Soon.

Scared. Excited. Worried. Holding my breath. Vacillating. Eager. Confident. Guarded. Unsure. Prepared. Nowhere near it. Determined. Nervous. Like steel. Irrational. Frantic. Tired. Impatient. Absolutely scatterbrained. Bubbling. Bursting. Petrified. On the edge. Back. On the edge again.

I've waited 12 years to feel exactly like this. And I can't wait one minute longer. Ladakh, here I come.

**********

Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia or Abulafia was a thirteenth century Jewish scholar and philosopher. Among all of his deeply philosophical pursuits and passions, he had this obsessive belief that alphabets, numerals, vowel-points and their infinite permutations hid the purpose of human existence and the “truth”.

Umberto Eco wrote this incredible book called Focault’s Pendulum. Now related to as the intelligent man’s Da Vinci Code (I got this from Wikipedia!), the book is about these three nerdy editors who think they’ve stumbled upon the truth of the universe and get into a world of trouble and, of course, adventure! One of three editor has a computer, or a “Word Processor”, that he called Abulafia.

This guy (for the frailty of memory, lets call him Bob) is a really interesting character. He believes, like a lot of others, that the true name of God is one particular combination of the several million characters of the Torah. And that Abulafia and Basic Programming (can you believe this!) could be the key to cracking the right combination of God’s name. In other words, the “Password” to the truth.

The third editor (the first one is our protagonist) believes that the point of the belief that the combination of characters makes God’s name and the pursuit of finding that is to give people a purpose in life, a religious direction, and other theological implications of that. So he is completely opposed to the idea of using Abulafia for this purpose (even though both know that the piece of medieval hardware they call Abulafia would take close to 30 million years to get all the combinations in place, let alone find the right one).

So the story begins with Bob going missing. One night he calls our protagonist, the first editor, and tells him that their “Plan” or theory about the truth of the universe was true, and that the details of it were in Abulafia (all this while vacillating and scaring the large intestine out of the protagonist). Bob manages to tell the hero that his life is in grave danger (in true bollywood, no hollywood style) and hangs up, abruptly.

Our hero reaches Bob’s apartment at the speed of light, tumbles over an assortment of books, paraphernalia and other nonsense a complete nerd would have in an apartment, scampers over to Abulafia, turns it on, and wheezing like a pug with an asthma attack stares into the screen, dumbfounded.

The screen says, “Do you have the password?”

The hero has this desperate sense of urgency to save his fellow nerd (Bob). So he gets about the business of hacking into Abulafia so he can understand what Bob is really stuck in and exactly where in hell he is. He works all evening, all night, the whole of the next day, the whole of the next evening, punching password after password. He tears his hair out and that of a stuffed toy lying on a shelf next to him trying to figure out what the password could be. Names of girlfriends (not that Bob had many), dates, books, places Bob liked, absolutely everything. But each time, Abulafia returns the same answer. “Invalid password. Do you have the password?”

Just as he snubs out the last cigarette in the apartment, in a fit of utter frustration, he tries his last attempt before he puts Abulafia under a train. And he types “No”.

Abulafia flickers to life.

Evolution!

This is an article I found here.

I still can't believe there is any debate about the reality of evolution as a process in nature, but large groups of people continue to resist any form of scientific revelation. Part of the reason is no doubt related to religion, as for whatever reason, evolution and religion have been put in a cage with each other with orders to kill. Last time I checked, evolution made no claims as to how or why we got here, so there's no reason you can't have your religious beliefs at the same time you can admire a mysterious process that influences all life.

Need proof? Look no further than the Italian wall lizard, which were introduced to an island off the coast of Croatia back in 1971. Scientists placed 5 adult pairs on the island and have recently returned to see what happened. There are now 5,000 lizards running around, all genetically related to the original 5 immigrants. What could possibly have happened in only 30 years?

From National Geographic:

Pod Mrcaru, for example, had an abundance of plants for the primarily insect-eating lizards to munch on. Physically, however, the lizards were not built to digest a vegetarian diet.

Researchers found that the lizards developed cecal valves—muscles between the large and small intestine—that slowed down food digestion in fermenting chambers, which allowed their bodies to process the vegetation's cellulose into volatile fatty acids.

"They evolved an expanded gut to allow them to process these leaves," Irschick said, adding it was something that had not been documented before. "This was a brand-new structure."

Along with the ability to digest plants came the ability to bite harder, powered by a head that had grown longer and wider.

Scientists are stunned at how rapid evolution took hold and created a physical transformation of the lizard. An amazing example of evolution at work.