“Here is my final point. About drugs, about alcohol, about smoking and everything else. What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, say, think, who I meet, what I take into my body - as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet?”

Oh, did I just sound like one of the wannabe-cool-for-their-age kids or minors as they hate to be addressed on the cigarette boxes.

A cigarette might be a happily accepted company during meals and in the intervals between them but only for an adult who is completely aware of the reactions of his actions. However, for a minor who is just trying to seem cool to his peers, its alarming. When a small under-the-chin-beard by Amir Khan made beards pop under all the chins, why should watching Shahrukh smoke on the screen or smoke from Arjun Rampal’s lips or Vivek’s stunt with cigarettes not boost the tobacco industry. But its sad to know that the kids who fail to sport an Amir beard, go the Shahrukh smoking way.

Cigarettes are injurious to health. I had to say this, though I know its like saying the Sun is hot.

Worldwide, four million people a year die from smoking — that’s 11000 people every day. Every 6.5 seconds a current or former smoker dies, according to the World Health Organization. In India, about 1 million Indians a year die from smoking-related diseases, that’s more than 2,500 people daily. Half of Indian males use tobacco and it is becoming more popular with younger people. Around 100 million people died because of tobacco use in the 20th century. Tobacco use will kill 1 billion people in the 21st century if current smoking trends continue. There is a huge lot of people who was better of without these details. There are some circles in America where it seems to be more socially acceptable to carry a hand-gun than a packet of cigarettes.

A cigarette is a pipe with a fire at one end and a fool at the other. And now there’s a Japanese company which is determined to decide the age of the fool.

All the parents, worldwide, couldn’t have asked for more. In a desperate and much-needed effort, the Tobacco Institute of Japan has come up with an RFID card or a Taspo card to check the sale of cigarettes to the underage populace. Well, wish it was a card which beeped like an ambulance alarm whenever it sensed a cigarette in a minor’s hand and got converted into a robot which would slap the minor so hard that the memories of the slap harped back each time the kid thought of smoking and became a card again. Its not. It’s a basic identity card available only to those over 20, which is both the age of majority in Japan and the age at which one can buy tobacco products. All the adults, who like their cigarette served hot from a vending machine, are supposed to carry the card. The card need not be inserted into the machine but just needs to be held up to the sensors. There is an electronic money or ‘Pidel’, to be used specifically with the Taspo cards. This Pidel might not work with all the vending machines. The card needs to be held at a proper distance from the sensor, for it to read it and approve the purchase.

Since this project is in its nascent stage, there will be some hiccups which might make it sound fussy initially. But this doesn’t rob the company of the credit it deserves for having given minor smoking a thought and for having worked towards curbing it.

This Project has its own share of flaws. Like there is no way of stopping the kids buy their smoke through adults. The adults who crib and complain will be surprised to know that most of the times the first cigarettes the children get are from adults. Then there are people who would think that their privacy is being invaded if they part with their personal information. This probably is just one of the plethora-of-steps needed to be followed to address this cancerous issue, quite literally at that. Research has shown that advertising may encourage children to start smoking. Siblings and parents are role models for children. If a child’s parents smoke they are three times more likely to smoke themselves.

The adults should realize their social responsibilities and take steps to prevent this.

Or they can try to ape Douglas Adams who said : If we see you smoking we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action.

Something for the Bush.

We have it. The smoking gun. The evidence. The potential weapon of mass destruction we have been looking for as our pretext of invading Iraq. There’s just one problem - it’s in North Korea.

The post does talk about both the types of diabetes, but leaves room for confusion.To make it clearer:

In type 1 diabetes , the pancreas no longer makes insulin and therefore blood glucose cannot enter the cells to be used for energy.

In type 2 diabetes , either the pancreas does not make enough insulin or the body is unable to use insulin correctly.

Now for people who are not doctors and just prospective patients, here’s a simplified version of the above stated facts.

Most of the food we eat is broken into glucose, the body’s main source of fuel and the form of sugar in the blood. This glucose enters the bloodstream after digestion and it needs to be transported to the cells for generating energy. This transportation happens only in the presence of a hormone called insulin which is produced by the pancreas, a large gland behind the stomach.

