Cycle of Life and the Long Life

Cycle of Life and the Long Life

Maha Brahma (really his assistant) tells me that he has an old story to relate.

It goes on like this with some global modification by me to stand to reason for the modern world.

One day an earthling has come to visit him for his next round of birth as a human. He looked at his CV and offered him five years of life to the said being. 

He was thoroughly dissatisfied with the offer. So the Maha Brahma asked him to stay for a while so that he could offer him some bonus deals.

In real life most of the beings in the lower world except pigs (I come to that point later) refuse his offer and go for a lower life cycle than what is offered by the all almighty, so the Brahma can hand over any left over to any earthly beings as a bonus.

In a little while another earthling came for his share in the life cycle. Maha offered him 15 years as a dog. Dog was not happy to take this offer and Maha said that he has to take a minimum of five years that he offers to all humans and asked why he declined the offer.

He said as a dog even though is very faithful he only get left over food and dog food is really dog food and the garbage is no better.

Brahma promptly offered the balance to the human being making his life cycle 15 years and he was still not happy.

Then another earthling came and he was offered 25 years as a bull. Without batting an eyelid he refused the offer and went for the lower limit (minimum) of five years. His grouse was he has to work every day of the week and after all that when he is weak the human offer him to the slaughter house and it is not a pleasant ending.

Maha did not have any regrets and he gave the balance to the human being making his life 35 years. He was still not happy.

Then the third in the line of earthlings came for his godly offer. Maha offered him a choice that he could have 25 years as a village pig and said that there is no guarantee that he could live up to the maximum. Pig requested a lower regime and Maha offered him 1 to 5 years. One year as a domestic pig or 5 years as a wild boar. He went for the latter offer knowing very well the outcome of the former life (slaughter house within a year).

Maha offered him the balance 20 years to the man making his life time 65 years but he was still not happy.

Then came the last of the earthling for the day and he offered 40 years as a bat.

But the bat asked why 40 years.

He said you do night duty when all other earthlings are having a good snooze and so “it is a bonus” Maha said.

But bat said it is not a fun standing upside down the whole day and seeing the world upside down.

Maha said the whole world is upside down now anyway and what you are seeing is the real world.

But the bat was not convinced he went for a lesser time of five years and Maha offered the balanced to the man who was quite pleased with 100 years.

When he was about to leave the Maha told him my friend you are going to live only five years as a real human being.

How come the man asked?

Now child you will live as a child for five years.

Then the next five years you live like a dog always faithful to your parents, to elders and teachers.

Then the next 20 years till 35 years you will live like a bull doing all the dirty donkey work for your family.

Next 20 years you like live like a pig eating all the rubbish the world has to offer.

The last 35 years you live like a deaf, dumb and a blind man and seeing the world going upside down right in front of you and you a ready for the dustbin any moment after 65 years.

Man asked why didn’t you tell me this?

You never asked the Maha Brahma replied.

Now I come to my late discovery and hope somebody would propose me for a Nobel Prize in psychoanalysis.

This actually should go to Piaget but he did not publish this in his time (found in his possession as crumbled notes) fearing that if he published it then he would have been sent to the dustbin of history with all his previous writings.

My adaptation of his psychoanalytical theory goes little further than Piaget assumed it to be.

1. Up to 5 years Concrete Operational  

2.  5 to 15 years Formal Operational  

3. 15 to 35 years Formal but non Functional  

4. 35 to 65 years Non operational  

5. 65 to 100 years Concrete (Complete) non Operational

In another way of putting the facts of life is as follows.  

1. Up to 5 years Ego  

2.  5 to 15 years Accelerating Ego  

3. 15 to 35 years Decelerating Ego  

4. 35 to 65 years Non Ego  

5. 65 to 100 years No Ego

When this theory is applied in a scientific way to politics and science what is revealing is fantastic.

Politicians

The politicians also go through the child stage and the dog stage up to about 15 years and having achieved nothing in this period he would go to the stooge stage abruptly (Formal but non Functional Stage) and becoming subservient to his political masters.  
At 35 years he goes to the Killer Stage. 

By default according to my latest analysis (Non Operational Brain Stage) at this stage they do not get any new ideas and subside on others ideas for survival (for example All Party Conferences). This stage they start killing other’s ideas within the same party and if they cannot do that they physically eliminate them.

