Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Just so you don't think I've gone all soft in my old age, too afraid to take risks as I get to the upper-20 age bracket, I am personally spearheading the A'Takamul 2005 NCAA Men's basketball tournament pool. Big money, $10 buy in.

You: "Ooooohhhh Jay you're a sissy. What's the big deal?"

Me: "It's technically illegal in Kuwait to gamble with money. I'm not sure if it's CD-burning illegal or murder-illegal, but since some of the Muslim staff have already bought in, I figure it's pretty much overlooked."

Actually, it is pretty much overlooked and we got a pretty good size group playing, so if all goes according to plan, the winner could walk away with about $100 Cdn or so. Not huge money, but it passes the time.

Jay's Uninformed, Haven't-Followed-NCAA-at-all-this-year, picks for the Final Four: Duke, Wake Forest, Illinois, and I forget the other one. Oh well, if the 'professionals' on the net are correct, I may be a winner. Time will tell.

In more serious news, the UN has announced that the death toll in Darfur, Sudan is far worse than expected. Despite the fact that the US government has labelled this a 'genocide', the response by the world community has been noticably weak. Africa is a big place, you could fit 3 USAs into Africa and have a little bit left over. And it is always in turmoil, or so it would seem from the mass media coverage that we get. There is always some civil war/uprising/corruption/plague etc to occupy the few headlines that deal with Africa. Oh and don't forget the ongoing AIDS suffering.

And, I think, that this constant barrage of negative news has served not to help Africa, but to desensitize us to it, allowing us to ignore 'another' report of how Africa is slipping into the abyss. We never hear any good news out of Africa and thus have tuned it out, perhaps only dealing with it after the horrible facts come to light. Rwanda ring a bell?

To further add to our general disenchantment with helping Africa out, we are rather innudated with a litany of other 'sky is falling' news stories, from Iraq to North Korea, US shootings to violent weather tragedies. So those tend to push the dark continent onto the back pages of the newspapers.

Despite our best efforts as a western society to ignore Africa's problems, it keeps popping up again and again, reminding us of the legacy of imperialism and underfunding. And yet we push it away over and over. When will the world wake up the fact that Africa is not a minor set of issues and that urgent, ongoing, and stable help is needed to address the poorest continent on the planet?

An interesting development for historical buffs to consider, as this report suggests that the Nazi's might have possessed and tested a variant of a nuclear weapon during the waning days of WWII. One wonders, if this is true, how the war would have ended if they had managed to use it. I suspect that they still would have been defeated, as their troops were vastly decimated and their resources drying up in 1944-45. But still, had they managed one last hurrah, perhaps Paris or London wouldn't be the places that we know today. Food for thought.

On a lighter note, a story that proves just home much of a sissy I am when compared to this guy. Dang!

Going to the Hilton tonight, gonna pretend I'm rich. In my beat-up running shoes.

A sovereign thought, delivered to your door at 6:04 AM ~~ 0 bonsai trees

shout out out out out out

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