First up, diseases are a common problem in the modern world. Sure, we’ve made many advances and have eliminated things like smallpox, but we still have to deal with the occasional outbreak. Most societies deal with this through immunizations and vaccines, as well as prevent the spread of disease through hygiene, germ cleansers, and in extreme cases, quarantine.

That’s just not good enough in the backwater villages of India. How do they deal with it? They marry their daughters off to frogs. Yeah, that’s going to end well.

Next time I catch pneumonia, I’ll marry the Little Bird off to a hamster. Fix me right up.

In our second entry, we’re drawing closer and closer to the dreaded 2012 apocalypse as predicted by the Maya. There have been books and TV shows devoted to the date, and theories abound as to what the world-destroying event could actually be.

Putting aside the failure to learn a lesson from Y2K hysteria and the fact that the date is just a nice round number in the Mayan calendar (just like 2000 on our Gregorian calendar), has anyone stopped to realize they’re worried about predictions from people who practiced human sacrifice to appease their gods?

They needed rain, they sacrificed people. They needed more crops, they sacrificed people. They needed the sun to come up the next morning, they sacrificed people. I’m just not going to get myself too worked up over the last page of a calender worked out by some assholes who’d cut my heart out as an insurance policy for reaching that last page.

Makes me wonder if we’re really making any progress after all.