You Shouldn’t Have Slaughtered Those Pigs

The upcoming school year has many schools and universities preparing for the potential epidemic of the swine flu or what is technically known as the H1N1 flu. Many colleges and universities are frantically giving away disinfectant hand wash to every student on campus and they even have created procedures for classes if the H1N1 virus hits half the campus. The swine flu which popped up around the spring of 2009 has caused a world wide pandemic. No one wants to go through another bird flu or a SARS epidemic again and Toronto and China can attest to that. Here’s a funny fact about the swine flu. Originally, they called it the swine flu but pig farmers got mad and lobbied to change it’s name because it reflected poorly on pigs and pig farmers in general. Everyone got scared of pigs and stopped buying any type of pork which obviously brings the pig farmers’ profits down. Then they called it the Mexican flu and all the Mexicans got mad because then everyone thought every Mexican (aka: illegal alien) had the disease. It was named Mexican flu because it originated from there, not because Mexicans had it. Now they have resorted to just calling it based on it’s strain, the H1N1 virus.

When this outbreak occurred, every country closed its doors and temporarily banned international flights hoping to isolate the epidemic. The WHO raised the their pandemic level to five (5). That’s pretty serious stuff; once the level reaches 6, it’s total and immediate lock down in every country. Many countries were obviously afraid that the flu would spread amongst the people so travel was banned for the time being. Egypt on the other hand went to a more extreme length; they killed ALL the pigs in its country. Some might say good move because this definitely reduces the possibility of a swine flu case to 0%. Also, Muslims do not eat pigs. They only eat blessed meat or halal and pigs do not get blessed. But why do they have pigs in the country in the first place if they aren’t used for food or food bi-products?

Well, one thing pigs are good for in Egypt is to clean up the organic waste that people throw out on the streets. This unfortunate and misguided attempt at preventing swine flu failed on an epic proportion as now the streets of Egypt are littered with garbage. When pigs were alive in Egypt, they would stroll the streets and eat the organic waste. Now, without the pigs, Egypt is facing an ever increasing amount of garbage on the streets and something even worse than the swine flu can come about, like The Plague. Obviously the government is trying to clean up all the garbage but that will take some time. It’s like whenever a city has a garbage strike. All the residents just throw their garbage in one spot and that area pretty much becomes uninhabitable. No one would even want to walk around there a year after the garbage has been cleaned up. If the government does not act fast, that could happen to Egypt. I’m pretty sure the effects of garbage on the streets are all negative.

This article has more information: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/world/africa/20cairo.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&topic=swineflu

The Degradation of FML

Maxime Valette and Guillaume Passaglia have a lot to thank to the unfortunate people who get fucked over day after day and like to vent out their depressed thoughts. Of course we are talking about the up and start website, fMyLife which has become a global sensation solely because we all want to have that feeling that no matter how bad our day is, there is at least someone else who has it worse. Or we just want to laugh at other people’s misfortunates. Give or take, these two reasons are pretty much why it has become so popular. The website is actually an English version of the French website, VieDeMerde created by the same people. The website launched in January 2008 but lately it has become a huge hit as more and more people begin to discover other people’s misfortune. Of course I am a fan of the website because the posters’ submissions are hilarious. The website has reached its peak in early 2009 and I am pretty sure it is due to Facebook. Not that many people knew what FML meant but as the website became more popular it has become the next LMAO. Its biggest push was when a fan page was created for it and afterward, it spread like wildfire.

Back then though, the stories which some were probably fake were very good and hilarious. These days, the website has degraded to a form of unimaginative stories which are probably all true nowadays since they suck so much. What happened to FML? The stories people had were so good, but now the stories reaching the front page don’t even get a sound out of me. The website has a section to moderate the FML submissions but, what the hell have these moderators slumped down too. It’s come to a point where

“Today, I was taking the AP Biology exam. It’s strictly timed, yet my proctor spent 30 minutes (a third of the time we have) talking about his sexual relationship with his wife, who was also proctoring. I don’t know how I did on the test, but I now know my proctor had erectile dysfunction. FML”

Yea, that’s truly an FML moment. Oh man good for you knowing that your proctor has ED. That is a terrible FML. What happened to the days where people were submitting stories of them being dumped and getting kicked while down? I remember that FML where the guy paid for his girlfriend’s pay as you go phone for text messaging just to get dumped. That’s sad, and hilarious at the same time! That’s a good FML.

