Evolution is Stupid!

Evolution is Stupid! Rather an arrogant claim by minuscule mortal against almighty evolution. I am not saying its silly, it is incredibly sophisticated and powerful. But it is Stupid.

Evolution doesnt have a vision. It doesnt work with end in mind. It is a slave of the Process. It works like a child assembling pieces of puzzle, picking up all pieces which it can get its hands on and putting them together. If it fits, it sticks, if it doesnt, it falls off the puzzle. The child hopes that whatever fits forms a magnificent structure. And in most cases it does. Thats the beauty, but that beauty can be a snake that bites the child. In this context humans are snake and evolution is the child!

Humans or homo sapiens are a uniqueness that evolution has created. A creature whose intelligence is Tera, while a ducks intelligence is quack quack! which brings up the question, why is intelligence so rare! why doesnt evolution favor intelligence? millions of creatures, and only 1 evolved to be considered intelligent (although i have seen people who are serious contenders with ducks!). There is a gigantic difference b/n human intelligence and the next closest in the living kingdom. It is as if Evolution knew that any intelligence can meddle with the holy grail of evolution, The Process, and can essentially kill evolution!

That just is what is happening. The Process follows a simple rule, survival of the fittest. The rule has 2 attributes, which according to evolution is the purpose of life & of existence. Eating and Fucking, i mean survival and reproduction. Infact we can say reproduction is the only purpose, as survival is a necessity for reproduction. Female spider rips off and eats male head after mating. In most insect species males die soon after fertilizing the female. alas, there is no need to survive, as survival is not the purpose of life, reproduction is, that is all evolution cares about. It is as if evolution is doing a lengthy experiment and every generation produced by reproduction is a step forward.

After 3.5 billion years of this puzzle game, evolution gave rise to Intelligence. Intelligence which can understand and control 'The Process'. The rule of survival of fittest breaks down. The new rule is survival of the richest! People dont die when they were supposed to die. Advancement in technology & medical care keeps and nurtures the weak, who for evolution were a disease and their discardal is a necessity as per the rule. Reproduction is not happening between fitter and select few humans as evolution wanted. every loser is fucking (with the evolution!), causing evolution to slow down. Its experiments are coming to a standstill. Intelligence which evolution created turned out to be a trap for itself!

Life extension is no longer a fiction. This science will become a reality in not so distant future. Professor Aubrey de Grey is one of the researchers on the subject and claims he has drawn a roadmap to defeat biological aging. His idea is simple. If you keep replacing the worn out parts of you Cadillac, the car will practically remain new and function forever. Same with the human body.

This can be a problem for evolution if same people live very long. There is limited resource on earth and to cope with that the people who live long reproduce less. Also, same survivors reproduce again and again, severly limiting the variables in evolutions experiment. The experiment stalls and same step repeats, at very slow rate.

Booya.. you did not see that coming, did you evolution? and that is why, evolution is Stupid! Lol.. Maybe not.. there is a new wave of evolution, EvolutionNext, that is debunking all the limitations evolution had. Evolution always focused on individiuals within a species. Humans developed a brain, and it got bigger over generations. whats next in human evolution? will still bigger brain help? apparently it wont! a recent study showed that intelligence maxes out at the brain size not too biger than that of humans. any increase in brain size after that and intelligence dips. Apparently bigger brains will not be fast & efficient enough to transmit neural signals between different parts, and yet act as one coherent creature.

EvolutionNext took the giant step and its focus is not on a individual human, but its treating entire humanity as an organism. Collectively humans are acting as one organism creating

complexities and wonders which traditional evolution could never have achieved. EvolutionNext is using evolutions recipe, the fractal approach, to have simplicity repeated numerous times to create astonishing complexity. The act of 1 phone call between 2 cell phones, is an example where collective intelligence and actions of thousands of individuals lead to something extra ordinary. No single human could create this. This is humanity acting as an organism. There are innumerable examples around - Economy, Stock Market, Scientific advancement and even the internet and computer you are reading on, are all creation of collective intelligence, the fractal recipe of EvolutionNext.

