Life, Dreams and Reality -- Sohel's Blog

A Nineteen‑Year Echo: Returning to a Technology That Refuses to Stand Still

2026-01-19T23:14:00.001-07:00

When I logged back into this old blog after so many years away, I expected dust, silence, and maybe a few broken links. Instead, I found something unexpected: people are still reading a piece I wrote nineteen years ago, an article about optical cloaking, back when the idea felt like a fragile spark from the edge of science fiction.

Curiosity got the better of me. What happened to that technology I once wrote about with such excitement? Back then, cloaking was mostly theoretical, an elegant mathematical possibility built on metamaterials and transformation optics. The physics was promising, but the real world had not yet caught up.

So I went searching.

To my surprise, the field has not only survived, it has matured. Researchers have pushed optical cloaking far beyond the early conceptual stage. Over the last two decades, it has grown into a serious scientific discipline, with real prototypes and expanding applications. A 2021 review describes how invisibility research has “blossomed into a remarkable scientific journey toward reality”. Metamaterial cloaking, once a speculative idea, now has working demonstrations that guide electromagnetic waves around objects. And newer guides explain how cloaking principles are being explored for fields ranging from medical imaging to consumer electronics.

Nineteen years ago, this was all theory. Today, it is becoming technology.

But as with any powerful innovation, I find myself hoping it is used for peaceful, human‑friendly purposes, not for crime, not for warfare, and certainly not for state‑sponsored violence against civilians. The world has enough tools for harm. What we need are tools for healing, learning, and protecting.

So what good can cloaking technology bring to humanity?

Peaceful and Human‑Centered Applications of Cloaking Technology

1. Better Medical Imaging

Cloaking principles can help reduce scattering and noise in imaging systems. Instead of hiding objects, the same physics can make hidden structures more visible, leading to clearer scans and earlier diagnoses.

2. Protecting Privacy in a Hyper‑Visible World

As cameras become ubiquitous, cloaking-inspired materials could help people shield sensitive information, like preventing unauthorized scanning of documents, devices, or even personal data embedded in wearables.

3. Improving Solar Energy Efficiency

Metamaterials can guide light more efficiently, reducing losses and improving the performance of solar panels. This is cloaking in reverse: instead of hiding objects, it “hides” inefficiencies.

4. Safer Buildings and Infrastructure

Cloaking concepts can be applied to seismic waves and vibrations. Engineers are exploring ways to “cloak” buildings from earthquakes by redirecting destructive energy around them.

5. Non‑Invasive Scientific Instruments

Cloaking can help create instruments that observe delicate systems—biological, chemical, or quantum—without disturbing them. This could open new frontiers in research.

6. Enhanced Accessibility Technologies

By controlling how light or sound moves, cloaking research may lead to:

better hearing aids
clearer acoustic environments
improved assistive devices for low‑vision users

7. Cleaner, More Efficient Communication Systems

Cloaking principles can reduce electromagnetic interference, making wireless communication more stable and energy‑efficient.

As I write this, I feel a strange sense of continuity. Nineteen years ago, I was fascinated by the idea of bending light around an object. Today, I’m fascinated by how far that idea has traveled, and how much potential it still holds.

Technology evolves. The world evolves. And perhaps, in some small way, we evolve with it.

If you’re one of the readers who found that old article and kept it alive all these years, thank you. It’s good to be writing here again.

In the Long Echo of My First Blog

2026-01-19T22:55:00.000-07:00

I haven’t written anything on this blog for several years. That doesn’t mean I stopped writing, far from it. I’ve always loved writing. I simply shifted my words to Facebook for a while. But this space… this is the blog I started many years ago. I was one of the early bloggers, writing almost from the moment the internet found its way into everyday life. Back then, I published in various online magazines and newspapers during those pioneering days of the web.

The world has changed so much in the years since. The internet and its surrounding technologies have seeped into nearly every corner of human life. Many of these changes have been wonderfully positive. Learning has become easier than ever. Watching a good movie or TV show takes only a few taps, and the choices feel endless. Gaming has evolved into entirely new dimensions. I can carry an entire library with me, on a dedicated e‑reader or simply on my phone, with every device syncing effortlessly. Even when I’m driving through mountain roads, the internet stays with me like a trusted companion, disappearing only on rare occasions.

And now we’ve entered the age of artificial intelligence. It began spreading widely just a few years ago, and already it’s leaving a meaningful mark on our daily lives.

I’m hoping to return to posting here more regularly. I know I had readers who followed my writing in the past. If you’re still out there, I hope you’re well, safe, and thriving.

Writing

2023-06-29T11:59:00.000-06:00

I haven't written any blog post a long time. This is unusual for me. Writing is my passion from my childhood. I don't know how I stopped writing altogether. Hoping I can return to this love of my life.

Life has become very busy for me in recent years. Being a father of a son, working full time, family and all the daily humdrums that come with living a life, perhaps played a role in my long time absence from writing.

I am not sure how large the readership of my blog posts. Hoping whoever you are, where ever you are, you all are safe and having a good life.

Will write more soon.

Stop the War

2022-03-12T21:59:00.002-07:00

War is always painful. It brings destructions, devastations and deaths. Peoples' lives and livelihoods are uprooted. Schools, hospitals, shopping malls, nursing homes, apartments, community centers are bombed. Bullet ridden bodies of men, women and children lie on the roads and the side ditches have congealed blood filled rocky ice like compassionless stones.

Human history is full of wars, invasions, occupations of foreign lands and genocides. From the time of antiquity, the invaders and the aggressors try to justify their bloody actions. They cite past injustice fallen on a segment of a population as the precursor. They cite security risk posed by the invaded nation as the root cause of their occupation.

Russian invasion of Ukraine falls into the same pattern.

Was there injustice in breakaway eastern Ukraine from 2014 or before? Most possibly there was.

Did the injustice in eastern Ukraine got world's enough attention? Most probably not.

But does it give any justification of Russia's invasion of Ukraine? Are the missiles, bombs and tank shells falling on civilian filled cities and towns and villages all over Ukraine based on any righteous moral principles? What moral principles are there in the killing of innocent children? What righteousness are there in the indiscriminate massacres of sieged people?

Absolutely none!

In a charged environment when war rages and ravages and the fear of expanding that war and a global unstable economy are real possibilities, people may have various opinions of war, and it's people's fundamental freedom to choose a side or not choosing any side. What is painful is to observe the logical fallacy based whataboutism. It is an age old technique that attempts to discredit the opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument [1].

The whataboutism arguments related to Russian invasion of Ukraine is going like this: why are people so vocal about Russian invasion of Ukraine when they kept quiet in other wars or violence? For example Israeli occupation and wars on Palestinian people, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Syrian wars, Kashmiri issues, the wars in Africa, etc.

If one is observant one should note that this classical usage of logical fallacy in the attempt to discrediting people who are vocal against Russia's despicable aggression against Ukraine is sidestepping the current on going war where everyday and every hour in Ukraine civilians' homes, shelters, their hospitals, their life and livelihoods are destroyed.

When I was growing up, many of the children books my father bought for me to read were Russian folktales. In Bangladesh, Russian writers were popular. Many of us grew up reading great Russian literature translated in Bangla. So many wonderful stories! Many of the details I have already forgotten, but gist and the morals of the stories are universal in nature. Be good. Don't do harm to others. Never be silent in the face of injustice and aggression.

Russia is a large nation. It has a long and decorated history. Russians are proud people and like all human beings they also want to live free of fear and in freedom. The unforgettable contribution of Russia in the fight against marching Nazism and Hitler are well known. In Bangladesh's independence war in 1971, Russia was supporting Bangladesh and was against the invasion of Bangladesh by then West Pakistani forces where millions of innocent civilians were killed and millions of people had to flee their homes and sought shelters in neighboring India.

This is all good. Russia was on the right side of history then. What is not good is to have blind support to any nation, may that be Russia, or US or one's own motherland, if that nation becomes the transgressor and commit war crimes. How can one blindly support someone who shares one's religious or ideological faith or a shared community but commit crime against humanity?

Is Russia a saint nation? Does everything that United States do in the name of its foreign policy based on morality? Is China not doing any crimes against its minority Uighurs? I can probably cite every nation of the world in this context, from the weakest to the most powerful, each and every one of these nation has shameful past and many are sadly involved in current criminal acts against its own citizens or involved in troubling activities in foreign lands. In autocracy and plutocracy it happens more than in a stable democracy. None of the world's nation is free from cruelty of the past and none of them are saint.

Human beings have selfish genes. We like to take care of our own first. We like to raise our voice louder when we see someone from our own background or community or ideology get violated or subjected to injustice and we keep quiet or perhaps not protest loud enough when we see people from other background or ideology or nation get bombarded and uprooted.

Humanity is not perfect. We are the amalgamation of contradictions and imperfections.

Still, humanity made huge leap in the positive direction in last few hundred years. We are not in the medieval world of rampant marauders and naked conquerors. Science, technology and the lifting of trade barriers lifted billions of people out of the depth of endless poverty. Despite the recent lockdowns and setbacks from global pandemic, the longevity of human beings show upward trends if one considers decade to decade data.

