The Paddy Field, the ecosystem and the sick man.

The Paddy Field, the ecosystem and the sick man.

I never bothered to work out the ecosystem built around the paddy field.

My first impression is that they are vanishing fast due to wrong agricultural practice and use of uncensored variety of chemicals and fertilizers.

I used to release my excess load of guppy fish to the streams and paddy fields but have stopped doing that since, my gut feeling is that they would not survive.

Interestingly only water loving plant not in my water garden is paddy.

I dismiss paddy as a highly customized and manipulated plant for commercial use and has no value to nature except pollution and more pollution.

It is not a natural plant in a giant ecosystem.

I natural pant does not need any human intervention.

My neighbourhood is a good example of what is happenning to the paddy fields.

There was a stretch of paddy land between the road and the railway line.

Now there is line of newly built houses where most of the paddy fields were.

It an offence to fill up paddy fields and built houses according to the law but with Chinthanaya holding its forte, every little law related to paddy cultivation was violated over the last 10 years.

In actual fact over the last 25 years.

If you neglect a paddy field it does not regenerate its ecosystem and blossom into a water garden with water lillies all over the place.

If there is no water it goes into a utterly useless wasteland.

One cannot make it to a proper and viable vegetable garden.

The in between is worse, they become breeding ground for various mosquitoes not only dengue.

When we move into our present location, the mosquito menace was immense.

We could not sleep without mosquito nets.

Then we went abroad for few years and when we returned, I made a resolve to make our current location 80% mosquito free.

I have listed them elsewhere from education to simple techniques (no need any repetition here) and we have achieved it.

Suffice is to say, the filling up of the paddy lands did help a lot but now we are left with dengue.

Dengue mosquitoes thrive on urban on semi-urban environment.

My bone of contention was and is even toady is that most of the mosquitoes breed in the cesspit.

Coming back to the paddy lands that are presently cultivated, there are only two left.

One looked after by a woman.

The other looked after by a man who worked in the university.

I was very friendly with him and he followed a somewhat scientific approach and the woman followed the traditional method.

The paddy land of the woman is above the paddy land of the man and it gets the water first but this clever guy always beats her and always cultivate paddy a few weeks before the woman.

This I have observed and was very careful not to raise my eyes and pose a question knowing there was subtle competition.

The other subtle point is the guy gets the benefit of the fertilizer seepage towards the latter half of the growth and it is almost free.

These are little things one has to observe but no detective work should be carried out.

Mind your business attitude.

This week I noticed she for the first time beat the guy up well and truly.

So I paused a bit and went into pensive mode.

I pretended to be observing the two king fishers on the power line.

There were two almost flightless birds (who nest on marshland left by uncultivated paddy lands) on the paddy field that has being prepared.

I came home and decided list the animals.

The fish (hardly any), crabs, king fisher trail was obvious.

Water snakes, frogs, toads and insects was the other trail.

Mind you all the toads and frogs visit my fish tanks not civered.

I do not interfere.

This is something I missed in my little piece my contribution to the ecosystem.

But then I remembered this guy telling me that there are little mice that damage the plant when young and also when the seeding begins.

The fact I did not know was that this was the mouse or the rat that spread leptospirosis.

I did not see him for few weeks.

Is he down with leptospirosis?

 

Is he having kidney ailment?

Those were the questions that spontaneously ran through my mind.

Fedora 22-3-Design Suit

Fedora 22-3
Design Suit
I have downloaded Fedora 22-3 design suit and it has fantastic collection of utilities.
It is 1.7 GiB and Gnome and boots up fast.
It come both in 32 and 64 bits.
I am posting this with the live DVD booted up.
It has many isos to suit your needs.
You may take little time to get to know new Gnome but it is worth the trouble.
Excuse me for typos.

io Debian GNU/Linux

io GNU/Linux is a powerful operating system that will turn a high-end computer into a state-of-the-art multimedia (mostly audio) workstation.

It is based on the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, built around the Enlightenment desktop environment and includes a wide range of open source applications suitable for audio production.


