Skip to main content
Peptic ulcers of the world.
   Sometimes I think that my posts are fraught, rightly so. Just today I had to see my doctor for complaints of retrosternal burning and epigastric pain that has been troubling me for a considerable time now. Looked like acid reflux to the doctor and she prescribed me two weeks of medications. The condition is supposed to be a result of stress and irregular eating habits. In most cases overeating contributes to the symptoms (not in my case though!). I came back from the clinic and sat in the common room just to watch another depressing documentary on BBC. It was about Ethiopian famine of 80's. It was a documentary made well and effectively, atleast in my case. I could never have imagined that hunger and famine can be so devastating and can shake the core of any society to this level. There were pictures of people either dying or dead everywhere. There were tears in the eyes of parents who had lost their final child finally at the hands of famine. Who was there to save these millions dying at the hands of hunger_initially no one! Only this one lady doctor from Medecins Sans Frontières who was there to help thousands of people single handedly. She was their god whose nod could mean provision of help for the much needy. I would say she was and is an angel. Then Michael Buerk from 6 o'clock news arrived and his news reports stirred alarm in the world of the rich and abundantly provisioned. Bob Geldof saw this report in his house at Chelsea and this stirred a spirit in him to help those who really needed help. Within a week it was a national movement. As Geldof says, there was "never a civic movement in history that was so rapidly assembled, so focused and determined, so attuned to the objective". The result of all this_ the ethiopian disaster was checked from spreading further damage. But even today 6 million Ethopians would die of hunger if world aid didn't reach them on regular basis. This statement makes me think whether we have done any good by averting the famine in the 80's or only delayed it to come back ever so devastatingly. We didn't solve Ethiopia's problem. In this world there are places where the major killer is obesity. Where food is so cheap that you can eat a piece and throw away the rest. and there are places where eternal famine resides.
   I have come to realize that there is hope in humanity. If a lady doctor a news crew and a singer can do it anyone can do it. We only need to realize that it is not ourselves that matters but the good of the whole humanity. When I see that young lady doctor helping without help from anyone I wish I could be like her. Not because I wish I had similar fame but because when I saw her on TV today her face was calm and she had nothing to regret in her life nothing at all!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Learning Arduino 1

This holiday season I decided to gift myself some basic electrical components in the form of a Arduino UNO set from Elegoo. I have always had a desire to tinker with electronics and in gifting myself this basic set I am now starting on a journey to quench my inner electrical workman's thirst. I hope to develop this hobby as I move forward and will, from time to time, post about it here on the blog. As the journey moves forward I am sure to run into trouble and issues. But as they say you can not master anything without first being a fool at it, so I have decided to remain a fool at it until I am a little good at it. To start with, I do possess some elementary knowledge in electronics and electronic circuits. I intend to further my knowledge using the world wide web and following some very useful video channels on youtube. I will first start with some very basic projects to familiarize myself with Arduino and basic electronic circuits and techniques such as soldering. Then graduall...

XBOX ONE controller

I have been using the new xbox for many days now. The most important part of the console is obviously it's controller as this is the part we interact with most. In comparison to the xbox 360 controller the build quality of this controller seems slightly compromised. There is little counter weight in the wings of this controller and therefore it does not feel quite as sturdy in hand as the old one. However the shape has been elongated a bit and this actually probably compensates for the weight issue. All the buttons are within reach of my fingers which is good. One thing I have liked about the xbox controller is the snug fit in my hands. This is unlike sony's six axis controller. Those are obviously made for smaller hands. The sony controllers are much sturdier as I have learnt over the years I have had the play station. They took a lot of beating but came out winning. I don't think I expect same quality from the xbox controllers.  Also I have been getting a taste of Microso...

Tax skirting by hospital systems?

The issue of avoiding federal taxes is in the news these days with Apple being in the spotlight.  Most of the times big companies avoid paying US taxes by skirting their profits to tax havens.  Healthcare giants can do the same theoretically.  Imagine if there were a health care giant that opens up shop in tax haven islands and then uses the same technique that commercial entities use to skirt their profits out of the country, thereby avoiding taxes.  This is very much possible.  The of shore clinics can be potentially used to complicate the tax return filing system here in US.  I could never understand why a completely US hospital system would like to open up a clinic in Bahamas.  These clinics are portrayed as the global reach of the entity but who do they actually serve.  We never hear about them in press or public.  These clinics are apparently manned by some doctors we never hear about.  How does this system work?  I really do...