Muslim medical students refuse sanitation measure on religious grounds

Last updated on: February 11, 2008 at 5:46 pm By Desh Kapoor

Pharyngula writes on Scienceblogs: So…Muslims want special foot washing stations so they can tidy up in order to pray, but at the same time, Muslim doctors don't want to have to wash their arms before they plunge them into my guts. "No practising Muslim woman — doctor, medical student, nurse or patient — should be forced to bare her arms below the elbow," they say. What is wrong with this picture? As much as I think Pharyngula is linking to un-connected news items to give it a sensational touch - what is perplexing is the second piece. A lady doctor feels that she is being immodest by exposing her arm to wash her arm before a surgery! If the discussion of modesty and immodesty and of shame and otherwise has to be taken to a sterile environment of an operation theater - then maybe such a person should not become a doctor. Or maybe stay confined to a madrasa Unani dawakhaana. Some females refused to roll up their sleeves in a children's hospital to wear the gown because of the same reason. A children's hospital? Read more

Primitive bacteria, fishing jelly-fish and how we have screwed nature

Last updated on: February 11, 2008 at 5:21 pm By Desh Kapoor

The decline in the atmosphere and the on the ground due to man's greed and science is very hard to imagine. These days oceans and seas are churning out primitive algae in large numbers which are toxic and making life for sea-line residents and for the sea mammals really tough as for the fishermen/women. Things are just not the same.. The fireweed began each spring as tufts of hairy growth and spread across the seafloor fast enough to cover a football field in an hour. When fishermen touched it, their skin broke out in searing welts. Their lips blistered and peeled. Their eyes burned and swelled shut. Water that splashed from their nets spread the inflammation to their legs and torsos. "It comes up like little boils," said Randolph Van Dyk, a fisherman whose powerful legs are pocked with scars. "At nighttime, you can feel them burning. I tried everything to get rid of them. Nothing worked." Read more

How does the space smell?

Last updated on: February 11, 2008 at 5:07 pm By Desh Kapoor

Had never thought about this one point ever, but what the heck - everything smells.. something is good and somethings real bad. But what about space? Space is vacuum. Does vacuum has any smell? Ostensibly no.. but what about space? Space is not just vacuum, it has lots of "stuff" floating around. Does all that give it any smell? Find out from the "horse's nose", as it were. It is by ISS Science Officer Don Pettit - who smelt space. Each time, when I repressed the airlock, opened the hatch and welcomed two tired workers inside, a peculiar odor tickled my olfactory senses. At first I couldn't quite place it. It must have come from the air ducts that re-pressed the compartment. Then I noticed that this smell was on their suit, helmet, gloves, and tools. Read more

Welfare money is a career choice of 6 million Britons!

Last updated on: February 11, 2008 at 12:08 am By Desh Kapoor

Pride in its population is a natural corollary of a nation where people through sheer hard work or by strength of the gun have made themselves rich. This pride often manifests in increasing benefits for the people so that no one is poor. Its then about the collective image. However, these benefits have their own life. After some years, they have a strange narcotic effect. It becomes an addiction. Now, its a right as opposed to a special act. Most of Western European societies are in that phase, where welfare benefits have become an addiction and a right without responsibilities. Such that people now plan their lives around welfare benefits itself. They do not factor in the need for work. The constituency of such welfare-careerists becomes so big in a democracy that it can be a difficult one to NOT appease for the politicians. In Britain, the problem of welfare state has become so severe that 6 million Britons are jobless and benefits are the way of life for them! The cost to exchequer is £13billion! That's a lot of money that the productive Britain donates to the unproductive one. Read more

Zinda Hoon Is Tarah by Mukesh

Last updated on: February 10, 2008 at 6:18 am By Desh Kapoor

Today I am testing out my Audio module. It has a limit for the file size you can upload to 2 MB. So I circumvented that by using the audio import module and bring in the file to the audio module from the temporary folder that I had uploaded my file too. This is just an amazing functionality and a workaround! Next I will learn to FTP files to that folder and make it even easier! Read more

Tu Mane ya na mane dil dara by Rajiv Kumar

Last updated on: February 10, 2008 at 5:48 am By Desh Kapoor

This song was sung by the Rajiv Kumar from Chamba when he was eliminated. These few lines were based on a sufi song... and sung very well by Rajiv as his parting gesture. Enjoy Read more

Thought is matter as an ideology.

