It is a common practice in contemporary America to assume that quality of our public educational system is a result of a single variable of the amount of government spending education. This article intends to dispel this perception and lay out the four key pillars needed in a nation to build a strong education system and world class workforce. These four pillars include (1) Family Values (2) Cultural Values (3) Education policies and (4) Government funding.

Family Values:
Thomas Alva Edison, the most successful and well known inventor of all times, also know as “Wizard of Menlo Park, never graduated from College however deep family value of love of learning and his personal ambitions drove him to learn in the proverbial street lights at night which led him to most successful technology enterprise of his time…a key morale of Edison’s life or many others from Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell and others is that it is the personal desire of learning and doing far exceeds the learning capabilities that any formal school system can inculcate in our next generation.

I believe lack of strong engagement of parents in highlighting the importance of education at home is at the core of declining rates at which American children are pursuing higher education and especially a dramatic decline in percentage of American children pursuing education in mathematics, science and technology — educational pillars necessary for building the competitive workforce of tomorrow. In addition to formal education, today’s working parents have delegated to schools the responsibility of playing educational games with kids at the dinner, doing weekend field trips to zoo, factories and other learning opportunities. The house parties are now controlled by automated iTunes streamed music and MTV reality shows as opposed to education focused board games (remember pictionary?) and math and memory games.

The first and foremost focus of a nation in building a strong educational system needs to start at home with parents actively engaged with their kids in making learning a part of every day life and enforcing the importance of education early in life. No amount of government funding or high quality education system will replace the burning desire and love of learning that can be kindled at home under the loving care and upbringing of parents. Remember that mind is not a vessel to be filled but a light to be kindled and it can only be kindled at home.

2 Cultural Values:
In his 2004 book, World is Flat, Thomas Friedman recites a story about his visit to China and how young teenagers in China were falling over themselves to get into a public speech by Bill Gates; hoping to learn about his experiences as a world renowned technology leader. Friedman noted that the difference between contemporary Chinese and American youths is that for Chinese kids Bill Gates is like Brittany Spears and for American youths Brittany Spears is Brittany Spears!
I thought the above anecdote highlights very well the decline in cultural values on what the society considers important. In the 19th and early 20th century our scientist and business men were the national heroes (Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Neil Arm Strong) but over the last few decades national fascination has shifted to Rap stars and pop stars as the idols that our young people want to follow. More recently these ideals have further gone away from nation building heroes to stars of reality TV shows. It is not a surprise that as our children spend most of the time watching Jersey Shore and Real housewives of New Jersey they dream about becoming Snooki or Mike Sorrentino of Jersey Shore, instead of becoming Edison, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs of tomorrow.

I believe it is the responsibility of the society (media, family, government and school system) to build value system where nation builders (engineers, doctors, businessmen, scientists, teachers and public servants) are revered and idolized. When such value systems decline in a society, the next generation will follows the decline.

As a society we need to build back our fascination with the true heroes that made this nation great, and not let our children be fascinated with people who are only famous for just being famous!

Educational Policies:
Educational policies that adopts learnings from free market systems can be successfully applied to government supported institutions like public education. A simple model of reward for performance can help rebuild our educational system from entitlement based expectation of union workers who are now in charge of educating our children to a merit based system where best teachers and schools are rewarded with higher funding.

There are numerous policies under debate today and I do not intend to comment on all possible policies, however I want to give an example of a sample policy to illustrate how minor changes in funding mechanism can help improve the schools without even increasing a single dollar in educational funding or massively impacting the current benefits or incomes that our current educators receive. Imagine that instead of public schools getting the funding for children they are educating, we assign/attach the funding to the child. Let Parents have the freedom to take their child to any school they like. And as long as child is in a particular school, that school will receive the funding for that child. So if a school is not doing a good job in educating that student, parent has the flexibility of taking that child out of that school and put her in a better school and the associated funding will transfer to the new school.

