dr know it all

i must admit, before i continue, that although this phenomenon is most prominent in american tv, it'll really happen in any country, due to the fact that people, in general, are sheep. so please, help me out here, since when do doctors practice on tv? i'm talking about that asshole in scrubs who is featured on oprah who gives sermons on everything from gastronomical pains to the latest flu scare. you're a fucking doctor. you can't possibly be a specialist in all these things. that either makes you (a) a liar, so your advice is really yap yap or (b) incompetent, meaning that a trained earthworm can do what you do on the show. i do, however, concede that you may have a life outside tv. after all, you're only on the show every couple months.

what really riles me up is that complete show called doctors. they diagnose people and give advice on tv every week.

seriously? are they pretty boys (and a gal) who failed at their practices? surely a successful surgeon doesn't have the time to shoot a weekly show. who are these monkeys and why should we listen to them? and the problem is that people do listen to them. see although this originated in the us, it will work in any country because people are, well, sheep.

note: dr phil is borderline in this case, because while he poses to be a doctor and listening to him may cause an increase in blood pressure and the urge to gouge one's eyes out, he doesn't give any real medical advice. he's like a grumpy grandfather who finds losers and explains to them why they're losers. i once heard he's like a detective interrogating people. police drama never hurt anyone.

harry potter - college freshman year edition

my aching head woke me up. i could tell it was morning - light was seeping through my eyelids - but i had no idea what the time was. i didn't want to risk antagonizing my throbbing head with a sudden rush of sunlight, so i kept me eyes shut, steadying my nerves for opening them.

eventually the promise of caffeine and nicotine inspired me to risk getting up. i rolled over away from the window, dangled my feet over the side of the bed, and slowly peeled my eyes open. i squinted, attempting to reduce the influx of electromagnetic energy onto my retina, and was able to keep my eyes open without my brains exploding. i took a cigarette out of the pack and lit it, inhaling deeply, forcing my mind to concentrate on something other than the pain. my hand alternated between holding the cigarette to my mouth and massaging my temples. lightning on my forehead or not - alcohol gave me a hangover like any other guy.

last night was slowly coming into focus. that was one hell of a freshman welcome party. then two things happened simultaneously: i noticed i was naked and i was startled by the sound of someone stirring in my bed. whipping my head around wasn't the wisest of my moves that day - exploding pain - but neither will it prove to be the dumbest. i hadn't noticed her there, but hermione lay in my bed, her hair all over the place. fuck, my head hurt. i fell out of bed, in the process nearly setting the room on fire when i dropped my smoke. i'm guessing the sound of my fall and my constant repeat of fuck, even under my breath, eventually woke her up.

"where am i," were her first words, eloquently followed by "what happened?"

then she saw me sprawled there, wearing a facial expression that i'm sure could've been described only as dumb-struck, and nothing else.

"why are you naked?"

in addition to hangovers, alcohol generally causes slowing down in the thought process. i fumbled around the room looking for my boxers, still muttering the word fuck over and over again, while it slowly dawned on her why i was naked. she took a peek under the cover and realized that we were both naked, and started chanting the fuck mantra with me.

ever wonder why meds are so expensive?

well there you have it:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/plos-dis010208.php

a little dated but valid nonetheless.

career magic quadrant

i was reading a book the other day, and one of the characters was a lawyer. he was pondering the idea of how moral he was, how he bent the rules, and it got me to think of what that means, and how different professions treat the matter of morality differently. in addition, it got me thinking that there are different levels of belief in the morality of what is done - surely the carpenter doesn't think about the meaning of what he does as much as the policeman might.

so how do we summarize this? in a magic quadrant. i stole the idea from gartner, but it works pretty good here. i wonder if they'll sue me. there is one thing i'd like to add: how the belief of the individual differs from the view of society, but i couldn't keep the graph simple and add that info. alas, it will have to work without it.

in any case, let me explain the axes and the meaning of each.

the horizontal axis describes morality. on the right lie the professions that are truly ethical, with their motivations and rewards being uncontroversial and generally agreed upon. to the left are the consequentialism, whose ends always justify the means. the means are almost always questionable and the ends are narrowly and selfishly beneficial, if that at all. those in the middle carry little or no moral value attached to their profession.

the vertical axis is how deeply the professional believes in his or her morality. to the top are those who strongly believe in the (a)morality of what they're doing, whereas at the bottom are those who cannot decide - or to whom it doesn't really matter. in the middle, of course, are those who, in terms of morality, don't feel much about what they do at all.

enjoy (click to enlarge).


update: there seems to be some confusion on the issue of the axes. my bad. the horizontal axis is the objective overview of the morality. the vertical axis is the subjective belief of the professionals.

want something fun to do?

just drink water from a bottle. drinking from it is even more fun than drinking from a normal water.

http://www.camelbak.com/drink-study

wtf age is this that describes water drinking as fun?

may they burn in their personal hell

i live in dubai. it's not bad in general, except we have etisalat.

etisalat is the most expensive, least efficient and most horribly over-subscribed service provider in the region. we're stuck with them. i don't have the choice of going anywhere else. i call and yell till i'm blue in the face to get someone to get to my house to fix a connection that's been down for a week now, but it's useless. this is a summary (and i do apologize for the length - it's needed to highlight the pain i went through):

call 1, tuesday 11th:

"my internet is down"
"ok what's the brand of your modem"
"siemens blah blah blah"
"are the lights on?"
"yes"
"ok connect your laptop directly to the fiber optic modem"
"ok"
"now enter your username and password"
"i don't know them"
"ah you need to reset your password"
"how?"
"go to www.e4me.ae and place a request there, then call e-services help desk and ask them to reset it"
"ok... but you know the dhcp on the modem isn't working at all, so it's not a password issue"
"no sir without a password i can't help"

of course they don't tell you how you're supposed to access the website without an internet connection. luckily i have my trusty mobile. i login and reset the password. i call the call center after that.

