. Bono is an exception to the rule. He seems to always be doing something good for humanity. He is a very intelligent and talented person. I hope his flaws remain unknown. He is human so, he must have some. So far, he has kept them hidden. A man is the sum of his actions and what he has done. Hopefully, the good outweighs the bad. Shakespeare said, “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” This is a difficult ambition. I am not divine enough to forgive someone like Adolph Hitler. There is a limit on what can be forgiven. Everyone has a different set point.

We all have one thing in common, our imperfections. There are those who have had an achievement which made our world a better place but that does not make them perfect. In a perfect world, we would not judge others nor have prejudices. Learning to tolerate and accept one another is something to aspire for. However, again, there are limits. Common sense tells me to not be tolerant of militant Muslims who are trying to destroy my way of life. I say profile the bastards! Finally, our government has decided that it is politically correct to profile Muslims and other wanna be terrorist from certain countries. It is about time! We were damn lucky that goofy Nigerian just set his pants on fire instead of blowing up an airplane with hundreds of people on board. Wake up people! Fundamentalist Muslims hate us and want to kill us!


Everyone makes mistakes. The trick is to do it when nobody is looking!

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