What if it wasn’t….

The Emperor of all maladies by Siddartha Mukherjee makes for a more interesting read than just an addition to the nowreading hash tag on Twitter.

I am now half way through the book, and it seems to be the guide to cancer for non-medical professionals or perhaps the dummy’s guide to cancer. The writing style is simple and lucid. The book presents a hassle free look at cancer, making it sound so good that you wish you would get cancer, because it is largely curable, or at least that is the feeling you get as you go through the book.  I am not going to attempt to review the book any further.

What struck me as very interesting was the fact that cancer which is perceived as death and destruction is shown as the anti-thesis of disease, in that it is an uncontrolled proliferation of cells. Cancer is actually a growth of cells and not the destruction of cells. No one has been able to find out how it starts or why it does so.

Given that certain cancers still remain incurable, I am forced to think that Cancer may be just an other evolutionary process in the progress of man. We may be trying to stop the unstoppable in trying to find a cure, and stop the evolution of mankind.

What if it wasn’t meant to be cured? What if we are playing havoc with our evolutionary process? What if we are throwing a spanner in the works?

Whos who

I was at the airport the other day and browsing through the book shop at the arrivals, waiting for an aircraft to land, I came across the Twitter Celebrity directory – 1st edition.

With anyone who’s anyone having a twitter account and tweeting away, and making an event out of breaking wind or even their wildest most inconsequential thoughts, this could serve as the who’s who in the celebrity world. At 6.something KD, I was just wondering if such a publication would have any takers or even make it to a second edition.

Twitter doesn’t still have a chargeable service, though they do have some kind of B2B deals. It is surprising how many ideas have sprung around it and how it has a lot of potential. Now whodathunk it..

National Geographic…not for Kuwait?

I got an email offering a 1 year subscription to the National Geographic magazine for only 15$.
Seemed like a steal, so I clicked on the links and went on to subscribe.
That page, on which I landed had the offer only for the US & Canada.. huh?
OK…there was another link which was for international subscriptions. Great!! they think of everything! So I click that and Kuwait is not there on it. Strange…! Ah yes! they think of everything – ‘If your country is not listed click here for other regions’ So I click again and there is no Kuwait there either, just countries no one would want to go right now!!!…Is this magazine banned here.
I’m going to try writing to them.

Humor cutback!!

Starting issue # 500 (due out in May 09) MAD  magazine will be published only quarterly. An official statement from the magazine by the Editor John Ficarra, said that readers feedback received showed that only every 3rd issue was really funny and so they decided to print only that. Moreover, subscribers will now find that their subscriptions last longer…

Mad started out as an 8 issue per year publication, then went on to 12 and is now scaling back to 4. Initially, they didn’t accept advertisements and ran on the steam of their humor, but later started accepting advertisements though on a very minimum level

The number of pages have been increased. Mad kids and Mad Classics will be stopped completely. MAD which is owned by DC Comics run by Warner Bros. has effected a cost cutting program which could see staff reduced by 10%.

When humor is affected by cutbacks, we must be in real trouble.

Well that explains the missing issues.

Virgin dumps Playboy

The Virgin Group has denied that it wants to buyout the Playboy Group. Hugh Hefner has apparently put Playboy on the  block after it posted a loss, due to the availability of free porn which has affected revenue.
However, realizing the value of what he has Hugh is asking for 3 times the current market capitalization of the company. The deal is for the company and not just the magazine, which means that includes Hef and the Mansion.