Blog@GraceJunction

This is how the 63rd session of the General Assembly began this year. The Secretary General, as usual, addresses the gathering.

“Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen: Welcome to the opening of the general debate of the 63rd session of the General Assembly. It is customary for the Secretary-General, on this occasion, to assess the state of the world and to present our vision for the coming year. We all recognize the perils of our current passage. We face a global financial crisis. A global energy crisis. A global food crisis. Trade talks have collapsed, yet again. We have seen new outbreaks of war and violence, new rhetoric of confrontation. Climate change ever more clearly threatens our planet. We often say that global problems demand global solutions. And yet … Today, we also face a crisis of a different sort. Like these others, it knows no borders. It affects all nations. It complicates all other problems. I refer, here, to a challenge of global leadership.”

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Ten thousand years ago the agricultural revolution launched a slow wave of change. The industrial revolution, starting roughly 350 years ago, triggered a second – faster – wave of change. In the mid-1950s the United States started on the path to a completely new kind of economy – one based on knowledge rather than muscle power. This is part of a gigantic wave of technological, social and cultural change. What we’re living through now is history’s third great wave of change – one that is arriving at hyper-speed and is global in extent.

This new way of life – it’s really a new civilization or, for that matter, a “super-civilization” – is spreading out from the United States and has cells in many other parts of the world, from Japan and Singapore and China to India and Brazil.

The first phase of this current upheaval is the digital revolution and its social and cultural effects. The next phase is the fusion of the digital revolution with the genetic and biological revolution. (more…)

You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come. For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them!

Since over a decade, thousands of British teens head for Crete, a Greek island, for their holidays. They usually stay over for about a week. A very chaste and innocent choice at face value but in this one week’s time, they create mayhem on the island. (more…)

You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come. For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them!

For any generation, these are really tough and seemingly rude words. However, the acridity pales off before the events that play out before us daily. The news pouring in from different corners of the globe are appalling and shattering and only confirming to the confession we read above. (more…)

Few men sat together and played with the LIBOR rates in the wake of the US funds crisis and this has allowed in artificial interest rates into the world economy which could have serious ramifications very soon. LIBOR rates are used as benchmark for over 300 trillion USD worth of transactions worldwide!

Few men sit together at the OPEC and decide how much you and I will pay for our petrol or diesel. They decide the production limits of its constituent countries and this gives them large control over the prices of crude. The crude cost per barrel is estimated to be around 15 USD per barrel, that however is now selling at 130 USD per barrel or even more. (more…)

The human appendix (vermiform appendix), located at the junction of the small and the large intestine in all humans, is considered a vestigial (useful once upon a time but now degenerate and ill formed) organ. It is taught about in schools as a reminder of what used to be an useful organ some time in history in some remote ancestors of the human race.

Some say that the appendix used to be useful in the digestion of leaves and others say it used to be useful in the digestion of raw red meat and when our remote ancestors stopped consuming both these items, the appendix shrunk and has assumed in current shape and size! However both these views are questionable because very few mammals have an appendix at all and in those that do, it bears little ressemblance to the human appendix!

Everyone lives happily with it until it becomes painfully inflamed, when the only treatment is to remove it surgically. Then everyone lives happily without it! So why is it there in the first place? (more…)

Yesterday, I was introduced to this essential protein that I have had in me all my life and knew nothing about! In fact, its there in you, and in everyone who ever lived!

My friend tells me, if we were to make a man with brick and mortar, Laminin, the protein would be the mortar. It is the protein that holds everything in our body together. Really? There is enough and more about Laminin on the internet.

Laminin is a protein found in the “extracellular matrix”, the sheets of protein that form the substrate of all internal organs also called the “basement membrane”. It has four arms that can bind to four other molecules. The three shorter arms are particularly good at binding to other laminin molecules, which is what makes it so great at forming sheets. The long arm is capable of binding to cells, which helps anchor the actual organs to the membrane. (more…)

On my way to work, I have to always pass through a railway crossing (a.k.a. level crossing). Mostly, regardless of the time that I go for work, I encounter a closed gate bringing a sudden stop to my usually fast journey.

When the train is passing by, every one has to stop. Regardless of who is in the vehicle, all have to wait till the train passes. Regardless of what the vehicle is, none of the vehicles is now as important as the train. Though the train maybe carrying only ordinary people, less important than the ones waiting in their cars et cetera, yet the only thing they can do is- to wait. However urgent and important the work on the other side of the gate maybe, the gate will not open. Be it a matter of crores or even a matter of life and death. (more…)

Recently I was passing by a transport godown near our factory. I passed by that part of their godown where they were taking in the goods. It was a fairly big door they had there. But a little outside the door they had “Size Restriction Bars” (I don’t know what else to call it). It’s a steel structure made with heavy channels (often rails), with two vertical bars and one horizontal bar (a shape similar to the greek alphabet “Pi”).

Though the door was bigger, all the goods that could go inside had to pass through this “Size Restriction Bars” and only then the transporters could “book in” the goods for transit to other places. Probably the size restriction was keeping in mind the size of the truck container or it was a size restriction put on that particular godown. Whatever it was, the message was very clear: If you have dimensions that cannot meet our standards, go away.

The heavy steel bars made sure that this standard set by the company management would not give into pushing by mere mortals, perhaps not even a heavy truck!! The decision was final and binding on all, even if it was the biggest player in our industrial estate! (more…)