Not so Grand Design

The Nature's way of attesting your existence on Earth, is your responsibility/ability to leave a progeny on Earth. But this concept has got twisted with the evolution of medical care and technology. If you are someone prone to catching diseases, chances (without medical care) are that sexual routine would be hindered due to the disease. However with medical intervention, we can safely surpass the genetic defects and make a progeny; with similar diseases. Before medicines, such genes just got eradicated. 


But who are we to question this Grand design. We made weaker humans, only to clear this Earth off the unduly dominant human species, only sometime later. So this, definitely is not our concern.

Fasting against Fasting against Corruption

"Fasting against corruption" by Everyone, Everywhere.

What can the Government do?! "Fast till every one fasting against anything/something, ends their fast"!

Simple isn't it?!

(Click to Enlarge)

The Hindu Bangalore Edition "Mummified" - 1/6/2011

This is "The Hindu", Bangalore Edition on a Wednesday morning. The newspaper was, is and will always be celebrated for its clarity, crispness and the quality of News. The Hindu is one of few dailies that holds onto the brave old school journalism.

The Hindu has a code of their own and still thrives with an DNA that has neither mutated nor evolved with the modern schools of journalism.

Well, all the above defines what the daily "The Hindu" is. This blog-post was written because there was something very deviant from the normal "The Hindu" behavior. The Bangalore (a state in Karnataka, India) edition had one entire page of AIADMK's scheme to give free rice (Tamilian's staple food) to every home in Tamil Nadu. The DMK was famous for their dead cheap rice, and now the scheme evolves with elections into "rice is free". How many Governments across the world does that? But I just hope that it doesn't spell 'Kaput' to the breed famous for hard-work : The Tamils. My uncles and their competitors alike, who run Lorry service businesses complain that they don't get workers. ROFL...How would they?!

Conclusion : None made. I am usually sleepy in the mornings. Good time to blog, but bad time to be judgmental.

:BioFlukes:Rebooting Research

:BioFlukes:Rebooting Research

This post marks the official launch News of the much awaited Life Science research information repository website "BioFlukes.com"

Check out the Website and be a part of the Bioflukes' endeavor at "Rebooting Research"... Welcome!

More stories on BioFlukes and news coverage will follow!

:BioFlukes:Rebooting Research

First few drops...

Sitting in the room, with a book in the hand, the ceiling fan circulates a fresh set of air with the scent of the rain's first few drops.

The mind so absorbed in the book awakens to the exterior virtual world, and hears the big drops falling from the skies on the concreted face of Earth, committing suicide by shattering itself, for she expected that she would soon be a part of the juice in a fruit, but later realized that she will be flowing into the city's drainage system and will be nurturing bacteria and mosquitoes.

What does the human me do at once, run outside and protect the partially dried clothes on terrace, snatching the few probabilities of happiness that the rain drop destined to drainage, could have had.

Saved the clothes and what next? Wish I could get drenched and feel myself alive again, but my day is too packed for that. Sorry rain drops, better luck next time!

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The Books as I see them

   
        Books have always been called man's best friend, true it must be, for friends have a peculiar knack of telling you what you need to hear and more importantly in the right time, and most often (but not always) in a way that does not heavily scratch our ego. Good friends are hard to be found nowadays. Ever wondered why you call your office co-worker a "colleague" and not "friend"? The simplest explanation is that he/she is a potential competitor to your career growth, just the way you are one for them. Robin Sharma, often says that if you ever have the curiosity to know as to what will you be five years from now, all you need to analyze is the people you meet and the books you read, for they have a very profound influence on what you will turn into in your immediate future.

        The reason the books command such a respect in a reading human's feelings, can be explained in a few comfort zones that the books help us to stay in. Firstly, we read books by our choice, ranging from the topic to the author, it's all our choice. Secondly, unlike friends books don't try to convince you until or unless you decide to get yourself convinced over a issue; for we often take a book to make a decision, among the two or three options that we already got in mind.

        Many authors have spoken lot about books, I feel a different love towards books. Let me explain how do I feel about reading and keeping books. Books are written by humans, the type of humans I prefer calling "the working men of the highest order", just because the works are the outcome of the influence of his/her higher faculties, which includes the physical system and the intellect .The latter is not an essential component involved in the products of a normal working man, the product that could be a line of laid bricks, or pounds of raw heaped iron, all of which require not much of intellectual prowess being employed for the outcome.

