Turning a New Page

My son has a bout of wheezing, and I had to take leave from office to be with him.

While he was taking rest, I had some quality time which I made use of to learn some html so that I know now about how to give links within a page.

I should thank my son for this, but he won't be thanking me,

Yesterday he bought some creamy chocolates because he wanted to see what they were giving free with it. He took what he wanted and gave the chocolates for me to eat.

But I felt sorry, the chocolates looked so great and tasty, I felt sorry that he couldn't eat them because of his allergy.

So I told him to eat them, and promised that nothing untoward would happen. He liked what I said, so he went to a corner and ate it silently. Sure enough, he vomits in the morning, he has a cough, and now he can't go to school. So, out of sympathy for him, I am giving him company.

Now, having learnt that part of html, it gives me more freedom in this blog. The posts need not be long-winded commentary on a bookmark any more.

What I intend to do, is to share with you whatever I find interesting while keeping my comments short. The posts will be more varied, and should be more interesting to read, let's see.

So, in this post, I might go on about how I use html to give links inside a single page, a verse of mahadevamalai which a friend of mine wrote, about sniffing rats that find landmines and tuberculosis, and a woeful blogpost about the harmful effects of Google.

Good, right?

Now you can click whatever you fancy, and move on- There is enough for you to spend your two to five minutes here, so you won't be sorry you came to this blog (My experience of browsing is that I spend more time searching than finding- so, you have at least seven links here. This should keep you occupied!).

Okay first, about that html>.

What I did was this:

I took the tutorials at . They were easy. It took about thirty minutes for me get the idea.

It is a bit laborious, but the brain work is not too demanding, and the results look promising.


Now on to Mahadevamalai, This verse is translated by my friend Sadasivam, and I am posting it here without this permission. His work is right now at the draft stage, I hope to see him complete it soon.


The One,

Who is the sole, ubiquitous, and eternal,
truth of the entire variegated Universe,
Who is the ebullient joy of realization
felt in the hearts of the great Sivayogis,
Who shines as the supreme silence of pure Being
free from the clash of dualities,
Who is the unsullied Truth
of the Grace of His Transcendental Being,
Who is the unbroken joy of the Great Beyond
shining as the One substratum
and the informing Light of all mental states,
Who is the great Awareness of space
remaining unknown by all phenomenal knowledge,
Who shines in the lotus of the heart
of all devotees as great bliss,
I bow down to that supreme Lord, Mahadeva.



From the supreme Lord, Mahadeva to sniffer rats is quite a distance. But then, they do save us in ways we ourselves can't. I think these rats do the work of dogs, but rats are easier than dogs to maintain and transport, may be that is why they are training these rats to do this.

According to Boston News,special squads of raccoon-size rats are sniffing out lethal explosive devices buried across the countryside in Mozambique. And in Tanzania, In neighboring Tanzania, teams of rats use their twitchy noses to detect TB bacteria in saliva samples from four clinics serving slum neighborhoods. So far 25 of these trained rats have identified 300 cases of TB cases in the early stages- so early that lab technicians failed to detect the germs in the specimen given to them.

Bart Weetjens, the Belgian who conceived both these programs, says, "It's fair, I think, to call these animals 'hero rats,' "

These rats are proving better than us humans in what they do. It seems that a single rat can inspect 1,000 square feet for landmine in about 30 minutes- that's at least a full day's labor for a human working with an electronic detector at terrible risk.

And when it comes to biochemistry, they are no slouches there, either. They evaluate saliva samples at a rate of 40 every 10 minutes; that's equal to what a skilled lab technician, using a microscope, can effectively complete in a day!

And what takes the cake, or should I say cheese, is their integrity:

"For both TB and land mines, the rats are trained to respond to the sound of a clicker; when the rat makes the scratching motion that means it has detected an explosive or the odor of disease, the handler or trainer responds by snapping the clicker, which means a nut or fruit is on the way.

So why don't the animals just scratch every few minutes to win a treat?

"That would be human behavior," said Weetjens. "Rats are more honest.""

Find more of this in Boston News, of course.


And finally, the blame-Google business, Thanks to Google, it might happen, possibly in 2028, that a computer might say, "Neural Machine 1528 is your new president"- and we will obey that command like it was telling me to turn left at the next light. And when the computers take over, we won"t even know- they will just triple every calculation and we will be prehistory within 24 hours. Want to know why, and what Google has to do with all this? Please visit World's Dumbest Man