tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-198644712024-03-08T06:00:43.846+05:30India speaksDigantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comBlogger101125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-20911944026184919642009-04-23T07:15:00.002+05:302009-04-23T07:17:21.210+05:30Farakka Water Flow<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRQH1WtuDSCqxxRlxk9bk6Fo3ZeJXiW5cxzJErhOcCW0Vw7FX-_yuCQKtEQu-or54oiHWdUI7yfT0O2LOJ-ZaTfRcgFmGp8l-6yjiV6xD632V3kJ1r_HLf3Ngw4Rs3Fb0RmmgWsQ/s1600-h/Farakka-waterflow-slidingwindowaverage.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327697434476925474" style="WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 234px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRQH1WtuDSCqxxRlxk9bk6Fo3ZeJXiW5cxzJErhOcCW0Vw7FX-_yuCQKtEQu-or54oiHWdUI7yfT0O2LOJ-ZaTfRcgFmGp8l-6yjiV6xD632V3kJ1r_HLf3Ngw4Rs3Fb0RmmgWsQ/s320/Farakka-waterflow-slidingwindowaverage.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwCJbopeNiEthNOPtdYOOMVpSCUVWC3IWMZZoBe2mrxQCWsrGb1ih6vdF9AsSb4k2xw9M1OaFdf-wfHFoEK6ZqncLh4m1mxrKr8JhrrxnQbS5jITD-K90wx5QgT6EtgVFJ6wBv2A/s1600-h/Farakka-waterflow.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327697244661738802" style="WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 238px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwCJbopeNiEthNOPtdYOOMVpSCUVWC3IWMZZoBe2mrxQCWsrGb1ih6vdF9AsSb4k2xw9M1OaFdf-wfHFoEK6ZqncLh4m1mxrKr8JhrrxnQbS5jITD-K90wx5QgT6EtgVFJ6wBv2A/s320/Farakka-waterflow.JPG" border="0" /></a> </div><br /><div></div><br /><div><br /></div><br /><div></div>Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-66782139866110755272008-03-20T04:17:00.002+05:302008-03-20T04:22:09.768+05:30Bengali BlogsOf late I have started writing more in Bengali and here is a list of my Bengali Blogs :<br /><br />1. Sachalayatan : <a href="http://sachalayatan.com/diganta">This </a>is my main blog site.<br />2. <a href="http://diganta.wordpress.com/">This </a>is the secondary one in wordpress, here I keep backups.<br />3. <a href="http://www.mukto-mona.com/Articles/diganta_sarkar/index.htm">This</a> is for publication in mukto-mona, a secular humanist site.<br />4. Last but not the least, my favourite somewhere <a href="http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/digantablog">blog</a>.<br /><br />Please come and read those pages as well.Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-76158688650482779672007-08-17T15:14:00.000+05:302007-08-17T15:16:28.350+05:30The News in ChinaToday I was watching a Chinese news channel broadcasting news in English. It’s like news broadcast by Doordarshan 20 years ago. There are no specialists present in the studio to discuss things. There is on boring woman taking pain of going through the entire news. There are no graphs, no analysis, nothing. The Chinese news is also similar to this one only. The media in China are at least 20 years behind of Indian counterpart. Everywhere in the news, the signature of socialism is bright and visible.<br /><br />Let’s dig deep into the news contents. It was showing the Chinese premiere visiting Afghan and Iranian counterpart to talk to them. The reader summarized their comments without any analysis. Next, the domestic issues were presented. The price of pork (main source of meat in China) has been gone down this week by 1.2%. However, the other meats (Chicken and Lamb) have jumped once again. At the end of the scoop, she reminds us that price of pork has been doubled this year due to the shortage of sources. It’s really pathetic. I think if the price of Chicken doubles in any state of India within a year then that could be a good enough cause to vote that particular govt. out of the power. Poor Chinese people seem to forget protests and they have to live in a harsh capitalist society. It seems even USA is less capitalist than ‘Communist’ China.<br /> <br />Next the news about pollution came on screen. China is banning half of the cars from the roads of big cities to reduce the pollution. This is a reaction to the reports that most of Chinese cities are over-polluted. The reader added that the aim is to offer the Olympian guests a better China. The way to achieve half-ban is very simple – ban odd numbered cars on a day and the even ones on the next (between 8am to 8pm possibly). So, if you are a patient and need to use the car, I don’t know what you’d do. Should you wait for a day? Or take permission from some authority to drive (nothing similar was mentioned though)? Only China knows.<br /><br />The trade news consists of the statements made in a single press conference. Some minister had warned a few countries not to carry out anti-dumping investigations on various Chinese products. He threatened them that China will deal the issue through WTO, in case any negative steps are taken. It seems like single news but the news composer has managed to disintegrate the news into two parts – one against some ‘friendlier’ nations (like Russia and Mongolia) using friendlier tones and the other against some rich competitor nations (like US and Canada) using harsh words. The selection of words was really praiseworthy, who says Chinese are weak in English? <br /><br />Only in a few lines the reader completed the ‘irritating’ issue of China blocking the entry of Taiwan in the UN. China does not recognize it as a sovereign state, since it considers Taiwan a part of China (no reference to people of Taiwan at all, it seems that Taiwan is a barren no-man’s-land). So, that’s what Taiwan is.<br /><br />The last one was on Chinese children in a ‘summer camp’ organized by the Govt. (once again!!!). The children are taught some self-dependency and creativity. They do learn organizing rooms, washing own clothes and dishes. And the afternoon is open for all to play. That’s the nicest piece of news I watched. The focus on quality of children is something totally missing in Indian Govt activities. I can China in multiple ways, but the foresight to create ‘quality’ children is really nice and should be replicated in India as well.Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-10552764270014987712007-08-01T08:48:00.000+05:302007-08-01T08:49:06.280+05:30Einstein on Religion and ScienceAny Scientific minded person who considers himself as a religious or an atheist, should read thses wonderful articles of Albert Einstein. These are, in a sense, an eye-opener to me, that how beautifully one could express how religion and science can be reconciled. There are four master-pieces, all of them are worth reading at a stretch. I know there will be many religious people claiming that Einstein was a ‘deeply religious’, but what I found here, that he defined the religion in totally a different way to build himself as ‘deeply religious’. Let’s go through a few excellent quotes.<br /><br />On how the religion has come :<br /><br />“With primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious notions - fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death. Since at this stage of existence understanding of causal connections is usually poorly developed, the human mind creates illusory beings more or less analogous to itself on whose wills and actions these fearful happenings depend. Thus one tries to secure the favor of these beings by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices which, according to the tradition handed down from generation to generation … This, though not created, is in an important degree stabilized by the formation of a special priestly caste which sets itself up as a mediator between the people and the beings they fear …”<br /><br />Problems in the above definition of religion and his own view :<br /><br />“Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. … I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. … The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this. “<br /><br />On morality :<br /><br />“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.”<br /><br />In praise of religion (article 1 and 2):<br /><br />“The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. If one were to take that goal out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind.”<br /><br />Defining a religious person and religion (Article 3) :<br /><br />“a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to which he clings because of their superpersonalvalue. … Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts.”<br /><br />In support of Science :<br /><br />“For example, a conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against the doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs.”<br /><br />This is exactly where he sounds like an absolute Atheist :<br /><br />“Nobody, certainly, will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help, and guidance; also, by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea in itself, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history. That is, if this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him? … The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God. “<br /><br />How religions with ‘personal God’ will play around Science :<br /><br />“To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. “<br /><br />A request to religious leaders to modify their approach to religion :<br /><br />“In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests.”<br /><br />Again restricting religion in the domain of idealism and attitude :<br /><br />“As regards religion, on the other hand, one is generally agreed that it deals with goals and evaluations and, in general, with the emotional foundation of human thinking and acting, as far as these are not predetermined by the inalterable hereditary disposition of the human species. Religion is concerned with man’s attitude toward nature at large, with the establishing of ideals for the individual and communal life, and with mutual human relationship.”<br /><br />On in-community brotherly love :<br /><br />“For while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. “<br /><br />Overall, I feel the articles are really great. The gist is - Science and Religion are friends is they stay in their own ground. Science should not try to guide what is worthy and what is worthless, what we should do and what we should not. At the same time, Religion should not try to describe how the nature works, neither should it insist anything to be ‘created’ by God as a person. He condemned the idea of ‘religion of fear’, that is, the idea to tell people to be good only because some Omnipotent God will punish them otherwise after death. Overall, these come under one of the best read articles of my life time - they sound very strong.<br /><br />Links once more.Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-5366092082902342472007-07-29T21:38:00.000+05:302007-07-29T21:41:33.372+05:30Around ShanghaiAfter long dilemma, I walked out of my home in this weekend at last. I went to see the real and fake marketplaces of Shanghai, as well as the riverside. <br /><br />I started from my closest Xujiahui metro station. The station has a couple of lines passing through it – line 1 and line 4. My destination was the station named ‘Shanghai Science and Technology Museum’. In the platform, there was a set of ticket counters along with automated ticket vending machines. As a newcomer, I did not risk the vending machines, rather went to the counter and bought the tickets. Then passed through the check-in gate (similar to Kolkata Metro), and took the stairs to reach the platform. The platform looks similar to any of the Kolkata Metro platform except one piece of add-on. There is a single platform shared between up and down lines – and each end of the platform is covered by glass frames. The glass-frames also have doors placed in between. When a train stops, each of its doors stops at one of the doors of the frame, then both opens up simultaneously. The reason is crystal clear: there is no scope for anybody to jump in the line, either accidentally or to commit suicide. <br /><br />There were five stoppages between Xujiahui and People’s square – the place where I had to switch to line 2. It took around five minutes a station. In People’s square, however, the add-on was missing. I felt probably safety is beaten by the cost – what is affordable for a posh station like Xujiahui, is not affordable for another station. However, I went up and then walked about half a kilometer through an underground tunnel, to reach the line 2 station. The directions are in English and Chinese, so there is no trouble if you follow them. But, please don’t at least expect anybody to speak English. The line 2 actually goes under the river to reach my destination, although there is no unique experience for that as the underground tunnel is as dark as it is in any other places. Ultimately, after five more stations, I reached the destination.<br /><br />The metro is really crowded, even in the weekend. I can easily project the situation in a weekday – office time. It would be no better than a Kolkata Metro experience. The frequency of trains is high – a train in a couple of minutes. Even in the weekend, all seats are occupied in every train, although standing is comfortable. And there is crowd in the platform, at the escalator, inside the tunnel or at the shops. I heard that China is the most populated country in the world. I saw it today.<br />Most of the ‘Shanghai hawker’s market’ is underground, attached to these metro stations. The beggars and footpath-sleepers also find comfortable home out in the stairs of the Metro. There are escalators, but they are only to go up. To go down, you have to take stairs. Shanghai streets are almost free of beggars, may be because the authorities are too strict about them. The authority keeps the city ‘look clean’ but the real beggars come out of their den at night. I could see a glimpse of them underground. The pattern of the beggars is same as that in India – ranging from a blind playing a flute to a mother carrying a child. However, it seemed to me, they are a little bit better dressed than their counterparts in Kolkata. <br /><br />Leaving aside the crowd and beggars, when I reached the station and came up to the open air, I was really charmed. The grand building of ‘Shanghai Science and Technology Museum’ is in front of me. It requires a little knowledge to estimate that it’s been a grand product of a huge investment (later I came to know that the amount is 1.78 billion yuan, i.e. 9 billion Rs) to promote science among the children. Although I am a little bit skeptic of how this kind of museum can promote scientific mind, I have no option but to respect the efforts made. After taking a few photographs, I walked into the market. I had already read about it in a site that asked foreigners to start bargaining at one-fifth of the quoted price. I did it and bought a kimono type dress along with a cotton shirt with Chinese handicraft. The cost was 80 and 100 yuan respectively. I did everything perfectly, from starting with one-fifth to sticking to it and act as I am not that interested in the object. Yet, at the end the owner was happy to sell it, and I was a little bit irritated as it seems I got ‘cheated’. However, the consolation is clear to me - how shamelessly can you bargain? Blaming my ‘shame’ to put lowest digits to bargain with, I started for Nanjing Road, again via Metro.