2012 is a Leap Year. As was 2008 and 2004 and the year 2000. Normally, a year that can be evenly divided by 100 is not a Leap Year but if it is divisible by 400 then it is. Thus the year 2000 was a Leap Year but the year 1000 was not and neither would be the year 3000.

The Chinese calendar has a leap month about every 3 years and the name of the leap month is the same as the previous lunar month. The Jewish calendar has a leap year 7 times in a 19-year cycle.

The chance of being born on Leap Day in the Gregorian calendar is about 680 out of a million (1 in 1470). Which means little more than 4 million people (out of a world population of 7 billion) have their birthdays on Leap Day whereas on average approximately 19 million people share a birthday every day other than Leap Day. Because Superman always appears so young and because nobody knows for sure how old he is, tradition has it that he is a Leap Year Baby.

Ladies, if he did not pop the big question on Valentine’s Day then February 29th is your day because tradition has it that a woman can propose to a man on Leap Day.

When numbers instead of letters are used to spell a whole word it is called leet – which, in leet, is written as 1337. Another example is n00b, a term for newbie. Andsoforth.

Leet originated in the 1980s in relay chat services and on bulletin boards. If you look at it for the first time it might seem difficult to understand but you’ll be surprised how quickly you will catch it. Train your brain with this example of leet:

7H15 M3554G3
53RV35 7O PR0V3
H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N
D0 4M4Z1NG 7H1NG5!
1MPR3551V3 7H1NG5!
1N 7H3 B3G1NN1NG
17 WA5 H4RD BU7
N0W, 0N 7H15 LIN3
Y0UR M1ND 1S
R34D1NG 17
4U70M471C4LLY
W17H 0U7 3V3N
7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17,
B3 PROUD! 0NLY
C3R741N P30PL3 C4N
R3AD 7H15.

Glad you caught that! As you’ve noticed, you can also combine the use of leet, textese and normal spelling or even morph it.

5p34k1ng 0f wh1ch, a1s0 c: Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch

Our solar system makes up only a tiny part of the Milky Way. To compare, if the entire Milky Way would be the size of the United States, our solar system would only be the size of an American penny.

Earth's position in the Milky Way

It’s not that Earth is that small. Earth weighs 6 sextillion, 600 quintillion tons. Yet, 764 planets the size of Earth will fit into Saturn, the second largest planet in our Solar System and our farthest planet visible by the naked eye.

Saturn and Earth in comparison

At the same time, Saturn – named after the Roman god of agriculture – is small compared to our sun. You can fit 1,700 planets the size of Saturn into the sun. It takes Saturn 29½ years to orbit the sun. Even so, compared to other suns our sun is small (the biggest known sun, VY Canus Majoris, is 2,000 times the size of our sun) and only one of an estimated 200 billion stars (and more planets) in the Milky Way.

It takes our sun 250 million years to complete one rotation of the Milky Way.

But consider that the Milky Way is only one of 200 billion+ galaxies, each with billions of stars, in the known universe. Our Milky Way is not even the biggest galaxy, being only 100,000 light years across (and 1,000 light years in thickness). The Milky Way is a spec in the universe: the size of the universe is estimated to be 13,7 billion light years in size.

A tiny ship

Earth is a tiny ship in a vast ocean. The famous astronomer Carl Sagan constantly tried to remind us of our fragile place in the universe. In 1990, he requested that the space craft Voyager 1 take a picture of us at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion km) away from Earth. The picture tells the story: Earth is a Pale Blue Dot in the galaxy.

Earth is a Pale Blue Dot in the Milky Way

Our humble home

70% of the earth’s surface is covered in water. We live on a small part of earth. We live on a spec of a spec in the universe. Honestly, it shouldn’t be that difficult to reach out to each other.

The controversial practice, known as “pay for delay,” occurs as part of patent litigation settlements and typically buys a brand-name drug company more time to sell its blockbuster drug exclusively until its patent on the drug expires. Federal Trade Commission regulators have said the practice costs American consumers an estimated $3.5 billion each year, and have pushed for a ban.

But now it appears the drug company Pfizer is adding yet another twist to its efforts to delay generic competitors. As The New York Times reports, the company seems to have struck a deal with certain pharmacy benefit managers – the middlemen in the pharmaceutical industry – to block generic versions of Lipitor.

Lipitor, Pfizer’s blockbuster cholesterol-lowering drug, is among the world’s best-selling pharmaceuticals, and this isn’t Pfizer’s first attempt to protect it.

In 2008, the company settled patent litigation with Ranbaxy, an Indian generic manufacturer, striking a deal that guaranteed that Pfizer would not have to face challenges from Ranbaxy’s generic version of Lipitor until the end of November 2011. Pfizer granted Ranbaxy some incentives as part of the bargain but said it made no payments. Nonetheless, a group of pharmacies filed suit against Pfizer and Ranbaxy last week over the deal, calling it 201Can extraordinary ripoff201D and alleging price-fixing between the two companies.

