5 Laws of Human Stupidity

By Carlo M Capolla in 1976.
Study History of Economics.

1. Always and invariably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

They are very common in every walk of life.

2. The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristics of that person.

There are stupid Nobel prize winners.

3. A stupid person is a person who always causes losses to another person or a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

Typical example is any  Ceylonese who becomes or aspire to become the President of Ceylon with the help of absolutely stupid electorate.

4. Non stupid people always underestimates the damaging power of the stupid people in particular, and non stupid individuals constantly forget that all times and places and under any circumstances to lead and/or associate with stupid people always turn out to be a costly mistake.

Good example is the duo of Wirawansa and Holman Pila or better known as Gonman Pila.

5. The stupid person is more dangerous than a pillager.

He goes onto categorize four groups on two scales on x and y axis on benefits to oneself and others.

1. Intelligent people are the ones who act to benefit oneself and others.

2. Bandits are the ones who deprive others of any gain and pockets everything to their pockets.

The politicians of all shades fall into bandit group.

My convention European Economic Commission falls into the bandits group and it's ally NATO singing the bandwagon.


3. The third group is the one who benefits the others but with no gain to (benefit provider) self.

They are the naive guys who are often taken advantage of.

The fourth and the most dangerous are the ones who deprive themselves of benefits and others.
They actually are the most boisterous of all.

They are the ones who fall into the 3rd Law of Stupidity.

The actual estimate of them are the same, irrespective of class, race, ethnicity, country, social order or any other measurable criteria.

Mind you every one of us has little bit of this stupidity in economic sense.

Absence of stupidity does not make one intelligent.

This guy was an economic major.


This Italian guy prudently avoid using feminine gender when describing stupidity, fearing of course the collapse of the institution called family or marriage.
Good on him.

Could the God be considered stupid creating white, black and brown people on this planet to fight each other on daily basis.

China Syndrome

I was intrigued by the fact that why China is currently Communist and is resistant to Buddhism.
I have found the answer.

Their religion was drug intoxication from ancient times.

MaO Tse Tung killed at least 3 millions to arrest this pan-drug-addiction syndrome and made a Vasal State.

The Chinese are known for herbal  medicine.

In their quest for plant medicine they discovered addictive psychoactive drugs.

Manna Mushroom is one of them.

The story of South America is similar and they have more variants including ayauriska (spelling wrong).

The problem is meditators (try to induce endogenous relaxants), alcoholics (temporary euphoria and later toxicity) and drugs addicts from Afghanistan (opioids), all fall into same to the same boat.

ADDICTION.

I have gone into detail how meditators end up with strokes and the latest was one of my classmates who died within 6 months is meditation practice.

Let me dish out a small passage from a book I never read but fished out from the attic few days ago.

Since the early days of humankind chemical substances have been available when consumed, alter some kind of behaviour or experience.

Often the effects are powerful and mysterious that the substances that produced these were incorporated into religious rituals of the society.

The power of these substances took on mystical qualities of their own.

Read also Philadelphia Experiment.

In other words, almost all religions originated from this fantasy.

Buddhism as it practiced today is no different.

I have introduced this subject briefly in my book "Charms of Alcohol" at Amazon Books.

Tactics of War of Attrition

I am using management technics of "General Use" for "War Tactics".

It is no different in Private Hospital Care.

I am not a War Tactician at all but I am a strategic thinker in Hospital Management.

In hospital illness is an incidence and death is catastrophe.

More illness we have better it is for the private hospital industry and death is gain for ONLY the undertaker.

But we think strategically and keep patients in long term intensive care.

Intensive care is a money spinner for Hospital Industry and no different to the Military Industrial Complex.

Directly and indirectly War is good for intensive care industry.

A dead soldier is no use to the hospital industry but a young viable casualty is an asset.

Problem is people do not understand these principles but taught a misguided tale that living in a hospital bed is an honour and cadaver in a coffin has no monitory value.

I come as a after the fact, postmortem guy and look at death not as a single event but a compendium of secret or hidden knowledge.

In war death is gain for one side and catastrophe for the  opposition.

1. First point is gathering intelligence or valuable data leading to the data point of illness.

In battle field, it is the preliminary survey of the ground reality.

2. In hospital industry keeping the victim going on even with a saline drip and the blood pressure and the blood flow to vital  organs intact, is of paramount importance.

Blood and Plasma do the prolonging of life.

In war it is keeping the vital supply line open and hiding and consolidating, the strategic defense positions (from harm from the enemy).

3. The most important of all is the manpower available.

It is mobilizing the extended family of the patient to procure as much money as possible by keeping the moribund guy on a ventilator.

Amplify the story to best advantage in spite of heavy losses in the battlefield is the motive.

Faking news items is the only way to survive.

4. Fourth point is market saturation and inability of the first responders to respond to a given task.

In war it is War of Attrition and supple lines unable to keep pace in the face breakdowns.

The supply line holdup is the new term in town.

America cannot even provide baby foods!

I think this is already happening in USA and when the first tranche is finished, then the America and EU have no second tranche in stock.

Build in America is still on the pipeline and Ukraine has to prolong it efforts through Poland until America vitalizes it's depleted war machine.

I prefer to die at home with family around me and prefer not to hear any sounds of monitors ticking by with so many tubes attached to me.

I hate a tube going through my penis and a prefer a suprapubic tap, if the bladder is full and that is also only twice not more.