Above model will create an instant competition for educators, school administrators and teachers to do their best to retain the funding within their institution. While there are numerous administrative and logistical challenges to implement a model described above, the intent of this example is to show that even without exorbitant increase in public funding, we can improve our policies for public funding to nurture merit based educational system as opposed to today’s entitlement based system. I am not against the teacher unions but I am advocating smart policies that will reward competency and disadvantage incompetency.

Government Funding:
As a nation we talk about the government funding as the sole variable in improving the educational system in America. I believe our focus needs to be balanced on all four pillars of building a strong educational system in a nation.
However in addition to a balanced approach to improvements in educational system, it is imperative for any advanced nation to regard its spending on education and basic research and development and core responsibility of the public sector.
Sun Yat-Sen’s insight mentioned at the beginning of this article that the core advantage of Western world is not in their weapons but in their dedication for development of their citizens to their full potential remains true in the second decade of the 21st century as it was true in the late 19th century. Today we need a Sun Yat-Sen of America to recognize that core of nation building is development of its citizens to their highest potential.

When I talk about manufacturing I do not intend to limit myself to the industrial manufacturing but production of all physical goods. For example manufacturing of Pharmaceuticals, new materials used in high quality construction (say cheap graphene), construction of nano-materials for embedded medical tablets, nano-materials (eg. Polymer non-composites or metal matrix non-composites), as well as new generation of construction around robotics, personal manufacturing (e.g. 3D printers).

While the above technologies do not fall under the umbrella of traditional manufacturing, these are at the bases of next generation of physical goods that will likely be consumed by the future customers. In the upcoming industries of nano-technology manufacturing for smart tools for medical and industrial production as well as alternative energy products and smart materials based production of current products (e.g. temperature controlled clothing), these manufacturing technologies will play a major role. And just like having the know how in silicon chip manufacturing helped US retain a lead during the PC revolution of late eighties, nineties and first decade of this century, maintaining deep know how in these technologies will help US retain lead in the coming decades.
So in summary, I remain extremely supportive of US to continue chasing the higher and higher margin industries, in IT services, finance, insurance, software (I myself squarely belong in the software industry). However at the same time to ensure readiness for emergence of new technologies and to be able to play key role in next generation industries we need to maintain a balanced approach of skills and competency development in our economy. Otherwise we expose ourselves to the risk of getting stuck in the local maxima of high margin industries of today and missing out the global maximas of future growth opportunities.

Summary

The deal on the debt ceiling reached in Washington this week has two parts:

Part 1:
In summary deal reached in the Washington allowed for a debt ceiling to be raised by $1T while at the same committed to $917B in spending reductions over 10 years. These 917B are roughly come from $350B cuts in military (read Republican compromise) and 391B come from other discretionary programs (read Democratic compromise) and rest comes from interest savings.

Part 2:
Additionally deal requires that additional $1.3T in savings have to be agreed upon and passed as a law by the end of November. If agreement is not reached by the end of November than automatic reduction will be enacted that will be painful for both parties. Automatic reduction includes $500B reduction in military spending (read painful to GOP) and $500B reduction in entitlement programs, like Medicare (read painful to Democrats) and $200B interest savings.

Needless to say automatic triggering of savings which spreads equal power to both parties is my favorite part as it will create strong incentive for both parties to come up with a sensible compromise without putting national credibility at stake again.

In summary the deal will reduce the deficit by roughly $2.3T over next ten years.
Basic Implications for GOP, Democrats and Tea Party:

GOP: The apparent winner in the debate got the upper hand by forcing the no tax hike. But also put at stake military spending and hence the funding of current wars.

Democrats: While looking like getting a slightly losing hand, they were able to push the discussions of any further debt ceiling to past 2012 elections and came out looking like a party that would like to compromise to move things forward.

Tea Party: Biggest winner in terms of political clout. Not only Tea Party asserted its tremendous influence in the Congress but also woke up even parts of GOP about the potential threat it can pose to GOP itself.