Then they turn to the opposing parties and start abusing and eliminating them until they culminate in coming to the helm by hook or by crook.

The final culmination of all the hard work and they become the rulers (The President or Prime Minister) without any new ideas or common sense (Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush were examples).

They project all ideas of the others as their own and Mr. Reagan was an example and was a very good actor at that.

Scientists

Coming to Scientists they go through the Discovering Stage (rather learning) up to 35 years.

Then they go to the Discovered Stage.

They do some hard work and at the end they find all these have been already discovered by others.

Having discovered this fact at a later stage of their career they have no urge for living and die prematurely at around 65 years of age (looking for a better life next time).

Buddhist way of Analysis

Lord Buddha and Buddhists analyze this in a subtle way. 

It is easy to analyze this in modern Banking Terms.

There are only three stages.

1. Deposit Account Stage from birth to 15 years – Kusala Kamma (KK for short)  

2. Current Account Stage from 15 to 35 years    – Kusala Akusala Kamma (KAK for short)  

3. Overdraft Stage from 35 to the end    – Akusala Kamma Stage (all Kusala consumed)

Then the Brahma takes over and recruits them to the Animal Kingdom again.

His choices and picks have no overrule in life and matters.

The life cycle begins again with fresh vigour.

Rough Guide to the Tree Equivalent of Man and their Re-plantation

Rough Guide to the Tree Equivalent of Man and their Re-plantation

This is not referring to the commercial scale of replacement since the rate at commercial scale exploitation cannot be estimated to any accuracy.

This is based on the use of tree, timber and its products by man during his productive life.

If we were to sustain each man or women has to grow at least 10 trees and maintain them till their mature life. This  has to be done in 4-5 year cycles and older you (above 35 years) are the cycle has to be at least 1-2 years. Ideally each man or woman plants a tree on his / her birthday!
1. The use as timber products for roofing and housing

2. To replace the use of paper products

3. Use of fire wood (this has to be in relation to the use)

4. The use of furniture

5. Wastage in every production line

6. The trees not sustaining themselves due to bad planting or weather conditions

7. The last 4 are for unaccountable felling and vandalism encountered and may have to vary according to the country.

  This amount is to keep the balance of nature. 

If one has a house with 4 adults in it this estimate makes it 40 trees around their neighbourhood and the way the houses are built in a city next to each other there is  no room for us to grow enough trees.

Not even a single tree or hedge to act as windbreaks and shade. (please look at how rich Americans build their houses and walkabouts).

That means every major city has to have a buffer zone (this is how the ancient people built cities) of tree cover equivalent to the population that is incarcerated in the name of development.

  Colombo city can never regain its splendor what ever we do now for it.

The Kandy city has almost 3 three times population density of Palestine Refugee Camps and we are going to be no different to Israel in another 10 or 20 years.

We are losing it faster than it’s regeneration.
Regarding the commercial exploitation the re-plantation has to be according to the tree’s cycle. If the tree grows to maturity in 4 years for every tree harvested 4 should be planted and only a few trees fall into this category.

For some trees, if it is lost it is lost for ever.

They take may be 400 to 500 years for it to grow to maturity and often not reproducing fast enough due to their longevity and this simple equation cannot be applied in recreating its natural habitat.

  This is only a rough estimate and we have lost about 60% of our forest cover in 50 years of unsustainable use.

I do not think these people with mega-development ideas have understood the problem or have insight into the matters of concern we are facing now.

The have no futuristic goals but presence of mind for exploitation.

Very soon we will be like Dubai, the work we have to do now is enormous if we are to arrest these trends.

Forest Harvesting; Comparison of American Style and Sri-Lankan Style

I was bit inquisitive why there are so many tornadoes and hurricanes in America.

I just went to Google Earth and had a little peep from above of Americas’ West and East.

There is hardly any different of tree cover of the land. Mostly farmland and build up areas. That did not give me a clue to the state of the forest cover. Then I went and searched deforestation.

American harvested the 90% of the land in 70 years from 1850 to 1920.

Entire East was covered with Forest and fair proportion of the West was covered with primary forest.

The deforestation continued to this century and America now has mainly secondary forest covering 10% of the land.

American knew that the CO2 problem started around 1920 and continues even today due to their exploitation of fossil fuel.

