genes, the right wing and a factitious stereotype on the way to cologne

I remember reading an article not so long ago about a specific gene that had been identified, named the KDM5A gene. The functionality of this gene is to encode one enzyme (with a complicated name, of course) which, it was discovered, helped in controlling the increase and decrease in the quantity of certain proteins in our cells, which in turn reflected the progress of the day from the time we wake up, until we again sleep at night. Why this suddenly came to my mind two days ago, was due to the astonishing fact, that during my trip to Cologne, I was again and again woken up by - well -  myself, just in time to alight from the train at the right station. Get this - I was supposed to exit at the Augsburg Main station at 3:27 AM. I sleep off, and - boom - precisely at 3:24 AM I wake up. Just pure chance, you might say. But wait, it does not end there. I sleep off again in the next connecting train as well, and at exactly 4:15 AM- I wake up to exit at Treuchtlingen in two minutes. And it happens again for all my next four connections. With incredibly precise time keeping (by my body) I woke up within 2-3 minutes of reaching each destination. It felt as though there was some alarm clock inside of me, and I just had to remember at what time I had to get off next, and lo and behold, I would wake up just in time for it. Of course, I don't have any idea whatsoever at all whether this is in any way related to the gene and enzymes I mentioned above. Nevertheless, I feel it is pretty astonishing that our body can keep such precise times.

Speaking of keeping precise times, one of the stereotypes which has stood for a fairly long time, and perhaps in a broad sense accurately as well, is that the Germans keep precise times. It is in my experience during the time I have been here that the public transport system in Germany does not do exactly that. Take for example the Munich public transport system. During off-peak hours, if you are a visitor in Munich, you will be amazed by the down-to-the second precision by which trams, buses, the underground as well as the suburban trains arrive and leave. However, come the peak office hours and it is an entirely different story. The on-road transport systems and the suburban trains especially, never arrive at their scheduled times. Of course, it is not that they are delayed by an hour or even tens of minutes. They are late by a few minutes - and it might seem I am complaining too much. However, if you always try to plan the most optimal route with 1-2 minute interconnecting times as I do, you end up getting delayed if even one of the connections is late by a couple of minutes. Technically, I think that the traffic models that they use to design the network may not be suited to the peak - non peak flow of actual traffic; but that is besides the point. The Deutsche Bahn, on the other hand, is actually well and truly quite a villain in this regard. Long distance trains are especially almost always delayed from a few minutes to even hours. My latest experience, on my way to Cologne, I had one train from Frankfurt on to Koblenz cancelled after being delayed for the good part of an hour. Ofcourse, this particular train was not run by the DB - it was a private company - but the point still remains. On my way back too, I noticed that almost all trains from Cologne were delayed by a few minutes up to even hours. A Chinese couple whom I met on the platform and who had their train delayed by an hour or so were quite worried whether they would catch their connecting train to Frankfurt airport, from where they had a flight as well. I am not sure whether they got useful assistance, if any at all, from the DB folk. I am actually quite surprised that the Germans, although I have heard them talk about it, do not really seem to care too much to do anything about it - or at least, I am not aware of anyone initiating a complaint or something of the sort on DB. All in all, when it comes to the Deutsche Bahn, the precise time keeping nature of the Germans is nothing but a factitious stereotype.