Its been 3.5 years since evolutions experiment started and earth has about 3.5 billion years more of habitable life left. we are right in the middle part of earths life cycle and evolutions experiment. maybe now is the new phase when humanity evolves to move out into other planets as earth dies out.

So, it turns out i was wrong.. evolution is not stupid! Infact it is so clever that it evolved itself into EvolutionNext!!

PS: fractals - complex formations out of repetition of simple structures. eg: lightning, branching of a tree, formations on brocolli, branching of river flow

Inspiration..

This was the conversation between me and my friend Nithin yesterday on Gmail chat..

6:31 PM hinithin@gmail.com: nan blogs odi comment maDu

me: hey.. nodoide..nin blogs... they r good.. adre full odoke agilla.. will read it..
good job pai..
;-)

hinithin@gmail.com: thanks
6:32 PM nin blogs link kodu nange

me: http://manojmp.blogspot.com

6:50 PM hinithin@gmail.com: Dude.. what inspired you to start writing..?

6:57 PM me: its a secret mean.. but the inspiration was strong ;-) anyways gotta go now.. catch u later bye

I said bye to him, went and sat in the company shuttle to go back home. His question had made me think.. what was my inspiration to write? or did i not have any inspiration? or is my purpose[as i mentioned in earlier blog] my inspiration? No, inspiration is different, it can come from anywhere,anyone,anything.. Yes,There was a inspiration behind every blog that i wrote. Wach inspiration came from a different source, sometime it was a festival,a movie, a girl, a newspaper article, and now it is a friend - Nithin pai, who is the inspiration for this blog.

Surprisingly, source of inspiration can be totally irrelevant to the content of the blog!!! . For example, my inspiration for Writing the blog "How impressive is First impression" came from newspaper.

Inspiration for writing the blog has also come out of other dependent factors like Competition, Pride and Jealousy!!!!

Strange but true.. I have to dig more into this Rabbit Hole of Inspiration, i have to look back as to what were my actual inspirations for writing each of the blogs... Will surely do that.. Now its time to go Catch the shuttle back home, and on the way find out what was and is my INSPIRATION.

Will update soon...

Time Travel

I have always been fascinated with the concept of time travel. Right from the days when i first heard about theory of relativity and time being relative, i have been excited to know more about it.But thought that this is just a fantasy and could not happen in reality. Although initially i could understand a very little about it eventually i could grasp few of the concepts.I came to know that time travel,infact, could be possible. Oh boy was i excited. i was literally jumping around. A book by Stephen Hawking - 'The Brief History Of Time', was one of my favourite reads.
If 100 years ago someone told you that u can fly in air at the speed of sound, and you can talk to anybody in the other part of the world by using a hand held device, you would literally laugh till u suffocate. But what has happened now. We never know what is in store for us.. Every time in the history people have thought that what they have is the limit of exploration, everything there is has been discovered and nothing more could be discovered. But changes, new discoveries, have continued to shock the world. Who knows, in our lives we may see time travel as a technology as common as a telephone is right now.

I found some of the interesting videos about these concepts. So, thought of putting them in my blog.

Paradox of Time travel.. Part 1..



Paradox of Time travel .. Part 2...



Time Travel(Discovery video).. Part1



Time Travel(Discovery video).. Part2



a missed out part of the above video with interesting physical details



An Example of Theory of relativity



Newton Vs Einstein




More to come ... :-)

Love - when seen through biological lens.

In my previous post i wrote about love. That was a psychological perspective of Love. There is a more interesting way in which we can look at love - Biologically.

