Freedom and its abuse, Our national News Papers

Freedom and its abuse, Our national News Papers

Both English and Sinhala, may be Tamil too have lost the ability to keep high-profile.

There was a time when we take a paper and we read it from front to back.

Even if it was not newsworthy, at least one picks up a few nice phrases and a few new words

Now it does not take two minutes for me to peruse.

I am going to list 10 (ten or more) missing points of our National News Papers.

1. All of them have lost creativity.

2. They have no understanding of future trends

3. They are obsessed with Gossips

4. They are obsessed with Politics

5. They are obsessed with Profits (advertisement)

6. They are all Polarized

7. Simply they do exist as of some sort of necessity and like having an early morning purge, one reads, rather glances through  and have an immediate intellectual clean up

purge .

Why this is I do not know.

8. It is like one way traffic, even one comes to an intersection, they prefer not to take a turn, either to the right or left, worse they do not think of pulling to a side and have a cup of tea or coffee.

Enjoy the scenery a bit

9. Are we getting brain washed?

10. Why are we so selfish?

Why don’t we look at alternative ways of thinking and look at current trends.

The 10 or missing points are:

Since I am (was) in a higher educational institute, I will take up with the education, first.

1. First IT.

There is a sea of change happening in the IT world.

This was building up over the last three years.I was obsessed with Linux but keep a track of what was happening.

The first white paper I received 3 years ago.

It is the cloud computing that is making the sea change.

The androids have already come

Then the tablets.

Then the bust of HP computer arm.

All HP, IBM and Google going to cloud services.

2. Then the amazon come up with the Kindle.

3. Amazon has taken over the Digital Library Services along with the reading habits.

4. Soon tablets will hit all the schools, in preparation the have stopped teaching or training cursive writing. 

Instead of the slate and slate pencil it will be digital tablets that will take over.

5. I hate this government Free Book Service which is 30 years outdated.

All the books can be put in couple of doubled layered DVDs.

6. One actually does not need even that and the cloud service can take over the digital content.

7. For that we need fiber-optic connection and not a land based service.

8. We do not have a satellite to facilitate the G.P.S

9. We need to improve English at schools.

10. We need to get Sinhala and Tamil into IT.

11. All that costs.

12. There is an alternative operating system and Ubuntu is taking giant strides including commercial aspect and they are ready by 2014.

But only Debian has universal language support including Sinhala and Tamil.

13. Then there is software piracy at all levels in spite of copyright law. I strongly opposed copyright law when it was brought in because we were digitally backward at the stage and I believed we needed at least 5 years to change.

More than a decade gone we are still in  squire one.

Well IT itself has taken more than 10 units.

14. We are not addressing the problem of population growth (I stated it when population was 6 billion).

15. We are not addressing the global warming and climatic change.

16. We are not ready for alternative energy for cars including electric.

17. Science, Technology and Mathematics even worse than English.

18. Doctors, Engineers who pass out won’t be able to fill government posts.

They are saturated.

19. New private medical college is a colossal waste.

20. Education hub is a daydream and we missed the bus by 10 years because of the war.

Above all we do not have resources and we are still paying the debts.

We are trapped in the debt trap.

IMF will capitalize.

Why are our papers not addressing these in real time and numbers.

This budget will be another austerity budget and things will get worse in spite of tightening our belts.

I have not seen a single article on economics and debt crisis.

We cannot put a lid on everything, like a rubber ball pressed under water with hand, the moment the hand is taken off, it ill pop up.

What the papers are doing is trying to keep the rubber ball underwater.

It is a failed exercise.

Poisoning the Nation!

This was something I wanted to write but kept postponing for more than 5 years after my first entry into minor scientific and environmentally friendly writing.

However the ideas dates back to my medical students days.

I was convinced the Mahavali River water was contaminated from its origin not only from biological agents but form pesticides that originate form tea plantation.

The amount of dog’s shit that get washed away to the river is colossal and that alone is enough to prove my point but amount man’s shit goes parallel and almost doubled or trebled that since the  rough ratio to dog to man in Sri-Lanka is 1 to 7 (ratio).

This is not about dog shit but how our agrarians poison us almost daily.

There is no food in the market which is not contaminated but there is no machinery to monitor the extent of this man made disaster since our legislation is to weak to regulate the use of artificial in gradients.

