[Goanet] Goa has the potential... for bombast? (FN)
Goa has the potential... for bombast? -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. Frederick Noronha in The Goan -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. My friend Emil shared a WhatsApp message the other day. It didn't say much. It just contained a long list of (what looked like) newspaper headings. Each one said something nice about Goa, about its potential. Or, how this could become into a land of sugar and spice. Everyone was promising so many things, it almost sounded funny. It took me a minute or two to realise the point that Emil was trying to make. Then, I caught on. Who compiled this, I asked. "I did," Emil shot back, "as I found the phrase 'Goa has the potential' too often used." Interesting! And see how it reads: Chief minister Pramod Sawant is telling us that Goa has the potential become a defence manufacturing hub one day, and a "startup forum" the next. Vijai Sardessai has been telling us that Goa has the potential to become a "floriculture state". Union minister Giriraj Singh has told us that Goa has the potential to become the "fisheries hub of the country". Never mind that people of our generation have lived through the mechanisation of our coast, traditional fishermen's protests, and the decimation of our fish resources. Another report in a local English-language daily tells us that Goa has the potential to become the "No 1 destination for filmmakers". And, of course, Goa also has the "potential to" become a big investment destination (Chief Minister Sawant again). Experts put it across that Goa has the potential to become a global board of trade, or a multi-modal logistic hub (Mauvin Godinho, as industries minister). To former President APJ Abdul Kalam goes the credit of seeing Goa as a "potential state" for the cultivation of cash crops, spices and medicinal plants. Now, who wouldn't want that? At another stage, the wise ex-President saw Goa as having the "potential, courage and God's grace" to transform into "a prosperous, happy, peaceful and secure State". Then, at another stage, the ex-President also could see the potential to become an "IT-rich environment [with tools] such as tele-education, tele-medicine and e-Governance." (APJ Abdul Kalam) Rohan Khaunte has seen Goa's potential "to double-up as a tourism-cum-knowledge destination". Meanwhile, the TERI, the Energy and Resources Institute, has also diagnosed Goa's potential "of being a global leader in high-value organic farming and being an example of enterprise-led agriculture". Savio Rodrigues, the politician-returned expat-media person and Republic TV's preferred quotable person from these parts, saw Goa's potential to "have a robust healthcare economy coupled with rising demand for medical tourism". The list seems endless. How much one can dig up depends only on how much time one has to waste. As if to catch up with the political bombast, such approaches have spread among our newspapers and op-ed pages too. One saw a "potential for safe tourism" in Goa, while another writer pushed Goa's potential to "become an innovation hub". And finally, there's even one from the Netherlands-headquartered KPMG, one of the Big Four accounting organisations worldwide: "Goa has the potential to focus on well-being through its lifestyle and traditions." What exactly this means, could be anyone's guess. * * * This might seem like some harmless kite-flying on the part of our political class. But it is not so innocent. Over the years, Goa has been sold a whole lot of hype, promises and dreams. We forget what was said and what was promised. This tall talk makes us feel good; but no track is kept of it. Wool is pulled over the eyes of the citizen. By some coincidence, even while reading the above, I happened to be going through some of my old books and paper clippings from some decades ago. What I read there also shocked me. So many promises were made, and yet so little fulfilled. In 2002, the Goa Chambers was saying: "Goa offers the ideal locale for co-locating R&D at a national technology park to generate homegrown technologies. Annual venture funding fairs, technology fairs could catalyse the creation of the new emerging Indian IT markets." In 1993, a group called the Haryana Delhi Industrial Consultants Ltd was promising a "coconut cream project" and all its benefits for Goa. By 2005, ICAR, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research was hosting a national seminar on agro-eco tourism at Ela, Old Goa! But talk comes cheap, and seminar papers can often have little relevance to real life. By 2007, Goa was being hyped up as Best Governed State (west) by Dataquest. The Goa Broad Band Network was inaugurated. Built on a public-private
[Goanet] {Dilip's essays} The mystery of the Tasmanian Tiger
April 25
Ever since my parents visited Tasmania, many years ago, I've wanted to
visit too. At some point since, I read David Quammen's magnificent "The
Song of the Dodo" and found out, for the first time, about the Tasmanian
Tiger. More reason to visit, though he did point out that the said Tiger is
extinct.
