Three Strikes

I've made a horrible error in self-assessment: apparently I thought I could keep up a daily blog of entries even during final essay/exam/Easter season. Silly me. I wouldn't be surprised either, dear friends, if this were to occur again.

In light of my misdeeds, I offer you a veritable plethora of news items from around the world (ok, mostly North America, I can't hide my bias) as food for your mental hunger.

FIRST! This recently from Slate.com, just another example of the ever-burgeoning YOUistic trend of the current social scene - if anything is to be sold, it must be personalized and have the impression of being immaculately tailored to suit one's needs. iPod, XM Radio, Facebook, car packages, clothing, travel options, etc etc etc. Christopher Hitchens has written an article on this somewhere on the internet; seek it out if you'd like his take.

What I'm talking about is Twitter, the new website that allows, simply, one to log in an update the rest of the world on exactly what they're doing at that moment. It's a kind of real-time snapshot of daily life. Click here to have a look.

SECOND! This is from last week and YahooNews. The US Marine Corp has recently announced that they are putting a ban on all visible tattooing of their soliders, with specific attention to forearm and calf tattoos. Being a fan of tattooing of all kinds, and having a general interest in the subject at large, I find this to be particularly interesting. Time was when body decoration amoung a society's "warriors" was common, even expected (see the woad-painted soldiers of Braveheart, or the tribal tattooing of the Maori people). Even Roman soliders were known to dye their hair different colours and spike it to make them seem more imposing.

The mentality behind the tattoo snafu is that the images could be considered unappealing and unprofessional when seen on a figure as highly regarded as a US Marine. I find this logic to be a tad faulty, especially considering that the Marines are supposed to be men and women who are independant of every authority except that of their commanding officers. I would think that tattooing would be accepted simply as a form of pride in the work that a Marine does. Anyway, check out the article and decide for yourself.

THIRD! And final thought of the day. The New York Times has decided that they bogeyman of global warming is not only the next great devastation to be visited upon us sinners in the Western world, but that the poor innocents of the underdeveloped world will bear the brunt of our reckless disregard for the environment.

Apparently, third-world nations such as those found in Africa will have to neogtiate the worst of the inevitable global warming trend as their crops continue to dry at a much faster pace, and their water supply becomes increasingly unstable.

Funny though...I thought those countries had, for the most part, always suffered from unstable crop production and scarce water supplies. The countries that the Times cites as the most threatened are located around the most traditionally infertile areas of the African continent, namely the Sahara where they experience only two seasons as opposed to our four: the wet season, and the dry season.

I don't mean to sound callous, but the current science has pegged global warming as being responsible for an overall rise in tempterature of little more than a single degree in the last 150 years. From my knowledge of Africa thus far, drought and poor crop yields have been a constant of African society for the last 1000 years at least. What people never seem to give the average African (or, really, the average human being) credit for is the ability to adapt. To think that we in the West are exacerbating the declining condition of the African citizen because of our inability to further invest in ethanol is ridiculous, and clearly biased journalism.

I offer you the full article here but I'm not sure if you'll be able to access it without being a paid subscriber. Give it a shot.

Cheers all.