Tuesday, December 30, 2014

That's that



There are so many things I wanna write about…till the time I actually sit down to write and then there’s obscurity.
Hey, today I learnt that my PhD work has finally been submitted for publication to a reputed journal, the ACS Chemical Biology. 7 years after I joined PhD, my supervisor finally thought its time. Really! 7 years, what all could I have done in 7 years “it doesn’t matter”
Something about this new lab I’m working in, the PI is good but he’s also weird. He thinks of himself as God or God incarnate (like many other scientists here) but even by scientist standards, he’s quite weird.
Bobo’s grown big so fast. He’s 7 months old and already difficult to manage. Yet he brings a sense of love to everyone in the house. Thankfully dogs have no clue about the complexity of human minds, else they’d never be referred to as man’s best friend. Thinking of how different life could be with a kid. As time passes and you experience the myriad colors of life, you’re never the same as yesterday. That’s why it doesn’t matter “what could have been” for “what is, is” and that’s what’s important.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Indian father Indian son

We have an awesome system where many soaring fathers spend the younger years of their lives feeding their sons but clipping their wings to keep them under their control. Then they spend the later years ridiculing the fat gluttons for not being able to take-off and eating away the resources of their younger years.

Indian boys: your folks are scheming brain-fuckers
Indian girls: you folks are nastier brain-fuckers

If you think "oh! my parents are so cool and awesome" then wake up you you've been espionagically (if that's a word) mind-raped.

When will this mind-sex orgy in this country cease?

And strangely still, I love you very much dad.

Friday, October 17, 2014

Rafter

It juggles and throws you around but you hold the paddle tight, beat the wave and move through the mob of bubbles and rocks, shouting at the top of your voice in an adrenalin rush.
Then you reach the calms and jump in to relax, locate the eddies and avoid them. Soon you spot the white waters at a distance and haul yourself back in. You pass other boats, some of them meet a scarier fate than you. But when you face the fury of the foam, its time to roar in battle. You watch it rise high above you but what are your choices; fight bravely or drown like a coward. 

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

A week after the accident, the things still doesn't look good.

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Zap Zap

I've been feeling so horribly fatigued for such a long time. Then today, after many months, the workload was phenomenally high. I ran, I sprang, booked the instruments, ran columns, centrifuged etc etc and did all the multitasking. From 9:30 am til 7:45 pm, and that too without food (ok ok I had 2 samosas at 5:00 pm but I was on water throughout the day before that). I returend home and gobbled tons of food as precaution, without sensing the mildest of hunger. It's midnight and I'm still not tired!

How'd my battery get charged? Here's the story:

Well you see, I will become ineligible for a research associate position soon. Working as a volunteer and not having received any salary for the past 10 months, has changed many things for me (for the worse) beyond the scope of this post.

When posts were advertised on the institutional website, I had little choice but to think about it. No positions are coming my way in the near future, if I lose eligibility for ones that I can get now, Soon I'll have nothing left to do. Someone is majorly responsible for this misery of mine but I'll refrain from taking names.

Much as I love and respect my present employer (where I work as a volunteer), work hasn't been built on solid ground. Not that I should expect it to and honestly I have tried taking ownership of the work but in vain; things are way too jinxed out here. Moreover, I'm suffering from the once-bitten-twice-shy syndrome lately and I try as I may, my mind doesn't let me trust people anymore. Time's running out for me! I've put in 5 months and have observed that deadlines are never met (similar to what happened in my PhD).

Having said that, things are hotting up here. So I'm not sure if this is the right time to leave. But I gave myself a deadline, I'm outta here in 2 months max and I gotta give it a quality shot while I'm here. The transformation was magical. No fatigue, total energy, total concentration! I finally managed to take ownership of the work and todays work was a sweet success.

I reckon, that's how you get rid of fatigue by having a time-bound goal! Common knowledge but easier said than done.

