Win a Trip to Jakarta!

Ok, ok, that’s not a fair title for a post. But, MY BROTHER DID! He studied gamelan – native Indonesian musical instruments – and has put on a few performances. Ironically, the group sponsoring the event was holding the drawing for two round trip tickets to Jakarta via Singapore Airlines. (valid for a year) – and without any corrupsi, was able to pull the winning tickets! I have no idea when he’ll come, but it’ll be great to have himRead more

Bastards, Breasts, and Base

Fun facts of the day. All found in the Nov. 2005 issue of Discover Magazine during my lunch break: DNA testing has proven that one in 25 men unknowningly raise another man’s child. One in 25?? Pharmacologists have studied Italy’s river Po in hopes of evaluating drug use. The river carries the sewage of 5 million Italians; basically the world’s largest drug test. They’ve found that 8.8 pounds of cocaine flow downstream every day. Of the 100 trillion bacteria foundRead more

Bush Could've Built Some Pyramids?

Putting things into perspective, from Metafilter: Cost of Iraq war may exceed $1 trillion dollars. That number is hard to comprehend. To get a grip on it, observe that the CIA says the average annual purchasing power of Iraqi citizens is $3,400, and there are about 7,500,000 males between 15-65 years old in Iraq. Divide this out, and it turns out that by the time we’re “done” with Iraq, we could have hired each and every man in Iraq andRead more

You Are What You Blog

Reading this article only reaffirms why I’ve been cautious to disclose too much personal information on the ‘net. A number of people have made it clear that my site would be much more interesting if more personal info was divulged. Google is powerful weapon for those who seek to know more. Maybe I should start a separate blog posting anonymously. 😉 …Googling people is also becoming a way for bosses and headhunters to do continuous and stealthy background checks onRead more

2 Live Crew for 5 Year Olds?

So the other day, my Chinese buddy invited me to his kid’s birthday party. Actually it was for his 5 year old and 10 year old (girl & boy respectively). Despite the fact that he’s obscenely wealthy, I had visions of a dozen kids screaming around a flaming birthday cake while the adults got buzzed up in the corner on the spiked punch. Um. Yeah. Wrong. Driving past the gated security in one of the most prestigious (and quiet) neighborhoodsRead more