Elephant Thinking

This is what an elephant was thinking while being dressed up for the grand pageant in Kandy.
Why I  am chained?
Why these people gather in numbers to watch my incarceration?
Do these people have a brain as big as mine? 

Do they use their brain or are they very selfish to restrain my freedom?
My brain is big but my plea very is simple.
Give me my freedom.

The man does not need a brain as big as mine but they should use a bit of their cocky brain for fair play and equal opportunity.

Are these only fancy words with no meaning?

I hope few of these spectators, especially foreign visitors spare a little moment to grasp what my thinking brain does while parading in front of you and not admire the the majestic beast in me.

I am big but very gentle in my ways unlike the man the dirty beast.

Lateral Thinking

Lateral Thinking is a concept developed by Prof Bono.
In here it is to state that our PM is talking about alternative views.
This is very healthy trend evolving in our politics that was lacking in this country over a half century.
 

Whether we can translate that to politics including reconciliation is completely a new experience.

Water is our right

Water is our right.
Chandrika tried to sell water for debt.
I was very vocal (read my book water politics) then.
I was with IMMI they changed to IWMI and I strongly opposed and resigned.
The first white paper was drafted in 1989 or so.
This same paper surfaces back and again.
Good editorial.
Please maintain the pressure.
Ranil is cunning and might slip this through, if he wins, which is most likely.

Zebra Fish Breedimg

Fish breeding was childhood activity that I never had time to explore fully.
Our science teachers were mediocre and never taught us with pragmatism and interest.
It was a case of deriving a stereotype answer for particular scientific principle and nothing more when we were kids.

Thankfully we had scientific brains t even outsmart our teachers.
Fish breeding was something I learned by simple observation.
That is also live breeding never breeding egg layers like gurami or zebras.
With heavy workload both as a student and a professional there was no spare time, anyway.

It was a matter  of giving up hobbies including photography.
Well as a preparation for retirement and as a break I started keeping pet fish well in advance of my retirement.
That was a big mistake on my part leaving me no breathing space.
It restricted my well earned spare time, which could have been very well used for gin and tonic not extra work but by some rare coincidence, I discovered that if I leave the water removed from my fish tank (when changing water due to algae) in a bucket, in a few weeks I will have young Zebras.

Yes Zebras do not eat all their eggs.

There is sufficient number of eggs that hatch.

They are unfortunately not visible to the naked eye. 

Now I have the fourth batch of young zebra in bucket over the last two months.

The cardinal rule is not to mix them with guppies.

hey will leave no trace of zebra eggs.

English: Lanka’s only feasible link language

 Kumar one time contemporary in our university has done a good analysis.
It is a reproduction.

Singapore at 50: 
Language the vital key

English: Lanka’s only feasible link language

by Kumar David

"A champion of the Chinese language argued (in 1965) that Chinese was used by more than 80 percent of the population and should be the first among the four languages. I gave him a dressing down. Did he want Singapore to be like Sri Lanka, with unending social strife between the Sinhalese and the Tamils because the Sinhalese imposed their language upon the whole country? Did he want Malays and Indians to feel discriminated against? How would Singapore as a whole make a living – would China give us jobs? Who would trade with us apart from Taiwan? Why should multinational corporations invest in Singapore when they could go to Taiwan where it was cheaper? If they did not learn English they would pay a price. The price would be decided by the (world) market".

(My Lifelong Challenge; Singapore’s Bilingual Journey, Lee Kuan Yew, 2012, p.60)

An addendum to this quotation; by 2010, it was found to everyone’s surprise, that 60% of Primary One school admissions were from homes where English had become the home language. Chinese had slipped to second place with Malay and Tamil following. Singapore’s tortuous language journey from the end of the war to the present time is chronicled in Lee Kuan (spelling used in the book) Yew’s compelling recounting The story reveals something profoundly important; It was language policy that underwrote Singapore’s long-range development strategy; entrepreneurship, markets, economic incentives and so on were along-the-way pragmatic specifics. Lee’s authoritarianism and anti-communism too was motivated to a surprising extent by his determination to drive through his language policy. The ‘Singapore Success Story’ is underpinned by its ‘solution’ of its language problem; this was the real trick, the rest followed. Excellence of government service, cognisance of globalisation, the city’s business and investment ethos and its inter-racial harmony, all have as their sine qua non an education language-policy that despite blunders and course corrections has succeeded at a price.

