ten-thousandth at one



My sincerest thanks to a certain Google searcher from the town of Evanston, Illinois, where the main campus of the globally-ranked Northwestern University is located, who landed on this lowly weblog as my ten-thousandth visitor.

downtown Evanston, from wikipedia

Thanks to you, my lowly  med school chronicle has recently reached the five-digit audience mark, just four days shy from the first anniversary since my first blogpost on this domain. What a spectacular year it has been! 34% of visitors come from the Philippines, 29% from the United States, and 37% from the rest of the world. 85% of all viewers use Windows OS.



That certain awesome person used Chrome on a Mac while browsing through Google Images and presumably found the comic below interesting enough. He or she then presumably clicked the thumbnail, which lead to the July 2011 blog archive that contained the xkcd comic pertaining to this particularly difficult patient.

from xkcd.com

In that case, I should really thank xkcd for allowing the syndication.


Pati na rin sa lahat ng napapadpad sa aking website nang walang malamang dahilan. Kahit hindi ko mawari ang inyong pakay kung bakit kayo napadaan dito, hindi naman ako magsasawang magpapasalamat sa inyong lahat!

TEDGlobal 2012

Wow, TED just gave me a free pass for the webcast of TEDGlobal 2012 to be streamed live from Edinburgh! Thank you TED! Pure awesomeness.

TEDGlobal's theme for this year is Radical Openness, and I bet that there should be at least a couple of radical talks worth my time, which will be spent away from the medical texts that I have study for a written examination next week which is on infectious and systemic diseases. That means, it'd better be good.

the city of edinburgh. from wikipedia
Among the roster of speakers, I am keen on what Mr. Malte Spitz has got to say about data science. I am quite frustrated with data visualization techniques, and I've got to see his talk firsthand! Off the program teaser, it says that he has been tracking 5-months worth of mobile phone usage, twitter feeds, and blog entries tagged with geolocational vectors which he then made into a longitudinal infographic. It sounds really exciting, right?! I know...

The last time I had a free webcast from the awesome TED team was for the entire TED2012: Full Spectrum conference at Long Beach, California.

the city of long beach. from wikipedia
I was less busy during that time, since the Long Beach event was neatly sandwiched during the modules for ophthalmology and otorhinolaryngology, which almost all students would say are the most benign subjects, in our school at least.

I can still remember a few stand-out speeches from the sessions. Indubitably the most memorable monologues from TED2012, at least in my mind, were done by the following people:







and this has got to be the funniest intermission to have been inserted in a very serious conference like TED:



So there! If anyone wants to watch this live, and you don't want to pay $$$, you can go to my house! Okay?

forty-first TED translation



Mga kamangha-manghang bagay sa ilalim ng dagat, hatid ni David Gallo
TED2007, filmed march 2007, posted january 2008
Translated into Filipino by Schubert Malbas
Reviewed by Polimar Balatbat

fortieth TED translation



Marco Tempest: Usa ka sugilanon nga katingalahan (nga naay augmented realty)
TED2012, filmed march 2012, posted march 2012
Translated into Cebuano by Aries Erioles
Reviewed by Schubert Malbas

thirty-ninth TED translation



Marco Tempest: Ang salamangka ng mga katotohanan at kasinungalingan (at mga iPod)
TEDGlobal2011, filmed july 2011, posted august 2011
Translated into Filipino by Schubert Malbas
Reviewed by Polimar Balatbat

thirty-eighth TED translation



Marco Tempest: Pinagyamang realidad, salamangka sa teknolohiya
TEDGlobal2011, filmed july 2011, posted november 2011
Translated into Filipino by Schubert Malbas
Reviewed by Polimar Balatbat

thirty-seventh TED translation



Arianna Huffington: Paano ba magtagumpay? Damihan ang tulog
TEDWomen, filmed december 2010, posted january 2011
Translated into Filipino by Schubert Malbas
Reviewed by Polimar Balatbat

thank you captain obvious

contrary to claims of this country's president, avoiding china as trading partner is almost impossible.

top importers 2011
china $1.326 trillion
united states $1.212 trillion
japan $752 billion
taiwan $510 billion
south korea $478 billion

top exporters 2011
china $1.639 trillion
japan $759 billion
saudi arabia $604 billion
united states $576 billion
south korea $461 billion

in the eyes of the global economy, china is more important than the philippines. duh.

global shipping network, fortune magazine, may 21, 2012 page 41




















to view the full six-page graphic made by nicolas rapp for fortune magazine, go here.

hans rosling's 53-second talk




this was taken from the tedxsummit 2012 in the city of doha, qatar, attended by many tedx organizers from all over the planet. i've always wanted to be like him - a medical doctor and a statistician - and i still do, but this is wishful thinking from a man with so many numbers swimming inside his brilliant head.

at some point i want to disagree with him, because in my 2 and a half decades of existence the poorest in my province hasn't made much progress. they're still stuck beneath that thing you call the poverty line. multiply their numbers by 70x for the other provinces in this developing nation and by 100x for all other third world countries. easily that's more than 1 billion in the world who are not moving up the social ladder.

that's just something to think about. positive predictions are pretty and all, but when it comes down to facts needed in policy-making, scientists and politicians alike should get a grip at reality, because the truth will set us free.