Real life suspended animation

In my latest article for SC Global Group Innovation Institute, I discuss suspended animation and how it is about to become a reality for a team of US surgeons.  

The technique that is being used for these human trials, is derived from a study done back in 2000 which was conducted on pigs.  90 percent of the pigs in the study survived the cooling technique, enabling their otherwise life threatening wounds to be successfully treated.  

You can read about it here:

http://www.scglobalgroup.com/innovation/2014/suspended-animation-becomes-reality/

(And have a quiet giggle at how I successfully managed to slip in not one, but two Star Trek references!)

DEF CON Hermit

I'm antisocial at the best of times, but occasionally I find human interaction almost completely intolerable.  My usual level of hermit will rarely exceed 'Operation Hermit' or 'Operation Extreme Hermit', but last week the combination of having to re-organise the entire house, pack up a family members house, catch up on all the work I'm behind in and... well... people just got too much.

So I declared DEF CON Hermit.

The one thing that gets under my skin like nothing else does, is the feeling of being overwhelmed and then having people hassle me while I'm feeling overwhelmed.  I thought that declaring DEF CON Hermit would stop people from annoying the crap out of me.

I was wrong.

Apparently telling people to leave me alone only encourages most of them to bombard me with facebook messages, text messages and emails even more than they usually would.  I'm not going to lie, this has pissed me off.  A lot.

I get that people don't really get the whole introverted hermit thing, but even if it's not something people can't understand, it's not that hard (in my opinion) to respect it.  Or try to.

And every single message or email I get, just puts me in more of a bad mood and makes me want to stay away from people for longer.  I'm hoping that it'll die down soon and they'll leave me be.  But I highly doubt that.

In the meantime, my inbox can continue to fill while I avoid it.

It's hard being antisocial sometimes.

Three word budget: For battling billionaires.

With the release of the 2014 budget, the Australian government has shown yet again how out of touch with reality they are, and the depth of their selfish callousness and cruelty.

With big cuts to foreign aid, family payments, medicare and benefits, universities, pensions and hospitals, it seems that the only Australians who will benefit from these cuts are those who are wealthy, in perfect health and without dependents.

But, let's face it, the budget is almost exactly what we predicted from the government, isn't it? 

After all, these are the same morons who will spend $12b on fighter jets and an undisclosed, but also high figure to keep our precious borders free from those nasty asylum seekers who the media and uneducated bogans tell us are a threat to our way of life.  It's okay though.  With $7.5b cut from unnecessary foreign aid, a whole bunch of them will probably die before they reach our oh-so-sovereign borders anyway. 

Obviously the funds to help out our hard battling mining billionaires, and keep us free from the apparent filth of those seeking asylum need to come from somewhere, so why not effectively eliminate universal healthcare and cut funding to already underfunded hospitals, and universities? 

And let's not forget those freeloading pensioners!  How dare they expect handouts?  But that's all good too, because since rising the (aged) pension age to 70, a lot of them will drop off in numbers before they are able to reach their greedy hands out for freebies since not everybody works an office job and those working in manual labour jobs probably won't even make it to the age of 70.

The solution to these problems is simple though.

Don't be poor.

Don't get sick.

Don't be old.

Don't get educated.

Don't have a family.

I can honestly say, I am ashamed to be Australian these days.