Friday, May 21, 2010

~ SubhanAllah

Salam alaikum,

Even in the events surrounding us are signs for those who ponder..

Allah is uniting us through the name of his beloved Rasool (salaLLAhu alehi wa alihi wassalam - fidaa ummi wa abi) & the cause for his honor.. some 1,500 years after him.


The phenomenal activism is just mind blowing & its pretty humbling, i'd say, to see Muslims of all colors, races, ethnicities & Jama'at platforms left & right unifying for this cause.. subhanAllah.

Video



Rulings & Jurisprudence;


Our attitude concerning mockery of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him)

Regarding the hadeeth about the blind man who killed his slave woman because she reviled the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him)

Confusion about the hadeeth of the blind man 

Ruling on one who insults the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) 


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Sunday, May 16, 2010

~ The Secret Door

Salam alaikum,

Much has been going on this past week in my head (& in real life ofcourse :p), specially since a journal dead-line is fast approaching & the time is neigh.

I was mulling over multiple speedy options including telecommuting (which - unlike the general perception - needs a lot of freelance selfemployed selfdiscipline), specially when my dean will be on a hiatus, flying off to france pretty soon, only to return next month - inshAllah.




It was close to getting all overwhelming & before i'd freak out, I was provided with this nice read by my consort from one of her med handbooks & clinical training manuals.. & somehow it all made quite a relevant sense to me in these times, even though i've nothing to do with this field whatsoever.

Here goes the refreshing read;


On being busy: Corrigan’s secret door;

I work much better in chaos”..
- Francis Bacon.

Chaos is not always an enemy: certainly there is no shortage of it in hospitals, consulting rooms, and other battle-grounds.

Can we prepare ourselves to use chaos well? Being fore-warned allows us to be fore-armed, enabling us to adapt to being busy, or at least to wink at each other as we slide down the cascade of long hours--> excessive paperwork--> too few beds--> effort_reward_imbalance--> compromised care from too few resources--> trouble with superiors--> difficult patients--> too many deaths--> failure to reconcile personal and family life with professional roles.

Thus, Logistic regression shows our consequent problems are predicted by 5 stressors:
1 Lack of recognition of own contribution by others.
2 Too much responsibility.
3 Difficulties keeping up to date.
4 Making the right decision alone.
5 Effects of stress on personal/family life.

We may think that it is modern medicine that makes us ever busier, but doctors have always been busy.
Dr. James Paget, for example, would regularly see over patients each day, sometimes travelling many miles, on his horse, to their bedsides.

Dr. Dominic Corrigan was so busy 180 years ago that he had a secret door made in his consulting room to escape the ever-growing queue of eager patients.

We are all familiar with the phenomenon of being hopelessly over-stretched, and of wanting Corrigan’s secret door. Competing, urgent, and simultaneous demands make carrying out any task all but impossible: the junior doctor is trying to put up an intravenous infusion on a shocked patient when his ‘bleep’ sounds. On his way to the phone a patient is falling out of bed, being held in, apparently, only by his visibly lengthening catheter (which had taken the doctor an hour to insert). He knows he should stop to help but, instead, as he picks up the phone, he starts to tell Sister about “this man dangling from his catheter” (knowing in his heart that the worst will have already happened). But he is interrupted by a thud coming from the bed of the lady who has just had her varicose veins attended to: however, it is not her, but her visiting husband who has collapsed and is now having a seizure. In despair, he turns to the nurse and groans:
“There must be some way out of here!!”..

At times like this we all need Corrigan to take us by the shadow of our hand, and walk with us through a metaphorical secret door into a calm inner world. To enable this to happen, make things as easy as possible for yourself—as follows;

First, however lonely you feel, you are not usually alone. Do not pride yourself on not asking for help. If a decision is a hard one, share it with a colleague.

Second, take any chance you get to sit down and rest. Have a cup of coffee with other members of staff, or with a friendly patient (patients are sources of renewal, not just devourers of your energies).

