Mad World

Listening to: 'Meccano' by Red Light Company [Fine Fascination]

The world pissed me off today. Thrice.

1. "You're poor, therefore you must be unhappy."

I was listening to the radio today, as I always do, and I was listening to Jo Whiley's Changing Tracks. Today's story was about a girl who spent her gap year in Uganda, and what a great time she had and how it changed her life etc. When speaking of the Ugandan kids she worked with, she said the following -

...despite living in abject poverty, they were always smiling...

Well what did you expect? Did you think they'd be walking around feeling suicidal just because they live in a poor country?! Honestly! The concept of contentment is alien to the majority of these studenty types. They live in a world where your self worth is measured by how many colours of nail polish you have, or the type of iPod you own, or how drunk you got at last night's party. They float from the skies to these 'developing countries' thinking that they'll make a marked difference to the region and come back talking about how lovely the people are. And those people? To them, they're just a nice foreigner who came on holiday.

I'm not saying that these students don't have good intentions - they do. What I'm saying is that a lot of them don't understand a life outside their own. They don't see how a child from a rural village can enjoy life. They don't see that there's more to life than material possessions. They don't see that one year of teaching English is not going to change the futures of these kids at all. I just can't see it as anything other than a glorified holiday.

2. Tailor-made babies

According to this article, a fertility clinic in the States is offering sex and physical trait selection. Yeah that's right...if you want only a baby boy with only blue eyes and only blonde hair, head over to this clinic. I really hope this is just another case of BBC editorialising things 'cos if it's the truth, I want to puke. I can understand using this technology for screening of genetic disorders such as Down's Syndrome and Huntington's Disease. If parents choose to abort a pregnancy that would result in a baby with Down's Syndrome, that's their prerogative. But to discard a foetus because it has the wrong hair colour?!?!?! How superficial are we getting? This is a human life we're talking about, not a washing machine!

3. Rules are rules

So apparently the team from Corpus Christi, Oxford that won this year's University Challenge has been disqualified, because one of their team mates graduated half way through the competition and therefore ceased to be a student. OK, rules are rules...and while I would've preferred common sense to prevail (because I think they deserved to win), I can accept the BBC's decision. What I can't understand is, if this was such a big issue, why didn't it come out earlier?! Why wait until they've won to bring this up? Why wasn't it highlighted during the however many other matches they played? Have they checked the details of every other participant in the history of University Challenge? Or was it just that some bonfire pisser got upset that this college had won twice and decided dig around in the hope that they'd find some goss? Well they found some, so I hope they're happy.