Abstraction, root of all evil

     The word abstraction conjures up so much complexities that many people do not want to use it in their vocabulary. This was particularly highlighted recently when a write-up was made to my superior. The written content was then edited over a long time to ensure that the remains of this word does not exist. So much pain was taken to ensure this. It was assumed that somehow the next reader would know that this word was used in the first draft. The resultant content was so much watered down that I could not stand near that content even for a micro second. Now, what happened here? What happened was that my writing was further abstracted without the superior understanding it. He did not reduce the abstraction but increased it. This is the un-becoming of many of the organizations today. 

     This applies particularly to traditional organizations who have made it to the present age based on the money amassed during their prime. Organizations should facilitate whistle blowing and suggestion system and incorporate them into the main fabric of the organization. This will remove the levels of abstraction between the lowest execution levels and the highest vision level. This will in turn bring out the shortcomings at both the levels and all the other levels between. 

    The entire world works on abstraction at the highest level. People feel comfortable at the highest level of abstraction. Truth comprehended by humans is already abstracted. As it flows down the communication chain, it is further abstracted. Once it reaches the target human, the target human again adds a level of abstraction based on his capabilities/influences and will try to influence others with this level of abstraction so on and so forth. The human language is made for this level of abstraction. In fact one of the most important programming paradigm the Object Oriented Programming has abstraction at its core. This paradigm is simply the human ability and least resistance path approach to understand any aspect in the most easiest way a human can understand, which in turn leaks out a major portion of the reality. People always tell they want the "real" information, the truth. This is far from what any human wants. 

All humans want an abstracted view which will make them comfortable or un-comfortable in the most comfortable way. There are many occasions wherein a certain group of people with a certain ideology wanting to prove that their idea is the best one. To do this what is the need of killing people who are no way connected to this level of abstraction and are abstracted in a much different way. Why cant this be told in the best possible abstraction, that is human language. Why should certain unrelated people die to get your point across. Why? Tell what you want to tell straight. Keep on telling it. When somebody wants to tell a strong point, it is always better to be at the lowest level of abstraction. 

    The governments take the opposite approach. They undermine the capability of understanding of its people and present the facts at the highest level of abstraction. The amount of effort required to peel of these layers of abstraction requires huge resources. This will be done by only a few. If these are identified and re-programmed then whatever data available to the common public is the one presented to them at the highest level of abstraction which is very easy to digest. 

    The assimilation of highly abstracted and 0 level abstracted data requires the same level of effort and is the absolute minimal. Humans should never forget the art of questioning/prodding/peeling off levels of abstraction and search for the absolute truth. Ideologies requiring abstraction requiring laying down of human lives are cowardly and would require further abstractions to stay in vogue and in this race, the resultant situation would at some point go out of control leading to chaos. It is not that chaos is bad, but to reach that many lives might be lost.

The USA withdrew from Afghanistan.

    One single line with global ramifications. It altered the visions of many. It has made all the countries to rethink global strategies. Lots of question presented with few answers themselves leading to further questions. Why all of a sudden? Why has USA been bogged down by 80K soldiers.? and many more.

    Being one of the major arms supplier to the entire world, what is it that they are expecting. With majority of killings in-house every other day with automatics owned by majority of the American population. The arms industry is one of the strongest including the pharma industry which exert lot of clout in the administering of the country. The country has not taken any steps to stop the killings within the country. No law maker is even talking of a solution to this menace which is resulting in innocent lives being lost to individual maniacs who have understood and experienced the work "freedom" in its most negative form. The historical freedom of allowing individuals by weapons and retain them was to ensure sufficient capability with the common man so that they could fight for their country if required, since the armed forces at that time in USA were still very small. 

    How that turned into a large industry is a very good case study for any Business grad. Let us say that the US brings in a law, which would require all individuals to surrender their weapons, just imagine, Because I am not seeing it happen, However, let us imagine in our wildest dreams it is going to happen. Good, very good. Congrats USA. Now let us go to the next area where the US arms industry is selling its weapons, the world. Just wait, I am not telling that they should have that Tony stark moment and decide to stop weapons immediately, which is again, not going to happen. It employs a lot of people and is a very big revenue generator for the government. 