Did they tell the truth to the world? Big No.

In Sri-Lanka we had 90% forest cover until around 1850 and British started deforestation for coffee and tea cultivation.

By the time they left in 1948 forest cover was over 60% but before they left they pass a law prohibiting encroachment of Crown Land.

From 1948 to 2000 we have decimated another 40 percent especially after 1970.

We are now below the minimal threshold of 22% to maintain our rivers.

This land now can be called President’s Land instead of Crown Land and the development goes on.

When the thermal power plant is operational we will be approaching 10% level which is the cut off point for desert classification.

Acid rain will do the rest even we stop cutting to Zero.

Then we can say we are better than America in case of deforestation and go for an IMF loan.

Very soon we will be no different from Dubai.

Regards to American tornadoes and hurricanes trees act as a wind breaks and control the water cycle better.

They should reforest America back to 1920 or continue to have this cycle every year.

Problem is there is no country rich American can go to avoid hurricanes since rest of the world is no better including China.

This is what I call the development of the Earth Crisis.

The prediction that world ends in 1912 should be rephrased that irreversible loss of biodiversity is in full swing from now onwards.

We Sri-Lanksn will be drilling oil with Indian help till sun goes down.

The cycle of destruction has begun and it is irreversible unless there is global consensus.

Next biggest crisis will be food crisis and that will be worse than 1973 (due to oil crisis and poor foreign balance) since this time it is related to failure of rain and land becoming dessert.

We are at a cliff edge.

Problem is politicians obsessed with development and energy do not want to see that in that way.

We have no plan for food security but have big plans for 100% energy supply which we will never achieve.

Children who are born today will see the consequences but we do not even have a population plan.

The Truth about Cholesterol

1. Cholesterol is a vital biochemical component

2. Its body’s production far exceeds its dietary intake and independent of eating eggs.

3.Cholesterol is needed for proper function of serotonin receptors in the brain. Serotonin is the body's natural "feel-good" chemical.

4. Its treatment with anti-cholesterol drugs causes dementia which American Heart Association and Drug Companies would like to hide.

5.Eating eggs is a healthy habit.

It is a class one protein in addition to supplementing vitamins.

6.Its treatment causes confusion,domestic violence, suicide and even homicide.

7. Its a vital component in the brain-this is for meditators

8. Its secretion parallels cortisols, the vital stress hormone of the body.

In other words it a secondary stress indicator and not a stress hormone.

9. Its treatment does not prolong life.

10. Only Aspirin prolongs life in low dosage.

11.Treatment of hypertension does not prolong life but retards secondary organ damage (Heart Failure and Kidney failure

12. Human growth hormone is one that prolongs life

Unfortunately one cannot interfere with its production except regular and mild exercise.

13. Good sleep (without pills) is my best indicator of healthy life style.

Have plenty of it (one can do that only retirement)

14. Meditation may be helpful but I have a caution.

The Truth about Cholesterol

If You had been cheated by American Drug companies, please read the real Biochemistry! Your body makes saturated fats, and your body makes Cholesterol – about 2000 mg per day. In general, cholesterol that the average American absorbs from food amounts to about 100 mg per day. So, in theory, even reducing animal foods to zero will result in a mere 5% decrease in the total amount of cholesterol available to the blood and tissues.

In practice, such a diet is likely to deprive the body of the

substrates it needs to manufacture enough of this vital substance; the cholesterol, like saturated fats, stands unfairly accused.

It acts as a precursor to vital corticosteroids, hormones that help us deal with stress and protect the body against heart disease and cancer; and to the sex hormones like androgen, testosterone, estrogen and progesterone; it is a precursor to vitamin D, a vital fat-soluble vitamin needed for healthy bones and nervous system, proper growth, mineral metabolism, muscle tone, insulin production, reproduction and immune system function; it is the precursor to bile salts, which are vital for digestion and assimilation of fats in the diet. Recent research shows that cholesterol acts as an antioxidant. This is the likely explanation for the fact that cholesterol levels go up with age. As an antioxidant, cholesterol protects us against free radical damage that leads to heart disease and cancer.

