Halloween and Extreme Pumpkins
All it took was one Google: pumpkins carved
It took me to Extreme Pumpkins.com, and it will give you minutes of helpless laughter. People are SO creative!
Yesterday I bought a pumpkin, not the traditional American sugar pumpkin with it’s thin skin, but a thick, ribbed Indian squash, and when I took it, the clerk said “You want the WHOLE thing??”
It’s not that big. But normally, people buying this kind of squash here buy it in pieces, not as an entire (carvable 🙂 ) pumpkin.
This is not my pumpkin; it is another from Extreme Pumpkins.com I am making cat pumpkins this year. 🙂
Turmeric Kills Cancer Cells (Pass the Biriyani, Please!)
Curry spice ‘kills cancer cells’
From BBC Health News
An extract found in the bright yellow curry spice turmeric can kill off cancer cells, scientists have shown.
The chemical – curcumin – has long been thought to have healing powers and is already being tested as a treatment for arthritis and even dementia.
Now tests by a team at the Cork Cancer Research Centre show it can destroy gullet cancer cells in the lab.
Cancer experts said the findings in the British Journal of Cancer could help doctors find new treatments.
Dr Sharon McKenna and her team found that curcumin started to kill cancer cells within 24 hours.
‘Natural’ remedy
The cells also began to digest themselves, after the curcumin triggered lethal cell death signals.
Dr McKenna said: “Scientists have known for a long time that natural compounds have the potential to treat faulty cells that have become cancerous and we suspected that curcumin might have therapeutic value.”
Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, said: “This is interesting research which opens up the possibility that natural chemicals found in turmeric could be developed into new treatments for oesophageal cancer.
“Rates of oesophageal cancer have gone up by more than a half since the 70s and this is thought to be linked to rising rates of obesity, alcohol intake and reflux disease so finding ways to prevent this disease is important too.”
Each year around 7,800 people are diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in the UK. It is the sixth most common cause of cancer death and accounts for around five percent of all UK cancer deaths.”>
Where to Start a Difficult Conversation?
“Mom,” my son started out, “I have some bad news.”
My heart sank. They are expecting a baby in late January. Please Lord, let this baby be OK.
He starts into a long story, which has to do with an old friend who lost a job, who is staying with them temporarily, who has been very helpful, and on and on and on; I live in a family where nuances are important, and details help understand the conclusions, but it is hard to hold your breath that long!
Then he gets to the point. While he and his wife were at work, the friend was in the house recovering from jet-lag and it started raining hard. His friend thought he heard drips in the attic, and upon exploration, they discovered a small leak in the roof. He will call the contractor we work with, but he wanted me to know.
Bad news?
“Son!” I said, laughing, “when you start a sentence with ‘I have bad news,’ it needs to be followed immediately with ‘I am OK, my wife is OK and the baby is OK’ so I don’t have a heart attack!”
We both laughed. He said “yeh, I thought about that about halfway through the explanation, but I didn’t want to break the train of thought.”
When you have bad news, get it out on the table. Start with “I have bad news, (fill in the blank.)” Then go into the background, and the proposed solutions. My son did everything right, except for the part about I was scared for him and his wife and the baby.
On the other hand, after all that build-up, I was so happy that it seemed like such a small problem, compared to the possibilities.
My husband tells a joke, the point of which is to build up gently to bad news. Not to start with “the cat is dead” but to start with “the cat was on the roof . . . ” The day came when I had to call him with some very bad news, and because I am wired to laugh in the face of the worst things that can happen (it is a sort of hysterical reaction, I have to work hard to control myself at funerals and weddings, I cry at weddings and want to laugh at funerals. The big things are just too overwhelming for me so I react inappropriately. Our family joke is that “inappropriate” is the grown-up word for “stupid”) I had a very hard time not starting off with “the cat was on the roof,” which would have been totally inappropriate but I was overwhelmed, knew I needed to let him know immediately, and you think when you get to be a grown-up you will have all the answers, but we don’t. We really don’t. Like you, we do the best we can.
What I really like was that when our son gave us the bad news, he also had a proposal for how to handle it. Wooo HOOO.