I am ready to kick the bucket when the time is right and "hide a ride" in the next round of birth.

No idea of going to heaven or hell.

I nearly kicked the bucket to Moderna vaccine with myocarditis.

5. Fifth point is Witness and Record accurately, in all the BHTs (bed head tickets), all inputs for the account branch to make a fat bill at the end of the stay, death or discharge to a free or government hospital.
Thank God we have government hospitals to absorb the overflow which America and Ukraine do not have (field hospitals put during coronavirus is an example).

In war, it is mobilizing the soldiers and especially mobilizing the family members to support the killing or getting killed by any means.

There is no insurance cover at the time of war and if there is any insurance cover, it is all over in three months of protracted war.

Only solution is to become a ready made refuge both economic and real.

This happened in Ukraine in the first four weeks and nobody is returning and Poland is taking the direct  punch.

The modus operandum in here is social media cuts and giving false hope and cooking up false narratives for the CNN and Fox News in USA and RTA in Russia.

BBC is only an alley and alibi.

World War III or My View, An Objective Point of View

 World War III or My View, An Objective Point of View

 I have little data left in my dialog USB Stick and thought of making a brief entry here.

I am not an expert on wars and I have no understanding of World War I and II.

I was born after World War II and I want to die during a peaceful time and not during a war of attrition or a destructive World War III.

We in Ceylon had 33 year of internal war of attrition and we now are paying the price with hunger.

 

It is no doubt that even without a war, lot of kids are dying of hunger in this world and the UNO or WHO cannot stem it.

 

My Theory of World War III.

1. I am pretty sure Russia is mindful and want start the World War III.

Russia has checks and balances and luckily we have a guy who is not a military man but an astute politician called Putin.

 

2. Then we have a Mad Man and a Joker (I am sorry Ukrainians have elevated this guy to mayhem).

He wants more and more war material to destroy Russia and has become a Proxy of CIA and Military Industrial Complex.

 

3. European Commission that was commissioned to avoid the World War III has put their Proxy-Poland to help Ukrainians from behind or from West.

Scott Ritter has a good analysis of this War of prolonged attrition and one is advised to  see it, before Google put it down.

 

My intention here is to touch the points he missed in a lighter vein.

 

4. Third World War will start not in Taiwan but in a place like Iran, Pakistan, Myanmar or North Korea.

Certainly not in India and China cannot find a plausible cause to initiate it. 

It also cannot monitor peace in the world for its economic growth.

China may be supplying war material to smaller countries in Africa so when they go bankrupt like in Ceylon, they will then purchase the land assets like in Hambantota port.

5. America cannot start it even though the MIC wants it desperately, since the declaration of War is controlled by many branches of its War assets.

CIA alone cannot.

Pentagon does not have the inclination.

All institutions starting with the words National and Defense, NSA, DSA and many more arms, cannot even think of War without the bipartisan support in the Senate.

So CIA use Ukraine as a Proxy-War machine (PWM for short).

 

6. It is very easy to start a war but it is very difficult to to end it.

7. This is where stupidity of Poland is showing. 

Tell me whence Poland has won a war in history. 

NEVER.

The Poland entry now is to acquire its lost possession in the past to Ukraine. 

It will end in breaking of Poland to parts like Yugoslavia in the past. 

 

Already Ukraine is divided into two like in Korea many more would be possible due to rivers going through its massive land extend.

 

So my point is the World War III will start in a very small place who possess Nuclear War heads not in Russia.

Americans attempt to put nuclear war heads on the borders of Russia in  Ukraine will come to none at the end of prolonged attrition.

As it is, the Sixth extinction of the planet is on course due to our obsession  to fossil fuels.

 

Man will destroy the planet by the World War III but the planet will start its next round of evolution no sooner the War is over and Mankind's extinction from this planet accomplished.

 

The Mighty God who created man is guilty on the first count and he should have had the wisdom to think twice before creating man on this earth.

 

By the way, Ukraine War is perceived by two sectors of the Church one Catholic and the other Orthodox.

This is why I call, all religions are like incurable brain viruses, with no possible treatment available.

Phobias and ophidiophobia

I thought of writing a book on phobias and there is not a lot of terminology to fill a book.

So I have to start with dentist phobia.

I do not fear the dentist but I fear his drill and like a snake I cannot stand vibrations.

Snakes can detect vibration of humans footsteps  20 feet away and they are gone even before one step out of the door.

I lived with a giant cobra in my official quarters as a DMO which I used to call as the reincarnation of the former DMO.

I do not fear cockroaches or insects but I hate mosquitoes.

I can tolerate their bite but hate their music.

I have trained my ears to hear soft cardiac murmurs that are not audible unless amplified by a simple tubing system called a stethoscope.

I have given my cardiac stethoscope to a practising doctor since I have said goodbye to diagnostics for good but keep a spare, just for posterity.

Ophidiophobia is fearing snakes.

I have lived around all types of snakes in Galagedera where T.B.and Thamara Illangaratne cut their political and literary teeth.

I have killed a young cobra even before I was three years old and another innocent water snake when I was about 8 years and vowed  not to kill any animal but killed a rat in rage and several toads (gased by chloroform) while doing Advanced Level practicals.

I respect all cockroaches but accidentally trampled  one today and hence this piece  and the cockroach is my evolutionary illuminary or friend who has outlived even dinasaures.