Of course, when it comes to spreading stereotypes and prejudices, I think the media in general, and the electronic media in particular, including the social networking sites play a very important role. And this can be either way - to quash them, and especially if you are not very open-minded - to reinforce them. Take the case of how the right wing is portrayed in the left/liberal media for example. You might wonder if everyone who holds a sort of right wing view is stupid or bigoted. There are right wing nutters of course, but I would think that the distribution of people across the political spectrum from one extreme to the other should follow something similar to a bell curve. Thus there should be an equal number of left wing nutters as well. I am reminded of some people back in Kerala. Coming back to the point - even though most places in Germany are extremely safe by any standards of comparison, if you read the liberal media - especially the online English versions of the Der Spiegl or the copy and paste source TheLocal, it might be quite easy to form the opinion that far-right violence is quite common in Germany. But I have never felt insecure in Germany. I have been to lonely places in the middle of the night, and never felt unsafe. However, on the way to Cologne, early morning at the Treuchtlingen station, I happened to share the platform with a group of guys, who were five to six in number and fully drunk. They were well built and wore military type khakis. Their heads and faces were fully shaven, except for a tuft of hair at the centre of their otherwise bald heads. Two of them held dogs, tethered to leather leashes. The dogs themselves looked particularly sinister, one of them looking at me with what seemed to be a menacing smile. The station itself was completely deserted and not exceedingly well lit, and I could not see anyone else in any of the other platforms as well. As it were, these guys were minding their own business, of course, and smoking some cigarettes, and I now wonder whether in such an inebriated condition as they were, they could have noticed anything at all, let alone me. But for some reason, which is not very clear to me now when I think about it, I decided it was best to leave them alone in the platform and move to the underground common area until the train arrived. I am not sure how much effect the media had on me on taking that decision.

A global warning

Much has been said, and is being said about this phenomenon, if you can call it that, called global warming. Hence I have decided that it's time that I also took a stand; as little as that is going to change anything, it is something that I can do, and there seems to be nothing better to do anyways.

The world has spent so much of its time on this - so many discussions, debates, articles, protest marches, new laws, tv room discussions, news paper editorials, parliament disruptions, research, accusations, counter accusations - the list is endless.

Unfortunately though, in my opinion, most of the people who have been saturating our media and our lives with their bickering and brawling about global warming, have been aiming their fists at the wrong opponent. Having seen many such debates, and having read so many such articles, I have to say, it makes me very sad to see that even many extremely intelligent scientists on either side of the argument fail to realize, that global warming as an issue, is not as much a dichotomy in environmental science, as it is in risk management.

Let me try to explain that statement with a simple example. Consider somebody who is thinking about taking an insurance. A middle aged man, for example. A family man, the bread earner, who is thinking about insuring his new house. Now obviously, he is in no position to predict what will happen in the future. A fire may destroy his house. Vandals may attack his house and burgle it. These are crises that can happen in the future, about which the poor old man has no knowledge in the present. He may feel that such events are highly improbable to occur, but because he is wise, he understands the risk, and the consequence of it and the price he would have to pay in case the fire did occur. And he takes the term policy. This is what risk management is all about. Willing to lose the cost of the insurance to guard against the risk and the bigger price one would have to pay if that risk did turn out true. The wise man did not waste effort debating and fighting with his wife whether or not a fire will occur; because no matter how much he debates on the chances of a fire gutting his house, it would never change anything, and he will always be in the dark regarding the chances.

And that is exactly what all these environmentalists and politicians and scientists seem to be doing. Debating on and on whether the fire is going to occur or not, and not thinking about the insurance. Because let's get the facts straight. As far as I know, the global debate on climate change really started seriously in the 1980's, when scientists started observing the results of a lot of research around the world - credible results - that seemed to indicate that the average temperature on the surface of the earth has been increasing since the 1850's or so.

Now that is a fact that everyone agrees upon - that the average temperature of the surface of the earth is increasing.

All the debate is about whether human activity over the past century has had any sort of effect on this temperature rise. To take one side of the debate, are scores of hundreds of scientists and scientific institutions, with the IPCC as the flag bearer, who vehemently argue that the amount of green house gases that we humans have injected into the atmosphere during the past century or so has resulted in the temperature rise. The IPCC, in its third assessment report in 2001, and its first since the Kyoto protocol, adhered strongly to this view, by publishing what is now very famously known as the 'Hockey stick graph', indicating that the global temperature was always lesser and fairly constant over the past millennium, while it is suddenly increasing since the turn of the 20th century. Also, many computer models exist of the weather pattern on the earth, which seem to indicate drastic increase in global temperature in the near future.

The other side of the debate is taken up by people who are branded by the general media as the 'skeptics'. These people do not oppose the fact that global temperatures are rising. But according to them, the hockey stick graph is a just a farce, and this increase in temperature is not something new to the earth, but it has happened in the past. They say, the earth was going through a mini ice-age till the start of the twentieth century, and this increase in temperature is natural and has nothing to do with human intervention or increase in green house gases. Hence they argue that man-made global warming is a 'myth'. And statements like it is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people".

