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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!?

Shubh ratri!

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!

Prayers and wishes…

Shubh Ratri…

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.

Heartfelt condolences

Om shanti…

Do you know what’s a Bonobo!? Cool! Now do you know what is the connection between Bonobo and Google!?

Well, they say what is in a name!? The answer lies in the spelling says me!

Now in case you didn’t know what is a Bonobo! Then do not get angry if someone calls you that! Since it is both comforting and insulting depending on your mood!

Well, Bonobo, is the common name for apes!

So what is so special about this name, well it was the spelling error which made became permanent and then legendary! The same thing happened unintentionally with Google and intentionally with many brands!

So Bonobo  sounds like some sort of translation of a meaningful term, but in fact, it was the result of a typing error! Researchers reputedly first found the animals in the town of Bolobo, Zaire, in the ’20s, but the name of the place was misspelled “Bonobo” on the shipping crate in which the animal was placed, leading others to refer to the animal by the name, which stuck!

What about Google you say!? Well, the tech giant’s name was actually a misspelling of “googol,” the mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros!
When founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were brainstorming names for their search engine, they wanted something that represented the vast amount of information they planned to organize.

The misspelling happened during a domain name registration! Luckily they did not fire the ‘Bonobo’ who made the error but they kept it and built one of the most valuable brands in the world around this happy accident!

Taking inspiration from the Bonobo and Google you actually have so many instances of intentional misspelling!

Take Reddit for example (do not literally take it though!). So the popular discussion website’s name came from the phrase “read it,” as in “I read it on Reddit.” By removing the “a” and doubling the “d,” the founders created a unique, memorable name that cleverly referenced the site’s function while being easier to trademark!

Everyone also knows Flicker! This photo-sharing platform originally started as a feature within an online game called ‘Game Neverending’
!The developers wanted to name their photo service “Flicker,” but the exact domain name wasn’t available. Rather than choosing a different name altogether, they simply dropped the “e” and created the distinctive “Flickr.” This shorter, quirkier spelling became instantly recognizable and helped the brand stand out in the early days of social media!

Brands like Tublr, Netflix and ToysRUS all use this same strategy to intentionally misspell to create a unique brand name which sounds good but may give Sahshi a nightmare! Now do not be a Bonobo and concentrate on your spelling! Not all spelling errors would be tolerated! Then again if you are a journalist who is almost broke, you would do anything to survive! In this case, write and sell a novel to become a legendary novelist!

The Day of the Jackal was written to make some money! It made his life! My favourite though is The devils alternative! Then again I have read all his works! The Odessa files to the Avenger; the Afghan to the Cobra to the Kill list! His short stories called the Veteran would give the master short story writer Jeff tough competition!

His last was one of his best! It was called The Fox! When the world of espionage met a hacker! Frederick Forsyth, you were a legend! Your work will be remembered forever!

The Dogs of war do not negotiate!

That will do Fred…

In the story narrated by you or your story, you are always the lead! The whole story is your point of view!

In the sense of the world if you are wrong then it is the whole world which is wrong while you are just in the wrong place at the wrong time!

Then again, if you are right then you are, well, alone!

The same thing happens in any issue! There is a minimum of two point of view! Sometimes many more! The biggest example is in a family where each of the spouse has a different version of the same story! Or the siblings have a different take on the same ‘fight’!

In the novel “The Clifton Chronicles by Jeffery Archer (the last tolerable Novel by him!)”; the Jeff presents three different versions of the same story!

The start was so good and so complicated! To write three different point of view of the same event or story was nothing short of extraordinary! Of course he could not stick to that line of storytelling and the novel just tumbled down in the series! So much so that I was just waiting for the closure!

But the very fact that a single event can have different interpretation is dependent on an effect called the Rashomon effect!

The “Rashomon effect” refers to the phenomenon where multiple witnesses to the same event provide contradictory accounts, leading to uncertainty about what truly happened.

It’s named after Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashomon, which explores this concept through the differing narratives of four witnesses to a crime. There have been many movies and stories both from reel and real which have been affected by this affect!

The same incident even in the era of reels and social media everywhere can have different interpretation!

Of course the legal issue is that the Rashomon effect highlights the unreliability of eyewitness testimony due to factors like individual biases, selective memory, and the influence of social and cultural contexts.

In Rashomon, the audience hears four different versions of a murder, each from a different character’s perspective, raising questions about the objectivity of truth.
The term has been adopted in various fields, including law, psychology, and film, to describe the phenomenon of contradictory accounts and the potential for misinterpretations of events.

