Horizontal Perspective 横顾天下

A Campaign to Support Women of Burma

I feel only contempt for the ‘leaders’ of Myanmar, so imagine the devilish delight this site invoked :

The Panties for Peace campaign plays on the regime leaders’ superstitious fear that contact with a woman’s underpants will rob them of their power. Women around the world are asked to post their panties to local Burmese embassies in a bid to strip the regime of its power and bring an end to its gross violations of human rights, especially those committed against Burma’s women.

The originating Campaign URL

Lament: If only I were a women.

This came to me in a mail sometime ago

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar he shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous “yes” .

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things — your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions and last but certainly not least…like knowing Jesus Christ as our Personal Saviour — and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.

The sand is everything else — the small stuff. “If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

“Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18 holes of golf and don’t put God/Jesus last in ones life, like I have here and in the sentence above. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first — the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled and said, “I’m glad you asked. The coffee just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

BBC NEWS Magazine report: The card that lets you choose death

A controversial new “right to die” card is being offered to the public that allows anyone to refuse treatment in a medical emergency.

Original URL BBC Magazine

BBC Health News report: New consent guidance for doctor

The General Medical Council is calling for a fresh approach in the way doctors seek patient consent for treatment.

Original URL BBC Health news

During the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols placed many Hui and other foreign Muslims in high civil administrative posts, shunting the appointment of native Han Chinese in the administration of China. The Chinese Confucian scholars were instead sent out of China to administer other parts of the Mongol Empire, including West Asia, Russia and India. This ensured the separation of the lay subjects from the administrative class, thus decreasing the likelihood of a general revolt. It also freed up Mongols to concentrate on what they were best at, ie waging wars of conquest. In fact, the Han Chinese were relegated to the fourth tier (the lowest) while Hui were elevated to the top.

This favoring of Hui decreased significantly during the latter part of （忽必烈）Kublai Khan’s reign, due largely to the refusal of many Muslim sea-farers to sail with his ill-fated naval assault of Japan. (The Muslim sailors knew what the Mongol warriors did not: that many of the vessels in Kublai Khan’s hastily assembled fleet were flat-bottomed river boats and thus not sea-worthy. The expedition failed with many lives lost at sea.) Due to this refusal to cooperate with the much hated Mongols, the Han Chinese wormed to the Hui somewhat, and thus with the founding of Ming dynasty, the Hui population were not subjected to any reprisal for ‘working with the occupiers’.

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In my earlier browsing of the British Medical Journal website, I came across some really amusing articles which I was planning to share in my upcoming posts. The articles include :

1. Accuracy of comparing bone quality to chocolate bars for patient information purposes
2. Medical myths
3. Excuses me! The etiquette of sneezing in surgical masks
4. Pimp my Slang
5. Ghost in the machine?

The problem was these archives are mostly not publicly accessible, so I can’t link to them. On the other hand, I am reluctant to post the text wholesale without accreditation. So the idea just sat languishing on the shelf. Well some kind subscriber in epocrates downloaded them (plus a few more) in pdf form to share. So here it is. Enjoy!

If you wish to save a copy for reading later, right-click on the link and save it to disk.

The story of my family root started in ancient China during the tail end of the Song [宋] Dynasty. At that time, the people of China comprised of five major ethnic groups (Han [汉]: the largest ethnic group in the world today, Man [满] : the Manchus, Meng [蒙] : the Mongols, Hui [回) : the Islamic people of Arabic/Persian/Turkic descends; and Zhang [藏] : the Tibetan), seven minor ethnic groups and some 40~50 rather small minority groups (which today numbers between a few hundreds to under 100,000). Specifically we, the Hui, descended from Arab/Persian traders who came to China through the Silk Road during the early Tang [唐] Dynasty. When trade declined in late Tang, some chose to settle and became traders/sea-farers in east coast of China. Other stayed in the north western China and became fruit farmers and nomadic herders (due in no small part to the influence of the Mongols). In fact, the Hui got along just fine with the Mongols, because while the Song Court tried to shut the Mongols out with the Great wall, the Hui never stop trading with them.

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