Lies, deceptions, hallmark of Sri Lanka war- Telegraph

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 May 2009, 11:14 GMT]
"Chinese weapons, Indian intelligence, Sinhala Armed personals and racist Sri Lankan leaders came together to perform one of the most cruel war that has cost the lives of many thousands innocents," says Richard Dixon, a columnist in London's Telegraph. While "Tamils all over the world are mourning the death of their loved ones back home," and "[b]irds have now stopped singing in a land called Vanni," Dixon writes, "[l]eaders of Sri Lanka and some responsible officers in the UN, should be questioned in international courts in order to find out if they were responsible for the deaths of innocent Tamils."

The Real Culprits behind Sri Lankan War

Birds have now stopped singing in a land called Vanni. Sun, moon and the stars in the sky have hidden their faces. Angel of death flew over the skies of Vanni and took the lives of more than twenty five thousand innocent Tamil men, women and children in a single day.

Thousands of wounded are still crying out for help. They are bleeding to death on the streets. They have touched neither water nor food for days. Nobody has come to rescue them. Those who fight for the rights of the animals and those who preach about Buddha and Mahatma have no compassion for the dying Tamils.

Chinese weapons, Indian intelligence, Sinhala Armed personals and racist Sri Lankan leaders came together to perform one of the most cruel war that has cost the lives of many thousands innocents.

While thousands of innocent children and women are facing painful and slow death, Sinhala Buddhist extremists are celebrating victory with flags and fire crackers in the south of the country.

War that was started with hidden agendas of local and international forces, went on for months not just with the strength of the weapons but with well organised false propaganda done by the Sri Lankan officials.

This war was orchestrated and staged with lies and deceptions from the beginning till the end.

Sri Lankan leaders are still vomiting out worms of lies

Rulers of Sri Lanka are continuing to vomit out worms of lies to justify their atrocities against innocent lives. They started with “War on Terror” but changed the buzz word to “Humanitarian Operation” in order to deceive the international community. “War on Terror” was an accepted norm during the Bush era but lost it's validity now. Therefore they had changed the name of the game to “Humanitarian operation”

Why do they lie?

Because they have many hidden agendas behind this dirty war. They want to hide the atrocities that are being committed against innocent civilians. They themselves know, what they are doing is wrong and not acceptable in a civilised world.

Above everything they want to protect India who are orchestrating the war in Sri Lanka. Indian intelligent agents and military experts are working closely with the Sri Lankan forces in the war zone.

How do they manage to lie?
They simply hide the truth. When the truth is hidden what comes out is lie.

Foreign journalists and aid workers are barred from the war zone and IDP camps. Those who try to enter and report about the war, are kicked out of the country if they are critical of the government.

Local journalists are intimidated, tortured and sometime killed. Telling the truth is considered a crime in Sri Lanka.

Phone lines are tapped. Web sites are blocked. Anybody who talk against the government is considered as Terrorist or Terrorist supporter.

In the war front, dead bodies of the civilians are burned to ashes using powerful chemicals. This is to hide the number of innocent civilians that have perished in the war.

Sri Lankan government officials very often organise staged visits to the IDP camps and force the refugees to lie to the foreign diplomats.

What did they lie about?

They lied about the objective of the war, weapons used, number of civilian causalities and military operations.

Although they initially claimed that the objective of the war was to defeat the LTTE, they have in fact killed and wounded several thousands of innocent Tamil civilians with heavy weapons. They used chemical weapons and cluster bombs on innocents, but they continue to deny the usage of such weapons.

Sri Lankan forces have destroyed Schools, hospitals and farm lands and made the whole place into a graveyard for the Tamils. This is also regularly denied by the Sri Lankan authorities.

This war has claimed more than fifty thousands lives just within the last few months but the Sri Lankan government is not going to open their mouth and tell this truth to the world.

Why didn't the UN intervene?
United Nations, who is supposed to be a guardian for the oppressed people in the world turned out to be a silent spectator of a man made disaster that has taken the lives of many thousands.

There is a conspiracy behind this whole war game. China was initially blocking every attempt that was made by UK and France to discuss the Sri Lankan issue in the Security Council.

Ban Ki-moon's chief of staff Vijay Nambiar was sent to Sri Lanka to organise a cease fire. He failed to secure a ceasefire and returned back after meeting the Sri Lankan and Indian officials.

Interestingly Vijay Nambiar couldn't achieve anything constructive in his visit and he had also refused to meet the reporters.

This `unbiased` negotiator, who appears to actually be on the payroll of the Sri Lankan government, though indirectly, something that is obviously known to the United Nations. Vijay Nambiar`s brother (Satish Nambiar) is a paid consultant for the Sri Lankan army, and has been since 2002. Is there any link between the UN and the Sri Lankan army`s paid consultant?

UN has once again proved to the world that it is no longer a trust worthy international body that can protect the vulnerable.

They have all achieved what they wanted

What we are witnessing in Sri Lanka is neither “war on terror” nor a Humanitarian operation. This is simply a racist war against the Tamils conducted with the help of India and China. You wouldn't shoot at the passengers and bomb the whole bus, if you had to rescue the hostages.

Sinhala extremists are already celebrating and they have also started to intimidate Tamils in the South of the country.

India and China have started to work on their hidden agendas in Sri Lanka.

Tamils all over the world are mourning the death of their loved ones back home.

What Next?

When the rocket scientists designed highly complex derivatives and greedy traders traded these new emperors cloths, many investment banks collapsed. Pension funds lost money. Bankers committed suicide.

The whole financial disaster was caused by greedy and selfish individuals who had short term hidden agendas.

We took action. Greedy bankers and traders were taken to courts. New rules and regulations are now in place to prevent this happening again.In the same way, the masters of this war in Sri Lanka should be brought to justice.

Sinhala government with racist agendas , China and India with their strategic interests and UN with corrupt officers are the evil ingredients of this dirty war that has cost the lives of many thousands innocent Tamils.

Leaders of Sri Lanka and some responsible officers in the UN, should be questioned in international courts in order to find out if they were responsible for the deaths of innocent Tamils.

If we didn't, we would end up seeing more of such evil games repeated over and over again.

Richard Dixon
RichardDixons@googlemail.com

The Einstein Factor

The Einstein Factor
The curiosity of the greatest thinker of our time.
By Walter Isaacson

Not Always an EinsteinWhen Albert Einstein arrived in America at age 54, pulling into New York Harbor on the ocean liner Westernland on October 17, 1933, an official greeting committee was waiting for him. Einstein and his entourage, however, were nowhere to be found.

Abraham Flexner, director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, was obsessed with shielding his celebrity professor from publicity. So he'd sent a tugboat to spirit the great man away from the Westernland as soon as it cleared quarantine. His hair poking out from a wide-brimmed black hat, Einstein surreptitiously disembarked onto the tug, which ferried him and his party to lower Manhattan, where a car would whisk them to Princeton. "All Dr. Einstein wants is to be left in peace and quiet," Flexner told reporters.

Actually, Einstein also wanted a newspaper and an ice cream cone. As soon as he checked into Princeton's Peacock Inn, he walked over to a newsstand, bought a newspaper and chuckled at the headlines about his mysterious whereabouts. Then he entered a local ice cream parlor and ordered a cone. The waitress making change for him declared, "This one goes in my memory book"

Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his contribution to theoretical physics, Einstein was given an office at the institute. He was asked what equipment he needed. "A desk or table, a chair, paper and pencils," he replied. "Oh, and a large wastebasket, so I can throw away all my mistakes."

He and Elsa, his wife, rented a house and settled into life in Princeton. He liked the fact that America, despite its inequalities of wealth and racial injustices, was more of a meritocracy than Europe. "What makes the new arrival devoted to this country is the democratic trait among the people," he would later marvel. "No one humbles himself before another person."

The lack of stifling traditions, he noted, encouraged more of the sort of creativity he'd relished as a student in Europe, where his constant questioning of established wisdom led to the special theory of relativity, as well as the best-known equation in all of physics: E=mc2. Einstein, however, was no Einstein when he was a child.

Growing up in Munich, Germany, the first of two children of Hermann and Pauline Einstein, he was slow in learning how to talk. "My parents were so worried," he recalled, "that they consulted a doctor."

Even when he began using words after age two, he developed a quirk that prompted his nursemaid to dub him the dopey one. "Every sentence he uttered, no matter how routine," recalled his younger sister, Maja, "he repeated to himself softly, moving his lips." His slow development was combined with a cheeky rebelliousness toward authority, which led one German schoolmaster to send him packing. Another declared that Einstein would never amount to much.

"When I ask myself how it happened that I discovered the relativity theory, it seemed to lie in the following circumstance," Einstein later explained. "The ordinary adult never bothers his head about the problems of space and time. These are things he has thought of as a child. But I developed so slowly that I began to wonder about space and time only when I was already grown up. I probed more deeply into the problem than an ordinary child would have."

Encouraged by his genial father, who ran a family business, and his music-loving mother, Einstein spent hours working on puzzles and building towers with toys. "Persistence and tenacity were part of his character," his sister remarked.

Once, when Einstein was sick in bed as a preschooler, his father brought him a compass. Einstein later remembered being so excited as he examined its mysterious powers that he trembled and grew cold. The magnetic needle behaved as if influenced by a hidden force field, rather than through a mechanical method of touch or contact. "Something deeply hidden had to be behind things," he said.