Russia is a global power in terms of its arsenals, weaponry, natural resources and historical influences on many nations. This Russian invasion of Ukraine is not only obliterating the yearning and freedom of an independent nation, it is also bringing in the specter of old and meaningless cold war that my parents and grand parents' generations had to suffer from for many years. Russia has large number of nuclear weapons as do United States and many other nations. If the unthinkable happens, by accident or by malicious intentions, my entire being becomes numb and I shudder from the bone chilling thought of total destruction of this world where humanity made so much progress in the right direction but all of this can end in a heart beat.

No one in his or her right mind should support Russian invasion of Ukraine. The killings and maiming of innocent people in Ukraine should be more than enough justification for not staying silent. History has ample precedence of despot dictator who tries to cling to his power and tries all he can to expand it by invading foreign lands or attacking its own vulnerable citizens by dehumanizing them first. Unless it is checked with global collective cooperation, this illusion filled invasion can expand to other nations and can very well trigger the all feared third world war that the world must do all it can to stop.

Stop the war in Ukraine!

I stand with Ukraine!

Reference:

1. Whataboutism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson - a Review

2021-04-05T21:02:00.000-06:00

This is the second book of Bill Bryson I have read, and like the first one, A Short History of Nearly Everything that I had read more than a decade ago, The Body: A Guide to Occupants is a well researched and thoughtful book that has good information of human body presented in humor mixed and eloquent format that I found to be highly readable like his other book I had read.

Some of these concepts that the writer presented was not new to me, as I had studied some of these concepts in various biological science courses I had taken in high school, colleges and universities, but unlike the heavy tomes text books that I had to plough through in my student life, as I read Bill Bryson's book I found it more amusing and some of the tidbits about various scientists, accidental discoveries, and treacheries of some scientists not giving due credit of the original discoverers or inventors of their hard work shed light on the dynamics of world of science that mimic the larger outside world in every aspect, from heroic triumphs, losses and betrayals.

The first chapter of this book provides a humble outlook about the very complexity of human body and the nearly impossibility of ever creating a human body artificially matching all the functionalities of actual human body that nature has perfected over many iterations through countless mutations. Here is a good quote: "You could call together all the brainiest people who are alive now or have ever lived and endow them with the complete sum of human knowledge, and they could not between make a single living cell, never mind a replicant Benedict Cumberbatch."

I find the information presented in this book is valuable to many. While we are going through uncertain time and a deadly pandemic, when many people, some of them even in my family and friend circles have perished from COVID 19, and some of them are still going through the sufferings from COVID some of them lost jobs and many other challenges, I hope the summary version of my review can help someone to understand our own human body that most of us take for granted, and perhaps can provide a guidance. Or, it can inspire someone to pursue the concepts presented in this book to face the challenges that science present to invent or discover something beneficial for the human kind. A lofty goal I know, but it is worth pursuing.

Stay tuned for the next writing based on my understanding of this book by Bill Bryson.

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee - a Brief Review

2021-04-05T20:35:00.000-06:00

Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko is memorable and full of heart and life’s struggles, ups and downs, challenges, survivals and kindness portrayed in lives of many characters of this unforgettable novel. The author shined a light over Korean people who lived in Japan for many generations, their longing for their unreachable motherland and being forever “outsiders” in Japan.

From the start to finish the author told a long but compulsively readable story, and described the harsh life of poor Koreans living in Japan. It also showed how hard work to provide for their family pushed them to work harder, and some of them were successful climbing out of the deep pit of poverty, and many were not so lucky.

Pachinko is a well researched novel and is a pleasure to read.

How Does Bigotry Enter into Mind?

2021-01-11T17:29:00.002-07:00

How does bigotry enter into mind?

I thought about this question for sometime now. A child is born with pure heart, no shred of bigoted ideas or thoughts can be present in his or her pristine mind. When I cradled my son for the first time, he was so tiny. The nurse wrapped him up in a small blanket and first she took him to my wife, the mother who gave birth after an agonizing delivery process that lasted more than 16 hours. Then I hold him in that wrapped up blanket. He could not open his eyes fully then, slept the entire time I hold him for about an hour before we left the delivery room and went to the recovery room.

Children learns from the parents. It took my son about an year to say a coherent word though he had started blabbering some words way early than that, maybe in his 3rd or 4th month he started saying meaningless words as part of his learning.

If angels are real then children are angelic. They come to this world with open mind. They look at the world with the newly opened eyes, listen to the strange sounds surrounding them, looking at the strangest lights, and shape of people moving about, uttering sounds that he or she could not comprehend. And then, day by day, the brain grows, and children, like miracles, starts learning and before long starts saying words, bringing joys to the family.

Unlike my son I grew up in a nation where most people were one kind. There was no Latinos, no Mexicans, there were no people from other nations, at least I didn't see them in the beginning. My father and mother were in the music world, so they had friends in musical world including in India and Pakistan. Sometimes, some of these people, singers, music directors came to our home. Slowly I learnt about some other cultures, though they had similarities, but subtle differences were there, like their primary languages, Hindi or Urdu, the efforts of my parents took to speak in those languages when they invited them, or when they stayed with us for a few days.

I didn't know about religion until my parents hired a tutor for me to learn some basic Arabic. It was so difficult in the beginning. Only thing I learnt from that stern faced tutor was memorizing some required "Suras" to learn to pray. I still remember some of these Suras. The tutor was indeed stern and sometimes outright rude as if he had received a divine authority to be harsh with the children. My sister and I used to wait with fear every day in the afternoon before he came and asked us to recite the memorized Sura. If we missed anything, any words or pronunciation, he took our hands, and slammed it with a small stick. We just cried, silently mostly, and then went back to learn more. It was so early in my life, I have forgotten most of that traumatic memory. I remember my mother fired that tutor after learning the excessive punishment.

My mother was a fashionable lady. She was a singer, performed in television and radio regularly and also sometimes in live events. As far I can remember, she disliked all those stern faced Mullahs like my father did. My parents prayed daily, but they did not accept any hatred and superiority spewing people.

I don't see any wrong in people who like to pray and have deep faith in their religion. My parents had similar faith. My father prayed until his last breath and my mother in her advanced age now is devout and faithful, however, she still likes to be fashionable and have no issues with people with any other faith.

I do have issues with people, including Mullahs and bigots and very rigid and stern faced people who promote religion such a way that do not keep any option for people with other faith or no faith. For them, everyone that does not believe in their faith and religion is destined for hell, and only they and people like them will be automatically selected as heaven bound. How laughable does this sound? This is true. If you go through various comments section in Facebook or Twitter, you can find these types of moronic arguments still get displayed and shared openly.

You see, when a child is born, he or she does not have any religion or faith. He or she learns everything from parents and other family members and as children grow up, they learn from their environment. So a child born into a Muslim family is a Muslim, a child born into a Christian family is a Christian, a Jewish children born into a Jewish family, A Hindu child is born into a Hindu family, a Buddhist child has Buddhist parents. If my parents had Zoroastrian religion, I would be calling me a Zoroastrian. There is no uniqueness about it. We are what we are by pure luck of draw. Nothing else.

When children grows up into adulthood, from any religion or faithful background, or perhaps no faith background, most of them cling to their parents' faith, understandably so, as that becomes ingrained into his or her identity.

When I was studying in Texas, I had a spirited argument with a born Texan. He had light complexion, tall, blue eyes, I think he also had slight reddish beard if I am remembering it correctly. He was my classmate and we were eating lunch along with a few other class mates. For whatever reason, we started arguing about the merit of Christianity and Islam. He was trying to convert me and I was trying to convert him, it was a funny scenario. We both argued with passion, and I thought that's the end of it, but the next day I saw him, he acted he didn't know me. It was hurtful then, now that memory came back as I am writing this. From then I understood that there is no spirited argument even among friends in regards to religion or faith, it can severe any friendship instantly.

About a year later I saw my old friend at the intersection of a street, talking loud about his strong held belief and the very danger of going to hell unless everyone does not covert to his belief. It was my turn not to recognize him and I just walked on.

Mullahs with unbending and rigid belief are in every religion, in Christianity, Islam, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhism, and they also exist in non faith based people like absolutist atheist. They have one thing in common despite their religious/irreligious difference, they are super certain of their immovable ideas that they are absolutely right of their claims and everyone else is absolutely wrong.

How bigotry enters and flourishes in people's mind?

It is not through any particular religion or faith or non faith. Bigotry enters through absolute rigidity. It seeps into our mind from our unwillingness to open up to the wider world. It slowly changes our outlook, it whispers in our inner ear about the evil others, and it incites us to do crazy things, like harming others who does not look like us, does not think like us. Every time we just shrug off seeing someone acting bad or downright bigoted, terming others as super sensitive or a snowflake without standing up to bigots, we are becoming part of this vicious cycle and promoting bigotry.

Bigotry permeates every culture and nation. Yes, there are marginalized people who suffer the most from bearing the brunt of bigotry. But that also does not make it right to be a bigot toward anyone that is not in the marginalized segment of a society. Two wrongs indeed don't make a right.

We were born with pristine and crystal clear mind. Life, its ups and downs, the nurturing or lack of it that we get as we grow up, the environment we surround with, our close circles, the books we read, the movies that we watch, and myriad of other factors nudge us toward one way or another.

Like everything else, it is up to every one of us, how we can get rid of any tiny bit of bigotry from our heart and mind.

It's a challenge and it is winnable.

Hoodwinked

2021-01-09T11:47:00.000-07:00

The meaning of hoodwink I learnt not many years ago. I don't even remember from where I first heard of this word. Its dictionary meaning is: "deceive or trick someone".