The biggest culprit was WHO who for three to four decades sprayed the enter country with DDT to fatten the coffers of American Companies which produce (they blame only Iraq and and did not find a trace) all the nasty chemicals yo test on the poor countries.

That menace is gone to some extent but our Agriculture Ministry has taken over the responsibility of poisoning our masses by default of not monitoring or regulating the use of poisons.

My friend in the University and almost my name sake was able to prove that cadmium was the cause of renal diseases prevalent in the North and North Central but both the WHO experts and the local medical experts failed to see this since renal disease is big money and a Kidney is priced at half to one million now.

If one take two kidneys from an innocent refugee it is almost two millions.

This probably happened during the war time.

The kidneys were not a problem then but it is a problem now.

One of my friends who was abroad tells me doctors there removed his normal kidney leaving his half normal kidney to survive.

I can remember in my internship my consultant removed the Normal Kidney of a woman  and went on for one week of holiday and I had to look after her till her death.

Since I was an intern I could not do anything.

Bound by ethics!

That is one reason, I did not take up Surgery which I loved as a medical student but ended up as a pathologist to see what went wrong after the event.

The poisons in our food is too numerous to list but at least it is my responsibility to make people aware.

I should end up with a little note of our drug industry.

The number one poison in the list is alcohol.

For many reasons.

1. It is a universal cell poison.

2. It is a good solvent and dissolve all other poisons and act as a vehicle for poisons.

3. Third is that alcohol is adulterer with methyl alcohol to a large extent which causes blindness.

4. Most of our children’s syrups and vitamins are not water based but alcohol based.

5. There is no way to regulate consumption of illicit (almost legal in this country) alcohol.

Just today I went to buy some vitamin syrup for an adult.

This particular one needed alcohol free syrup.

Having checked over 20 I could not find a single bottle that had a label to say what is the solvent used.

They should label them as alcohol based or water based.

I had to buy (just guess work) two and at home opened and taste them  to see which had alcohol.

One was alcohol based other was not alcohol based but expensive.

This is a primitive experiment in a country where we have not produced a Nobel Prize winning scientist.

That is why I drink only wine now even though they very are expensive.

What is the hell the Health Department doing to regulate that issue?

They have one priority.

That is dengue.

The have no priority to check all the poisons and the labels in food and drugs industry (that are imported to this country).

This include our chille powder. One Brand I tasted was totally poisoned may be with Gadol.

Anybody who has money and connection can import anything to this liberal and liberated  society.

se demander -to wonder, how could I master French?

French is a beautiful language on paper but not when a native French speaks to another native (not English of course) French.

English however has grabbed all the niceties (not English speaking diplomats including Koreans) including cricket commentators of yesteryear.

The worst of the crime to French and English is perpetuated by English and Canadian Football Hooligans now turned Human Right Protectors of the World.

Below is a collection of French sayings I copied from the web with only one word demande.

In English it is corrupted to force of demand in colonial times of the past and now channel 4 outbursts of Human rights (most of them were few years ago Football Hooligans).

Enjoy even if you cannot pronounce them especially, the tongue-tied English, who cannot pronounce my name in full (it is a violation of My Human Right anyway).

demander la lune
to ask for the moon

se demander
to wonder, to ask oneself

se demander bien pourquoi…
to not be able to figure out why…

Cela ne se demande pas !
That’s a stupid question!

Il est parti sans demander son reste.
He left without a murmur.

Que demande le peuple ?
What more could you ask for?

Je ne demande qu’à vous voir.
All I ask is to see you.

demander la parole
to ask for permission to speak

Also how corrupt it has got when it turned into English?

Parle has cahnged to parole (change in tense) and English parole (in French it is the freedom to speak-French Revolution but in English the freedom to move -physical freedom of it’s incarcerated inmates including Sri-Lankans in Ceylon after 1815, tortured and killed in prisons.

Now these English and the “Whites” speak of Human Rights which they violated including French in Africa in colonial times.

They all are hypocritical including Channel 4.

How to forward a dead man’s (women excluded) email

How to forward a dead man’s (women excluded) email

Internet is a bustling with activity and it has spawned new avenues for recreation.

I have been specially appointed from both Apaya and Devlova (Heaven) to coordinate activities and I have been asked to formulate a formula to prevent Apaya MySQL Web Server getting jammed.

