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Fake Medicine: Dracula

The symptoms of Dracula do not seem any different than someone suffering from rabies - his deadly fear of running water, sunlight. He would bite people - when he did they too would be infected with rabies. It is said he fought the Turkish army and was known as Vlad the Impaler. When he captured Turkish soldiers he force them to convert to Christianity and when they did not, he would impale the forehead to a tree. The cross was his guide but became his curse because he was bitten by some animal which was is a rabies a carrier, a dog or a fox. So when he saw the cross it reminded of the time he contracted rabies. His hate of the Turks was so much that even hated the food they ate, which had plenty of garlic in it. Dracula developed an aversion to garlic. Hence the myth grew that in order to keep Dracula away was to have garlic hanging around. Perhaps in the days of Dracula rabies manifested in some other form, it may result in madness but not death. Dracula would stay out of light and w

Cars and motorcycles a luxury?

Commuting in a city the size of Karachi is very difficult. The policy of the junta as regards the price of fuel is inconsistent – because of this the owners of public transport – be they taxis or buses do not have fixed fares. Those who travel in buses are not sold bus tickets and taxis do not have meters – they justify this on the grounds that the price of petrol varies from one day to the next, so it is impossible for them fix the fare. When it comes to taxis (or rickshaws) one has ask the driver how much he will charge for going to a particular place. The shorter the distance the more the fare, the longer the distance the fare is comparatively less. If one wants to go to some residential area – the fare is higher, because in such places people usually have their private vehicles and rarely rely on public transport, so taxis go back without any passenger aboard. But if ones destination is a major shopping area, then the fare is great deal less, because the taxi driver will most lik

Know nothing

Proud of my ignorance? Certainly not - but I must admit do not know much about anything - rather for the most part I am absolutely have no clue. If am told the world is round and it has been proven to be so - I must agree - but my personal experience tells me it is flat. Why do things fall it said I am told there is such thing as gravity then I am told there is nothing such as gravity it is the curvature of space - whatever that is supposed to mean. I wish scientists were to make up their minds. What are those tiny bright dots I see in the night sky? I have no idea - I am told they are stars and they are so far away no one will ever be able to reach them. Whatever the reasons for that I will never venture to ask, I have never had a telescope in my life so I can never see that far. Why does my mobile do the things it does? - I do not know. Why can see so many TV channels, when at one time I could only one - is beyond me. Why I can see TV is at all is even harder to explain. There

A stranger

Insinuations, euphemisms, gossip, superciliousness are make up his conversation. He always contradicts himself. He has proven that without the shadow of any doubt that he is a hypocrite. If it is possible he will try never to listen, but when he does – he likes to interrupt and starts arguing. Every conversation degrades into a pointless and meaningless argument. All sense of fun and levity has gone from him, perhaps it was never there. He derides anyone with a sense of homeliness, warmth and closeness. He finds it discomfiting to laugh out loud at something which is genuinely funny because he is so used to ridiculing and scoffing at everything. It is apparent his has all but lost his sense of humour. He cannot tell the difference between opinion and fact – he mixes both of them up. When gossip is not involved in any conversation – he starts an extensive interrogation seeking every tiny detail which is actually a desperate bid to find fault so that he can start an argument. He does n

IDEAS by pinheads

For three days Karachi is suffering from another bout of traffic jams because of an every shady arms fare called IDEAS. No one knows who is selling what to whom. Several parts of the city have been cut off and the normal flow of traffic has been seriously affected. It is as if the people in Karachi are a major security risk. The people are not a security risk it’s the pinheads (none other than the over-rated military) who by exaggerating the importance of the arms deals fare. This only creates even more resentment, because the junta deliberately is alienating the people of Karachi from everything. Before Karachi was the country’s capital – Islamabad became the capital – but Karachi’s commercial and financial importance over the decades and it become the commercial capital of the country. The junta receives 75 per cent of all taxes from Karachi, yet the city and its citizens do not get return on the taxes paid. Now the pinheads that instead of finding an appropriate place to have th

Internet surfing doomed 2

This following is becoming turning into incredible hurdles in surfing the Internet. Who would want to use the Internet if this goes on. The Internet Service Providers blame PTCL the telephone monopoly which in turns blames PTA the supervising organisation of all telecommunications including surfing the Internet which blames the ministry of communications which blames the overall policies of the junta. In a country when there are only 6 per cent of the entire population of the country surfing the Internet, in which in most cases one is lucky of getting connected to an ISP which are normally dead slow and broadband cable is readily available and where it is available it is also unreliable and extremely expensive so the junta does not have filter the Internet just make it so slow that no one access anything anywhere at any time - the whole point of the exercise of blocking Internet Websites is pointless - because the entire system has been transformed into a decrepit, unreliable mess (

Animals eat people, what?

If one tells children these days that lions and other predators can eat people, they laugh insanely. The reason simply being that first of all being they have never seen these creatures roaming around free at least and there has been no reported case of any of these animals actually have done this in recent times. Humanity has been very proficient in eliminating these creatures from the face of the planet - now the only predators are people and their machines. It is more likely to be run over by a car than to be eaten by a tiger. No matter fearsome these creatures may look, children and many grown ups have stopped thinking of them as a threat. Kids collect T-Rex figurines and just because of the movies they enact how they growl and devour people - but since they know such creatures just does not exist they are just having fun, they could easily have other predator figurines it would make no difference whatsoever Perhaps a few hundred years ago, would be terrified when wolves howled a