Are mutation really random or is it programmed?

One of the biggest confusion between the religious and scientific world is around the concept of "intelligent design" and "evolution through random mutation". Could it be that the truth is in neither camp and is somewhere in between. Without being biased on either proposition if indeed mutation where indeed controlled by "someone", then the big divide between religion and science may vanish. As Einstein famously claimed " God does not throw dice", may be there is a planned design though sometimes error do creep in.

First and foremost, I am convinced through various experiment the evolution is a reality and the world getting made all its being in a 7 day span is a farce. Now to the second part of the problem is that if evolution is true, is it arbitrary or is it a controlled design. If it was indeed random, as was shown in an experiment on  vesicular stomatitis virus, most of the random mutation are indeed lethal ( Out of all mutations, 39.6% were lethal, 31.2% were non-lethal deleterious, and 27.1% were neutral). Some similar studies in other organism also has shown it. As we do not see such large scale death of living beings due to mutation may be it is not random.

Another study which got published do claim that the mutation seems to be concentrated and that indeed mutation may not be random. Also some studies have show that the most of the chromosome and genes are propagated intact over million of years, it cannot be the case that somehow random mutation left some genes for some other genes. If it indeed it is so then randomness is clearly not there.

Also mutation cannot be based on UV and other chemical effect as these are rare mutations and i think this would not be point mutation. As most changes we see around through point mutation, may be the mutation are indeed under the control of human, how we breed, how we behave and how we select the better half. 

If true then our karma may indeed be deciding the future mutation and hence as in scriptures, may be each of us are responsible creators determine where we take the world to. May be "Moksha" is that final design which never needs to be mutated. But as in godel's theorem, there is always problems unsolvable in a finite world and which needs a bigger finite world to solve it, moksha based on finite set of genes may be that elusive target which may never be met. 

As much as genes has evolved, so has the longest surviving memes (as Dawkin puts it) of "karma/Dharma/Moksha" has survived the vicissitudes of human evolution and did not die down even though the idea got mutated a lot, the truth i believe may be that it is evolution with a controlled mutation dependent completely on our hands.

Why the world should welcome Global Warming?

One of the key problem facing humanity is the problem of water availability to take care of $6 billion people. Most of the people in developing countries have no access to water and most of them are dependent on ground water. Ground water is being tapped increasingly through bore wells which are being dug deeper and deeper. How will these ground well get charged. We need rains to happen more frequently and everyone having some means to recharge the aquifers through rain water harvesting, check dams and so on. The global warming should increase the water vapour in the atmosphere and hot land area being always low pressure area compared to sea area will pull in more clouds and create more rains. Though this rain may be erratic but frequent, may not be uniformly distributed but concentrated, may happen i a short time and may create localized floods but will create somewhere and hope will help in filling up the acquifiers. Thus Global Warming is the only hope for humanities insatiable need of water from the supply side.

Let me spend some time on the demand side of it. The western style nuclear family and personalized facilities are being adopted in a big way by developing countries and LDC. Earlier people used to socilaize and bath in a pond/lake/river. This ensured that the water is efficiently recycled and is not distributed as is being done today with personalized bathrooms. As every citizen get into personalized mode for ablution, we are increasing the demand and as this is spread across a large area the more exhausted water is getting evaporated and not recharging the aquifers. So the increased demand also inturn reduces the supply due to inefficient recycling of water.

In conclusion, the increased demand through personalized water usage can only be handled by more rains and legalized way for aquifer recharge through rain water harvesting is the only hope for human civilization. Water is the mother of all needs for any human and it needs that we warm the world faster :)   

Most evolved being

Somewhere deep in our mind, we human being we are the most evolved being. I believe we are not and may be the unseen virus known only to us through the disease we get it through them are the most evolved being in the evolution chart.

First, the more the evolved a creature is the lesser it should be in number of well known food chain system. Plants being part of food chain of all animals is clearly a lower evolved being compared to animals. Fish being part of quite a large number of foodchain may be more evolved than plants but not as evolved as the carnivore and mammals. Using this logic, we human are may be in the value chain of some bacteria, ameoba and virus but not the wide variety of animals. So we may be more evolved than the wild animals but not more evolved than the unseen living beings.

Second, the evolved beings are at the ruinous best in the system with very few control built in controlling it. The most evolved being will cause the vanishing of the previously most evolved being. Based on this we have historical evidence that evolution of homo sapiens had caused the previous evolved creatures like apes to be sidelined in the population nos. If we see this logic virus are more or less uncontrolled, with no medicines around and are having a free day in its ability in spreading from continent to continent and its growth across climate changes geographies are getting unparalleled even better than human being.

