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It really happened more than 20 years ago at my Alma mater, Calicut Medical College.
It was around 5 pm and I was walking through the hospital corridor when I heard a huge commotion. I could see people scurrying all around in panic. I asked a Hospital attender about the reason.
“Sir, a Rabies patient somehow got out of his cell and is roaming around the Hospital. Everybody is afraid he will attack.
“Did he attack or bite anybody?” I asked.
“No Sir, but you know how violent these patients can be”.
Do I really know? No I have not seen any violent Rabies patient. But folklores say these patients behave like dogs and bite everyone in sight.
Then I noticed hospital staff bringing big buckets of water and placing it in front of entrance to each ward. They were using their knowledge of science to prevent entry of the Rabies infected patient into their ward. They knew that Rabies patients do have fear of water [hydrophobia].
I was curious and wanted to see this man who was causing so much commotion. I found him standing just outside the hospital near the front gate.
Turkish troops said on Friday they had seized power but President Tayyip Erdogan vowed that the attempted coup would be put down and crowds answered his call to defy a curfew order and take to the streets to support him.
Sad to see instability in the region continuing. Erdogan is not a saint but military coup is not the answer.
I just now realised that I had passed the landmark of hundred posts in this blog in just under four months. I never imagined I will be posting so regularly. I am usually a little bit lazy in such aspects.
Image credit here
Reaching a century I thought I will take a look back. The statistics counter says till now I had around 32000 views and around 16000 visitors. Around half of the views came from USA, 12% from India and about 9% from UK . The blog had 219 comments too.
The most viewed post was on Charlie Hebdo. The post on Religion and phobias came second and the review of Meera Nanda’s book came third.
References came mostly from my own Facebook and Twitter posts.
I thank all my visitors for finding time to read my posts. I will try my best to post here regularly my views on all subjects that I feel like writing. I invite suggestions and criticisms if any to make this blog better.
Happy reading
Arun
Actually I have only a vague idea about uses of Helium. Also I did not knew much about its dwindling supplies. Only by reading this post by fellow Ftb blogger and scientist Abe Drayton about the new discovery of Helium in Tanzania that I realised its importance.
When we hear day in and day out about valuable resources drying out, this discovery is quite a game changer. Hope such good news will keep on coming. Hope the poor in Africa will get some real benefit from this.
Here is an important announcement from this blog network’s ethics committee :
Freethought Blogs unequivocally condemns any behavior that threatens the safety of atheist community members, including particularly marginalized groups. Freethought Blogs also recognizes the role of sexual harassment as one of numerous barriers for women that limits access to and participation within atheist conferences and spaces.
When the recent allegations against Richard Carrier were made public, Freethought Blogs initiated a process to investigate these claims and formalize its policy concerning the conduct of its members. The FtB Ethics Committee received several reports of Carrier’s behavior and was in the process of reviewing them when Carrier chose to leave the network. A thorough review of the allegations against Carrier cannot be completed by Freethought Blogs without his cooperation.
As part of our commitment to equitable access to freethinking spaces for all, Freethought Blogs members who violate our commitment to social justice by creating or maintaining barriers to participation will be removed from the network as a matter of policy. All reports submitted to us in furtherance of this policy will be kept in the strictest of confidence, unless the accusation was made publicly or in the event we have express permission to reproduce the complaint.
-The FtB Ethics Committee
At FtB there is zero tolerance to harassment of any sort, especially sexual harassment.
As posted by me earlier, there was a raging battle between a coalition of interfaith groups the South Asian History for All and Hindutva groups on the revision of California school history curriculum. It was a high stake battle as many other American states follow Californian curricula.
The “saffronising” of textbooks isn’t limited to Gujarat or Karnataka, or even just India. The American Hindu groups in the California battle include the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), whose founding members have links to the Sangh Parivar; the Hindu Education Foundation, a project of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, and the religious research group Uberoi Foundation. They want to rename the Indus Valley Civilization “Sindh-Saraswati”, delete any mention of Guru Nanak’s challenging of caste, and further what SAHFA calls the “oppressor Muslims vs persecuted Hindus’ narrative of Hindu nationalism”. In one of their most controversial moves, they’ve tried to get the term ‘Dalit’ deleted from the South Asian history taught in school curriculum. One of the Uberoi Foundation’s comments among the edits says, “Dalit is not a term from Sanskrit, nor from Hindu social history but a contemporary political construct to gain leverage mostly in elections and for economic concessions.”
Now the officials in California has come to, it seems, a just and rational decision.
In a welcome move, courts in India and European Union has upheld the usage of big pictorial warnings on cigarette packs.
Report from India:
The Supreme Court told tobacco companies on Wednesday they must adhere to a new central rule requiring much larger health warnings on cigarette packs, in a major setback for the $11 billion industry that opposes the new policy.
The Supreme Court turned down a plea to stay implementation of the new rules introduced from April 1, which require health warnings to cover 85 per cent of a cigarette pack’s surface, up from 20 per cent earlier.
In a packed courtroom, a two-judge bench rejected the industry’s plea to extend a stay it had obtained from a Karnataka court but agreed to a request to move the rest of the appeals to the Karnataka court.
“You have duty towards the society,” the judges told a team of industry lawyers, which included some of the most expensive advocates in the country.
The industry “should not violate any rule prevailing as of today”, they said.
The World Health Organization has confirmed that the available scientific evidence is strong enough to arrive at a consensus that Zika virus infection is indeed the cause for the recent increase in number of cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome and foetal microcephaly.
Guillain-Barre syndrome produces acute, usually ascending, flaccid paralysis of muscles and can be life threatening when it affects respiratory muscles, though most recover with prompt treatment.
I am also scared, Sir, scared of getting killed. But what else can I do? It’s better to die rather than living by keeping my head down.