The Elephant thing

Elephants form the integral part of any Kerala festivals, reason being that the gods or goddesses unlke us likes to travel on these majestic creatures instead of low-floor volvo or Maruti WagonR. Off late such festivals have increased, apart from that the similar ezhunnallappu (procession) are being organized even by Jewellary shops and supermarkets. Needless to say I was lucky to witness the procession of a single elephant carrying 'Uninor' god accompanied by Chendamelam on the day before Thrissur Pooram.

Irattupetta Ayyappan was the third elephant from the centre of the 15 elephant entourage of Paramekkavu Bagawathy for last year's Thrissur Pooram, he was probably living his life peaceful( or not) in the misty high ranges of Irattupetta. Everyone would have read about or even saw in live how this jumbo fainted and collapsed as the Ilanjithara melam was cracking through the 4th level. The people who had gathered around didn’t hesitate to sprinkled water from their mineral water bottles to cool him, and after some struggle he managed to get up and was immediately taken away into some shade and replaced with another chap. Doctors who checked him up found that he had a swelling on his leg and the swell might have had got aggravated by the heat.

Paramekkavu had been little laid back in terms of conducting the pooram, they give most of their tasks on contract which means the involvement of people is lesser here. A swell on the leg could have been easily identified and the necessary steps taken to prevent this unfortunate incident. A suggestion to make things easy going forward - rotation of elephants in Pooram. For e.g. The battalion that takes the idol and begins the initial procession will be relieved by another batch towards the noon events(like the ilanjithara melam) and after that as the batch ‘descends towards the south’ the first batch takes over for the Kudamattam(Umbrella show). Then the other batch takes over for the night Pooram. This would give them ample time to recharge and probably take a quick shower before the next shift.

A couple of days prior to this event I happened to come across a 'Elephant lovers group' while visiting the umbrella and other chamayam display at Paramekkavu, they were collecting signature to regulate the use of Elephants for festivals. While signing in their petition I asked them how could we imagine about a festival without elephants, to which they said though they prefer complete ban on elephants being used for such activities they at least want some legislation to be introduced to check illegal use, ill treatment, improper transportation for long journey, medical facilities etc.I promptly signed my name in their petition. 

An year has gone by and Thrissur pooram is around the corner. Eagerly waiting for that...

Classical science, convergence and some thoughts

Few months back there were some discussion about science and superstitions in bulletin board. Needless to say, much of the arguments ‘for’ superstitions were in fact attacking the idea of science. Few questioned the superstitions in the science too, which I thought was valid(strangely, though it was not the intention of the questioner to point out the beauty of science) - do you believe in Einstein’s special relativity theory? Do you believe in Schrodinger’s experiments? Do you..?. Science has nothing to do with believing something. Science is that which is enquired upon, it is the liberty to do experiment and question the properties and nature of the natural world. People who believe in some scientific theory, because it is an accepted theory, are nowhere different from a person believing in ghost. Having that innate itching to question things is the real scientific temper because scientific theories could be wrong. Long ago Anaximander proposed an idea of geocentric model of universe. His philosophy, simple and backed by many accurate observational points, was that the earth is at the center of universe which revolve around it. Similarly Rutherford’s model of atom was a well known hypothesis. Though their theories have now been proven wrong, it doesn’t take away the scientific methodology adopted by either. We know, Later the church adopted and somewhat ‘base lined’ the geocentric theory. They attacked the scientists who put forward the heliocentric theory, and were marked and killed as heretics. The interesting part of this argument is pointing to how the same theory were defined as scientific and superstitious based on how the lines are drawn around it.

I believe classical science played a major role in drawing the lines between the hypothesis and proven facts, it didn’t give space for approximation or caveats and was persistent in defining the natural world with classical mathematics. But there were always something that baffled the scientists and mathematicians which finally brought forward the idea of Convergence. For instance, we know 1/3 + 2/3 is 1, but 1/3 is .333.. and 2/3 is .6666.. and when you add that up it just comes to .99999…. which a classical mathematician equated to 1 with a glass of water. Philosophical thinkers which dominated the scientific fraternity didn’t have anything other than the convergence theory to agree upon that .9999… converges to 1.

There was a famous paradox, which is often used to explain the convergence theory in a classical physics experiment. It was the same old story of the Hare and Tortoise, quite popular hence very likely that you have heard of it. In this story, Hare was confident that he will not sleep on the way and Tortoise, as usual, appeared cool and unperturbed. He approaches the Hare with a humble request, “Mr. Hare, Since you are very quick why don’t you give me a little advantage of starting 10 meters ahead of you, 10 meter is all what I am asking from you”. Hare laughed out loud thinking of Tortoise’s inanity and agreed to the condition. Now the Tortoise will start from a point 10 m ahead of Hare’s starting point. Monkey blows the whistle and the race starts. Now let us apply classical theories into their race..