Last updated on: February 9, 2008 at 3:54 pm By Desh Kapoor

Those who think a great deal are very materialistic because thought is matter. Thought is matter as much as the floor, the wall, the telephone, are matter. Energy functioning in a pattern becomes matter. There is energy and there is matter. That is all life is. We may think thought is not matter but it is. Thought is matter as an ideology. Where there is energy it becomes matter. Matter and energy are interrelated. The one cannot exist without the other, and the more harmony there is between the two, the more balance, the more active the brain cells are. Read more

Madhubala – Timeless yet Ephemeral

Last updated on: February 9, 2008 at 3:48 pm By Desh Kapoor

Madhubala, was in my view - as in many's eyes - the most beautiful face to ever adorn the Indian movie screens. She had the freshness, eroticism, divinity, innocence, naughtiness - all rolled into one! Her life was a tragedy which was lived only to enrich others - specifically her father and family. Everyone milked her. Used her. Rarely did anyone help her live a life worth her. She was also in my considered view one of the most under-rated actress! Her comedy in Chalti ka naam Gadi and her tragic performance in the epic Mughal-e-Azam were truly unique. Ones that have never been matched in their power. Yet, she will be known for her beauty... that was timeless, yet ephemeral. Her angelic face also has provided me with solace and peace during my childhood as well. During my school years, I would draw her potrait after every term exam. She was my salvation and my companion on the road to recovery. I would pour over her many pictures and study every contour of her face, marvel the forth-right-ness of her eyes and the hopeless-ness being pushed desperately through labored longingness in her ethereal smile. I could never capture it all in my drawings. She was there in my mind but eluded the paper. It was befitting. Read more

Myths of Gandhism, Ram, and the Partition

Last updated on: February 9, 2008 at 7:53 am By Desh Kapoor

Mahatama Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948. It has roughly been 60 years since then. For all these years, a lie - and a blatant one at that - has been perpetuated by the Indian National Congress. That, while dying he uttered the words - "Hey Ram". This was to make him popular with the majority community and take the sting out of any leanings to the Jan Sangh family. Nehru had lot of obstacles to pave way for him and his family be the rulers of India forever. Jan Sangh's influence was one. He first had Nathuram Godse linked to RSS and then demonize them forever. The myth that RSS was to Hindus what Muslim League was to the Muslims was perpetuated in a very methodical fashion. The truth, however, was very different. The pre-partition's cycle of deadly and unending violence was set in motion the day Mohd. Ali Jinnah held a press conference in Bombay in July 1946, in presence of Margaret Bourke-White (LIFE Magazine journalist) and said categorically that if Muslims were not granted Pakistan, he would launch "Direct Action". This little known "Direct Action" was what set the fire in motion that has since burnt and engulfed many in its hatred. Direct Action Day, also known as the Affirmative Action Plan, the Calcutta Riots, the Great Calcutta killings, and "The Week of the Long Knives", started on August 16, 1946. It was a day when the Muslim League planned peaceful protests all over India to voice the Muslim demand for a separate homeland during the Indian Freedom Struggle against the British Raj. This protest was followed by massive riots in Calcutta instigated by the Muslim League and led to further riots in the surrounding regions of Bengal and Bihar by Muslims against Hindus and Sikhs, followed by retaliatory attacks on Muslims by Congress followers and supporters. Within 72 hours, more than 5,000 people lost their lives, at least 20,000 were got seriously injured and 100,000 residents of Calcutta City alone were left homeless. Read more

Iraqi Mother and her son

Last updated on: February 8, 2008 at 1:07 pm By Desh Kapoor

There are many heart breaking pictures I have seen, but this is surely one of the most livid! I can feel the pain of that lady, I can see (and feel) the breath of the son go away... into eternity while his Mother looks helplessly at the nonsense of this entire act. A woman takes her dead son into her arms, as she grieves for her six-year-old son, Dhiya Thamer, who was killed when their family car came under fire by unknown gunmen in Baqouba, capital of Iraq's Diyala province, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq, on Sunday, Sept. 16, 2007. The boy's ten-year old brother, Qusay, was injured in the attack as the family returned from enrolling the children in school, where Dhiya was to begin his first year. Adem Hadei, Associated Press. Read more