bt again

On the one hand, researchers have clear evidence that viral/parasitical genes can infiltrate our genome, and even become part of what we pass on to our children, on the other, they firmly state that the bt genes will not escape into the wild fauna/other crops nearby. This kind of blinkered approach does not make good science. The proponents of bt technology pooh-pooh concerns about the gene escaping . We do not know that it won't. Nor do we know how it will be manifested once it infiltrates other genomes, ....maybe the crop of wheat grown next to bt crop will acquire the bt gene and in that, it may produce toxins in the seeds (can you imagine acres of poisoned wheat?). We really do not know and this is a risk we should not have taken even with cotton. The risk is too huge...once a gene is in the wild, we have no control over what it infiltrates and how it will get manifested in other species.
Why is it unscientific to have these concerns?

Caste panchayats

Meham MLA says "these caste panchayats are good for society. They help me win elections"
All these years I was wondering what is really ideal for society..now I know.. Good society helps the current MLA of Meham win elections. Never mind if a few people are murdered by these panchayats for the 'grave crime' of getting married to each other. They keep society pure! Perhaps society is cleaned up by washing in blood!
The thing that bothers me most is not the killing as such, but the complete lack of any inkling in the MLA that killing a couple is a really horrible crime and the cheerful admission that the panchayat help him win elections and so nothing they do will be taken cognisance of.

admin jobs in college

In private colleges, the lecturers double up as exam clerks, security persons, event manager, caterer--many more roles. In general, it's good because it gives you a sense of involvement. But of late, I had started getting a bit tired of it. Luckily, since I had taken the last academic year off to live in a hill station, I got deleted from all those committees--my jobs had been outsourced. This academic year, I did not have to check attendance registers, issue examination forms or hall tickets, did not have to arrange any of the various functions of the college. It is a relief, since I am getting too old to do so much work. But there is a small sneaking sense of not being in the loop.....foolish.

I love.......

The sound of a choir of young girls singing old hymns.
The smell of jasmine on a summer evening.
The sound of a spring bubbling behind my bedroom window.
Walking along the shoreline in the Marina beach in the 1960s (nowadays it's awful).
Sounds of children playing in the distance on a summer evening.
Walking on cold evenings when I am warmly covered.
Watching the rain from a sheltered spot.
The feel of approaching winter.
Smell of old books in old libraries.

Op-ed

Antara Dev Sen in today's DC about education in India and the possible impact of foreign universities setting up shop here. I find her Little Magazine one sided in its views. But in this article, I feel entirely in agreement with her.

A recent incident has highlighted the frustration of teaching undergrads. The University does not seem to care whether you teach well or not. There are a lot of opinions on this.
Most people seem to value research over teaching. Most feel both should be done. The truth is many may not be able to do both well. Peter Atkins says as much in the recent issue of Nature. His contribution to Chemistry is probably worth many researchers', since countless undergrads learn from his textbook(s).
I think good teaching should be valued as much as research, unless the research is really outstanding.

When I was a student, often elderly gentlemen would ask me..."so you are doing research in Chemistry? tell me what is this made of?" after picking up a random object. I would say, "Well I don't know. One has to test it ...." and they would shake their heads and with varying degree of politeness let me know that I must be useless if even with a PhD, I cannot tell them what an object is made of. After sometime , I got a little smarter, and would say " oh this is surely made of 20% aluminum, about 33% steel about..." at random just to avoid the sad head shaking.
Another question I would always get was "what is the use of this research?" I would be unable to answer that too, since my PhD work was studies on some complexes of one of the less common metals. Again I would cook up stories on how one can get useful materials from this(true in a way, but that wasn't really what I was doing at that time)
Those days I believed science was done just because you wanted to know. Now I am more inclined to believe that science specially in a resource-poor country like ours, must be either the earth-shaking- pushing-the-frontiers-of-knowledge kind of research, or the kind that is of use in the near future... ways to grow crop in arid zones, ways to purify water at low cost, the cliched cure for cancer, cheaper efficient energy sources, etc.
The kind that I did, though it got me good papers in good journals, were not meaningful enough and I was not mature enough to see that.