Independent Singapore is 50 years old today; following divorce from Malaysia, independence was proclaimed on 9 August 1965 (separation from Britain and the shotgun wedding with Malaya was in 1959); so today is an excellent occasion to square accounts. Lanka has made a catastrophic mess of language in education, administration, international intercourse, and faces abysmal failure in national unification, so let’s see where Singapore got it right and sometimes wrong. A lesson that comes out of this story is that in Lanka only English can serve as link language link between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities. The National Integration Ministry’s alternative approach, promoting Sinhala-Tamil bilingualism as the link, is doomed to fail.

Singapore’s experience has convinced me that Sinhalese students cannot and will not gain even modest fluency in Tamil – why should they, what’s in it for them? How can they when it is known that second language class teaching followed by reverting to mother tongue in sports field and canteen and exclusive mother tongue usage at home, yields no sustainable second language competence? Language skill dies if not used often, or unless there are other powerful motivations such as jobs, education, trade and the internet, to keep it fresh. Some Tamils may learn Sinhala (or if like yours faithfully they were immersed from a young age), but the great majority in the Tamil majority areas will not bat an eyelid in choosing English over Sinhala. The Eastern Province and the Muslim community appear to contradict this. But no, not at all, both the criterion of continuous social immersion and the material drive from trade and business actually strengthen my case.

English is what Sinhalese and Tamil young people want, the horizons it opens up are the opportunities they crave, and thankfully and in passing, it will serve as the link; not because you din the virtues of national integration into their heads, but because if young people in both communities want to learn English for other reasons, it makes sense to speak it reciprocally instead of staring at each other mutually dumb and deaf!

Lingua Sinhapura then and now

They say that 70 to 80 % of Singaporeans are Chinese but what they don’t tell you is that in the 1950s they couldn’t talk to each other! They spoke about 12 mutually unintelligible dialects – written Chinese is all the same so with a primary education (say 500 characters) one could read shop and road signs. They came from different parts of South China in the early 19th Century; Hokkien speakers (40%) from Fujian, Cantonese (23%), CheChow (18%) and Hakka (7%) from Guangdong, Hainanese (7%) from Hainan Island and other smaller groups. Mandarin was used only by a tiny Chinese elite, the literati;

I guess like French in the European courts of yesteryear, or Newton’s Principia written in Latin (maybe the greatest scientific treatise ever written, but the author felt no compunction to make it intelligible to the great unwashed). Dialect groups lived in clans in enclaves and daily life was governed by clan associations owing lineage to a village in China or an ancestral name. Rich clan members founded dialect schools for their community and that’s where most children went. The Malay and Tamil communities ran their own schools imparting instructions in the vernacular. The colonial government ran two school systems; a prestigious English medium and Chinese medium schools catering to a minority of the Chinese; education was far from widespread.

At independence Singapore inherited this mishmash of schools run by interest groups whose dialects were unintelligible to each other and a population living in polyglot enclaves and ghettoes. The first decision, for obvious reasons that I do not need to repeat, was to ram through English in the ‘bilingual period’ of about 20 years (1965 to late 1987). English was made a compulsory second language at a moderately high standard in all vernacular medium schools while Chinese, Malay or Tamil was a compulsory second language, at moderately high standards again, in English medium schools. This worked for a while but broke down because of a rising demand for English medium schools which the government favoured though vernacular schools were not denied resources. The last Malay, Tamil and Chinese medium schools closed by 1986 due to lack of demand. Then in 1987 a watershed was crossed; after a considerable period of preparation English became the medium of instruction throughout the Singaporean school system while emphasis was also kept on second language competence; that is bilingualism became the standard.