He marveled at magnetic fields, gravity, inertia and light beams. He retained the ability to hold two thoughts in his mind simultaneously, to be puzzled when they conflicted and to delight when he saw an underlying unity. "People like you and me never grow old," he wrote a friend years later. "We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born."

Contrary to widespread belief, Einstein excelled at math. By the age of 13, "he already had a predilection for solving complicated problems in applied arithmetic," his sister recalled. An uncle, Jakob Einstein, an engineer, introduced him to the joys of algebra, calling it a "merry science," and whenever Einstein triumphed, he "was overcome with happiness."

From his reading of popular science books, which showed him that "much in the Bible could not be true," Einstein developed a resistance to all forms of dogma. As he wrote in 1901, "A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth."

At age 15, Einstein left Germany for northern Italy, where his parents relocated their business, and at 16, he wrote his first essay on theoretical physics. By then, he was a head-turning teenager who possessed "masculine good looks of the type that played havoc at the turn of the century," according to a woman who knew him. He was sensuous and sassy, with many romantic relationships over the years.

Einstein's discovery of special relativity, after he graduated from the Zurich Polytechnic in 1900, involved an intuition based on intellectual as well as personal experience. He developed the theory starting in 1905, after taking a job at the Swiss patent office. But his theory was not fully accepted until 1919, when observations made during a solar eclipse confirmed his prediction of how much the gravity of the sun would bend light beams.

"Lights All Askew in the Heavens," The New York Times headlined. "Men of Science More or Less Agog Over Results of Eclipse Observations. Einstein Theory Triumphs."

At age 40, in 1919, Einstein was suddenly world famous. He was also married to Elsa, his second wife, and was the father of two sons from his first marriage. By spring 1921, his exploding global fame led to a grand two-month procession through parts of the United States, evoking mass frenzy. The world had never seen such a scientific celebrity superstar.

Dozens of reporters and cameramen rushed aboard his ship. "I can't do that," Einstein protested when told he should lead a press conference. "It's like undressing in public." But he could, and he did. After posing for pictures, he held a press briefing with all the wit and charm of a big-city mayor. When a reporter asked for a one-sentence description of the theory of relativity, Einstein replied, "All my life I have been trying to get it into one book. And he wants me to state it in one sentence!" But he gave a simple overview: "It's a theory of space and time as far as physics is concerned, which leads to a theory of gravitation."

A reporter asked Elsa if she understood relativity. "Oh, no," she replied. "It is not necessary to my happiness." Later that week, some 10,000 spectators gathered outside city hall to hear speeches. Einstein got a "tumultuous greeting." As he left, "he was lifted to the shoulders of his colleagues in the automobile," the New York Evening Post reported, "which passed through a roar of cheering voices."

On April 25, Einstein paid a visit to the White House to meet with President Warren G. Harding. Afterward he attended a reception at the National Academy of Sciences, where he listened to long, boring speeches. As the evening droned on, he turned to a Dutch diplomat and said, "I've just developed a new theory of eternity."

In Hartford, Connecticut, 15,000 spectators lined his parade route. In Cleveland, several thousand thronged the Union train depot, and a cadre of Jewish war veterans in uniform led a parade of 200 honking horns.

Einstein loved America, appreciating that its bursts of exuberance were the result of freedom and individualism. In March 1933, with Hitler in power in Germany, Einstein realized he could no longer live in Europe. By that fall, he'd settled in Princeton, and by 1940, he was a naturalized citizen, proud to call himself an American.

The Harmony of Nature and Math
His first Halloween living in this country, Einstein disarmed some astonished trick-or-treaters by serenading them at the door with his violin. At Christmas, when members of a local church came by to sing carols, he stepped outside, borrowed a violin and merrily accompanied them.
Einstein soon acquired an image, which grew into a near legend, of being a kindly professor, distracted at times but unfailingly sweet, who rarely combed his hair or wore socks. "I've reached an age when, if somebody tells me to wear socks, I don't have to," he told some local children.

He had also adapted to the role Elsa played, that of a wife who could be both doting and demanding. He gave in to her nagging that he smoked too much, and on Thanksgiving bet her that he would be able to abstain from his pipe until the New Year.

When she boasted of this to friends, Einstein grumbled, "I am no longer a slave to my pipe, but I am a slave to that woman." He kept his word, but "he got up at daylight on New Year's morning, and he hasn't had his pipe out of his mouth except to eat and sleep," Elsa reported.

The greatest source of friction for him came from Flexner's desire to protect him from publicity. Einstein once sent a letter with his return address as "Concentration Camp, Princeton." He proposed ending his relationship with the institute if the meddling continued. Finally Einstein won his battle. Every day he'd shuffle freely from his house on Mercer Street to his office.

He once helped a 15-year-old student, Henry Rosso, with a journalism class. Rosso's teacher had offered a top grade to anyone scoring an interview with the scientist, so Rosso showed up at the Einstein home, only to be rebuffed at the door. The milkman gave him a tip: Einstein walked a certain route each morning at 9:30. Rosso snuck out of school and accosted him.

But the student, flummoxed, didn't know what to ask. So Einstein suggested questions about math. "I discovered that nature was constructed in a wonderful way, and our task is to find out [its] mathematical structure," Einstein explained about his own education. "It is a kind of faith that helped me through my whole life."
The interview earned Henry Rosso an A.

Anger Management

We all know what anger is, and we've all felt it:

whether as a fleeting annoyance or as full-fledged rage.

Anger is a completely normal, usually healthy, human emotion. But when it gets out of control and turns destructive, it can lead to problems—problems at work, in your personal relationships, and in the overall quality of your life. And it can make you feel as though you're at the mercy of an unpredictable and powerful emotion. This brochure is meant to help you understand and control anger.

What is Anger?

The Nature of Anger
Anger is "an emotional state that varies in intensity from mild irritation to intense fury and rage," according to Charles Spielberger, PhD, a psychologist who specializes in the study of anger. Like other emotions, it is accompanied by physiological and biological changes; when you get angry, your heart rate and blood pressure go up, as do the levels of your energy hormones, adrenaline, and noradrenaline.

Anger can be caused by both external and internal events. You could be angry at a specific person (Such as a coworker or supervisor) or event (a traffic jam, a canceled flight), or your anger could be caused by worrying or brooding about your personal problems. Memories of traumatic or enraging events can also trigger angry feelings.

Expressing Anger
The instinctive, natural way to express anger is to respond aggressively. Anger is a natural, adaptive response to threats; it inspires powerful, often aggressive, feelings and behaviors, which allow us to fight and to defend ourselves when we are attacked. A certain amount of anger, therefore, is necessary to our survival.

On the other hand, we can't physically lash out at every person or object that irritates or annoys us; laws, social norms, and common sense place limits on how far our anger can take us.
People use a variety of both conscious and unconscious processes to deal with their angry feelings. The three main approaches are expressing, suppressing, and calming. Expressing your angry feelings in an assertive—not aggressive—manner is the healthiest way to express anger. To do this, you have to learn how to make clear what your needs are, and how to get them met, without hurting others. Being assertive doesn't mean being pushy or demanding; it means being respectful of yourself and others.

Anger can be suppressed, and then converted or redirected. This happens when you hold in your anger, stop thinking about it, and focus on something positive. The aim is to inhibit or suppress your anger and convert it into more constructive behavior. The danger in this type of response is that if it isn't allowed outward expression, your anger can turn inward—on yourself. Anger turned inward may cause hypertension, high blood pressure, or depression.

Unexpressed anger can create other problems. It can lead to pathological expressions of anger, such as passive-aggressive behavior (getting back at people indirectly, without telling them why, rather than confronting them head-on) or a personality that seems perpetually cynical and hostile. People who are constantly putting others down, criticizing everything, and making cynical comments haven't learned how to constructively express their anger. Not surprisingly, they aren't likely to have many successful relationships.

Finally, you can calm down inside. This means not just controlling your outward behavior, but also controlling your internal responses, taking steps to lower your heart rate, calm yourself down, and let the feelings subside.

As Dr. Spielberger notes, "when none of these three techniques work, that's when someone—or something—is going to get hurt."

Anger Management
The goal of anger management is to reduce both your emotional feelings and the physiological arousal that anger causes. You can't get rid of, or avoid, the things or the people that enrage you, nor can you change them, but you can learn to control your reactions.

Are You Too Angry?

There are psychological tests that measure the intensity of angry feelings, how prone to anger you are, and how well you handle it. But chances are good that if you do have a problem with anger, you already know it. If you find yourself acting in ways that seem out of control and frightening, you might need help finding better ways to deal with this emotion.

Why Are Some People More Angry Than Others?

According to Jerry Deffenbacher, PhD, a psychologist who specializes in anger management, some people really are more "hotheaded" than others are; they get angry more easily and more intensely than the average person does. There are also those who don't show their anger in loud spectacular ways but are chronically irritable and grumpy. Easily angered people don't always curse and throw things; sometimes they withdraw socially, sulk, or get physically ill.

People who are easily angered generally have what some psychologists call a low tolerance for frustration, meaning simply that they feel that they should not have to be subjected to frustration, inconvenience, or annoyance. They can't take things in stride, and they're particularly infuriated if the situation seems somehow unjust: for example, being corrected for a minor mistake.

What makes these people this way? A number of things. One cause may be genetic or physiological: There is evidence that some children are born irritable, touchy, and easily angered, and that these signs are present from a very early age. Another may be sociocultural. Anger is often regarded as negative; we're taught that it's all right to express anxiety, depression, or other emotions but not to express anger. As a result, we don't learn how to handle it or channel it constructively.