Monday, July 21, 2014

So is God on a rampage?



http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/opinion/timothy-egan-faith-based-fanatics.html?_r=0

http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/07/19/iraq-security-christians-idINKBN0FO0V920140719

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

'B'e'T'rayed

I wrote an article on bt brinjal some years ago http://www.heraldofindia.com/article.php?id=441 I guess there's so much I didn't know back then. On the one hand there are life saving drugs being developed, while on the other hand, here's how businesses corrupt science 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTGatLDwF_8#aid=P81WmWenEpg

This is downright scary. They're slowly making roads into India. 

The following link was shared by a pro-GM friend. http://www.marklynas.org/2013/01/lecture-to-oxford-farming-conference-3-january-2013/  Although I agree that GM can satiate the needs of the deprived, I only wish that was their only agenda. I present my argument against the abovementioned article (I could've elaborated even more but ran out to time and patience). The lines in read are directly quoted from the article followed by my argument in black (in some places I've just argued by calling some statements silly, owing to the common knowledge about the subject):

Author builds his credibility in the beginning of the article. If he's gonna talk about hardcore objective science, he needn't build his credibility. But ok, never mind, let's go on to read on. 

Says he was wrong about GM being harmful…(oh he already sets the mood for the article, now I know what to expect. But anyway, let’s move on)

Ehrlich Vs Borlaug à btw he conveniently omitted M S Swamynathan from the Indian Green Revolution). Borlaug’s ideology differed from Monsanto’s his aim was to feed the poor, not mint millions by obliterating the natural crops. It is Monsanto’s biggest agenda to wipe out naturally occurring seeds in the near future. This in itself is a challenge to biodiversity. Then farmers will be forced to buy seeds from such company's every season. You think this is intended to help the poor? 

Studies like these, effects of drugs, take years/decades to complete. The once commonly used medicines were found to be toxic after 10s of years. They all meant well. America is not suffering from famines, so why push GM there with such force?

CropLife suggest it costs $139 million  à What is Croplife's turnover? Let’s compare. How much do they aim to earn from this technology. How will it help the farmer to be independent and progressive? No info on that

Because we have enough to eat, we can afford to indulge our aesthetic illusions.à So? Why’re they hell bent to cure a problem that doesn’t exist in the first place? Because Europe is rich!! Population is not Europe’s problem so why obfuscate the argument?

The idea that it is healthier has been repeatedly disproved in the scientific literature….organic is much less productive, with up to 40-50% lower yieldsà  Why’s he comparing yield with “healthier”. Surely those in surfeit need worry only about health, not yield. Poor countries aren't touting “organic”, rich ones are because they can. So why does it itch GM companies. They can just go about their well-meaning work in poor countries.

Instead they talk about an ideal world where people in the west eat less meat and fewer calories overall so that people in developing countries can have more.à I don't think that’s the idea, these things are being promoted for health reasons, not to accommodate the poor.

horse and cart in 1850,à We don't eat horse and cart, they don't go into our bodies and don't affect our health directly. This seems like deliberate obfuscation.

benign herbicides like glyphosateà please watch the youtube documentary (link given in the beginning) about how benign it is. Monsanto’s already infamous for projecting dangerous things as harmless; history is witness to this. There are doctors and scientists vouching against this statement, based on real research and real patient records. This guys is not a scientist, if he so believes in peer-review then he should get this article peer reviewed by the scientific community. I assure you that if I can find such big caveats, more experienced scientists will rubbish this article in a jiffy.

Recent research by Jesse Ausubel and colleagues at Rockefeller UniversityàSure go ahead, sell GM in India, Africa and poor countries, why do you want to penetrate Europe and America so desperately? Money?

That is why I don’t know why so many of those opposing the use of technology in agriculture call themselves environmentalists.àSure forests and animals should be protected but at the same time, you can’t eat something that’s gonna gradually lead to genocide right?

This was a public health catastrophe, with the same number of deaths and injuries as were caused by Chernobyl, because E.-coli probably from animal manure infected organic beansprout seeds imported from Egypt.àSure that’s a good eg. so that doesn’t make GM any better…you can’t ignore patient records. We base our research on that, so it cannot be ignored.

