Lost in Dreams…

Signing off 2009 with the hope that 2010 will be better…  These two comic strips sum up my thoughts…

“Experts through the ages” is the creation of Nick D Kim. You can find more of his work in strange-matter.

“The original climate conference” is the work of Nitrozac & Snaggy. More of their work in joyoftech.com

The following words are from the Botany Textbook of First Year of Higher Secondary of Tamil Nadu state board (Standard Eleven in Indian System of Schooling). The textbooks are released by the government. The very first words from the textbook written by Dr A Jaffar Hussain (Chairperson, Text Book Writing Committee) are exactly quoted below.

We are passing through an “Era of Biology”. Words like “Biotechnology’,'Bioremediation”, “Biochips”, “Biomineralization”, “Bioinformatics” etc. have become familiar even with “common man”. Certainly there is a new unusual never-before tried approach to address and solve many problems associated with modern life and to enhance the quality and standard of living by application of modern tools of Biology; particularly the Genetically Modified Foods (GM Foods) and other GM Products have revolutionized our Life.

All I could manage after reading this was : WTF ?

We are preparing the young generation by brainwashing them into thinking that everything about modern life and new technologies are good and better in life. We are looking at a situation where these students are going to demand GM Foods in their table just because they assume it is going to “revolutionise” their life.

Online Version of the textbook is available here (Page 3)

A wonderful quote by E  F  Schumacher

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.”

I have been reading this wonderful book by Jared Diamond, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee”. In this book, Diamond dwells on why just one of the species of the big mammals (humans) came to dominate the other closer species which had a equal chance for the top position. It also dwells on how one group of humans (eurasians) came to dominate the other native groups all over the globe. Diamond’s famous masterpiece “Guns, Germs and Steel“, which was written after this book explains more about the latter topic.

I found the following argument quite interesting and decided to share it along.

” I find it mind-boggling that the astronomers now eager to spend a hundred million dollars on the search for extraterrestrial life have never thought seriously about the most obvious question: what would happen if we found it, or if it found us. The astronomers tacitly assume that we and the little green monsters would welcome each other and settle down to fascinating conversations. Here again, our own experience on Earth offers useful guidance. We have already discovered two species that are very intelligent but technically less advanced than us — the common chimpanzee and pygmy chimpanzee. Has our response been to sit down and try to communicate with them? Of course not. Instead we shoot them, stuff them, dissect them, cut off their hands for trophies, put them on exhibit in cages, inject them with AIDS virus as a medical experiment, and destroy or take over their habitat. That response was predictable, because human explorers who discovered technically less advanced humans also regularly responded by shooting them, decimating their populations with new diseases, and destroying or taking over their habitat.

Any advanced extraterrestrials who discovered us would surely treat us in the same way. Think again of those astronomers who beamed radio signals into space from Arecibo, describing Earth’s location and its inhabitants. In its suicidal folly that act rivalled the folly of the last Inca emperor, Atahuallpa, who described to his gold-crazy Spanish captors the wealth of his capital and provided them with guides for the journey. If there really are any radio civilizations within listening distance of us, then for heaven’s sake let’s turn off our own transmitters and try to escape detection, or we are doomed.

Fortunately for us, the silence from outer space is deafening. Yes, out there are billions of galaxies with billions of stars. Out there must be some transmitters as well, but not many, and they do not last long. Probably there are no others in our galaxy, and surely none within hundreds of light-years of us. What woodpeckers teach us about flying saucers is that we are unlikely ever to see one. For practical purposes, we are unique and alone in a crowded universe. Thank God! “

It’s time we stopped looking up at the skies, trying to find intelligence and life. It’s high time we saw and realised what is happening here in earth and conserve what is left.

Related articles

• The Evolution of Religions (brainandlearning.blogspot.com)
• The First Population Explosion: Human Numbers Expanded Dramatically Millennia Before Agriculture (spittoon.23andme.com)
• What is Evolution? (neatorama.com)
• On the origin of education (guardian.co.uk)