    What can the US do to make some improvement here? Well, for starters, it can sell only to the governments, elected governments. But then there are lot of governments across the world that once elected start enacting laws to increase the dictatorial power within the gambit of democracy. So, how will the seller know that the governments to whom he is selling the arms will be used to uphold democracy. Democracy and freedom cannot be upheld with armed struggles. Armed struggles will result in factions which will be detrimental to the common man. Because these factions think they know better than the common man, what the common man wants. 

    By leaving Afghanistan, USA made another statement. Destroying a country and having contractors rebuild the country is passe, old strategy. The strategies of going to war in another country by its physical presence is very costly and dangerous. They just looked at how China is doing the same thing in a different manner. The economical war. Get countries to sign contracts which will be honored by international law. Cripple the country economically, get your businesses in. give the citizens no option but to do business with the Chinese companies or totally exit from the deal, which in turn hands over the entire investment in foreign soil to the Chinese companies, which are in fact representing the chinese government. So beatiful. No arms, No war, No bloodshed. Just pure business. 

    There is one more dimension to this exit. Are there any friends to any county beyond economical dependencies. If any country is with war with another, will friends come and join them. Will this result in world war 3. With this exit, all these doubts are laid to rest. If any country with war with another, this is normally the case with nations sharing borders, they will be left to fight and whoever wins, business deals will be made. It will be very economical. The winner and the enitre global business will exploit the spoils. 

    If we observe the present war situations. Governments are fighting against groups who want to run the government and once they win there will be another group which is ready to do the same. With this exit, it is clear that all military coalitions are in reality, business deals, economic understandings. These are not be understood in the classic sense wherein we expect the allies to come and fight side by side. 

     It is a good development. Wars are nonsense. Diplomacy and economic strategies are the way to go.

A study in scarlet, Again

     Yes, I have read all the short stories and the novels involving Sherlock Holmes. But, every time I take up the study in scarlet, I am hooked on again. A contrast between introduction of Sherlock and Watson is what always grabs my attention. Everything about Watson is told to the reader. It is like, know the narrator first. Normally a narrator is given a one dimensional character.

    The narrator cannot change for anything. He will be true to his introductions. He does not want any share of the success but will be there for all the difficulties the main character undergoes. I saw the same pattern in "The Great Gatsby" and also "Brideshead revisited". The study in scarlet is different here. Watson is always with Sherlock. There are very rare situations where they are not together. There is one more difference. We dont know much about Sherlock Holmes. We are told what Watson sees. So, we, the reader, know as much as Watson wants us to know. 

    The character of Sherlock Holmes is not fully exposed to the reader. Whereas in other books, I state, the main character is more well etched than the narrator. There will be more dimensions to the main character. Sherlock Holmes is as unknown to me as he was known to me before reading all the stories he is involved in. I know a lot of Watson's character. However, he is not multi-dimensioned. His history is told as though it is a bored life. 

    Whatever life he now leads with Sherlock is what is important and significant. We also see that Sherlock himself does not like the way Watson writes his escapades though he is happy that he is doing it, since, Holmes himself would not have done it since it is too boring. Should we thank the single dimensional life of Watson or the multi-dimensional un-explored life of Sherlock. 

    This is exactly the reason there have been plenty of takes on this detective than any other ones. Dalgelish and Poirot are etched so beautifully to the last strand of hair on their face, it is very difficult to bring them out of their comfort zone. But, Sherlock does not have to be comfortable. He enjoys the un-comfortable. He cherishes it. To this day, I have not figured out Sherlock as much as the hardy boys, Nancy drew, Poirot or Dalgelish. But, I am happy that these people exist. They have drawn me out of many depths and have partnered me in re-energizing me on various occasions. Thanks to one and all. However, Sherlock.......

Vaccines for the SARS Cov 2

Disclaimer: I am not a virologist, a biologist or a doctor. I hated biology at school and that is the very reason that I am an Engineer.