Growing up in Bangladesh I am very much familiar how the corrupted politicians hoodwink as many people as they can. Democracy was not easy to achieve in Bangladesh. After its bloodshed filled independence war when millions died and millions more injured and after only a few years of the governance of the first elected government, more bloodshed came, and multiple governments came and gone by several coup-d'états.

In my childhood we had only one television station and one main radio station in Dhaka. Government ran both of these. So, whoever was the government in particular time utilized these mediums as effectively as they could to propagate their political agendas, to hold onto power.

Even, the newspapers and cinemas had to go through strict censorship.

Still, each military based government failed to hold onto power. It was not easy to keep general people hoodwinked very long. Democracy eventually came and removed autocracy. It was not an easy journey. Many died in successive protests against the autocratic rules. And when democracy came, it was not easy either. It was indeed messy. Two polar opposite political parties were at each other's throat, as they are still the same to this date.

When I moved to America to pursue higher studies, one thing I loved about it from the very beginning was its peaceful transfer of power. I was amazed to see after a hard fought election, the losing party concedes gracefully and transition the power to the winning party.

For many like me, and I am sure billions of more in faraway nations, American democracy was indeed the shining beacon. I had very little knowledge of Canada and other nation's political system then, and also I only started taking a few history and political science courses in American university.

As I learnt more from books and from observations from more than half of my life having spent in north America, working in many places, working at numerous odd and professional jobs in various cities, coming close to people with many ethnicities, faiths, nationalities and diverse political ideologies, I remained in awe seeing the mostly peaceful coexistence in democracy.

Yes, history is painful. The grievances by indigenous and people with darker shades of skin color, ethnicities I found to be intense and real. But, I was either shielded by being busy all the time at school or work, or being very lucky to be in a place and a city in my formative years in Texas where I didn't see any mass discontents among people. Now, I know how lucky I was.

After September 11, 2001, I felt a big change happened everywhere. A sharp division between a before and an after. People's attituded changed. Distrusts grew. And some politicians took advantage of the painful circumstances by exploiting fears.

Moving to Canada shielded me and my family from most of these dire changes in America, though we were not completely immune from the pain. Canadian economy is very much linked with American economy. If American economy goes down, Canadian economy follows it. Political upheavals, instability in America has profound effect in Canada in many forms. It influences its national politics.

2016 was the year when another big change happened. Donald Trump became American president as a major shock to many. From the very beginning, during the bitter election campaign, his tones, directly attacking immigrants and people of color and diverse faiths with acrimonious words were not missed by me. When he came to power, like many other naive human beings, I also thought and hoped he would be changed and would govern from the center.

It didn't take long before that hopeless hope died.

Last 4 years I observed with increasing dismays as he uttered lies after lies, and repeated those lies even after facts were checked and he got caught many times, but still the lies never stopped. In the beginning I thought Donald Trump is the most idiotic American President in history. And I kept believing it. Only last year after reading a few contemporary books my delusion slowly swept away.

Now I know Donald Trump is one of the most shrewdest and cleverest Presidents in American history. He used the classic hoodwinking tricks that I knew from my childhood time, where autocrats and wanna be autocrats try to make everything very simple for the masses. Like the Bangladeshi autocrats, I trembly realized that Donald Trump was hoodwinking American people, he gave them a clear vision of their future, a return to a throwback American past when everything supposed to have been greater. He told them America was under siege by foreigners, by Muslims, by liberals. He told them the liberals in Democratic party wanted to make America a socialist / communist country. He said he wanted to make America first.

A large segment of people gobbled up everything he said.

In a recent book I'd read a few weeks ago, Surviving Autocracy, written by Masha Gessen, I found the following stanza:

"both Hitler and Stalin struck many of their countrymen as men of limited ability, education, and imagination—and, indeed, as being incompetent in government and military leadership. Contrary to popular wisdom, they were not political savants, possessed of one extraordinary talent that brought them to power. It was, rather, the blunt instrument of reassuring ignorance that propelled their rise in a frighteningly complex world."

What also surprising to me was an active approach putting people in Trump's cabinet and other leadership position who either did not possess any relevant skillsets or they had history of opposing that particular position or tasks. For example, the Environment Protection head who was against any environmental regulation or Education cabinet who didn't like quality public education but promoted private education in the disguise of school choices.

Year by year, Trump became stronger. He became the central figure in the Republican party. Quoting Masha Gessen, "In an autocracy, the politician’s primary audience is the autocrat himself, because he is the patron who apportions power and influence. In Trump’s America, Republican politicians perform for Trump—he is their primary audience—but his audience is his base, the people who come to his rallies and absorb his tweets. He distributes power by mobilizing these voters."

As the Republican party became more and more like a Trumpian party, the main opposition the Democratic party tried to counter it, but their efforts didn't have full success. The investigation by Mueller failed because the conclusion was vague and inconclusive. The impeachment fell through the Senate. And Trump was happy to put 3 conservative justices in Supreme Court that may have years of impact.

Like many at some point I also tuned off any political bickering filled news. When I started paying attention again in March of 2020, COVID Pandemic was slowly becoming menacing. I watched a few COVID press briefings where Trump and his team gave daily briefings. There I saw how the lies and downplaying of COVID never ceased to stop. Dr. Anthony Fauci and people from CDC were breaths of fresh air among the politicians but they could only do so much without full support from their main leader. To be fair, COVID or any pandemic is complex and is not easy to handle, and is highly unpredictable. But I still think if Trump could have been more forthcoming and truthful from the beginning and put all of his earnest efforts the pandemic could have been better managed.

Then came the painful summer. On top of pandemic, the black lives matter movement soared, for justified reason, after George Floyd's live streamed murder by a police officer. People of all colors and ethnicities were anguished seeing a fellow human being's life was snuffed out under a rigid knee. The counter protest was also massive, and most of them seemed to me were the Trump supporters, who vehemently claimed All Lives Matter, as if pointing to a specific and on going injustice was too much to fathom. Trump fueled the anger in his typical inflaming rhetoric.

From Masha Gessen's book I learnt, "Totalitarian regimes use words to mean their opposite. In 1984, George Orwell imagined the Party dictating its slogans: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Real-life totalitarian regimes do not grant their subjects the clarity of juxtaposing a word with its antonym—they enforce order by applying words in ways that invert meaning."

America is still a democracy and I am glad that Joe Biden with decades of political experience won the presidency in 2020. But I think it will be very challenging for him to heal the damages that Trump and his acolytes cost America. A large segment of Americans believe most news media are "fake news". They believe Trump is the one who tells the absolute truth and they believe Democrats are the incarnation of devils, etc. etc. How to recover from this deeply held beliefs based on years of lies and deceptions?

It's possible. But it will take honest efforts. It will take steps to dismantle the lies and fears about immigrants and anyone considered as "others", about the fearful outside world. Without the significant changes in the Republican party's extreme ideology that many of them hold dearly to appease Trumpism, Democrats will fail in their all noble goals of making a more equitable world. Once Republican party's most major leaders were centrist or just right of the center, but first the Tea Party and then Trumpism changed everything.

2021 started like 2020 did, with a bang! The attack on American Capitol in Washington DC on June 6 shall indeed remain in livable history and possibly many years to come after we are all gone. In last few days it seems the sanity is slowly returning after this horrific attack at the heart of American democracy. Freedom of speech is super important. But freedom of speech does not give anyone the right to spew incessant lies and hatred and incitement of violence. Various social media and technology platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple are taking long over due steps. But the problem is already a huge segment of Americans, even a large segment of Canadians, Europeans, even in other continents and nations, the effects of Trumpism spread, far and wide.

Maybe the pandemic and its eventual end or better control will have positive impact. When everyone who wants to get vaccinated and the spread of the virus is slowed and stopped and managed like we manage other yearly viruses, and when the economy rebounds as it will surely do unless there is any unforeseen calamity, most if not all people can be united, inspired by "understanding of our fundamental equality and interdependence" in this only living and breathing world we know of. We have bigger and real existential crisis waiting, like the unstoppable climate change, maybe a runaway meteor or a gigantic asteroids, or more natural disasters waiting to be happened, that may bring grief filled unity among the warring humans.

Hold Fast to Dreams

2020-09-21T23:34:00.002-06:00

I love to read often the following poetry snippet of Langston Hughes':

"Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow."

Only 8 lines and 33 words, and the poet wrote the necessary words many years ago that are needed in this time of growing sadness from a wild fire like spreading pandemic and political and economic instability.

"Hold fast to dreams", he says again, "Hold fast to dreams", that is the key to hopefulness and living in this beautiful world for however brief our existence may be.

Hold fast to dreams.

A Book Review: An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

2020-08-28T00:41:00.006-06:00

Matt Richtel is a terrific writer. His book on immune system is titled: An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives.

In my childhood, my parents taught me the very basics of our immune system, like I have a large number of tiny soldiers inside my body that fight with many viruses, bacteria and other pathogens to protect me. They told me that when I get injured, like a small cut on finger, it is these tiny soldiers come and repair the wounded area. I passed the similar knowledge to my son when he was younger.

That's about it. That's what I knew as I played soccer in the mushy mud, cricket under the scorching sun, kabadi in monsoon rain, while hopping from tree to rooftop back to another tree with hand made slingshot, jumping on reddish brick or slippery grass. In subsequent years, schooling taught me a bit more, like the B and T Cells, antigens, antibody, how vaccine works, etc. Also, I learnt how having good eating habits and doing exercises regularly keep our immune system strong.

