(s)whine flu

27 people have died from H1N1 in the United States.  As terrible as that is, on average 36,000 people die from the regular, annual strain of influenza.  When I first heard about Swine Flu, I got the impression that this was something similar to the plague.  It was spreading quickly across Mexico, and onto Europe.  Then, during the mass hysteria, I watched an interview with a CDC official state that the H1N1 Virus was similar to the regular flu and the most likely to be affected will be the young and elderly.

This gave me pause.  For the moment, the impression of H1N1 I got was  that it was deadly and unstoppable.  If it’s just like the regular flu, I don’t think people in the US should worry.  Meanwhile this shit show continues and people are still freaking.  Schools have been closing left and right.  This seems like a good idea, but then you find out no one is watching the kids at home.  They leave the house and parade around the mall.

I’m not quite sure that makes a whole lot of sense.  It makes me question the severity of Avian Flu… Meanwhile swine flu seems to have infected less people than the normal flu kills annually.  It has infected far less than the seasonal flu hospitalizes.  

JJRC

Twitter my time away

There are several instances where I have caved. I caved when I joined Facebook. I caved when I started this blog. I have recently caved with Twitter.

I am still of the school that believes that Twitter is a waste of time for young people who have nothing better to do, but I still joined. It makes me a hypocrite… a hypocrite who needs a waste of time because I have nothing better to do. Sure, I have this blog, but that doesn’t really cut it anymore. Writing has become somewhat difficult these days. How I managed to set the bar for my own writing that is too high is beyond me. Mind you, I write quite frequently. It just never manages to grace the pages of this great blog for the reason that I think this is a great blog (at the very least some of the entries are sort of funny).

I don’t know enough about Twitter to be comfortable with it… though in all honesty if Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears can figure it out – I am positive I can manage my way around it. I figured, I’ll get addicted to it within the next two weeks, and hopefully that’s that. It’s so odd to have this cyber existance. Also, it’s surprised to see how many people actually have this alternate. Like Facebook, it lets you sort through your contacts and pick people who are in your address. Since GMail updates my address book automatically – there are easily a couple of hundred people on there. As I sorted, I found people with whom I attend college and high school. Mashed in there were my co-workers.

It’s pretty mind blowing that I can update people what I’m doing from my phone.  I’m not entirely sure what my first tweet will be.  Perhpas I’ll be drunk and tweet away – embarrassing myself in a completely new dimension.  I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into, but I’m sure I’ll laugh about it when I’m 94… probably because I’ll laugh at anything by that age.

JJRC