I dream

I dream of a world,
with no hopes unbounded.
With fearless people,
and alarms unsounded.

I dream for sincerity,
and a depth of trust.
Cruelty unthought of
and lies laid to rust.

I dream of tomorrow,
as yesterday's new kind.
With renewed vigour,
and stable mind.

(Doubt has a place,
for sure, I say.
But courage unfettered,
is better, any day.)

I dream of thought,
as the new-age tool.
Which though long-known,
was left for the fool.

I dream of passion,
with resplendent magic.
A life without it
is all but tragic.

I dream of a return,
filled with hope and fire.
Without those dreams,
life feels dire.

Poor little baby loo!

It never was loved, and used like all before,
to rid the little one's fears.
Yet, it was dumped in the memory store,
after the first two years.

I won't use you till you are clean,
But, I will return favours soon.
I will treat you like you've never been.
It is promised by the moon.

The day started with a misty dawn.
It awaited the promise of a clean bill.
The closet opened, the guts did fawn,
Alas! flushed with last night's fill.

It was tired, but hopeful, all the same;
it replenished itself, as it had to.
And today ended, but tomorrow never came.
Poor little baby loo!

R(evolve)

What are you thinking?
The transience of time in the crisp October air
I look out the window, I see but not feel

This town is grey, this town is sinking
You, me, us the blame unfair
Snow replaces leaves, the cold is all that's real

Count the milestones as you lay waiting
Where is my moment? How long will I be stuck on this penultimate stair?
The rain washes away the darkness, is this my sign to heal?

The year has been harsh, I've been in hiding
As the sun comes out and birds begin to chirp, I leave my lair
I gingerly step out on a cool April morning and announce "this is the moment to steal!"

To my little cocorita

Cocorita, my little princess,
the petite bird in the skies.
Blithe and cute, and simply blessed,
a spirit that never dies.

Never shackled, never cringing,
one of varied hues.
Seldom ired, always singing
to pay your worldly dues.

Budgerigar, the english talk,
misses the lilt, you've had.
Now, there is the cage and lock,
it just makes me sad.

Fly free, feel the breeze,
let the wind kiss you.
Smile again, be a tease,
sing a song anew.

Tee Hee!

Run away!
Run away from the fears.
Live each day!
Live each day with the cheers.

Let nothing,
let nothing put you down.
Stop each thing,
Stop each thing that makes you frown.

Get a life,
Get a life, and be happy.
Rid your strife,
Rid you strife, and feel the glee.

It's a must,
Carpe Diem, said the wise.
Life is just
full of wonder and surprise.

What goes down, must come up!

When you hit the nadir, the apex called.
Said, I am sorry for being late.
You looked sad; you had surely bawled.
Ah, the twisted games of Fate!

You had dreams, but Fate caught 'em.
You lost a lot, but cheer up!
For, when you've hit rock bottom,
the only way is up!

Hope for better, dream for more,
think of that golden door;
the portal to your destiny,
and the happiness to be.

Frustrations

You want light and you want dark,
Yet you get "light", you lose the shield.
You get "dark", you lose the spark.
Damn the puzzle that just won't yield!

How do you choose, between the two?
What do you use, to end the blue?

Do you trust the feeling, and take a stride,
or trust the ken, and play it safe?
Do you follow the desire deep inside,
or dog the truth, and let it chafe?

Damn the dread, damn these choices!
Damn your head, with its million voices!

Questions

Mountains form, and ages pass by,
every man has questioned, out of doubt or fear,
"what's the purpose?" or just "why?"
Still unanswered; not even near.

What's right? And what's wrong?
What's fair? And what's unfair?
You may ask your whole life long,
yet, who knows! and why do you care!

The pragmatist reflects, why ask!
The dreamer rebuts, you have no heart!
Let's just live, that's the task,
is the answer of a simple lark.

The questions consume, the questions remain,
Why uncover questions, with no use?
Mother nature! such deceit, such legerdemain!
why allow men such mental abuse?

More like an onion, with every skin I peel.
Kipling and Tagore, you may stir in your graves.
But, the deeper I dig, the shallower I feel;
this world was never for the braves.

Many will come, and many will go,
but the questions stay; they never die.
The choices you make are yours to keep,
There are no answers, I won't lie.

