Leaves

The wind has been blasting the leaves off the maples outside - perhaps around the massive WWII bunker nearby built on the suffering of thousands of prisoners. As long as we grasp so tightly to our views, we will have great difficulty detecting the entrapments of thought and such things will repeat themselves.

Slum dispute over Commonwealth Games

In the last two years, more than a quarter of a million people have had their homes demolished along the banks of the Yamuna.

The city authorities plan to make Delhi completely slum-free in time for the arrival of thousands of foreign athletes and spectators for the next Commonwealth Games, due to be held here in 2010.

...

But it is the slum clearances that some people fear are at odds with one of the mission statements of the Commonwealth Games: "To develop sport for the benefit of the people."

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Scientific soul

It's old news that science is selling out to big business - patenting non-synthetic genes being an example of the sad, sad extent. Let us never forget the Mertonian principles!

Mertonian principles
1942, Robert Merton wrote of four principles composing the normative structure of science:

1.universalism denoting the impersonal character of knowledge claims
2.communalism, or common ownership of discoveries
3.disinterestedness commitment to truth for its own sake
4.organized skepticism,referring to the suspension of judgement until conclusive evidence appears

Don't ask how...

Forum surfing out of nowhere and I come across...

"Do you know what a chickenfish is?"


Perhaps we should really ask ourselves: "Do you know what a chickenfish is not?"

A chickenfish is not boastful or proud.
A chickenfish is not a yeti.
A chickenfish is neither liquid or gas.
A chickenfish never ends.

Escaping the Caste system

Low-caste Hindus adopt new faith

About time, what people parade as Hinduism nowadays has long since rotted at the head and kept people in deplorable states both physically, in the case of the Dalits, and mentally considering the truly warped perception of humanity some of the higher caste adherents adopt.

Edelweiss

The dark times are here. 8.30am and a layer of mist continuous with a murky grey cloud cover extends as far can be seen, keeping my circadian clock firmly at 6. Yesterday, I scanned a book on the Seiser Alm in the wood-floored and rustic waiting room of the doctor's practice. Butter-witches, well-fed mayors, and freeclimbers in a fairy tale landscape begging for a werewolf or two and collectively symbolised by the Edelweiss: a testament to life in a harsh world. It all gave my rebelling goblet cells and baneful Streptococcus colonization of my system a bit of context and my head stopped complaining. Memories of the hours spent in the dish (dispensary) back in KIS or trying to avoid the dish and sit in front of the fireplace with a cup of something, just listening to the rain on the moss and ducking occasionally when on-patrol staff members would lope by. It helped passed the time. Hopefully, reflections such as this and the Merck stamped Penicillin will let me get through this football lecture in my War and Culture class and the re-streaking waiting for me in the lab. I might slyly inoculate a couple of petri dishes with my untoward residents...

Trivial

Trivial, the most crushing word in the life of an undergrad here. A few chalk boards of mathematical postulation and of course it's trivial. Several thousand slides of beta-folds and chemical species but remember it's all trivial. A roaring cascade of protein signals named over 4 generations and 6 nomenclature systems...ha! trivial.
Bite me.

Tibet's missing spiritual guide

One of the pressure points of the situation is the ongoing detention of Tibet's Panchen lama. I find it odd that he was identified openly given the circumstances, and very alarming that China is willing to kidnap and detain a 6 year old child.

Psych

Earlier this evening I had the pleasure to rate the humour in Seinfeld, Friends, and Looney Toons clips through 6 electrodes tuned to my eyebrow muscles. Strange that the quantification was based on conscious muscular contraction - in that light the whole eyebrow setup seemed a bit contrived.
Anyway, I was sufficiently well behaved to prevent the experimenters from applying the electroshock feedback and I even did a good deed on the way back home.

Tibet

Ever since China's "Peaceful Liberation" of Tibet in 1951, the human rights abuses in the country have been steadily worsening. Everyone knows that something's going on there, but the effective genocide of the Tibetan people by the Chinese leadership is rarely treated as more than a curiousity.

Get yourself informed: Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion

Keep in mind that the Chinese people are comparably imprisoned by their leadership.

The situation in Tibet is sadly a symptom of our times and similar cases occur worldwide. Check out the Amnesty International site now and then to be aware.

Melts

Well, my guided research is finally settled and I will continue the inquisition of Pseudomonas started over the summer. Nostalgia brings to mind a ninth grade debate on genetically modified Pseudomonas syringae leaking into the biosphere and now, here I am, genetically modifying Pseudomonas syringae and lea....keeping it under secure and sterile conditions....yes.
Currently, however, the mysterious greying of sage tea in around 6 hours consumes the mind...

Why do we tolerate these clowns?

Illegal migration - Maltese MPs conspicuous by their absence at EU meeting

Prey

The days march on and autumn is kindling in the trees around campus. Hordes of grounds-staff now lurk around wielding leaf blowers and mulch-churning lawn mowers. So far I've managed to capture 3 using the handy underground tunnel network connecting the bomb shelters around the lecture halls. Presently I'm waiting for signs of the next wave in class, passing the time by listening to a passionate lecture on DNA repair. Once these minions have been scared off, I will dispatch my army of RoboMowers ... ah, I hear them - the mulch people are here polluting the air with sound during classes ... to rescue the university from financial ruin!

Blink twice...

Do You Know What Lives In Your Eyelashes? .......