A few fun facts

Nearly 3 billion people, or half the world, live on less than $2 a day.

Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names

Less than 1 percent of what the world spends every year on weapons could put every child in a classroom

National Catholic Reporter, Jan 30, 2004 p24

Independent Media Center | www.indymedia.org

Since I am busy working on my 12 page Final Paper for my Ethnic Studies class, here's a link to the
Independent Media Center, which is one of the groups I am profiling in my Anti-Globalization paper.

My Favorite Fortune Cookie

You are an angel. Beware of those who collect feathers.

Did you know...

That Norah Jones is Ravi Shankar's daughter?

Did you know...

The name Spain came from a Phoenician word, which means 'rabbit coast'

Battleship

An awesome Battleship game, where you have eleven ships instead of six.

Tradewinds

I came across Tradewinds on shockwave.com last week. It's a shipping simulation game where you have to beware of pirates, manage your fleet and play the market with prices. It's fun, and you can play online for free, but you need to purchase it to unlock all of the options.

Tessellations

Check out this page on Tessellations (shapes that repeat to make a pattern). It has great interactive demonstration, and shows more than just squares, triangles and hexagons.

Today is an "International Day of Reflection" for Rwanda

Ten years ago, a plane carrying the the President of Rwanda was shot down and the ensuing months saw an average of 8,000 Tutsi and politically moderate Hutus killed per day. That's called genocide. Read more about it here.

Rwanda is a small country in the middle of Africa. It is almost the size of Maryland and has 8.2 million people. In 1994, between 500,000 and 800,000 people were killed, between 6 and 9 percent of the entire population.

Transit Strike

I live in Minneapolis, and our transit workers are on strike right now (issues about health care costs being the main issue). It hasn't affected me much, except I have to park two blocks further from work. However, it has affected my sister, niece and many of my friends a great deal. Even if I didn't know anyone that was having problems because of the lack of busses, I'd still see the need to get the busses back. People have been saying that traffic is better because of the strike, and therefore we shouldn't worry about it. Um, let's try to look at the whole picture. There are people who can't drive due to age or medical restrictions, there are people who don't own cars due to the expense and there are people who choose to ride the bus to save money and reduce pollution. These people do deserve to have options.

Perhaps I am being naive, but why can't we make transit profitable? Right now it is being subsidized by the state and that's part of what bothers people. Even if fares were slightly higher, if it was profitable to run a bus, we'd have less of an issue right now.

As for traffic, if only we had a subway/elevated system, people wouldn't have such an issue with the reduced number of busses on the roads. I doubt that will ever be approved, because of the debacle and debate over Light Rail that we had a few years back.