Broader Implications
Putting aside the details of the deal, which are mildly interesting, lets discuss what does this mean for US and the world. First and foremost this whole discussion on debt ceiling was a internally focused political facade. This was not a debt problem similar to the problem that Greece or maybe even Italy is facing. US debt is still highly in demand and US still owes significant portion of its debt to itself. In other words there was not a real market situation where US can not sell its treasury bonds or investors were demanding heavy interest increases on US bonds. Highly sought after US debt is still in demand and debt ceiling is an internal self control mechanism to ensure that US does not put itself into excessive debt.To put it in perspective we have raised the debt ceiling 102 times in the past… or roughly once every year. So in the scheme of things this is a common everyday business. Especially when you have inflation of 2-3%, it makes sense that your debt will go up at least at a similar rate or the nation will be under leveraged. So as opposed to some underlying economical problem, the focus of this debate was political to position both parties as big bold decision makers for the 2012 election.

Having made the strong point above, let me state that US debt has mushroomed at an alarming rate in last 15 years and it does need to be controlled. Therefore this debate was timely and healthy topic that needed to take place. However problem started with how this debate progressed and how it undermined the confidence of the whole world in the US political system and its ability to manage itself in a reliable and mature manner.

Last month the whole world watched US government trying to resolve its own self imposed or self created crises. And what the world saw was a painful soap opera of bickering politicians and antics reminiscent of Real Housewives of New Jersey … full of drama, bickering, and creation of armageddon sounding dramatic antics. Even if you believe it was a necessary fight, we should be embarrassed that the world saw us making the sausage in the most filthy way.
As Americans we were embarrassed but I feel Chinese, Europeans and Africans were dumbfounded. They were asking if American political system is this unreliable? Should they really be concerned about the US debt they are buying? Moreover will America really go into default? These were the questions that were not even in the lexicon of the world before. The dependency of US debt was so solid that all the financial models in the world are built around it. We took one thing that the world never ever questioned — ability of US government to pay its obligations — and put it under doubt. In order to make it more dramatic and sensational, media and the politicians played it to the max, while not realizing that we are putting the trust of the world in US at risk.

They say that one of the main jobs of a leader is to bring certainty and confidence amidst uncertainty and fear. This is the role America has played during past global financial uncertainties. And in this time of global financial uncertainty, when many of the Asian and African nations, including China and India, who heavily depend on the massive American consumption for their growth of the economy were also shaken with the potential American default. Due the position of the American economy in the world, any default by the US will cause global recession and potential depression and while we avoided such calamity, the theater that was created to reach a deal caused this nation some credibility as a leader and we will need to work hard to win it back.

In the end each party may have achieved some political goals, but as a nation we lost our credibility that we have built over last two centuries. Credit ratings agencies may not downgrade US debt, but the world may be a little more cautious in buying our debt fearing similar future stand offs in our increasingly divisive political landscape. And therefore result could be the same as if our credit rating was downgraded!

At the time when Chinese system of market and government interplay is showing an alternative to American model with fast and continued growth, dysfunction showed by our government over last several weeks and dramatization of it by our media only weakens America.

In summary I am less concerned about American economy and even our current debt — I am a strong believer that American economy will come out of its doldrums and will march along with rigor. However I am concerned about the political implications of how we are making the new policies and its impact on our perception by the world.

On a positive note:
Regardless of the negative impact, now that we are past the discussion, it is important to use this deal to kick start strong fiscal reforms that can bring this nation back to its roots of a growth focused economy. This deal has put some drastic cuts in our spending and while it puts our economy at risk by not allowing any potential stimulus if needed, I hope our politicians will use the next round of discussions to put the fiscal plans in place that will help focus the government on where it can help the country most while making America an attractive place for entrepreneurs and corporations to do business.

Lastly I want to address the naysayers who think that this marks the beginning of decline of American dominance in world economy. I think nothing can be farther from the truth. Probably these naysayers don’t remember the same sentiment during 80s about the rise of Japan or the impact of Great Depression. This nation rose from both events stronger and more powerful. I will write more about why I am still strongly bullish about US economy and US as the superpower in my next blog entry.

