In the near-middle foreground of William Frith's painting, The Railway Station (1862), is a triangular group depicting the artist's own family. Frith's two elder sons are being seen off to boarding school, the younger one for the first time. The artist/father looms at the back, impressive in fashionable hat and greatcoat, with one gloved hand resting on the older son's shoulder, while his wife hugs the younger boy, whose arms are clasped around her neck. Beside them stands their grown daughter, holding the hand of another boy, evidently the baby of the family. Consider the grouping and the emotional nuances of the scene. How does Frith view himself? What roles do the older two siblings play, and what kind of interaction can you see between them? What is the youngest child doing, and what does this tell us about him? In particular, what does Frith's "subject matter" here reveal about this particular milestone in Victorian family life?
"[T]hat first night at school," writes Thackeray, who entered Charterhouse at the height of its reputation in 1822, "hard bed, hard words, strange boys bullying, and laughing, and jarring you with their hateful merriment — as for the first night at a strange school, we most of us remember what that is. And the first is not the worst, my boys, there's the rub" ("On Two Children in Black" (text outside VW). Homesick, forced to endure spartan conditions and undergo punishments and other impositions without showing his feelings, striving to make his mark among his peers whilst in awe of, often in thrall to, his seniors, a public schoolboy of this period had more to occupy him than his struggle with the Eton Grammar.
Adjustment could be especially painful for those sent off at the earliest possible age (see Kincaid 86). This was true of Thackeray himself, a mere five years old when he was dispatched to England from Calcutta. More of a shock, too, for those brought up in the nursery with their sisters — the majority, perhaps. "Little boys are looked upon as girls in a school, till they show that they are little men," explains Harriet Martineau's Dan Firth to Hugh Proctor, who arrives at Mr Tooke's school at the age of eight, still innocently sporting his fair flowing locks. "'And then again, you have been brought up with girls, — have not you?' 'To be sure; and so was he.' 'And half the boys here, I dare say. Well, they are called Bettys till — '"(The Crofton Boys, 1841). Till they have endured their first flogging, perhaps? Look up The Crofton Boys to see how Hugh gets on (text outside VW).
At this time, forced inculcation of knowledge, often without understanding, and of a kind totally unsuited to the children's future needs, was still the order of the day right across the board. Schoolmasters in the eighteenth-century novel, like Fielding's Thwackum (Tom Jones, 1749) and Smollett's Keypstick (Peregrine Pickle, 1751), were bad enough. But nothing quite prepares us for the host of cruel, wrong-headed and self-righteous schoolmasters of Victorian literature. Although Thackeray was particularly fond of Fielding, and Dickens of Smollett, both were also drawing on their personal experience of the educational system of their age. As the educational reformer James Kay-Shuttleworth remarked early in the reign: "I think the great majority of such schoolmasters would conceive that they deserted their duty if they treated the children kindly" (qtd in Rooke 33). Pick out some examples of these schoolmasters in Dickens. Try adopting a different standpoint, and arguing against seeing such characters as a direct reflection of the social reality of the time.
Although the public school situation certainly began to improve with Thomas Arnold's reforms at Rugby, it was years before such changes were widespread. When Arnold died in 1842, for instance, "nothing material at Eton, Winchester and Harrow had changed since the beginning of the century," writes John Chandos (268). This is certainly borne out by what we know of the frail and sensitive Swinburne's time at Eton, which he entered in 1849. His experiences there seem to have been even worse than Thackeray's at Charterhouse in the 1820s. Note that the other three famous headmasters whose respective schools blossomed during this time were younger than Arnold and considerably outlived him: Benjamin Hall Kennedy (1804-1889, headmaster of Shrewsbury 1836-1866); Edward Thring (1821-1887, headmaster of Uppingham 1853-87); and William Haig Brown (1823-1907, headmaster of Charterhouse 1863-97).
As Frith's canvas suggests, we are talking here almost exclusively about boys. Charlotte Brontë came to know Kay-Shuttleworth personally before writing Villette (1853), in which she relates his opinion to her personal experience of girls' education; but girls from good families, even the minority not exclusively educated at home by governesses, were unlikely to be subjected to the extreme methods used in the boys' public schools. When Thackeray stems the flow of the narrative in Vanity Fair (1847-48; text outside VW) to ask schoolmasters angrily in his own voice, "how many of those gentle souls do you degrade, estrange, torture, for the sake of a little loose arithmetic, and miserable dog-latin?" (Chapter V), the "gentle soul" he is referring to is his central male character, Dobbin. To what extent, then, is it ironic that Victorian girls should have envied their brothers their "opportunities"?
Violence breeds violence, and the threat from other boys at public school could be even worse for the sensitive child than the threat from teachers. The bouts of fisticuffs in the largely unsupervised quadrangles could be horrific: in "Mr and Mrs Frank Berry," Thackeray describes a fight which runs to 102 rounds, perhaps a backward glance at the notorious fight at Eton in 1825, in which Lord Shaftesbury's brother had died. Bullying, even beyond what was institutionalised in the "fagging" system that required small boys to slave for their elders, was endemic. Moreover, it could be both highly inventive and excruciatingly painful, as illustrated when Clarence in Charlotte Yonge's Chantry House is hung by the wrists out of a third storey window at Harrow, and made to hold a red-hot fire-grate with bare hands.
Yet an even sterner test of a boy's spirit was the threat of moral contamination. This is the greatest fear of Anne Brontë's fictional parent, Helen Huntingdon, in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848): against all opposition, Helen opts to protect her son from it by keeping him at home. As usual, there was undoubtedly some basis for this fear in real life. "At the very sight of a knot of vicious or careless boys gathered round the school-house fire," says Arnold's first biographer, the great headmaster himself would be put in mind of the devil (Stanley 114). A common site for the hero's first moral battle is the classroom itself. Given long passages from the classics to construe, pupils in Victorian public schools would resort to widespread cribbing: Eric's yielding to this practice, in Dean Farrar's Evangelical tale, Eric, Or Little By Little (1858, written while the author was a housemaster at Harrow) is what eventually leads the boy to the verge of complete moral breakdown and finally death. This is extreme, of course; Eric is a cautionary figure in a moral tale, not a hero to be emulated.
Arthur, Tom and East work together one night from a 1906 edition of Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes. [Click on thumbnail for larger image.]
For a positive role model, boy readers had to look instead to the other famous school story of the era, Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857; text outside VW). Once converted by the pious new boy, Arthur, Tom Brown is soon encouraging his old confederate Harry East to adopt a new, conscientious approach to schoolwork. This process accurately reflects Arnold's own belief and practice. By delegating authority to trusted "praepostors" among the older boys he had done his best to promote better discipline right down the school.
The only danger was that self-consciously good boys would seem priggish, even emasculated (see Nelson, passim). To prevent this, they needed to retain some of their boyish high spirits. One way of simultaneously fostering and channelling their natural energies was though sport, and boys' books of this time often feature accounts of football and cricket matches. Look for examples of these in Tom Brown's Schooldays and consider their roles in the narrative. Athletics also flourished. Even delicate young Arthur learns to run, swim and play cricket (if not rugby) with the rest of the boys. Another way of ensuring continued manliness was not simply to allow but actively to promote fighting for a good cause. Hence Dobbin's thorough thrashing of the strutting and bullying Cuff in Chapter V of Vanity Fair. Arnold himself was no pacifist, and Tom Brown too covers himself with glory when he batters "Slogger" Williams. Throwing oneself into the fray like this is seen as "proof of the highest courage" when "done for true Christian motives" (Part II, Chapter V). This was good training for the future: public school boys were expected to go on to fill the highest ranks of the armed forces and to hold sway in the colonies, principally India. How does Vanity Fair reflect these expectations?
Two portraits of William Haig Brown of Charterhouse [Click on thumbnails for larger images]
Notice Hughes' words, "Christian motives." Similarly, Charles Kingsley tells his young readers at the beginning of Part II of The Heroes, " there is a better thing on earth than wealth, a better thing than life itself; and that is, to have done something before you die, for which good men may honour you, and God your Father smile upon your work. [text outside VW) Public schools at this time were imbued with the mid-century ideals of muscular Christianity, and the chapel features as prominently in accounts of school life as the football pitch. No wonder public school chapels like those at Eton and Charterhouse provide some of the finest specimens of Victorian Gothic architecture. For an idea of their importance to school life, look at Haig Brown's statue at Charterhouse, in which he is shown holding a model of the (then) new chapel at his school.
Yet worship was not confined to the chapel. The Heroes itself is a vigorous retelling (originally, for Kingsley's own children) of the adventures of Perseus, Jason and the Argonauts, and Theseus. As this suggests, muscular Christianity meshed brilliantly with the chivalric ideals to which the Victorians were now returning for inspiration in literature, art, design and architecture. It was a time for heroes and hero-worship — a phenomenon which flourished in the hierarchical, high-minded hothouse environment of the public school. The headmaster himself, once having abdicated the role of tyrant, could now be at the receiving end for some of this. Arnold, seen as "a strong, true man, and a wise one too, and a public-school man too" in Chapter VI, Part I of Tom Brown's Schooldays, was not the only "great doctor" to loom impressively in front of his pupils. Read Chapter V of Harold Begbie's biography of Robert Baden-Powell , who went to Charterhouse, and note the description of Haig Brown too as "the great Doctor."