Matt Richtel presented our amazing immune system through the lives of four people. One of them was his closest childhood friends.

Our immune system is very complex, but Matt Richtel presented this complex and least understood subject lucidly, in simple words and within the actual life stories.

One major point from this book is that our immune system defends us, not by only raging wars against pathogens, but also and mainly by maintaining and promoting peace. Only when everything fails, the immune system goes to all out war.

I find the story of Robert (Bob) T. Hoff profound. He was infected with HIV virus that killed his friends and loved ones, but Bob survived, he never got sick from HIV. His powerful immune system shielded him from the menacing AIDS that killed millions of people.

The story of Jason Greenstein was heartbreaking. His entrepreneurial heart, strong determination and resilience facing the uphill battles against a terminal cancer (Hodgkin's lymphoma) one after another, going through pain after pain, is tragic, but he is also a source of inspiration for Matt Richtel to dig deep into immune system and various immunotherapies that Jason and three other lives depicted in the book gone through.

Our elegant immune system tries to keep peace. It is not a relentless war monger that many in the wider population including me learnt from childhood, but its main purpose is to maintaining harmony, the balance between our "self" and "alien". The writer drew a meaningful parallel here: how a healthy immune system cooperates with our friendly bacteria ("alien"), helping each other, while when immune system goes awry, autoimmune disorder happens when our own immune system attacks the very cells and organs that it is programmed to protect. It has stunning similarity within human societies, where "Xenophobia, blind nationalism and racism, is an autoimmune disorder. A culture, tone deaf in its own defense, attacks so aggressively that it puts itself at serious risk. Biology's lesson, honed like water-polished stone, teach us that cooperation with our species' diversity is undeniably key to harmony and survival".

Here is a good quotation from the book: "civilization ..... has been dominated by the push and pull of our competing instincts to cooperate and alienate, to see what people share in common or prey on what divides them. The lesson of the immune system is that the better able we are to find common ground, the more allies and weapons we have to contend with a greater, common foe." (page 396)

It is the global efforts from every nation, every culture and creed, that are needed to fight our "greater, common foe", which is the very inevitable death itself, "If we learn together and cooperate, we can tackle autoimmunity and cancer and Alzheimer’s, and who knows what other seemingly impossible foes." (page 397).

Here is another great quote: "the immune system cautions us to take the least destructive path possible to a livable balance. When we don’t cooperate, when we err too easily on the side of war—literal and proverbial, physical and verbal, armed and political—we emulate one of the most self-destructive of our traits: an overheated defense system."

Tinkering with immune system by using various medicines to treat diseases has risks, many of which are still going through scientific research. However, rather than tinkering with our immune system, there are four powerful things that we have control of: sleep, exercise, meditation and nutrition.

Basically, sleep and exercise keep our immune system (adrenal) from firing too intensely. Lack of sleep and lack of quality exercise raise inflammation throughout our body, and also makes our immune system less functional. Exercise also slows down the natural aging process.

Embracing good nutrition is also super important. "The less toxic the things you put into your body, the less likely your body is to create, or need to create, an inflammatory response.........When it comes to food, science identifies risks associated with unnatural substances you digest, additives and chemicals and factory inventions that are not actual food. They make it likelier that your immune system has little choice but to react."

Here the writer points out that more active we can be, both our body and our brain, the more signal we pass to our internal system that we play a vital role in our own and our species' survival, this generates a continuous cycle of regeneration and increases the probability of our survival. The revere is also true where when we become still, both physically and mentally, our internal system interprets that we want to quit and it takes away our resources that we need to survive.

In the end, our death is inevitable. Matt Richtel points out that our immune system evolved to defend us as an overall species, but not as our individual self. It keeps us alive until we pass our genetic materials to next generation, then bring our offspring to adulthood so that it can protect itself and the cycle can continue. When our task is done, the inevitable demise comes. There is no way to stop it. We cannot live forever.

None of us can control this, but what we can plausibly control is how we age, how healthy we remain to our last days. The key point here is: "Less pain, anxiety, disabling disease. Less fragility."

Here is one quotation from the book that I find to be profound: "two competing principles in exquisite balance: We must continue to strive, dream, and exercise all the passions that have gotten us this far, while also doing a much better job of accepting death. Death is not just inevitable, not just programmed into us and facilitated in ways by our immune system. It is essential for our survival." (page 407)

I loved reading this book and heartily recommend others to read it.

Black Lives Matter!

2020-06-03T14:43:00.002-06:00

The protests in America are live streamed for more than a week now. Images and videos are vivid. Mostly peaceful protesters are marching on the streets with placards, shouting slogans together: "No Justice, No Peace", "Justice for George Floyd".

I have seen people of all colors, races, ethnic origins are walking, Blacks, Caucasians, Latinos, Asians, Africans, Native Americans, everyone out on the streets, singing, reciting inspiring poetry, distributing water, where many are holding up signs saying "Black Lives Matter".

Police presence is everywhere, as it should be. The primary task of police force anywhere in the world is to keep peace, preventing the break down of rules that any civil society is based on.

One good news arrived. At last, after more than an agonizing week of protests, peaceful and violent, in America along with the unified solidarity shown around the world, all 4 fired police officers are now charged in George Floyd's murder case. Couldn't this be done earlier? The slogans in the protests that I'd seen were demanding justice: "No Justice, No Peace!" - is this an unreasonable yearning?

George Floyd's 6 year old daughter, Gianna came to a news briefing, innocent and grief stricken, clutching her crying mother's hand. As her mother said, she will be growing up without her father. The pain Gianna and her family are going through is very real and hits closer to home for many if not all, like a father like me of a six year old boy. Little Gianna said, “Daddy changed the world”. Yes, he did Gianna. I wish he was alive to see the outpouring of heartfelt support, tears and love.

Black Lives Matter! This simple statement does not nullify the universal statement: "All Lives Matter". Without protecting the vulnerable segments of a nation, may that be in America, Canada, Mexico, Brazil or Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Egypt, France, Israel, Palestine, China, whichever that nation is, ALL lives, in reality, are not treated equally.

One simple analogy for those who seem to me do not comprehend the significance of "Black Lives Matter" movement is this: just think about a neighborhood, anywhere in the world. Say there is a fire in a house. Fire fighters come to put off the fire, and ask all people congregating in the neighborhood, "which house has the fire that needs protection"? The most precise answer would be to pointing to the very house that is on fire, that needs the most protection right that moment. The wrong and the answer with abject indifference would be, "All Houses Matter", meaning don't point out to the exact house, but protect all houses right that moment. How ridiculous this answer sound to you while the fire engulfs a particular house?

Another simple analogy is this: Say you are sick. You have broken your left arm. Your arm needs fixing, but now everyone you know starts yelling, "All Arms Matter", broken or not. How is that unreasonable demand helpful to fix your broken left arm while you are in tears from unbearable pain and suffering?

Black Lives Matter movement is important as it acknowledges the very real problem exist in America, and also it inspires to resolve the problem, so that the same brutality like George Floyd and many others faced do not repeat. This movement is also inspiring others including the disadvantaged segments in other nations to speak up, to get out of the silent and violent complicity.

Police force is vital to preserve peace. This is an essential service. Without rules a society breaks down. Police force consists of people from the nation. They are someone's father, mother, brother, sister, wife, husband, son and daughter. They are part of the civil society. They are not the enemies. The entrenched system that do not want to change is the problem. Without having fair justice a society breaks down anyways in the end. Some segments of society, for example, the blacks and browns and natives in America, are indeed subjected to daily discrimination and racism.

This is also true in other parts of the world including Canada where the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his predecessor Prime Minister Stephen Harper both acknowledged this truth.

Discrimination is based on color of skin (racism), or on how much money and status you have in the society, or based on a person's religion or lack of faith or sexual orientation, or any other shallow differences that can be exploited. All of these are reprehensible.

With all its faults, problems, political and societal issues, America still is, in my humble opinion, one of the best nations to live in, due to its freedom of expressions that, unfortunately, is not the same in many parts of the world, however, it is indeed a nation filled with problems that must be addressed.

Just imagine the same level of protests happening in China or India or Pakistan, or Bangladesh or Syria or Palestine. How much bloodshed there could be. Can you imagine?

In recent days the alarming news emerging from its most powerful man, Donald Trump, seemingly glorifying violence and incitement, is definitely painful to watch. But the civil society are out in force and can state openly what they think, against or for, and can vote freely to elect its government, I understand fairly. Can this be said the same for other nations with a few exceptions?

I wish all these ex Police officers in Minneapolis were arrested and charged earlier as that could have addressed the question of deeply seated unfairness and racism question better. Still it's a positive development. Looting and violence as a form of protest do not help in the end, though I admit looting and violence can shook more people in sudden jolt from perpetual slumber. I can understand the deep frustration and economic desperation that can push someone to that illogical direction. However, looting and violence in any protests weaken the noble cause, as it gives strength to the naysayers, emboldening the solidified discriminators more. Gandhi in India in his fight against the British Colonial system pre 1947 in Indian subcontinent and Nelson Mandela in South Africa during the notorious apartheid time, followed and inspired non violence based movement, that had brought real changes in the end. However, one can also argue that there were also violent elements active in that time period including in India and South Africa.

