Good times, bad times; retribution, karma and consequence, 'form and class' are all ways of thinking that we have developed around the random assortment in which events occur in our realm.
Because our powers of statistical prediction of a p,0.05 or intuition ( 'gut feeling','work experience')do not serve us well all the time
and because
there is some regularity in irregularity( or so the brain is trained to think- we always look for patterns unconsciously, link up events- thats the way we are trained to remember, to assign significance to mundane everyday events. A someanyone is a somesignificantone of someknownONE; a random thing sticks in memory because of the nebula around it that we probed to link up with some other thing we know of)
we develop this sometimes absurd linking of events.
That a present was a consequence of an earlier.
Things do not turn out always as we expect, unexpected events factor in, performance varies - we did good or we did not do so good. This creates uncertainty that gives you the sweaty palms and queasy belly- autonomic responses that we are instinctively uncomfortable with.Uncertainity is also an uncomfortable emotion for the psyche.And because we attach a sense of morality or even fear to many things we do-thats the origin of the punitively conscientious 'kar bhala so ho bhala' or 'as you sow..'These are good comforters.Then we change thinking patterns to we did good or we did BAD.Punitive conscience becomes a nonpunitive ego-ideal.
Another form of linking of events that we do subconsciously but have prided as creation of human ingenuity/intelligence is the 'law of averages'That you have good times and bad times. This is contradictory with the above point in that if one keeps doing good then there should be no bad times at all.Kar bhala .....ho bhala should go in a positive feedback loop.But events do occur in a way that they are at times good for us and sometimes not so good for us.What sustains through is how one handles the events and what adaptive lessons one learns from them.Why someone has a longer cycle of good times and bad times while others seem to hop, skip and jump out of them is not a question of morality but stochastic probability.If we think so( it is tough to go against what is drilled into the id though) then it creates preparedness for events- not a false sense of security or hopelessness.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Article from the NYT
Here's an article from the NYT that I was forwarded.Very interesting read. Ironic that it figures in the NYT instead of the TOI.Maybe it requires an outside observer's viewpoint to figure out where we go wrong?
Was a time medicos in India found it fashionable to discuss Gawande's article in the NEJM about hospitalist practice in India when it really was a viewpoint of an alien on what is common practice in our country given the pathetic resources we have and priorities that are more pressing than say pumping dollars into a luxury like say screening in the way it is done in Gawande's country.Still bear the hurt from the words of a visiting observer from UK who was posted with me in the general wards at KEM while I was junior resident: " you guys dont have resources to perform ACLS on a dying patient in the wards of a tertiary referal center in the biggest city in India.We have facilities to do that in Victoria Train Station in UK!"
Here goes:
Anand Girdharadas
NY Times, Nov 30th 2006
MUMBAI, India, Nov. 29 The job market for Indian college graduates is split sharply in two. With a robust handshake, a placeless accent and a confident walk, you can get a $300-a-month job with Citibank or Microsoft. With a limp handshake and a thick accent, you might peddle credit cards door to door for $2 a day.
India was once divided chiefly by caste. Today, new criteria are creating a different divide: skills. Those with marketable skills are sought by a new economy of call centers and software houses; those without are ensnared in old, drudge like jobs.
Unlike birthright, which determines caste, the skills in question are teachable: the ability to communicate crisply in clear English, to work with teams and deliver presentations, to use search engines like Google, to tear apart theories
rather than memorize them.
But the chance to learn such skills is still a prerogative reserved, for the most part, for the modern equivalent of India's upper castes - the few thousand students who
graduate each year from academies like the Indian Institutes of Management and the Indian Institutes of Technology. Their alumni, mostly engineers, walk the hallways of Wall Street and Silicon Valley and are stewards for some of the largest companies.
In the shadow of those marquee institutions, most of the 11 million students in India's 18,000 colleges and universities receive starkly inferior training, heavy on
obedience and light on useful job skills.
Students, executives and educators say this two-tier education system is locking millions of people into the bottom berths of the economy, depriving the country of talent and students of the chance to improve their lot. For those who succeed, what counts is the right skills.
"It's almost literally a matter of life and death for them," said Kiran Karnik, president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies, a trade body that
represents many leading employers. "The same person from the same institution with the same grades, but not having these skills, will either not get employed at all or will probably get a job in a shop or something."
India is that rare country where it seems to get harder to find a job the more educated you are. In the 2001 census, college graduates had higher unemployment - 17 percent more than middle or high school graduates.
But as graduates complain about a lack of jobs, companies across India see a lack of skilled applicants. The contradiction is explained, experts say, by the poor quality
of undergraduate education. India's thousands of colleges are swallowing millions of new students every year, only to turn out degree holders whom no one wants to hire.
A study published by the software trade group last year concluded that only 10 percent of graduates with nonspecialized degrees were considered employable by
leading companies, compared with 25 percent of engineers.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a former Harvard professor who recently resigned in frustration from the National Knowledge Commission, which advises the Indian government on
overhauling the education system, said, "The real crisis for me is the place where 70 percent of your graduates are students who do basic science, bachelor of arts and
bachelor of commerce."
Bijal Vora, a commerce student at Hinduja College here in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, would welcome a redesign of the system. "We have not done this to become salespeople," she said.
Hinduja is in one of India's richest enclaves, but it is a second-tier, little-known school, and so it exemplifies a middling college experience - neither the best nor the worst.
Between lectures there, dozens of students swarmed around a reporter to complain about their education.
"What the market wants and what the school provides are totally different," a commerce student, Sohail Kutchi, said.
Kinjal Bhuptani, a final-year student who expects next year to make $2 to $4 a day hawking credit cards, was dejected. "The opportunities we get at this stage are sad,"
she said. "We might as well not have studied."
The students said they were not learning to communicate effectively, even as the essential job skills evolve from pushing papers to answering phones to making
presentations. They said their courses offered few chances to work in groups or hold discussions. And in this supposedly English-language college, the professors often
used bad grammar and spoke in thick accents.
Across India, half of graduates are not taught in English, effectively barring them from the high-end labor market, said Mohandas Pai, director of human resources at
Infosys, a leading outsourcing company. And where English is taught, it is not necessarily the kind employers need.
"Depreciation nikal diya, assets ko less ho gaya." So went a lesson being given by the accounting professor at Dahanukar College in suburban Mumbai - removing
depreciation reduces assets , an example of the widespread use in supposedly English-language colleges of Hinglish, an amalgam of Hindi and English.
A lack of communications skills may be the most obvious shortcoming, but it is not the only one. A deeper problem, specialists say, is a classroom environment that treats students like children even if they are in their mid-20's. Teaching emphasizes silent note-taking and discipline at the expense of analysis and debate.
"Out! Out! Close the door! Close the door!" a management professor barked at a student who entered his classroom at Hinduja two minutes late. Soon after his departure, the door cracked open again, and the student asked if he could at least take his bag.
The reply: "Out! Out! Who said you could stand here?" A second student, caught whispering, was asked to stand up and cease taking notes.
Then there is the matter of teaching style. At Hinduja and Dahanukar, the mode of instruction at times evokes a re-education camp of some sort. In a marketing class at Hinduja, the professor paced in front, then pressed her chalk to the board.
She drew a tree diagram dividing it into indirect and direct marketing, then divided those into components, and those further into subcomponents. As students frantically took notes, she kept going, and before long she was teaching them that each region of Mumbai would have its own marketing representative: eastern Mumbai, western Mumbai, central Mumbai. There was no discussion, and
there was little to discuss.
The professor then led the students in a chant: "What is span of management?"
"Span of management is the number of subordinates a supervisor will manage." She chanted the refrain four times.
Rote memorization is rife at Indian colleges because students continue to be judged almost solely by exam results. There is scant incentive to widen their horizons to read books, found clubs or stage plays.
That is not good news for Indian companies, which are hiring these days. Infosys will take on 25,000 people this year from a pool of 1.5 million applicants. The ranks of the rejected are likely to include smart graduates who lack qualities like poise, articulateness and global exposure, Mr. Pai of Infosys said.
And even if rigid teaching ways are changed, experts say the rigidity of Indian households will continue.
"When we are raising our children," said Sam Pitroda, a Chicago-based entrepreneur who is chairman of the Knowledge Commission and was an adviser to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s, "we constantly tell them: 'Don't do this, don't do that. Stand here, stand there.' It creates a feeling that if there is a boundary, you don't cross it. You create boxes around people when we need people thinking outside the box."
