Wowed Beyond Belief at Mumbai Terrorist Attack

It's absolutely unbelievable what has happened in Mumbai. This is an attack that had gone on for nearly 59 hours. Many civilian places targetted, many civilians murdered for what the terrorists claim was their religion.

It's amazing that while the human death toll is at the time of writing about 20 times less than that of the 9/11 attacks, the psychological power of this attack was just as strong, if not more.

These terrorists were faceless, I have only seen a few pictures, and that was when they were in action, with most of the images being grainy.
The best picture that could be found shows a young guy. He looks like a guy I would sit next to in my biology class and would be the type of guy who'd fight tooth and nail to get into medical school. It's hard to believe that indoctrination created what could have been brilliant people who would save the world into people who create more havoc.

Just looking at this attack, it is something that has wowed me. Watching images online for the most part is something very interesting. At the end of the siege at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, there was a cell phone picture of what appeared to be the body of a terrorist who had jumped to his death from the window.

The image of the body with a gun and blood around was very gruesome, but allowed a human element at the same time, something that just wasn't seen in the mainstream media. We heard the term 'gunmen' so often that we were desensitized to it and had the thought that it was just a bunch of raving and well-coordinated lunatics running around with religion as the mentality.

Still, this attack was terrible, and while my scribbling here is any indication of my attitude towards this now-over siege, I'm still stunned...

Kordanifying, Kordanizing, and Kordan in general...

A shame that Jon Stewart hasn't brought this up. It would've been something right up his alley.

If you hadn't heard about it either, then you're not alone. This happened to have happened (Yes, I used the same word twice in the same sentence) on U.S. Election Day, when "Yes We Can" was the moniker, as opposed to "I swear to Allah that I have received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University!"

The culprit was none other than former Iranian interior minister Ali Kordan, a man who claimed to have received an honorary doctorate in law from none other than Oxford University in London! Problem with this is that Oxford is not located in London, it's located in Oxfordshire, a town that's about 55 miles away from London, but whose keeping tabs?

After making this announcement and showing off his degree, which contained the signatures of no less than three professors, none of whom were related to the faculty of law, all published in CAPS LOCK, which makes it look very 'official,' and had a few spelling errors, academics and especially Oxford University started scratching their heads.
After doing a thorough check of their records, Oxford found out that Ali Kordan had not ever received an honorary degree from Oxford, nor had he ever attended Oxford University to begin with!

Of course, with Kordan vehemently defending that he indeed did receive this degree, more speculation came that he ordered this very official-looking degree from a diploma mill that emphasizes life experience over academics.

Anyhow, with this funny episode, I'm reminded of a certain sketch that the Australian group known as The Chasers did. Basically, one of the guys paid $400 to get his dog a degree in medicine, essentially creating a new Dr. Zoidberg!



Anyhow, Ali Kordan has given rise to a new set of words that would be good to use to describe and if you read the London Guardian, this is a good way to bring new words to the English language.

Kordanize (v)
1. To get a PhD without having a Bsc
2. To become an important person (eg. minister) by presenting fake certificate or documents

Kordanification (n)
1. The process of getting a fake degree, especially from a prestigious university (e.g. Oxford)
2. The relationship between happiness and telling a big lie
3, A method to gain self-confidence

Kordanism (n)
1. The philosophy and strategy of telling a lie to a large group of people (e.g. a nation)
2. A psychological method for deceiving people and laughing simultaneously

Kordanic (adj)
1. Happy
2. Self-confident
3. Relaxed

Kordanicaly (adv)
1. In a Kordanic manner

Power stirs corruption in an already corrupt country...

Debt, debt and even more debt

So much is in the news about debt, plummeting markets, big powerful corporations going to the cleaners, etc. There's a credit crisis because banks and predatory lenders aggressively gave those who couldn't afford the American Dream of a house in suburbs, two cars in the driveway and much more. They couldn't afford it and with the interest rates so high, they will be paying interest with no end in sight.

As a result, it's snowballed into the rest of the economy. This is a very simplistic view of looking at this economic crisis.

I can see how bad this economy is. I'm finishing university in approximately 32 days from the date of writing and the prospects of getting a job here is bleak at best.

Luckily, I'm not on any student loans because my parents have helped and I worked over the course of my university career so I'm not in too much trouble just yet.

But, at the same time, I really want to have a meaningful job. Working with the people at the Red Bull Air Race is awesome, but I doubt I'm qualified as a reporter with them because this is just a hobby.

The irony of that above statement is that a fellow named Harold told me that you're a journalist if you can tell a story, you don't need a degree to prove that.

Anyhow, back to debt. I feel for my friends. They are all knee-deep in loans and looking to pay it off by getting a job. But with an economy that's in shambles, how will they be able to?