Pigs are our closer cousins please adore them!

Pigs are our closer cousins please adore them!

These are little things that will be prohibited to teach in schools in Ceylon, soon.

Pigs are very similar to humans in genome study.

They are communal species ( not like in pig farms).

They look after their young in the wild.

There is hierarchy dominated by mums like in the elephant family.

They are not ferocious as depicted in the wild boar clan.

They keep clean if left to their own devises.

Pig’s diseases are similar to human diseases especially cardiovascular risks.

Pigs become chubby like our politicians.

They are an intelligent species to tolerate (not the pig eaters) humans and their survival in a increasingly hostile planet where elephants with big brain fail is a dilemma.

Their intelligence and brain size are similar to the comparison of dolphins to humans.

Pigs diverted from wild boar probably million years ago.

Why god created pigs and hate ham is open to question for some religions.

The miniature Wuzhishan pig is extensively inbred and individuals are genetically similar.

Its small size makes it easy to handle and useful for medical research. The team looked at genes and protein domains that pigs and humans share. These are important targets for drugs. The researchers found the physiology of the two is 84 per cent similar at the genetic level.

The studies identified 112 positions in the genome where pig protein has the same amino acid that is implicated in a human disease.

This supports the use of pig in studies on human diseases. Some of the protein aberrations that pigs share with humans are associated with obesity, diabetes, dyslexia, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.

This understanding of the genetic origins of modern pigs is important for their breeding and to find new ways to deal with old and emerging diseases.

Quality in Action

Quality in Action

This one is for our Commissioner of Elections and his cohorts!

I give a background of my entry into Quality in action.

From selection to execution it has to be perfect.

In other words Total Quality Management (TQM) of elections without fear psychosis (especially for Tamils and Muslims).

We do not won’t extraordinary measures but strict laid down (written instructions form declaration of intent to final closure and 10 days afterward) procedures (especially for police and I do not fear the armed forces).

If he has to shoot on the head (not below knee as stated) and eliminate them, be that so, we need to wean out bad genes before procreation and repetition for future generations to suffer.

Let me start with one of my school teachers (I was instrument in chasing him out from our school). 

He ended up in politics and cut a sorry figure. 

He published, university intellectual property belonged to the university as of his own.

Thanks to JRJ who demolished English department and Pali department, this guy became famous. 

This guy was recording the committee stage discussions of over 50 guys’ and girls’ intellectual property and he took the written notes home (never acknowledged as co-authors, which is a standard procedure in the universities) and published them as his own.

Stealing intellectual property at the highest level (not an offense in this country).

He ended up in quality control unit of the government and when I visited this institute many years after his retirement there was not a single balance (quality assured) in that unit (I verified personally).

Then to nepotism in style.

I was interested in becoming a reserved air force officer (seconded officer) as a young guy.

I loved flying or be with the flying guys, including drones and dragon flies.

I applied with few others and followed the papers to its final destination for selections.

I had all the qualifications including sports, cadeting, the height, the chest and the rest.

Sometime later, I heard a guy who was six inches shorter was selected (that to state that I am not a short guy and could clear a good distance in long jump; once I bettered the university (not national) champion’s jump by a few inches).

I did not pursue this any further and left this country in the first opportunity I had (but never to return home was in the back of my mind).

Many moons later, I met this guy who had retired as a brigadier but never served in combat zone (thank god they have to retire at 55 years).

I ended up as a flying doctor (that the level of my perseverance) in New Zealand. 

 

I chose the remotest hospital in there where local guys hate to serve with a good air strip and an annual air show.

 

New Zealand has over 20 off shore islands.

 

They may be bad in cricket but excellent in haka and flying small air crafts.

I joined a leading private hospital in Colombo (before my sojourn abroad) and took over the laboratory performing badly in techniques and performance. 

I told the management that the hospital should enter the National Quality Award and I will train them with the help of a quality guy (recruited by me and paid him hefty) and I need three months of training myself. 

