Secular extremism is the grave danger, not religious expression in public square
By Michael Gaynor, November 29, 2006, RenewAmerica
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This is America. Merry Christmas! There is no national religion, but there is supposed to be free exercise of religion, religious values are supposed to inform public policy and separating public life and personal faith more than America’s Founders intended is a malignant mistake.
America’s Founders were genuinely religious people. They wisely rejected the extremes: monarchy based on divine right, theocratic government, and secular extremist government. Instead, they established a moderate secular government that publicly and gratefully acknowledged God and the dependence of America’s government and America’s people upon God and expected religious values to inform public debate and public policy. They fashioned a national government that supported religion generally, refused to establish an official national religion and respected the private right of conscience (without giving a tiny atheist minority a veto power over the right of the majority to have their government support religion generally). Days of Thanksgiving were proclaimed for America as a nation to give thanks to God, not for shopping. Those who did not believe in God were not forced to pretend that they did, of course, but national policy on whether Thanksgiving and Christmas would be national holidays, “Laus Deo” (Latin for Praise God) would be on the top of the Washington Monument (once the world’s tallest manmade structure), “In God We Trust” would be on America’s currency and coin and “under God” would be in “The Pledge of Allegiance” were supposed to depend upon the will of the majority, not the whim of a tiny minority. READ…..
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‘Anger bad for heart, blood pressure’
By Kounteya Sinha, Times of India, Sept.30, 2007
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New Delhi: Are you extremely short tempered and irritable? Do you scream and swear often? It’s time you watched your heart. For, doctors say being a ‘‘cool dude’’ can be immensely beneficial to your heart.
Researches show that hot-headed and grouchy people face a threefold increased risk of heart disease than their cooler peers though science is yet to point out the exact connection between anger and heart attack. Experts say it’s because anger triggers an excessive release of stress hormones, increased oxygen demand by the heart’s muscle cells and causes platelets (which are the blood cells that form clots) to get sticky causing blockage and a heart attack. READ…
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Girl dies over a bowl of rice
By Amita Verma. Lucknow, India. Aisian Age. Sept.30, 2007.
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She fought with her younger brother over a small bowl of rice.
The brother managed to snatch away the rice and the distraught sister – unable to bear the pangs of hunger committed suicide.
When the family returned from work on Friday night, they found the 18-year-old Gyanwati’s body hanging from the roof.
An empty bowl of rice lay nearby and the son, Chhatrapal, 12, sat close by, filled with remorse and guilt. “I killed her.
If I had given her the rice, she would not have died,” he muttered as the neighbours gathered around the house. This tragic incident took place on Friday night in Detikar village in Gosainganj area on the outskirts of Lucknow. READ…
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Shopkeepers Engage in Recycling Business
August 25, 2007, Times of India
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Khan Mkt to recycle waste paper for bags. 150 Shops Propose To Set Up Plant In Lane. By Neha Pushkarna for TNN.
New Delhi: They stopped selling firecrackers seven years ago to inspire their customers to say no to crackers. A few years later, they installed bins in front of their shops for garbage segregation. And now, they are planning to recycle their waste paper to make paper bags and help their customers bid goodbye to polythene bags forever. Khan Market, in the heart of south Delhi, is thinking and acting green.The shopkeepers in this elite market are not screaming business but aspiring to become the connoisseurs of environment conservation. If all administrative hurdles are crossed over, and the efforts of the market president Sanjiv Mehra take shape, you may soon be coming out of Khan Market with recycled paper bags made right inside the market. READ…
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Till the cows no longer come home
by P.Sainath, The Hindu, 19 August, 2009
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“Truckloads of cattle have left this village,” says Maruti Yadavrao Panghate in Devdhari village of Yavatmal. “Many more will go. There is no fodder or water for them.” Panghate, who owns five acres, feels he has lost “80 per cent of my soybean, 70 per cent of cotton and 50 per cent of all the jowar I’ve sown. Late rains even at this point will retrieve something, though not much. However, it could help with fodder and some water. Without that, the rest of the cattle will go, too. Already bullocks worth Rs.10,000 are selling at Rs. 4,000. It’s the same in other villages.”
The distress sale of cattle is one of the most sensitive indicators of crisis in the countryside. And when prices fall the way they have here, it suggests the onset of unusual levels of hardship. Vidharbha may not be yet as severely hit by the drought as parts of Marathwada or neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. But its situation is fragile. Its farmers have been battered by years of an agrarian crisis that had little to do with drought. Coming atop that crisis, monsoon failure hits a people far more vulnerable than they were in other decades. READ…
Born with heart outside rib cage
August 4, 2007, Deccan Herald
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DECCAN HERALD NEWS SERVICE. Aug.4, 2007. Page 4. Metro/State section. BIJAPUR : In what is said to be one of the rarest of rare medical conditions, a male baby was born with its heart outside the rib cage and just beneath the skin,at the VASI Hospital here recently.Gynaecologist and obstetrician Daxayani Jigjini said the condition is so rare there is hardly any reference to such phenomena in books on obstetrics. The delivery of the baby, born to Neelabai Biradar of Gotyal village in Indi taluk, was normal and so was its ‘position’at the time of delivery- “it came out with its head and legs folded and touching the chin, thus preventing any damage to the heart”.Immediately after the birth, the baby was referred to paediatrician Anil Navadagi of Navajeevan Hospital but the latter referred it for doing an echocardiograph to the District Government Hospital, where cardiologist Anil Byakod noticed the baby had a congenital atrial septal defect,where the heart is just below the subcutaneous tissue — that is just beneath the skin.
Dr Byakod told Deccan Herald there have been many cases of the heart being on the right side of the chest but a baby with its heart outside the rib cage “is probably an impossible medical condition”,terming it a rare developmental, or possibly genetic defect.
To set right the defect, he said, a ‘reconstructive surgery’ could be contemplated, but it is a very rare and high-risk surgery, usually done at Hyderabad, Mumbai or Bangalore, and costing nearly Rs 2 to 3 lakh.
District Surgeon Sajjan Shetti said all efforts were made to keep the baby in the hospital, to ensure that it got all possible emergency medical help. But the parents got it discharged against medical advice.
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