I better finish this article so I can watch the season finale of House or else FML.

Virginia Tech Decapitation

I just read that there was another horrible incident that occured at Virginia Tech; months after the Massacre. A graduate student by the name of Xin Yang was killed and was decapitated by a kitchen knife. She arrived on January 8th to Beijing to study accounting but she passed away too early. Too early for anyone to get to know her, too early for anyone to see what a wonderful girl she is.

Another graduate student by the name of Haiyang Zhu was arrested and charged with first degree murder. This comes about a year and nine months after the Virginia Tech massacre that took the lives of 32 innocent students.

My thoughts and prayers go out to Ms. Yang and those that have perished April 16 2007.

WTF Happened in Battlestar Galactica?

I watched Battlestar Galactica last night. It came out of its winter hibernation and is set to air the last ten episodes of the series. Last night’s episode was AMAZING and there were so many twists and turns that came at you so fast that once they were over you were thinking, ‘what the hell just happened?’ There were so many things going on that it just blew my mind away.

The first surprise was the best. It turns out that the thirteenth tribe was a colony of cylons. That sucks for the president and admiral Adama who have been preaching that they will find earth some day. Well they did, only to realize that it was inhabited by cylons that nuked the hell out of each other.

Next thing you know, you find out that Tyroll discovers he was living on earth as a cylon in the thirteenth tribe. All the cylons in the fleet, colonel Tigh, Tyroll, Anders, and Ms. Foster were copies of the cylons that lived on earth. The music they keep on hearing was the music that Anders’ original body was playing for the rest of them before they all go nuked to hell.

The most WTF moment in the show was when Dualla just shot herself in the head without any warning. Some people say if you look closely in the frames, the skin colour of the hand does not match hers and the angle that it was at did not look like she was pointing the gun to her head but as if someone else was pointing the gun at her. Plausible, but it was very bright in that room and when you do see the hand, its lit up to a point where its just pale white. The whole angle thing, I don’t really know what to say for that.

Starbuck’s scene was most surreal though. She finds out that she actually did come to earth in her viper but she died and you see evidence of a dead body resembling Kara in a destroyed cockpit of a viper. Her ex husband cylon or the guy that held her captive on New Caprica got scared and ran off not understanding what was happening.

To me, the part where Tigh gets the memory of him and his wife getting destroyed by the nukes in the bank and then he realizes that his wife was also a cylon was not so WTF. It did not surprise me at all for some reason, probably because deep down inside I knew that she was a cylon. It would be crazy though if she did ressurect somehow and came back to earth to surprise the shit out of everyone.

Best and Worst Jobs in America

I read an article today from the Wallstreet Journal which gave a list of the best and the worst jobs America has to offer during the recession. To my surprise, the best job right now is mathematician. Actually it is not really a surprise because once the recession hit, pretty much every single company in every single industry got hurt by it. Now, the only safe job to have is being a professor with tenure at a college or university and that is where mathematicians come in. There’s also the fact that as a mathematician you are incredibly smart having an IQ in the top one percentile of America so you are a great asset to whatever company you are working for and will probably be one of the last people to get laid off. Companies can not let go of their most important assets unless if they have two mathematicians hahaha.

The Wallstreet Journal (WSJ) listed:

The Best
1. Mathematician
2. Actuary
3. Statistician
4. Biologist
5. Software Engineer
6. Computer Systems Analyst
7. Historian
8. Sociologist
9. Industrial Designer
10. Accountant

I’m kind of dumbfounded to see Historian as one of the best jobs to have at this point in time. It seems like a job/career that would not be affected by anything, it will always be at the same place never rising nor falling from its position.