I entered for a seminar organized by a lady, through a paper advertisement (forget from where she came, not from the standard bureau, I visited personally) by shear chance occurrence.

 

This where I got a chance to have a head on clash with air force guys who followed the same course.

They had just won the quality award.

The same year they lost all but one aircraft in combat with LTTE in Jaffna.

 

I told them you don’t practice what you preach and surely you should practice quality (never to lose one), at least with foreign aid.

They did improve drastically some years later.

I was happy then, that I never got a officer batch to adorn, myself.

I took a little bite at the expense of the trainees.

Suffice is to say they became pals.

My teacher did not have quality.

The air force did not have quality approach and probably army in the distant past (used to kill JVP guys) did not.

The standard bureau did not.

The private hospital did not.

University did not.

Within three months I transformed the Unit to be the best in Colombo overtaking the rival laboratory run by a guy (not a doc) from Kandy.

I checked quality procedures with a Singapore institute.

A guy would go to Singapore every Friday (chemical tests) fly back on Saturday and would also purchase the best equipments available at that time (training done by the company who delivered the gadgets).

I was lucky to join the university under Professor Ranjith Mendis and twisted him arm to introduce Quality Teaching in Peradeniya.

We established a Quality Forum, it went into defunct state within three months of Rail becoming PM under Chandrika.

 

Now my grouse with the Ranil Wicramasinghe who like JRJ wants to destroy the universities (not only Pali and language departments, which JRJ initiated) is that he replaced Professor Ranjith and also the university reforms envisaged -long term- by the team of University Dons.

 

He put a stooge with no knowledge in Quality and University Education as the UGC Chairman and his selection of Ministers of Education is arbitrary.

Good guys are leaving and bad guys are coming to roost.

By the way I visited the private hospital years later for courtesy call and sadly quality had a nose dip with an Indian guy running the place.

Punchlines, Punch Bags (Boxing Bags). Punch Balls, Kick Bags and Kickbacks with Punch and Judy

Punchlines, Punch Bags (Boxing Bags). Punch Balls, Kick Bags and Kickbacks with Punch and Judy

Posted on July 3, 2010

Election is all over and every conceivable lie had being utilized for gains.

It is miracle that I survived without hearing loss since the decibel range was higher than the pitch I was used to.

Sometimes I think it is a blessing to be either deaf or blind or both.

Since I am not either this is to revive Punch and Judy not in his style but in boxing style.

It is strange to note that Punch and Judy characters never used Boxer the kids friendly dog nor the the real boxing characters like Cassius Clay (Mohamed Ali), probably fearing American backlash.

I am writing this not expecting any kickbacks from any living soul or any British soul sent to hell by Punch but I have to use English for the strength of the Punch but in boxing style.

I am not even light weight and not even super flyweight to have the physical (I was super bantamweight when I was abroad and having being here for over 5 years gone below the fly weight category without even having a crash course in dieting) presence felt in the ring.

I have to use the English punchlines (send our Buddhist MPs including monks to heaven – not to hell like in UK for them to evoke blessing for the millions of voters who are practically missing a meal-according to health Ministry statistics they never starve; they actually follow the Buddhist monks principle of eating once a day to go to heaven.

Sri-Lanka is not the heaven or paradise that it used to be.

The boxing categories including light weight was used by me to address the issue I have with the Microsoft / Open Office Office Package/s which is /are always super heavyweight and tax my computer’s limited resources including RAM.

Since I use Linux for my work I do many things (unlike Microsoft Windows) once at the same time (watching Football World Cup-not cricket now- do a distribution download while I do some pep writings like this) and the speed is a factor I rely for efficiency.

I use Abiword Light sometime which is portable too.

I have extended this to my Linux100 writing elsewhere in the Google’s blogspot- just type asoka and paraox- you are instantly there and I want the Linux Developers to produce Light Weight (700 MiB. Middle Weight is 1700 MiB and anything above is Heavy Weight (especially the commercial versions that tax resources even at boot time) and sometimes useless to say the least.