Even though I would like to say that I am a neutral observer, I actually feel a bit inclined towards being a skeptic. I personally agree with many scientists on the unpredictability of the weather system. I believe it is too chaotic and complex to be understood completely and predicted using computer models, no matter how complex they are. Also, I don't buy the IPCC's claims. I believe that there is enough credible research, even out in the public, to atleast question the theory that global temperatures have increased only since the advent of the industrialized man in the past century.

But that is where my journey with the afore-mentioned skeptics ends. Even though Crichton's idea never ceases to amaze me, I am not sure anybody is intentionally trying to perpetrate a hoax. The fact of the matter is, nobody knows how the future is going to pan out.

That is to say, no matter somebody is a skeptic or a believer, the only way to know what happens in the future, is to get there first. You can be satisfied seeing your computer churn out ones and zeroes about what is going to happen in the future, but there is not enough certainty in it for countries to make policy decisions costing billions of dollars based on that data.
Also, as a non-believer, you don't have anything to prove that the present rise in temperature is not due to human intervention. Just because you have data to show that the earth was warmer in the past, does not prove that the present warming is also fully due to natural causes.

Thus the only logical conclusion I can see in the above debate, and what everyone knows, is that there is no point in debating whether something will happen in the future. Because we just don't know the future.

We must realize that we are in the same position as the guy who took an insurance for his house, not knowing whether something would happen, but knowing that something can happen.

Thus, the believers should change their stand. They should not try and convince the world that man-made global warming is a reality. They should tell the truth, that it can be a reality, but which actually they cannot predict for sure. But if it does turn out to be true as they believe, its going to turn out very bad.
The skeptics should realize that they may be right, but they may also be wrong. And the price that the world is going to pay if man-made global warming turns out to be true, is so huge that it is far better to spend some money now to prevent the disaster.

Thus once people start realizing that there is really no point in arguing on the course of the future, I hope they stop debating on it, and choose the one thing that can be done. Insure ourselves - act and force a policy change.

What harm will happen, if we reduce our pollution a little bit anyway. :)

The Noryangjin Buddha

The fish market in Noryangjin-dong is world famous, for they serve various exotic dishes like sashimi and ikuzukri. Even though I never had an opportunity to visit the fish market as such, I have passed through the place perhaps many a dozen times.

The Noryangjin metro station, lies on line1 of the Seoul metro. While going to Seoul station from the South, it comes just before you cross the Han river to reach Yongsan.

The Noryangjin-dong area is one of the comparatively lesser developed part of Seoul. Thus, even though it has its own fair share of high rises, it cannot be compared to the nearby areas of Yeoido or even Yongsan.
Hence the metro station itself is quite small, without the usual shopping mall, posh stores and costly restaurants, it is only basically a platform and a roof.

I have passed through this station many many times. I don't exactly remember from when, but for the past many times I have been through this station, I have started noticing an old white building adjacent to the station.

Now, the building itself is nothing much to talk about. If I remember correctly, it is a three storied structure, with its age showing clearly on its outside walls, with the white paint missing in many places to reveal the mortar and brick beneath, and huge cracks running along the walls, threatening to tear the building apart, and iron rods protruding from the roof, as though they are crudely designed lightning conductors.

For the past few times I have passed through this place, this building has come to my notice; not so much for its architectural genius or its aesthetic appeal, but for three paintings that hang on its outside wall.

These three identical paintings, that adorn the wall of the building, which is visible from the train, are hung just below the windows of the first floor, in a neat row. The paintings, which appear to be as old as the building, are drawn in grey canvas, and have the picture of Buddha.

Now, of course, in a country like South Korea, where approximately half of the religious people are Buddhists, it is no big deal to see a painting of Buddha being hung outside a house.

But these paintings have struck me,each time I have seen them, which I have now come to call 'The Noryangjin Buddhas'.

