Myth Broken: Tobacco-Free Cigarettes Are No Less Harmful For Your Health

You are a smoker, but you are not worried about your health. Why? Because you smoke cigarettes that do not contain tobacco or nicotine, and you are confident that such cigarettes do not cause any harm to human health like the ones which contain tobacco.

Sorry dude, but you are completely mistaken. If researchers at New York Medical College are to be believed, then tobacco-free cigarettes are likely to be more carcinogenic (i.e. a substance or agent that tends to produce cancer), as they actually induce more extensive DNA damage than cigarettes which contain tobacco.

So now you can see that you are not causing any less harm to you health by smoking tobacco-free cigarettes. So now you have two options. Either quit smoking completely (which is virtually impossible for an addict like you), or continue your smoking with cigarettes that contain tobacco. After all, why should you harm the tobacco industry when you are doing no less harm to your health even by avoiding tobacco while smoking?

Causes of honour killings

This article on Honour Killing has been written by my good friend Mr K.V. Gautam. He requested me to post the same in my blog, and I am executing his order. I will like to mention that though this article is being posted in my blog, it is Mr K.V. Gautam who is solely responsible for the outcome of this post. - Raja Basu


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The honour killing of young journalist Nirupama Pathak (Delhi based, working for Business Standard) throws up some disturbing realities. Now honour killing is not limited to some uneducated people with medieval mindsets living in Haryana . It has been seen even in educated middle class.

These are the causes of honour killing in India:


Parents think that they are some manufacturing units and their children (of all ages) are their products

Parents think that their sons and daughters have no life of their own. And they have all rights to use and abuse their sons and daughters

The whole concept of human rights and child rights are alien to Indian parents

Indian parents are experts at emotional blackmailing

Parents think that they have done some favor to their wards by giving birth to them (which is wrong as kids are born out of sex, a pleasant activity. and people give birth to kids because it gives pleasure to them)

Parents think that they have done some favor to their wards by bringing them up (which is wrong as parents bring kids up just for their self-interest of helping them in their old age)

Psychologically speaking, parents unconsciously abuse their wards to take revenge for the abuse they had themselves suffered at their own parents' hands (someone please stop this barbarity in the name of tradition and so-called family respect)


Are people who kill their sons and daughters in name of caste any better than terrorists who kills people in the name of religion?

Naveen Jindal's Support To Khap Panchayat - An Act Under Compulsion

Everybody is surprised and shocked that Naveen Jindal has expressed his support for the infamous Khap Panchayat's opposition to same-gotra marriage. The root of the surprise lies in the fact that Naveen Jindal is not only a young politician, but is also well educated and comes from an elite family with apparently a modern outlook.

However, I feel that there is nothing surprising about it. Naveen Jindal is not supporting the Khap Panchayat spontaneously, but under compulsion. Everybody knows that the Khap Panchayat commands huge control on the local community, i.e. the local electorate. Therefore, if Naveen Jindal rubs the Panchayat in the wrong way,then it will ultimately result in his losing the support of the local people. And that will eventually result in his failing to retain the Kurukshetra (Haryana) parliamentary seat in the next general election.

Therefore, it is simply to ensure his victory in the next election that the hapless politician is feigning support for a demand that he himself knows to be completely wrong.

It is basically a classic example of the draw backs of popular democracy, wherein a public representative is forced to support a wrongful demand, simply because it is a popular demand. We witnessed a similar incident when we saw Sachin Pilot fighting for getting his Gujjar voters the coveted ST status. However, Sachin Pilot was very much likely to be aware that his Gujjar voters' demand for an ST status was completely illogical and baseless.

Some Interesting Outcomes Of The Recent UK General Election

The recent UK election has certain outcomes that might be interesting for the Indian mass. They are as follows –

1.) Keith Vaz and Valerie Vaz of the Labour Party have become the first brother-sister duo to jointly enter the House of Commons since 1950s. Their ancestral root lies in Goa.
2.) Indian origin Priti Patel has become the first Conservative Party woman of Indian origin to be elected to the UK Parliament.
3.) Priti Patel and Valeri Vaz have also become the first women of Indian origin to enter UK’s directly elected national legislature.
4.) Indian origin Marsha Singh has again won from the Bradford West constituency, an area often referred to as “Little Pakistan” as the majority of the local population is of Pakistani descent. In fact Marsha Singh has been winning this constituency since 1992. It is notable that his opponents have always fielded Pakistani origin candidates against him. And yet he has managed to retain his constituency which is, I repeat, dominated by Pakistani origins.

Congrats guys! You have really made us, the citizens of your ancestral country, proud. We wish you all a rewarding political career in the UK.


A Pakistani success

Shabana Mahmood has become the first woman of Pakistani origin to enter the UK Parliament.

Congrats sister! May you achieve the zenith of success in your chosen vocation, and make your ancestral country proud of you.


A tight slap for the anti-immigration hawks

The anti-immigration, far-right British National Party has failed to win a single seat, despite the fact that they fielded 300 candidates. The Asians owe a huge thanks to the forward thinking people of the UK, who rejected downright the flawed jingoism that British National Party was trying to sell.



News Courtesy: The Times of India, New Delhi, 8th May 2010.

Limb Amputation To Be History?

The human society might get rid of the painful experience of limb amputation, provided a group of US scientists working to that effect is successful in its mission.

A team at the Centre of Regenerative Medicine in Pittsburgh (USA) is reported to have developed a “miracle powder”, nicknamed “pixie dust”. The scientists claim that the powder is likely to ensure that injured limbs do not need to be amputated.

The powder has been made out of pig bladders, which enables the body to grow new tissue, and can also regenerate large areas which have been badly injured. But how is it possible? Well, pig bladders are blessed with a substance called extra cellular matrix, and that is mainly constituted of collagen.

Notably this “pixie dust” has already been used to treat some severely injured US soldiers who are back from war-torn Afghanistan. All those soldiers had their limbs so badly injured that they were very much likely to be amputated. But they did not have to go through that ordeal, courtesy the use of “pixie dust”.

Is Your Pet Dog A Lefty or Right Handed?

No no, please do not get me wrong. I have not lost my sanity. Dogs and cats indeed are left or right-handed. And so are even parrots and fish. This startling fact has been unearthed by a team of psychologists from Canada’s Queen’s University. They have come to this conclusion after studying 42 pet cats for several weeks.

Really an interesting piece of information, eh? Such findings might not help us improve human life by any aspect, but they nevertheless add a touch of fun and amusement to our day-to-day life.

So if you have a pet, then why do not you ask him or her right now – “Hey Tommy (or whatever it is), are you a lefty? Or right-handed?”

European Inventor Award 2010 For Sanjai Kohli of India

India’s Sanjai Kohli and his partner Steven Chen have won the prestigious European Inventor Award 2010, instituted by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the European Commission. They have won the award in the category of inventors who belong to countries outside the European Union.

So what is their achievement? A significant one, to say the least. Kohli and his partner are credited with inventing powerful but inexpensive chips that have facilitated the commercialization of GPS. It is reportedly due to chips invented by them that today we can see the successful incorporation of GPS technology in so many constituents of our everyday life, such as cars, planes, ships and mobile phones.

By the way, Mr. Sanjai Kohli is the worthy son of F C Kohli, the “Father of Indian software service industry”. Like father, like son.

Long live Indian technology! Long live Indian brain!