At the core of the process of life, order creation is autonomous and automatic. We know of this autonomous process as Evolution. Evolution is the algorithm that is applied at the genetic level to create increasingly sophisticated information management system for creation of kinematic (or non kinematic — plant life) self replicating machines. So over time life fulfills it’s purpose in two ways:
Increase order by having increasing numbers of living organisms ( population growth)
Increase sophistication of each member of the of the specie over time ( survival of the fittest) to ensure continuation and growth of the specie.
As you will notice the above two goals of life are performed automatically by all living things, animals, plants and all lifer forms of living including us.

So at a very basic level by just living and procreating we are fulfilling the most basic meaning of life. However if we stop at this level our life will be basically as meaningful as an animal — not destructive but if you are reading this article hopefully you aspire to live a more meaningful life than a moth. The question that this article intends to answer is how to go beyond this level in living a rich and meaningful life.

In the course of human history many individuals have created more order and organized the world around us better than their peers. We call these people leaders of different disciplines or creators of disciplines — philosophers, political leaders, scientists, businessmen, writers, musicians, artists, engineers. For example Aristotle masterful effort in organizing human knowledge and structured pursuit of truth guided scientific thought for almost two thousand years. His contribution to creation of structured progress was a higher level creative action compared to his peers who just lived their lives and died with their offspring as their only contribution to the universe. Since we identify creative action as the fundamental meaning of life, in our terms Aristotle lived a more meaningful life than many of his peers. Similarly Beethoven and Mozart lived a more meaningful life than their peers by creating a long lasting legacy of beautiful music and art of creating harmonized tonal structures out of vibrations of air. In other words people who create more organized information that aids the world in becoming more sophisticated and information rich live a more meaningful life by creating more order than their fellow men.

As a corollary destructive individuals who bring disorder or chaos live an opposite of a meaningful life or in essence are embodiment of evil — names like Hitler, Osama Bin Laden come to my mind as personification of this trait.

Considering the above hypotheses as the basis of applying theory of creative action to living a meaningful life, what does an average person needs to do to live a good life? Obviously not everyone is going to be Aristotle, Einstein or Mozart. My proposition in this article is that for an average person the most basic requirement to live a meaningful life comes down is to at least two key requirements

Raise kids who will be better creators than he/she is, thus leaving he world with a better forces of creative action – community leaders, scientists, business leaders, philosophers. Just executing on this principle will make world a better place if each one of our children are brought up to improvement of ourselves — I call this directed social evolution.
Secondly every should perform their craft in a way that it is left in a better state than when he/she started. This means doing your job not to just earn a paycheck, or to perform what you are asked to do, but improve your work/profession from its currrent state.
If everyone can perform these two tasks than they start to stand shoulder to shoulder with the great creators of humanity by giving the world two types of order creating forces, first his offspring, that is better than themselves in living a meaningful life and creating a better world and secondly improving and evolving their craft / profession to new levels.

Imagine if everyone in the world achieved the above two goals (have kids who achieve more than their parents and perform their work better than before)… The world will quickly become an amazing place within few generations.

These two simple goals may sound mundane but wisdom lies in finding profound within mundane. These two simple goals puts tremendous responsibility on everyone. We have to take our responsibility as a parent very seriously as we are not just bringing up our children but our children are our products that we are selling to the world as their citizens. This makes the job of every parent a serious job of creating a world of tomorrow.

Secondly signing all our work with excellence forms the basis of creating value in the world which is one of the key measurement of how meaningful is your life. Therefore it is important that you should pursue what you love and what you are good at…not necessarily where you can make the most money. Love your profession not because it is source of your livelihood but because it is one of the core reasons of why you were out on this earth.

I would submit that we should not hold our ambitions to live a meaningful life to what is laid out above. Instead we should pursue living as richly meaningful life as possible within our capabilities. What i mean by that is we should sign each day with excellence by doing best as parents, workers, executives, friends, community members etc. And going beyond that we should aspire to “create” and “advance” new forms of structure by contributing to world either intellectually (Establishing new theories, e.g. , Wealth of Nations, Origin of Species, Symposium, Theory of Ralativity, Principia Mathematica etc) politically (forming first democracies in Greece, abolishing slavery in America to bringing peace and subsequently economic development to middle east) building (from building great structures to todays power plants and sky scrapers) or inventing (e.g light bulb to computer to antibiotic). All of the above are examples of creating order where there was disorder before. Disorder of metal, brick, sand, water is shaped by the hands and minds of creators of the world into sky scrapers and power plants. Similarly disorder of confused thought, superstitions and jumbled beliefs get structured by thought creators of the world in scientific, political and economic theories based on which our world works.