As an initial remedy I have instructed them to have new server for Sri-Lankans but Apaya does not want to vandalize limited resources on Sri-Lanka and that is why they need a special formula.

Since I am in regular contact with Sackra’s Assistant (Maha Brahma) which I have from the time of registration of Hela Urumaya as a political party (that appointment was to give a resume of all Hela Urumaya voters who gets a call of nature through Devalayas before their demise).

Sacra himself handles the party stalwarts and he does not believe their own well cooked up resumes leave alone any comments that I have made about them in web publications. Unlike Apaya. They have enough memory in all the servers with my good offices I have made an arrangement to provide a server on IMF loan facility to Hell which can be paid back while in hell to Apaya accounts.

You may wonder how I got the appointment.

On merit and that is due to my intense interest in Linux and the number of publication (on Linux) in the web by any Sri-Lankan.

They have just typed asoka and linux and lately asokaplus and got hold of my web counting.

Now there are asokafixed(to the keyboard and onSugar) and asokalive (livejournal) and asokalinux(Xanga)

Then they have looked at the impact it made in Sri-Lanka which was almost zero and connected me wirelessly to ask why this discrepancy.

I promptly said I publish only in English to which they said why don’t you make an attempt to improve English. I said Sir, I am doing it right now  by writing  and that is the reason for me posting in the web.

They were quite happy and impressed with my answers but said your extensions will be based on your daily writings and that is why I have to post at least one a day at wordpress.

When I was at writeclique it was once in three days and at Google once in 2 to 3 days and now once a day like a poor National  News Paper Editor.

I am told by the Web Administrator of the Apaya (Hell in English) a new super powered Server to handle the demand from Sri-Lankans was installed this year (immigrants specially from Colombo 7, Hela Urumaya type who sell electricity for an exorbitant price -they have a special sub-system for Hela Urumaya).

Nobody can contact the President and the Head of Apayas since he is 24 hour on call and cannot sleep.

He was elected recently unanimously without a contest and he can go for re-election at lib.

His crime was sleeping while on call  duty at President’s Office and giving false promises to the visitors and giving false statements to a judicial inquiry (perjury not punished here).

You may wonder what is the difference between becoming head of Apaya or Devlova.

Sackra has four hours of sleep and he can delegate some of activities to the assistant and the assistant can delegate it to me.

It looks as if one becomes a President of this country he can easily take up a position in Apaya since there are no delegated activities now in Apaya and super-computers have taken over mankind (beingskind- a new word coined by me for Apaya use) there.

My duty is easy to forward dead man’s emails either to Apaya or Devlova or safe house in between for scrutiny.
By doing that all email holding companies will benefit by releasing their precious space for new comers.

I am currently doing the test run on the formula I have developed on Senior Ministers’ profiles (I am due bound not to disclose test runs to the person while they are alive) on my computer and it got stuck due to overload and I may have to update the RAM and the speed.

Unfortunately I am not paid any allowances even though I requested 10% on testing and another 50% on running.

If you have any suggestion please forward it to me without any delay so that I can include them on the revised version.

I have decided  not to make the formula public since the Central Bank of Ceylon (Now SIRI LANKA) and IMF would get bright ideas to change roles and divest their energies in Apaya Investment Limited (newly formed company by me).

Mind you there is a vacancy for-How to forward a dead woman’s email post- any man or woman can apply by passing me.

Details are at Apalya Investment Limited website if it is in operation without any untoward attack by Sri-Lankan Government.

To Hell or Heaven

To Hell or Heaven

It is said
That when
A Sri-Lankan
Plans to go abroad
He becomes secretive
And almost paranoid
Does not tell anybody
Of his intentions
Lest somebody pulls a string
Under the carpet
To stop
His endeavour

But
Once he is abroad
And found a filthy dwelling
For habitation
He is in all but praise
Of the new found
Hell sans freedom
Wants all his fellow beings
Left behind
To come, join him
In misery
And share his chores and concerns

I am told
This is so
In the Middle East
Or else as
A refuge
In the West

But,
What is significant?
And the most indwelling
Fact is that
Where one goes to hell
He makes sure
All his fellow beings
Are pulled out there from here
Like a magnetic attraction
To share the misery

