Deadly Brain-Eating Amoeba Kills Six

I have recently found out that there are several cases of deaths in United States that are related to brain-eating amoeba called Naegleria, a microscopic organism that thrives on warm, fresh water bodies like lakes. Although cases are rare, the organism enters the body through the nose, mostly from diving into water with Naegleria, and it travels through the nasal passage and eating its way to the brain.

The common symptoms found in victims are headaches, body pain and fever which gets worse as the amoeba eats more of the brain. If caught early, it can be killed with antibiotics but because the symptoms are similar to influenza, it can get mistaken for a common fever. If left untreated, further brain damage will result to behavioral changes to the victim, and eventually death in within two weeks.

Foxnews.com website reports that victims are commonly boys who swims in lakes infested with this amoeba but there is no reason to panic as the cases are rare.

Help Save the Dolphins

Before I climb to bed at night (or morning, depends on my work shift), I make it a point to watch TV for about five minutes before I doze off to slumberland. I browse through Discovery Channel, Travel and Living channel, or catch up on Hollywood or local showbiz news. I was able to watch the Daily 10 this morning, a Hollywood entertainment news show, and decided to watch a couple of news. Later on, the show presented Hayden Panettiere of Heroes and declared (or joked?) of Hayden being wanted by Japanese policemen for trying to save the dolphins.

Whhhhaaattt?

I thought I heard it wrong so having Google just an Alt+Tab away, I searched for the keywords 'Hayden dolphin'. E! News' story about Hayden's attempt to rescue dolphins in Japan came up so I read through the article. What I found out devastated me.

Hayden apparently volunteered to go with animal rights volunteers to go to Taiji, Japan and stop thousands of dolphins from being massacred. In the E! News website, Hayden was crying and telling the press that they could not save the dolphins from the Japanese fishermen who were lashing out at them with a boat hook, eventually forcing them to return to shore.

Wanting for more information, I searched further and saw the website who spearheads this mission, the Save Japan Dolphins organization. They are volunteers who have gathered from all over the globe to help put a stop to this non-sense massacre of gentle dolphins. I watched some of the videos that really made me cry because these killings are inhumane!

The group's website states:

In the Japanese fishing village of Taiji, fishermen are rounding up and slaughtering hundreds and even thousands of dolphins right now.

After driving pods of dolphins into shallow coves, the fishermen kill the dolphins, slashing their throats with knives or stabbing them with spears. Thrashing about, the dolphins take as long as six minutes to die. The water turns red with their blood and the air fills with their screams.

This brutal massacre — the largest scale dolphin kill in the world — goes on for six months of every year. Even more shocking, the captive dolphin industry is an accomplice to the kill.

The extreme cover-up is undermining one of the fishermen’s principal justifications for killing dolphins: That it’s a tradition they are proud of. If they are truly proud of killing dolphins, then why are they so frantic about hiding it? The fact that they hide the bloodbath behind blue tarp, chains, barbed wire and walls of fabric reveals that they are well aware that the dolphin massacres, once fully exposed, will be viewed as deplorable by the rest of the world, including the Japanese people.

Here some pictures of these inhumane activities courtesy of savejapandolphins.org:

This is a picture of Japanese fishermen rounding up the dolphins to a shallow cove to be slaughtered later on for their meat while some young dolphins are to be sold to dolphin trainers for their dolphin shows.

This is a picture of the bloodbath after the dolphins were massacred. The sea has turned red from thousands of dolphins that were slaughtered in Taiji simply because it is a tradition.

How can the Japanese kill these gentle creatures?
For their meat? Because it is the tradition?

Help put a stop to this insane killings of sea creatures! Visit Save Japan Dolphins organization website and take action to let the Japanese government be known of this animal cruelty.Help save the dolphins for the future generations to come.

"A good man takes care of his animals, but wicked men are cruel to theirs."

- Proverbs 12:10

Happy Thanksgiving Day

It is Thanksgiving Day is US today, though I am not an American citizen, I want to greet everybody a Happy Thanksgiving Day!

We have always heard of this special occasion, but do we really know what Thanksgiving Day is? A little quote from wikipedia:

Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a traditional North American holiday to give thanks for the things that one has at the conclusion of the harvest season. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States and on the second Monday of October in Canada.

