A New Business Idea

Last month, Discovery Channel’s planned telecast of The Jesus Tomb was scuttled by Joseph Diaz, the General Secretary of Catholic Secular Forum. Mr. Diaz without even watching the documentary, clairvoyantly assumed that it trivializes the Bible and would hurt the sentiments of people. Christian population in Christian majority countries and the Vatican had no issues with the documentary and in such countries Discovery Channel went with the telecast. In India they meekly submitted.

This time Joseph Diaz was able to step in at the right time and prevent people from seeing the documentary. We fear that sometimes things may slip through, like for example, he forgot to get the book, Da Vinci Code banned.  Books like Satanic Verses and Dwikhandita could only be banned in time because the concerned people were alert.

Also it is not just book banning that requires help. Political parties and communal organizations need help in disrupting the life of Indian citizens for matters which have nothing to do with India like the hanging of Saddam Hussein or the Palestinian issue. Besides this there are various effigy burning worth national incidents, like Khusboo’s remarks on sex, or India losing to High School cricket teams or the Shilpa Shetty- Big Brother incident.

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Going the Hawaiian Route

CoconutDuring the time of the last Queen of Hawaii in 1893, the island became one of the major exporters of sugar, producing about two hundred tonnes of sugar annually. It was big business, resulting in the import of workers from China, Japan, Korea and Philippines. As the labor costs began to rise, the businessmen started looking at other countries and soon sugar was imported from Cuba, Caribbean and Puerto Rico. Left with no other option to make money, the sugarcane plantations were converted to hotels and a tourism based economy was established in Hawaii.

What sugarcane was for Hawaii is what coconut is to Kerala. Till 1980, Kerala was the major producer of coconuts with about 80 – 85% share of the market. Now Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu produce coconuts and that too of high yielding variety available around the year. The price of coconut  is falling and with the removal of the duty on edible oils, the price is expected to fall down. In such a situation, some families have started providing Bread and Breakfast type accommodations in plantations to make a living.

The transformation of Kerala’s coconut plantations mirrors a shift taking place throughout rural India. As the national economy cracks open, once-isolated pockets of the country are suddenly being exposed both to global competition and also to new economic opportunities. For some farmers, that openness might mean better prices for pepper or rubber, while for other Indians, tougher times might prompt a shift into a new industry or a move to a nearby city.

In August, Johnny Tharakan opened three rooms of his home for guests. Mr. Tharakan charges around $150 a night to stay at Ayanat House, a two-story home built 70 years ago, including all meals. Mr. Tharakan and his wife, Rani, dine with the guests, pointing out the Kerala favorites of fresh red prawns and steamed cakes with coconut shavings.

The coconut industry “is dying,” says Mr. Tharakan. “It’s only a matter of time, and that time is not very far off.”

In Kerala, the coconut is only the latest example of using aging crops to harvest tourists. A decade ago, many of the state’s rubber plantations began offering homestays amid a slump in prices, while more recently, tea plantations have become B&Bs.[India’s Nuttiest Destination (WSJ subscription reqd)]

With tourism booming, Kerala is on the way to Hawaii and if we introduce Hartals in Hawaii it will be soon on the way to be Kerala.

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Pakistan's Biggest Buddy

After Dick Cheney triggered Musharraf’s Dopamine system, there has been lot of activity on the ground in Pakistan. CIA Special Operations units are inside Pakistan to hunt down the Senior Video Making Cave Dweller. The two terrorists holed up in Pakistan are supposed to be on the move in March when the snow melts and the CIA operatives and paramilitary officers want to capture them during that time.

The deal signed between Musharraf and the tribal leaders in Waziristan has been a failure and al-Qaeda has been gaining strength and re-establishing significant control over their franchises. It is this deal with the tribal leaders that changed everything and it was conveyed to Musharraf that US has no interest in preventing his destablization. Till now Musharraf scared Washington with the thesis that if he vanishes  along with a mango crate aboard a C-130 Hercules aircraft, then Islamic extremists would take over the country. Now the CIA is not that worried.

