Thursday, August 28, 2008

Teaching

"Sometimes teaching is hard work. A teacher is like a
garbage can that people throw their frustrations and
problems into. The more people you teach,the bigger the
garbage disposal problems. But teaching is a wonderful
way to practice Dhamma. Those who teach grow in
patience and in understanding."
- Ajahn Chah.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

honey

"Those whom truth an wisdom lead, can gather honey from a weed"!


- Cowper

The sermon

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."

Blessed are the poor in spirit? What is the meaning of spirit? Is it the fighting spirit? Evil spirit? poor spirited as in humble and quiet? Perhaps, it is the latter.

Who are the meek? perhaps they are those who are selfless, without a big ego. Those who know that they are not "individuals" "self" "special" but simply part of god, to be one with god. This means they are nothing on their own, as when they are one with god, this separate identity of a self is no more.

"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, 'Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye,' and behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

This is a very important part of the sermon, as people have become habitual in judging people fast, too fast. It is best to remember this is my own life, and not judge others or find fault just to feel i am better.

Hypermethylation of DNA

Hypermethylation of DNA is a common molecular alteration in human neoplasia including renal cancer. Altered methylation has a role in silencing tumor suppressor genes. DNA methylation markers have been found not only in primary tumors, but also in serum, plasma and urine in a variety of cancer types. Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) may be an ideal candidate for urine and blood screening because the kidney is at the junction of the circulatory and urological systems. Dalgin et al (page 1126) from Boston, Massachusetts searched the selected DNA regions of 19 significantly down-regulated genes whose expression patterns correlated perfectly with RCC and normal kidney tissue. Methylation patterns were analyzed in DNA extracted from 38 paired RCC normal samples. Seven significantly hypermethylated regions from 6 down-regulated genes were found. The down-regulation of all genes was verified in mRNA and protein level. Overall, the detection of hypermethylation in these highly down-regulated genes suggests that assaying for methylation using cells from urine or blood could provide the basis for a viable diagnostic assay.

Journal of Urology Volume 180, Issue 3, Pages 802-803 (September 2008)

Why do osteodense sclerotic deposits in Prostate Cancer fracture?

This is puzzling. But it seems that this is due to the fact that while osteoblastic activity takes place, there is weak poorly mineralisedwoven bone here as well. Therefore it seems that there is a wide array of lesions. Some are dense; others are lytic.

Torvaldisms

"To me, security is important. But it's no less important than everything *else* that is also important!"

"Be honest -- sometimes painfully honest. Part of that, by the way, is not feeling shy about saying impolite things or showing some emotion. So I'd rather flame people for doing stupid things and call them stupid, rather than try to be too polite to the point where people didn't understand how strongly I felt about something."

"My personal guiding principle is that I try very hard to find people I can trust, and then try to get out of their way as much as possible. I don't mean totally unconditional trust; but on the other hand, once somebody maintains something, he really should be able to make all the normal daily decisions."

Linus Torvalds - the holder of the reigns of Linux.

Who are the meek?

"...for they shall inherit the earth" - Jesus. Sermon on the mount.

Lots of people have been asked this question - by me. The answers werà¶‘ few. Most did not know quite what to make of it. Why the meek? The scared? of whom? God?

I will come back to this...

the selfless, knowing that one is nothing but part of god.

Perhaps there are similarities here with the damma. Selflessness. Egolessness. No individuality. One is Not.
A Christiandamma.
Our body is impermanent - belongs to nature. Our soul is endless - belongs to god. Our mind is impermanent too, and belongs again to no one.


Then is their a soul of my own? Or is it just part of God? In this case there is no business of my soul and your soul. Individually we do not really exist.......

Browsing without a mouse

Why on earth? Since the development of WIMP, the mouse has roared! Nobody can do without it, and nobody wants to!!(squeal)

I am not talking about mobile devices where this is thought to be cool!!!
http://mobizinesupdate.blogspot.com/2007/04/my-mobizines-for-mouseless-devices.html

Oh! But so many people hate the mouse. It slows them down. Gives them pain in their hands and forearms. And on laptops - those mice are just awful! See the flat tops you have to caress or the little "gears" stuck in between the keys! Bloody awful.

What can one do?

Use voice! Thats soooo cooool! Heard of Nuance and their DNS? Doesn't quite work in linux and not in Macs, but in windows, it does a wonderful job for $200 or so, until the many windows viruses hit your throat. And of course, everyone hears your password and everything you write and every site you go to.....

:-(

What can one do?

Look at these

Firefox - add on and add on and add on - what the hell do they have in it without the add ons?
http://www.universefirefox.com/add-ons/browse-the-internet-without-using-the-mouse-mouseless-browsing
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/879
http://www.rudolf-noe.de/index.php?/content/view/14/26/
http://mlb.rudolf-noe.de/

Er..! You could just press this comma key and then type in the name of the link you need too...

Opera - part and parcel for years and years - even the uses did not know they had it !
http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/nomouse/

IE?

just forget it!


There is a FOSS software that can write with a mouse! But here we don't want those sweet creatures....(Sorry Micky and Jerry and all those loved mice from our favourite world of believing)

Using Gmail? mouselessly - http://email.about.com/od/gmailtips/qt/et_keyboard_gm.htm

Define Your Own Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts

To change the default Gmail keyboard shortcuts to more handy keys:

  • Follow the Settings link in Gmail.
  • Go to the Labs category.
  • Make sure Enable is selected under Custom keyboard shortcuts.
  • Click Save Changes.
  • Follow the Settings link again.
  • This time, go to the Keyboard Shortcuts section.
  • Edit all desired keyboard shortcuts.
    • Use '\' together with the corresponding decimal ASCII code to use non-printable characters. "\27" stands for ESC, for example, and "\127" for DEL (you cannot, alas, use the latter for the text input field only accepts three characters).
  • Click Save Changes


Eureka! No mice, see? see?

Opera - the future was here!

The Opera browser has a small user base on the desktop - just less than 2%! That is because it was not given free, initially, like the other browsers. It was arguably the best browser but the others were free. Something like what happened to Apple Mac and the IBM PC race, long long time ago.....

However, it is a great browser with lots of ability built in. Even though other browsers claim certain capabilities as "firsts", in fact they were already in use in Opera. But no one knew, as hardly anyone used the damn thing!

Tabbed browsing - Firefox thingy ? No. Opera had it long ago. Page zooming, Malware protection, phising protection, pop-up blocking, download manager, BitTorrent client, web feed aggregator, speed dial with thumbnails of the many pages - all started here! Others followed..............

Usability and accessibility features were in it during conception. voice control, page zooming, keyboard shortcuts - the works!
email, chat, news!
By the way who supported CSS first? standard compliance?

But, Firefox catches up! Just like Microsoft did to the Apple OS.

Now, it can match all of the above. It is free it is FOSS. It is the standard browser to develop web sites for!

However Opera is going into the mobile market and the games market (Wii is one!) in a BIG way! There it will live, grow and rule! So the story goes, unless the Mozilla Org destroys the ring of course......

Friday, August 08, 2008

On Guard!

GUARD YOURSELF LIKE A FORTIFIED CITY

"Like a border city, guarded within and without, so guard yourself. Do not let slip this opportunity (born as a human), for they who let slip this opportunity grieve when born in a woeful state."

-The Buddha