It is the work of these Maters of Creative Action that has brought the man out of the cave and into the modern sky scraper. This desire to create order and structure out of every endeavor of our life is the fundamental driving force of life and the ultimate meaning of life. Most amazingly it can be achieved by trying to achieve at least two simple goals, raise your children to be better than yourself and perform your profession with excellence.

We all can contribute within our capacities to live a meaningful life and if we all do that world will be a wonderful place to be.

Time is the fire in which we all burn. Decay and deterioration, in due time, of every object, animate or inanimate, is irrefutable. Humanity has searched for eternal youth for eons, however until recently many adventurers seeking the fountain of youth did not realize that they are up against the most fundamental laws of nature, the second law of thermodynamics. For many scientists second law of thermodynamics comes closest to the absolute law of nature that governs everything in the universe.

The second law of thermodynamics states that as time progresses, disorder increases in any closed system. This innocuous sounding statement describes most intimate and profound nature of the universe that we dwell. In essence the statement above defines the arrow of time and what time does to “stuff” in any closed system. It is the implication of this law that you can see a cup of water fall down and break into pieces , but will not see broken shards of glass assemble spontaneously into a cup and jump back on top of the table.

Before going any further, let me explain the second law of thermodynamics via example for those readers who may not be familiar with it. Imagine an empty room with two partitions, dividing room into two sections. Now fill each section with two different gases, say oxygen and carbon dioxide respectively. Now remove the partition wall. According to second law of thermodynamics, overtime, the two gases in the room will not remain in their respective section and will ultimately mix with each other. In other words the neat order you had created with a separate section for oxygen and carbon dioxide will mix into a single mixture of both gases. This will happen because matter at the most basic level is in continuos motion making the molecules of different gases bump and interact with each other and mixing into a single uniform mixture over time. And this is it – this simple and intuitive concept is the essense of second law of thermodynamics. Hopefully this example will make the smokers think twice before smoking a cigar in the living room of a non smoker’s house, thinking that it will not bother their hosts in their bed room.

Generalizing the above example, second law of thermodynamics state that entropy, also known as the measurement of “disorder”, will increase with time in any closed system. In a poetical sense everything deteriorates with time and we see the results of this when human body mixes back into the ground, ashes to ashes and dust to dust — Time will burn the order into chaos and disorder.

For those readers who want to get a better appreciation of laws of thermodynamics, I highly recommend a short book by Peter Atkins, called “Four laws that drive the Universe” It is a reasonably easy read and will give you a more precise understanding of the second law of thermodynamics than what I am wiling to explain in this short essay.

The second law of thermodynamics impacts the working of our universe at every level. From the working of simple systems like the gas filled room described above to the working of the galaxies, burning of the stars, breaking water cups and aging of our bodies. Without the second law of thermodynamics we would have had a happy childhood as anything we mistakenly broke could be reversed before we get a scolding from our parents. In a sense arrow of time gets defined by this law, thus disallowing us to go back in time, as travel in reverse direction would allow us to reverse the second law of thermodynamics. (for those of you interested in potential of time travel utilizing theory of relativity and it’s implications of bending time, please wait for my article on the nature of time)

Scientist use the second law of thermodynamics to predict the future of the universe as a gray, cold and dark place which would have no structure to it. Over time all energy will be used up, stars will burn and either turn into black holes or non luminous blobs of matter that will be spread in all directions. Indeed a dark and depressing picture. Again in a poetical sense I call this structure eating nature of the Universe the ultimate evil – the destroyer of any discernible structure.

