Thoughts And Trivia

Discovery Channel had made a DVD regarding the "Out Of Africa" theory of Human migration based on mitochondria Genes. What is new in this?

I have written earlier also on this theory of there being only one original Woman {Lucy) from which all of us are descendants, based on the Mitochondria. (By the way: I should make a subject wise archive on this blog, instead of monthwise. I would do it ASAP).
Still what was intriguing was how could large number of humans crossed the sea at various points. The fact is that at that time, there was a sever ice-age and as a result the sea level was about 160 Ft. lower than today. Therefore, what appear to be islands today, actually were connected through shelves of land(which are now submerged).
But still there was about 100 miles of sea from Malaysia to Australia. This the Humans did cross by reed boats. Why and how did they navigate is not clear.
All this is based on mitochondria evidence and real archeological evidence is still weak.

Virus! Vi r u s(ick)! Bird-Flu pandemic scare scares us all. Sometime back it was SARS. I wonder what the viruses are upto?

Virus in dormant form are not living things but large protein molecules. Still the tendency to perpetuate their genes is much more virulent than in larger living things. The animal-human viruses like bird-flu, mad-cow disease and SARS create a pandemic. Even AIDS is rumoured to have passed on from monkeys to humans. I suspect a purely human (or purely animal) virus is not virulent since its not programmed genetically to totally wipe-out its parasite-host. In animal-human virus this restraint is not seen. Does my hunch make sense?
Virus spreads from one living parasite-host to another, but not from vegetable and fruit. Why are vegetable kingdom immune to cross vegetable-human virus? If we all revert to vegetarian diet and stop keeping pets except in Zoo, can we avoid at least animal-human viruses - that are a real danger?

As mentioned in one of my earlier post, commonly held belief that if we don’t meddle with nature, Nature would ensure survival of human race – is not correct. Our universe is a violent and unstable place born in violent Big-Bang and brought up in equally violent events like supernova bursts etc. It’s not natural for life to develop and survive in such a universe.  Life is too fragile and too freak a phenomenon to be infinitely sustainable.
World economy is also a similarly unstable and ruthless phenomenon.

Our understanding of it is rather sketchy. What makes it tick and what makes it go into cycles of depression is hardly understood.  There are theories in this regard but none has predicted the next disaster – which is the real test for any theory to be true.
Globalisation of world economy (The flat world) is forcing the fault lines of world economy to realign, without our knowing it.  The changing political balance of power in post cold-war period is another unsettling force.
Earlier in segregated economies a meltdown in one country did not affect others.  Thus the world as a whole could climb back out of the abyss.
Globalisation and overheating of economy and fast pace of its growth in China etc. could lead to a world-wide economic meltdown. It will be difficult to climb out of such a global economic tsunami.
We should concentrate on understanding the forces shaping the global economy with as great urgency as possible.
What do you think? Please leave a comment.

Isn't it a surprising thing, that Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi for most of us) never received a Nobel Peace Prize.

The Maha(The great)-Atman(Soul) developed, preached and practiced non-violence as a potent weapon against the British Colonists.  And this non-violent struggle was mainly responsible for India winning the freedom (its a lie that it was granted to us). His philosophy influenced other freedom movement leaders like Nelson Mandela; African-American rights leaders etc.
In World's fight against Terrorism, Mahatma Gandhi's non-violence can be potent answers.   Those who use terrorism as a weapon could realise that much more can be gained for their causes through Mahatma's methods than by violence.
We should place him in the category of Mahatma Budha.  We should be utterly grateful that Mahatma Gandhi didn't leave us his dogma in form of a religion or a family clan - which he was in position to do so.  His followers would have converted his sound philosophy into an inane dogma and pushed it down the throat of others - in a non non-violent way.  That is what fanatical followers of religions do to the noble principles of their religions.
Then why didn't he receive Nobel Prize? It is learnt that he was nominated for the award in 1937,1938, 1939 1and 1948.  But some internal petty minded referees chose to stress on some of his eccentricities rather than to his greatness.
Nobel Prize is poorer for this faulty judgement.

I cherish my invention as a kid, of a Telephone Exchange for kid’s thread and ice-cream cup toy telephones.   The invention is extremely simple.   I wonder why no other kid had invented it before (or after).  The high that this generated still provides me a sense of achievement.

I initially tried to find a solution to the problem that such thread and cup telephones can only function in straight line, but not across a bend. If there is any obstruction on the way which touches the thread, it did not function.
I made a large diaphragm of paper on a cardboard cut out.  This card-board diaphragm I fixed at the corner(Bend in passage) at 45⁰. Threads from two perpendicular directions were anchored to this diaphragm.  The threads could be kept taut without touching the bend.  Now you could talk from two perpendicular directions.
It was a simple step further to make a cube of card board (withot top and bottom panel). Diaphragms of paper were fixed on four cardboard cutout sides of this cube. Then these diaphragms were connected from inside of cube by taut threads to the diaphragm perpendicular to it on its right, which in turn was connected to the perpendicular one on it's right thus completing a circuit of all four diaphragms  For better results the opposite diaphragms were also connected by separate threads. This cube I fixed on the roof of the concourse in the house. Now threads from all directions could be connected to the four diaphragms of this cube.
This was the thread telephone exchange which allowed me to talk to any other threaded telephone.  The important point was that the other telephone could even be hidden behind a wall, but I could talk to it.  All my siblings played with it various spy games etc.
Great! and simple.   NO!!

My recurrent theme (and a pet peeve) is that the intrinsic animal instincts of humans are in conflict with the mores of our society due to which the institution of marriage is crumbling.   A newspaper report says that in UK, more and more men and women are finding marriage to be incompatible with professional and personal time-demands. Is there no way out?
Can we refashion our mores of society (or the institution of marriage)to be more in tune with our basic animal instincts?

Some virus like programming in our minds makes humans(women not excepted)to be polygamous.   Its as if an alien being takes hold of our psyche.   Would you not expect that we should have been programmed to place our own survival as a top priority.   But no, its passing forward our genes to a mate perceived to have best genes (person with brawn rather than brains), that appears to be ingrained as top priority in our psyche - even at the cost of our own survival.   Unsinn (non-sense) ganz verruckt (total madness)- as the Germans would say.
On the other hand humans also want to optimise their chances of physical survival by selecting a mate with best ability to provide food (and monetary safety).   In stone age these two qualities coincided, because the best mating genes was also the mate with best ability to hunt food.   Not any longer in modern society, where brains (with a minimal brawn) dictate ability to provide food and monetary security - rather than brawn alone.   Thus humans want to mate with brawny candidates but want to marry the brainy ones.
This is what threatens the institution of marriage.
Single parents, Live-in relationships, procreation thru in-vitro child-birth, step-parent are all off-the-cuff reactions to this dilemma.
While the animal instincts would not go away, social-contract expectations from marriage would get refashioned.   We cannot predict the ultimate solution society would arrive at, by trial and errors.   But the fundamental approach could be that on one-hand women would get freedom to choose father (not necessarily their husbands) of their children.   On the other hand men would be freed from the life-time financial responsibilities towards their spouses and family.