It is not just the Americans who are disappointed with Musharraf. President Karzai has been shouting from the roof of the Minaret of Jam that religious schools in Pakistan are the source of terrorism and NATO commanders in Afghanistan have agreed with him. Even Iran, a terrorist sponsor is upset by the terrorists from Pakistan. The growing violence in Pakistan has also raised concerns that Musharraf is losing grip.

When Pakistan is getting squeezed from all directions to end its support for terrorism, guess who is their biggest buddy now? India.

Yet, even by that standard, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s surprise embrace of military-ruled Pakistan as a fellow victim of and joint partner against terror puts India out of sync with the growing international focus on that country’s descent as the fount of transnational terrorism.

As in May 2001 when the sphinx-like Vajpayee blithely helped lift Musharraf’s international-pariah status by inviting him all of a sudden to Agra, India is out of step again. It has eased the pressure on Pakistan just when the rest of the world is beginning to exert pressure over its metastasizing terrorism. Since Singh made Pakistan a joint partner against terror, Western officials increasingly are speaking up about the Pakistani terrorist threat.

One expected New Delhi to insist that the US, in response to Musharraf’s dubious anti-terror record, suspend the sale of lethal, India-directed weapons to Pakistan. But mum is the word. Indeed such is the salient incongruity that a US protégé, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, speaks plainly about Pakistan’s cross-border terrorism while India toasts the terror sponsor as a partner. Is it thus any surprise that India is not even among the 12 nations identified as victims of terror in the White House’s national-security strategy report? [Out of sync, out of mind ]

Manmohan Singh is committing the same mistakes which is predecessors did, hoping that if you feed Musharraf enough Biriyani  in Delhi, he might turn a new leaf.  All that joint terror commission and demilitarizing Kashmir does not remove the fear of India from the Pakistani mind. The biggest fear, yes fear, that Pakistanis have is being encircled by India. With India actively participating in rebuilding Afghanistan, and with the Indian air base in Tajikistan, the Pakistanis have found that they have no where to run.

“I have the impression, when I’m travelling through Pakistan particularly that they have a very real fear of being encircled by the Indians, which, to most observers, seems to be ridiculous. “However, it’s very real out there. And many of their policies might have little to do with Taliban, al Qaeda or anything else, Karzai, et cetera. It’s the old great game between the Indians and the Pakistanis,” Senator Reed maintained.[ Pak feels India`s Afghan role inimical to its interest: US ]

Once the Americans get their men from Pakistan, they will walk off and the pressure on Musharraf will be off. He will then turn to the Eastern border and we will have to sacrifice many more Indian lives. Instead of exerting pressure on Musharraf to turn off the terrorism tap, we are giving him a rope, which he will use to hang us later. Why are we so adamant that we will not learn anything from history ?
 

Chess originated in Kannauj?

Present day Chess is a variation of Chaturanga which originated in India sometime in the 6th century or earlier. The Chaturanga was played on an 8×8 board called the Ashtāpada. The game shows the four fold division of the ancient Indian Army consisting of the Infantry, elephants, cavalry and chariots.

The Vinayapitaka, a Buddhist text that prescribes monastic rules for monks and nuns mentions that a convert should keep away from Ashtapada, while the Jain text Suyagadamga goes one step furthur and says that people should not even learn to play the game. There are references to chess like games in Mahābhārata and Vasavadatta, but it is Banabhatta‘s Harsha Charitha whcih has the earliest reference of Chaturanga.

Now a groups of German Indologists have claimed that chess originated in Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh when it was the capital of the Maukhari kingdom.