Bilingualism itself was the next casualty, especially in the Chinese community for two reasons, one political the other pedagogic. Opposition to English was led by Chinese nationalists, leftists, scholars and graduates of Nanyang University (Nantah) – the first Chinese language university in South East Asia, set up in 1956. (Nantah was merged with National University of Singapore in 1980). Singapore’s leftists were in the forefront of the campaign to protect the Chinese language, to uphold traditional Chinese values and to halt surrender to alien powers. The 1960s and 1970s was the high water mark of Maoism and its influence on the Asian left; in Lanka recall Shan’s Peking-Line CP and the embryo stages of the JVP. The gloves came off for an almighty fight; Lee Kuan Yew, his Peoples Action Party and the state on one side, Chinese nationalists and leftists on the other. In these years Lee emerged as a ruthless authoritarian with little respect for the niceties of democracy. Nationalists and leftists were hounded. Lee is in no way apologetic: "it had to be done" he declares, no crocodile tears. Authoritarianism in Singapore started with conflicts on language policy.

The pedagogic reason to discard bilingualism was that the demand for high competence in two languages was too much; students failed in droves, parents complained bitterly about overload. Lee is frank and conceited enough by power, to call it "My big mistake". The government abandoned this style of bilingualism demanding high standards in the second (vernacular) language also and steered to a policy where second language competence at a lower level was accepted. Students who intended to specialise in language or literature in Chinese, Malay or Tamil were of course another matter, though specialist tutoring in the latter two was meagre.

The future

Now a new crisis is looming; Singapore’s Chinese are loosing their identity in a headlong rush to English. Complaints, especially from the older generation proliferated; Lee, a devotee of tradition, Chinese values, respect for elders and obedience, knew that culture cannot be imbibed except by emersion in an environment; he sent his three children to Chinese medium primary and secondary schools unlike Lanka’s fake 1956 politicos. Bilingual education faced another challenge when the authorities made a rude discovery; learning Mandarin in class and reverting to dialect in social life and emersion in dialect soaked families caused a sharp decline in Mandarin standards; dialect was choking out Mandarin. Something had to be done urgently; Mandarin had to be salvaged. As early as 1977 the Speak Mandarin Campaign cajoling and imploring parents to drop dialects and adopt Mandarin as the home language had started. Its success is still uncertain.

What has come to the rescue was the rise of China as an economic power. Singaporeans of bilingual competence in English and Mandarin were at a premium and pragmatic students responded to the niche market. High flyers like Janet Ang (CEO, Lenovo), (Kenneth Chan, CEO, McDonalds, China) and pop-stars Tanya Chua, Stefanie Sun and JJ Lin, all bilingual Singaporeans who have broken into the 1.3 billion Chinese market, captured the attention of young Singaporeans. Waves of Chinese officials, sometimes 400 strong, started visiting Singapore on study tours or enrolled on Masters Programmes after Deng’s celebrated 1992 trip. It is still too early to deliver a verdict on the safekeeping of Mandarin in Singaporean education; it depends on China’s economic expansion and its need for Singaporean bilinguals. If this need declines, Singapore will become an English speaking and educated society with Chinese, Malay and Tamil lurking in corners.

This account shows that the pre-1950s language backgrounds were different in Lanka and Singapore. It is also clear that policy over there was driven by pragmatism; here blind racism, starting with SWRD and his bigots, and continuing to the Rajapaksa government. Maybe we can rescue ethnic reconciliation if we make a start by defeating Rajapaksa on 17 August in the Sinhalese areas, but I am pessimistic about salvaging English for our youth. So much devastation has occurred; a vacuum of teachers, English dumbness in the middle ranks of government and even the private sector. In shops, supermarkets, bazaars – you name it; Colombo is a city where streetwise-English has withered. As for students, even university students, it is a wasteland. What I am driving at is that the minimal social environment needed for a second language to survive has been vacated. It will take a generation, if the government is serious, which it is not, to undo the devastation that narrow nationalism has inflicted.