Just to take some respite from somewhat taxing job (100 is a big issue at my age, even though I have already 200 distributions in my USB hard disc) of testing and writing reviews for the wider web users.

I take life at an easy pace now!

To begin with my Punch Code (in computer terminology) we must have a nurse and a doctor appointed to the parliament.

The should weigh all new MPs (do not do that with the old foxes they are too heavy that the spring of the balance will break without any spring of surprises) now and every three months over the next 6 years and send that data to the Central Bank / World Bank and the WHO (Sinhalen whoooo) as real data.

They must be categorized according to the weight class of the boxers and see how they progress from flyweight to super heavyweight both in weight and money in no time.

Real progress of the country.

My argument for this is that our parliament truly represents the wishes of the population in real terms and numbers. 

It truly feel the pulse of the people and rule of the law but not the rulers image.

If we have donkeys in this country surely they should be represented there.

Then we must have an annual contest in front of the Diyawana Oya and get Indian actors to come and face them weight by weight.

Our voters can be used as the Punch Bags or Boxing Bag (it is done almost everyday if you look at the government TV Channel).

It is worth while that they must send a random sample of weight from school leavers for comparison.

But I think that is a waste since our Central Bank has the knack of manipulating any real data into abstruse elements for it to be presented at the Budget at any time of the day or night or if necessary for IMF’s consumption.

But my real punch line is not for the new MPs.

It is for the Ministers who were newly appointed.

It looks as if they are used as the Punch Bags especially the Foreign Minister.

I do not wish to tell who uses them as the Punch Bags.

It is a top secret except for one who is always vociferous in Sinhala for the cameras and destroy anything foreign except the oil he wears on his head.

If seems that boxers use kick balls and kick bags.

I like both of them (kick bag and kick ball) and in football style I can kick them in their vestiges!

Asoka

3rd July., 2010

To Hell or Heaven

To Hell or Heaven

Posted on December 23, 2011 

It is said

That when

A Sri-Lankan

Plans to go abroad

He becomes secretive

And almost paranoid

Does not tell anybody

Of his intentions

Lest somebody pulls a string

Under the carpet

To stop

His endeavour

But

Once he is abroad

And found

A filthy dwelling

For habitation

He is in all but praise

Of the new found

Hell sans freedom

Wants all his fellow beings

Left behind

To come, join him

In misery

And share his chores and concerns

I am told

This is so

In the Middle East

Or else as

A refuge

In the West

But,

What is significant?

And the most compelling fact

Is that

When one goes to hell

He makes sure

All his fellow beings

Are pulled out there from here

Like a magnetic attraction

To share the misery

But,

By chance

If he found

A decent and healthy place

As a habitat

He writes home

In shame and disregard

Of the place adopted

Lest he has

To share

The wealth and happiness

Of the New Found Land

This is not

In anyway

A warning for anybody

Who wishes to go out

And explore

The Sri-Lankan

Who wish for divine intervention?

All the time,

End up in hell instead

But,

When one goes to heaven

They go there all alone

Simply because

Increasing the numbers there

Would be antagonistic

To the Zero Growth Principle

Propounded by me

Here and now

The propensity

Adopted by,

The Sri-Lankans

Who are already there

Established in position and fame

Is truly different in magnitude

But,

Buddhist anthology and tradition,

Is the “Kalyana Mitta”,

The true friend who helps

The upward bound

Of beings

To high heaven

Come what it may

Now and always

Sans boundaries,

Of colour, caste, creed or class

Sadly.

It is known for its absence

In the modern world

Of material gain

Is it asking too much?