The science behind this.

Undoubtedly, books are the outcomes of an intensive generation of ideas and thoughts brought about by the author (which, even if Artificial Intelligence comes alive, I doubt if the robots would ever be able to do), and ideas don't generate out of nowhere, it clearly has it roots in every single moment the author has spent observing, learning and comprehending the events of life (both his and others, and most often through other books too!). So here it is worthwhile to notice the point that with every progressing generation of humans, the lustre and clarity of the intellect and of the ideas become progressively sharpened in resolution, as it is the truth that unfolds every single day and with numerous authors, numerous perspectives are added on to it.

        All these explanations now positions me aptly, to explain how I see and perceive books. I see the books to be a fragment of the soul or intellect or the life of the author, because a book captures the entire thinking process of an author, that which formed its pattern over a considerable period of time. Now all this gets permanence in a book in a humble two-dimentional simple print in a very consice manner. So literally the author has crystallized his entire soul and intellect, in his book. So when you have yourself sorrounded by books, you have the fragments of their souls all around you.

And that my friends, is how I see the books around me.

Antiseptics for washing hands?!..ha ha...no-no...win-win

A few months ago, one of the very active members of TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) Maitree team and I were having a discussion over a coffee. The doctor in front of his name was not an addition due to a Ph.D; he's a doctor who deals with human body. However, whether his job in TCS is biological or technological, I do not know. But what I know is that he is a biology person at heart, for I could see that his outlook on all that existed in TCS, was hugely biology inclined and inspired by life.

At the discussion, he made a crisp comment about the usage of antiseptic soaps and soap solutions in our washrooms and even in our homes. He felt it was an overkill. But me being a Biotechnologist, could comprehend his concern with another dimension added.

We often use antiseptic soap solutions for washing hands after every meal, bath with antiseptic soaps, mostly to play safe/safer/safest! Here, I would also like to bring in my another persona, which is that of a business-man. The business guy in me says, that it is a long term win-win situation.
 
How? : When we wash and bath, mostly after having stayed in air conditioned rooms and offices, or even in clean homes, we don't actually carry a huge load of pathogenic micro-organisms, that needs a heavy antiseptic treatment. But we still do it. On the contrary, Nature has designed or may be the organisms have evolved, in such a way that organisms beneficial to us humans are more often than not weaker (less resistant to antiseptics) than those that are harmful. So everytime we use a good quantity of soap (unnecessarily beefed up with antiseptics), we add a considerable quantity of antiseptics into the waters, which finds its way into the ground water and also in the soils.

So, how does the bad businessman in me find a win-win in this!?

It's simply because all these unnecessary antiseptics, prevent us from getting infections and diseases, while also managing to kill the beneficial organisms in the environment. This slowly reduces our immunity against microbes that co-inhabit this world, which we must actually share with them. And while our immunity gets progressively weaker, the pathogenic (disease causing organisms) organisms get stronger as their immunity against the antiseptics become progressively higher with every cycle of their reproduction. And these guys reproduce real fast! Because, by the time we complete one session of intercourse, they will have produced millions of off-springs! And what worse, all of them stronger, while our kids are weaker!. So isn't this a win-win situation!? Your kids will buy stronger soaps, and their kids even stronger ones!!!

But the biotechnologist and the environmentalist in me writes this blogpost with a weird kind of paradoxical pain.

Too Technical?!

Usage of antiseptics for hand washing and bathing = wearing a helmet while sleeping, fearing a fall from bed and an injury.

Don't worry Nature has taken care of our immunity, nothing can possibly go wrong that easily. Relax...use a normal soap, or just water. Our fore-fathers did that, and managed to stay alive for me to be writing and you to be reading/commenting this blog.

Man....! Win-win....oh...just shut up you...

With love, Insomniac.

I kinda like this time. Silent, productive, other minds are sleeping, hence not emitting disturbing human mental waves that destructively interfere with those of the few minds that thrive at peace and calm.

I love these nights. A constant reminder of the past and the reality; a black post-it note that clings on for about 50% of each day, trying in vain to remind the sleeping minds and bodies, of a Universe that existed before the diverging dust and debris started their journey.

So after all the fun and frolic ends, it will be the night that will embrace us all.