Was a time medicos in India found it fashionable to discuss Gawande's article in the NEJM about hospitalist practice in India when it really was a viewpoint of an alien on what is common practice in our country given the pathetic resources we have and priorities that are more pressing than say pumping dollars into a luxury like say screening in the way it is done in Gawande's country.Still bear the hurt from the words of a visiting observer from UK who was posted with me in the general wards at KEM while I was junior resident: " you guys dont have resources to perform ACLS on a dying patient in the wards of a tertiary referal center in the biggest city in India.We have facilities to do that in Victoria Train Station in UK!"
Here goes:
Anand Girdharadas
NY Times, Nov 30th 2006
MUMBAI, India, Nov. 29 The job market for Indian college graduates is split sharply in two. With a robust handshake, a placeless accent and a confident walk, you can get a $300-a-month job with Citibank or Microsoft. With a limp handshake and a thick accent, you might peddle credit cards door to door for $2 a day.
India was once divided chiefly by caste. Today, new criteria are creating a different divide: skills. Those with marketable skills are sought by a new economy of call centers and software houses; those without are ensnared in old, drudge like jobs.
Unlike birthright, which determines caste, the skills in question are teachable: the ability to communicate crisply in clear English, to work with teams and deliver presentations, to use search engines like Google, to tear apart theories
rather than memorize them.
But the chance to learn such skills is still a prerogative reserved, for the most part, for the modern equivalent of India's upper castes - the few thousand students who
graduate each year from academies like the Indian Institutes of Management and the Indian Institutes of Technology. Their alumni, mostly engineers, walk the hallways of Wall Street and Silicon Valley and are stewards for some of the largest companies.
In the shadow of those marquee institutions, most of the 11 million students in India's 18,000 colleges and universities receive starkly inferior training, heavy on
obedience and light on useful job skills.
Students, executives and educators say this two-tier education system is locking millions of people into the bottom berths of the economy, depriving the country of talent and students of the chance to improve their lot. For those who succeed, what counts is the right skills.
"It's almost literally a matter of life and death for them," said Kiran Karnik, president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies, a trade body that
represents many leading employers. "The same person from the same institution with the same grades, but not having these skills, will either not get employed at all or will probably get a job in a shop or something."
India is that rare country where it seems to get harder to find a job the more educated you are. In the 2001 census, college graduates had higher unemployment - 17 percent more than middle or high school graduates.
But as graduates complain about a lack of jobs, companies across India see a lack of skilled applicants. The contradiction is explained, experts say, by the poor quality
of undergraduate education. India's thousands of colleges are swallowing millions of new students every year, only to turn out degree holders whom no one wants to hire.
A study published by the software trade group last year concluded that only 10 percent of graduates with nonspecialized degrees were considered employable by
leading companies, compared with 25 percent of engineers.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a former Harvard professor who recently resigned in frustration from the National Knowledge Commission, which advises the Indian government on
overhauling the education system, said, "The real crisis for me is the place where 70 percent of your graduates are students who do basic science, bachelor of arts and
bachelor of commerce."
Bijal Vora, a commerce student at Hinduja College here in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, would welcome a redesign of the system. "We have not done this to become salespeople," she said.
Hinduja is in one of India's richest enclaves, but it is a second-tier, little-known school, and so it exemplifies a middling college experience - neither the best nor the worst.
Between lectures there, dozens of students swarmed around a reporter to complain about their education.
"What the market wants and what the school provides are totally different," a commerce student, Sohail Kutchi, said.
Kinjal Bhuptani, a final-year student who expects next year to make $2 to $4 a day hawking credit cards, was dejected. "The opportunities we get at this stage are sad,"
she said. "We might as well not have studied."
The students said they were not learning to communicate effectively, even as the essential job skills evolve from pushing papers to answering phones to making
presentations. They said their courses offered few chances to work in groups or hold discussions. And in this supposedly English-language college, the professors often
used bad grammar and spoke in thick accents.
Across India, half of graduates are not taught in English, effectively barring them from the high-end labor market, said Mohandas Pai, director of human resources at
Infosys, a leading outsourcing company. And where English is taught, it is not necessarily the kind employers need.
"Depreciation nikal diya, assets ko less ho gaya." So went a lesson being given by the accounting professor at Dahanukar College in suburban Mumbai - removing
depreciation reduces assets , an example of the widespread use in supposedly English-language colleges of Hinglish, an amalgam of Hindi and English.
A lack of communications skills may be the most obvious shortcoming, but it is not the only one. A deeper problem, specialists say, is a classroom environment that treats students like children even if they are in their mid-20's. Teaching emphasizes silent note-taking and discipline at the expense of analysis and debate.
"Out! Out! Close the door! Close the door!" a management professor barked at a student who entered his classroom at Hinduja two minutes late. Soon after his departure, the door cracked open again, and the student asked if he could at least take his bag.
The reply: "Out! Out! Who said you could stand here?" A second student, caught whispering, was asked to stand up and cease taking notes.
Then there is the matter of teaching style. At Hinduja and Dahanukar, the mode of instruction at times evokes a re-education camp of some sort. In a marketing class at Hinduja, the professor paced in front, then pressed her chalk to the board.
She drew a tree diagram dividing it into indirect and direct marketing, then divided those into components, and those further into subcomponents. As students frantically took notes, she kept going, and before long she was teaching them that each region of Mumbai would have its own marketing representative: eastern Mumbai, western Mumbai, central Mumbai. There was no discussion, and
there was little to discuss.
The professor then led the students in a chant: "What is span of management?"
"Span of management is the number of subordinates a supervisor will manage." She chanted the refrain four times.
Rote memorization is rife at Indian colleges because students continue to be judged almost solely by exam results. There is scant incentive to widen their horizons to read books, found clubs or stage plays.
That is not good news for Indian companies, which are hiring these days. Infosys will take on 25,000 people this year from a pool of 1.5 million applicants. The ranks of the rejected are likely to include smart graduates who lack qualities like poise, articulateness and global exposure, Mr. Pai of Infosys said.
And even if rigid teaching ways are changed, experts say the rigidity of Indian households will continue.
"When we are raising our children," said Sam Pitroda, a Chicago-based entrepreneur who is chairman of the Knowledge Commission and was an adviser to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s, "we constantly tell them: 'Don't do this, don't do that. Stand here, stand there.' It creates a feeling that if there is a boundary, you don't cross it. You create boxes around people when we need people thinking outside the box."
LIJjat hai...
Goin to NY.Second look at Long Island Jewish Med Center.Shall make my pitch for a PM.Plan to catch my 40 winks on a Greyhound bus.Wish me Best of Luck!
Astra Castra Numen Lumen.........the sky is my roof, the earth, my playground.
Causes of persistent kaluretic hypokalemic alkalosis: Diuretic abuse, early vomiting, Schwarz Bartter syndrome and hypomagnesemia.
Sometimes horrified that migraine is really a neurological abnormality and not a vascular one. By the look of it, on a T1 weighted MRI, my brain looks okay.My kidneys must be bruised though- have exhausted my stock of combiflam already.Some consolation...there's something inside there to ache so much yeah!
Astra Castra Numen Lumen.........the sky is my roof, the earth, my playground.
Causes of persistent kaluretic hypokalemic alkalosis: Diuretic abuse, early vomiting, Schwarz Bartter syndrome and hypomagnesemia.
Sometimes horrified that migraine is really a neurological abnormality and not a vascular one. By the look of it, on a T1 weighted MRI, my brain looks okay.My kidneys must be bruised though- have exhausted my stock of combiflam already.Some consolation...there's something inside there to ache so much yeah!
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Ice wise
Back from a trip to Albany visiting my cousin Vidya and her husband Kiruba.Few observations in random:
-- Pongal is beginning of the tamil new year.Similar to Lohri or Sankranti.As is custom tamil households make jaggery rice called sakkarai pongal( and its more palatable cousin venpongal or khichidi) V and SIL tried a pongalopongal( porridge Oh porridge, plenty of porridge)as gruel boils over.So far away from home, in a different time zone..as folks back home retire from SunTV broadcast and washing pongal pots we hash together a goulash assortment of Indian condiment,not great , but hell we did it didnt we; and celebrate a togetherness if not a festival...away from the alien loneliness thats so much a part of life for many in this country.And when its time to go home, feel sad about it.
