Inside the Well of Sickness

Some time after Ashton Kutchner climbed to the top of the tweets, I sunk into an abyss which ordinary people might have ordinarily but mistakenly very well said sickness but I refused to be tagged as sick. While trying to find a name proper to adequately describe my situation, time flew by. I hereby send a warm thank you to the crew of House, MD including but not limited to Hugh Laurie, Lisa Edelstein and others. They kept me entertained during that misery.

Ashton Kutchner Becomes Top Tweet

Actor Ashton Kutchner has become the first person to achieve one million followers on Twitter. Kutcher triumphed over CNN in their much ballyhooed race to be the first to reach a million followers on the micro blogging Web site. Kutchner surpassed that benchmark in the early morning hours Friday [17th], narrowly edging out the breaking news feed from the Time Warner Inc-owned network.

We have shown the world that the new wave is here. It is present and it is ready to explode. You guys are all of it because I can't follow me.

Those are the words of Kutchner, a proud revolutionary, the new savior of our planet, spoken in a live webcast.

Britney Spears is close behind and a new-comer to the scene, Oprah Winfrey has started strong and already passed the 100,000 mark.

Tweet is sweet, explosion is imminent, the new wave has come.

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Attempts to Silence Holy Father

France, Germany, the United Nations' AIDS-fighting agency, and the British medical journal The Lancet called the pope's remark that condoms are not the answer to Africa's AIDS epidemic irresponsible and dangerous. The Belgian Parliament passed a resolution calling them "unacceptable" and demanded that Belgium's government officially protest. The Roman Catholic Church opposes the use of condoms as part of its overall teaching against contraception.

The Vatican deplored "the fact that a parliamentary assembly should have thought it appropriate to criticize the Holy Father on the basis of an isolated extract from an interview, separated from its context." A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said: "We are making it clear that the pope and the church won't be intimidated by these criticisms or by media campaigns and will continue to staunchly support Catholic positions on moral issues."

Some unidentified sources have found it surprising that celibates have a say in issues related to sex.

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Thousand-Hand Guan Yin

I have watched various versions of the Thousand-Hand Guan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion but none has touched me like this one by China Disabled People's Performing Art Troupe. All of its performers are deaf. The last thing that these dancers deserve is the word disabled in their titles.

Imagine the challenge when they try to synchronize their every move without hearing the music. It is a living monument dedicated to human will, a compass that points to hard work, integrity and the desire to succeed. An indisputable proof that we as mankind will survive. I know I am a little bit lost for words but you will forgive me after watching the video.



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Have a Cup of Coffee While Reading This

According to a research by two Yale psychologists, John A. Bargh and Lawrence E. Williams, encountering warmth or cold lights up the insula — a walnut-sized section of the brain — and the insula is the same part of the brain engaged when we evaluate who we can trust in economic transactions. The physical sensation of warmth encourages emotional warmth, while a chilly drink in hand serves as a brake on rash decisions. Barth argues that,

One person's perceptions of another's "warmth" is a powerful determining factor in social relationships. Judging someone to be either "warm" or "cold" is a primary consideration, even trumping evidence that a "cold" person may be more competent. Much of this is rooted in very early childhood experience, when infants' conceptual sense of the world around them is shaped by physical sensations, particularly warmth and coldness.

The practical advice Bargh takes away from the study is that important decisions are best taken with a cold drink in hand, because that part of the brain that triggers caution in economic and trust decisions is stimulated by cold sensation. Conversely, if you are planning on introducing your fiancee to mom and dad, pass on the icy martinis in that air-conditioned, glass and steel restaurant; do it over a mug of hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire.

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