Harken back to CPU Biology and World Issues...

I had meant to write about this when I read it... but i only just remembered.

McDonald's does McPHDs

David Fairhurst, the chain’s chief people officer, said that the company’s new power to award qualifications made it “a university in its own right”.

“One day I’d love to see us doing a PhD. I definitely think we can go as far as we can,” the Telegraph quoted him as telling the Financial Times.

Somehow, deep down inside this arts-embedded self of mine, I felt a twang of -- what was it, panic? despair? fear? -- as I realised my worth had just dropped once again.

People will no longer make arts students jibes about how we're gearing for a life serving greasy fast food.
With qualified McDonald's degrees,

WE WON'T EVEN BE ABLE TO GET THOSE JOBS...

Especially if we're concerned over artsy issues like GE food...

Oh, look. A convenient segue into the issue of genetically modified food!

Well, you get my take on it, anyway, I personally don't have a big issue with GM food. I see it like, instead of taking years to breed certain traits into things, you just use scientific surgery to cut out the desired gene and plop it right in there. Of course some of them are just pointless and self-serving (think glow in the dark pigs)

As if little Mr. Piggy didn't have enough trouble trying to get laid. Now she thinks he's Asian.

But most of our food is relatively cheap thanks to genetic engineering. Did you know that strawberries are made frost-resistant through a fish gene? Yup. Apparently it helps them resist the cold so your strawberries can last through the winter.
I guess my only issue would be that you never know which one of the genes taken will carry on allergies too. Wikipedia told me that some workers in cotton plantations started getting reactions to the GM cotton because there was a brazil nut gene inside. Turns out allergies are transferrable. So if you go into sneezing and rashes after buying a relatively safe t-shirt, it might be your peanut allergies kicking up.

Or swine flu. Oh look, another convenient segue into new diseases!

Last scientific nugget for the day. I was highly suspicious of this fact for the longest time, thinking that all this swine flu (oh sorry, H1N1) stuff is highly overrated and really due to hype. [Don't you find society at large has a morbid fascination with anything new? New iPod! Crazy hype around it. New Idol! Crazy hype... New disease! It's the latest thing on the block...]
Anyway, I finally found something that backs me up:

Most swine flu cases so far have been pretty much like normal, seasonal flu. Swine flu and seasonal flu share symptoms, and spread the same way.
In a typical U.S. flu season, an average of 36,000 people die of flu or flu complications, and about 200,000 people are hospitalized. Swine flu hasn't come anywhere close to that.

My point being, new disease: we don't know how it could mutate and how best to fight it - fair enough. But if you're going to worry, there's a higher chance of you dying from the common cold than from swine flu (oops.. H1N1). And while we're at it, a higher chance of me dying while driving on my way to work than dying on an airplane.

In conclusion, mum and dad (not that you read this), I REFUSE to wear a face mask at the airport!

Oh look, final convenient segue into flights!

I'm flying to Aceh for work in about 2 days. This will be good because:
- a travelling job, what's not to love?
- out of the office, what's not to love?
- it will be really great to see what i would call ground zero of the tsunami, 5 years on
- we're supporting a project that cultivates seafood. Read: Free crabs, lobsters and fish.
- you are now deadly jealous of me and will curse the diseases of the world on me.

Anyway, expect not more than the usual silence, failing which, those be some mighty curses.