Read This Somewhere

Khidhir Hamza was a nuclear scientist in Iraq. He later escaped Iraq to another western country. In his book, Saddam’s Bombmaker, he described a meeting he had with Saddam Hussain. His lab acquired a large new computer and was installed. One day, Saddam, unannounced, came to his lab.

 

 

 He was not showing interest in the new computer. He was looking at the pictures that Hamza has tacked to the wall. They were all famous scientists, from Copernicus to Einstein. Hamza tore their pictures from magazines and tape them in the wall.

 

Saddam asked “who are those?”

 

Hamza replied: “They are the greatest scientists in history”.

 

Saddam became angry. "What an insult this is! All these great men, these great scientists! You don't have enough respect for these great men to frame their pictures? You can't honor them better than this?"

 

End of Story.

 

Hamza’s explanation: Saddam had kinship he felt with the great men of history, with history itself. Lack of reverence for an image of Copernicus might suggest a lack of reverence for Saddam.

Butt-Dial

I never heard of this word until last week.

 

(Image Courtesy: Dreamstime.com)

 

Butt-Dial means accidentally dial someone’s phone number while sitting on your phone. It happens when you are sitting down while your cell phone is in your pant’s back pocket. It is also known as pocket dial. It usually dials any of the last 3 numbers you have dialed.

 

When this dialing happens, the receiver can hear all the conversations you are having with someone else in the room. If you are not talking to someone, the receiver will be wondering why you dialed him/her and did not speak.

 

Side Note: Last week, President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Guiliani’s cell phone butt dialed an NBC News Reporter. At that time, Mr. Guiliani was speaking to someone else, someone in the same room. This reporter heard the whole conversation and published the entire conversation. I think this is unethical.

Chutzpah

Chutzpah (pronounced Hootspa) is a Jewish word meaning audacity or nerve.

 

I checked the Dictionary.com for the meaning of audacity. It gives the following:

 

Boldness or daring, especially with confident or arrogant disregard for personal safety, conventional thought, or other restriction.

 

Here is a true story. This is not any movie scene.

 

Amrullah Saleh was a Spy Chief for the Afghanistan Government. He is now running for the Vice President of his country as a running mate for the current Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. As a Spy Chief, he made lot of enemies including the Taliban. He killed lot of enemies. To a US television network he said: “And if they kill me, I have told my family and my friends not to complain about anything because I have killed many of them – with pride”.

 

In July of this year, his office was attacked and many of his bodyguards were either killed or wounded. He just escaped. He later visited the wounded bodyguards in a hospital. In the hospital, a relative of a dead bodyguard slapped Amrullah Saleh. His own security came to protect him. He asked his bodyguards to step back. Amrullah told the dead bodyguard’s relative to hit him more. And, he hit him again.

 

Amrullah Saleh asked the grieving relative whether his own death would have eased his pain. The man said “yes”. Amrullah Saleh then pulled his handgun, loaded it, and gave it to the man to shoot him. The relative took the gun, aimed at Amrullah Saleh, and after a few seconds returned the gun to Amrullah Saleh saying he could not shoot him.

 

During these few seconds, Amrullah Saleh looked at the man straight in his eyes and no fear in his face.

 

I would call this Chutzpah. Real life incident. Not a movie scene.