The big news topic this weekend was the outbreak of swine flu, which has hit Mexico hard already and via Mexico, has spread to the United States.  Experts are troubled by this flu outbreak and how quickly it has spread from person to person, so in the spirit of public health, CNN has a FAQ on the deadly new flu outbreak.  It hasn’t spread in big numbers to the US or Canada yet, but I’d advise travelers to reschedule that trip to Mexico City if at all possible (or at least pick up some urban survival gear if you do go).

I actually missed the big news on it this weekend and only heard about it this morning when a friend confessed to being petrified of a giant disease pandemic.  Of course, I made some references to Randall Flagg and The Stand, but secretly?  I’m a bit worried, too.

I checked Google Flu Tracker this morning to discover that we’ve had a relatively mild flu season so far.  I guess that’s because Captain Trips has been incubating in some secret Mexican germ warfare lab.  If you get sick, just stay home.  Your coworkers will thank you for not spreading your diseases to them, and it’s not like you’d get much work done in between mugs of TheraFlu.

Tags: flu, swine flu, pandemic, flu outbreak, diseases, health, pandemics, swine flu facts, captain trips, the stand

Margaret O’Callaghan had a need for a new type of kitchen utensil.  The round-bottomed ladle and the spatula are just not good enough when you’re dealing with things like crock pots and serving dishes.  That’s why she invented the scrudle, a combination ladle and spatula designed to scrape the deliciousness from any sort of cooking […]

Every day, Tom Baker deals with the issue of traffic.  Given Southern California’s massive concentration of cars, it’s no wonder that Baker would get frustrated dealing with the daily traffic routine.  That inspiration resulted in these great images of Los Angeles without the cars.   Here’s the full image gallery, and it’s awesome.
I love the […]

Have you ever wondered where salt comes from?  I mean, salt is in everything from fertilizers (potassium chloride) to the dinner table (sodium chloride), but where does it actually come from?  Why, salt mines, of course!  They’re not just for horrible industrial accidents or mad scientist lairs anymore.  English Russia has a great look inside […]

For some reason, the kids these days love the Twilight saga.  Believe me, it pains me to call it the Twilight saga, because to me a saga is a great, sweeping work of masterful literature, not a teenage vampire romance novel.  Either way, the latest movie based on the Twilight books, New Moon (officially The […]

People worry about all kinds of crises as the world ends, but as the movie Zombieland taught us, sometimes it’s our snack foods that are most important to our happiness.  For Tallahassee, it was his beloved Hostess Twinkies.  If your favorite food is the humble Eggo waffle from General Mills, then you’d best head to […]

I love goofy little websites like this.  From the Wal-Martians to quality engineering, I love a nice, odd corner of the Internet to investigate.  If it’s something that can result in some comedy thanks to random word generation, even better.   That’s why when Mysterio offered to predict my holiday gifts, I jumped at the […]

Linguist d’Armond Speers is an odd bird.  How else could you explain someone that taught his son Klingon as his first language? For the first three years of his son’s life, Speers spoke to his son only in the fictional alien language Klingon from the Star Trek universe.  His reasoning?  It was an experiment to […]