Documenting Observations

My mom just reported that with her specs on, it's difficult for her to climb up and down the stairs. She would rather do the same with her spectacles in her bag. I wonder if it's time for her to change her specs or if there is some real issue with climbing up and down the stairs with the specs on. She never seemed to have said this before. She is now 68. 

While flying during day hours many of you must have noticed that a water body suddenly reflects all sunlight falling upon it. There's just a flash of it as you are travelling high speed and the angle soon changes. The change being such that you may not even realize that a water body exists there if you did not notice it with the reflection set on you. One interesting fact is that birds must have used this reflection to locate water right from the beginning of times, thousands of years earlier than us human beings. Nature must have taught many living creatures facts like these that may not have all been reckoned by us yet. Such knowledge sharing does not happen easily between us and the natural world around us. These days’ scientists seem to be exploring all knowledge that can be picked from the natural world. But there are so many observations by common people that may go undocumented though they may be of great significance. Looks like it’s time for a social media to ...

For every blog you write on Blogger, you get 4 reader's from the US, 1 from Germany and 1 from India. The first once to read are usually from US. I have got a reader from Germany only once before the US guys did. The once watching from India is always the last one. Oh that very well describes how popular a blogger I am :-). I could soon also make a Guinness Book entry with having received no comments in any of my blogs on blogger so far. 

My daughter playing with the garden hose with a sprinkler often told us of a plastic sound when she put it in her mouth. To us it sounded like water until we put the sprinkler in our mouth. There's a lot of difference in the inner and the outer sound :-) and yes with the sprinkler in mouth it was the plastic sound as observed by the 6 year old. 

I commented on an news paper article about an Indian politician (a new Delhi Chief Minister) denying to stay in a five bedroom apartment because of criticism for people supporting him. Here is what I wrote. The user community found it offensive and has deleted it. It's a strange time indeed. Nautanki is 'Drama' in Hindi Offensive comment deleted Inbox x The Times of India   <mailerservice@timesofindia.com> 4 Jan (6 days ago) to  me Dear Reader, Your comment has been taken off the website as our user community did not approve of it. We encourage you to participate in conversations on the site while refraining from posting obscene, defamatory, or inflammatory comments and not indulging in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Comment Removed: This is nautanki... Staying in a five bedroom is no crime... It might just be needed by a person who will have...

As part of the 'Toyil Orappa pathyadi' or the employment guarantee program of the panchayats in Kerala. Women workers turn up on farms and work for a day or two without any obligation on the farm owner. They are paid by the panchatyats and they earn life long pension on completion on 100 days work. One work which they do is digging Neerkuyi (Water Pit in Malayalam) in the farms. The idea is to create open pits in which rain water can accumulate and be used by the surrounding areas for a longer period of time. On they outset, this may seem as a not very efficient water harvesting mechanism. However, these pits also seem to collect more due and remain relatively moist than the surrounding and plants grow on top and cover the pit from being directly exposed to the sun. Slaughtered rubber trees often leave a hole in the ground when it trunk and roots degenerate rapidly. Now this seems to be a natural or partly natural equivalent of a Neerkuyi.

5 Goats on a 3.5 acre of land seems to be fine. Add one more and it could wipe out plant species. The animal being smaller and gentler is easier to walk with. However, you need to be clever in taming the male ones. The male usually love to put up playful fights with it's caere takers. If encouraged much it advances to become real fights. If you are young, you will manage bit if you have other older caretakers, you risk them being hurt. The dengue epidemic in Delhi was a wake up call to people in India about the importance of goat milk. Being highly recommended for recovery from the disease by doctors, the demand for goat milk went so high that it became unavailable to many who were ready to pay even Rs. 3000 for a litre. People new to the milk may dislike it first, but after a few months, you might start loving it. Summer months might seem to be harsh on the goats with not much green on the 3.5 acre within reach. However, they now feed much on the dry leaves that fall from t...

We assume that trees in tropical forests are bigger because they grow in dense forest and fight for sunlight. Well, sometimes we see that tress are tall even if they do not fight for sunlight with others. Coconut trees seem to be protecting their new leaves from pests and weather for growing all it's years and that need a lot of upward space. So is it really only for sunlight?

The division may not be exactly between the west and the east, but rather more accurately between the developed and the under-developed world. While there are a lot of things the under-developed nations can learn from the developed once. There is a lot of cultural progress that the developed nations might need to revert.  My wish in this post is to mention what's going wrong in the developed nations and then mention my plague in the under-developed world that I live in: Developed nations notation of secular ideas seem to be pushing it back to an era where it would apparently end up having cult ideas or pagan believes.  1. Animal rights - While it is important to be vigilant of species extinction. Making hue and cry about non-endangered animals is way to far with a hue and cry. While in the west this is about animal rights, in the east it's about animals being gods. Was the west influenced by the intolerance of animal killing in the east?     Here in...

Looks like for a 35 year old it's possible not to be able to count 1 through 100 without committing a mistake. After about 45 minutes of workout, I jumped to 80 from 19 for each of the five trials that I did. I hope as my stamina increases, I will start counting better.  Looks like I have improved on my counting just two days after publishing this post. Today on the 9th of January, I seem to be in better health.  For so long I have not been much into exercising. I would walk a lot at times but I was never a regular. Of late I started feeling the difficulties of being overweight. I guess the symptoms of ill health was triggered by my habit of putting my laptop on my lap. When I bought a new one recently in UK I had to get it exchanged as the batteries of the Toshiba Satellite was coming of the unit. I realized that  Toshiba had brought in the market some antique laptops.  I went back to John Lewis to get the crap exchanged for some other brand. As I described ...

Rabbits seem to perform a little cleaning of their vegetables plants before they eat it. It looked likes they bite off all the roots facing them, before they eat the portions that they prefer.