Thursday, July 07, 2005

Note on frequency: I'm starting a new job in less than 2 weeks, which means I'm cramming to prepare and taking a lot of vacation time to use up what I've got at the old job. You might think the days off would be prime blogging time, but I'm catching up on naps and helping pull together a move and a wedding. So if I get a lot spottier on the blogging thing over the next couple of months, you have my sincerest apologies.

Thoughts and prayers go out to all who are in London (including a friend of mine on his honeymoon there - they are safe). I'm glad that our security forces work well enough for this to stand out as a terror attack - no sarcasm there, I'm sure a lot more of these are headed off before they happen.

A note on perspective, though - hundreds are dying and being tortured in Sudan every day (here's a report claiming 500 deaths a day - if they're off by 90%, it's still more than the bombings), and thousands die from conditions related to poverty (this report says 50,000 daily - it can be 99% wrong and would still be 10 times as many). Did you see A Time To Kill, where bongo expert Matthew McConaughey's character details the abuse of a young girl, then asks the jury how they'd respond if she was white? I think it's a bit heavy-handed on the race card, but I think a similar factor is at play here - 9/11, the Madrid bombings, the London bombings, and most other terrorism hits situations we can imagine ourselves in, and that inspires more fear than a primitive warlike state where the best-armed family in the neighborhood does whatever they want to everyone around them, or conditions where there's not even enough food to steal to keep everyone alive.

I don't want to minimize the suffering of those killed and wounded this morning - their pain and their family's pain is every bit as real as those in the other areas I've described. I just hope we don't let fear of more familiar dangers take over our priorities, since there's been no shortage of agencies/companies/attorneys general willing to take advantage of that fear. What if, instead of being afraid and trying to avoid things that might happen, we reached for our dreams and what we hope for? I don't think I've ever heard of people making that kind of change who didn't improve the lives of everyone around them as well as their own.

Tony Blair said "It's particularly barbaric that this has happened on a day that people are meeting to deal with world problems at the G8 in Scotland." Would it have been less barbaric if no meetings had been going on? Is there a day where the government isn't trying to deal with world problems on some scale? While it is mightily inconvenient for it to happen as the G8 convenes, it suggests a bit too much emphasis on his own current mission, as worthy as it is. Hope that's not too hypocritical after my previous soapbox.

Accountability: Played racquetball yesterday morning, and am playing again this afternoon, as well as hopefully basketball tonight. It's gonna hurt, but I love playing these sports. Much more entertaining than ellipticals and such.

What I've Learned: 1) Anonymous comments are worse than worthless. 2) My funniest moments have a nasty tendency to be unshareable. 3) Really good books reveal something different every time you read them, even 3 times in 2 years.

Thanks to Bohemian Yuppie for pointing me to Order of the Stick, a great comic strip for anyone who's ever played Dungeons&Dragons, with enough other references to keep me laughing far too long.
posted by Unknown 12:08 PM | 2 comments