First of all, the paintings are those of a very young Buddha, if one knows the story, perhaps that of Gauthama the prince, rather than Buddha the enlightened. Thus this Buddha is not the mature omniscient man, who has found all answers and is in deep thought or in meditation, but that of a young prince, who is asking many questions, and hoping to find answers.
Which is why, perhaps, the paintings depict Buddha in a posture that is perhaps very rare for Buddha to be depicted.
This Buddha is not meditating, with his hands in a dhyana mudra, nor is he sitting or standing with his hands in an abhaya mudra. These are the common postures we see Buddha being depicted. But the Noryangjin Buddhas are different. It is perhaps the only representation of Buddha which I have seen where the face of a young boy, with long curls, with his pensive eyes looking upwards in deep thought. The head, little tilted towards the left, and the eyes looking upwards, with the hands not depicted, left to be interpreted as being wide open, welcoming all.

Which brings me to the exact reason why I am now looking forward to observe the Noryangjin Buddhas again. They distinctly remind me of Jesus Christ. The posture, the look and face-cut. The long hair. Add a beard to the person in the paintings, and they will resemble 'the anointed one'.

May be this is just my imagination pulling tricks over me, but it does give something to think about on those long monotonous metro journeys ;)

My rendition of the Noryangjin Buddha

vertigo

The setup was basically very simple. It resembled a gigantic swing. There were two crane towers from which a passenger car with two seats was suspended using elastic cables, the other ends of which were attached to huge machines, on either side of the towers. Basically this machine would stretch the cable to produce the elastic force necessary to catapult the seat, together with its couple of passengers, into the air.

Adrenaline already pumping from our previous ride, and even more so, after watching somebody else do what we would be doing in a couple of minutes, I perhaps mistook our hearts pounding for a distant drum beat!.
Anyhow, we had taken the tickets, and now there was no turning back. Even after we saw the reaction of the present sufferers on the tv screen.!!

Finally it was time. It was our turn now. We approached the seat.

The guy in the United jacket, who ran the ride, instructed us to remove any loose items we had with us. Which meant, everything in our pockets. Purse. Tickets. Money.Batteries!. Even the ear-shield for the cold!
All set, and we approached the seat. The seat was now fixed to the ground, using what was probably an electromagnetic latch, and was just big enough for one person to sit fairly comfortably.

The guy who ran the ride, fastened our seat-belts. He pulled down the safety harness and locked it. We were to hold on to it for our dear lives. A camera was pointed to our faces, for others to see and enjoy our reactions.

****
Lorenz has said, that a small change in initial conditions can result in perhaps a cataclysmic crash of the system. I wondered if I was keeping my leg in the correct angle :P.

I could guess that my co-passenger was actually perhaps ten times as tensed as me. :P :P :D

But we were all set.

The machines started whirring, stretching the cables.

One guy behind us, whom we couldn't see, and perhaps would never see :D started counting in hangul.

"sette..."

We could hear the whirring sound of the machine, and see the people watching us.


"dul...."

Tension gripped us, we couldn't even pray.
Our fingers automatically clutched as hard as they could onto the safety harness.


"hana..."

We could perhaps have heard our hearts beat, but we had become oblivious to everything except that voice behind us.

A second could not be any longer.

We were just sitting there, waiting to hear him say it.

"GOOOO....!!!"

The click sound of the latch, and that was it. We felt our seat being pulled up.



****

Darkness. Pitch black.


For a moment I had closed my eyes.

I opened my eyes, and it was fantastic.

We were moving towards the sky, and at what speed!!. We were literally being catapulted upwards. The air resisting our motion, striking against our face with good force,as we were flying. We could see the sky, and nothing else. Oh my!!, am not I lost for words. It was nothing sort of beautiful.


Then came the pause.

The tiny second. The little moment when we stopped. Fifty meters up in the sky, and we were still. The world was in suspended animation before us. It is interesting, how much you can observe in a tiny second. The huge roof of a factory in the distance. The ferris wheel. The people below us. The trees in the distance. The birds flying. Oh, it was beautiful.

It is brilliant how the world works, isn't it?; you are actually flying towards the sky, and a moment later you realize you are now tumbling towards the ground.