But now there's recent research that suggests ... well, not quite
otherwise, but something like that. And all over again, Tasmania calls.
Take a look at my Mint column for April 14: The mystery of the Tasmanian
Tiger,
https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/did-the-tasmanian-tiger-really-go-extinct-in-1936-math-suggests-otherwise-with-possible-sightings-in-recent-years-11681409363813.html
Thoughts welcome. Though if you take me to Tasmania, that's welcome too.
cheers,
dilip
---
The Tiger that was. Or is.
About the only reason the Tasmanian Tiger is - or was? - called a "tiger"
is that it has stripes on its body. Other than that, nothing. It is not a
tiger, nor is it even related to tigers or any cats. Also known as the
Tasmanian Wolf, it certainly looks more like a wolf than a tiger. Yet it
isn't a wolf either. Instead, it is a marsupial: like the kangaroo or
koala, the Tasmanian Tiger carries its young in a pouch. That explains the
animal's other name, "thylacine" - from the Greek word for "pouch",
"thylakos".
Or again, should those words be "was" and "carried" and so on - that is,
should that paragraph have been written in the past tense? Because the last
Tasmanian Tiger died many decades ago. Seen as pests and a threat to
livestock on the island of Tasmania, they were widely hunted. The last of
the species died at the zoo in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1936. Pest or not, the
thylacine is such a cultural icon in Australia that the country observes
National Threatened Species Day every September 7, the day in 1936 when the
thylacine went into extinction.
Or did it? Reminiscent of the Loch Ness Monster, there have been plenty of
reports of sightings of thylacine since 1936.
For example, one night in 1982, a wildlife ranger called Hans Naarding was
sleeping in his car in a forest in a remote part of Tasmania. Heavy rain
woke him at 2am. He turned on his torch and swept the beam around him. To
his astonishment, the beam caught a thylacine, about six or seven metres
away. It was an adult male, he reported later, "with 12 black stripes on a
sandy coat."
Then in July 2019, a hiker was climbing up to Sleeping Beauty Mountain,
west of Hobart. He saw a footprint that he later Googled. He was convinced
it was made by a thylacine.
These were just two of over 1200 reported sightings of Tasmanian Tigers all
over Tasmania between 1910 and 2019. Barry Brook, a mammal ecologist at the
University of Tasmania, has compiled all these reports into what is known
as the Tasmanian Thylacine Sighting Records Database.
Why am I telling you about this possibly extinct animal, and this database,
in a column that's ostensibly about mathematics?
Because Brooks and his colleagues used that database to estimate the
thylacine's date of extinction. The date they suggest is a serious
surprise. More about that in a bit. But intriguingly, they came to that
conclusion after a statistical analysis of the database ("Extinction of the
Thylacine", Barry Brook et al, bioRxiv, 19 January 2021,
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.18.427214v1.full.pdf).
As they write in their paper, they "collate and characterize the type,
quality and uncertainty" of all those reported sightings in the database.
They dated each one and located it on a map. They broke them down into
categories, like those that were actual specimens of the animal, or just
signs of its presence (like the Sleeping Beauty footprint). They classified
the sightings according to the person reporting it: was she an expert in
the field - a trapper, a scientist? - or just a casual observer like a
hiker, or you or me? They looked for "spikes" in the reporting numbers; one
they found, in 1970, probably happened because of "media attention linked
to a well-publicized expedition" to search for the thylacine. Brooks
referred to this as "recency bias".
Put simply, all the sighting reports in the database are not equally
reliable. As Brooks and his team commented, trying to decide the
reliability of the sightings is "the most vexing difficulty with a
scientific mystery like this."
