Iron Man IRL is not really desirable

Popeye the Sailor Man helped popularise the idea that large quantities of iron in your diet is a good thing.

While iron is important to make the red blood cells that carry oxygen and serve as catalyst for vital biochemical reactions in your cells, it is NOT of much help for developing biceps bigger than your head.

But the idea of its importance remain, and you can see most processed food are touted to be enriched in minerals (which is what iron is) and vitamins. Have we gone overboard with our enthusiasm for fortified food?

Have a look.



Judging from the video, I'm thinking that maybe a year's worth of breakfast cereal is sufficient to craft a single nail. That amount would kill ya.

Lucky for you, your liver does a fantastic job of getting rid of undesirable stuff in your body (sadly, not the extra 20 lbs obscuring your six pack) and you can do it all without supplements for detox. Yay for physiology evolution!

Iron toxicity is rare; it is usually seen in people who have to undergo high volume blood transfusion because of anaemia. As a deliberate poison of choice, it takes too long to kill the victim, so murderers should stick to something a little bit more fast acting.

However, there have been cases of children who died from iron toxicity courtesy of multivitamin overdose.

Yep, those cute, tasty, colourful, chewy tablets CAN CAUSE DEATH.

After all, children are small and their juvenile livers are incapable of removing excess iron effectively. Makes it easy to build high concentration of iron in their body enough to kill them. Children with their penchant for sweets and crunchy candy often like multivitamins enough to keep badgering you to give them the tablets.

*That* is why those kiddie multivitamin bottles have WARNING LABELS telling you to KEEP THIS BOTTLE OUT OF CHILDREN'S REACH.

You have been warned.

The perils of modern life

I live in a country where hundreds and even thousands of people die (or got maimed) every year from road accidents. Most are motorcyclists, but a good bit are also pedestrians, drivers, and passengers in public vehicles. If you want the figures, go ahead and Google it. It's very depressing.

The numbers say that most of the fatal traffic accidents are caused by human error. This does not mean the non-fatal ones are not caused by human error. It's just that no one died so no one really cared about the causes of the accident, except for the insurance adjusters. Human error usually means the operator of the vehicle had catastrophic misjudgment(s). For example, overtaking dangerously, driving on the emergency lane and hitting a stationary vehicle, taking perilous curves at unsuitable speeds, inadequate vehicle maintenance making it prone for accidents,  the list goes on. One of the major factors is loss of attention while driving, which could be because the guy slept at 4 am watching a footie match and fell into microsleep behind the wheel, or was using the mobile phone, or trying to grab the mobile phone that fell below the seat and so on.

The mobile phone is one of the most amazing addition to the modern life. It has revolutionised how we communicate, the speed at which information (truth and lies) spread, and the number of people who could get connected. The mobile phone had fueled the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement. The mobile phone has helped expose uncomfortable truth about schoolroom bullying, indifferent citizens, rape in real time and much, much more.

This hyper connectivity feeds the pleasure centre in our brain, making us feel good when we get our fix, nail-bitingly anxious when we can't get a hit. Our mobile phones are so versatile: it is our umbilical cord to those we love (or want to talk to), entertainment centre, camera, computer and I am sure you can come up with more uses for your mobile phone. It's no wonder that we love it, have a relationship with it, and mourn when it is out of date (3 months from the date of purchase) and are ecstatic when we get the latest gadget with all the bells and whistles.

Like many, I will bet that when you leave your house, apart from your keys and wallet, you make sure that you have your mobile phone with you, right? Because it has gone beyond a luxury into a necessity of our modern life. We check our mobile assiduously while we are on dates, watching movies, at concerts/funerals/weddings/graduation, eating with our family and even while we are in the loo. We never stopped fondling our mobile phones even while we drive, no matter how our forebrain tells us that it is a dangerous and stupid thing to be doing.

