I am sure you may know a lot of Marthas! But this one was a bird!
The last of its kind!
Just when you think if you have the numbers, you have all the odds in your favor, let this be a wake up call!
Martha was a Passenger pigeon!
Martha, thought to be the last passenger pigeon, died on September 1, 1914, at the Cincinnati Zoo. The eradication of the species is a notable example of anthropogenic extinction. Yeah now you want to know what is that! You must know it since we humans are responsible for this!
The Holocene extinction, also referred to as the Anthropocene extinction or the sixth mass extinction, is an ongoing extinction event caused exclusively by human activities!
There is no discrimination here though! This extinction event spans numerous families of plants and animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, impacting both terrestrial and marine species!
Widespread degradation of biodiversity hotspots such as coral reefs and rainforests has exacerbated the crisis! In short; the cause of massive extinction of even a species which were billion in number is only one grave factor; the HUMAN GREED!
The cousins of Martha were also one of the victims; poor passenger pigeons. The name comes from an earlier sense of passenger as one that passes by, and passenger pigeons certainly did that in almost inconceivably vast numbers. One early observer estimated a passing flock as being a mile wide and 240 miles long. They literally darkened the sky! Even now you may see maybe a couple of odd pigeons here and there! This was a flock of over thousands and more!
Apparently at the time of the Mayflower landing there were perhaps nine billion passenger pigeons in North America, more than twice the number of all the birds found on the continent today!
With such numbers they were absurdly easy to hunt. One account from 1770 reported that a hunter brought down 125 with a single shot from a blunderbuss! Some people ate them, but most were fed to pigs.
Millions more were slaughtered for the sport of it. By 1800 their numbers had been roughly halved and by 1900 they were all but gone. On 1 September 1914 the last one died at Cincinnati Zoo; Poor old Martha..
Hope humans can learn from these as soon as possible before it’s too late… One way to go is the peaceful and relaxing way of yoga!
A sketch dedication to Tirumalai Krishnamacharya the father of modern postural yoga…
Now do the pose to lie down on the bed and close your eyes for some time! Also known as Sleep!
The Book 48 laws of power by Robert Green tells about Victor Lustig!
The story which has actually inspired many movies and series is actually good because it is true!
Once when there was a discussion between cops and robbers, it was told that it is of course more difficult to be a robber! Yes! The saying was that the robber had to be successful all the time only then he or she can be good while the cop had to be successful only once in catching the robber to be good!
The thief who made this statement further elaborated that a thief must have more instinct and be more clever! He or she must have all the senses working for him! You have to be mentally and physically fit to be a thief; at least a good one!
Of course personally I think those who steal are some of the worst humans ever and no amount of justification can ever make it right.
Then again the story of Victor is legendary! Did you know that he once sold the Eiffel tower of Paris!? Not once but twice by the way!
Lustig, was a charming man, fluent in five languages, a good talker and an even better listener! All the trait for a good husband or better yet; a good thief!
But unfortunately when you have such talent, the thing which you must have the most is patience which most would lack! So in an effort of getting rich faster he used his skills to become the most brilliant swindler on the planet!
Those days due to his ‘colourful’ activities he got himself a scar on his face! A scar of a man’s face those days was actually a good thing! The stories of how he got the scar also changed every time and became more and more ‘legendary’!
Now after a few pocket money swindle he was ready for the big one! So when he arrived in Paris, he had prepared to pull off the ultimate swindle! Now which is the ‘property’ you can sell in Paris which is both big and famous!?
Well, how about the Eiffel Tower!? In a Hindi movie the same act was repeated when a con pair tried to sell off the Taj Mahal!
Of course if you read history, you would know that at the time, Eiffel Tower was not the landmark tourist attraction you know now! At the time it was a 7000 ton behemoth made of metal!
So in little pieces. Lustig planned to sell the landmark in parts and as scrap metal!
It has helped in the fact that the Tower had become a problem! The maintenance of the rivets and joints, the constant cleaning, the painting and repainting (before taking on its final appearance, it was red, yellow and orange), the oiling of the elevators… all of this was very expensive. So much so that a rumor circulated in Parisian society that sooner or later, the Tower would be dismantled!
When this rumor reached Lustig’s ears, he saw dollar signs. This was his chance. He went to Paris, commissioned a trusted forger to make him letterheads and medals of the French Republic, and rented a room at the luxurious Hôtel de Crillon.
There he called together six scrap metal businessmen, introduced himself as deputy director of the National Postal and Telegraph Service, and explained how ugly the Eiffel Tower was, and that it didn’t match the Gothic grandeur of Notre-Dame or the neoclassical style of the Arc de Triomphe!
