Homo sapiens sapiens - Civilisation discontinued

More random stories from Pangloss' best of all possible worlds... incontrovertible evidence of a good, all-knowing, all-powerful God in action.

I'm sure some of you will have heard of the story already. For 24 years a woman was held captive by her biological father and continuously raped. Held in a windowless cell tract in the parental home she gave birth to anywhere between 5-7 of his children. He seemingly raped the girl for the first time when she was 11 years old. Remarkably, in that very same house the man's wife and grandparents lived. There were no less than 6 adults going in and out of the house. It goes without saying that they claim to have had no clue as to what was going on in that house of horrors. All of this happened in a small Austrian town... -

On a slightly - just slightly - more cheerful note, the German news magazine DER SPIEGEL has unearthed the rules governing stoning-to-death activities in 21st century Iran. Kinda cute. Basically the convicted evil doers (say someone who slept with someone other than her husband) will be dug in up to their waistlines. Then their heads will be covered, then finally the crowd can go about the stoning to death business. You know, I was always a tad bit worried that that just might be too easy a death for such a heineous crime. Indeed, that's what the religious authorities in that country seem to have thought, too. The problem is basically this: how can we ensure that people don't die too easily or too quickly, because someone uses too big a stone. Thankfully, and in true testimony to the creative spirit of the Iranian justice system, the size of the stones that people may throw during the various stages of the stoning-to-death festival, is strictly regulated. Little did Monty Python's know when they produced the LIFE OF BRIAN that their mocking of the stoning-to-death ritual actually reflected 21st century Iran.

Thank goodness, having been educated in Germany, I know my Leibniz, so I know, much like Voltaire's Pangloss, that none of this should take my eye of the big truth: This earth was created by God. God is good. God is omnipotent. God is omniscient. It is precisely for that reason that this is the best of all possible worlds. Praise the Lord, imagine how bad it would be on earth if our paradise hadn't been created by HIM etc etc etc

Xmas in heaven - that's TimTam for you and me :)

It's weekend, but sadly the university network that is currently hosting me in London prevents me from uploading images to the net, hence this not so serious entry has to make-do without a photo of a TimTam's package. I couldn't believe my luck today (a Christmas in heaven type event) when I was about to get on the bus at Shepherd's Bush station. There's a little shop selling all sorts of goodies from Down Under, including revolting stuff like Vegemite. Anyway, I got myself a package of TimTam's originals. You know, others go for Cocaine, marijuana, stuff like that. All I need for my happiness are TimTam's. Those divine chocolate biscuits kindly manufactured in Down Under for Arnott's. Ummm... yummie! They're kind of legend in the country really. Most addicts have their own favorite way of eating them. I picked mine up from a bloke I shared a place with while I did my PhD at Monash. Basically you use the biscuit as a filter and suck your coffee or tea into your mouth thru the TimTam's. I swear to you, if you like sweets at all, and this doesn't bowl you over, nothing will.

Unlike the Colbert Report (with Dorito's), this Tim Tam's ad wasn't sponsored by Arnott's, sadly so.

Oi wei... so far for Londonistan's disaster preparedness

Much has been made of Londonistan's disaster preparedness in the aftermath of the tube and bus bombing a few years back. Well, may I say that I am a tad bit skeptical. Two days ago, on my way back from the local clubs I rushed - together with many many others - close to midnight into the tube station at Tottenham Court road. Something seemingly was wrong with their announcement system as messages continued in a loop (like station manager, report to XYZ). However, eventually the message changed to something like 'this is an emergency, please vacate the station immediately'. I got to be honest, I heard it on the top of the escalators and headed down anyway -together with a few hundred others. Eventually, on the bottom of the escalators my friend and I decided to do a U-turn and leave the station. Station staff told me that there would be no further trains that night due to the 'emergency'. They were quite cheerful about it, and in no particular rush to clear the station of hundreds if not thousands of people meandering around aimlessly in the station. Indeed, while we made eventually our way up the escalators again to catch the nightbus, people still rushed down the escalators, despite the continuing emergency announcements. Surprisingly, nobody bothered switching the downwards escalators off either.

Guess, if this had been a real emergency, this would have ended in a huge tragedy, mostly because people did not bother responding to the emergency announcement at all. When I say people, I mean both passengers as well as station staff.