“man-in-the-cloud" attack

“man-in-the-cloud" attack

This is a small blog piece related to an article on “man-in-the-cloud" attack.

The vulnerability discussed in this article is real.

In my case, being an open source man and Linux promoter, sharing what little I know is automatic and almost mandatory.

I may kick the budget of old age but I leave behind lot of digital footprint for to be exploited ad hoc.

So the mobile you use may be a big risk factor.

If you lose your mobile or somebody steals it, all your emails and contacts are at risk.

I cannot offer any solutions.

But it is better to use the non digital land phone for strictly private phone calls.

But even the government can eavesdrop (Sri-Lanka Under MR, I do not know how it is now and USA in particular).

Other option is to have an android of cheapest (Rs.5000/=) price with limited capacity and function for ordinary communications and emails and your value added iphone or any android or commercial for mission critical work and make it sure that it is kept under lock and key physically when not in use for long periods and not to carry it when one is on a shopping free or holidaying (hard thing to do).

We did not have all these gadgets an we carried out confidential work without fear or favour just 20 years ago.

Now we are getting paranoid and young people who are starting their careers should take a special not of the vulnerability of the mobile phone an in particular if you have private data in the Cloud.

This was one reason I was never too keen on for a mobile.

In my twilight years, it is getting bit lazy and less mobile physically that is when you become hooked to a gadget and the vulnerability of old age is also exposed.

It is the responsibility of the mobile carrier to safeguard your interests but if you leave your door open, very little they can do.

Next Cafe

This not about Nescafe but about your cup of coffee or tea.
We were forced to drink the same beverage for 21 years, same taste and same colour.
Now is the time for change.
If we do not take the initiative now, we will be treated like donkeys.

Are you for change?
YES should be the answer.

Linux and Mobile Phone

Linux desktop PC is lagging behind the Android World.
Why I do  not know?
I was reading the Linux Magazine, September edition and its publisher has realized the need to work on the mobile field in Linux.

Next edition will come out with a feature article.

I am eagerly waiting for it.
I downloaded few mobile utilities but none of them installed (mounted) on my Linux PC mounted my non proprietary kit kat.
This is where I support the EU directive to formalize, rather normalize the Mobile Code.
Code weaving is not the answer.
The Linux developers have to work hard on these issues and come out with tangible solutions and produce a non platform based kernel that would standardize code weaving or expansion.

Wireless World

I just downloaded a torrent link for a Linux distribution for wireless or digital radio stations of the world.
I did not have time to download or test it.

But this is about the mobile world.

 
I am new to mobile world
It is a big  learning curve.
I am enjoying it, all the same.
Touch system is the most difficult to master, in spite of fine surgical dexterity of young age. 
For a desktop maestro with keyboard wizardry it is a novel experience.
The beauty of the virtual keyboard is,  it is fast on anticipation and spelling corrections.

I generally give scant regard for getting the grammar correct but do the editing over the next 48 hours.
But the obsession is to get the blog piece posted in double quick time.
This is again to compensate for my boredom traveling by a slow bus plying from Peradeniya to Kandy.
I am now blogging on the fly.
Thanks to all the Android developers.
It is becoming a democratic habit.

I wish the young would use it craftily during this election, which is a turning point in our politics.

It has the same power as social media but does not need a BIG PC to explode.

Mobile or Tablet

I am pretty new to mobile world by choice not of conviction.
I was waiting for the EU directive which supported standard non proprietary hardware to come out, including a standard and affordable battery with long battery life.
Mainly due to costs, iphone was out by the first count.
Samsung was cheaper but still expensive.
Google phone was not available in this part of the world.
Firefox phone did not kick off well.
Android had to go through from jelly bean to kit kat and the patches.

