North Korea's Bad Choices

Firstly, allow me to apologise. I've been away from the computer for a few days with a migraine, and still writing this with sunglasses on (I've been called Blade several times over the past week). I'm still a bit out of it so expect a few less posts for the next week while I recover.

Anyway, North Korea! I have to say, they could not have been stupider. First of all, western countries are feeding Kim Jon Il's citizens (because he won't) in hopes that he won't wouldn't develop nuclear technology. Now, that support is likely to come to an end. Thanks to that, the poor poor POOR people of North Korea are going to see a reduction in quality of life from terrible to unlivable. There are even rumours of citizens going into fields for GRASS to supplement their diet because not enough rice is available). GRASS. I'm just trying to picture how I would feel about my lunch if it were soup consisting of water and GRASS. Keep in mind grass has no nutritional properties, so it's not really like eating veggies either. It's just GRASS. Unbelievable.

I have a somewhat vested interest in stories from North Korea and Cuba because I was raised in the Soviet Union (though most of my memorable experience with that leadership is vicariously through my parents) and this sort of news always interests me and frightens me at the same time. I'd like to ask why the good people of North Korea are not revolting, but it seems a bit naive. There is no internet access there AT ALL, there is no real news of the outside world, hell, there's no food. None. I mean, if people are eating GRASS for God's sake. But at the same time, I think we could be doing more. Just like we could be doing more in Sri Lanka, or Zimbabwe, or Colombia, or Afganistan, to name a few.

Everyday I'm amazed by how little our government does to protect their citizens and to help defend human rights.

Ruling on fraud makes cigarette companies choke

Funny story today on a case which has been dragging on since '99, and will likely continue. The courts have, once again, said that cigarette companies are guilty of committing fraud against the public because they've publicly lied about the dangers of cigarettes and deceived the public by offering "light" versions that are in no way less harmful to the body.

Golly gee, that's a surprise.

That said, this is how I see it. First of all, anyone with half a brain knows that cigarettes are dangerous. It's common knowledge. If you don't know, you've been living under a rock. It then seems impossible to "deceive" the public. Of course, "light" is underhanded and evil. And yes they should be punished for it. But I think it's still a far cry from fraud.

I think the worst issue brought up in the trail is the issue of deceiving children, but again - it is not the responsibility of companies to educate children. Why have parents become so lazy? "How dare companies say what is in their best interests, rather than parent my children so I don't need to!"

If the kids knew from their parents the dangers of smoking then the cigarette companies would hardly be able to lie to them, no?


Continue to defend public stupidity and laziness! Though I suppose till the public smartens up, someone has to take care of business.

A bit of cheerful pessimism

I feel I have not had as much humour in this blog as I'd like. I suppose mostly due to the very serious topics I select, but there's nothing like some cheerful perssimism. So here's a recent Dilbert cartoon that I find very timely and very funny.

Civil war in Sri Lanka Not Over

This is completely absurd. The news media is going crazy over this so-called end to a brutal civil war in Sri Lanka (see my post explaining the background on it). There is so much propaganda coming from all sides, including from countries which feel guilty for not having done anything in Sri Lanka after promising time and time again to prevent genocides from occuring.

In any case, the news have it that the Tigers have been killed, and that clearly, the violence will stop immidiately. Because before the Tigers there was no violence in Sri Lanka. They were NOT a reaction against institutionalized discrimination where there were maximum quotas of how many Tamils could be accepted at universities, and government troops sneaking into villages at night and killing whole groups of young Tamils.

I am ashamed of my country and the rest of the world for ignoring yet another genocide. So much for "never again". Absolutely disguasting.

Post Secondary Universities

Allow me a rant, if you will, about the effectiveness of post secondary universities. Feel free to comment if you agree or disagree. Disclaimer, I do not claim to know everything, but I sure try to!

Here is my beef - they're worthless, for the most part. If there are some time tested formulas you need to know to get a job in a field once you're out of school, university can help you get the basic technical skills (e.g. calculating taxes, knowing where the heart in the body is, etc). Unfortunately, for technical jobs such as finance and medicine, you still need much more than what you're learning in school, and for non-technical careers such as teaching, business administration, etc, the topics raised in university are not only not furthering our knowledge of our field, but giving us the delusion that we might actually know something after 4 years of long nights and empty wallets.

This is, of course, untrue. Interestingly, one of my profs wrote about the disconnect between school and work, and how students are coming out unequipped and have no guarantee of employment. The article notes that the bachelor degree of today is the high school degree of the past - except the high school degree is free.

The result is graduates who think they deserve a 6-figure job and corner office right out of university, but have no real life skills to back it up, and on top of that, employers and professors are doing nothing to remedy this chronic underperforming and continue to require these degrees while making no changes to them to make them more useful for students.

Why are we being prepared for the world of 1991, when most of those textbooks last had a major updating? What are we paying for?

In short? To be screwed.

Change

I've been thinking a lot about change and moving on lately. I've been told all my life that as you age, accepting change becomes more difficult, and that you cannot "teach an old dog new tricks". This has always been terrifying for me as a kid, because I love change. Stagnation for me is death. To lose that would be to lose myself.

Then I went to university, and learned a couple of things. For example, statistics show that older people (50+) are just as willing to learn new things in the workplace, they just happen to recieve almost 5 times less money in training, for a number of reasons.

This tells me something though - I don't think you lose your ability to accept change because of your age. What this is is just another excuse. It's another of the "I can't do that because of *insert relevant stereotype* and that's that". Why is it that people in one breath fight vehemently against being put in a box and in the next rely on stereotypes to avoid going outside it.

Embrace change, people, or at least find a better excuse. 

The Indian Sex Trade

Neat little story on CNN today about the sex trade in India. Officials have it pegged that at least 100 million people are involved with human traffiking. 100 MILLION people.

India's population is about 1.147 billion people. So that means that about 9% of the population, in modest estimates, is involved with human traffiking. That's increadible. That's at least 1 in 11 people in India in some way related to this industry.

About 1.2 million of those are kids.

Officials believe almost all the movement is within India (i.e. they don't leave the country).


I really have no comment on this.

I am completely speechless.