<br /><br />The interesting thing that I saw in that small market was a shop named ‘Gulistan’. As per the hoardings, it serves Turkish and Uighur foods, but they are no different from Indian kebabs. It is a gift of Chinese western part that is closer to central Asia and India.<br /><br />The Nanjing Road is the shopping capital of Shanghai. It is said that an investment of $2 billion is being added to this road by 2010. It is not a traditional road as it was a few decades ago. Now it’s a pedestrian road, paved with tiles, with high-rises on both sides. I started walking towards the bund (river) and the old Shanghai came close to me. There are old style buildings, with arch shaped cantilevers, and red colored building supported by additional steel structures outside. The ground floors of these buildings are full of shops, mostly selling clothes, jackets and chop-sticks. It is absolutely a cousin of Kolkata Esplanade area, only missing a couple of cinema halls. The old narrow roads, the market beside, the traffic jams and red buildings, all point to a colonial cousin of Kolkata been nurtured by the British half a century ago. <br /><br />I took a ride to the sightseeing spot of the bund (river). It was an underground journey, crossing the river in a small single compartment closed trolley. I bought the ticket at 45 yuan and ultimately it was useless. I thought I would see a bit under the river, but it was just another blind tunnel. On the other side, the arrangement for watching the river was fully perfect, with lash green lawns and pavements beside the river. The tallest building of Shanghai is also located nearby, although it’s difficult to recognize it as a ‘building’ at all. It looks more of a tower, with a couple of spherical balls attached to its belly. Later I discovered that those balls are basically restaurants with 360 degree view of the city. I am already planning to visit the place once more and obviously to visit the restaurant in the evening.<br /><br />The river was another cousin of the Ganges, although less wide. However, the skyline is full of skyscrapers. After spending half an hour beside the muddy river water, I started back. <br /><br />At the time of return, the Nanjing road looked closer to the fifth avenue in NY than Esplanade of Kolkata. The gorgeous lighting and the innumerable shopping malls does not only show the advances China has made in last couple of decades, but also signifies how we have lost our ways in a harsh, capitalist world. The Nanjing Road Metro station is full of beggars, yet nobody dares to come up and create inconvenience to the rich pedestrians, who are busy in window shopping. Is it a good move for the Government to deny them a few bucks more? Or is it good to keep them away underground? I know, it takes a full-length debate to come to conclusion. However, leave apart morality, that’s how China is going ahead.Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-78819545479104545942007-07-07T01:35:00.000+05:302007-07-07T01:52:44.478+05:30Phantoms in the Brain"Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is." - Bhagavad Gita.<br /><br />Have you ever heard of Bill Marshal, an ex-Air Force Pilot, who met a stroke and lost some of his brain functionality? Since then, his capability of dealing with numbers was lost. He could explain you the fighter planes and share his experience of flying with them. But once you ask him about what is the value of one hundred minus three, he fails to answer. Not only that he can’t deal with numbers at all.<br /><br />Did you hear the story of Mirabelle Kumar, a cheerful young lady, who was born without her hands? But she used to feel the existence of her hands from her childhood. Philip Martinez, who lost his arm in a motorcycle accident in San-Diego freeway, feels pain in his non-existing elbow and fingers.<br /><br />One might not even heard of Diane Fletcher, a lady who survived an accident from carbon-monoxide fumes, could not recognize or count any object - largest letters on an eye-chart or number of fingers shown. Literally, she was a blind - would have failed all standard tests of blindness. But, she could pick up things or walk or even place a letter in the letter box with dexterity - without any help or even without touching the slit of the letter box.<br /><br />A more interesting case was that of Ingrid, a Swiss woman, who suffered a brain damage to lose the visibility of continuity of motion. She could perfectly read books or cook in the kitchen but if she looked at a person running, she could only have seen a succession of static snapshots of the continuous motion.<br /><br />The history of James Thurber sounds more common to us. He lost one of his eyes at the age of six, and later lost the vision of the other eye in a gradual process. At the time he became blind, he claimed that he could see a fantastic world full of surrealistic images. He could see bridges rise lazily into air, like balloons. He used his 'vision' creatively and drew a lot of whimsical cartoons and pictures, those became very popular.<br /><br />There is a story of one-hand clapping also. Mrs. Dodds, who was paralyzed on her left side of the body after a stroke, knew that it was working very well. When she was asked to clap, she just made clapping movement with her right hand and was confident of her action.<br /><br />Last, but not the least, the amazing story of Arthur, the son of a diplomat from Venezuela, who met a near-fatal accident and went to coma. Once he's back from coma, he could recall all the past and seemed to be normal with respect to outward appearances. But he had one credible delusion about his parents - that they were imposters, posing as his parents - and nothing could convince him. He even recognized the facial similarity with his 'actual' parents, but never agreed that they are his parents - even he conjured up some imaginary reasons as justification as why would they pose as his parent.<br /><br />All these and much more are the topics of the book I am going through - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Phantoms-Brain-Probing-Mysteries-Human/dp/0688172172">Phantoms in the Brain</a> by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilayanur_S._Ramachandran">V. S. Ramachandran</a>, an eminent neuroscientist. He explains all these cases in depth without using much of jargons in Neuroscience. He starts with an assumption of our brain as a set of black boxes and then gradually goes onto describe each one's functionality and how they interact with each other and the limbs. More importantly, other than the above mentioned and many more case studies, he devises a few simple experiments those let us understand his point of view properly. In one of his later chapters, he explains the relationship between our brain and the image of God from the angle of Neuroscience as well as Evolutionary Psychology. In his concluding chapter, he deals with the apparent philosophical question - what is a self and what is consciousness - and how these are closely linked with our brain.<br /><br />The book I would recommend for the readers who like to explore new fields and want to know about a vaguely understood area of science - neuroscience. As a deeply scientific-minded reader, I enjoyed the book from beginning to the end. It gives me the feel that how correct Newton was when he said :"I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-20308462220924597992007-07-06T23:12:00.000+05:302007-07-06T23:35:21.440+05:30Blogs on Scientific PhilosophyA few interesting posts I have come across over wordpress thanks to wordpress tag surfer. The <a href="http://beyondtheblog.wordpress.com/2007/07/06/early-and-classical-knowledge/">first one </a>discusses how the knowledge was developed in ancient civilizations and wherefrom it started to go dark. The blogger discussed about early socirty, mythology-religion development, trade and economy and also how the religion evolved. He did not forget to mention a few wise men of ancient greece (his writing is Europe oriented).<br /><br />The <a href="http://scholarsandrogues.wordpress.com/2007/07/05/why-are-we-so-afriad/">next one </a>tries to explain the relationship between stress and development. The blogger diagramatically described how the fear is related to stress-development gap. And he also examplified in support of his hypotheses, with modern day issues and reactions.<br /><br />The <a href="http://aloadofbright.wordpress.com/2007/07/06/how-do-you-know-that/">last one </a>talks about the critical thinking - to explain how we accumulate knowledge. I have pointed out the similarity of his writing with Dawkins' letter that I have already <a href="http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/dawkins2.html">discussed </a>and <a href="http://horizonspeaks.blogspot.com/2007/06/in-his-interview-dawkins-said-about.html">translated </a>too.<br /><br />Happy blogging, keep it up.Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-17609509411903559052007-07-05T15:50:00.000+05:302007-07-05T16:02:42.179+05:30Pollution in ShanghaiIt's evening time in Shanghai. The sky is cloudy and the air is misty. The environment is so hazy that I can't see a high-rise a kilometer away. A few days back, I've reported that a heavy downpour has made the air hazy. I think that's not only the downpour - it's pollution too. The particle density in Shanghai is so high that the fog seems to be automatic in the dusk. To me, China developed too fast to ignore the environmental aspects.<br /><br />The links are the updates on the<br />1. <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1015139.stm">BBC</a><br />2. <a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/05/asia/05china.php">The International Herald Tribune</a>.Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-17449209768900740092007-07-05T12:12:00.000+05:302007-07-06T14:04:55.277+05:30Can Smokers be Wiped out by Natural Selection?One interesting thought!! Can Natural Selection wipe out the smokers from the Earth after years of evolution? The study results point to a similar direction.<br /><br />First of all, the smoking habit has to be a genetic characteristic (inherited property in other words) to be qualified to take part in evolution. Scientists, in fact, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s891393.htm">claim</a> to have discovered the gene linked to smoking habit. The <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s891393.htm">study</a> by Dr Hidetoshi Nakamura of Keio University in Japan looked at a particular gene known to have an effect on how people process nicotine. In the human body, nicotine is mainly metabolized by the gene CYP2A6.If people are not very good at processing nicotine, then they are less likely to be interested in smoking and less likely to continue if they do start. In another <a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1382068,00.html">study</a> by Dr Robert Walton, of Oxford's clinical pharmacology department, variations of a gene known as the dopamine D2 receptor gene, or DRD2, reveals whether individuals are genetically programmed to be addicted to nicotine. One in three people is born with the gene.<br /><br />Now let's see how the smoking habit can make us disadvantageous to reproduce. British researchers <a href="http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/06/23/MNGI27ADT91.DTL">published</a> a study claiming that a life of cigarette smoking will be, on average, 10 years shorter than a life without it. They also claimed that consistent cigarette smoking doubles mortality rates in both middle age and old age. More interestingly, Men who smoke cigarettes may experience a significant decline in their capacity to father a child, a <a href="http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/smoking_fertility.html">research </a>by a reproductive medicine specialist from the University at Buffalo indicates. Like other cells in the body, human sperm carry a receptor for nicotine, which means they recognize and respond to nicotine. The results could mean that heavy smoking overloads the nicotine receptor in human sperm and in the testes, leading to a decline in fertilizing potential. Not only that, the same study claims, smoking men also should be aware that smoking can damage their sperm DNA, passing on faulty DNA to their baby.<br /><br />To sum up, smokers are likely to have less life-span with less probability to father (or mother) a child. If we bring together all theree studies, the platform for differential reproduction rate to wipe out a genetic variety seems to be in effect. Isn't those enough to stop spreading the genes for smoking? To answer in brief : No, as memes are there to manipulate.<br /><br />This is where importance of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme">meme</a>s comes to picture. Let's take an example of Indian women. They generally don't smoke because in Indian societies, smoking by women is almost prohibited. So, they carry the 'smoking gene' to pass it to the next generation as successfully as other women would have done. The smoking gene doesn't stop spreading because of the meme present in Indian societies to prevent women from smoking. The strong Indian social structure defies the Natural Selection on smokers. In a nature versus nurture debate, in this case, nurture seems to have won - and the habit of smoking will last longer in protective societies. To wipe the habit out, we require the introduction of a new stronger meme to stop smoking itself. The meme is: "Smoking is injurious to health" - and we need a strong awareness campaign.<br /><br />Reference : <a href="http://horizonspeaks.blogspot.com/2007/05/memetics-and-cultural-evolution-roots.html">Meme and it's activities</a> (my old post)<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Darwin">Darwin</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/DNA">DNA</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Evolution">Evolution</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Meme">Meme</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Genetics">Genetics</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Science">Science</a>Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-8492011064556624172007-07-04T17:39:00.000+05:302007-07-05T15:23:25.084+05:30To Change the Species - Just Change the Genome!!The news appeared in most of the leading newspapers that scientists have successfully transplanted the entire genome of one species of bacteria to another. This is carried out by the institute lead by J. Craig Ventor, a prominent participant in the human genome sequencing.