Cholesterol is the body's repair substance, manufactured in large amounts when the arteries are irritated or weak. Blaming heart disease on high serum cholesterol levels is like blaming firemen who have come to put out a fire for starting the blaze. Cholesterol is needed for proper function of serotonin receptors in the brain. Serotonin is the body's natural "feel-good" chemical. This explains why low cholesterol levels have been linked to aggressive and violent behavior, depression and suicidal tendencies. Mother's milk is especially rich in cholesterol and contains a special enzyme that helps the baby utilize this nutrient. Babies and children need cholesterol-rich foods throughout their growing years to ensure proper development of the brain and nervous system.

Way Forward

One correct judgment does not mean that our judiciary is reformed.

It has long way to go!

Milk and Brest Feeding

Milk and Brest Feeding

Breast Feeding is the Best for first six months.

Every mother has the right to choose breast feeding or bottle feeding.

Breast feeding depends what the mother eats and her general health.

The nutritional requirement of a breast feeding mother is more than when she is pregnant.

Mother should avoid taking drugs, medicine and smoking.

Demand feeding is the best approach.

Weaning is not recommended before six months.

If weaning is intended it should not be delayed beyond 5 to 6 months.

The breast milk substitute should be an infant formula Highly modified (humanized) cow’s milk.

Goat milk has no place in infant feeding.

Infant formulas are two types.

 

Whey Based;

Low in protein

Low in salt.

Low in calcium.

High in fats

 

Casein Based;

High in protein

High in salt

High in calcium

Low in fats

Infant formulas have added vitamins.

Cow’s milk is not recommended for infants.

Cow’s milk is high in salt, protein and calcium.

Infant formula generally recommended is whey based.

Follow on formulas have different composition.

They are cheaper than the whey based highly modified (humanized) infant formulas.

Milk alone is not sufficient after 6 moths and careful weaning should be introduced.

May be introduced between 12 to 18 months.

Milk should be prepared according to correct instructions. Concentrated milk can cause dangerous hypernatraemia.

If there is a family history of asthma and eczema continue breast feeding at lease for 12 months and the mother should avoid all potential allergenic foods during breast feeding.

Shelf Value

Deception is the default system and truth has no shelf value.

Dog Shit as a Meditative Object

Dog Shit as a Meditative Object

All dog lovers should read this.

I was to write about my 'Mini Garden Concept' but this is more urgent matter to deal with.

It was only yesterday, I was walking down our foot path and there was a little tussle brewing.

I generally avoid such encounters like, I avoid dog shit on our path.

This guy was a old polio case with a big limp and at the street level with direct eye contact.

I knew him as a casual labour when young not for good reason.

He refused to cut grass as fodder for the young cattle (cow and a bull) my wife had saved from the slaughter house.

His refusal did not deter me doing this menial job of looking after them for over seven months.

The other was a wife of a policeman who died recently as a pensioner.

She was on top flight of the steps.

I did not look up but diverted the guy's attention to me.

Then he said that dog shit was on his steps everyday.

He knew, I love dogs and feed all the stray dogs I meet on my walkaway.

 The lady, in a second retreated to her house.

This guy is living at a higher level and there is another guy who is very friendly with me because of his reading habits. (Only recently I found that they were two brothers and their childhood history was terrible.)

He is relatively poor but I make a point to buy a book or two of his choice, if I meet him in a bookshop.

 I like him since he always has a question or two for me to answer or expand upon, which sometime end up as a blog piece.

I have this canny habit of rephrasing his question to make his next question more vulnerable.

He is caring for all the dogs (now partially stray) that come to his house from the neighbourhood.

I told him the other day, that he is stupid and with the cost of living as it is, feeding dogs is not a minor matter.

I told him, I feed stray dogs on the street but never take them home as my company.

These dogs have the uncanny habit of pleasing you with a drop of a hat.

I tell him, follow me, when I see dog shit in my garden, I clean them up immediately in meditative mode (my dog never does it on the steps) since my wife has a big aversion.

Mind you dog shit is dog shit and smelly if your dog is not a vegetarian dog (there aren't any vegetarian pedigree dogs).

My dog has limited space but his shit is small and in pellets formation and easy to cast away like a bad thought in meditative mode.

His only problem is constipation both he and I suffer due to dehydration (extremely hot weather even in Kandy).

So dog shit is a meditative object for me but for many Buddhists in this country dog shit is enough to start a war now that the ethnic war is extinguished (but the mad hatters are harping on).