Third, the lesser the lifespan of a being the better is its ability to evolve at a rate faster than the other beings. Lifespan of virus is much smaller than human being. Within the lifespan of human, the virus has gone through roughly 500 generations always help them to be a better evolved than homo sapiens and as time pass by allow them the ability to be more evolved than we the human being. This is true for bacteria and many other being, though they are evolving faster they are yet to crack the most fundamental aspect of virus to stay alive in the worst of condition without any need of living being.

So in conclusion, let us not get complacent in thinking that we are the most evolved creature and suffer the same unknown fate of dinosaur or our immediate apes.   

Austerity - New buzzword in economics

A raging debate is driving in the world of economics and is now in political domain as well in Europe and the US of the march between profligacy of yesteryears and austerity to contain the budget deficit into future. It seems as per Paul Krugman it is well known in all text book of economics that it is a bad idea during bad time. He makes this point almost every month through his article in NYT. It is clealry obvious that if neither the general public (due to bad economy) and the government (due to austerity) does not spend it is doomed in the short term.

Another problem worth asking is by government spending during the bad time, are we not giving a wrong confidence that everything is fine and may be when we get better both the people and the government get complacent towards fixing the problem as no democratic government in right mind would just cut all the freebies and face a rout in the following election.

So logic apart, bad time is a good time to fix the issue as the people also appreciate the suffering. Procrastinating the problem by giving wrong confidence by spending through the crisis is also a bad idea just because we humans have a very short memory. Austerity may be a pain and will take a longer term to fix but everyone can be rest assured that it will indeed fix the problem for a longer term than the "spending binge" approach. It is always good to build character in countries organization and people during bad time as it is already a bad time and getting a bit more worse right now to save yet another round in near future is a good thing. An example would be the same example used in economics text books to justify "spending binge". During the great depression in US, it took a long time to come out of it but then it took a even greater time to get back into it. We see that now a days based on this new non-austerity approach we have much more recessions rather than one in life time.

Sometimes, theory is quite different from the practical implementation. So while in theory i concur with Paul Krugman and all other economic professor but i side with the austerity politicians as even if they were to suffer a short term pain they will build a nation and euro with a good solid character and may be centuries from now then professor will use this as a test case to say that sometime its better to suffer deeper once rather than suffer multiple times again and again.

It is better to get vaccinated even if we feel the pain of needles during the short time rather than taking antibiotics and never building up the immunity.

The kirana effect

While there is a huge hue and cry on FDI in multi-brand retail and how it will subsume the kirana stores, what most people forget is the role a kirana store play in an Indians decision making. In India if a technology has to succeed it has to be first accepted by the kirana as a good enough business. This is what i term the kirana effect and i think its role cannot be subsumed by any large player. Kirana stores i have seen are more flexible than their bigger counterparts and know the pulse of the customer much better than any large format store.

I remember how wall clocks from Ajanta became a craze as it started occupying all the space in the near by kirana store or how telecom became a rage as the PCOs started off in the kirana store. Education in India changed a lot with the kirana store allowing me to photostat the friends notes through their ubiquitous Xerox machine. Internet was introduced to India through the kirana browsing centers. Today we see kirana store moving away from clocks, PCOs, Xerox machine and browsing centers to keeping new mobile handset and recharge coupon. The prepaid telecom revolution in India has much to do with the kirana store than any policy action. Slowly i am seeing DTH sets donning their display boards and i am sure it will be as successful as the mobile telephony.

Even today i see that the kirana provision store from where i buy most of my items has all the items i need from the boiled rice to the right spices compared to their larger counterpart. Though i find larger counterpart are cheaper for few items but the sheer exhaustion at the billing counter and having to again visit my kirana store to pick the missing item makes me to skip the larger format store.

Another aspect of kirana store is that the relationship with the person who owns the store is not just a buyer-seller relation but that of an extended friend and a personal bonding. Any item which i want but cant procure will be procured by him specifically for me in a day or two and even home delivered even though he may suffer a loss in that particular deal. He also helps in making me decide among the multiple choices by mentioning the fast moving items and his opinion are more trusted by us the buyers than any other advertisements or research material.

The third aspect of the kirana effect is the location. Kirana store will always be the nearest to you as they need very little space as they know the customer and procure accordingly. The small space also means he will pick the item you want for u and at the same time he keeps track of all the items which moves in and moves out of is store. This makes it highly efficient as there is very few inventory. Also as i spend very little time in my kirana store (more because he picks up items for me and i need not remember all the location), it need not have all the air conditioning and lighting as in modern large retail store, which makes the cost of operation at the large store multiple fold higher than the kirana store which subsumes the cost saving due to large scale procurement. The kirana i think is as efficient as the multi-brand FDI store.