Research has also found that family background plays a role. Typically, people who are easily angered come from families that are disruptive, chaotic, and not skilled at emotional communications.

Is It Good To "Let it All Hang Out?"

Psychologists now say that this is a dangerous myth. Some people use this theory as a license to hurt others. Research has found that "letting it rip" with anger actually escalates anger and aggression and does nothing to help you (or the person you're angry with) resolve the situation.
It's best to find out what it is that triggers your anger, and then to develop strategies to keep those triggers from tipping you over the edge.

Strategies To Keep Anger At Bay
Relaxation
Simple relaxation tools, such as deep breathing and relaxing imagery, can help calm down angry feelings. There are books and courses that can teach you relaxation techniques, and once you learn the techniques, you can call upon them in any situation. If you are involved in a relationship where both partners are hot-tempered, it might be a good idea for both of you to learn these techniques.

Some simple steps you can try:

Breathe deeply, from your diaphragm; breathing from your chest won't relax you. Picture your breath coming up from your "gut."

Slowly repeat a calm word or phrase such as "relax," "take it easy." Repeat it to yourself while breathing deeply.

Use imagery; visualize a relaxing experience, from either your memory or your imagination.

Nonstrenuous, slow yoga-like exercises can relax your muscles and make you feel much calmer.
Practice these techniques daily. Learn to use them automatically when you're in a tense situation.

Cognitive Restructuring

Simply put, this means changing the way you think. Angry people tend to curse, swear, or speak in highly colorful terms that reflect their inner thoughts. When you're angry, your thinking can get very exaggerated and overly dramatic. Try replacing these thoughts with more rational ones. For instance, instead of telling yourself, "oh, it's awful, it's terrible, everything's ruined," tell yourself, "it's frustrating, and it's understandable that I'm upset about it, but it's not the end of the world and getting angry is not going to fix it anyhow."

Be careful of words like "never" or "always" when talking about yourself or someone else. "This !&*%@ machine never works," or "you're always forgetting things" are not just inaccurate, they also serve to make you feel that your anger is justified and that there's no way to solve the problem. They also alienate and humiliate people who might otherwise be willing to work with you on a solution.

Remind yourself that getting angry is not going to fix anything, that it won't make you feel better (and may actually make you feel worse).

Logic defeats anger, because anger, even when it's justified, can quickly become irrational. So use cold hard logic on yourself. Remind yourself that the world is "not out to get you," you're just experiencing some of the rough spots of daily life. Do this each time you feel anger getting the best of you, and it'll help you get a more balanced perspective. Angry people tend to demand things: fairness, appreciation, agreement, willingness to do things their way. Everyone wants these things, and we are all hurt and disappointed when we don't get them, but angry people demand them, and when their demands aren't met, their disappointment becomes anger. As part of their cognitive restructuring, angry people need to become aware of their demanding nature and translate their expectations into desires. In other words, saying, "I would like" something is healthier than saying, "I demand" or "I must have" something. When you're unable to get what you want, you will experience the normal reactions—frustration, disappointment, hurt—but not anger. Some angry people use this anger as a way to avoid feeling hurt, but that doesn't mean the hurt goes away.

Problem Solving

Sometimes, our anger and frustration are caused by very real and inescapable problems in our lives. Not all anger is misplaced, and often it's a healthy, natural response to these difficulties. There is also a cultural belief that every problem has a solution, and it adds to our frustration to find out that this isn't always the case. The best attitude to bring to such a situation, then, is not to focus on finding the solution, but rather on how you handle and face the problem.

Make a plan, and check your progress along the way. Resolve to give it your best, but also not to punish yourself if an answer doesn't come right away. If you can approach it with your best intentions and efforts and make a serious attempt to face it head-on, you will be less likely to lose patience and fall into all-or-nothing thinking, even if the problem does not get solved right away.

Better Communication

Angry people tend to jump to—and act on—conclusions, and some of those conclusions can be very inaccurate. The first thing to do if you're in a heated discussion is slow down and think through your responses. Don't say the first thing that comes into your head, but slow down and think carefully about what you want to say. At the same time, listen carefully to what the other person is saying and take your time before answering.

Listen, too, to what is underlying the anger. For instance, you like a certain amount of freedom and personal space, and your "significant other" wants more connection and closeness. If he or she starts complaining about your activities, don't retaliate by painting your partner as a jailer, a warden, or an albatross around your neck.

It's natural to get defensive when you're criticized, but don't fight back. Instead, listen to what's underlying the words: the message that this person might feel neglected and unloved. It may take a lot of patient questioning on your part, and it may require some breathing space, but don't let your anger—or a partner's—let a discussion spin out of control. Keeping your cool can keep the situation from becoming a disastrous one.

Using Humor

"Silly humor" can help defuse rage in a number of ways. For one thing, it can help you get a more balanced perspective. When you get angry and call someone a name or refer to them in some imaginative phrase, stop and picture what that word would literally look like. If you're at work and you think of a coworker as a "dirtbag" or a "single-cell life form," for example, picture a large bag full of dirt (or an amoeba) sitting at your colleague's desk, talking on the phone, going to meetings. Do this whenever a name comes into your head about another person. If you can, draw a picture of what the actual thing might look like. This will take a lot of the edge off your fury; and humor can always be relied on to help unknot a tense situation.

The underlying message of highly angry people, Dr. Deffenbacher says, is "things oughta go my way!" Angry people tend to feel that they are morally right, that any blocking or changing of their plans is an unbearable indignity and that they should NOT have to suffer this way. Maybe other people do, but not them!

When you feel that urge, he suggests, picture yourself as a god or goddess, a supreme ruler, who owns the streets and stores and office space, striding alone and having your way in all situations while others defer to you. The more detail you can get into your imaginary scenes, the more chances you have to realize that maybe you are being unreasonable; you'll also realize how unimportant the things you're angry about really are. There are two cautions in using humor. First, don't try to just "laugh off" your problems; rather, use humor to help yourself face them more constructively. Second, don't give in to harsh, sarcastic humor; that's just another form of unhealthy anger expression.

What these techniques have in common is a refusal to take yourself too seriously. Anger is a serious emotion, but it's often accompanied by ideas that, if examined, can make you laugh.

Changing Your Environment

Sometimes it's our immediate surroundings that give us cause for irritation and fury. Problems and responsibilities can weigh on you and make you feel angry at the "trap" you seem to have fallen into and all the people and things that form that trap.

Give yourself a break. Make sure you have some "personal time" scheduled for times of the day that you know are particularly stressful. One example is the working mother who has a standing rule that when she comes home from work, for the first 15 minutes "nobody talks to Mom unless the house is on fire." After this brief quiet time, she feels better prepared to handle demands from her kids without blowing up at them.

Some Other Tips for Easing Up on Yourself
Timing: If you and your spouse tend to fight when you discuss things at night—perhaps you're tired, or distracted, or maybe it's just habit—try changing the times when you talk about important matters so these talks don't turn into arguments.
Avoidance: If your child's chaotic room makes you furious every time you walk by it, shut the door. Don't make yourself look at what infuriates you. Don't say, "well, my child should clean up the room so I won't have to be angry!" That's not the point. The point is to keep yourself calm.
Finding alternatives: If your daily commute through traffic leaves you in a state of rage and frustration, give yourself a project—learn or map out a different route, one that's less congested or more scenic. Or find another alternative, such as a bus or commuter train.

Do You Need Counseling?

If you feel that your anger is really out of control, if it is having an impact on your relationships and on important parts of your life, you might consider counseling to learn how to handle it better. A psychologist or other licensed mental health professional can work with you in developing a range of techniques for changing your thinking and your behavior.

When you talk to a prospective therapist, tell her or him that you have problems with anger that you want to work on, and ask about his or her approach to anger management. Make sure this isn't only a course of action designed to "put you in touch with your feelings and express them"—that may be precisely what your problem is. With counseling, psychologists say, a highly angry person can move closer to a middle range of anger in about 8 to 10 weeks, depending on the circumstances and the techniques used.

What About Assertiveness Training?
It's true that angry people need to learn to become assertive (rather than aggressive), but most books and courses on developing assertiveness are aimed at people who don't feel enough anger. These people are more passive and acquiescent than the average person; they tend to let others walk all over them. That isn't something that most angry people do. Still, these books can contain some useful tactics to use in frustrating situations.

Remember, you can't eliminate anger—and it wouldn't be a good idea if you could. In spite of all your efforts, things will happen that will cause you anger; and sometimes it will be justifiable anger. Life will be filled with frustration, pain, loss, and the unpredictable actions of others. You can't change that; but you can change the way you let such events affect you. Controlling your angry responses can keep them from making you even more unhappy in the long run.

Courtesy:American Psychological Association

Be Careful What You Wish For

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Adrienne_Smith

Remember the story about Aladdin's lamp? As the story goes, the boy picks up the lamp and rubs it. Out comes a genie and tells the boy that he has three wishes. The boy gives him his first wish and the genie tells him that "your wish is my command". The boy continues with his second and third wish as the genie follows through with "your wish is my command". I always found that story fascinating and dreamed that would some day come true for me.

When I was a child I didn't understand that the genie is just a symbol and really stands for the higher power, God, the Universe, Allah, whoever is your highest consciousness. So what this story really means is that whatever belief system you have in place, that is who is granting your every wish. For now, we will continue to use the "genie".