Third, do not miss meals. If there is no time to go to the canteen, ensure that food is put aside for you to eat when you can: hard work and sleeplessness are twice as bad when you are hungry.

Fourth, avoid making work for yourself. It is too easy for junior doctors, trapped in their image of excessive work and blackmailed by misplaced guilt, to remain on the wards reclerking patients, rewriting notes, or rechecking results at an hour when the priority should be caring for themselves.

Fifth, when a bad part of the rota is looming, plan a good time for when you are off duty, to look forward to during the long nights.

However busy the ‘on take’ or 'on call', your period of duty will end.
For you, as for Macbeth:
'come what come may,
time and the hour runs through the roughest day.'

Riding the wave;

In Macbeth, toil and trouble go hand in hand, but sometimes we work best when we are busy. This is recognized in the aphorism that if you want a job done quickly, give it to a busy (wo)man. Observe your colleagues and yourself during a busy day. Sometimes our energy achieves nothing but our own inundation. At other times, by jettisoning everything non-essential, we get airborne and accomplish marvellous feats. As with any sport, we have to break into a sweat before we can get into the zone, where every action meets its mark.

But note that what keeps us riding the wave of a busy day is not what we jettison but what we retain: humour, courtesy, a recognition of the work of others, and an ability to twinkle.

A smile causes no delays, and reaches far beyond our lips.

In our public medical personas, we often act as though morality consisted only in following society’s conventions: we do this not so much out of laziness but because we recognize that it is better that the public think of doctors as old-fashioned or stupid, than that they should think us evil. But in the silences of our consultations, when it is we ourselves who are under the microscope, then, wriggle as we may, we cannot escape our destiny, which is to lead as often as to follow, in the sphere of ethics. To do this, we need to return to first principles, and not go with the flow of society’s expectations.

To give us courage in this enterprise, we can recall the aviator’s and the seagull’s law:
'it is only by facing the prevailing wind that we can become airborne, and achieve a new vantage point from which to survey our world.'

Our analysis starts with our aim: to do good by making people healthy. 'Good' is the most general term of commendation, and entails four cardinal duties:
1 Not doing harm. We owe this duty to all people, not just our patients.
2 Doing good by positive actions. We particularly owe this to our patients.
3 Promoting justice—i.e. distributing scarce resources fairly and respecting rights: legal rights, rights to confidentiality, rights to be informed, to be offered all the options, and to be told the truth...
4. Promoting autonomy.

Don’t think of good and evil as forever opposite; good can come out of evil, and vice versa - this fundamental mix-up explains why we learn more from our dissolute patients than we do from saints..

[...so on & so forth]

Source
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Saturday, May 15, 2010

~ Projects

Salam alaikum,

While having a lil light chit chat with a good friend of mine, he sent some funny stuff my way.
A disgruntled I.T dude, as he is, its kinda expected coming form him.
umm..
a bit too gynecological (or obstetric?) perspective of IT, i dare say :D.. but here goes nothing;

I.T. Designations:

1) Project Manager is a person who thinks nine women can deliver a baby in One month.

2) Developer is a person who thinks it will take 18 months to deliver a baby.

3) Onsite Coordinator is one who thinks a single woman can deliver nine babies in one month.

4) Client is the one who doesn't even know why he wants a baby.

5) Marketing Manager is a guy who thinks he can deliver a baby even if no man and woman are available.

6) Resource Optimization Team reckons they don't need a man or woman; they'll produce a child with zero resources.

7) Documentation Team deems they don't care whether the child is delivered, they'll just document 9 months.

8) Quality Auditor is the person who is never happy with the PROCESS of baby production.

And lastly..

9) Tester is a person who always tells his spouse that this is not the Right baby!

The How's :

>> How a web-design goes straight to hell?

>> How projects really work?
click the below to zoom..

