The sad thing is that while one man did what he can, the rest of the world, especially the US, didn’t do anything at all. It was left up to the Tutsis themselves to rid Rwanda of the Hutu extremists who carried out “acts of genocide” as the U.N. calls the mass murder of almost a million.
Today, “acts of genocide” are being carried out in the Darfur region of Sudan. And probably elsewhere too. But has the world learned its lesson and do something? So far it doesn’t seem that way.
Rating: 4/5
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The Pentax Optio WPi is a camera you can bring almost anywhere, almost anytime. It is small, compact, and waterproof! (up to 5 ft for 30 minutes). Wrap it in the optional silicone rubber skin and it’s also reasonably rugged, too. It’s got good camera specs too: 6 megapixels, 3x optical zoom, and 2″ LCD monitor. The picture quality is pretty good. At the default setting, pictures are on the soft side but this can be adjusted easily. Quite good enough for snap shooting use.
This is the second of the “h2o cameras”. The first being the WP. The W10 was already available when I got this camera then but decided to get the WPi because of its slightly more compact size and lower price. As of this writing, the WP and the WPi have been discontinued and the W20 is out.
One gripe I have with the WPi is that it doesn’t have an autofocus assist lamp and thus does poorly at focusing under low-light conditions. Good thing there’s a manual focus feature. Another is that water drops sometimes sticks onto the lens, causing smudged pictures. But that’s what you get for using a camera in wet conditions. You just have to wipe the lens before taking shots.
Rating: 4/5
The last exam was finally done. After a quick snack courtesy of the MBA Program Director, after hasty goodbyes, after three years of studying, taking exams, discussing cases, MBA is finally over. In a way, it was a bit sad. Despite the adversity, it has been quite fun and enjoyable so how could it be happy? But I guess there are no happy endings, only happy beginnings. So here’s to a happy beginning!
Rating: 3/5
Yesterday, some of my classmates and I were having a post-exams dinner at Gerry’s Libis when the question of why we were all drained, tired, and famished after the exams. I mentioned that I read somewhere that the brain consumes a lot of energy. But how much exactly I didn’t know. So I did a quick look up and found the following (from Power Of A Human Brain):
The brain makes up 2% of a person’s weight. Despite this, even at rest, the brain consumes 20% of the body’s energy. The brain consumes energy at 10 times the rate of the rest of the body per gram of tissue. The average power consumption of a typical adult is 100 Watts and the brain consumes 20% of this making the power of the brain 20 W.Glucose is the main energy source for the brain. As the size and complexity of the brain increases, energy requirements increase.
The human brain is one of the most energy hungry organs in the body thereby increasing its vulnerability. If the energy supply is cut off for 10 minutes, there is permanent brain damage. There is no other organ nearly as sensitive to changes in its energy supply.
Incidentally, the question why some people get chubby at MBA also popped up. My theory is that people usually eat a lot after brainwork. Thus they tend to eat more but the energy is no longer needed so it gets stored as fat. The solution, I think, would be to eat a bit before doing anything majorly cerebral :D
