My week
Has kinda sucked.
The world is seeming like a pretty grotty place at the moment, I suppose because I have been reading too much stuff about all the crap that happens in it. I am not even talking about the big obvious bombing Afghanistan crap either, I mean all the stuff I have been reading in order to avoid that.
Ok a lot of it is historical, there is no point getting all upset about the appalling lives of agricultural workers in 17th century England. Nothing you can do about that, still depressing though. And there is not much you can do about the closer to home stuff either.
I read an account of the independence movement in West Papua, aka Irian Jaya, yesterday. It was in the Journal of Pacific History , not a usually emotive tome, but it was rather sad. I don't just mean the violence and obvious ghastly stuff but the story of Mama Josepha's flag. A group of peaceful hopeful people who rallied around a symbol, believed that justice was going to prevail only to find that power and authority and money won again. Reading about struggles for freedom or self determination or the right to a decent wage or to be yourself who ever that may be separated by 350 years and a couple of continents and knowing you are just sampling two in a whole smorgasbord both geographically and temporally, leads to the conclusion that the world is not improving much, it is just shovelling the shit around. 'Civilisation' is like a badly laid carpet, push down the bump at one end and it just jumps up in another.

Anyway the Morning Star will not be raised in Papua without the rest of the world's interest so it is time we started paying more attention.
Amnesty International
Human Rights Watch

Well, even if the world is a nasty and insane place not all the insanity is nasty. Some of it is fun, and to cheer up you can always laugh at that.
At for instance the Ig-Nobels