For healthy living, the pancreas should make enough insulin to facilitate the movement of glucose from the blood to the cells. When the pancreas doesn’t oblige, it results to diabetes where glucose doesn’t reach where it should ( the cells) and it remains where it shouldn’t (the blood). The extra sugar accumulated in the blood gets attached to the proteins in the blood vessels and tends to change their structure and function. This accumulation lessens the elasticity of the blood vessels and makes them hard, making it difficult for blood to pass through. And as a result the cells are starved of energy (hence the complaint of weakness by diabetics) and there is always an increased risk of insufficient blood supply to the heart and the brain. This in turn leads to heart diseases , strokes , vision loss , kidney failure and amputation.

With diabetes, people suffer from insufficient blood supply and weak cells. If it were only for the inadequate blood supply the symptoms are very pronounced and alarming like nausea, chest pain or pressure, breathlessness, pain in the arms or the jaws, sweating or fatigue. However, the same is not the case with diabetes. Here one can have a “silent” heart attack and not know it.

Prevention

A diabetic should always keep a blood sugar, blood pressure and a blood fat goal, and also abide by it.

Blood Sugar: An A1C level of 7% or less. [A1C test shows the amount of glucose that sticks to the red blood cell which also accounts for the amount of glucose in the blood]

Blood Pressure: Below 130/80 millimeters in the mercury.

Blood Fat: HDL (High Density Lipoprotein) or the good cholesterol preferably upto or higher than 60 mg/dL and less than 150 mg/dL.

LDL ( Low Density Lipoprotein ) or the bad cholesterol preferably as low as 70 mg/dL and strictly below 100 mg/dL.

HDL is called the good cholesterol as it is a fat found in the blood that takes extra cholesterol from the blood to the liver for removal. LDL is called the bad cholesterol as it is a fat found in the blood that takes the cholesterol around the body to wherever it is required for cell-repair , however also behaves naughty and deposits it on the inside of the artery walls.

If we understand the nature and the reason of the disease, it becomes easier for us to find a remedy. A self inspection of one’s life style and eating habits is sufficient to chalk out a damage control plan on one’s own.

Herbal remedy for diabetes : Shilajit, gudmar turmeric, neem, amalaki, guggul, and arjuna.Use of bitter Gourd (karela) in food .It contains gurmarin which is similar to bovine insulin and can regulate sugar level in the blood.

Allopathic remedy : Insulin injections and ELEOTIN and probably many more to come.

These are the easy ways out but for sure not the will-cure-for-sure remedy if not coupled with proper exercise and discipline.

And this for sure shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody. There is a huge crowd which loves to hate Camilla.

But then isn’t everybody still clinging to the past and not letting it wane. Like any other couple, even this couple ( Charles and Diana ) had differences, probably they tried but couldn’t reconcile. Charles got another lady love away from his existing relation and even Diana moved on with men, with Dodi Fayed serving as the last man she dated and even contemplated marriage. It doesn’t take a lot of brain to understand that Charles and Camilla love each other and are just like any other couple which for sure hates to be hated for being in love.

One wonders whether Diana would have been rebuked in the same manner as were Charles and Camilla, had she been the first one to walk out of the marriage. But then this was not to be. The relation of Charles saw the daylight first and this was the only mistake which cost him his popularity (which wasn’t huge anyway) and made him prey to all the ill-wills of the populace.

Undoubtedly, Diana with her just-picture-perfect young face found way to people’s heart very easily. She tried to rescue herself from the woes of a disastrous marriage and looked for solace in charitable causes, from landmines and leprosy to sick children and HIV/AIDS, et al, which also served a further purpose. This is what made her people’s princess and hence made her qualified for people’s sympathy and love.All said and done, life was still not rosy at the home front and her winning hearts elsewhere just seems like a pyrrhic victory.

Times have changed. Camilla has been accepted by the people who matter the most, William and Harry (or at least one would like to think in this fashion because of the invitation extended by Harry).

All rationale say that Camilla would have been hated any way: attending the service or not attending the service.

Quite interestingly, a lot of thought has gone into deciding the list of attendees to the service. People’s past behavior since Diana’s death has been taken into account before extending an invitation.

Camilla said something about diverting the attention from Diana’s service by her presence there. One can only be quick to think that that will be a feat in itself coz Diana in life and in death still continues to monopolize all the attention.

Here we have another bird to append the list.

If asked which bird is so particular about sanitation that it builds a toilet area at the first bend of its nest, not many would raise their hands to say “Puffins”!!!!

