Abid Uzair > Recent Status Updates

"How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him"

Another ride on the wild old maker. This time to the far South. What say?

End of Book 2: Muas'dib
Next up is Book 3: The Prophet

I wonder what the Arab world makes of this book, assuming they read fiction and foreign literature.

I wish I could enroll myself in Bene Gesserit training program. I would be so much better.

Oh how I wish I could read all day :/

The writing is amazing given that it was first published in 1958. This book can be used as a reference or as a model to explain any esoteric and complex subjects laid in strong theoretical underpinnings and which require a much needed historical view to fully appreciate a piece of work. This is exactly what I was looking for.

If only they taught us this way...sigh!

End of Book one - Dune.
The book has religious vocabulary borrowed from Islam, that's cool. Author has done his research.

Phenomenal world-building.

Ch #1 Education as a Necessity of Life

Education ensures continuity of social life through transmission and communication, all communication is educative in a vitally social life, deliberate education decreases gap b/w immature and adults through formal education and association in a complex society, education influencing social disposition vs education of remote matters through symbols which may seem superficial

Buying Kindle was one of the best decisions I made this year. I enjoy reading on the device, it is light-weight in nature, so I don't even need to use both my hands, almost no eye-strain which makes it a great piece of work. I never thought I would say this but I am slowly starting to feel kindle device is better than paperbacks. My only concern with the device is it's not as responsive as I would like it to be.

This book is fairly interesting for someone like me who is not well aware about, well many things but like, economics and politics. I'm curious to know if his daughter left any review on the Internet.

This is a good one, I'll continue from where I left off. However, I have no way to actually put these valuable lessons to test. How would I ever know if they actually work?

I learnt a great many things from this book. However, the book feels dry if you already have strong foundations in Calculus. I personally felt he spent way too much time trying to explain the most basic things, clearly I'm not the target audience here. I'm not sure if I will get back to this book, however, a part of me is not comfortable placing a half read book back on the shelf.

I wish to restart. Linguistics is too much of an important topic to not be taking notes. I quite enjoyed whatever little I managed to listen but hoping to get much more out of it.

Not looking to continue for reasons mentioned already.

Surprisingly, this work of fiction felt like a drag. I wish to give it a second chance because I quite enjoy reading Carl Sagan.

I must decide if I want to read the kindle book or go with the audiobook. I am inclined to read the book because it has many quotable quotes and I do not want to miss out on taking a note of them. However, I love the fact that it is narrated by Stephen Fry which makes for an amazing reread.

After having listened to 8 hours of history, I may have to start all over again. Mainly because of break in continuity and for some reason audio version for this book isn't working out for me. The first few chapters were gripping but it tapered off from there on. The other thing is I did not take notes. I still think this is a good book which covers an important phase of medieval history and therefore must be read.

Something to think about, which my grandmother had articulated in the past:

"The presence of B. R. Ambedkar underlies a quite profound difference between the Scheduled Castes and the other minority...For the Muslims had no seats reserved for them...nor did they have a leader of Ambedkar's stature to inspire and move them - while he was alive or long after he was gone."

Muslim elite must take notice.

I wish the chapter "Minding the Minorities" also cared to speak for the other religious minorities.

Ch #17 Minding the Minorities (iii)

Historical injustice against Dalits, SC reforms in education, govt employment, and Parliament and state assemblies; B. R. Ambedkar as the SC leader, his slogan - "Educate, Agitate, Organize," atrocities perpetrated on Dalits continued, state law one thing; social practice quite another, Nehru's biggest contributions-creation of secular state and equal rights to Dalits

Ch #17 Minding the Minorities (ii)

Main themes: formation of MIM to represent Muslims and other minorities in 1951, Muslim elite went to Islamic state Pak, Muslims who remained were the labouring poor, 1960s Jabalpur-Jamshedpur-Rourkela riots, retributory violence against Indian Muslims due to after attacks on Hindus in E. Pak, actions in Pakistan having repercussions on Indian Muslims, lack of educated Muslim elite

Ch #17 Minding the Minorities (i)

Main themes: Muslims and Scheduled Castes, muslims regarded as Pakistani spies, partition of India injurious to Indian Muslims, Vallabhbhai Patel - Muslims must prove their loyalty to India, should not hold key posts in govt administration as section of Muslims are actively sympathetic to Pakistan, Saif Tyabji-Muslim Congress member encouraged Muslims to take active part in politics

Researchers have isolated 2 related genes, BRCA-1 and BRCA-2, that vastly increase the risk of developing breast cancer. A woman with an inherited mutation in BRCA-1 has a 50 to 80 percent chance of developing breast cancer in her lifetime (the gene also increases the risk of ovarian cancer), about three to five times the normal risk. Today, testing for this gene mutation has been integrated into prevention efforts.

We now know there is a link between nutrition and the risk of particular forms of cancer, but this field remains in its infancy. Low fiber, red meat rich diets increase the risks of colon cancer, and obesity is linked to breast cancer, but much more about these links remain unknown, especially in molecular terms.

"If one compares two breast cancer specimens, the set of mutated genes is far from identical.

"Every patient's cancer is unique because every cancer genome is unique.

"Normal cells are identically normal; malignant cells become unhappily malignant in unique ways."

Some mutations are harmful and others aren't but there's a pattern.

"Underneath what might seem like overwhelming diversity is a deep genetic unity."

This is pretty cool. Using uniqueness of cancer cells against itself.

"In the mid-1970s, two immunologists.., Cesar Milstein and George Kohler, had devised a method to produce vast quantities of a single antibody using a hybrid immune cell that had been physically fused to a cancer cell. (The immune cell secreted the antibody while the cancer cell, a specialist in uncontrolled growth, turned it into a factory.)"

TIL

Back when protein drugs were notoriously difficult to produce - "Insulin, for instance, was produced by grinding up cow and pig innards into a soup and then extracting the protein from the mix - one pound of insulin from every eight thousand pounds of pancreas."