PARKING 'PLAINTS? WHO CARES?

 


According to Prof. Simon Blackburn this is a foolproof formula for making your car fit in the tightest parking spots. So, my dear readers, add your measuring tape and the calculator to the survival kit you pack in the trunk of your car. Yeah, right! I can imagine what a help this might be when I am attempting to park in the narrow streets of New York City with all those cars honking behind me and the juicy epithets spilling out of their open windows.  Not for anything will I venture out measuring stuff.

TELL ME AGAIN WHY THERE IS NO CURE FOR CANCER

I was watching an episode of NOVA on television today titled “What Darwin Never Knew”. Actually, it turns out that there is very little that Darwin did not know. However, scientists can today provide evidence for the theories that Darwin propounded. They now have proof that all life is a process of evolution and natural selection. They even believe that all land animals have evolved from the fish. D-uh, isn't that what we Hindus always knew? They have compared the DNA of various species and traced the path of evolution.

Scientists can now study the genetic code of animals and tell which gene is responsible for a particular trait in that animal. The study of the DNA is fascinating. All genetic code consists of an infinite number of patterns formed by the arrangement of four kinds of bases—Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Guanine (G) and Cytosine (C). The particular arrangement gives us our unique traits. Cracking the genetic code has helped to isolate genes and their characteristics.

Researchers went back to the Galapagos Islands to do what Darwin did—study the different kinds of finches. They too found that the same species of birds may have different kinds of beaks depending on their habitat. What kind of beak they have is dictated by the DNA. The DNA has the ability to switch off certain genes and turn others on. The gene switches are not genes but can activate the genes that are responsible for the trait. Phew!! I hope I got it right. Nobody knows yet what makes the genes turn on and off. The most amazing part of this research was that all embryos—of all animals look alike initially—they compared the embryos of reptiles, birds, fish and mammals. It was really hard to tell them apart. The human embryo had vestiges of gills, and reptiles of limbs. The gills developed into the three inner bones of the human ear and the limbs of reptiles just vanished. The gene switches get active after a certain stage and turn things on and off in the embryo.

Given all this, why hasn’t anyone discovered what causes cancer? Scientists can cut DNA, inject glow into a fruit fly from a jelly fish and create new species of fruit flies—but they cannot isolate the trigger that produces cancer? I find that very hard to believe. They have isolated 23,000 different genes in the human body. They know which protein is responsible for muscle building, which is responsible for hair. What’s left to investigate?

Furthermore, it is scary that new species of animals can be created in a laboratory. How long will it be before we produce real life Frankensteins?  Can science fulfil its responsibilities towards the human race and its role on the planet or will it become an uncontrollable instrument of mutilation/mutation?

IT'S ALI-I-I-VE, EEEET'S ALIVE!!

Scientists discovered a "significant" amount of water- 25 gallons of it--on the moon when the Lcross satellite crashed into a crater near its south pole making a large hole 60-100 ft wide.  The water "gives future settlers something to drink, but could also be broken apart into oxygen and hydrogen. Both are valuable as rocket fuel, and the oxygen would also give astronauts air to breathe."(NYTimes)  It's sad that the moon has to be wrung dry now.  What is the future of our moon? The stray astronaut will go there for a drink of water, the space station will exploit it, and we will have all these probes making more craters on the moon.  The sea of tranquility will become like the Chicago Wal-Mart on Black Friday of 2008.

And then, the moon will be colonised.  People will fight for rights to explore it.  They will fight for the water, and our wars will reach the boundaries of our solar system. Or a new order of pilgrims will make their way there, endure the bitter, harsh realities of the moon and on the Thanksgiving days they will "cook" water. Sigh!

THE POLITICS OF RECONNECTING

I located some classmates (from school) last month and we've been working overtime to close the 33-year or so gap.  We have a yahoo group for our batch which has taken over my life the last couple of weeks.   We are teenagers all over again.  The set up at our school was kinda funny.  It was a co-ed but the classrooms seated the boys and girls in segregated sections. Boys and girls did not talk to each other. I spent my entire school life pretending boys did not exist. Now, on the website, the string of posts started by the boys are continued by the boys and the girls respond to each other. Its déjà vu all over again, as Berra would say.  A 33yr old classroom reconstructed in cyberspace!   60% of my classmates are doctors, and the rest are engineering grads. ! There is an odd journalist and one stay-at home-mom (me).

ON WRITING

I always wondered what inspired people to write.  I have come to the conclusion that people that have a stable home have nothing to say.  If one's life followed a predictable course of events what would one write about?  Most writers of good fiction are traumatized, nervous wrecks or under the influence of drugs.  Look at Shirley  Jackson.  Her "The Lottery" was a masterpiece, but I was sick for a week after I read it.  Who would write such a story?  She had a happy enough life with a husband and four children and found writing relaxing.  But then, she also had anxieties, so many that she had to seek therapy.  Is the abnormal mind, stuck between the rational and the unstable, the real author?  Would the Beatles have written anything worth listening to if they were not drowning in LSD?  There are millions of books to read, millions of people that write--of hope and despair, of love and hate, of social conscience and apathy, of philosophy, religion and science, of history, of the future and I alone find nothing to say.  I must be the happiest, sanest person ever.  Yes?

2012

Sreya thinks I should have my own blog.  What I will blog about, I don't know.  Movie reviews are safe enough.  It's appropriate that I begin my blog with a review of 2012 --the movie is about new beginnings and fresh starts.  However, it was a major torture to see a "blow"-by-"blow" account of the world disintegrating. 2 and a half hours of a movie without a bad guy, but a lot of twits!! What was even worse was to see creation (including artwork!) saved in a modern version of Noah's Ark (or was it Noah's fleet of Arks?). I mean, all that story for some Christian laughs? I thought only Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise would think of such a plot. (Not a compliment.) Not to miss the number one on the poster shaped like the sword of the Crusades.  There were only two lighter moments in the whole movie: a desperate attempt to start a car before realizing that its ignition is voice activated, and the clear ringtone of a cellphone playing "main agar kahoon" from "Om Shanti Om" over the screams of women and the roar of the tsunami.
Conclusion: it was a combination of a WWII movie without the Germans and Moonraker