Let me introduce Puffins to you as Stephen Kress introduced Puffins to the puffins-starved islands of Maine.

Maine puffins were over hunted by early settlers for food and this is what made the island wait for almost over a century before it could witness the rearing of the fist puffin chick in the year 1981.People thought that it was a cross breed between a bird and a fish because of its flight in the air and superb ability to swim under water. This gave them an excuse to eat puffins during the lent when meat is not allowed. We are a smart breed!!

This resplendent effort put in by Stephen Kress was based on the mere memory of the puffins. A puffin chick heads off to the ocean without its parents and remains in the water until it is 2-3 years old. Then it comes back to the place it hatched and it rears its own chicks beside its old burrow. This is the information Kress used and started transplanting 2-weeks old chicks from Newfoundland to the Eastern Egg Rock island of Maine so that they think that this was their home and they return here to breed. Nothing less than a brilliant idea and something that worked as well. Between the year 1973 to 1981, 954 eggs were transplanted in artificial burrows and now we have almost 700 pairs on all the four Maine islands, including 90 on the Eastern Egg Rock.

Puffins, which means chubby cheeks, is a small, round-bodied auk with a large head, a spectacular striped bill, which it uses to catch food and in display. In summer, the puffin’s bill is colorful, the upper parts of the body and collar are black and the underparts white. In winter, the face is grayish and the bill smaller and duller.They live on fish which only live in cold waters. They fly across the sea to get the fish and they can get from as many as 10 to 62 fish at a time in their bills.

The clowns of the sea, as they are lovingly called by the locals, have managed to build a huge band of enemies over time, Black backed gull being the worst of them. They can catch the puffins in mid air. Herring gulls and terns are the ones which feed on puffins and the food that they bring home from the sea. Not to forget the chemicals that we so callously allow in the oceans along with the oil spills. People also depleted the fish stock of the ocean and hence the puffins chicks starved which also resulted to the drastic decrease in the number.

Now its important that we understand why puffins at all ? Because they are excellent bioindicators of the environment. They can let us know about the level of fish in a particular region of the ocean. The study of their eggs, feathers and internal organs can tell us about the behavior and the presence of the heavy metals in the environment. And even if they are of no use, why can’t we just let them live and help mother nature not feel anguish about one less breed of birds. Puffins appeared on coins and stamps in the island of Lundy which was named after them. We should allow them to appear on the horizons of the sky as well. Wat say??

Let’s not get into the age old statement with a smirk that in a country where people die of starvation and farmers commit suicide for not being able to pay loans worth Rs. 2500, why do we have celebrities paying an import duty of Rs. 1.13 crore for an imported car?? We have celebrities and we have made them and we love them more when they are in such cute and sweet trouble. We feel for them.

The latest sweet-heart to get into this is Shushmita Sen. She tried to skirt a transaction after tax evasion in importing her new Toyota Land Cruiser. She claims to have sent money to an importer at an address which is non-existent, according to an MCGM vigilance officer. Shush also seemed a little confused about whether the car was used or new. To the Road transport officer’s office it was declared new but everywhere else it was declared a used one. So a car worth US $36000 was shown as a car worth US $6000 only. One fails to understand why at all hide that it was imported to Chennai before it came to Mumbai.

So the presence of so many details or rather the absence of so many details has prompted the MCMG to levy 10 times fine. Shushmita has moved the higher court challenging this decision. Good luck Shush, and we still love you.

The Indian audience gets its seasonal lessons on the rules over the imported cars once a year when either Sachin gets a gift from Ferrari ( for equaling the record of Sir Bradman), or when Vijaya Mallaya buys a Lamborghini ( because it was a pleasant sunday afternoon ) or when Amar Singh forgets who bought the car that he is driving and from where. Nearly half the bollywood drives imported cars and a Mercedes for sure is commonplace. Porsche is one of the hot favorites these days amongst the glitterati. BMW and Lexus are also joining the band with Mercedes in being very common.

For people who want to quite the itch of buying an imported vehicle, a good-to-know information: for importing a new bike one has to pay 105 % duty, for a used bike one has to pay100 %; in case of a car for a Completely Built unit one has to pay 111%, for a Completely Knocked Down model (assembled in the country) one has to pay 38 to 48 % only depending on the engine displacement. Not to forget the different other taxes and the tests that the cars or the bikes have to go through.