WTF California

One I love how the only dissenting vote was from the one liberal judge. Two how can people genuinely be so horrible?

I believe that a Church has the right to define marriage in what ever way it wants to- that is religion people have a choice, but to take away fundamental liberties that are available to everyone else in the state? You have a choice to follow a religion, you have a choice to buy a car, you have a choice to wear solids or stripes... you don't chose between gay or straight and that should not result in a division between liberties and non-liberties. What are people so afraid of? The state of California was not asking Catholic churches to agree to perform ceremonies and there is supposed to be a separation of church and state anyway! This was not a threat to anyones children or families, homosexuals don't eat babies for breakfast for goodness sake.


Come on California stop the hate.

Tourists will always loose a game of chicken with a runner

Running USED to be my sanctuary. It always made me feel better and less angry... then I moved to London. I happen to be very luck to live in one of the most beautiful areas of London- it also happens to be home to the famed tower bridge, golden hide (ship) and the Queen's walk among other things meaning that from 9:45am to 9pm it is packed with tourists. For anyone who happens to be a local in a tourist hot spot you will appreciate. Good people seem to loose all sense of decency when they become a tourist, they walk four abreast down a narrow road, stop mid-walk to gawk at something, fail to walk in a straight line. All of this makes it terribly difficult for a runner. I would normally simply submit and use a treadmill but I am training for a marathon meaning I need to run outside to get the proper training. Furthermore I think it is a bit silly to take a twenty minute tube ride to find a bit of greenery to run in meaning I must run along this tourist packed river walk. It is my neighborhood I can run where I want to! Needless to say constantly having to dodge tourists who started out on one side of the sidewalk only to drift to your side can be a bit annoying. Aside from the constant weaving you have those walking four abreast acting as a road block that you cannot get around. My person fav is the people who have one person posed for a picture on one side of an enormous sidewalk and then the person with the sidewalk all the way on the other (meaning anyone who needs any bit of the sidewalk risks going through their photo). They always seem sooo annoyed when I run right through as if they actually expect me to stop in deference to their hogging of a significant piece of property and jog in place while they get the set up just right and take the picture. Dear tourists- if I stopped for any of your pictures my thirty minute run would take two hours! It is not going to happen. Needless to say putting so much effort into getting from point A to B and back is way more stress than one needs on their run. As a result I have become a cranky lady when I run. This means I will brush against people in an effort to get by, glare, run through photos and on one occasion where a tourist turned around-saw me coming- and continued to amble in my way- swear under my breath. Needless to say tourists you will loose a game of chicken with me when I am running because I want to get my run in and you are in my way- sorry.

In case you were wondering why the direction of the blog changed

Hello,


So I promise to still blog when random weird and whacky things happen to me on my London adventures but lately since I have been spending entirely too much time writing papers and studying to have these crazy experiences I thought I would try something new. Since the end goal of all this schooling is to work for a kick ass human rights organization either making the public aware of violations throughout the world by doing field work and writing reports or spurring the government to action through lobbying- I figured I should start writing about different events in the human rights field once a week. Since I am currently in exam mode they will hopefully get better when I have more time to research and think.

Anyway learn and take it with you!
x

Um excuse me....

So for anyone who has been reading up on the foreign section of the paper as of late you are aware of the recent arrest of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi- for those of you who are not here is the story. This woman has been under house arrest for over a decade, she is the leader of the democratic movement in Myanmar, had won an election (back in1991) which scared the ruling military party in to continual bogus charges against her since in an attempt to create the whole 'out of sight out of mind' for the oppressed in the country. She has been arrested and sent to jail again because... a man tried to break into her house and establish contact with her. A man (who had previously tried to get to her house and give her a bible- save my opinion on Mormons for separate rant) swam across a lake to her house completely uninvited. I am pretty sure this Buddhist older woman in exile really couldn't care about a whack job from the middle of America. So now she is back in jail awaiting trial and conveniently with elections approaching. With the front runner locked up it would be much easier for the Junta to fake legitimize their rule. Not to mention not very Christianly of this man to go and f* any chance at democracy for this oppressed country.

Sadly my issue is that the Obama administration- and the rest of the west - does not seem to care much. It has barely been a year since the cyclone devastated Myanmar, does no one remember the horrors that followed? The ruling Junta not only oppresses their people on a regular basis but in the aftermath of the disaster actually hindered aid delivery from international support and even threatened its own citizens who were trying to help. China has been abysmal at pressuring the country for change (ASEAN embraces the notion of sovereignty far too much). Suu Kyi needs to be cleared of this ridiculous charges in order to stand for future elections or at least lead the democratic charge. The world needs to pressure Myanmar to change because this kind of behavior in the new millennium should not be tolerated .

Oink Oink

I must say this swine flu thing is hilarious, it also shows exactly how crazy the media can be. For starters my biggest beef (not pork), comes from the attributed US death. Several people over here in London have asked me "aren't you concerned now that an American has died", clearly everyone reads the headlines and not the small print at the veeery end of the article. The boy who died in America was flown from Mexico, he was Mexican as far as I understand it (someone claimed he had dual citizenship or something which is why I say as far as I understand it). The point is not a single death has happened in a fully developed country with a sound health care system. In fact I am willing to bet if we did a study on the socio-economic class that each death comes from we would find that most of them were poor, didn't eat well, and had limited access to health care. Some have responded that I am silly and it is perhaps instead the virus has mutated more in Mexico making it more deadly. This could be true expect for two counts against it: one the infections in Mexico have leveled, two there have been no reports of worse cases in the US where enough people have it to the point where I think it is safe to say if it was going to mutate it had the chance. One person says they are not scared right now but what about this fall when it becomes flu season and they are at a higher risk of getting it. By then it is believed that a vaccine will be available for this particular strain- o and the drug tammyflu is proving to work as well.

While I think all this hype is unnecessary there are two major benefits to this outbreak.
1) Maybe viruses in general will stop spreading. Suddenly there is a massive campaign telling people to wash their hands and cover their mouths when they cough (I thought this was just common sense). I have always washed my hands directly after using public transport simply because uncouth people sneeze on the handrail without regard to anyone else. Perhaps if people start taking these extra steps less germs will spread in general which would be very nice for those of us bound to the cesspool of germs that is the London tube system.

2) While no one is actually getting this "swine" flu from pigs once again the media confuses people and pig consumption is going down at least for the time being. Pigs are smart creatures, the perform as well on computer tasks as monkeys and can be trained just as easily as dogs. They are aware of what is happening- it is for these reasons I do not eat them. I mean if people think it is weird to eat a monkey or dog why do they make exception for the pig?

So if it saves the adorable pigs and makes people sneeze in a tissue and not on me then thank you swine flu for making this world a better place.

pirate correction

So aside from the fact that my decision on how to handle pirates was against my humanitarian nature I have learned some interesting things I did not know before. One silly I know and I bet everyone else knows this but they are only pirates once out of Somali waters- so some closer to shore operations actually dont count. Two a certain ICJ justice put it very clear to us- basically these pirates steal to get the hell out of Somalia. And what does that have to do with things you ask? Well say we capture the pirates -this means a country has to try them (no one seems to be jumping at the chance minus kenya) and say the US does try a pirate- do we then send them to jail in Somalia (clearly no) - so all this capturing them and trying them means is they get their plane ticket to a better country paid for!

So new plan- find a magic way to bring peace and stability to Somalia so people dont have to be pirates!