But,
By chance
If he found
A decent and healthy place
As a habitat
He writes home
In shame and disregard
Of the place adopted
Lest he has
To share
The wealth and happiness
Of the New Found Land

This is not
In anyway
A warning
For the foreign peace mongers
Who curry favours
With the tyrants and the clan
And when they fall, they fall
All together
One hell of a pit of disgrace

The Sri-Lankan
Who wish for divine intervention?
All the time,
But,
When they go to heaven
They go there all alone
Simply because
Increasing the numbers there
Would be antagonistic
To the Zero Growth Principle
And it propensity
Adapted by,
The Sri-Lankans
Already there
Established in position and fame

The only exception
But the classic example
To the above rule of thumb
Is the exposition?
Of the stupidity of
The tour management
Sans sense
Who left out Sanath
In the bench lingering
So that the entire team
Go down in disgrace
Without any excuses

But the survivour
Par excellence
Is our own Sanath?
Who has to give himself
His own farewell
Since the soul mates
Could not perform
As a winning team when needed
And under duress
At Kandy

The hostility,
And the whole host of predicaments
A soul born out of this soil
Of the divides
On a common ground,
Of paucity of ideas and innovation
Has to go through is minute
In comparison
To the disgrace and disrepute
The foreign souls
Would have to inherit and forbear

But,
In Buddhist anthology and tradition,
The “Kalyana Mitta”,
The true friend who helps
The upward bound beings
A safe heaven
Come what it may
Now and always
Sans boundaries,
Of colour, caste, creed or class
Is known for its absence in the
Modern world of material gain

Water, Water, Everywhere

Water, Water, Everywhere

Water, water
In the sea,
In the lakes,
In the rivers
And the rains taking
It round the world
Making life possible
Everywhere

Wastes of domestic and industrial
Draining into the rivers  
That swells the lakes
Then the sea
The ultimate dumping ground
Of sewerage and nuclear waste
Why is man so indiscriminate?

Water, water everywhere
But not a drop of water
Is spared sans pollution
For me to drink
And share with you
With quality

14th March, 2006

Rough Guide to the Tree Equivalent of Man and their Re-plantation

This is not referring to the commercial scale of replacement since the rate at commercial scale exploitation cannot be estimated to any accuracy.

This is based on the use of tree, timber and its products by man during his productive life.

If we were to sustain each man or women has to grow at least 10 trees and maintain them till their mature life. This  has to be done in 4-5 year cycles and older you (above 35 years) are the cycle has to be at least in every 1-2 years.Ideally each man or woman plants a tree on his / her birthday!

1. The use as timber products for roofing and housing

2. To replace the use of paper products

3. Use of fire wood (this has to be in relation to the use)

4. The use of furniture

5. Wastage in every production line

6. The trees not sustaining themselves due to bad planting or weather conditions

7. The last 4 are for unaccountable felling and vandalism encountered and may have to vary according to the country.This amount is to keep the balance of nature. If one has a house with 4 adults in it this estimate makes it 40 trees around their neighbourhood and the way the houses are built in a city next to each other there is is no room for to grow enough trees.

Not even a single tree or hedge to act as windbreaks and shade. (please look at how rich Americans build their houses and walkabouts).

That means every major city has to have a buffer zone (this is how the ancient people built cities) of tree cover equivalent the population that is incarcerated in the name of development.Colombo city can never regain its splendor what ever we do now for it.

The Kandy city has almost 3 three times population density of Palestine Refugee Camps and we are going to be no different to Israel in another 10 or 20 years.

We are losing it faster than it’s regeneration.Regarding the commercial exploitation the re-plantation has to be according to the tree’s cycle. If the tree grows to maturity in 4 years for every tree harvested 4 should be planted and only a few trees fall into this category.

For some trees, if it is lost it is lost for ever.

They take may be 400 to 500 years for it to grow to maturity and often not reproducing fast enough due to their longevity and this simple equation cannot be applied in recreating its natural habitat.

This is only a rough estimate and we have lost about 60% of our forest cover in 50 years of unsustainable use.

I do not think these people with mega-development ideas have understood the problem or have insight into the matters of concern we are facing now.

The have no futuristic goals but presence of mind for exploitation.

Very soon we will be like Dubai, the work we have to do now is enormous if we are to arrest these trends.