    The amount of write-ups on SCV2 on the public network is un-imaginable. I have also written a couple of posts on the same. In this post I would like to write more about how the vaccines work. This is for people who dont want to combine the information available on the public network. If readers are ready to go that extra mile, they can piece all this information together. Let us start

About SCV2(Sars CoV 2):

    SCV2 is a RNA based virus. That is, the re-production information is stored as RNA. The RNA strand is safely encased in a protein shell with additional proteins, now known infamously as the spike proteins(S protein). The RNA is the blue print which will be understood by the material which makes up the cytoplasm of a cell. On the most simplest side,  a cell is made up of a nucleus, surrounded by cytoplasm held together by a membrane. The nucleus contains the DNA which is converted to RNA, which in turn enters the cytoplasm. The code in the RNA is understood in this area. Normally, the information in the RNA is to make proteins. 

    Why should we know this minimal amount of a human cell composition. Without this premise, we will not know how SCV2 multiplies in the human body. The SCV2, to begin with mainly affects the upper respiratory system. You will now ask me why does it not affect other cells. Well, these respiratory cells have a receptor to which the spike protein attaches itself easily. It is like the spike protein knows the language of the receptor on these cells and it does not understand the language of receptors on other cells. 

    The SCV2 attaches itself on to this receptor and by biological magic, the RNA inside the protein casing is released into the cytoplasm in the affected cell. Now, the RNA which enters the cytoplasm is executed by the constituents of the cytoplasm(It is like running a binary compiled program). The main result of the execution is to create one more copy of the SCV2. This then gets out of the cytoplasm and locks with the receptor of the next cell and so on and so forth. What damages this replication does is known to all. Let us not dwell on this. We have discussed issues which might be helpful for us in understanding how the vaccines hope to work against this virus.

About Adenovirus:

    Adenovirus is a DNA based virus. That is, the re-production information is stored as a DNA safely encased in a protein shell. These viruses are known to be harmless on humans, if affected would result in a cold only. Of course, as with other viruses there have been several mutations.

mRNA based vaccines:

    There are two popular vaccines based on this methodology and they are from pfizer and moderna. As we have discussed earlier, the spike protein with the which the SCV2 starts its journey into the human cell, is a very important identifier. This protein is found to be unique. This uniqueness of the protein lends itself to identify the virus. mRNA vaccines work by delivering the mRNA to the cytoplasm of the muscle cells. This mRNA is a compiled program executed by the constituents in the cytoplasm of the cell. The result of the execution is the production of spike proteins. 

    To elicit an immune response, enough cells should be invaded and the mRNA has to be delivered to the cytoplasm. The mRNA is pure chemistry and can be very well understood by people in that field. The chemical formula is a copy of the chemical formula of the spike protein found in the SCV2. The immune response peaks in about 2 weeks time based on the present dosage. Increasing the dosage would improve the response times, but would also result in such a great immune response that it would start attacking the healthy cells also. This is the reason that the second dose is given after a gap of a month or so. The second jab also helps in creating memory cells which stay in the body for a long time, maybe enough for a lifetime. 

    The optimum dosage has been finalized based on the 3 phases of vaccine development. The medium through which the mRNA is delivered to the cell is though lipid solution which bonds easily with the cell membrane and allows the entry of the mRNA into the cytoplasm. Here we can have issues. One is the allergy of the individual to the lipid solution used to deliver the mRNA. If the person is allergic then the boding does not happen between the lipid solution and the cell membrane which stops the mRNA to enter the cytoplasm. Since the mRNA enters the cytoplasm and does not have to deal with the nucleus it is clear that it does not alter the host DNA contained in the nucleus of the cell.

Adenovirus based vaccine:

    The most known ones are the Astrazeneca and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Trillions of adenovrirus are cultivated in a controlled lab environment. The DNA of this virus is altered to result in the following

a. The DNA part which allows it to duplicate is edited out.
b. The chemically formulated compiled code for producing the spike protein in the form of a DNA is added to the original adenovirus DNA strand.
c. Its infecting capability is intact.