After his speech, he told them that, although the matter was top secret and they shouldn’t tell anyone, the government was determined to dismantle it and sell it as scrap metal. And then he dropped the bait: that lucrative contract would go to the businessman who submitted the highest bid for the 7,300 tons of iron!
Now of course most would just get up and walk away! But you can always get a bait if you wait! One of the ‘fish’ was Poisson (which makes the story even more ironic, as “poisson” means “fish”).
The best con here is not the fact that he is selling the Tower! But two distinct thing!
One is to make an act in such a way that the conned thinks that they are more clever when he or she is in fact not that clever and the next it to ‘act’ like a government official!
The businessman hinted that he would do whatever it took to get the contract and, like a sniper, Lustig knew that this was the exact moment to pull the trigger: “If you’re really prepared to do whatever it takes, perhaps you and I can come to an agreement… personally.”
Now what is the most ‘important’ feature of a ‘typical government’ official? Well, he or she likes to get greased! Of take a bribe! It is a sad truth as old as history!
Poisson immediately understood what that agreement was and paid him 70,000 francs as a bribe to secure the contract. Lustig accepted, they shook hands, and until next time, which of course never came because Lustig ran off with the money knowing that Poisson would never speak as that would expose him as corrupt!
Poisson actually paid because he ‘thought’ that since Lustig asked for a ‘bribe’ he had to be a real government employee!
He did the same scam again by the way! Even this time it worked like a charm! But it was too smooth! Since it was actually a police set up!
Then again Lustig was not a ‘good’ con man for nothing! He escaped just before being caught because of his ‘informer’! This is the another most important factor in a good con! You must have an informer and pay him or her well and he or she must be well ‘informed’!
Of course in this day and age if you are clever and fluent and well, informed; you can actually be successful without any con! Just be patient! Now do not read the blog and try to sell me the Statue of Liberty!
Now there are people like Lustig who even though clever took the wrong way; then again you have great women like Droupadi Murmu whose life inspires many!
One of the laws from the 48 laws of power is the power of the mirror!
One of the best measure to find out if a person is a human or a zombie or a ghost is to see his reflection in the mirror! Of course that is a story but then again I do not want to prove or disprove it!
One of my favorite line is that all you have to answer to at the end of the day is the man or woman in the mirror!
The mirror also is an amazing view into your heart and soul! Not to mention your conscience!
If you give a pen to someone he or she would most probably sign or write his or her name! In the same way, if a human passes a mirror, he or she would at least glance on it even if it for a while!
The mirror demonstrates that you are your own self the best company! Which is why many elevators or lifts have mirrors in them! One you do not feel that claustrophobic and second when you look at yourself in the mirror; you do not realize that it takes time to go from one floor to another!
The mirror also is the supreme truth! The mirror does not lie!
When Perseus defeated Medusa he simply showed her the mirror! Since she had not seen herself for a while, she turned to stone! Which is when he cut off her head and kept it for the kraken!
Then you have the Mirror effect which is an extension of all these!
The term “mirror effect” can refer to several different concepts. In psychology, it describes the tendency to project our own traits onto others, especially those we dislike in ourselves.
This effect suggests that we are often more irritated by behaviors in others that we recognize and dislike in ourselves. It’s as if those individuals are holding up a mirror, revealing our own flaws or undesirable traits. For example, someone who is very critical of others might be irritated by a critical coworker because they recognize that same critical tendency in themselves.
This is so true because those who constantly criticize or find flaws or spots in the moon, would not accept even the most glaring flaws in themselves! The line between being frank and being rude is very thin indeed! Almost as thin as a mirror!
So when someone is faced with a person like this it is imperative to show him or her the proverbial mirror! It is like the mirror image of the saying, putting yourself in her or her shoes!
Now if you are at war then you apparently must mirror your enemies!
In the novel the author thus says that when you mirror your enemies, doing exactly as they do, they cannot figure out your strategy. The Mirror Effect mocks and humiliates them, making them overreact. By holding up a mirror to their psyches, you seduce them with the illusion that you share their values; by holding up a mirror to their actions, you teach them a lesson!
He showed a shield which was a mirror while some people use the mirror as a shield!
Sometimes of course you can use the mirror to show them his or her behavior! And the only person a man or a woman actually listens to all the time is the man or the woman in the mirror!
Sometimes the mirror may be dirty though so clean it and then see how beautiful you are! Or sometime remember that the mirror is actually clean! The dirt you see is on you…
The most familiar person to you is always the person in the mirror! Then again if you look like Arvind Swamy then even the mirror may not mind showing the image!
