A daily dose of odds and sods, some interesting, some bizarre, some funny, some thought provoking items which I have stumbled across the web. All to be taken with a grain of daily salt!!
I found this photo quite interesting mainly because in the middle of a war devastated Chechnyan landscape, you have this Russian soldier tickling the ivories.
I might have shared this letter before kids but I thought you'd like reading this letter from Einstein. Fascinating how fathers keep wanting to pass on their lessons to their children. Kannu remember the book that we gave you? Lord chesterfield's letters to his son? These letter have an old history. So many men (curiously mostly men, not that many women) send letters to their kids. Down history. There's a letter written by a Roman soldier on a piece of sliced wood which was sent by him to his son. He was based in England while his son was in germanica. And for some reason the letter never got sent. But you can see that in the British museum. Fascinating indeed. To see how this kind of letter writing is common.
And what Albert says is absolutely true. Best way to learn is to love what you learn. Then the time passes by without noticing. Although I don't think your baba will forget food even if he's doing things they he loves. Your Dadu does that. He forgets to eat.
Anyway. Nice letter. Skype to you later son. The interview with Morgan Stanley will be easy :) we will prepare well. Me and Diya are waiting for the movie Martian to start. It was a fun day and more fun to come :) missing you and am looking forward to seeing you next weekend.
In 1915 Einstein, who was then 36, was living in wartime Berlin with his cousin Elsa, who would eventually become his second wife. His two sons, Hans Albert Einstein and Eduard “Tete” Einstein were with his estranged wife Mileva in neutral Zurich.
It was good speaking to you yesterday Kannu. I think you did just fine. You were able to answer most of the questions. It's a tough interview. It's a tough bank. That's why it's at the top son. You're already in the top ranks by being in Oxford. But they want even more selectivity even from Oxford and rest of the top universities. And this brutal meritocracy keeps on going on. It doesn't stop son. This isn't to discourage you. This is a constant challenge for you to constantly improve yourself. Constantly learn and improve. While having a good sense of humour. And I was so proud of you yesterday. Your tone was confident and calm. Very good son.
That's the stuff of hero's son. Like this man. Can you imagine having to saw off your own leg? Holy crap. I've been there to a much smaller extent. When I used to really suffer from the HS boils. Once I got a giant one in my left armpit when I was in Frankfurt and I had to give a hugely important presentation to the European Central Bank. Usually my way of handling large painful boils is to gobble a fistful of painkillers till the boil burst. But that made me dozy and would slur and basically look and behave like a drunk.
So I decided to sort out the boil. I used to carry a Swiss knife back then in 1998. So ran it under loads of very hot water in the hotel bathroom. And then knotted my hanky for a teeth guard. Filled the bath with the hottest water I could stand and then popped in, and cut out the boil. Not fun. Specially since it was in the right armpit. And was using a mirror which kept fogging up. With my wet left hand. Clutching a tiny Swiss knife. But the sodding bleeding wouldn't stop. It kept on weeping blood and pus. As you know, joints are a pain to bandage. So I wrapped up my armpit and over the shoulder with a plastic bag. Tied it into place with a piece of rope. And then went to work looking like a teapot with my right arm akimbo. Mamma was quite accustomed to looking at my clothes all blood stained. Not a fun time.
My PwC partner paul betts asked me what the hell was I doing? So I told him. He just shook his head and said, you're a nutter! But pain is pain. Just one more thing to overcome and conquer :)
Anyway. Have fun son. Busy days now for you with your assignments tutorials and interviews and events. It will all be worth it.
Can't wait to see you this weekend son. I will be making your dishes with a smile :)
When a farmer and migrant worker got thrombosis in his legs, China failed him. In the end, he had to saw off his own rotting leg in order to survive. Zheng Yanliang’s story is an allegory of the struggle to the Chinese healthcare system.
His shroud had already been purchased when, on April 14, 2012, Zheng Yanliang, 48, a Chinese man from Hebei Province, summoned up the last of his strength to lean out of his bed and reach for his toolbox. He took out a hacksaw. Then he wrapped the handle of a backscratcher in a piece of material, which he stuck in his mouth so that he could bite on it. He did not hesitate. He had thought about his options and concluded that he had only one choice, this unthinkable, monstrous deed. He placed the saw against his right leg, a hand’s breadth below his hip, and began to saw.
