Sunday, 28 January 2018

Review: Dracula

Dracula Dracula by Bram Stoker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As gripping as the vicious teeth of the Dracula whose story this is. Every vampire movie, book, story seems like a cheap replica compared to this original classic. Like all great fiction, this book talks about human nature, character and tells an enthralling, entertaining story. Stoker takes us slow, sometimes he takes us fast, when it times to end, it's subtle, like a soft click. Highly recommended bed time reading.

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Review: The Fasting Cure

The Fasting Cure The Fasting Cure by Upton Sinclair
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is a very valuable read. In an age, in which the only affliction we have is caused by overeating, and in which hunger is seen as something scary and detestable, this book offers a very fresh perspective. That hunger is comfortable, and is as important for growth and health as nourishment and sustenance. It talks about an era in which people considered losing weight as a sign of weakness, and wanted to gain weight to be healthy, in which people wanted color in their cheeks and spring in their step. Mainly, this book also recounts numerous stories of people fasting, in old age too, to get rid of the diseases. The author makes no claims of scientific authority, he simply explains what he did, and what he advised others to do, and their results, good or bad. And invited the readers to do their own experiments. In an age when we're told "Do this, not that" this kind of narrative is very refreshing, to say the least. 50 pages are enough to get anyone interested in "The Fasting Cure" for all diseases, after all, Hippocrates said, "Everyone has a physician inside him or her; we just have to help it in its work. The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well. Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food. But to eat when you are sick is to feed your sickness."

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Monday, 15 January 2018

Book Recommendations by Simon Sinek

BOOK
Viktor E. Frankl
Beacon Press, 2006
This is essential reading for anyone interested in the topic of purpose. Because Frankl’s personal experience was so extreme, the lessons are that much more stark. And, most importantly, his lessons are universally applicable to all our lives.
BOOK
L. David Marquet
Portfolio Hardcover, 2013
So many leadership books are either theoretical (written by people who study it but don’t do it) or by people who look back and try to explain how they did it. Though both valuable, most leadership books are also very hard to implement as prescribed. That’s what makes Marquet’s book is so remarkable. A submarine commander, he used to obey traditional models of leadership … until they failed him. Unable to change any variables (people, technology or equipment), the only thing left for him to change in order to achieve success was how he acted as a leader. Based on real life events, Marquet presents his ideas in a superbly practical way — perfect for implementing.
BOOK
Jared Diamond
W. W. Norton & Company, 2005
I’m a fan of books that challenge our assumptions, and Diamond offers us a new and remarkably simple way of looking at our world. Learning to challenge existing assumptions is core to effective leadership for it trains us to keep an open mind.
BOOK
Gavin Menzies
William Morrow Paperbacks, 2008
This is another book that trains us to keep an open mind. It offers a theory of how the Chinese discovered America 70 years before Columbus. The practice of being open to new ways of seeing things makes a leader open to the ideas of others — an essential characteristic of great leadership.
WATCH
Universal Pictures UK, 2011
I cry every time I watch this documentary by Asif Kapadia. It is the most remarkable illustration of what it means to do something for the love of it. It draws a stark contrast between someone who does something for the passion versus someone who does something for the numbers.
WATCH
Lorber Films, 2013
Though not intended to be a documentary about leadership, Vikram Gandhi’s exploration as to why we look for gurus to follow is a perfect metaphor for true leadership. Namely, when those we choose to follow encourage us to find our own strength.
BOOK
Susan Cain
Broadway Books, 2013
Leaders needn’t be the loudest. Leadership is not about theater. It’s not about dominance. It is about putting the lives of others before any other priority. In Quiet, Cain affirms to a good many of us who are introverts by nature that we needn’t try to be extroverts if we want to lead. Simply being ourselves is more important — and more effective.

Sunday, 14 January 2018

Review: 1984

1984 1984 by George Orwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It was an enjoyable and scary read.

Having read Animal Farm, as I was reading this, I couldn't stop myself from thinking why Orwell was against Socialism so much. I still don't know the answer.

But, IF, he was someone motivated to propagate for capitalism and against socialism, he did an amazing job of highlighting what can go wrong if totalitarian governments are allowed to be.

Though a lot of it we're even seeing in capitalist governemnts.