    The viruses are then transferred to an injection medium. In summary, live viruses are injected into the human body through the vaccine jab, but crippled as mentioned above. So, if 25 billion viruses are injected, then they stay 25 billion and cannot replicate. Once injected, the adenovirus clings on to a muscle cell and transfers the DNA into the nucleus of the host cell. The vaccine makers are telling that though the DNA enters the host cell it does not interact with the host DNA. Once inside the DNA is converted to mRNA and then moves out of the nucleus into the cytoplasm. From here the procedure of making the spike proteins and generation of immune response is the same. 

    There are some issues here. When the live attenuated adenovirus is injected, there are chances that the human body produces immune response for the virus itself. This will kill the virus before it delivers the DNA payload. This is the exact reason why the astrazeneca vaccine did not work for people in South Africa and all the doses were returned back. This is because, the people in this country are already exposed to this variant of adenovirus and already have antibodies developed which will kill the virus once they are injected. This vaccine works only if the virus is unknown to the human body. There have also been instances of blood clots and other related issues in some countries while in some countries the issues are minimal in this regard.

De-activated SCV2 vaccine:

    This is the most simple and the most straightforward type of vaccine considering the fact that the methodology is used for various classic vaccines like the small pox. So, you cultivate SCV2 in the lab. Totally de-activate them. Put them in an injection solution. Inject this into the muscle cells. The body will produce immune response to various facets of the virus composition. So, this seems to be the best possible solution. 

    Yes. However, there are some issues. It is costly to manufacture. It cannot be manufactured quickly in large scale. The quality constraints are very high. Every jab should be free of any live virus, otherwise the result can be catastrophic. The quality procedure should have a testing procedure to ensure that all the batches of the vaccine, every drop of it, does not have any live virus. The most well known is the Covaxin. There are others being used and I am afraid of even naming them since I dont trust them, the trust is lesser than the size of the virus.

Chemically fabricated spike proteins:

    This method of preparing the vaccine is the cheapest. The most important one is the one from Biological E(Named Corbevax). Here the spike proteins are fabricated in a lab. These proteins in an injection medium is delivered to the muscle cell. The body develops immune response to the spike proteins. Instead of the human body producing the spike proteins and then expecting an immune response, here we are doing the job of making the spike protein in the lab.

    The purpose of the vaccines are to produce immune response to the UID of the virus and to ensure that enough memory cells are created which remember this UID and be ready with the necessary immunity response when dealing with a real SCV2.

    Thanks to all the virologists and all the hard working health professionals for developing a vaccine in such a short time. Condolences to all the people succumbing to this virus. Everybody alive, kindly wear your masks properly and try to learn the "mask etiquette" properly. Get your vaccine shots. Dont forget that all the vaccines require a minimum of 2 weeks to create an immune response. The first three days of taking a vaccine shot are crucial. The immune system will be at its most crippled. Kindly stay at home for these three to four days. You might have a light fever. Stat away from alcohol and smoking for a minimum of two months from your second jab.

The same post on the fediverse:   https://qua.name/zbqmle9wsf

PS: An example for a virus which alters the host DNA is the HIV

Are indivduals in any part of the world, Free

     The world celebrated an anniversary of the end of fight for freedom, which happened in one of the largest country, not valuing, you guessed it, Freedom. Has it got to be celebrated, Yes. Period. Is it alright to just celebrate it and then go ahead with our daily routine, no? So, what are we supposed to? Well, dont ask me. I am out of answer as much as you are. 

     The human race has reached a situation where some portion of the people fight for the majority portion of the freedom of people. This fight for freedom is not what was warranted when, humans developed their brains and formed societies. The problem started brewing once societies started being formed. Along the formation, of societies morals were being framed. Rights and wrongs were being hardwired. Some societies thought they were better than the others...Ah, what was I talking about... What am I talking about now? Are they related?