I hate Chinese who even eat cockroaches, who are  the biggest danger to mother earth, apart from their contribution to global warming.

Every Chinese dying of Coronavirus is a blessing for the well-being of the planet earth.

If is not Russia we have to fear but China's global expansion in many fields.

Coming back to my phobia of snakes is a new phenomenon.

During the last three years I have encountered three large cobras and one I touched accidentally fetching the morning post.

That did not bother me but the giant cobra behind my back resting on a parapet wall in front of the big fish tank was a near miss.

Fellow had come looking for frogs and my fish tank is the main attraction of all frogs and toads.

Even the long tail of the chameleon provokes fear of snakes now.

MugaMaruwa or Ceylon krait, I touched accidentally, nearly killed our dog.

I have found a plant with pungent smell to repel them but the fear lingers on.

Hence the reason for writing a book on phobias.

Phylogenetic Tree

This piece I am writing with anger and disgust.

I have lot of books in many fields including,Science, Biology, Linux, Buddhism and lot of dictionaries.
.
1. I love Linux.
Even though, it's kernel is of several million lines of coding BUT with about 10 commands, I can get to what I want to explore in Linux.
With my favourite Debian and with LibreOffice, I can finish writing a book in 3 days.
This is not so with other utilities.

2. Dhamma inherits it's words in Pali and with a dictionary in hand I can attempt to understand the meaning in Pali.

By the way, Buddhist monks have made a mockery of its interpretation that vary from monk to monk.

I follow only Satipattana and 37 Bhodhipakkariyadhammas.

That's it.

In Dhamma there is meaning (atta), condition or law (dhamma), etymology (nirutti) and understanding (patibhana).

They are collectively called Patisambhida.

3. I hate all languages especially French since the syntax of which is confusing and spoken language is dissimilar varying from person to person.

I am only interested in reading a text in French not speaking it except for greeting someone nicely.
It is as pleasant language in that sense, unlike German or English.

English has borrowed so many words from other languages it has no way of avoiding adding more and more words to the ever enlarging dictionary.

When I started learning French at the age of 55, I thought all what I need is a basic text and a good dictionary but I was proven wrong.

By the way, I sat GCE (O) Level and had a pass and distinction in English.

4. I hate psychology by default.

One day I browsed a dictionary of psychology and found it has more words than all the words combined, in three subjects of mathematics, physics and chemistry.

No wonder psychologist commit suicide more often than a radiologist or a pathologist who sees, the things in perspective, instead of attaching any significance or bondage or emotion.
Bit dry sense and bare bone medicine has always being not inspiring to me.

A radiologist sees a shadow of an object and pathologist sees it after the fact or death.
Both professions may points the findings  to a disease process or more  but have no clinical responsibility to treat the living or consoling the dead, unless, it is a case of murder when a forensic guy takes over.

In other words psychologists are entangled in their own cooked up terminology with no meaning to the subject in suffering, they are trying to treat.

They poor subject is dosed up with a drug ultimately and with no escape.

So it better NOT to have a language or have a primitive pidgin language for communication.

I think prehistoric man never had psychological disease but fear of some sort to real situation at hand was their problem, for example lightening or to thunder.

All  religions have not answered this basic fear but has added another layer of confusion and many more words.

I was looking for as diagram showing phylogenetic tree of evolution on this planet from all my biology books and I could not anything worthwhile.

I used Google search engine and found a link to Wikipedia but the entry was in bits and pieces.

My current interest is how the brain developed from monkeys to apes to human and even the embryology book, I bought has very limited entry on brain and it's development.

There is something wrong in the teaching of science globally including medicine.

They are inundated with massive knowledge base.

It is not limited to psychology.

I have decided to a write few books under 100 pages starting with Cloud physics, lightening, phobias, mind and rebirth.

But power cuts are hindering my efforts.

So cellphone has come to my rescue diffuse the pent up pressure due to no gas and no electricity.

Hunger I have decided to stomach but not mental boredom.
.

Purity and impurity depends on oneself

By oneself is evil done by oneself is one defiled.
By oneself is evil undone by oneself one is purified.
Purity and impurity depends on oneself.
No one purifies another.
Dhammapada Verse 165.

Who is Buddha and what he is not?

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: S.B.Asoka Dissanayake <asokasb@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 20 May 2022, 18:12
Subject: Fwd: Who Buddha was and what he was not?
To: <asokasb@gmail.com>




---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Anuruddha Dissanayake <anuruddd@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 20 May 2022, 17:50
Subject: Re: Who Buddha was and what he was not?
To: <asokasb@gmail.com>
Cc: <asokaddd@yahoo.com>, <asokaddd@gmail.com>




On Fri, 20 May 2022, 17:47 Anuruddha Dissanayake, <anuruddd@gmail.com> wrote:

Who is Buddha and what he is not?

It is very difficult to answer this question either in positive or negative sense.

BUT;
I will start with the negatives.

1. He was not a philosopher and Buddhism is not a philosophy.

2. He was not a scientific scholar.
The science and technology were not his domain.
In fact, it was a bane by his subtle insinuations of scientific goals which are by nature local or global in nature and not absolutes truths.

In fact, rational investigating mind is a hindrance to mental awakening, which he prescribed for understanding of the uncertainty or the unsatisfactoriness of the greed, ignorance and selfishness within every human being.
What it means is basic understanding of nature is OK but looking for absolutes is a vain exercise of no use except of temporary benefit.

