Recession - Get rid of it from your mind

I created a new blog to record my views and thoughts on Leading and managing business . Just made the first post there and have reproduced the copy of the same here as the topic is current is quite relevant here.

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The times we live in are more challenging for the simple reason, globalisation has set its roots firmly in India and its effects are clearly felt. Last year, around this time, we were ebullient with the economy predicted to touch 9% growth for the second consecutive year. It however fell short of that mark, but pessimism was not in the air. People were still talking about expansions and capital investments. In plain words demand was not expected to recede. But today recession is the word that tops the list of words we Indians utter. Be it for lack of business or for joblessness, "it's recession, you know".

Surely India is hit by the recession in US, UK and the lot. Our exports are nearly 25% of our GDP and the sector employ(ed) nearly 150 million people. Only agriculture employs more people than export sector. Foreign Investments, both the hot (FII) and hard (FDI) varieties, are not forthcoming and external borrowings have become costlier. Despite all these we still are growing and expected to grow at 5 to 7% for the current fiscal. There is no negative growth, not even for a quarter, to justify claims of recession in Indian economy. It has definitely slowed down compared to 9% growth we achieved for fiscal 2006-07 but nowhere near negative growth.

I came across Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen's comments on recession in yesterday's edition of The Hindu. He is on the dot when he said,

"No amount of financial stimulus into the global economy is going to rid the world of recession. We have to get rid of this mindset...the mindset of recession. It's a matter of psychology than economics."

In India we haven't yet felt the real effects of a recession but already think we are in one. It may be true of export sector but then if that sentiment is allowed to be carried over to the rest of the economy then we would surely experience recession.

Indian banking system is awash with money as very little of it moved out as loans and advances during the last few quarters. All the money released by monetary interventions by RBI are lying with RBI itself in various forms. The 'Recession' disease killed the risk appetite of our bankers. As one bank manager put it, even new proposals have trickled down. Whom to blame? The banks? The Government? or The businessmen? Surely the hit to the export sector will have its effect on ancillary units that depend on them and those failures would rankle the bankers and the businessmen. But then there is still room to move around, not that one is trapped in a 2x2 warp.

Businesses may have made the mistake of reckless investments when the picture was rosy. Businesses would be wrong to avoid prudent investments when the picture is not rosy. Every time presents an opportunity. Never is the time apt to innovate and improve than these tough times. The slowdown will not last if we keep the word 'recession' away from our minds and make business decisions based purely on the merits of each case.

Bishops Should Not Do Stunts with Kids

Bishop arrested for child chimney pot stunt- Yahoo News!

What did the good bishop do?

Bishop Jonathan Blake of the Open Episcopal Church helped his sons, Nathan, eight, and Dominic, seven, to the top of the chimney of their two-storey home.

Horrible. What sin did the two boys commit to be punished thus?

Not punishment. It was all in a good cause. There was a competition in their school- find the most unusual place to study a book. The good Bishop thought reading a book called,"The Killer Underpants", sitting on top a chimney on top of two storeys (more than 40 feet high) would be a sure winner.  He took a photo.

Brilliant!

Not so. A neighbour called the police, and the police came and put the bishop in the cage in the back of a van and kept him in a cell for a night.

Poor man...

Yes, "I was taken out in handcuffs in front of the whole neighbourhood while my children were in tears. I was kept in the cells without any information about what was taking place from 7 pm until 10 am the following morning. I am appalled and incredulous. I would never have imagined in a thousand years that this could have happened," Reuters reports Bishop Jonathan Blake as saying.

But may be, the Bishop should not have risked the life and limb of his children?

The Bishop has a strong line of defence to that. The children were wearing safety harness, and climbed the chimney through a flat roof at the back of the house!

I suppose it is the turn of the school teacher who organised the competition and the police officials to get into the cage and get driven out of the town!

NASA Risk-map Successfully Predicts River Valley Fever Outbreak

Scientists at NASA have used satellites to draw a risk-map of areas that will be infected with River Valley Fever, and their predictions of the outbreak of RVF- River Valley Fever, have proved successful.

(Image copied from internationalspacemission.blogspot.com)

Do we need to worry about RVF?

No, and yes!.

No?

RVF is usually mild on people. Only a small percentage of us develop a much more severe form of the disease. They are affected with ocular (eye) disease (0.5-2% of patients), meningoencephalitis (less than 1%) or haemorrhagic fever (less than 1%). In all, less than one per cent of the RVF affected people die. WHO

If so, why 'Yes!' ?

Rift Valley fever mostly afflicts livestock- cattle, goats and sheep, resulting in a nearly 100 percent abortion rate in these animals. Its outbreaks periodically cause economic devastation in parts of Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe. Bioterrorism experts warn that its introduction to the United States would cripple the North American beef industry. (-Science Daily). If USA feels that way, the we in India have more to worry.

Why India?

Rift Valley Fever Virus is endemic in areas that have heavy and sustained rainfall, and mosquitoes are there to do the dirty work for them. The virus is carried by mosquitoes and is transmitted to humans by mosquito bites or through contact with infected livestock. So we can guess the disaster RVF will bring to India if it ever gets here.

If NASA can prevent this RVF, ISRO can. But, what did NASA do?