Politicizing the Universities

I saw a long narration about my Alma Mater (University) which was probably written in malicious political intention and this is in no way an attempt to engage in a debate with the writer or answer any issues raised.

But regret to say without the points I am raising here are not included in that essay, it cannot be taken as an academic exercise. I will leave it to a politically oriented person to address those issues academically.

The points I am raising here could be used as a base. I will put them in concise and precise manner since an average reader has no time to read long essays.

There is is a little scientific but not political bias here.

I try to be in chronological order but not in logical order and the reader can reassemble in logical order he wishes to.

The bottom line is politicians without vision and education principles are ruining all education including University.

Monty Affair

First that come to mind is Monty (Late Monty Gopallawa who was the Governor in Kandy) Affair. Monty is a good friend of mine and good philosopher and I have no intention of incriminating any malice or disgrace to him, his father or his family except highlighting the wrong decisions made by the then education minister and only he is culpable of the grandiose mistake.

I must state here when I heard about the Monty’s demise I wrote a verse (sent to a paper but they did not publish it) and publish it in the web and it is still there. Only other person I have written a verse is our late Kadhiragarmar.

That is the to put in perspective the way I admire both personalities.

Both are in racing parlance, thoroughbreds.

The story we have heard was that Monty did not have the required marks to enter the university. Then the minister gave orders to lower the marks of entry to accommodate Monty. In that process the candidates up to that point mark had to be taken into all the universities. The universities did not have proper infrastructure to accommodate the numbers involved and the race course adjoining the Colombo university was used as temporary shelter.

This was the beginning and I think the year was 1965. Lot of things happened after that and in 1965 (may be later) police was called in to settle a dispute and police baton charged and one student had serious head injuries and he completed his academic studies with me many years later.

In 1968 Army was stationed in the Gymnasium with political motivation and what followed was nasty and I was there to witness it.

Then in 1974 on wrong (a racial issue) advice the practical examination to enter the science streams were stopped. Then Science Streams were made to be taught in mother tongue (Swabasha) and that was the death knell for outside world of scientific knowledge.

Between 1974 to 1976 (I need to be corrected here-I had left the university by then) another blunder was made by introducing area basis admission scheme but not on merits.

In 1975 or 1976 we had a death of a student (I was a witness as a doctor in Kandy OPD) shot by police, a single bullet at short range.

We did not have a proper Vice Chancellor it could have been a Competent Authority (politically appointed, I believe) that was running the show.

In 1977 the UGC (and the act) was established leading to full politicization and the Chancellor and Vice chancellor were made on political affiliations.

There are many more blunders in our education and one of the biggest is when a wrong decision was made there was no discussion or and no attempt to correct it even when it was realized that the decision was not made on education principles but on political grounds with short sight.

These thing happened not in isolation but with connivance of academics who go for high seats and become stooges of politicians. Down the ages with political intervention we manged to cancel the University Entrance Examination conducted by the University independently.

University has no choice in selecting the students they wish to have in their various faculties. It is a game of lottery or lotto which is unprecedented unlike in universities abroad.

For over 60 years we did not have an Education Minister with some distant vision or understanding of real needs and I have a feeling the way we select our representatives we never will have.

There are lot of lapses in this summary of events but I will wind up with a down to earth story.

I had served six years of service and I wanted to go abroad. For GMC registration I needed my degree certificate. I had applied it five years ago and when I inquired about it the registrar told me that they do not have money to buy the special paper for degree certificate (imported probably from UK). I could not wait and I was not bothered about the special paper and told the registrar I need a certificate authenticated by you and the vice chancellor, that is all what I want. Finally with some persuasion, the vice chancellor agreed to give  me such certificate pending the original. My father received the certificate many years later when I was abroad (I may be the only one who has two certificates for the same degree) and he kept it in his safe possession without telling me. He of course fell sick and was ill for a long period of time and his memory was gone. Then many years later after my father’s death my sister who had some of his precious paper belonging dumped them in a garage of my other sister. One day I was looking for some old memorabilia in the garage, may be my father’s stamp album and some of his photos (one gone missing by that time) and I found my MBBS (Ceylon) Certificate, top part eaten by white ants.and bottom part still legible because of the quality of the print material.

It may be at least 20 years later I saw my original certificate. Quite and outstanding achievement of mine.