3. He did not proclaim a rigid dogma of God and a Creator of the Universe.

He was part of the cosmos and all living beings are part of this cosmos and not outside (this cosmos).

Simply put God is outside of this cosmos and the God is not part of it (in literal sense, he cannot exist on his or her own domain apart from becoming part of the cosmos).

The god is only a clumsy and flimsy human creation with no substance at all.

Coming to positive side of  Buddha's teaching he was one of us and was a perfect human being.

1. He lived in the present moment (of mind and associated mental formations of infinite variegation) not in the past or in the future tense.

No two human beings are alike and no two thought moments are alike.

2. He was a born environmentalist and lived all his enlightened life (except the rainy season) under a tree and not away from the nature.

3. He gave equal opportunity to all living beings and a wild cat living on another living being for survival was not an antithesis.

In other words, wild cats were born of their own karmic exposition and escape from that  predicament is possible at the time of patisandhi citta or linking to  the next life.

It is not eternal hell but escape is possible from animal kingdom to a better life BUT not being born again is his ONLY goal to eternity.

It is not a Void but a Signless existence of eqanimity.

4. It is an individual responsibility of each and every individual to seek for his or her own salvation of the inescapable "human suffering and bonding".

I have exluded some difficult areas of Pali rendering and unfortunately English is inadequate to explain the *Wisdom of Buddha* I have put the conceptual framework of Buddha's thinking would have been.

By the way, I do not claim I understand all of them clearly.

Do not hang on to Kalama Sutta and questioning the Kalama Sutta itself, is the entry point to Enlightenment.

Buddha was never a saviour of humanity but who showed the way of compassion, boundless kindness, sympathetic joy and above all equanimity.

In his world there is no ground for Killing and War whether due to ideology or religious sects or humiliation of a different faith or sector.

Religion by all means a Brain Virus.

The Orchids

This with sun shining on the flowers.

Skin Colour, White Supremacy and Church Mythology

Skin Pigmentation and Amyloid are my favourite pathological topics.

I will dispense with Amyloid and Mad Cow Disease briefly.

Meat or specifically beef and it's products leads to remodelling of protein molecules in the brain that appear like an infection but which is not.
Brain lacks the proteases to breakdown abnormal proteins and hence leads to accumulation of abnormal proteins and glycoprotein byproducts and early onset dementia.

The real biochemistry is much complicated and I will leave it at that.

Coming to white skin, is also, a lack of enzyme in melanasome melanization process.

It is an inferiority complex of the enzyme system, that lacks in white (not brown skin) skinned people who end up with sunburn and squamous carcinoma when migrated to Australia from the West.

I haven't got a clue to why white men and women migrated to northern hemisphere but my guess work is early childhood melanoma and malignant melanoma that killed host of early white skinned civilizations in the tropics.

White men probably originated in Ethiopia to begin with and later mixing with Asians ameliorated this tendency of carcinogenesis.

Sun rays are the most powerful carcinogenic agent on this planet.

I pity the wealthy white guys who piggyback on Elon Musk.
If they get brain melanoma he is culpable.

Squamous carcinoma is a very slow protracted illness but malignant melanoma is aggressive and death ensues in a shorter framework of less than two years.

So brown people should be happy that they have some form of protection but not the so called pure whites.

Pure whites is a mythology brought forwards by the Church and even the English Royal Family has black pigment inheritance.

This is besides the haemophilia in the Royal family.

The Germanic or German connection is an accident in history.

There are NO pure whites left on this planet.
It is a mythology.

My reason for writing this is even the Harrison's Textbook of medicine editors bowed down to the pressure from the Church and stop publishing the chapter on pigmentation, to which Pope was very supportive.

I stopped buying the textbook of medicine by Harrison's from that point of time in mid eighties.

My point is this.

Why the mighty god in his wisdom did not prevent this evolutionary Discrimination Plot so that this planet would have been peaceful for ever.

The current war in Ukraine is between two sections of the Christianity.

One orthodox Russian Church and the other the Unity or the Catholic Church to which CIA agency is fueling oil for over 70 or 80 years, so that American War machine can survive.

But unfortunately they have met the Russian Bear who has spined a Nazi conspiracy theory for world consumption.

What an outcome in the 21st century politics?

Why I Left United Kingdom

Apart from Registration protocols, the number one reason  was subtle racial discrimination.

Mind you, this was seen even in New Zealand.

I believe in Equal Opportunity and this concept was not even in its infancy, in early eighties.

Whenever, I felt that I was differently treated, I left that institution giving a flimsy reasons.

I remain still (not at all active now) a Labour sympathizer to this day.

I hated Mrs. Thatcher's policies which were discriminative.

The Falkland war sealed by impressions.

When it comes to possession even whites kill whites.

Ukraine war of CIA proxy is evident currently.

Americans have created a Russia- phobia for their own propergation
of War Machine.

Why Labour will never succeed and come into power in UK in this century is due to emergence of ultra nationalist, including events in France.

There is no room for an third or alternative ideas.

Politics is a dicey issue and I voted for the only union guy in Ceylon for our presidential election and he got little over 30,000 votes.

Labour is almost dead even in Russia and China.

Must say, I did not vote for Kadugannawa based Wicktamabahu (forget his surname) but Siritunghe Jayasinghe was my choice.

I hate P++xx Vasu who is a disgrace for Labour movement in Ceylon.