But who is night to embrace me?! I declare ..."I chose you", remember...and its not the other way round!

love,
Insomniac

Lovely Biotechnology

 Waiting to start them all over again!

Carrying the license to play God...in a humble manner!

George Smoot on the design of the universe : Review

I Felt that this TED video was worth sharing in this blog, for I have noticed that, some minds whose thinking tries to break out of the biological limitations of the skull, and thoughts run beyond the limitations of flesh bone and lust, visit this blog often. This video is for all you such people

P.S : If you felt the description above was overtly flamboyant and an overkill, and you are someone who is possibly convinced that such people are wasting the limited carbon on the planet by assimilating it in their biomass, don't waste 19 minutes watching this video! Go watch porn!

Till the last drop vaporizes!

The statistics and history have shown that it was the war times that fuelled many a innovations to come alive. Penicillin, harley davidsons, instant noodles are examples of it!

I was confronted with the challenge challenging the very existence of humanity, in a war of two most dominant species' on earth! Man and Mosquito...

The challenge was to make the last drop of available mosquito repellant liquid in the magazine@canister to vaporize for the chemical warfare against the mosquitoes to be efficient.

Thats when I came up with this innovative war strategy to efficiently utilize the little ammunition I had to be able to survive the cold, bloody war night.

Humanity won!

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A feedback Based Iconic Interface for smart devices

Note : The important stuff of the blog starts after first three priming paragraph! So please don't loose cool yet!

A few months ago, LG mis-conducted an online competition for designers. The designers were asked to come up with a totally new rethinking of the technologies and their designs that we have presently. The example design put up on their website was something like a fan with a remote control. I felt there was something about this initiative, that was worth a praise and also worth a try. So I gave it a shot.

The funny part was that, I missed the deadline to upload the entry, and when I saw the webpage, it said I could still upload cos the deadline was extended (Good for me!), hence I uploaded happily. The date was extended once again after a few days again! I waited, waited and waited...then there came a time when I stopped checking the website for results! Not very professional isn't it?!?

This experience somehow influenced me when I bought my android phone, though I liked LG optimus, I had this compelling feeling which never allowed me to buy it, I rather bought Motorola Backflip, and I love it!


I mentioned that I uploaded my designs right? Yes, these designs were a set of ideas that had been rolling in my right brain for quite sometime, but I did not develop an app for it, cos my left brain is not that of a coder's! In this blog-post I am uploading the two image files that explain the design concept, plus the mathematics that the design should run on.

Concept : When we use the touch screen based smart devices, the most used icons should progressively increase in size, while the least used icons decrease in size proportionately.

How : There is an incremental and decremental logic for the icon sizes to change, which works very similar to tag clouds where, the frequency of 'hits' on a particular word leads to the increase or decrease of its font-size.

Designs :  Well...You can always click to enlarge!  ;)

If you find this idea cool, please work on it! and Send me the link to the app, am waiting to see my idea in action!

The Tell-Tale Brain by V.S Ramachandran : Review

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

V.S. Ramachandran is celebrated as the "The Marco Polo of Neuroscience" by Richard Dawkins! One Genius can't be wrong about the other! can they?!

I found this book at Odyssey book store in ITPL, Bangalore. Not wasting a moment, bought it! Priced at Rs. 499/-- this I definitely felt was more precious than Eclipse or New Moon or even Lord of the Rings, which also are priced more or less the same.

Ramachandran is first among the many who diverted my lines of thinking into a more neurological, psychological and cognitive pattern. This book tagged "Unlocking the mystery of Human Nature" is definitely bound to pull many more able brains to this wonderful, yet relatively unexplored field of Science.

The teasers(which this book hardly needs) in the book cover's third paragraph inside reads,"The brain remains a mystery to us. How can a three pound mass of jelly that we can hold in our palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos?" Sounds interesting? Igniting a spark? Go ahead, make an investment.

His Robot Grlfriend, by Wesley Allison : Review

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Good start and pages went all good and sexy, but after chapter 6 the author/ daffodil/ even reader(me) couldn't know where the story was headed to and why, and the end followed my declined interest to finish the book. Down to Earth imagination!



View all my reviews

My website, REFRESHED!

Hi peeps,

It's great fun to be writing this now and then; as it gives me great happiness and fulfillment, to be informing you that my personal website www.nram.co.in , is now friendlier, more organized and sensible with respect to the information structuring. But this is what I feel it is, the website is for you to see, hence verdict is yours!