Spending much time in Israel is one of my dreams kids. It's a country with so much history that you breathe it in, you weigh it and stumble over it with every step. We have so many books and manuscripts relating to this area and I haven't spent time here.
But I love this idea of this exhibition. Can you imagine keeping the oldest copy of the Ten Commandments along with a more recent handwritten copy of Einsteins work? That itself is mind boggling.
Not that many people know all the 10 commandments but most know some. How many do you know and remember?
I'm reminded of what the Dalai Lama said. My religion is simple. Be kind. Simple no? People make life much more difficult by putting in rules and regulations. Just be kind. Don't be an idiot.
I've got a horrible feeling that I may have sent this to you earlier but what the heck!
I just love the cuteness and fun of getting these collective nouns into our language. And frequently try to introduce them into my day to day usage. Some of them are so interesting like 34 and 35. Every writer will love 49 eh?
We've got few books on English lexicography and logophila. What I do is to keep them with me in the loo :) and pick up one or two words or collective nouns each day. Fun eh?
Collective nouns may seem like quirky ways to describe groups, but 500 years ago, they were your ticket to the in-crowd. Most collective nouns, or “terms of venery,” were coined during the 15th century. Many were codified in books of courtesy, like the 1486 classic Book of St. Albans. St. Albans was a handbook for medieval gentlemen, and it contained essays on hawking, hunting, and heraldry. Appended to the hunting chapter sits a list of 164 collective nouns, titled “The Compaynys of Beestys and Fowlys.” (Contrary to the title, many terms actually describe people—a biting example of ye olde satire.)
These were funny stories about how writers write. I'm starting to do research and have been spending time in the library and at home writing. And it's an indescribable feeling. It's a high. You physically feel that you're on a different plane. I had the Same feeling when I used to code. Music in your ears and you write and type furiously. Words bubble out of your fingers. Your mind is whirring away like a top. Your fingers are typing furiously trying to keep up with the ideas. You flick Windows. You flip pages of the books. You look up at the ceiling. You stare blankly at the pen on your desk. And then dive back into writing. It's such a glorious feeling. Love it.
Btw, observe how Mum writes. It's so cute and funny :) she gets very irate if you disturb her. Very cute :)
Imagine telling your boss the only way you can be productive at work is after imbibing two or three glasses of sherry. Or by lying flat on your back with your knees tucked tightly toward your chest. Or perhaps in a bathtub brimming with soap bubbles. You'd probably be fired.
But habits or routines similar to these were staples in the creative process for some of America’s most famous authors. These renowned literary figures spared no effort to create a space for the unconscious mind to play. Truly, these strange sandboxes for creativity and inspiration were crucial to the creation of some American classics. Let's explore a few authors and their peculiar, but effective, habits
Here's an example of how people lose their arguments. A laudable objective. Stop war. I concur with that. I hate war as well. But the author forgets few things. That a state has to first and foremost keep its citizens safe and there are competing ideologies and missions which stop them from doing so. Think about the police. Why do you need them?
Second is to make silly comparisons. Don't make an aircraft carrier and instead use the money to build water systems. Good. Whose going to pay for that? Running costs for the next 30 years? The American taxpayer will pay for the world's water system? There's that little matter of democracy to worry about.
When people make arguments like this,, they cause more damage to their own cause. Just noise.
Furthermore: This US Memorial Day Remember War Is Murder
BY GLEN BARRY · MAY 25, 2014, Ecological Internet: We must stop glorifying war murders and their perpetrators, and demobilize globally in order to address the far greater threat of abrupt climate change and ecosystem collapse. Murder has not, nor will it ever, make us free.
Well. You'll go through what I went through and to a lesser extent going through with your grandfather. We rely on doctors to tell us what to do. If I knew more about medicine I could challenge but I don't. So I just go with whatever they say. Look at mum. She's suffering from a frozen shoulder for the past year and countless trips to the doctor hasn't fixed the issue. Tests and poking and and and nothing. One of my friends keeps moaning about the epidemic of tests that the NHS orders here in the uk and fulminates against the quacks in London. But lessons learnt son. We need to ask more. And challenge more. Sometimes it's better not to do anything. But it needs some faith in yourself and the knowledge that sometimes you will make a mistake. And that's the problem. If you don't test, operate or what have you, what if you were wrong and it goes bad?