<br /><br />The researchers worked with <em>Mycoplasma mycoides</em> (a microbe that infects goats) because it has one of the smallest genetic blueprints of any known self-replicating organism and lacks cell walls, making it easier to insert new DNA. They isolated its entire genetic code - one chromosome that forms a circle-stripping it of all its proteins, and then added genes to make a host organism blue (to make it easy to pick out in a Petri dish) as well as resistant to the antibiotic tetracycline. The scientists added close relative Mycoplasma capricolum (another goat pathogen) to a solution containing M. mycoides' genetic material and gently mixed it for a minute. After three hours of incubation, the resulting microbes were exposed to the antibiotic tetracycline.<br /><br />The Evolution and Natural Selection are played once more in the labs as the variants having favorable mutations (artificially imposed) survived and the rest perished. After three days, large colonies of blue, antibiotic-resistant microbes had formed. Roughly one in 150,000 of the M. capricolum microbes had absorbed the new DNA and transferred it to daughter cells. The daughter cells displayed no trace of their original DNA while taking on the entire form and function of the original bacterium.<br /><br />The ultimate goal is to make cells that might take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and produce methane, used as a feedstock for other fuels. Such an achievement might reduce dependency on fossil fuels and strike a blow at global warming.<br /><br />Scientists remain unable to create synthetic life in the lab. "If we're trying to understand the origins of life and cellular life, it would be ideal to have all the chemical components in a soup to spontaneously go together and form a cell", Venter says, "We're a long way from that."<br /><br />References :<br />1. <a href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=731D3D25-E7F2-99DF-37737D5D2D921661&chanID=sa019">Sciam</a><br />2. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/science/29cells.html?ref=science">NYT</a><br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/DNA">DNA</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Evolution">Evolution</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Genetics">Genetics</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Origin%20of%20Life">Origin of Life</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Science">Science</a>Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-17752407950508383572007-07-04T10:21:00.000+05:302007-07-04T10:46:51.313+05:30My Third Article on Mukto-MonaMy third bengali <a href="http://www.mukto-mona.com/Articles/diganta_sarkar/Bishwaser_Bhalomondo.pdf">article</a> also got published at Mukto-Mona yesterday. The topic was the Dawkins' <a href="http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/dawkins2.html">letter </a>to his daughter, that I have <a href="http://horizonspeaks.blogspot.com/2007/06/in-his-interview-dawkins-said-about.html">discussed</a> previously. There are a few good Bengali Articles present in the same site. I would recommend one to read Avijit Roy's "<a href="http://www.mukto-mona.com/award/jahanara_award_avi.pdf">Amader Kajer Swikriti</a>" (Recognition of our work), that covers a brief history of atheism along with a history of struggles those Mukto-mona had gone through. The context of the article is the receipt of Jahanara Imam Memorial award, that is given for encouraging free thinking in society.<br /><br />Coming back to the article, I tried to change the context of the letter so that it becomes acceptable to the public in general, especially to the people of South Asia. I have mentioned the examples (castes and dogmas) to suit South Asian readers.<br /><br />My next assignment is foing to be a translation of one of my all time favourites - The God Delusion. The <a href="http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/God_Delusion.pdf">first chapter </a>of the same book has already been translated and kept in the mukto-mona site. I am trusted with the translation of at least one chapter from the same. I am planning to take the same route - replace the original examples with the South Asian ones. Given that a Bengali reader is going to be most probably from this region, it's my responsibility to make the translation smooth to him. An overdose of references to the Catholic Church and their activities might not get a warm welcome from people here.<br /><br />Once I am done, I will definitely come up with the same in my blog.Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-10019152305730395272007-06-30T21:55:00.000+05:302007-07-05T15:15:56.773+05:30An Indian Restaurant in Shanghai<p class="MsoNormal">Today I visited the Indian Kitchen, an Indian Restaurant in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Shanghai</st1:place></st1:city>. To get the road direction, I called them up and some Chinese girls greeted me. As expected, the conversation with them was futile; they called up an Indian to carry on. Getting the tone of an Indian in a foreign land is like a song of a bird in the morning. I wished to carry on the conversation a little more, but it was a short-lived one. I got the road-map. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">In the evening, I started for Indian Kitchen. Before that, I took the address from the internet and a Chinese transcript of the same from a colleague. The Chinese transcript proved to be the key to reach the restaurant. I could dare to ask the road direction (at least a few silent gestures and hand-directions) from the pedestrians. Contrary to the culture in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>, whomever I asked was at least able to approximately tell us where the location is, despite the fact that it is not a famous place to visit. In <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>, most of the people on the roads of a busy city do not know about the surroundings at all. Soon, I entered he small roads from the broader ones. Astonishingly, even those smaller roads are equipped with pedestrian signals and cemented pavements. And the roadside were full of small restaurants, small shops and massage centers. The houses in the backyard are mostly like Indian houses (resembles saltlake in Kolkata or Jubilee Hills area in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Hyderabad</st1:place></st1:city>). Each one is an entity separated by tall wall surrounding it. The flat culture is thriving in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Shanghai</st1:place></st1:city> with skyscrapers all around yet these small houses do exists. They at least have a free sight of the sky and a few more trees than the flat-dwellers.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The entry to the restaurant was decorated in an Indian style, with garlands and portraits of Hindu gods. I entered and felt the deviation from my expectation at the first sight. The first and the most striking difference was the scarcity of Indians inside. Most of the customers, as well as the waiters were Chinese. However, after a close look, I saw that the kitchen cooks were all Indians – south Indians in particular. The Indian boy, with whom I talked to, met us with a smile. He’s Ambrose from Tamilnadu. I saw that he was communicating with other Chinese waiters at ease – of course in Chinese. Soon, I became familiar with another Indian boy. They came to <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Shanghai</st1:place></st1:city> three years back, and can speak in Chinese. I did not ask him more questions, although I think I should have.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Although the waiters are mostly Chinese and as usual are very poor to communicate in English, they were dressed up in traditional Indian dresses. Men were dressed up in golden color Kurta-Sherwani and women in pink Salwar-Kameez, with golden color embroidery on it. The interior is decorated with Tanpuras and <st1:place st="on">Tablas</st1:place>, to conjure up an Indian image. One can match the experience with a Chinese coming to <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region> and having food at a so-called Chinese restaurant. The men and women are dressed up in Chinese traditional dresses and the people who come to eat are all Indians. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">There were Chinese couples coming to experience Indian food for the first time. The waiter (Indian one), was explaining Indian course sequence to him – kebabs first, biriyani-curry next and gulab-jamun at the end. To simplify the choices, they have what we call an Indian aggregate meal that we call a thali in <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">India</st1:country-region></st1:place>, consisting of one item each from the all three sections. Besides, there were Indian versions of the Chinese foods as well. The couple ordered one such thali. Soon, the kebabs reached them and they were really happy with the food. We had a normal dinner with a lamb kebab and a curry-bread combination. The cost was 130 Rmb, with 6 Rmb tips. In <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Shanghai</st1:place></st1:city> standard, I cannot call it costly.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Yesterday, while searching in the net, I found many Indian restaurants around. I was a little bit skeptic of how really an Indian restaurant is defined, since I know that Indians are not present in high numbers here. The entire concept of Indian restaurant abroad, serving NRIs a home-like food, has been trashed in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Shanghai</st1:place></st1:city>. There are Indian restaurants serving the local population, with the customized menus those suit the locals.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Tomorrow, I am planning to visit a nearby Uighur restaurant named Shanghai Xinjiang Fengwei Fandian. The Uighur-community is from the western-most <st1:place st="on"><st1:placetype st="on">province</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename st="on">China</st1:placename></st1:place>, named Xinjiang. They are mostly Muslims and have a strong cultural tie with <st1:place st="on">Central Asia</st1:place>. After all, <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region> is a big country. If <st1:country-region st="on">Tibet</st1:country-region> is the link between <st1:country-region st="on">India</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region st="on">China</st1:country-region>, then Xinjiang can be termed as the link between <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region> and the Central-Asia, up to the Middle-East. Same can be said for the food as well. The special item they produce is the juicy lamb-roast (kao quanyang), costs around 40 Rmb. The item is so popular, that it is advised to call them up before to confirm the availability. The other speciality is a square-shaped noodle, named miantiao. The Uighur cuisine includes <i>laohu cai</i> (salads with cucumbers, onions and tomato slices), <i>da pan-ji</i> (chicken with spices) and <i>Xinjiang-pijiu</i> (Xinjiang black beer).The restaurant also has a dance program starting from 7:30 in the evening and I have no idea how it will be. Chinese culture may not be as diverse as the Indian one, but there is no reason to think that it is a monolithic one.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">From the above description we can easily identify the similarity between Uighur cuisine and the typical Indian Mughlai cuisine. After all, the Indian culture is an ecosystem of several cultures. And that helps us survive more smoothly inside a different culture with higher adaptability.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/india" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/india">India</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/china" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/china">China</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/shanghai" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/shanghai">Shanghai</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/travel" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/travel">Travel</a></p>Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-64315947531493229602007-06-29T15:43:00.001+05:302007-07-05T15:16:23.500+05:30More of ShanghaiOf late I’ve been writing on several positive notes on shanghai. One turn-off I have in the streets at Shanghai is the presence of smokers. People do smoke everywhere and there are I am yet to see any no-smoking zone. In India, things did improve a lot in last few years. Especially in Kolkata, it improved a lot (given the Bengali passion for intellectual cigarettes). Like Western countries, women do smoke at a high rate, so do the street-vendors. The worst is that they throw cigarette-butts everywhere. The city is kept clean by sweepers, who really work well to collect so huge garbage.<br /><br />By the way, I think I have talked about a football ground near to my apartment. It also has a synthetic track around it. Now the shocker is – it’s nothing but a high school!! I sometimes forget that I am living in a country that’s ranked second in the Olympics medals tally. Compare that to the situation in India. I can remember, before 1987 SAAF Games, West Bengal State Government literally ran out of money to build synthetic track at Salt Lake Stadium. And, these people have synthetic running tracks in their schools. It’s no surprise that they are the second and we are fighting to avoid the bottom.<br /><br />Beggars are not that frequent visitors as they would have been in any Indian cities. The beggars here are more civilized also. Inside McDonalds I met a similar person. He had a poster kind of thing, written in clear bold English, that he’s deaf and dumb and should be helped. While coming back home, I encounter a person who collects begging money in his hat. One good thing about the beggars is that they are all old. In India, even I could have seen young men and women, who could have added value in Indian economy, begging at the streets. I hope that those sections will soon be removed from India also. And that would be an important step towards development.<br /><br />Today is the birthday of Tanya Chen, the girl who sits beside me. They arranged a small cake (delicious!!) to celebrate. The cake is cut but there were no candles. Let me add an interesting spice to this trivial update. Steven (close colleague) told that in China, gifting clocks is culturally prohibited. The reason is somewhat amazing – the sentence “I gift you a clock” is similar sounding to another sentence “I wish your death”. So, it’s considered ‘ominous’. One can note the similarity with Indian culture at this point. Had the sentences been similar sounding in any of the Indian languages, it would have been probably considered a bad practice to gift a clock in India also. Both India and China, the old civilizations of the world, are yet to get rid of what we call social superstition or the society in general.