Then he told us they are planning their Halloween costumes. First, because his wife is now very visibly pregnant, they were looking for a cheap doll to take apart and glue some appendages coming out of her little basketball-tummy, but now they are looking for tentacles, a la “Alien”. LLLLOOOOLLLLL! I thought it would be the perfect occasion to wear her wedding dress, our son could wear a tuxedo and the friend could go as the angry-Papa, carrying a shotgun. Yes, we are a little weird in our family, but we have a great time.
Women: Unsung Heroes Awards
Wooo HOOOO, Doha! Don’t you love it? Unsung Hero awards for WOMEN, and what women!
This is from today’s Gulf Times
Three women to receive ‘Unsung Hero’ awards
The 21st Century Leaders Foundation will honour three women at their inaugural awards ceremony on Friday at Grand Hyatt Doha.
Qataris Eman Ahmed al-Obaidli and Sara Mohamed al-Shamlan, and Palestinian Helen Shehadeh will be the first recipients of the Unsung Hero Award.
The Doha 21st Century Leaders Awards was established this year to mark the humanitarian and environmental achievements of individuals who have made a serious commitment and a significant impact to their chosen cause.
Eman, a retired elementary school teacher, has spent the past seven years engaging the people of Qatar in becoming more aware of children with physical disabilities.
Eman has also raised significant awareness within Qatar for Caudal Regression Syndrome, a rare spinal disorder that affects her son Ghanim.
With her son as a constant source of inspiration and with a strong belief in his independence, Eman has founded Ghanim’s Wheelchair Foundation which has donated hundreds of wheelchairs to other special needs societies in the Gulf.
She also started Ghanim’s Sport Club in 2008 to allow both physically disabled and able-bodied children to join in activities as varied as karate, skateboarding and basketball.
In the future, Eman’s vision for Qatar’s community includes independent accessibility for wheelchairs and integrated sport clubs.
The second Unsung Hero award goes to 16-year-old Sara, a student from Qatar Academy, who harnessed her passion of photography to raise awareness of some of the poorer expatriate Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi children in Qatar.
Initially started for a community service project for school, she documented a number of young children in the Abu Hamour area of Doha and went on to sell the prints in her father’s jewellery shop and at a jewellery exhibition. Sara quickly raised a huge sum that was used to provide the children with a proper education and basic necessities such as shoes and toys.
Daughter of well-known Qatari businessman Mohamed Marzooq al-Shamlan, managing director of Marzooq Al Shamlan & Sons, Sara considers her father a major catalyst for her way of thinking. Sara’s work is supported by the Qatar Charity.
The third recipient of the Unsung Hero award is Helen Shehadeh, a Palestinian woman who at the age of 75 is actively continuing to teach blind students.
At the age of two, Helen herself lost her eyesight overnight as a result of a diphtheria epidemic. In 1981, Helen founded the Al Shurooq School for the Blind which aimed to provide blind and visually impaired children with an appropriate education and equal opportunity, while rehabilitating and integrating them into the local community.
Other award recipients on the night include film stars Josh Hartnett and Sir Ben Kingsley and film-makers Danny Boyle and Christian Colson.
Women recognized for making a difference. . . Ahhhhhh. . . . it is a red letter day. 😀
Short Fat Women of the Future
I found this on AOL’s Lemondrop.com link this morning, LLOOLLLL!
Well, here’s a self-confidence booster — you’re not short and fat, you’re just highly evolved.
According to a study by Yale researchers, humans are still evolving, and women are evolving to become shorter and fatter. It is estimated that in 10 generations, women will be two centimeters shorter, weigh one kilogram (around 2.5 lbs.) more, and look back and wonder what kind of freakish monster Angelina Jolie was. (“What are these jeans called ‘long’ from the Gap?)
But we won’t just be jolly little trolls, we’ll also be healthier, with the study expecting women to have lower cholesterol and better heart health, start menopause later, and have more children earlier in life. The study observed over 2,000 medical histories from Framingham Heart Studies in Massachusetts. Shorter, heavier women have more children, who also grow up to be shorter and heavier.