Black Lives Matter! In the end I am hopeful like George Floyd’s six year old daughter Gianna saying “Daddy changed the world”, all these protests will act as a wake up call in the civil society, will bring the necessary changes in law enforcement and also in public and private, small businesses and large corporate culture, where subtle and blatant racism and all forms of discrimination will be uprooted once for all.

One can always hope for the best, can't he? Sometimes, I hope often time, even fairy tale may come true, right? I love to read Langston Hughes' immortal poem "Dreams" as often as I can:

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Black Lives Matter because without protecting the vulnerable and oppressed segment of a nation fairness cannot be achieved nor peace can be sustained, then in all fairness and in reality, All Lives Cannot Matter.

Can a Single Virus be Omnipotent?

2020-05-11T12:00:00.003-06:00

I'm not a virologist. So, take my personal opinion below as worth of two cents at most.

In recent days I have been plodding through a historical and scientific facts based book written By John M. Barry titled "The Great Influenza", and learning a bit of detail about viruses and their attack processes and the ingenuity of humanity to counter it. If there are any specialists exist in my friend list, please clarify on this: Can one virus attack everything in human body, from head to toe that this Washington Post article seems to be reporting on? Or is this just a plain case of fear mongering from some news media that many are claiming? During the 1918 Influenza crisis, some groups in many nations were talking along the similar line that the Influenza crisis was just hyped up for political expediency in the middle of the raging First World War. Subsequent painful history, seems to me, disproved this claim.

Here are a few snippets from this terrifying article:

"Today, there is widespread recognition the novel coronavirus is far more unpredictable than a simple respiratory virus. Often it attacks the lungs, but it can also strike anywhere from the brain to the toes. Many doctors are focused on treating the inflammatory reactions it triggers and its capacity to cause blood clots, even as they struggle to help patients breathe."

"It attacks the heart, weakening its muscles and disrupting its critical rhythm. It savages kidneys so badly some hospitals have run short of dialysis equipment. It crawls along the nervous system, destroying taste and smell and occasionally reaching the brain. It creates blood clots that can kill with sudden efficiency and inflames blood vessels throughout the body.

It can begin with a few symptoms or none at all, then days later, squeeze the air out of the lungs without warning. It picks on the elderly, people weakened by previous disease, and, disproportionately, the obese. It harms men more than women, but there are also signs it complicates pregnancies."

"It mostly spares the young. Until it doesn’t: Last week, doctors warned of a rare inflammatory reaction with cardiac complications among children that may be connected to the virus. On Friday, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) announced 73 children had fallen severely ill in the state and a 5-year-old boy in New York City had become the first child to die of the syndrome. Two more children had succumbed as of Saturday."

Two reasons are given for the virus being so omnipotent when attacking human beings:

"many scientists have come to believe that much of the disease’s devastation comes from two intertwined causes.

The first is the harm the virus wreaks on blood vessels, leading to clots that can range from microscopic to sizable. Patients have suffered strokes and pulmonary emboli as clots break loose and travel to the brain and lungs. A study in the Lancet, a British medical journal, showed this may be because the virus directly targets the endothelial cells that line blood vessels.

The second is an exaggerated response from the body’s own immune system, a storm of killer “cytokines” that attack the body’s own cells along with the virus as it seeks to defend the body from an invader."

Only thing I can say is stay very careful everyone. I am all for staying very positive and calm in any dire situation, but also it's good trying as humanly possible for not being foolish either in the current evolving scenario. In my limited knowledge about viruses I have not read about such an unpredictable, super efficient and all attacking naturally caused viruses in the book I am currently reading, also during my various biology and microbiology courses I had taken many years ago I didn't come across anything such mentioned. Something is not adding up here and I am not sure what it is yet.

It is most likely since this is a very new virus, our best minds in scientific world are facing many uncertainties. And that's what science is all about. It takes rigorous studies, observations, experiments, before any new concepts get clear. When new information arises from experiments, older concepts gets updated or demolished. I still believe that the collective humanity will conquer this menace, but when that remains a big question.

Reference link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/10/coronavirus-attacks-body-symptoms/

Gun Bans in Canada

2020-05-01T17:34:00.003-06:00

This seems to be a good step. In a democracy why would anyone need assault-style firearms? However, this arms banning step does not answer the question on illegal guns that criminals can get apparently easily. In Nova Scotia shooting, the gunman obtained his guns illegally, not through any legal means.

I am aware of a huge debate between for and against gun ownership and the historical reasons behind it. In an uncertain time, like any other time really, the law abiding citizens want to get assurances from their elected governments that they are protected and criminals of all kinds don't go rampant with violence. And also one other argument that the pro guns people have that I have seen stems from the sheer mistrusts toward government.

These are legitimate concerns for many nations where democracy is not stable. Canada has a functioning democratically elected federal government, popular opposition parties who has more than 50% of people's support along with provincial governments governed by different political parties. Also, Canada has an independent judicial system, an apparently censorship free news media and journalists who are not afraid to ask tough questions. These all should ensure checks and balances for any government not to overreach in any manners.

Trust is not easy to earn. Trudeau's government needs to think better to win back trusts from many law abiding gun owners, answering their concerns transparently. Comparing to many shambling democracy in our world, many of them are democratic only in name and paper, Canada seems to me is in stronger position in the trust front, however, I can understand the frustrations of legitimate and law abiding citizens' rational concerns.

Reference: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-gun-control-measures-ban-1.5552131

Confusions about New Corona Virus

2020-04-30T00:42:00.004-06:00

We have access to abundance of news. As COVID-19 passes 3 million marks, death toll surpasses 200K around the globe in increasingly faster rate, so does the various claims and theories on the origins, transmissible capability, severeness, treatment and other aspects of this virus have grabbed the world's attention. Many nations have taken stringent action by necessary public health measures including ordering their citizens to stay at home unless they are the essential workers. These are good steps. Historically, if we look back to Influenza crisis of 1918, the unpredictable nature of any virus makes it very difficult to make a vaccine or therapeutic available in short period of time, so the best approach at this point is to minimize social interactions to contain the virus.
However, this is causing huge impact on the economic front. Many people's lives are impacted beyond imagination. In developing nations, a majority of people work daily for their livelihood without any savings or other sources of income, nor they have governmental support like the developed nations can provide. Even in the developed world, layoffs are still occurring as businesses of every kind suffer unlike they have ever before. Layoffs after layoffs are increasing and even the lucky ones are still holding their jobs are not certain whether the next day will be the last.

Human beings are good in seeing patterns. It is our innate nature to find resemblances among various things that affect our lives. During this pandemic, as more and more people are getting infected, the news feed of social media are getting flooded of death news of known and unknown people from near and far, we try to find meanings, we try to give or hold on to stories that seem to match those pattern matching resemblances. Hence the start of various theories that are not scientifically proven nor are they credible by any independently verifiable source. What these unverifiable claims do is increase people's distrust, rising the anxiety levels a few folds more. Governments are doing what they can in a dynamic scenario. Some are doing better than others. Some politicians are still catering to their political bases, even claiming unfounded, unproven and sometimes even dangerous antidotes to new Corona Virus.

We have access to abundance of news. But we don't have access to abundance of news that are thoroughly fact checked. Maybe the next generation of news service will be using some technological marvel to correct this error. But for now we need to be alert.

False Equivalence in the Time of COVID 19

2020-03-24T10:36:00.003-06:00

What is a false equivalence? Politicians and many journalists uses it. It is basically comparing apples and oranges. Both are fruits but not the same.

In more formal definition, the false equivalence is “a logical fallacy in which an equivalence is drawn between two subjects based on flawed or false reasoning” (Ref: Wikipedia)

The daily press conference done by President Trump on March 23, 2020 had examples of false equivalence. He tried to downplay the very realistic possibility of devastating impact of COVID 19 with the road accidents to prove his political point. But the problem in this false equivalence example is that COVID 19 is killing people faster everyday and on a near vertical trajectory pointing to many order of magnitude of mortality than car crashes cause each year. This is comparIng apples and oranges.

If the near vertical rise of the curve is not hammered down, and the virus gets more opportunities to spread freely, the direct death toll will be enormous, causing deaths to millions of people in US, many of them will be the most vulnerable segments of the population. However, the indirect impact will cause more devastation because of the inevitable collapse of the already stressed out healthcare system, then patients with health issues like heart attack, cancer, injuries from car crash will not get treated timely with care, therefore increasing death toll many times more.

President Trump also compared the seasonal flu with COVID 19, another apples and oranges comparison as flu is already well researched and we have vaccine and anti viral medicines for it. COVID 19 is a new virus for which no vaccine or proven cure available until scientists create an effective vaccine and medicinal cures are in place and distributed to the wider population.

I think easing restriction soon would be a monumental mistake as it will let the virus wreck more damages by killing more people, that will surely create more fear and panic and will have more dire consequences for the economy. Transforming US strategy like South Korea, as Trump mentioned, so quick would not be easy and now is not the time to do sudden experimentation. The prudent step would be placing more restriction for longer time, not years but a few months, then ease the restriction when the healthcare system is ready to take the similar approach like South Korea.

President Trump is not the only one who seems to be downplaying the impact of COVID 19. Some leaders of other nations, not necessarily the President or Prime Ministers, like Bangladesh, India and others doing the same, and in many cases utilizing the similar false equivalence examples to accomplish their political agenda.

