Gideon Sundback's 132nd Birthday

In just two days after the Earth Day doodle, Google has placed yet another interesting doodle on its homepage. This time round, its a huge zipper that unzips itself when clicked, splitting the whole homepage into two (kindda like tearing a piece of paper into halves).

Apparently, this doodle serves to celebrate the 132nd birthday of Gideon Sundback, a Swedish-American electrical engineer who developed the zipper.

Earth Day

Earth Day is a day on which events are held worldwide to increase awareness and appreciation of the Earth's natural environment. The name and concept of Earth Day was allegedly pioneered by John McConnell in 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco. It was first observed on March 21, 1970, but in 2009 the United Nations designated April 22 as International Mother Earth Day.

To celebrate this day, Google has placed a doodle of a beautiful patch of flowers on its homepage.

Life is like Cooking

Sometimes I feel that life is a little bit like cooking...
To make a delicious meal, the qualities of the ingredients count and the quantities of the ingredients you put in also matter. And not only that, the order and time in which you put in the ingredients and condiments are equally as important.

Kindda just like life don't you think? There are probably just as much factors in leading a successful life as in making a delicious meal.
The inherent qualities of the person matters, how much of each quality is present in the person, the surrounding conditions, order of happenings and when they happen also plays a part.

As each of us is different, at the end of the day, the paths that we take down the road of life differs. To forcibly move down a predetermined path that's supposedly "successful" for someone else might not turn out with the same outcome for us. Its just like using different ingredients, procedures and stuff to try and cook the same meal. It just wouldn't come out the same now would it? And of course, it might come out bad or it might come out better...you just can't tell until you try.

- BuLaDiFu -

Robert Doisneau's 100th Birthday

Today's the 14th of April 2012, the 100th birthday of Robert Doisneau, a French photographer who was a pioneer of photojournalism and widely known for his street photography.

To celebrate this day, Google has made a doodle using several black and white street photographs and placed it on its homepage.

Eadweard J. Muybridge's 182nd Birthday

Today, Google celebrates the 182nd birthday of Eadweard J. Muybridge with his work The Horse in Motion incorporated into a doodle.

Eadweard J. Muybridge was an English photographer of Dutch ancestry who spent much of his life in the United States. He is known for his work on animal locomotion and his zoopraxiscope which greatly influenced and paved the way for motion pictures and filmmaking.

Just another bad article?

On today's Yahoo! Finance Singapore, I came across this article which was supposedly written to inform us of 5 unnecessary insurance policies. Being curious about it, I decided to give the article a read.

What shocked me though was how badly written the article was and to think that Yahoo! would allow such articles to appear on its front page.

Even though there were five insurance policies listed in the article and I would have to agree that some of the listed policies do seem redundant to have, however, the points to substantiate why those policies should not be taken are somewhat lacking and not straight to the point in my opinion.

Take for example the mortgage insurance point.

• Just exactly what would be deemed to have holistic coverage?
  
• Perhaps it would be a good idea to briefly explain what a mortgage insurance is. And furthermore, which is the writer talking about? Mortgage insurance or mortgage "life" insurance? The mortgage insurance mentioned by wiki seems to be a "must" for mortgage loans which exceeds 80% of the property's sale price.
  
• And regarding the large sum discounts? The sentence doesn't make any sense at all.
  
• If these so called term plans are mentioned as an alternative to mortgage insurance, then shouldn't the writer explain what these term plans are and where we can find them?
  

And pardon me for being stupid here, but isn't a motor insurance necessary in order for the vehicle to be allowed on the road? If so, then the motor insurance isn't "unnecessary". Perhaps this point should be in another article by itself and not found here?

Although I have to agree that the credit card insurance is unnecessary, but the child insurance and critical illness insurance are arguable. "Accidents" aren't picky enough to only choose adults and not children, so why shouldn't we parents buy insurance to safeguard our precious children?

In short, I found that the points brought forth in the article just isn't sufficient to convince people about the redundancy of the insurance policies. Either English isn't his or her native language or the writer didn't spend enough time researching and writing the article.

Link to the article:
Five Unnecessary Insurance Policies