The Worst
200. Lumberjack
199. Dairy Farmer
198. Taxi Driver
197. Seaman
196. EMT
195. Garbage Collector
194. Welder
193. Roustabout
192. Ironworker
191. Constructoin Worker
190. Mail Carrier

It sucks for those who have the worst jobs. They’re the ones being hit the hardest in the recession. Most of them are actually trade professions which if looked closely at are related to the housing market…and we all know what happened there.

What is interesting to see is that all the top jobs in America are the ones that require a degree before practicing and unfortunately for the worst jobs, a post secondary degree is not necessary to accomplish the task. The best bet for those people is to go back to school so they can stay protected from the financial meltdown, get a degree and own the hell out of that list.

Z2K9

haha, ZUNE SCREEN OF DEATH bitch!

Its the Y2K of Zunes everywhere. It seems as if all of the 30 Gigabyte Zunes by Microsoft have all failed and have become bricks. At around midnight of December 30 2008 all the 30 Gig Zunes have failed en mass. People thought it was only their Zune but further investigation shows that all the Zune models have failed at the same exact time. They just shut off without any notice and when restarted, the loading screen comes up but freezes when loading is almost complete. Talk about the Zune Screen of Death haha, or Load Screen of Death. Microsoft is aware of this and are working hard trying to fix this problem…well no, because they’re all drunk as the new year arrives. Pretty sure they will start working on the problem once they get back to work in about four days. What a crappy manufacturing defect this has. Everyone was so worried about Y2K and when 2K9 comes about, an unexpected problem occurs with Microsoft…sickening! This news is not good for Microsoft as they’re losing the battle against Apple’s iPod. Weren’t they still recovering from the DRM fiasco that came with the first generation of Zunes?

Well Bush is at Least Good at One Thing

He can dodge not one but TWO shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist. It seems to be the only good thing he has been good at since he stole the spotlight of winning the American presidential election. Oh there’s also the fact that he did a good job at screwing pretty much almost everyone in America, but lets not talk about that now. What is amazing about this whole ordeal is WHERE THE HELL WAS HIS SECRET SERVICE?

The outgoing president of the United States made a surprise farewell visit to Iraq on Sunday the fifteenth of December to talk about…well no one really cared about what Bush was talking about after the journalist threw his shoes at him. He did not just throw one shoe, he threw BOTH of his shoes at Bush. He threw both the left shoe and the right shoe and Bush was able to dodge those shoes pretty well just like the draft. People in the Western world think, why would he throw his shoes at him, someone could have sneaked in a gun and tried to assassinate Bush. Well it turns out that in Iraq’s culture, showing one’s sole of a shoe means great disrespect. Even worse is throwing your shoes at the person. It is Just like ‘flipping the bird’ or saying, “That’s not what your mom said last night. OOOOHHHHH BURNNNN!” The name of the Iraqi journalist is Muntadar al-Zaidi who stood up and he shouted to Bush, “This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people,” and he threw his shoes at him. Obviously it has made news headlines around the world and in less than a week the video has been posted on Youtube and been watched over five million times. That has to be a record!

The problem that seems to have been overlooked was, WHERE THE HELL WAS THE SECRET SERVICE? I’m pretty sure a couple of agents of the Secret Service are always with Bush at all times, especially when he goes to a country he “invaded.” Aren’t they supposed to be behind him or beside him too? It took the journalist about four seconds to throw both his shoes before anyone actually stood up and wrestled him to the ground but it was not the secret service. Other journalists got up and wrestled him to the ground and yet still no one tried to protect Bush. Four seconds, that is a pretty slow response time for bodyguards who trained practically half their lives (well maybe a year or two at least) to protect pretty much the most important person in the United States. They’re also supposed to sacrifice themselves in order to save their primary, yet no one dove in front of Bush during the whole ordeal. It would have been funny though jumping in front of the person you’re protecting just to get hit by a stinky shoe. A few seconds after Muntadar threw his shoes, the Secret Service came in and crowded the podium. What the hell were they doing outside of the room anyway? Well to stop any outside intruders but where was the Secret Service in the room? No where to be found that is. Come on guys, even though he is the worst president ever in America and has the lowest approval rate, he is still the president. If someone tried to attack him back in America, those agents would be all up in the perpetrator’s ass and take him down to the town. If this happened to Obama, there would have been considerable amount of outrage and controversy about the slow reaction time of the secret service agents assigned to protect “Renegade.” There would have been an investigation of how the accused was able to do this and all the major news networks would be all over just that part of the story, but since it is Bush we’ll just let that one slide.