To go for zero growth

In activity, mobility and expansion

To save our mother nature

Using the eye of wisdom

To see and vision,

The guiding principle

Is “Small is beautiful”

“Less is more”

In Nature

To know this

The man doesn’t

Need a brain as big as

The nature has endowed

Upon him

To apply

The simple principle

Of cohabitation with

Mother nature

The mother of all

Passing the Baton and the beating the Police Baton Polla

Passing the Baton and the beating the Police Baton Polla

This piece is bit spicy.

We have moved from the community spirits of passing the baton (responsibility) to beating the baton (iron fist of the police) mentality.

It is all due to family brandism and now the baton is passed exclusively within a family.

This in addition has mutated to passing the buck dualism.

From DS it passed to Dudley.

Thanks to vociferous left Dudley left politics and lived up to old age as a common man.

JR was in the background and was incubating hate to the entire nation.

Real destruction started with SWRD who introduced racism and religion to politics and sadly Sirima took the baton after his demise and even the army was brought into the forefront to destroy JVP.

People were killed in the bread queues with socialist not having a recovery program to fill the empty coffers.

Manioc was the staple food of the poor.

Nobody helped except perhaps China with rice (started from Sir John Kotalawala)

Sir John left to UK saying it was far better to hunt foxes than doing politics in Ceylon.

It was then lovingly called Ceylon.

Only one who did not have a formal family (he may have fathered out of wedlock).

JVP was an aberration in our politics (one phrase is enough to describe it in entirety).

Ranasingha (called running (duvana) president by the LTTE) Premada having used army to throttle JVP extended his hands to LTTE and programed his own death.

JRJ was in between and introduced a bizarre constitution of his family.

His son was a STF man and is no more.

Anura to Chandrika was family brandism with a arm twist.

Chandrika twisted the arm of his brother and continued to cajole with the defunct left.

That is the period of anarchy in this country.

Unfortunately I was abroad and returned to see the rejuvenation of this country.

I was proved absolutely wrong.

The last stage of the family brandism is now in display.

We thought we reversed the trend in 2015.

MS who took the baton turned backwards on the masses and went backward and handed over the baton to the last man in the relay team.

He has a family but he could not brand it quick enough.

What an upshot and RW was passing the buck of the central bank and still have to form a family of his convicts.

Then the son of Premadasa is going to take the family baton in style and I bet he would fail (by ruining the party his father started by eliminating Gaminie and Athulkathmudali and many more).

While all these happening another family is benefiting while doing sweet nothing (except stirring racism) in the process but wanting to go back to beating the Police Baton Polla mentality.

We use the baton as a polla to hit or slavery and not as a proverbial relay of responsibility.

Reality

This is a lengthy answer for one of my friends.

Reality

Too many questions in one go.

To begin with there is no unifying theory of everything.

Steven Hawking tried all his life and he failed.

Newton's gravitational theory is wrong.

Dismiss it outright.
There is curving of gravitational force (it is not straight).

If we formulate Multi-Universe (not single Universe) the gravitational force will be different in each one.

Einstein was close enough but he was restraint by the Church.

He has to invent the Big Bang (to go along with God Creation)

He formulated the Dark Energy to establish a constant but did not elaborate on it.

Space and time was described as a fabric (by Steven Hawking (Who? I may be wrong) not as curvature.

Now the bombshell.

Matter is only 5%.

Dark matter and energy is 95% (just similar to genetic cord less than 5% is read and others dormant-why?).

Hubble is the first one to describe redshift and that the Universe is expanding..

He thought it was at a constant rate but the current understanding is it is accelerating fast and widely.

My contention is that disorder is PRIME and order is RARE (except in Biological systems).

It is on that PRESUMPTION (not a theory) I expand the discussion.

At a particular point of rapid expansion matter will disappear and gravity cannot hold onto matter.

Then there are black holes with enormous gravity (let us say big eater) that will eat up every possible matter it encounters.

That is the other end of the spectrum (it is not linear by the way) contracting universe.

I believe nether expansion theory nor contraction theory explains the current state of affairs.