In total 53 people died and 3,500 suffered serious kidney failureà Please watch the youtube documentary to get stats on the rise in number of cases of various disease due to GM over the past decades since it was introduced.

trivial risks from highly-regulated chemical pesticides and fertilisers” à He’s trying to trivialize this. Risks from Chemical pesticides and fertilizers have not been trivial.

analogous to burning books in a library before anyone has been able to read them” à Books won't directly kill/maim your children.

immoral and inhumane, depriving the needyà Again—go and give it to the needy. These people are using the needy as their poster boys, while their main aim is to pocket big money from the developed world.

help reduce overfishingà This is a proposal; in science we first propose, then show that it works and then it is accepted. What GM companies are doing is not semi-science projected as the hardcore scientific method, which implies that it is indeed pseudoscience.

So my conclusion here today is very clear: the GM debate is overà Sure, you’re the jury and the executioner. A scientist would never ever ever say such a horrible thing.

never been a single substantiated case of harmà So the doctors, patients and scientists crying foul with lucid records of the harm are lying?

more likely to get hit by an asteroid than to get hurt by GM foodà Such comparisons are drawn by airline companies as well. Guess what…not many survive aircrashes. And here’s the thing, GM can be good, some of it must be good but to tout it as awesome, much-needed and the only way, is not scientific. Science accounts for everything, even results that have come to light just once, everything has to be explained (like why did it happen once in a particular case). 


more likely to get hit by an asteroid than to get hurt by GM foodà That’s a blatant lie. Please watch the Youtube documentary I mentioned in the beginning of the article to see what exactly I mean.

blight-resistant potato would save farmers from doing 15 fungicide sprays per seasonàDeliberate obfuscation. The author deliberately omits the reason for such apparent reduced fungicide use. The reason is that the fungicide is being produced inside the potato itself! This is not rocket science! The life cycle of a potato production may just be one year BUT the effects on humans can/will/do linger for years. Please watch the documentary on how this happens. Please see animal test trial that unequivocally prove the dangers. If there’s an ideological issue, it’s with the author, who is hell-bent to skew facts and project them as reality.

potato famine in the mid 19th century…But thanks to the Irish Green Party, this is not to beàand “medieval superstition as a strategic imperative” again he’s rousing emotions to prove his point.

India has rejected Bt brinjal, even though it would reduce insecticide applications in the field, and residues on the fruità Bt brinjal has Bacillus thuringiensis (a bacteria) toxin genes, produced the toxin inside the brinjal, therefore external application is reduced. Bro with some normalization, it is equivalent to having a toxin in each and every cell of the brinjal from its core to its skin…you think that’s not dangerous? A good scientific test would be to calculate how much toxin does each brinjal produce and check the lethal dosing of this in mice or other animals. Why doesn't the billion dollar strong industry carry out such a test? They go the distance to suppress the results of such research (please watch the documentary to see how a senior scientist lost his job of 35 years, when he did so).

supposed “health risksà the health risks aren't “supposed”, there are patient records and scientific evidence that GM companies suppress.

suffocating avalanche of regulations à by saying this, GM companies are behaving worse than the greedy pharma industry. So they're saying this shouldn't be regulated? That’s a dead giveaway about their intentions.

integrate nitrogen fixing capabilities into major food crops, starting with maizeàSure this is a good thing but don't deliberately mislead us that this is should be considered the same as crops like BT brinjal, BT maize etc. that produce toxins in every cell of their bodies. Not all GM are the same. They need to be thoroughly studied by third party researchers, they need to be understood and definitely regulated, so that we can know which ones are good and risk free.

international myth-bustingà This is hypocrisy. They suppress independent research into GM with full force.

Norman Borlaug is dead now, but I think we honour his memory and his visionà There you go, another emotional support. I’m sure Borlaug though only about poor in a well-meaning way. Not to capture and enslave farmers around the world.

farmers should be free to choose what kind of technologies they want to adoptà Sure they should but they should be equally well-informed of both the choices; all the pros and cons. So should the public.

you don't have the right to do is to stand in the way of others....Farmers who understand the pressures of a growing population and a warming world...àThis is downright amusing and silly.