Usually, ISRO does what NASA has done, right? No offence meant, just a dig.

It happened this way-

During an intense El Niño event in 1997, the largest known outbreak of Rift Valley fever spread across the Horn of Africa. About 90,000 people were infected with the virus.

A Science paper in 1999 described the link between RVF and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). ENSO is a cyclical, global phenomenon of sea surface temperature changes that can contribute to extreme climate events around the world. For some areas, the warm phase of ENSO brings drought, while in some areas like the Horn of Africa, ENSO leads to above-normal rainfall.

Excessive, sustained rainfall awakens the eggs of mosquitoes infected with Rift Valley fever that can remain dormant for up to 15 years in dried-out dambos—shallow wetlands common in the region. The link between the mosquito life cycle and vegetation growth had first been described in a 1987 Science paper by co-authors Kenneth Linthicum of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Compton Tucker of NASA Goddard.

Given the threat posed by RVF after the 1997 outbreak, U.S. Department of Defense Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System funded the formation of a working group in 1998 to see if predictions of an outbreak could be made operational.

How did NASA draw the RVF risk map?

Anyamba and colleagues at NASA set out to predict when conditions were ripe for excessive rainfall, and thus an outbreak. They started by examining satellite measurements of sea surface temperatures.

The greatest indicator of a potential outbreak is the measure of the mosquito habitat itself. The researchers used a satellite to measure the landscape's "greenness." Greener regions have more than the average amount of vegetation, which means more water and more potential habitat for infected mosquitoes.

The final product is the risk map for Rift Valley fever, showing areas of anomalous rainfall and vegetation growth over a three-month period. The forecast is updated and issued monthly as a means to guide ground-based mosquito and virus surveillance.

Does this work?

As early as September 2006, the monthly advisory from Anyamba and colleagues indicated an elevated risk of Rift Valley fever activity in East Africa. By November, Kenya's government had begun collaborating with non-governmental organizations to implement disease mitigation measures—restricting animal movement, distributing mosquito bed nets, informing the public, and enacting programs to control mosquitoes and vaccinate animals.

(All this information comes thanks to NASA)

The threat of Global Warming:

Professors Ernest A Gould of Oxford University, and Professor Stephen Higgs of University of Texas Medical Branch studied the effects of climate change on viruses that have been in the news during the last 10 years: West Nile, Chikungunya, Rift Valley Fever and Bluetongue.

They have concluded that during the past five decades there have been important changes in the way arbovirus diseases appear.

Since the movements and breeding of these arbovirus are greater in warm, damp areas, climate change, global warming, could lead to their migration to more places. -Fair Home

• Looks like there will be never an end to diseases, we conquer some for a while, but thanks to changes in population densities and distribution, thanks to change in climate and lifestyle- new diseases take control and strike out. But we are coping, that is what this NASA risk-map and its success shows, I feel.
  

The Collision of Submarines Underwater In the Atlantic

How could it happen? Two Submarines, British and French, collide under water in the Atlantic? Do they have lanes there? What happened? These were the questions I was asking myself.

What happened?

HMS Vanguard, the lead boat of Britain's fleet of four V-class submarines hit Le Triomphant, the flagship of the French nuclear strike force. Taken together, the two were carrying 265 crew and 32 intercontinental ballistic missiles.

What was the risk?

The two submarines were armed with nuclear warheads- enough to bomb Hiroshima 1248 times.

Try this for size:

The submarine was nearly the length of two football pitches and had nearly the height of a three-storey building. Yet it went undetected. -Thanks to -The Independent.

But how could this happen?

• The point of the submarines is that they should remain undetected. So neither boat will have been using active sonar, because that would have given their position away. Modern Western submarines are deliberately made very quiet in operation - so much so that they are very difficult indeed to detect using passive sonar. If both the submarines, Vanguard and Triomphant, were patrolling very slowly and listening as hard as possible they might still miss each other entirely.

• Submarines with nuclear warheads are built to be undetected. So it should come no surprise that it happened. US and UK trust each other, so they have set up a joint traffic-control system- this means that the submarines are given deconflicted, preplanned moving boxes of sea within which to stay. This avoids British and American boats crashing into each other.

(Obviously, this arrangement is not there between UK and France).

-Thanks to -Lewis Page at The Register..

So, even though this incident could have been a terrible accident, it is not a disaster, but in all probability, an unanticipated success!

Bloggers Beware- Your Linking Rights Are Under Threat

Soon, blogs of the kind we read and write could change...

Slate reports a case:

Jones Day is a law firm with 2,300 lawyers.

BlockShopper, the real estate news site, is a start-up with 15 employees.

The news site ran a headline reporting the purchase of a home by a Jones Day lawyer. Three months later it reported another such purchase. In both the cases, it gave links to the bio available in the website of Jones Day.

For some reason, Jones Day hated that.

They demanded that the news items should be removed.

BlockShopper refused.

Jones Day retaliated by suing BlockShopper for trademark infringement.

The judge was not sympathetic to BlockShopper. Unable to meet the six-digit expenses of arguing the lawsuit, BlockShopper came to a settlement.

As demanded by Jones Day, BlockShopper would link, but its anchor would be the full URL of the Jones Day website, instead of whatever BlockShopper could choose.

