SHAVING PERSISTENT STUBBLES: A COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS

Last Sunday morning while shaving my face I noticed that a few stubbles over the upper lip were still noticeable. I passed my electric razor over them twice again but they proved quite stubborn.  I again tried to mow them down, this time changing the direction of attack, instead of usual side to side I used up and down. This time I managed to get most of them down but about three or four were still keeping their head above the parapet. I cleaned the cutting head of the razor and tried again, this time with rotary motion, clockwise alternating with anticlockwise. This finally worked and my upper lip skin was sore! I spent more than twice the time on removing the few tiny stubbles than what I usually take to do the whole shaving.

How come I never noticed these unruly hair shafts before? It puzzled me. Pondering on this mystery I turned the shower on and started to put the shampoo on my hair.  The divine revelation suddenly came literally crashing on the shower tray in front of me. I had the reading glasses on! These were my work glasses which I only used for close dermatological examination and micro-surgery. They are almost a mini-microscope. I was wearing them earlier to read the calorie and fat information on a packet of crisps. The food companies use the tiniest possible fonts known to mankind. My usual reading glasses are not up to that task. I wonder whether these multinational companies are trying to save a few pennies on ink or trying to hide their list of lethal additives. Anyway I will muse on this in another blog. I am happy for now that the immediate quandary is unravelled.

I do not need to spend that much extra time on getting rid of few stubbles which I cannot see in the mirror without these microscope-glasses and even more importantly my wife cannot see. In a perfect world I would like to invest more time and energy to get rid of these but on close cost-benefit analysis I do not think it is justified. Few years or should I say few decades ago when I had abundance of energy I would have tackled this unruly hairs mercilessly but not now.

The recent slowing of economy has lead to diminished government revenues. It has imposed the dreaded cost benefit analysis in everything from army to policing and health to education. The acceptable number of stubbles is getting alarmingly larger. I sincerely hope that the society and the government choose them with due care and diligence.

  

“EK HATH SE TALI NAHIN BAJATI” A HYPOCRITE’S BEST PROVERB

There is a saying in India “ek hath se Tali Nahin bajati". Translated in English it goes something like this" clapping cannot happen with one hand".   It is very similar to the proverb used in UK “it takes two to tango”.    All over the world this proverb is used in some form or other.

 For any given altercation between two individuals or groups, this saying tries to impart responsibility on both of them. It seems quite innocuous and impartial saying but in reality it is a huge Pandora’s box overflowing with innuendos and insinuations.  

For an example, a man returning home from the office gets stabbed on the street and is critically injured. When given this news, some people will use this saying " ek hath se Tali Nahin bajati", thus assigning some blame on the victim.

Most benignly this is used by lazy people who do not wish to work their brains to think rationally or think at all.  They just want to say something sounding cleaver.

 Then there are Humpty-Dumptys who always sit on the fence. Never take a decision for the fear of offending one or the other party. They are cleaver but pusillanimous.

Some dislike the person stabbed will use this  saying much  less benevolently and say it with some emphasis on the words  “one hand”  apportioning  quite a bit of  blame on this poor victim  though still sounding neutral. This is the beginning of the slippery slope of hypocrisy.

On the other hand  if the person you are talking to is a great supporter of the mugger then he/she would repeatedly and loudly say this proverb trying to convince you and whoever is prepared to listen that the victim was if not solely, equally responsible for his misfortune. These people hypocritically project themselves as righteous, knowledgeable and unprejudiced commentators.

Recently President Trump used this while commenting on the shameful and blatantly racist supremacist atrocities in Charlottesville, USA. He denounced the violence and mayhem quite rightly but in the same breath implied that the peaceful antiracist demonstrators were equally to be blamed. What? The woman killed by the car driven in reverse by this thug has contributed to her injuries by being on this road? Lots of people all over the world, many from his own party saw through this conceit. They were very indignant and justly denounced him.

Many a times a lot of unscrupulous leaders get away with it. When the opposite party does something wrong they are blamed wholly and solely but when it is clear as a daylight that their own party or personnel are responsible then they very cunningly invoke this saying that clapping cannot take place....  This is repeated by their followers so often that it becomes an reason to exonerate the culprit.

Some times it is true that both the parties are responsible and the commentator is right but he should have real facts to back up his statement. Using this saying as if it is a universal truth is never justified, at best it is a smokescreen for intellectual laziness, at worst a disgusting hypocrisy.

CHOOSING TO LIVE AT THE RIVER BANK: AN EVOLUTIONAL HANGOVER?

 

There is a river that flows in front of our new house.  During the early period of house hunting when I and Bibha came to explore this Wye Dene area in Chiltren Hills, it was just a green field with a stream flowing through the middle of it. The salesman showed the plan on a 3D model.  He was very poetic about the houses being built on the river bank. We did not like the idea of the house on the water edge. Recently on the TV We had seen a lot of floods happening in UK and all over the world.  

