Kahneman and Tversky once rigged a wheel of fortune so that it stopped only at numbers 10 and 65. Students in an experiment were asked to rotate the wheel and write down the number on which the wheel stopped. They were then asked two questions. Is the percentage of African nations among UN members larger or smaller than the number you just wrote? What is your best guess of the percentage of African nations in UN? Spin of the wheel gives no clue to the answer of the second question. But students who saw 10 and 65 answered 25% and 45% respectively – clustered around the number they got in the wheel of fortune. Our estimates for an unknown quantity remain close to the first piece of information offered. This is  anchoring effect.  It has been incontrovertibly proved in many psychology experiments. Salesmen exploit it to boost profits. People bought 7 cans of soup when a nearby sign read, ‘LIMIT OF 12 PER PERSON.’ Sales dropped to half when the sign read, ‘NO LIMIT PER PERSON’. In negoti

‘What is the purpose of life?’ This query has occupied thinkers for ages. They have focussed their intellects on a species of bipedal ape with swollen brains. This narrow-framing – choosing one species among extant millions and many more extinct – has misled them splendidly. Unity of life in its vastly numerous forms, though hidden from unsuspecting eyes, is indisputable. Proteins are essential for life. Amino acids, the basic molecules of proteins, are coded by a DNA sequence. This code is unique for each of the twenty amino acids and is same in all forms of life on earth - viruses, bacteria, yeasts, plants or animals. So are the cellular processes to produce energy from various types of food. Life originated on earth only once. It diversified over eons into millions of forms. Like the branches of a tree, all the species of living organism trace their origin from the trunk, i.e., the earliest living forms, a virus, a bacterium or just a strand of a replicating chemical. Meaning of lif