Rambang

Aku ingin meraikan hari kembalinya kelajuan jalur lebar Internet ku kepada kelajuan asalnya dengan berkongsi beberapa video dan gambar-gambar yang entah pape:

Summer idle

On a totally different note, in overcoming my summer idleness, I tried watching/catching up on my vast collections of downloaded movies/documentaries. First 3 lined up were: BBC's Islamic history of Europe, Yvonne Project, and Fox's Conspiracy theory: Did we land on the moon? All these documentaries were old (downloaded 3 years ago) but their content, IMO, remain relevant today. Islamic history of Europe detailed the impact of Islam on Europe and how it shaped Europe today. It also showed brief history of Muslim settlement during Abbassid dynasty in Spain and Sicilly and the impact they have on Europe. Yvonne Project on the other hand is an hour-and-a-half lecture given by Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist captured by Taliban during American invasion of Afghanistan. She talked about her encounter with Taliban and how she ended up as a Muslim after the ordeal. I definitely recommend these 2 documentaries to broaden your perspective. The third documentaries is more sensationalism than exact documentary, IMO. It is Fox material anyway. It proposed that US never did made moon landings and arguements were made to prove this. They had a NASA spokeman, who did a crap job IMO, to counter these arguements. Whether he was trying to convince people of a lie or whether he was just crap at explaining, one thing for sure, he made the whole documentary more convincing of US never did land on the moon. 

Street Hoops

Old but good. Was on the telly the other day. I'm off to Dunedin today.

Dave Chapelle

Statistics

Just finished my Evidence-Based Medicine assignment and now is plowing through the books on breast surgery and GI diseases. As I have been toying with papers involving some statistics lately, here are some few interesting statistics on bread:

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.
2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.
3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations
4. More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.
5. Bread is made from a substance called “dough.” It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average North American eats more bread than that in one month!
6. Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence of cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and osteoporosis.
7. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days.
8. Bread is often a “gateway” food item, leading the user to “harder” items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter, and even cold cuts.
9. Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person.
10. Newborn babies can choke on bread.
11. Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 240 degrees Celsius! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute.

Stolen from wwww.phsyics.uwo.ca

the Dwellings

O you who believe! Let not a group scoff at another group, it may be that the latter are better than the former. Nor let (some) women scoff at other women, it may be that the latter are better than the former. Nor defame one another, nor insult one another by nicknames. How bad is it to insult one's brother after having Faith. And whosoever does not repent, then such are indeed zalimun (transgressors, wrong-doers).

O you who believe! Avoid much suspicion; indeed some suspicions are sins. And spy not, neither backbite one another. Would one of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? You would hate it. And fear Allah. Verily, Allah is the One Who Forgives and accepts repentance, Most Merciful.

O mankind! We have created you from a male and female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know one another. Verily, the most honourable of you with Allah is that (believer) who has taqwa (piety). Verily Allah is All-Knowing, All-Aware.

Verses from Qur'an 49:11-13 as recited in today's tarawih prayer at University of Canterbury.

On a totally unrelated note, I'm getting pretty fed up with chrome's hanging and now seriously considering a move to kyubi (firefox) or worse IE. I'm hoping the final version of chrome come out soon and fix these 'hanging' coz I kinda fancy it for being speedy (fast load).

Comment moderation

All I wanted to say is I've switched on comment moderation. Not that there was ever any flood of comments on my blog, but I can't condone any comments that in any way promote maksiah (sins) and such. A society that allow sins to perpetuate is very much condemned in Quran and I will not allow this blog to be a medium for those sort of activities. Go somewhere else, there's plenty out there. I'm not free of sins too and may be a bit myopic of my own faults but I'm working on that (hopefully) and this entry will act as a precedence/reminder that most of my entries should be kept in the limits of Islamic law.

The photo sure does bring back memories of high school. Back then, we used to hang cats on window grills like this:

No cats were harmed though, and after several 'hanging', they finally figure out how to get down. 

Ramadhan blues

Whether it is a good thing or not, this whole week I got a holiday as the convener of the class had to go outstation and felt drafting someone else in such short notice as unfair hence canceling the whole week of class. I should be pissed because my government paid hefty fees to get me educated but hey, who doesn't like holiday? My mates invited me to go down to Dunny, but poor them, they don't have holiday, so what am I suppose to do during the day when everyone else at class? (actually, I could do hafazan or some reading, or sleep). So, here I am, at home, with free time to spend and to contemplate and evaluate my Ramadhan this year. The only aim I set this year was that, it must be better than last year's Ramadhan. But that Ramadhan was the worst I ever experienced, and without going into much details on that, it reminded me that to have the eagerness to perform ibadah is a blessing and mercy from Allah itself. To be woken up in the early morning so you're able to perform qiam and have sahur is a blessing as is to have the right state of mind or freedom of time to focus on hafazan or quran recitation. Nevertheless, one doesn't perform ibadah because he is pure or pious, but one performs it in order to purify oneself or reach piety. This is an important concept that I would like to remind myself and others. It debunk the concept: "I'm evil so I don't perform ibadah". Anyway, as alluded earlier, the state of my Ramadhan last year was bad and it was only a manifestation of the regression that I have experienced as far as I can remember when I stop involving in dakwah activities 3 years ago. It strike me today, I haven't made much improvement to myself since, and in fact, I am in a state worse than I was. I was demystified of my current state only when observing how much my mates have progressed. I'm not sure where I'm going with this musing but the point is, the regression must stop now, retrain my self-discipline, endure the journey and pray for the result.

Remember this cat?


He's kinda serious underneath those makeup:


And also master of disguise:


Stolen from pantip.com

masochism

mas·och·ism [mas-uh-kiz-uhm]

–noun
1. Psychiatry. the condition in which sexual gratification depends on suffering, physical pain, and humiliation.
2. gratification gained from pain, deprivation, degradation, etc., inflicted or imposed on oneself, either as a result of one's own actions or the actions of others, esp. the tendency to seek this form of gratification.
3. the act of turning one's destructive tendencies inward or upon oneself.
4. the tendency to find pleasure in self-denial, submissiveness, etc.

The goat was licking an electric fence.

PS: Chrome do 'hang' a lot when browsing YouTube, which is surprising. And a simple copy-paste of text for blogging is hard since the default mode in chrome is to copy the whole html behing the text. Several cons for you to chew on...

Weird ...

Al-Yankovich, another musician who does parodies. His song 'eat it', a parody of Michael Jackson's 'Beat it', had me in stitches. 'Amish paradise' and 'Smells like nirvana', parodies of 'gangsta paradise' and 'smells like teen spirit' respectively, were good too. Now, I stumbled upon 'e-bay', a parody of BSB 'I want it that way, which had kept me entertained a couple of minutes ago. This is not the official video but still funny:

amateur transplants

I was belatedly introduced to this duo - Amateur Transplants - Drs from London who does musical parody mostly on medical stuffs. There are couple of their songs posted on YouTube if you want to look it up. However, some songs have strong languages so thread with caution if you think you might be offended. Here's one of my favourite - anaesthethist hymn:

apathy

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