This Is So Not True!

Studies have shown (got a deadline and just don’t have the time to search google for this!) around 90% of what someone achieves is based on the circumstances he/she is put in! Nuff said!

from here:

The working classes have lower IQs than those from wealthier backgrounds and should not be expected to win places at top universities, an academic has claimed.

Bruce Charlton, reader in evolutionary psychiatry at Newcastle University, suggested that the low numbers of working-class students at elite universities was the “natural outcome” of IQ differences between classes.
In a paper shown to the Times Higher Education magazine, Dr Charlton questioned the Government’s drive to get more students from poor backgrounds into top universities like Oxford and Cambridge.
He said: “The UK Government has spent a great deal of time and effort in asserting that universities, especially Oxford and Cambridge, are unfairly excluding people from low social class backgrounds and privileging those from higher social classes.
“Yet in all this debate a simple and vital fact has been missed: higher social classes have a significantly higher average IQ than lower social classes.”
The fact that so few students from poor families get into Oxbridge is not down to “prejudice” but “meritocracy”, he said.
The Government criticised Dr Charlton’s comments. Higher education minister Bill Rammell said: “These arguments have a definite tone of ‘people should know their place’.
“There are young people with talent, ability and the potential to benefit from higher education who do not currently do so. That should concern us all.”
Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, said: “It should come as little surprise that people who enjoy a more privileged upbringing have a better start in life.
“It is up to all of us to ensure that not having access to the social and educational benefits that money provides is not a barrier to achieving one’s full potential.”

Road Less Travelled and an apology

I may be day dreaming, I may be rewriting my story I may be delusional, I’m not really sure. But I’ve always tried to take the road less traveled. I apologize to the people who  are hurt along the way. I ask forgiveness for causing you pain, Not for what I have done, but the pain it caused you. I never meant to hurt anyone. It just had to happen the way it did!
Road Less Traveled
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference
– Robert Frost

A Letter From DAD to SON!

An excellent letter written by leo of zen habits. Letter is here:
Best Part for me:
Love Should Be Your Rule
If there’s a single word you should live your life by, it should be this: Love. It might sound corny, I know … but trust me, there’s no better rule in life.

Best Sentence Read Today!

Part of me always hated taking any exam, that’s why this kind of hits home for me.  More on this later!

The U.S. system may be too lax when it comes to rigor and memorization, but it is very good at developing the critical faculties of the mind. It is surely this quality that goes some way in explaining why the United States produces so many entrepreneurs, inventors, and risk takers. Tharman Shanmugaratnam, until recently Singapore’s minister of education, explains the difference between his country’s system and that of the United States: “We both have meritocracies,” Shanmugaratnam says. “Yours is a talent meritocracy, ours is an exam meritocracy. We know how to train people to take exams. You know how to use people’s talents to the fullest. Both are important, but there are some parts of the intellect that we are not able to test well — like creativity, curiosity, a sense of adventure, ambition. Most of all, America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority.” This is one reason that Singaporean officials recently visited U.S. schools to learn how to create a system that nurtures and rewards ingenuity, quick thinking, and problem solving. “Just by watching, you can see students are more engaged, instead of being spoon-fed all day,” one Singaporean visitor told The Washington Post. While the United States marvels at Asia’s test-taking skills, Asian governments come to the United States to figure out how to get their children to think.

Fareed Zakaria

Longing For May 12!

May 12 is a red calendar day for me. Back to everyday blogging, back to java (goodbye C#, joke lang , C# I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, Java, C don’t poke C#’s eyes!)

Word Of The Day 2008 04 28!

Pizzled: from here:
I actually try to never do this, My policy is that the person who I’m with deserves more attention than a text message or a phone call. I try to do this because the only person whom I have really any control of Is me. Let others be insensitive, I live my way!

The feeling you get when someone whips out their Blackberry aka crackberry or cell phone and begins having a conversation with someone. It’s a cross between pissed off and puzzled.

I was pizzled the other night when my husband started talking on his Crackberry at the dinner table.

A Poem About Seeking and Finding!

from TED here:
I enjoyed the TED talk, do try to view the 18 minute talk!
a poem I transcribed from the TED talk!
He who seeks truth shall find beauty
He who seeks beauty shall find vanity
He who seeks order shall find gratification
He who seeks gratification shall be disappointed
He who considers himself the servant of his fellow being
shall find the joy of self expression
He who seeks self expression shall fall into the pit of
arrogance
Arrogance is incompatible with nature
Through nature , the nature of the universe, the nature of man
we shall seek truth
Through truth we shall find beauty.