Strange and Dangerous Time

2020-03-24T10:34:00.000-06:00

We are going through strange and dangerous time. The very real threat of COVID-19, the alarming speed of its spread and the steeply rising number of deaths, have forced many developed and developing nations taking urgent and emergency measures. In front of a seemingly unstoppable virus, invisible but deadly, the very raw fear in every human beings have come up to the surface.

To defeat the highly transmissible virus like COVID-19 stringent measures like the strict social distancing is necessary. Governments of the world need to be flexible to deploy all available and innovative measures to win this war against the mighty virus.

Among people, from Canada to US to Mexico to Brazil to Italy to Germany to France to Spain to UK to Egypt to South Africa to Bangladesh to Indonesia to Australia, people of every nations are terrified of the grim possibility of an uncontrolled virus stamping out our precious livelihood, our very existence. The colourful graphs showing the near vertical rise of new cases and deaths by the virus are frightening for many. So the people in most nations are demanding their government to take more stringent measures. And the seemingly benevolent governments are responding.

However, we need to be mindful that, “history teaches that emergency measures are frequently abused and at times become permanent. Indeed, they can provide fertile grounds for widespread human rights violations and may even provoke a transformation from democracy to a totalitarian regime.”

This can happen to any nation, even the most sophisticated and the matured democratic ones.

Along with this possibility exists the inevitable and devastating. economic collapse that the very needed lockdown will bring.

In the Common Dreams article, the writer observes that the answer to these very grim but realistic possibility of economic meltdown around the globe is to take a few prudent progressive steps by the government of every nation. Some of these ideas are:

* “A living universal income and freeze to mortgages and rents for people under the poverty line, as well as for those who lose their jobs, the homeless, gig economy workers, the unemployed and small businesses.

* Mandatory paid sick leave that matches one's salary, so that poor sick people will not feel obliged to go to work.

* Free and comprehensive treatment for coronavirus and potentially related symptoms, no questions asked (about immigration status), so that no one goes untreated because of fear or poverty. This could entail expanding Medicare to all Americans, for example.

* Government investment in homeless and women's shelters, and food banks. And massive medical aid to refugees.”

We are going through a strange and dangerous time. Many of us are confused, we have never experienced a fear filled uncertain situation like this before. This strange time is also opening up our delusion filled eyes. We started to value what is more important, like family, over spending invaluable time in never ending entertainment binge.

I can see three possibilities after defeating COVID-19, and humanity will defeat it for sure, regardless of many of our chances of survival. These are:

1. The world goes back to its original state, where mindless consumptions of everything, staying indifferent to others’ pain, being numb binging endless entertainment from every possible source returns in heartless triumph.

2. The world regresses to a totalitarian nightmare, every nation separately or collectively merges into a supra autocratic entity, almost like many dystopian novels like 1984, predicted.

3. The wisdom of the world populace prevails and every nation, separately or collectively pursues universal goodness for all so that humanity is well prepared for the next threat, the looming climate change crisis or the onslaught of more morbid pandemic or whatever crashes with sudden thump.

Let’s hope the goodness of humanity prevails.

Reference: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/03/22/coronavirus-conundrum-and-human-rights

Fitness

2020-01-30T22:34:00.004-07:00

When January comes every new year, many of us make new year's resolution that includes exercising more and eating healthier food along with many other noble goals. By the end of January, many of these goals dissipate into increasingly fading memory. Many events in life happens, we get busy at work, family, sickness, rushing to appointments, studies, and many modern distractions play in synchronous mode to get us disarrayed from our goals set at the onset of a new year.

To get back on the noble set goals to be healthier, one of the first things we can do is to measure our current level of fitness status. Attached are two images that show tables where one can measure his or her fitness level, that can sometime proves to be inspiring to return to a healthy living. These two tables are available in https://www.topendsports.com/

How to do push ups correctly? Check this link: https://www.wikihow.com/Do-a-Push-Up

How to do squats correctly? Check this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aclHkVaku9U

Don't give up, ever! Keep pushing the boundary!

Fearful Time

2020-01-07T23:35:00.001-07:00

Stoicism talks about not to worry about the external events that one has no control of.

Epictetus said, "Some things are in our control, while others are not. We control our opinion, choice, desire, aversion and in a word, everything of our own doing. We don't control our body, property, reputation, position, and in a word everything not of our own doing. Even more, the things in our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unobstructed, while those not in our control are weak, slavish, can be hindered, and are not our own."

As the world entered into the human invented calendar year 2020, the drumbeats of war are reverberating, from one crazy theocratic and dictatorship based nation to another that unfortunately has a commander in chief who shows brazen instability in his words and actions.

Stoicism says not to worry about the external events as an ordinary man or woman does not have any control over it, however, it brings more stress. Stoicism has good point. Does it mean one cannot even raise the voice when the very external events bring the world to the brink of another devastating war?

I have been paying least possible attention to American President Donald Trump as possible last two years or so after observing first two years of his obnoxious and volatile public behavior where he incited violence and hatred toward every kind of vulnerable segments of society and also emboldened other despots in other nations.What baffles me more is the steadfast support he still garners from his adamant supporters who takes everything he utters as the sweetest divine words.

Donald Trump is in trouble. He was impeached by American Congress controlled by Democratic party, though he holds the executive power as US Senate hasn't made its decision yet, though the outcome of that decision by the Republican party controlled Senate is possibly quite apparent as was the case for the outcome by the Democratic party controlled Congress.

Now from the outset it looks like he is trying his best starting a war with Iran.

Iran is a nation run by dictatorial theocracy more than 40 years now. The last American president Barack Obama worked with American allies like United Kingdom, Germany, France and other nations and had negotiated a deal with Iran where economic sanctions were lifted on Iran for its commitment not to pursue nuclear based technologies, including creating horrifying nuclear weapons. After Donald Trump came to power, he nullified that agreement as if making an agreement and commitment among sovereign nations do not matter anymore. Like the pulling back from the Climate Change deal, Donald Trump and his party in power has backed away from a very real chance of bringing the theocracy based Iran in the fold of peaceful international community, denying it the chance to modernize and possible path toward democracy.

The path to democracy has never been easy for any nations that I know of. It is always filled with blood and gory and marred with violence. However, this is probably not a far fetched idea that if that nuclear deal was maintained, and no economic sanctions were placed upon Iran, then the theocratic dictatorship of Iran quite possibly would have collapsed by the pressure from its citizens' fair demand for a more free society and accountable government.

Now an Iranian general was killed by American drone attack along with Iraqi casualties, and Iran has struck American military bases inside Iraq using ballistic missiles, thus taking the entire scenario in a very volatile and unpredictable stage where the hope for peace is diminishing fast. Just now an Ukrainian civilian plane crashed in Iranian capital Tehran just after lifting off and possibly all 180 passengers died. The timing of this crash just after Iran sent a dozen of ballistic missiles targeting military bases in Iraq is a suspect to the least.

Is the world turning into a lawless jungle?

I do not know the answer to this primitive question, but I wish that American president Donald Trump and Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei look into the following dictum from the stoic Epictetus and take it to their apparently cold heart to find a wise solution out of this fearful time:

"The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own....."

A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa - a Book Review

2019-09-02T22:19:00.000-06:00

I thought I knew about distress, bottomless poverty and boundless miseries that many human beings under a totalitarian regime go through. I thought I understood how dehumanized many feel in every second of their brutally suppressed life. Masaji Ishikawa shattered my trifling understanding, by his slender book describing his and his family's endless sufferings in North Korea.

This is not an easy book to read. Not easy in the sense that I was in repeated shock reading the detail description, how desperate the condition in North Korea actual is, "the land of paradise" in propaganda jargon, but in reality just the opposite for most in that mysterious nation secluded from most of the world.

This is indeed a good book to read, in the sense that the English translation that I've read was done very well, detailing Masaji Ishikawa's misery filled life in depth.

Masaji Ishikawa and his family, his Korean father, Japanese mother and siblings were duped in 1960s and were brought to North Korea from Japan by promise of a land of paradise where education and health care were free, everyone has freedom, everyone has plenty of food to eat. This was the time after the Korean war, about fifteen years after second world war ended. By then "2.4 million Koreans stranded in Japan. They belonged to neither the winning nor the losing side, and they had no place to go. Once freed, they were simply thrown onto the streets. Desperate and impoverished, with no way to make a living."

This desperate life in Japan pushed many Koreans living there, many of them married to Japanese, eventually move back to North Korea. Government of Japan played its role too by playing either dumb or actively motivating these families who had no idea about the reality in North Korea.

Masaji Ishikawa's family found out from the very moment they landed in North Korea that the promise of a paradise was utterly false. They were literally fed dog food as welcome present. And their life went from bad to worse to beyond words. Here is a skin crawling description the writer puts, "But now he was scared, plain and simple. And that scared me to death. When I saw the terror in his eyes and heard the miserable realization in his voice, I knew once and for all that we’d been consigned to hell. It made my flesh crawl to think about it. My father had bought a pig, a chicken, and a sheep to feed his family, and some jealous neighbor had seen fit to rat him out for this gross misdemeanor. And that policeman would happily have killed him for it."

A totalitarian regime depends on controlling its population in absolute term. In that setting, people must have gruesome fear instilled so that no opposition ever dare to utter any word against the supreme leader or his regime. In a totalitarian regime the meaning of words becomes lopsided, like "That’s what happens to language in countries like North Korea. A totalitarian dictatorship is a “democratic republic.” Bondage is known as “emancipation.” Here is another extract relating to lopsided usage of language, "This was laughable, of course, but that’s always the way with totalitarian regimes. Language gets turned on its head. Serfdom is freedom. Repression is liberation. A police state is a democratic republic. And we were “the masters of our destiny.” And if we begged to differ, we were dead."

