Wanderlust

In the throes of some extreme wanderlust at the moment. The entire day has been SO BLOODY unproductive, its not even funny. I recently moved into a new office, one which has a spectacular view (from the 9th floor of the building), and spent the entire day gazing out, reading poetry that had something to do with travel. That is, I spent hours scouring the web for travel poetry to read. Highly recommend this. Not to mention this lovely anthology of travel poetry here.

Blech. Of course, this means I have more time (rather, incentive) to blog. Once I get home, that is.

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

- J. R. R. Tolkien

[Zion National Park, Utah]

[Yosemite national park, California]

[Seville Cathedral, Spain]

[Chinatown, Singapore]

[Fullerton hotel, Singapore]

[Random apartments, Singapore]

[Road trip, Santa Barbara]

[Ooh, guess where!]

[Chatfield Hollow, New England]

The world's shortest essay competition

From the "World's shortest essay" competition, the winner, when asked to compose an entry that would satisfy the following - Religion, Royalty, Mystery and Sex.

"My God", said the Queen, "I'm pregnant. I wonder who the father is.."

Now this may or may not be apocryphal - but it sure as hell is funny :)

On Computer Security and Sex

Overheard,

Computer Security is like sex.
Once you're penetrated you're fucked.

How true :))

The dangers of Journalism as a profession?

Szerelem pointed me to a link today, about the number of journalists in the Caucasus that have been killed for one reason or another - political rivalries, whistle blowing, or even just standing up for what should be a free press. A total of 31. Since 2000 - a mere 7 year span. An average of 4 people losing their lives due to the whims and fancies of others, in the pursuit of duty. Civilians, to boot. And this figure doesn't even include those who were roughed up, threatened, or just disappeared before publishing their exposés.

One of the things which struck me was how the author of the article above found it extremely tough to put a picture to each name (he couldn't manage it in two instances). And to be honest, apart from the infamous Politkovskaya murder which received wide press coverage due to her criticisms of the Putin's government, I haven't heard about any of the others in any mainstream media. Does that mean these lives were lost in vain?

I looked up some numbers, courtesy of the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the International News Safety Institute, and they're rather startling..

The Top 21 bloodiest countries over the past 10 years have been Iraq (138), Russia (88), Colombia (72), Philippines (55), Iran (54), India (45), Algeria (32), the former republic of Yugoslavia (32), Mexico (31), Pakistan (29), Brazil (27), USA (21), Bangladesh (19), Ukraine (17), Nigeria, Peru, Sierra Leone & Sri Lanka (16), Afghanistan, Indonesia & Thailand (13). Iran’s figures were swollen by one air accident in December 2005. A military aircraft carrying news teams to cover exercises in the Gulf crashed in Tehran, killing 48 journalists and media technicians aboard.

As an aside, this puts India at 6th place in being one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. An eye opener of a statistic if there ever was one for the world's largest, and fastest growing democracy. Which brings us to the question of why they were killed in the first place. According to the CPJ,

They either died in the line of duty or were deliberately targeted for assassination because of their reporting or their affiliation with a news organization.

Full coverage of the article is here. There's no one reason for all the senseless killings - and no pattern which can probably be detected without the help of machine learning mechanisms.

Will people one day aspire to thought processes which do NOT involve eliminating potential threats from the arena in order (mostly) to make more money? or is that being naively idealistic?