Just click it!

It couldn't get any easier than this: by clicking this link, TNT pledges to donate 19 cents to World Food Program. That's it. No pulling money out of your pocket. Just some microjoules of energy for moving yer finger to click on the mouse button.

19 cents may not sound like much, but it is certainly enough for ONE SCHOOL MEAL for a poor kid in a poor country somewhere (yeah, I admit my ignorance of the fine details).

In case if you don't believe me, and think that this is some stinky scam, go to the WFP site yourself and find out. I congratulate you on your healthy skeptimism though. Too many gullible chumps around nowadays (Yours Truly is sometimes an unwitting subject).

This is sooooo much better than the "oooh, plz plz forward this email to all yer friends, and Bill Gates will donate $xxx to one kid with cancer" shebang.

Calculus of Eeman

Let:

x : perceived spiritual height
t : time, where t = - 9/12 is a busy night for your parents.

v(t) = dx/dt : effort
a(t) = dv/dt : wills/intentions

Some constants, as decreed by The Ultimate Judge:

t1 : milestone of self-accountability.
t2 : when x(t)'s agents of change loses its main player, perhaps leaving only three legacy contributors.

Observations:

Ideally, we want x(t) to be a highly positive function, preferably with positive v(t) and a(t).

I'd say that regardless of how low x(t1) is, as long as a(t) is sufficiently positive, then we have a decent odds of surviving the post-t2 period.

Although a stable x(t) with a high x(t1) is commendable, I find it not as impressive as the case of low x(t1) with high a(t) starting at some point in time, achieving dramatic x(t) growth within short span of time.

Having encountered some living examples, this inspires me to upshift my own a(t) and increase my v(t) so that, God Willing, I'll achieve significantly higher x(t) some day, hopefully before t2.

More observations to come.

moQotD 20060120: Skema

If being skema means following the sirat al-mustaqiim, then
heck yes, I want to be skema!

for non-Malayspeaking readers:
skema: adj, being a straight stick.

And no, I don't want to translate "sirat al-mustaqiim". Google it, and fair chance that you'll get much better definitions than whatever my shallow knowledge can come up with.

Capping smear?

This incident happens too often enough to warrant creation of its own word:

The act of missing its mark when you're trying to cap your pen/marker and ended up smearing your fingers/palm. It might be followed by a small cursing, depending on the temperemental of the person.

So let's see what would be a good word/phrase to describe this phenomenon...:

• capping smear?
• cap smear?
• capping incident?
• capping miss?
• cap miss?
• miscap? <-- hey, got a pun value there!

Opinions, suggestions, all are welcomed. So is an indignant rebuff about first rights to creation of the word... (in that case, *sigh*....)

How much does a little bit of your money worth to them?

Extracted without permission from a UNICEF page. Copyright owner can contact me if you have any issues with this.

$15 a month (about 50¢ a day) can feed three children for almost four weeks.

$25 a month (about 80¢ a day) can provide vitamin A for 7,500 children.

$35 a month (about $1.15 a day) can provide two sturdy tents for families struck by disaster.

$50 a month (about $1.70 a day) can provide clean water for four villages.

$70 a month (about $2.30 a day) can provide lifetime immunizations for almost 50 children.

If you find that spending this amount of money each month is hardly inconveniencing you at all, then please donate! You pledge on your own terms, you decide how much you want to donate each month (heck, even 1 dollar if you insist), and you can choose whenever to stop.

Frankly, to me, this is much better than any subscription contracts I've ever seen.