I was able to stop the tussle, just yesterday.

This guy is deceased now.

But I won't try it once the parliament is dissolved.

All our political stray dogs are there cohabiting with shit on the floor of the house with p words.

I was looking down from my balcony and there were five or six dogs on the road making their territorial marks.

It just reminded me one of our present minister's pedigree dogs were poisoned for political reasons.

So they (now he is just a citizen with lot of spare time on his hands) will be busy igniting the ethnic war while at the same time visiting Buddhist temples.

How can these Buddhist monks practice meditation not on 'dog shit' but on 'ethnic purity shit'? 

This theme is called 'territorial integrity' which dogs possess in abundance. 

I think dogs acquired this "SHIT TERRITORIAL POSSESSION" from man.

First Five out of the first 10 and more

Beware Linspire and Freespire that Microsoft Guys/Girls try to use for destroying interest in Linux newbies!

It is time for me to narrow down the first Five Linux Live CDs (Please note not Installable CDs) only.I have no intention of giving points or put it in any order except alphabetical.

However criteria for selection were based on few important qualities.

They include the followings.

1. Stable Boot Loader preferably GRUB.

2. Ability to live with other Linux distributions side by side (not only with windows). Black Track4 fails on this issue. I cannot have it installed along with other Linux distributions so that it is available for me in an emergency.

3. Good Partition Manger (which include other OS types)or a editor which does not cause problem with many other partition tools available in Linux.

4. Installation process easy and compatible with other distributions.

5. Security tools and firewalls and parental control.

6. Availability of root and user options (unfortunately Ubuntu fails on this issue).

7. Availability of commonly used general purpose utilities or the ability to download them as an open option.

8. Attractive but light weight (tone downed KDE would do).

9. CD burner ideally KDE.

10. an assortment of light weight games (including card games) or one single high features game everybody loves.

Unfortunately all of the Live CDs fail on this feature.

1. Knoppix
2. Mepis
3. PCLinux
4. Puppy
5. SuSe

I have all in my 80 GB hard drive.

6. Linux Mint
7. Fedora
8. Vector Linux
9. Berry Linux
10. Zenwalk

For specialists and Newbies with special interest.
11. Arch
12. Chakra
13. Granular
14. aLive / aLinux ? Peanut Linux
15. AV Linux
16. Yoper
17. GoBo Linux
18. Linvo
19. Dream Linux
20. Ubuntu / Lubuntu / Kubuntu / SuperrOS and the lot

Then the Light Weight beauties.

21. Slax
22. Imagine.
23. Peppermint
24. Element
25. gOs
26. Paldo
27. Unity
28. Untangle
29. Chameleon
30. Imagine
31. Igelle
32. Myah
33. Leenux
34. Netrunner
35.Exodus
36.ELive
37. ViperOS

Commercial
38. Mandriva
39. XandroS
40. ? Linspire ? Freespire

I have not include the educational distributions like Scientific Linux, Fermi Linux, ADIOS. QIMO. Knoppix for Kids. Kids Linux.

I have also not included the middle weight or the heavy weight like. Sabayon, Monomax, Openmamba, Calculate Linux, ALT Linux, Epidermic and Genitoo.

Linux-100-Criteria

I have over 200 distributions and images stored all over my hard disks and CDs and DVDs and I continue to download at least a few more of them a week to test.

My search for (looking for) best hundred has being of no avail.

It is time for me to do it myself for the benefit of Linux fans and newbies.

Internet has being immensely helpful.
First of all I must thank the guys / girls of the following non-commercial sources and few commercial sources.

Number one goes to www.Distromania.com since they keep a catalog of old distributions and and also list the new and latest distributions.

www.Distrowatch.com also doing a good job of it but unfortunately they seem to miss some of the old ones.

Softpedia com has enormous number of pages and like Distrowatch.com do not keep a repository of old distribution images and their links.

Linux online also list distribution in their site.

Linux Live CD list is the only one which list the distributions according to to the types, education, games. desktop, multimedia. science, medicine etc.

I recommend this site for anybody who is choosy for a particular type say for kids, education.

Elive for at least releasing the development version free.

There are many more and thanks to all of them.

Couple of years ago the story was different one had to browse or read a Linux Bible to gather information, Now these guys who write books do not bother to update them since the task is extremely difficult due to the pace at which Linux is moving.