---My first sighting of ice, as it frosts over your car, forms from the dew over the leaves and grass turning them into a ghostly obelisks shorn of all life ...all over a translucent gray and gloomy cloud cover to add to the surreal mileu. Walking on ice is as unpleasant a task.It is motion that keeps the rivers from frrzing over.And there's so little to see otherwise.Spent most of the time indoors with our hosts.
---You can either have your own life or have a kid.
---Tiramisu is a bitter sweet Italian dessert made of cocoa, coffee espresso, cheese(with a fancy sounding name- Mascarpone), rum, wine and Lady fingers!!!Last ingredient I tried to locate in the dish unsuccesfully believeing it as you might have now , to be Lady's fingers or bhindi.But the small twist in the spelling is almost unnoticable aint it?Ladyfingers are a sweet spnge cakes shaped like a fat finger( lady?).Its literal meaning is 'pick me up'in Italian. Slutty name probably originates from the theory that Venetian females fed this unholy concoction to their worse halves to charge em up ( coffee, wine, cocoa...whaddya exoect?!Prolly the fat finger was a similar invocation to Aphrodite)Leaves a doughy aftertaste.Not bitter sweet but rather salty...maybe the masca-whatever cheese.Feed me Tiramisu again and I wont be able to recognise it unless told.Slept peacefully after tiramisu. So much for Italian men.
Au revoir!
-- Pongal is beginning of the tamil new year.Similar to Lohri or Sankranti.As is custom tamil households make jaggery rice called sakkarai pongal( and its more palatable cousin venpongal or khichidi) V and SIL tried a pongalopongal( porridge Oh porridge, plenty of porridge)as gruel boils over.So far away from home, in a different time zone..as folks back home retire from SunTV broadcast and washing pongal pots we hash together a goulash assortment of Indian condiment,not great , but hell we did it didnt we; and celebrate a togetherness if not a festival...away from the alien loneliness thats so much a part of life for many in this country.And when its time to go home, feel sad about it.
---My first sighting of ice, as it frosts over your car, forms from the dew over the leaves and grass turning them into a ghostly obelisks shorn of all life ...all over a translucent gray and gloomy cloud cover to add to the surreal mileu. Walking on ice is as unpleasant a task.It is motion that keeps the rivers from frrzing over.And there's so little to see otherwise.Spent most of the time indoors with our hosts.
---You can either have your own life or have a kid.
---Tiramisu is a bitter sweet Italian dessert made of cocoa, coffee espresso, cheese(with a fancy sounding name- Mascarpone), rum, wine and Lady fingers!!!Last ingredient I tried to locate in the dish unsuccesfully believeing it as you might have now , to be Lady's fingers or bhindi.But the small twist in the spelling is almost unnoticable aint it?Ladyfingers are a sweet spnge cakes shaped like a fat finger( lady?).Its literal meaning is 'pick me up'in Italian. Slutty name probably originates from the theory that Venetian females fed this unholy concoction to their worse halves to charge em up ( coffee, wine, cocoa...whaddya exoect?!Prolly the fat finger was a similar invocation to Aphrodite)Leaves a doughy aftertaste.Not bitter sweet but rather salty...maybe the masca-whatever cheese.Feed me Tiramisu again and I wont be able to recognise it unless told.Slept peacefully after tiramisu. So much for Italian men.
Au revoir!
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Khalbali hai Albany, Mushik
Ah Keep your eyes on the road,
Your hands upon the wheel.
Keep your eyes on the road
Your hands upon the wheel.
Yeah, we're going to the roadhouse,
Gonna have a real good-time.
The Doors, Roadhouse Blues
The smartest animal in the Universe is the mouse. Of course that was in the book H2G2.But the amazing alacrity of this animal, its gung ho attitude to living,' never say die' attitude that enables it to evade the glue traps we hapless humans keep setting for it are indeed crackerjack stuff. Maybe its Lord Ganesha who came and saved his mushik vaahana.Aint Ganapati the lord of new beginnings, wisdom and success. Shouldnt mushik have some part of his rider's qualities?Smaller than its country cousins Bandicoota Bengalensis and rattus rattus, Mus( musculus)is a smarter, swifter, sweeter( twas mickey mouse not rat aint it?)and sexier version of the brotha hood of black skinned, queer nosed squeakies.Them brothas have a shrine to their name, the Karni mata shrine at Deshnok, near Bikaner. Pray which intelligent Homosapien sapien ( Khushboo aint intelligent dude) can boast of that.His ( seems every bit a guy to me) survival instincts are more than fortitude, its blessing that has enabled em guy to wade through unscathed what we humans have struggled with...plague, leptospirosis, hantavirus.The last organism they have succeeded in establishing a nonlethal relationship with, something our immune system seems averse to.On the Gough Island mice have learnt, and are teaching each other how to attack and kill tristan albatross chicks, birds 200 times their size to feed on them and survive.!
The word mouse comes from sanskrit mush- so it seems when I look up...meaning to steal.But I gather it has more to do with stealth.Adaptability and survival instinct.If you watch the movie mousetrap- bout how a mouse in the house drives a duo mad and makes them destroy their prized mansion - you will become an instant fan of this guy man.
When we begin dissection in medical school we study the anatomy of the human body but when its experimental physiology we always do it on mouse.My first dissection was of the mouse brain.Its a mini human brain...same thalami, putamen, cerebellar hemispheres.Its a prototype. All drugs are first tested on mice and of course its famous lab cousin the Guinea Pig.When Gregor Mendel, intrigued by color traits in mice wanted to study them, his padri in chief forbade him to share quarters with critters that indulged in sexual intercourse. So we have the story of the sexless Garden peas that we wonder why on earth are we being taught.
Time to hit the road..
Your hands upon the wheel.
Keep your eyes on the road
Your hands upon the wheel.
Yeah, we're going to the roadhouse,
Gonna have a real good-time.
The Doors, Roadhouse Blues
The smartest animal in the Universe is the mouse. Of course that was in the book H2G2.But the amazing alacrity of this animal, its gung ho attitude to living,' never say die' attitude that enables it to evade the glue traps we hapless humans keep setting for it are indeed crackerjack stuff. Maybe its Lord Ganesha who came and saved his mushik vaahana.Aint Ganapati the lord of new beginnings, wisdom and success. Shouldnt mushik have some part of his rider's qualities?Smaller than its country cousins Bandicoota Bengalensis and rattus rattus, Mus( musculus)is a smarter, swifter, sweeter( twas mickey mouse not rat aint it?)and sexier version of the brotha hood of black skinned, queer nosed squeakies.Them brothas have a shrine to their name, the Karni mata shrine at Deshnok, near Bikaner. Pray which intelligent Homosapien sapien ( Khushboo aint intelligent dude) can boast of that.His ( seems every bit a guy to me) survival instincts are more than fortitude, its blessing that has enabled em guy to wade through unscathed what we humans have struggled with...plague, leptospirosis, hantavirus.The last organism they have succeeded in establishing a nonlethal relationship with, something our immune system seems averse to.On the Gough Island mice have learnt, and are teaching each other how to attack and kill tristan albatross chicks, birds 200 times their size to feed on them and survive.!
The word mouse comes from sanskrit mush- so it seems when I look up...meaning to steal.But I gather it has more to do with stealth.Adaptability and survival instinct.If you watch the movie mousetrap- bout how a mouse in the house drives a duo mad and makes them destroy their prized mansion - you will become an instant fan of this guy man.
When we begin dissection in medical school we study the anatomy of the human body but when its experimental physiology we always do it on mouse.My first dissection was of the mouse brain.Its a mini human brain...same thalami, putamen, cerebellar hemispheres.Its a prototype. All drugs are first tested on mice and of course its famous lab cousin the Guinea Pig.When Gregor Mendel, intrigued by color traits in mice wanted to study them, his padri in chief forbade him to share quarters with critters that indulged in sexual intercourse. So we have the story of the sexless Garden peas that we wonder why on earth are we being taught.
Time to hit the road..
Friday, January 12, 2007
WYSIWYG?
I have come to believe both versions of the saying 'What the eyes do not see, the mind does not perceive' and its spooner sister ' what the mind does not see, the eyes do not perceive.' It is a bit like an a priori Vs an a posteriori viewpoint.
