Helpful hints for students

1. Suggesting that the McDonaldization of education is good because fewer lecturers are needed will not gain you high marks or indeed warm feelings of regard from the person marking your essay.

2. The US Government does not own 'Skype, Microsoft etc.'.

3. Africa is not a small country. It's a massive continent of 47 countries.

Also: this gem from Zoot Horn:

If you get an email from the NHS warning you that you can catch swine flu from canned pork products ignore it. It's just spam.

Relax, we're in safe hands

…because my institution has set up a pig flu committee ('Pandemic Flu Management Team'). Let's hope they don't catch it first, or we'll all die of management failure. The advice seems to consist of 'stay in your homes and surf the web'. The question is, will it be a short fat pandemic or a long thin one (that's an obscure institutional joke that only colleagues will get).

Panic! We're all going to die! But money can be made!

Cynical, immoral and unprofessional, anyone? Stockpiling anti-flu drugs then doing online prescriptions for patients they haven't examined? Just think, if you were a panicky, devious hypochondriac, you could google the symptoms, fill in the boxes, stockpile drugs which are in short supply, or take them and therefore reduce the effectiveness of the antivirals (thanks for the correction Ben) when the actual illness reaches the population. I wonder if this disgusting company has thought of this possibility (that's sarcasm, by the way).

Oh yes - and they're charging £50: a mere £43 more than the standard prescription fee on the NHS.

Swine flu cause discovered

It's the Democrats. Well, according to Michelle Bachmann, the elected representative for Minnesota. She's the lady who called Obama unAmerican, amongst other crazed ravings. (Via Pharyngula):

I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter, and I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence.

Turns out she's wrong too: Republican Gerald Ford was in the White House!

Info - and a pun

Decent Doonesbury take on Twitter yesterday.

Earthquake in Mexico City just now - swine flew...

A Camera Obscura CD - My Maudlin Career - just turned up in the post. Sweet.

Swine flu update

All showings of Babe in the City are henceforth banned.

Kermit has quarantined Miss Piggy.

Porky has been put to the sword.

Squealer, Napoleon and Snowball have been purged - they will never have existed once the records can be altered.

Piglet ran away in a cowardly fashion.

The third little piglet and the wolf have succumbed to the fever, as has Charlotte, thanks to Wilbur's cross-species overfamiliarity.

This flu clearly originated with The Black Pig - the northern Irish symbol of evil and death.

Swine, women and song

xkcd has a beautiful take on swine flu and Twitter (which is also spreading like a disease).