Ramadan: Tuesday? Wednesday? Thursday? Depends on where you live
This is from the Huffington Post via AOL. Ramadan has started in the USA, but the rest of the world . . . not so clear.
Is Ramadan Tuesday or Wednesday? How about Thursday?
Because of disagreements over when the lunar-based Islamic fasting month begins, Muslims will start their fasting on different days this year.
In the United States, the Fiqh Council of North America, a prominent group of Islamic scholars affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America, has declared the first fasting day of Ramadan to be Tuesday. It used astronomical calculations and a sighting of the new moon in California. Many mosques, such as the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, have also encouraged their congregants to use Tuesday as the first fasting day.
But with the vast majority of the world’s Muslims living outside the U.S., and many of America’s Muslims having immigrated from or having family in other countries, the Ramadan calendars used in places such as the Middle East and South Asia have swayed some Americans to change their observation dates.
In several Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, Islamic leaders said Monday that the new moon had not been sighted, meaning that Ramadan fasting could not begin until Wednesday. Ramadan technically begins at nighttime, when the crescent moon is sighted, and the first day of fasting begins at dawn the following morning. Islamic leaders in Malaysia have also said the fast won’t start until Wednesday. To blame in some areas for the lack of a visible moon: cloudy skies and bad weather.
In Pakistan, news sources are reporting that the fast could begin either Wednesday or Thursday. The story is similar in India, which is home to 177 million Muslims. TheWall Street Journal reported Tuesday that monsoons had prevented moon-sighting committees from declaring the beginning of Ramadan.
Syed Tariq Bukhari, a member of the moon sighting committee at Old Delhi’s Jama Masjid, one of India’s largest mosques, said India lags behind the Middle East because of its geographical position and, this year, because of the monsoon.According to his committee, if the new moon is spotted either by a moon sighting committee, a reliable Islamic witnesses — a Muslim man with a beard — or a large number of people Tuesday evening, then Ramadan will begin in India on Wednesday.
If not, then Thursday will mark the start of the fast.
Regardless of differing dates abroad, American Islamic scholars are keeping with using Tuesday as the first fast, Fiqh Council of North America officials say in a statement on their website.
“There is a big chance of divergence. The Fiqh Council will stick to its criteria and decision no matter what reports come from abroad. Ramadan in North America will definitely begin on Tuesday, July 9, 2013.”
Gulf Power and Customer Energy Use Monitoring
I love this! Yes, I am a nerd, yes, I get excited about geeky things, but after my first year in Pensacola, paying electrical bills in the $400’s because I like to be cool, I have learned a few tricks about spending less, like turning the a/c up when leaving the house, it really makes a difference.
And now, we monitor our energy use on a DAILY basis. I love it! When you log into your Gulf Power account, you can see your energy usage calculated against the daily temperatures, with a range of your estimated end-of-month bill. No more bad surprises!
I think I inherited a small bit of my father’s engineer mentality; I love being able to manage my energy use 🙂
Thank you, Gulf Power, for making it possible.
BBC Secret Life of Cats Article: Hilarious Site With Mobile Cat Web Cams
First, you have to go to this BBC Science Website, where cats in a Surrey village were tracked by the Royal Veterinary College to see where they would go during 24 hour periods. You click on each cat to see the route they followed – some are amazing – and then you can click on a video to have a glimpse of cat life, usually including the underside of a cat chin. It is fascinating and hilarious.
Anesthesia Linked to Dementia Risk in Seniors
It may not be dementia. It may be a reaction to a medication in the elderly that LOOKS like dementia.
My father was 87, and doing pretty well for a man 87. He still walked on his own, using a walker when he had to, and very rarely, a wheelchair if we were going a long ways. He went into the hospital for a minor surgery. The tube inserted in his hand for the anesthetic became infected. Dad was acting weird, he was having hallucinations, and my sister rightly identified that Dad had a reaction to the diuretic drug Lasix; when they switched him to an alternative, the raving and hallucinations stopped.
He was transferred to a rehabilitation unit, where for two days, they put him back on Lasix. Poor communication between hospital and the rehab facility, plus standardization of drug regimens – they switched him without telling him, or us. Once again, he went loony tunes, and at the same time, his right hand began to swell until it looked like a lobster claw. He kept saying it hurt, and it was big and red, and the rehab people kept saying it would get better.
Dad was rushed to another hospital, one the rehab clinic worked with, and the doctors told us he had a ‘cascade of problems’ and which were the primary three we wanted them to work with?
Get him off the Lasix, first thing, we all agreed, and find a way to have it annotated on any record that he is never to have Lasix. (It did no good; the next hospitalization, back at the first hospital, they gave him Lasix again, which made him crazy and masked all the other symptoms.)