Only a rocket scientist can keep pace with.

My attempt is to fill this void.

I thought of using somewhat scientific approach using my own criteria.

My criteria are based the practical difficulties we face in this country due to poor (comparatively better compared to India but no where near the capabilities of Singapore) Internet service and download speed.

It is practically impossible to download a DVD more than 1 GB. 

It takes ages even for that.

So I have concentrated on CD rather than DVDs.

My impression, it is better for us to have number of CDS rather than DVDs.

I used to download up to 7 Debian CDS in the past when we had only Redhat and Mandriva.

To decide my 100 Linux distributions of choice I will use many criteria.

1. Live CD which can be installed on hard disk 25 points

2. Easy access to Internet 20 points

3. Automatically Configure Internet 30 points

4. Browser (ideally FireFox) Capability 10 points

5. Other browsers 05 points
6. Google gadgets but not essential 10 points
7. Skype 15 points
8. Office Package (Abiword or Open office) 15 points
9. Light Weight (very important) 30 points
10. CD burner, very important(ideally K3B) 20 for K3B and 5 for others
11. Stable Grub configuration 30 points
12. Partitioning tool is essential(ideally Gparted) 30 points
13. Light weight games 20 points
14. Ability to clean up the temporary file at boot up 50 points
15. Updates and Package management 10 points
16. Reliability (most of them are) 50 points
17. Many versions form Mini to LXDE to Standard and Children's 25 points for each
18. Speed at start up (most of them are slow except YOPER) 100 points
19. Quick installation 20 points
20. Multi-Language in addition to English 25 points
21. Separate administrator in addition to normal user 50 points
22. Digikam and Gimp 20 points
23. Media Players including ability play itunes and divx 30 points
24. Type of Desktops (Genome / KDE/ Fluxbox) 25 points
25. Down loader that start from where one has left / stopped earlier 50 points
26. Infrequent Cycles of Change (new distributions) but frequent updates 50 points
27. USB boot op 30 points
28. Live CD creator 20 points
29. Wine (window emulation) 20 points
30. Apple Emulation 30 points
31. Innovative approach like GOBO and YOPER 100 points

32. Home web site and the facility for registration and writing reviews 100 points
33, Scientific packages like statistics 100 points

34. Blender (Maya equivalent) 200 points

35. Children Educational packages with games 300 points

I will start with Linux Mint, gos 3.1 gadgets and Berry to begin with, which is a cute one. 
Children educational packages I have given bonus marks since they should be developed as separate distributions such as youknow4kids, Knoppix for kids and sugar.
Asoka

4^th April, 2010

Original Purpose of this site

Original Purpose of this site

I was trying to find the best hundred Linux distributions in the same spirit as the Fortune-100 but I could not.

Then, I decided to rate the distributions myself that I have downloaded on a scale of my own.

I posted the list of items and rated PCLinux2009.2 as my best distribution and published that on an alternative web site.

This was the site I used for the past 4 years for freelance activity. 

The site was named www.writeclique,net published under the British Council Library.

To my surprise there was some interference with the site with malicious intent.

This I discovered done with the knowledge of the Government to interfere with free exchange of opinions.

I used to write things that politicians would not like to their taste, my writing may have caused the attack.
The Web Administrator confirmed the interference.

Since the election was due in 10 days and if the web site becomes active after election, my gut feelings would become correct.

Thank god that Google gave me this opportunity, I started with two poems to begin with and ended up over 2000 pieces.
Even with Google, then government stopped its live coverage in Ceylon. 

It could be seen in Singapore (outside the country)
I alerted the Google of the shoddy deal.
Thanks Google for your untiring efforts for free exchange of ideas.

Time has come to winding up operations.

However, I have deleted all the political stuff.

Dengue Dilemma and the Escape Route

This was something I wanted to write for some time but kept delaying it for many reasons including political.

When some issue is taken out of context and used as a political gimmick, even with much discomfort, I tend to refrain from taking the center stage.

Train to think logically and constructively, I sometime find it difficult to find an audience (group of intellectuals in a forum) to discuss a topic at length.

This was something we used to do even when we were just interns.

For an example we were faced with a dilemma of the treatment protocol as interns.

On many occasions we were sure we had made the correct diagnosis but the standard treatment did not ensue improvement or recovery.

