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).