The Rashomon effect underscores the idea that truth can be subjective and multiple perspectives can exist, even when describing the same event.
In legal settings, the term is used to describe how different witnesses might present conflicting accounts of the same incident, which can make it difficult for jurors to determine the truth!

The effect is not limited to legal issues also! You can have the same effect in day to day interactions and each and every walk of life! A 6 from your point of view is 9 from the other side! So next time you are in a argument you can think either about -(Dash) mon (if you are a mallu!) or Rashomon or padukon! The last one was only to get Prakash Padukone!

Now hopefully all would agree at least in this part of the World that it’s time to sleep!

Shubh ratri!

When you hear the words Retina display or Megapixel your eyes literally become wide! Now cameras use the eye as the role model!

Now remember that nifty feature of landscape and portrait mode! Or how accurately your phone ‘maps’ your direction and takes you to the proper place! When there is a change, the phone tells you to ‘recenter’!

Well all that and many features of the phone are inspired by your EARS!

The ear is the a major component of your balance and orientation! Of course the brain is the most important and integral part but the ears give the most amazing signals!

There is a fluid deep inside our ear called the endolymph in the inner which are responsible for balance! In very simple terms the changes in the fluid when we move tells our body of our position and makes the brain maintain balance!

We have specific ‘parts’ of even the inner ear which detects position when you are standing still and when you are moving! We also have a complex array of canals which ‘detect’ the motions and orientation in all the three dimension! A complex interplay of these canals keep you, well straight!

As otologists and as balance specialists; we are still understanding the complex interplay of all the canals and the signals to the brain, but the concept has been very well utilised in the design of your phone!

So a Phone orientation detection relies on the synergy of three key sensors: the accelerometer, which measures linear acceleration and gravity, the gyroscope, which tracks angular velocity and rotation, and the magnetometer, which senses the Earth’s magnetic field, collectively working together to provide a comprehensive understanding of the device’s position and orientation!

Accelerometer design which is a direct inspiration from the inner ear consists of a small device that contains a mass that is suspended by a spring. When the phone is tilted or rotated, the mass moves, and the spring stretches. The amount of stretching of the spring is proportional to the acceleration forces acting on the phone. The accelerometer converts this information into an electrical signal that can be read by the phone’s operating system!

The accelerometer can also be used to detect changes in the phone’s orientation when it is not being held in your hand. For example, if you put the phone on a table and then shake it, the accelerometer will detect the changes in acceleration forces and use this information to determine that the phone is being shaken!

The gyroscope contains a spinning wheel that is suspended by a gimbal. The gimbal is a set of three rings that allow the spinning wheel to rotate freely in any direction! You will be surprised to know that even we have three canals which detect the ‘angular’ movement and in any given moment at least two and many times three canals are stimulated which signals the brain on the direction and orientation! It is simply mind boggling!

When the phone is tilted or rotated, the spinning wheel tries to maintain its original direction of rotation. This creates a force on the spinning wheel that is proportional to the rotational forces acting on the phone. The gyroscope converts this force into an electrical signal that can be read by the phone’s operating system.

The gyroscope is also sensitive to changes in the phone’s orientation. When the phone is rotated, the spinning wheel will start to rotate in the opposite direction.
The gyroscope is a very sensitive sensor and can detect very small changes in the phone’s orientation. This makes it ideal for applications that require precise measurements of orientation, such as virtual reality and augmented reality!

The magnetometer contains a magnet that is surrounded by a coil of wire. The magnet is free to rotate in any direction. When the phone is placed in a magnetic field, the magnet aligns itself with the field. This movement of the magnet generates an electrical signal in the coil of wire. The magnetometer is sensitive to the Earth’s magnetic field and so the magnetometer will measure a slightly different value of the magnetic field depending on the phone’s orientation. The phone’s operating system can use this information to determine the phone’s orientation relative to the Earth’s magnetic field!

Most of the phones you have right now especially the high end phones have all of these complex instruments and sensors inside which guide you day in and out! The next time you see and photo in the portrait and landscape mode immediately the moment you turn the phone, take a moment to appreciate the complex interplay involved and also marvel the ‘nature or creator’s’ design of the inner ear which made all this possible!

Possible is also the motto of Kiran Bedi!

Now, remember how you can walk in a dark theatre!? It’s because of your inner ear!

Think about it!

Shubh ratri!

Am sure you would have heard Oui amma! The latest song from Raveena Tandon’s daughter! But have you heard about Oumuamua?