    The thing is should we remember only major ones. Should we not find out and celebrate smaller struggles by individuals across the globe. The news agencies and the entire societies have started to incorporate a very bad idea that one person talking anything about issues believed right by a majority is wrong. This is the most deemed to be free countries, which again is confused with democracies. Democracy is not freedom. Freedom is not the same as democracy. 

    Freedom is not given by anybody to anybody. It is just there. If it has to be given and it has to be taken, then both sides are flawed. So, if a democratic setup tells that you a free to do that and this and then that and then IFTTT.... it is not freedom. It is bondage. Wherein your are given a certain degrees of freedom. 

    There are democracies with varying number of degrees of freedom. So, the country with the highest degrees of freedom is the ultimate? No. Freedom is and should be a given. Isn't it wrong then, that a free(er) parts of the world are not doing anything to improve the degrees of freedom of countries with a lesser number of freedoms. Yes, it is. But, are you allowed to express the same and are you capable of doing something on this issue. Are you given this freedom. Can a theoretically free individual free the group of people who are not having the same? It is impossible.

    Let us take the next scenario. Let us assume that the entire world of people are really free. Now let us assume a certain group of people want to create a society with lesser degree of freedom. Now, the world can act against it and make sure that they are again free. Good. Now, do these people really want to be free. Many people dont know the meaning of freedom. 

    The rich countries have sowed seeds in the minds of the people that Democracy is freedom. So, instead of fighting for freedom, people are fighting for democracy. So, what is freedom? How do people feel freedom? Is the lack of knowledge of freedom, freedom? Isn't the same be applicable to people who are slaves upto their last cell? Is anarchy the best form of freedom. Does anarchy give the individual that theoretical freedom? But, then again, you are branding individuals to a set of rules and conditions which fist spells out anarchy and then the individual has to figure out freedom.

Are you, the individual, Free?

The same post on the federated web  https://qua.name/wrrfhlepep

Blog freely

     Blogging is one of my favorite past time. However, my blogs are not thought out, laid out and thoroughly researched. Majority of them are thoughts/rants which make me "write". I think I have been blogging since the year 2010. As you can see, there is no specific time and routine with which the posts are written. They vary from technical to note taking to local issues upto the restaurant at the end of the universe. So, what keeps me blogging. Well, to start with, my basic drive is the fantastic world of FLOSS developers, users and maintainers. What passion do these people have!. When the whole world believe that the end point of all actions of human beings is money, these people think different. For them, money is the means to satisfy their passions, their will, their tastes, their thinking of general well being, their thought that the fantastic food, the human race is enjoying today is because of the FLOSS philosophy of all the people associated in studying and preparing food.

    I had always wanted to blog from my favorite editor, emacs. By, the way, I also love vi. However, I will stop here on this topic. I dont want to add to the plethora of information available on the public network. The war of words is so great that our future generations, when we become the cave people will be astonished at this war of words and will forget all about the wars which bought the ending of human race and concentrate on this. There you go again, you have dragged me into it. I knew you would do it. I hate you for that. Or do I love you for that!!. Argh!!!.

    Coming back to my first line in the second paragraph, I came across a project called write.freely. I liked it. I liked that it federates beautifully. But, then somehow, it just went out of focus. Maybe because I was not blogging much at that moment. I do have longer lean periods than periods of flourish. However, I am active on mastodon(@srinicame). Again, as active as my blogging habits in posting. But, I am an avid reader and try to consume posts from my favorited individuals. During one such session, I came across a post from Marcel on the Mastodon fediverse offering invites to his write.freely instance. Thank you Marcel, for allowing me to create an account on your instance. Once this was done, I was in the FLOSS market for plugins so that I could publish my blogs directly from emacs. And lo and behold, there is exactly one here https://github.com/dangom/writefreely.el

    Followed the configuration on the github page(Did not work for me), and I am now ready to post a blog from emacs. Downloaded the command line tool from https://github.com/writeas/writeas-cli/blob/master/cmd/wf/GUIDE.md. This is now my first post on a federated blog. Congratulations to me. Thanks to all the devs and users of the write.freely fediverse.