Jones Day has had its way, though in what way its trademark was threatened, and has now been safeguarded is not clear.

Wendy Davis, who wrote the article, points out 

• this threatens the right of Web sites to link freely.
  
• this signals to companies that they can force sites to revise their linking styles by alleging trademark infringement- Web publishers may have to spend significant sums to deal with this kind of litigation.
  
• Web sites could  be forced to use different linking protocols for every company they write about. Not only would they lose control over stylistic decisions, but accommodating a variety of individual requests could be unwieldy and labor intensive, which also means expensive.
• If sites really needed permission to link to others, the Web would be a very different place.  It's hard to imagine there would be a Gawker, or for that matter a TMZ, a Wikipedia, or anywhere else that embarrasses the subjects of posts.

This case is pending- a government lawyer in Sheboygan, Wis., has demanded that blogger (and political critic) Jennifer Reisinger remove from her site a link to the police department- JSOnline

This could get worse, we might not be able to link anything at all. Wikileaks.org has received notices from Scientologists, Mormons for publishing copyright material; the Mormons issued legal warnings to Wikimedia Foundation for linking  to the material in a WikiNews article. Wikimedia obliged. You can read this at FOXNews.com. 

How would such activities help democracy or free speech?

May be, NDTV should take note of this.

Jade Goody, Terminally Ill With Cervical Cancer To Go Live

Jade Goody, the "Big Brother" star has cervical cancer which has been diagnosed as the terminal stage of cancer. She is 27.  Her boyfriend, Jack Tweed, 21, has proposed to her on the eve of Valentine's Day at her hospital bedside. Her marriage will be telecast live, and in all probability, she will die live in our living halls.

Remember her?

Jade Goody, the reality TV star, hit the headlines for the wrong reasons in 2007 after she was accused of racism and bullying towards Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty when the pair appeared on Celebrity Big Brother.

The Situation:

Goody, 27, rose to fame through Channel 4 reality show, "Big Brother". She was first diagnosed with cervical cancer in August and had a golfball-sized tumour removed during a lengthy procedure this Friday. But unfortunately the cancer has spread to her bowel, liver and groin. Her condition is now diagnosed as Terminal Cancer: she has only months to live- "It's a question now of when and not if"

She will be survived by her two children, Bobby. 5 and Freddie, 4.

What Goody felt:

"I couldn't breathe when they told me. I just screamed and cried and said, 'Can't anyone do anything to help me?'" She was absolutely devastated.

Her legacy:

The children. She plans to make as much money as possible for her children. So she has opted to go for the live telecast of her marriage, and is sure to die on camera.

Are people ready for this?

One industry insider told the Daily Star: "Jade's wedding is going to be a real tear-jerker. Every magazine editor will want to buy the rights. The fact that she is doing it to raise money for her children makes it even more heartbreaking."

What is the justification for the live telecast?

She is doing this for three reasons:

• One: She wants to make as much money as possible for her children.
  
• Two: She says it will keep her busy, it gives her something to think about other than her cancer, and what's going to happen to her.
  
• Three: Since last August when she announced she had cancer, the amount of women having cervical smears has gone up over 20% right across Britain and that's something she's very happy about. She wants to raise awareness
  

"She said to her manager, 'Look Max, I'm hoping what happened to me won't happen to them. They didn't spot the cancer that was growing in me, these women will have the proper tests and it won't happen to them.' 

Quotes:

"You're a fucking loser and a liar. Go back to the slums."

To Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, on Celebrity Big Brother January 2007.

"Who is Heinzstein [Einstein]?"

"They were trying to use me as an escape goat."

"Sherlock Holmes invented toilets."

"Do they speak Portuganese in Portugal? I thought Portugal was in Spain."

"Rio de Janeiro, ain't that a person?"

Now that she has been sentenced to death, it is difficult not to feel compassion for her- some of us might even make fond memories of her...

(Content collated from The Independent, Guardian, Press Association and All Great Quotes )

Additional Information from Cancer:

Symptoms of Cervical Cancer:-

• Abnormal vaginal bleeding
  
• Unusually heavy discharge, whatever the texture or odour, you should consult a doctor if it gets heavy
  
• Pelvic pain that is not related to the normal menstrual symptom
  
• Pain in bladder or during urination- advanced stage when it has spread to the bladder
  
• Bleeding between regular periods, after intercourse or pelvic exams.
  

Mortality:

Cervical cancer contributes over 2.7 million years of life lost among women between the ages of 25 and 64 worldwide, some 2.4 million of which occur in developing areas and only 0.3 million in developed countries- Cancer Research UK.

Here is a blogger on living with cervical cancer. 

Alfie, Boy, 13, Is a Dad

(Update-28.3.2008:  I have been wondering why all of a sudden this particular post got more hits, and I find that poor Alfie took a DNA test that proved Alfie is not the father at all!- SFGate quotes Mirror. But I could not find the story there, it had been removed- probably because Justice Florence Baron has issued an order restraining journalists from reporting the story. I found that at The Canberra Times.)

 

The Sun reports that Alfie, 13 and Chantelle, 15 are parents: a baby girl, Maisie Roxanne, was born to them. It happened.

How?