Now, it has nothing to do with any item number in a hindi movie! But it is still an ‘item’ of interest! And it is Interstellar! Again, not the movie!

ʻOumuamua is the first confirmed interstellar object (object from outside our solar system) to be discovered. Discovered in 2017, it’s a rocky, cigar-shaped object with a reddish hue that passed through the solar system.

It was given the designation 1I/2017 U1 and the Hawaiian name “ʻOumuamua,” meaning “a messenger from afar arriving first,”.

ʻOumuamua is elongated and appears cigar-shaped, with an estimated length of about 377 feet (115 meters). The structure exhibits unusual variations in brightness, suggesting it is tumbling rather than rotating on a single axis! Its high speed and trajectory indicate it came from interstellar space and was not gravitationally bound to our sun. The interesting thing is that unlike typical comets, Oumuamua does not display a bright coma or dust tail, leading to questions about its composition.

Another interesting thing is that it is accelerating away from the sun, which puzzled astronomers and led to speculation about potential explanations, including the release of hydrogen gas or even the possibility of it being an alien spacecraft!
Of course when no one knows the exact origins, you would have many explanations!

Scientists believe it could be an exotic type of comet or asteroid, perhaps one that has been heavily coated with dust from interstellar travel! It has also been thought to have originated from a collision within another star system and been ejected into interstellar space!

One theory called the Nitrogen Ice Theory suggest it might be a piece of an exoplanet similar to Pluto, potentially composed of nitrogen ice!
One more theory is that it could be an alien ship similar to Rama! Not our dear God on whose name I am named but named after Rendezvous with Rama!
This is a 1973 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. Set in the 2130s, the story involves a 50-by-20-kilometre (31-by-12-mile) cylindrical alien starship that enters the Solar System. The story is told from the point of view of a group of human explorers who intercept the ship in an attempt to unlock its mysteries! So was Clark on to something!? Well we can get to know in time!

In January 2022, researchers proposed that a spacecraft launched from Earth as part of Project Lyra, could catch up to Oumuamua in 26 years for closer studies!

Let us check back after 26 years then!
Hope that made you smile! Or you can watch a
Rajendra Nath movie and laugh!

Your choice!

Shubh ratri!

Imagine one fine day someone who is dressed, well out of times and is behaving a little odd and he or she tells you that he or she is a time traveler who has come from the past or history; he or she has come from around a time 5000 years ago! (Or at least that is what he or she tells you!); well what do you do?

One sure fire test is to ask him or her to make lemon juice! Or if you are from Kerala, maybe lemon sherbet or soda!

If he or she makes an amazing lemon juice or lemonade then, well you can drink it (at your own risk!) but rest assured that he or she is not from the past!

That is because there was no lemon 5000 years before!

The Lemon is only about a few thousand years old!

I still remember the big oval lemons we used to get in Assam! Those had so much juice but were surprisingly bitter! The first time we tasted those lemon juice at one party; it was so bitter that no amount of salt or sugar could make us gulp it!

I quietly poured that juice on a potted plant! Sadly during the next visit, well let us just say that the plant had some issues!

Now we love the lemon! It must be yellow and round and spot less to be only sour and not bitter! You must soak them in warm water and then use! I used to make nice lemon juice which my mother used to love so rest assured I am not 5000 years old!

Now the lemon is a cross breed of several fruits!
 
One fruit is the bitter orange, best known in the west for its use in marmalade, cocktails, and tea.  The bitter orange has about six different varieties, the best known being the Seville orange (the famous ingredient in marmalade) and the bergamot orange (used in Earl Grey tea). 

The bitter orange itself is a hybrid of two other citrus fruits: the pomelo and the mandarin! The pomelo is a large, sweet citrus fruit, often described as the largest in the citrus family! It’s known for its thick, easy-to-peel rind and juicy, sweet-tart flesh. Pomelos are native to Southeast Asia and are considered an ancestor of many other cultivated citrus varieties, including grapefruit!
Finally a mandarin orange (Citrus reticulata), often simply called mandarin, is a small, rounded citrus tree fruit. The mandarin is small and oblate, unlike the roughly spherical sweet orange (which is again a mandarin-pomelo hybrid). The taste is sweeter and stronger than the common orange.

Then you have the citron! Or Citrus medica historically also known as cedrate which is a large fragrant citrus fruit with a thick rind. It resembles a ‘huge, rough lemon’. Now that I think about it, the bitter lemon I had in Assam may have been the citron!