We looked for houses in other places. Two years passed by. When we liked an area, the house was not appealing. When we loved the house, the area was not to our liking. Where we did like the both, the price was astronomical. About 8 months ago we came to see a house in a different part of this town again. We drove along Wye Dene. Just on a whim we went to the Sales office and enquired. All houses were already sold but one buyer has failed to get the mortgage and this house had become available just a few days ago.

The house was already built, ready to move in, they had landscaped the river and surrounding area, it looked stunning and idyllic. From the balcony of the house we can see the gleaming transparent water flowing between the green sloping banks with a pair of swans and a bunch of ducks paddling.

We were now hooked by the curvaceous, twinkling brook. The earlier reasoned threat of a possibility of flooding was set aside by the joyfulness we felt. Heart over head. We bought the house and moved in. 

A winter and a spring have passed and now it is Summer.  The river has kept us fascinated all through this time with constantly changing its width, depth and the pace of flow. The shrubs and the big trees on the banks have now covered their winter nakedness with sparkling radiant green leaves. Spring daffodils and bluebells have now given way to flowering shrubs and aquatic lilies. The ducks and the swans are now proudly paddling with their young ones. 

Why the river does fascinate us humans so much? Why so many of us choose to live near them in spite of obvious problems? All religions describe great catastrophic floods in their scriptures, still they eulogize about sacred rivers. You will always find a river flowing through in their version of paradise.    

Almost All ancient great civilizations developed along the river banks (the Nile, Yangtze, Ganges, Tigris, Euphrates etc.) due to obvious benefits of potable water to people and their cattle, and irrigation for their crops.

Earlier when humans were hunter gatherer, the thick woods and congregation of animals around the river banks provided perfect conditions for their sustenance.

Some think that our attraction to rivers may even be due to our biological evolution if itself. The ancestors of humans probably originated on the river banks. Our nearest evolutional ancestors might have been aquatic apes rather than tree dwelling monkeys! 

 Marine biologist Alister Hardy believed that a subset of apes moved to or were forced to live and survive on sea shores and river banks. The wadding in the water to catch food encouraged them to stand upright. Emergence of bi-pedality and loss of thick body hair do point towards an aquatic origin of humans.   Study on the area where Ardi (Ardipithecus ramidus, a 4.4 million years old hominid found at Middle Awash, Ethiopia) was discovered has revealed that it was once a river bed.  Over the last few decades the interest in Aquatic Ape Hypothesis (AAH) has been gaining momentum in spite of criticism from many mainstream scientists. 

 AAH or AAT (Aquatic Ape Theory) does explain our instinctive love of rivers, sea

and other water bodies. The sight and sound of flowing water certainly arouses a feeling of innate joy and wellbeing. Our choice for the house by the Wye River is certainly not by reasoning but is probably an inevitable bi-product of our evolution!

Further Readings

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-new-aquatic-ape-theory-67868308/

 https://phys.org/news/2011-12-couple-evidence-indicating-earliest-humans.html#jCp

PROVISION FOR JUSTICE TO ALL: A MORAL IMPERATIVE FOR A CIVIC SOCIETY

A few months ago, people here in UK voted to get out of European Union. The present government which consists mainly of eurosceptic politicians wanted to decide the when and the how to manage this Brexit without discussing in the Parliament. They were afraid that many members of the Parliament might oppose some of the provisions which seemed discriminatory. There were also some who thought the way pm was hurrying to start the process might  be harmful for the economic growth of the country.
It seems logical that the Parliament must deliberate before the ministers can take a definitive decision on a constitutional process of such a magnitude. The government was adamant not to allow it.
Gina Miller, a member of public decided to take them to court, the government opposed but lost. The court ruled that the government has to discuss and get the agreement of the Parliament before starting the process of Brexit.
David Pannick, the barrister who argued the case for the plaintiff said that it was great that a common person could get justice even against the most powerful institution in the country.
I wonder, can really any citizen get justice. Gina Miller is not your typical average citizen. She is smart, highly intelligent and also a very rich business woman. She can afford the services of the big guns like lord David Pannick QC and his team.
It is true Justice is certainly there for everyone in UK but can everyone afford it! The fee alone of the barristers and their teams in the Brexit case was more than a million dollar! A low or middle income person cannot afford such justice. A few years ago the government used to pay all the cost if a person could not afford it but the budget for this has been markedly reduced in the present economic climate.
In principle it seems great that provision of justice should be equal for everyone but in practice there had to be some compromises.
A good society is one where the compromises are kept to a minimum. A competent and unbiased judiciary which is not under the thumb of the government or the Mafia is of course a condicio sine qua non. A civic society must also make adequate funding available in deserving cases where fundamental or constitutional rights are at stake.