Correction: 2004 Basketball Olympic Gold in Athens was won by Argentina (its first ever Olympic medal) . But Puerto Rico did win over USA team.
Umesh
Argentina topples Italy for basketball gold
Last Updated: Sunday, August 29, 2004. 8:16am (AEST)
Argentina capped a golden day in their history on day 15 of the Athens Olympics by beating Italy 84-69 to win the men's basketball title for the first time.
The South American country had not tasted Olympic victory of any sort since 1952.
But earlier in the day Argentina won the soccer gold medal at the Athens Games.
"Before this, the Americans went 109-2 with 12 gold medals since 1936. The only prior US men's basketball losses in Olympic history were to the Soviet Union in a controversial 1972 Munich final and a 1988 Seoul semi-final.
Puerto Rico inflicted the first Olympic defeat upon a US NBA squad by 92-73 in their Games opener and Lithuania outdueled an improved US team down the stretch for a 94-90 triumph. "
umesh sharma <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
About Hippies and junkies (smoking easily available "weed" or marijuana or "bhang" ) I know for a fact having seen so many of them in remote Pushkar - and read about their economics in the local edition of Times Of India --Rajasthanplus http://www.rajplus.com/ as well as from Tourist guides.About the NRIs planning to return to India I read when I was in India on www.Rediff.com where some NRI was giving advice to those going to Bangalore. He advised that wait till you spend about ten years in US and then once you are a citizen you are guarenteed Rs 25,000 p.m. (a princely sum in India as you will agree) - and then u come back to set up a start up in tech field etc. I imagine thats what many techies might be doing whilereturning to Bangalore or Hyderbad.umesh
Chan Mahanta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:>However, as I read somewhere, some become citizens in the West and return in >old age to their poor countires and survive very nicely on the generous >unemplo! yment dole (as do Hippies)*** Where did you read this Umesh? Or did you just make it up, without regard to the facts?At 8:14 PM +0000 2/20/06, umesh sharma wrote:My note: In 2004 summer Olympics at Athens the basketball Gold went to obscure and poor Peurto Rico -who beat longstanding champions - USA. How? -- by watching the videos of games played by Michael "Air" Jordan and Chicago Bulls --and playing accrodingly. Modern communication means knowledge can be trasferred easily across the globe. The secrets are out. Countries, companies across the world are quick to adopt tactics and strategies being currently used by Western ones.UmeshPS: However, for poor countries like India there are millions who would love to work in the West -for the one who opts to go back. However, as I read somewhere, some become citizens in the West and return in old age to their poor countires and survive very nicely on the generous unemplo! yment dole (as do Hippies)---------------------------------article's Best quote:In his book Thomas Friedman puts it another way: "In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears--and that is our problem."..."That is especially true in China, where the government has put its muscle behind an all-out effort to transform homegrown science. "Ten years ago in China, it was virtually all derivative stuff," says Chu. "Students would sit and listen and try to capture every word. Now they're asking lots of questions." During a 100th-anniversary celebration for Peking University a few years ago, Chu found himself seated next to China's Minister for Education. "She was asking for my autograph," he s! ays, shaking his head. "It was totally topsy-turvy. Can you imagine in the U.S. the Secretary of Education fawning on a Nobel prizewinner? It just won't happen."--------------------------------------------------------------------------Coverhttp://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1156575,00.html
Are We Losing Our Edge?