…celebrity chefs to the US foodies to the peasant groups of Indiaà thanks for your respect for the Indians sire. By now you've gone completely subjective, irrational and the bigotry is well reflected in your words.

But you must know by now that they are not supported by scienceà Neither are you sire.

get on with feeding the world sustainablyà I wish that was the primary aim of the present-day GM companies. I wish Norman Borlaug was alive and objectively listened to both sides of the story.

Ride-iculous


I had these symptoms many years ago.  That too was a time of turmoil and I wasn't getting enough sleep and was suffering from a lot of fatigue in my legs. Even after I started to get reasonable amount of sleep, the fatigue persisted. Then it all disappeared and became hale and hearty again. Now it has returned. In June I fell sick. It was diarrhea, followed by a severe back pain that left me bedridden for over two weeks. I tried almost everything, for massages done from three different places, got physiotherapy from two places but in vain. Finally I got sick of it and just decided to move my butt back to work. I exercised away the back pain but then my thighs and calves developed intense fatigue that wouldn't go away no matter how much I massaged them or rested them. I can't stand or walk for very long anymore. Have developed knots in my calf muscles and by calf tendons have very tight and inflamed. My sister said that it could be fibromyalgia. I read about it and found out that I sure had some symptoms. The particularly striking one being one talked about being extremely fatigued even after sleeping for more than 8 hours or so. This sure is me! I checked the reasons and found that they were rather unknown but suggested that it could be a result of a physical stress/ trauma or mental trauma/depression. 


Depression was stated as a possible reason. While I sure am mentally disturbed to a small degree for the past few months but I don't consider myself depressed. I’m surely terribly stressed out because of my career but I'm definitely not depressed. Then there was the bike ride that started it all. My wife and I rode to Mcleodganj in very hot weather and I made the terrible mistake of balancing a big, heavy, wobbly bag on the fuel tank. We'd expected the hill to be cool but only Mcleodganj offered a bit of respite, which lasted only <20 kms="" nbsp="" of="" out="" the="" total=""> 250 kms. Through the ride, I had to hold the bag squeezed between my thighs and even with my arms, on turns. Some stretches had terribly eroded roads…roads? I wouldn't call them roads, they were solid potholes. Mcleodganj itself is stressful on legs. The long flight of stairs to the hotel was a massive trek in itself, especially while hauling a heavy bag. Worse still was that we had to climb back out every time we wanted to get out of the hotel, which was twice in a day. In 3-4 days, my legs had almost given way; the calves were especially in a bad state. To make matters worse…we had to ride back the same way, in the same terrible heat and the same stretches of horrible tarmac. We made a good speedy start but then, in the terrible heat, my bike stopped dead on the hills. No warning, nothing, just RIP. The heat was killing us and we were heavily loaded with stuff, not to mention, my bike is heavy. I had to push it uphill for some distance that almost snuffed the life out of me. I was also cursing myself for torturing my wife like this; she was following me, sweating in the heat and stress. We were very lucky to have found a mechanic in that place but we were set back by almost two hours.