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Monday, 8 January 2018

"The opportunity is often lost by deliberating.”  - Publiilius Syrus

Causes of Depression

We need to feel we belong.
We need to feel valued.
We need to feel we’re good at something.
We need to feel we have a secure future.

Wednesday, 3 January 2018

Review: The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A delightful read. Engaging enough to keep you hooked, and humorous enough to keep you laughing.

Wilde puts a bit of himself in all of his characters. His wit, his graceful, splendid, elegant ridiculousness pinches and tickles the reader at the same time. Very enjoyable read.

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Thursday, 23 November 2017

TIL

from collections import defaultdict
a = defaultdict(int)

a[whatever] += 1 # without ever initializing for any whatever key

Wednesday, 15 November 2017

Sunday, 5 November 2017

Tech Advice from ./

1. Get away from Gmail. Use a privacy-friendly alternative e-mail service like Startmail or ProtonMail. Yes, you will probably have to pay. You are either paying cash or paying with your data.

2. Break off Google search. Use DuckDuckGo to keep your searches private. If you want Google results, use Startpage instead; it will search Google privately on your behalf, preventing it from monetizing you.

3. Ditch Chrome. If you love the UI, then use the open source Chromium instead. Otherwise use Firefox (which is about to get a LOT better with the new overhaul debuting later this month) or Brave. Use your browser with ad blockers like Disconnect, uBlock Origin, AdBlock Plus and Privacy Badger to stop Google and others from serving you tracking ads.

4. If you use an Android, consider running CopperheadOS on your phone. It is built on Android code, but hardened for security and free of Google data mining.

5. Say no to Google cloud storage services. If you want a high security option, use SpiderOak. Otherwise, you can use Boxcryptor to locally encrypt your files before sending them to the cloud so that they cannot be data mined.

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Monday, 9 October 2017

Give to a gracious message a host of tongues,
but let ill tidings tell themselves when they be felt.

Tuesday, 3 October 2017

"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless." - Thomas Edison

Friday, 25 August 2017

Method of Divorce


Reference Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhQpuOAeAUQ


These are the steps one should follow if one thinks divorce is the best solution to one's marriage.

1. One man from the family of the woman, and one man from the family of the man should have a sit down and discuss what the issues are. And who's at fault. And council the one who's fault. Q:"And if they want to resolve an issue, then Allah will put mohabbat in their hearts." This task has to be done by men of the families.

2. Halat e hez main talaq ne di jaye

3. Paki ki halat main shart yeh hai k mubashrat se pehle chore, mubashrat kar li tou is Tuhr main bhi nahin chor sakte

4. Sirf aik talaq per iktifa kia jaye, dusri aur teesri na ki jaye, phir is aik se 3 periods k baad nikah batil hojaye

5. Aur agar wakai bezar hai, tou dosray tuhr ka intezar kare. Phir us main dobara talaq de, phir tesri talaq k liye phir teesray tuhr tak intezar kare. Aur kisi bhi tuhr main ham bistry jaiz nahin.

Thursday, 10 August 2017

Imam Ghazali on time management


"Your time should not be without any structure, such that you occupy yourself arbitrarily with whatever comes along.
Rather, you must take account of yourself and order your worship during the day and the night, assigning to each period of time an activity that must not be neglected nor replaced by another activity.
By this ordering of time, the blessing in time will show itself. A person who leaves himself without a plan as animals do, not knowing what he is to do at any given moment, will spend most of his time fruitlessly.
Your time is your life, and your life is your capital: by it you make your trade, and by it you will reach the eternal bounties in the proximity of Allah.
Every single breath of yours is a priceless jewel, because it is irreplaceable; once it is gone, there is no return for it.
So do not be like fools who rejoice each day as their wealth increases while their lives decrease. What good is there in wealth that increases while one’s lifespan decreases?
Do not rejoice except in an increase of knowledge or an increase of good works. Truly they are your two friends who will accompany you in your grave, when your spouse, your wealth, your children, and your friends will remain behind.”
— Imam al-Ghazali

Thursday, 3 August 2017

Summary: Why children are disobedient to their parents بچے والدین کے نافرمان کیوں

Summary of this bayan as I undderstand it:

1. Secular education is like Ghiza (food) and Religious education is like dawa (Medicine). We need both of these to live a healthy life. Where food is regular, we become sick, and need medicine. Likewise with education.

