King Cobra-Naja naja

This is not something to alarm you but to point out how man has neglected the use of cobra venom for therapeutic use.
In addition there is a paucity of knowledge how venom evolved in animals and how some animals are resistant the smaller doses of venom.
I teach that it is the venom that is produced in our body after the bite that kills us not the cobra venom (to illustrate the fact that cytotoxins have multitude of actions).
For example bradykinin that causes pain is the product of our own tissues.

Snake venom is a modified saliva and we really do not know whether these are produced in evolution for digestion of the prey or to immobilize or anesthetize (humane to the dying prey). None of the points I have raised have been addressed conclusively and potential for the use of the modified venom molecule for treatment of leukaemia or cancer cells or as antithrombotic activity have not been discussed in scientific journal adequately..
Why?
The answer is simple.
Once they discovered that antivenom as a cure, everybody forgot about the biological role and what system they act and why, when where and how they modify the homoeostatic mechanisms.
Moment the commercial activity of preparation of antivenom starts the scientific investigation of biological nature takes a back stage.
That is very unfortunate.
There lot we can learn from these cytotoxins.

Coming back to cobra (baby cobra-are as poisonous as the adult), I killed a young cobra with a ruler when I was as young as the tiny cobra who was under my bed.

When that little fellow made his hood and kissed the death I fell heroic and also very sad.
Then in another incident when I jumped over huge cobra in a big compound and looked around to see he was as frighted as I was and showed his hood with a warning and quietly slipped away to his safety, I wondered why fear an animal who is on his routine search of his food or prey.

I still say the jumped I made that day worth an Olympic record if somebody made an accurate measure on that day. Unfortunately I missed an Olympic record since officials were not there to record it. That would have changed my life completely but the day that completely changed my mind was another ordinary day.
I was walking along a stream with the intention of catching guppies and I had a stone in my hand (we used to play marbles those days unlike today's kids) and I saw a water snake (harmless creature) quickly swimming across in fear.

I took an aim in a moment of irresponsible stroke of mind of ill will and thought, threw the stone at the poor creature and it landed right on his neck.

It was like a bulls eye shot but the agony of the creature who succumbed in a long drawn out 5 minutes of death dance made an impact in my mind never to hurt (reflecting my killing in fear of the young cobra) an animal in either fear or sport.

Then on one night (2 am in the morning) in darkness a Ceylon krait landed on my right shoulder and I brushed it with my left hand gently and put the light in a flash to see creature landing on cement flow with a thud and my dog charging at it, I was man thinking of three lives my dog, myself and the poor creature who ventured at night.
Mind you Ceylon krait is the deadliest of Sri-Lankan venomous snakes.

I watched the creature and it quickly disappeared into crevice wide open due to rotten timber of the bathroom door.

I did not have any cement to seal and went to the kitchen an took some American flour (who says American flour has no place in this country) and sealed the hole with the dough hastily made since the price of flour was very cheap (cheaper than the cement) then.

Suffice is to say I flushed the hole with water before I did that and slept on the settee fearing few more in my bedroom.

After three days it emerged (none elsewhere) from the kitchen floor cracked and we caught it and released it to safety.

Of course I had to cement both holes in the bathroom end and the kitchen end.

The key point here is that animals fear us more than we fear them in this modern world where are we are encroaching on their habitat with blatant disregard to biodiversity.

What if one loses a Pendrive or a U.S.B Hard Disk?

What if one loses a Pendrive or a U.S.B Hard Disk?

Nothing much you can do about it if you are a Microsoft user.

If you are paranoid and buy some expensive stuff with password protection and or use encryption before saving, you can say alright I lost it but there is no use for the petty thief.

In a world where everybody is getting very selfish and living in self contained compartments, if you accidentally lose it the one who finds the gadget may not go all out to find the owner.

Best way to protect your data is to not to carry in a portable medium.

Cloud Linux and saving in a cloud is a good option and that is why I used to support it very enthusiastically but even there are some problems when hackers attack servers.

So there is no full proof method to save data.

Other option is to be somebody like me who make life principles very simple and have very little substance to hide or boast about except my Linux Images stored all over the place.

If I lose them no problem the Linux tracker will have almost all my Images except the very old ones and it is a matter of sitting down and painfully downloading them again on a portal which is painfully slow in the 3rd world.

When I come to think about it it is time for people with common interests to get together form Citizens Bureaus and possess servers of their own and maintain them on a voluntary basis with trust as the bond and friendship.

This is a wishful thinking of the futuristic world I am dreaming of but may not live long to see this in actual fact emerging as a force in need.

Everybody getting paranoid and everybody has something to hide or use the knowledge he or she possesses for capital gain in this present world of greed and profit but no common decency.


WiKiLeaks was something that had to emerge and I only saw the good side of WiKiLeaks and we saw the panic of so called good or is it bad Americans diplomacy and duplicity.

We see a similar round of duplicity when BunKi Moon decides to make his own world of wisdom, just to make sure his job is secure for another two years but throw the U.N.O. credentials and caution to the wind.

Transparency is only a word but not a practice proclaimed at high level.

We cannot expect it to get better or established at grass root level.

In this this context looking after ones data is one's own purgative.

If for common decency if one wants to save your family photos and a paltry sum of privacy you have from hacker at large, I have a solution for you.

Go Linux.

You can have a Linux distribution in a Pendrive or in your USB hard disk with boot time protection with password one can save one's common decency.

I have not tested this as a possible scenario in my live CD/DVD encounter and in future this is something I am going to promote or test as a virtue of Linux.

So I expect the Linux developers to think seriously about it including UNetBooIn Developers.

Even Knoppix has now introduced root password facility not as a default but one can enforce it after installing it in a hard disk. That is a good thing that is emerging for simple guys like us who sometime has to make political statement of some sort in a country where democracy is owned by only one party, one race or religion an government is enforcing some scrutiny on dissenters.

If these political guys or police get hold of a tiny statement in a Pendrive or a hard disk they have misplaced and produce it /them in a court of law they have no defense.

This is where even Polippix and Incognito has a place when police states emerge in the pretext of law and order an disciplined society where simple justice and common sense and decency may disappear forever.

I think Linux Developers should give us the utilities to protect common decency to if not the political will to change bad practices of all kinds.