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Yahoo Mail No Messages

Since yesterday my Yahoo mail inbox has been empty. Somehow the option to automatically forward the mail has been activated. Yahoo has been forwarding my mail to a non-existent email address which I used around 10 years ago. I suspect this was an issue with Yahoo mail as I found another couple of users complaining the same thing. You can fix it by removing the old email address and setting it to POP in the POP and forward option in the Email Options page. But you can’t recover the forwarded mail.

Inspirational Advertisement from India

This advertisement covers everything. Despite the corrupt and ineffective politicians and authorities countries move forward.

Fossil Fuel Equivalent of a Barrel of Crude Oil at $30

In September, a privately held and highly secretive U.S. biotech company named Joule Unlimited received a patent for “a proprietary organism” – a genetically engineered cyanobacterium that produces liquid hydrocarbons: diesel fuel, jet fuel and gasoline. This breakthrough technology, the company says, will deliver renewable supplies of liquid fossil fuel almost anywhere on Earth, in essentially unlimited quantity and at an energy-cost equivalent of $30 (U.S.) a barrel of crude oil. It will deliver, the company says, “fossil fuels on demand.”

Read the story at The Globe and Mail here

Breakthrough conversion of sunlight and waste carbon dioxide (CO2) directly into liquid hydrocarbons that are fungible with conventional diesel fuel.

This landmark achievement in industrial bioprocessing clears the path for large-scale renewable fuel production, addressing the cost, resource constraints and energy-intensive steps associated with biomass growth, harvesting, extraction and refining to reach an end product. The entire process produces more net energy than it consumes and yields sulfur-free, ultra-clean diesel.

The integrated platform will enable productivities above any other closed-system approach, with a commercial target of 15,000 gallons of diesel per acre annually. Joule’s pilot operations are currently underway, with commercial production targeted for 2012.

[From the articles in http://www.jouleunlimited.com/]

This will change the world as we know it.

Sri Lankan Customs

These are some excerpts from a great old article by a brave journalist from Sri Lanka who ventured into the cave of the thieves.

As I watched the proceedings, my attention was immediately diverted by the outstretched hand of a Customs officer at the counter, who casually took a one hundred rupee note from a clearing agent, before attending to his Customs Declaration. My eyes lit up. I was not too sure whether my eyes were playing tricks on me. As I coolly watched the proceedings at the counter, every single clearing agent was oiling the palm of the Customs officer with a hundred rupee note, which was carefully put away in the officer’s drawer before he paid any attention to the job at hand. I found it hard to believe that such practices were the norm at the Customs. The clearing agents in the queue had fistfuls of 100 rupee notes.

I happened to overhear a telephone conversation in where a high ranking Customs official was making arrangements with a friend to hire a van to transport a Chinese vase, which he had taken as a sample. He went on to explain to his friend, that usually he managed to put all these samples in his car, but the vase was unfortunately too large. Clearing agents told me that a sample, once given to the Customs can never be retrieved, unless an importer demands that it be given back, which then means that the clearing agent has to once again allow money to do the talking.

At the final point of departure, each container is halted for approximately eight minutes, at which point Customs verify the delivery document for the umpteenth time, as to whether the container is carrying the correct consignment. Given the impracticality and the absurdity of the endless questioning, the clearing agent has to bribe the officer, and the eight minutes is spent on negotiating the amount the officer should receive.

A rough estimate done by an industrialist states that Sri Lanka Customs earns Rs.900,000 in total overtime, and “speed money” amounts to another Rs 1,100,000 a day alone, which roughly amounts to five billion rupees a year. Sri Lanka is a nation that is heavily dependent on imports, be it food and clothing or industrial raw materials. This means that every single citizen in this country is paying a price for corruption!

[http://sundaytimes.lk/021222/ft/srilanka.html]

At the gates of hell there is a red channel specially for Sri Lanka Customs officers to walk in straight to eternal damnation.

Teachings From the Silent Mind

Now we are prone to having blind attachments, aren’t we? For example, say you’re locked up in a foul, stinking prison cell and the Buddha comes and says, ‘Here’s the key. All you have to do is take it and put it in the hole there underneath the door handle, turn it to the right, turn the handle, open the door, walk out, and you’re free.’… But you might be so used to being locked up in prison that you didn’t quite understand the directions and you say, ‘Oh, the Lord has given me this key’ – and you hang it on the wall and pray to it every day. It might make your stay in prison a little more happy; you might be able to endure all the hardships and the stench of your foul-smelling cell a little better, but you’re still in the cell because you haven’t understood that it wasn’t the key in itself that was going to save you. Due to lack of intelligence and understanding, you just grasped the key blindly. That’s what happens in all religion: we just grasp the key, to worship it, pray to it … but we don’t actually learn to use it.

So then the next time the Buddha comes and says, ‘Here’s the key’, you might be disillusioned and say, ‘I don’t believe any of this. I’ve been praying for years to that key and not a thing has happened! That Buddha is a liar!’ And you take the key and throw it out of the window. That’s the other extreme, isn’t it? But you’re still in the prison cell – so that hasn’t solved the problem either.

Anyway, a few years later the Buddha comes again and says, ‘Here’s the key,’ and this time you’re a little more wise and you recognise the possibility of using it effectively, so you listen a little more closely, do the right thing and get out.

– Cittaviveka, Teachings from the Silent Mind, Ajahn Sumedho

I have read this book some time back. You can read the book in here. You can find other publications in here.