You know I suffer from hidranitis suppurativa. It's a problem with the endocrine glands and manifests itself in skin lesions who are horrendously painful. And then I've got to gobble painkillers like candy to get through the day. There's no cure. The only cure that the doctors said was to surgically remove the skins from around my groin and armpits. Which would be sodding disaster. So I told them to bugger off. I take turmeric. Stopped smoking. Cut out red meat. Stopped taking sugar. Am physically active. Switched from briefs to boxers. And and and. Surgery isn't fun son. Having gone through a few, it's painful.
Anyway you may have to decide for me or mum. So this article gives you some useful guidance on how to handle Medical treatments and say No sometimes.
Millions of Americans get tests, drugs, and operations that won’t make them better, may cause harm, and cost billions.
It was lunchtime before my afternoon surgery clinic, which meant that I was at my desk, eating a ham-and-cheese sandwich and clicking through medical articles. Among those which caught my eye: a British case report on the first 3-D-printed hip implanted in a human being, a Canadian analysis of the rising volume of emergency-room visits by children who have ingested magnets, and a Colorado study finding that the percentage of fatal motor-vehicle accidents involving marijuana had doubled since its commercial distribution became legal. The one that got me thinking, however, was a study of more than a million Medicare patients. It suggested that a huge proportion had received care that was simply a waste.
The researchers called it “low-value care.” But, really, it was no-value care. They studied how often people received one of twenty-six tests or treatments that scientific and professional organizations have consistently determined to have no benefit or to be outright harmful. Their list included doing an EEG for an uncomplicated headache (EEGs are for diagnosing seizure disorders, not headaches), or doing a CT or MRI scan for low-back pain in patients without any signs of a neurological problem (studies consistently show that scanning such patients adds nothing except cost), or putting a coronary-artery stent in patients with stable cardiac disease (the likelihood of a heart attack or death after five years is unaffected by the stent). In just a single year, the researchers reported, twenty-five to forty-two per cent of Medicare patients received at least one of the twenty-six useless tests and treatments.
Could pointless medical care really be that widespread? Six years ago, I wrote an article for this magazine, titled “The Cost Conundrum,” which explored the problem of unnecessary care in McAllen, Texas, a community with some of the highest per-capita costs for Medicare in the nation. But was McAllen an anomaly or did it represent an emerging norm? In 2010, the Institute of Medicine issued a report stating that waste accounted for thirty per cent of health-care spending, or some seven hundred and fifty billion dollars a year, which was more than our nation’s entire budget for K-12 education. The report found that higher prices, administrative expenses, and fraud accounted for almost half of this waste. Bigger than any of those, however, was the amount spent on unnecessary health-care services. Now a far more detailed study confirmed that such waste was pervasive.
I decided to do a crude check. I am a general surgeon with a specialty in tumors of the thyroid and other endocrine organs. In my clinic that afternoon, I saw eight new patients with records complete enough that I could review their past medical history in detail. One saw me about a hernia, one about a fatty lump growing in her arm, one about a hormone-secreting mass in her chest, and five about thyroid cancer.
To my surprise, it appeared that seven of those eight had received unnecessary care. Two of the patients had been given high-cost diagnostic tests of no value. One was sent for an MRI after an ultrasound and a biopsy of a neck lump proved suspicious for thyroid cancer. (An MRI does not image thyroid cancer nearly as well as the ultrasound the patient had already had.) The other received a new, expensive, and, in her circumstances, irrelevant type of genetic testing. A third patient had undergone surgery for a lump that was bothering him, but whatever the surgeon removed it wasn’t the lump—the patient still had it after the operation. Four patients had undergone inappropriate arthroscopic knee surgery for chronic joint damage. (Arthroscopy can repair certain types of acute tears to the cartilage of the knee. But years of research, including randomized trials, have shown that the operation is of no help for chronic arthritis- or age-related damage.)
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