Cleaning Hands

Please DO NOT Burn Your Hands, following the technique stated HERE.

This was a comment I placed below an article. 

Following is an extension of my blog activity.

One does not have to go paranoid about keeping clean hands.

Your hands are never sterile of bacteria.

Hands get colonized with bacteria every half an hour from your own "domesticated" or resident non pathogenic bacteria living on the surface and the root of the hairs.

They actually protect your hands from pathogenic bacteria invading and colonizing.

By wearing gloves one eliminates the risk of contaminating of a wound from your own possible carrier pathogens.

Ideally even a surgeon has to change gloves every half to one hour while operating.

By washing and scrubbing one gets rid of the foreign bacteria that are present in the contaminated food.

So the bottom line is to make sure one buys them from hygienic sources.

Other is to cook them before eating.

Fresh food (uncooked) is never free of bacteria one does not have to cook your hands; 

instead cook the food.

I never get involved in cooking since, with fish tanks and the dog my hands are never free of possible contamination.

I have to handle food that day is off for the fish and the dog. 

I consider the fridge-freezers are the most contaminated articles in yur house if it is jammed pack.

Minimum food in it cooked or uncooked is the safety valve.

I let my wife do the honours and bring fast food as a supplement.

Before I buy fast food I do a survey of how the food is handled and dished out and if I see any wrong practises, I never visit that place.

Food handling is a special art for the hospitality trade.

It is the job of the Public Health Inspectors to visit them regularly BUT our guys/girls visit them to take BRIBES from the vendors.

To get rid of hepatitis virus one has to boil for minimum of half an our.

HIV virus is inactivated by simple soap and water BUT kissing can transmit it apart from SEX whatever one's orientation is.

There was article stating to use HOT Water (temperature is immaterial) clean hands which is wrong.

Both hot water and very cold water can BURN your hands which is a serious injury for CHILDREN and adults.

40 years ago there wasnt a single place one could buy clean food in CEYLON.

Over the years we became immune to all the bugs.

I have no solution to this problem of "proper washing of hands (or any other article or body part").

I have to thank both Professor Barkumarakulasuriya and Professor Aluvihare for training as Medical Students and the etiquette of theatre practice.

Bar Kum wanted me to take surgical photographs of his cases, which I enjoyed very much.

APR (Athe Paya Rudawa after Surgery or Per Rectal Anjuna we renamed him no sooner he returned from UK) had SICU for his critical cases.

SICU was a new concept only Colombo General had a unit then.

Renal Unit was not established.

The technique I learned was useful when I started doing NEONATAL WORK in UK.

Then I realized I would be spending my time washing hands most of my waking life instead of sleeping like a log.

I decided to give up both surgery and Neonatology (We we the pioneers of Ventilators in UK then, starting with Baby Bellings and more sophisticated ventilators later).

Back at home under "Sirimawo and NM", I used to do postmortems with bare hands since even, if I wore two pairs of Cheap Chinese gloves, body fluids (no oozing blood but clotted blood in cadavers) would seep through them and stain my nails specially both index fingers.

I thought this was not a joke with Cholera was endemic in Jaffna then (brought from India).

I developed my own technique using surgical instruments properly sterilized under my ONLY pharmacist's scrutiny.

Nobody had ever used them before me in the District Hospital I worked all instruments coming from UK.

Hospital was known as a punishment station (unfortunately my first appointment) and was occupied by J.V.P in 1970/71.

Within a month only other medical man left to get married, (Thankfully I had a RMP who loved PP by the side which I encouraged to offload my patients) and I was all alone in three-man station.

Within five months I was the most unwanted man in the district since I was catching one by one all the Sinhala Buddhist clerk, food supplier, chief attendant, security guard and rogue nurses.

I could trust only three out of over 100 staff, the midwife, the pharmacist and the RMP, the last two were Tamil gentlemen.

I made an easy exist to the Department Pathology, University (That was intended as a punishment, since I begged the Deputy Director, never to send me to Pathology under Professor Tennakoon) from where I started climbing UP.