We were doing exactly that. Tumbling towards the ground. Free fall. Accelerating freely at nine point eight metres per second squared. The wind pushing against us. It was chaos. Our seat was rotating. We were rotating. The whole world was rotating in front of our eyes. One moment the sky was in front of us. The next moment the ground. Then the sea and the port, albeit upside down. It was utter chaos. Disorder, and disorienting. It was unbelievable, and yet it was brilliant.

Finally, we stabilized. We slowed down. We got our bearings right, and faced the correct direction, towards the horizon. We were calm. The adrenalin was pumping out. The cables were now relaxed.
Finally we reached the ground.

****

I don't exactly remember whose crazy idea it was, but one of us told the guy in the united jacket for one more ride, free!!

And lo and behold, he agreed.

So we went through the motions again. But this time there was lesser unpredictability, but the fun was no lesser.

I have to concede that this catapult ride was on of the most 'funkk' experiences I have had. But I heard bungee jumping was even 'funk'ier. So next time I am going to try that. ;)

And it would have been even more interesting if we could have seen our reactions on tv.

Perspective

He sees two guys. One tall, the other taller. D&G etched on one forehead, of course he may not know enough English to read the letters.
They are walking. Towards him. Towards the platform. Towards the train. Mad. Death by suicide can occur through better ways. Why? Ofcourse they are tourists. Why would a tourist want to die under a train?

He thinks.
Stop. Red light. 500 passengers. Let them wait. The lives of two people are more important than a score of minutes of a five hundred.

But why are they doing this? why do they have to walk on a track on which a train is standing, ready to leave. Why? how can people become so stupid?

Oh for Christ's sake, can't they at least walk faster.

He has to stand on the platform in the freezing cold, windy evening, when the sun has almost set.

The guy with the D&G cap doesn't seem to even care that a train is waiting to run on the track. Of course he is not blind to not see a bloody train in front of him. The arrogant *%*@@&.

Thank God, at last they have reached the platform.

His shift would end once this train leaves. Only for these two fools.
He thinks.
People can be so senseless at times.
Let them come, and let the train leave. Enough delay already.
Of course he would get angry if the two people told him they were looking to reach a shopping mall.


What happens when you stop a bullet train for almost the time in which it would be a hundred kilometers away, and then you have a bit of free time, and suddenly you are reminded of your inactive blog,but you are very lazy to think of even something stupid, let alone write it, and you also believe in thinking in somebody else's perspective ?

A post that is to be deleted

I once read the story of this boy,who lived somewhere in China, or Japan, or thereabouts.

But come to think of it, where he actually lived, or perhaps who he actually was, or what he actually did and all such seemingly apposite questions are actually quite irrelevant.

Oh,now actually all of it seems so stupid, what I did, I can almost laugh at myself. I have since thought over it, and I feel so dumb about it, and very very stupid. Everything I had dared to think, interpret, to not hide a truth, perhaps even slightly hope for, how grossly wrong, on hindsight,how comically emotive!!

I think we are actually blessed with such a big cranium so that conscious intelligence can presage each and every one of our thoughts, words and actions, and not blind instinct. Otherwise one is living in utopia.

Anyways I was talking about this boy. It seems he too had his share of aspirations, passions, opinions and perceptions,and also his principles. He made it a point to always work hard in his life to keep a really open and logical mind towards everything, tried to keep his mind free from any sort of prejudice and tried to understand how everything in the world really worked.
He often gazed at the sky, and it never ceased to amaze him. Its vastness, how it was both so empty and so abundant at the same time. How it would sometimes seem melancholic, sometimes spirited, sometimes thunderously active, otherwise pensive. The sky seemed to have as many emotions as there were.

In the sky,he admired the moon. He didn't know a lot of things, the boy. He did not know much about the moon, for example. But he always admired it truly. He admired it for the radiance it had that brightly over-shone the other stars in the night sky. He always felt that somehow he could see the moon truly as it was, even though it was far far away, and mostly it chose itself to be perceived by the world in a way it wanted, only partially hidden behind the grey clouds.

But he had his feet grounded, the boy. He never had any ambitions about reaching the moon one day.