Now that it’s November 2011, Ranbaxy and other drugmakers are gearing up to offer cheaper versions of Lipitor. As The Times reports, Pfizer has tried to counter this competition by offering big discounts on Lipitor to the middlemen that process prescriptions for pharmacies and other buyers, giving them discounts in exchange for having them block generic versions of Lipitor for another six months. Here’s The Times:

Many drugstores are being asked to block prescriptions for a generic version of Pfizer’s Lipitor starting Dec. 1, when the company loses its patent for the blockbuster cholesterol drug and generic competition begins.

Medco Health Solutions, among the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit managers, is one of the companies issuing instructions, seeking to have pharmacists keep filling prescriptions with the more expensive Lipitor for six months.

See some of those instructions sent to pharmacies by the pharma middlemen. The documents were released by Pharmacists United for Truth and Transparency, a group of independent pharmacists. (We first noticed them posted at the blog Pharmalot.)

According to the group, Pfizer’s plan would mean that customers at the pharmacies serviced by these middlemen would receive Lipitor even when they’ve been prescribed a generic version. Because Lipitor co-pays would also be reduced to the level of generic co-pays, customers might not notice, but employers and Medicare Part D would pay the same amount as before, despite the availability of a cheaper alternative.

A Pfizer spokesman gave The Times a statement saying that the company was committed to ensuring that customers had access to Lipitor but declined to answer additional questions.

Article by Marian Wang, ProPublica

Of the 650 types of leeches, only a small number of Hirudo species are used, the most popular being the Hirudo medicinalis. They’re usually sold 20 to a pack, at US$7 apiece.

Also see Use of the medicinal leech (but please note that the graphics are not for the faint of heart).

Following Google and Facebook, YouTube has grown into the third most visited website with 48 hours of videos uploaded every minute. That is the equivalent of 240,000 full-length films every week or nearly 8 years of viewing content uploaded every day. 3 billion YouTube videos are viewed by 20 million people every day. Hard to believe, but that is an average of 150 video views per visitor per day… even with many videos being only a few seconds in duration.

First video on YouTube

The very first video uploaded to YouTube is still there. Co-founder Jawed Karim’s “Me at the zoo” was uploaded at 8:27 pm on Saturday April 23rd, 2005 and has been viewed more than 5 million times. It’s only 19 seconds in duration and not quite the most exciting video out there which perhaps is why it has not gone viral. True viral videos would rack up that amount of views within a day. In comparison, Susan Boyle’s video was watched more than 100 million times in less than 2 weeks after it was uploaded.

What does “Viral” mean?

The saying “Going viral” comes from the term “Viral Marketing” which is said to have been originated by Tim Draper and Jeffrey Rayport to explain the popularity of a product spreading like a virus. Which aptly describes YouTube, by far the most dominant video viewing service in the world.

Fastest trending viral videos

The word viral is now ubiquitously associated with trending YouTube videos. A video made famous by Internet users sharing it on social networks and through email can bring shame on the unscrupulous but can also bring stardom – and wealth – to an artist, votes for a politician, laughs at pranks, support for good causes, and respect for supporters of animal rights.

10 Top YouTube videos:

1. Justin Bieber – Baby – 630 million+ views,

2. Lady Gaga – Bad Romance – 420 million+ views,

3. Shakira – Waka Waka – 400 million+ views,

4. Jennifer Lopez – On the Floor – 390million+ views,

5. Eninem – Love The Way You Lie – 380 million+ views,

6. Charlie bit my finger… Again! – 370 million+ views,

7. Eninem – Not Afraid – 280 million+ views,

8. Justin Bieber – One Time – 260 million+ views,

9. Justin Bieber – Never Say Never – 260 million+ views,

10. Parto in un letto – 250 million+ views.

The Only Constant

Since change is the only constant – re Heraclitus (535 – 475 BC) – today’s most viral video will be forgotten all too soon. But for this day of writing, one of the fastest trending viral videos happens to be one that will tuck at the strings of your heart -

An adventure motorcyclist saves the life of a calf:

For the record, ADV rider Johan Gray used a Drift HD170 Stealth Helmet Cam to capture the precious moments.

Agatha Christie donated the rights to the play to her grandson, Matthew Prichard, as a present for his 7th birthday. The movie rights were sold in 1956 – to British producer John Woolf – but on condition that a film version won’t be released within 6 months after the staging.

Woolf passed away in 1999 and The Mousetrap is, after more than 50 years after its debut, still staged at the St Martin’s theater in London. Having passed the 24,000th performance, it is the longest-running show of any type in history. And, obviously, there won’t be a movie version until at least 6 months after the last stage performance in London.

Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (which introduced Hercule Poirot to the world), was rejected 6 times before it was published in 1920. She killed off her famous private investigator Poirot character a year before she died in 1976… but not before he became almost as well known as she was. Poirot appeared in 33 novels, 51 short stories and numerous radio plays, movies and TV series.

Under which name did Agatha Christie write romance novels? Mary Westmacott.

World’s first novel was written by a woman