America has once again witnessed another repulsive crime that would make your stomach roll over. In Richmond, California, police say that as many as 20 people were involved in or stood and watched the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl outside a California high school homecoming dance Saturday night.

2 teens have already been arrested and more is to come as the investigation goes underway. A $20,000 reward is also being posted for anyone coming in with information that can lead to information that helps arrest and convict those involved.

“We will be making arrests continually as we develop probable cause,” said Richmond Police Lt. Mark Gagan. “With this number of people implicated in the incident we’re going to be making arrests on an ongoing basis.”

It is worth noting that the rape happened in public in a high school campus. While the brutality of the crime is highlighted by the number of people involved. It is said that 10 people were directly involved in the assault while 10 people watched the “live show” without notifying the police of the undergoing crime which lasted for over 2 hours.

Witnessing a crime and not telling the police is almost unthinkable. But witnessing a crime and enjoying it for 2 hours is diabolic. Such people is society’s abomination. Unfortunately, being a bystander at the crime scene and not informing the authorities is not a crime.

The victim remains in the hospital and is already in a stable physical condition. Emotionally, however, I doubt that. Having a group of people rape you for such a long period of time while others do not bother to help but simply watch can dramatically change her outlook of life. Talks of economic recovery dominate the news but what about the recovery of moral standards?

Watch the 2 videos below from CNN to get more details:

Crime “watcher” not prosecutable?

Well, yes you read that right. Reader’s Digest is filing for bankruptcy. According to The Wall Street Journal, Reader’s Digest has “reached an agreement with its lenders on a restructuring plan that it will likely complete under a prepackaged bankruptcy filing in order to reduce its debt.”

Much like any other printed media that failed and became bankrupt, Reader’s Digest would need to become more of an online presence rather than an offline one. This is to ensure that they survive since offline media is being forgotten by the day and becoming less appealing to the younger generation.

[image byhttp://ec.mashable.com]

Image by Dan Queiroz via Flickr

Are Swine Flu masks and respirators effective? Do they help stop the spread of swine flu? There is no scientific study to prove that. However, it does help to alleviate fear in a lot of people. Why? This is because they think that wearing one will help stop the virus (in this case the AH1N1 virus) from reaching them through their noses or mouths.

To help understand how masks and respirators might help us, we need to know the answer to this question - how big is the A(H1N1) virus and can it fit and go through the tiny holes of our masks and respirators? The logic is simple, if the virus can’t fit through the holes then it won’t be able to penetrate our body thru our nose or mouth. But then again as I said just now, this is not scientifically proven so don’t take my word for it.

Let us go back in time and examine the SARS scare for a minute. In 2003, there was a study that said the SARS virus, which is just 100 nanometers in size, can easily pass through surgical masks. Thus there’s every reason to believe that swine flu, at 80 to 120 nanometers, can, too.

However, just like a shield of a warrior can block multiple sword swings during a fight for his life so can masks and respirators. It might not be able to block viruses all the time but could block it many times.

We also need to know the difference between masks and respirators. Masks are loose-fitting that cover the nose and mouth. These include products labeled as surgical, dental, medical procedure, isolation, and laser masks. They help stop droplets from being spread by the person wearing them. They also keep splashes or sprays from reaching the mouth and nose of the person wearing the mask. They are not designed to protect you against breathing in very small particles. Sample of a mask is seen at the picture above.

On the other hand, respirators are designed to protect you from breathing in very small particles, which might contain viruses. These types of respirators fit tightly to the face so that most air is inhaled through the filter material. See below for sample respirator image:

In other words, respirators can filter more than the normal face masks. Due to this, respirators are more expensive than face masks.

But it is interesting to note that some people are getting cool ideas with their masks:

It is up to you if you want to use masks or respirators to help prevent swine flu. As for my case, I’ll definitely think about this. Am I being socially responsible in doing so? Probably.

Good day and good health to you!

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

When you hear of the theory of relativity, Albert Einstein would most probably come to your mind. No theory of relativity is complete without the utter mention of his name. But I won’t be talking about his Theory of Relativity. I’ll be talking about mine.

When I was much much younger, probably during elementary, I heard the theory of relativity from somewhere or someone. Being the inquisitive kid that I was, I researched more about it and came to the phrase - everything is relative. In terms of the real theory of relativity, this refers to how an observers sees things around him/her depending on his speed and displacement (or his point of reference). However, I brought this phrase to another level. I took the word ‘everything’ to literally mean everything.

So how is everything relative? How does my theory of relativity work? Let us take an example. We need to take two of anything for this to work. Say playing basketball and writing a blog post. How are they relative? I see a lot of relativities between the two. For one, when shooting a basketball, you need focus, strength and accuracy. The same can be said about writing blog posts, you need focus, strength and accuracy to be able to ’shoot’ and reach your audiences’ attention and heart.

