February 2019 – mymilieu.org

McKenna’s Gold and Moral Dilemma

Yellow Metal – From Nanotechnology to Currency Buffer (Gold Reserve)

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For centuries now, we are aware of the value of Gold. Gold Standards have, in fact, it has taken a central place in our nomenclature and reference. It is not surprising to see that Gold has made a foray into nanotechnology – from diagnostic tools to conserving solar power to touch screens and advanced data storage. However, to me, the most influencing impact of gold is the gold reserve, which determines the health of the local currency of that country.

Known Gold and unreported Gold

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Current gold reserves for India stand at 580 tons. India is the largest consumer of Gold in the International market after China. However, it is said that India has a maximum of yellow metal with its household, amounting to 23,000 -24,000 tons. Countries as close to that value are China and Turkey. Though the US has the most amount of gold reserves, standing at 8000 plus tons, it has the least gold consumption amongst the top consumers of Gold worldwide.

If only Southeast Asian countries like India bring the Household Gold on record and to international reserve, it would probably be one of the most influencing factors in circumvent the pressure on the national currency and buffer against the intransigence of fluctuations.

How do we bring the household gold to the national reserve?

Of course, a change of mindset is paramount. However, more than a mindset, much of the gold is from unreported earning. That makes the conversion difficult. However, let us presume, we have the owners ready to declare the Gold. That conversion to national reserve can be on similar lines as holding a piece of land. Once the household gold is considered a national reserve, it will be easy to protect that part of the Gold from theft or threat. It is definitely a cultural change, no one wants to declare the amount of Gold they have, so also, no one wants to declare the amount of cash or other assets they hold. Gold can follow similar lines. We have to overcome the dilemma of declaring Gold.

Why not expand Gold Reserve?

Expanding Gold reserve will reduce the pressure on the economy and the currency. However, the status quo may be affected because of doing so. Just imagine a currency reversal. The exporter will be significantly affected as exported products would become costly in the international market. However, imports too will be cheap. Products made abroad, ‘Foreign Made’ will flood the streets. Expat dollars flow will be reduced. All these will need a huge modeling to understand the impact. However, it would certainly equalize the value of the currency (and efforts) of the common men.

Data with Future Enabled State?

Data (and Privacy), Regulations, Compliance, Security and Policies are the key to any Future Enabled State and for that matter, any cloud transformation. How do we factor in data, security, compliance, regulatory and policies factors into an integrated cloud solution?

So what is Dr. CSP?

I thought it right to device an acronym for Data, Privacy and Regulations/Compliance. A gamut of policies, procedures and processes need to be updated along with change to organizational culture for understanding and adopting the impacts and implications. Data (and Privacy), Regulations, Compliance, Security and Policies (DR. CSP). What should we do to get this right? Often, while providing proposal, we just talk about cloud migration. Alas, migration is not a lone isolated event; it has to factor in all dimensions of transformation. The acronym is simple, any Cloud Service Provider (even we can be counted in as CS), should be DR. CSP. It may be mean to those who have fantastic memory but without being a DR. CSP, we are unlikely to resonate with the customer.

Yes, Data is number one. It is the ultimate asset of an organization. Data, Data and Data – the key enabler or a bane for emerging Future Enabled State. According to Network Asia, “By 2024, 90 percent of the G1000 organizations will mitigate vendor lock-in through multi and hybrid cloud technologies by using technologies such as containers and data fabric, these organizations will be able to flexibly and easily move workloads across environments while having full control over them”.

According to the same report, Bank of America, for example, is using containers for app testing and development. By doing so, the bank’s developers and infrastructure staff are able to focus on high-value work instead of managing middleware systems and messaging buses, which do not generate revenue for the bank. Despite the benefits of hybrid and multi-cloud, they will not be the default IT architecture for smaller organizations. This is because data itself can be far less portable than compute and application resources, which affects the portability of runtime environments. Moreover, some cloud services may be exclusive to a particular cloud provider, which means that those services cannot be ported to other environments”.

Integrated solution is a key while resonating with customer already in cloud or those intending to migration to cloud. Providing an encapsulation and governance mechanism to critical enablers such as data, regulations, security, compliance and policies will drive success to the future enabled cloud state.

Interesting read…https://www.networksasia.net/article/4-key-trends-could-spark-digital-transformation-enterprises.1548732759

Why am I blogging on health and diet?