Nevertheless, it was the usually the older boys rather than the masters who attracted the most passionate following. Homoerotic elements often come close to the surface in the novels. For example, when E. F. Benson recreates his own mid-Victorian public school experiences in David Blaize (1916), he shows David's beloved Frank coming back from Cambridge to visit his sickbed. Lamplight falls like a halo around the older youth's face, and the scene is charged with powerful emotions. Such attachments feature very prominently in two earlier bildungsromans: David Copperfield (1850) and George Meredith's The Adventures of Harry Richmond (1871; text outside VW). In both novels, the attachments have to be outgrown, relinquished. David Copperfield's Steerforth and Harry Richmond's head boy, Heriot, are cut down to size later, so that the hero himself (the hero of the narrative, that is) is free to become truly the "hero of [his] own life" (David Copperfield, Chapter I). Yet it is doubtful that these strong attachments are ever really lost. Consider the power of the storm scene (Chapter LV) in David Copperfield, and how much it owes to Steerforth's final appearance.
Public schools exerted a huge influence on their pupils' later lives. However poignant the parting for Harrow in William Frith's The Railway Station, the rising planes of the triangular family group imply something positive as its outcome. Frith's eldest son, already somewhat aloof in his smart uniform, is clearly well on the way to becoming a man like his father. Boys' sufferings at these unique establishments were felt to be, and indeed normally were, part of the process of growth. The physical, moral and emotional challenges they faced there were probably more of a preparation for life than the classical education they were offered. Looking back in The Newcomes (1855), even Thackeray could feel glad that he had passed through those flames, and now felt a lingering warmth in the memory of them.
Begbie, Harold. The Story of Baden-Powell "The Wolf That Never Sleeps". http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17300/17300-h/17300-h.htm
Chandos, John. Boys Together: English Public Schools 1800-1864. London: Hutchinson, 1984.
Kincaid, James R. Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture. New York & London: Routledge, 1992.
Nelson, Claudia. Boys Will Be Girls: The Feminine Ethic and British Children's Fiction, 1857-1917. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1991.
Rooke, Patrick. The Age of Dickens. New York: Putnam's, 1970.
Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn. The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, D.D. New York: Scribner's, 1884.
Note: see also Lytton Strachey's reassessment of Thomas Arnold in the chapter on him in Eminent Victorians (1918; text outside VW), but beware! Strachey's evidence has been criticised in its turn as unsound. For an update on public school life, specifically at Eton, see J.F.O. McAllister, "A New Kind of Elite." Time Magazine, 26 June 2006: 28-35.
Last modified 16 July 2007


This Arts and Crafts quiz is called 'Recording Ideas' and it has been written by teachers to help you if you are studying the subject at middle school. Playing educational quizzes is a fabulous way to learn if you are in the 6th, 7th or 8th grade - aged 11 to 14.
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As middle school students develop their skills and abilities in art and design, they will subsequently learn how to organize their ideas and record their experiences in order to inform their project planning and provide them with a bank of visual imagery which will support their art.
Recording ideas may take many forms - from quick and simple sketches 'in the field', to photographed images and perhaps even a collection of ideas and ephemera which inspires and consolidates ideas for a particular project.
An initial concept or idea for a project usually begins with the question 'What do I want to create?' This question may lead to the artist exploring many different possibilities and cause them to experience and experiment with many different media, stimuli and processes. Recording the outcomes of these experiences and experiments will underpin a project, as a selection may end up being woven into the finished artwork.
Ideas can be recorded in sketchbooks, binders or folders and may consist of images, notes, scraps of texture, cuttings and sketches. An organized artist knows when and where the inspiration was sourced and can access ideas with ease.
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Malaria presents a formidable global challenge. It affects more than 200 million people worldwide every year, and more than 1 million people die from it, primarily pregnant women and children under the age of 5 years. Resistance to existing anti-malarial medications is a constant, and vaccines have not proven effective. But the disease also presents a unique opportunity for researchers to uncover innovative solutions. As a result, even the cash-conscious National Institutes of Health (NIH) is investing in malaria research.
Boston Children’s Hospital physician Jeffrey Dvorin, MD, PhD, recently received a High-Risk, High-Reward New Innovator Award from the NIH. The award is reserved for early-stage investigators whose research has potential for significant impact, but who may lack enough data for a traditional NIH R01 grant. Dvorin will use the $1.5 million, five-year grant to pursue research that could lead to new tools to combat malaria.
The challenges of treating malaria begin at the molecular level. To develop new anti-malarial tools, the research community needs to understand how the parasite replicates. Determining which genes are essential to parasite replication could provide the data needed to develop new medications or an effective vaccine. But scientists have not yet determined functions for more than half of the 5,500 genes in Plasmodium falciparum, which causes the majority of malaria infections in Africa.
Innovation and successful NIH funding applications have much in common. Both are methodical, step-by-step processes that depend on role models and persistence.
As a young researcher pondering the genetic challenges of malaria, Dvorin cultivated relationships with established clinicians and researchers, who urged him to think big. Michael Wessels, MD, chief of Infectious Diseases at Boston Children’s, encouraged him to consider innovative techniques and gave him the freedom to pursue outside collaborations. At the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Manoj Duraisingh, PhD, helped to shape his view of malaria genetics, and Dyann Wirth, PhD, provided more senior career mentorship, such as identifying opportunities in malaria research.
With encouragement from his mentors, Dvorin applied for various grants to test his approach to the genetics of P. falciparum. A pilot grant in 2012 from the William F. Milton Fund at Harvard University served as the initial seed for Dvorin’s current NIH win. This award, offered Harvard-wide, provides funds to help researchers generate the preliminary data needed to convince the NIH or other funding sources to further support their research. Dvorin used the $40,000 grant to complete preliminary experiments to determine if his approach, applying a technique known as forward genetics, was feasible.
Dvorin used a second grant, a two-year, $47,000 award from the Boston Children’s Hospital’s/Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s collaborative fellowship program, to recruit an additional post-doctoral researcher to his laboratory to perform the pilot proof-of-principle studies (unpublished) for the project.
“Institutional support for early stage investigators has been critical for the exciting research taking place in my lab now,” Dvorin says. “As my research moves forward, I hope that the hard work of the postdoctoral fellows in my lab, together with some luck, will allow us make a significant impact on a globally important disease.”
The NIH New Innovator Award grant adds critical support for the research.
To date, the process of pinpointing essential genes has hinged on a slow, one-gene-at-a time process known as reverse genetics. The approach applies classic genetic techniques to mutate specific parasite genes individually to determine the function of each gene and its effect on phenotype. Using this method, it takes researchers three to four months (or longer) to evaluate individual genes.
Dvorin aims to accelerate the process by approaching it from a different direction, devising a forward-genetic system for P. falciparum. Successfully used in the past in yeast and other organisms, forward genetics starts with a target phenotype, such as growth or a behavior, and seeks to identify the genes responsible for it—often by using agents to induce mutations. Researchers can then breed successive generations of the mutant organisms and examine their phenotype.
Dvorin plans to apply this method to malaria for the first time. He’s adapting forward genetics, inserting a mutagen in a dormant state into the parasites and then turning it on. Selecting parasites with the dormant mutagen prior to activation could increase the yield of parasites available to study by more than 10,000-fold, Dvorin believes.
Next, he will seek to identify mutations and then follow this pool of parasites through several generations to determine which mutations disappear in successive generations. Those mutations, which may have affected an essential gene (thereby causing the parasites to perish), may point to essential genes that could provide potential targets for new anti-malarial drugs.


Flitting, floating butterflies are lovely visitors in the garden, but not so welcome when it feels like they are fluttering in your stomach. This is especially true if accompanied by flushed skin and an attack of the sweats. These combined symptoms could be attributed to mere nerves, or they may indicate other medical conditions.
Stomach butterflies and increased sweating could signal a panic attack, a common condition described in a publication of the University of Texas at Austin's Counseling and Mental Health Center as "an intense physical and mental chain reaction" that often begins with a single negative thought or uncomfortable body sensation. It quickly careens into fearful thoughts, feelings of terror and devastation, and a variety of ratcheting physical symptoms. While panic attacks are scary, they are not life-threatening, and treatment options are usually successful, as 70 to 90 percent of people who seek treatment and stick with it get relief from the condition, according to the University of Texas at Austin.
A normal reaction to stressful events includes stomach flutters and flushing, but if these symptoms persist or intrude on your quality of life, you may have an anxiety disorder. Feeling keyed up and sweaty in non-threatening situations points to anxiety disorders, which often go hand-in-hand with depression. Anxiety disorders can range from generalized anxiety disorder and phobias to post-traumatic stress syndome and social anxiety. Treatment options for anxiety include behavioral therapy, medication and alternative therapies such as relaxation or biofeedback techniques, hypnosis and meditation.
During the fourth month of pregnancy, the expectant mother may feel the baby moving for the first time. The sensation of butterfly flutters in the stomach is called quickening. Fluctuations in hormone levels, specfically a decrease in estrogen, may make you feel like the baby is baking in your body. Hot flashes are normal in pregnancy and usually are confined to the head, neck and chest. They commonly occur in the second and third trimesters and hot flashes may plague you more frequently postpartum, when estrogen drops even lower before returning to pre-pregnancy levels.