For example, clearly an actual sighting of the animal - like Hans Naarding
reported - should carry more weight than a mere footprint. And in fact,
Brook's team gave the Sleeping Beauty sighting a low rating, meaning it was
unlikely to be true. Then possible "copycat" sightings, or recency bias,
should be rated lower than others. But again, there are some clusters of
sightings that are close in both space and time, with similar descriptions
of the animal, but that may not be copycats. If these were multiple
sightings of the same thylacine by different people, that must warrant a
higher rating.
W
[Goanet] {Dilip's essays} Very accurate, very hidden, covid test
April 25 2023 Yet one more time, I've fallen behind with these dispatches. So there are three coming your way today. (At least one of you groaned - in writing - when I last did this. I remember.) This column was spurred by the increase, again, in covid case counts. I don't mean to downplay that by any means - after all, I'm trying to get used to using a mask again. But I got thinking a little about covid tests, about what it means when they return positive results. And not just that, about another test of sorts that is, arguably, even more accurate than others out there. I promise you this is not facetious. It's just a statistical reality that may give you some food for thought. If you're hungry for that kind of thing. cheers, dilip --- Very accurate, very hidden, Covid test Just heard from a good friend that he has tested positive for the Corona virus. You remember that little beast perhaps? The one that was responsible for a pandemic not so long ago? So yes, even if we think we are done with the pandemic now, there are still active cases, still people testing positive, evidence that case counts are on the rise again. So my friend's news got me thinking once more about testing. In particular, what does it really mean, at least statistically, to test positive for Corona? Much of the early testing for the virus used the RT-PCR method. It was uncomfortable to endure, because it required the tester to insert a swab deep into your nostrils, and another into your throat. Still, it was always considered to be very accurate, especially when performed properly by a trained tester. Here's a question worth asking: what do we mean by a "very accurate" test? Let me try explaining that here with some hypothetical numbers. We can divide the population of the country into two camps: those who are actually infected with the virus, and those who are not. Of course, the ones who have the virus, like my friend before he took the test, don't know they are infected. They have suspicious symptoms, that's all. They want to be sure one way or another, and that's why they get tested. Now let's say that an RT-PCR test administered in India produces a positive result for 99% of those who already have the virus. Let's say the converse is even better: the test produces a negative result for 99.5% of those who are not infected. (Remember, just hypothetical numbers.) No doubt you'd agree that this is a very accurate test. In fact, with the numbers above, you'd most likely call it better than 99% accurate and that's a good way to describe it. So given the accuracy of this test, what is the chance that my friend, who tested positive, actually does have the virus? At first glance, we might think the answer is 99% or more, simple. Isn't that what the numbers tell us? And even if Covid is on the wane, that is still a pretty unsettling number. After all, it was a pretty deadly pandemic. But suppose we take a closer, maybe deeper, look at my friend's case? Consider these numbers: * India has about 1.4 billion people. Let's say all of us Indians are getting ourselves tested. This is of course not true, but we are still being hypothetical. * The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare says there are today (April 5) 23,091 active