For most healthy living is having a balance between eating and exercise. Well, it goes beyond that one will eventually comprehend the importance of spirituality and expand the dimension of health. Suffice it to say that, the most elementary blocks of health starts with Diet and Exercise and this blog is focused on diet and exercise.

Because it is core and critical to our efforts and initiatives in life.

Generalizing from decades of observations, understanding the molecular mechanism that cascades the physiologic pathways, and adding an angle of a spiritual journey to our living, I too believe that the source is within us. We pamper ourselves with indulgence and defend it with reason. That in itself is a root cause for systemic illnesses such as for overweight/obesity, insomnia, hypertension, and diabetes (well in exceptional cases, we do have hereditary, genetic and developmental factors that contribute).

However, once these systemic maladies set in, it takes a long time to revert to the original baseline. Here again, we try indulging in radical results with resultant generalized impact. Liposuction, extreme diets, such as keto diets, etc. cause untoward effects on the body. Dependence on drugs such as antidiabetic or antihypertensives keeps increasing, partly because of tolerance and mostly because the root cause is not addressed.

Restoring health is a discipline, not a snapshot event in time. It needs a comprehensive multidimensional change. I know if I haven’t slept adequately how that affects my work. Some maladies have an evident outcome, others have a long-lasting impact. Let’s have that balanced perspective to dart towards achievements.

I am often reluctant towards opting for radical options such as surgery (with exception), so also I am against drugs/medicines.

Every life journey is unique, complicated by a confluence of conscious and subconscious flows, that we alone can decipher and discern. Those moments of reflection should ideally help in putting up a roadmap towards the restoration of health. While that is the permanent way, we can and should rely on drugs or other means, while transiting towards that phase.

However, jumping directly to radical options is ill-founded and deficient. A gradual incremental reversal, though difficult, can be achieved through consistent behavior with discipline. Well, it is easy to say but difficult to implement. However, that’s the test of your grit and determination, that we all are born with.

Thinning Brain with Sleep Apnea

I just have one critical observation – not sure if the author removed the confounding bias introduced due to age-related change. Otherwise, insightful research.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is commonly associated with memory impairments. Although MRI studies have found volumetric differences in the hippocampus of people with OSA compared with controls, MRI lacks the spatial resolution to detect changes in the specific regions of the hippocampus that process different types of memory.

The present study performed histopathological investigations on autopsy brain tissue with OSA to examine whether the thickness and myelination of the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex (EC) vary as a function of OSA severity.

Increasing OSA severity was found to be related to cortical thinning in the molecular layer of the dentate gyrus. OSA severity was also related to decreased myelin in the deep layers but not the superficial layers of the EC.

Patients are known to have used continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment showed no significant reductions in cortical thickness when compared with controls, suggesting that CPAP had a protective effect.

However, CPAP did not protect against myelin loss. The regions of decreased cortical thickness and demyelination are locations of synaptic connections in both the polysynaptic (episodic and spatial) and direct (semantic) memory pathways and may underpin the impairments observed in episodic, semantic, and spatial memory in people with OSA.

https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article/42/1/zsy199/5139668

Imminent fragmentation of a string of Global Village

One of the factors that make us a global village is our ability to connect over the internet and internet being a common highway for humanity to connect. With the advent of Russia discovering its renewed ability to develop parallel track, we may see an eventual fragmentation of the way we communicate.

A prelude to imminent fragmentation… everyone will copy this model. So far, we existed as a single earth, connected together by internet, making it a global village.

With the advent of Russian testing for separate DNS (domain name service, e.g. google.com), it will be talking a different language in a different world. Ultimately, others will follow suite and eventually, lobbies and multi-block reorganization may induce a multipolar world that may collaborate or in extreme situation, be at loggerhead with each other.

Russia considers ‘unplugging’ from internet
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47198426

Celibate Life for Serving the Lord?

Celibacy and renounciation is not a prerequisite to service of Lord or to mankind. Yes, it is a distraction from devotion but it is not absolutely required. Many religions consider it is a must, possibly because life and normal living itself is a beyond distraction from the path of spiritual service. How best can we confluence these divergent tracks?

Not that atrocities towards women in places of beliefs are uncommon amongst at Hindu Temples or and Muslim Madrassas. We commonly see religion asking for renouncing celibate life to be a guardian or evangelize religion.