Love is a feeling, an emotion aroused inside a person. Each emotion in human is associated with a particular enzyme. If we speak in the words of Bio-chemistry, enzyme is a chemical. So, our emotions are controlled by chemicals. For example, higher levels of 'homocysteine', a chemical in blood is known to cause anger in individual.
The feelings of attraction and love are associated with few chemicals called Phenyl-Ethyl-Amine(PEA), norepinephrine and Dopamaine. When researchers use a functional magnetic resonance imaging to see the brain of people in love, the scan shows increased blood flow in areas of the brain with high concentrations of above mentioned chemicals.

Well here is a tricky situation, U go walking along the street, when u see a beautiful girl go straight across to her and inject PEA and dopamaine to her, what do u think is gonna happen?? Believe it or not she will be attracted to you, she will have the feelings of love towards you.. This concept has been doing rounds since centuries, in an encapsulated way. Well, you cant go inject the PEA to the person u like but if u can initiate PEA secretion in that person's brain, your job is half done, that person will be attracted to you. How to do it? dont ask me....But certain fragnance and aromas are known to cause secretion of PEA and related chemicals in humans.. That is why u are advised to go to a romantic evening with a good perfume on and with fresh flowers.. Well which perfume in the market is the best for that? again, dont ask me.. But a scent found in human sweat is known to make one attractive to opposite sex. Chemical components called pheromones which are present in sweat are responsible for this attraction. So i would say, next time you go to meet ur love, wear that sweaty T-shirt u wore for the work out the other day.

Dopamine, norepinephrine and phenyl-ethyl-amine is responsible for that giddiness,racing heartbeat, flushed skin and sweaty palms, which happens when u are attracted to someone and when first falling in love(can i call it infatuation?). .Also, people in love have lower levels of serotonin, a finding in people with obsessive behavior disorders, which also explains why those in love tend to be “obsessed about their partner.” Neural circuits associated with the way you assess others during this time are suppressed too, so you become less critical of those you love. Suppression of these neural circuits makes one lose his ability to think rationally—at least when it comes to the object of his attraction. The old saying “love is blind” is very accurate in this stage. We become oblivious to any flaws our partner might have. We idealize them and can’t get them off our minds. This overwhelming preoccupation and drive is part of our biology.

Well these chemicals cause feelings of attraction, love and lust in the initial stages of a relationship. Lets get deeper now. What do u mean when u say " I love you"?. Well we can answer it taking a simple example. when i say " I love chocolates", i simply mean i enjoy the taste of chocolate. Similarly when i say "I Love you", it means "I enjoy touching your body,” or “I enjoy believing that i am secure & protected when with you,” or “I enjoy having sex with you.” In love, one looks for satisfaction in all the various titillating parts of the body. But there is more, "I love you" means i have a sense of absolute belonging and acceptance with you.

PEA and dopamine act in initial stages of love causing raising heart beats, sweaty palms etc.. But as the relationship progresses this feelings of lust will not be there. A relationship becomes more practical,it faces unforeseen problems and distractions. During this stage vasopressin and Oxytocin predominates. These are hormones associated with the formation of long-term, monogamous relationships. These two chemicals explain why passionate love fades as attachment grows.

"I Love you" is not as simple as" I love chocolates", It means more. Real love is a love beyond “making love;” it is a love that exists beyond lack and limitation. A love that involves a sort of ecstasy of being matter of the soul and not of the body.

Courtesy: Dr. Grace Carole; Few biological and chemical details taken from Dr. Grace Carole's articles and publications.

What is Love??

I get this question quite often in my mind.. I try to answer myself, wander around some ideas and give up without coming to any conclusion.
This question again stuck me when i was watching the movie 'Awarapan' few days back. The guy there is totally lost. In some parts of the movie you can actually feel the emptiness that he has in his life. As the movie started i was like 'comeon how can someone be so much obsessed about a girl when she is already dead'. But belive me it happens. Love is such a strong emotion.
Is it an Obsession? is it exaggeration of emotion?Or is it a decision?
Many say that It becomes impossible to stop thinking about someone. even if they try to forget, they cant.. They dont stay in touch, they dont speak to each other for months, years.. but still that feeling of Love will be so strong. Does it mean that u dont have to be in contact with the person to love that person? this is what is happening to Emran hashmi in Awarapan, he is so in love with her even though the girl is no more...