The Maukhari ruler Sharva Varman had gifted the game of ‘chaturanga’ to his contemporary Persian ruler Khushrau-II in lieu of saltpetre (a variety of gunpowder).
A recent book ‘Kannauj, The Maukhari And Chaturanga — The origin of chess and its way from India to Persia,’ authored by Ranate, laid the foundation for further research. The Maukhari rulers used to play ‘chaturanga’ with 16 cabinet terracotta before venturing into military campaigns, said Eder. Even Banbhatta in his ‘Harshcharita’ had mentioned a game called ‘ashtapada’ similar to chess, he added.
Historical accounts say during the later Gupta period there was an Indian army school where cadets were taught about warfare through terracotta pieces on ‘ashtapada’, which was again the game of chess in its primitive stage, said Eder. [Origin of chess is UP]

The Tomb of Jesus

In 1990, Israeli archaeologist Amos Kloner discovered a tomb in the Jerusalem suburb of Talpiot during the construction boom. This tomb had ten ossuaries and six of them had inscriptions related to the Gospels. No one thought much about it till  Film Maker Simcha Jacobovici (of the Exodus Decoded fame) and producer James Cameron (of Titanic) decided to investigate this and two years of their effort was shown on Sunday in the Discovery Channel documentary, The Lost Tomb of Jesus.

In the documentary, they make the claim that this tomb, was the tomb of Jesus and his family. It is not any Jesus, but the one known as Jesus of Nazereth. The tomb, according to the film makers  has markings which says Jesus, son of Joseph, Maria, Mariamene, Matthew, Judas, son of Jesus, and Jose. These are common names of that era and the Kloner thinks that it is a coincidence that the names are similar to the protagonists in the New Testament. Simcha Jacobovici thinks otherwise.

He got motivated to do this story after working on the story of another ossuary which had the inscription, “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” This was later found to be a fake. During his investigation he came across the ossuaries which had the names of Jesus and others and he was astonished by it.

The filmmaker rests his case on four main points. First, he says, recent Biblical scholarship argues that Mary Magdalene’s real name was Mariamene, a common first-century derivative of Miriam. Second, DNA tests show that microscopic human remains scraped from the Jesus box and the Mariamene box are not related, at least not matrilineally, leaving open the possibility that the two humans whose bones were once in those boxes were married. Third, the patina on the Talpiot ossuaries—that is, the mineral crust accumulated over centuries—matches that of the James box. This “discovery,” if provable, is complicated but critical to Jacobovici’s argument: the match means, he says, that the James ossuary originally lay in the Talpiot cave, thus answering questions about the James box’s provenance. It also increases the probability that the tomb belongs to the Holy Family. Jesus had four brothers, according to the Gospel of Mark; two of their names—Joseph (or Jose) and James—were found in the Talpiot tomb.[Raiders of the Lost Tomb ]

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Book Review: West of Jesus

West of Jesus: Surfing, Science, and the Origins of Belief by Steven Kotler, Bloomsbury USA (June 13, 2006), 224 pages

Some religious rituals like repetitive chanting and rhythmic drumming have been found to produce excessive religiosity, out-of-body experiences and vivid hallucinations. Out of body experiences have been reported not only in religious texts, but also in action sports like surfing, mountain climbing, and motor cycling. Brain scans have found that such feeling are produced when the parietal lobes, the part of the brain that integrates sensory information and determines the spacial location of objects go quiet and portions of the right temporal lobe, which is mainly involved in visual memory, become more active.

SPECT scans of the brains of Buddhist monks during meditation have shown a significant decrease in activity in the right parietal lobe implying that meditation temporarily blocks the processing of sensory information and explains why meditators feel that the self is endless and is interwoven with everyone. In the fifties, neuro surgeon Wilder Penfiled discovered that stimulating the right temporal lobe with mild electric currents produced out-of-body experiences, heavenly music and vivid hallucinations usually associated with near death experiences. All this means that our brains are wired for mystical experiences.

Interestingly, I read all of that in a book by a surfer (not web surfer), on surfing, science and the origins of belief. The surfer, Steven Kotler, was making his living as a writer, with the perfect apartment and perfect girl friend and then he got the Lyme disease. On days he could make it to the kitchen from the bed, he would end up standing with a coffee pot in one hand and the tap running not sure what to do next as he had forgotten to do the most basic tasks. He lost his job, woman and his mind and he started thinking of suicide. So he decided to do the best thing possible – go surfing to Costa Azul, Mexico and to his surprise he started feeling better. Then he wanted to know why he felt better.
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Triggering Musharraf's Dopamine System

440px-Dopamine2.svg

Dopamine, a naturally produced chemical in the brain functions as a neuro transmitter, which means that it helps pass signals from one neuron to another. Dopamine is the reward center, so when something pleasurable happens, like news of Quattrocchi being arrested, dopamine is released in your brain. Understanding dopamine can help in your love life and explain Musharraf.