Just when you thought that ENT surgeons are, well; just think about them that is all! Now why I mentioned ENT is because of a war!
Now there have been several wars but did you know that there is a war fought for an EAR! In fact the war itself is called The war of jenkin’s ear!
The War of Jenkins’ Ear was a conflict between Great Britain and Spain, primarily fought in the Caribbean and North America, from 1739 to 1748. It began due to trade disputes and colonial tensions, but gained its popular name from the incident in 1731 where a Spanish captain severed the ear of British captain Robert Jenkins. This incident was used as a pretext for war, although the underlying causes were more complex.
The war stemmed from British resentment over Spanish restrictions on trade in the Americas, particularly the activities of Spanish guarda costas (coast guard vessels) that harassed British ships. The incident involving Captain Robert Jenkins, whose ear was cut off by Spanish authorities, fueled public outrage in Britain and provided a rallying cry for war!
The war officially lasted from 1739 to 1748, though the major fighting in the Caribbean largely concluded by 1742. A notable victory was the capture of the Spanish port of Portobelo in 1739!
Now this is the official version! According to Bill Bryson in His novel about American History it was just an ordinary war with two major results!
First things were some interesting linguistic spin-offs. The first one came with the introduction of a daily ration of rum and water for the sailors on the instructions of the commander of the fleet, Edward Vernon. Vernon’s nickname was Old Grog – no one seems to know why – and the drink, as you will doubtless have guessed, was soon called grog. Which is why even now those who drink too much would perforce become groggy!
Another achievement was due to the fact that Vernon was by all accounts an inspiring figure, and was greatly loved by his men. One of his colonial officers, Lawrence Washington who was half-brother of George, was so taken with the admiral that he named his Virginia plantation Mount Vernon in his honour! It stands there to this day! Now you know why it is called so!
The final contribution according to Bill of the war of Jenkins’ Ear is that it marked a telling semantic transition. It was then for the first time that the British began to refer to their colonial cousins as Americans, rather than as provincials or colonials. American had been recorded as early as 1578, but previously had been applied only to the native Indians. No one realized it yet, but a new nation had begun!
All because of the EAR!
Now do not ask what happened to Poor Jenkins! And no jokes on the EAR! Or you will get an EAR full!
That’s the strength of the EAR! Strength or shakti reminds me of Shakthiman aka Mukesh Khanna!
Heart is probably one of the most favourite organs for poets and singers alike! Starting from ‘My heart will go on’ (which is now so famous that it is one of the most irritable songs for many!) to ‘dil ki dhadkan’; lyricists and singers would be unemployed if it were not for the heart!
Pages after pages are written everyday about the heartbeat! How it increases when you look at someone or think about someone or something! Or when someone steals your heart! Or when your ‘heart’ is not in the right place or when the heart no longer beats for someone or something!
You can be ‘heartless’ in spite of a beating healthy heart! Or you can have a ‘hearty’ meal when it is the stomach which is full!
It is all in the heart!
The interesting thing is that the whole beat starts in a single point!
It is also interesting to note that this is the only organ which has to beat constantly every single day and minute! In a heart transplant or in some surgeries it is literally stopped and restarted! The whole surgery depends on the ability of the heart to restart! Constantly this little pump beats and pumps blood over and over again!
Now you may wonder that since most of the ‘heart’ related feelings are expressed by men; this may be the reason of calling the connecting bundle between the two chambers of heart as Bundle of HIS! Well, before you take out the sexist spears let me assure you that it is not so!
So, in the year 1839, Jan Evangelista Purkinje discovered a net of gelatinous fibres in the subendocardium of the heart which are named after him! Later on a conducting bundle between the atrium and the ventricle was found by Wilhelm His, Jr in 1893! (THAT’S WHY ITS CALLED BUNDLE OF HIS! NOTHING MASCULINE ABOUT IT!) Later on in 1906, Sunao Tawara found a “complex knot” of tissue at the proximal end of the His bundle. He concluded that this was the inception of an electrical conducting system which continued from the AV node through the bundle of His, divided into the bundle branches, and terminated as the Purkinje fibres. Finally Arthur Keith and Martin Flack discovered the sinus node which is the beginning of your heart beat!
The sinus node is thus the beginning of your heart beat! So if you want to be technically true poet or if you are a medico who likes a Cardiologist then you can write about the SA node to impress him or her!
Then again if your heart is not in it then it may not be that ok! Dun kya!
As far as the number game goes the limbs take it all! Does the work and then takes the fall!
Quantity matters since numbers make up percentage and percentage make up the votes! This is not political thought! It is your body! One of the few places where numbers may not matter!
Everyone knows that an adult human skeleton consists of 206 bones in total!