Let’s also not forget that in addition to shrinking downward while expanding outward, we’ll all also have super-hot faces. Short, fat, healthy and hot. Totally awesome.
You can read the original article on TheMedGuru.com
The Social Contract
Without accountability, does the social contract exist?
Wikipedia on the Social Contract:
Social contract describes a broad class of theories that try to explain the ways in which people form states and/or maintain social order. The notion of the social contract implies that the people give up some rights to a government or other authority in order to receive or maintain social order through the rule of law. It can also be thought of as an agreement by the governed on a set of rules by which they are governed.
Social contract theory formed a central pillar in the historically important notion that legitimate state authority must be derived from the consent of the governed. The starting point for most of these theories is a heuristic examination of the human condition absent from any structured social order, usually termed the “state of nature”. In this condition, an individual’s actions are bound only by his or her personal power, constrained by conscience. From this common starting point, the various proponents of social contract theory attempt to explain, in different ways, why it is in an individual’s rational self-interest to voluntarily give up the freedom one has in the state of nature in order to obtain the benefits of political order.
He’s on the Roads Again
This also from today’s Gulf Times. This 25 year old was convicted of killing an Asian driver, due to his reckless driving, and the court fined him the equivalent of $1370. He also had to pay the family of the man he killed about $41,000. Oh. Wait. He “and his insurance company” will pay the fine.
And they didn’t take his driver’s license away, they suspended it. Oh. His jail sentence is also suspended.
Do you think because his license is suspended, that he isn’t driving?
What do you think he has learned about the value of a human life?
What do you think he has learned about equality before the law?
What do you think he has learned about accountability?
Do you believe he will be a better driver now that he has learned the consequences of reckless driving?
You will note that I did not use the tags “Doha” or “Qatar” on this post. That is because these are not situations unique to Qatar, unique to the Gulf countries, unique to the Middle East . . . in every country, including my own, there are pockets where justice depends on who is on trial. I would venture a guess that no country is exempt, that it is always a question of degree. So the question for us, as parent,s is how do we raise children who respect the value of life? Who respect the law? Who see themselves as equal to every other person before God and before the law?
Jail term suspended
A Doha appeals court has suspended the three-month imprisonment given by a lower court to a local motorist for reckless driving that caused the death of an Asian driver on June 27, 2007.
According to sources, the fatal accident took place in Shahaniya soon after midnight, “when the accused swerved left suddenly, for unknown reasons, colliding with a pickup driven by the deceased in the opposite direction.”
According to the court papers, there was no median separating the two lanes that ran in the opposite directions and the pickup was damaged in the crash.
The Qatari motorist was 25 at the time of the incident.
The appeals court ordered him to pay, jointly with the insurance company, QR150,000 as blood money to the family of the Bangladeshi victim (32).
The Doha court of first instance ordered to cancel the driving licence of the convict, but the upper court suspended it. A fine of QR5000 was upheld.
Health Services Providers Closed in Doha
Also from today’s Gulf Times . . . . It would be nice if we knew what those institutions were, so we could avoid them in the future, and what the specific complaints were.
For example, it doesn’t bother me for men and women to be in the same waiting room, like when my husband was really sick and needed a procedure done, he really needed me by his side. It would have been agony to have to wait in separate rooms, and, in fact, I have never seen separate waiting rooms in the modern Doha facilities I have visited, except for the hospital where they process all the people trying to obtain residence visas.
But I really want to know who is carrying expired or adulterated medications in their pharmacies, and who is using unauthorized or unqualified medical personnel! Please! In the interest of public safety, name the names.
22 health institutions shut for flouting rules
The Medical Licensing department at the Supreme Council of Health closed down a total of 22 health institutions, which did not comply with the health standards and rules, between November 2008 and September 2009, the department’s report states.
According to the report, which was the first published by the department, the health institutions include private clinics, medical centres, herbs selling outlets, dental clinics and eye-glasses shops.
They were found violating the standards during surprise visits by medical licensing inspectors.
Among the violations listed against the institutions were employment of unlicensed general practitioners and persons banned from practising or blacklisted, shortage of medical staff, selling of drugs that contain internationally banned substances or drugs not registered with the government pharmacy department and improper collation of patients’ data.