Maisie was conceived after Chantelle and Alfie — just 12 at the time — had a single night of unprotected sex.

Is Alfie a good boy?

Denis, his father, says: “He could have shrugged his shoulders and sat at home on his Playstation. But he has been at the hospital every day.”

Okay, what are Alfie's plans for his child?

• "Asked what he will do financially, Alfie - whose voice has not yet broken - replies: 'What's "financially"?'"
• “I didn’t think about how we would afford it. I don’t really get pocket money. My dad sometimes gives me £10.”
  

What kind of a family is theirs?

Chantelle, her mother and her jobless dad Steve, 43, and her five brothers live in a rented council house in Eastbourne. They are on benefits.

Alfie's older sister Jade, now 19, also had a baby at the age of 13- Daily Mail 

Dennis, Alfie's father, has himself fathered nine kids and is off to a fresh start:he ran off with a 19 year-old teenager two years ago, when Alfie was 11, and is still living with her.

What next?

Penny, Chantelle's mother will claim a total of £568.75 a week, or £29,575 a year in benefits.

But what about Dad?

Denis says: “When I spoke to him he started crying. He said it was the first time he’d had sex, that he didn’t know what he was doing and of the complications that could come.

“I will talk to him again and it will be the birds and the bees talk. Some may say it’s too late but he needs to understand so there is not another baby.”

Yes, that is good thinking.

Rumours? 

Daily Mail reports that neighbourhood rumours are that Alfie is not Maisie's father at all.

"Sean Thomas, who lives opposite the Stedmans, claimed Chantelle had already had several boyfriends, who were allowed to stay over in her bedroom. 

"He said: 'She's been with quite a few lads. They are allowed to sleep over at her house, her parents don't mind. She is treated like an adult and can do what she wants.' 

"Another neighbour, who did not wish to be named, said: 'The Stedmans let the kids run wild on the street until all hours, they have no control over them.'

"A 17-year-old called Jake said: 'She knows lots of boys and never has the same boyfriend for long. Alfie lives with her and seems to think he's the dad but we all think he should have a DNA test.' "

Will Maisie see a brighter world?

• Alfie says, "I know I'm young, but I plan to be a good dad. I think we'll be good parents. I'll have to work extra hard at school."
• Chantelle says, "'When I was pregnant the police and social workers came to interview us and they decided that we would make good parents to Maisie. We will prove to everyone that we can be, and give her a great future."
  

But, oh yes, don't pick on them. There are about 40,000 underage conceptions in England (under 18, in case you are confused), and this is just one such case.

For the record:

Sean Stewart  is Britain's youngest known father. He was 12 at the time his soul mate Emma gave birth to their son. They split up six months later.

In case you are wondering what the grown-up people in Great Britain are doing, well you just have a look here

Life is good.

Pain in Life

Pain is in the nature of life- it is there in The Bible, it is the first of The Four Noble Truths of Buddha, and I have poems by Walt Whitman and Henry King that look at how it is...

(I have been thinking about writing about a poem in this Blog, but I hesitated that it would not fit in (surprise, surprise- does anything not fit in with this blog?). However it is true.

But now that Soulberry has so kindly queried why there should be pain in nature, it gives a perfect excuse for me. I am sure if he put his mind to it, Soulberry could explore it better than me, but since the point of this post is a poem, not one, but two poems, I will go ahead.  With thanks to Soulberry, of course.)

Pain is in the nature of creation, as I have said already (so that you could know what is in store for you here, and also to help Google  find this post)- "For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now."- Romans 8:22

And for Buddha the first of the Four Noble Truths is Dukkha: All existence is unsatisfactory and filled with suffering- "Now this, monks, is the Noble Truth of dukkha: Birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, death is dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair are dukkha; association with the unbeloved is dukkha; separation from the loved is dukkha; not getting what is wanted is dukkha. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are dukkha."

And Walt Whitman is silent as he confronts pain face to face. In the poem, "I Sit and Look Out", he writes,

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all

oppression and shame,

I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with

themselves, remorseful after deeds done,

I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying,

neglected, gaunt, desperate,

I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer

of young women,

I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be

hid, I see these sights on the earth,

I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and

prisoners,

I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who

shall be kill'd to preserve the lives of the rest,

I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon

laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;

All these--all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon,

See, hear, and am silent.

What does his silence mean? Is it that he is helpless? I think Waltman accepts that pain is inevitable- this does not make it less painful, of course. But at least he is aware of its universal presence. You show empathy with those in pain only in silence, what can you say to someone who is dying? (Cheer up! Tomorrow you are out of this!) I think silence is our natural reaction to pain.

But there is this poem I read which I liked, because it says something about life- that life is all about death, and for that reason, it ought to feel great.

This poem is by someone called Henry King- "A Contemplation Upon Flowers"

Brave flowers, that I could gallant it like you

And be as little vaine,

You come abroad, and make a harmelesse shew,

And to your beds of Earthe againe;

You are not proud, you know your birth

For your Embroidered garments are from Earth:

(Flowers come in, make a harmless show of it, and then go back to Earth. But what is brave and gallant about it- we will see. However, the point for us is their easy naturalness, spontaneity: unlike us, they don't dress up, they are of earth, living and dead).