Hot flashes, which afflict roughly 75 to 85 percent of perimenopausal women, are bursts of heat that start in the torso and work up to the chest and face. Your upper body may flush red and you may break out into a sweat while experiencing flickers of anxiety in the stomach. Try eliminating spicy foods, caffeine and alcohol to see if hot flashes lessen. Dressing in layers, running a fan at the office or in the bedroom, and exercising regularly can help control hot flashes and anxiety. Hormonal therapies and alternative medicines constitute other treatment options.
- Helpguide.org: Anxiety Attacks and Disorders: Signs, Symptoms and Treatment
- Planned Parenthood: Pregnancy Week by Week
- Teverbaugh, Croland, Mueller OBGYN & Associates: Obstetrics and Gynecology FAQs
- Babycenter.com: Is it Normal to Have Hot Flashes During Pregnancy?
- National Institute on Aging: Menopause


ogs are our best friends in sickness and in health. General dog health care can be difficult. However, For a dog, if it is unwell, it needs you the most. Therefore you must act like an overly responsible parent until your dog heals. Here are a few good suggestions for caring for a sick dog and helping it feel at ease at home. (Wanna know more about everyday pet problems, pet health questions, health care for pets? Click here: https://loobani.com/)
What Is the Matter with My Dog
We hear it from the owners all the time: “What is wrong with my dog?” “What is this on my dog?” or “Tell me what you need to take care of a puppy?” First, you need to understand the common dog diseases and health problems. Keep a close eye on all of your puppy’s signs and symptoms. You can scribble them down so you can inform your vet over the phone. Why are dogs different when they are sick? It is because they show signs of disease by changing their behavior or appearance. Dogs have a natural tendency to hide signs of illness. Remember that animals will usually try to hide indications of disease. This is an instinct for survival in the wild, where any animal that shows evidence of vulnerability is likely to be rejected by its species or attacked by enemies.
Keep an eye out for some of the warning indicators listed below. They could be a sign of a problem that a vet can only handle. Others may require extra attention at home.
- Whining and crying
- Appetite loss
- Scratching or licking excessively
- Bad smelling mouth, ears or skin, etc.
- Low energy
- Bloating stomach
- Increased shedding
- Discharge from the eyes or nose
- Difficulty in moving
If your symptoms worsen or new ones arise, contact your vet right once. Any new symptoms might indicate that the infection is getting more serious, necessitating the assistance of an emergency veterinarian for health testing your dog.
Be careful when your dog shows some severe signs that suggest medical intervention:
- Losing consciousness
- Blood in the feces or urine
- Ingestion of a dangerous chemical that has been identified.
- Tumors or lumps
- Vomiting and diarrhea that won’t stop
- Bones are broken.
- Having trouble breathing
- Seizures that last more than a minute
- Inability to urinate or lack of urine production
- Symptoms in a dog with a medical condition (diabetes, Addison’s disease, etc.) that are new or reoccurring.
- Swellings around the mouth, eyes, and throat
Know which indicators suggest an emergency that needs urgent veterinarian attention and which signs necessitate veterinary attention if they last longer than a day or two. Tell your vet, “I need help with my dog!”Difficulty to pee, a swollen hard belly, severe vomiting or diarrhea, convulsions, and inability to stand are all signs of an emergency. Within 24 to 48 hours, other less powerful indicators of sickness should be evaluated by a veterinarian, who dogs trust.
If you have a senior dog, you should exercise extra caution and watch for common illnesses that affect older dogs. It’s critical to know what to check for so you can contact your veterinarian sooner rather than later.
How to Care for A Sick Dog
- Medical Needs
Follow the medication’s directions to the letter. Avoid concealing pills in food if your pet has a weak appetite. By doing so, they risk losing what little interest they have in food. Instead, teach them to swallow the pill whole or see a veterinarian about injectable options. Talk to your vet tech if you’re having trouble administering treatment. Many would be willing to come to your house for a nominal charge to assist you with administering medications. Hence, you must understand your dogs’ needs.
Ensure that you know the proper dosage and how to administer drugs prescribed by your vet. Your vet understands that medicating a pet can be difficult, and they will gladly show you how to do it and provide further instruction if necessary.
Bring your dog back to your vet for any required re-check examinations or diagnostic testing, and finish all medications given by your doctor. Even though your pet no longer seems or acts unwell, there may be an underlying sickness that will resurface if you do not follow all of your veterinarian’s advice.
Dogs run a lot, but dogs during illness may not feel like moving a muscle for the entire day, but this is detrimental to their health. If your dog stays in one spot for too long without moving about, it may get bedsores. These bedsores can harm the skin or tissues and are most commonly caused by continuous pressure on the skin.
What to give dogs during illness? Remember that giving your sick pet anything to eat heavy on the belly will only make it feel worse. You should save all food for the first 24 hours, especially if your pet has diarrhea or nausea. Give your dog bland pet food when this period has passed. Both carbohydrate and protein sources must be included in the diet. Boiling chicken with a cup of steamed rice is a delicious combo.
If your doctor has suggested a special diet for your ill pet, make sure you feed it to him away from other animals. Be aware of your pet’s particular dietary requirements and understands that even tiny portions of treats or different kinds of food might be detrimental.
Keep in mind any specific physical requirements your ill pet could have. Some drugs may lead your pet to drink and urinate more regularly, necessitating more frequent walks or litter box cleaning. You may need to assist your pet if it has trouble walking or going up and downstairs. Solicit instruction from your veterinarian on properly aiding your pet so that you do not endanger him.
- Tend to Your Dog‘s Bathroom Needs
Please keep track of your pet’s potty habits while they are unwell. Because your pet will most likely be too tired to get up and go to the potty, you will need to pay close attention. Your pet’s body is also likely full of urine and excrement, so clean it at least twice a day. While it is unwell, you should also change its bed every day.
If your dog is unwell, it is unlikely that it will have the energy to clean itself. Its health might be harmed by lying in one location all day, unclean and weary. While a proper wet bath may aggravate your sick dog, rubbing a moist towel over its entire body can benefit. To keep your ears, eyes, and mouth clean, run the towel over them specifically.
Pay close attention to your toileting requirements. If the pet has bladder control but cannot walk, an indoor toilet should be provided. A puppy pad at the back entrance or a litter tray near their bed might suffice. This preserves their dignity while also reducing your clean-up time.
Water is one of the necessities for a dog, even more for a sick one. Dehydration is a dangerous ailment that occurs when your dog loses more fluid than they consume. You can feed your dog an electrolyte drink mixed with water every few hours if they exhibit indications of dehydration. Dry lips, gums, or noses are early indicators of dehydration, loss of skin suppleness, evident weariness, and intoxicated or sunken eyes.
Any pet that does not move is a danger of developing bed sores or worse. Make sure they’re on the other side of the bed at least once an hour. This keeps blood from accumulating in the lungs, leading to consequences like hypostatic pneumonia.
Give your dog a water basin within reach of the nose because most sick pets don’t want to get out of bed; keeping water nearby lowers the danger of dehydration. Warming the meal slightly, presenting odorous items, and hand-feeding are all things to consider.
Remember that a sick pet requires a peaceful environment and may want to be left alone. Make sure that no little children or other pets bother him. You may need to isolate your ill pet in a different room or part of the house.
- Keep aJournal
For your dog’s health, keeping track of your dog’s behavior and habits when they’re unwell will help you make an accurate diagnosis if they get worse. Keeping note of any prescribed contemporary veterinary drugs, their potential side effects, and your dog’s reaction to the treatment ensures that your pet receives the best care possible if they need to visit the veterinarian.
It’s also possible that your pet’s medicine is causing new symptoms. Your veterinarian may wish to re-examine your pet or modify the medicine he is giving him. Please make a note of your dog’s potty habits since this will help the veterinarian determine how well his body is working.
- Avoid Triggers
Sick dogs, even those who have been extensively socialized, want to be surrounded by items and people they are acquainted with when they are recovering. To make your pet more comfortable, try to keep him at home throughout the recovery period. To keep your pet quiet, avoid bringing company over to your house.
Many dogs need to be consoled since they are sick. Physical affection in the form of soft pats and petting, hugs, and stroking may be soothing to your pet. When caressing your dog, be extremely cautious if there are any incision areas following surgery. Focus on pressure areas on their ears, paws, and the top of their head to offer them a gentle dog massage.
When a dog is sick, it might get worried. Reassure them that this isn’t their fault, and don’t penalize them if they fall or vomit. Soft music can help calm nervous dogs, and some dogs may like hearing you hum while petting them. Allow your dog to snooze in a peaceful environment. Some worried dogs prefer wearing tight clothes. They relax and feel more tranquil as a result of the moderate pressure. You may swaddle your dog with blankets.
- Care for a terminally ill pet
Unfortunately, your dog’s condition may not improve. During this period, terminally sick pets should be kept as comfortable as possible. Those who take care of animals need to monitor them and manage their symptoms as directed by their veterinarian. Your pet’s pain may be treated with pain medication prescribed by your vet. If this is the case, give them their medication on a regular basis to keep them comfy and pain-free. It may be necessary to euthanize your terminally sick companion dog at some point. This is a compassionate way to put an end to their suffering.