I have two other outstanding achievements.

I decided not to attend any convocation for my life in Ceylon. Our convocation were canceled indefinitely for many years because they could not buy the paper to print certificates. I never took a photograph with the degree paraphernalia.

But I still remain as a teacher of young adults.

I have one more comment.

Uuntil the University (University Entrance Examination conducted by the University concerned) is given the autonomy to decide the caliber of students they want our Universities will be down the pallan (down a precipice).

Alcohol the Miracle Cure

Alcohol is the miracle treatment of mankind. It had been in productivity from the time immemorial. Its presence parallels the prosperity of mankind and its rate of consumption is a better index of growth rate of a nation. Through out history its consumption drops only during times of war. The rate we are consuming alcohol is an indication how peaceful and serene the life of an average Sri-Lankan is. For instance come, New Year and Christmas only queues one is likely to see in supper markets are the customers peacefully waiting for this precious commodity. This is specially so just before Poya holidays. By reflex action the veritable Buddhists and Christians replenish the stock of this vehicle of medicine (before long holidays), sensing just in case the production peak drops, and our industrial giants might have a stock market flop.
Why one should be writing an article on this commodity with medicinal value? Just to show the foreign experts the success story of this industry. In spite of the conflicts with our own kind we do not need any foreign expertise to support this industry. We only had some problem with this industry when kings and queens of this country had been advised by eminent Buddhists monks without economic know how.
However, this is a special time with elections coming round soon this industry will have a special kick. The boom of this industry is awaiting. Why do I say so? All the stake holders take part in propagating the national interests of the nation in need. For the politicians just before the public address bit of this medicine is the gift of god and gift of the jab. I was just watching the people who took part in recent parade from Devinuwara to Colombo. How happy the people were, in spite of the distance they covered? Essential ingredients were this miracle medicine they partook at the end of everyday of the walk.
Important thing was that the walker, in real sense the voter, did not have to foot the bill. Nobody talked about the inflation and its rate of rising and there was no belt tightening. In actual fact the belt were so loose after few rounds they looked as if they were in heaven. This is something unique about campaigning and champagning at election times. My advice for the voter is to have the champagne before the final count. Because after the final count the losers want (sometime the winners also) be able to pay.
My special interests of course are the journalists and the expert commentators (some of them are giving running commentaries while they are running after the candidates). But my caution for the losers, there want be anybody to wipe the tears (only to wipe the tears of joy). Journalist of course in this period of time would get a helping of special brands imported variety. They should actually be liberal on these opportunities and it comes with the gift of the gab and the editorials become less incisive but buttered with sharp edges on both sides of the divide. The journalists are the one who should have windfalls with increase number of regular readership not seen before. I was benefited by the captain Haddock’s saying nincompoop. Our journalists must change it to nicampop (the type of experts that are popping up from academic and nonacademic circles) from the tradition of nicambook and colombook varieties. People like me who have other interests including academic should take a low profile or should increase the douche in proportion to the degree of boredom.
There are two or three other categories of individuals who are benefited by liberal intake of this miracle drink. They are the police, the doctors, lawyers and the young drivers with a drinking habit.