While some centres were found operating without proper licences, some were said to be in possession of expired drugs.
The report added that a number of them failed to separate men and women in waiting rooms and that they lack proper hygiene.
Doha Tribeca Film Fest a Sellout!
From today’s Gulf Times comes word that the upcoming film fest is already totally sold out. They have some really good movies!
Film festival a sellout
By Peter Townson
The Doha Tribeca Film Festival (DTFF) box-office outlets have seen a lot of interest from filmgoers in Qatar, with many of the movies due to be screened over weekend already sold out.
Among the most popular films are Capitalism: a Love Story by Michael Moore, Team Qatar, No-one Knows About Persian Cats, the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man, and About Elly.
The festival’s ‘blue badge’ passes, which offer holders a discount and access to a number of the festival’s events, have been very popular, and almost all the tickets that have been sold so far have been bought by blue badge-holders.
However, with less than a week to go it seems that most films have more or less sold out, with only a few seats remaining for many of the screenings.
But for disappointed moviegoers unable to buy tickets for the shows they want to see, all is not lost. Organisers have told people to go to the venue of their preferred screenings around one hour before the scheduled time, and there is a chance that people will be admitted to the film depending on whether all the ticket-holders turn up.
One British resident, who managed to get tickets to the most of the films she wanted to see, said that she was particularly looking forward to watching A Serious Man and London River but said she was disappointed not to get the chance to attend either screening of No-one Knows About Persian Cats.
“It is fantastic to have the opportunity to see films like this here in Qatar,” she said, adding “I am really looking forward to seeing the types of films we don’t usually find at the cinemas here, including some of the Arab films as well.”
However, another filmgoer expressed her disappointment at not being able to get tickets for any of the films she wants to see.
“I was really excited about seeing some of these movies, but now I’m so disappointed as I couldn’t get any tickets I wanted,” said the Australian expatriate, adding “I just hope they have not all been given away to people who don’t even really want them.”
With some 3,000 guests expected to attend the screening of Mira Nair’s Amelia it would seem that the film-loving population has wholeheartedly embraced the opportunities the festival will bring to Qatar.
Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran
I saw a mention of this book in an Amazon.com referral as a book I might like, and was almost set to order it when something said “go check the stack of books Little Diamond left for you” and sure enough, I already had the book.
I use books as an incentive to get me through life’s inevitable tasks I don’t like – like “if I finish this project on time, I get to read this book as a reward.” It works for me.
When I first started reading Marsha Mehran’s book about three Persian sisters starting up a cafe in a small Irish town after fleeing Iran, I found it sour. The author has a critical point of view, and generally speaking, I don’t like hanging around with people who criticize others and judge them harshly. At the beginning of the book, Mehran introduces a lot of people, many of whom we are not meant to like.
Even the sisters are not all that sympathetic – at the beginning. But also, near the beginning, she discusses Persian cooking, the idea of balance in a meal, hot and cold, spicy and bland, so you kind of get the idea that if there is sour, then there will also be sweet. In addition, at the end of each chapter there is a wonderful recipe, a wonderful, fairly easy-to-follow recipe, and she included one, Fesanjan, that is my all-time favorite Iranian dish and now, I know how to make it, Wooo HOOOO!
Three sisters, orphaned by fate, held together by love and duty, start a cafe, which, against all odds, becomes a raging success. Raging success does not heal all the old wounds, however, nor the hearts that bear them, and we learn through the book what the sisters have borne and overcome.
It turns out to be a sweet book, one well worth reading. And oh! the recipes! In each chapter, there are also hints that make them even better, so you can’t just copy out the recipes and use them, you really have to read the book. 🙂
It’s a pity that two of the most wonderful countries in the world – Syria and Iran – are off limits. We’ve been back to Syria, and it was everything we remembered (see the Walking Old Damascus blog entries) but oh, how we would love to explore Iran. Sigh. The world turns, and we can only hope to be able to get there in our lifetime. Stranger things have happened.
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Early Voting in Florida
