The 100th Post

This is the one hundredth post on KarmaDude.com, not that I want to brag, but I thought this would be a good milestone to share some of my experiences and thoughts about blogging, and an opportunity to get to know the readers of this blog.

It has been quiet the journey so far. Along the way, I have managed to learn new things, fine tune my skills, make new friends, give back a little, and hopefully—managed to share good information and experiences with other.
(more…)

Aryan Invasion Theory

Every time I read another debate or article on the Aryan Invasion Theory(AIT), I start to fume, not because I am mad at their opinions, but at the fact that, so called historians and scholars are still debating this bogus theoryâ€â€?which was created by people who had a religious, colonial, and race agenda. Any Indian knows what the word Arya means, but Max Muller—the man behind the theory had no clue—which he later admitted when his Sanskrit and historian skills were challenged.
(more…)

Night Terror

Night terror, recently I had a chance to observe this phenomenon, which I had never heard of or seen before. A friend’s ten month old son woke up from his sleep crying, there was this look of terror in his eyes, and there was nothing we could do to calm him down. Eventually he stopped, after a good 10 mintues of crying, but it was confusing and new to us. Later, we learned that what he had gone through was a night terror.

(more…)

Hope is a good thing

This article can also be read at thelittleendian.com.

Hope is a good thing–maybe the best thing, and no good thing ever dies.–Stephen King (The Shawshank Redemption)

Just finished watching The Shawshank Redemption, for perhaps the 4th or 5th time. What struck me this time? Stephen King can really invent good and evil at the same time. More importantly however, what stayed with me was the quote about Hope.

(more…)

Bird Flu

With all the hype over bird flu, I wonder about the truth, and the basics we should be aware of, in case of an outburst. With the World Health Organization projecting that 2 to 7 million people could die in a flu pandemic; how much should we be worried?

The problem—all this is based on projections of a potential pandemic. As of now, there are reported cases of the bird flu virus making the leap from birds to humans, but still lacking the capability to spread from human to human. When the virus can figure out how to spread from human to human, is a game of numbers and time, kind of like, how long it will take infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters to produce a perfect copy of Hamlet.

(more…)

Dialectical Way to Truth

Socrates way to the truth was to engage in dialectical conversations, where you ran after the truth, with no destination in mind. To do this successfully, you have to be like Socrates, assume you know nothing, and be skeptical. The goal is not to provide alternatives, but rather to expose the truth in current ideas, thoughts, and beliefs.

(more…)

Mind’s Eye

If I were to ask a person with normal vision, the question, “What is seeing?�� I probably would hear something like, “The ability to perceive through the eyes.�

Enter Esref Armagan, a blind painter form Turkey, and one look at his paintings of houses, fruits, mountains, butterflies, and faces — would make you wonder, “How does he see?â€Â? His painting of things, he has never seen, is both puzzling and intriguing. These paintings raise questions like how the mind actually sees things, constructs them, and remembers them as images? How does the Mind’s Eye really work?

New Scientist article–art of seeing without sight–provides an insight into seeing and the Mind’s Eye, as they dredge deep into the intriguing mind of Esref Armagan.

4 Things

Four jobs that I’ve had

• tutor
• computer lab assistant
• software engineer
• graphics & web designer

(more…)

Did you know

That the word sugar comes from the Sanskrit word sarkara pebble.

The process for creating sugar by pressing out the sugarcane juice, and then boiling it to crystals, was developed in India around 500 BC. It was knows as, “the reed which gave honey without bees�. This crude form of sugar was called “gur� (sweet tasting)

While most of Europe was still using honey as the sweetener, it was the Arabs who introduced sugar to Europe in the middle ages, and later Columbus introduced it to the New World. It was in the 1700’s that a German scientist developed the alternative to use sugar beets, instead of sugar cane.

Here are a couple of resources for more information about sugar: Canadian sugar institute, Sugar coated truth.

Did you Know

That the word malaria comes from the words mal and aria, which is Italian for bad air. This derives from the ancient belief that all diseases are caused by bad, or dirty air.