I am really a fan of Enlightenment desktop, which is for me the most innovative Linux Desktop.
  Enlightenment is lightweight, so it runs of lots of legacy desktops and laptops. It also is very customizable. This desktop offers a basic core design -- but the design is tweaked and integrated differently depending on which supporting Linux distribution one uses.

Elive is the first Enlightenment Desktop I used and its current version is under way.

Debian has done a great service integrating it with the io distribution mentioned in this blog.

32 and 64-bit images are available now with installer, check the download page:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/io-gnu-linux/files

Hen or egg dilemma of our constitution

Hen or egg dilemma of our constitution

Our Con Con Constitution,

Is a rotten egg,

It cannot be eaten,

It cannot be thrown away,

It cannot be frozen,

In limbo,

And the wise would

Incinerate it,

Forthwith

If the current,

Parliamentarians do not see

It that way ,

When they come for reelection,

The voter should have

Honorable duty and

The right to throw

All the rotten eggs

In the market place

At them

As a consolation prize

For losing the confidence

Of the constituency

Making Sense out of Nature

Making Sense out of Nature (Ten or More Statements that need my attention)

I wanted to make the title 'Zeroing with CO2 and My Simple Attempt to contribute at Zeroing' but it makes no sense scientifically.

The alternative title was to make 20 or more statements on Nature.

That itself is a daunting task.

Could I make 10 to begin with.

Let us see.

Let me try the Zero CO2 emission.

1. I have to kick the bucket immediately, so I want breath out CO2.

But my dead body will rot at burial site or if cremated by my immediate family producing enough CO2 in the process and many other ozone depleting products.

Even at my death there is no zeroing.

2. If I do not travel by motor vehicle (I boycott Colombo as a way of zeroing CO2 and only visit there if there is a desperate need. Last time when I visited Colombo, the 1 and ½ hour delay at Kaleniya bridge contributed more to CO2 emission. 
I told the driver to switch off the engine have a nap on the wheel) and only walk, still I am not zeroing.

3. If I do not procreate (I have to try in the next birth, better still not have another life) but I have not kept that promise.

4. I cannot resist burning all the paper and plastic since there is no recycling machinery in this Buddhist city called Kandy.
That produce more unwanted products both solid and vapour. 

5. Worst even in my sleep and dream state I produce CO2.

This zeroing of CO2 is an insult to science in particular and even worse than a political statements of Mahinda Chinthanya converts.

They play a lip service but trade more and more CO2 with more coal power installed.

In any case Mahinda Chinthanaya was never a scientific endeavor.

So I am lost after 5 statements, unlike a politician, my tongue does not bend to adversary.

This CO2 scenario is bunkum and purely hypothetical.

But on a second thought, my water garden does a better job mopping off CO2, the algae problem, I am trying to stop is winning by a big margin but taking CO2in.

I give up. 
 

Let me try the nature statements.

1. One cannot reproduce nature, how ever much one tries.

Eg. My lillie pond and my fish tank.
They only simulate nature but nowhere near the exact nature

2. The nature reciprocate your kindness with vigor.

Just water the garden or throw the waste water not on the drain pipe but under the foot of a tree.

They will grow.

They will bloom and the flowers are laid on your footpath.

3. The nature does not talk but it always reciprocate kindness with kindness.

4. Plant can sense me but I cannot sense them with all my senses.

5. Their secrets are hidden in the garden or on my foot path.

I try discover them.

6. One cannot get a seed to germinate the way way you want it to be.

But still all the seeds that I scattered in my garden refuse to grow under my foot but years later they are growing successfully a distance away, sometime in my neighbor's garden rail, or on the foot path I walk.

I make a bow for their gratitude.
They have got washed away to a new location after heavy rain.

7. My mini garden refuse to take my command but the little rock left to its own devices has more biodiversity and make a beautiful rock garden.

8. The garden tap leaking is not a welcome site for my purse but the roots of potted plants burst through the plastic and find their way to where the leaking tap is located.

9. My dog has better sense than me and spray its wonder nutrients and they bloom better for its efforts.

10. One cannot kill a weed by glycophate.

They will hibernate till the sprayer has none left or the planter has gone bust by poor prices of his products.