Each is true ...we only know as much as we see around us. Our most fantastic stories, our dreams, our creations arealways shaped by what we have seen, experienced or subconsciously felt....now, perhaps in our childhood.But how we choose to live does depend on that. we have the potential to shape what we call future if we realise that it is just a play of action and consequence....a seemingly endless Goedelian paradox.
So again...if we do nothing...will nothing happen to us. Will that equation be negated because the variables are zero?Theoretically yes. But if we go full out and try the best we can.....is it still a fair equation?Are we limited by our perceptual limitations? Concepts like 'gut feeling' or 'counterintuitive intelligence' probably originate from this line of thought.Yet we never ask ourselves why we thought so.Why it felt that ' this was how it was to be.'
Could we work that into a mathematical deterministic possibility..reliably reusable experience with similar results? Again theoretically yes.Realistically? Dont know.
We have our concepts of time vector based on suppositions we never have seen or perceived.But proven mathematically.It is a far more different realm.It was because someone had a bent of mind to challenge the limits of the a priori .
Again the beautiful and simplistic way in which a genius like Feynman or Einstein explain their theories( we all know of the gas stove example of Einstein's explaining relativity and Feynman's books can be read by you and me) using examples of daily life, events and things we see everyday..they arent schizoid fantasy robots....they probably challenged their limits of perception, thought it not foolish enough to be not rule bound normal.
We do have pop philosophy of movies like MATRIX which make it a fashionable thing.It gets one interested.But at the risk of being labeled cranky. Seeable and believable, but not trustworthy reliable.Like Avogadro principle of homeopathy. Nice in theory, on paper, good for colds....but curing cancer...are U kidding?Maybe thats bridge we have to build. In our thought.
Each is true ...we only know as much as we see around us. Our most fantastic stories, our dreams, our creations arealways shaped by what we have seen, experienced or subconsciously felt....now, perhaps in our childhood.But how we choose to live does depend on that. we have the potential to shape what we call future if we realise that it is just a play of action and consequence....a seemingly endless Goedelian paradox.
So again...if we do nothing...will nothing happen to us. Will that equation be negated because the variables are zero?Theoretically yes. But if we go full out and try the best we can.....is it still a fair equation?Are we limited by our perceptual limitations? Concepts like 'gut feeling' or 'counterintuitive intelligence' probably originate from this line of thought.Yet we never ask ourselves why we thought so.Why it felt that ' this was how it was to be.'
Could we work that into a mathematical deterministic possibility..reliably reusable experience with similar results? Again theoretically yes.Realistically? Dont know.
We have our concepts of time vector based on suppositions we never have seen or perceived.But proven mathematically.It is a far more different realm.It was because someone had a bent of mind to challenge the limits of the a priori .
Again the beautiful and simplistic way in which a genius like Feynman or Einstein explain their theories( we all know of the gas stove example of Einstein's explaining relativity and Feynman's books can be read by you and me) using examples of daily life, events and things we see everyday..they arent schizoid fantasy robots....they probably challenged their limits of perception, thought it not foolish enough to be not rule bound normal.
We do have pop philosophy of movies like MATRIX which make it a fashionable thing.It gets one interested.But at the risk of being labeled cranky. Seeable and believable, but not trustworthy reliable.Like Avogadro principle of homeopathy. Nice in theory, on paper, good for colds....but curing cancer...are U kidding?Maybe thats bridge we have to build. In our thought.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Limetrick!
There was a thumbi from Rasta peth
Happend to be a great believer in fate
And though IIT and Oxford and Stanford
Meant moving from Bajaj to Maruti to Ford
Finally Pudukottai is where he found his mate.
There was a lady from Rabat
Had she triplets Pat, Tat and Nat
Twas fun thinkin abt the groomin
But feedin em she found,was harrowin
For she found often she had no Tit for Tat.
Happend to be a great believer in fate
And though IIT and Oxford and Stanford
Meant moving from Bajaj to Maruti to Ford
Finally Pudukottai is where he found his mate.
There was a lady from Rabat
Had she triplets Pat, Tat and Nat
Twas fun thinkin abt the groomin
But feedin em she found,was harrowin
For she found often she had no Tit for Tat.
all our passive aggressive exercisers...
Its freezing cold here. Yet some gung ho exercisers sweat it out in the morning.Yours truly excluded.Birthday boy(BB) leads the pack, inspired by big brother(BB').To be birthday boy( TB BB) follows egged on by BB. LB drinks splendaville coffee and eats doritos, plays with little baby( LB') and piles on the lbs( how the hell is that supposed to mean pounds.?..why didnt they come up with pds or something like tht?)
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Random ponderings
Listening to Unni Menon singing a song from the movie rhythm wondering to mellifluous Rehman music whether "river arent you a lady, ask me reasons I shall give you a hundred."He goes on to soliloquoise about the various ways in which water enters the lives of man...nectar of fresh bloom, milk of cow...and about all that is pretty and fruitful in life being feminine..lovely listening for me ...my half baked tamil and kulturlos sensibilities help me get a half baked but beautiful message.
Another Tamil guy, Shanmuga ( I dont recollect how I got in his mailing list) does me a great favor every week.Is he a veshti Mama or a FabIndia dude I dont know...but his posts are always so grounded to reality....random observations about life, art and activism...both of which I am a cipher in,health and humanities...all compiled in one weekly dose.I would delete his mails without opening them initially. Kaun nastar TP karta I used to think.But somewhere sometime I read one of his postings....couldnt help marvel how good a service this guy is doing, and how and why he does it.
When the Rivers Run Dry: Water--The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century
by Fred Pearce
320 pages, Beacon Press (March 9, 2006)
Highlights from this book:
97% of the world is sea water--this suggests that we need a MASSIVE global desalination program to protect aquifers from further salination and deterioration $100M will buy a desalination plant capable of desalinating 100M cubic meters of
water a year, or Navy ship nor an Army brigade with tanks and artillery, or 1000 diplomats, or 10000 Peace Corps missions, or a day of war over water.
Kashmir is about Pakistan's Achilles heel,
water.India is on a path to destruction. Water mines are selling water for $4.00 (four dollars) a Truck Tanker Load, and basically mining India dry.
Dams produce methane from rotting vegetation, with 8X the greenhouse \neffect of a coal powered plan of the same capacity.
Some more Rehman. Thillana thillana......
My brother Ram told me bout this great site itwofs.com that gives you the many rip offs that Indian music directors get away with.The wierd cooings of a female before the song begins are straight from Deep Forest's song...forget the name.Et tu Rehman!! Anyways he aint so blatant as some of the other guys...check Dhoom machanewala music director Pritam and our own favorite Anu Malik.The Idea cellular tune rip off is a revelation.Illayaraja deserves commission for all the big bucks tht the ad agency made with the 98 tara ra blah blah blah....blah blah blah.
Delhi's Rashtrapati Bhawan has a rooftop rainwater-harvesting system that accounts for the sizeable daily demand, even if it is for ancillary consumption activities such as irrigating gardens and washing floors.
Reminds me of Melghat in Gadchiroli where I stayed for 3 days as a part of a health education trip with Prachiti, student organisation at BJ.There is no electricity in Melghat though electricity poles were laid way back in 1984 when Indira Gandhi visited the place. There were no access roads then ( even today!!) and she had landed there on a helicopter.That was the first time the village folk had seen anything like tht( Sounds like Pather Panchali?)Even now the poles bear stand mute witness to how easily a gullible rural folk can be taken for a ride...and continue to be for 20 some years.Their fault? They live on the border between Maharashtra State and Madhya Pradesh. And each is undecided about who will supply power.So what do people do? They get solar cells and harvest the sunshine. Aint they smart? Wait!! Dont jump to conclusions.What do they do with their valuable solar cell harvested energy- they hook it up to a cassette player and speaker and play lewd marathi folk songs and dance to the music. Am unable to upload a photo I have of that.But, iske jaat ka baida maru....what the hell!!
Pritam ...Halka halka sa yeh nasha......out and out copy of Breeze from Saintes Maries by James Cook.I am deleting this song from my favorites list man.