Then it means that love is a feeling associated with oneself.. People create an ideal personality of a person in their mind and love that personality. they dont actually love the person, they are loving the personification of the person in their mind. Yes, when someone says that i want to stop loving her, that is why i have stopped being in touch with her these days, then, they are not addressing the problem. The problem is in their mind.. If they really want to, they have to take off that 'Person' that they have in their mind....

Love is a decision. A subconsious decision that one makes that he cant deny even if he wants to. To Unlove is also a decision. A decision which should override all the emotions and resistances one may face to Unlove someone. In most cases when people say 'i cant stop thinking about her, i cant stop loving her', it does not mean they cant, it means they dont want to.. Even if the person says he wants to forget someone, the subconsious will not let him because that subconsious doesn't want to lose the beautiful feeling of love. It ultimately leads to pain to that person. Pain of love. But is it actually Pain?? One of my kannada masters used to say, 'There is satisfaction in Pain, Once pain becomes a habit, the person is actually satisfied by taking pain'. To quote the exact phrase - " Bhoga dante vyasanavu ondu hambala devi.."- phrase from a drama- Yayathi.

Ok this is what exactly i was telling you before, whenever there comes a keeda in my mind, i try to figure out things and as always end up nowhere. This time the keeda was the movie 'Awarapan'. I was thinking what is wrong with this guy.Ya he loved her, but now she is no more and its illogical to keep thinking about her, why cant he move on. But the truth is that Love is illogical, he is not moving on in life because he doesnt want to, he cant stop thinking about her because he doesnt want to. Do you call it the madness, do u think that guy is freakish crazy. Yes he is.. thats why the name - Awarapan. In the movie he says "What am i doing, why am i doing all the things i am doing, Why am i running from people, where will i hide, I have always been hiding, whereever i go i cant hide and escape from the fact that i Love her, i cant hide myself from my feelings towards her, No its impossible"..

Uff pretty confusing isnt it.. If i continue to think i will screw up my logic. Actually Psychology is fun and interesting but too much Psychology can screw up your life and make you a real psycho. Trying to figure out logic behind every action and every thought is what psychology does. In this endeavour psychology can lead to an endless loop with no way out making a real Bheja Fry out of a person..

U know how we turn to god to seek help and answers for our unsolved mysterious questions.. Well these days Google is my god because i try to seek answers through google. I know the answer is out somewhere, but the difficult part is to find and reach that answer..

So, i tried googling about psychology of love and got few interesting insights...

Compassionate vs. Passionate Love

According to psychologist Elaine Hatfield and her colleagues, there are two basic types of love: compassionate love and passionate love. Compassionate love is characterized by mutual respect, attachment, affection, and trust. Compassionate love usually develops out of feelings of mutual understanding and shared respect for each other.
Passionate love is characterized by intense emotions, sexual attraction, anxiety, and affection. When these intense emotions are reciprocated, people feel elated and fulfilled. Unreciprocated love leads to feelings of despondence and despair. Hatfield suggests that passionate love is transitory, usually lasting between 6 and 30 months. According to Hatfield, passionate love arises when cultural expectations encourage falling in love, when the person meets your preconceived ideas of an ideal lover, and when you experience heightened physiological arousal in the presence of the other person. Ideally passionate love then leads to compassionate love, which is far more enduring. While most people desire relationships that combine the security and stability of compassionate with the intensity of passionate love, Hatfield suggests that this is rare.

Romantic love is made up of three elements:
Attachment: The need to be cared for and be with the other person.
Caring: Valuing the other persons happiness and needs as much as your own.
Intimacy: Sharing private thoughts, feelings, and desires with the other person.

Every person has an ideal combination of these elements that will make up his 'idea of love'.