They are watching you by the minute.

My daughter brought some weeds along with the young rose plants from Nuwara Eliya 10 years ago and they are still with me.

I am losing my battle to get the roses to flower.

11. The orchid Vanda (cultivar) I spent a fortune failed to grow since I refuse to follow the instruction. They were eaten by slugs or died a natural death but one bulb remained for two years dormant and sprouted two leaves.

I have found a safe place for it to grow albeit slowly.

12. Vanilla plants are all over taller than me but they refuse to flower.

13. Dragon plant has many “bulbs” or branches, but they refuse to flower.

14. Whatever you do to pineapples they (remain for hundred years in the wild) bloom when the time is right but the fruit is microscopic and gigantic.

15. The lillies my latest attraction are always ready to greet me with a flower but not when I need one.

So if one wants to be a gardener one has to tune with the plants s/he owns not the other way round.

Nature reciprocates always kindness with kindness with their own clock work, one cannot slow or accelerate its finer tuning with its fellow beings.

The dog will wag its tail but the plants including weeds are very patient and never aggressive.

16. The piple trees (Bo trees) I ill treated as an experiment are still among the dragon plant but better indicator of horrible dry weather than the Mexican dragon plant.

17. Nature has bounty when that is the order of the day but equally thrifty when the demand is less favorable.

I guess the economics cannot fine tune our stock market with such precision.

18. Flowers are ther to entice you when one is least expected.

19. I do not need to go for them but they come looking for me when I am in tune with them.

The array of ferns all around our garden refuse to settle in the neighbor's garden
I wonder why?

They know how to entice. 

20. The palm trees, three left out of the 20 I tried to plant, decided to bloom for the second time.

I have over 100 nuts for the next generation.

21. The beauty is that it stands as a wind breaker and lets through only the gentle breeze towards our veranda.

How on earth it works out its physics of wind breaking is intriguing.

22. How on earth those blind albino barbs I have detect me in the vicinity and feed themselves are the nature's secrets waiting to be discovered.
They do have a sixth sense in captivity and would not have survived a day in the wild!


Facts

The planet's carbon sinks, the oceans and plant life, have taken up more than half of the CO₂ emissions since we started using fossil fuels.

The oceans are the ultra long carbon sink. Plankton convert carbon into calcium carbonate. As plankton die, they fall to the ocean bottom. Pressure and time combine to create limestone and dolomite, effectively removing carbon indefinitely.

Plant life is the short-term, temporary carbon sink. As plants grow, they remove the carbon from carbon dioxide and use it to make cellulose, the building block of plant structures. But as these plants decompose, or are burned, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere. This process takes as little as a few months, and as much as a few hundred years. Not enough time to be an effective tool for cleaning the atmosphere of carbon dioxide.

Castrated Constitution

Castrated Constitution,
Consequential Presidency,
Conditioned hellhole assembly,
Confused Constituency,
Country void of scientific philosophers
Wasting the golden opportunity
For the vision of the 21st century
Are the manifestation of
Senile politicians bickering 
For power
That brings nothing 
But Momentary Insanity
To our Body Politics 

Bugger the constitution 
Which buggered us
For 38 years
With a tool called
Two third majority

And another tool called

Referendum which is not worth

The ballot it is printed on

And casting a vote on it

Is a colossal waste

On the common sense

Of not so common voter behaviour

Which is flimsy and fragile

And evaporating by the minute

With very poor and

Lasting memory in store

The Common misinterpretations of a Pali Verse that states the body decays but the Name and the Tribe does not

This verse I have heard many politicians of yesteryear utter in tandem with political speeches, I often wonder from where it originated.

Rupam Jirati Majjanam

Nama Gottam Najirathi

 It should be stated as

Rupam Jirati Majjanam

Nama Gottam Jirathi Va

The face value seems all Buddhist in nature but its implication in modern day is really disruptive to the nature of Dhamma as stated in the Tripitaka (the Three Baskets). 

There is no problem with the first statement. 

The second statement destroys the whole of Dhamma in entirety.