Masaji Ishikawa writes the horrific ordeals that he and his family had to suffer. Being half Japanese and returnees from Japan and having no political connection in North Korea, they were treated like serfs, "if you had no connections, forget it. At the local level, neighbors were clustered into groups of five families each, with a leader who was tasked with reporting everything about the members of the group to the secret police. Even if you were nobody. And being nobody, you were automatically suspect. People like that got sent to remote villages to work as serfs."

The farming and economic system in North Korea as the writer describes is destined to be failure as "the real farmers had to work under these ridiculous conditions all the time. They knew that, however long they worked and however much effort they put in, they wouldn’t be rewarded for their labors; their pay would be the same. And they had to follow the instructions of amateurs who didn’t know what they were talking about. So of course they lost all motivation. Who could blame them?"

Reading "A River in Darkness", the writer's indescribable agonies, his and his family's desperation, the shameful disregards from the democratic world, may not be for the faint heart, but if you like to expand your horizon to know the truth and reality for countless many subjugated in absolute totalitarian and totalitarian leaning regimes, this actual misery filled book is a must read. My wish for the writer Masaji Ishikawa is that he gets relevant governments' assistance bringing his remaining family to live with him honorably. He and his family suffered more than enough.

Here is one last quote from this unforgettable book: "But Young’s behavior reminded me what it was to be a human being. And I came to recognize that, no matter how difficult the reality, you mustn’t let yourself be beaten. You must have a strong will. You have to summon what you know is right from your innermost depths and follow it."

"Poking Nose" in the Case of Human Rights is Everyone's Business

2018-08-07T22:44:00.001-06:00

Bangladesh Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu termed the U.S Embassy's rightful statement regarding the beating of students in the peaceful protests as "poking its nose in Bangladesh's internal politics in an indecent way" - that does not sound coming from a minister of a democratically elected government, representing a nation which is also signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Here is what US Embassy in Dhaka had stated in its Facebook post: "Nothing can justify the brutal attacks and violence over the weekend against the thousands of young people who have been peacefully exercising their democratic rights in supporting a safer Bangladesh"

US Embassy as everyone one else has the right to speak against any brutal attacks and violence on unarmed middle school, high school and university students that did happen mostly from Saturday.

There was no need of this reprehensible crackdown. Students were protesting peacefully, then they were attacked without any provocation.

The ruling party, Awami League, is considered as a progressive liberal party, and it does hold some good reputation comparing to alternatives, especially for its historical siding with the people who were wronged. However, the recent brutality that the ruling party and its goon infested student wing had shown is nothing but shameful. I am aware that there might be some opposition element who might have tried to instigate the students, but overall from the news sources I have seen it seemed the student protest movement was not managed by any nefarious political agenda, but solely for the road safety.

Government tried to deny any attack on students, however, many videos and photos showing such heartbreaking episodes exist, and does look to be genuine.

Freedom of expression like free speech is the cornerstone of any democratic nation. Since Awami League proudly proclaims that it is the forefront bearer of democracy in Bangladesh, beating of journalists by government sponsored goons, and arrest of Shahidul Alam, a prominent photographer and activist in Bangladesh, does not exemplify democracy, but points toward an intolerant autocracy, ironically, that historically Awami League and its founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had struggled against.

Awami League could have avoided the entire crisis if it were handled differently. Instead of sending armed police and equally armed political goons to spill protesting teenagers' blood, its all level leaders should have gone to the streets and could have protested side by side with the students, embracing their rightful demands with more open hearts. Its top level minister like Shahjahan Khan who had fumbled in the beginning of the protest by trying to diminish the protest while displaying uncaring attitude, should have been more careful and caring. Similarly, the home minister Obaidul Quader was arrogant when he said he didn't see how he could "kiss" the protesting students when they were agitating toward the central party's location. These all showed arrogance at its worst, where the best were expected.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina seemed to be more caring than her fumbling ministers, but she could have done better by ordering the law enforcement agencies not sheltering Awami League's political goons and only to protect the protesting students, not beating them.

I hope this is taken as a learning lesson for the ruling party in Bangladesh. The first good thing that the government of Bangladesh should do is releasing all prisoners, like Shahidul Alam and others who had dared to speak against the crackdown. They should not charge against any protesters unless they are indeed involved in any criminal activities. Protesting is not a criminal activity. However, the videos and photos that are widely available showing goons beating students while police stood standby doing nothing along with hooligans' shameful attack on US Ambassador's car, should be thoroughly and fairly investigated and anyone found guilty should be charged regardless of their political affiliations. That's what people expect from a democratically elected government in Bangladesh. Nothing less.

Fabrication

2018-08-06T00:07:00.000-06:00

Nah! It's all rumor, lies and deception
The earth is flat and the sun moves around
We never gone to moon, all fabrication
Only the words of throne hold the ground

Didn't they tell all will be well and good?
Goons will not beat the innocents with sticks
And machetes but will bring delicious food
Dangerous roads will be cleaned, free of freaks

You have the full freedom of expression
Can say anything, do peaceful protest
No one will imprison you, commotion
Will not be the norm, nor be the pretext

To maintain the peace and tranquility
Of a loving "desh", full of fragrant rose
Where ministers serve with humility
and kisses, so alive! Not comatose

Where the people have the backbone intact
Not afraid to say what has to be said
And the children can learn, play, and react
Running boys and giggling girls with black braid

---------------------------------------------------------------
August 6, 2018
Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)

This satirical poem is dedicated to the innocent protesting students of Bangladesh whose brave apolitical struggles to have safer roads is a source of inspiration for many.

Bangladesh - What is Happening? Teenage Students Struggle to Have Safer Roads

2018-08-05T03:19:00.000-06:00

We live in the age of internet when quick communications through social media is the norm. Some of these news sources look to be true and some of them seem to be dramatized to pursue an ulterior agenda.

Seeing various news sources, including some videos and news articles regarding Bangladeshi students protest movement that started last week after at least two high school students had lost their lives when a bus hit them while they were waiting to get on the bus, I am trying to understand actually what is happening in Bangladesh, a country where I lived my nostalgic childhood, where my siblings, parents, grand parents, cousins, uncles, aunts, long gone ancestors and many of my close childhood friends were born. This particular tragic event stirred a movement among the students whose demand is to have safer roads in Bangladesh, where thousands of people die every year from road accidents and many of them are students going to school or returning home from school.

When I was growing up in Dhaka, I still remember my anxious mother and father, one of them or both taking us to school, in a car or a rickshaw or a taxi, at that time we called them "baby taxi". And after school, one or both were waiting at the school door to take us back home. In later years, I remember taking bus with them too, but not as often as other types of vehicles. Every school day, without a miss, almost.

One time, I still remember as if it happened only yesterday, my 70+ year old grandma came on a rickshaw to pick me up from school as neither of my working parents could come that day, holding my infant sister in her cradle in one hand, two of my other sisters, one of them was a toddler, and other one was going to primary school at the time, were bundled in her other hand. I still remember feeling embarrassed, in front of my "cool" middle school friends, being picked up from school by my grandma in a rickshaw. Now when I look back to that moment, I feel sad for being a stupid insensitive boy, as the amount of stress my grandma was in, handling three children in a tiny rickshaw and coming to pick me up from the school was beyond my comprehension at that time.

The reason of my parents' and grandparents' anxiousness was mainly for the terrible road and traffic condition in Dhaka where daily accidents were quite regular. As if by just being there, accompanying us to and from school would keep us safe from horrible road hazard.

In my childhood I remember reading or hearing news of road accidents almost everyday. Even my father was involved in multiple ones, and in one of the accidents he was seriously injured and was hospitalized for a few days. In another accident, I still remember that day, I was about to go to take my first Secondary Certification Exam, when the news came that my father's business associate was killed on a road accident. His name was "Bokhtiar", and he was riding a motorcycle, got hit by a truck. Bokthtiar uncle was very close to our family. My parents rushed to the hospital and was with him in his last moments.

I am reminiscing my childhood memories as I try to understand the reason the teenage students in Dhaka are on the road, protesting a system that still remains as one of the most inefficient, corrupted, clogged and dangerous, where unnecessary deaths and injuries cause thousands of deaths every year as it did all those years ago during my childhood. As if nothing has changed.

From my childhood to this day. Economically Bangladesh has made tremendous steps. From being mocked as a "basket nation" and now after years of struggle as it is quickly progressing to become an economic powerhouse where gross domestic product trend has remained steadily upward, especially from the decade of 1990s, and now stands at respectable 7.3 even amid the global economic uncertainty. Overall, millions of people are living better lives, out of the dismal poverty, and the economy seems to be growing more and in some account it is "booming". It is true that still a sizable population of Bangladesh are struggling, but the overall trend seems to be unmistakable as it moves up, and pointing to a time when Bangladesh will become a developed nation within foreseeable years if this trend continues and no unforeseen disaster strikes the nation. A big if, some may say, but still possible I believe.