Drink Driving
The role of drinking and driving in Sri-Lanka is commendable. Why I say that? They kill themselves when they are young (even before procreation). We have inadvertently solved the problem. These potent virile genes are eliminated liked the tusked elephants of the wild who are becoming extinct due to aggressive poaching in the past. In fact LTTE has eliminated most of the tusked elephants in the recent past, we will only have mediocre alcoholic elephants of the two feet variety. I advise the hierarchy of the elephants to hire nonalcoholic chauffeurs if they wish to preserve their genes in posterity.
Doctors’ Attitude
There is some interesting statistics emerging from the west. The stereotype of a medical student is the hard working, hard playing and hard drinking individual who carry these genetic traits as a young general practitioner. Since we follow the western traits our young doctors are no different. Public have a very wrong impression of them unfortunately. They are actually a hard working lot. Only way they can arrange for an alcoholic binge is to organize a lightening strike. The patients should be mindful of this
departure from the norm and take a leaf out of the doctor’s diary and follow the traditional healing methods. The miracle alcohol!
A point of departure, for one of my personal experiences. The children’s great grandma who was in her late eighties was bit of out of sort. I could not point a finger at the basic problem. I decided to investigate. These episodes happen to coincide with the arrival of her pension. Being health conscious the grandma (daughter of the great grandma) used to buy a bottle of Dasa Moola Aristaya for her and to my amazement she finishes this in a day or two. To my horror this Aristaya had about 25% alcohol. Gradually I weaned her off from this habit and the miracle treatment and changed her to a selective calming influence of Vallergan (used in paediatrics patients) until her timely demise. Just come to a relevant point and how our Mahanayakes get a liberal supply of this quite innocuous time old Aurvedic medicine. I would not elaborate on this instead some reflections of alcohol and the Church, Pansal and Dansal. Authorities in Church found it necessary to order that any priest who got drunk before a service should do three days penance but did not regard alcohol as posing (as a poison) a great threat to the souls of the laity. Quite opposed to the Buddhist monks attitude who get a general helping of Dasa Moola Aristaya and Aswagandha Moolaristaya as a dhana supplement and preach the merits of five precepts to the laity. This is the cardinal attraction (alcohol) of Buddhists who convert themselves to Christianity. That is of course my opinion.
Doctors in the west have a problem. Who needs help? Is it the doctor himself or the patient? That is the dilemma. Medical faculties of the west have not found a solution to this problem. We have to find a way to introduce it to our curriculum when a proper study is evaluated in the west. The western model is going to be the best.
We in our faculty started the tobacco cessation unit some time ago. (Even before this unit was established I was trying to wean off one our workaholic messenger boys but failed miserably).
In our preliminary discussions, I suggested that we should make it an Alcohol and Tobacco Cessation Unit. We are hitting two birds with one stone I said. It was my medical colleagues (not Dental) who opposed the idea on the ground of human rights violation. I of course promptly accepted the democratic consensus knowing very well I was outnumbered.

Lawyers’ Attitude
Attitude of Sri-Lankan lawyers is commendable. The way they interpreted our constitution and the representations (or is it misrepresentation?) made by eminent lawyers make me feel dwarfed in my stature. They actually deserve a bit of this miracle medicine for the stresses they underwent propagating arguments and counterarguments for and against of having two presidencies (terms) for the count of one. They have one more issue raised by our learned politicians i.e.; the lowering of the age of consent to 13 years. Our lawyers and law makers might even split their brains (most of them of course have split brains one for this country and other for the country they wished their children would have been born) protecting the human rights of paedophiles (especially if they are of foreign kind) showing a single case that had taken place (for example an act of a paedophile king in our history) in our history as a precedence to persevere with their  cause for lowering the age of consent still lower, say to 5 years (Mahathma Ghandhi wouldn’t have liked, it if he was alive). Lawyers find this medicine adjutant to their verbal skills especially when judges are also pampered with this article when they make a long recess to the chambers for deliberating vital points of departure from normal conventions. This medicine can be delivered to the opposing witnesses liberally so that at the question time they might get so confused to which party they are appearing. Using this ploy one can win most of the cases but when the other party also applies this strategy going might get tricky. In that situation a long recess to the chambers would benefit one party to get sober before the other. It is more than likely that the sober party would lose the case unless of course a replenishment of the article is made within the premises without getting caught to the police.
Attitude of the Police
This is something by compulsion I should not write a lot except for releasing one of my secrets of success as a District Medical Officer. If the police wanted me for a quick postmortem in the jungle they should provide me with the best sweet toddy (not honey- there was plenty of jaggery including sauce those days) before the ordeal and what better transport than the Police Jeep?  Vehicles were hard to come by those days. Now the breathalyser has come into existence they have got a wonderful ally, but the Police Chief should do an inward survey of the prevalence of this pastime in the forces once in a way.
Biochemists and the Academics
This is the time (elections) even quite docile academics (all universities included) would come forward with all the ammunition firing in all directions, expecting some to hit the target audience. This is welcome with a liberal sprinkle of alcoholic beverages of the foreign variety. Unlike those days we do not get a good supply (foreign) unless we go for a British Council ceremony or similar function. For biochemists of course if I can find a single personality who does not (a professional achievement-not a hazard) consume this medicine I would like to revise my biochemistry at a time of great biotechnology revolution.
Medical Benefits
Alcohol is (red vine) is protective to the heart both soul and in physical terms when taken in moderation. However, I would not define what is moderate in a scientific sense. In general terms moderation is defined by how affluent one is. An experience abroad worth mentioning. There was a mum with pregnancy induced hypertension and eclampsia and she was having fits which were not responding to standard treatment. We decided to give her an alcohol drip and she responded. So who says alcohol is no miracle?
There is one problem however, we do not have an enzyme in our system to metabolize alcohol and have to use an enzyme in the normal vital metabolic pathway and that is why it is known as a metabolic cell poison which is universal. The biotechnologist must transplant the metabolic pathway that is seen in the yeast as a subsidiary metabolic pathway in human beings as soon as possible. When this is done one needs not wait in the queue before poya holidays. Our body can form it within oneself with only a bit of sugar.  That is the only contribution from me as a pathologist.
Good bye to the baker’s yeast.