From Chemistry to Biology

Amongst the most famous debates in current pop-science groups is undoubtedly the debate of "how did life come about? Was it thru natural happenstance or thru miraculous/supernatural intervention" - the debate between unguided evolution vs. intelligent design. After following this debate for quite a few years (a lot of PZ Myers, Dawkins, Bertrand Russell for the evolutionary perspective, and the discovery institute,... for the ID point of view), I have one strong statement to make, the intelligent design community is intellectually empty. They do have a philosophical point - it is "logically possible" that some supernatural force created everything, but the community that espouses this view is rampant with miscreants and liars. In my opinion, even the "biggest" proponents (read, Ken Ham, Michael Behe, ...) of this "theory" consistently fabricate data, and misinform the clueless public. This is my biggest concern! While there might be some philosophical merit to the proposal, just the way they go about doing it shows one thing - even they themselves aren't truly convinced by the evidence, and need to resort to cheap, and ultimately unproductive, tactics like lying and making up data. (see the "Creation Museum" pictures to see how ludicrous some of this population is.)

On a related note, a subject that I have found fascinating in recent times is that of "Abiogenesis". The branch of scientific inquiry that studies the origin of biological life, i.e., how did life (in the biological sense of the word) ever come about from a point when there was no life?

Evolutionary theories (in the Darwinian mould) talk about biological evolution as a result of Natural Selection - that is Nature (and natural conditions) acts as a filter, and repeated filtering over mutations results in evolution of new species. However, what's key for biological evolution is the pre-existence of life. That is: speciation is only possible, in a Darwinian framework, when a previous more "primitive" life is already present. In short, Darwinian evolutionary theories have nothing to say about how life came to be - or how life ever started - they just account for how species evolved.

I recently saw a video lecture by Professor Robert Hazen (Carnegie Institution and George Mason University) on the topic of Abiogenesis. It was a lot of fun, and really stirred the love for physical and organic chemistry that I had in high-school.

I present below a gist of his talk. I refer you to the actual 1hr 9min talk video for a more elaborate discussion.

His talk's main point was that for biology to have developed from chemistry, there must have been at least the four steps in the pic below. Darwinian natural selection is only possible after the "biomolecules" or "building blocks of life", i.e., amino acids, sugars..., were created from the chemical conditions that existed on earth before life; followed by steps 2 and 3.


A cool experiment that showed that step one is replicable is one by Miller and colleagues in the early 1950's. They had a lab experiment where the apparatus mimicked the conditions of the "pre-life earth". The apparatus tried to recreate the presence of water, air, the right temperature and pressure, and finally, the chemicals that were there before life came about. What they found was that leaving the set-up as such for some time automatically leads to the creation of the basic building blocks (amino acids, sugars...)


So, step 1 is essentially solved. We understand it. The answer is kinda known. We know for sure that we can recreate step 1 without any "outside/supernatural" intervention, just by recreating the original conditions of the earth. This is clearly a replicable process.

Steps 2 and 3 are still being understood. We have good leads with step 2 - some important minerals might be aiding in the selection of the right building blocks. But, step 3 is still in the conception stage. There are apparently some good theoretical ideas, but there's no good experimental support for these proposal.

Again, step 4 has some excellent experimental support. And of course it has received massive support from evolutionary biological findings in the last 150 years since Darwin's days (and from some work even before that, of course).

So, to put it concisely, the work that really needs to be done and is being pursued right now in the small field of Abiogenesis is between steps 2 & 3.


And finally, why bother talking about all this when I started with the discussion of evolutionary biology vs. intelligent design. Simple, I love the conclusions of the talk. Very simple, and basic, yet the god-mongers amongst us don't necessarily see it.

In search of a new beginning!

Hello everyone! It has truly been a long time since I last blogged. I was just wondering what everyone's been upto.

Shitty got married, Ashwin and Rags are soon to follow in Dec./Jan. Mayank's been trying to call me for the last week, and somehow he finds the voicemail, and the two times I tried to call him up, I found an old german lady. In short, somehow, everyone's getting screwed over. lol!

Life's been weird. Interesting, but weird. I am having to push thru my usually spirit-less existence to force myself to do things that are totally out of character. And you know what?? It ain't half bad. I am getting to know myself very well. Loneliness does that to you. haha!

But, since I last messaged, I learnt a lot about linguistics, a lot about neuroscience, and a lot about lotsa unrelated things. I think I kinda like who I am becoming. When is the last time I said that?

I'm going to Michigan State Univ. for a one year stint as a faculty member there. Should be 'interesting'. When I went there, I had a lot of fun, but kinda missed not being with close ones.

Been playing tennis (with Naveen) in the last week. Was a lot of fun. Played after many years! I was surprised that my knees didn't give in. Far from being half-decent, but I have to say it was a welcome change to my otherwise sedentary way of life.

Federer just lost to Tsonga in the Rogers Cup. Was a little sad about it. he's just not the same anymore. :(.

This was sort of a boring post I guess, but hopefully more interesting stuff will follow soon!