cases of Covid in the country. Those are the diagnosed and recorded cases, of course. It's possible there are many more who are infected but don't know it. So let's assume - we can be hypothetical, remember? - that for every known infection, there are almost nine unknown ones. That is, let's assume that there are about 200,000 people in India right now who are infected with Corona. This means there are 1,399,800,000 (1.4 billion - 200,000) Indians who are not infected. * If the test produces a negative result for 99.5% of uninfected people, that means it produces a (false) positive result in 0.5% (that is, 100% - 99.5%) of them. So: Among the 200,000 infected Indians, the RT-PCR test will produce a positive result 99% of the time, meaning in 198,000 people. Among the uninfected 1,399,800,000, 0.5%, or 6,999,000 people, will test falsely positive. So if everyone is getting tested, the total number of Indians who will get a positive result is: 198,000 + 6,999,000 = 7,197,000 It always takes me a moment to fully grasp the implication here. Of this total of 7,197,000 positives, only 198,000 actually do have Covid. That is, if you do test positive, and if everyone around is getting tested, the chance that you actually have the virus is: 198,000 / 7,197,000 = 2.75% Think of that. You have tested positive on a test that is "better than 99% accurate", remember. Naturally, that result worries you. But on the other hand, the probability that you are really infected is 2.75%, which is tiny. Should you be worried at all? Well, that depends partly on what you make of some of the hypotheticals here: that everyone is getting tested, that there are many undetected infections, and more. My feeling is, be worried,
[Goanet] Schedule for Wednesday 26th April 2023
CCR TV GOA Channel of God's love You can also watch CCR TV live on your smartphone via the CCR TV App Available on Google PlayStore for Android Platform. Click the link below. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ccr.tv4 Email ID: ccrgoame...@gmail.com Schedule for Wednesday 26th April 2023 12:00 AM Rosary - Glorious Mysteries 12:27 AM Secular Institutes - Fr Subhash Anand 1:00 AM Mass in Konkani for Tuesday 1:45 AM Krav Maga - Ep 4 - Oscar Viana interviewed by Chriselle Fernandes 2:01 AM Saibinnichi Ruzai - Orkache Mister 2:27 AM Devachem Utor - Stotram - Avesor 14 -Vachpi Orlando D'Souza 2:31 AM Panel Discussion on Punishment hosted by Kavita Almeiia 3:23 AM Music - Sounds of Joy Quintet 3:29 AM Music Uncovered : Samuel Afonso talks to Alfwold Silveira 4:03 AM On the Third Day - Vegetable Cultivation - Nelson Figueiredo 4:32 AM Our Father - Kannada 4:37 AM Health Matters - Cochlear Implants - Dr. Christopher de Souza 5:02 AM Activists of Goa - Tallulah D'Silva 5:34 AM Poem - Are we free? Really? - Larissa Rodrigues 5:38 AM Atmik Ekchar 5:39 AM Word of God - Talk by Orlando D'Souza 6:03 AM Hymns - O.L. of Perpetual Succour - Cortalim 6:08 AM Abundant Life - Are we capabe teachers? - Prof Nicholas D'Souza 6:49 AM Ximpientlim Motiam -Bhag 223 - Wilma Rudolph - Fr Pratap Naik sj 6:55 AM Sokalchem Magnnem - Eastertide 7:00 AM Praise & Worship - Magno Menezes - SJVSRC Old Goa 7:19 AM Morning Prayer - Eastertide 7:22 AM Devachem Utor - Stotram - Avesor 15 -Vachpi Orlando D'Souza 7:24 AM Literally Goa - Dr. Fr. Anthony da Silva sj interviewed by Frederick Noronha 7:54 AM Psalm 118 - Read by Alfwold Silveira 8:00 AM Advertisements 8:05 AM Museums of Goa - Paulino Art Gallery - Varca 8:50 AM Prayer - Litany of the Saints 9:00 AM Presentation on Inter-Religious Dialogue - Rachol Seminary 9:28 AM Our Father - Mundari 9:34 AM Bhavarth - Talk by Victor Mascarenhas 10:03 AM Inner Healing - Talk by Sr Elsis Mathew MSMI 10:29 AM Carlos Acutis - A song by Fr Eusico Pereira 10:35 AM Anchea Jivitacho Hetu - Talk by Royle Fernandes 11:02 AM Devachi khuxi amchea jivitachi - Nazareth D'Costa 11:19 AM Prayer over Expectant