Another Tamil guy, Shanmuga ( I dont recollect how I got in his mailing list) does me a great favor every week.Is he a veshti Mama or a FabIndia dude I dont know...but his posts are always so grounded to reality....random observations about life, art and activism...both of which I am a cipher in,health and humanities...all compiled in one weekly dose.I would delete his mails without opening them initially. Kaun nastar TP karta I used to think.But somewhere sometime I read one of his postings....couldnt help marvel how good a service this guy is doing, and how and why he does it.
When the Rivers Run Dry: Water--The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century
by Fred Pearce
320 pages, Beacon Press (March 9, 2006)
Highlights from this book:
97% of the world is sea water--this suggests that we need a MASSIVE global desalination program to protect aquifers from further salination and deterioration $100M will buy a desalination plant capable of desalinating 100M cubic meters of
water a year, or Navy ship nor an Army brigade with tanks and artillery, or 1000 diplomats, or 10000 Peace Corps missions, or a day of war over water.
Kashmir is about Pakistan's Achilles heel,
water.India is on a path to destruction. Water mines are selling water for $4.00 (four dollars) a Truck Tanker Load, and basically mining India dry.
Dams produce methane from rotting vegetation, with 8X the greenhouse \neffect of a coal powered plan of the same capacity.
Some more Rehman. Thillana thillana......
My brother Ram told me bout this great site itwofs.com that gives you the many rip offs that Indian music directors get away with.The wierd cooings of a female before the song begins are straight from Deep Forest's song...forget the name.Et tu Rehman!! Anyways he aint so blatant as some of the other guys...check Dhoom machanewala music director Pritam and our own favorite Anu Malik.The Idea cellular tune rip off is a revelation.Illayaraja deserves commission for all the big bucks tht the ad agency made with the 98 tara ra blah blah blah....blah blah blah.
Delhi's Rashtrapati Bhawan has a rooftop rainwater-harvesting system that accounts for the sizeable daily demand, even if it is for ancillary consumption activities such as irrigating gardens and washing floors.
Reminds me of Melghat in Gadchiroli where I stayed for 3 days as a part of a health education trip with Prachiti, student organisation at BJ.There is no electricity in Melghat though electricity poles were laid way back in 1984 when Indira Gandhi visited the place. There were no access roads then ( even today!!) and she had landed there on a helicopter.That was the first time the village folk had seen anything like tht( Sounds like Pather Panchali?)Even now the poles bear stand mute witness to how easily a gullible rural folk can be taken for a ride...and continue to be for 20 some years.Their fault? They live on the border between Maharashtra State and Madhya Pradesh. And each is undecided about who will supply power.So what do people do? They get solar cells and harvest the sunshine. Aint they smart? Wait!! Dont jump to conclusions.What do they do with their valuable solar cell harvested energy- they hook it up to a cassette player and speaker and play lewd marathi folk songs and dance to the music. Am unable to upload a photo I have of that.But, iske jaat ka baida maru....what the hell!!
Pritam ...Halka halka sa yeh nasha......out and out copy of Breeze from Saintes Maries by James Cook.I am deleting this song from my favorites list man.
How many you watched?
This is the TIME magazine's listing of the 100 greatest movies of all time:
http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/the_complete_list.html
Nayakan, Pyaasa and Apu trilogy are the Indian movies that figure in the listing.There is no ranking system nor is it a Hollywood dominated listing.It is actually....but more of world cinema than one would expect.Citizen Kane cited by other( read American) rankings as the best ever figures in the list; so do Finding Nemo, LOTR and Pulp Fiction( reservoir dogs wither?) among newer movies.There is ET, Psycho, Goodfellas,Schindlers List, Godfather....films we loved.
Thought The Color-Purple was a notable omission,and Do Bigha Zameen instead of Pyaasa would have been a better choice.No Ben Hur??Clockwork Orange, 2001 ASO,Platoon?My lst would include the Pianist, at least one Chaplin movie( TG Dictator),Taxi Driver, Thin Red Line,Forrest Gump, Life is Beautiful, October Sky.And there's such a wealth of small movies that get made but never make it to the top.We shall never know.
http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/the_complete_list.html
Nayakan, Pyaasa and Apu trilogy are the Indian movies that figure in the listing.There is no ranking system nor is it a Hollywood dominated listing.It is actually....but more of world cinema than one would expect.Citizen Kane cited by other( read American) rankings as the best ever figures in the list; so do Finding Nemo, LOTR and Pulp Fiction( reservoir dogs wither?) among newer movies.There is ET, Psycho, Goodfellas,Schindlers List, Godfather....films we loved.
Thought The Color-Purple was a notable omission,and Do Bigha Zameen instead of Pyaasa would have been a better choice.No Ben Hur??Clockwork Orange, 2001 ASO,Platoon?My lst would include the Pianist, at least one Chaplin movie( TG Dictator),Taxi Driver, Thin Red Line,Forrest Gump, Life is Beautiful, October Sky.And there's such a wealth of small movies that get made but never make it to the top.We shall never know.
Monday, January 8, 2007
Jayostute
जयोऽस्तु ते जयोऽस्तु ते! जयोऽस्तु ते!
श्री महन्मंगले शिवास्पदे शुभदे
स्वतंत्रते भगवती त्वामहम् यशोयुतां वंदे!
गालावरच्या कुसुमी किंवा कुसुमांच्या गाली
स्वतंत्रते भगवती तूच जी विलसतसे लाली
तू सूर्याचे तेज उदधीचे गांभीर्यही तूची
स्वतंत्रते भगवती अन्यथा ग्रहण नष्ट तेची
वंदे त्वामहम् यशोयुतां वंदे!
मोक्ष-मुक्ती ही तुझीच रूपे तूलाच वेदांती
स्वतंत्रते भगवती योगिजन परब्रह्म वदती
जे जे उत्तम उदात्त उन्नत महन्मधुर ते ते
स्वतंत्रते भगवती सर्व तव सहचारी होते
वंदे त्वामहम् यशोयुतां वंदे!
-विनायक दामोदर सावरकर
श्री महन्मंगले शिवास्पदे शुभदे
स्वतंत्रते भगवती त्वामहम् यशोयुतां वंदे!
गालावरच्या कुसुमी किंवा कुसुमांच्या गाली
स्वतंत्रते भगवती तूच जी विलसतसे लाली
तू सूर्याचे तेज उदधीचे गांभीर्यही तूची
स्वतंत्रते भगवती अन्यथा ग्रहण नष्ट तेची
वंदे त्वामहम् यशोयुतां वंदे!
मोक्ष-मुक्ती ही तुझीच रूपे तूलाच वेदांती
स्वतंत्रते भगवती योगिजन परब्रह्म वदती
जे जे उत्तम उदात्त उन्नत महन्मधुर ते ते
स्वतंत्रते भगवती सर्व तव सहचारी होते
वंदे त्वामहम् यशोयुतां वंदे!
-विनायक दामोदर सावरकर
Gandhi ani Pune
I call myself a Gandhi fan...I admire the man for his ability to challenge not (only) the world but ( also) himself; think different in a time when idealism/angst, call it what you may, was a difficult to imagine emotion, a luxury for the nations/people who had aplenty and little else to ponder on.For trying to teach conscientiousness to a folk so far removed from it.
But I am dismayed that Pune, my home town...safe, peaceful-so they call it now,was the Hate-Gandhi capital of India then....much of the anti Gandhi sentiment originated and was propogated here....Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was a hero for many Puneites .One of my maratha manoos friends loves to regale me about his travails in kaalapani, his dreams of motherland across the seas....(Jayostute and sagara praan talmal la).And yet he chooses to turn a blind eye to me when I tell him that this same person renounced his 'activities' and agreed to honot the British Constitution in return for clemency in a pact he signed with the Brit govt, that Savarkar was the idealogue( disputed co-conspirator/ aquitted and then implicated later by the Kapoor Commission ten years later) of the people who attempted tirelessly to kill Gandhi.Seven times!! Succeded in the eighth.Seven desperate attempts!!. Why?55 crores to Pakistan...can that be a motive to dedicate your life to?
If I am to die by the bullet of a mad man, I must do so smiling. There must be no anger within me. God must be in my heart and on my lips..
