A controversial idea

The procedure that every successfully-tested medicine should undergo, in order to be able to appear on a drugstore’s shelf is, for understandable reasons, excruciatingly time consuming. It’s needless to say that how many patients lose their life or lead a miserable life during this approval period, which may take years even decades. And the most considerable obstacle is, as expected, the possible dangers and consequences of examining new drugs on human beings.

Now, what if we let those criminals who are passing very long term, even life sentences in jail, to introduce themselves as volunteers to be tested with new life-saving drugs, in exchange for paroles, proportional to the risk they are going to take.

Relax! I’m not suggesting a Nazi-style lethal experimentation on human beings. What I’m saying is, it won’t hurt if they are provided with this CHOICE of cutting down their sentences in exchange of serving to humanity and paying back their debts to the society, instead of pouring their years and the people’s tax money into the drain in enormously costly detention facilities. And since nobody is forcing them to do so, they can always ignore the chance and spent the rest of their lives in jail!

Strange maybe, unconventional perhaps, but inhumane, I don’t think so. Just think about all those lives that will be saved if we just could be able to speed up the drug-approval-process by years or even months. By the way, not only it can be helpful tackling the problem of over crowded prisons, but also the money, being used for building new prisons, can be used to prevent crime in the first place.

Just think about it.

Quote of the day

Seinfeld: I love women, I watch women…Men watch women…we don’t understand them so we think we’d better keep an eye on them!

Why our days are getting shorter?

It’s the end of the March already and I still can’t figure out how the hell it passed so quickly! Some people blame it on monotonous and repetitive life we’re leading these days but personally, I’ve never been more active in my entire life. My daily schedule is certainly more fruitful, fun and comprehensive in every possible way compare to, for example, what I was doing in late years of elementary or early years of high school. Yet I still can remember how I could felt the weight and the length of EVERY SINGLE DAY back then whereas I can not feel weeks and even months right now, although I was leading much more monotonous life back then.

The only explanation that comes to mind is, as we grow older, the same constant units of time, become a smaller share of our life, meaning that if one year, when I was four, was 25% of my entire life experience, as my only comprehensible perception of time, the same one year is now only 3.33% of my entire life so I feel it 7.5 times smaller in value thus faster in speed! Well, surly it can’t be that mathematical but the idea is, as we grow older, our perception of time expands but those units of time (days, weeks, years) are constant so we naturally feel that they don’t linger any more as much as they did before.

That’s my analogy and I appreciate to hear yours, but whatever the reason is, IT SUCKS BIG TIME!

Bravo Honey!

Bravo Honey!
You won,
And I knew you would.

I tried so damn hard,
To show you,
You’re better than what you think.
And you tried harder,
To prove me I’m wrong,

I ignored, ignored and ignored,
And you tried, tried and tried,

So,
Bravo Honey!
You won,
And I knew you would.

But,
Like checking behind the shower curtain,
Though you know there’s no one there,
Or late at night, when nobody’s watching,
Jumping on a swing
To make sure it’s still fun to play,

Sometimes even when you know,
It’s good to make sure my dear!

So Bravo Honey!
You won,
And now I’m sure you did,
Bravo!

Long live The Capitalism!

First of all, I like the show very much. I think it’s smart, funny and well-executed and unlike these days’s stupid popular shows like “Grey’s Anatomy”, which is nothing but a late night colorful soap opera, it has something to say and something to watch.
It’s amazing that how intelligently; they’ve gathered almost all common interests of an ordinary woman in one series, without compromising its quality. But that’s not what I wanted to write about.
Anybody remembers "Peter Weir's" “The Truman Show”? How they made a live show just to place products inside and to advertise them in a subtle fashion?
Well to me, Sex and the city, is the smartest and yet the most blatant real-case product placement that has ever appeared on TV, from “Swear to Channel!” phrase to unstoppable raving about how wearing Manolo Blahnik’s shoes gives a girl self confidence!. But that’s not all, pay attention to all the places- bars, clubs and restaurants- which are being promoted by Carrie or Samantha, not only uttering their names but also their approximate locations, accompanied by a colorful shot from the insides and some comments about how hip they are or how difficult it is to get a reservation or a membership. To this, add some more subtle ads like the slow movement of camera over the Apple’s logo on Carrie’s Laptop whenever she’s writing something and I think you’ll get the picture.

Next time you watch Sex and the city, try to count how many ads you’re being fed, in a half an hour show! It’s simply amazing!

Imperfections

I adore your imperfections,
They diminish you,
from a goddess,
to a women
and elevate me,
from a worshiper,
to a lover

These crafty politicians!

Most of us, Iranians I mean but it’s not confined only to us, have this idea about how politicians all around the world, and especially in the United States and Western Europe, (England as a famous "Daii-jaan-Napoleon-type" example!) have a broad and comprehensive knowledge about what’s going on around the world. We assume that they know all the little tricks and sophistications of different cultures and civilizations and have meticulous models to predict the events and act accordingly, in the foreseeable future. Well, as much as I go through professional analysis and lectures, done by prominent journalists, politicians, political thinkers and even people deeply in charge of managing the world, I can hardly find any extraordinary point or comment or even analysis that couldn’t come to the mind of any ordinary, non-politician, non-expert, who knows enough about the background of the subject and who is simply following the news on a daily basis as a part-time hobby or enthusiasm and sometimes their decisions, considering massive errors in judgment or overlooking some obvious facts, are also strengthening this suggestion that they really don’t know considerably more than what we, normal people, do.
Final word, it seems they are not blessed with any special tool to see the future more accurately than we do yet they have the power to affect the life of millions of people.
It is Scary isn’t it?

Optimum way for traveling to Toronto

If you want to go to Toronto for a weekend, I think I’ve discovered the optimum way Possible:
Using the “Carpool-daily” service on Friday, you can be picked up at 5:45 PM from Namur station and you will be in Toronto before 11:30 PM, so you can still catch up with the rest of the night. (Total cost: 45$)
Now, for squeezing every little drop out of weekend, Use “Coach Canada” Bus on Sunday at 9:00 PM and you’ll be in Montreal, somewhere around 3:30 AM. If you’ve used all your energy as you were supposed to do, there shouldn’t be any problem sleeping the whole 6 hours and a half in the bus. Go home, try to sleep for 2 more hours, take a shower and go to work. (Cost: 51$ Tax included + Cab fare (if you can find any better way of transportation at 3:30 AM, well! Be my guest))

Don’t forget to bring a pillow! That’s the most essential part of all

*Total hours in Toronto: 45 (out of weekend’s 48! WOW)
*Total Cost: Around 100$
*Why you should treat yourself like this? If you’re not in love or don’t have a long distance relationship, couldn’t think of anything but plain stupidity!

Back from Toronto

Well, I’m back. Toronto, as always, was OK but it’s not Montreal. Call it prejudice or whatever, but apart from that lovely distillery district, elegant built-for-tourists Yorkville Street, the cute little café in Kensington that my most recent friend Naz introduced me to and I still don’t know the name of it!, and probably some other interesting places that I still haven’t seen, It’s bitterly unfriendly, it’s uncomfortably huge, and it doesn’t have any character.
Although I have to say, some of my dearest friends live there and that makes it pleasant and I really missed the hot dogs :)