Humans are totally screwed

I guess everyone has their mini-break point. For some reason, here’s mine: as soon I saw this three-year old video of India and Pakistan’s antics at their border, that was it. Something died deep inside. I feel like throwing in the towel and just finding a nice secluded cave somewhere to quietly die of intra-species embarrassment.

I bought me a lottery ticket

Estimated cash value, now up to a cool 640 million. Normally I shy away from paying the stupid tax, but with all the buzz I was as helpless to do my consumer duty as a trained chicken pecking at a mini-piano for seed. If I win anything here is my sworn oath: as I’ve been carefully taught by the masters of the universe, like Mitt Romney and the Bain crew above, I will spend the money exclusively on myself, earmarking a few million for political purposes dedicated to making the life of non lottery winners as brutal as humanly possible and taking every last cent they have. Because half a billion isn’t nearly enough, right? How about you, fellow lottery players?

An eye witness steps foward in the Trayvon Martin case


Video of George Zimmerman being brought into the Sanford police station after shooting on 26 Feb 2012

I’ve held off on writing about the tragic shooting death of Trayvon Martin last month in Florida. There just wasn’t enough info at first and it was being blogged coast to coast elsewhere. But it’s started to fill in a bit and maybe some speculation on what could have happened is in order. First the eyewitness: [Read more…]

And I thought I had it bad: The lure of virtual currency

Chinese prisoners were forced into 'gold farming' – building up credits on online games such as World of Warcraft.

I’ve been bummed that I have to work with a painful autoimmune-vision condition, one that would resolve much faster if I didn’t have to stare at teeny-tiny text in fine detail all day. Woe is me! Then I see this piece below, which helps put things in perspective:  [Read more…]

They don’t call it “eye” ritis for nothing

Actually the medical term is Iritis, as in inflammation of the iris, and mine’s caused by an autoimmune disorder called Anklyosing spondylitis. It’s like a super arthritis which attacks soft tissue on top of the usual aches and pains in the joints. AS is genetic, there is one main marker (HLA-B24) and one or two others have been found in the last few years. Some researchers think the genes for autoimmune disorders like AS may have been greatly favored at various points in human history, when any resistance to epidemic disease gave an individual a leg up. If not for modern medicine, my case would have at least blinded me by now and have me halfway to crippled. But from an evolutionary viewpoint, it’s better to survive long enough to sire offspring and go blind in your 30s, than to die as a child from TB or the Black Death. [Read more…]

Master of my own domain

I have a friend who enjoys working in the medium of wood. I can understand, there’s something about working with wood that seems to offer a Zen experience. Over the years he’s become quite good at it, in fact I would say at this point he’s an artist of sorts. Anyway, he’s making me a beautifully finished coffee table, shown above during construction, and when I looked underneath what signature did I see set skillfully into the Kos-orange, hand-crafted lacquer finish? [Read more…]

NASA Mars program facing steep budget cuts

CRIRES model-based computer-generated impression of the Plutonian surface, with atmospheric haze, and Charon and the Sun in the sky.

The official budget won’t be released until Monday, but word is NASA’s unmanned program will see big cuts and Mars missions will take the brunt of them. Sadly, when it comes to our budget priorities as of late, we are one screwed-up country: [Read more…]