Tales from Londonistan: Red Ken vs Blond Boris

The battle for the job of Mayor of Londonistan is on in all earnest. On May 01 it'll be Ken Livingstone or Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. The campaigning in the UK's capital is heating up nicely, and the choice, kind of, couldn't be starker. Other than red Ken and blond Boris there's my good friends, the Lib Dems who have chosen as their choice of losing candidate Brian Paddick, an openly gay ex cop with sensible views on most things. There's also the usual rabble of weirdos like the BNPs Richard Barnbook.

Anyway, good ol Ken has been a central figure on Londonistan's political stage for some three decades, no less than 8 of which as the capital's mayor. Frankly, by any standards, he hasn't made a hash of it. He is rapidly increasing the quantity of affordable accommodation in the capital, has introduced the congestion charge to get at least some car nuts people to use Londonistan's public transport system, he has been consistently supportive of women's, gay and ethnic minority issues and so on and so forth. Still, there has been the odd corruption scandal, but nothing, it seems that would have benefited him or his family financially in any way.

Blond Boris main claim to fame is that he ran the SPECTATOR, a conservative reasonably intelligent magazine. He also makes oodles of money as a regular commentator in THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, a right-wing broadsheet. As an MP for the conservative party he has rarely been heard of, except when making oddly disparaging remarks about all sorts of people both in the UK and elsewhere. He suggested at one point that men should vote for the Conservatives, because this would translate into their wife getting bigger breasts, and they'd be more likely to drive a BMW M3 (nice car, btw). While this is all quite amusing, and I kind of like Johnson's quirkiness, no doubt, this makes him unelectable by most peoples' standards. Why anyone of sane mind would consider this bloke for mayor ... beats me.

It seems as if lots of people are plain tired of seeing Ken Livingstone's face as mayor. There might be a surprising hang-over if people suddenly discover that their not very reflective boredom with an old policy wonk like Livingstone might suddenly translate in Boris Johnson becoming the mayor of London. Scary thought, but there you go.

African trade unions against Bob Mugabe

For the last couple of weeks a shipment of Chinese weapons has unsuccessfully tried to reach its destination, Zimbabwe, the country ruined by Bob Madhat Mugabe and his thugs. Of course, initially the shipment was provided with the usual coverage that African leaders like Thabo Mbeki are known to offer to African dictators ('we have no idea what's on the ship, it might just be cereal for the starving Zimbabweans'). Well, since then a combative South African priest, Rubin Philip, a senior management member of the anglican church organisation in South Africa, went to the Durban High Court and managed to get a verdict preventing that the weapons can be transported across South Africa to Zimbabwe. Good on you Rubin Philip!

In addition to this action the international trade union movement has joined forces against this weapons shipment. In effect trade unions across Southern Africa declared that their members would not help unload the shipment of weapons. Organized transport workers declared that they would not transport the weapons to Zimbabwe. It seems Comrade Mugabe has lost his other comrades' support. The longstanding African tradition of accepting foul leaders, as long as they're black, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Mind you, even the Germans are getting in on the act. A German government bank assisting third world development lend a couple of million Euros to a state owned Zimbabwean steel company. The loan was guaranteed by Zim's able government. Of course, it was never repaid. The place is bankrupt and comfortably burning its non-existent midnite oil, mostly courtesy of South African tax payers. Well, the German bank quickly pounced when it heard the story of the shipment. It also went to the Durban High Court to get the shipment seized in lieu for the money owed to it by Bob's government.

It goes without saying, the Chinese captain quickly moved his rustbucket out of South African waters and has since looked for a new harbor to unload his deadly freight. Mozambique's foreign minister declared that he would not permit the shipment to be unloaded in his country. Rumours have it that the ship is en route to Angola, but it has been suggested that the ship would barely have enough fuel on board to reach the most southern harbors of that country. Looks like end game on that front for Bob Madhat Mugabe.

Irish Catholic Church in fight for donations

Funny story on the BBC news website (thanks Darragh - again). A Catholic priest in Ireland urges his followers not to donate to beggars standing outside the church doors, and asks instead that they give their money to him. The argument, it seems, is that the beggars might use the money on themselves (unlike his organisation with sends quite a bit of what it collects on to its Politbuero in Rome). Worse, as he explains, these beggars might be remote controlled by evil third parties - very much unlike his organisation.

Just so that his followers get the message, he explains that not giving to beggars when one could also hand cash over to the church doesn't violate bible tenets. There you go :-). Of course, as we all know, the church has not only problems with church staffers going after young boys, nope, there's also ... well... interest in other people's money.

Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie Oi Oi Oi

Great news from my adopted home country, Down Under. It seems, since that sad little racist throw-back-to-the-50s man John Howard was finally turfed out of government by my fellow compatriots, the new Labor government is pushing at long last ahead with a progressive republican agenda. Reportedly a think-tank type event had several government ministers on record suggesting that it would be a good thing if Australia became a republic by 2010.

Here's fingers crossed, thumbs pressed, the lot, for that to happen. After all, it's a major hassle for that elderly English woman to travel to all those ex-colonies and pretend that she cares one way or another. And savior the thought of Prince Charles becoming the next King of England... another good reason to become a republic soon. It's really just a matter of becoming a grown-up country, isn't it?!

Pace Charlton Heston :0)

Courtesy of Darragh Hare... my weekend entertainment offering :0)


DEAD acting legend Charlton Heston has launched a campaign for the right to shoot angels with a variety of high powered assault weapons.

Is heaven run by nancy boys?

The 84 year-old, who played Moses, Ben Hur and himself in an episode of Friends, said his heavenly gun rack would be used primarily to shoot the souls of dead animals, including dead deer, dead rabbits and dead pigeons.

But he insisted he and other dead people had a right to protect themselves with a machine gun if an angel broke into their cloud.

Heaven is a relatively crime-free area with gun ownership restricted to licensed hunters and a handful of the bigger saints.

Heston said last night: "I thought heaven was supposed to be a free country. Instead I find it in the grip of hippy communists, pansies and sissy-boy abortion doctors.

"What are these people afraid of? If you've done nothing wrong then the chances of me shooting you are reduced significantly."

He added: "As someone who played Moses in a film, I think I'm more qualified than most to speak on behalf of God.

"The Almighty loves nothing more than spending a weekend in the woods, talking about the Constitution and polishing his favourite Uzi 9mm."

Heston arrived in heaven shortly after a gun had been prised from his cold, dead hands, as predicted.

Criticizing organized religion - The latest human rights violation

Yep, you read it correctly. While organized monotheistic religions have been uniquely responsible for the oppression of countless citizens the world all over, the UN, that true beacon of hope for anything corrupt, has nonetheless for a long time been the last best hope for human rights campaigners. Not any longer, thanks to an ominous UN outfit called the United Nations Council on Human Rights. The defenders of human rights on the council consist of such nice countries as Syria, China (PR of) and Cuba. Well, quietly colluding with the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Council a few weeks back announced a revised mandate for the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression. UNCHR managed so successfully to defeat the very purpose of having such a Rapporteur. IHEU advises that 'the Rapporteur will now be required to report on the “abuse” of this most cherished freedom [of expression - US]. We fear this will be interpreted to include those daring speak out against Sharia laws that require women to be stoned to death for adultery or young men to be hanged for being gay, or against the marriage of girls as young as nine, as in Iran. ... The amendment was passed by 27 votes to 15, the OIC states being supported by China, Russia and Cuba. Canada, India, and a number of European states spoke out against the change of focus from protecting to limiting freedom of expression.' Here's the wording of the newly defined role of the Special Rapporteur: “To report on instances in which the abuse of the right of freedom of expression constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination …” - Ein Schelm were boeses dabei denkt! - As Canada pointed out, '“Requesting the Special Rapporteur to report on abuses of [this right] would turn the mandate on its head. Instead of promoting freedom of expression the Special Rapporteur would be policing its exercise … If this amendment is adopted, Canada will withdraw its sponsorship from the main resolution.”

Incidentally, since it came into existence, the Council on Human Rights failed to criticize China (PR of), Iran (IR of) and other routine violators of human rights for their actions.

I wonder how the UK voted on this issue, seeing that it has also instituted some kind of blasphemy legislation (aka hate speech legislation) that's designed to prevent people from being critical of religious ideologies.

The OIC has since called on the Dutch government to prosecute a Dutch MP for 'defamation of religion.'

There are those, of course, who believe the hype that goes with the UN, and they probably think it's worth putting up a fight over the Council on Human Rights and its Rapporteur. There are also those who believe that the earth is flat, pigs can fly, and that nuclear power is safe. Perhaps our UN believers and these people should get together and begin an NGO of the willing-but-naive to change the situation :).