   You are welcome...
   --Ram
   www.nram.co.in 

Abbreviation Psychometry : A thinner slicing into a person's psychology.

     It all started when my father once asked in a 'father testing his son's knowledge..' tone "What is OD?". That was three years ago when I was in the second year of my college. I swiftly replied "optical density", he was shocked and a little irritated for he expected me to say "over draft". Well, I was then a biologist in the making, while my father was a banker for about twenty years. No wonder our take on the abbreviations differed.

It doesn't have to be with two people necessarily. After my college years, there is this company in India called TCS which had extreme faith in 120 of us from our entire batch of God knows how many students, and they offered us employment in our third year of college just when recession was stating to catch up! As I was waiting for the job call from TCS after completion of my Undergraduate study in Biotechnology , Government of India's ministry of Science and technology had for the 2009 batch, called the students for its fantastic initiative called BCIL(Biotech Consortium of India Limited) which gives students a paid internship in leading Biotech companies across India. I was learning big time in Biozeen for about four months.

That's when I was repeatedly using certain abbreviations like DNS (dinitro salicylic acid) and SIP (sterilization in place), CIP (cleaning in place) etc. When I joined TCS after that and started to learn web designing, which had always been my crush kinda hobby during my entire college years, the same (DNS) got reprogrammed in my brain as "Domain Name Server"!

This by itself is not a great thing to write a blogpost upon, rather its too trifle a matter! But what I felt is, this shift in the way certain abbreviations and symbols are processed by the brain, could give a very detailed inference on what and who a person is.

Like for example red could mean love for a lover, while it could also mean blood for a serial killer! These are the takes of two persons of the same symbol. But it could also be that it meant love for the person, till the day he became psychologically destabilized due to a failed relationship and it then started to mean blood! Eeewwww, but you get it right!? This is what psychometry has always been trying to analyze. To make a thin slicing of a person's psychological state is what psychometry aims at.

What I am here trying to convey is that the thin slicing can be made thinner by understanding what abbreviations mean to a person. This could lead to deeper understanding of a person's inclinations to various subjects of his/her professional or personal expertise, (@in short.. one's actual field towards which his/her brain is more aptly fit to be productive) in his/her present psychological state.

Now, the idea is open. I would love to see cognitive Neuroscience brains work on this, for I already am!

Ramrevatube ...ha ha.Yeah That's my youtube channel name!

Hi all,

Had you noticed, there is a little addition to the pages on top panel! Yeah, there is "My Youtube Page" added.
Just a place to keep a few videos that are worth more(yours) than just two eyes(mine!). Welcome there...

Spanish speaking monk from Argentina.

It was just another evening, out of nowhere a person comes to me. Dressed up in cotton khadi attire which seemed to laugh at the corporate synthetic attire of mine, and with a soul that had no fear nor expectations which was reflecting in his bright brown eyes.

He introduced himself to be a person from Argentina and that he speaks Spanish, and wants to spread the words of his Gurus and handed me this book.

Shame, I dont know his name. But, whats in a name? We all descend from Om.

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The Tell-Tale Brain by V.S Ramachandran...Lovely Book

Just bought the book I have been waiting to read. feels soooo good. my best investment i would say is this...

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Work-Life Balance

Often seen as a myth, Work-life balance was explained by my mother in a few simple terms. That sparked in me an idea to click this pic; which is exactly how my mom explained it!

This blog-post is soon to be expanded further, by adding my own theories that has helped me to maintain my balance best.

Cracked pipelines? bangaloreans show what to do!

I recently was hunting for a place to park my bike in the perpetually crowded mg road, brigade road, luckily found a place opposite to the juice junction in churchstreet, where I had to pay an enterpreneur Rs.10 per hour!

It wasnt bad, he did take care of the bike, like everyone else's till I returned two hours later.

Juice junction did help me fight the unusually hot persona Bangalore has started to carry these days! Whats worth mentioning is the garbage can(well not strictly!) Outside the fruit juice shop! I did find a moment to capture the cement pipeline which was invented to transport waste water. But due to aging it cracked, and some right brained guy/gal had painted it and helped it resurrect and serve humanity...yes, thus was born this garbage can(again, not exactly!)

