Category: In the News

You can decide how the world will end!

Recently I came across a news article called Five Ways the World Can End.  (No, I wasn’t searching for it on purpose!   I just happened across it while surfing around. The title drew me in.)

Earth melting from the SunThe picture represents what may happen in about 5 billion years, when the Sun grows so large that it’ll be this close to Earth.   Obviously this will cause the ultimate global warming, and all life will end.  (Ironically, there are scientists already working on this problem, even though we have 5 billion years before it’s an issue.  While it’s good to prepare for the future, there are some other issues we might ought to work on first…)

The article lists some of the standard hypotheses, like a massive asteroid impact, massive volcanic eruptions, nuclear war, black holes, and the expanding sun.  Most of those sound like natural disasters which we would have little control over, except nuclear war, which hopefully won’t ever happen.  But then the article really surprised me.  There’s a link in the article that says:

YOU DECIDE: How Do You Think the World Will End?

We get to decide?!?  Awesome!   I always figured the end of the world would happen when God brings His final judgment to humanity.  Plus, I thought the end of the world was detailed in the book of Revelation in the Bible.  But this is on a news site, so it must be factual, right?  On a side note, I wonder how FOX News got exclusive access to let us vote on how the world will end…  They must’ve paid a LOT of money for the rights to that!

Anyway, I wanted to cast my vote, so I clicked on that link, but unfortunately the comments were already closed.  So I suppose the fate of the world has already been decided…  And that page didn’t even tell us what the winning option was!  Now we’re just left to wonder…

scientists discover a skinny gene

I saw something quite interesting in the news recently : scientists discover “skinny” gene.  If that’s true, then it should be made into a vitamin I can take.   I really miss the days when I had a metabolism, when I could eat whatever I wanted and not gain weight.  But since I got out of college and started working in a cubicle farm, that’s no longer the case.

Now, I know, some of you are thinking I should just eat less and exercise more.   If that’s what I wanted to do, I’d be skinny.  But I enjoy eating.   And while I enjoy some forms of exercise, there’s not always time to do enough of it.  If only I was genetically predisposed to be skinny, then I could eat fried chicken with biscuits & gravy more often.   Oh, and include mashed taters, too, covered with gravy.  Yeah, that’s the stuff.  And I’d order pizza a whole lot more.  I’d definitely eat much better if I was unable to gain weight.  And then I wouldn’t have to rearrange my schedule, giving up fun activities, to make more time for exercise.   And who knows, maybe if I wasn’t overweight and thus had more energy, I’d do more exercise-type activities.  As it is now, exercise makes me feel tired.

So I’m looking forward to being transformed into a skinny person by the benefits of cutting-edge science.  They need to hurry up with it, because I think a lot of people need this.

dream job – get paid to be a tourist

If you’re able to take a couple months off work and go to Orlando, you can get paid $25,000 to be the ultimate tourist.  You just have to ride all the rides, tour the attractions, eat at the restaurants, and enjoy all the spas.  You just carry around a camera and camcorder, and you write blog posts about your experiences.  So basically you’re on a two-month vacation, plus you document it.   Tough job, huh?

FYI, Orlando is the home of Disney World, Universal, and SeaWorld.  I’m thinking I could do this…

the danger of cleaning a shared fridge

I used to work in a corporate environment, where a whole floor of people had to share the same refrigerator.  As you might expect, people sometimes forgot about their food and left it in there for a long time.  But a policy was developed that the fridge was cleaned out at the end of every week.   Apparently the AT&T building in San Jose, CA, didn’t have such a policy.

Recently an office worker was cleaning the office fridge, and the resulting smell was so noxious that 28 people needed treatment for vomiting and nausea, and 7 were sent to hospital.  I’ve smelled some stinky stuff before, but that’s inconceivably bad.  Actually, that’s beyond stink — that’s some stank!  They had to evacuate the entire building!  And it gets even worse — the hazmat team was called in!

When I lived at “the bachelor pad” in college, the fridge occasionally got out of control, and we joked about leftovers trying to conquer the fridge, but it never actually happened.   But obviously the mold did take control of that office fridge and required professionals to defeat it.

The irony of that story is that the person cleaning it didn’t get sick, because she couldn’t smell due to allergies.

There’s probably a moral to the story…