Long story short, there were a cascade of hospital mistakes – not one hospital, two hospitals and the rehab clinic – where miscommunications, inattentions and shortage of trained personnel resulted in a cascade of issues that led to my father’s death later that year. The other lesson learned is that if you go into a hospital, make sure you have a good support system, someone with you who will bravely ask questions, and remind someone if an inappropriate medication is prescribed. You need a family member with you for protection against inattention, mistakes, miscommunications and personnel shortages.
It’s not like there’s anyone to bring a lawsuit against; they were all doing the best they could, but Dad was old. My bet is that he might have lived another couple years, at the very least, had he not gone in for that first non-essential minor surgery. To me, the moral of the story is if you want to live a long life, stay away from hospitals.
Anesthesia Linked to Increased Dementia Risk in Seniors
Exposure to anesthesia has been linked to a 35 percent increase of dementia in patients over age 65, according to a new study.
By Jeffrey Kopman, Everyday Health Staff Writer
FRIDAY, May 31, 2013 — Caregivers and seniors struggling with the dilemmas of elder care have another risk to weigh against potential rewards — senior patients exposed to general anesthesia face an increased risk of dementia, according to research presented at Euroanaesthesia, the annual congress of the European Society of Anaesthesiology (ESA).
Researchers reviewed the medical information of 9,294 French patients over the age of 65. The patients were interviewed several times over a ten year period to determine their cognitive status.
After two years, 33 percent of participants had been exposed to anesthesia. Most of the exposed patients (19 percent overall) were exposed to general anesthesia — a medically induced coma. The rest were exposed to local/locoregional — any technique to relieve pain in the body — anesthesia.
In total, 632 participants developed dementia eight years after the study began. A majority of these patients, 512, were diagnosed with probable or possible Alzheimer’s disease. The remainder had non-Alzheimer’s dementia.
The gap between dementia related to general anesthesia (22 percent) and non-dementia patients (19 percent) was associated with a 35 percent increased risk of developing dementia. This risk was linked to at least one general anesthesia.
“Elderly patients are at an increased risk for complications following anesthesia and surgery,” said Jeffrey H. Silverstein, MD, MS, and vice chair for research at the Department of Anesthesiology at Mount Sinai in New York City. “[They] are particularly prone to postoperative delirium, which is a loss of orientation and attention. Anesthesiologists have been evaluating higher cognitive functions (for example, memory and executive processing) and found that a substantial number have decreases in one or more of these areas after a surgical procedure.”
Researchers hope this study will lead to more awareness for surgeons.
“Recognition of postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) is essential in the perioperative management of elderly patients,” said study author Dr. Francois Sztark, INSERM and University of Bordeaux, France, in a press release. “A long-term follow-up of these patients should be planned.”
Elderly Care: Risk vs. Reward
Senior citizens and their caregivers might be willing to accept an increased risk of dementia if it means getting necessary anesthesia for an important medical procedure. Dementia is a relatively common occurrence in old age: One in three seniors has Alzheimer’s disease or dementia by the time of their death.
But surgery at old age can also carry more severe, and less common, health risks. In fact, simply surviving surgery can be difficult for elderly patients, especially those over the age of 80.
While the numbers vary depending on procedure, researchers have found that mortality risk tied to elective major surgeries increases with age. The risk more than doubles for patients over 80 compared to patients ages 65 to 69.
But other surgery complications are even more common in seniors.
“The major risk for elderly patients following surgery is pneumonia,” said Dr. Silverstein. “Cardiac complications are next most common.”
However, Dr. Silverstein still feels that if surgery is deemed necessary, patients should not fear the risks.
“In theory, only necessary surgery is done,” he said. “Knowing how [patients] reacted to anesthesia and surgery in the past may give them some idea of their postoperative course.”
Last Updated: 05/31/2013
Round-Up Herbicide Tied to Serious Health Deterioration
Shocking news for everyone with grounds and gardens – we’ve all been using this, not knowing its long term impact on our environment – and on us.
Roundup, An Herbicide, Could Be Linked To Parkinson’s, Cancer And Other Health Issues, Study Shows
The peer-reviewed report, published last week in the scientific journal Entropy, said evidence indicates that residues of “glyphosate,” the chief ingredient in Roundup weed killer, which is sprayed over millions of acres of crops, has been found in food.
Those residues enhance the damaging effects of other food-borne chemical residues and toxins in the environment to disrupt normal body functions and induce disease, according to the report, authored by Stephanie Seneff, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Anthony Samsel, a retired science consultant from Arthur D. Little, Inc. Samsel is a former private environmental government contractor as well as a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body,” the study says.