Windows phone was not my choice anyway coming from the Linux background (mind you I am considering buying one before it busts).
All my waiting was worthwhile and I had little time for the cheapest Tablet I owned with 10 Linux boxes running at home.
Now that I have dismantled all but one Linux box which is going to pack up any moment, not by choice but by desperation, I had to be proactive and plunge into Mobile World.
I bought Rs.5000/= Android and it was limited in capacity and function.
Adding Micro SD was of no use.
Could not add additional software.
No touch screen and was useful as only a bare bone phone.
I went for Rs.10,000/= Android but it got stuck unable to access the dialogue or factory default, for three days after fiddling with it setup.

I went back to the retailer and he could not access the default setting.
So after three hours waiting Kit Kat was installed with root kit intervention.
Well from that point onwards no holding back.
I was deeply engrossed with Android or the Google World.

This piece is from Google blog spot, the mobile version of Google blogspot.

 
I am well set and blogging on the fly NOW..
I want the guys and girls to use the Mobile Power to beat the political thugs.

There is a Sinhala Version of the blog spot.
Use it liberally during this critical period to offset Mada Programs.
The downside is, it is very slow in downloading and uploading.

Additionally battery charge time is as short as 3 hours but I keep them plugged into the PC while I do other jobs in the world wide web. 

Things one cannot do with a mobile;
There are few things one cannot do with a mobile phone.
One cannot access data from a USB stick.
One cannot access data from a PC without appropriate software.
One cannot dual boot.
In that sense, tabloid is better but bulky and one has to carry all the accessories, which add to the bulk.
So before you buy a tablet see all the ports are available.
After few days of using one is inclined to tweak to ones needs.
It becomes a human compulsion with any gadet one may have. 
Think before you buy.
One may have to buy two instead of one and the there is no one to dish out the spare gadget at going prices. 

WiFi Connection

I am trying to connect to a WiFi hot spot.
I am travelling by bus not driving.

From engineering Faculty to University to teaching Hospital to Telcom, I tried but failed.

 End of the mobile note without publishing in draft mode.

Hospital I can understand, these little gadgets can effect pacemakers and instruments.

Finally in Colombo street, I was connected.

My SIM is Mobitel.

Then in Kandy returning home, while I was waiting for the bus to start (may be five minutes) I downloaded, Genius Root kit, Superuser and Google+.

At home in Paradeniya, behind engineering faculty, I was trying to update Google blog piece for over three hours (I drafted first few lines of this blog piece, as stated above), I could not.

I wanted to publish the draft first few lines, so that I could edit it and publish from my old IBM PC.

Even the wired connection is on snail pace, at 5 bits / second since I overshot the 20 GiB, my limit for a month.

I was trying to download Emmabuntus 3- 64 bit version for my archive.

It broke down over five times over Ethernet (3 GiB into five is 15 GiB).

In other words even if the downloads fails, I pay but I have no returns.

This is absurd when the government is promising free WiFi to the youth.

All bunkum.

I met a young group (guys and girls) of Kandy in the city centre and they we trying WiFi there and they were telling me Yaha Palanaya WiFi is a gimmick.

I could not agree more.

The Google's Loon also may be for political Loonies.
This problem was perennial.
I have stated it many a times before.
Only time the Internet was fast like in Singapore was when the Election Commissioner was on his peak during the January 8th election day.
I think now that he is retiring from the Election duties he should be appointed as a supernumerary supervisor (fully paid not free) for our Telecom regulatory body.
He is the only Civil Servant who deserves all the accolades when political stooges were draining and drying out over Public Service.

Mobile Power

Journal Journey 
There are many mobile utilities that are useful. 
All are available in an Android Phone but one has to download them.
Then the mobile becomes a Powerful Utility. 
One I have already stated in my blog space.
We can report election irregularities. 
More powerfully in video mode and instantly.
One can report it as a new's item OR report to the Police.
Failing which to the election Commissioner.

Mobile Segment

Google's Blogger has option  for video posting.
This something that is very useful NOW.
We can post a violation of election LAW instantly to the election. Commissioner
.One can post it at your blog space.
This is especially useful to those who lack competence in English language.
One has to create only a CAPTION.

Android Applications for Blogger

 Android Applications for Blogger

This was posted on mobile and later edited by my OLD IBM which is about to pack up after years of dedicated service.