Then again if you count the numbers the adult usually has lesser number of bones than the child! The adult of course counts more than the child officially but everyone knows that children are the kings and queens! At the time of the birth they have around 270 bones! Do we treat them wit so much kindness and concern since they have so much bones! Interesting line of thought!
As they grow older the bones start to fuse and finally they the numbers settles to 206! Which is also when they become more rigid and inflexible and well, when they are no longer the recipients of much concern or love! At least not easily available! They have to earn it!
Again as far as the number game goes; More than half of your bones are located in the hands, wrists, feet, and ankles! There are a total of 126 bones in the limbs (both upper and lower). Each limb has 30 bones, so two arms and two legs account for 120 bones. Additionally, the shoulder and pelvic girdles, which connect the limbs to the axial skeleton, add another 6 bones! With such a huge ‘majority’ stake; the limb is the ‘decision’ maker! or at least ‘implementer’! If you want to pick up something or do something, you need the limb! If you want to run away or towards the danger, you need the limb! Then again, like most ‘majority’; even if you have the number, you literally do not have the brain! The brain with absolutely no bone of its own which is like zero number, finally makes the decision! Then again the strongest bones are ’employed’ to protect it!
Interestingly, the largest bone in the human body is the femur, also known as the thigh bone. The smallest bone is the stirrup bone or my favourite stapes bone! which is located inside your ear drum. So your largest bone makes you run while the smallest makes you listen! Our whole life is spent between these two activities! We either run away or towards something or someone or we listen or try not to listen to something or someone!
Then you also have the boneless stomach which can eat and store anything and everything! But is does not have any protection like the brain which is may be why it tries to escape from the front as soon as you become an adult! The muscles are those security with absolutely no power than just the uniform unlike the bones which makes it difficult for them to control the stomach! Yes! You can use that to explain your pot belly!
By the way, even though it is surrounded by bones, even our tongue does not have any bone! Then again it also has no brain! Which is why it is free to say stuff which does not make sense while the upper limbs with no brain (again!) is free to type nonsense!
With all these going around though, you would realise that the limb and the tongue actually do not have any bad intent! That originates only from the boneless brain! The brain would make you do and say senseless stuff and leave you to face the brunt of ‘its’ actions while being safely tucked away in the center safe which is the skull! This is just like the center leaders who would incite the brainless limbs and tongues to cause problems and face the music so to speak while being safe themselves! Our body is a literal country!
Finally you have the court jester which tries to stay away because all this is really amusing or funny for it! Which is why this particular bone is called Humerus!
Occasionally though tongue not having a bone makes it and the other boneless structure like vocal cords produce amazing songs like by Hemanth da!
A mother’s love has no equal for the simple fact that the child was a part of her body at some point! Yes, that is putting it bluntly but that is a fact!
The greatest issue in the world and people which causes depression and sadness and ironically sometimes happiness is; COMPARISON!
Some things cannot be compared and should not be compared! It is like how a child asks a parent which child the parent likes more! There can never be a true answer for that! Of course there would be circumstances which may force some change, but a parent would always love all his or her children equally! The eldest may get more responsibility, the youngest some more liberty and well, the middle ones usually get a mixture of the two but always wanting for more of either!
There is no equation which can determine the exact amount!
On that note it is also not fair to compare a mother with a father!
Then again life is not a fairy tale! It actually begins when the fairy tale ends! They lived happily ever after is actually the beginning of endless struggles being a parent! Starting from the birth to the education and to the settling down! A parent is a parent for life!
In the modern age apart from the biological aspects, the ‘traditional’ roles of father and mother are no longer the same! You may have a father who cooks well and a mother who is the actual earning member of the family!
The stern father who may not express his love for the kids and would always first say no is changing! Our father and Grand Fathers do not remember the last time they hugged or kissed their father! Or even told them how they love them! You would have done that to your kids yesterday! Or maybe not! All fingers and fathers are not the same anyway!
In one book called the 48 laws of power, the author tells how a son can be better or at least as good as the father and one way is to select to do something very different than you father! To try and shine beyond your father’s legacy is difficult so it is better to create a new one!
Or the best way to go about is not to think about impressing anyone too much and simply try to be a better person than the man or the woman in the mirror every single day! Of course that is the theory!
What is a father’s day without a blog on, well; Father! Am sure Ganesh Acharya’s father would be proud of him!
All I can say for now is that I am proud of my father and I hope my daughter and son would be proud of me too!
Do you know what is “tada yori takai mono wa nai.”
It is ok if you did not know! it is Japanese!
The translation is free but it comes with a cost!