<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/india" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/india">India</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/china" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/china">China</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/shanghai" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/shanghai">Shanghai</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/travel" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/travel">Travel</a>Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-76788793563878681772007-06-28T14:09:00.000+05:302007-07-05T15:16:44.252+05:30Around the Shanghai MarketplaceUltimately I’m back to blogging. I’ve just finished my first assignment. It’s raining outside. And I can’t just describe how heavy that downpour is. It’s completely dark outside, cars running with headlights on. From the 9th Floor, at 3:00PM, I can’t see the roads clearly. The Shanghai skyline has also been blurred completely.<br /><br />I did my lunch with KFC burger once more. I’m now doing it for a couple of days, after the initial adventure with pure Chinese foods. I am yet to launch cooking operation at the apartment. This weekend I am planning to visit a few ‘Indian’ places nearby. We’ve got a restaurant at our target list – named Tandoor. Also, I’ve seen a restaurant named Salaam nearby, maybe I’ll also visit it. However, if the prices are exorbitant, I’ll refrain myself from having food at those. It’s foolish to run behind Indian foods where I have so many things to explore with such a little time in hand.<br /><br />Yesterday, I went to a retail food store (similar to a Food Bazaar) and thought of buying some vegetables to cook. But, the prices prevented me to really buy anything. After taking the trolley, the first thing I was looking for was the chicken. I saw a semi-prepared chicken body (similar to Arambagh’s chicken), priced almost at 4 Rmb/100gm. I calculated it to be 220Rs and the idea of buying chicken was dropped instantly. Then I moved to other markets – to compare prices of beef and pork. But, they were no better. However, all these foods are a kind of ‘packet-preserved’ food; the prices for these kinds of foods are higher in India also. I thought that I should buy meat from a street-vendor, might I get a better deal from him. There were many different fish items kept at a place – all freeze. The point of surprise was the egg-section. There were so many kinds of eggs present there – off different sizes and colors. I am so habituated with seeing white eggs of a particular size (poultry and on a few lucky occasions – duck), I took time to adjust to the situation. Most of the eggs were dark yellow and faded red. Some of them were even ash-colored. Sizes range from 2 times a poultry egg to a normal egg-size. However, the biggest surprise was the absence of simple white eggs – can you believe it? I guess they are not at all popular in China. If you have so many options in eggs – do you think poultry-chicken industry can survive in China?<br /><br />Next I moved to an electronics section of another retail shop. Looking at a tiny iron, I asked the price. It was marked in clear English – 218rmb. I was really stunned; I didn’t expect prices would be so high in Shanghai when we all know that it’s a low-cost country. I searched on the internet to get a view of the Chinese pricing structure. Actually the price is higher because of taxes. In India, prices are same at villages and cities. But the cities have the infrastructure. So, people flood into the cities. Here, in China, to prevent flooding of people from countryside, they have imposed high taxes on each item in cities. Of course they efficiently control the flow of goods. People, who live in cities, pay more tax to get better infrastructure, that’s why cities are cleaner and less-congested than Indian counterparts.<br /><br />After the dinner (again with same burger), I went out to buy a headphone. It was an irritating absence since I was not been able to listen to the songs (Chinese songs yet to be explored and added to my favourites) and was not able to chat online. I started at around 8:30 PM and soon I discovered that a lot of stores are already closed. I crossed the busy crossing and entered a less posh area, to get a view of how Chinese items are priced at ‘real’ market – where from the local people buy things. Unfortunately, after walking for a kilometer, I could see only restaurants beside me!! There are so many restaurants in that area – from a small one to a big, decorated one, there were just too many variations. On the footpath, under a tree, a person was shouting with some black packets kept in front of him. It took a while to understand that he’s trying to sell those – and some people are coming to buy those. Do you know what they were? Octopus!! The buyers were probably the local restaurant owners. Indeed octopus and squid is popular food item in Shanghai.<br /><br />After a crossing, I saw the market pattern got changed – now there are a variety of stores. The dominant one among them was the real estate. The prices were displayed outside and people go inside to see the model and the sample interiors. I saw prices generally ranging from 8000 Rmb to 15000 Rmb (per sq meter) for different places. A shop also had a map of Shanghai with different pins pointing at their different real estate locations. I heard that real estate price are not that high in Shanghai as in Indian cities, but I think it’s not the case. I have to ask a few people to get it confirmed.<br /><br />There were a few cloth-shops as well. I entered one and quickly realized that it’s better to come with a Chinese colleague to help me. The shop was run by an old woman, who probably had no idea of English. When I was looking for the price tag, she took her calculator and typed in 1078 to let me know the price. She was intelligent enough to understand that I did not like the price (why should I? It comes to 5500Rs!!), hence she quickly multiplied the figure with 70 and divided by 10 (took 70%) and reduced the price to catch an attention. Yet, it didn’t come under my budget. So I left for the next shop. The next shop surprised me – it was written in clear English on top of shop-entrance that “Nicco(shop name) provides excellent post-sell services. Please don’t ask for abnormal discounts to bargain with our staff.” I understood their pain – the prices are indeed exorbitant. May be, they want to prevent entry of the poor by the message – who come inside and bargain.<br /><br />I went into a darker ally beside the road, to see how the shops look like at that place. Most of them were wine-shops, selling beers and other drinks. One was a tailor-shop. And there were a few barbers’ shop as well. To the contrary of Indian experience, only the tailor-shop was run by a man – others were all women.<br /><br />After another crossing, I decided to come back. So far I didn’t see any electronics shop – may be after a few crossings they are present in a series. I had no time to blindly look for those. Next I stumbled upon a small shop. It has everything – from pillows to knifes, from nail-cutters to nice pots and wooden racks. Nobody is inside; people are going in, picking up things and paying a woman while coming out. The woman is having a series of notes in between her fingers – in a fashion similar to bus conductors in Kolkata. I also gestured her whether she keeps headphones as well – the answer was negative.<br /><br />Just after getting out of the shop, I had a head-on collision with a Chinese boy. In India, I could have avoided a similar one, but in China I couldn’t. I noticed him (and vice-versa) before the critical time one should take to avoid a collision. But, as a natural step, I took my left. Unfortunately, he took his right and we collided. I understand the difference of right-hand and left-hand driving system has lot more to do than we think of. May be is the crowd less disciplined streets of USA one cannot feel it, but I bet, in Shanghai, one will. When our natural step would follow the left side of the footpath or to avoid close collision, the other party will move right. It’s not really my fault, but it is called diversity.<br /><br />Once more, I have managed to write up a lot on my experiences, hopefully people will enjoy these episode also. Of course, I’ll keep everyone updated on my China visit. The rain has stopped, I need to go now. Bye, see you!!<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/india" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/india">India</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/china" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/china">China</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/shanghai" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/shanghai">Shanghai</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/travel" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/travel">Travel</a>Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-86452379912432855732007-06-26T07:38:00.000+05:302007-07-05T15:17:09.583+05:30Over to ShanghaiI boarded in the Flight to Singapore on Friday night, at NSCB Airport, Kolkata. Most of the flight members were Indians and the queue to check in the Singapore Airlines Flight was longer than any Air Deccan Flight. I was really surprised to find so many Indians traveling overseas, may be sue to my lack of knowledge of Indians in Singapore.<br /><br />My next surprise came with Singapore <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changi_Airport">Changi Airport</a>. My father landed there in 1989 and told me beforehand that it’s going to be an experience. The airport proved him right. You never have to walk to reach the appropriate parking bay; the floor walks (something similar to escalator) itself. The size of the airport is huge – it takes at least 15 minutes for the flight to reach the terminal after landing, that too without any disruption. There are lanes for flights to reach the terminal. There are total 68 parking bays as per wiki. The other interesting aspects of the business-oriented country are the shopping malls inside the airport. Although I did not buy anything, I saw almost everything’s available there.<br /><br />The next flight took off in the morning and I was quick to notice the change in demography. Almost all the passengers are Mongolians now; we are a tiny Indian minority out there. There are announcements and displays in Chinese, those I don’t understand at all. Also, a major shift in male-female ratio of the passengers – something that I hope to discuss about in details – is in favor of women.<br /><br />The next major surprise was the city of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai">Shanghai</a>. I was expecting a city of High-rises with a brand-new airport and a broad highway. It is more than those. The high-rises are taller, the highways are cleaner and broader and the airport is bigger than that I expected. It may not be as hi-tech as Singapore, but certainly out of comparison with any Indian counterparts. In fact I am really proud of that India is indeed compared with China, and it is estimated that India will reach the current Chinese state within next 10-12 years. The striking thing at the first glance is that people are disciplined a lot – may be because they are citizens of a metro city.<br /><br />I was lodged in a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_apartment">Service apartment </a>– near a posh area in Shanghai. It’s not bad, but not at all well-furnished. We need more utensils to cook (may be the Chinese don’t). Otherwise, there are ACs, TVs (all Chinese channels), five-star like bathrooms and first-class furniture. I tried to browse the TV channels and interestingly found Indian serials been telecast. Soon, I discovered that they are dubbed in Chinese and the particular channel is dedicated to Indian Soap serials only. I am still looking for information on how popular these channels are. The channel has a green maple leaf as an icon. The serial I watched was “Koshish”. The owner of the apartment is a company named Orient Manhattan Ltd, who owns a lot of similar apartments in around the area. The COO, Susan, greeted us. She can really talk in English but often takes time to figure out the correct word to express. She has a small office at a nearby place where from I was able to make my first call back to India. I also came to know that in the same compound, there are more Indians, mostly from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infosys">Infosys</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABN_Amro">ABN-Amro</a>. She bought a couple of calling cards for us, which we actually got on the next day. ISD calls are cheap in China and possibly come with lower quality than that in India. The China Telecom calling cards cost 30RMB for 100mins (1 RMB = 5.5Rs roughly).<br /><br />I was out for a walk in the evening around posh Hongqiao Road area. I was a little bit helpless without Chinese money; they call it Yuan, officially named as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renminbi">Renminbi</a>. I walked around to find the huge twin-towers, where the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft">Microsoft </a>office is located. The area around is full of malls and wide roads. Most of the buildings are 15-20 floored, with a few classic exceptions. There’s a football ground nearby, alongside a few small shops also. The security guards are similar to Indian ones, except a small difference. I wanted to confirm whether the Microsoft office is actually located in that building, they did not understand at all. When they called their officer in charge, a suited person came up. He also did not recognize Microsoft, even after I showed back of my T-shirt - “Microsoft” written in English. He tried to pattern-match it with some of the existing sign-book entries, but unfortunately, none of the MS-employees visited the office on that Sunday. So, his efforts were all in vain. He said “sorry” (how did he know that!!) and I understood the situation. None knows English – not even the minimum to carry an informal conversation – except a few privileged ones.<br /><br />The next morning we were straight to the office. Fortunately, due to the previous experience, the office security persons did recognize IDC entrants and there were no problems to follow. The office was another Microsoft office, with an exceptional view of Shanghai skyline.