Diseased Planet (Man made)

Diseased Planet (Man made)

This planet is the only living planet we know of and it is showing all the signs and symptoms that it is ailing.

Cockeyed scientists are trying to convince us that all this is due to natural stresses but I would like to disagree.

We have lost sense of philosophy, science and common sense because of heavy use of unscientific economic jargons. Economic principles are based only on making money on the go and speculation. Statistical trends and speculations as it is used by the economists have no scientific base.

They are based on false premise of earth’s resources are finite and are there to be exploited.

Atoms, anti-atoms,universe and anti-universe are infinite by nature of the natural systems but each individual of this system with a solar heritage has finite resources.

Only addition our planet earth gets with ease is solar radiation.

Only plants can trap that energy in a recyclable way and nothing else. Living cells gets all its energy from the sun either directly or indirectly.

We can trap energy by solar cells but that energy is not recyclable but only have to be expended.

In a country where so much radiation is wasted like our water resources talking about solar panels and their use seem to be ridiculous to our politicians.

All this is because of the advice given by the pseudo-economists of the Central Bank.

They are in fact giving  dead ropes to hold onto.

Global warming is not my interest here except for saying that for the last three years (I began recording home temperature-my observation on a separate note) the indoor temperature topped 90 degrees Fahrenheit consistently for the last three years in succession and the highest recorded by me was 92 degrees in Kandy.

Kandy is like Kurunegala fifty years ago.

My interest in tectonic activity was rekindled after the tsunami since somebody in the TV uttered that this country (free) was not affected by earth quakes.

I could remember in early nineties there was a tremor felt by us from an earth quake around 400 kilometer or so away. My search at that time (without Internet) indicated that a crack in the Indian Plate is appearing and it is widening.

In last July, I was woken up in the early ours with a feeling of movement of my bed and this I dismissed as a dream. However, this strange feeling I felt twice afterwards. When I detected a week later (we were away from home) that all my fish tanks had fallen off the stand and a minor earth slip behind our house my forgone conclusion was a minor earth tremor has occurred.

However, I reported to the Grama Sevaka, that there could have been an attempt by a thief breaking into our house (my forensic examination excluded that fact), for posterity sake.

Weeks later, I found in a Sunday paper several tremors amounting to five or seven had been recorded in Sri-Lanka.

Our disaster alert was at its prime or primitive stage going by these observations.

Had I reported this to the authorities I would have been written off as insane by one of my colleague psychiatrists.

The fact of the matter is that we are now earth quake prone and it is the direct result of Indian Plate cracking and pushing towards Himalaya Range.

My concern, why the Indian Plate is cracking.

Is it man made or is it natural.

My gut reaction it is man made.

Current earth quake in China (even though Chinese Scientists would disagree with my theory) in my opinion is probably an after effect of a series of underground nuclear explosions in China.

If somebody can locate where Chinese test their  underground nuclear explosions and plot it distance to the present earth quake zone with simple physics (advanced level not nuclear physics) one can prove my hypothesis.

Pakistanis, Indians and Chinese had been secretly having nuclear tests underground for decades and now we are reaping the human benefits.

The recent earth quake in Sumatra and also the tsunami have direct relationship to the French nuclear explosions in South Pacific for several decades.

That is my gut feeling. If there are true scientists left on this planet one should prove or disprove my theory before my demise (due to natural causes if not an earth quake in Kandy).

We must band all nuclear explosions underground and over ground.

That is the only sensible thing man can do to heal it from random diseases.