We “have hit upon something very important that needs to be taken seriously and further investigated,” Seneff said.
Environmentalists, consumer groups and plant scientists from several countries have warned that heavy use of glyphosate is causing problems for plants, people and animals.
The EPA is conducting a standard registration review of glyphosate and has set a deadline of 2015 for determining if glyphosate use should be limited. The study is among many comments submitted to the agency.
Monsanto is the developer of both Roundup herbicide and a suite of crops that are genetically altered to withstand being sprayed with the Roundup weed killer.
These biotech crops, including corn, soybeans, canola and sugarbeets, are planted on millions of acres in the United States annually. Farmers like them because they can spray Roundup weed killer directly on the crops to kill weeds in the fields without harming the crops.
Roundup is also popularly used on lawns, gardens and golf courses.
Monsanto and other leading industry experts have said for years that glyphosate is proven safe, and has a less damaging impact on the environment than other commonly used chemicals.
Jerry Steiner, Monsanto’s executive vice president of sustainability, reiterated that in a recent interview when questioned about the study.
“We are very confident in the long track record that glyphosate has. It has been very, very extensively studied,” he said.
Of the more than two dozen top herbicides on the market, glyphosate is the most popular. In 2007, as much as 185 million pounds of glyphosate was used by U.S. farmers, double the amount used six years ago, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data.
Shams I; Huge Solar Plant in Abu Dhabi
Today – from WeatherUndergroundNews:
Behold — a way to capture a maximum amount of solar power in one of the sunniest regions on the planet.
Located in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates that cozy up to the Persian Gulf in the Middle East, Abu Dhabi announced the opening of the Shams 1 solar plant last month. Shams 1, which translates to “the Sun” in Arabic, according to the BBC, utilizes more than 250,000 mirrors to capture and harness the power of the sun.
Officials in Abu Dhabi hope the new plant will save 175,000 tons of carbon dioxide every year, reports an NPR blog. That’s the equivalent of removing 15,000 cars from the road, they say, and several more of these mega-plants are in the works.
The other reason for building the Shams 1? The country will be able to export more of their vast natural oil reserves instead of using it within the country. It will lead to even more profit for the UAE, says Bloomberg. The plant cost $750 million to build, but according to the report, it’s just the first step in a plan to generate one-third of the country’s energy from solar power by the year 2032.
Worst Drivers in the World: Traffic Fatalities by Country
Driving in the Middle East is a whole other world, a world of chaos until you realize that the rules are different, no matter what the published rules are. To drive in Qatar, I started at 0430 on a Friday morning, when there was little or no traffic (things have changed) and would drive until traffic began to thicken. Eventually, I knew the city and gained confidence that I could drive without getting killed. In Kuwait, for months, I would only drive to relatively nearby shopping areas, or drive only on back roads carefully plotted on the map during low traffic hours. After a while, you begin to get a sense of things, and the sensation of imminent death lessens.
Adventures in Qatar: a radiator dropping off a truck in front of me, being hit on purpose by a man who didn’t like women driving, being pushed into a round about by a Hummer, being nearly assaulted by two young Qataris who believed we had insulted them by being in the lane where they wanted to be, watching men drive up the wrong side of the ring roads because they were too important to wait in line, later standing and laughing at their crashed cars – Daddy would buy them another. It sounds crazy, but you get used to it.
Kuwait was a whole different ball game, controlled chaos at high speeds. Adventures in Kuwait: the sleeping elderly man driving in the lane next to me who almost hit me, watching drivers drive through red lights as if they were green, sparks off the fenders of SUVs on Highway 30 as people wove quickly in and out of traffic, the dramatic crashed and burned out cars on the sides of the highways, the car impaled on a palm tree – 10 feet above the road. Kuwait was so surreal that I couldn’t even begin to imagine how some of the accidents happened; I learned to be a very prayerful driver.
So out of idle curiosity, today I looked up highest rate of traffic fatalities per country, and found this on Wikipedia. So here’s a surprise . . . Kuwait’s fatalities statistic is roughly equal to that of the United States. Qatar’s is significantly higher, and many countries are even double or triple Kuwaits fatality rate. I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around this.