This is the link to this post(This same post) on the federated blog https://qua.name/bknf7v9835

xargs - The generic tool for arguments

    xargs is one of the most versatile tool used by command line warriors. There is a sort of aura around this command. Numerous videos are out there explaining the usage of this tool. The discussions below are to be taken as one for the entry level command line users. Kindly refer to the man pages for further advanced usage. In particular more information and its usage can be better appreciated from books and articles on shell programming, where a discussion on this is a mainstay.

    I will be using music files and c source files as examples wherever appropriate according to the easiness with which the underlying usage of xargs is more clear.

In the present directory as we start this discussion, we have the following files

music1.mp3
music2.mp3
music 3.mp3(notice the space in between music and 3)
music 4.mp3
big_program1.c
big_program2.c
big_program3.c

ls *.mp3 | xargs -t

echo music1.mp3 music2.mp3 music 3.mp3 music 4.mp3
music1.mp3 music2.mp3 music 3.mp3 music 4.mp3

    The output above is a little cryptic. Let us clear it first. If there is no other command to which xargs passes the arguments, the by default xargs pipes it to echo. The -t option is same as --verbose option with GNU extensions(by the way, I like GNU extensions for any program, they are more verbose and use the long form to extend  and explain what that particular option would do). By specifying the -t option, we are telling xargs to be more verbose in its activities. The result was that the xargs command took the output of ls and piped it to echo. We can see that exact executed by xargs in the first line of the output. The total result of the command is the output in the second line. All the arguments were passed on at once to the echo command.

    Now, let us change the above command such that the echo command is run on every argument. For that,

ls *.mp3 | xargs -t -n 1

echo music1.mp3
music1.mp3
echo music2.mp3
music2.mp3
echo music
music
echo 3.mp3
3.mp3
echo music
music
echo 4.mp3
4.mp3

    If we see the output, we met our task, partially. echo command is run on every argument. However, the file names with spaces in them have created a problem. By default, the delimiter for xargs is the space/blank character. To ensure that the above command works properly, we have to include the information of the delimiter in the xargs command, like so.


ls *.mp3 | xargs -t -n 1 -d'\n'

echo music1.mp3
music1.mp3
echo music2.mp3
music2.mp3
echo 'music 3.mp3'
music 3.mp3
echo 'music 4.mp3'
music 4.mp3

    Now, we see that the xargs command met our requirements. Now we are pretty confident that we can now pass on these xargs to other programs and are confident of them working properly. Let us now play the mp3s.


ls *.mp3 | xargs -t -n 1 -d'\n' mpg123

    This will now play all the mp3 files in alphanumeric order as listed by the default ls command, one after the another.

    Let us now take up the next key strength of xargs. xargs has the capability to spawn multiple processes so that arguments can be passed on to multiple instances of the program. For eg,

ls *.mp3 | xargs -t -n 1 -d'\n' -P 8 mpg123

    That was indeed funny, right. Seriously, that is a very wrong example to illustrate the parallel processing achieved by the above command. The above command starts multiple instances of mpg123, with all the instance playing an argument supplied. You can increase the argument for -P based on the number of files piped into the final command. Here you have all the four songs playing in parallel. The sound output might be interesting for music producers. For us listeners, nothing.

    Let us now consider a proper, practical example for this spawning of multiple processes,

ls *.c | xargs -t -n 1 -P 8 gcc

    The above command will run multiple instances of gcc at the same time and the compilation will happen in parallel on all the 3 files in the present directory. To do this kindly ensure that your programs can be compiled so and are stand alone and not dependent on each other being compiled already. Here we do not have the problem of file name containing spaces. If you are comfortable with

make -j 8

    For compiling your linux kernel, you know exactly what is happening here. The linux kernel is one of the greatest and practical examples for compiling sources in parallel. What a great feat. Kudos to all the kernel devs.

    With this, we come to the end of this gentle introduction to one of the most important tools for shell programming. The knowledge of xargs is a must for all shell programming aficionados.

    The standard thanks and regards to all the FLOSS users and devs. You people are great. Thanks again.