Gene & Environment

The graph here is trying to explain the four quadrants of gene & environment combinations at play in our life. Needless to less any one with possession of good genes & living in a favorable or good environment of learning and excellence will be successful in life. That's the green quadrant.

The other extreme is the red quadrant. The yellow quadrants depict situations where only one of the factors out of gene or environment is good. The arrows point the transition of one state to another. One can physically move from a bad environment to a good one by choice. Regarding genes too, as the latest research on epigenetics show, one can by food habit , lifestyle choices and medication bring about mutation in genes in a human life time allowing us to transition from bad to good genes. This is still somewhat fuzzy and will take more research to pin point and develop as a strategy. The state transitions could be bi-directional as well, because, again by lifestyle choices and making environmental change, one can land from green to yellow or even to red quadrant.

Note on 08/20/2011: I came across this article today, which explains epigenetics very nicely and also probably adds a correction to my diagram above to say 'epigene' instead of 'gene'. It's because the epigenetic markers are switches for the genes to be expressed or not. One cannot change gene in a lifetime but trigger the epigenes, which in effect turns on or off the genetic expressions.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1952313-1,00.html

Life's A - B

So, it turns out that many things in life can be equated as A - B. You have to increase something and reduce something else at the same time to have a net positive effect. It's just not enough to look at A & B separately.

Here are some examples that come to my mind.

Savings = Income - Expense

Profit = Revenue - Cost

Personal Health related:

To loose weight = Exercise - Food

To gain weight = Food - Exercise

Economy's Health = Value of Goods & Services produced - Debt

First two are straight from the books. It seems like a pretty simple equation but we have such a hard time following it at private & public level.