You doe obey your months, and times, but I

Would have it ever spring,

My fate would know no winter, never die

Nor thinke of such a thing;

Oh that I could my bed of Earth but view

And Smile, and looke as Chearefully as you:

(So here it comes: the flower is perfectly at ease with whatever happens- it does not resist change "but I would have it ever spring"; it is not afraid of winter, the cold death "my fate would know no winter, never die"; I should learn life from you.)

Oh teach me to see Death, and not to fear

But rather to take truce;

How often have I seen you at a Bier,

And there look fresh and spruce;

You fragrant flowers, then teach me that my breath

Like yours may sweeten, and perfume my Death.

(Brilliant, right? Something better than brilliant, if you ask me. How long does a flower live? It lives in the shadow of death, as we do- but it has made peace with death, so it is always fresh and bright. Hence these great lines: "You fragrant flowers, then teach me that my breath/ like yours may sweeten, and perfume my Death". But the flower does not perfume death, its perfume permeates its life.)

A great poem with a great message.

Let me see. Flowers we have everyday. We get them, we enjoy them, we don't miss them because we know they will be there. Not the same with gold. Gold is good, but there is not much of it, and whatever there is, is liable to be taken away from us if we are a bit careless. Okay, they have value, but that point I don't want to see here.

What I want to see is, what is it? I have lost the thread.

Pain. Right, suppose you are a flower. Not a flower yet, but now a flower-bud. You are cosy, temperature okay, lighting okay, everything is fine. Then you flower. If you are a man you will say, how wonderful is this flowering! But you are not a man now, you are a flower. Something is pulling you apart, you are breaking down, and light is flooding in, and sound is flooding in, and heat is rising- you are torn apart: it is more like an explosion if you are a flower that is doing the flowering.

But yet there is beauty in it. When you think what a flower is, how vulnerable it is, you understand how precious it is. But it is strong. Its strength is in its weakness- it needs no props, it is okay to die, so chances are it will live long past the day we are gone. 

Just think a moment- if everyone goes away from your city, how long will it be before the wilderness overwhelms it? 

Life is like that- keep shuffling the cards and find new patterns. If you are something and something different happens to you, it might be difficult. But if you are the same thing- you are the mover and the one who moves, it is nothing. The Lion eats the Deer- but if you are the lion and the deer, what is the big deal?

There is a lot more to be said about this, but we have to shut up sometime, and this is it. For now.

Thanks for reading this.

The Love Life of Seed Beetles

There is something about the love life of seed beetles: the female of the species get brutalised when she gets laid, but still she wants more. Seeking to know why this happens, Claudia Ursprung of the University of Toronto Mississauga, put 79 female seed beetles in enclosures for eight days. Some were given solid and liquid food, and others just solid food.

You can guess what happened.

"We wanted to find out whether females were getting food or drinks from the ejaculated fluid," says Ursprung, and her suspicions are now justified: it is the dehydrated beetles that go for sex, reports National Geographic. 

There are two ways of looking at this:

• One is that it is an evolutionary tactic: the seed beetles live in a dry environment- "It is kind of like a bribe for mating, a way of ensuring that the female will produce offspring," according to Darryl Gwynne.
• The other is that since they can't store sperm because of lack of water, they want to get more numbers- "They may be remating for [more] sperm rather than water," according to Karim Vahed.
  

Whatever it is, let me wish you a happy Valentine's Day.

(Watcher, thanks for your comments. Inspired by your remark that this is not mating, I looked up at the love life of seed beetles- now I wish I had not.)

According to Cosmos, the male seed beetles have spectacularly harmful organs covered in sharp spikes, which "look like a medieval torture instrument" (there is a scary photo of it). These help the Male's chances of fertilizing the eggs by providing an anchor, but it causes injury to the private parts of the female beetle. They evolve some padding to protect themselves, but does it help?

Seems it does. The males with more spikes get good anchoring and seed more efficiently. The females with padding survive and produce more offspring, since the less endowed of the species are injured and drop out of the race.

More intimate view of these encounters are at Science News , where we find that a typical act of mating lasts about three minutes. It could extend more, but after three minutes, the female beetle starts to slam her hind legs against the male.

Helen Crudgington and Mike Siva-Jothy of the University of Sheffield in England, who did the experiment, went one up and removed the legs to see how long a male could go on. They got off only after six minutes.

In comparing the damage to the beetles, the longer an encounter lasted, the more rips and tears Siva-Jothy and Crudgington found in the female reproductive tract. And as additional evidence of harm, females that mated only once during the experiment lived longer than females that mated twice.

However tough it is, females of the seed beetles should count themselves lucky when compared with the bedbugs. The male bedbug organ look like a stiletto, and they literally use it as a stiletto- though the female reproductive tracts have external openings, the male bedbugs usually just stab through some spot in the body wall and let the sperm swim from there.


The abstract of the research paper, "Genital damage, kicking and early death" by Helen S. Crudgington and Mike T. Siva-Jothy is here at Nature:

"Because the costs and benefits of polygamy differ for males and females, copulation is not always a cooperative venture between the sexes. Sperm competition can build on this asymmetry, producing male traits that harm females, thereby generating coevolutionary arms races between the sexes. We have found that the male genitalia of the bean weevil Callosobruchus maculatus damage the female genitalia, and that females act to reduce the extent of this damage. We propose that these functionally diametric sexual traits form the basis of reproductive conflict."