-Gandhi on 28 Jan, 1948- 2 days before his assassination
But I am dismayed that Pune, my home town...safe, peaceful-so they call it now,was the Hate-Gandhi capital of India then....much of the anti Gandhi sentiment originated and was propogated here....Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was a hero for many Puneites .One of my maratha manoos friends loves to regale me about his travails in kaalapani, his dreams of motherland across the seas....(Jayostute and sagara praan talmal la).And yet he chooses to turn a blind eye to me when I tell him that this same person renounced his 'activities' and agreed to honot the British Constitution in return for clemency in a pact he signed with the Brit govt, that Savarkar was the idealogue( disputed co-conspirator/ aquitted and then implicated later by the Kapoor Commission ten years later) of the people who attempted tirelessly to kill Gandhi.Seven times!! Succeded in the eighth.Seven desperate attempts!!. Why?55 crores to Pakistan...can that be a motive to dedicate your life to?
If I am to die by the bullet of a mad man, I must do so smiling. There must be no anger within me. God must be in my heart and on my lips..
-Gandhi on 28 Jan, 1948- 2 days before his assassination
- 25 June 1934:
- May 1944:
- June 29, 1946
- When finally Gandhi fell to Godse sweets were distributed in many areas in Pune byt the supporters of the Hindu mahasabha.
Kamathipura
This is something that can happen only where it happened.Funny...you get the best thaali in Mumbai near Kamathipura.Well if you have time for some more bin pagari and are not from Mumbai you might enjoy the next link too. Read Madras bashai on wiki....couldnt relate to tht at all.This....is my lingo.Ekdum raapchik real.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/06/03/stories/1303128f.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bambaiya_Hindi
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/06/03/stories/1303128f.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bambaiya_Hindi
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Learning curve
Staying with my niece Ananya who is in her toddler years I have a great time -playing with her, konjufying her....but most of all noticing how unspoilt, uncomplicated and truthful her emotional sensibilities are.
Having read Jean Piaget and Erikson's stages of psychosocial development and perhaps learnt a method to the learning curve of development of the ego from the primitive instincts of the id......I sometimes want to ask....do we need method? Do we want to give structure to an innocence we all value and cherish and in process perhaps take away from it the very freshness that characterises it- the gestalt, the entirety of it- unanalysed, as it were.?
Buddhist Barbie!
Really nice poem I found on the net: ( God bless the net: where else could we hack into Japanese sekkusu,plagiarised SOPs, depression help groups or Laetitia Casta wallpapers- or even known any of that) Creativity has acquired a new meaning .......its about how many hours you can enjoy in front of a monitor with Bru Instant( kaapi) and Colgate( paste)....its trashy and kitschy and constructed...but hell...if you are lucky and no one finds out.......... Opal Mehta zindabaad!!
Buddhist Barbie
In the 5th century B.C.
an Indian philosopher
Gautama teaches "All is emptiness"
and "There is no self."
In the 20th century A.D.
Barbie agrees, but wonders how a man
with such a belly could pose,
smiling, and without a shirt.
( Bru Instanted and colgated from poetry.com)
Buddhist Barbie
In the 5th century B.C.
an Indian philosopher
Gautama teaches "All is emptiness"
and "There is no self."
In the 20th century A.D.
Barbie agrees, but wonders how a man
with such a belly could pose,
smiling, and without a shirt.
( Bru Instanted and colgated from poetry.com)
Friday, January 5, 2007
Direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising!!
This is somethjing that I noticed after I came to this country. How blatantly drug companies push their products to their intended consumer market- television, print, internet..no effort is spared really.
When I asked my cousin Lakshmi about this she said its educating the consumer.Couldnt really help wonder how a 1 minute commercial could educate you.How " ask your doctor today about XYZ" could mean an informed decision will be taken.We read in our preventive medicine books that health education and health propaganda differ in the former making the receipent to think and the latter striving to prevent him doing that are two poles no less.
And decongestants or cough medicines or even drugs for osteoporosis being advertised on TV are okay. But pray why pegfilgrastim- a colony stimulating factor?Why a antihypertensive cholesterol lowering drug combination( amlodepine+ atorvastatin)?Would consumers realise that amlodepine had vascular endothelial protective effects? How the hell would they know what endothelium is?
I have been on the other side of the doctor patient relationship and have realised how blindly patients trust their physicians in times of distress.This possibly stems out of the fact that they know very little about their own bodies- they think heat and cold can influence wellness,that guarded prognosis means I have to expect death, that old age and disease are an inevitable combo and so many other things that thier mothers and sisters and friends told them and they never read about. So when they are in a situation when they know they do not comprehend much or are helpless - cmon who thinks about which stent to use, bare metal or drug eluting when their dear ones are having a heart attack at that moment ; or even if a stenting is warranted in that situation- they trust their physician implicitly and to an extreme extent. But this could also turn into extreme mistrust and paranoia when they have a bad experience with a doctor.
In some societies which are more litiginous like this country maybe this is more prevalent than India.Maybe it has to do with the fact that the patient does get a really raw deal here. Medical care is ridiculously expensive- $200 for a tooth extraction!!. I guess thats where there comes a feeling that medicine is not about care and healing but about whether your insurance covers a commodity or service being provided, whether you can afford it, why it is so expensive, what a terrible amount of money the doc might be making.These lead a disgruntled patient population to want to be sure about every thing they receive, to know about options they have, to want to be on top of things and not be swarthed in helplessness of ignorance.And who cashes in on this emotion...the guys who are the richest - the pharma guys. They control research dollars, they make up sweet sounding advertisements that talk about "empowerment", "the power of knowledge", " tell someone". What difference does knowing that cancer of cervix is caused by a virus make? Is it really that enlightening or life changing? Or does it make you want to persuade your doctor to give you a shot?And isnt the doctor happy to oblige....the party those vaccine guys gave was great.And did he not educate himself from the pamphlet that the vaccine guys distributed to him.Did he care to search for himself? The pharma guys make it so very easy for him.They search out what they want to tell the doctor- all that is nice about their product, a few figures to get a statistically significant result, nice power point presentations with sparkly pens and diaries.
This is from an editorial from the Lancet:
US Government Accountability Office (GAO), is a non-partisan investigative and research agency of the US Congress. A report prepared by them reviews direct-to-consumer advertising in the USA and examines how well the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversees these advertisements. The investigators found the oversight was lax. But their report also raises questions about the value of direct-to-consumer advertising and shows just how hard it is to regulate once this genie is out of the bottle.
(Have clipped the rest)
When I asked my cousin Lakshmi about this she said its educating the consumer.Couldnt really help wonder how a 1 minute commercial could educate you.How " ask your doctor today about XYZ" could mean an informed decision will be taken.We read in our preventive medicine books that health education and health propaganda differ in the former making the receipent to think and the latter striving to prevent him doing that are two poles no less.
And decongestants or cough medicines or even drugs for osteoporosis being advertised on TV are okay. But pray why pegfilgrastim- a colony stimulating factor?Why a antihypertensive cholesterol lowering drug combination( amlodepine+ atorvastatin)?Would consumers realise that amlodepine had vascular endothelial protective effects? How the hell would they know what endothelium is?
I have been on the other side of the doctor patient relationship and have realised how blindly patients trust their physicians in times of distress.This possibly stems out of the fact that they know very little about their own bodies- they think heat and cold can influence wellness,that guarded prognosis means I have to expect death, that old age and disease are an inevitable combo and so many other things that thier mothers and sisters and friends told them and they never read about. So when they are in a situation when they know they do not comprehend much or are helpless - cmon who thinks about which stent to use, bare metal or drug eluting when their dear ones are having a heart attack at that moment ; or even if a stenting is warranted in that situation- they trust their physician implicitly and to an extreme extent. But this could also turn into extreme mistrust and paranoia when they have a bad experience with a doctor.
In some societies which are more litiginous like this country maybe this is more prevalent than India.Maybe it has to do with the fact that the patient does get a really raw deal here. Medical care is ridiculously expensive- $200 for a tooth extraction!!. I guess thats where there comes a feeling that medicine is not about care and healing but about whether your insurance covers a commodity or service being provided, whether you can afford it, why it is so expensive, what a terrible amount of money the doc might be making.These lead a disgruntled patient population to want to be sure about every thing they receive, to know about options they have, to want to be on top of things and not be swarthed in helplessness of ignorance.And who cashes in on this emotion...the guys who are the richest - the pharma guys. They control research dollars, they make up sweet sounding advertisements that talk about "empowerment", "the power of knowledge", " tell someone". What difference does knowing that cancer of cervix is caused by a virus make? Is it really that enlightening or life changing? Or does it make you want to persuade your doctor to give you a shot?And isnt the doctor happy to oblige....the party those vaccine guys gave was great.And did he not educate himself from the pamphlet that the vaccine guys distributed to him.Did he care to search for himself? The pharma guys make it so very easy for him.They search out what they want to tell the doctor- all that is nice about their product, a few figures to get a statistically significant result, nice power point presentations with sparkly pens and diaries.