The key question is –
Do we have to renounce normal living and be celibate for the service of our Lord and to run the religious institutions? Celibacy is not an absolute criterion but a matter of choice, inner decision, and personal philosophy. This ensures less abuse of fair gender within their ecosystem.

Some religious practices have institutional stipulations that enforce celibacy. However, human nature and natural instincts fight back. The guardians of religion eventually, succumb to their internal material instincts and end up abusing and covering for their crimes. We see such abuses that later get institutionalized.

The report below talks about the Pope allowing for marriage for the priests. Only if the Pope opens the door for the clergy to be married and start a normal life, that we will see a true decrease in such incidences.

Let me change the topic to Hinduism and its evolutionary traits and practices. Hindu priests have always had the option to marry and accept a normal life. Reflecting upon how Hinduism has evolved after adopting such practices, provides credence that this is a philosophy in evolution and has a longer life than predicted by most western historians.

It is important to keep our ideas open and align with nature. Freezing change is counterproductive. The day we freeze evolution, we stop growing though and the only way to keep vibrant and dynamic is to keep listening, debating, and evolving with a sense of accommodation and assimilation. Sometimes back, during the medieval period, Hinduism froze varna and subdued our women. We wiped out meritocracy by institutionalizing nepotism and feudalism. We created a majority that was subservient to those who captured the institutions – religious, social, family, political, etc. thus weakening our institutions.

It takes time to dismantle but the time we unfreeze and evolve, we will see a spurt in our spiritual and ideological growth. To those who say Hinduism is under attack, I agree. But it is not an external element, but our own internal shackles.

Pope admits clerical abuse of nuns including sexual slavery
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-47134033

Welcome – Culture of ‘Forwarding’ messages!

Forward is gradually getting deeply embedded within our social interaction. This isn’t an isolated phenomenon, this is gradually getting all pervasive and as part our inherent tendency to thoughtlessly contribute towards just not gossip, social malice but apathy and an agony to those affected. We were in the culture of rumor mongering but, now – welcome to the culture of forward instinct. It is a new norm, a new reality.

Barbaric not tribal instinct

I got a below message on our home owners community group. This is despite having created norms (we don’t call them rules) and governance. The intent of that group is to serve home owners that matters them directly. Below, please see the message. I removed personally identifiable information to protect privacy.

I knew it was fake but more so, I was concerned, why a message on kidney donation (from India) be seen in US. I contacted the number shared in the message and below is the reply from the gentleman, screenshot for your perusal. Can we call this barbaric? Definitely, this is not tribal. Tribal folks have better norms amongst themselves, so let’s call this criminal.

Is Due Diligence that difficult?

We need to do a little due diligence before indulging in public service of forwarding this message. Our forwards may be causing agony, trouble or harm to those who are directly affected. Even if those are mild, we are burning the bandwidth by taking away time from doing something concrete and productive.

Sometimes, I feel, our sense of social service is restricted to forwarding indiscriminately. We suddenly get that urge, that strong impulse – to forward, may be “kisi ke to kaam ayega”. That forward relieves us of our impulsive instinct and provides a sense of having achieved something for social cause.

The Big Concern

With the volume of messages and our decrease bandwidth, just one instinct dominates, “forward”. I feel, our amygdala is taking over our left frontal cortex, the part that is responsible for intellectual pursuit and decision making. There is another part that dominates the story. Normally, a part in our brain called amygdala, are responsible for flight or fight type emergency responses as well as our perception of fear. When Amygdala dominates Left Front brain, it is equivalent to ‘frontal lobe injury’. Some of these patients end up losing that decision making ability. Most concerning aspect for me is – , Are we getting rewired with these voluminous social media messages?

The Irresponsible within us

Our social media adds more and gives us less. The downside is social agony, malice, cognitive dissonance and pulls us back as those lacking sensitivity. We can’t blame social media, it starts with us. Absolute barbaric behavior such as stone lynching has been widely reported due to irresponsible messaging. We are being exploited and our opinion are molded and dominated by intentional messaging. One of the dominant reason for the recent rightwing political wave across the globe is capturing of intellectual pursuit. Sometimes back, I wrote a blog on this. It is still relevant, so I am sharing the link. https://wp.me/p7XEWW-Uc.

Request all not to forward without due diligence, even if that means good for the community.