What price love?

Epigrams

The art of the epigram is well alive and quite healthy.

A modern practitioner of this art is Siegfried, from whose blog I take these:

---

Fragmentation- We are divided. That's all we know.

- whoever said that

---

Keep believing in yourself-

Don't let people tell you what to think.

---

How to stop-

Just sit up or stand straight. Observe. Listen.

---

Looney Tunes

"I have no message for mankind."

-U. G. Krishnamurti

"Good, then try karaoke."

-J. Tourist

---

How to exploit the present-

Sell the Presence.

---

What is-

That's you and me. And them. Objects in consciousness or unconsciousness.

---

It is-

Life is here and now.

---

Enlightenment

Life is suffering.

- Siddharta

Life is impermanent.

- Adam

Suffering is impermanent.

---

What Siegfried writes reminds me of Dag Hammerskjold-  but more relaxed and happy.

Tony Wu of Smart Union

Some lives are extraordinary, and the life of Tony Wu of Smart Union is one such- read this:

Roots:

Child of two unskilled construction workers in Hong Kong.

Received an engineering degree in 1978.

Joined toy industry, and in 1995, set up on his own.

Growth:

Started as middleman, arranged for production of the inexpensive promotional items that are  given away by fast food chains.

Bought a shell company called Smart Union; from the profits, bought a tiny mainland factory in 1997.

Smart Union started out with production of cheap, injection-moulded figurines, then expanded to toys with mechanical and then progressed to toys with electrical parts.

In 2006, it raised $7m and the share price more than doubled in a year.

By the end of 2007, its sales were HK$1 billion- a relatively large firm by local standards.

Storm:

• Huge reinvestment to cover expansion in sales;
  
• Rising cost of inputs;
  
• Enforcement of costly labour laws;
  
• Appreciation of Yuan brings less income-
  

-Reduced profits.

• In 2008, abrupt tightening of credit- working capital of Smart Union reduced by half- Smart Union raises costly loans outside banking system.
  

The End:

In June, 2008, severe rains in Dongguan: floods sweep the city- Smart Union washed out:

More than HK$65m in inventory lost;

Rumours of closure- suppliers stop delivery, workers demand advance salary.

The firm practically shuts down in September, though it has heavy backlog of orders.

Moral:

"I learnt that without confidence, a business is dead", says Tony Wu, who, now out of work, has started on a doctorate.

His thesis is this: What does a company need to grow.

With plenty of thanks to The Economist, where you can read this article.

Fatwa against BSP's 'Jai Bhim' slogan

Express India: 

"A leading Islamic seminary has issued a decree declaring the BSP slogan of 'Jai Bhim' as un-Islamic and violative of Shariat.

"In the fatwa, the Dar-ul Uloom said that the slogan, invoking Dalit leader Bhimrao Ambedkar, was "against the Islamic law as the religion does not permit such a prayer for anyone except Allah"."

How's that!

President Obama's Prayer Breakfast

This is a thoughtful man: read this- President Barack Obama's Prayer Breakfast-

"There is no doubt that the very nature of faith means that some of our beliefs will never be the same. We read from different texts. We follow different edicts. We subscribe to different accounts of how we came to be here and where we’re going next – and some subscribe to no faith at all.

"But no matter what we choose to believe, let us remember that there is no religion whose central tenet is hate. There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know.

"We know too that whatever our differences, there is one law that binds all great religions together. Jesus told us to "love thy neighbor as thyself." The Torah commands, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow." In Islam, there is a hadith that reads "None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." And the same is true for Buddhists and Hindus; for followers of Confucius and for humanists. It is, of course, the Golden Rule – the call to love one another; to understand one another; to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth.

"It is an ancient rule; a simple rule; but also one of the most challenging. For it asks each of us to take some measure of responsibility for the well-being of people we may not know or worship with or agree with on every issue. Sometimes, it asks us to reconcile with bitter enemies or resolve ancient hatreds. And that requires a living, breathing, active faith. It requires us not only to believe, but to do – to give something of ourselves for the benefit of others and the betterment of our world.

"In this way, the particular faith that motivates each of us can promote a greater good for all of us. Instead of driving us apart, our varied beliefs can bring us together to feed the hungry and comfort the afflicted; to make peace where there is strife and rebuild what has broken; to lift up those who have fallen on hard times. This is not only our call as people of faith, but our duty as citizens of America, and it will be the purpose of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships that I’m announcing later today."

Obama finished his speech with these resounding words:

"So let us pray together on this February morning, but let us also work together in all the days and months ahead. For it is only through common struggle and common effort, as brothers and sisters, that we fulfill our highest purpose as beloved children of God. I ask you to join me in that effort, and I also ask that you pray for me, for my family, and for the continued perfection of our union. Thank you. "

25 Random Things About Me

Friskyphil is a blog I follow, and today I was surprised to see that he had posted "25 Random Things About Me". I learned much about FriskyPhil, such as this:

• He put himself through college by working as a butcher in a small grocery store, then found some employment in a pea cannery, drove a wheat truck, was a Cat-skinner pulling a hillside combine, and finally a combine man and crew boss. He earned a BA in Language/Literature.
  