The hare running at V velocity takes T1 time to cover the first 10 meters, ie after T1 seconds Hare reached the point where Tortoise started. But, Tortoise was not simply standing there, he was walking with a velocity of U and has, by now, covered a distance of U*T1 meters and is still ahead of the Hare. Now Hare takes another T2 seconds to cover the distance U*T1 meters and reaches the point where the Tortoise was, at the end of T1 seconds. But the bugger Tortoise is again U*T2 meters(however small) ahead of Tortoise. Going by this, Tortoise will always be U*Tx meters ahead of hare..which means as per the above explanation the hare would never overtake tortoise!! (Or will this race ever end?). But in reality we know the race would end, and hare would overtake the tortoise. The only explanation to this could be given by the convergence theory, i.e. as the distance between the hare and tortoise becomes infinitesimally small after infinitesimally small fragments of Tx, it is safe to assume that the distance between the hare and tortoise is 0! I.e. as limit Tx->0, the U*Tx->0 and hence after sometime Hare and tortoise would end up in same line. That was the only way this race could be explained with mathematics. To many, it was a failure of classical mathematics in clearly explaining the natural physics, which was otherwise considered as the ‘unambiguous language’ of physical nature. The idea that, a measurable quantity like 1 sec or 1 cm could be divided into infinite quantity of infinitesimally small units even gave the prominence of infinity in mathematics and natural science a stronger base.

Classical science relied on the observation and observational experimentation which involved macro subjects that are quite readily available, visible to human eyes and comprehensible to the human brain. Chemistry was probably something that split the philosophers as the experiments often convoluted into magic, but the idea of science and philosophy were, very much, hand in hand until the end of macro science and evolution of micro science. Now the uncertainty and approximation has changed the way things are seen. It has gone beyond the limits of human imagination, looking at the way the scientific reasoning during the age of enlightenment lead to evolution of the classical science, as we get into the age of nano science. Things are changing, The modern physics may not be able to appreciate philosophers. With the evolution of nanotechnology, philosophy of physical science had been getting heavily dependent on ultra-precision equipments and confined to the walls of expensive laboratories. Astronomy is probably the only classical realm that still remains undiscovered to a large extend. This well known arm of philosopher’s physics still manages to elude the boundaries of human imaginations.

Future of food

Had been watching a BBC feature called Future of food, basically much about the future of food production and consumption and the trend seen across the world and how much the third world countries have been “feeding” the developed countries.

Hungry kya?

Few interesting facts presented in that documentary were, like 70% of the food items imported by Britain comes from the countries where there has been a history of famine, starvation deaths and food riots, this includes countries like India, Pakistan, African countries and South American countries. In one of the episodes the narrator travels to India speaking with various farmers about the problems they face, the responses were like the water shortage, excessive dependency on fertilizers, threat from genetically modified crops, rampant urbanization etc. The documentary was basically for British audience, while it talked about the troubles in various countries it also put forth a warning on how bleak the future of food is going to be.

Genetically modified vegeteroids

A mass movement against the BT Brinjal proved to be a landmark one. But that has just gone for hiding all prepared to come back with more “pleasing” rules and regulations. Now that the nexus between Indian government and corporate have been exposed, it leaves us to wonder why government was so desperate to get the GM food items introduced into the Indian market. It was about a couple of months back I watched yet another documentary called “The World according to Monsanto” It was a stunning documentary on the chemical turned bio-chemical turned Biotech firm that is posing to hold the world at ransom. It was interesting to find that the infamous “Agent Orange”, a mass defoliant used by US in the Vietnam war was a Monsanto product. This indicates the long living marriage between this company with the US government and her ambitions.

The World according to Monsanto

'The World according to Monsanto’ presented various case studies of the seed market invasion done by the Monsanto, like how they file lawsuit against the farmers onto whose farms the GM seeds accidentally fell from the adjacent farm due to wind – the lawsuits were on illegal usage of a company product without consent! Similarly how the BT corn has managed to degrade the local corn of Mexico forcing the farmers to buy the BT corn seeds from the company. The BT Cotton debacle has already showed its fangs when it sent numerous Indian(Vidarbha) farmers suicidal over the seed dependency and crop’s vulnerability to ball worm attacks. These were the few known calamities that the company couldn’t suppressed under their political or media blanket. Recent comments from some leftists, that the people’s apprehensions on BT seeds are superstitious, was slightly shocking considering the fact that they were up front in the protest against BT Brinjal.

