Veiled Consequences?

Last month France became the first country in Europe to ban the wearing of the facial veil in public, including in shops and on the street.

Personally I have no problem talking and interacting with someone who has their face covered. The only thing that bothers me is when you can't see their eyes, but then I think about how it doesn't bother me when I talk to someone that wears sunglasses, I suppose it really doesn't matter if anything or everything is covered when someone is talking to me.

Human rights are obviously in question here, but I think the basic question of how people feel about faces being covered up regardless of the reason should be looked at...

1. Women who wear veils over their faces for religious reasons

2. Some women/men cover their face with botox, plastic surgery, tattoos, piercings, etc. still covering part of their natural faces.

3. People with deformities often have prosthetics to cover the entire or parts of the face.

4. People wear surgical masks to avoid sickness

5. People who wear ridiculously large brimmed hats and sunglasses, blocking a good percentage of their face.

6-100. There are so many more examples (like mimes)....



There are so many more examples out there but it comes down to freedom of expression, freedom to live within a culture and still be an individual. Regardless of the reason, be it medicinal, social, religious, or cultural, I don't think that the government should have the right to tell someone to take off whatever is covering their face while walking down the street...well unless it is someone like leatherface, which I would be more than happy if the police arrested leatherface-like-people.

To the Culicidae Family: A plague on all your houses!

Serious movements should be made to bring down the house of Culicidae, little gnats, annoying, destroying and wreaking havoc on innocent lives...shameless, absolutely shameless.

If they wonder why there is so much hate, they should look to the evil sister 'the mosquito'.  Excuse my language, but 'the mosquito' is a little prick in my opinion.  I spent days of my life putting on ointment to mend bite marks, avoiding the strong urge to scratch, and trying different methods of prevention from their annoying bites (lights, sticky things, spray, nets, etc.).  I now look at them with a whole new level of distaste, which is shocking because I truly did at one point in my life admire their work in bringing on the possibility of Jurassic Park to my childhood imagination...DINO DNA!  But those childhood dreams have long since been crushed by the cruel reality of their impact on human health...(though I still have a love for Jurassic Park, it's just not the same).  

Pesky, annoying, female mosquitoes are the ones that need to obtain nutrients from a blood supply before she produces more bastard children to cause pain and misery.    With 3,500 species of mosquitoes, I find it a badass idea to eradicate all of them (proven to have no serious consequences for any ecosystems), preventing a number of infectious diseases affecting millions of people a year.  The mosquito works as a vector agent, carrying the disease causing viruses and parasites from person to person without catching the disease themselves.  A few diseases that may pop to mind are yellow fever, dengue fever, Chikungunya and the big M word, Malaria.  Transmitting disease to hundreds of millions people annually in Africa, South America, Central America, Mexico, Russia, and much of Asia with millions of resulting mortality and morbidity cases.  

So I say just knock out the entire culicidae family, the insecta class won't miss them and mosquitoes have been giving them a bad rep for years, so it's probably more of a favor.

For more information please visit: Mosquito.org or the CDC website for Mosquito borne diseases.

Can we really end poverty in this generation?

This year's Forbe's World's Billionaires list broke records in number of billionaires (1,210 billionaires) and total net worth ($4.5 trillion), and includes only the individuals that make their money on a legal and public stage. While the extremely wealthy were breaking numbers during the economic crisis of the past three years, an estimated 64 million people were added to the 1.4 billion population of those living in extreme poverty, meaning in times of economic crisis, the wealth inequity gap gets wider. The rich get richer and the poorer get poorer.

Does this make sense? Is there not a human responsibility for just and equitable treatment of everyone, and closing the gap between extreme wealth and poverty? Can we realistically achieve an end to poverty by merely shifting around funds that address aspects of poverty but not poverty itself?

These astonishingly simple questions are faced with complex philosophies, are highly political and are definitely a taboo subject for anyone in public office. Questioning the ethical practices of unregulated market forces and unbridled capitalism is often accompanied with powerful objection and circular reasoning.

The word wealth itself, originated in the 13th century and modelled on the word health, gives power in the forms of monetary funds, social standing and capacity. Is it so unjust to expect that the wealthiest of individuals, having the most power, to heighten their responsibility and take on the burden of extreme poverty (a population with little or no power)?

The wealthiest no longer make their billions in their community or country alone, their net worth is derived from global dividends, the global community is therefore the focus of charity and humanitarian movements made because their society has been globalized. Globalization and technology have made it possible for more and more people to make personal commitments.

To explore this a bit more, a calculation of how redistribution would work in order to keep the billionaires billionaires and the extreme poor shift to moderately poor. If there are 1.4 billion people that should make $1.25 per day (365 days) for the next 5 years (as per the 2015 Millenium Development Goal, MDGs), the calculation is this: 1.4 Billion (($1.25 x 365 days (5 years))= $3.19 Trillion (USD)

If you take $3.19 trillion USD from the $4.5 trillion net worth, that leaves $1.31 Trillion to distribute to the 1,200 billionaires, which still qualify them for the list at $1.09 billion per individual. Essentially taking out the extremely wealthy and redistributing wealth to the extremely poor would encourage and support the eight millennium goals and accomplish the aim to end poverty by 2015.

It all comes back to us; we can make efforts to improve education, health and reach the other MDGs but individuals are the building blocks to the global society and it is about asking the wealthiest people to contribute their fair share to redress the wealth gap that exists. While this is political suicide, it is the right path to take as a global society.

So yes, WE can end poverty but it means advocating for the wealthiest to take a radical role in closing the gap of extreme economic inequity, will you ask them?

I am no Dickens...

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." -Opening Paragraph to A Tale of Two Cities

When I go to write anything I always think about Charles Dickens. He made it seem so effortless, so admirable, so frustrating.
If I could have started this blog off with a literary bang such as the opening paragraph to A Tale of Two Cities (above), and end it with the final sentence to A Tale of Two Cities (below), I would have exceeded my own expectations and most likely would have questioned every grade I received in English and writing classes. In reality, I am an ok writer, and an ok thinker, but what I lack in those departments I hope to make up for with some wit and subject matter.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known. ” -Final sentence in A Tale of Two Cities

YO...please come again...

Hola!

I was sitting around the other day complaining about Newt running for office in 2012 and the bologna that he put on the Clinton Administration, and I looked at my flatmate Chong, and realized three things:
1. we spend way too much time together, and oddly enough we don't want to kill each other (well on my part, I hope she feels the same)
2. she obviously does not seem to be amused with my comments, and
3. maybe I should find another outlet so I do not drive away Chong and have the possibility of living with five cats and one-sided conversations.

So here it is, my blog.