Freakshows abound - Welcome to the 21st century

I don't know, we are not doing too well, or do we, as a species? I mean, on the one hand we got all those hi-tech gadgets, plastic bags and the Airbus 380. We even got the Hummer so that men with really small penises may drive their fragile bodies to their half a mile away gym. That's pretty cool, ain't it? Shows how far advanced we really are, as a species!

And yet, as the item of my last posting on this blog shows, we are capable of committing atrocities against weaker creatures seemingly without batting an eye lid. A bunch of ex-Mormons is currently being prosecuted in the USA for having subjected girls as young as 12 or 13 to forced marriage and rape in their polygamous compound in Texas. The polygamists (it's not about polygamy, btw, it really is about the systematic sexual abuse of young children) defend their activities by pointing to the sacred right of - you guessed it - 'religious freedom'. Madhat Bob Mugabe is once again stealing the election in Zimbabwe, happily aided by 'democrats' such as Thabo Mbeki and the rest of the rabble euphemistically referred to as 'African leaders' in the African Union. The honorable exception here: Botswana's Foreign Minister, Phandu Skelemani! The Chinese leaders treat folks in Tibet pretty poorly, the Burmese dictators crushed civic society's latest uprising while ASEAN stood idle by (well, more or less), the genocide in Sudan continues unabated. On the topic of China (the PR of, that is), isn't it mind-boggling that they're going to reduce the Beijing pollution during the international doping competition euphemistically referred to as the 'Olympics', only to restart all those heavy industries after the doping troupe has moved on. I mean, aren't they telling us that their citizen's well-being is of no concern to them, while the athletes competing during the Olympics matter? Well, at least Chinese dictators' disregard for the citizens of the country is consistent. Wasn't it Chairman Mao who declared that Chinese people are expendable, seeing that there is more than a billion of them...

Hey, my friend (second item below) visits his well-heeled and truly societally 'respected' boyfriend on Barbados, and ends up staying in a hotel so that nobody could possibly expect his partner to be a pervert. I mean, hello... how low are people prepared to stoop?

I am aware of all the usual this-n-that responses, excuses, explanations for any of these seemingly unconnected stories, but frankly I am skeptical. I think that these stories tell us something about the promethean shame. We experience ever more rapid technological advancements, yet our advancement as human beings seems bizarrely slow (if not stuck). Makes me wonder whether our continuing primitive responses and gross moral failings in any of the areas mentioned shows that we are hardwired to some extent to respond as we do, and that we seemingly can't step above instinctive responses that are plain unacceptable. I know, there are exceptions to this, but our evolution as civilized entities seems frighteningly slow and always ready to break down in crises times. The veneer of civilization is thin indeed. It goes without saying, my list is kinda random and simply lists what I noticed while watching TV and being on the phone the other day - you'd extend it infinitely!

Oh well, on this cheerful note, enjoy your weekend. I got to get going. This sermon ends HERE.

Starving a dog to death in the name of 'art' - Honduras or Bizzaristan?

Dear Reader,

I am providing you in this blog entry with information forwarded by my good friend Bonnie Friedman. If true this is truly horrendous.

'In 2007, the 'artist' Guillermo Vargas Habacuc, took a dog from the street, tied him to a rope in an art gallery, and starved him to death. For several days, the 'artist' and the visitors of the exhibition have watched emotionless the shameful 'masterpiece' based on the dog's agony, until eventually he died. Doeshttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif it look like art to you?

But this is not all... the prestigious Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American decided that the 'installation' was actually art, so that Guillermo Vargas Habacuc has been invited to repeat his cruel action for the biennial of 2008.

PLEASE HELP STOP HIM.

http://www.petitiononline.com/ea6gk/petition.html

It's free of charge, there is no need to register, and it will only take 1 minute to save the life of an innocent creature.'

I found this youtube item on our Latino 'artist'.

You don't want to go to Barbados today ...

Not sure about that one? Why wouldn't one want to go to Barbados today? Well, my friend (let's call him John Doe) is flying today from Toronto to Barbados, coughing and sneezing like there's no tomorrow, happily spreading the flu virus across the (sadly main) cabin. So, if you happen to be unfortunate enough to be on that flight, and you forgot or chose not to (like he did) get your flu shots in time, you're fairly likely to find yourself sick like the proverbial dog in a few days, probably half-way thru your vacation on the island.