Threat to Sustenance

Vandana Shiva, an imminent environmentalist, has started a program called Navdhanya to conserve the natural seed and to create a seed repository to fight against the seed privatization. The developed countries, who currently have to survive by importing food from third world countries for cheap, are already scared on how long they can continue importing food. In case a food riot breaks out any moment in any of these countries(which looks quite possible), that could threaten their sustenance as well. The powerful nations have, hence, let the private parties loose, to graze through the meadows of third world countries and innovate any mechanism to retain the control over the food. Once they control the food, they control the economy of that country, and when they get to control economy they bargain over a nation’s sustainability and social fabric.

Sustainable farming has to win at any cost.

Mirror Neurons: Linking Science and Humanity

“Here is a lump of flesh, about three pounds, which you can hold in the palm of your hand. But it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space. It can contemplate the idea of God, the meaning of infinity, and about itself contemplating the meaning of infinity. And this is truly the most amazing thing in the world.”, V.S. Ramachandran, on brain

I have been watching couple of interesting talks by Dr VS Ramachandran, an imminent neurologists who had been doing research on various aspects of brain and neurons specifically. Neurons are those strands that sit inside the brain and forms the complex circuitry making decision varying from the insignificant zero to the unfathomable infinity. There are many classified types of neurons that is designated for various kind of processing. One interesting topic that he talked about was on a recent discovery of something called the mirror neurons. Going 4000 years back, closeness of all the early inventions like the invention of wheel, fire, self-awareness, civilization etc had always baffled the archeologists as to what made them wait for 3000 years to make the first civilization or discovery of mind and gods in spite of having the same brain formation. What the recent studies have indicated is that at that point of time something evolved in brain which didn’t exist for other animals, something that helped humans to learn and understand things and eventually evolve from a simple animal into a complex personality, a bunch of neurons that apparently has an ability to empathize and emulate from its surroundings as opposed to the basic motor neurons(the one that works on command from senses).

Mirror neurons form a cluster of neurons sitting on the front portion of the brain. What it does is, it tries to mirror the events that it ‘sees’. For instance, if you are pinched on your hand you would instantly know the pain, which is quite natural as there is physical connection between the skin and the brain. But a similar pain is felt when you see someone else being pinched, in a way you tend to empathize with that person. But what tells you that it is painful?. When we see someone cry a similar emotional thing tries to send us to the same state, why? Ramachandran speaks how the discovery of mirror neurons or empathy neurons gave the neurologists an answer to all these questions.

Getting back to the evolution of human beings, the formation of mirror facilitated the Lamarckian evolution, named after Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. While Darwinian theory was slow and involved physical transformation, Lamarckian was quick and evolved brain instead of physique. The example he quoted was, for a Polar bear it must have taken about 1000s of years to evolve itself with the thick white coat to survive in the polar region – this is the Darwinian evolution. A boy learns by watching his father kill that polar bear, skin it and use that fluffy coat to survive in the polar region, in a matter of 10 minutes – that is the Lamarckian evolution. There is a saying in Malayalam “kaateethu kaatunnavan kurangan”(the one who imitate others are monkeys). This saying is not a non-sense but a very sensible one as it is from the times of hominids (with chances of spreading this into the monkey cousins) that he/she started learning things by observation.

The mirror neurons are quick in capturing the ‘characteristic images’  in the brain and is quick in reproducing it later, it appears. How it works is, say we see one person getting beaten up. The brain gets a signal from mirror neurons telling that getting beaten up on arm is painful (as if it is his/her hand that is getting thrashed), the brain tries to verify that with the nerves from the arm and finds that it is not true. Then a cancellation signal goes and cancels the physical pain ‘application’, but it cannot cancel the emotional bit of the pain. So when we see someone beating a kid, we don’t feel the physical pain but we do feel the emotional pain(empathy). The interesting thing is, when the arm of this person is paralyzed or amputated there is no nerves connecting the arm with brain. Hence at that stage the brain cannot cross check the genuineness of the pain. Upon experimentation, what the neurologists have found is that people with such syndromes can even feel the physical pain. So which means if you try to pinch your arm in front of another person who doesn’t have that arm he feels the exact physical pain that you just felt, in his phantom arm!!. This is used by neurologists and physiotherapists to cure ‘learnt paralysis’ -  A person sitting opposite to the patient massages or exercise his own hand, the patient in turn gets the real feel of the massage and eventually gets cured.

He points out the formation of civilization and its development by accounting it under the development of mirror neurons. How a person become insensitive after being tortured for a while, how a child learns about smoking by just seeing from his/her parent, despite of many no-smoking signs etc implies the significance of understanding the surroundings a key to human development. Ramachandran nicknames this as ‘Gandhi neuron’ as it gave humans the ability to understand each other without a physical connection. He is quite right in calling this the real facebook that connects one human being to another without any wire.