<br />The lunch was supposed to be the next interesting topic. There was a restaurant in the same Plaza. I went there, along with my Chinese colleagues. They were delighted to know that I was non-vegetarian and can have beef as well. Though they didn’t order beef, may be some secret instructions or experiences before, I was prepared to have beef. The ordered items were fish and pork. The pork items were really delicious and I want to have them more while in China. The fish were sea-fish mainly and nobody knew which fish it was!! All the preparations were in fact marinated and boiled. The gravy was delicious; some of them were in fact soup-like. The favorite one was the kebab like pork-pieces colored like beets. It was simply superb!!<br />Yesterday I went to a KFC and found out that HSBC credit-cards were not accepted there. Today, I saw my colleagues are paying by some special cards, meant to pay restaurant bills only. Some of the restaurants accept these cards and one need to ask the acceptability before they enter a restaurant. The system is still mostly cash-based with a few sporadic efforts of cashless transactions. In India, most of the class one restaurants do accept credit cards and also the overall banking is mostly cashless. In the evening, I had some food where we used the Chinese currency – 754 for $100. I went to McDonalds and the serviceman was clever enough to help me with pictured menu-card. I had a McChicken combo at 18.5Yuan. Similar food would cost around 150Rs in India – Rs50 more. In general, food costs more in Shanghai than in any Indian cities.<br /><br />While coming back, I used a Metro Railway station to cross a road. Although there are flyovers, they are less in number and pedestrians do depend on Zebras to cross the dangerous roads. The Metro Railway appears to be similar one like one in Kolkata. It’s not as clean as one would have expected it to be. The station I visited was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xujiahui">Xujiahui</a> (District - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xuhui_District">Xuhui</a>, famous for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:St_Ignatius_Cathedral.JPG">Cathedral</a>), clearly written in English at the entry. Later from the Wikipedia I came to know that the station could be the best landmark for our place. Also, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro">Shanghai Metro</a>, is much bigger railways service than single-route Kolkata Metro. Shanghai has five key metro routes compared to just one each in Kolkata and Delhi.<br /><br />The similarity with India was also visible in the attitude of the people. The bus drivers are shouting at the passengers at the stops, although the buses are better ones. The hawkers and roadside beggars are present at footpath, although they are better dressed up. Streets are full of people, although they look different from Indians. They are Chinese, out to add themselves in the world order. The weather was similar to that of Kolkata - hot and humid outside, cloudy sky with occassional drizzles.<br /><br />The topic I wanted to really talk about was the women in China. They are dressed scantily in Indian definition of dressing, yet they are comfortable with that. It created an impression that dressing should be different for different ethnicity – because the shape and the structure of the body are different. Mini-est skirts and string-tops do fit them. The variety of skirts and tops are really Moreover, women do heavily participate in jobs, both in formal and informal sectors. The ratio should be much higher than India. One step towards joining the big-league of nations is to employ more and more women to increase the work-force and to build a society based on equality. The employment of women in all sectors is a must. In China, there are women bus-conductors, restaurant-“boy”s, salesgirls, bank-officials and hawkers – a majority of them. Emancipation and empowerment of women should be the next Indian goal – if India at all wants to become a China in future.<br /><br />As I explore more and more of China, I will keep everybody updated. It’s only tiny part of Shanghai I have travelled across; let me wait for getting a chance to draw a better picture soon.<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/india" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/india">India</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/china" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/china">China</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/shanghai" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/shanghai">Shanghai</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/travel" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/travel">Travel</a>Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-59810251321899413992007-06-18T14:19:00.000+05:302007-06-18T14:28:46.167+05:30Pushing the Limits of Speciesism<p>I heard about a lot of hybrids, but never of one involving humans, except in fiction stories. Now, those stories are becoming truth, may be sooner than I expected. Britain has dismissed the plan to outlaw an effort to create a human-animal embryo. Under the new <a href="http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Policyandguidance/Healthandsocialcaretopics/Assistedconception/Assistedconceptiongeneralinformation/DH_4069149" mce_href="http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Policyandguidance/Healthandsocialcaretopics/Assistedconception/Assistedconceptiongeneralinformation/DH_4069149">guidelines</a>, Scientists are allowed to create three different kinds of embryos. The <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/genes/article/0,,2081756,00.html" mce_href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/genes/article/0,,2081756,00.html">Gurdian </a>notes :</p> <p>"<i>The first kind of hybrid allowed under the bill, known as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_%28genetics%29" mce_href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)">chimeric</a> embryo, is made by injecting cells from an animal into a human embryo. The second, known as a human transgenic embryo, involves injecting animal DNA into a human embryo. The third, known as a cytoplasmic hybrid, is created by transferring the nuclei of human cells, such as skin cells, into animal eggs from which almost all the genetic material has been removed.</i>"</p> <p>The scientists will be allowed to grow such an embryo for only two weeks - to develop new treatments for incurable diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. It also restricts the creation of "true hybrid" embryos, which would involve fertilizing a human egg with animal sperm or vice versa. It would also be illegal to put them inside human womb (don't know about the animal one). This kind of embryos would be the major source in the stem cell research.</p> <p>The moral brigade is already started shouting against it. I got a few letters on the internet those describe it as 'Frankenstein science'. However, they might not know that Chinese have already <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/8/14/153903.shtml" mce_href="http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/8/14/153903.shtml">created</a> such an embryo for a similar purpose. Other experiments are proceeding quietly in research facilities around the world. At the Mayo Clinic, scientists created pigs with human blood. Stanford University in California is considering attempting to create mice with 'human' brains.</p> <p>The new regulations came as a U turn over Britain's last decision to outlaw it. Many scientists like Dawkins put huge efforts behind it - to set morality free from religion. Dawkins said once that a human embryo is 'biologically nothing different from an Amoeba', yet we shout against its use in stem cell research as it is 'would-be-human'.</p> <p>However these researches will definitely push to revisit our ancient way to describe a 'human-centric' morality. As Darwinian Evolution said and Genetics later verified, we are very closely related cousins. These experiments are taking that view a bit further. A rat with a human brain might possibly be able to suffer similar emotional pain to that of a human being. So, a 'human-centric' morality can be called an example of '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism" mce_href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism">speciesism</a>'. In this video, Dawkins <a href="http://www.leonardodicaprio.org/getinformed/videos/mov3.htm" mce_href="http://www.leonardodicaprio.org/getinformed/videos/mov3.htm">talks</a> in favor of animal rights and against speciesism.</p> <p>"<i>Today we live in a specisist world. We are automatically, without thinking, without question assume that there's one law for Homo sapiens and one law for the rest of the animal kingdom. That is speciesism. Now of course, if you object the speciesism, you are in a sense letting yourself wide open to reductio ad absurdum when people will ask - where will you stop? Should you care for cabbages because there is an evolutionary continuum between us and cabbages if you go sufficiently back? You'd be starved to death, if you are that insistent upon rejecting specisism. My answer to that is that we should not be any kind of '-ist' of that kind. We have rather a continuum as a sliding scale from Gorillas and Chimpanzees being very close to us and cabbages being very long way away. And there is no way why we should erect a wall at any particular fence. There are some animals who suffer, can think, can reason, can suffer emotions which deserve and must have a greater moral consideration from us than other animal.</i>"</p> <p>He continued to make a case for other animals to be treated with minimal morality or to stretch the morality of our perception:</p> <p>"<i>What I am saying is that it's a matter of a merest accident that the intermediates happened to be extinct. That's the only thing that enables us to erect this great fence around Homo sapiens to say that there are humans in one side and the whole of the rest of the animal kingdom on the other side. It's very hard to make a purely scientific case for conserving any particular species. ... The only case I can make is the emotional case, and what's wrong with that? We are emotional beings. I feel emotional about it. I want to save gorillas, to save rhinos; I want to save these magnificent creatures which are built up over millions of years of evolution before they go forever. It's an irrevocable thing and that is an emotional argument.</i>"</p> <p>I wonder what position the religious people would take on this since it cannot be called a 'human'. Will it have a soul? I'm pretty sure that liberalist and extremist religious people will fight once more. Let's wait and find out what their stance would be.</p> <p>Reference : Dawkins <a href="http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/dawkins01.htm" mce_href="http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/dawkins01.htm">write up</a> on Speciesism. The <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&index=books&field-keywords=Speciesism&page=1" mce_href="http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&index=books&field-keywords=Speciesism&page=1">list of books</a> on speciesism at Amazon.</p>Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-2261001672364312702007-06-18T01:23:00.000+05:302007-06-18T01:24:49.229+05:30A Letter to a Daughter<p>In his interview, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins" mce_href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins">Dawkins </a>said about child-indoctrination and why he considers it as a child-abuse. He also mentioned that a true education of children should include teaching of all kinds of religion, including atheism. Also, they should be encouraged to have a critical view on religion, if they wish to. However, he did not actually mention how that kind of education will look like. In his <a href="http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/dawkins2.html" mce_href="http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/dawkins2.html">letter </a>to his 10 year old daughter Juliet, I can see a glimpse of that scientific education.</p> <p>Dawkins classified belief into 'good' and 'bad' categories. He tries to answer the critical question on why anybody should 'believe' in science. He explains what is evidence and how carefully science gather it. He then cited three other popular reasons for belief - "tradition," "authority," and "revelation." He presented examples for all these and explained how they might drift one away from truth. He didn't only talk about religion, but also about language and other traditions. In the end he separates out the knowledge of "revelation", "tradition" and "authority" from the knowledge out of evidences and guided her to choose knowledge-resources carefully.</p> <p>I cannot but quote a few lines from his letter. A wonderful similarity between detectives and the scientists are the way the find out evidences. Dawkins says :</p> <p>"<i>Often, evidence isn't just an observation on its own, but observation always lies at the back of it. If there's been a murder, often nobody (except the murderer and the victim!) actually observed it. But detectives can gather together lots or other observations which may all point toward a particular suspect. If a person's fingerprints match those found on a dagger, this is evidence that he touched it. It doesn't prove that he did the murder, but it can help when it's joined up with lots of other evidence. Sometimes a detective can think about a whole lot of observations and suddenly realise that they fall into place and make sense if so-and-so did the murder.</i>"</p> <p>He even classified 'love' based on evidence and without evidence. He said :</p> <p>"<i>There are people with a strong inside feeling that a famous film star loves them, when really the film star hasn't even met them. People like that are ill in their minds. Inside feelings must be backed up by evidence, otherwise you just can't trust them.</i>"</p> <p>And of course on child-indoctrination :</p> <p>"<i>It's a pity, but it can't help being the case, that because children have to be suckers for traditional information, they are likely to believe anything the grown-ups tell them, whether true or false, right or wrong. ... Millions of other people believe quite different things, because they were told different things when they were children. Muslim children are told different things from Christian children, and both grow up utterly convinced that they are right and the others are wrong.</i>"</p> <p>Of course his most valuable guidance to her daughter comes with :</p> <p>"<i>And, next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: "What kind of evidence is there for that?" And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.</i>"</p> <p>I am trying to translate it in Bengali. In case I am done, I will update this blog to have that link too. Till then read the finest English <a href="http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/dawkins2.html" mce_href="http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/dawkins2.html">letter </a>from Richard Dawkins - the smartest intellectual.