Pursuit of Happyness.....

Few days back i watched a movie, 'The pursuit of happyness' starring Will Smith(as Christopher Gardner) and his real life son Jared Smith. What moved me most while watching this real life story was the persistence, father-son relation and stubborn will of Chris Gardner. The movie is down to earth and dialogues are heartbreakingly real.

The story is about Chris Gardner, who makes a living by selling bone-density scanners. The movie is about struggles when he hits a low point after he and his 5-year-old son are evicted from their San Francisco apartment. Gardner acquires an unpaid internship at a prestigious stock brokerage firm where he struggles to keep appearances while forced to carry a suitcase with all his belongings to work. Along with his son, Gardner faces many hardships, including living in a shelter, but continues to strive to carve his place in the firm and to pursue his dream of a prosperous, happy life.

Few of the scenes in the movie are very eye catchy, like the one where Gardner solves the Rubicks cube puzzle in a cab, in front of a person from a stock brokerage firm, where he hopes to get an internship.

In the movie Gardner tries to define his views about happyness.. He realizes what Thomas Jefferson, the third US president wrote in his Declaration of Independence, that all men were endowed with the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Jefferson had specified the pursuit of happiness as a right, not happiness itself. "And I thought about how he knew to put the 'pursuit' in there," says Gardner, "like no one can actually have happiness. We can only pursue it."

Everybody has their own idea of happyness, Gardners wife leaves him to pursue her happyness, her idea of happyness is a good home, food, clothes, money to spend... A crazed man tries to steal Gardner's bone-density scanner, which he thinks is a time machine. That is his way of pursuing his happyness of time travel. Gardner finds happyness in being a stock broker, being a responsible father.. He pursues it by enduring all difficulties.. Some of the scenes in the movie are very moving, for example, Gardner does not keep the phone receiver down between calls so that he can save few seconds, he does not take breaks to drink water, by doing all this, in a day he could save 9 minutes.. wow can u imagine the struggle he puts in.. all to pursue his happyness... Gardner makes his son believe that the toilet room in the train station is a cave and they have to hide from dinosaurs in the cave, and spends a night in the toilet room.. His struggle in the personal life to achive happyness has been beautifully portayed and Will smith has done justice to the role.Gardner pursues happiness and finds it as a father having fun with his son, while watching a match in the stadium, enjoying time on the beach, or spending the night in a luxury hotel although he knows they might soon have to sleep on the street again.

Gardner, who sees his son playing basketball with so much enthusiasm says that "No matter how well u play, some day u will have to leave this and find ways to do job to earn money for living". seeing his son disheartened by his words, Gardner feels guilty.. he says to his son "Listen, dont let anybody tell you that you cant do something, not even me. People cant do it themselves, they say you cant do it.. you've got to dream... And you've got to protect your dream.. you've got to pursue your dream".

The scene where chris explains his son how 'Probably' is different from 'Possibly' is also nicely shot .

Another notable part of the movie is the scene where Gardner comes to the interview for internship in a old shirt with paint spilled all over it. The moment he enters the interview room after seeing the mess and noise in the stockbroking firm he says " Wow, For half an hour i have been sitting outside thinking about the excuse i can give for wearing cloths like this, but now i dont have to." he also says to the panel "I am a kind of person who tells 'I dont know' if i dont know the answer for something, but tell you what, I will find the answer.." Gardners positive ness and sense of humor is nicely portrayed in the scene where the interviever asks him "Mr. Gardner, what would you say if someone comes to an interview without a shirt on him and i give him the job, what would you say Mr. Gardner" and Gardner Replies "He must've had on some really nice pants."

There are hundreds of other scenes that i liked in the movie, but it is best felt when watched. The movie gives a new paradigm of looking at things, with inspiring true life struggles and incedents in Chris Gardners life..