Fair enough, you might say, that isn't nice, but there's probably other sick people on that flight. However, that response is surely begging an interesting moral question: should he (and them) have canceled their trip in order to prevent innocent other air travelers from getting infected by the flu virus? I think that there can be no doubt, passing knowingly such an infection on to other parties in a confined space such an airplane for the duration of several hours constitutes a case of harm to others. Nobody on the plane volunteered to be subjected to that sort of infection risk and almost certainly everybody (not already vaccinated) on that particular flight would have preferred not to have been on that flight, considering the risk of reasonably serious disease. It's not that the flu is 'just' a nasty illness keeping us sick for 10-14 days, no, it actually kills a lot of people each year. Up to 1500 people die each year of flu related complications in Canada alone. Worse, those people infected on the plane, doing what people usually do when they go on Caribbean vacations (eg drink, increase the skin cancer risk by means of roasting in the sun for no good reason, have sex), will almost certainly ensure that folks on Barbados will also pick up the flu from them. A lot of people will get sick as a result of Mr Doe's decision to board a flight to Barbados today.

Well, before the divorce papers arrive in the mail, what reasons could be deployed against this analysis: For starters, the volenti non fit iniuria principle can probably be deployed. After all, we all know prior to boarding planes that there's bound to be some irresponsible passenger or other who dragged his infectious illness onto the plane. Unlike with multiple drug-resistant TB, of course, we can actually protect ourselves against the flu reasonably well, and at low risk for ourselves, simply by getting vaccinated. So, if we board a plane anyway, voluntarily and unprotected, this can arguably be read as consenting to the risk of catching an infection. That doesn't mean that we want it, but we surely didn't go out of our way to prevent it from happening. Another reason in support of Mr Doe's decision to fly anyway, is that most airlines will almost certainly not reimburse for tickets canceled that late in the day, so he would have suffered a substantial financial loss had he chosen to stay in bed. Corporate policies in other words, incentivise people to follow courses of action that are detrimental to public health. Quite possibly some employers might have required him to take his leave anyway, as scheduled, instead of taking sick leave.

All of that is regrettable. Surely we should have policies in place that reward people like Mr Doe for behaving responsibly and in a slightly more caring manner toward fellow travelers. That we do not is remarkably short-sighted.

Food vs Cars

Quite ironic, isn't it? For oodles of years environmentalists have told us that we should use public transport and avoid using 1-2 ton vehicles to transport our little bodies from A to (3 min away) B. Well, now we've got food riots on our hands and things will be getting worse on that front. How did that come about? Well, ever more farm lands are being wasted for the production of 'biofuels'. So, again, in order to fuel 1-2 ton vehicles to transport out bodies from A to (3 min away) B, we rather see poor people go to bed hungry then to turn to public transport ourselves. How bizarre can behaviors (and, indeed, public policies)get without us noticing that they are unacceptable? Beats me!

Flat-earth parents kill child by act of omission

Acts of omission, when we could have acted to prevent a bad from happening at comparably low (or no) cost to ourselves, are arguably as morally reprehensible as if we had actively brought about the bad in question.

A bunch of religious nutters have killed their sick daughter thru an act of omission. Here's what happened, according to a report published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, '11-year-old Madeline Kara Neumann died of diabetic ketoacidosis, a treatable though serious condition of type 1 diabetes in which acid builds up in the blood.' Why did she die? Well, she died due to an act of omission. Madeline's parents chose to pray for her recovery while shunning the idea of taking her simply to a doctor. So, while the parents and their nuttish church friends were busily organising prayer festivals (they requested fellow church goers to join their prayers while their daughter was dying), the teenager died a preventable death.

The Neumann's belong to an evangelical church that happens to subscribe to the view that God heals us and that if God doesn't heal us, it's our turn to hit the coffin.

'It was Sunday at 2:33 p.m. when Everest Metro Police said they first learned of the girl's condition. A call came into the dispatch center from a family relative who lived in California, said Police Chief Dan Vergin. Vergin said the relative notified authorities "that the child was ill, and due to religious reasons the family would not take the child to the hospital". Officers were dispatched to the home, and a second call - this time from the family's residence - was placed to 911, Vergin said. The caller said the girl was not breathing and did not have a pulse, Vergin said. Officers and emergency service personnel went into the house and found the girl in a family-room area lying on a futon mattress on the floor, Vergin said. "The mother and father were praying over her at that time," Vergin said.

According to doctors the girls would have been sick for about 6 months or so. The mother who, jointly with her husband prayed her daughter to death asked that the family be left alone in their grief.