The return ride took 9 hours of motorcycling through mostly good roads but the bad stretches took a heavy toll. By the time we reached Bhakra Nangal, the sun had set and our plans had already gone awry. I never ride in the dark due to obvious safety concerns but now we didn't have a choice. Because I wasn't prepared to ride in the dark, I hadn't bother about my scratched helmet visor. As it grew dark I could no longer keep the visor down due to poor visibility and no sooner did I lift it, my eyes were bombarded with hundred of insects. I had no choice but to go on blinking frequently and take the beating on my eyes. Then one of the thing got into my eye and did something in there that that eye started to burn severely. I was flickering my eyelash to rid whatever it had secreted in there, and then....I dunno what it was but something real big bombed my other eye...it was really big, hit my eye and went out from the opening in the helmet underneath. I screamed in pain as I gradually slowed the the motorcycle to come to a halt. I pressed my eye with my palm as hard as I could as the pain was unbearable. All this was freaked my wife out and she broke into tears. I realized I had to control my reaction or she'd lose it completely seeing me like that. I asked her to calm down, telling her that I was ok and it'd be fine soon. My eye was throbbing and pulsating with pain. I realized to not adequate clear, eye-protection for night riding could have cost us more dearly had I lost control of the bike going at 90 kmph when I was I got hit by whatever it was. I washed my eye with copious amount of water and waited till the throbbing and burning subsided to a bearable degree. We had not even reached half way and home was still very far away. We were tired and covered in dirt and nearly hallucinating from breathing truck exhaust fumes most of the way. We were negotiating overtaking high speed trucks and buses on the highway, not to mention the occasional car driver that thought he was on F1 track, had a few close calls but we couldn't slow down and prolong the torture. All my senses were alert at full intensity, lest we get into a compromising situation, which would’ve spelt disaster on the highway at night with a lot of high-speed traffic. All this while, the godforsaken bag had to be balanced on the tank. Wife too was carrying my camera bag on her back, which was by no means light. We made it home after 9 hours of starting from Mcleodganj. Then started the fatigue syndrome that led to one ailment after another.

Lessons from the bike ride:
  • Although my bike was all set to go and I had all the spares like foot-pump, tyre-tubes, chain-link, most of the tools to remove tyres, chain, tubes, spare fuses etc. Everything was in perfect working condition but the battery was old. It just went kaput without warning, so you really need to be careful about the condition of your battery. Once the battery has crossed its warranty life, it's a no brainer to replace it before a long ride, even it seems to be working perfectly fine before the ride.
  • You just gotta have a clear eye protection for the post-sunset milieu. I wouldn't ever want my eyes to go through the torture that they went through in the last leg of the ride. I can be fatal if you get hit in eye with such force and lose control of the bike at high speed. 
  • Riding gloves are a must. I had them and I can vouch for their importance.
  • Don't have a heavy bag on the tank...or if you must, have it restrained such that it doesn't sway around. I got too caught up centering heavy weight, which was a great thing as far as ride handling is concerned but it brought its own problem of a wobbly bag on the tank. For a nine hour bike ride, that's a big no-no. 


So the fatigue, that has become chronic, does seem to be about mental and physical stress. Problem is that once it sets in, it doesn't go away that easy. I'm at it, resting, eating, exercising and working, trying to balance it all and curing myself from this irritating problem. Once I'm ok, we'll do this again taking the experience with us.

Saturday, July 05, 2014

Le Corbusier who?


Every once in a while, you read news of some belonging of Corbusier being "disposed" by the Chandigarh Administration. I wonder why there are no collectors of these within Chandigarh, a city with a substantial rich population. Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris aka Le Corbusier, the man who planned the city beautiful, Chandigarh, has long been forgotten here.

Here's news of the disposal of some other left overs. Soon there'll be nothing left (if any is already).


Friday, May 23, 2014

Worth



Having attained perhaps the highest degree in education, PhD, I reflect on what was the most important part of my stint with education and what were the most important lessons learnt.

Which part of education did I really enjoy through the time I was studying? -- I think that would be PhD. I gave me the freedom to think and explore for myself. I was never one who could forge interest in something I wasn't inclined to know, therefore school and college, where we Indian kids are burdened with everything there is to know in the world, didn't go quite as well. I loved literature (both Hindi and English), geography, biology and physics. I gradually lost interest in Physics because of my compromised mathematics. I could never make sense of what we were doing in maths. I could only relate to the world of the living and the what could be shown to directly affect them. 