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Martin Jacques: Understanding the rise of China | Video on TED.com

I recently happened to get the link of this video in my mail Inbox, because as a fan of TED.com you get the inside scoop as and when good videos are added in TED.com. The title astonished me! "Understanding the rise of China", every word of it was true. But my interest to watch the video was fuelled by the desire to understand how can the people (the basic and the most important asset of a country) be highly supportive of all the measures that the State subjects them to.

In the process I understand that its not the Government thats strong, but that the people are strong in their minds. The relationship of the State and the society is like that of a parent and child, or husband and wife, as most of what keeps the relation running and happy is more often than not 'Trust' and 'Dogmatic Faith'.

Here in India and even in the west we often have a rebellious attitude and not much of trust for the State. Yes, face it. It's true.

Look at our morning papers, the first thing we see in the media is a negative news. They don't stop there, they criticize China too, as if we are all clean and happening big time! Sarkozy and Tiger Wood's personal life is what our media likes to talk the most about and not about the great things that are happening in India or the World generally. Why is that we are dead set on seeing the wrong things and saying wrong things. Gandhi knew this Indian mentality very well, he gave the three monkeys well in advance. I guess they are dead by now!

Martin Jacques: Understanding the rise of China | Video on TED.com

Little Deeds of Greenness@Greatness

I keep looking out for little deeds, knowingly or unknowingly, committed by people, that is an act worth a praise. There is a tea shop in National Games Village, where people (educated!) litter the place with loads of soft drink bottles, cigarette's behinds! and anything that isn't edible.

The shop owner is a man of his own kind, 'punctual', 'God fearing', 'money minded', 'mature' and 'cleanliness freak'. Of these I do not know which makes him collect these bottle caps and sell them. But somehow I was happy that once in three days, these Aluminium caps start their journey to get recycled.

"Little deeds of "Green"ness, little works of clean;
Make our Earth an Eden, like the Heaven above."

Thank God Julia A. Carney is dead, but I am sure she too would be happy with me tweaking her lines ;)

The Safety in similarity

Likes attracts likes.

Waiting for the bus that is scheduled at ten at night, while I reached the bus stand at 9 due to leaving home very early overestimating the Bangalore traffic, gave me nothing but a lot of time to observe completely random people and analyse their behaviour. It was really fascinating to see the strikingly evident pattern that's visible while looking at how and why random people come closer in a completely random environment.

Here I stand in a noisy bus terminal with people impatiently waiting for their buses and some already irritated. It is these typical environments that one gets to do a lot of behavioural analysis. I was consciously not wanting get irritated at the beginning of my journey to Chennai, which was going to give great inputs for my travelogue that I am about to write next! Hence keeping my happiness levels high was a prime importance.

What I couldn't help but notice was the coming closer of four completely random people unrelated to each other. One striking commonality between them all is the fact that all these men are having ear phones plugges into their ears. Out of the four one has been thinking something very deeply for quite a long time, the other fiddling with his rubix cube bringing it to form and then enthusiastically shuffling the colors, the other noticing me noticing all of them and there was another girl who was out of the place but nevertheless closer, I presume this was because these were unrelated people and the distance she took was because she was in one way not common to all of them, she was a female.

After sometime the female seemed to have attracted more alikes around her, and like the female, they were all rich and sophisticated. Needless to say with headphones!

Another point to consider was that there was this old man who walked atleast thirty steps just to take a seat among these guys who were all lonely specimens lost in thought and music and thinking. This was of course out of place, but this gave spark to a lot of questions.

Was this old man intelligent once? Still intelligent but just slowed down by aging? Why did he subconsciously prefer this group, when there were so many other seats available in other places?

Why did these people prefer to have have a seat by each other?

Was it because their minds perceived other people more alert and occupied as potential dangers? do they fear them? could be...

I think we all try to settle within our comfort and safety zones. All ears plugged means one of their senses of perception is occupied, hence they prefer to surround themselves or fit into a surrounding in which they see potentially lesser dangers.

Too deep into thinking in an environment which demands complete alertness and conscious wakefulness? Thats risky, hence the minds choose subconsciously a set of people who are more like us and tries to fit in quietly into the environment. The safety ring. The Similarity ring.

blogging via android!! so cool!

Its fascinating to know that people like me (who are attached to corporate computers which somehow never understand the value of blogging), can still blog with this android app!

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