It’s Not What It Seems

After having been woken every morning for the past week by having my bed shake, I’ve been led to re-think what we’ve all been told about the earthquake in Chile.

One conclusion that has come to me is that this was not a natural event. It is a man-made phenomena that comes from the testing of a secret government project to develop a national alarm clock!

To explain the various discrepancies which opponents of this theory might raise I offer the following explanations:

1. The massive quake on February 27th was an accidental result of the simultaneous activation of several separate shaker apparatuses.
2. The several hundred aftershocks were due to a malfunction of the control mechanism provoked by event Number 1.
3. The varied times are a combination of the damaged control mechanism and deliberate testing to determine the optimum shaker intensity required to awaken the maximum number of citizens at different times of the day and night.

If they can be located, sources close to the newly elected president of Chile, Sebastian Piñera, who is a well established entrepreneur, may indicate that the president-elect has been quick to recognize the potential commercial value of this program. Once the timing and intensity controls are perfected, it is said he has plans to licence the use of this technology to other countries whose economies need to be awakened.

Among the various benefits the new technology offers are:

• The quick demolition of old and dilapidated buildings and neighbourhoods.
• A final testing procedure of new buildings before they are occupied to ensure that they meet all anti-seismic standards.
• Demolition of inadequate roads, bridges and transportation infrastructure.
• A quick method of testing the moral character of large groups of people and identifying those with delinquent tendencies who participate in looting during simulated emergency conditions.
• A process to stimulate and reactivate the construction industry.
• A justification to use the manpower and machinery of a country’s armed forces in peace time without provoking any external conflicts.
• A focal point to unite the citizens of a country toward a common national goal which supersedes political agendas.

It all makes sense now, doesn’t it?

Technorati Tags: chile,communication,emergency,earthquake,government,humor

No sense of humor

Today I was shocked to discover that Facebook, or at least some of the people who work there are far too serious … perhaps even to the extent of being prudish.

This all began several months ago, when I created a group on Facebook called I used to have a bellybutton and described it as a just for fun – totally pointless group to encourage others to post true facts which don’t make any sense. (I might add that I “lost” my own BB a couple of years ago during major surgery and occasionally joke about my “loss”.)

Recently, I decided to promote this group out of curiosity to see how many other people also might share my condition.

I applied to Facebook to run an ad promoting the group and displaying the above photo only to have it rejected with the following explanation:

The image of this ad is either irrelevant or inappropriate. Per sections 3 and 8 of Facebook's Advertising Guidelines, the image on your ad should be relevant and appropriate to the item being advertised. Images that are overly explicit, provocative, or that reveal too much skin are not allowed. Images that may either degrade or idealize any health condition or body type are also not allowed.

I didn’t particularly feel that the image was too risqué, however, I changed the picture and tried again with the following ad:

Again, the ad was rejected on the same grounds.

To me, the whole idea of seeing if there are others who share my condition was a bit of a lark, but the reactions of the people who run Facebook’s ads seems to me exceedingly conservative.

What do you think?