Find Out How Your Mind Works

From Digg

• Get a brain sex profile and find out if you think like a man or a woman.
• See if you can gaze into someone's eyes and know what they're thinking.
• Find out why scientists are interested in the length of your fingers.
• See how your results relate to theories about brain sex.

Find out HERE from the BBC

Apparently. I'm just your average male. :)

MRT 3 Ticket Scarcity

The MRT 3 ran out of ticket today.

OK, so not really, but they did ran out of stored value tickets. I regularly ride the MRT 3 along EDSA. I avoid the traffic and arrive at my destination faster. Today however, as I tried to buy a prepaid or "stored value" card, the ticket vendor told me that they were sold out.

Stored value tickets gets you out of the long queus, further shortening travel time. I cannot believe the MRT 3 administration allowed this to happen.

Anyway, I searched the web and I found this blog by J. Angelo Racoma complaining about the same thing, and wrote about it last week. Mr. Racoma has a link to the official website of the Metrostar Express, who administers the MRT. I called the office and they told me that they have ordered new tickets and it should arrive within the next two weeks. Meanwhile, I would have to arrive at the stations before 7 AM before the ticketing office runs out of stored value tickets or fall in line.

Complaints can be directed to the MRT office:

Tel. No: 929-5347 loc. 3078 and 3079
E-mail: cac@dotcmrt3.gov.ph

Alternatively, you might want to call the Light Rail Transit Authority.

Website: http://www.lrta.gov.ph/
Tel. No. - 853-0041 to 60
E-mail - lrtamain@lrta.gov.ph

Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes Snow Art Gallery

http://www.angelfire.com/wa/zzaran/calvin.html

Somebody Buy Me Out

got this one from abe

My blog is worth $1,693.62.
How much is your blog worth?

Which Fantasy/SciFi Character Are You?

Jean-Luc Picard (I can't believe it, If I was to be a Star Trek character, I would rather be Spock)

An accomplished diplomat who can virtually do no wrong, you sometimes know it is best to rely on the council of others while holding the reins.

There are some words which I have known since I was a schoolboy. "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." These words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie -- as a wisdom, and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged.

Jamby's Gun

I was going to write about this but as I read Alex magno's column (The Philippine Star), I realized that I could not write something better. Some quotes from the column:

"If Sen. Jamby Madrigal cannot do without an armed bodyguard beside her, she should refrain from joining street demonstrations. That is the dictate of civic duty."

"Madrigal tells us her bodyguard’s gun was licensed.

But, dear senator, that is not the point.

The point is that the man brought his gun to the frontlines of a tense confrontation between the police and a political cult that was supposed to be engaged in peaceful protest. That might seem to be an act of minor stupidity. But it is nonetheless an act that put everyone else in the vicinity in great peril."

"Notwithstanding, I think Madrigal owes the nation an apology.

Tito Guingona, former vice-president was there. I don’t think he had bodyguards.

Fr. Robert Reyes was there and, as always, believed he was protected by the archangels.

A host of others were there, bare as they should be as they profess a variant of politics we might not all agree on but could agree to respect. When someone goes to a political demonstration, it should be sufficient to feel that one is surrounded by others of the same belief and is therefore protected by number and comradeship."

"If she does not have the courage to march without armed cover for a cause she claims to hold, how can we call her a peaceful protestor? How can we accept the conviction she flaunts as sincere?"

It was such a stupid thing to do. How could we have elected this person to the Senate.

Worst Disaster to Hit the US?

Got this from the Urban Legends Reference Page :)

TV Hoaxed

Got this story while reading the James Randi Educational Foundation's weekly commentary. Olivier Van Cantfort, of Belgium sent the story to the JREF. It was about how a parody site (in French), was able to hoax a Television program from France. Here is the link to the entire story, translated from French, and here are the stated reasons of the hoaxers who did the deed:

• because it was a unique opportunity to make a big joke, kind of like "punk'd" but with TV as the victim, and moreover without having all the means of TV stations at our disposal.


• because the opportunity makes the criminal... The journalist offered us the opportunity for the hoax right away during the very first contact. That he could read the web pages of Destroy-Escort and think that it's real is simply mind-boggling. And if he didn't read those pages before contacting us then it would show a complete lack of professionalism. So, yes, our main reason is this: we created this hoax without any other real reason than because we were given the opportunity, because we belong to communities that are too often stigmatized by television. We weren't able to resist for more than two minutes the temptation to give some TV people a taste of their own medicine by showing that sometimes - if not "often" - what's on television is just nonsense...


• because it was intolerable that such a powerful communication tool - by the size of its audience - didn't go through the pains of checking what they say. As Denise Fabre was happy to remind us all during the show: "When one works in TV, one has to be careful about what one says..." It's a matter of responsibility on the part of the one who speaks and of respect towards those who listen to him through that mass media that is television. The simple presence of our hoax in the landscape of French television raises the question of the authenticity of some of the broadcasts that happen in France...


• because the quest for sensation that drives television channels transforms them in just a succession of images, the veracity of which is no longer the main objective and this is not acceptable for a media that manipulates images.


• because by creating this hoax, we really "investigated" the professionals implicated in our story and it appeared to us that this innocent entertaining show was the work of professionals well known in the French TV world, and because of their recognized professional qualities they shouldn't have fallen for our joke.


• And because there has to be one last reason for all this: definitely because it's been way too easy...

Which makes this story applicable the world over and in all media outlets. Maybe the media, including those in the Philippines can learn form this experience.

Doctors as Nurses

For some good news, Parallel Universes has written about the news reports on Filipino doctors who become nurses and tried their luck abroad. It seems they are being deported back to the Philippines because they are doctors. A lot of them are also failing the nursing exam.

It seems that the mass emigration of doctors that we have all been dreading will take longer than predicted.

Friday the 13th

Just Wondering

I was commmuniting from work yesterday when I suddenly realized that the date was Friday the 14th. This led me to conclude that the day before was Thursday the 13th. This led me to wondering whether the bad luck associated with Friday the 13th will be spread over the 2 days. Will Thursday the 13th and Friday the 14th be half as unlucky as Friday the 13th and will the bad luck during the course of those two days be equal to the bad luck during a Friday the 13th.

Of course days of the week are not usually associated with luck, good or bad, except mondays, which everybody hates, which makes it unlucky, i mean the day itself because if tuesday was the designated first day of work, then everybody will be hating tuesdays rather than mondays, but this pragraph is leading nowhere. :)

The number 13 then is the culprit, 13 has long been associated with bad luck, but what makes Friday the 13th more unluckier (double redundancy) than thursday the 13th? And is there a hierarchy of unlucky days? Will days close to Friday, be unluckier than days further from Friday the 13th? Will Thursday the 13th for example be unluckier than Monday the 13th? Is there a mathematical formula to determine the ratio of bad luck between days that falls on the 13th?

Does a month that have a Friday the 13th more unlucky than a month that does not have a Friday the 13th?

These are the questions that keep me awake at nights. How can I decide courses of action without answers to these pressing question? Ah well, I will just have to muddle through somehow.

P.S.

I realize that with the number of people in this earth, somebody somewhere has probably asked the same questions above, and somebody somewhere has probably posted the answers on the internet, but I was amused enough that I do not want to know the answer right away. when I get around to hunting for the answers, I will update this post. If somebody already knows the answer, give me the link and I will update this post.

Thanks.