call 2, tuesday 11th:

"i reset my password and i'm calling you"
"why?"
"the call center told me to"
"no if you've accessed the website there's no need"
"ok, do i need to do anything else?"
"no, it's ok, but it needs 24 hours"
"24 hours to reset a password?"
"yes"
"ok thank you"

call 3, wednesday 12th:

"my internet is down, and i called yesterday, and..."
"ok what's the brand of your modem"
"siemens blah blah blah"
"are the lights on?"
"yes"
"ok connect your laptop directly to the fiber optic modem"
"ok"
"now enter your username and password"
"entered, still fails"
"ah"
"as i've told your colleague yesterday, the dhcp isn't working"
"ok then we'll need to send a tech, please take the complaint number, someone will contact you"

silence all through thursday, so i call on friday - what an idiot expecting them to work over the weekend.

call 4, friday 14th:

"sir no one has called"
"sir the complaint needs 2 business days, and since you logged the complaint on wed, then you had thursday and friday is off, so you may expect a call on saturday, but they work half-day, so maybe sunday"
"ok thanks"

call 5, sunday 16th:

"i have a problem with my internet and you've promised to send a tech and no one's here"
"sir what kind of modem do you have?"
"no, no i don't want you to fix it, i just want to know where the tech is"
"account number"
"blah blah blah"
"ah sir, someone will call you"
"i have called a week ago and still no one is here"
"sir they need 2 working days to get there; you called on wednesday and friday and saturday were off, so today is the second business day"
"but i called on friday and you told me that sat is a working day"
"no sat is off"
"ok when can i expect the call"
"within 2 days"
"yes, today is the second day, what time"
"i don't know sir i don't have their schedule"
"ok how about you give me their number, i'll call them"
"sir they don't have a direct number"
"ok... how do you get in touch with them?"
"we file the complaint and they get it" (in other words, magic)
"ok, so can you please put a note that i asked for a follow-up?"
"ok, done"

call 6, sunday 16th:
"i have a problem with my internet and no one has called"
"sir account number"
"blah blah"
and i swear he asked me this again "sir what brand of modem do you have?"
"no no i don't want you to fix anything, i just want to know when you'll send the the tech"
"well, sir, what lights do you have on the modem"
*facepalm*
"i tried it all, i used a wire, i connected directly to the modem, i tried all the diagnostics 15 times and it's still not working, i just want to know where the tech is"
"ok sir, please take this tracking number"

call 7, monday 17th"
"no one has come"
"i see here that you've filed to complaint on wed"
"yes, that's what i said, now where is the guy?"
"sir i've made a rush comment, here is the tracking number"

and here i am writing this blog from work. needless to say, it's still not resolved but i do have 3 tracking numbers and i know the exact key combination on their ivr to get directly to a live agent. ha! take that etisalat!

how did that idiot get up there?

i find myself asking that question more often these days. you would meet someone in a respectable position in a company, and the first thing you think of is this: how the fuck did you end up here? obviously, you have no brain. it is quite apparent that your iq rivals that of a dyslexic pigeon. yet, despite all challenge you have climbed the corporate ladder.

i find there are three prerequisites for said idiots:

1. higher education at a good school: yes, nothing says smart like a good degree
2. charm: how to make nonsense sound a little less ridiculous by looking good
3. no sense of self-worth: only approval form other people is what really matters

they follow a simple schema:

1. keep moving: if you stay in one place long enough, someone will notice that the stapler has more common sense than you
2. keep moving again - move up by moving sideways: face it: since the database backup server contributes more to the company than you, the only way to move up it is to move companies. never stay in one place more than 2 to 3 years
3. learn and like what an ass tastes like (i mean that in the bootlick sense, not the literal sense)

the result is what you see in everyday life: idiots in high positions.

more american idiots

yes, it's that time of again. americans make it easy for me to pick on them, really.

cnn has a weird feature where people send in answers to a provocative question (not sure if it's text or twitter or some other "in" shit). so cnn asked the question "are you willing to sacrifice some of your rights to help the effort against terrorism?" and i caught two of the responses. needless to say, these were americans at their best:

"if necessary, but constitutional rights are inalienable!" way to go learning a big word like inalienable. so dimwit, what rights are you willing to sacrifice? ones scribbled by 3 year-olds? your rights are constitutional by definition.

"of course, because if we don't the terrorists will win." who are those mysterious people known as the terrorists? win what exactly? does the average american really believe that there is a species out there out to get them? news flash: there are no "terrorists", they don't want to "win" anything. the only ones in a war are your representatives in government, waging a fight against a vague image of an imaginary enemy. another news flash: you'll never win because there's nothing to win.

right-click

set as desktop background. that's how you change the wallpaper on your windows desktop. no one has any excuse to retain the piss-ugly green field xp desktop. in fact, there are some tools that will randomly set wallpaper from your pictures folder.

note: do NOT set a picture of your kids on your desktop. no one gives a fuck.

what you'll never see on tv

csi: after the corpse is fished out of the river, the chemicals found in its hair are not unique. in fact, just common salt and pollution found all over town. case closed.

sci fi series: the flagship just patrols the space. a strange artifact in encountered and turns out it's just a rock. alarms aren't sounded.

sci-fi alternative: the flagship runs into a superior alien ship, to be destroyed in a cloud of shrapnel and vapor.

medical drama: as the patient is rushed into the emergency room, the doctors converge on her, yelling medical statistics and diagnosis. 3 minutes later, she passes away.

young rich people show (90210, one tree hill, the oc): the guy falls in love with the girl and marries her without complications.