The Law of Attraction is always working in everyone's life whether you realize it or not. Have you caught yourself asking for something and then later thinking to yourself that you will never be able to acquire it? The genie is in everyone's life and he is making your wishes come true. He is in essence saying to you each time you ask for something or wish for something that "your wish is my command". Just think about that for a few minutes.

Say you want a promotion really bad at work and you constantly say to yourself that you deserve that job because you are the best person for that position. As time goes by and you haven't heard anything, negative thoughts start creeping in and you start doubting yourself and your ability to actually get the promotion. Remember that every single thought that you are thinking is backed up with the genie telling you that "your wish is my command". Be careful what you wish for.

The genie can get overwhelmed at times because you are throwing so many different thoughts that way. Such as I really would like to buy that; your wish is my command, but I can't afford it; your wish is my command. I want that promotion so bad; your wish is my command, but I don't know if I'll get it; your wish is my command. When you follow your wish with a negative statement that is what you are going to get. Keep those positive thoughts, wishes and dreams in your mind at all times and the genie will grant your wish.

The most important lesson I learned about keeping negative thoughts out of my mind is the genie story. Everything you say, think, feel and do are coming from that higher place. The genie is granting your wishes without you realizing that is what is really happening. Just remember to be careful what you wish for or your wish just might come true.

Adrienne Smith is an internet marketing consultant and work at home business owner. She enjoys helping others succeed in all areas of their life. To read more about her, please visit her website at adriennesmith.net

Life as a female Tamil Tiger guerilla relived by one of first female soldiers

In 1987, aged 17, Niromi de Soyza shocked her middle-class Sri Lankan family by joining the Tamil Tigers. One of the rebels' first female soldiers, equipped with rifle and cyanide capsule, she was engaged in fierce combat

December 23 1987 was a warm, clear day, and I was hiding under a lantana bush with eight of my comrades in a village north of Jaffna. With our rifles cocked and our cyanide capsules clenched between our teeth, we awaited the soldiers who had been scouring the area for us for several hours. Our orders were to empty our magazines into them before biting into the glass capsules we called 'kuppies' that hung on a thread around our necks. As a Tamil Tiger guerrilla, there was no honour in being caught alive.

There had been 22 of us that morning – nine boys and 13 girls, aged between 15 and 26 (I was 17). Now, four of my comrades were missing, two were wounded. Ten were dead.

At dawn that day, Indian soldiers had surrounded our hideout, an abandoned house in Urumpiraay, a village in Sri Lanka's far north. As the war had intensified, our units were being squeezed out of Jaffna peninsula. We slept in different places each night: in open fields or houses taken by force.

Our sentry had spotted the enemy soldiers beyond a distant line of trees to the south, and Muralie, our unit's second in command, decided that we should flee north across an arterial road. The morning chill was still in the air and the dew dripped from banana leaves as we ran though fields and approached the road. As we attempted to cross it, we were ambushed from both sides in a barrage of automatic gunfire, grenades and mortars.

'Get on the ground!' Muralie commanded. 'Fire and break through!'
Everyone was screaming. We crashed to the earth as the gunfire grew heavier, now coming from behind as well. A helicopter gunship hovered above, strafing. We were surrounded. There was no cover other than a few palmyra and banana trees that dotted the landscape.

Lying on my stomach, I shuffled forward, following another girl, Ajanthi. My heart was pounding and thick smoke stung my eyes. In a state of panic, a few of my comrades attempted to cross the road. One by one, they fell. One was on her back, screaming, 'My leg, someone help me!'
A grenade flew over from my left. As I scrambled to my hands and knees, I realised Gandhi, our area leader, was in its path. 'Gandhi anna, duck!' I screamed. The grenade hit his head and exploded, ripping his skull apart and covering me with blood and tissue.

Ajanthi got to her knees, ready to dash across the road, then abruptly fell backwards, her arms and legs splayed awkwardly. Blood spurted from the centre of her forehead, soaking her auburn hair. In shock, the air left my lungs and I could not inhale it back. Ajanthi had been my friend since primary school and we had joined the Tigers together. She had been hit by a sniper.
I crawled forward holding my AK-47 with both hands, desperate to reach Ajanthi and drag her to safety. To my right, two comrades were trying to drag Muralie, who had also been hit, through the wet grass. His blood-soaked body kept slipping through their hands. As I reached Ajanthi our unit commander, Sudharshan, yanked me by the collar, dragging me with him.
'But Sudharshan anna,' I said, stumbling to my feet. 'We have to get Ajanthi, Muralie and the others.' 'They will follow us,' he said.

We ran through the fields and scrambled over a concrete parapet as rifle rounds flew from behind us, gouging holes in the wall. On the other side, we kept running and found five comrades. Seeing no means of escape, we took shelter under a large lantana bush.

At sunset, confident that the soldiers had moved on, we set out through fields, supporting the injured, eventually reaching a gathering of huts on a narrow lane. News of our arrival spread quickly, and a curious crowd assembled along the sides of the lane. Most had never seen female Tigers before. An old woman flung her bony arms around me: 'Ayyo, my poor child! Wouldn't your mother's heart break if she saw you like this?' I didn't realise then how I must have looked – a starved teenage girl with torn clothes, caked in blood, barefoot and carrying an automatic rifle. Most villagers wanted us gone. If the enemy soldiers knew we were still around, they were sure to attack the village.

On Christmas Day we arrived at a hideout occupied by another Tigers unit. I sat outside on the mud veranda, thinking about the ambush. Since joining the Tigers, Ajanthi and I – and another girl, Akila – had been inseparable. The last time I had seen Akila she had been firing her M16 rifle from behind a water tank during the ambush. Sengamalam, one of the boys, told me that more than 2,000 soldiers had been involved in the round-up of our 22-strong unit, and had dumped the bodies of those who died in the open air. My mind swum with images of Ajanthi and Muralie, their bodies being scavenged by dogs.

I heard footsteps and looked up to see the silhouette of three figures approaching our hut. I recognised the tall Akila, her hair in plaits, and ran towards her. As we embraced she told me that, after the ambush, she had survived by hiding in the water tank for two days. 'I wish I was dead, like Ajanthi,' I spluttered. 'How will I face her family again?'

'We have to keep their dream of Tamil Eelam alive,' Akila said. For me, the dream felt far from reach.

I was born in 1969 in Kandy, a Sinhala-majority town in Sri Lanka's hill country, where I spent the first seven years of my childhood. Although I had Tamil ancestry – Tamils make up 18 per cent of Sri Lanka's population – my extended family included Sinhalese, Sri Lanka's main ethnic group. In 1978 I was packed off to the northern Tamil city of Jaffna to live with my grandmother, whom I hardly knew. 'So that you can become a doctor like your aunts and uncles,' my father reasoned. 'Education in Jaffna is far superior.' I was a confident, independent girl, and my parents believed that I would cope well in a new environment without them.

Though I was unsure about becoming a doctor, life in Jaffna was idyllic. Not knowing when I would see my family again, I began to distance myself from them and focused on shaping my own life, making new friends and working hard at school. My weekends were busy with music, art and drama lessons.

Soon after, my father, an engineer, went to work in Dubai (it was becoming difficult for Tamils to get good jobs at home). My mother, a teacher, and sister, who was three years my junior, joined me in Jaffna. I had been oblivious to the deep-rooted tensions that were simmering between the Tamils and Sinhalese, and knew nothing of the anti-Tamil riots that had killed more than 250 Tamils in the country the year before. But before long the growing unrest outside my sheltered world was hard to ignore.

Tamil pressure groups were becoming more vocal in their calls for equal rights between Tamils and Sinhalese, and an end to what many Tamils felt were the government's discriminatory policies. Meanwhile, Sinhala extremism in the south was growing. There were boycotts, strikes and skirmishes. There were reports of Tamil politicians being shot dead, Tamil students being kidnapped.

The quest for equality had spawned a number of militant groups, including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), known as Tamil Tigers outside Sri Lanka. In the late 1970s they had taken up an armed struggle for an autonomous Tamil homeland – Tamil Eelam – in the north and north-east of the country. To begin with, they carried out minor attacks on government targets, but on July 23 1983, when I was 14, they ambushed an army patrol in Jaffna, which brought them into the national spotlight.

Thirteen soldiers died that day, but about 1,000 Tamils were said to have lost their lives in an anti-Tamil pogrom in the south that followed. Large numbers of Tamil men, mostly teenagers, reacted to what they saw as the Sri Lankan government's indiscriminate persecution of innocent Tamils and joined the insurgency, which was rapidly gathering support.

By 1985 the situation had escalated into full-scale war in the north and east, with the government launching a military offensive on Jaffna to wipe out the rebellion. From a normal happy upbringing, I now found myself living in constant fear. Jaffna's library, where I spent much of my free time, was burnt down by government forces.

We lived under indiscriminate aerial bombing and artillery shelling, day and night; our movements were restricted by long curfews. We spent many days in our home-built bunker where I studied, listening to gunshots and explosions, still hopeful that my exams would go ahead as scheduled. The Tigers' television station broadcast images of war: militant training camps, dead bodies, Tamil funerals. The images began to haunt me, and I felt outraged that no one was being held to account, and that the outside world was doing nothing.