Now i recognize the importance of knowing about peoples life, earlier when somebody used to read biographies and autobiographies i used to think, why should someone waste their time in knowing what happened in someone else's life.. But now i know that life is a school and experience is the best teacher.. Knowing about people is like education, we can learn from their mistakes and put things that worked for them into our lives..

There are very few movies which you remember for years, just because of the way you felt,the way you started to think, the way you involved yourself when you were seeing the movie. This movie is one among those few..

And About Chris Gardner, he later started his own finance-consulting-stock brokerage firm by name 'Gardner Rich'. The company went public in 2005 and Gardner, still holding 75% shares amassed millions... He is a true legendary inspiration...

My hometown - Chikmagalur.

As a child, the moment i stepped out of my house, my eyes would fixate on those beautiful mountain ranges of mullayanagiri and baba budangiri. Backyard of my home offered a elegant view of the 'giris'. The festival seasons, especially deepavali, were still more exciting because the flame lighted a top the hill would be seen as a tiny little bulb glowing in the sky... I had always wanted to go see the beautiful place closely. Mullayanagiri... the highest point of Karnataka... is in my hometown of chikmagalur..The words used to be so thrilling... But actually, not as thrilling as the experience of visiting the place itself. I visited the 'giris' with my team recently. Here are a few snaps from the trip..


This is 'Devirammana betta' one of the three major hills in the range. The Hill is very steep and pointed. Hundreds of devotees climb the hill during first day of Deepavali to get the devi darushana.. More than seeing the god, its the beauty of nature that the people rejoice. This is the reason i think temples are built in places where nature reveals its vastness and beauty.. One can see a small white temple a top the hill..




Have a closer look at the photo you can actually see rainfall in the backdrop of the hill. It was a thrilling experience to see rain pouring down from the clouds at a certain place and other places being cloudy and sunny... This is the view of Devirammana betta from Manikyadhara, Baba budan giri...





This again is a view form Baba budan giri. In the lower half of the snap you can see small dried out plants. These plants are kurinji plants. Kurinji grows at an altitude of 1300 to 2400 metres, and they blossom only once in 12 years . The flower last blossomed in Aug-Sep 2006. I missed out a chance to see this wonder of nature and now i will have to wait till 2018 to see that happen again. The Nilgiris, which literally means the blue mountains, got its name from the purplish blue flowers of Neelakurinji that blossoms gregariously once in 12 years. The flower turns the entire mountain purple and makes the mountains a pleasure to watch. see the picture below to find out how the mountain looks during neelakuringi blossoms..


I got this pic from a website giving info exclusively on kurinjis http://kurinji.in


Anyways, find few of the pics taken from baba budan giri ...

Sitalayyana giri is a hilly place on the way to mullayanagiri. Our team first stopped in sitallayangiri, washed faces in chilling water and decide to have a walk within the mountains...

Then we reached mullayangiri. I stood there for a while looking at the beauty, trying to point where our chikmagalur is..

Just look at the shodow of clowds on the land.. how amazing...

After reaching mullayanagiri we have to climb a little distance by feet to reach the top point where there is a shiva temple.


Magfi and Sasi, my teammates can be seen in the above pic...



What i didn know about mullayanagiri is that there are beautiful caves in the mountain top. The caves run very deep ans skewed. we could not go deep inside because it was very dark, and we were afraid that we may get lost in the cave without finding the proper route back.





The above pic was taken inside one of the caves.The cellphones were not bright enough to illuminate the caves.

Within the cool breeze of wind and the shadow of clouds , we sat and relaxed for a while...


Basu and i went to take few snaps on a projected,pointed pinnacle.





At that point i was on top of the world.. i can say, on top of Karnataka,literally...

On the way to Baba budan giri from mullayan giri there are some eye catching views.


We stopped at a point called Kavigala gandi that gave view of mountains all around..








The day was so amazing. I had been looking at those mountains since my childhood and it took me 20 years to actually go see that place. And i am so happy that i also got an opportunity to take my team mates to my hometown and visit the wonderful place again with them....