I had working relationship with my professor (who wanted me to do renal biopsies with only one Siverman Biopsy Needle) and one day watching me doing the dissection of the left overs (he never gave the Heart and the Kidneys) without gloves;

"What the Hell You Do, without gloves with Hepatitis B (Australia Antigen and Hepatitis B were current news then) epidemic".

I told him my reasons (Cheap Quality Chinese Gloves) and he made sure all our gloves for the department were imported from UK.

His final say was "Never Mind, you use your OWN technique BUT wear gloves in my department".

Within a year he treated me better than his sons.

The sons ONLY got distinction in English.

My sons are lazy, he used to tell me.

He had three heart attacks and the reason was heavy smoking (last two were after he quit smoking).

I stop smoking having seen him in critical care, latter stages of his life.

He wanted only books to read, that also detective ones.

He used to hit the films, the first day.

Both reading (especially critical scientific articles) and films, I am no different to him.

Thanks to him, I stopped smoking on my own volition, the day I stepped foot on United Kingdom.

I smoked only once on the day of my father's (not my mother) funeral.

Mind you he was a heavy smoker and I changed him to good cigars (he had multiple strokes) over time brought from UK.

Unscientific America

Unscientific America

With Mr. Trump coming into power, it is obvious that the word Science has come into prominence.

I did some search (not research which is my bona fide) of America in preparation of a brief visit to New York.

It never materialized.

It ended up me writing two fiction books (not my forte) obliging to a request from my family members to write a few fiction books.

I love writing books on Real Science (not scientific fiction of Sir Arthur Clark's) as an antidote to Arthers's fiction.

The catch phrase in my book was “Ten days in America, I am already broke” which I got printed (fictionally) in my uppers not pants, to avoid all the muggers.

America has few suckers and lot of ordinary people.

My search culminated in writing a book on conspiracies (entire world including Vatican City) which is available on Amazon.

Like America, Amazon is a wonderful organization much better than “Sewering Facebook' and “The Faked News Agency” authored by many unsuspecting guys/girls.

Authoritarian news agencies did not fare well fuelling the Faked News.

The reason for writing this piece is to make you read a few books on America.

1. Unscientific America (about how scientific knowledge filter down to the masses).

2. House of Lies (How the business world operates)

3. Third book I have misplaced and cannot remember the Title, is very good and academic.

It is on the line of “The Matrix of American Population Dynamics”.

I am sorry I cannot give the correct name.

Of course that made me to write a book on Ceylonese Dimensions from “Freedm to Anarchy to War Mongering (That is not the name of my book).

It was titled  “Reflections”, a personnel perspective of Ceylonese Politics with corruption.

In a Matrix of seven or eight levels.

Mind you I am not a politician but a passive observer.

Global Warming

Let me sympathize with the  New Zealanders (no relationship to global warming, I believe) after the third of the 7. 8 range earth quakes within 15 years.
I went through with one of those which lifted the Otira range by few inches.
 
(New Zealanders are the nicest people of this planet!)
I could not sleep for six weeks with after tremors.
I was thrown off twice off my bed.
I thank god I was in deep sleep, woken up only by a major earth quake.
That is how I sleep after heavy night duty.
I slept through a major cyclone in United Kingdom which down the parapet wall of my house and uprooted my neighbour's roof.
I managed to anchor my back door with a fridge a freezer and a dryer, which saved my roof but not the neighbour's.
My staff was amazed that I slept through it but did not ask me to volunteer work for the aftermath (I was up all night the day before the cyclone and weekend off).
I politely told them I am available for any emergency, do not bother waking me up.
When one sees these catastrophes what a blessed country Ceylon IS (barring politicians), runs through my mind.
Even though, Jayalalitha who was very ant-Ceylonese I wish her a speedy recovery from her brief illness.