The government launched further offensives and air raids became commonplace. Bodies were sometimes strewn by the roadside on my way to school, or hanging from lampposts. I was dismayed by the attitude of family and friends who believed that they had no power to change the situation, but didn't support the militant groups either. 'These movements are run mostly by uneducated, low-caste youth,' they said. 'They are not capable of solving the Tamil problem.' But at least they were trying, I thought.

The more I listened to the militants, the more I sympathised with the idea of an armed struggle, the more it seemed like the only response. There had never been any military connections in my family but I felt that if we were going to be killed or driven from our homes, then shouldn't we at least put up a fight? With friends, I talked about joining the insurgency, though few felt the same, believing that such actions would bring disgrace to our families. Middle-class girls didn't do such things.

In May 1987, when I was 17, the Sinhala government launched Operation Liberation, declaring all-out war against the Tamil militants on the Jaffna peninsula. By now, the Tigers had gained administrative control of the region, restricting government forces to their barracks. My mother decided that we would return to Kandy until the war was over. As we prepared to leave, I made up my mind to run away to join the Tigers. I told my mother that I was going to Ajanthi's to say goodbye.

After I told Ajanthi my plans, she said, 'I'll come with you for moral support', and we set off together for the office of the Student Organisation of Liberation Tigers, a large house near Jaffna University. We were interviewed. They were hesitant about recruiting middle-class girls, but finally relented. Ajanthi said she would miss me too much if I left without her, and was enlisted, too.

'The life of a freedom fighter is harder than you think,' Thileepan, the leader of the Tigers' political wing, warned us, adjusting his spectacles. 'We gamble with our own lives and bury our friends. There'll be none of the comforts you are used to. I'm not convinced that you are suited to this lifestyle, but no one here is held against their will.'

Knowing my mother and sister were out, I went home and wrote them a note explaining that I had joined the Tigers. The following morning, naturally, my mother and sister and Ajanthi's family came to the Tigers' camp to plead with us to return home. 'You are about to ruin your life. This is not for you,' my mother said, grasping my hands, her eyes filled with tears. Ajanthi's father said we had been brainwashed.

Thileepan sent us to work with members of the Tigers' female political wing, the Freedom Birds, contributing articles to their magazine. At the Freedom Birds' headquarters, we met Akila, who at 17 was already an active member. We immediately became friends.

A few weeks later, Ajanthi and I were selected by Thileepan for military training, and sent to an all-girls' camp in an outer suburb of Jaffna. As we were the first group of female fighters to receive military training in Sri Lanka (at this point, there were fewer than 80 female Tigers), the organisation's enigmatic leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, wanted to talk to us personally. Prabhakaran was seated behind a table in his office as I entered. The flame from a hurricane lamp cast shadows across his round face, and his large brown eyes glistened.

Although he did not ask many questions, it felt like he knew everything about me. 'There's hardly anyone in our movement from your suburb,' he said. 'Most girls here come from rural areas. They are used to hard work, pounding rice and chopping firewood. Be in no doubt: training is going to be harder for you.'

Training, in a village south of Jaffna, was indeed gruelling. The days began with a two-hour exercise regime, followed by commando training. In the afternoons we had firing practice and lessons in explosives and camouflage. Prabhakaran would visit often, and one afternoon expressed his desire to recruit us into the newly formed Black Tigers, the organisation's suicide bomber wing. Only a week earlier the first of the Tigers' suicide bombers, known as Captain Miller, had driven a lorry packed with explosives into an army barracks. Prabhakaran wanted to give women the same 'opportunity', he said. I knew I could never do such a thing because I didn't have the courage.

As the war escalated, civilians were being drawn into the conflict, and a humanitarian crisis was developing in Jaffna. Eventually, the Indian government intervened. It was no secret that India had been fostering Tamil militants and providing them with training and ammunition, and the relationship between the Indian and Sri Lankan governments was strained.

Then the peacekeeping forces arrived, a ceasefire came into effect, and a peace accord was implemented on July 29 1987. The war-weary Tamils welcomed the Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) with open arms, and our training came to an abrupt halt. But Prabhakaran informed us that our services would be required in a month or two – he was sure that hostilities would resume by then. Like the Sri Lankan government, he did not appreciate the foreign intrusion.

So it came to pass. In September 1987, while other Tamil militant organisations engaged in the political process, Thileepan went on hunger-strike at the Nallur Hindu Temple near Jaffna in protest against certain aspects of the peace deal. Mass rallies were organised by pro-Tiger Tamils in Jaffna and also by Sinhala extremists in the south, both parties believing the IPKF's intervention served only to assert India's supremacy in the region. Fourteen days later, Thileepan died. The Tigers blamed the Indian government for his death, and for standing aside while Sinhalese forces violated the peace deal by arresting some prominent Tigers despite the amnesty provisions, and organising Sinhala settlement programmes in Tamil areas.

The war resumed, just as Prabhakaran had predicted, though now we were fighting not only the government troops but the peacekeepers, too. A few thousand youths suited only for guerrilla warfare, we were no match for the world's second largest army. Fighting the Indians made no sense to me.

I had joined the Tigers to make a stand against my country's oppressive government, but now found myself at war with those who had come to maintain peace. It seemed that we might be destroying our only chance of resolving the situation peacefully. I expressed my doubts to Akila. Fiercely loyal and single-minded, she argued that, as foot soldiers, we were unaware of the complex politics of the situation, and that our leaders knew exactly what they were doing. 'Believe that Anna Prabhakaran is always right,' she told me. I decided to ignore the growing disquiet inside me and joined the war.

In October 1987 I was sent to the battle front north of Jaffna where, by coincidence, Akila and Ajanthi joined me in a unit of 30 cadres. The first female Tiger had died only a few days earlier, confirming that women were now firmly engaged in frontline fighting. During battles we had been trained to fire in the general direction of the enemy, not at individual targets, and I am not sure whether any of my bullets hit anyone. I'm glad I don't know. I once asked the more experienced Muralie how he had coped with the knowledge that he had shot people. 'After your second victim,' he said, 'you learn to live with it.'

The Tigers had no chance of overpowering the Indian army. Jaffna and many surrounding areas were now under their total control. We were being ambushed on an almost daily basis, becoming accustomed to life on the run. Support among Tamil civilians was waning, too. Whenever we encountered them, they pleaded with us to stop this futile war.

By early 1988 self-preservation was now our main strategy. Forced out of the Jaffna peninsula by the IPKF and following an overnight boat trip, we found ourselves in the jungles of the Vanni in the Northeastern Province, where it was easier to lie low. I was now part of a large unit of nearly 45 girls, with Sengamalam, one of only two boys, in charge. We moved around the jungle constantly, enduring primitive living conditions, while 130,000 Indian troops searched for some 2,000 Tigers on foot and by air.

After five months in the jungle, I contracted malaria; many others were ill with dysentery and typhoid. Akila stayed by my side, taking care of me, bringing medication and rice water in a rusty tin. I felt broken, physically and emotionally, constantly questioning the purpose of a war that could clearly never be won.

I had believed the militant propaganda, convinced that Tamil Eelam could be achieved within a year or two, but it was now clear that an armed conflict would resolve nothing. 'You are free to go home any time,' Thileepan had told me. It was time to walk away while I still could. One morning in June 1988, at a house near the forest where we had taken shelter following an attack on our hideout, I approached Sengamalam as he washed at a well.
'I want to resign.'
He stopped drying his face with a sarong and looked at me with alarm. 'Is someone giving you grief?'
'I just can't cope any more,' I said. 'I am tired of this war. I'm weak.'
Calmly, he said that he was sorry, that he was surprised I had lasted so long. 'I must warn you,' he said, 'your life will be in grave danger – from the Sri Lankan army, Indian forces, even rival organisations. Your name is on their wanted lists.' I didn't care. Surrendering my rifle and kuppie, I severed all ties with the Tigers, unsure of what the future held or whether my family would take me back.

Before I left, I went to say goodbye to Akila. When she saw me wearing a dress, her jaw dropped. 'What's going on? You're leaving?' Consumed with shame, I could hardly speak. 'I can't believe you're leaving me,' she sobbed. 'We have so much to achieve.'
Before I could answer, Sengamalam hurried Akila into the forest and I watched her fade into the bright sun. I never saw her again.

Sengamalam organised for a local boy to take me to an old woman's hut in the nearby town of Kilinochchi. For the next seven days, the old woman and I did not exchange a word or a smile.
One afternoon, while I helped herd her cattle into the shed, I saw my mother running towards me down the dirt lane. The mayor of Kilinochchi, a distant relative of ours, had bumped into the Tamil boy who had taken me to the old woman's hut. The mayor was carrying a photograph of me that my mother had sent him and asked the boy if he had seen me. Once I had been identified, the mayor fetched my mother. The only emotion I felt was relief, as if I was no longer capable of experiencing happiness or sadness. My mother embraced me and sobbed while I stood numb.
'I thought you might have disowned me,' I said, finally.
'You're my daughter,' she replied. 'I'd never give up on you.'
Within two months of being re­united with my family, during which time we never discussed my experiences with the Tigers, I was sent to a boarding school in India, where I completed my studies.

Although now in the country whose army I had fought only months before, I was determined to move on, and make the best of the second chance I had been given. On the surface, normality had returned. My fellow students were girls from affluent families who liked talking about boys, movie stars and make-up. When the lights in our dormitory were turned off at night, I cried myself to sleep.