I know it's a bit lengthy for a public service announcement. Nonetheless, it's still gripping and visceral, created by a film-maker well known for making arty films. I swiped the video from here.

That said, I don't know if it will stop me from texting/Whatsapping/e-mailing/playing Word Feud while driving.

Because accidents only happen to other people, right?

Right?

Pornography is to sex ...

... what McDonalds is to food.

An examination of pornography as industrialisation of sex and how it feeds toxic masculinity that actively participates in the vicious cycle of victimisation and sexual violence.



Oh dear ...

Do you want to be another statistic?

Don't text and drive. Don't text and ride either. I've seen motorcyclists frowning intently as they look at their text messages instead of the road. While riding (i.e. in motion).

Just another gentle reminder to fellow Malaysians. And since it is Halloween this week, let's scare ourselves a little with some figures from MIROS shall we ?

For those who favour two wheels propelled by four stroke engines:

• Motorcyclists are twice as likely as motorists to be involved in an accident.
• Motorcyclists are twice as likely as motorists to be badly injured and/or die in a traffic accident.
• Motorcyclist fatalities are increasing on an average of 2% each year for the past decade.
• 25% of motorcyclists who die in traffic accidents are below age 20 (so don't let your children ride motorcycles without licence OR supervision).

For those who favour four wheels (or more) propelled by engines that corresponds to the size of your manhood/ego:

• The number of traffic accidents are on the increase annually.
• The number of traffic accidents with fatalities (i.e. someone or a lot of someone dies) are also increasing every year.
• Malaysians hold the unenviable number of 23 deaths from traffic accidents / 100,000 population.
• Cars and taxis are leading in terms of number of accidents, followed by motorcycles and bicycles, lorries, vans and others.

Many research has been done to pinpoint the cause of traffic accidents and what they all sum up: people are idiots and cause traffic accidents. It may not be you but another jerkwad, but that doesn't mean you are any less injured or dead.

Well, what has been known cannot be unknown, yes? So let's all work together to be less of an asshole on the road; don't matter whether you are on two wheels or more. Cos we all want to get home safely.

Strange fruit

Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday

Southern trees bear a strange fruit, 
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, 
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. 

Pastoral scene of the gallant South, 
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh, 
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck, 
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop, 
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

What could drive people to commit such atrocities on another human being? Is it as simple as us-vs-them propelled by the mob mentality? Quite a number of lynchers in the American south during the segregation era were actually church-going members of the society; they even created memorabilia of the horrifying events. The lynchers of the mentally ill man accused of burning the Quran in Pakistan claimed that they were doing it in the name of Allah. Angry mobs killed African-looking men in Libya in retaliation to atrocities committed by African mercenaries in Ghaddafi's employ. If you are accused of practising witchcraft, don't think that not living in the dark ages or 18th century will save you; people accused of being witches in Africa are still being killed in this modern 21st century.

How does fear and hatred remove your moral brakes so totally that such heinous action can be deemed acceptable?

*contemplates*

Inspired by this article.

I am alarmed, all right

And I'm not even a parent.




Please, if you have boys, be alarmed too. And don't think that your son is safe just because you don't live in the decadent West.

DON'T BE MY VALENTINE

Especially if you got crazy fathers/mothers/siblings/ex-boyfriends/ex-girlfriend/spouse/what-fuckin'-ever.

The Thing!!!!

The Thing has always been one of the scariest movies I have ever seen. Pingu the Penguin is an adorable claymation character. What happens when you merge them?

This.

Be afraid.

Be very afraid.

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

But you gotta admit, this is super cool.

Reality check for elementary schoolers ...

Scrooge, much?

*buries my giggles in my facepalm*



Seriously, I would like to think I am just like the last kid. Just keep smiling in the face of misanthropy!

There is hope!

... in the face of freaky people who don't believe in science.

Totally WTF.

A horror story

Truly the mind of David Shrigley is a wild and fantastic terrain.

Hugh! Hugh! Hugh!