In Buddhist phenomenology self (Nama or Soul) does not exist and the tribe (Gothra) is an illusion that originate from the above wrong premise.

I have to restate the same with my own invention as below. 

The meaning I am trying to derive at is that the Mind State does not vanish at death but (Patisandhi) re-link with the next Bhava using Kamma as the vehicle or the driving force.

Rupam Jirati Majjanam

Nama (means Mind here) Kittam (means Kamma) Najirathi

(The Gotham is substituted with Kittam-Kriya)

In Abhidhamma context it is realistic to use the above version of the verse (even though I am not a Pali scholar) to express the conditional existence of Bhava. 

The term Nama Rupa (stated above in first chapter) occurs frequently in Abhidhamma and Nama is used interchangeably with the Mind. 

The term for body is corporeality and not Rupa in Pali context.

Who perpetuated this myth is immaterial but the damage it has done is enormous. 

In that context writing something of my own contradicting the statement is appropriate even though it is a departure from the original tenets of this book.

This I think originated with the British rule. 

It is common for us to blame the British for every little mishap we are going through in our modern history. 

But this one is a direct antecedent. 

They are the one who started naming the streets even in Kandy with British names of inheritance and their Governors. 

All the streets in Colombo have some relevance to British authorship. 

In their tradition it is a normal and is all welcome by every British administrators big and small.

What went wrong was that we adapted this tradition without scrutiny in the post-colonial period and continue to do so even now. 

Instead of naming the street with some meaningful road traditions like main street, cross street, first lane or second lane we started adapting our own names. 

Politicians in turn for their gain started naming these streets with the names of their kith and kin. 

They invented and used the above jargon riddled Pali verse for the propagation of the political agenda. Even though the tradition is British the wrongful doing is our own ill vision, political patronage and heritage.

Butterfly Effect

I am one who vent an air
Of protest that
When a few butterflies
Flutter their wings
On my side of the world
Would ignite a chain reaction
On the other side of the world
In the far corners of the globe
In the Arctic or the Antarctic

Come what it may be
In philosophical sense
With a scientific slant
And in an investigative mind
But not to stir up
The potential political undertones
But when I ask myself the question
How clean the clean air?

And when I get the answer
That there are 1000 minute particles
Of dust in every cubic metre density
On this planet
But not in the clear looking Iceland
Or the Antarctic
Gets the credit for
Such an accolade
In this contemporary world
When somebody asks me
Are asking the right question?
Lest you get the wrong answer
Of some sort
By the Coal Power Merchants
Of the modern world
Who continue to discover
The latest technology
To clean my air and breath
Sans how to dispose
The vast amount of ashes and sediment
That get deposited
On this tiny Island Paradise

One who was brought up
With the tradition of zero tolerance
In life and matters of discordance
And purity par excellence
Having forced to go
From macro to micro to nano-tolerance
Of the 21st century macroeconomics
Driving me mad
To go to the outer space
For the safety limits of tolerance
In the Dead Space of my lung
But not the Vital Capacity
Which is fast receding
With time and age

But when I think
Of the virulent fungi
That grow endlessly
In the closed tubes
Of the artificial respiratory tracts
Of the Space Station
I wonder
I could be born again
In another Planet
Outside this Solar System
As an alien being of some sort
Bringing the alien wisdom
To this Island Paradise
 
Is it a wishful thinking of mine?

Debian 8.1.0 is OUT=Update

Debian 8.1.0 Update
This is to report that I have downloaded and installed Debian in my old IBM and it configured my system correctly in spite of me having a hard disk which might fail at any moment (hard disk problem with problem with master boot record).
This is the beauty of Linux it can boot up from any partition.
What I do now is to boot from a DVD and search (get) the grub file and boot various distributions, I have installed.
Debian 8 is different.
It reminds me of the old time SuSe which lets you install several desktops.
I have installed gnome (the new gnome is elgent and it has classic version too), KDE plasma and LXDE.
If you have mastered Knoppix (read my blog post) the next thing you ought do is to install Debian.
It has individual desktop versions too.
I have downloaded them too.
I received the Linux Magazine yesterday but its DVD had Debian 8 without updates.
Internet is moving very fast the print media cannot keep pace with.
Make sure you install while connected to the Internet.
It was breezy installation.
Unlike the Chinthanaya Regime which used to listen to our private telephones and tap into our emails with very slow internet, thanks to our Election commissioner who got the Telecoms to upgrade the service, the internet is breezy and fast.
Downloading and installing took little over one hour.
Enjoy Linux freedom.

