Alarming numbers from pandemics

I got the following info from this links.

What does a pandemic mean in terms of the death rate? Would it necessarily be severe?


Pandemics can vary quite a bit in severity. The 1918 pandemic killed many more Americans than an ordinary flu, while the 1968 version killed about 34,000 people — about the same number killed each year by seasonal flu, according to CDC statistics.

The world generally experiences at least two flu pandemics each century. Historically, the 20th century saw 3 pandemics of influenza:

• The 1918 influenza pandemic caused at least 675,000 U.S. deaths and up to 50 million deaths worldwide.
  
• The 1957 influenza pandemic caused at least 70,000 U.S. deaths and 1-2 million deaths worldwide.
  
• The 1968 influenza pandemic caused about 34,000 U.S. deaths and 700,000 deaths worldwide.
  

In 1957 millions die because of influenza pandemic, oh my!
34,000 deaths each year killed by seasonal flu?
How many deaths in Iraq so far? Diseases sometimes kill more than guns do.

Swine Flu

Yikes, the Mexican swine flu is getting serious! It has made headline on top of unemployment news and other economic woes.

SARS in 2003 was such nightmare in China and Hong Kong. America was miracously not affected. But this time it is much closer. Consider the number of people traveling to and from Mexico. I hope it will be contained... Perhaps we must kill off those pigs like those chickens that were destroyed during SARS... It is brutal but that may be the only effective way.

America's health care system is all about hungry money grabbing doctors and hospitals. No money no insurance no talk. If it hits poorer folks who can't afford doctors they will continue to spread it. I can't imagine seeing heroic doctors trying to risk their lives saving patients especially those with no money.

Diseases can certainly hurt the already weak economy even more... US should take as much as action as possible to prevent another global disaster.

Ice Mountain bottle

You may have notice Ice Mountain bottled water is leaner in size compared to bottles before. Kudos for helping the environment.
No one should indulge in bottled water, come on, drink tap water, boil it filter it if you want it cleaner.
Those who refuse to drink that deserve to pay tax on that environmental hazard plastic even if it is reduced in size.

Today I notice the size of the bottle. It says .5 L (1pt and 0.9 oz).
Ok, first I notice the inconsistency of .5 and 0.9. It is mathematical lazy not to include a 0 in front of the decimal point.

The 0.9 oz is rather interesting. Why not give you a full oz but 0.9 oz?

Waita minute let me convert 0.5 liter to see how many oz there are:
Go to google and type in "0.5 l in oz". It says 16.9070114 oz. I think it is a bit confusing to say 1pt 0.9 oz, it is better to say 16.9 oz.

So bottled-water goes metric. But some old-British system values are here to stay. For instance, yards in football (it will never convert to metric), 8.5" x 11" paper, no one will convert that to metric either.

Hawking is ill

One of today's news item: Stephen Hawking is ill.

If you have never heard of Hawking, you live under the rock in the world of science. He is one of the most accomplished scientists of our times. He is comparable to giants such as Einstein, Newton, Gallileo and all that. Yet he is paralyzed. Thanks to technology that he is still able to talk and write.

He is most famous for writing books for the layman on cosmology. A Brief History of Time is a must read! It is easy to read and I find it so interesting! There are now full-colored illustrated versions of this famous book.

His professional works are of course only understandable by experts... Besides Brief History of Time, he also collected and wrote commentaries for famous works from other all-time important mathematicians in God created the integers. It shows that Hawking has such enthusiasm toward (pure) mathematics, although he is generally considered a scientist.
Though this 1000+ page book is not for beginners, it is a collection of classics. Not many people understand all of it.

Understanding is one thing, able to teach it to another is a higher-level achievement. As a person with disabilities, Hawking is even more amazing.

囧

Recently I discovered that some people use this almost obsolete Chinese word 囧 as an emoticon like :) Originally, this word is an equivalent form of the first word in the phrase 炯炯有神.

See this wiki article for detail.

It is difficult (if not impossible) to create your own Chinese words. Sure you can write (draw) your own word, but how do you get it to Unicode? In alphabet language such as English, anyone makes any word anytime... so it is fairly interesting that people make new use of a pictograph as an emoticon.