Let’s go into detail. For a basketball low post move to be successful and to be able to shoot the ball, a player needs good footwork and body strength. A player can back down on his opponent to get nearer the rim, do a dream shake move to trick his opponent and lose him, drop step as a power move to accelerate and dunk to put the ball in. The same can be said with writing a blog post. Your audience is the ‘oppenent’ as they won’t believe a word you say unless you convince them. You could ‘back down’ on your audiences by tackling each and every problem and desire they have. You do a ‘dream shake’ by writing something that is too hard not to believe in and ignore. You ‘drop step for acceleration’ by presenting more convincing arguments that they cannot refute and at last you ‘dunk the ball’ by hard-selling your point into your audiences’ minds and hearts that would leave them nodding their heads in agreement.

So you see basically, my theory of relativity is another way of creating illustrations. In short, you can create illustrations of any two objects for comparison.

This begs the question, how useful is my theory of relativity? Does it solve scientific questions like Einstein’s theory of relativity did? No, mine does not. But it does help you think out of the box when you are stuck with a problem. It might give you creative ways of solving a problem (as it did for me many times past…).

Let’s take an example of a simple problem and relate it to anything I could think of. Let us use the problem of being stuck in a traffic jam and the game of chess. Being stuck in a traffic jam is a problem (at least for me) since you won’t be able to get to your point of destination in the amount of time you normally would. So how do you relate this to chess and solve your problem? In chess, there are numerous ways of removing ‘traffic jams’. One is by simplifying using your pawns. You can eat the opponent’s pawns by equal exchanges. You could also go sideways if the middle of the chess board is ‘jammed’ (too equalized control of the center). So if that is the case, you could go sideways by channeling your pieces via the sideboard (not outside LOL).

The same can be said with traffic jams. You could ’simplify’ or power your way out by ‘eating’ or going forward as quickly as possible, beating other cars to empty spots every time the flow of traffic moves to create small empty spaces. This is clearly seen in the Philippines. Another way is by going ’sideways’. Instead of going forward, you could go ’sideways’ by taking other roads which is probably a longcut but nevertheless free of traffic jams.

These are just simple ways to use my theory of relativity. It would sound very geeky to those of you who think mainstream but for those who think outside the box, here is another way for you to think, another paradigm shift your could try out for yourselves.

Do you know the best way to solve a maze? You probably do. But what is its relation to our goals in life? Let us find out.

When I was young, I solved maze puzzles beginning from the START. If I was fortunate, I get to solve the maze in one shot. But more often than not, I do not. I have to try several times to be able to find the correct and only way out of the maze, to get to the END.

And then I got the idea of starting the maze from the END (I assume most of us did…). And of course, I was able to solve the maze quicker! Though sometimes I do not solve it once due to the complexity of the maze, the probability of me solving the puzzle is much much higher than starting from the START! I felt like was a maze expert.

So now how do you relate this to your goals in life? I’m going to tell you a short story. When I was in college, I took up computer science. This course had a lot of subjects that dealt with mathematics and topics that would pop your brains out. Nonetheless, I had to study them to pass the course. Since I had to study them, I might as well study it good and hard. Make proper use of the time spent studying.

Now, I had a classmate who studies just as hard. This classmate of mine was good. However, I was really surprised when she said that she had no idea what and how to use the things we learned in computer science in real life. She knew how to solve the test, exams and problems in paper but she had no idea how to relate them to the things in life. My point is (this is just a side point…), we have to learn to relate the things we learn in one aspect to another aspect of life.

So back to my main point, what is the relationship between a maze and goals? It is how we solve and achieve them. Just as it is much better and mathematically correct to start from the END to solve a maze, the best way to achieve our goals is starting from the goal itself and work our way backwards.

Let us take an example. Let us say you want to make money online. You want to earn passive income thru the power of the internet. You heard that there is a growing number of people doing this and they are doing so by Adsense and affiliate marketing. So you say to yourself, “Ah! All I have to do is put up a site, splash some Adsense and affiliate code and that’s it! I’ll be living the DOT COM lifestyle”.

Days, weeks and months go by and all you are earning is just measly cents and you give up. You ‘discern’ that the DOT COM lifestyle is just a dream. But what if you started from your goal and worked backwards? What if you started with a goal of say earning $10/month (let’s fix 1 month to be equal 28 days). That is small, but for the sake of an example, let us take that. Say you know that the average CTR(Click Thru Rate) in Adsense is 3%, meaning for every 100 visitors, you get 3 clicks. Say again that each click is worth $0.50 (I am using fixed values here for the sake of simplicity…).

Let us break this down to small simple steps. To earn $10/month means earning around $0.37/day. To get $0.50, you need at least 33 visitors (given the 3% CTR - Click Through Rate). If you do some math, we would come up with 24 visitors. Yes, we need 24 visitors to our site per day to be able to earn $10/month. And all you have to do is bring in 24 visitors to your site. The quality of your visitors coming to your site is another story and another goal to achieve.

This mini lesson does not just relate to making money, it can and should be used in every way possible especially when setting goals. Learn from it and stop shooting arrows blindly at your target.

Don’t start from the START but start from the END to get to the END.