In 1990, with help from a relative, I moved to Sydney (my family later moved here, too) and went to university. After my departure from the Tigers, and with a new life opening up to me, I blocked out any news of Sri Lanka as best I could. These days, of course, that is impossible.
The two-year war between the Tigers and the Indian forces came to an end in July 1989, with changes of government in both countries. But the fighting between the Tigers and Sri Lankan government forces continued. The primitive but effective guerrilla organisation that I left behind grew into a sophisticated and formidable fighting force. As its methods became more extreme, the LTTE's notoriety increased – not just within Sri Lanka but all over the world. (In late 2001 it was classified as a terrorist organisation by many countries, including Britain.)

The Tigers have carried out hundreds of suicide attacks over the past two decades – more than all other radical organisations in the world combined – notably the assassination of the former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and the Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993. The guiding principle of the Tigers, which is so difficult for outsiders to understand, is that the greater the sacrifice, the higher the honour. There are no bravery medals or pompous ceremonies for living Tigers. They are recognised for their efforts, and awarded a rank, only posthumously.

The past decade has seen several attempts to form a lasting peace agreement between the Tigers and the government, all unsuccessful, with the most recent deal being torn up in early 2008. Since 2006 the LTTE's numbers have fallen sharply, funding from the Tamil diaspora has dwindled while government forces stepped up their campaign.

At the beginning of this year, a number of crucial Tiger strongholds were recaptured, and the government was confident it would annihilate the remaining 1,000 or so Tigers within months. After three decades, the civil war – which has claimed more than 70,000 lives, including at least 23,000 Tigers – appears to have reached its endgame, the Tigers on the verge of a final, crushing defeat. The Tamils are, it seems, back at square one.

In fact, the situation may be worse than ever, with the UN estimating last month that 150,000 civilians were trapped in the eight-square-mile battle zone, under constant threat of bombing from government forces and being used as human shields by the increasingly desperate Tigers. Some human rights groups have condemned the Sri Lankan government for practising ethnic cleansing against them under the guise of fighting terrorism.

Although the Tigers have staged many comebacks in history, the latest government offensive may prove fatal. But the scars of this war will remain and until a political solution that recognises and respects the rights of the Tamil people is reached, I am certain that the Tamil fight will continue in one form or another.

More and more these days, my thoughts turn to the friends I have lost. Recently, for the first time, I typed Akila's name into Google and found several archived reports and court documents. Akila died on November 1 1995, in a battle against the Sri Lankan army in Neervaeli, a town for which we had fought side by side. With defeat imminent, she ordered the members of her unit to bite into their cyanide capsules, and then did the same herself. She was 24. After her death, she was awarded the highest rank achievable in the Tigers at that time: lieutenant colonel.

The most shocking detail was that she had been wanted for masterminding, along with Prabhakaran, the killing of Rajiv Gandhi. The suicide bomber and her collaborators had been members of Akila's unit, as I might have been if I had not walked away from the Tigers.
On the surface, my life goes on as a happily married mother in an affluent Sydney suburb who enjoys reading, travelling and gardening. But often, in my dreams, I am being chased by soldiers or hanging off the side of a cliff, unable to save myself. It has taken me a long time not to panic when I hear a helicopter overhead.

I rarely discuss my past. Some people cannot believe that someone with my grounded life could have done such things. Others probe deeper, asking if I regret picking up a gun with the intention of killing others. Of course, some will never understand; others may consider me a former terrorist.

The world has changed since I left the Tigers, just as the Tigers themselves have changed. In this age of terrorism it is easy to dismiss all rebel groups as evil extremists, without considering the desperate circumstances that drive people to align themselves to such organisations.
I tell people that the only reason I joined the war was to defend my people, because I felt there was no other choice. I was not coerced to join the insurgency. As an idealistic 17-year-old, I believed in the power of the individual to make a difference.

Looking back, I recognise the elements of reckless, selfish teenage rebellion in my behaviour. Naively, I had not anticipated how much my family would suffer as a consequence of my actions, and for that, above all else, I am deeply sorry. To this day, my parents have never asked me about my time as a guerrilla. As a mother myself, I understand why: that they must somehow have felt that they had failed in their duty as parents.

I hope that my own children will grow up with firm, positive views, but without the blind idealism I had all those years ago. I will try to teach them tolerance and empathy, that the end doesn't always justify the means, and that violence always breeds more violence. I learnt that lesson the hard way. Sadly, I don't think Sri Lanka has learnt it at all.

Nuclear bomb tests help to identify fake whisky

Radioactive material flung into the atmosphere by nuclear bomb tests is helping scientists to fight the multi-million pound trade in counterfeit antique malt whisky--By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent

Bottles of vintage whisky can sell for thousands of pounds each, but industry experts claim the market has been flooded with fakes that purport to be several hundred years old but instead contain worthless spirit that was made just a few years ago.

Scientists have found, however, that minute levels of radioactive carbon absorbed by the barley as it grew before it was harvested to make the whisky can betray how old it is.

Researchers at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, which is funded by the National Environmental Research Council, discovered that they could pinpoint the date a whisky was made by detecting traces of radioactive particles created by nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s.
They can also use natural background levels of radioactivity to identify whiskies that were made in earlier centuries.

Dr Tom Higham, deputy director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, said: "It is easy to tell if whisky is fake as if it has been produced since the middle of the twentieth century, it has a very distinctive signature.

"With whiskies that are older, we can get a range of dates but we can usually tell which century it came from. The earliest whisky we have dated came from the 1700s and most have been from 19th century.

"So far there have probably been more fakes among the samples we've tested than real examples of old whisky."

The technique the scientists use is known as radiocarbon dating and is more commonly used by archaeologists to date ancient fragments of bone and wood.

It relies upon the fact that all living organisms absorb low levels of a radioactive isotope known as carbon 14, a heavy form of carbon which is present in low levels in the atmosphere.

After death, levels of this isotope in animal and plant remains will slowly decay away, meaning scientists can estimate their age from the amount of carbon 14 that remains in the sample.
Nuclear bomb testing in the 1950s saw levels of carbon 14 in the atmosphere rise around the world and so the amount of isotope absorbed by living organisms since this time has been artificially elevated.

Most of the tests on whiskies have been conducted for the Scotch Whisky Research Institute, which is responsible for analysing the authenticity of Scotch malt whisky.

Phials of whisky extracted from the antique bottles are sent to the laboratory in Oxford, where the scientists burn the liquid and bombard the resulting gas with electrically charged particles so they can measure the quantities of carbon 14 in the sample.

In one recent case, a bottle of 1856 Macallan Rare Reserve, which was expected to sell for up to £20,000, was withdrawn from auction at Christies after the scientists found it had actually been produced in 1950.

David Williamson, from the Scotch Whisky Association, said: "The collectors' market has been growing and the SWA would strongly recommend any prospective buyer takes steps to satisfy themselves as to the product's provenance.

"A range of authenticity tests can be carried out on the liquid and packaging and occasionally, radio carbon dating techniques have been used to assist assessments of the liquid's age."

“World’s Fastest Camera” Snaps 6 Million Pictures in a Single Second

Optics researchers have invented a camera that uses infrared lasers to bounce light off an object, and say the result should leave shutterbugs with a serious case of technology envy. Their device can take 6.1 million pictures in a single second, at a shutter speed of 440 trillionths of a second. Light itself moves just a fraction of a centimeter in that time…. “It’s the world’s fastest camera” [Wired], says study coauthor Keisuke Goda.

Conventional digital cameras use charge-coupled devices (CCDs) to take a picture. The devices contain semiconducting chips that … produce electrons in response to light. The electrons are read off the chip and their signals are then electronically amplified and encoded as a digital image [Nature News]. But that process has its limits. Top-notch conventional cameras top out at about 30 frames per second, while the fanciest scientific instruments can take about one million frames per second. For Goda and his colleagues, that just wasn’t fast enough.

To make the serial time-encoded amplified microscopy (STEAM) camera, described in an article in Nature, researchers fired an infrared laser beam and spread out the light pulse to form a spectral pattern. As demonstrated in a video explaining how STEAM works, the researchers then shine this light onto the object they want to photograph. This means that different parts of the object are illuminated by different wavelengths of light. The reflected light is fed through a special fibre-optic cable that makes different wavelengths travel at different speeds. Longer wavelengths move to the front of the line, while shorter ones fall to the rear. The stream of light is amplified and then read out by a single photodetector [Nature News]. The photodetector records when each wavelength arrives, and that simple data set is used to reconstructs an image of the object.

The camera could be used for studies of combustion, laser cutting and any system that changes quickly and unpredictably. “I would imagine that STEAM would be useful for any scientist,” Goda says [Nature News].

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LaserBrain -Hacking the Most Amazing, Sophisticated System Ever to Exist: Us

Scientists are using lasers to directly control parts of primate brains - and not just the crude Ming the Merciless "Point a laser gun and tell them what to do" method, where initial apparent successes are overshadowed by the way your entire base blows up.

Instead, MIT scientists direct a tightly focused laser pulse onto neurons in primate brains, which is a wonderful way of phrasing it without actually saying "Sawed open monkey skulls." You can't just poke any old neuron with coherent light to make it dance, though, unless you're prepared to turn up the power and count "burning to death" as a very specific tango.

Selected cells are pre-infected with a genetically engineered virus which causes them to glow blue, and makes them susceptible to external light switching certain channels on and off. External light isn't normally an issue inside a skull, which is where the laser beam comes in. So we've got genetic engineering, mental lasers, and even brain cells which actually glow blue (which anything with a LED will tell you is the smartest and most modern color) - never mind revolutions in optogenetic neurology, this is what Lex Luthor's origin story would be if we was written today.