Global Warming
Obama denied its existence BUT Trump does not have and idea or plan to counteract.
USA, Russia, India and China are the culprits.
Small nations like Mali and Ceylon have no control over it but we contribute t it by felling our rain forest, including building Motor ways for purported to be eco-tourism.
2016 looks poised to be the warmest year on record globally, according to preliminary data.
Reproduction.
With data from just the first nine months, scientists are 90% certain that 2016 will pass the mark set by 2015.
Temperatures from January to September were 1.2C above pre-industrial levels, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The body says temperatures should remain high enough for the rest of the year to break the previous record.
El Nino has had an impact, but the most significant factor driving temperatures up continues to be CO2 emissions.
What is climate change?
The provisional statement on the status of the global climate in 2016 has been released early this year to help inform negotiators meeting in Morocco, who are trying to push forward with the Paris Climate Agreement.
The document says the year to September was 0.88 above the average for the period between 1961-90, which the WMO uses at its baseline.
The whole of 2015, which broke the previous record by a significant amount, was 0.77 above the 1961-90 average.
Image copyright WMO
While there are still a couple of months to go this year, a preliminary analysis of the October data indicates that 2016 is very much on track to surpass the 2015 level, which in turn broke the previous high mark set in 2014.
"Another year. Another record. The high temperatures we saw in 2015 are set to be beaten in 2016," said WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas.
"In parts of Arctic Russia, temperatures were 6°C to 7°C above the long-term average. Many other Arctic and sub-Arctic regions in Russia, Alaska and north-west Canada were at least 3°C above average. We are used to measuring temperature records in fractions of a degree, and so this is different," said Mr Taalas.
The report highlights the fact that other long-term climate change indicators are also breaking records. The amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere continued on its upward march in 2016.
Arctic sea ice continued to melt in significant amounts, while the Greenland ice sheet displayed very early melting this year.
Experts believe that the El Nino weather phenomenon played a role in the record warm temperatures seen in 2015 and 2016.
They quantify it as roughly 0.2 of a degree - but the bulk of the warming is coming from the accumulation of greenhouse gases. And the impacts of that warming are being widely felt.
"Because of climate change, the occurrence and impact of extreme events has risen," said Petteri Taalas.
"'Once in a generation' heatwaves and flooding are becoming more regular. Sea level rise has increased exposure to storm surges associated with tropical cyclones," he said.2016 set to be world's warmest year
The surprise election of Donald Trump as president of the US has increased expectations that he will bring a more skeptical view of climate change to the White House.
Scientists are stressing that the evidence for the reality of climate change is getting stronger all the time.
"We are seeing the impacts of climate change on extreme weather," said Dr Peter Stott, who leads the climate attribution team at the UK Met Office.
"One degree may sound a relatively small number but in the context of such a stable climate that we've had over the past millenniums, and the rapidity of that warming, we are seeing this real world evidence that doesn't come from a model or a projection."
According to the WMO analysis, 16 of the 17 warmest years have been recorded this century. The only exception was 1998. 
Postscript; 
If you watch your garden daily (Without Watering)  all the ill effects of global warming are evident from blooming to seeding to germination.
Our water bill was more than the electricity for three solid months.
If I did not water, all my water plants including lilies would have perished (My EXPERIMENT).
This is in a country where there were 100 rivers (down to 80 now) with perennial flow of water!
This due to the destruction of the rain forest.
We are on the verge of sixth extinction which Trump the Man has no understanding.
I am convinced Americans are either STUPID or Macho.
Having said that Listening to 'Grand Mother Talk' (the lecturing) of Hillary would have sickened me to death, while CIA is pulling the strings.
I did a survey and found all America Presidents Past and Present (Hilary did it before assuming office, so she need not become the first female President) made a huge earning from global lecture series.
I do not think Trump could foot that bill on lectures (no intellectual would pause to listen).
What we need is men and women working not lecturing on TV.
Media got it wrong this time round.

USA and the Facts I Did not Know

USA and the Facts I Did not Know

1. 50 fifty states

2. 300 million population

3. 120 million took part in the election

4. How many did not vote, I do not know?

5. 180 million ineligible or not registered including minors

6. Minimum age 18 years (migrant workers' right not stated, in the sense de facto or de juro basis)

7. No compulsion or mandatory to vote

8. Mrs. Clinton got little over 600,000 votes above Mr. Trump but got 232 electoral colleges whereas Mr.Trump got 290.

9. Total colleges are 538 and the above tally does not add up to 538 (26 electoral colleges I cannot account for)

10. It has 9 time zones and four contiguous time zones.

Managing this election was an enormous task and hats off to the federal officers managing it without a hitch.