How to Give Medicines to Your Dog
It’s best to conceal the tablet in food, but make sure the prescription doesn’t need you to take it on an empty stomach. Cheese, for example, is a strong-tasting food that will stay on the tablet without sliding off. Place the pill in a tiny amount of food and make sure your pet is hungry when it’s time to take medicine.
Many medications are now available in a more appealing form; see your veterinarian, but keep these pills out of reach of your pet, so they don’t accidentally overdose. Special soft snacks in which medications can be buried are also available from the veterinarian. Giving one or two treats – without the pill, of course – before and after might occasionally help to trick your dog. However, if you use the same number every time, your dog will see through your trick.
- With one hand, lightly grasp the muzzleand place your hand over the muzzle.
- Retract the head until the nose is pointing at the ceiling. The mouth should open if you press on the lips immediately beneath the large fang-like fangs.
- Hold the tablet between your right hand’s first finger and thumb. To completely expand the mouth, press down on the lower jaw between the canine teeth with the other fingers of this hand, and place the pill much further back on the tongue as possible. Maintain control of the upper jaw throughout to prevent the mouth from closing.
- To stimulate swallowing, seal the lips and touch the throat or rub the nostrils. Release just after the dog has swallowed, then praise and offer a treat.
- Eye drops orOintments
- Rinse the eye to remove any discharge. Keep your dog’s eyes open using your finger and thumb. Because animals’ eyelid muscles are powerful, you’ll need to be firm.
- Hold the drug with your right hand and bring it from the side towards your eye. If using drops, place one drop directly into the eye, taking care not to touch the eye itself.
- Squeeze a small amount of ointment from the nozzle, place it over the eye, and squeeze again to create a trail of ointment over the real surface of the eye. Make sure the nozzle does not come into contact with the eye. Reward your pet instead of rubbing its eye!
- Ear medication
The earflap covers only the portion of your dog’s ear. The hearing system is located inside the skull and is connected to the outside via the ear canal. This tube connects to the head at the base of the flap, goes vertically down the side of the head, and then twists abruptly inwards.
When cleaning the ears or administering medicine, having a helper who can hold a reward in a closed hand for your dog to sniff or lick while doing the therapy might be beneficial.
- With the lid off, have the cotton balls or tissues available, as well as the medicine.
- If you’re right-handed, lift the earflap with your left hand and locate the ear canal entrance.
- Place the quantity specified on the label into this aperture with your right hand. Place the bottle on the table but retain the flap in your hand.
- Feel for the ear tube going down the side of the head and gently massage the drug down the tube with your finger and thumb. Wipe away any wax or medicine that has risen to the surface.
- Release the earflap and watch your pet shake his head.
- Don’t forget to present a prize!
Why are dogs friendly to humans? Because they trust us unconditionally. Being one of the dog carers entails several obligations. People with dogs understand how they want their pets to have a long and healthy life. They are more than pets and need to be taken care of during their worst days. The suggestions above can help you achieve just that. Just keep in mind that caring for your ill dog at home isn’t always enough. When these situations develop, get your dog to a veterinary facility or your own trusted veterinarian as soon as possible.


A ‘cyber attack’ is commonly defined as the use of malicious code to manipulate or disrupt a computer system. In the past, cyber attacks were mostly aimed at governments and the defence industry.
Today, it is not unheard of for commercial and industrial companies to come under the same level of sophisticated attack that was once reserved for states. The increasing use and reliance on technology and the proliferation of new technological devices have made us more vulnerable now than ever before. To make matters worse, sophisticated crime syndicates are using encryption to hide their activity. Consequently, any company, government entity, non-profit organisation, or individual that uses computer systems or the Internet is susceptible to a cyber attack. The drivers for these crimes are varied and include extortion, commercial sabotage, hacktivism, cyber spying, cyber terrorism, and cyber warfare. There is particular concern about the vulnerability of the healthcare sectors in many countries as they process vast amounts of sensitive personal data.
Attacks in the Middle East
The Middle East has long been a target for various types of cyber attacks.
The Shamoon attack on oil giant Saudi Aramco in 2012, described by former US defence secretary Leon Panetta as the most destructive cyber attack on a private business then seen to date, is believed by US officials to have been the work of hackers working on behalf of the Iranian government. In that attack, the virus crippled 35,000 computers at Saudi Aramco within hours by overwriting the master boot record and rendering their computers inoperable. Earlier this year, the Saudi government warned organisations in the Kingdom to be on the alert for variants of the Shamoon virus, following attacks on various ministries and government agencies. Given the continued conflicts in the region, such attacks are expected to increase.
At the time of writing, the WannaCry ransomware hack has indiscriminately hit 200,000 targets in at least 150 countries. Ransomware is a type of malicious software that blocks access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid. According to Symantec, Saudi Arabia is the most targeted country for ransomware attacks in the Middle East and Africa region, followed by the UAE.
Potential losses resulting from cyber attacks
The frequency and severity of cyber attacks increases year-on-year, and it is now imperative that organisations take a proactive strategy to manage them. Such strategies need to be targeted to ensure:
- the preservation and continuity of commercial operations;
- protection of commercially sensitive information and valuable intellectual property;
- protection against the theft and misuse of sensitive and personal information of employees and staff;
- prevention of fraud; and
- minimal brand damage and loss of good will.
Protecting against, and recovering from, cyber attacks
A multi-pronged approach should be taken to deal with this threat in a way that covers all bases, including:
- using information technology systems and products that were originally designed with security in mind;
- finding and fixing vulnerabilities before an attacker can try to exploit them;
- properly vetting new employees, agents and contractors who have access to information technology systems;
- deploying both proactive and reactive cyber security solutions;
- establishing internal security policies and plans for defending against attacks (and testing such plans through the use of exercises);
- preparing and promptly implementing disaster recovery in the event of a cyber attack;
- placing ‘best effort’ obligations on service providers to perform remedial action against virus contamination. This includes ensuring restoration of data from backups maintained by the service providers, locally stored data, and backups maintained by the customer as well as reconstructing lost or corrupt data;
- obtaining cyber security insurance. Note however that this type of insurance can be difficult to source as only specialised underwriters and IT experts have the requisite expertise to even come close to appropriately pricing the insurance risk. Even then, the actuarial estimate of the insurable risk is unlikely to be accurate as estimates of total annual loss due to cyber risk vary greatly from around $100 billion to over $1 trillion; and
- a right to terminate the contract where the service provider is not able to restore the service promptly following an attack. This leverage ensures immediate attention, and as a last resort, allows the customer to engage another service provider to restore the services.
Customers should review their existing IT contracts to ensure they contain sufficient obligations on the technology vendor or IT service provider to comply with the measures above. Where the contract does not address these issues, the customer should seek to raise these concerns with vendors and service providers with a view to having terms amended to address these types of essential concerns.
Organisations can no longer afford to ignore cyber security threats and must put in place systems and processes to defend against and recover from cyber attacks. The recent global Wannacry ransomware hacks are a clear reminder of this. Financial institutions, healthcare providers, government agencies, airlines and online businesses are particularly vulnerable and should undertake an internal review to identify and address any weaknesses.


The Swat District in Pakistan’s Northwestern Frontier Province, dominated by the Swat Valley, watered by the River Swat, surrounded by snow-capped mountains rising as high as 20,000 feet, has been compared to Switzerland in its breathtaking beauty. Only 684 square miles in area (two-thirds the size of Rhode Island), with a population of 1.5 million, it has little commercial agriculture or industry but is rich in history as well as natural scenery. Until recently, it has been a mecca for the archeologist and for the tourist. Both are drawn largely by the presence of Buddhist artifacts, including great Buddhas carved into the mountainside, similar to those crafted 1500 years ago in Bamiyan, Afghanistan.
Conquered by Alexander the Greek and his Macedonians in the 320s BCE, this region became part of the Mauryan Empire. Emperor Ashoka in the mid-third century BCE promoted the spread of Buddhism here, and in the second century BCE the local Greek King Menander may have been a convert. (The Questions of Menander—supposedly a conversation between the king and a Buddhist monk—is unique among ancient Buddhist texts in its dialogue form, characteristic of Greek philosophical texts, and may have actually been composed originally in Greek.) Later the Kushan Empire centering on the Gandhara region encouraged the emergence of an Indo-Greek Buddhist style of sculpture. The Swat Valley was at the cutting edge of one of the most extraordinary syntheses in art history: Buddhist content and classical realistic western sculpture. The Buddha, earlier represented symbolically (as a footprint), came to be depicted as a Greek deity or king, standing or seated in meditation.
This, for example, is the 23-foot high Buddha of Jenanabad, one of the finest examples of Gandharan art, as it appeared until recently.
Here’s how it has looked since October 8:
Remember how the Taliban destroyed the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, in Afghanistan, in March 2001? Well, this Buddha in Swat was attacked twice last September by forces led by a local cleric named Maulana Fazlullah, who heads the “Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law,” aligned with the Taliban. On October 8, the Pakistani Talibs succeeded in obliterating its face with dynamite. This was not widely reported in the U.S. press, perhaps because it would have so dramatically demonstrated how Taliban influence far from waning has spread outside Afghanistan, and is even leading some Pakistanis to attack their national treasures.