The U.S. still leads the world in scientific innovation. But years of declining investment and fresh competition from abroad threaten to end our supremacy
By MICHAEL D. LEMONICKFeb. 13, 2006Gabriel Aeppli was! born in Switzerland, but when he was 1 year old, his father came to the U.S. to pursue a career as a mathematician. Back then, America was a scientific "city on the hill," a place where enormous resources, academic freedom, a tradition of skepticism and a history of excellence lured everyone from astronomers to zoologists from all over the world, and like Aeppli's father, many of them never had any interest in leaving.Aeppli, now 48, attended M.I.T., where he got a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, and went on to work at Bell Labs, the legendary research arm of AT&T. Then he moved on to the NEC research laboratory, outside Princeton, N.J., as a senior research scientist. But while industrial labs used to be well-funded havens for freewheeling scientific inquiry, says Aeppli, "my career was limited because opportunities to lead were very few." So he left for an academic job in Britain. He now holds a chair in physics at University College London and also dire! cts the London Center for Nanotechnology. "I've been able to start with a clean sheet of paper and create something unique in a world-class city," he says. "We doubt that could be done anywhere else."Edison Liu is a Hong Kong native who studied in the U.S. and eventually rose to become director of the division of clinical sciences at the National Cancer Institute. But in 2001 the government of Singapore made him an offer he couldn't refuse: the directorship of the brand new Genome Institute along with a $25 million starting budget--part of a $288 million integrated network of life-science research centers and biotech start-ups called Biopolis. Says Liu: "I came because I saw that the entire leadership of the country, the fabric of the country was thirsting for biology."If those were just isolated cases, they would be easy to dismiss. Such stories, though, have become disturbingly common. After more than a half-century of unchallenged superiority in virtual! ly every field of science and technology, from basic research to product development, America is starting to lose ground to other nations. It's still on top for now; the U.S continues to lead the world in economic performance, business and government efficiency and in the strength of its infrastructure. As recently as 2001, the U.S., with just 6% of the world's population, churned out 41% of its Ph.D.s. And its labs regularly achieve technological feats, as last month's rollout of a new, superpowerful Macintosh computer and the launch of a space probe to Pluto make clear.But by almost any measure--academic prizes, patents granted to U.S. companies, the trade deficit in high-technology products--we're losing ground while countries like China, South Korea and India are catching up fast. Unless things change, they will overtake us, and the breathtaking burst of discovery that has been driving our economy for the past half-century will be over. In his 2005 best seller, The ! World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman argues that globalization has collapsed the old hierarchy of economic engine-nations into a world where the ambitious everywhere can compete across borders against one another, and he identifies the science problem as a big part of that development. Borrowing a phrase from Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he calls it America's "quiet crisis."Some critics have tried to put the blame for the U.S.'s scientific decline on President George W. Bush, citing his hostility to stem-cell research, his downplaying of global warming, his statements in support of "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution, and his Administration's appointment of nonscientists to scientific panels as well as its alleged quashing of dissenting scientists (see story on page 37). Although that record has certainly roiled the scientific community at home, experts in business and academia have been warning for decade! s that U.S. science was heading for trouble for three simple reasons. The Federal Government, beset by deficits for most of the past three decades, has steadily been cutting back on investment in research and development. Corporations, under increasing pressure from their stockholders for quick profits, have been doing the same and focusing on short-term products. And the quality of education in math and science in elementary and high schools has plummeted, leading to a drop in the number of students majoring in technical fields in college and graduate school. In the past, hungry immigrants looking for America's prestigious Ph.D.s made up for that decline in the U.S. science and engineering labor force. Now if they come to America for Ph.D.s, students often return with them to gleaming labs in their homelands.The warnings about those three forces have been largely ignored. In the aftermath of 9/11, for example, the political class complained that nobody had heeded a r! eport issued nine months earlier by former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman warning of a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The report also said "the inadequacies of our systems of research and education" posed a threat to U.S. national security greater "than any potential conventional war that we might imagine." Nobody paid attention to that part either.People are paying attention now, though. Responding to an increasingly insistent drumbeat of lobbying over the past few months from industry leaders, scientists and legislators, Bush announced in his State of the Union address last week the launch of what he called the American Competitiveness Initiative. The plan: double federal funding of research in basic areas like nanotechnology, supercomputing and alternative energy; make permanent the R&D tax credit; and train 70,000 additional high school science and math teachers. Aboard Air Force One the next morning, the President told Lamar Alexander, the Tennes! see Republican Senator who has been pushing the idea hard for the past year, that he's determined to make it happen. "I want to make sure that everyone knew I was taking this seriously," said Bush.---------------------------.............................. . ........................
Umesh Sharma
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College Park, MD 20740
1-202-215-4328 [Cell Phone]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
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