2. Everything has a taseer (nature, side effect) — water has an side-effect that it cools one down in addition to quenching the thirst. Spices have an effect the heat one up, though the primary reason is to improve the taste of the food. It's the nature of the secular sciences that they progress. They improve my criticising the previously accumulated knowledge, findings flaws in it, and improving upon it. The idea is newer is better than older. So the kids who are taking secular education subconsciously adopt this view with regards to their elders.

3. Religious education. Respect the elders, love the elders, trust the elders, associate with the elders. Rely on the elders. Religion doesn't "progress", it doesn't improve upon the previous. It only applies what was said earlier, to what's new. Religion progresses not my evolving, not by looking at older things with new perspectives, but newer things with old perspective.

4. Secular education is the science of experimentation. Experiments can be criticised in light of new experiments. Of course. But Wahi cannot be criticised in light of new "knowledge". If we challenge or criticise Wahii, we might lose Emaan.

Tuesday, 25 July 2017

*args, **kwargs


Inside a function header:


* collects all the positional arguments in a tuple

** collects all the keyword arguments in a dictionary

>>> def functionA(*a, **kw):
       print(a)
       print(kw)


>>> functionA(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, a=2, b=3, c=5)
(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
{'a': 2, 'c': 5, 'b': 3}

In a function call:


* unpacks an list or tuple into position arguments

** unpacks an dictionary into keyword arguments

>>> lis=[1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> dic={'a': 10, 'b':20}
>>> functionA(*lis, **dic)  #it is similar to functionA(1, 2, 3, 4, a=10, b=20)
(1, 2, 3, 4)
{'a': 10, 'b': 20}

Thursday, 1 June 2017

Bad Big Wolf

From here: https://www.futilitycloset.com/2017/05/25/fire-and-fog/

When J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his first story, at age 7, “my mother … pointed out that one could not say ‘a green great dragon,’ but had to say ‘a great green dragon.’ I wondered why, and still do.” It turns out that there’s an unwritten rule in English that governs the order in which we string our adjectives together:

opinion
size
age
shape
color
origin
material
type
purpose

In The Elements of Eloquence, Mark Forsyth writes, “So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.”

Another unwritten rule concerns ablaut reduplication: In terms such as chit-chat or dilly-dally, in which a word is repeated with an altered vowel, the vowels will follow the pattern I-A-O if there are three words and I-A or I-O if there are two. So:

tip-top
clip-clop
King Kong
flip-flop
sing-song
shilly-shally

And so on. Interestingly, these rules about precedence seem to follow a precedence rule of their own: The “royal order of adjectives” would require Red Riding Hood to meet the “Bad Big Wolf” (opinion before size). But the rule of ablaut reduplication apparently trumps this, making him the Big Bad Wolf.

“Why this should be is a subject of endless debate among linguists,” Forsyth writes. “It might be to do with the movement of your tongue or an ancient language of the Caucasus. It doesn’t matter. It’s the law, and, as with the adjectives, you knew it even if you didn’t know you knew it. And the law is so important that you just can’t have a Bad Big Wolf.”

I don’t know how this applies to dragons.

(Thanks, Nick and Armin.)

Thursday, 18 May 2017

Review: Islamic Guide To Sexual Relations

Islamic Guide To Sexual Relations Islamic Guide To Sexual Relations by Muhammad Ibn Adam Al-Kawthari
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Some non-muslims teased the companions of noble prophet saw. They said, your prophet tells you about how to wipe yourself too.

The companions, not suffering from any inferiority complex, said Indeed he does. And he tells us to do in so and so manner.

Alhamdulillah, Allah has taught us through His messenger about each and every facet of life. And one important aspect of a person's life is sex. Maslow would place it as one of the five most basic human needs. Well above self-actualisation, esteem, love, belonging, intellectual pursuits. In terms of a person's well-being's dependence on it, it's not much different from food itself. As the joke goes. Sex, like Oxygen, only becomes important when you aren't getting any.

Unfortunately, muslim world is too shy to talk about it, or to acknowledge.

May Allah give rise to more scholars in ummat, who are able and willing to talk about the relevant issues with clarity and completeness. This book is by one such scholar.

At the very least, one would learn what how the Prophet, the greatest of men of all time, loved his wives, and treated them.

At the best, it could inspire one to fall in love with Allah and His final prophet once again, for having thought about us, the ummatis to such an extent, and to provide us with a deen so complete in guidance, and so pure in its rule.

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