The Buddhist law of karma states that willed actions have inevitable consequences. Evil actions produce more evil. There is a strange karma at work nowadays, making everything worse everywhere in Southwest Asia. George Bush invaded Afghanistan in 2001, to capture Osama bin Laden “dead or alive,” crush al-Qaeda and topple the Taliban regime. He in fact failed to capture bin Laden, and U.S. intelligence reports conclude that al-Qaeda is stronger now than in 2001. Meanwhile, the Taliban relying on new recruits controls large swathes of Afghanistan, kills “Coalition” soldiers in record numbers (218 so far this year, including 111 Americans, compared with 191 including 98 Americans in 2006), and expands operations in Pakistan. The Taliban is rooted in the Pashtun tribes who straddle Afghanistan and Pakistan and have little use for the border. They are linked by a common language (Pashto) and culture centering around the Pashtunwali or traditional code of conduct (preceding even the arrival of Islam, which is to say dating at least to the Buddhist period) which more than any other value emphasizes hospitality to visitors (melmastia).
Perhaps the Bush administration didn’t consider this when it drove al-Qaeda and the Taliban across the border during the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, or when in March 2002 Bush told a White House press conference in March 2002, “I truly am not that concerned about” bin Laden. Since March of this year administration officials have been voicing mounting alarm over Taliban and al-Qaeda gains in the border area, even speaking ominously about possible U.S. attacks on Pakistani soil. These statements have produced immediate denunciations from the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, partly no doubt to assure the public that the unpopular regime opposes an U.S. attack, and partly to dissuade Washington from attacks that would exacerbate the current anti-American sentiment in the country. This has risen precipitously in recent years.
The Pashtuns of the Northwestern Frontier provinces, including those of Swat, have plainly extended hospitality and provided sanctuary to many on the U.S. wanted list, probably including Mullah Mohammed Omar and Osama bin Laden. As the Taliban resurges in Afghanistan, it abets its progress, placing Pakistan’s dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf in a terrible bind. He has deployed troops unfamiliar with the region to attack local Taliban supporters, at Washington’s insistence, but they have fared poorly and his efforts have only produced more local support for the Islamists and more opposition to his government. According to the New York Times, the U.S. Army’s Special Operations Command plans to” train and equip the Pakistani Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force that has about 85,000 members coming mostly from border tribes” and to recruit Pakistani tribal leaders to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban. But how will they do this in a region where bin Laden is even more highly admired than in Pakistan as a whole, where his approval rating as of September was 46 percent, compared with 38 percent for Musharraf and 9 percent for Bush?
Citing the growing security threat, Musharraf declared a state of emergency and suspended the Pakistani constitution November 3, prompting an all-around political crisis in a nuclear-armed close ally of the U.S. He had apparently planned to do this in August but was dissuaded by Washington. Now he is taking a big risk. He may fall, and the Islamist iconoclasts or their backers in the Pakistani military could move into a power vacuum, as Islamists gained control over Iran following the overthrow of the hated Shah. Or power might pass to Benazir Bhutto who would, like Musharraf, need to steer a careful course between cooperating with the U.S. in its “war on terror,” and posing as a nationalist and defender of moderate Islam. In the face of near-universal hatred for the Bush administration in Pakistan, and suspicions that its war is in fact against Islam in general, the prospect for a Taliban seizure of power in parts of Pakistan is very real. The Bush administration, unable to control the events it has triggered, is in a state of consternation.
How did this happen? What are the causes and effects behind the Talibanization of the frontier? One can either trace the bad karma forwards or backwards. If we do the former, we might start with the first big U.S. intervention into Southwest Asian history: the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953. (Having nationalized the country’s oil industry, he was falsely declared a “Communist” by U.S. politicians and media.) But let’s proceed backwards towards that point.
The al-Qaeda and Taliban presence in Pakistan stem from the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan stemmed from the al-Qaeda 9-11 attacks on the U.S.
The al-Qaeda 9-11 attacks stemmed from the establishment of U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia (more than any other cause).
The establishment of U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia, which were never accepted by the Saudi people but seen as a travesty in the land of the holy sites of Mecca and Medina, stemmed from the U.S. decision to go to war with Iraq in 1990.
The first President Bush’s decision to go to war with Iraq and destroy its military stemmed from Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.
That invasion of Kuwait stemmed mainly from quarrels between Iraq and Kuwait concerning Iraq’s debt to the latter.
Iraq’s debt to Kuwait stemmed from its heavy borrowing from its neighbor during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, and Kuwait’s refusal (backed by the U.S.) to forgive the debt after the war.
That war stemmed from Saddam’s supposition that Iran was weak, and that Iraq could adjust the border between the two countries by military force.
Saddam’s optimism stemmed in part from his two meetings during the war with Donald Rumsfeld, who offered and provided him with U.S. military assistance.
U.S. desire to assist Saddam stemmed from the policy objective of overthrowing the Iranian government.
This objective stemmed from the overthrow of the pro-U.S. Shah in 1979 and the emergence of an anti-U.S. Islamist regime.
The acquisition of power by the Islamist regime stemmed from the hatred of the Shah, who had been overthrown in 1979 in the most genuine, mass-based revolutionary upheaval in the history of the Muslim world.
The Shah’s return to the throne 26 years earlier stemmed from a U.S. imperialist calculus that he would be the best man to look after U.S. interests in the Gulf region.
This is of course a simplified backwards-looking chronology. It leaves out a lot, including the deep background fact that the whole map of the Middle East was drawn up by British and French colonialists after World War I. (This is why Kuwait is separate from Iraq, why Kurdistan never became a state, why Lebanon’s Christians wield disproportionate political power, etc.) Some might of course blame me for laying out a “blame America first” perspective covering the period from the CIA coup in Iran, but what government deserves more blame for the current crises from Lebanon to Pakistan? I might add that the very existence of al-Qaeda and the Taliban stem from the U.S. effort throughout the 1980s into the 90s to mobilize Islamists for a jihad against the Soviets and their allies in Afghanistan. The conscious deployment of jihadis versus secularist “communists” during the late Cold War era led directly to the emergence of such groups. The Afghan resistance lionized by Reagan was not by and large progressive in any sense; it opposed the education of girls, the establishment of clinics, land reform, curbs on clerics’ powers, lifting of Islamic dress regulations. It was filled with religious fanatics as opposed to American as Soviet meddling in their affairs. After the Soviets were driven from Afghanistan, many wound up attacking the U.S. This is what the CIA calls “blowback.” It’s the bad karma of imperialism.
But back to the Swat Valley and its Buddhist heritage. Mullah Fazlulah, whose “Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law” dates back to the early 1990s, reportedly now has some 4,500 militants under his influence. He inveighs against UNESCO-administered polio inoculations, CD shops, and girls’ schools, and apparently spearheads the effort to erase Swat’s non-Muslim past. Anyone advocating U.S. strikes against Pakistan (a number of neocons have done so over the last nine months) will mention all these things in order to emphasize the enemy’s caveman otherness. But we should ask such people: Why are the Mullah Fazlulahs on a roll right now? What is the cause, what is the effect?
Why do these religious fanatics want to target priceless, irreplaceable Buddhist art? Why have some Muslims in this region, who have lived contentedly in the shadow of these images for many centuries, only within recent years started blowing them up? (The last effort to destroy them was in the seventeenth century, during the reign of the uncommonly intolerant Moghul Emperor Aurangzeb.) According to Peshawar Museum archeologist Zainul Wahab, “the militants say [the statues] are ‘symbols of evil.’” The Swat Islamists are aware that the Qur’an forbids the depiction of the human or animal forms in religious art (although some “miniature paintings” showing these in books has been allowed, notably in Shiite Persia) as a safeguard against idolatry. (See Qur’an 6:74, 14:35, 22:30, etc.) But why these actions, now?
The Bamiyan episode may hold some clues. In July 1999, Mullah Omar actually ordered that the Buddhas be preserved. They were not being used as objects of worship (there being no Buddhists in Afghanistan in centuries). Moreover, “The government considers the Bamyan statues as an example of a potential major source of income for Afghanistan from international visitors. The Taliban states that Bamyan shall not be destroyed but protected.” But in March 2001 a new decree called for the destruction of all such images. Mullah Omar explained to a Pakistani journalist in April 2004, “I did not want to destroy the Bamiyan Buddha. In fact, some foreigners came to me and said they would like to conduct the repair work of the Bamiyan Buddha that had been slightly damaged due to rains. This shocked me. I thought, these callous people have no regard for thousands of living human beings — the Afghans who are dying of hunger, but they are so concerned about non-living objects like the Buddha. This was extremely deplorable. That is why I ordered its destruction. Had they come for humanitarian work, I would have never ordered the Buddhas’ destruction.”