This is from an editorial from the Lancet:
US Government Accountability Office (GAO), is a non-partisan investigative and research agency of the US Congress. A report prepared by them reviews direct-to-consumer advertising in the USA and examines how well the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversees these advertisements. The investigators found the oversight was lax. But their report also raises questions about the value of direct-to-consumer advertising and shows just how hard it is to regulate once this genie is out of the bottle.
The investigators showed that from 1997 to 2005, industry spending on direct-to-consumer advertising grew on average nearly 20% per year, twice as fast as spending on drug promotion to doctors, reaching US$4·2 billion in 2005. By comparison, industry spent $31·4 billion on research and development, according to the GAO report.
More than 50% of the direct-to-consumer spending went to advertisements for just 20 drugs, most for chronic conditions such as hyperlipidaemia, asthma, and allergies. Not surprisingly, these are the same drugs that drug companies are promoting directly to doctors with advertising in medical journals, drug-representative visits, and free samples. It's a smart dual-pronged strategy, because a doctor is more likely to provide a particular drug when a patient asks for it and when the doctor has free samples on hand.
Now, this is not to say that direct-to-consumer advertising does not help some patients. In many cases, patients may have been well served by advertisements that led them to discuss their concerns with their physicians. But the primary purpose of direct-to-consumer advertising remains clear: to sell lucrative, on-patent, brand-name drugs. Claims to the contrary just do not pass the straight-face test.
How well, then, does the FDA oversee this advertising? Not well, the GAO showed. Under the law, advertising materials must contain a “true statement” of information that includes a brief summary of effectiveness, side-effects, and contraindications. Broadcast materials may present only major effects and contraindications, but must provide information about where consumers can get more details. When material is shown to be in violation, FDA officials issue a regulatory letter that might call for the advertisement to be stopped or, in more serious cases, for new advertisements to correct misinformation that may have been disseminated.
In general, the FDA only reviews material after it is disseminated, although in some cases companies bring their materials to the agency for comment before dissemination. Because the FDA can review only a small proportion of advertising put out each year, FDA officials told the GAO investigators that they used informal criteria to select what to review. But the GAO investigators showed that the FDA had no written documentation detailing these criteria, no system for applying the criteria, and no record for tracking what it had reviewed. In addition, the FDA issued relatively few regulatory letters, between eight and 11 per year between 2002 and 2005. However, once the FDA began drafting a letter it took on average 4 months before it was issued. In many cases, by that time the advertising campaigns had often run their course.
Part of the FDA's performance is probably due to the influence of an industry-friendly administration that has made its antipathy towards government regulation clear.(Have clipped the rest)
Thursday, January 4, 2007
New Year resolutions?
Whats a new year but a cycle of resolutions made and broken ..slotting time into sectors, ignoring its immutability, perhaps reminding us of the only one direction we can go in- forward , regardless of Wellsian Time Machine crap and speed of light and bending time vector bull...that events are what they have been, that thoughts have come and gone and the freshness is to be sought only for the now.The past is gone, the future is to be made.Happy New Year!!
Alike for those who at a yesterday stare
And those who only for a tomorrow aspire
A muezzin from the tower of darkness cries
"Fools, your reward is neither here nor there"
Distorted from Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by memory and right brain rote
Alike for those who at a yesterday stare
And those who only for a tomorrow aspire
A muezzin from the tower of darkness cries
"Fools, your reward is neither here nor there"
Distorted from Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by memory and right brain rote
US vs them
A few afterthoughts that still dwell on my mind. Havent got concrete and satisfying answers to them....these came up when I quit a " lucrative" Cardio seat at KEM( arguably best in Mah) and decided to give a shot at pursuing education in the US.But what really spurred the chain of thought was a series of mails I exchanged with a friend of mine.Was that 'unpatriotic'- as trashy a term as it may sound? Was it selfish...innocent idealism lost to the lure of more lucre? Was it impulsive lunacy? I kept asking myself...and would always come up with an emphatic no.But try as I may I could not come up with concrete reasons that I could put in words and then read that and be proud.I guess it is a part of the confused, sometimes self deprecatory passive aggressiveness of people who come to this country, stay on, apply for permanent resident status, enjoy American football and yet feel the need to read E-sakal everyday and are so anguished and emotional when politicians split the country they wanted to get away from on castesit grounds. I havent reached a profound realisation state of being above all that...that would be pretentious.I am still grappling with indecision and uncertainty at times.But at least that leaves me happy that I am thinking.
I am pasting the first of the mails that my friend sent me:
I am pasting the first of the mails that my friend sent me:
Dear Shivkumar,
There is definitely nothing flawed in your POV.But there are certain other points of view which
I want you to consider. I will write randomly -excuse that.
In-between Dayama had read in a journal, that in today's information age, even the doctors from
the developing countries get exposed to the latest in medical care. The cream of the country
manages to get aware of the very best in it. Then they find the gap between what they know, and the
scenario in their country's medical practice to be too big. And so they decide to go abroad and
be a part of the very best and sensible medical practice. Though nothing wrong, but because of
this the developing countries are losing all their cream to the developed world. Rather than
the developed supporting the developing , the developing are supporting the developed , by
providing the best of their manpower!! And as a consequence , the developing countries don't seem
to be making progress towards efficient medical practice , at any significant pace. One of the
conclusions of the article was -- so we should stop educating the medical students of developing
countries about things that are beyond , what can be implemented in recent present. Of course, I
disagree with this conclusion. But what do you think about this issue? What is the solution?
Isnt this brain drain bad for our country?
ofcourse there is madness in India and things are simply pathetic. Sanjeevani, recently left her
job as a MO after 3 months after becoming terrifically frustrated. The staff over there
used to come in nighty! And sometimes her hubby dear would come and ask ," Madam, is it must for
her to come. She is making food at present"? :-)
Not denying it. Things are far far from ideal. But how will things improve , if even those few ,
who continue to harbour a passion for an ideal practice , leave the show. Hearing Apte sir was
such a big treat. There was so much dynamism and optimism in his voice. I am sure, that the
scenario of hemat practice in Pune must have received a huge transformation because of him.
Good doctors need to make India their place of worship, not because they will get an ideal
setup; but because there is no ideal set up; and because there is a need of creating one. the
things which motivate you are : ( when you see any form of exciting work you want to join in.
Jo bhi karna hai I want to do something thats really good.. Its like if you want to do Psy and
if U are doing it at NIMHANS you are assured of something substantial.) Wouldn't being a pioneer,
and setting up one ideal practice , be a very exciting and challenging job? Being good where
everyone around you is good, is fine. But isnt it more worthwhile to become good in India and prove
that its possible. Its not necessary for us to become a part of a bad set up. Luckily, in BJ we
were exposed to a couple of near- ideal set ups and we have an assurance, that though difficult
-- its possible. Just that its very difficult, risky, and probability of success in an
unsupportive environment is very less. Yes, being there - these uncertainties wont be there. It
would quite certainly ensure that you will successfully be a part of something meaningful.
But one thing is there, if you wouldnt be there, somebody else would take your place and the show
will go on. But over here, a system is not in place . and so success or failure is determined
by the quality of the person. Jamkhed exists because Dr. Arole exists. IMR in Gadchiroli has
dropeed by 100!! because Dr. Abhay Bang exists. I have not seen someone so strong academically and
yet so well read about general issues also.