Having said that the behaviour of the losing party is unbecoming and they have no legal right to do so since president is elected by the electors (electoral colleagues) and not the voters.

Losing Voters have to “eat the humble pie” for another four years.

Reproduction

Thanks to Wikipedia

Eligibility to Vote

Eligibility to vote in the United States is established both through the federal constitution and by state law. Several constitutional amendments (the 15th, 19th, and 26th specifically) require that voting rights cannot be abridged on account of race, color, previous condition of servitude, sex, or age for those above 18; the constitution as originally written did not establish any such rights during 1787–1870.

In the absence of a specific federal law or constitutional provision, each state is given considerable discretion to establish qualifications for suffrage and candidacy within its own respective jurisdiction; in addition, states and lower level jurisdictions establish election systems, such as at-large or single member district elections for county councils or school boards.

The United States Electoral College is the body that elects the president and vice president of the United States every four years. Citizens of the United States do not directly elect the president or the vice president; instead they choose "electors", who pledge beforehand to vote for the candidate of a particular party.

Each state gets to choose as many electors as the combined total of the number of U.S. senators and representatives to which the state is entitled.

The District of Columbia gets at most the number of electors it would have if it were a state but not more than the number of electors of the least-populous state (currently three).

There are therefore currently 538 electors, corresponding to the 435 representatives and 100 senators in the House of Representatives and the Senate, plus the three electors for the District of Columbia.

The Constitution bars any federal official, elected or appointed, from being an elector.

The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.

Capital: Washington, D.C.

Dialing code: +1

From GMT to UTC

GMT was superseded as the international civil time standard by Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in 1960, when the International Radio Consultative Committee formalized the concept of Coordinated Universal Time, abbreviated as UTC.

It is, within about 1 second, mean solar time at 0°.

It does not observe daylight saving time. It is one of several closely related successors to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). For most purposes, UTC is considered interchangeable with GMT, but GMT is no longer precisely defined by the scientific community.

Zones used in the contiguous U.S.

From east to west, the times zones of the contiguous United States are:

The eastern standard time zone: (Zone R), which comprises roughly the states on the Atlantic coast and the eastern two thirds of the Ohio Valley.
The central standard time zone: (Zone S), which comprises roughly the Gulf Coast, Mississippi Valley, and Great Plains.
The mountain standard time zone: (Zone T), which comprises roughly the states that include the Rocky Mountains.
The Pacific standard time zone: (Zone U), which comprises roughly the states on the Pacific coast, plus Nevada and the Idaho panhandle.

United States time zones

Standard time zones in the United States are currently defined at the federal level by law 15 USC -260. The federal law also establishes the transition dates and times at which daylight saving time occurs, if observed. It is ultimately the authority of the Secretary of Transportation, in coordination with the states, to determine which regions will observe which of the standard time zones and if they will observe daylight saving time.

As of August 9, 2007, the standard time zones are defined in terms of hourly offsets from UTC. Prior to this they were based upon the mean solar time at several meridians 15° apart west of Greenwich (GMT).

Only the full-time zone names listed below are official; abbreviations are by common use conventions, and duplicated elsewhere in the world for different time zones.

The United States uses nine standard time zones.

As defined by US law they are:

1. The Atlantic standard time zone
2. The eastern standard time zone
3. The central standard time zone
4. The mountain standard time zone
5. The Pacific standard time zone
6. The Alaska standard time zone
7. The Hawaii–Aleutian standard time zone
8. The Samoa standard time zone
9. The Chamorro standard time zone

Linux Magazine and the Editor

Linux Magazine and the Editor
Linux Magazine has made alliance with "Linux Voice".
Even though I do not engage in "Flame Wars"of the old time, it is nice to see some constructive criticism on paper (not on social media please).
Social media including Facebook have become the staging ground for psychopaths.

It is evident after the US Election, currently.

Why I want "Flame Wars" on paper is that a good editor knows how to choose words or edit them for public consumption.
Linux Magazine has a very good Editor in Chief.