The first Thanksgiving day occurred in Berkeley Plantation in Virginia in 1619, during the time of British Colonies when a group of 38 English settlers arrived at Virginia and that day was proclaimed as a day of Thanksgiving to God for their safe arrival. The original holiday was not really much of a feast but the popular occasion evolved as time goes by. Most families gather on this special day, even traveling from afar just to celebrate with their families. Today, the most popular symbol for Thanksgiving is turkey, not the country but a kind of fowl similar to chicken but much larger. The day is also known as turkey day for the main course of the Thanksgiving dinner is commonly cooked turkey.

Personally, I am afraid of turkey especially if alive and running towards me. When I was in back in grade school, my school has a backyard where different sorts of plants and some chickens were grown and raised for the nearby convent (my school is an all girls school). We knew there was a turkey locked in a cage because whenever the caretaker leaves the gate open, we would sneak in to see what is beyond the fence. One time, a friend and I sneaked in just for kicks then we saw the turkey out in his cage. The turkey was surprised to see us and became uneasy because of our presence. The turkey started chasing us and we ran and screamed all the way back to our classroom. I was so afraid because I saw how fast those long turkey legs can run. I realized that that turkey was not accustomed to human presence and so it became hysterical when it saw us and became more when it heard us screaming. I never liked turkeys since then.

The Filipino word for turkey is pabo in case you want to know. And if you were chased by a turkey too, I want to hear your story.

What's on TV?

I am not really a couch potato, but there are a few TV shows that I am so excited to watch every week and I never miss an episode. So here I am, with lack of topics to write about, listing my few favorite shows on TV. Some spoilers may apply.

1. Prison Break. On its third season, Prison Break gives that feeling of love and hate while you are watching the show. Lead star Wentworth Miller as Michael Scofield is as hot as Dominic Purcell who plays as his brother, Lincoln Burrows. Season 1 is really great and I expected that the story would stay inside Fox River Prison but the story continued even when they got out. It is a refreshing show to watch because the plots are exciting with a surprise with each episode and breath-taking stories of each character as how they interact with each other. Third season is in its 8th episode, with new characters introduced into the story.

1. Heroes. This one made a huge entrance when it was introduced a year ago. Its first episode made it clear that the series definitely is promising. This show has a few more than the usual set of characters, each with special powers explained as a genetic evolution. Milo Ventimiglia plays Peter Petrelli who has the ability to absorb any ability, somewhat similar to powers of X-Men's Jubilee, but without the tights. The cool thing here is the characters are very normal-looking, except that they aren't, and they are battling their own personal issues like any other normal people. Created by Tim Kring, this show is in its second season, with the same villain named Sylar played by Zachary Quinto, with the same power as Peter Petrelli but more evil :D Another asset of the show is Masi Oka, a Japanese special effect artist slash actor, playing as the Hiro Nakamura who has the coolest power of all - the ability to control the time/space continuum otherwise known as time-stopper. He can travel back and forth history and freeze or speed time. Now that is a power I want for me in case I can have one. Second season is in its 8th episode as of this writing.


2. House. This is one hell of a medical-comedy-drama you would not want to miss. Hugh Laurie plays as Dr. Gregory House, a doctor who has a bad limp and specializes in Infectious Diseases, who is best known for his sick sense of humor and ability to observe people. This talent of his helps him run his own diagnostics team made of hand-picked doctors played by Jesse Spencer (Dr. Chase), Jennifer Morrison (Dr. Cameron) and Omar Epps (Dr. Foreman). Their job? To cure patients with diseases other doctors can't fix. Dr. House's ability to detach himself emotionally from his patients makes him do unorthodox, sometimes illegal, ways of treating his patients. Now in it's fourth season, House continues to be show worth watching.


3. C.S.I. This crime-suspense show is going strong because it is on its eighth season, with episodes to drive you on the edge of your seat as you try to solve who is the killer. William Petersen plays Gil Grissom, a CSI and supervisor of Nevada's top crime scene investigators who are excellent at their jobs of knowing who and how the crime was committed. This show always makes me wish Philippines has those kind of people working on crime scenes. That would scare the hell out of criminals knowing that these ass-kicking CSI's can prove their dirty deeds. If you like watching shows that make you guess (I know I am), then this is definitely a must-see.

More information about these shows including the schedules are available on their official websites, or you can check out http://www.tv.com. If you are watching a good tv show, share it here. :)

Hey! You!

Yo!

Thank you for dropping by. This is just a quick blog to that everything is running smoothly.

:)