List of labour guys that ended with Ken Livingstone was many and Tony Benn was a collosal.

Tony Blair was a flash in the pan and American stooge and a puppet.

By the way after destroying Communist party in the US in 1960s under the cloud of white supremacy, there was no revival of labour activity in USA.

The eight years I worked in  UK all the post were where white guys and girls refused to work and in Blackburn, I did my elective and ended up in Dartford under an amiable Dr. Mobarack with three hospitals to cover Westhill, Greenwhich and Dartford.

I did work at in High Wycombe for  six months and Westminster Children's hospital for six weeks and said good bye for good never to return again to UK.
White Chapel in East End was the worst hospital.

There was racial bias in selections and interviews and I was itching to come back home.

I worked in a university hospital in  Ceylon and the tenure in UK never attracted me but I met polish Professor Lober in Sheffield and he said you will never get a university post in UK and they are reserved for British not even an Irish guy will get a substantial post.
That was it, and it was easy for me to leave UK.
IRA was active then.

I got the New Zealand post thank to Dr. Van Dyke who was a South African.
Unfortunately Van Dyke lost his post and he told me he was ousted since he gave the job to me and not to a New Zealander.

Having said that I did my work to best of my ability abroad and never bum-sucked to white supremacy but made substantial improvement to every hospital, I stepped in.

Within three months I forward a list of shortcomings of every hospital and also plausible remedies.

Greymouth hospital did not have an eye unit and I made sure every two weeks a specialist visits it and they trained me on all the eye screening procedures.

My interest was research and I returned home and finished my thesis in good time and currently doing  finishing touches to a medical book.

I wanted to go to USA briefly for a visit and looking at USA with no baby milk and poor vaccination programme, it was a blessing that I did not waste my money.

America has the worst infrastructure worse than Russia for poor people.

The pandemic exposed American strategy, make money from vaccines was their motto.

I won't go to Ukraine, even if they give me a free ticket.

I believe with mounting crisis they are short of medical hardware, software and personnel on top of a global pandemic and looming food crisis.

It was a big release that I came home in spite of total economic collapse in Ceylon.
Two or three families ruined Ceylon in 70 years and the uprising of the youth is very poorly managed.

We are running short of food due to faulty withdrawal of fertilizer both solid and liquid.
Organic farming is in its infancy in Ceylon.

Leave no room for the military to thrust after political power Uphold the principle of an apolitical military

 

Leave no room for the military to thrust after political power
Uphold the principle of an apolitical military

Reproduction

Leave no room for the military to thirst after political power

Uphold the principle of an apolitical military

June 19, 2020, 4:08 pm

by Kumar David

General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is America’s highest serving military officer. He made a mistake when he appeared in a photo-op with Donald Trump, following forceful dispersal of peaceful protesters outside the White House on 1 June. He apologized, admitted it was a mistake and said "my presence in that environment created a perception that the military is involved in domestic politics". What is more crucial for Lanka’s Presidents, Prime Ministers and military brass to digest is what Gen. Milley said next: 
"We must hold dear the principle of an apolitical military which is deeply rooted in the very essence of our republic".

Several former generals have spoken out against Trump’s partisan approach to a human rights issue - equality for black Americans. His first Defence Secretary, retired Gen. James Mattis, said he never dreamed that troops would be ordered to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens. However, it is this declaration from Gen. Milley, the current top serving officer, that is stunning; it is a public rebuke of the President.

Fast forward to the role of the military in Gotabhaya’s Administration. So many generals, admirals, inspector-generals, retired and serving, piles of kaki and bristling medals shine around, about, within, between and adjacent to his person. They jostle for positions and crave for Ministry Secretary-ships and Chairmanship of Corporations. Task Forces are so over-populated with generals that they trip over each other’s regalia. True it is still not time to call this Administration a military junta but that for sure is not for a scarcity of soldierly personages in the squad. The fundamental distinction between the culture and the traditions of the top echelons of America’s military and our own is that the former boldly tell the President: ‘We hold dear the fundamental principle of an apolitical military, an ethos deeply rooted in the essence of our republic’. 

Can we say this of Lanka’s military? 

Only a careless analyst will stake his intellectual reputation on such an assertion!

Though the regime has used coronavirus as a smokescreen to strengthen its stranglehold on society it has still not declared itself a ruling junta or suspended the constitution. Gota and poropaya are confident of winning the elections and have outflanked both flavours of the UNP and rendered them impotent. The SLFP is a miserable rump and crackpot Sira may lose his seat in Polonnaruwa – good riddance. The Tamils and the TNA are exhausted and have given up the fight. The ghost of Tamil polity can do no more after the LTTE pranced with the devil and the army buried thousands. The TNA and Sumanthiran have offered to boot-lick the putative dictatorship if humble pleas are entertained till 5 August after which the lick will end. Shades of GGP, but at least the old rogue got a Cabinet post in lieu of 30 pieces of silver. MAS, Sambanthan and Mave come cheap; no such offers will materialist without the monks’ blessings and fat hopes of that! Lead counsel MAS bowed his head in sheepish humility when the Court kicked him resoundingly on his soft posterior; I guess he didn’t want to displease the President. 
The Muslims cower in fear with no capacity to protect themselves from President, military or the disdain of a most Sinhala people.

