As my friend was passing by an elephant, he suddenly stopped, confused by
the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope
tied to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the
elephants could, at anytime, break away from the ropes they were tied to
but for some reason, they did not. My friend saw a trainer nearby and asked
why these beautiful, magnificent animals just stood there and made no
attempt to get away.

“Well,” he said, “when they are very young and much smaller we use the same
size rope to tie them and, at that age, it’s enough to hold them. As they
grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They
believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free.” My
friend was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their
bonds but because they believed they couldn’t, they were stuck right where
they were.

Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief
that we cannot do something, simply because we failed at it once before? So
make an attempt to grow further…. Why shouldn’t we try it again?

“YOUR ATTEMPT MAY FAIL, BUT NEVER FAIL TO MAKE AN ATTEMPT.”

OBAMA

O- Originally
B - Born in
A - Africa to
M - Manage
A - America

Technical Skill is the mastery of complexity, while Creativity is the
master of presence of mind

This is a famous paper written for an Oxford philosophy exam, normally
requiring an eight page essay answer and expected to be backed up with
source material, quotes and analytical reasoning.
This guy wrote the below answer and topped the exam!

*OXFORD EXAMINATION BOARD 1987*
*ESSAY QUESTION*

Question: What is courage? (50 Marks)

Answer: This is courage

The thought of a six-footlong iron rod falling from the sky and piercing through your stomach is the stuff nightmares are made of. And this is exactly what 21-year-old construction worker Santosh Kumar survived on December 1.

    An unskilled worker from Bihar, India, Kumar had come to Pune ,India, a month ago seeking employment and was working at a construction site in the city. On the morning of December 1, when Kumar walked out of an under-construction building, he was hit by a six-foot-long iron rod that had slipped from a pulley ferrying the rods to the seventh floor.

    “The rod penetrated through his right shoulder to come out from the right arm, further pierced through the right side of his abdomen and traversed diagonally to come out of his left groin and went into the thigh,” said senior gastro-intestinal surgeon Gajanan Wagholikar who operated on Kumar.

    Wagholikar was assisted by senior orthopaedic surgeons J C Purohit and Deepali Gonjari, in the five-and-a-half-hour-long surgery. Kumar was grounded by the impact and lay immobilised in an odd position, writhing in agony. “Shifting the victim, in itself, was an ordeal. He had to be carried in the same position,” Wagholikar added.

    “Medical protocol is that the impaling object has to be removed only in the operation theatre, after ascertaining the damage it has done,” said Wagholikar. The rod had penetrated Kumar’s intestines in multiple locations and had made 16 holes. “Two segments of the intestine were badly damaged. While they had to be sacrificed and healthy intestine reconnected, the other holes were closed. After the operation, the patient registered a slow and steady recovery,” said Wagholikar.

    Injuries with a penetrating object lodged in the body are known as impalement injuries and are extremely rare in surgical trauma practice. 

src. Times of India

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Tea cultivation in Corrientes province, Argentina. The fertility of the red soil and the regular rains of the Corrientes region create the ideal conditions for the cultivation of tea. In an effort to protect the soil against erosion, tea is planted along curved terraces and protected from the wind by hedges. Unlike Asian and African countries, where the young sprouts are handpicked, in Argentina mechanical harvesting is the rule, done mainly with high-clearance tractors that are driven along the straight rows of tea bushes. [map] ( Yann Arthus-Bertrand) #

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A whale swims off the Valdes peninsula, Argentina. After summering in the Arctic, whales return to the southern seas each winter to reproduce. From July to November, whales mate and bear their young along the coasts of the Valdes Peninsula in Argentina. Until the 1950s, this migratory marine mammal was extensively hunted for its meat and the oil extracted from its fat, which brought it to the edge of extinction. Protective measures were adopted after international attention was focused on the problem in 1937. In 1982a moratorium was declared on whale hunting for commercial purposes, and in 1994the southern seas became a whale sanctuary. After decades of protection, 7of the 13whale species, of which only a few thousand remain (10to 60times fewer than in the early 20th century), are still endangered. [map] ( Yann Arthus-Bertrand)

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Darul Aman Palace, in Kabul, Afghanistan. First built in the 1920s by King Amanullah Khan, the palace has been destroyed (by fire and warfare) and rebuilt many times. Its re-reconstruction is in the planning and fundraising stage right now. [map] ( Yann Arthus-Bertrand) #

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Algae in the Gulf of Morbihan, France. For more than a century, oyster farms have been the privileged sites for the introduction of exotic species. In the 1920s an epidemic decimated Crassostrea angulata, the most widely exploited oyster species in France. A Japanese species, Crassostrea gigas, was then introduced - and, involuntarily along with it, some thirty species of animals and algae that today live in the waters of the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean. One example is the Sargasso (Sargassum muticum), a brown algae, seen here in the Gulf of Morbihan, where it has become a part of the local flora. [map] ( Yann Arthus-Bertrand) # 

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Today i was browsing through my account in ETS site . I was trying to send my TOEFL score to some universities it gave me the following error. Looks like ETS uses Struts J2EE framework. Struts is similar to the framework i work with. It was quite familiar to me but if someone else had got that error he would be scared to death . Click image for larger view