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Sunday, May 02, 2010

~ Busy Behind the Wheel


Salam alaikum,

Over & over again, i get warned by my family not to attend my cell while driving.. not that i compose sms or text something, but some calls from professors are just too important.

I ignore this advice saying that i can handle & am too good for this lil distraction & sometimes even dismiss it as too much ado about nothing..

Not until i was asked to play this lil game, which i played twice.. & scored.. well not too bad enough.. alhamduliLLAh :p

(gates missed the first time were 0% too, with an average delay while texting..)


But still not too good either, since real life is sorta different & makes me think i should really rethink my cell strategy from behind the wheel..

Its Distracted_Driver game by NYT to gauge your distraction while you're texting on the road. The game puts you driving on a road having to negotiate a number of toll booths along the way, to see how good you go. And thus it tests your ability to drive through the correct gates without any distractions, and then it makes you write a couple of text messages whilst still having to negotiate the booths.
After you finish the game, you get a comparison of your result with everyone else who has played so far.
P.S; I did see the gray lady the first time but failed the second time..

Digging through some papers i figured that the science of mobile phone use whilst driving is a developing field, with most of the recent research suggesting that you are just as impaired - or more so - if texting or using a hand-held mobile as you are if you are disillusioned or semiconscious (sleepy).

A couple of great resources if you are interested at all:
  • SWOV Fact sheet: Use of mobile phone while driving was published in 2008 by The national road safety research institute (SWOV). It contains a great deal of up-to-date research. Their conclusion is that the negative effects of mobile phone use whilst driving are caused by both physical and cognitive distraction. Although physical distraction can be reduced through the use of such aids as handsfree phones and speed dialling, cognitive distraction remains the crucial problem. They conclude that handsfree phones do not have significant safety advantages over handheld phones. They also point towards research suggesting that talking on a mobile phone is associated with cognitive distraction that may undermine pedestrian safety.
  • Applied Cognition Laboratory, Department of Psychology, University of Utah - has published a wealth of research on the impact of using in-car technologies on driving performance and traffic safety. It is well worth a browse of their published articles.

Oh n before i forget, check out the Distracted_Driver game & try it out yourself - if you too are into tech_behind_wheel ailment.

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Saturday, May 01, 2010

~ Mind the Gap plz


Asalm alaikum,

Whether we want to believe it or no; Much of the world has been engulfed into globalization, for good or for worse.

As I've been scribbling & has scribbled in past that application of statistics is mind-numbingly dull, but statistics can be quite interesting when you dig deep down into the foundations..& a way - i might add - to understand the world better.

While wolframalpha has achieved a milestone in this statistical analysis - & i've been pleased to share info with my peeps - Minding the gaps (as opposed to mind-mapping) has been an awesome way of bridging such statistical gaps that prevailed the stat-horizon in yesteryears.

Gapminder
[Say no if /when asked for aborting of the flash-script.]

Here is what I tested

So, as the gap-minder guru Hans says;

"It seems you move much faster up the graph if you're healthy first than if you're wealthy first. And health can't be bought at a supermarket, you've to invest in health & educate the population."

Apparently Professor Hans talking here [Toggle full-screen in top right corner of vid-box to see subtitles clearly] uses world Development Indicators from The World Bank :/ (& UN & certain NGOs)

You will see a scatterplot where each bubble represents a country.
The position of the bubble is determined by the indicators on the axes.
The size of the bubble represents the population of the country.
And then you can play the whole thing to see the trail_of_trend.





As it turns out, recently the world bank has opened up its world-data for the world out there, based upon this same work from Hans. And they did that under the pretext of; 'being informed about the world stats is the first step towards a better humanity..' yada yada.

No matter how flashy slogans they use, its not that such usury-driven, lust-ridden capitalist can offer anything better to the world, except for forced abortions & vigorous family-plannings to their credit.

Anywho, you can put together a prototype Gapminder chart in your Excel too.

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