I hope that nobody is going to leave them alone and that, after successful criminal proceedings, she and her praying husband will be locked up behind bars, where they're welcome to continue to pray for further miracles. Tis is all the more necessary as there is no insight on the parents side in their miserable failure to protect their daughter's life. Report the Milwaukee paper, 'They said it was the course of action they would take again," Vergin said. "They firmly believe even if they had taken her to a doctor, if this was the time God had chosen for her to die, she would die regardless of medical interference. This is not their defense, they aren't crazy people," Vergin added.

Savior that last sentence. Because these weirdos add 'God' to an otherwise ridiculous statement, some people seem to think they're not crazy. Just substitute 'flying spaghetti monster' for 'God', and ask yourself whether we would find that any more reasonable. After all, as some would say, it's possible that there's a God out there, but then, it could also be a flying spaghetti monster. In fact, the evidence for the existence of an all-powerful, omniscient, and 'good' flying spaghetti monster is as strong as that for the existence of God. For instance, there is an image (see top-left). So, it is possible that it exists and runs the universe!

Surely if the parents had explained their act of omission to consult a doctor with the suggestion that they're waiting for the flying spaghetti monster to heal their daughter we would have declared them insane. Why is there a special rule for that equally elusive thing called 'God'?

UK Embryo Research: Civilisation = 0 Catholic Church = 1

It seems in ongoing battles over crucial biomedical research involving human embryos as well as access to reproductive health services the UK government under Gordon Brown caved in to the Catholic Church's lobbying and threats. So, here's the deal, the Catholic crowd in government (several government ministers, including Opus Dei operative Ruth Kelly) threatened to defeat the 'Labour' government's new embryology bill. According to a BBC news report the Catholic Church's representatives on 'Labour's government benches are permitted to vote against these three partts of the bill in order to follow their conscience:

# Preventing fertility clinics from refusing treatment to single women and lesbians - under current legislation clinics must take account of the welfare of the unborn child including "the need for a father". This will be replaced by the "need for supportive parenting".
# Creating a child with the correct tissue match to save a sick brother or sister.
# Creating so-called hybrid animal/human embryos to aid stem cell research.

Good on them, at long last it will be possible again to make no bones of the Churches homophobic agenda when it comes to reproductive health services. No access to fertility clinics for lesbians in the UK. And, seriously, creating a child with the correct tissue match to save a sick brother or sister. How sickening a reason for creating a child! Now the Church succeeds in getting rid of the sick kid, and preventing the new child from coming into existence. I wonder whether such children, if given the chance to have a say, would mind coming into existence, helping their sibling to survive, and live happily ever after... - My hunch is, that they just might not mind!

The Church also demonstrated that it is dealing with the overpopulation issue inits very own way. Creating animal/human embryos for research purposes (we're looking a few days after 'conception', if you wish to use Catholic terminology), how truly Frankensteinian. The thought of having a cell mass of a few hundred cells of such hybrids makes me shiver. Soo they'd be taking over the world, no doubt! What's the big deal about seeing millions die of all sorts of degenerative diseases. Good on the Church. It seems its ongoing support of any pro-death and pro-disease agenda is cause for true celebration.

I have no doubt 'Labour' party voters will be delighted to find out that they actually voted the Vatican into office in the UK. Little did they probably know.

Act of omission kills medical migrant - Ami Sumani is dead

The case of Ama Sumani is far from unusual. The 39 year old widowed mother of two died on Wednesday in Accra of cancer. What is unusual is how her preventable death was brought about by British immigration authorities. Ms Sumani went initially to the UK to further her studies but eventually fell ill. A bone marrow transplant would have preserved her life and prevented her premature death. Instead the British Home Office removed her from her hospital bed in Cardiff after her visa had expired, and put her on a plane back to Ghana. Ms Sumani, unsuprisingly perhaps, was unable to afford continuing private medical care in Ghana and eventually died, about 2 months after her forced return to Africa.

It goes without saying that the British Home Affairs ministry is unequivocal that it has followed procedure. Her visa expired, and medical care for her condition was available in Ghana. The immigration bureaucrats omitted to mention that minor snag, namely that Ms Sumani needed to generate a huge amount of money to pay for such medical treatment, because unlike in the UK in Ghana such care is not available thru its national health service. Not unusual in a two-tiered health care system. Everything is available - for a price. Miserable basic care exists for the overwhelming number of poor Africans and first class care for the continent's wealthy elites. So, Ms Sumani found herself in a situation not unlike very many Africans dying preventable deaths due to the lack of resources in their countries' health care systems - well, if whatever is in existence deserves the label ' health care system' to begin with.