We need to study other galaxies (on top of our space fabric and below) and formulate new mathematics and expand on Einstein's efforts.

Space and time linear model won't help.

That is why Steven Hawking suggested Imaginary Time.

Now another bombshell of mine in summary.

There is nothing called SPACE, it is a self grandiose model to visualize Reality

Space is immediately occupied by some form of energy.

They had to formulate nuclear forces for atomic theory.

Dark energy for universe was Einstein's only entry without explanations.

Dark Energy and Dark matter are REAL but we have not yet visualized it to understand their workings.

We are visual model thinkers and limited by three dimensional view of reality.

We cannot understand fourth or fifth dimensions.

Mathematics describes at least 13 dimensions.

Reality is not constrained by dimensions and we will never understand (not even by meditation practice) Reality.

So accept our inborn LIMITATION of thinking capacity.

So I do not bother and pose a question and have a hearty laugh.

Laughter (my domain is satire) is the best medicine of all.
Just laugh at our ignorance and enjoy the little present or Now Now we have.

Continue the Course Correction, Already Started, Without Fear

Continue the Course Correction, Already Started, Without Fear

Can we do that?

Yes we can.

Just take examples from the animal kingdom.

Ants and spiders are very clever.

They have a strategy and weapons.

They never use the weapon of fear first.

Approach of the animal kingdom is very simple.

When they are confronted with they do not attack first.

They pause and assess the pros and cons quickly.

They take a slight cause correction, knowing very well that may be wrong.

Then advance slowly until the angle of diversion is large enough.

When they are safely away they accelerate at rapid space until the energy of fear that initiated is exhausted.

Then they take a pause and correct the course diversion (going for food or prey) and advance.

Humans have lost this trait by wrong examples, particularly in Ceylon.

We have advanced just enough to avoid counterattack possible.

What we need is slight course correction and advance at easy pace to the desired goal.

Fear has lost its value, since it was used inappropriately and in large quantities in the past.

But there is still a long way to go especially in the legal sphere.

Politically there is no retrogression.

It is counterproductive but progress is historically and metaphorically slow.

Perseverance is the correct strategy.

Order of Disciplines

Order of Disciplines

Philosophy is the First Order Discipline.

Its asks the appropriate question at the appropriate time.

If the wrong question is asked (Does the God really exist or is he the creator?- only he no she) one is beheaded 2400 years ago.

If you DO NOT ask this question NOW you are considered as a fanatic.

Atheists have not resorted to beheading strategy since they are still persecuted by the Church.

The second order discipline is Science.

Science is still evolving.

It has not grasped even the 5% of the total.

If one considers matter as 5% and Dark matter as the rest 95%.

The third order discipline is religion and it is redundant.

Why?

It cannot provide answers to neither the questions raised by philosophers nor science.

That is the bottom line and its threat to the survival of the human species is real.

Imagine a high priest having the nuclear bomb arsenal for his disposal.

He would detonate it for easy passage to heaven.

In defense of Darwin

In defense of Darwin

There are number of salient points that were not available to Darwin that cannot be ignored.

They did not come by chance.

My premise is that evolution brought order to the world (universe) without them

There was economy in participation.

Assimilation of two carbon units, twenty amino acids coded by a few purines and pyrimidines, about 20,000 variants of structural proteins with only levo-rotation (no dextro-rotatoion of sugar molecules) are convincing evidence that it started at one point in modern evolution but continued albeit slowly.
 

But nitty gritty of evolution and diversion of species were determined not by nucleus but by mitochondrial evolution.

Mitochondria were very resistant to mutation and they occur once in every 3 to 5 million year intervals.

When that happened drastic changes happened to the primates (erect posture, language acquisition and larger brain) in evolution.

How it happened in an ovum is a mystery by all accounts and we do not have mitochondrial data to evaluate.

For example we have giant mitochondria in salivary glands and in yeasts.