The book 48 laws of power by Robert Greene talks about how that there is no free lunch! Which basically means that if you are getting something or someone for free then you will have to pay for it in one way or the other!
This is when he mentioned the above Japanese proverb, “tada yori takai mono wa nai.” which means that “There is nothing more expensive than something free”
It of course means that when you accept something for free, you might be asked to do something or pay for something else in return, so that you might end up having to spend more than what you thought you had gained!
Even when you read this blog for ‘free’ you are actually giving me something which is most important to you! Your time!
When you get some app or material for ‘free’ like lets say for a trial then you develop a sense of ownership and then you would not mind paying for it later since the loss of ownership is big!
One of the most common things which you get for free always is Opinion and advice! Those are the two things which are both useless and in fact dangerous!
There is also a big issue in which when you get something for free, you tend to expect it to be free always and when you have to pay for it then you feel let down!
This is specially true when you are down and someone gives you something for ‘free’! Later on this very ‘free’ gift would turn out to be so costly in the long run!
Politicians giving freebies are the worst! When you are using the state or country resources to give something for free then someone somewhere is actually paying the price for it!
Most of the times people get attracted to the magical word ‘FREE’ and end up paying much more that they bargained for! Like you get a free gift and you have to enter your credit card details for the nominal ‘delivery fee’! Since the free item is pretty big and you have been hooked, you would not mind paying the small fee! Only to end up being defrauded by a credit card scam!
Many of my patients who are close to me actually ask me to charge them something and not give the treatment for free since they feel that unless they make a payment, the treatment will not work!
So in this day and age, the most dangerous word is FREE!
Now pay for the song properly and listen to it! Maybe one composed by Pritam!?
He was just an ordinary sailor but in the end he has not one but two continents named after him!
Some of the most amazing inspiring stories when you are growing up seem so unreal! Then finally you find out that it is unreal!
This story though would be as shocking as it comes!
In the novel Bill Bryson’s “Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States”; every page is a story worth telling!
One story was specially interesting!
So the person in context did make some voyages to the New World (authorities differ on whether it was three or four), but always as a passenger or lowly officer. He was not, by any means, an accomplished seaman. Yet in 1504-5, there began circulating in Florence letters of unknown authorship, collected under the title Nuovo Mundo (New World), which stated that he had not only been captain of these voyages but had discovered the New World!
The mistake would probably have gone no further except that an instructor at a small college in eastern France named Martin Waldseemüller was working on a revised edition of Ptolemy and decided to freshen it up with a new map of the world!
In the course of his research he came upon the Florentine letters and, impressed with their spurious account of the sailor’s exploits, named the continent in his honour.
Ok now enough of suspense! The name of the sailor was Amerigo Vespucci!
The continents named after him of course was America!
Of course it was first translated into the Latin Ame-ricus and then transformed that into its feminine form, America, on the ground that Asia and Europe were feminine. They also considered the name Amerige by the way!
Of course the fact of the matter remains that two whole continents are named after an obscure sailor who may have probably not even set foot on them!
That’s may make you smile! It’s needed nowadays…catch a P. V. Jagadish Kumar movie maybe!
Mother, father, husband, wife, son or daughter they were all. So many lives just in an instant. The friability of life cannot be more real…
The flight was on time, the numbers were sound. There were many who had hoped for this very day to go to a different country for the first time.
That student who burnt the midnight oil or the saw the rising sun for years and with persistence and conviction got the opportunity to go to UK! He or she would have just now tearfully said goodbye to his or her parents and near and dear ones! He or she would have felt gloomy and alone but comforted himself or herself about a bright future. Sadly there is no future…
The young professionals who would have gone for a business deal or for work or simply for better opportunity. Did they get to say goodbye? Well, it does not matter now anyway. All gone up in smokes…
The cute little family excited to go for that international trip! The little ones who could not decide which movie to watch or the older ones who would rather read a book. The mother who was thinking about food and the father who wanted to just catch some sleep. They will never have any troubles now…
The Manager who was unhappy in the economy and the CEO who wanted company in his Business class. The crash does not differentiate…
The crew who were just getting ready for a long haul of endless calls and service and blanket delivery; it does not matter now…
Those poor students who after a gruelling class and work simply wanted a hot meal or at least some meal even if it not home cooked and even if it tastes bad. They will never be hungry now…
All that argument, all that debate, those huge egos and those low self esteems; the crash did not care. It came in an instant and levelled everyone and everything.
My heart goes out to those poor souls. Pray to God to give their families strenght to get over this. Of course you can never get over the loss, but time can make you deal with it. Everytime now when you get on a Plane or even see one, all you can do is say a silent prayer and hope for the best.
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