Last year my son called me after a fishing trip in Tasmania.  He told me they’d caught plenty of fish but some of them had the strangest tongues - he’d caught a fish with the parasite Cymothoa Exigua.  This parasite enters the fish through the gills and attaches itself to the base of the fish’s tongue preventing any further blood flow.  The tongue atrophies and the parasite becomes the tongue, feasting on the host’s blood and mucus. About fifteen years ago at a second-hand bookstore in Ventura, California, I bought a book on Medical Biology.  The book had been written by a Scots doctor and he emphatically made the point that parasites are a substantial threat to the wellbeing of mankind, adding that if nothing significant was done abou...

When you say you’re gonna do something, you’d better do it. If you don’t, you’ll lose people’s respect. Go all-in! It’s not gonna work if you’re holding back in your mind. Stretching your comfort zone is scary and painful. But then afterwards it’s just awesome! Preparation is sooo important! Gotta put in the ‘behind the scenes’ prep work! That’s where the battle is won. I noticed that as I made progress in this one area, I started making progress in other areas too. It started a positive cycle. Run your own race. Never try to match someone else’s pace. Trust yourself and do it just like you practiced. Be patient. Let people pass you up in the short term. Those dudes who were sprinting in the first 5 kms are going to be dying when t...

Life:  The Next Step “What we do in life ripples through eternity” Marcus Aurelius If we were watching a Sesame Street programme, the twentieth century would have been brought to us by the letter ‘O’:  OIL. In the past 100 years the quest for oil has caused the current guardians of this amazing planet to squander millions of years of natural resources created by the remnants of animals and residue of plants that once lived here.  Karmic stuff indeed! Yet instead of building on the knowledge and wisdom gained by our forefathers, our self-styled business leaders and politicians are ignoring their responsibilities and are burning up the world’s resources faster than before. Our future has become a colossal ‘EVERYTHING MUST ...

It's been said those are the hardest words to say in any language. I believe they are also the two words with the power to change everything. In June 2010, American baseball teams Cleveland Indians and Detroit Tigers played a game that has gone down in history, but not for the reason you'd expect. It has been called the "perfect game robbery". Background: Since 1900, nearly four hundred thousand baseball games have been played in the United States. During this span, only 18 times has a pitcher delivered "a perfect game", getting each batsman out, in order, without any batsman reaching a single base. To put this in perspective, the odds of a perfect game being thrown in baseball (one in twenty thousand) are far smaller than t...

Whitney Houston, and you. (From http://sethrosario.tumblr.com/) Tributes pour in from all over the world in honor of the late Whitney Houston, the legendary soul singer who inspired millions. “There are so few people like her in the world. They are a rarefied breed.” - Simon Cowell (The mean judge guy from American Idol) In 2009, the Guinness World Records cited her as the most-awarded female act of all time. She was the only artist to chart seven consecutive No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hits and the second artist behind Elton John to have two number-one Billboard 200 Album awards. Despite her choices later in life, her music continues to encourage and inspire hundreds of thousands of people around the world.  Here are three thing...

The single most important device that one cannot do without today is the mobile phone. Correction! I would rather name them the I-Phones, the I-Pads, the Tablets, the Smart phones. All these can be used to read books, write letters/stories/blogs, draw pictures, surf the internet, purchase products, book train, flight, movie and theatre tickets, play games, do official work, do monetary transactions, etc. etc. etc. And, by the way, they are also used as phones. About 7-8 years ago, I had once heard a line about a mobile phone: “It’s a phone, you call, and you hang up”. But I suppose, it’s not that simple anymore. This gadget offers multitude of services or apps which help you with almost every possible need in life today.   However, it’...

I felt that my return to Dehradun and Mussoorie after 17 years was destined. But I had never imagined it would be during the monsoon of 2011. Living in the city, I had lost the charm of the monsoon season. Apart from welcoming the showers after the scorching and sweltering summer, there was no other reason to rejoice. The romantic and poetic inspiration brought about by this season, the beautiful aroma of damp earth and the clean and green look of the trees had been almost washed away by the slush and waterlogged streets, longer traffic jams and delayed travel time everyday. Today, having witnessed the rains in Dehradun during dusk and the floating clouds in ever-lovely Mussoorie, nostalgia and love for the monsoon was re-kindled, ...

Parked at a comfortable corner at the waiting area of the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, I was awaiting my flight to Dhaka along with other passengers headed to different destinations. As far as my vision went, I could see a myriad of colours, faces, heads, people, luggage, and hear a multitude of announcements, voices, squabbles, tongues and noise. It seemed like I was in some cosmopolitan country, where being an Indian felt strange. There were many Indians, correction, NRIs around who only resembled that they once belonged to my beloved India. Of these, the older generations might have even spoken in a familiar tongue and accent, but the current crop looked, behaved and spoke completely foreign. It made me wonder whe...

Treatments of: Cancer, Radiation Exposure, Neurological Conditions, Autism, Pain, Stress, and Emotional Upset by Dr Mark Sircus This book champions the use of marijuana in clinical practice for adults and children for a wide range of diseases including cancer and diabetes. Medicine needs cannabinoids to fight in the front lines against serious diseases as well as stress and emotional upset. Medical marijuana is an especially safe and effective treatment for cancer and a 2007 Harvard Medical School study showed that marijuana cuts lung cancer tumor growth in half. I've just bought a copy from Dr Sircus' site www.imva.com  and am impressed with what I've read so far. Table of Contents 1 - About This Book 2 - About the Author 3 ...

Aikido-Yoga seamlessly integrates the traditional training methods employed by the Japanese martial art of Aikido with the ancient science of Yoga. Far more than a separate study of Aikido and Yoga in isolation from each other, the pragmatic training methods of Aikido-Yoga provide a seamless integration of the two disciplines.