Time to get serious

So I know most of you probably read this blog for entertainment value and honestly, most of the time, I write this blog for entertainment. However, this is one time when I would like to get serious. There are a lot of things out there that can harm us. Unfortunately,cancer is one of them. You know what else used to hurt us? Polio and small pox. You know why they don't anymore? It's because research allowed us to find vaccines and effective treatments. Don't kid yourself into thinking this can't be done with cancer. So on that sad note, I would like you all to consider the people in your lives who might have dealt with some form of cancer. Consider how you would feel if one of your loved ones or friends was diagnosed with cancer. This is something we can prevent. All it takes is research. Unfortunately, like everything else in life, research takes money ( a lot of money if you actually want to find a cure). So the point of this post was to encourage you to think about doing something about this. This could be as simple as learning more about cancer, or donating money to fund research. You could also be more involved and become one of the researchers looking for a cure or start your own fundraisers in your community. Anything is better than nothing.

The following are some links for more information if you are interested:
http://www.chordomafoundation.org/ : this is a foundation devoted to a specific type of cancer which one of my friends was diagnosed with. Since it is rare, government funding is low and contributions would be greatly appreciated.

cbcf.org: Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation

www.cancer.ca : Canadian Cancer Society

What's happened to the news?

So, if you picked up today's edition of the 24hours (Thursday Jan 8, 2009), did you notice the lack of actual news that is on the front cover. Sure, you may argue that 24 hours to newspapers is like Carrot Top to comedians, as in most people wouldn't see/read it even it if it is free. Just look at some of the headlines (these are directly from the front page):

1. "Just do it-later? It's called procrastination and we all do it" This front page headline (the one with the biggest picture)is not news. It is merely a fact of life. Isn`t news supposed to enlighten us? Besides, according to the headline, most people wouldn`t even get the newspaper because they keep putting it off until later.

2. "Turf wars leave kids vulnerable" When do wars not leave children vulnerable (unless it is a design war between companies making kid-sized indestructible armor)?

3. "News: Alex G. Tsakumis moves to Thursdays in 24 hours" What's so bad about this headline is that is starts with the word news although it is absolutely useless information to most people. It is also very confusing as one could ask: "So, is Alex Tsakumis moving to Thursdays 24 hours from the moment I got the newspaper or from the moment Thursday began?"

Paris Hilton's IQ is 125. Are you smarter than Paris?

I'm not sure about you but I have been annoyed by those ads on the internet that post a question similar to the title of this post. I have never and will never take part in that IQ test because it will probably download a virus onto my computer or charge me for something I didn't buy. Another reason is that I don't want to be dumber than Paris Hilton. Sure the IQ of 125 is probably arbitrary and I could always say that I went to University and she didn't (a reality show called "The smart life: Paris goes to college" doesn't count. By the way, don't bother looking that up as it's not a real show. It if ever became one, I should be able to sue). Besides, the whole idea of an IQ is kind of messed up. A high IQ simply means you can learn things better because you have a better memory and can see patterns easier. However, in all practicality,useful knowledge needs to be learned and if you put a genius in a box from birth (of course there would be food and a place to sleep since this is not torture. Also the intelligence of the genius could not be described by a wave function. That last sentence was a shout out to all the Chem nerds out there)they would not come out more useful than any of us who have gone to school for most of our lives. Thus, those people who point out they have an IQ of 170 or whatever as a way of displaying their superiority are really douche bags because that arbitrary number does not actually display how useful they are to society. And if fictional TV shows have taught us anything, it's that geniuses are often physically weak (from "Malcolm in the Middle" and "the Big Bang Theory"). Thus the genius douche bags are even less useful because they can't do a lot of the stuff they think about with their high powered brain. It's like if you put an Intel computer chip in a toaster. Would the toaster make toast faster? Perhaps. Would the toast taste better? Perhaps. Would the toast tell you what the weather is like in Nepal? Not likely. That was basically the long way of me saying how IQ tests are overrated. Perhaps they should overhaul IQ tests and set them up as problem solving exercises that could actually happen in real life. I don't know how theses problems should be set up but somehow they should make it harder for the genius douchebags to get a high IQ to prove once and for all that they are not as useful as they might like to think. Just a note to any geniuses reading this. This was written out of jealousy and jealousy is the greatest form of flattery.