</p>Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-2114004851938942622007-06-18T01:20:00.000+05:302007-06-18T01:22:45.422+05:30Genetics to Biotechnology<p class="MsoNormal">It was always a challenging task for human beings to produce the ‘human-hormones’ outside a human body. The reward was well known. A disease caused by the lack of this particular hormone can be cured easily by injecting that artificially produced hormone.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Let’s take the case of Insulin. A patient of Diabetes requires regular injection of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin" mce_href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin">Insulin</a> since their body fails to produce it naturally. Until 70’s, the major source of Insulin was domestic mammals like cow and pig. Due to close evolutionary relationship with human beings, this Insulin was almost similar to human insulin in structure. Hence, these sources used to work for most of the cases. However, there were side effects of this method – like skin rashes.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The advent of a couple of technological breakthrough changed the entire scenario. First, the DNA was discovered. Then it was established that the amino acid sequence in DNA strands are actually replicated in ribosome to produce different proteins. In other words, the DNA code on the chromosome works as a template to the protein produced in the cell. The other milestone was the discovery of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recombinant_DNA" mce_href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recombinant_DNA">Recombinant DNA</a> – a form of DNA that is achieved by combination, insertion and deletion of more than one DNA strands.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Bacteria have a second set of DNA molecules other than those in their Chromosome. This is called a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmid" mce_href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmid">plasmid</a>. The successful strategy by a company named Genentech to produce Insulin uses these plasmids efficiently. Genentech researchers produced artificial genes for each of the two protein chains that comprise the insulin molecule. The plasmid is then inserted into the bacteria named E. Coli. The bacteria multiply and at the same time produced either of the two protein-chains, in presence of lactose.<span> </span>At the end, the bacteria are killed and the Insulin chains are separated. The protein-chains are then merged to produce Insulin.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The fact is that the person who discovered Recombinant DNA – <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Boyer" mce_href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Boyer">Herbert Boyer</a>, started Genentech. He was funded by a venture capitalist, Bob Swanson. They formed the World’s first Biotechnology firm, with a capital of close to $1000. However, when they were ready to launch their product, Eli Lilly was the market leader in Insulin business with 85% market share. Genentech avoided the collision and signed contract with Lilly to market their product. In September 1980, Genentech went public. The share price shoot up from $35 to $89 within hours of trading and both of them became instant millionaires.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The same concept of Recombinant DNA is used even today in Biotechnology, to produce artificial proteins, and getting used in every sphere of Life. A chapter of the book DNA : The Secret of Life by James Watson, is dedicated to various biotechnological efforts. The most interesting one is described like this :</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>So-called dragline silk, which forms the radiating spokes of a spider web, is an extraordinarily tough fiber. By weight, it is five times as strong as steel. … the silk-protein producing genes have been isolated and can be inserted into other organisms, which can thus serve as spider-silk factories. This very line of research is funded by Pentagon … soldiers may one day be clad in protective suits of spider-silk body armor.</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Something that started with innovations ended up making money once more. With the advent of Biotechnology, the prime focus of research in Genetics took a new turn to include commerce in the agenda. For human society, the research that started with Watson-Crick Double Helix model slowly begins to produce fruits in direct application.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Reference:</p> <ol><li class="MsoNormal">DNA The Secret of Life by James Watson : Chapter Five titled as – DNA, Dollars and Drugs: Biotechnology</li><li class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.che.utoledo.edu/Biotechnology.html" mce_href="http://www.che.utoledo.edu/Biotechnology.html">Biotechnology</a> describes the Insulin production process.</li><li class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_biotechnology_in_pharmaceutical_manufacturing" mce_href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_biotechnology_in_pharmaceutical_manufacturing">Wikipedia</a></li><li class="MsoNormal">Protein <a href="http://www.scienceaid.co.uk/biology/genetics2/proteinsynthesis.html" mce_href="http://www.scienceaid.co.uk/biology/genetics2/proteinsynthesis.html">Synthesis</a> described.</li><li class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.med.uni-giessen.de/itr/history/inshist.html" mce_href="http://www.med.uni-giessen.de/itr/history/inshist.html">History of Insulin</a>.</li></ol>Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-20402638062952781622007-06-18T01:18:00.000+05:302007-06-18T01:20:08.228+05:30Writing in Bengali<p>For the first time I am <a href="http://www.mukto-mona.com/Articles/diganta_sarkar/Dawkins.pdf" mce_href="http://www.mukto-mona.com/Articles/diganta_sarkar/Dawkins.pdf">writing in Bengali </a>on the topics I cover in my blog. It's a great experience to write in mother tongue. The article, already published in the <a href="http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/index.htm" mce_href="http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/index.htm">mukto-mona</a> site, is again on the <a href="http://horizonspeaks.wordpress.com/2007/05/25/81/" mce_href="http://horizonspeaks.wordpress.com/2007/05/25/81/">interview of Richard Dawkins</a>. I was always skeptic about my Bengali writing skill, but ultimately somehow managed to produce something. One of the questions was eventually dropped from the translation since I was unable to get a fitting Bengali translation for 'compartmentalize'. I am really thankful to my wife for helping me out in crtical translations - she again proved that Bangladeshi Bengalis have superior control over Bengali. Thanks to Avijit Roy of Mukto-Mona for publishing my article. And of course thanks a lot to the Bengali word processing software, <a href="http://bornosoft.com/" mce_href="http://bornosoft.com">Bornosoft</a>. It's really interesting to know that this excellent word editor (<a href="http://bornosoft.com/freebasic/" mce_href="http://bornosoft.com/freebasic/">download the free version</a>) has been developed by someone who is a doctor by profession!!</p> <p>Coming back to my writing, I am planning to write up an article on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett" mce_href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett">Daniel Dennett's</a> view of Atheism. Also, I am eager to write about DNA stuff I am reading from the books of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson" mce_href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson">James Watson</a>. I would also write on brain and consciousness inspired by a book from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilayanur_S._Ramachandran" mce_href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilayanur_S._Ramachandran">V. S. Ramachandran</a>. This time, I have to write in Bengali too. May be it will add a few extra hours of work in my weekend, but the pleasure I derive from the writing is priceless.</p> <p>For next couple of months, I am going to stay at Shanghai, China. During the visit, I am planning to concentrate on China specific topics, especially on Chinese culture. I am already a little bit worried about the Chinese food and work-culture. Yet, nothing is wrong if I hope for the best !!</p> <p><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Bornosoft" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/Bornosoft">Bornosoft</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Bengali%20software" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/Bengali%20software">Bengali software</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Bengali%20editor" mce_href="http://technorati.com/tag/Bengali%20editor">Bengali editor</a>.</p>Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-46973130695559549072007-06-12T09:55:00.000+05:302007-06-12T10:37:23.488+05:30The Bengali Resources at Mukto-MonaWhile I write on Richard Dawkins and Evolution in my blog, a group named <a href="http://www.mukto-mona.com/">mukto-mona</a> have taken up their pens to write up in Bengali. It's great to see people scribing for Atheism and Dawkins in Bengali. Let me refer you all to some of the best resources available in Bengali.<br /><br />1) The <a href="http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/God_Delusion.pdf">first chapter</a> of The God Delusion.<br />2) A <a href="http://www.mukto-mona.com/Articles/bonna/elem_kotha_theke.pdf">book</a> on Evolution by Bonnya Ahmed - continued for multiple chapters. It is also available as a book at Bangladesh Ekushe Boimela.<br />3) A Richard Dawkins <a href="http://www.mukto-mona.com/science/popular/Dhormer_upojogita.pdf">article</a> on Religion and Evolution.<br />4) The <a href="http://www.mukto-mona.com/Articles/alo_hate/jaatree1.pdf">Journey of Science to find Life</a> - An excellent write up on modern science (especially focussing on the roots of Universe and what is Life) starting from Big Bang to Extraterrestrial life, divided into multiple parts.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/2007/Jahed_Darwin.pdf">life of Charles Darwin</a> is described in Bengali.<br /><br />And of course, anybody want to publish their views in Bengali, can <a href="http://www.mukto-mona.com/Articles/ajoy/muktanwesa.htm">send</a> it to them or join a yahoo group called <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/">mukto-mona</a>. There are numerous good articles both in English and Bengali published at the site. I bet that anybody will enjoy most of them. To a Bengali living in West Bengal, I would recommend these article since they should know how close they are to someone living accross the border - in Bangladesh.<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Atheism">Atheism</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Bangladesh">Bangladesh</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Bengali">Bengali</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Darwin">Darwin</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Dawkins">Dawkins</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Evolution">Evolution</a>Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-90168884005870204452007-06-08T20:56:00.000+05:302007-06-09T00:00:00.597+05:30The Evolution FAQI was planning to write about Evolution FAQ for long. It's boring to fight against all apostates of Evolution visiting their own blogs. Rather, if I can prepare a platform at my own blog to fight those, I get a better opportunity pounce on them. By the way, let me first acknowledge that this particular piece is going to be mostly be compiled from various sources in Internet.<br /><br />The evolution is best described as :<br />1. is a fact,<br />2. is also a number of theories,<br />3. is Science,<br />4. is also scientific,<br />5. is naturalistic and purely mechanistic,<br />6. is falsifiable,<br />7. is testable,<br />8. is predictive,<br />9. has been observed;<br /> 9a. in the field<br /> 9b. in the laboratory,<br />10. has occurred in the past,<br />11. is still occurring,<br />12. will continue to occur in the future.<br /><br />Further, we can also note that evolution:<br /><br />13. is not atheistic (nor Communistic, Marxist, Leninist, Stalinist, etc.),<br />14. <span style="font-weight: bold;">is not evil</span>,<br />15. is not mandated by law to be taught in US public schools,<br />16. is not a cosmological theory (i.e., "it don't do origins"),<br />17. is not a religion nor Religion,<br />18. is not determined by popular opinion (as can be said of any science),<br />19. is not a socio-political program or paradigm,<br />20. is not dependent on the supernatural,<br />21. does not claim that "Man came from apes",<br />22. is not progress,<br />23. <span style="font-weight: bold;">has not, will not and cannot be proven</span> (as can be said of any science),<br />24. Is not random nor relies on 'blind chance',<br />25. does not violate the second law of thermodynamics,<br />26. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Does not deny (a) God(s), and finally,</span><br />27. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Falsifying evolution does not prove Creation.</span><br /><br />Sounds interesting? <a href="http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/factfaq.htm">Continue reading</a> ... By the way, my pick of the quote would be :<br /><br />The honest scientist, like the philosopher, will tell you that nothing whatever can be or has been proved with fully 100% certainty, not even that you or I exist, nor anyone except himself, since he might be dreaming the whole thing. Th us there is no sharp line between speculation, hypothesis, theory, principle, and fact, but only a difference along a sliding scale, in the degree of probability of the idea. When we say a thing is a fact, then, we only mean that its probability is an extremely high one: so high that we are not bothered by doubt about it and are ready to act accordingly. T<span style="font-size:100%;">he probability that evolution is the correct explanation of life as we know it may approach 99.9999...9% but it will never be 100%.</span><br /><br />However I would like to pick up a few more so called technical questions to answer. The pick of the questions are :<br />1) What is the application of Evolution, or, in other words, can evolution predict anything?<br /><br />A very good application can be the creation of hybrid species. These species are been created matching the environment they are going to live, so that they can maximize production. This is derived from the fact that nature does select. If everything were created, we would not be able to create new species.