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