One night, in the lake beside his house, the boy saw the moon. The bright, beautiful, radiant moon in his lake!!. What was it trying to do?

At least for a moment, the boy selfishly thought what he should do.Should he jump into the cold water? Won't his parents scold him if they came to know he jumped into the cold dark water, going after the moon? what will his neighbours think if they hear a loud splash in the lake in the middle of the night??

But once this moment of selfishness passed, the boy bravely decided, hell to the rest of the world, and blindly jumped in.After all, it was the moon which had come to his lake. He thought only about it.The moon which he admired, and adored, had come to his lake.He even asked himself whether he had at least for a moment, may be even unconsciously taken his feet of the ground.
So he jumped in. Into the big lake. In the dark night, into the ice cold water. He just couldn't help it.

When the cold water splashed on to his face, the harsh reality woke him up.

The moon had never come to the lake.

The moon was always up there in the sky, where the boy had always seen it. Whatever he had seen in the lake, was simply its reflection. What the boy thought that the moon had come to his lake, was merely an illusion. Something that had deluded the boy.

The boy was now alone in the water. It was freezing cold. The boy was shivering. And he was sad that the moon, for which he had jumped into the water, was never there.
He swam back to the shore, back to his house.

Then he dried himself up.

Then the boy realized how silly he was. How could he possibly imagine that the moon that was miles miles away, would come to his lake. The boy felt so stupid. How grossly he had misinterpreted a simple things as the reflection.

But thankfully the moon seemed to have pardoned his little folly. As, even now, the moon shined brightly over the boy as he sat beside his lake.

Even if you always try to make intelligent choices, sometimes you blindly trust your instinct. When that judgment you made based on your blind instinct turns out to be grossly wrong, you find yourself in an awkward situation. Sad at first, but when you think it over, you feel really stupid you didn't think about it first. Really, really stupid, you can laugh at yourself. Or , at least smile :).

When I am typing this, I am becoming such a selfish and egoistic individual. Character traits I never wanted to develop. Otherwise I would have heeded to demands to not type this post, not only from me...

the club

there is this club called Last-Minute-Rush-and-Almost-Get-Fished-Up club.
An analysis of the activity of two prominent members of this club , a couple of days ago when they were trying to catch a train, gathered the following data.

Members of this club do not plan anything early, and leave most things to the last moment, and the rest to chance.
Members of this club realize on the day before their 'planned' trip home after many months, that tickets are required for travelling.
Members of this club contact all their contacts, and their friends who have contacts, to somehow arrange for a couple of last minute tickets.
Members of this club realize on the afternoon of the day of their journey that they, with the help of their good friends, have procured three times the number of tickets required!!
Members of this club stay in their office in CVRaman Nagar till 1-30 pm when they have to catch the train from majestic at 5.
Members of this club, when they finally leave office at half past one, suddenly realize that they have not yet packed. One member rushes to his house in JB nagar, and the other to his uncle's house in white-field.
One member of this club suddenly remembers he has some work left, and leaves his half packed bags behind for half an hour more in office.
The other member of this club rushes back from whitefield to get to his friend who has returned to office only to discover that the back-gate of the tech-park remains closed in the late afternoon. He also realizes that there is hardly ninety minutes left for the train to depart.
This member of the club also suddenly realizes that he has to make a small trip till inner ring road to return the keys of his uncle's house.
By the time they have an hour to catch the train, these two members of the club are ready to catch the auto to majestic.
Members of this club never pay an unfair amount to auto-wallahs, even if time is not there on their side.
Members of this club, after they board an auto, suddenly realize they have to get to an atm to even pay for the auto.
Members of this club coax and persuade and threaten and plead to the auto driver to get them on time to the station.
Members of this club somehow board the train when the light is turning from yellow to green.
One member of the club suddenly realizes that the train travels via alleppey, instead of kottayam, where he has to meet somebody.
This member of the club suddenly decides he would get off at ernakulam and take the next train to kottayam.
The other member of the club faithfully bids farewell to his friend at ernakulam station at 530 in the morning, and successfully reaches trivandrum on time.

Please feel free to join this club if you are not already a member of it. ;)