<br />Many predictions made by theory of evolution are proven true. Darwin predicted the existence of 'unit of heredity' that was proved to be gene. And, the genetic similarities the species share among them, are the living evidences of evolution. More recently, the same theory explains the existence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, who've mutated to resist antibiotic (e.g. penicilin), and 'selected' to become the majority and can resume attacks.<br /><br />2) If humans are from monkeys then how does monkeys still exist?<br /><br />Human beings did not evolved from monkeys. They share a common ancestor with monkeys. And a new species generally comes out of the other only if they are geographically isolated. So one can safely assume, that there were at least two groups of apes/hominoids, one evolved to become humans, the other became monkeys.<br /><br />3) Even if we accept natural selection, what's the proof that it leads to speciation?<br /><br />I should refer to the speciation <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html">events</a> observed in the past in front of modern human eyes.<br /><br />That's it from my side. I know I could have written a lot more than this, but somehow, I'm satisfied with this. If anybody else suggests me about any common misconception, I am ready to clarify him.<br />Further reference :<br />1) <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/faq/">FAQ 1</a> A good technical one.<br />2) <a href="http://www.evolutionfaq.com/">FAQ 2</a> brief but to the point.Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-60674478290704389782007-06-06T12:19:00.000+05:302007-06-08T11:35:44.311+05:30Videos on EvolutionThe Discovery channel on Evolution of life on Earth is amazing and entertaining. Here's the list of of the links -<br /><a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=Yveo1hRXFME">part 1</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=faGA_5rEXl8">part 2</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=7niMVm7xxLk">part 3</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=1KlyEwOqucQ">part 4</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=s9ZWyyCrRf0">part 5</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=KnCIEgk55DU">part 6</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=0dJ6QZWfMm8">part 7</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=s0hZ3rHI_v8">part 8</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=QwgFiPjF9AE">part 9</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=yuFdmJDjHBs">part 10</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=VBNRdFGF9zg">part 11</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=wE7vnVrMd4M">part 12</a>. The program is named as "Walking With Monsters". In fact the entire set uploaded by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=TruthTheory">TruthTheory</a> should be watched.<br /><br />An knowledgable description of the process is found in Dawkins' video -<br />The <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=furcepFlfZ4">evolution of the eye</a>. The full video is available in <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=3BSjtL0mdLo">part 1</a> and <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=Z_bXMiQmkVw">part 2</a>, titled The Blind watchmaker. Another video, comparatively less attractive, was the <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=FzeCn02l_Rw">Nice guys finish first</a>.<br /><br />The wonderful story of Human evolution is at 5 parts -<br /><a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=zK6ECiARTvA">part 1</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=bswCYL92m6s">part 2</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=H4BOnIOQLKA">part 3</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=tvdshQPqQ7k">part 4</a> and <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=iHxe59UrgGE">part 5</a>. The series is named as "Human Life - Evolution To Self-Evolution". It also lists the proofs gathered with respect to human evolution.<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Evolution">Evolution</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Science">Science</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Dawkins">Dawkins</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Darwin">Darwin</a>.Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-21011962181631199522007-06-03T10:33:00.000+05:302007-06-06T12:16:05.894+05:30Towards a science-aware societyOf late I have been writing on the ill-effect of <a href="http://horizonspeaks.wordpress.com/2007/05/28/memetics-and-cultural-evolution-the-roots-of-the-religion/">religion</a> to resist the science and the scientific study of nature. After writing on the Memetics of the religions, I decided to look further deep to understand why exactly science is obstructed – is the religion the root cause or human nature itself blocks the development. I discovered that the intuitiveness, a virtue of a human being, is considered to be the worst enemy of science education. In other words, human beings are programmed to oppose science instinctively. The best explanation comes in favor of it by analyzing the natural learning process of a human being.<br /><br />Prior to exposure to organized study of science, children use their intuition to judge and gather knowledge about the world they see – both physical and social knowledge. The examples social knowledge can include the identification of parents and close relatives. The physical domain experiences include the observational fact that objects fall in the ground or it hurts more if dropped from higher places.<br /><br />The problem with teaching children the science is not what student is lacks, but what the student has already assumed to be the truth as per physical domain experience. As an example, once a child ‘knows’ that objects fall, it’s difficult to convince him that the Earth is spherical in shape, because they perceive that people should ‘fall’ out of the bottom half of the sphere. Also, a flat world fits their observation that they can see, sometimes, in a dilemma, they pick up a false idea of a flat livable flat place on top of a spherical Earth.<br /><br /><a href="http://web.jhu.edu/cogsci/people/faculty/McCloskey/">Michael McCloskey</a>, a professor of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science">Cognitive Science</a> in John Hopkins University, conducted a <a href="http://punya.educ.msu.edu/courses/summer01/pdfs/naivetheories.pdf">survey</a> among adult American students to find out how scientific they are. He took the domain of objects in motion, something that people both read theories and observe a lot of times in their day to day life. He presented diagrams to depict a physical condition and asked the students how the motion of the object would be in those conditions. He asked how a ball should continue after coming out of curved tube, what trajectory a ball should fall when dropped from a moving aero plane or from the roof and many more of these. The result was strikingly different from what was expected, people went by ‘common perception’ or what we see in life. Most of them told that the ball from the aero plane will fall straight, or come out of a curved tube in a curved motion. Interestingly, when asked about the motion of water out of a curved hose-pipe, they mentioned it to be straight, since it comes into their direct space of observation.<br /><br />McCloskey concluded that everyone (children or adults) builds a naïve theory in their brain out of the observations they make. These theories are often wrong and also carry casual explanations along with them. These naive theories are dominant in ancient scripts and continue to be the base of <a href="http://horizonspeaks.wordpress.com/2007/05/07/79/">pseudo-science</a>. A sustainable knowledge of science needs to overcome these barriers of naïve theories within a human being.<br /><br />To overcome this resistance, the establishment of trustworthy source is necessary. Children, when unable to verify most of the claims, try to verify the sources of the claim. To a child, parents and the closer relatives are the most trustworthy source. So, in case science teacher in school teaches them about evolution and parents back home opposes that, then, they are bound to take the parents’ one. Not only that, they grow idea about books and newspaper those are trustworthy. They tend to believe ideas from an adult who is confident and who can map their theories to real life. Most notable point here is the trustworthiness they gather, carries to their adulthood. And it holds true for religious, political and moral beliefs also. The idea to overcome science resistance is to inject science at every level of information source, so that people understand them as trustworthy, even if it conflicts the naïve theories in mind.<br /><br />In India, the presence of naïve theories in the form of superstitions is very potent. One example I can pick up, is related to “Snakes eating milk and banana”. These theories are present from religious background and get verified by the children from their trustworthy adults. I used to believe that snakes really eat them as society elders talked about them. I came to the correct knowledge only after a science campaign run on television. The naïve theories (example: firm land should be kept idle for a certain period of time to retain land-fertility) present among farmers are also the result of their intuitions, and campaigners find them difficult to replace with modern science (following crop-rotation).<br /><br />The discussion above points out that we need more prominent scientists to come up at the stage, at public debates or at television programs to articulate and defend science as a unique process of acquiring knowledge. The society today, if it is superstitious and religious like that of India, is a result of egoistic apathy of the scientists, who ignore their social responsibility to convey their message to common people. More research and more innovations might bring more money to them, but ultimately, in a democracy, people rules. So, a social awareness of the science is the only way people can become scientific, or at least can consider science as a trustworthy source of information.<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Science">Science</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Cognitive%20Science">Cognitive Science</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Atheism">Atheism</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Evolution">Evolution</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Society">Society</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/India">India</a>Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-15809102366614344122007-05-29T01:42:00.000+05:302007-05-29T11:12:24.700+05:30Memetics and Cultural Evolution: The Roots of the Religion<strong>What is Memetics?</strong><br />The term "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme">meme</a>" coined and popularized by the biologist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins">Richard Dawkins </a>in his book <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene">The Selfish Gene</a>, refers to a "unit of cultural information" (cognitive or behavioral pattern) which can propagate from one mind to another in a manner analogous to genes (i.e., the units of genetic information). Some contemporary examples of meme can be popular proverbs (“Hard work pays”), gossips, health consciousness (“wash hands before eating”), nursery rhymes (even epics and religious books), conspiracy theories, terms and phrases (“Whassup”) and a lot more.<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme-complex">Memeplexe </a>or Meme-complex is a group of Memes; those are interdependent and survive as a ‘colony’ of memes – such as religion, culture or political doctrines.<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics">Memetics</a>, coined as a similar sounding word of Genetics, is an approach to evolutionary models of information transfer based on the concept of the meme. The popular Memetics hypotheses that memes do not replicate only, but refined, recombined or modified in new memes.<br /><br /><strong>Propagation of Memes</strong><br />The better a meme can be copied; more it will become common part of the culture. This depends on copying fidelity (accuracy of copy), fecundity (rate of copying) and longevity of the meme. The successful propagation of memes depends on various things – experience of the individual, speculation of the individual, social censorship, distinction of source of the meme. Two communities, those who mix rarely, can be thought of as memetically isolated communities, e.g. Americans and Arabs.<br /><br /><strong>Children as the media of meme propagation</strong><br />As per behavioral evolution, children who are more obedient to their parents get natural selective advantage over others. This unique nature of children enables human civilization to build upon past experiences. Children, who accept the words of adults as rule of thumb, as “Don’t go to cliff of the roof”, “Don’t swim into the deep water” or “Don’t go to the forest alone”, are more likely to survive and reproduce later. When grown up, they propagate their memes, accumulated in the childhood to the next generation, and may be in a modified format. The memes that are more appealing tends to propagate more accurately than the others.<br /><br /><strong>Religion as a Memeplex </strong><br />Religion and the existence of God as a set of memes have got the unique appeal to human civilization. It provides plausible answers to deep and troubling questions of the nature, suggests the ‘injustice’ will be rectified in the next and one will be placed in relatively good or bad places after death depending on the performance in this life. Dawkins, in his book <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion">The God Delusion </a>(pg 199) has provided a list of religious memes those had high survival values in human civilization.<br /><br />The reasons for the high survival of religious memes include<span style="font-weight: bold;"> social experience, </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">speculations and </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">distinct source. </span>The religious people always express their experience as positive to add the survival value to the meme, e.g. faith is a virtue and prayer is the way to seek help from God. People speculate about mysteries of nature, miracles, life and death that ensure high survival for the religious explanations. Last but not the least, the revered and distinct source (religious leader/book) adds additional survival value to it. Presence of ‘exclusivist’ memes in the organized religion is striking. For example, punishment or ostracism for heretics, apostates and blasphemers are such ‘exclusivist’ memes. These memes protects the memeplex to get infected from 'outsider memes'. One of the distinct features of Indian culture is the lack of 'exclusivist' meme, that enables India to be built on top of a unique plural society.