• He mistook the aurora borealis for the Second Coming while disking in wheat stubble on night shift. He got down off the Caterpillar tractor and prayed for 15 minutes awaiting the Ascension before it dawned that he was witnessing the most elaborate display of the Northern Lights ever seen in Walla Walla, Washington.
  
• FriskyPhil is now a septuagenarian, who with the benefit of previous experience in IBM, produces and maintains websites as a Web-Servant for non-profit organizations on a volunteer basis.
  

Keep going Phil, I am glad to have found you, you are one of the people who make me happy...

But it was only later that I understood why FriskyPhil made that post when I found this report in  NYTimes:

"“It’s really interesting to sit there and try to think of 25 things that you’re willing to tell other people but that they don’t already know about you,” said Ms. Morgan, a health care industry publicist who has kissed 6 1/2 boys (No. 16), is legally blind (No. 19) and didn’t go to school until the fourth grade (No. 7)."

I am not in Facebook, so I did not know this- but apparently "25 Random Things About Me" is the lastest fad there. New York Times reports that nearly five million people have done this!

It also reports that in 2006, bloggers were listing hundred random things about themselves in their blogs, I was not here at that time, it passed me by, but now, following FriskyPhil, here is my 25 random facts about me:

1. I am five feet tall (not really, but somewhere around)

2. I have ten teeth in all (not really, but somewhere around, and it will soon get less)

3. My greatest influences are Ramana Maharshi and J.Krishnamurti (but they haven't changed my life- not yet, still waiting)

4. I am addicted to coffee (no acidity, not yet)

5. I am a self-styled homeopath (but an astrologer warned me that my horoscope predicts I could get holed up in jail, so I don't hand out medicines).

6. During college my favourite author was R.L. Stevenson. I read almost every play of George Bernard Shaw and the novels of Neville Shute.

7. I was one of the four students who passed the paper, "Quantum Mechanics and Vector Algebra"- there were about forty of us in our class. I failed in every other paper of the whole course.

8. My worst cricket moment of disappointment was when India lost to Pakistan in 'the last ball six by Miandad' match. But over time, I find the Azhar incident worse than anything. I can still argue for hours that he should have been allowed to play his hundredth test. Whatever the merits, I still get indignant when I think about the injustice done to him.

9. When I was twenty I got this job. It was a stroke of luck: but for that, today I will be dining on crumbs.

10. I hate it when I have to wait: it was worse when I was young. I would keep looking at the minute hand and it would never move. I think age has dulled my senses- now, I am surprised to find that more time had elapsed than I thought.

11. I get more angry these days than ever before- especially if I try to meditate. I feel some kind of emotional itch inside and explode ridiculously.

12. In high-school, I was a serious, passive kind of student. My friends called me "Buddha", and I was the one to carry reconciliation letters between sworn enemies. Yet, during the last year of high school, I fell out with two of my closest friends- and I could never talk to them again. They tried to be friends, but I did not relent. I regret it now, of course.

13. When Mandal Commission Report was implemented and people immolated themselves, The Hindu put on a high voltage biased coverage, I stopped reading it for a long time.

14. The one question that pops up is, "Which place is this place?". It is a kind of kaon, I think.

15. There was one high moment of spiritual grace. It happened on its own during sleep (not ejaculation or anything, I know the difference). It was a period when I was seriously into J.Krishnamurti and Zen books, I did Ramana's Self-enquiry for the first time while I was trying to sleep, and at three AM it happened. Satori!, I told myself. Now I am less disillusioned about this.

16. My memory was always poor- there were never many memories of past incidents that I could ever recall.

17. The little finger of both my hands are crooked- according to palmistry, I don't have any sense of justice: I think it is right in a way, I find it hard to come to a decisive judgment on any issue.

18. I am most happy when I can lie down undisturbed with four or five books by my side. Such moments have grown scarce.

19. I don't know how to ride a bicycle.

20. I like to walk. When I am stressed, or when I am excited, I prowl around like a caged tiger, okay, a caged cat or something.

If you are a blog author, and you happen to write something of this sort, please give me a link to it- I will come and look in.

Seven Marathons In Seven Continents In Five Days

Can you believe this? Richard Donovan, a  forty-two year old man from Galway ran seven marathons in seven continents in less than seven days: to be exact, within five days plus nine hours, he ran 295 km, flew 43,000 km.

“I think the biggest challenge really was coping with the different fluctuations in temperature,” he said. “Starting out in the Antarctic it was as low as minus 20 degrees, and later that day, in Cape Town, it was 28 degrees.

“Obviously there was a lot of sleep deprivation as well, and with all the travel, economy class, a bit or airline sickness, perhaps. Because I was having a hard time keeping down even liquids a lot of the time.

“But physically I’m okay. There’s no great pain in the legs or anything like that, but with the ultra-marathon background I know how to pace it carefully. It was hard at the end of each marathon, but at no point did I think I wasn’t going to actually finish them.”

 Read it here, at  The Irish Times.

And here, take a closer look at his schedule during those seven days.