The technique's power comes from the highly selective infection and the tight control of laser beams, compared to previous chemical and electrical attempts at brain control - which might have been slightly more advanced than trepanation (aka "knocking a hole in the skull with a chisel"), but suffered similar side-effects of affecting all the cells around the target area.

Expect some spectacularly stupid scaremongering as news of this breakthrough leaks through the internet, with self-appointed "experts" barely reading through the headline before launching into anti-mind-control crusades. This technique could revolutionize fields such as depression and addiction therapy, but it needs injections, optics, and a little thing called direct access to your brain in a specialist facility. At which point they don't need to control you anyway - they're got you. Nobody's beaming control signals through your TV unless it's capable of emitting laser beams and burning right through your eye into the cortex - and let's face it, if a mysterious "they" had weapons like that you'd obey them, hypno-beams or not.

Instead, this incredible breakthrough will lead to great advances in hacking the most amazing, sophisticated system ever to exist: us.

CIA's Kryptos -Does it Hold The Key to the Sequel to "The Da Vinci Code"?

One of the few uncracked codes at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia is found in Kryptos, a wonder of technology, a sculpture sitting in a sunny corner of the headquarters courtyard.

"EMUFPHZLRFAXYUSDJKZLDKRNSHGNFIVJ" is the first line of the Kryptos sculpture, a 10-foot-tall, S-shaped copper scroll perforated with 3-inch-high letters spelling out words in code resembling a piece of paper emerging from a computer printer. Completed 15 years ago, Kryptos, which is Greek for "hidden," at first attracted interest from government code breakers who deciphered the easier parts without announcing their findings publicly.

The main sculpture is made of red granite, red and green slate, white quartz, petrified wood, lodestone and copper, and is located in the northwest corner of the headquarters courtyard.
The characters consist of the 26 letters of the standard alphabet and question marks cut out of the copper. This "inscription" contains four separate enigmatic messages, each apparently encrypted with a different cipher.

Mystery lovers around the world have joined members of the national-security establishment in trying to crack the rest. So far, neither amateurs nor pros have been able to crack the code.
The latest scramble was set off by "The Da Vinci Code," the worldwide bestseller about a modern-day search for the Holy Grail. On the book's dust jacket, author Dan Brown placed clues that hint at Kryptos's significance. The main one is a set of geographic coordinates that roughly locate the sculpture.

A game at www.thedavincicode.com suggested that Kryptos is a clue to the subject of Mr. Brown's as-yet-unpublished next novel, "The Solomon Key."

Kryptos devotees are intrigued by the three passages that have been deciphered so far. They appear to offer clues to solving the sculpture's fourth passage, and possibly to locating something buried.Some devotees believe Kryptos holds profound significance as a portal into the wisdom of the ancients.

Sculptor James Sanborn, Kryptos's creator, says he wrote or adapted all three. In addition to deliberate misspellings, there are letters slightly higher than others on the same line. The first reads, "Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion."

The second passage, more provocative and mysterious, reads: "It was totally invisible. How's that possible? They used the Earth's magnetic field. The information was gathered and transmitted underground to an unknown location. Does Langley know about this? They should: it's buried out there somewhere." That passage is followed by geographic coordinates that suggest a location elsewhere on the CIA campus.

The third decoded passage is based on a diary entry by archaeologist Howard Carter, on the day in 1922 when he discovered the tomb of the ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamen.

It reads in part, "With trembling hands I made a tiny breach in the upper left-hand corner. And then, widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in. The hot air escaping from the chamber caused the flame to flicker, but presently details of the room within emerged from the mist. Can you see anything?"

Other possible clues are contained in smaller parts of the work scattered around the CIA grounds. Made of red granite and sheets of copper, these are tattooed with Morse code that spells out phrases like "virtually invisible." In addition, a compass needle carved onto one of the rocks is pulled off due north by a lodestone that Mr. Sanborn placed nearby.

Experts say the unsolved fourth passage -- known to insiders as "K4" -- is written in a more complex and difficult code than the first three, one designed to mask patterns of recurring letters that code breakers look for.

Sanborn, who lives and works in Washington, has exhibited around the world, including at the Hirshhorn Museum and Corcoran Gallery of Art. His more recent work has focused on the early development of atomic weapons, employing actual equipment from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Angels and Demons

Angels and Demons
Dan Brown's book Angels and Demons is a detective story about a secret society that wants to destroy the Vatican using an antimatter bomb. In the book, the antimatter is stolen from CERN.

The Physics of Angels & Demons

Scientists have had to spend a lot of time reassuring to the public that they're not Cobra Commander, out to annihilate the Earth with anti-matter black-hole projectors. Which is totally wasted time, because even if they were that's exactly what they'd tell us anyway. The LHC spent ages assuaging space-time fears (triggered by reporters who have to copy and paste the word "neutrino", and a botanist who's spent more time answering criminal charges than accelerating particles). Now, because of Dan Brown's Angels & Demons, the scientists at CERN have to explain that they're not about to blow anyone up.

The fact that antimatter can create huge explosions is accurate, a rarity in Dan Brown novels. Antimatter meeting matter isn't even called an explosion, it's called "annihilation", and this is in scientific circles who refer to thermonuclear detonations as "events." The energy released is the mass times the speed of light squared, and which means one kilogram gets you ninety quadrillion joules - two thousand times the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

The problem is, if your terrorist organisation has a kilogram of antimatter you're invincible anyway - because you can fly past security checkpoints on your quantum unicorns and hypnotize targets using The Force. We can only make a few trillion anti-particles at a time, which does sound like the sort of thing Dr Evil would threaten the UN with until you realise that even half a gram is three hundred sextillion atoms. And that's not even counting how each of those atoms is many, many particles. Oh, by the way, a sextillion is a trillion times bigger than a billion.

See? Even trying to describe how impossible the antimatter bomb is, the comparison numbers start to sound stupid. Short form: if would takes us two billion years to make enough antimatter to blow up the Holy See, and you can safely assume that something else would have happened to him in that time anyway - up to and including the re-evolution of dinosaurs.

If you've got a half gram of antimatter you don't need to blow up the Vatican anyway: it costs sixty two trillion dollars a milligram to make so you're sitting on thirty-one quadrillion dollars. There isn't even three quadrillion on the planet. You can just buy the place and evict them, and by "the place" we mean "Earth."

Oh, and did we mention how you'd have to be driving something the size of a tank to contain the Penning trap, vacuum systems and power supplies involved? You can't fit a fuse on antimatter - if even the air touches it, you and everything else you can see will be kissing gamma rays before you know anything's happened.

So it's a total Cobra Commander plan - sure, it could work, if you had impossible resources that would enable you to enact a million easier options anyway. Why has the story caught public attention? Why, because Scientists Are Bad, of course! Nuclear is boring and hippies destroying food crops doesn't make genetic modification look scary enough, so antimatter is the next big one. It's the biggest and baddest science-boom until someone works out how to garrote people with a superstring, and nobody cares if it's impossible.

Questions about the technologies used in the story. Answers From CERN.

Does CERN exist?
Well, yes, it does. You can see us to the left and slightly up from the centre of the city of Meyrin.

Is it located in Switzerland?
Part is in Switzerland, part in France across the border. CERN is not a Swiss institute, but an international organization. We are very close to Geneva's international airport.

What does the acronym CERN mean?
That is a long story, but the name CERN is derived from the French ‘Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire’.
Does it consist of red brick buildings with white-frocked scientists running around carrying files?
No, that is rather far from reality; we have mostly white buildings made of concrete and the scientists wear everyday clothes and they mostly do not carry files.

Was the Web really invented at CERN as the book states?
Yes, indeed, the Web came from CERN, invented here by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989.

Does antimatter exist?
Yes, it does, and we produce it routinely at CERN. Antimatter was predicted by P.A.M. Dirac in 1928 and the first antiparticles were discovered soon after by Carl Anderson. CERN is not the only research institute to produce and study antimatter.

How is antimatter contained?
It is very difficult to contain antimatter, because any contact between a particle and its anti-particle leads to their immediate annihilation.

For electrically charged antimatter particles we know how to contain them by using ‘electromagnetic traps’. These traps make it possible to contain up to about 1012 (anti-) particles of the same charge. However, like charges repel each other. So it is not possible to store a much larger quantity of e.g. antiprotons because the repulsive forces between them would become too strong for the electromagnetic fields to hold them away from the walls.

For electrically neutral anti-particles or anti-atoms, the situation is even more difficult. It is impossible to use constant electric or magnetic fields to contain neutral antimatter, because these fields have no grip on the particles at all. Scientists work on ideas to use ‘magnetic bottles’ (with inhomogeneous magnetic fields acting on the magnetic moment), or ‘optical traps’ (using lasers) but this is still under development.

What is the future use of antimatter?
Anti-electrons (positrons) are already used in PET scanners in medicine (Positron-Emission Tomography = PET). One day it might be even possible to use antiprotons for tumour irradiation.
But antimatter at CERN is mainly used to study the laws of nature. We focus on the question of the symmetry between matter and antimatter. The LHCb experiment will compare precisely the decay of b-quarks and anti-b-quarks. Eventually we also hope to be able to use anti-hydrogen atoms as high-precision tools.