Mothers - St Joseph Vaz 11:21 AM Intercessions - English 11:27 AM Regina Caeli (English) 11:30 AM Mass in English followed by Daily Flash 12:15 PM Obedience to God - Talk by Severina Fernandes 12:36 PM Music - Coracao Santo 2 - Victor Da Costa 12:38 PM Youthopia: Chess - Leon Mendonca interviewed by Lucius de Almeida 1:03 PM Health Matters - First Aid CPR - Dr Jorson Fernandes 1:43 PM Hymn - Jesus, Jesus - Sung by Rebecca De Souza 1:49 PM What's Cooking - Season 2 Episode 3 2:21 PM Hymn - Sant Antoni Ixtta- Fr Seveille Antao OFM Cap 2:25 PM Activists of Goa - Prajal Sakhardande interviewed by Daniel F. de Souza 3:00 PM The Church - One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic - Dr Sarita Nazareth 3:24 PM Ask Dr Sweezel - Preferable sitting position at desk jobs 3:30 PM Deivik Kaklutichi Magnneam 3:40 PM Blessed words of the Holy Ones -St Augustine of Hippo - 3:41 PM Lessons from Bartimaeous - Leela Moraes 4:00 PM Rosary - Glorious Mysteries 4:27 PM Hymn - Mary Immaculate Girl's H.S. Panjim 4:30 PM Senior Citizens Exercises - 8 4:57 PM Pope's intention in Konkani 5:00 PM Career Guidance - Shipping and Logistics - MES College 5:30 PM Magnificat (Konkani) 5:32 PM Heads Held High - Rosary High School, Cujira 6:00 PM Mass in Konkani followed by Jivitacho Prokas 6:45 PM Tell Me a Story - Eps 112 - King Solomon disobeyed God's Law 6:53 PM My Music Video - Bore Khobreche Dut Zaum-ia - Cielda Pereira 7:00 PM Bhogsonnem - Talk by Orlando D'Souza 7:30 PM Saibinnichi Ruzai - Orkache Mister 7:56 PM Prayer of Grandparents - English 8:00 PM Ximpientlim Motiam -Bhag 243 - DON DØRYA - Fr Pratap Naik sj 8:10 PM Charisms - Mary Healy 8:47 PM Society of the Missionaries of St Francis Xavier (Pilar) - Vocation Promotion 8:57 PM Devachem Utor - Stotram - Avesor 16 -Vachpi Orlando D'Souza 9:00 PM Advertisements 9:05 PM Adoration - Retreat for Families - SJVRC 9:53 PM Ratchem Magnem 10:08 PM Parish of the Week - Aldona 4 11:03 PM Stuti Choir - Panjim Church 11:46 PM Mando - Dance Category - Goychim Lharam, Carmona 11:57 PM Prayer for India 2 Donations may be made to: Beneficiary name : CCR GOA MEDIA. Name of Bank : ICICI Bank Branch Name: Panaji Branch RTGS/NEFT Code : ICIC015 Savings Bank Account No : 262401000183
[Goanet] THE PRESS MUST BE FREE AND INDEPENDENT
Our Supreme Court has recently reiterated that an Independent Press is vital for the robust functioning of a democratic republic. In a democracy it is absolutely essential that the Press has to be free from political, government or any other external interference. Freedom of the press and Freedom of expression are fundamental human rights. The Press infact should be totally independent and unbiased with no leanings to any political party or politician. Freedom of expression is one of our most precious right without which there cannot be true democracy and as a consequence it will not ensure good governance. The threat to freedom of the press hangs like the proverbial sword of Damocles. The press is considered to be the watchdog of democracy. Sadly, there is scant regard for this truism though ironically, our country is the world’s largest democracy. Freedom of the press does not mean a license to write anything that suits those in power. This freedom is precious and it has to be used judiciously and fairly. When this freedom is misused to keep those in power content, the public respect for the Fourth estate is bound to shrink and the press has to guard against this. May the words of Thomas Jefferson inspire all those in that noble journalism profession “When the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe”. Adv. Aires Rodrigues C/G-2, Shopping Complex Ribandar Retreat Ribandar – Goa – 403006 Mobile No: 9822684372 Office Tel No: (0832) 2444012 Email: airesrodrigu...@gmail.com You can also reach me on Facebook.com/ AiresRodrigues Twitter@rodrigues_aires www.airesrodrigues.in airesrodrigues1@instagram