Muntadar al-Zaidi now faces a fifteen year prison sentence for his efforts. He has become an international star though, a martyr is more befitting. There has been protests on the streets of Baghdad to release the journalist but unfortunately it will go ignored. He’s going to jail unless if those 200 lawyers who volunteered to be his attorneys are really good. Muntadar should get OJ Simpson’s attorney then for sure he would be free. As for Bush, well he’s just good at dodging shoes. Pokeballs on the other hand, he has to practice dodging those.

Does Sex Sell? Ask Coca-Cola…Well Kinda

So we all know Coca-Cola is one of the biggest and well known companies in the entire world.  It sells probably the most popular brand drink ever created.  Everyone knows those red cans, even if we can’t see the classic logo of Coca-Cola of a Coca-Cola can, it is pretty much reasonabl to say that the can is a Coca-Cola product.  Coke is such an amazing drink.  It tastes so smooth and and nice, there is an appropriate proportion of sparkling water and syrup, and there is caffiene in it which is the most important ingredient of the drink.  Even though there are the health concerns like obesity, arthritis, osteoperosis, and juvenile diabeties the company is still turning up some profit.  It may not be in Coke but possibly its other brand name drinks like Powerade, Dasani, or their Nestea.

But the real question is, how and why is Coca-Cola’s logo so famous and influential.  It is probably because of subliminal sex messages within the logo.  Wait! How is that possible? Well Gatorade and Powerade (another brand name drink of Coca-Cola) have used subliminal pictures of the penis, so do the red cans and bottles of Coke show the exact same?  Well you do see something, or at least I do.  My room mate told me about this and when I tried to find it, it was almost near dam impossible to figure out what this illusion was.  I finally got it as my room mate did not tell me WHICH Coca-Cola logo had this but once I found the right logo, I managed to see this weird, crazy illusion.  What I saw, surprised.  It was a man…..just standing there…..DOING COKE!!!!!  Crazy enough, there isn’t actually some penis reference I found (maybe there is, but I haven’t seen it)  What I saw surprised me, turns out if you flip the logo on its side you can see a man in a top hat sniffing coke!  You have to have a wild imagination to see it but, I have a picture here if you can’t see it.

Isn’t that crazy?  Ya, active imagination right there.  Unfortunately I could not get a good old school logo of Coca-Cola.  The old vintage logos had the first C in ‘Cola’ extend further all the way to the ‘o’ in ‘Cola’ so it would actually look like the man is holding something to sniff his coke.  I am not surprised by the fact some guy is sniffing coke, I mean coke actually was put into these drinks when the drink first came out.  Surprised it is not a sexual subliminal message though.  It is some crazy coincidence though.  Apparently someone noticed this and notifiedd Coca-Cola and that was a reason why they shortened the ‘C’ to only underline ‘Coca’.  It is purely a coincidence though or apparently that is what ‘Coca-Cola’ says and they never planned to put it in there at all.  I think they did actually put that in there, but originally the man sniffing coke was supposed to be…sucking cock but something happened in the design and they went, “meh, whatever too late now” just like what happened to Monkey Kong, oops I mean Donkey Kong.

Why They Won’t Go Back to the Old Facebook – Zomberg Style

So anyone, still join that Marc Zomberg group yet? There’s almost a million members!