Yeast mitochondria can hijack nuclear DNA and that is one way of mitochondrial evolution.
 

Mitochondria evolved by endosymbiosis.  

Mitochondria originated by a endosymbiotic event when a bacterium was captured by a eukaryotic cell. 

The organelles have far fewer genes than an independent bacterium, and have lost many of the gene functions that are necessary for independent life (such as metabolic pathways).

Why only 20 amino acids not 24 or 40 amino acids?

There is a natural selection strategy of amino acids, what Darwin postulated, without even having a microscope or genetic code.

A really a great thinker.

"The research helps us understand how positively charged peptides could have formed on the pre-biotic earth," says Moran Frenkel-Pinter, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech and first author of the paper. Peptides are made when two or more amino acid building blocks link up, leading to the proteins that make up every organism.
Leman, Frenkel-Pinter and many other scientists in this field find it strange that every living thing on our planet forms its proteins from the exact same set of 20 amino acids.

Why that specific set?
Scientists know there are many more amino acids out there.

In fact, meteorites with up to 80 amino acids have landed on Earth.

"In the prebiotic Earth, there would have been a much larger set of amino acids," says Leman, who also is scientific collaborator at the Center for Chemical Evolution. 

"Is there something special about these 20 amino acids, or did these just get frozen at a moment in time by evolution?"

The new study suggests that life's dependence on these 20 amino acids is no accident. The researchers show that the kinds of amino acids used in proteins are more likely to link up together because they react together more efficiently and have few inefficient side reactions.

In defense of Darwin

There is a sinister attempt in the past and in the present to discredit Darwin, mathematically.

Simply because he challenged the Church’s single model of creation which is outdated by million (billion of biological evolution) years of human evolution.

Church’s evolution is little over 2400 years and is statistically insignificant in years.

Let me say who I am first.

A pathologist and a critical analyst in data, particularly in Linux.

Luckily I went into research well past my 55 and my supervisor was 10 years younger and he was interfering with my work (actually my writing skills).

I still do not know why.

I called a meeting and unless he stops interfering, I am going to ditch my formal research into the dustbin and got up and walked towards the bin.

Finally I ditched him and made alternative arrangements.

My research was on morphology of placenta, there was nobody in Ceylon who had done any work on placenta.

That is why I chose it, for application of formal (it became extensive) research tools.

Statistics in particular.

I mastered statistical tools (borrowed from a Japanese guy) while doing the research.

Luckily my real teacher, the late professor of Pathology Victor Tennakoon had warned me of the outcome of any investigation.

He said without using (long experience over 40 years) any statistics you would discover only 20% of the new and we already know 40% and the rest 40% will never be known.

My gut feeling was that we can hit 90% based on the premise of 50% genetic and 50 environment influence.

Glad to say, I had to revise my premise having studied a book “statistics in biology” which is totally different from just the numerical statistics.

The writer of the book had studied things similar to what Darwin had observed in his long voyage of 5 years in the Beagle.

That book’s interpretation was similar to my professor.

Roughly 30% genetic, 30% environment and 30% unknown (please do not apply god to this portion, it is generally 100% God intervention), 10% as design error.

In my study figures were 28% (environment or diet), 32% genetics and 40% unknown (what my professor told me empirically, 25 years before I ventured into my research work).

I simply disproved God’s 100% perfection as far as human birth is concerned.

When Darwin recorded his data Genetics was not known or in existence.

Mendel’s plant (he was a priest) observation (pea) was published in early 1900.

Darwin delayed his book simply because Church was on his back.

This may be true for Mendel, too.

The Church’s orthodoxy was at stake by these two men of science.

I say Darwin was a Modern Thinker.

Just see what happened to Bertrand Russel.

He was persecuted by the Church and the British.

He was declared dead by the Church while hiding (suffered what we used to call double pneumonia) in China in 1920.

He survived due to nursing care of a good British Nurse.

The Church was flabbergasted.