The interesting ethical question is, of course, whether Ms Sumani deserved to be given compassionate leave of stay in the UK, and with that the right to receive continuing free care in that country's public health care system. This question, it goes without saying, is relevant not only to the case of Ms Sumani and not only to the UK, but equally to Canada, Australia and many other countries at the receiving end of medical migrants from the developing world. Why should we pay for the health care of impoverishes migrants from developing countries?

Well, for starters, because we can. The reality today is that our health care systems are able to absorb the comparably small number of medical migrants from developing countries suffering life-threatening illnesses. We could comfortably afford to resource our health care systems such that these additional patients won't break the proverbial camel's back. It's not unreasonable to suggest that we are morally obliged to act to prevent harm from happening if it is within our means to do so, and if the costs we have to bear are comparably small.

There is a second good reason: Only about 18% of the world's doctors and nurses reside in developing countries. We developed world people continue to recruit health care professionals that were initially trained in the developing world. About one out of every five Africa-born medical doctors works today in the developed world. The rich, in other words, are free-riders depending to some extend on a continuing transfer of health care professionals from the developing to the developed world. Developing countries use their resources to train very many of our doctors and nurses. Ghana, the country of which Ms Sumani was a native citizen has only about 6 doctors for every 100,000 citizens. It lost 3 out of every 10 Ghana-educated doctors to the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.

Perhaps we should consider offering free care to medical migrants that make it to our shores as one possible means to compensate the developing world for our continuing complicity in the stripping of their fledgling health care systems of health care professionals.

We would not treat an animal like that ...

French woman Chantal Sebire died at the age of 52 at her home near Dijon. Sebire suffered from a rare form of cancer that disfigured her entire face, eventually robbing her of her eyesight, capacity to smell, and that left her in severe pain.

Sebire campaigned during her last months for her right to died a death with dignity, in other words, she requested that France permit her doctors to help her die. Voluntary euthanasia as well as any other form of euthanasia is illegal in France, hence her request was denied. As the court in Dijon, in rejecting her plea pointed out, 'Even if the physical degeneration of Madame Sebire merits compassion, this request can only be rejected under French law.'

As Ms Sebire pointed out, 'One would not allow an animal to go through what I have endured.' The BBC reports, 'Legislation adopted in 2005 allows families to request that life-support equipment for terminally ill patients be switched off, but does not allow a doctor to take action to end a patient's life.'

Yet another example where zealot pro-life legislation trumps the decisions of competent individuals who make a voluntary decision to end their lives when they see fit. Sebire is right, we would not permit an animal to be treated as she was. She mentions that children eventually ran away from her when she walked in the streets of Dijon, while she was still capable of doing so. A truly tragic case.

Why study? and Why study arts and humanities subjects?

Students in most countries today pay tuition fees. Even countries that took great pride in their public universities (like Australia, Germany and the UK)started quietly with smallish top-up fees, higher education contribution schemes or whatever their euphemism for charging higher education students for their education might have been. Fees went up and up and up ever since. It goes without saying that people from poorer families face ever higher hurdles in their attempts at accessing higher education. They'll either often be unable to afford steep up-front fees, or the thought of gigantic student debts will put them off higher education forever. There are all sorts of rationales, some less rational than others, for why these fees were and are supposedly necessary.

It's probably worth noting that in each of the countries mentioned they were introduced by a generation of politicians that themselves benefited from tuition free access to university. Probably a phenomenon similar to that miserable little black man on the US Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas. A beneficiary of affirmative action policies if there ever was one, he now spends most of his time on turning back the clock on affirmative action (as well as civil rights like reproductive rights of women). I digress, I apologize.

Now, given that students pay ever more and more, and end up with ever higher debts when they graduate - let's ignore those scholarship receiving students attending investment banks with a little bit of education attached to them, like Harvard University, Princeton and other elitist outfits - it seems worth asking, why students continue to study for degrees in the arts and humanities, given that such degrees are not exactly leading to straightforward money-printing-press-equivalent degrees as law and medicine degrees , or even engineering degrees do.