I am just picking up with the mobile world.
I  had a tablet for over few years but I never used it.
Many reasons.
Small font.
Touch system.
Difficult to wean off from the desktop and  keyboard.
Cost of SIMS.
General apathy for change from old ways and systems.
Mastering Virtual Keyboard.

Freedom of mobility and blogging on the go OR on the fly is something, that I cannot ignore anymore.

I have already posted one from my  tablet and this is the second.
This I am doing with nearly 5 MiB Blogger Utility for Androids.
I  am beginning to love the new experience in spite of the small fonts.
I love the small utilities.
SWIPE is one of them even though it is very nosey of your activities.
The real reason is if I DELAY this with old age and poor vision, I will never be independent like a young blood.
Yes mastering these little techniques make me feel young.
Thank you guys and girls at Blogger and Google.
Android is a winner after all and Windows is trying to catch up.

First Mobile Blog Piece

This is my first mobile blog piece.
It took few days of work out.
Mainly due to getting Google services and Google drive linked.
It actually needed nearly 200 MiB of software on my tablet.
Download speed was equally not helpful.
My tablet's memory is full and no more space left.
I am going to try the same on my mobile android.
In fact I waited till all proprietary mobiles are going bust including Microsoft phone.

LeeNux-Netbook Versions

LeeNux-Netbook Versions

I am posting this with Leenux Kids Version booted on my old IBM.
There are many versions as torrent downloads.
There are only few seeders, please act as seeders.
Not yet available at Softpedia or Distrowatch.

If you have a Netbook, go and have a copy of your choice immediately, since there are very few Linux distributions (most of them are heavy on memory and demanding on resources)  that support Netbooks.

My favorite is Peppermint (minimal and support Google gadgets) but you have to waste lot of time downloading and customizing (which I prefer).

Emmabuntüs 3

Emmabuntüs 3
Emmabuntüs is a desktop GNU/Linux distribution based on Xubuntu 12.04 and 14.04 LTS (Long Term Support) made specifically for refurbished computers destined for humanitarian organisations and to promote the discovery of GNU/Linux by beginners, as well as to extend the lifespan of hardware and to reduce over consumption & waste in electronics.
It strives to be beginner-friendly and reasonably light on resources so that it can be used on older computers.
It also includes many modern features, such as large number of pre-configured programs for everyday use, dockbar for launching applications, easy installation of non-free software and media codecs, and quick setup through automated scripts.
The distribution supports English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and German languages.

It has both 32 bit and 64 bit versions.
It is about 3.6 GiB.

It has large array of software for children and adults.

I could not download its last version by torrents.
There were no seeders.
After about six months, I tried again but failed.
Then I went to sourceforge and currently downloading it.
With a fast Internet connection one can download it in about half an hour.

Mosquitoes (on an election campaign)

Please help me to enlist the next 10 items on the list below.

Mosquitoes
 
1. Why are mosquitoes not counted on census?
They do not have voting rights.

2.What happens to a mosquito who bites a Sri-Lankan politician?
It becomes disorientated.

3.When is the best time to check mate a mosquito?
When it is drunk.

4. Why mosquitoes avoids feeding on drunkards?
They prefer to be sober before a flight check in
Or a medical check up.

5. When did the mosquitoes had a medical check up?
When the dengue team arrives.

7. Why most of the urban mosquitoes are not fully insured?
Their premium is high.

8. What is the first thing a mosquito does when it lands on the moon?
It takes the space suit off for the first feed which it missed on the flight.

9. What happens to a mosquito who lands on a nudist camp.
He does not know where to begin.

10. What does it do when it meets a fellow mosquito in a nudist camp?
Check the sex to mate.
They are not homosexual (unlike human beings).

This was a Teaser for my friends.
What is the first thing a mosquito does when it lands on the moon?
He takes the spacesuit off for the first feed which he missed on the flight.
The caveat here is the male mosquito does not feed on blood but only the female that sucks your blood.

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.