To come back to my theme, ours is a military that is not prepared to tell the President "We want no part of anything that smacks of politics; we want no part of bossing around with public health, archeology, food distribution, intimidating minorities, collecting corporate and state sinecures, or accruing glowing medals on a burnished uniform for carrying your political spittoon". 

If the military leaves room to be sucked into politics it must take the blame – another share of the blame must be assigned to their overlord and his ilk.

The graver danger is long-term. 
Imagine that Gota departs for some presently unfathomable reason. 
What after that? 

The military having tasted power will continue to seek successors who ensure a military-aligned state to which their appetites are now being honed. 

Imran Khan is a case in point; his rise and continued stay in power is partly a gift from the military. 

Participation, the overbearing involvement in power of military brass is a dangerous development that cannot be reversed merely by political actors even as brave and distinguished as Imran. This is a task that will one day need the direct intervention of the people. That is the real as yet unaccomplished lesson of Pakistan.

A piece called "Wounded Democracy" Pradeep Peiris et. al in the Daily Mirror of 16 June quote a CPA survey which shows that over 90% of Sinhalese consistently "trust the military" since 2011; while 2018 parliament and political parties score a miserable 16 to 17%. 
This is a consequence of the Sinhalese victory in the Civil War. 
It was the same in Serbia despite genocide in Srebrenica. 

In Iraq Saddam’s atrocities against Shias and Kurds earned him the loyalty of the majority Sunnis, and everywhere the way to the affections of a race is to massacre an adjacent race or faith. 

Love of the military is deeply embedded in the Sinhala psyche because it won the war and Gota is playing from a strong hand when he bids for a grand-slam for a military dominated regime.

Therefore, there is an unavoidable contradiction in championing democracy. 
It is the people themselves who make a mockery of democracy. 

The grotesque Mervyn de Silva polled 150,000 votes in Gampaha in 2012, ladies of easy virtue outpoll proven, uncorrupted politicians and 90% of Lanka’s parliamentarians have not passed the O-Level. 
Such MPs, the corrupt, drug dealers and thugs win most elections. This is largely due not to vote buying, but is the outcome of a fairly free franchise. The incongruity to which there is no easy answer is what then are we attempting to shield when advocating democracy? The question is as old as democracy itself! 
The contrarian exclamations with which one throws up one’s hands in horror are: "We must preserve democracy!" 

"The masses are asses!"

The riposte to this charge is intellectually flabby but at the same time empirically impregnable. "No better form of government has been invented"! One and all call themselves republics (Latin res publica, a public affair) rule by the people, not excepting the Republic of Singapore and the People’s Republic of China. Madam Elizabeth holds titular rank in a place where her ancestors since 1648 (or at least 1688) are ceaselessly reminded that Parliament is supreme. 

Can you believe it, even an ugly tyranny like Egypt feels obliged to use the fictional name Arab Republic of Egypt?

The masses may be asses but a dangerous and profoundly false subtext is slipped in. "Since the masses are asses nothing could be better than the military taking power; great progress will flow; great achievements can be made". 
I impress on readers the frequency and duration of the cancer once it takes root. 
What progress? 
What achievements? Show me one from each box – I challenge you!

What to do when one starts forgetting passwords

 

What to do when one starts forgetting passwords

Practically nothing.

Unless of course one is proactive with the first signs of senility.

Some time ago, when I was busy (university on long term strike) and working all night downloading and testing Linux Distributions, temporarily, I forgot all the passwords for my bank accounts and emails.

With some soul searching I developed a kind of reference and more importantly put them down in writing.

Now I forget where the little note book is kept.

Mind you I have been using www.wordpress.com to Google to every possible web outlets including wikipedia and Dropbox.

So many different passwords.

Finally, I decided to take a very long break and only used my cellphone.

That has its own disadvantages Yahoo thinks I exist in one incarnation and one phone and every time I try to log in with the PC (unfortunately automated) I need damn verification of my PC.

Internet has become a pain in the neck (or ARxx may be).

I have stopped using Facebook (many reasons) and use Twitter for my photo sessions (cannot log in with the computer or my tablet). The Twitter also thinks I am of one incarnation not many like Aliens who are with us.

In fact, they treat me like an Alien.

So my decision to wind off with Internet keep my sanity intact.

Today, I plugged in an external hard disk (Suse installed) and could not boot it or read its contents. With trial and error I managed to boot with Linux tricks and it went in, in one stroke into Google Blog Spot and asked for my gmail password 19 characters long in Sinhala characters. I hit the ceiling but using my reference code I blog my universal irritation here.

Good Bye to Internet and Happy Christmas and New Year, 2019!

Conspiracies in Science, Religion and Politics

Below is an introduction I have written on the front cover of one of my many books.

I think current War in Ukiraine is the manifestation of WIN or War Machine of America.

Ukraine president is working like a CIA agent.

I have no intention of writing a book on War in Ukraine but I will bet my bottom dollar that more books will be written about it hiding all the underlying facts.

I advice the reader to read the book by Jared Diamond "guns, germs and steel"

 

It is strange that in America more people are dying due to Corona Virus and they are short even for baby milk in America.

 

Conspiracies in Science, Religion and Politics 

Internet of things is taking us to uncharted territory.

I adore its freedom, anybody with proper portal could voice his or her opinion without hindrance. There is no peer review or scrutiny. If properly used it can be a haven (not heaven) but it can be a place for raging fire/war.