Well, and here is the surprising finding from Great Britain: It is so, because only 35% of students polled in the UK declared that their primary reason for studying what they studied was the job prospects. 38% declared that they studied what they studied because of their love for the subject of their course. (This, of course includes people for whom their choice of study subject is both a subject that they love, and a subject that they chose because of job prospects.) That I find surprisingly reassuring.

Despite various governments' efforts to eliminate anything to do with culture from universities (by starving the arts and humanities of funding for research and teaching), our new 'customers' voted with their feet and elected to study arts and humanities subjects anyway. Many young people seem to have decided that universities are not merely educational factories designed to offer glorified vocational training and pseudo-academic degrees like Master's degrees in jeans design and similar such nonsense.

It is fair to say that academics have failed in most countries pretty miserably in defending the academy against the onslaughts of those aiming to transform universities into vocational training outfits. Students' love for the subjects they choose are probably one of the reasons for why arts and humanities continue to thrive these days, despite all the dooms-day sayers.

'We' Germans, Jamaicans, and Iranians

The skipper of the P&O ocean liner Oceana had it with those Germans. I'm sure you have heard (and possibly endured) it all before: se (soft 's', try it yourself to get in the right mood) Germans did it again. The Oceana was trundling thru the Caribbean while the islands in that part of the world were in-between their usual devastating hurricane seasons. And what did se Germans do? Well, according to Christopher Wells, the captain of the ship, they blocked the sun loungers with towels to ensure that passengers from other countries (well, let's just say, other passengers - period) could not take occupation of the 'best' spots on the ship while they're still having breakfast. Christopher Wells, himself married to a German woman, had enough of it and scolded se Germans thru the ocean liner's speaker system. He introduced a new pre-emptive rule, saying in effect that a sun lounger that isn't occupied by a suitably overweight, pink to red body (I'm making these qualifications up...) for 20 minutes could be taken over by another suitably overweight, pink to red body. It goes without saying that people started taking positions next to popular sun loungers with stop watches in order to take them over in case someone left their (sorry, NOT any longer their) lounger unoccupied for more than the permissible time. According to newspaper reports people soon started fighting over the reading of their timepieces and came close to exchanging blows. None of this surprises me, after all, they were all imprisoned on a big ship and probably had nothing much else to do. There's only so much buffet you can do ...

Anyway, what fascinates me about this really is that in an instant the captain had se Germans identified as the offending culprits. Anyone who has ever read British newspapers of the right wing variety (like the Telegraph) or the red masthead variety (like the Mirror or Sun) will have read stories about se Germans occupying beach and pool spots with their towels or other paraphernalia to ensure a good spot in the sun. After all, the fight fundamentally is about a place guaranteeing to maximize the occupiers chances of getting skin cancer, and according to these reports se Germans are kinda good at that.

Well, I was born in Germany... and I never jostled for these sorts of spots. In fact, and this might surprise you, too, I met the other day a Jamaican guy who hasn't killed anyone and isn't a drug dealer. Incredibly as it may sound, there's even the odd Iranian out there who thinks it might be sensible not to stone gay folks to death. I even bumped into a Japanese woman who just can't stand sushi. So, why are we so busily stereotyping people who happen to have been born (by accident, let's face it) in whatever part of the world? It just does not make much sense (just about ever) to talk about 'the' Americans, or 'se' Germans, so why don't we all grow up and move on ('all' here stands for folks who stereotype people seriously in that manner).

I sometimes wonder how sophisticated aliens from another galaxy would look at us busybodies that are working day and night to show how hugely different we all are from one another. Quite conceivably they wouldn't even understand what we are on about... we carbon based life forms.

Oh yes, someone who was offended by Christopher Wells remarks complained to the UK's Equality and Human Rights Commission. Makes me wonder whether someone is fishing for a P&O voucher - well, why not?!

Vaio Notebooks - Let the Buyer Beware

I love Sony's TX series notebooks. They cost a bundle (my TXN27CN cost a bit less than 3,000 $), but you get fantastic hardware. The battery lasts for a very long time, the screen is plain brilliant, and it is really light in terms of its weight. What drives me bonkers, however, as with any of the other vaios i had, is that the silver desktop colour peels off in absolutely no time. This h as happened to me with every Vaio I ever owned (and there have been a few over the years). Makes me wonder what's wrong with the bean counters at Sony. I wonder whether it's worth putting people off who pay a huge premium for their premium hardware by way of adding cheap paint on the desktop.