Michael Phelps- Substance Abuse, the Problem That Won't Go Away

The problem of substance abuse has come to occupy the headlines, thanks to Michael Phelps, who was caught smoking marijuana. I think most of us believe that it is only losers that take to drugs, and the abuse of drugs is incompatible with a life of high-achievement. The story of Michael Phelps proves that sadly, it is not so.

Michael Phelps, who has won a record fourteen gold medals, was caught smoking pot/ marijuana when a newspaper in U.K. published a photo of him in the act. The picture was taken at a college party in South Carolina three months ago. Phelps acknowledged that the photo was true, and has apologised for his action. 

But consequences, once set in motion, can't be controlled- in the latest development, he has been handed a three month ban from swimming, and Kellog has terminated its contract to him. Bloomberg reports:

“Michael’s most recent behavior is not consistent with the image of Kellogg,” Norwitz said. “We’ve made a decision not to extend his contract.”

(Marijuana is an outlawed substance in Olympic sports. First-time offenders caught using it get a two-year suspension from competition. The drug is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, which sets rules and oversees testing for Olympic-level sports.)

Phelps has never has failed a drug test though he was once charged with under-age drinking and was sentenced to 18 months’ probation.

The story of Phelps is a sad one, and it is not hard to sympathise with him. 

Baltimore Sun defends Phelps, "baltimore's favorite son".  It asks what happened to Santiago Holmes of Pittsburgh Steelers, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Josh Howard and Chris Webber. Michael Phelps is apparently a victim of prejudice, but it makes a strong point:

"But we also know this is a country where more than 42 percent of adults say they've used marijuana at one time or another. That appears to put Mr. Phelps in the company of about 98 million Americans. Like it or not, it's a lifestyle celebrated in mainstream Hollywood movies and other forms of popular culture. And we seriously doubt the jails in South Carolina - or anywhere else - are large enough to house all the perpetrators."

It seems the President of USA, Barack Obama too has acknowledged that he had smoked pot, and this has not stopped him from being elected to the White House.

But some want Phelps punished, and with a vengeance: Stanton Peele in WSJ writes, 

"Today, not only is it illegal to smoke marijuana, but, most people are surprised to learn, the number of arrests for marijuana use and possession are increasing. In that bastion of liberal values and political views, New York City, close to 400,000 people were apprehended for marijuana misdemeanors in the decade ending in 2007. This was almost 10 times the number arrested in the previous decade. In 2007 alone, nearly 800,000 Americans were arrested for simple possession of marijuana, according to FBI statistics."

But here is the dismal truth,

"...83% of those arrested in New York City in the last decade were African-American or Latino. This occurred even though these groups, while underrepresented among college students, don't actually comprise the majority of drug users."

So arresting Michael Phelps would set a healthy precedent?

But what about Marijuana? Is it all bad? Well, BBC  reports  in its article about Rastafarians,

"Marijuana is regarded as a herb of religious significance. It is used in Rastafari reasoning sessions, which are communal meetings involving meditation."

The Rastafarians  describe Marijuana as the wisdom weed or the holy herb. It is seen as an aid  to heighten feelings of community and to produce visions of a religious and calming nature.

The  Rastafarians believe that marijuana use is sacred, and call it holy herb. They justify its use with biblical texts such as:

He causeth the grass for the cattle, and herb for the services of man.

-Psalm 104:14

Better is a dinner of herb where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.

-Proverbs 15:17

That might well be, but drugs are definitely dangerous. Yesterday, I read this article by Mike Atherton at Times Online  about Richard Austin, a promising all-rounder who played two test matches for West Indies in 1978 and then played three tests in Kerry Packer's rebel World Series cricket. He represented Jamaica in cricket and football and was a brilliant table-tennis player. 

How is Richard Austin today?  Mike Atherton writes,

"...he inhabits the Cross Roads area of Kingston in a triangle between Tastee, the patty store, the Texaco garage and Union Square, sleeping rough, begging and, when he is flush, getting high. He is high a lot of the time, says the man who runs the garage where Austin hangs out, but people are fond of him and enjoy his company, unless he is so high that he starts talking crazy."

Change.org  argues that the medicinal and recreational uses of marijuana should be legalised: the views both for and against can be culled from the numerous comments to that post.

Whatever it is, that the use of drugs such as Marijuana cause harm cannot be denied.

Marijuana.addiction info has a long list of the adverse effects of Marijuana, which includes-

• Altered motivation and cognition, making the acquisition of new information difficult 
  
• Paranoia 
  
• Psychological dependence 
  
• Impairments in learning, memory, perception, and judgment - difficulty speaking, listening effectively, thinking, retaining knowledge, problem solving, and forming concepts 
  
• Intense anxiety or panic attacks
  
• Enhanced cancer risk 
  
• Diminished or extinguished sexual pleasure.
  

The case of Michael Phelps brings to our consciousness the pervasive availability of drugs, and the temptation to try them because of permissive social mores. In the context of the India of today, we need increased social freedom, but there must be some limits.

But what the limits are, and how they are to be enforced is a dialogue that must involve  informed discussion, but not always- our various Senas have their own take on this. Whatever we think, it is better to accept that this mapping of social values is a fluid process in a changing landscape- any impatience will give way to tyranny and lawlessness.