The secrecy, misinformation and conspiracy are commoner garden occurrence in the corporate world. I believe conspirators have even penetrated this democratic institution. I could not find a solution to this conspiracy even in the major religions. Linux with its copy-left and sharing philosophy, has become an antithesis to this grand design. I have used this philosophy as a counter thesis to misinformation and conspiracy. This world has produced lot of nice people. I have illustrated only a few of them.

The conspiracy should be sunk at all costs.

Like a lotus that flower above muddy bottoms, we should do all what we could do to bring the truth to the surface.

Why in book form?

Internet is fluid, superficial and the contents “Go” by the “Number of Hits”, status by nature. In a book one can delve in deeper.

I have to make a confession.

I have not “fact checked” most of the claims made by certain authors. In conspiracy or speculation, “fact checking” is humanly impossible. Errors are built into the system by repetition and the difference between “fact” and “fiction” becomes almost imperceptible.

In this scenario conspiracy thrives.

I am one who is averse to lies or deception.

I want scientists to be “bona fide” true gentleman / lady and when I find so called scientists, deliberately lie for some personal or corporate gains, it is obnoxious.

Unfortunately, I have seen doctors working in alliance with representative from pharmaceutical companies, use lies, deception, partial disclosure of side effects and exaggerating flimsy benefits. Having made unwitting entry into fields foreign to my own, as a preparation for this book, now I am convinced conspiracy in theory is universal, an Achilles tendon to scientific verification.

Wikipedia had been a major source and I am thankful to all those who contribute to Wikipedia.

But any errors of commission or omission are all mine.

I have placed many personalities in this book not knowing their direct or indirect contribution to either science or conspiracy. I had no personal choices, in the selections made, in this exercise and I may have inadvertently, left out many important personalities.

I present this book to those personalities left out unwittingly, but nevertheless, suffered ridicule and reprimand for their genuine interest and dedication in seeking the truth. I hope this book is an inspiration for those who seek transparency in science, governance and politics.

Benefits of Meditation and Lapses in My Memory

Benefits of Meditation and Lapses in My Memory

I have reproduced a piece I have written 4 years ago,the reason being that I forgot all my bank cards PIN numbers for a brief period recently.

I used A's Pin Number to B's Pin number and after three attempts bank inactivated all my cards.

Mind you, I luckily had an account in a different Bank and survived until my new card arrived.

All this due to enjoying my retirement and paucity of use of the daily routines.

So I immediately, joined my account with a family member.

The other thing that one forgets is the passwords for email accounts.

I have addressed that scenario in length elsewhere.

Just like forgetting PIN numbers and passwords if one abruptly stops Practicing Meditation, what ever the benefits accrued will dissipate in no time.

That is why, I recommend (and practice MM) Moment and Frequent Meditation (mental) exercises. Having said that I have not found a solution for lapses in my memory.

I still do not carry a Memory Note with me. Now my NEW method is counting the the lapses of my memory on daily routines.

How many lapses a day?

That seems to keep my memory fine tuned.

I sometime forget to fill the bowl with water for my dog.

He is totally blind and when this happens he seems to go in circles round the house to bring attention to its needs.

He reminds me of the routine and the lapse in my memory.

My dog has a fantastic memory (in our age he is nearing 100 years) and still behaves like a 7 year old kid and won't do anything to annoy me.

That is the difference of a pet and a human soul. Humans when old becomes very grumpy for no reason.

There is lot to learn from a dog.

This is part of the introduction to my Book on Meditation.

Benefits of Meditation

There are many claims of benefit of meditation often poorly substantiated. Some of these benefit can be obtained without resort to meditation but simple change in life style.

Suppose a meditator changes his food habits drastically say to a vegetarian diet and practice meditation as a routine and finds that his blood cholesterol is lowered significantly, and then if he or she attributes it to the practice of meditation, there is a big flow in that argument.

One is not sure whether the change in diet did effect the blood cholesterol level or the practice of meditation or both did have independent or summation effect on the level of blood cholesterol. Unless one take a random sample and assess the partial correlation, then only one can attribute combination or independent effects on a particular quantity tested.

Qualitative changes cannot be tested since one cannot quantify the results. In actual fact the effect of meditation is often qualitative and very individualistic and one cannot feel the same effect a different mediator would have felt at the time of his or her meditative stance or instance/s.

This is very true as far as the Jhana States are concerned.

With that reservation in mind one can describe the many unmeasurable benefits attributed to meditation in Buddhist literature.

Metta Meditation

In Buddhist literature it is claimed that one who practises Metta Meditation falls to sleep easily and get up in the morning peacefully.

It is wished in the last three lines of the Sutta. By reciting Karaniya Metta Sutta one should feel physically and psychologically better, one is made free of illness and one attains the highest goal or victory.

That is of course the Nibbana.

They may be just wishful thinking or one may actually feels better physically and psychologically.

It is also claimed that the natural immunity to cancer and infections are increased by practicing Metta Meditation.

This is something Venerable Ajhan Brahma Wanso preaches in most of his teaching.

Present Moment Meditation

This is something that is worth discussing here. It has direct relationship to day to day activities. I believe it has significant contribution to the efficiency of one’s trained skill, simply due to the intense concentration one may apply in his or her work skill at hand (without any distraction).

It is simply the focused attention to the task at hand. If one is focused on any work, the efficiency goes up by leaps and bounds. This is very well shown in management training.