A recent study was conducted on 15 people who were mending broken hearts. They were shown pictures of people to whom they had intense romantic feelings and some neutral images. Magnetic Resonance Images showed that when they saw the pictures of their loved ones, the dopamine system in the brain was triggered. This implied that they still maintained feelings for their loved ones. 

After 9/11, Musharraf had to part company with his loved ones, the Taliban and al-Qaeda, to whom he had intense feelings. If you do an MRI on Musharraf’s brain and show him images of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden or Mullah Obaidullah Akhund you will see that dopamine system is triggered. In medical tests it has been found that subjects with such failed relationships show brain activity associated with risk taking, and controlling anger. This risk taking mentality explains why Musharraf allows al-Qaeda to roam freely in Pakistan while denying it and we have seen intense anger when it is suggested that Pakistan is not doing enough in the war on terror.

Currently, the relationship between United States and Pakistan, like that between two old lovers has become mundane and not so exciting. Brain studies help here too. It has been noticed that over a period of time, the intensity of the romance  between couples fades and something must be done to ignite the passion.

One set of couples were asked to perform new and exciting activities like sailing or an art class while another group was asked to perform familiar activities like dinner with friends. Couples doing new activities found that their quality of marriage got better as the novelty of the new experience triggered the dopamine system.

After 9/11, the relationship between United States and Musharraf has been like that between  Charlie Sheen and Heidi Lynne Fleiss. The US pays some money, called aid, and in turn Pakistan offers some Taliban/al-Qaeda types at regular intervals. This worked quite well from 2001 and now after 6 years, the intense romantic feeling has died down. To rekindle the love, United States thought instead of money, why not send some F-16s, but still Musharraf’s dopamine system was not triggered enough.

Then what you need is a drug. Steven Kotler in his book, West of Jesus: Surfing, Science, and the Origins of Belief talks about an experiment conducted by Swiss neurologist Peter Brugger in which he gave the participants L-dopa, a drug used in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. Such people had increases in the levels of dopamine, the drug which evolution created to get us to do the things we need to do to survive.

Apparently Dick Cheney has the same effect.  We don’t know how much of Musharraf’s dopamine system was triggered by the exciting activity called one on one meeting with man who shot a lawyer in the face, but the end result is that Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, former defense minister of the Taliban government and #3 in the leadership council was arrested.

This also explains why India is not able to get Musharraf to budge on anything. Every time there is a Pakistan sponsored terrorist attack in India, all we do is re-issue previous warnings with just a change in the time stamp on the documents. Then there is the usual accusation/counter accusation new cycle and all goes still till the next terrorist attack. If we are able to pull a Dick Cheney on him, something tangible might happen.

Harappan site in Jamnagar

One more Harappan site in Saurashtra offers a glimpse into history

The site is at Pithad village in Jodia taluka of Jamnagar district. The remains of the Harappan site have been excavated by a team from MSU.

“It is a huge wall which appears to have been constructed to protect the village. It is 270 metre in length and 90 metre in width. It is constructed on a mound, which is 2-3 metre high from the surface,’’ said Ajith Prasad, a reader with MSU, who is leading the excavation team.

“The excavation at this site began last year, and this is the second session of excavation. Earlier, small kilns to make clay utensils were found. Ovens to melt meats were also found. Besides, pieces of clay utensils, weapons made up of stones, rooms, kitchens were also found. “Our study suggests that here a Harappan civilasation existed precisely around 2300 BC. Further, the study based on excavation and its finding confirms that Harappan civilisation settlements were done with good planning,” said Prasad.