In one of these occasions we decided to double the dose of an oral antibiotic which was only 12 cents a capsule.

We could not double the other agent given I.M and very painful too since with the wrong dose of that I have seen few children dieing (not any one who was under me) as misadventures.

Most of the misadventures were hushed up even then since the treatment was free and innocent patients were prepared to take some of the gullible lies from the administrators.

This has become a common occurrence nowadays let me not digress.

When we did increase the dose the patient started responding.

That was good news.

Unlike today we did not rest with that we asked the question why half the capsules were not working?

Obvious conclusion was that somebody was introducing dud capsules in the supply chain.

We reported this and the Ministry then had the way to investigate the supply procedure and then caught pilfering from the Medical Supply Division and the substitution of dud ones to replace the same.

This was big news then.

This is a common practice in India even now before they reach our shores.

That was Professor Senaka Bible's time and we were very happy.

Years later I came to Colombo General Hospital and this practice was rampant as nothing constructive to abort this practice was in situ and Professor Bible had died under mysterious circumstances.

The modus operandum was for the guys to come as patients and take month's supply of drugs and unload them at the nearest private pharmacy.

There were many other offenses (rice and eggs were meant to for patients were stolen during the Pang Polling days) I discovered as a D.M.O but these things are happening in much bigger scale now and I am still digressing from the major objective.

The point I want to bring out is that there is very poor accountability and the procedure for investigations is hampered both within and outside the health sector.

This is true for correct diagnosis too.

If one looks at a record of a patient who returns home comparatively well or who succumb in both private and public institutions the error rate of diagnosis is around 60% to 80% .

This figure has never been estimated for PMs (postmortems and not prime minister) after the introduction of private practice. 

Many a times not done in a proper scientific way.

Postmortems are avoided at very convenience of the doctors.

The other issue is that there is no proper consultation among individuals with expertise in other fields and different skills.

This is the salient feature in the practice of medicine in Sri-Lanka.

When something goes wrong the the diagnosis that come to the forefront is dengue. 

The gullible media also report them without serious investigation.

All what one needs is a platelet count and a slide test that detect antibodies (no distinction from old or new antibodies).

The test to show rise in titre is not evident in many cases.

There are multitude of other that can lower platelets.

Concrete proof is lacking and impartial objective scrutiny is never done before or after the event.

Once it is labeled as Dengue many doctors can have a sigh a relief that they have covered up their inefficiencies and tracks.

Unfortunately it covers up the administrative failures too.

When a society is corrupt to the core and in effect the legal and medical systems are not strengthened to investigate and find viable remedies this filters to all the other segments of life including schools and universities and proper conduct of examinations and elections to are left to the undesirable elements.

That is when non-medical people too get involved in detecting virginity when the pertinent question that should be asked is; Is it consensual (does not matter one is married or not-even in marriage it should be consensual not by force due the fact one is legally married; marriage gives a license) or not?

Every other case of death is buried under the mountain of dengue (we have to formulate strict guide lines).

1. The correct procedure is to have strict guide lines for diagnosis of dengue.

2. Then the next step should be and when the death is contentious (not dengue) there should be a procedure to arrive at an alternative diagnosis.

3. The third step should be to have independent clinical audit that is not practiced in this country.

I can give you an incident when medical people failed to come to consensus regarding the increase of kidney disease in North Central Province.
They did not have a protocol to deal with the scenario.
The dengue scenario is no different to me.
We are barking at the wrong tree
Only taking political mileage.
Poor mosquito should not be an escape goat and escape route for our indifference since medicine like books are given free by the government.
All governments are also culpable whether they are democratic or otherwise.
We need a system in place when the system fails everything else fails.

Nobody ask the question why almost 50% did not vote.

Simple answer to that is when the system in place has failed the very system that generate credibility is lost for ever and the apathy sets in.

These are not only philosophical points but these are social issues too.

Everybody in power, not in power, able, disable, in private practice, in government institutions and in all spheres of activity should have a fare share of responsibility.

We are all culpable either direct or indirect or not in action or out of action or in the thick of actions.

We cannot leave it to the politicians alone.

What is lacking is sincerity and transparency.

As Buddhists we will have to pay our dues for these crimes of inactivity and indifference now not in next birth.