A typical physicist will tell you that there is nothing in the universe that counters the second law of thermodynamics. And while in principle I agree with that statement, I am proposing in this series of articles that the fundamental nature of life is the core counteractive force against the chaos generating nature of the universe governed under the second law of thermodynamics. Moreover life is an instance of an emergent complex dynamical system that will spontaneously emerge in the universe given the physical laws that govern our current nature – in other words life is not an accident but laws of our universe favor spontaneous, although relatively rare, creation of life or as some would say that laws of our universe are designed to create life.

Before going any further I want to state that this is a hypothesis and is not based on scientific facts. However I have strong reasons to believe in the general principles that I am laying out here but above all this is also my belief on which I base many of the core principles of “Creative Action” theory of meaning of life.

Life at it’s core is an intricate organization of matter. Life embodies the ultimate order creation force. First of all life is a sophisticated structure in of itself, capable of maintaining homeostasis. Additionally, as opposed to other sophisticated inanimate structures in the universe, e.g. Star systems, life is designed to propagate over time increasingly sophisticated information. In other words instead of deteriorating over time, life actually evolves to be better and more structured than before. Therefore instead of deteriorating with time, life creates order and structure and spreads that structure beyond individual organism. For example first single celled organisms (prokaryotes) evolved into multi cellular organism (Eukaryotes), and the same process created numerous complex life forms including us.

I can hear some readers saying that this is a violation of second law of thermodynamics that I just described and claimed to be one of the fundamental laws of nature. This is known as evolution paradox and a careful reader will recognize that this is not a violation of second law of thermodynamics. Second Law of thermodynamics states that overall disorder increases with time in a “closed system”. This does not prevent order from increasing in part of the system as long as more disorder is created somewhere else in the system. In other words life might be taking in more energy and creating disorder as its by product (e.g. global warming) in the over all universe while still creating order in the bio-sphere.

Traditionally scientists have viewed emergence of life on a small blue/green planet as a sheer accident. However having placed life at the same level as the most fundamental law of nature, the obvious question emerges as to the importance of life in the universe. While in the past considering life as a fundamental feature of the universe was met with ridicule by serious physicists, however recently this question has received very serious thought and recognition from all respected thinkers of science, from Stephen Hawkins, Roger Penrose to Lee Smolin and Brian Green. The reason for serious thinking behind this question emerged from the fact that our Universe seems to reside in a “Golilocks Zone” of physical laws that are extremely well suited for life (it is called Goldilocks zone because it is neither too cold nor hot, but just right for the existence of life) If many of the universes constants (charge of electron, gravity between masses, mass of proton etc) were off by even 0.01% then universe and life in the universe would not have been possible. This gave rise to the concept of “Anthropic principle”, which basically states that we are here because universe is the way it is. If it were not like this we wont be here and wont be asking these questions. In other words universe as we know is extremely fine tuned to harbor life and laws of the universe that we inhabit has properties needed to harbor life as deeply intrinsic as any other physical law …. Or it might even be more fundamental then any other law. For more reading on this topic I would recommend the reader to read Stephen Hawkins’ Grand Design or for a more controvercial views read Robert Lanza’s book called Biocentrism.

Given the basic argument on life’s importance in the universe, let me turn attention to the basic property of life that matter to our current area of discussion – it’s creative power for establishing and propagating order. In affect life is a process by which physical structure gets increasingly organized and over time more and more of the physical substrate will get increasingly organized — i.e., population growth and evolution. Life finds ways to utilize energy to create structure of the substrate it is built on (carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen etc. —however substrate could also be silicon or other materials) and the preserves that structure by passing on that structure on its offspring. And the information is not just perserved but improves the information passed on either deliberately (cultural evolution) or unconsciously (via natural evolution). Moreover ability of parents to create large number of offspring enables life to expand its footprint to the available substrate and available resources. So just like second law of thermodynamics, given an open system of unlimited supply of substrate and resources, life can continue to grow and create order across the universe.