Finally to create our lemon, the bitter orange was cross bred with the citron!

And soon enough the prodigal son lemon was more popular than its parents!
Now of course you have so many varieties of lemon and so many uses! All you need next time is to make a lemon without the seeds! Then you can actually crack yourself and say like Tiku Talsania! Yeh kya ho raha hai!

Shubh ratri!

This one is right out of a zombie movie! A worm tongue!

Now just when you thought nature is really amazing; it amazes you even more! It is like a mission impossible movie! Just when you thought that Tom cannot get more crazier than this; he jumps of a cliff on a bike onto a train!

Hopefully though the Missions which are ‘impossible’ may stop with the last one! We watched it in 4d max and when the chairs start to move, you feel the thrill of the chase! Then again all good things must come to an end! With the final outing and the final closure, rest assured the Mission is done!

Now Tom jumping from one plane to another is not from the Zombie movie, have you heard of a fish with the tongue which is actually a worm!?

The only parasite that functionally replaces an organ! Yes! Lukily though this time it is not the brain! But the tongue!

The tongue-eating louse (Cymothoa exigua) is one of the strangest and most disturbing parasites in the animal kingdom. It enters through the gills of a fish and attaches itself to the base of the tongue. It severs the blood vessels, causing the tongue to wither and fall off. Then it replaces the tongue, attaching itself to the stump and functioning like a prosthetic tongue. The fish can still eat and live normally—with the louse acting as its new tongue. And of course the fish still lives! The fish gets some food too since the worm can only eat so much!

This is an example of a parasitic symbiotic relationship, one species gains from the other, while the other species is being harmed!

Now, Cymothoa exigua is not believed to be harmful to humans, except it may pinch if separated from its host and handled! So next time if you are speechless, instead of telling that cat got your tongue, you can say; the worm got it!

Now if that shocks you along with the mission impossible with so many stars! Do you know there is a movie in Hindi where there is only a single actor! That was the movie Yaadein and though there are depictions of many people, only Sunil dutt is actually in the whole movie!

Do check it out!

Shubh ratri!

Most people know that dogs have a really good sense of smell, but did you know that 40% of the brain goes entirely to their sense of smell!

To put this into perspective, we can taste a teaspoon of sugar in our coffee. They could smell a teaspoon of sugar inside two olympic sized swimming pools!
It has been suggested that dogs can detect many types of cancers in humans because cancers leave specific traces, or odor signatures, in a person’s body and bodily secretions! Now then you would ask (if you were as quirky as me!) then why don’t we employ an animal whose sense of smell is even better than the dog!

Well I fail to see how you can get an African elephant or  a Shark to work for you!

Yes! The African elephant is often considered to have the most developed sense of smell among animals. This is due to having a large number of olfactory receptor genes (around 2,000), more than any other mammal, including dogs. However, the best sense of smell can also be measured by how well an animal can detect faint odors, and in that case, the male silkworm moth is the champion!

The male silkworms also can detect the pheromones released by females from a great distance, even at extremely low concentrations, making them the ultimate champions in terms of detecting faint smells!

Other animals with strong senses of smell include Dogs, Bears and Sharks!
You would be surprised to know that even our dear Cows have a surprisingly good sense of smell, which helps them find and choose their food!

In the list above am sure the best candidate to ‘smell’ cancer in humans are indeed dogs!

And Yes! dogs can be trained to smell certain types of cancer. Studies have shown that trained dogs can detect cancer in urine, breath, and even tumor samples. They can distinguish between cancer and non-cancerous samples with a high degree of accuracy!

Dogs possess a significantly larger number of olfactory receptors than humans, allowing them to detect subtle changes in odor. The chief reason here is that cancerous tissues release volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are not present in healthy tissues!

By training specific dogs to identify and react to specific odor patterns associated with different types of cancer many cancers can be detected.

It has been shown that dogs can detect a range of cancers, including bladder, breast, lung, colorectal, ovarian, and prostate cancer! Which is why scientists are actively exploring the use of dogs and other animals in cancer detection, with the ultimate goal of developing diagnostic tools that can detect cancer early and improve patient outcomes!

Just when you thought the future is only AI; there comes the little bloke with cute eyes and dangling ears! Man’s (or woman’s for that matter!) best friend to the rescue once again!

Best reminds me of one of the best actors! Krishna! At one point he had close to 20 or so movies releasing in the same year! Most may not even know him! You may know his son Mahesh Babu though!

Now smell some sweet sleep!
Shubh ratri!