The excavation has revealed the presence of a settlement inside as well as outside the fortified wall. “The inside area was used for craft activity and residential purpose. In the area outside the wall, there settled those who were not included in the town management,’’ said Prasad.

Other Harappan Sites discovered are Rakhigarhi (Haryana), Bagasara & Rapar (Gujarat),  and Baghpat (Uttar Pradesh)

Tags: Technorati Tags: Pithad, Jamnagar, Harappa, India, Ancient History, Archaeology

 

Rakhigarhi: Harappan site in Haryana

New Harappan sites are getting discovered all over North India and enhancing our understanding of our history. In 2004, a Harappan site was found in the small town of Bagasara in Gujarat, which dates back to 2500 B.C. This site was found to have a shell making workshop, fortifications, and knives with bone handles. In 2005, the first Harappan burial site was found in Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh. Other sites include Rapar area of Gujarat’s Kutch district, and Farmana Khas in Haryana.

Excavations in Rakhigarhi, Haryana have revealed one of the largest Harappan sites ever discovered and has pushed back the history of Harappans by about 500 years.

“The site yielded finds of the early Harappan and mature Harappan phase,” said Dr Nath. He said that features like knowledgeof writing, use of wedge-shaped bricks and town planning, earlier thought to be present in the mature phase i.e 2500 BC, were discovered to be present in the early phase i.e 3000 BC. Evidence of well-planned towns were found, he said.

Dr Nath designated two periods in the early Harappan phase — pre-formative and formative. “The pre-formative period yielded circular structures and showed no formal planning. Whereas, the formative period exhibited planned structures. Burnt bricks were much in use during the early Harappan phase,” said Dr Nath.

The mature Harappan phase yielded a granary, with evidence of grain, fire altars and potters kiln. There was evidence of various crafts such as bead- making, bangle making, seal manufacturing, gold making, carpentry and terracotta making, practised by the people. Fish hooks were also discovered, pointing to the fact that the people practised fishing. Mirrors, tops, whistles arrowheads, rattles and tops were found. There is evidence to show that hopscotch was also played. [‘Rakhigarhi is the largest Harappan site ever found’]

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HOWTO: Let Quattrocchi Escape

Remember Ottavio Quattrocchi? The middle man for Bofors who represented Snamprogetti and big pal of ex-dead-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi? He was arrested in Argentina on Feb 6th and there is a 30 day period during which India should ask him to be extradited. Of course bringing Quattrocchi to Delhi is not something the UPA would like to do and so they decided to let the 30 day period lapse.

Then some spoil sport “leaked” the news after 13 days and there is lot of activity in the Parliament. Apparently the file went to our Prime Minster and no action was taken because a) they could not identify it was Ottavio Quattrocchi and b) They could not find anyone to translate documents from Spanish to English. Now that the news has been leaked the CBI is forced to book a ticket to visit the beautiful Buenos Aires.

According to the Government, which always looks if the glass is half full or empty by tilting the open side of the glass towards its face, the criminal in this whole case is the person who leaked the information to the media. He has been called a “saboteur” and “culprit” and various agencies have been asked to find the “mole”.

It was with great effort that the Congress Party erased the word “Bofors” from public memory and now this saboteur-culprit has undone two decades to hard work. If Bofors comes back, it is going to be trouble for lot of pundits. They will have to refresh their memory on what the case was all about and teach their spell checker to correctly spell Quattrocchi.

This will also distract us from other  issues  of national importance like the Abhishek-Aishwarya wedding. N. Ram will soon start publishing photo copies of Quattrocchi’s nursery school mark sheets and will have no time to reprint articles from the People’s Daily. The UPA Administration will be busy denying all Bofors allegations that they will not have time to express shock at various acts of terror happening in the country. Do we want this to happen?

We hope the CBI officers take  one of those boats at the Gateway of India which takes tourists to Elephanta Caves  or  better, Air India, to go to Bunos Aires. Once the 30 day period is over, then Quattrocchi will be safe and both Sonia Gandhi and rest of the nation can sigh in relief.

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Ottavio Quattrocchi, Bofors, Bunos Aires, Argentina, India