Debian 8.1.0 is OUT
Debian 8.1.0 is out with some
It has all the versions from standard to specific desktops by torrent for all the architectures including Apple MaC-PPCI am currently downloading LXDE and Gnome desktop versions.
Current Linux Magazine I got today has Debian 8 and Ubuntu 15.04.
Thanks guys and girl for all the hard work.

Make sure YOU download and become a seeder.

Water Lilies

Water Lilies

I am new to water lilies.

It is still in my learning curve.

I brought an expensive water lillie from an open market with the plastic container 2 years ago.

My wife put it an attractive container and pruned it and it died a natural death.

After two years I perseverance I got its yam to sprout a leaf or two.

They disappeared tangled with algae mesh.

I kept on removing the algae and after six months, I managed to get the first flower blooming.

The beauty is that it opens up everyday till the next flower blooms.

Few things I learned over the last three years.

1. They need lot of sunshine.

2. They are slow to domesticate.

3. If you meddle with them they go into long hibernation.

4. They yams are versatile probably to withstand dry spells hidden in mud.

5. They are vulnerable and sensitive.

This is my worry the vendors at temples (they think it is a commercial item) vandalize them for profit.

Nominal Buddhists now only think of PROFITS and Image but no conviction in precepts but indulge in CHEAP Practice and politics.

I met only one guy in Colombo who had studied this with conviction.

6. He told me that some varieties spread by seeds.

7. I am trying my best for the last three years to get a new sapling but failed.

8. The latest discovery is I have a lillie that is over 15 years old but not yet had flowers.

9. It goes int periodic hibernation but sprouts again.

10 I must confess the love for lilies I acquired from my wife.

11. She brought the first young sapling.

12. Now to the discovery. The first sapling is still in the original place but not in good condition (nutritionally deficient).

This has its own history.

The cement tank belongs to my mother in law who used it for mixing herbal medicines.

It is very heavy and I do not know how it was brought to the highest ground level it is stationed now.

It was not moved an inch from its orbit of influence, first from my mother in law and now from gravity.

I twisted her fingers and quietly made it to a fish tank.

My wife managed to get a tiny tortoise and it loved sun bathing on a little rock (it was nursed in one of my fish tanks and when it was goggling my fish, it was transfered to the cement tank)placed inside the tank.

13. I did not know my father in law hated the tortoise and it disappeared from the tank when we were in Colombo for few days.

I never inquired about it.

The story was it escaped or eaten by crows.

I never believed it but figured out that it was released to the Mahaveli river and died an unnatural death.

It was too tiny to survive in the wild.

It was pity my father in law did not know the biology of it and it was a foreign species made stunted not by design but by (genetic manipulation) inbreeding.

We have eaten all our tortoises as a taste for illicit toddy (Kassipu) and even the Kandy lake has none now.

14. It was blessing in disguise sine they live long and looking after a tiny tortoise was not my choice either.

15. I had to give up fish keeping nearly 15 years to avoid pscine tuberculosis.

16. It took 2 years for me to diagnose it.

Nobody in Sri-Lanka knew it then.

I believe it is endemic in inland fisheries, now which the government is hiding the facts.

17. Coming back to the fish tank, it was all taken over by my wife for the last two years and she had not put any fish in it.

18. The bottom line and the biological fact is that lilies need lot of nutrition and that has to come from fish URINE.

But I have to feed the fish with high protein fish food for the lilies to bloom.

The this ecology is hard to reproduce in an artificial environment indoors.

That is why we have to protect our Will Pattu from human habitat and encroachment.

Will Pattu means (1000) thousands of little pools of water in the wet land.

Then only we will have tens of thousands of lilies blooming.