Another point to be considered is. As Dr. Arole said, " Repairing cleft palates is an important need and requires great skill. Someone doing it is doing a great service. But in our country where lakhs are dying due to diarrhoea, how smart it is to busy yourself with repairing cleft palates?" Yes poor also get cleft palates . its just about prioritising and not grumbling that the work one is expected to do is below par. If we have been educated beyond the needs of our circumstances, that should act as a disqualification. It should just help us do develop a good distant vision.This can be applicable in technical issues and in non- technical issues as well. i.e. if the circumstances I have to address, demand that I have to spend a large amount of time in addressing non- medical issues as well - then I have no other option. What is more important, what I enjoy in giving or what is the need of the day? Abhay Bang had said in US, " YOu are busy inventing microchips for your foreign bosses and earning them patents. But when would you do research about how to make the wheel of a bullock cart light? How can the water of a well be drawn out comfortably, who will do research over that? How to wipe the mucus secretions of an infant , without damaging his tender nose, when will you do this research? There are little little problems , but i f we can figure out creative solutions to them, then it would go a long way in making the life in Indian villages, more pleasurable." I don't expect you to work in villages only. Establishing good practice in Indian towns, is also a big need of the day. Most consultants charge 600-700 for just saying "hi, god morning. how do you do?" When will this scenario change? When will patient-interest be the focus of the show, in India also? When will each accident victim's relatives, be counselled about organ donation in India also?
I very well know that what has drawn you there is not money, but that desire to excel. And that is
what hurts me more. I cant see my country lose you. There are so few quality workers in India!!
What was the calibre of some of the HOUs, in a reputed college like B.J.? I am in no position of
authority and I am making no offers or suggestions. I myself don't know the road ahead.
I also know only this much as of now, "jo bhi karna hai acha karna hai". I am not saying that
I will surely be there with you to help you.( though I will try my level best to work with you
if need be). But still I request you to spend your life for your motherland. If you cant see a
way how, there will be many who can help you chalk out a way ahead. Though few, still that are
enough number of people who are trying to change the way things are in India. they will guide you.
Things surely wont be very rosy and easy; but I feel you will be able to make it happen. Its more
difficult and cumbersome than practicing or doing research abroad. But lets try. The AIDS epidemic
is staring bang on India's face. lets lend a hand in fighting it.
If you plan to return to India after doing the course, then all above arguments stand cancelled
. But then my question remains - if you want to work in India, is it really necessary to go
there? Isn't all the info available on net? If you do a course out there, wouldn't you find it
impossible to find a work of your standard out here afterwards. I know that many people who have
changed the state of things in India, have 1st got educated themselves outside. but in today's
age, is that a must?
I have written freely as a friend. I know there are many factors, which have to be considered
while taking decisions. This was just 1 angle.Let me know about what other angles you are
considering.
There is definitely nothing flawed in your POV.But there are certain other points of view which
I want you to consider. I will write randomly -excuse that.
In-between Dayama had read in a journal, that in today's information age, even the doctors from
the developing countries get exposed to the latest in medical care. The cream of the country
manages to get aware of the very best in it. Then they find the gap between what they know, and the
scenario in their country's medical practice to be too big. And so they decide to go abroad and
be a part of the very best and sensible medical practice. Though nothing wrong, but because of
this the developing countries are losing all their cream to the developed world. Rather than
the developed supporting the developing , the developing are supporting the developed , by
providing the best of their manpower!! And as a consequence , the developing countries don't seem
to be making progress towards efficient medical practice , at any significant pace. One of the
conclusions of the article was -- so we should stop educating the medical students of developing
countries about things that are beyond , what can be implemented in recent present. Of course, I
disagree with this conclusion. But what do you think about this issue? What is the solution?
Isnt this brain drain bad for our country?
ofcourse there is madness in India and things are simply pathetic. Sanjeevani, recently left her
job as a MO after 3 months after becoming terrifically frustrated. The staff over there
used to come in nighty! And sometimes her hubby dear would come and ask ," Madam, is it must for
her to come. She is making food at present"? :-)
Not denying it. Things are far far from ideal. But how will things improve , if even those few ,
who continue to harbour a passion for an ideal practice , leave the show. Hearing Apte sir was
such a big treat. There was so much dynamism and optimism in his voice. I am sure, that the
scenario of hemat practice in Pune must have received a huge transformation because of him.
Good doctors need to make India their place of worship, not because they will get an ideal
setup; but because there is no ideal set up; and because there is a need of creating one. the
things which motivate you are : ( when you see any form of exciting work you want to join in.
Jo bhi karna hai I want to do something thats really good.. Its like if you want to do Psy and
if U are doing it at NIMHANS you are assured of something substantial.) Wouldn't being a pioneer,
and setting up one ideal practice , be a very exciting and challenging job? Being good where
everyone around you is good, is fine. But isnt it more worthwhile to become good in India and prove
that its possible. Its not necessary for us to become a part of a bad set up. Luckily, in BJ we
were exposed to a couple of near- ideal set ups and we have an assurance, that though difficult
-- its possible. Just that its very difficult, risky, and probability of success in an
unsupportive environment is very less. Yes, being there - these uncertainties wont be there. It
would quite certainly ensure that you will successfully be a part of something meaningful.
But one thing is there, if you wouldnt be there, somebody else would take your place and the show
will go on. But over here, a system is not in place . and so success or failure is determined
by the quality of the person. Jamkhed exists because Dr. Arole exists. IMR in Gadchiroli has
dropeed by 100!! because Dr. Abhay Bang exists. I have not seen someone so strong academically and
yet so well read about general issues also.
Another point to be considered is. As Dr. Arole said, " Repairing cleft palates is an important need and requires great skill. Someone doing it is doing a great service. But in our country where lakhs are dying due to diarrhoea, how smart it is to busy yourself with repairing cleft palates?" Yes poor also get cleft palates . its just about prioritising and not grumbling that the work one is expected to do is below par. If we have been educated beyond the needs of our circumstances, that should act as a disqualification. It should just help us do develop a good distant vision.This can be applicable in technical issues and in non- technical issues as well. i.e. if the circumstances I have to address, demand that I have to spend a large amount of time in addressing non- medical issues as well - then I have no other option. What is more important, what I enjoy in giving or what is the need of the day? Abhay Bang had said in US, " YOu are busy inventing microchips for your foreign bosses and earning them patents. But when would you do research about how to make the wheel of a bullock cart light? How can the water of a well be drawn out comfortably, who will do research over that? How to wipe the mucus secretions of an infant , without damaging his tender nose, when will you do this research? There are little little problems , but i f we can figure out creative solutions to them, then it would go a long way in making the life in Indian villages, more pleasurable." I don't expect you to work in villages only. Establishing good practice in Indian towns, is also a big need of the day. Most consultants charge 600-700 for just saying "hi, god morning. how do you do?" When will this scenario change? When will patient-interest be the focus of the show, in India also? When will each accident victim's relatives, be counselled about organ donation in India also?
I very well know that what has drawn you there is not money, but that desire to excel. And that is
what hurts me more. I cant see my country lose you. There are so few quality workers in India!!
What was the calibre of some of the HOUs, in a reputed college like B.J.? I am in no position of
authority and I am making no offers or suggestions. I myself don't know the road ahead.
I also know only this much as of now, "jo bhi karna hai acha karna hai". I am not saying that
I will surely be there with you to help you.( though I will try my level best to work with you
if need be). But still I request you to spend your life for your motherland. If you cant see a
way how, there will be many who can help you chalk out a way ahead. Though few, still that are
enough number of people who are trying to change the way things are in India. they will guide you.
Things surely wont be very rosy and easy; but I feel you will be able to make it happen. Its more
difficult and cumbersome than practicing or doing research abroad. But lets try. The AIDS epidemic
is staring bang on India's face. lets lend a hand in fighting it.
If you plan to return to India after doing the course, then all above arguments stand cancelled
. But then my question remains - if you want to work in India, is it really necessary to go
there? Isn't all the info available on net? If you do a course out there, wouldn't you find it
impossible to find a work of your standard out here afterwards. I know that many people who have
changed the state of things in India, have 1st got educated themselves outside. but in today's
age, is that a must?
I have written freely as a friend. I know there are many factors, which have to be considered
while taking decisions. This was just 1 angle.Let me know about what other angles you are
considering.
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India trip 2025
This trip has been difficult at the onset due to personal problems and I carried some emotional burden traveling with some unresolved issu...
-
This trip has been difficult at the onset due to personal problems and I carried some emotional burden traveling with some unresolved issu... -
As the Tsunami of COVID cases in the Indian subcontinent shows signs of finally receding, what us e d to be a painful routine for many US ... -
Awesome video...look at the hungry ants come in their bellies empty and then slowlydistend with the red sugary stuff.....!!