It sounds entirely illogical. The westerners, Omar reasons, were more concerned with saving a statue than with saving people in a country at war for sixteen years, vying with Ethiopia as the world’s most impoverished state—and so the Bamiyan Buddhas must be destroyed. Totally irrational. But it indicates a connection between extreme Islamist actions and global power structures. Omar would not agree with this interpretation of recent history, but the fact is the Soviet Union, taken by surprise by the leftist coup in 1978 in Afghanistan but determined thereafter to support a secular, progressive modern regime, sent in troops in 1979 to protect that regime from backward Islamists like Omar. And the U.S. threw its weight enthusiastically behind the jihadis, half the CIA money flowing to the notorious warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar now targeted for assassination. In 1993 the Northern Alliance warlords (principally Tajiks and Uzbeks) captured the capital, castrated and hung the last secular ruler who had taken refuge at the UN compound, proclaimed victory over anti-Islamic forces and set about constructing their new order. They fell into infighting among themselves and Hekmatyar, a Pashtun at one point named Prime Minister, laid siege to Kabul. The chaos ended in 1996 when the Taliban, supported by Pakistani military intelligence, took the capital and imposed the draconian regime deposed in the U.S. attack five years later.
In the interim—between 1993 and 2001—the U.S. basically ignored Afghanistan. Washington had relished the opportunity to (as President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinsky put it) “bleed the Soviets, the way they bled us in Vietnam.” But once the Soviets were gone, the U.S. lost interest. It recognized the new Northern Alliance-dominated government, but provided little aid. Its principal interests in Afghanistan were “drugs and thugs”—discouragement of opium production, and containment of mujahadeen who having ousted the Soviets were now venting hostility towards their former infidel allies. After the Taliban took power in 1996, the oil firm UNOCAL through its representative Zalmay Khalilzad hosted Taliban officials in the U.S. to discuss pipeline construction. Colin Powell negotiated an aid package specifically for opium eradication. But while U.S. allies Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Oman recognized the Taliban and sent some aid, the U.S. and the west in general did little to alleviate hunger in Afghanistan. Hence, perhaps, the mullah’s indignation.
He no doubt thinks the west doesn’t have its priorities right. But is his thinking about art so distant from that of the architects of the Iraq War, who failed to protect the Baghdad Museum from looters, calling the looting “creative chaos”? Or the U.S. military whose vehicles have crushed artifacts in Babylon dating back to the time of King Nebuchadnezzar II? Or the U.S. troops who used the ninth-century Malwiya Minaret in Samarra as a lookout and sniper post, drawing a bomb attack that damaged its top tier? I don’t sense that preservation of culture looms large among the priorities of the Bush administration; it’s concerned with conquest, not art and religion. The Pakistani state meanwhile ostensibly seeks to preserve the Buddhist images of Swat. But as a police official at the police station closest to the Buddha of Jenanabad put it, “Due to the precarious law and order situation in the area we are confined to the police station and could not go to the place.” The state is spread thin and its top priority is to protect itself.
So other Buddhist sites in Swat, including the Butkara stupa and Takht-i-Bahi Buddhist monastery ruins, remain under threat, at the mercy not only of religious fanaticism but the absence of a state apparatus preoccupied elsewhere. Both of these problems are aggravated by the U.S. invasion of the region. The current wave of Islamist violence was unleashed by U.S. imperialism, itself born out of capitalist competition between states dating way back to the nineteenth century. That’s when the major western powers, having carved up China into concessions and colonized the Pacific, divided Africa and Southeast Asia. Russia and Britain vied for control of Afghanistan, with Britain ultimately winning control over its foreign affairs. But the British imperialists were unable to obtain colonial control of Afghanistan despite two bloody wars for that purpose (1839-42 and 1878-80). In May 1919 the Afghan khan Amanullah attacked British forces, who responded with the first aerial bombardment (on Kabul) in Afghanistan’s history. Fighting ended inconclusively with an agreement in which Britain acknowledged Afghanistan’s self-determination in its foreign relations. (That was just after revolutionary Russia had established relations with the country.)
In 1857, Friedrich Engels described the First Anglo-Afghan War as an “attempt of the British to set up a prince of their own making in Afghanistan” that was doomed due to the Afghans’ “indomitable hatred of rule, and their love of independence.” This I submit is an issue larger than any kind of religiosity. People don’t like being invaded. They don’t like it when their close kin across an artificial border created by imperialist mapmakers are invaded. The Pashtuns of the Swat Valley are angered by the toppling of the Taliban, and no doubt by U.S. support for Musharraf and by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And if they are like Muslims throughout the Middle East, they turn to Islamic extremism in part due to frustration with poverty and lack of economic opportunity. These are the results of imperialist globalization; the Swat Valley is rich in minerals and has significant agricultural potential but the state has not promoted all-round development, relying instead on tourism. Outrage at military strikes, the growing civilian death toll in Afghanistan, and the lack of jobs and income in Swat combines with religious passion to attract young men into pro-Taliban groups. Now these groups are defying neocon plans for the region, rebelling against the Pakistani state, and attacking Buddhist images. But these Pashtun assaults are only the proximate cause of the Jenanabad Buddha’s defacement. The deeper karmic causes lie, in time and space, far outside the beautiful Swat Valley.


What was the first civil rights monument? If your answer is Maya Lin’s 1988-89 monument in Montgomery, Alabama, you’d be off by almost half a century. The history of the “first work of federal art to celebrate black protest” is fairly obscure. Art historian Sara A. Butler reveals the negotiations and compromises that led to Mitchell Jamieson’s mural, “An Incident in Contemporary American Life” (1940-42), being unveiled in the Department of Interior building in Washington, DC.
The backstory begins in 1939, when renowned contralto Marian Anderson wasn’t allowed to perform in Washington DC’s Constitution Hall. The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), owners of the Hall, were afraid they would have to offer non-segregated seating if she performed.
The South Philadelphia-born Anderson had already taken Europe by storm. She had sung in Carnegie Hall and was the first African American to perform in the White House. While Southern newspapers refused to call her “Miss Anderson” (“Singer Anderson” was one printed appellation) and she was forced to use “colored” accommodations on tour, Anderson had fans on both sides of the era’s color line.
Both blacks and whites protested the DAR’s rejection of Anderson signaled the birth of the modern civil rights struggle. As part of that protest, Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR. Her husband, the President, and his Secretary of the Interior, invited Anderson to perform on the steps of Lincoln Memorial. An integrated audience of seventy-five thousand filled the Washington Mall on Easter Sunday, 1939, to hear Anderson’s emotional “Freedom Concert.”
A collaborative effort to commemorate this event started just days after the concert. Butler details the disparate parties involved: the NAACP; bureaucrats from the Section of Fine Arts, the New Deal office charged with placing public art in federal buildings; the “Black Cabinet,” FDR’s informal advisors of color, including Mary McLeod Bethune (who’s portrayed in the mural). This coalition decided to hold a competition for a mural design that would celebrate Anderson’s concert.
The contest was open to all artists, regardless of color—a first for the New Deal. The winner, Mitchell Jamieson, was not an African-American. Butler calls his painting a “remarkably cool depiction of an event that aroused such emotions.” The audience is the subject of the painting; Anderson is a tiny figure in the distance across a sea of people.
What’s radical about this example of “government art” is that the audience is interracial, as was the audience for the concert itself. Interracial gatherings were then atypical for the nation’s capital. And yet the most prominent members of the mural’s audience are a black man and a white woman standing together. Butler notes the relationship between the two is ambiguous, but “their closeness goes to the heart of the issue that inspired the concert in the first place,” that is, the DAR’s fear of “race mixing.” Butler describes Jamieson’s achievement: “he indicates that interracial cooperation is a key component of a harmonious future.”
The mural celebrates the people watching the landmark concert and looks forward to integration as the new normal. It also stands as a tribute to a new, activist, notion of government-supported art. This was the first time a federally sanctioned work of art both represented a current event and an episode of the struggle for black freedom. Butler concludes that the mural resulted from the “art of negotiation,” resulting in “a compromise in the best sense of the word, and that is its achievement.”


General George Smith Patton Jr. was a senior officer of the United States Army who commanded the U.S. Seventh Army in the Mediterranean theater of World War II, but is best known for his leadership of the U.S. Third Army in France and Germany following the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Take a look below for 30 more interesting and fascinating facts about George S. Patton.
1. Born in 1885 to a family with an extensive military background, Patton attended the Virginia Military Institute and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
2. He studied fencing and designed the M1913 Cavalry Saber, or more commonly known as the “Patton Sword,” and partially due to his skill in the sport, competed in the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden.
3. Patton first saw combat during the Pancho Villa Expedition in 1916, taking part in America’s first military action using motor vehicles.
4. He later joined the newly formed United States Tank Corps of the American Expeditionary Forces and saw action in World War I, commanding the U.S. tank school in France before being wounded while leading tanks in combat near the end of the war.
5. In the interwar period, Patton remained a central figure in the development of armored warfare doctrine in the U.S. Army, serving in many staff positions throughout the country.
6. Rising through the ranks, he commanded the 2nd Armored Division at the time of the American entry into World War II.
7. Patton led U.S. troops into the Mediterranean theater with an invasion of Casablanca during Operation Torch in 1942, where he later established himself as an effective commander through his rapid rehabilitation of the demoralized U.S. II Corps.