List of countries Fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants
World 20.8
Afghanistan 39.0
Albania 13.9
Angola 37.7
Argentina 13.7
Armenia 13.9
Australia 5.71
Austria 8.2
Azerbaijan 13.0
Bahamas 14.5
Bahrain 12.1
Bangladesh 12.6
Barbados 12.2
Belarus 10.9
Belgium 10.1
Belize 15.6
Benin 31.2 1
Bhutan 14.4
Bolivia 16.7
Bosnia and Herzegovina 10.9
Botswana 33.8
Brazil 19.9
British Virgin Islands 21.7
Brunei Darussalam 13.8
Bulgaria 8.8
Burkina Faso 31.1
Burundi 23.4
Cambodia 12.1
Cameroon 28.1
Canada 9.2
Cape Verde 25.1
Central African Republic 32.2
Chad 34.3
Chile 13.7
China 5.1
Colombia 11.7
Comoros 30.3
Republic of the Congo 28.8
Cook Islands 45.0
Costa Rica 15.4
Croatia 9.1
Cuba 8.6
Cyprus 10.4
Czech Republic 10.4
Denmark 3.1
Dominican Republic 17.3
Ecuador 11.7
Egypt 42.0
El Salvador 12.6
Eritrea 48.4
Estonia 7.5
Ethiopia 35.0
Fiji 7.0
Finland 6.5
France 5.5
The Gambia 36.6
Georgia 16.8
Germany 4.5
Ghana 9.32
Greece 14.4
Guatemala 14.7
Guinea-Bissau 34.4
Guyana 19.9
Honduras 13.5
Hungary 9.9
Iceland 3.8
India 11.1
Indonesia 16.2
Iran 35.8
Iraq 38.1
Republic of Ireland 3.51
Israel 3.7
Italy 8.7
Jamaica 12.3
Japan 3.85
Jordan 34.2
Kazakhstan 30.6
Kenya 34.4
Kiribati 7.4
Republic of Korea 11.3
Kuwait 16.9
Kyrgyzstan 22.8
Laos 18.3
Latvia 8.7
Lebanon 28.5
Lesotho 26.7
Liberia 32.9
Libya 40.5
Lithuania 14.8
Luxembourg 9.0
Madagascar 33.7
Malawi 26.0
Malaysia 24.1
Maldives 18.3
Mali 32.1
Malta 3.4
Marshall Islands 7.4
Mauritania 35.5
Mauritius 11.1
Mexico 20.7
Federated States of Micronesia 14.4
Mongolia 14.5
Montenegro 14.6
Morocco 28.3
Mozambique 7.0
Myanmar 23.4
Namibia 28.6
Nauru 9.9
Nepal 15.1
Netherlands 3.9
New Zealand 8.6
Nicaragua 14.2
Niger 37.7
Nigeria 32.3
Norway 5.4
Oman 21.3
Pakistan 25.3
Palau 14.8
Palestinian territories 5.6
Panama 12.7
Papua New Guinea 14.2
Paraguay 19.7
Peru 21.5
Philippines 20.0
Poland 10.7
Portugal 7.9
Puerto Rico 12.8
Qatar 23.7
Republic of Macedonia 6.9
Republic of Moldova 15.1
Romania 9.4
Russia 19.5
Rwanda 31.6
Saint Lucia 17.6
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 6.6
Samoa 12.8
San Marino 0
Sao Tome and Principe 33.0
Saudi Arabia 29.0
Senegal 32.5
Serbia 9.8
Seychelles 18.5
Sierra Leone 28.3
Singapore 4.8
Slovakia 7.1
Slovenia 10.4
Solomon Islands 16.9
South Africa 33.2
Spain 6.9
Sri Lanka 13.5
Sudan 34.7
Suriname 15.8
Swaziland 26.3
Sweden 2.9
Switzerland 4.7
Syrian Arab Republic 32.9
Tajikistan 14.1
Thailand 19.6
Timor-Leste 16.1
Togo 28.1
Tonga 7.0
Trinidad and Tobago 15.5
Tunisia 34.5
Turkey 13.4
Turkmenistan 18.6
Tuvalu 9.5
Uganda 24.7
Ukraine 11.2
United Arab Emirates 37.1
United Kingdom 3.59
United Republic of Tanzania 34.3
United States of America 12.3
Uruguay 12.8
Uzbekistan 9.7
Vanuatu 18.6
Venezuela 21.8
Vietnam 16.1
Yemen 29.3
Zambia 25.6
Zimbabwe 27.5
Like all statistics, I think some are honest, and some need to be taken with a grain of salt. I found reading through them fascinating. You can get more information, accidents per thousand cars, total accidents, etc.
Top Porn Sites Install Malware
Surprise, surprise, you go to porn sites, you get malware. The entire story, which comes from BBC News, can be read by clicking here.
Top porn sites ‘pose growing malware risk’ to users
By Dave Lee
Technology reporter, BBC News
Some advertisements were found to be installing harmful software on users’ machines without consent
Browsing some of the internet’s most popular pornography websites is increasingly putting visitors at risk, research has found.
Advertisements displayed by the sites, which are visited by millions every day, were found to be installing harmful files without users’ knowledge.
Hilarious Ad
Thank you, Hayfa, I am still laughing!
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