Of course I knew maths was important but in my environment it was only important because if you were good in maths, you could pursue an engineering degree and go on to earn lots of money quickly; that explanation was enough for me to lose interest in it. Then in senior school I couldn't understand differential calculus and everybody around me was happily cramming formulas and scoring big. I couldn't understand what to do with the damn thing. How the hell will I ever use differentiation in the living world? Of course if became clearer that it was using in deriving many fundamental formulas of sciences (later I found that even biological ones) but at that time even the formulas were a means to an end. To cram them, do speedy calculations and score good grades...which again was a means to an end to become a medical doctor or an engineer. Oh Boy! Have I been lost. PhD gave me a chance to reflect on it all. Though it kept me occupied enough to not give quality time to learn some things that began to fancy, like calculus but it kept the fascination alive and flamed my interest further. I'm very thankful to the internet and to documentary makers like the BBC, which bring the biographies of great scientists, statesmen, hermits, photographers, god (?!). Watching these humbled me quite a bit as I learnt that most of these people never had it easy and/or were bordering insanity. Einstein, Eastman Kodak, Tesla, Newton are some examples and there are so many more. 


Of course PhD itself has it's fair share of the rat-race, i.e. publishing papers. I kept myself immune to the temptation while working on a difficult project. This was much to the convenience of my supervisor who was under no pressure to get my authorship in a paper, neither from his side and nor mine. Past PhD aged 34, I've been brought to my knees and I accept that this is not the way the world works. Now I'm at it, working for a paper. I accept that people are horribly selfish and that if I allow myself to be the sacrificial lamb, people will que up to slit my throat.

Did I need a PhD to learn this lesson? No, rather it delayed the lesson. 

Will I become horribly selfish like many others around me? I'm tempted to but I won't. I'd rather climb up the ladder and then get these people to mend their ways (those that I'll come across). Who knows how high I'll go, all I know is that I want to and when I want to, I do.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Parents

  I'm sure there are several exceptions to this generalization but then there are many who'd qualify too; my guess is that a majority of Indian parents do.

  They're competitive: my kids must be better than others in every activity (understandable, they think their genes are the best). They're insecure, so they brainwash their kids as much as they can, to follow their ideologies and philosophies of life.They plant thoughts into their children's head about their own beliefs. Every thing that the kid does, which is acceptable to them is rewarded and this reinforced. Though this is kinda understandable, in event of a son/daughter differing in his/her beliefs is penalized in certain ways, explicitly stated or carried out silently.

  Indian parents, many of them, are sickening when it comes to matters of money and property. They attempt to get things done by their children in lieu of a promise (explicitly made or implied) what they'll leave behind for them. Brought up in such a system, it is obviously a big deal for Indian kids (by kids I mean anyone alive at any age who has a living parent that owns a property or a certain sum of money that he/she considers sufficient to lure someone into doing something for the promise of owning it one day). Not unnatural for money worshippers, who try and gauge most things in terms of wealth.

  Indian parents love money, they teach their kids to love money and finally show em what all they can have it from them...by doing what the parents expect them to. You're expected to make the biggest choices of your life according their whims and wishes and whoever does not, stands to lose the inheritance or a certain part of it. If parents wanna leave anything behind for their children (if at all), it should be handed down to everybody equally, whether a son or a daughter, irrespective of what your beliefs are, so long as you know that your son/daughter is not doing anything unlawful.

  Son's stick around with their parents as much for the inheritance as for the love (if any), while some daughters and their families eye the moolah as well. Indian parents know all that well and influence their children's thoughts and action as much as they can. All the while they keep singing songs about how much they've done for their kids, as if it was a debt that has to returned, not the love for your father or for your mother. Indian kids are born into the slavery of the wishes and expectations of their parents and their society, most of them do well and carry on with the tradition.

  What shameless double-crosses and sickening sycophants. I understand that money is important but making an Altar for it changes the game quite a bit doesn't it.

Saturday, April 05, 2014

Lion help

I came across this video on youtube. It saddening to see how some rich people around the world choose to throw money on grotesque hobbies...just so they can boast about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPMZ9mRcn50

The following people are out to help the rescued animals.
www.sanwild.com
http://sanwildfundraisers.wordpress.com/

If happen to be rich and have spare money that you wish to donate for wild animals that need help, please do visit the page and help these people. These are people that are trying to help lions that some other people raise to be killed by game hunters. If you watch the video and believe that these animals should be helped, please do spread the word.