When focused attention is combined with attitude to work and other measurable increase in environmental components the work output and the efficiency levels improve.

This is something shop or floor manager can use in day to day basis.

It is called a Quality Drill.

It does not matter how one qualifies the content or the output but the efficiency of the skill concerned improve by both repeated practice and focused attention to the moment of the activity.

Samatha Meditation

There is no specific measurable benefits of Samatha Bhavana or meditation except the attainment of the four goals or paths of entry to Nibbana,

Buddhist spiritual goal is stream entry through development of Jhanas five in this life and more on celestial life.

Samatha probably is better for those who are less intelligent (One who is not able to master the finer scientific points in Dhamma).

Vipassana Meditation

This the highest goal of Buddhist meditative practice.

It is claimed that all states of Jhana can be attained by Vipassana Bhavana or Meditation. I may be wrong in this assertion but that is what is spread among the lay persons without full knowledge or the understanding of mediation.

But when I looked at the terminology, it is said that Vipassana Bhavana would not contribute to absorption states.

This (Vipassana) is called the gaining in insight by direct contemplation and vision.

Only in Samatha Bhavana one attains the Jhana absorption levels up to five.

Only when an aspirant has gained the higher Jhana level of the 5^th that one could develop the five kinds of supernatural powers (Abhiñña) the divine eye, divine ear, recall of past births, thought-reading and various psychic powers i.e. walk on water.

The attainment of the supernatural powers is not the real goal of Buddhism.

The attainment of these powers may actually be a distraction or hindrance to a true aspirant or a pathfinder of Buddhist path of glory.

The ability to absorb into Jhana states should not be the goal of Buddhist meditation.

The Jhana states have no hindrance and the Jhana/s could be the way forward of stream entry. The practice of meditation may bring many benefits and they are difficult to quantify or qualify except perhaps the benefit of present moment of meditation or focus which should be practiced without a label of a particular religion.

It is when one has labels and targets or goals of attainment, the practice of meditation becomes a commercial enterprise of undesirable consequences, ignoring the correct but simple way of development of the mental culture.

I am one who believes that mediation has value in all wakeful hours of the day.
The only exception is when one is asleep and when one dreams.

I am one who talks about dreams and write about dreams and their physiological value is unparalleled only by the practice of meditation in the wakeful state.

The meditation practice is the awareness of the wondering mind and its taming.

That is the Buddhist way.

The goal is not achieving of miracle powers, even though they may or may not come as a byproduct.

Sleeping (and dreaming) is the practice of letting the mind go into an unobtrusive and unhindered state in which the mind is unaware of the physiological inputs that operate in random manner with aberrations of awareness (of the totality) but with interludes of dreaming cycles.

On the other hand meditation is to “let go the attachments” one has with all the mental faculties both sensual and mind centered.

Goals of Buddhist Meditation

The goal is the spiritual attainment (Jhana states can be a byproduct) and stream entry by progressive cultivation of meditation basically by four common methods (there are many more).

1. Metta Meditation.

2. Samatha Meditation with Kasina or various Kamatahans.

3. Vipassana Meditation.

4. Moment Meditation (my simple creative method of short durations of multiple attempts).

This is adequately dealt by Venerable Ajhan Brahma Wanso, inthe book "Happiness Through Meditation". It is also published as “Meditation, Bliss and Beyond”.

It is the best book currently available on Meditation in general and my intention here is to make it more of global nature and take the religious tag at the moment of its use.

Memory and Meditation

I want to share a drill I practice on day to day basis.

This is especially because, I am beginning to lose my memory and there are short lapses infrequent though, but enough to raise alarm bells on my part lately.

Once I forgot all my password for bank cards briefly.

This was during our long industrial action when I had a laid back approach to life in general and sleep in particular.
I was not having an adequate sleep (totally engrossed in Linux downloads and testing the isos) at night.

This coincided with forgetting of passwords for half a dozen emails and Linux forum passwords. This shook my inner senses and I now have a ready made retrieval method based on memory drill.

The combination of Metta Meditation and Moment Meditation have worked wonders for me since then.

I now even have a simple protocol to remember 16 number Visa Card.

The memory loss was partly due to gray matter losing its material and the neural networks not recharging to peak levels, probably due to old age (this handicap is seriously encroaching my body parts, if not the brain).

Metta meditation makes one sleeps well not in one go but in two short spells (Night is the shortest spell when I do most of my work to avoid mosquito menace. The mosquitoes make me aware of my lack of Metta Meditation).

Our dog is the target animal for Metta.
Mosquitoes was the antidote to Metta.

Then in the morning I have a brief 5 minutes of Moment Meditation practice at the end of it, I have a mental list of 10 things or map out the tasks to do for the day.

If the list go up to 20, I do it in two spells like my sleep.

A morning list and an evening list.

That has worked well for the last one year and I still do not carry a piece of paper with all the tasks.

If I have to carry a piece of paper to to remind me the day to day work, I think I should say Good Bye and take first steps for the next round of birth.

That is on top of my wish list.

Since, I have not yet achieved stream entry, in spite of my mediation efforts, that will eventually happen and is only viable option left for me. There is a simple addition to that wish list. No electronic aids or tinkle to alert me of the wish list or missing tasks.

I do not use a cell phone by default. I do not want a gadget to master my brain. I rather "Master my Brain" instead without a phone alert or a piece of paper.
I wonder, how long I can practice it.