A giant ship engine failed. The ship’s owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could figure but how to fix the engine.

Then they brought in an old man who had been fixing ships since he was a young. He carried a large bag of tools with him, and when he arrived, he immediately went to work. He inspected the engine very carefully, top to bottom.

Two of the ship’s owners were there, watching this man, hoping he would know what to do. After looking things over, the old man reached into his bag and pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped something. Instantly, the engine lurched into life. He carefully put his hammer away. The engine was fixed!

A week later, the owners received a bill from the old man for ten thousand dollars.

‘What?!’ the owners exclaimed. ‘He hardly did anything!’

So they wrote the old man a note saying, ‘Please send us an itemized bill.’

The man sent a bill that read:

Tapping with a hammer…… ……… …….. $ 2.00
Knowing where to tap……….. ……… …… $ 9,998.00

Effort is important, but knowing where to make an effort makes all the difference

The Global Gender Gap Report was first published in 2005 by the World Economic Forum. The 2008 report covers 130 major and emerging economies.

The Report’s Gender Gap Index ranks economies according to their gender gaps and their scores can be interpreted as the percentage of the gap between women and men that has been closed. The three highest ranking countries have closed a little over 80% of their gender gaps, while the lowest ranking country has closed only a little over 45% of its gender gap. It “assesses countries on how well they are dividing their resources and opportunities among their male and female populations, regardless of the overall levels of these resources and opportunities,” the Report says. “By providing a comprehensible framework for assessing and comparing global gender gaps and by revealing those countries that are role models in dividing these resources equitably between women and men, the Report serves as a catalyst for greater awareness as well as greater exchange between policymakers.”

The Report examines four critical areas of inequality between men and women in 130 economies around the globe, over 92% of the world’s population:

1. Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
2.  Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher level education 
3. Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures 
4. Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio

Thirteen out of the 14 variables used to create the Index are from publicly available “hard data” indicators from international organizations, such as the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Health Organization.

Top 20 Countries

1.  Norway 82.39%
2.  Finland 81.95%
3.  Sweden 81.39%
4.  Iceland 79.99%
5.  New Zealand 78.59%
6.  Philippines 75.68%
7.  Denmark 75.38%
8.  Ireland 75.18%
9.  Netherlands 73.99%
10.  Latvia 73.97%
11.  Germany 73.94%
12.  Sri_Lanka 73.71%
13.  United Kingdom 73.66%
14.  Switzerland 73.60%
15.  France 73.41%
16.  Lesotho 73.20%
17.  Spain 72.81%
18.  Mozambique 72.66%
19.  Trinidad and Tobago 72.45%
20.  Moldova 72.44%

Read More about Global Gender Gap

The National Ignition Facility, or NIF, is a laser-based inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research device under construction at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in Livermore, California, United States. NIF uses powerful lasers to heat and compress a small amount of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclear fusion reactions take place. NIF is the largest and most energetic ICF device built to date, and the first that is expected to reach the long-sought goal of “ignition”, where the fusion reactions become self-sustaining.

Construction started in 1997 but was fraught with problems and ran into a series of delays that greatly slowed progress into the early 2000s. Progress since then has been much smoother, but compared to initial estimates, NIF is five years behind schedule and almost four times more expensive than budgeted. By August 2007, 96 of the lasers (out of a planned 192) had been completed and commissioned, with a further 48 (for a total of 144) nearing completion. As of June 2008, construction of the NIF is estimated to be completed in March 2009 and that ignition (more energy coming out than is put in) can be achieved by 2010. Its price of over $4 billion and its role in nuclear weapon research have made it a controversial project.

Read more on  National Ignition Facility

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Twingly, The blog search engines has added another feature to their blog search engine, Twingly will now offer users to search on website that provides micro blogging services including Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Bleeper.de, Bloggy.se and Pownce archives. Twingly calling it as world’s first federated micro blog search. Twingly targeting to index all micro blogging websites and  they are also asking users to suggest them any micro blogging service they through Twingly feedback

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