I got notice from Thomas who commented on my previous Marc Zomberg post that the Marc Zomberg group is now close to a million members. What is really interesting to me though is the fact that the group’s creator Jakob Peterson is now part of the San Francisco network instead of the London network. Could it be? He moved to Silicon Valley and is now working for Facebook? I still say no.

So I was wondering if Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook will ever revert back to the old layout. With how things are going, I’m pretty sure they won’t go back. Let’s go back in time and see why:

1. Remember the time when they permanently switched to the new Facebook?
That was around the beginning of September. I did not really care as I was already used to the new Facebook. I have to ask again, so has anyone else joined that Marc Zomberg group yet?

Has anyone ever heard of the saying, ‘Change is good’ or any sort of variation of it? I’m pretty sure we all have. What I really hate about people complaining about the new Facebook is the fact that they complain and they don’t do anything, they do not even send feedback to the people at Facebook. So from that, there is less of a chance they will change back to the old layout.

There is also the fact that if Zuckerberg actually looks at the groups that want him to change back to the old Facebook, I’m pretty sure that 10 million won’t do the job. There are OVER 100 million ACTIVE users on Facebook. If Mark were ever to consider changing back to the old layout how many people would be needed to get him to change his mind? I’m pretty sure over 50 million people would have to sign a petition or join a group or something. So I’m sorry Zomberg, I know you have probably the most group members on this subject but even if you do reach 10 million, you only represent a tenth of Facebook’s users. Do you actually think Zuckerberg will go back to the old layout to please a tenth of his users? What about the other 90%?

There are also the hacks that are being spread around letting users go back to the old Facebook. The company has patched a couple of them up, but now a lot of people still have the old layout. I don’t know if Facebook keeps stats on who managed to get back to the old layout or not but this really sucks for those who have tried and can not go back to the old layout (like me). With the people changing back to the old layout, they don’t have to complain anymore. As a result, probably about 20% (I just made up a random figure) of Facebook’s users have the old layout back. Probably over half of these people will stop complaining about the new Facebook thus probably over ten percent of Facebook’s users will be unaccounted for in trying to go back to the old Facebook. As a result, these hacks can be counter-productive and will give skewed statistics on who really wants to go back to the old Facebook or who still wants to keep the new layout.

2. Do you remember the time when Facebook introduced the news-feed feature?

There was so much outrage and controversy over this new feature Facebook introduced in September of 2006. Many people felt like that their privacy was being invaded. It would be easier for ‘creepers’ to lurk around their friends’ pages and see what they wrote and their new pictures they posted up. Obviously attached with the new feature was the privacy options which not a lot of people actually have used to an extent that kept their personal life private. Sure there are people that have chosen a couple of privacy options like choosing to not have any of their wall posts or pictures they posted up presented on the news-feed but that is pretty much it. After two years now, there are still people who have not chosen to set their news-feed options to not present any of their posts.
I remember all the controversy and the heated debates and how users hated the news-feed invading their privacy. If it was a real danger to anyone or a real annoyance then Facebook would have taken the news-feed off the website. Sure there have been modifications to make it safer to be on the website and make it easier to modify the feed, but its still there.
It has been two years now and everyone who uses Facebook is alright with the news-feed, many don’t even mind it. All that controversy and revolt from its users has just died away with time and now its a norm to have the news-feed with you.
Plus, everyone in general through human nature are attention whores and some can be narcissistic. If you turn all the options for the feed off, then everyone will forget you and no one will talk to you and post up on your wall. You will have a lonely existence and be an outcast, is that what you want? Its pretty embarrassing to have Facebook and not have anyone post on your wall don’t you think? So yes, the news-feed is an invasion of your privacy but then again, we all are attention whores and if we turn everything off on the news-feed, well we don’t get any attention at all and there goes our sorry miserable lives.