If a poet were to interpret the above discussion, he or she might say that disorder and decay is the ultimate evil that is destroying the structure, order and everything beautiful in the universe whereas life is the ultimate good that is creating order and spreading the beauty of structure. He might also ask so who will ultimately win this war, good or evil? Some scientists will answer that disorder and decay will win as even life is creating more disorder in the universe under the second law of thermodynamics. However others might recognize that the answer is not as simple. Second law of thermodynamics is only applicable to closed systems. And if the universe is infinite then the answer could be quite different. In an open, expanding and infinite universe, life can continue to spread order and increase order in the universe indefinitely, while the expanding universe will continue to have more of the universe to draw upon for energy for its order creation process. In other words while in a closed system second law of thermodynamics will incorporate life and will ultimately win, in an open and infinite system two will at least have an equal footing. And since today we believe universe could be infinite and expanding, this is a very likely scenario.

The above discussion of infinite universe and its implications on the power of second law of thermodynamics might be confusing to some who are not familiar in dealing with concepts involving infinities. To help explain how second law of thermodynamics and life can be equal in infinite universe while second law of thermodynamics contains life processes in a finite universe, I am going to use an example from a simple high school mathematics. Imagine two set of numbers from 1 to 10. First set, called A has all the numbers from 1 to 10. Therefore A = {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10}. While set B only has even numbers from 1 to 10. So B = {2,4,6,8,10}. Clearly B is smaller and is contained within A. In other words if A and B had a war, A will win over B. While B will kill 2,4,6,8,10, A will be left standing with 1,3,5,7,9 after B would have exhausted its number-soldiers.

Now consider the same example of set A and B, but this time these sets are infinite. So A = {1,2,3,4,5…forever} and B = {2,4,6,8…forever}. Now if these sets have a fight who will win? …. Think about it before reading further….

If you answered no one, then give yourself a pat in the back. However if you answered A, then trust me that the c grade you got in your high school math was well deserved and not a spiteful act on behalf of your math teacher. If you are still wondering why no one will win, you can solve this by noticing the following. You can assign the first element of set B to fight the first element of A (2 fighting 1) and second element of B to fight second element of A (4 fighting 2) ad infinitum. The 10 millionth element of B will fight 5 millionth element of A…since neither will ever run out of numbers they will keep fighting forever. For every element, say n, in A there is a corresponding element 2n in B. In other words A and B are exactly equal sets. So while in a closed system or finite settings A wins over B, in infinite setting they become equals. My argument is that same logic applies to the counterbalancing force of order creating force of the universe, life and its order destroying force or second law of thermodynamics.

At this point we have introduced our protagonist, Life, as the ulitmate creator of order and structure in the Universe and second law of Thermodynamics as the antagonist in our story of the meaning of life. In my next article I will use some of these terms to establish the tenets of theory of “Creative Action” and its implications for the meaning of life as it applies to us as human beings.

Note to reader: I am neither supporting or refuting any religious ideology. The intent of the effort to define the meaning of life in this manner is to approach it on the basis of universal principles that we can agree on without any specific religious ideology. I would strongly implore the reader of this article to not read this from religious perspective, especially from any one specific religious ideology.

Verizon has also tackled some of the most vexing hurdles associated with Web services as part of the IT Workbench project, such as managing and securing the services, charging for reuse and monitoring the performance of service-enabled transactions.

The shift, which will happen as early as this year, involves a new concept the executive, Shadman Zafar, described- as drip-casting, where video is sent gradually to devices such as tablets.

This will come hand in hand with so-called smart charging, where operators would not charge for certain data downloads, Zafar said in an interview with Reuters at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

As have many other SOA implementations, Verizon’s started after a merger — in this case, the GTE/Bell Atlantic merger that created Verizon.

“I was tasked to integrate the two IT departments to achieve strong synergy targets,” Zafar says. “During our initial research, we found that many of our core business functions were implemented anywhere from five to 30 times across different applications.”

In 2012, technology will continue to make consumers’ lives easier and more productive — at home and at work. And consumers themselves will be a major force behind technology’s direction and continued advancements.

Companies used to offer content, services and products and consumers would either buy in or not. Now, consumers are an integral part of the creative process, and this co-creation model is quickly becoming the new norm. That means more piano-playing cat videos, but it will also mean more meaningful user experiences