8. He commanded the U.S. Seventh Army during the Allied invasion of Sicily, where he was the first Allied commander to reach Messina.
9. Patton returned to command the Third Army following the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, where he led a highly successful rapid armored drive across France.
10. He led the relief of beleaguered American troops at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, and advanced his Third Army into Nazi Germany by the end of the war.
11. After the war, Patton became the military governor of Bavaria, but he was relieved of this post because of his statements trivializing denazification.
12. He commanded the United States Fifteenth Army for slightly more than two months.
13. Patton died in Germany on December 21, 1945, as a result of injuries from an automobile accident twelve days earlier.
14. Patton’s colorful image, hard-driving personality and success as a commander were at times overshadowed by his controversial public statements.
15. His philosophy of leading from the front and his ability to inspire troops with vulgarity-ridden speeches, such as a famous address to the Third Army, attracted favorable attention.
16. Patton’s strong emphasis on rapid and aggressive offensive action proved effective during his time in battle.
17. While Allied leaders held sharply differing opinions on Patton, he was regarded highly by his opponents in the German High Command.
18. Patton believe that he had been reincarnated from many previous military lives. Specifically, he believed that he had been a Greek soldier who resisted the Persian invasion of Ionia, a Roman soldier int he Tenth Legion under Julius Caesar, a Viking warrior, a Scottish Highlander fighting for the House of Stuart, a French soldier who escorted Napoleon Bonaparte on his retreat from Russia, and a member of a New York regiment during the American Civil War.
19. Patton had dyslexia.
20. While he was known for his foul language, it was mostly an act. He used it expressively to motivate his men and didn’t swear in casual conversation.
21. Patton struggled academically during his initial year at the U.S. Military Academy and was required to repeat his first year after failing mathematics.
22. After failing his first year, Patton began working with a tutor and redoubled his efforts to receive adequate grades the remainder of his tenure at West Point, eventually graduating 46th in his class of 103 cadets.
23. In response to a deadly 1916 raid by Pancho Villa in Columbus, New Mexico, President Woodrow Wilson ordered American troops across the Mexican border to capture or kill the Mexican revolutionary. Patton served as aide-de-camp to the mission’s commander, General John J. Pershing.
24. Patton participated in the first motorized attack in the history of American warfare on May 14, 1916, in which Pancho Villa’s second-in-command and two of his guards were killed.
25. Patton garnered headlines by ordering the corpses of Pancho Villa’s second-in-command and two of his guards to be strapped like trophy animals to the hoods of his unit’s automobiles before driving back to base.
26. He fired a new ivory handled Colt .45 in the deadly Mexican shootout, but after the battle, he decided to carry a second ivory-handled handgun for added firepower.
27. While personally leading an attack on German machine gun positions as part of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive on September 26, 1918, Patton was struck by a round that tore into his left thigh. Badly wounded, he continued to command the battle for the next hour from a shell hole and insisted on filing his report at division headquarters before being taken to the evacuation hospital. When the Purple Heart was reinstituted in 1932, Patton was awarded the honor for his combat wounds.
28. Patton deliberately cultivated a flashy, distinctive image in the belief that this would inspire his troops.
29. He was usually seen wearing a highly polished helmet, riding pants and high cavalry boots.
30. He was known to oversee training maneuvers from atop a tank painted red, white and blue.


Asbestos Containing Materials (ACM) were used extensively in Australian buildings and structures, plant and equipment, ships, trains and vehicles during the 1950s to the early 1980s. A complete ban on asbestos use and import was imposed on 31st December, 2003.
As a guide, homes built from the year 1988 onwards should be asbestos free, while homes built before 1984 may contain a significant number of Asbestos Containing Materials.
Asbestos Products found Around the Home
Asbestos can be loosely or firmly bound in building materials in older homes. Loose asbestos fibres are the most dangerous as they can easily become airborne and be inhaled by occupants at the property. Most homes contain firmly bound asbestos which usually do not pose a threat to health unless damaged.
Common Asbestos Containing Materials are:
Exterior fibre cement cladding (Fibro) and weather boards (pre 1984)
Artificial brick cladding
Flexible building boards – eave linings, bathroom linings, cement tile underlay
All corrugated cement roofing
Architectural cement pipe columns
Vinyl floor tiles or coverings
Asbestos cement water pipes
Mill board linings of switchboards
Sprayed Insulation – Acoustic walls, beams and ceilings
The removal of Asbestos Containing Material (ACM) can be a high risk task because there is often a significant disturbance when an ACM is damaged. This could mean exposure to airborne loose asbestos fibres that once inhaled, may become lodged into the respiratory system and cause a myriad of serious illnesses including cancer (mesothelioma).
A high degree of control is therefore essential during the removal of Asbestos Containing Material (ACM). Licensed removalists and bystanders within the asbestos work area need to be adorned in Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). This enables them to minimise the risk of exposure while at the same time ensuring that no asbestos contamination occurs outside the asbestos work area.
The work practices and precautions that need to be adopted for the removal of Asbestos Containing Material (ACM) vary considerably, depending on the type of ACM involved, the conditions (for example, wind) and its location.
Due to the complexity and nature of the removal process, we highly recommended that any asbestos removal is carried out by an organisation that is fully licensed and trained in safe asbestos removal procedures.
Bonded Asbestos Removal – for the removal of 10m2 (square meters) or more of bonded asbestos can only be carried out by the holder of a class “B” licence. This licence is issued to applicants who can demonstrate they are familiar with the practices and procedures for removing bonded asbestos set out in the asbestos removal code.
A person that is carrying out the removal of bonded asbestos is not required to hold a “B” class licence if the person is directly supervised by an “A” Class license holder.
Note: Although an individual does not need to hold a “B” class licence for the removal of bonded asbestos under 10m2, this doesn’t mean that asbestos containing material is any safer to remove or the exposure to deadly airborne fibres does not exist.
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See the Media Library for related film clips.
Shortly after midnight on September 9, 1976, Mao died at the age of eighty-two. There was a ten-day period of national mourning. All loudspeakers and radio stations broadcast somber music. Newspapers, bordered in black, carried the obituary issued by the Central Committee depicting Mao as "the greatest Marxist of the contemporary era," and declaring that "the radiance of Mao Zedong Thought will forever illuminate the road of advance of the Chinese people." At three p.m., on September 18, all the people of China were ordered to stop their work and stand in silence for three minutes. A million people filled Tiananmen Square and all trains, ships, factories, and mines throughout the country were ordered to sound their whistles and sirens in salute.
To chant "Long live!" is to contradict natural laws. Everyone has to die sooner or later, whether they be killed by germs, crushed by a collapsing house, or blown to smithereens by an atom bomb. Anyway, one way or another everyone ends up dead. After people die they shouldn't be allowed to occupy any more space. They should be cremated. I'll take the lead. We should all be burnt after we die, turned into ashes and used for fertilizer.
--Mao Zedong, in comments made when signing "A Proposal that all Central Leaders be Cremated after Death" in November 1956
Mao Zedong, the founding leader of the People's Republic of China, its gaozu as first emperors in China were traditionally called, is now the only permanent resident of the Square. Following his death, Mao's corpse was preserved for posterity. The mausoleum is more than a tomb, it's a grand villa. There is a white marble armchair inside as you enter with a massive statue of Mao seated on it in imitation of Abe Lincoln. Behind this statue a massive mural features the mountains and rivers of China, the geopolitical realm of Mao's posthumous rule. In the crypt one can find Mao's body lying in state on a bed covered in a crystalline sarcophagus and surrounded by flowers. Like so many others in Beijing these days, Chairman Mao goes to work everyday travelling from the nether world by elevator to be on display for tourist and faithful alike. At night his body retires after the last visitors have left to lie in an earthquake-proof chamber deep in the bowels of Tiananmen Square.
Side halls in the Mausoleum contain relics of other "first generation revolutionary leaders" -- Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De and Zhou Enlai -- making this monument a true Ancestral Hall of the Revolution.
Any investigation of this modern site would take the pilgrim to other comparable traditional ancestral halls in the Chinese capital like the Tai Miao, or Ancestral Temple, used for the worship of deceased emperors standing next to Tiananmen Gate and renamed the Workers' Cultural Palace (the Cultural Palace itself has often been used by the Communist rulers to display the remains of government rulers during state funerals). Then there is the Confucian Temple in the north-east of the old city or the Daoist Dagaodian on the north-west corner of the Imperial Palace which also once brimmed with cultural significance and now are sequestered in the cement highrise of new Beijing.
For more about Mao since 1976 and the Mausoleum, see the excerpt by Geremie R. Barmé in Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader, and a sketch by Yau Ma Tei, a satirist born in Peking in 1929, called "Maosoleum." See also an article by Wu Hung, "Tiananmen Square: A Political History of Monuments," in Representations 35, Summer 1991.


This Databank file will cover Belter Creole from both the TV series and the books. It is our goal to continue to add to the list of Belter words by our member base.
Belter CreoleBelter Creole, colloquially known as "Belter", is the cultural language spoken by many Belters. It is primarily derived from English with various influences and contributions from languages such as German, Chinese, Romance languages, Hindi, Slavic, Bantu, and many others. It also has various dialects with variations based on where they originate from in the Solar System.
Belter Langauge has a basic word order of Subject - Verb - Object.
Adjectives follow the word they modify, as do nouns when showing possession:
- setara "star" + mali "small" → setara mali "little star"
- Oye – "Hello" / "Hey"
- Oyedeng – "Goodbye"
- Taki – "Thanks"
- Im ta nating – "You're welcome." (lit. "It was nothing")
- To pochuye ke? – "Do you understand me?" (lit. "You hear?")
- Sabaka! – a general-purpose curse; "Dammit!" or "You bastard!" (lit. "Dog" in Russian)
- Kewe to pensa ere X? – "What do you think about X?"
GesturesThough not part of the language per se, spoken Belter language is accompanied by several physical idioms, which originally developed due to the need to be able to communicate while wearing space suits. Some examples:
- Lifting the hand: Asking a question
- Lifting a fist: Greeting; nodding, affirmative
- Shrugging is done with one or both hands, palm-up
- Two fingers (index and middle) double touch the opposite side of the chest: thank you
- Nail of index finger touching the thumb's inner side between the 2 digits, forming a circle, while the other 3 fingers are straight: derogatory gesture, similar to giving the middle finger
ReferencesThe Expanse Wiki,,Asteroid Belt and Belter Creole , and Belter Creole Books Belter Creole (Books)
The Expanse RP Board Timeline


Friday March 25, 2022
When we think of COVID-19, we think of the effects the virus has on our lungs, hearts, and health in the short- and long-term; however, an area that we don’t think about when we think is our toes.
Did you know that the COVID-19 virus could possibly be linked to swollen and discolored toes? Some medical groups and researchers believe that swollen and discolored toes during and post COVID-19 infections are linked while others suggest there isn’t a connection.
Despite the mild scientific pushback, research is still being actively conducted. There is a fair amount of evidence to pose the question: are my toes being affected by COVID-19?
It is still unclear what is causing the link between swollen and discolored toes during and following COVID-19, but one small study suggests there is a close relationship between COVID toes and COVID-19 due to an immune system response. It is possible that the toe condition may stem from the immune system mounting “a strong antiviral” response to the coronavirus infection which in turn affects the toes.
The symptoms of COVID toe are when the skin on one or more of your toes may swell up and look bright red, then gradually turn purple. Skin coloring may vary from pink, red, purple, and may also even have brown spots as time progresses. It is also possible to have blisters, itching, pain, raised bumps, or areas of rough skin.
It is more prominent to have COVID toes if you are a child, teen, or young adult, however it has been seen in adults. Again, research is ongoing to determine the age and factors that contribute to COVID toes.
It is imperative to consult with your physician if you notice any COVID-19 symptoms and to consult with one of our Modern Foot & Ankle podiatrists if you notice any changes in your feet post COVID-19.
Bet you didn’t think to look down at your toes as it relates to COVID, right?


Seamstresses formed the main labor force, outside tailoring, which fueled the expansion of clothing production and related trades from the seventeenth century onward. This expansion was not dependent initially on technological developments or the introduction of a factory system, but on the pool of women workers. Their expendability and cheapness to their employers was effectively guaranteed by the sheer number of available women able and willing to use a needle, their general lack of alternative employment, and by the fact they then worked outside the control of guilds and latterly have been under-unionized. These seamstresses sewed goods for the increasing market for ready-made basic clothes such as shirts, breeches, waistcoats, shifts, and petticoats for working people, or slops as they were known (after the practice of sailors who stored their working clothes in slop chests). Their history is largely anonymous. However, social and economic historians with an interest in gender are now extending the knowledge of seamstresses' central role in the historical growth of clothing production and consumption.
Historic Role of the Seamstress
At the cheaper end of the trade, the work of seamstresses did not involve complex cutting, fitting, or designing, though there were no hard and fast rules. "Seamstress" has always been a flexible term, with the work involved dependent on local conditions and the agency of individuals. Some elaboration and finishing was involved, such as tucking or buttonholes. While work done in this style continued, seamstresses were generally distinguished from dressmakers, milliners, mantua-makers, stay-makers, embroiderers, and tailoresses by their lower levels of craft and skill, but at the top-end of the market fine sewing was valued. Their existence was precarious and exacerbated by layoffs due to seasonal demand and unpredictable changes of fashion. In the Victorian period, widespread demand for mourning clothes, short notice given for elaborate evening dresses, and fickle customers were commonly cited as causes of distress through overwork.
There were large numbers of seamstresses in a wide range of situations. They frequently worked as outworkers, on per-piece pay, in small workshops or in their homes. Having learned their trade in waged work, many seamstresses continued to use their skills after marriage by taking in work, often making simple garments or restyling old ones in their own poor communities where they played an important role in the provision of cheap clothing outside the regular retail trade. Some seamstresses were employed in a temporary but regular visiting capacity in wealthier households where they supplemented existing domestic staff and worked by arrangement through an accumulation of sewing and mending tasks, in exchange for a day rate of pay and meals. This practice lingered until World War II in some areas of Britain.
"The Song of the Shirt" by Thomas Hood
With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A Woman sat in unwomanly rags.
Plying her needle and thread-
Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
Would that its tone could reach the Rich!
- She sang this 'Song of the shirt!'
Thomas Hood, "The Song of the Shirt," Punch, Christmas 1843. (Flint, p.105)
"Riding an omnibus through … [London's commercial districts] at the turn of the century, one could hardly avoid noticing gaunt and harried women and children scurrying through the streets … carrying heavy bundles … passing along from workroom to workroom the shirts, suits, blouses, ties and shoes that soon would dress much of the world." (Schmiechen, p. 1)
Seamstresses and the Sewing Machine
The widespread use of the sewing machine from the 1860s increased the pace of production of clothing because it could stitch up to thirty times faster than a hand sewer, but it did not immediately result in centralized factories becoming the dominant means of production. Clothing production remained characterized by many small-scale businesses, often subcontracting work, and by the subdivision of the various tasks involved in the making of a garment, using many outworkers and home work-ers. This drove down prices and wages and produced the sweatshop system in which many seamstresses worked very long hours for low wages. Despite well-meant attempts to reform the trade, pay and conditions remained bad throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. It was said that a practiced observer could identify a seamstress in the street because of her stooped carriage. Seamstresses in outworking were vulnerable to employers who could withhold or delay payment if work was deemed substandard. It was common practice for seamstresses in this kind of work to have to pay for their own thread, needles, and candles, in addition to their heating and costs of collecting and returning the work. "My usual time of work is from five in the morning till nine at night-winter and summer.… But when there is a press of business, I work earlier and later.… I clears about 2s 6d a week.… I know it's so little I can't get a rag to my back" (London shirt maker talking to Henry Mayhew in 1849, cited in Yeo, p. 145). Despite enormous disadvantages, it was seamstresses who staged the first all-female strike in America, in New York in 1825. Apprenticeship provided one means, however, unreliable and open to abuse, for women to learn the better end of the trade. Some women found that the clothing trade presented opportunities for them to trade effectively as seamstresses on their own account or to work as middle women, putting out work. Health and safety legislation, greater unionization, and factory production have combined to improve the lot of women working in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in the clothing trades; nevertheless, globally, it remains a fragmented industry with widespread homework and low wages.
Popular Debates and Imagery
Prints and paintings, often sympathetic if moralistic, frequently showed individual women bent over their sewing, in shabby interiors, sewing either to support themselves or their families. Middle-class women, fallen on hard times, were also depicted eking out a living in this way, a particular anxiety in Victorian Britain. Allegations of immorality, including prostitution, were frequently made, based on perceptions of the effects of poverty or, in better-class workrooms, the supposed temptations caused by familiarity of young seamstresses with fashion and luxury beyond their means. In Britain in 1843, Thomas Hood's poem The Song of the Shirt dramatized their plight and helped focus attention on potential reforms to wages and conditions, mostly without long-term effect. In 1853 Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Ruth expanded on the theme of exploitation of seamstresses and the suffering caused by extravagant demands of selfish or ignorant customers; the subject was treated in the United States in Charles Burdett's 1850 The Elliott Family or the Trial of New York Seamstresses.
Coffin, Judith. The Politics of Women's Work: The Paris Garment Trades 1750-1915. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Flint, Joy. Thomas Hood: Selected Poems. Manchester, U.K.: Carcanet, 1992.
Gamber, Wendy. The Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860-1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.
Green, Nancy. Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997.
Jenson, Joan M., and Davidson, Sue, eds. A Needle, a Bobbin, a Strike: Women Needleworkers in America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984.
Lemire, Beverly. Dress, Culture and Commerce: The English Clothing Trade before the Factory, 1660-1800. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.
Schmiechen, James A. Sweated Industries and Sweated Labour: The London Clothing Trades 1860-1914. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.
Stansell, Christine. City of Women: Sex and Class in New York 1789-1860. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
Stewart, Margaret, and Hunter, Leslie. The Needle Is Threaded: The History of an Industry. London: Heinemann/Newman Neame, 1964.
Yeo, Eileen, and E. P. Thompson. The Unknown Mayhew. New York: Pantheon Books, 1971.
Walkley, Christina. The Ghost in the Looking Glass: The Victorian Seamstress. London: Peter Owen, 1981.