The recent agitation among the students for the legitimate cause of having safer road and transportation system should be embraced by all political parties there, including the ruling Awami League and the main opposition parties like BNP and others. Having a better road and transportation system, infrastructure and justified rules that are implemented fairly where drivers without properly obtained licenses are prohibited to drive vehicles, where the crumbling roads, bridges and other relevant infrastructure elements are regularly maintained, could be a major step taking Bangladesh to that next level, attracting more foreign investments, and in the end transforming the nation into a more advance economy as it deserves.

Political thuggery has been a source of concern from the inception of Bangladesh. From the time of autocratic rulers, and the subsequent democratically elected governments, when a party goes to power, unfortunately it is perceived by the majority of country's population that the ruling party becomes supremely corrupted. It was true in the time of autocratic ruler Ershad, it was in the time of BNP and sadly it remains true in the time of Awami League, the party that formed the current government. I like to give the first decade of Bangladesh the benefit of doubt. When a nation is born after a protracted war where three million civilians died, many more severely injured and millions displaced from that horrific war, the decade after the independence war of 1971 was not easy. Famines, assassinations, counter assassinations, coups, devastating floods, super storms, etc. were part of the lives of Bangladeshis. Slowly, from the decade of 1990s, it looked Bangladesh was becoming more matured as its restive population overthrown the last autocratic ruler, and established democracy, though a lots to be done to make that democracy to hold a truly free and fair election.

Now, seeing some videos and news articles where the beatings of student protesters were documented and look to be genuine, though I understand that it is not easy to be sure of the authenticity of these videos and news sources, however, from my intact childhood memories I still remember how the previous governments that were not so democratic tried to deny all its involvements crushing any opposing movements it thought as threat to its political survival, and terming all opposing news source as false.

Awami League is considered as a progressive and liberal political party. And it claims to believe in democracy. The same is claimed by its main opposition party BNP which is considered as a conservative party in Bangladesh. These two remain to be the largest political parties in Bangladesh, both of them alternatively ruling Bangladesh many years now. My humble apolitical recommendations to both of its top leaders are:

Protect the children. Students who are protesting the horrible road and traffic conditions in Bangladesh is long overdue to be tackled and resolved fairly.
Don't play politics with the students' lives. Agree with and implement their fair demands as quickly as possible without resorting to beating them with political thugs and police (Awami League) or inciting them to accomplish any dirty political goals to regain the power (BNP).
These students are the future leaders, doctors, engineers, scientists, teachers, nurses, bankers and other professionals. Don't break their confidence. Support them.

Lots of problems to solve like the impending climate change for which Bangladesh has to work extra hard for its survival and its very existence. Saving the lives of future leaders and professionals of Bangladesh, that's what these students truly represent, should be the goal of the ruling government and the opposition political parties, and also the law enforcement agencies.

"We want justice" - the slogan that the students are chanting repeatedly, is nothing but the expression of agonies and cries, not only by the current generation of students, but that same agonies that were shared in the past generations of students, like my, and the anxious parents and grand parents, like my rickshaw riding grandma cradling infants, toddler and youths to protect the loved ones.

This is a demand of many generations. It is the time to solve it.

Trade

2018-06-09T23:47:00.000-06:00

Modern nation states need trade. The unprecedented prosperity, stability and peace that exist in majority of world nations, except some heartbreaking war zones, need uninterrupted trade between nations. The recent tariff set by various nations that hurt a wide segment of the business world, and eventually the general populace bear the cost. It's not productive. It does not bring peace in the end.

Historically, from ancient time to recent memories, violent wars broke out among various nations due to miscalculations, misinterpretations and to placate domestic political constituents. The legitimate and sometimes not legitimate fears of rising nations by the nations with the most global or regional power at the time, put otherwise friendly nation states at each other's throat. It begins with manageable small skirmishes, then it expands to larger battles, and full scale war as it happened during First and the Second World Wars, costing the lives of millions of innocent people, destruction of economies, uprooting of entire populace, unthinkable genocides, and lost opportunities to use that wasted resources in the advancement of science, technologies, health and helping people lifting out of poverty instead.

The world cannot sustain another disastrous global war. With the abundance of destructive weapons available, the outcome can be truly apocalyptic.

The current trend of retaliation by using tariff, done by all major powers of this age, must be reversed. To progress toward a more equitable world where all human population is moved out of poverty, having concerted efforts minimizing and resolving the myriads of problems arising from climate change, and helping humanity to win against all life ending diseases, the nation states must act like the matured and responsible entities.

This is the one world we have. The very short existence that we all share must not be wasted.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson - Review

2018-03-26T22:55:00.000-06:00

Astrophysics does not need to be filled with the unexplained technical jargon that only specialists or very keen readers can decipher. Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the finest astrophysicists who, like another prominent astrophysicist before him named Carl Sagan, has mastery in explaining complex astronomical concepts and mysterious cosmic phenomena in a tone and accessible language that most readers can grasp.

I am glad I have read his "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry". The title kind of indicates that it's written for a quick review of astrophysics. It's true, but it also gives an illuminating glimpse of our mysterious universe and an urgency, like the word "hurry" to have some sense of our very existence.

From the very start, the 0th time of big bang to all the way of 21st century's era of technological marvels, Tyson gives a good synopsis on how everything came about that surround us every moment but most of us remain oblivious to its origin. Tyson has a good point why most human beings do not have the time or the resource to ponder about the magnificent cosmos:

"But who gets to think that way? Who gets to celebrate this cosmic view of life? Not the migrant farmworker. Not the sweatshop worker. Certainly not the homeless person rummaging through the trash for food. You need the luxury of time not spent on mere survival. You need to live in a nation whose government values the search to understand humanity’s place in the universe. You need a society in which intellectual pursuit can take you to the frontiers of discovery, and in which news of your discoveries can be routinely disseminated.”

And he has good observation of our limited perspectives, just like the inexperienced and immature children do:

"Consider an adult who tends to the traumas of a child: spilled milk, a broken toy, a scraped knee. As adults we know that kids have no clue of what constitutes a genuine problem, because inexperience greatly limits their childhood perspective. Children do not yet know that the world doesn’t revolve around them. As grown-ups, dare we admit to ourselves that we, too, have a collective immaturity of view? Dare we admit that our thoughts and behaviors spring from a belief that the world revolves around us? Apparently not. Yet evidence abounds. Part the curtains of society’s racial, ethnic, religious, national, and cultural conflicts, and you find the human ego turning the knobs and pulling the levers. Now imagine a world in which everyone, but especially people with power and influence, holds an expanded view of our place in the cosmos. With that perspective, our problems would shrink—or never arise at all—and we could celebrate our earthly differences while shunning the behavior of our predecessors who slaughtered one another because of them."

Our existence as the part of the individual human consciousness is limited. But that should not stop us exploring this massive universe, of which we only know the minute fractions of its wonders. Tyson explains why it's absolutely necessary to know:

"The day our knowledge of the cosmos ceases to expand, we risk regressing to the childish view that the universe figuratively and literally revolves around us. In that bleak world, arms-bearing, resource-hungry people and nations would be prone to act on their 'low contracted prejudices.' And that would be the last gasp of human enlightenment - until the rise of a visionary new culture that could once again embrace, rather than fear, the cosmic perspective.”

I love the simple way he explains how every atom in us, "is traceable to the big bang and to the thermonuclear furnaces within high-mass stars that exploded more than five billion years ago.
We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out - and we have only just begun.”

And a lot to explore for sure when our current understanding of cosmos brought us to measure mere 5 percent of regular matter, while 68 percent mass-energy in the universe is attributed to dark energy and 27 percent is set aside for dark matter. In plain language, we still have to figure out 95% of the universe like we have the 5%. We remain a child in the matter of cosmic realm.

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Huval Noah Harari - a Review

2018-03-15T17:12:00.000-06:00

"Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow" is a very well written book, a sequel to Yuval Noah Harari's magnificent "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind". The writer's accessible way of explaining the technical and societal trend and unmistakable destination where humanity is heading to I found to be exhilarating but sometimes frightening too. It is fearsome to think about a world where humanity as we know of does not exist, but supplanted by unconscious intelligence, far superior than human beings could ever imagined to be.

To reach his striking conclusion Harari showed how we treat other animals with utter indifference toward their pain and sufferings, even farm animals for food as if only for that reason their existence is justified. Humanity boasts its pureness, its love toward goodness, but these goodness does not apply to the animals as we treat them having lesser intelligence. As the writer argues, when we reach that inevitable point when artificial machines far outpace and supersede human intelligence and effectiveness, then wouldn't it be the similar scenario when humanity itself be considered as utterly useless species that can no longer provide any benefits to the improvement of overall intelligence? Then why humanity would be needed? As long as the overall networked data processing system is intact and it expands into farthest corner of our galaxy and even conquering the entire universe and beyond (multiverses), who would miss the pesky sapiens?

Perhaps no one. As I read this thoughtful book a sadness comes over quite naturally. All of our collective history, consciousness, dreams, arts, music, fine literature, our constant struggles to better humanity's progress, our undying love toward our families, friends, and even to people who we don't know and reside in war ravaged lands or poverty stricken villages, these all will simply vanish one day in the giant scheme of an unconscious master intelligence.

Or, perhaps as the writer points out, that this book though provides plausible scenarios, is not the final words about humanity's progress and its destination. Maybe, the best minds of humanity can see the unsettling eventuality and will make sure that the churning algorithm, the initial starting blocks of artificial intelligence will be a guiding force only for the betterment of humanity and not leading to its gloomy doom.