We are destroying every inch of our ecosystem in the name of shoddy development and Chinthanaya cronies.

The Golyas making Kassipu are still in evidence in these 'will patulas'.

Wisdom and Science

Wisdom and Science

To travel ahead thou shall become the path itself.

The path (Science) and the path finder (Scientist) shall blend into one.

Live to benefit mankind, not to benefit oneself.

Just take little steps to help the fellow beings.

One need not have to take giant steps for reconciliation.

'Hillary and Tennyson conquered the Mount Everest by little steps at a time.' 

One has to be mindful of each of the little steps one takes but the first step bound to be the most difficult in reconciliation.

Email Etiquette

Email Etiquette

Web is full of suckers.

Most of them pretend to be your Advisor or Saviour.

This is true with obtaining VISA.

But they are suckers.

They are out there to get your money and email and more importantly your personal details.

They use your identity to get involved in undesirable activities.

Beside your government or its stooges are the most untrustworthy.

For example your Grama Niladari is not innocent.

He/She provides your information (sometimes incorrect) to the politicos and often leave important documents lying around.

Not in a safe or safe place.

In that way I am against this new trend in e-governace and e-commerce.

They provide these information to third parties and there are no legislation in this country to prevent them doing so.

Most of is done under the name of prevention of terrorism but now used for political mileage.

The police is not selective but they are corrupt.

They have no mechanism to anticipate and prevent disaster.

They are always after the fact and slow to respond.

So with this background my advice is simple.

1. If you do not need an email or not competent enough in using please do not open one.

2. If you do have one do not share it with others.

It is private property like an address.

Like our politicos you cannot have more than one birth certificate or more than one identity card.

3. Hackers are out their to use you as a Zombie.

Identity theft is a serious offense.

Our politicos operate in this way.

4. If you are opening an email, you should have at least two not one, for good reason.

I forgot my password for my private email it took three months for me to recover.

I forgot the 'the pet phrase' and the document that I wrote them was misplaced.

After three months, my memory recovered by accident and the pet phrase (now I have a pet phrase recovery method) was typed in to get back to the normal working order.

This was time I was migrating from Microsoft (dual booting) to Linux so my memory loss was not due to sickness but due to work overload and lack of sleep.

Trying to do too many things one at the  same time and wasting my time downloading Linux at night.

It was appallingly slow and University download was even worse and was restricted.

This was the time I had a university email and it was hacked by a guy who worked there for a while (temporary may be) and did some damage due probably to personal vendetta after leaving the university.

He took the password and the email password document of a particular faculty with him.

This was the time of mistrust and terrorism in its peak and with the most bizarre password (it was stolen) of all, I had was stolen.

The password was file was stored in a Microsoft Server which was available for the hacker/s.

So my conviction to go for Linux for the sake of Security was of paramount importance and the university was slow to adapt to Linux.

I never used university portals for my work and developed my own little private network which is practically dismantled to save my electricity bill NOW.

My daughter's Microsoft computer at home with 

wireless connectivity was hacked most probably by a guy in the Engineering Faculty but never ventured to capture the culprit / guy but changed my tactics to be secure.

Coming back, if you forget your password, the easiest way is to give the service provider the alternative email so that they send an instant email for you to have a new password.

This simple technique was not there 15 years ago.

5. The use of alternative email gives you flexibility.

6. I have many emails and one email is for money transactions only and I do not give it to anybody.

7. Another is to keep track with my batch mates and I always get the sad news of demise of another guy with serious illness.

8. Another one for all the academic / magazine articles.

9. The email what I regularly use is called the Junk Email. So anybody who sends an email to it is considered a JUNK MAN / WOMAN.

10. My biggest problem is when I kick the bucket who will be responsible for them.

I have already forwarded them to Apaya Director to take appropriate action since I will be in Apaya as a guest speaker since I have done nothing to stop the Sri-Lankan National / International criminals who go scot free from all their crimes and his / her / their balance of crimes have been credited to my account by accident.

I need to clean my balance sheet at Apaya before I think of my next birth.

Not Sri-Lanka again by default.

I am tired living with criminals, including Cyber criminals.