An apple a day brings ill-health shockingly near
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| Rotten apples |
Whoever
said ''An apple a day keeps the doctor away,'' surely never ate one
himself/herself. Going by the amount of chemical residue in the world's
apple crop -- fungicides, pesticides, fruit-ripening chemicals and
everything in between -- only the very brave or the very callous would
willingly eat apples these days.
The
main apple-growing states in India are Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal
Pradesh. Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh produce some apple crop too.
For
a little profit and ease of cultivation, India's apple farmers are
putting the health of Indians at serious risk. Even animals do not bite
the hand that feeds them. The greedy, careless apple-growers of India
clearly think different.
Chemicals used on the apple crop in India:
1. Dithane M-45 fungicide -- manufactured by Dow Chemicals, the multinational responsible for the Bhopal Gas Tragedy of 1984.
2. Bavistin -- This fungicide has already been listed in the UK under ''Immediate
Revocation of Uses for some Products Containing Carbendazim due to
Reduced Maximum Residue Levels'' . Put simply, it is too harmful for
human consumption.
There is insufficient information available about the harmful effects of toxic chemicals on human health. The link below gives some idea.
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| Rotten Apples |
Links to reports on harmful chemicals in apples:
Fairness Creams
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| No words necessary |
We
slather them on daily, sometimes more than twice, thinking they'll make
the skin fairer, firmer, fuller...! Yet all that fairness creams and
anti-ageing creams manage to do is bleach, dehydrate and --- with
regular use --- permanently damage the skin.
Here's how
they do it. By using ingredients that are NOT meant to be used in
cosmetic products. Some of them being titanium dioxide, mercury (yeah,
you read it right!), steroids and hydroquinol.
Given below are SOME ways in which titanium dioxide -- used in paints, inks, rubber and PVC -- can be harmful.
Titanium DioxideCharacteristics: High gloss, good whiteness, good dispersibility, good liquidity, extraordinary hiding power and good coloring power, good weather resisting property and chalk resistance performance.Suitable for decorative coatings, powder coatings, coatings used in the general industry and other industries; It also is applicable to the printing ink, Paints, papermaking, plastic color master batches, PVC, the plastic steel, sectional materials, tubes and pipes, Rubber, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene, polyolefin, engineering plastics and so onPacking: This product is lined film plastic bags inside and packaged fabric braided bags outside, and the net weight of each bag is 25 KG.
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Links:
- http://www.medimanage.com/my-looks/articles/neither-fair-nor-lovely%E2%80%A6-throw-them-right-out!!.aspx
- http://www.xinweixin.cn/products_list1/&pmcId=d638af2f-b378-45bd-b0ca-ae8fb6f8548f&comp_stats=comp-FrontProductsCategory_show01-1328767340829.html?gclid=CMiRscGRs7UCFYh66woddlEAcw
- http://www.skybright-chemicals.com/topic.php?channelID=15&topicID=59&productID=69&action=product&gclid=CJLmpcCRs7UCFUd66wodDlkAnA
- http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-09-06/beauty/32577202_1_creams-skin-body-lotions
- http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-01-28/beauty/29726790_1_hydroquinone-creams-skin
- http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-06-26/beauty/32102691_1_fairness-creams-hydroquinone-mercury
Catharsis
The Oxford dictionary defines Catharsis as the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions. It has also been defined as rare purgation. Its origin lies in early 19th century and it has been derived from Greek katharsis, from kathairein 'cleanse' and from katharos 'pure'.However, the meaning attributed to this process of 'purgation' is actually the Roman Catholic Church's device of discrediting --- once more and in more ways than one --- a religious sect known as the Cathars. From 'Cathars' comes the term 'Cathars-is'. It is essentially a polite and ineffective way of masking the utter ruthlessness with which the Cathars were exterminated -- through a 'pogrom' -- by the Church from the 'established' version of Christianity. Hence the meaning rare purgation or the process of releasing attributed to Catharsis.
Read on:
The Cathars were a religious group who appeared in Europe in the 11th century, their origins something of a mystery though there is reason to believe their ideas came from Persia by way of the Byzantine Empire, the Balkans and Northern Italy. Records from the Roman Catholic Church mention them under various names and in various places. Catholic theologians debated with themselves for centuries whether Cathars were Christian heretics or whether they were not Christians at all. The question is apparently still open. Roman Catholics still refer to Cathar belief as "the Great Heresy" though the official Catholic position is that Catharism is not Christian at all.
Courtesy: www.cathar.info
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| Fresco by Fra Angelico, 15th century Italian. At left, Dominic holds up the "testament of the Faith," a kind of check-list of questions to ask suspected heretics. At the time, Cathar perfecti were pledged not to lie to anyone, even Inquisitors. At right is the miracle of the fire that wouldn't burn the paper. |
http://catharslideshow.blogspot.in/
http://www.catharcountry.info/photos.htm
Mary Magdalene
Branded as a prostitute for more than two millennia now, Mary of Magdala or Mary Magdalene is believed to have been Jesus' wife. In the scriptures, references to her are at best, oblique and at worst, defamatory.
The reason why Mary Magdalene has been called a 'sinner' by the highest authority in Christendom can probably be found in this explanation by James Carroll in the Smithsonian Magazine:
Beginning with the threads of these few statements in the earliest Christian records, .... an elaborate tapestry was woven, leading to a portrait of St Mary Magdalene in which the most consequential note — that she was a repentant prostitute — is almost certainly untrue. On that false note hangs the dual use to which her legend has been put ever since: discrediting sexuality in general and disempowering women in particular.
Links:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Update-The-Reaction-to-Karen-Kings-Gospel-Discovery-174981701.html?onsite_source=relatedarticles&onsite_medium=internallink&onsite_campaign=SmithMag&onsite_content=UPDATE:%20The%20Reaction%20to%20Karen%20King%E2%80%99s%20Gospel%20Discovery
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/magdalene.html
Pandora's Box
The current
popular discourse in India goes along these lines: Do not open a
Pandora's Box by talking about violence against women inside 'safe
spaces' like their homes.
In pop culture, Pandora's Box has only negative connotations. This daughter of Zeus -- created out of clay -- is said to have let out all kinds of evil into the world when she opened a box she was forbidden to. However, legend conveniently forgets to mention that as the contents of Pandora's Box were released, this first woman ever created --- according to Greek mythology --- managed to trap one last evil. That evil was hopelessness. They say someone who doesn't have hope has nothing at all. We have Pandora to thank for sparing the world of 'hopelessness'. At the bottom of her 'box' lies hope. Opening Pandora's Box cannot be all bad then.
Links:
http://greece.mrdonn.org/greekgods/pandora.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/C0119204/pandora.html
Nobel 'PEACE' Prize
It's a sign of the times that we have a 'peace' prize named after the inventor of dynamite -- Alfred Immanuel Nobel. Dynamite -- in other words, nitroglycerin stabilized by the addition of kieselguhr (a siliceous deposit; also known as diatomaceous earth) -- for the uninitiated, has caused a helluva lot of destruction in this world. RDX and other harmful chemical mixes are its distant cousins.Today, the Nobel Foundation, formed after the death of Alfred Nobel, on the basis of a will -- contested by his relatives -- awards personages the world over for (among other things) working towards making the world a more 'peaceful' place. There's brutal irony in the air... and its lighting up the night, as if it were dynamite....
http://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/biographical/
http://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/biographical/timeline/
