Friday, October 16, 2009

Today is National Boss Day


Today is National Boss Day, and everyone seems to be blogging about that.

Well, my first boss was a timid man, and as timid men go, he was absolutely ruthless when he got a chance to do some slave driving.

He was horrible as a manager, and when on an occasion when he had to do something unsavory and palpably unethical, he told me, "I am just a post-man delivering to you what I had to. Don't mistake me."

He could have refused to do that, but he didn't- well that cured me of all ambitions, because I am not a brave man myself.

Here's giving him thanks and wishing him some boldness to help him get some peace of mind.

Photo Credit: tizzle



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Today is World Spine Day

spine hereImage by damclean via Flickr

Today is World Spine Day.

What are you going to do about that?

I am too hunched up to straighten up all of a sudden, so-

I've decided to spread the word.

Straighten up:

This is my part to it: Straighten Up!

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Thursday, October 15, 2009

Three of the best



Take a look at this page:


cute photos, like in a fairy tale.


(photo credit: Oddity Central)


Mao's grandson is a blogger- but what he blogs about is no surprise:



Mao in 1946 in Yan'anImage via Wikipedia



Mao's grandson (“Mao Zedong’s grandson by his first wife, the country’s CPPCC representative,) is a blogger, and these are the titles of his posts:


  • Grandfather [i.e., Mao Zedong] Has Had the Greatest Influence on My Life
  • The New Development of Mao Zedong’s National Defense Strategy
  • I Hope the Nation’s First Aircraft Carrier Will be Named After Mao Zedong
  • The Ancestral Home of My Grandfather Mao Zedong
  • Wen Jiabao Reports Many Aspects [of life] Make Use of Mao Zedong Thought
  • Remembering My Grandfather Mao Zedong on his 115th Birthday
  • We Love the Shaoshan [Mao Zedong's birthplace] Cuckoo
  • Researching Mao Zedong’s Strategic Attack Strategy
  • Brief Discussion of Mao Zedong’s Strategic Attack Strategy
  • Mao Anqing: Remembering My Father Mao Zedong
  • Following in My Grandfather’s Footsteps

What would our Nehruji's Grandson blog?
Interesting thought.






Fly on the wall, bomb-sniffing bees- the world is what it was.

A hive of Apis dorsata (giant honey bees) I ph...Image via Wikipedia


I don't believe a word of this: Bomb Squad Bees.

"Our “sniffer bees” are honeybees trained to recognise a specific odour. They are trained using a well known Classical Pavlovian conditioning protocol – a simple association of a smell with a food reward. The insect is exposed to the odour in controlled pulses and simultaneously rewarded with sugar syrup. After three to five presentations and rewards the bee is trained. When the bee detects the odour it expects a food reward and extends its tongue (proboscis). This response is a reflex action (Proboscis extension Reflex, PER) and is not consciously controlled by the bee. A “panel” of bees can be trained in as little as a few hours to remember a particular odour for several days."







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The River of Life

I once translated this into Tamil, wrote it in a paper, pasted it on the thick cover of a notebook and hung it on a wall- it is nice to see that someone liked it enough to put a quote of it up on his blog:

A Few Words:

"Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. By flowing with life I mean acceptance---letting come what comes and go what goes. Desire not, fear not, observe the actual, as and when it happens, for you are not what happens, you are to whom it happens. Ultimately even the observer you are not. You are the ultimate potentiality of which the all-embracing consciousness is the manifestation and expression.
---Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj





"

Suggestions


This is a blog you must, must, must subscribe to:

Just one post a day, and it is hilarious:

Enjoy!


 "

- Question Suggestions.
"

Three of the best

This is one amazing article:

"“This life of separateness may be compared to a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.”
- Buddha quotes, Think Exist.com



Now, why am I quoting this?

This is why- who is the most dangerous killer of men, and the least feared of all?

Again, this is one good article:


Not an easy post to summarise: this is about death, and causes of death.

Predators like lions and bears kill us, and we are rightly afraid of them. But what about mosquitoes? Bacteria kill more of us, but we don't fear mosquitoes. Is that because we don't see the effect directly after the bite?
And then what about man? More people (and other animals) are killed by man than anything else. There is evidence- castles, forts- everywhere in our cities.
But then, what about you?
Yes, you!:
" Worldwide, deaths from suicide now outnumber deaths from war and homicide together: the World Health Organization estimates that each year around one million people — predominantly men — kill themselves."
Is this anything to do with the way we have civilised ourselves? Cities, gadgets, rockets…
" Something about the way we live means that, for many of us, life comes to seem unbearable, a long, melancholy ache of despair."


(Photo Credit: Limbo Poet)




Problem with corruption: it is never done with.

Chicago Freight tunnels: enthralling reading.



Read this- has lessons for how our past comes back haunting-


Past comes haunting: Illegal freight tunnels:

"The groundwork for the Great Flood of 1992 was laid a century before, when the Illinois (later Chicago)Tunnel Company built a series of semi-official, semi-clandestine tunnels under almost every street downtown. The tunnels were only supposed to house telephone cables, but in a nice Pynchonian twist, the operators covertly decided to install a narrow-gauge railway for delivering freight, as well."
And its effect:
"The abandoned freight tunnels filled quickly, soon taking in about a quarter of a billion gallons.Water passed easily through old concrete barriers and soon began to fill the city’s subway system tunnels as well. Businesses that had forgotten about their illegal freight-tunnel hook-ups a half a century earlierwere shocked to find their foundations filling with up to forty feet of water…."
Good reading.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons.





Remember the LHC?

Don't worry, it won't destroy the world. In fact, nothing can destroy Earth- our future is right here, taking care of  itself, reaching its long, quantified arm to sabotage, terminate LHC:



This is our last, but the most important pick:


"“For those of us who believe in physics,” Einstein once wrote to a friend, “this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion.”",

Which means, "…equations work just as well, Dr. Nielsen and others point out, if the boundary conditions specify a condition in the future (the apple on your head) instead of in the past, as long as the fundamental laws of physics are reversible, which most physicists believe they are."
So?
The LHC is doomed.
" A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather."


Photo Credit: nomeacuerdo










Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change

Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change:

"Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be one of the largest-ever social change events on the web."

Do something, guys!

Post something to raise awareness of environmental degradation- I've decided to walk short distances (at least for the next few days), and change that filament bulb in my kitchen (before Sunday this week)...

What will you do?

To save the earth, I mean.

Here's a useful link you want to look at:

Warmlist


http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm