Sanjeev Mittal

There's so much valuable insights you can glean from this book. It covers everything in one's body, from the top of head to basically everything on or in the body. Highly recommended. The most interesting thing was reading about our skin, the tiny tiny layer that we makes us white or black or brown. Bryson watched a surgeon incise and peel back a sliver of skin a millimeter thick from the arm of cadaver. It was so thin it was translucent. That’s what race is. Which is why it’s so ridiculous that such a small facet of our composition should be given so much importance when it’s merely a reaction to sunlight. “Biologically, there is no such thing as race—nothing in terms of skin color, facial features, hair type, bone structure, or anything else that is a defining quality among peoples.” Skins gets its color from a variety of pigments, the best known is a molecule we know as melanin. It’s also responsible for the color of birds’ feathers and gives fish the texture and luminescence of the their scales. Our skin evolved based on our geography. In one of the studies he talks about, a man was given an injection of a harmless liquid to mimic snot. It couldn’t be seen by the naked eye, but under those blue lights detectives use. The test subject went into a room with other folks, and when they turned the overhead lights off and the blue lights on, every single person, doorknob, and bowl of nuts had the pretend snot on it, which is how the common cold passes from person to person so easily—through touch, apparently not by making out with someone (although presumably at some point you might touch that person). Antibiotics • Almost 3/4ths of prescriptions written each year are for conditions that can’t be cured with antibiotics (like bronchitis) • 80 percent of antibiotics are fed to farm animals to fatten them up which meat eaters then consume, which is one of the reasons antibiotics aren’t as effective as they used to be. • Fruit growers use antibiotics to combat bacterial infections in their crops, sometimes even of produce marked “organic.” Which means we humans are unwittingly eating antibiotics, rendering them ineffective when we need them for a real disease/infection.

It's strange that even in 2017 too, in a Bollywood movie, such stereotypes exist and thrive. Where male hero (Keshav played by Akshay Kumar) harasses heroine (Jaya played by Bhumi Pednekar), stalks her despite her warnings, stands outside train loo to crack jokes at her and is still called a hero. Even worse were the laughs from audience even in USA while I was throwing up inside. Rest of the movie was ok. You can watch it as 2 parts. First 90 minutes is virtually unrelated to main story. Last 90 minutes has good stuff, something like OMG movie. I would not suggest kids to watch first few minutes due to double meaning jokes and general vulgarity. I heard another criticism of the movie that it's a propaganda movie of BJP and Modi but I did not find anything wrong with it. Basic message of the movie is good and should be applauded for taking on such a challenging topic in an entertaining manner. Except that entertainment should not mean encouraging harassing girls and women in the hope of winning their attention. Unlike in movies, it has serious consequences in real life in majority of cases. Ask your school/college/office going sister or daughter. Now to main theme of the movie - Message about having toilet at home is very important for India for hygiene and women empowerment. It's difficult to experience the hardships when we can 'go' almost anywhere and anytime while there women in Indian villages have to time it, get ready well before dawn and can 'go' only once in the whole day. In open areas, in sunshine/rain/cold with perverts lurking, insects, snakes around and facing such hardships. It's really is a serious issue that needs support. Credit to this movie, this will be discussed more openly now and can only improve the situation.