Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
FEAR
FEAR: _ _ Prologue: I was watching movie “Jaws” in a theater with friends in Mumbai 30 years ago. In one scene, a deserted wrecked ship is being explored under water by divers and suddenly the shark makes appearance with frightening music and my whole body just jerked for a second. My friends were laughing and said that I am very fearful. Well, now they know that I am not fearful as I took all powerful media & politicians head-on. But that jerk of my body was an instantaneous response to advent of potential threat. That is fear and that is natural. If I were to pinpoint one pervasive emotion in society today, it would be fear. Fear is not a new emotion. Throughout history, it has marked societies and even mobilized them, whether they were facing down plagues or the threat of nuclear annihilation. Since the 1980s, society at […]
SCIENCE AGAINST RACISM
SCIENCE AGAINST RACISM: _ _ Prologue: When Hitler said, “Take away the Nordic Germans and nothing remains but the dance of apes, he based that thought on the Darwinist ideas that man had evolved from apes, for which reason some of them still possessed ape status.” This logic constitutes the starting point of the horrible massacres they carried out against various races such as Gypsies, Slavs, Russians, and especially the Jews, and the horrible insensitivity they displayed while carrying out these horrendous acts. In 1986, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone remarked that the average American intellectual standard is lower than the average Japanese standard because of the blacks and Hispanics in the U.S. Eleven years later, University of Texas Law School Professor Lino Graglia triggered a firestorm of criticism for his remarks that “Blacks and Mexican-Americans are not academically competitive with whites in selective institutions. It is the result primarily […]
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION (FREEDOM OF SPEECH)
_____________________________________________________________________________ FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION (FREEDOM OF SPEECH) _ _ Caveat: Please do read my articles on ‘Internet censorship’, ‘Science of Religion’ and ‘Torture’ whereby I have discussed freedom of expression on internet, blasphemy & sacred texts and clash of moral duties respectively. The reason for writing an entire article on ‘Freedom of Expression’ is to respond to an attempt made by Indian media to block my article ‘Hybrid Smile’ on my facebook page. Here I have discussed in depth the scope of freedom of expression and the limitations of freedom of expression. In order to make the article vibrant and inclusive, I have taken liberty to include views of some which may sound offensive to some community or some leaders or some people. I do not agree with some of the views of others posted in this article but for the sake of freedom of expression, I have allowed those […]
CLOTHING
CLOTHING: _ Duchess Kate Middleton, “queen of style” crowned best dressed woman of 2011. _ Prologue: After writing many articles on science, and trying to bring science in religion, crime, entertainment and superstitions, I thought why not write about our clothing. Personally speaking, I have a poor sense of clothing. Before writing this article, I wasn’t aware of all the different fabrics and their qualities. To me it clearly didn’t matter what fabric a garment was made of (so long as it looked good of course) and price was a far more important factor. Singularly criticized by fashionista Sonam kapoor for not appreciating beauty of body and castigated by supermodel Julia Stegner for not knowing what to wear in which profession, I am at a receiving end for not knowing beauty, fashion, style and dress sense. The only way out is to improvise and write on clothing, fashion and […]
FEVER
FEVER: _ _ Prologue: “Humanity has but three great enemies: fever, famine, and war. Of these, by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever.” – Sir William Osler. For last 20 years, I have been treating fever and my patients included everybody from poor to wealthy; from honest to corrupt; and from politician to bureaucrat. I fully agree with Sir William Osler. No matter how high or low socioeconomic status and no matter how good or bad the person is, fever make them very helpless, very fearful, very vulnerable and very apprehensive. I have seen patients coming to hospital in ambulance with fever for one day; relatives pleading to save life and next day patients are fine & discharged. Fever is a common complaint leading families to seek medical attention. When I wrote on “Heat illness”, I thought I would follow it up with article on fever […]