3. Do you remember the time when Facebook changed their layout?

I remember back in late 2006 or early 2007 maybe January of 2007 but Facebook actually modified their layout. Does anyone remember this? I remember with the older layout that you can access your pictures, your events, your posts, and your updates all at top of the user interface and then all of a sudden Facebook changed this layout to what we now call the ‘old’ Facebook. I was not used to this new layout, all the photos, applications, posts, and etc can only be accessed on this little box on the left side while all your settings and advanced features were put on top of the GUI (I really can’t remember what the old Facebook looked like, so this description might be inaccurate.)
Just like now, so many groups popped up asking/demanding/threatening Facebook to change back to the old layout. What is really funny is that over time, I saw a lot of my friends leave these groups and soon no one really cared about the older layout anymore. Everyone became used to the old Facebook over time and Zuckerberg never had to revert back to the older layout.

4. Do you remember the time when everyone just forgot about it?

I bet you by the end of this year 2008, those who still have the new layout will be fine with it and have finally adapted to the user interface. By the middle of 2009 these ‘go back to the old Facebook’ groups will be no more because people don’t care about the layout as they have now become accustomed to it. It is just like the news-feed and it is just like when they changed the older layout to the ‘old’ layout. Everyone will forget about this by then and not care.

When They introduce a completely new layout in a couple of years (I’m thinking 2010/2011), another user revolt will occur and all these groups will pop up asking Facebook to go back to the this current layout. Ironic. Don’t you think?

5. Do you remember the time where everyone said that Facebook is so addictive?

A lot of people are addicted to Facebook. If they don’t like Facebook anymore, then they should move to another social networking site. But who really wants to make a new account on a strange new social networking site and rebuild their profile to the status that its Facebook counterpart had? Facebook is just too good to let go. The layout is phenomenal well the old one, the interface is nice to use. People don’t have to click all these random links to get to where they want, and the colour scheme is amazing(ly safe). There are so many other social networking sites like Facebook, but Facebook has set the bar and it will be really hard for any other site to remotely even compare to it. Well there is Twitter but I’m pretty sure most high school/college students won’t have a use for that site…yet. So the idea of leaving Facebook all together will be really hard as one will be left out of the loop while they make a new account on a different social website and not have anyone to talk to on that site.

So these are my five reasons why they won’t go back to the old Facebook. So what I suggest for you to do, is to find a new social website you like and become a wolf, and not a sheep. Or you could actually do something and give some feed back to Mr. Zuckerberg on what you really think about the new layout.

your to stoopid for Engrish

So I just read this article about children in school who are being held back because they can not spell. Apparently learning the rules of spelling for the English language is too hard for many students in English speaking countries. It seems as though the children are being forced to memorize how the English language is constructed.

I really do not know what to say about this. Just by reading this article, I have lost all hope for the future. If a law passes allowing students to spell words without proper spelling, this will spell doom for everyone. I can already see that many people are getting confused with simple English rules. Everywhere on internet forums or commenting, the most misused words are between ‘you’re’ vs. ‘your’ and ‘women’ vs. ‘woman’. I see this all the time on internet forums, I’ve seen it so much that I have gotten used to it, but I’m not too used to it as I still remind myself that the poster misused or misspelled a certain word.

Many other languages in the world don’t have these complicated rules. Pretty much, once you remember the alphabet, it’s very hard to misspell them. Well for English being the bastard of all languages taking pretty much all of its words from different languages like Latin, French, and Spanish, there are bound to be rules here and there. In the article Professor Wells states, “It’s time to remove the fetish that says that correct spelling is a principal (principle?) mark of being educated.” You know, there is a reason why proper spelling is used, it is so that everyone can understand what you are writing about. If you take the rules out of the English language, it will take so much more time trying to understand what that person is trying to write. This will create a great burden on society and this could be the beginning of the downfall of society. Next thing you know if America becomes a lost civilization like the Myans, no one will know anything about Americans because they were all too lazy to write down and document anything about their society. This could even happen to Canada and England, well pretty much all the English speaking countries. Everything will be spread by word-to-mouth and people will be telling others myths and legends about English speaking people.

Insted of creating a burden on tha rest of sosiety, howbout having the kidz praktise sum speling for an our evryday so our world wont fall to peeses.