Do antimatter atoms exist?
The team of the PS210 experiment at the Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR) at CERN made the first anti-hydrogen atoms in 1995. Then, in 2002 two experiments (ATHENA and ATRAP) managed to produce tens of thousands of antihydrogen atoms, later even millions. However, although "tens of thousands" may sound a lot, it's really a very, very small amount. You would need 10,000,000,000,000,000 times that amount to have enough anti-hydrogen gas to fill a toy balloon! If we could somehow store our daily production, it would take us several billion years to fill the balloon. But the universe has been around for only 13.7 billion years...So the Angels and Demons scenario is pure fiction.

Can we hope to use antimatter as a source of energy? Do you feel antimatter could power vehicles in the future, or would it just be used for major power sources?
There is no possibility to use antimatter as energy ‘source’. Unlike solar energy, coal or oil, antimatter does not occur in nature; we first have to make every single antiparticle, and we have to invest (much) more energy than we get back during annihilation.

You can imagine antimatter as a storage medium for energy, much like you store electricity in rechargeable batteries. The process of charging the battery is reversible with relatively small loss. Still, it takes more energy to charge the battery than you get back.

The inefficiency of antimatter production is enormous: you get only a tenth of a billion (10-10) of the invested energy back. If we could assemble all the antimatter we've ever made at CERN and annihilate it with matter, we would have enough energy to light a single electric light bulb for a few minutes.

I was hoping antimatter would be the future answer to our energy needs. It seems more research is needed for this to happen.

No, even more research will not change this situation fundamentally; antimatter is certainly not able to solve our energy problems. First of all, you need energy to make antimatter (E=mc2) and unfortunately you do not get the same amount of energy back out of it. (See above, the loss factors are enormous.)

Furthermore, the conversion from energy to matter and antimatter particles follows certain laws of nature, which also allow the production of many other, but very short-lived particles and antiparticles (e.g. muons, pions, neutrinos). These particles decay rapidly during the production process, and their energy is lost.

Antimatter could only become a source of energy if you happened to find a large amount of antimatter lying around somewhere (e.g. in a distant galaxy), in the same way we find oil and oxygen lying around on Earth. But as far as we can see (billions of light years), the universe is entirely made of normal matter, and antimatter has to be painstakingly created.

By the way, this shows that the symmetry between matter and antimatter as stated above does not seem to hold at very high energies, such as shortly after the Big Bang, as otherwise there should be as much matter as antimatter in the Universe. Future research might tell us is how this asymmetry came about.

Can we make antimatter bombs?
No. It would take billions of years to produce enough antimatter for a bomb having the same destructiveness as ‘typical’ hydrogen bombs, of which there exist more than ten thousand already.

Sociological note: scientists realized that the atom bomb was a real possibility many years before one was actually built and exploded, and then the public was totally surprised and amazed. On the other hand, the public somehow anticipates the antimatter bomb, but we have known for a long time that it cannot be realized in practice.

Why has antimatter received no media attention?
It has received a lot of media attention, but usually in the scientific press. Also, antimatter is not ‘new’. Antiparticles have been known and studied for 75 years. What is new is the possibility to produce anti-hydrogen atoms, but this is also mainly a matter of scientific interest.

Is antimatter truly 100% efficient?
It depends on what you mean by efficient. If you start from two equal quantities m/2 of matter and m/2 of antimatter, then the energy output is, of course, exactly E=mc2. Mass is converted into energy with 100% efficiency.

But that is not the point: how much effort do you have to put in to get m/2 grams of antimatter? Well, theoretically E=mc2 because half of the energy will become normal matter. So you gain nothing. But the process of creating antimatter is highly inefficient; when you dissipate energy into particles with mass, many different - also short-lived - particles and antiparticles are produced. A major part of the energy gets lost, and a lot of the stable antimatter-particles (e.g. positrons and antiprotons) go astray before you can catch them. Everything happens at nearly the speed of light, and the particles created zoom off in all directions. Somewhat like cooking food over a campfire: most of the heat is lost and does not go into the cooking of the food, it disappears as radiation into the dark night sky. Very inefficient.

Do you make antimatter as described in the book?
No. The production and storage of antimatter at CERN is not at all as described in the book: you cannot stand next to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and see it come out, especially since the LHC accelerator is not yet in operation.

To make antiprotons, we collide protons at nearly the speed of light (to be precise, with a kinetic energy of about 25 GeV) with a block of metal, e.g. copper or tungsten. These collisions produce a large number of particles, some of which are antiprotons. Only the antiprotons are useful, and only those that fly out in the right direction. So that's where your energy loss goes: it is like trying to water a pot of flowers but with a sprinkler that sprays over the whole garden. Of course, we constantly apply new tricks to become more efficient at collecting antiparticles, but at the level of elementary particles this is extremely difficult.

Why then do you build the LHC?
The reason for building the LHC accelerator is not to make antimatter but to produce an energy concentration high enough to study effects that will help us to understand some of the remaining questions in physics. We say concentrations, because we are not talking about huge amounts but an enormous concentration of energy. Each particle accelerated in the LHC carries an amount of energy equivalent to that of a flying mosquito. Not much at all in absolute terms, but it will be concentrated in a very minute volume, and there things will resemble the state of the universe very shortly (about a trillionth of a second) after the Big Bang.

You should compare the concentration effect to what you can learn about the quality of a wooden floor by walking over it. If a large man wearing normal shoes and a petite woman wearing sharp stiletto heels walk over the same floor, the man will not make dents, but the woman, despite her lower weight, may leave marks; the pressure created by the stiletto heels is far higher. So that is like the job of the LHC: concentrate a little energy into a very minute space to produce a huge energy concentration and learn something about the Big Bang.

Does CERN have a particle accelerator 27 kilometres long?
The LHC accelerator is a ring 27 kilometres in circumference. It is installed in a tunnel about 100 m underground. You can see the round outline of it marked on a map of the area.

In fact, why do you make antimatter at CERN?
The principal reason is to study the laws of nature. The current theories of physics predict a number of subtle effects concerning antimatter. If experiments do not observe these predictions, then the theory is not accurate and needs to be amended or reworked. This is how science progresses.

Another reason is to get extremely high energy densities in collisions of matter and antimatter particles, since they annihilate completely when they meet. From this annihilation energy other interesting particles may be created. This was mainly how the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider functioned at CERN until 2000, or the Tevatron currently operates at Fermilab near Chicago.

How is energy extracted from antimatter?
When a normal matter particle hits an antimatter particle, they mutually annihilate into a very concentrated burst of pure energy, from which in turn new particles (and antiparticles) are created. The number and mass of the annihilation products depends on the available energy.
The annihilation of electrons and positrons at low energies produces only two (or three) highly energetic photons. But with annihilation at very high energy, hundreds of new particle-antiparticle pairs can be made. The decay of these particles produces, among others, many neutrinos, which do not interact with the environment at all. This is not very useful for energy extraction.

How safe is antimatter?
Perfectly safe, given the minute quantities we can make. It would be very dangerous if we could make a few grams of it, but this would take us billions of years.

If so, does CERN have protocols to keep the public safe?
There is no danger from antimatter. There are of course other dangers on the CERN site, as in any laboratory: high voltage in certain areas, deep pits to fall in, etc. but for these dangers the usual industrial safety measures are in place. There is no danger of radioactive leaks as you might find near nuclear power stations.

Does one gram of antimatter contain the energy of a 20 kilotonne nuclear bomb?
Twenty kilotonnes of TNT is the equivalent of the atom bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The explosion of a kilotonne (=1000 tonnes) of TNT corresponds to a energy release of 4.2x1012 joules (1012 is a 1 followed by 12 zeros, i.e. a million million). For comparison, a 60 watt light bulb consumes 60 J per second.

You are probably asking for the explosive release of energy by the sudden annihilation of one gram of antimatter with one gram of matter. Let's calculate it.

To calculate the energy released in the annihilation of 1 g of antimatter with 1 g of matter (which makes 2 g = 0.002 kg), we have to use the formula E=mc2, where c is the speed of light (300,000,000 m/s):

E= 0.002 x (300,000,000)2 kg m2/s2 = 1.8 x 1014 J = 180 x 1012 J. Since 4.2x1012 J corresponds to a kilotonne of TNT, then 2 g of matter-antimatter annihilation correspond to 180/4.2 = 42.8 kilotonnes, about double the 20 kt of TNT.

This means that you ‘only’ need half a gram of antimatter to be equally destructive as the Hiroshima bomb, since the other half gram of (normal) matter is easy enough to find.

At CERN we make quantities of the order of 107 antiprotons per second and there are 6x1023 of them in a single gram of antihydrogen. You can easily calculate how long it would take to get one gram: we would need 6x1023/107=6x1016 seconds. There are only 365 (days) x 24 (h) x 60 (min) x 60 (sec) = around 3x107 seconds in a year, so it would take roughly 6x1016 / 3x107 = 2x109 = two billion years! It is quite unlikely that anyone wants to wait that long.

Did CERN scientists actually invent the Internet?
No. The Internet was originally based on work done by Louis Pouzin in France, taken up by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in the US in the 1970s. However, the Web was invented and developed entirely by Tim Berners-Lee and a small team at CERN during 1989-1994. The story of the Internet and the Web can be read in ‘How the Web was born’. Perhaps not as sexy as Angels and Demons, but everything in ‘How the Web was born’ was first-hand testimony and research.

Does CERN own an X-33 spaceplane?
Unfortunately not.