Bill Gates’s era

The 88% rise in Microsoft stock in 1996 meant [Bill Gates] made on paper more than $10.9 billion, or about $30 million a day. That makes him the world’s richest person, by far. But he’s more than that. He has become the Edison and Ford of our age. A technologists turned entrepreneur, he embodies the digital era -Walter Isaacson (1952-). “In search of the real Bill Gates,” Time 13 January 1997

The Young man said to him. “All these [commandments] I have observed; what do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in the heaven; and come, follow me. “ When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions. – Matthew(A.D. 1^st cent.)

BILL & MELINDA GATES foundation

Foundation Fact Sheet

Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, we focus on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, we seek to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. Based in Seattle, the foundation is led by CEO Jeff Raikes and co-chair William H. Gates Sr., under the direction of Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.

Statistics

Number of employees: approximately 786
Asset trust endowment: $34.17 billion
Total grant commitments since inception: $21.08 billion
Total 2008 grant payments: $2.8 billion

Tony Blair: Faith-Based Politics

Tony Blair, Britain's -longest-serving Labour prime minister, left office in 2007 as a relatively young man of 54. He's kept busy: making speeches (at roughly $150,000 a pop); serving as Middle East envoy for the Quartet of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia; and setting up several charities, including the Faith Foundation. At his office in London, Blair spoke to NEWSWEEK's Stryker McGuire. Excerpts:

You've said religious faith will be at least as significant in the 21st century as political ideology was in the 20th. why is that?

Left-versus-right issues still -matter—you can see that in the economic crisis—but they matter less today than the issue of what I would call open versus closed. There are two competing dimensions in most faiths. One is exclusionary: "my faith as opposed to yours." The other, which is inclusionary, sees faith as reaching out to others. Religion motivates and galvanizes very large numbers of people. Indeed the theory that religious faith would die out in a process of "enlightenment" has turned out to be a completely false prophecy.

Courtesy Newsweek dated May 25, 2009

When the messenger who carried the last sheet [of Johnson’s Dictionary] to Miller returned, Johnson asked him, ‘Well, what did he say?’ - ‘Sir (answered the messenger), he said thank God I have done with him.’ – ‘I am glad (replied Johnson with a smile,) that he thanks God for anything.’ – Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

The Day of Judgment is either approaching or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore, the candles be brought –Col. Davenport (18^th cent.). Speaker of Connecticut House of Representatives. Responding to his colleague’s clamor for adjournment because of their fear that the darkened skies at midday signaled the end of the world. 19 May 1790. In Alistair Cooke, “Getting Away from it all,” One Man’s America, 1952.

‘Masters of light’ win Nobel Physics Prize

Award divided between Hong Kong based expert and two American scientists for inventing fibre-optic cable and imaging semiconductor circuit used in digital cameras

STOCKHOLM: Charles Kao, Willard Boyle and George Smith won the 2009 Nobel Physics Prize on Tuesday for pioneering “masters of light” work on fibre optics and semiconductors, the Nobel jury said.

The Hong Kong-based expert Kao and his two American counterparts were hailed for creating the two tools that helped unleash the Information Technology revolution of today. “This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded for two scientific achievements that have helped to shape the foundations of today’s networked societies. “They have created many practical innovations for everyday life and provided new tools for scientific exploration,” it said.

One of them is the fibre-optic cable, which enables transmission of data at the speed of light, the Nobel jury said. Kao, who has British nationality but has been based in Hong Kong, was awarded half of the prize for “groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication,” it said. “If we were to unravel all of the glass fibres that wind around the globe, we would get a single thread over one billion kilometres long - which is enough to encircle the globe more than 25,000 times - and is increasing by thousands of kilometres every hour,” it said.

Kao’s discovery means that “text, music, images and video can be transferred around the globe in a split second,” the jury said. Boyle and Smith shared the other half of the prize for “the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit - the CCD sensor,” or the charge-coupled device, which is the “electronic eye” of the digital camera. The CCD sensor, invented in 1969, “revolutionised photography, as light could be now captured electronically instead of on film.”

CCD technology is also used in many medical applications, such as imaging the inside of the human body, both for diagnostics and for microsurgery. Last year, the prize went to Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa of Japan and Yoichiro Nambu of the United States for groundbreaking theoretical work on fundamental particles called quarks. On Monday, Australian-American scientist Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider and Jack Szostak of the United States won the Nobel Medicine Prize for identifying a key molecular switch in cellular ageing.

Even the most stable atoms will radioactively decay, emit alpha and other particles, and fall to pieces, leaving only iron, if we wait long enough. How long? The American physicists Freeman Dyson of the institute of Advanced Study Calculates that the half life of iron is about 10⁵⁰⁰ years, a one followed by 500 zeros – a number so large that it would take a dedicated numerologist the better part of 10 minutes just to write it down. So if we wait just a little longer – 10⁶⁰⁰ years would do just fine- not only would the stars have gone out but all the matter in the universe not in neutron stars or black holes would have decayed into the ultimate nuclear dust. Eventually galaxies will have vanished all together. Suns will have blackened, matter disintegrated, and no conceivable possibility would remain for the survival of life or intelligence or civilizations – a cold , a dark and a desolate death of the universe.

Carl Sagan (1934-1996), in the book Broca’s Brain (1979 edition) (page 348)

When all the suns will be blackened and all matter disintegrated the average temperature of the universe will rise from the present 5 °Kelvin (-268 °C) to 8 °Kelvin (-265 °C). Then the universe will be extremely cold, and completely dark.

We are set irrevocably, I believe, to the path that will take us to the stars- unless in some monstrous capitulation to stupidity and greed, we destroy ourselves first. And out there in the depths of space, it seems very likely that sooner or later, we’ll find other intelligent beings. Some of them will be less advance than we, some, probably most, will be more. Will all the space- faring beings, I wonder, be creatures whose births are painful. The beings more advanced than we will have capabilities far beyond our understanding. In some very real sense they will appear to us as god-like. There will be a great deal of growing up required of the infant humans species. Perhaps our decadence in those remote times will look back on us, on the long and wandering journey the human race will have taken from its dimly remembered origins on the distant planet earth, and recollect our personal and collective histories, our romance with science and religion, with clarity and understanding and love [of humanity].

Carl Sagan (1934-1996) in the book Broca’s Brain (1979 edition) page 368.

Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was anAmerican astronomer, astrophysicist, author, and highly successfulpopularizer of astronomy, astrophysics and other natural sciences. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

He is world-famous for writing popular science books and for co-writing and presenting the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which has been seen by more than 500 million people in over 60 countries. A book to accompany the program was also published. He also wrote the novel Contact, the basis for the 1997 film of the same name. During his lifetime, Sagan published more than 600 scientific papers and popular articles and was author, co-author, or editor of more than 20 books. In his works, he frequently advocated skeptical inquiry, secular humanism, and the scientific method.