My take is also 有人認為應該尊重漢字，用來惡搞不雅 有損中華民族文化的厚重感

13.25% Tax on that Soda

Chicago has the highest sales tax in America at 10.25% (and this is old news).

I do realize there is a bottled water tax, which I support, to curb excessive use of plastic.

I rarely pay attention to the calculation of taxes on my receipts, I just noticed that there are 3 additional percent on soft drinks. That means 13.25% tax on the soft drink! Isn't that outrageous?

There are tax on cigarette and alcohol, well only those addicted are affected.
But soft drink is such common thing! Is it designed to curb excessive sugar and aluminum? No it is just outrageous new burden on common people! Parking meters increased too. Now 1 quarter only buy you 15 minutes of parking in Chinatown... Property tax is of course also outrageous.

The government better make good use of that tax money. But yikes, is there any watchdog on how that money is spent? There better be.

Too many programming languages

Got my hand on a copy on a few months old MSDN magazine.. I am impressed with paper quality of this magazine. Smooth paper! It has nice layout. If you are not anti-Microsoft tools I think you'll like this magazine...

In the magazine I learned about that there is IronRuby as one of Microsoft's .NET language for its CLR. (CLR reminds me of this cleaning product in department stores). Ruby starts out as a toy language for enthusiasts and now Microsoft grab it and include it in its own language packs.

Microsoft likes to have lots and lots of languages doing similar things for its .NET platform. Sure, it has its own Java-like C#, and Visual Basic has major face lift to fit that platform... There are so many! The world does not need too many programming languages really, unless it is a breakthrough. Since Java's breakthrough out of hairy C++, I really don't see new breakthroughs needed....

Oh my, in the list of CLR languages, there is a Spanish oriented one (called Lexico), there is even a language called Boo... Boo is a Super Mario ghost character!

Spanish Billboard

I live close to the highway. Pro: easy access to it. Con: noise from late night trucks. Ok, the noise is fairly minor, I am not complaining. Every time I go home, I see is a billboard for the highway. This is a Budweiser billboard. Besides that name Budweiser, all other words are Spanish.

That means I live in a Spanish speaking neighborhood? Perhaps so. But the billboard is denying all non- Spanish readers to understand. I am sure not all highway users come from Spanish speaking neighborhoods.
It is not being fair to speakers of other languages, such as English.

Although most countries have official language (or languages), United States does not. (See the wiki article if you don't believe me). Although I won't go as far to say Spanish is for ghettos, it just feel uncomfortable to see a public sign I don't understand.

If I go to an ethic town in Chicago, such as Greek town or Korean town, and see a restaurant with signs and menus written only in the ethnic language, I won't mind going in and have an authentic meal.

The difference is this: I volunteerly go inside that restaurant, but I involunteerly see the billboard. Budweiser does not seem to care rather any non-Spanish speaker drink their beer or not.

Opinion: public billboards should at least contain English in America.

"Spring" needs to be revisited

March 20 or Vernal Equinox as first day of Spring?
This needs to be revisited. Three inches of snow fell last night, and it is a few days into April.
It is not random aberration. Frequently we get snow in April. I don't associate "spring" with snow.
I remember in college days, during Spring Break we get snow: perhaps it is better named as Winter Break II, or Almost Spring Break.

Is it because of Global Warming that weather go out of whack? We had 60's days before the so-called first day of Spring.

Well the label on the calendar is not so important, just test the temperature outside and dress accordingly.
Who cares what the calendar says? Perhaps the farmers do, to plan when to put seeds in and all that.

I am glad I am not doing the hard labors of farming.

More shooting in America

Another gunmen shoot innocent and shoot self. This time in New York where people taking citizenship exam. See this news.

This is happening way too often in America! and only America.

The president ought to say something about it. Enough talk about the economy.

What is justice? Oh someone do something bad? They get punished: restrict their freedom in jail or take away their life in extreme case.

But what do you do to crazy people with guns who didn't want to live anyway? There is nothing to do after they start shooting.

Please, put gun control in America. Crooks will always have guns you say? Well it is not the crooks that is often doing the killing, but the psychologically troubled guys that are doing it.