Tonnes of Hugh Laurie and a new-found fear of hospitals coming up once you finish watching this video.

*grin*

Creative, but ...

... decapitating yourself using the tractor loader possibly isn't how Caterpillar envisioned the use of their machinery.

Oh boy.

Way to destroy one's childhood memories ... :'(

How could GQ desecrate Voltron thusly???!

Not to mention that such paper dolls used to be a particular obsession of mine. They were cheap and came in amazing variety from just RM 0.20 to RM 0.50 per set at your local friendly stationery shop. Since the money to get toys (like Barbie dolls) were routed to feed my reading obsession, these paper dolls were my primary toy.

Darn you, Lady Gaga!

*shakes fist*

As if I'm not paranoid enough in rivers ...

... now I hear that crocodiles can traverse oceans. Granted that this was seven million years ago, but since crocodile design hasn't really changed since then, this is pretty scary.

Oh yeah. Crocs are salt tolerant and can survive six months without food. So by the time they reach the beach where you are frolicking innocently, they are starving and you look like a delicious meal.

Humans are doomed.

(Image ganked from here)

Not these crocs, okay? Only scary near escalators.

Is it obvious I am not an animal lover?

 

I like my animals either on my plate or stuffed. Enuff said.

I could ...

... use this video to troll my cousins who are die-hard Twilight fans.



But I ought to be bigger than that, dammit!

The scariest book I ever read

No, it was not Twilight. Nor did it feature any of the usual monsters of the week hunted by the Winchester brothers *dreamy eyes* (even though reading it may scare the crap out of Dean).

Did not feature these darlings.

Eric Schlosser wrote a frank and engaging examination of one of the biggest icons of Americana: Fast Food. Its history unfolds in early 20th century and helped produce some of the biggest self made men in the US, the perfect embodiment of the American dream.

This book exposed the nightmarish side to these success stories.  From unfair business practices that ruins small businesses, fatal food contamination,  hideous and slave-like working conditions, to the globalisation of obesity via fast food and even exploitation of children through advertisement, Schlosser exposed any number of issues that we do not think about when we unwrapped our burgers. Although most of the companies featured in the book refused to officially cooperate in his research, Schlosser was able to persuade a number of the employees of those companies to speak to him; giving him first hand accounts of what lay behind the shiny facade of the big corporations that made the fast food machinery what it is.

Naturally the corporations featured in the book did not take it lying downand fought back with threats of lawsuits and such. Boldly, Schlosser invited them to conduct fact checking and prove any of the allegations in his book as untrue. Although there was much blustering and threats, none of the corporations named in the book took legal action against him. Instead, they launched an online campaign that petered out like a deflated balloon.

What I find most interesting in the book is that even though the successes of the individuals that built these giant corporations underscore the possibilities promised by the American Dream, it came at the expense of the iconic Western cowboys and the freedom promised in the frontiers. As small and medium sized ranches disappear to the pressures of economy, it also diminished the mythical tough men of the West: suicide rate of the American cattle ranchers and farmers are three times the average in the country (refer to page 146). The legendary West featured in films and dime novels are now lost in the mist of history.

Books like Fast Food Nation makes one pause and contemplate one's decisions over things that were previously taken for granted. I don't think a reader of the book would immediately swear off McDonalds and KFC. But perhaps you would scrutinise the fine print even more after reading this. After all, caveat emptor.

Like Dean Winchester often said; it is people who are the worst monsters, not the demons and ghouls and beasties that stalk in the night.

Ear candy in surgery

Medicine is srs biznez, yo. But does it mean you can't kick back and have fun? Of course not.

Enjoy the Laryngologists spoofing Breaking Up is Hard to Do, nurse anaesthetist style.



While we are in the medical vein, we must not forget Weird Al Yankovich's parody of Madge's eponymous hit, Like A Virgin.

Except with surgeons. Pray to God you don't get one of these guys should you need to go under the knife.