<br /><br />A reflection on the above theories can provide you clues why religious sects exist. Sects came into being due to different variation of ‘interpretation’, resulted out of different memetic evolutionary path followed by different sects. Same way, the recombination of different memes resulted in same religion to be performed in different ways in different regions.<br /><br /><strong>The Roots of Religion</strong><br />As we know how religion and the features propagate, we can proceed how it came into being initially. The best explanation, although controversial, I have got is from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett">Daniel Dennett</a>, in his book The Intentional Stance. He classified the stance of human beings with respect to an object in three ways – physical stance, design stance and intentional stance. In a Physical stance, man tries to explain the object and its’ behavior in terms of natural laws. The second one is design stance, to predict the behavior of the object as it is designed to perform that, e.g., the bird flies by flapping the wings or an alarm clock is designed to ring at a particular time. This is in effect a shortcut over the earlier one and provides advantages if established upon experience. The last one is the intentional stance, that enables personification of the object and predict the behavior as per the intention of the object. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_stance">intentional stance</a>, very frequently gave humans advantage over other animals e.g., to identify predators (like Tiger) and cattle (Dogs). The noticable point is that the abstraction of objects is increasing in each stance. The human civilization is basically a race from the third one to the first - initially they had to take the more abstract ones due to lack of knowledge to go to physical stance. Dennett argues that it is best to understand human beliefs and desires at the level of the intentional stance, without making any specific commitments to any deeper reality to the artifacts of each and every folk psychology. The gods and the God, along with the Angels and Daemons are nothing but these personifications of these objects - survived in human societies as memes.<br /><br /><strong>The Future</strong><br />The clash of reason and religion is basically the clash of memes. The memes of reason are supported by evidences, those a human being can directly experience. The memes of religion are appealing and has high propagation value. The battle is likely to continue in future.<br /><br /><strong>Conclusion</strong><br />A memetic view of religion is undoubtedly better than any view proposed by the popular religions as the ‘first cause’ or the beginning of themselves. The explanation gives us idea on how the simple ‘personification’ of unknown objects turned into what we see as organized religion, by means of propagation of memes. The hypothesis, may have a lot of technical drawbacks, but overall is very effective in this case.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">References</span><br />A <a href="http://www.cscs.umich.edu/%7Ecrshalizi/notebooks/memes.html">bibiliography</a> on meme.<br />The <a href="http://www.jci.org/cgi/reprint/115/11/2961.pdf">multi-dimensional</a> evolution.<br /><a href="http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/">Susan Blackmore</a> and her "<a href="http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Books/Meme%20Machine/mmsynop.html">The Meme Machine</a>".<br /><a href="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel4/5659/15164/00699248.pdf?arnumber=699248">The Selfish Meme</a> - a concept.<br /><a href="http://www.consciousentities.com/dennett.htm">Intentional Stance</a> made easy.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Atheism">Atheism</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Evolution">Evolution</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Meme">Meme</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Dawkins">Dawkins</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Religion">Religion</a>.Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19864471.post-37705059094235905792007-05-25T10:25:00.000+05:302007-05-25T13:20:35.607+05:30The Richard Dawkins FAQRichard Dawkins, the author of NY Times bestseller <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion">The God Delusion</a>, has been interviewed many a times recently. The questions asked were mainly related to his book, the views on atheism, morality and present world. He answered all the question in a flawless and confident way. Each and every answer of him speaks about his passion and eagerness to explain his stance on every point. It's an amazing experience to watch him speak. I have tried to pick up a few commonly asked questions and his answers on different topics.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why are you against faith?</span><br /><br />Because, I am a kind of person who cares about the Truth. The religion and any sort of dogma are the biggest obstacle against the Truth. Not only that, I am worried about the position religion enjoys in our society. You can attack other's political view, criticise a football coach but cannot attack one's religious faith. It's a kind of immunity from criticism that religion enjoys, despite being proven to be mostly illogical.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">There are billions of people across the world following their faiths and living their life. How do you describe them?</span><br /><br />Of course, there are billions of people living their religious life and most of them are harmless people. But, they are carrying a virus of faith with them, that they transmit from generations to another, and could create a 'epidemic' of faith any time. As I said, I am a kind of person who cares about the truth and also want to see people following the truth. The truth is not a revelation, but truth that has been established though evidences and repeated experiments.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Even there are scientists who are religious. How do you feel about them?</span><br /><br />Yeah, unfortunately there are many good scientists who do this. Although, I do not clearly understand their position in life, it seems to me, either they act like religious people consciously for some other purpose or compartmentalize their views based on the context.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Religious people claim they derive their morality from religion. Where from an atheist derive his morality?</span><br /><br />Religious people do not derive their morality from religion. I disagree (with the interviewer) on this point. Almost all of us do agree on moral grounds where religion had no effect. For example we all hate slavery, we want emancipation of women - they are all our moral grounds. These moral grounds started building only a few centuries ago and long after all major religions were established. We derive our morality from the environment we live in, Talk shows, Novels, Newspaper editorials and of course by the guidance of parents. Religion might only have a minor role to play in it. An atheist derives his morality from the same source as a religious people do.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">But, all the religious books have given moral guidance to the people, like not killing the neighbors. Why do you think they are still bad?</span><br /><br />The religious books do talk about not killing your neighbors, at the same time they talk about not showing skins of women or killing the infidels. The God of the Old Testament, as I described, is not at all a good 'person'. The God is certainly a lot better in New Testament. However, when you pick and choose the good verses out of a religious book, the parameters those you use, does not certainly come from the religion itself. For example, when you say New Testament is better, you are certainly not using Christianity as a judge. The parameters you use, are the effect of the morality that is already with you, assimilated from different sources in your life time.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">In your book, you've said that God 'almost certainly' does not exist. Why are you leaving open the possibility?</span><br /><br />Any scientific people will leave open that possibility, that they cannot disprove whatever unlikely the event might be. I would be the first person to acccept God once evidence comes in favour of it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">So you accept Science cannot disprove God. What is the problem if people follow religions till God is disproved?</span><br /><br />Science cannot disprove God as well as they cannot disprove <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo">Apollo</a> or<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juju"> Juju</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor">Thor</a> with his hammer or even a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster">Flying Spaghetti Monster</a> creating the universe. However, we do not believe them as they are unlikely to exist. We do neither believe in fairies of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Christian_Anderson">Hans Andersen</a> although we cannot disprove them. To believe in an unlikely event or a deity only because we cannot disprove it, sounds foolish to me.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why don't you thing that the Universe, huge, complex and mysterious, is not a creation of a Supreme Being, where we see all complex things are in fact created?</span><br /><br />First of all if you assume that all complex things are created, then a God, capable of creating such a complex Universe, should also be a complex being and should also has a creator. On the other hand, if you follow the Darwinian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution">Evolution</a> path, you'd see how a complex organism can be built upon relatively simpler beings by the process of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Selection">Natural Selection</a>. And it is far more logical to believe that we and the Universe in general, started from a simpler start that a complex creator starting it up.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">When you stand on the top of a mountain doesn't the vastness of the world strike you? Don't you feel charmed by the beauty of the nature, and the mysterious laws of the vast Universe?<br /><br /></span>Of course I do. And I have mentioned about it in the first chapter of my book as the spirituality followed by Einstein. He was so charmed about the mysteries of the world and it was such an exciting experience to explore it. It's a kind of spirituality that does not require God, a personal deity to explain the mysteries of Nature. It is quite different from a religion centered around a God who can read mind, keeps track of sins, judges people after death punishes the disbelievers and rules the Universe.<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What is your opinion about Stalin and Hitler as Atheists?</span><br /><br />I have said in my book that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler">Hitler</a> is not at all atheist, as he was religiously biased against Jewish people. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin">Stalin</a> was following communism dogmatically. I have already said that none of us, in effect derive our morality from religion. Stalin, in fact, used the dogmatic communism as his source of morality - if we call it morality at all. Being atheist does not ask you to become dogmatic or communist, but only ask you not to believe in God. A person working in a Mafia group can also be an atheist although it will be illogical to say that atheism pushed him to the Mafia group. There are other colleagues working with him who are religious.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why do you link religion with 'Child-abuse'?</span><br /><br />I link the marking of children as 'Jewish boy' or 'Muslim child' as a child abuse, since, in childhood they are yet to choose their religious views. Not only that, they are brought up in a way that he gets separated from other religious groups and views so that he follows the religious faith of his parents. Obstructing the view of children clearly comes under child abuse.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Your ambition is that people reading this book should abandon their faith. Isn't that?</span><br /><br />There is no harm in aiming high and you can say that is my ambition. But, in practice, we want the people who follow the middle ground, who never have thought deeply on this topic, to think twice and consciously reject God. Also, I can see that in United States 10-15% people are Atheists, larger than any minority religious groups. However, they don't have any political power or a lobby compared to strong Jewish lobby. I want Atheists to come together and establish a God-neutral political view, a view of their own, for a better balanced world.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">References<br /><br /></span>1) <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=CfTDxnbsxZQ">Interview</a> with Jeremy Paxman on BBC.<br />2) <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=pye57KSH4pQ">Interview</a> on CNN on Darwin Day.<br />3) TV Ontario interview (<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=BfLn4MAnfpM">part 1</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=rq4KwBjXROA">part 2</a> and <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=xvGYbv_aBJw">part 3</a>).<br />3) The Hour <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=bNHo00gjHRk">interview</a>, (<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=vFChwyJEc4g">part 2</a>).<br />4) The debate - <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=HyKqhvF-6tI">part 1</a>, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=n5h_P7aBU7E">part 2</a> and <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=uzAnBTRXQpw">part 3</a>.<br />4) <a href="http://richarddawkins.net/home">RichardDawkins.net</a> for more video/interview resources.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Atheism">Atheism</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Religion">Religion</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Dawkins">Richard Dawkins</a>,<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/The%20God%20Delusion"> The God Delusion</a>.Digantahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466797229235000916noreply@blogger.com