Even if the FDI is allowed or not I think the kirana effect will survive as it is as much part of Indian culture and has reached the level of customization which will be hard for a large format store to replicate in a large and diverse country like India.

Large stores

The Frankenstein called WTO

As there is a raging debate on allowing FDI in Multi-brand retail, a goof-up or a subterfuge happened in the policy. The policy just mentioned that the 30% sourcing of goods has to be from SME without mentioning explicitly "Indian" SME. The justification of not adding India as our "enlightened" policy maker thought that it is against WTO rules.

In Indian policy circle, we have over years after signing WTO had created a Frankenstein out of it. Every country and its policy makers are expected to take care of their citizen first and then think of all the rules out there in the world. India is the second largest market after China, and hence has the power to change the global commerce. If some rules were written by some when India could not even make an opinion as we were a third world country, it is time we revisit all these rules.

Now coming to the WTO rules and its interpretation worldwide, what better place to look at other than China, which is a bigger market than us and hence we need to be cognizant of their policies while making our own policies to ensure that we will get some support  even if we assume things are on wrong side. As per this document, China has a procurement policy which uses government fund to buy indigenous innovation product. If so how come our enlightened policy makers find it hard to do this in all the Indian government procurement and in general all procurement by Indian citizen. We would expect a policy like the one China has to come from a democracy like India where all the policies are supposed to help the citizens who have voted in the policy makers.

Yesterday there was a restatement of the restatement mentioning that it is now 30% of Indian SME. Hope this would have been stated at the first instance itself, so that at least there is a feeling in the Indian public that this policy is for their own good. 

The War on Euro

Recent news flow on Euro is giving a sinking feeling to me that there is another war happening in this world other than war on terror. Historically all wars have seen a blip with respect to propaganda and is a good way to gauge a war before it actually happens. Any war does see change in guard and there is heightened political activity in the losing countries. 

Wars in human history has seen a big change from organized war fought by big armies of states in a large battlefield (in era before 1950) to small, distributed and targeted battle  in a small stretch of land for usurping the power/resources of other countries/dominion (esp in the era after successful Vietnam war of 1955) and fought between a non-state actor and a state actor. War over this period has also seen propaganda moving from small targeted and distributed activity (before 1950) to more large scale through television and now through social media. This is a strange change where the actual war is getting more distributed and focused over small area while the propaganda is getting more large scale and is triggered by a small tweet or a small video in Youtube or TV but then gets bigger and bigger with additional tweet/video from a multitude of source through multitude of mediums to reach not only the targeted country but the whole human civilization.

Coming back to euro, we see lot of media hype building up around the world in all the medium that something is bad about euro very similar to period of war. It has for the first time seen two head of government had lost their title, one in Italy and another in Greece. This looks like the first battle for resources being played completely in the background with no physical non-state players. It is like the present day war being distributed and focused but target being the currency. It is being fought in one week in Greece another week on Portugal, then on Italy and now even reaching even the shores of France (which was triggered by a  false alarm on sovereign downgrade from the S&P mailing system).

Why Euro? This argument is completely an axiom which will need proof to to get to a Theorem. Euro now is the second largest reserve currency. It is used by more than 500 million people (175 million through their currency getting pegged to Euro) and is now slowly seeing actual natural resources getting traded with Euro. Iran has broken off from OPEC system and is using Euro for settling transaction. Slowly euro is gaining traction as an alternative to dollar for settling one of the biggest source of energy for humankind, namely, crude and gas. This makes it a target which sadly does not have a single government with enough power to protect it. (So in a way if this is a war it will be the first war between a non-state and non-state in history.)

EU, China and India itself consuming more oil than 23million bpd (As per CIA world factbook), mostly consumers with very small level of local production having no reservation in using euro or any other currency, while US with its growing shift towards shale gas through frackling process and getting most of the oil from Mexico and Canada, for the first time since many many years oil can potentially trade away from dollar to Euro. As both Yuan and Indian Rupee are still not fully convertible, Euro looks the only option (as EU being the largest consumer as well as euro being the second largest reserve currency). 

Many EU countries like many other developed countries are have unsustainable debt but then Japan has more Debt. The argument that Yen loans are owned by Japanese is true for euro as well (Euro loans i hope is predominantly owned by EU members). EU being a group of countries with different push and pulls due to many government itself is wrong as they only voted together to form Euro in the first place. Over the years Euro has helped all the countries in EU and like the old saying people would not like to kill a goose laying golden egg. So all this counter argument falls through at least in my eyes.

It is time that the people manning ECB and other countries who are part of euro see if this is a war fought by distributed financial cartels based out of different countries making a targeted attack on Euro. I though sincerely wish that this remains just a plot for a fictional movie / book (hope some director pays me for this plot :) ) and not a real life scenario.