Horrible (yet humorous) ways to meet your end

1. As you look out the window of your office building, you see a jumbo jet getting closer. When the jet gets close enough, you see the sign on the front of the plane that reads "If you can read this, you are about to die"

2. You die from a heart attack after some television personality tells you that you have won 10 million dollars. The TV show later realizes that they went to the wrong house.

3. As you jump off a platform during a bungee jump you hear someone in the background ask "Aren't these supposed to be connected?"

Not all suicide notes look the same

The provocative title to this post was from a commercial about how dangerous eating disorders can become. On a more humorous note, I am referring the act known as academic suicide (which to some people *cough* Asians! *cough* is basically the same as suicide since without education you will be stuck in a useless career for the rest of your life). There are two variants to academic suicide: the short way and the long way. The short way is well known and heavily prevented by most academic institutions. It is of course intellectual dishonesty or as most people know it, cheating. The long way, much less prevented, is the path I find myself in at the moment(do not worry about my safety as I am only speaking metaphorically, at the moment anyway). I like to call this method over-achiever syndrome, which is just as dangerous but only develops after a period of time under certain conditions. These circumstances include: taking too many courses, taking courses you already got credit for just in case there was something you could miss out on, taking 3 hour blocks of night courses, studying for extracurricular reasons such as the PCAT to get into pharmacy school. Unfortunately, this semester is a perfect storm of all 4 conditions for me. Also unfortunately, if I get into the pharmacy program my semesters will become more and more loaded with courses (up above 40 credits). Alas, even my summers will be riddled with courses and internships. While I will probably get through this all and be able to laugh at it one day (hopefully not a crazy laugh), I just had my first night class and it is not sitting very well with me. Let's first forget that it is 3 hours long at night. The professor who teaches the course (I'm not going to mention his/her name because I am not stupid and do not want to commit academic suicide the fast way)annoys me very much. It is not the fact that he will not give us his email to contact him, did not even introduce himself until 1 and a half hours into the lecture and shuns all technology save for the overhead projector. No, the thing that annoys me is that is how this professor speaks and surprisingly it is not his/her accent. It is the fact that he/she speaks in the slowest manner I can possibly imagine. I mean literally 15 seconds between sentences. And it is not like he/she pauses and then strings together words eloquently like say Barack Obama. He/She completes a mundane sentence after a 15 second pause with a phrase like "Of course this is up for interpretation." It is also agonizing to wait for the words to come because you don't know when they will and instead you are left watching his/her annoying facial gestures (like he/she is thinking really really hard) only to have that come out of his/her mouth. Does it seem like I am ranting? That is the first sign of overachiever syndrome.

the √3 poem

This is an awesome poem from Harold and Kumar escape from Guantanamo Bay, enjoy:

I’m sure that I will always be
A lonely number like root three

The three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three

As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed

Thank goodness for non- Asian parents!

So I am currently snowed in right now and I have had a lot of time to think. I am stressing out about the PCAT (test to get into pharmacy school) which is coming up soon. The career of a pharmacist was of course first introduced to me by my Asian parents. This is nothing against Asian parents as it is clear how hard they work so their children will live a better life than they did. This often involves pushing their children into high paying professions such as medicine, law, dentistry, business, engineering etc. What would happen if every Asian child were actually able to get into these careers? Not only would these professional schools be over crowded but there would also be no Asians left to do any of the other lower paying jobs. For example, how can you perform surgery if someone doesn't build a hospital, clean the floors and equipment, or make your surgical scrubs etc (also without Asians there would be fewer people coming to the hospital to take advantage of the free health care). The only fact that makes me sleep soundly at night knowing this won't be a problem is the fact that non-Asian parents are generally much more lenient as to their child's career path. This is nothing against non-Asian parents either as it shows how much they care about their child's happiness in allowing them to make their own choice. Fortunately for us, these choices are often misguided and they end up working the lower paying jobs to support themselves. Two parenting methods that together keep the world running smoothly. Good job parents!