FINALLY, Egypt is taking back its stuff! The staff at the Egyptian museum in Cairo want the Rosetta Stone back - can you believe that they have a fake version?
I wonder how the British Museum will respond to their request.
I love the peace and serenity of the British Museum. I love the Bloomsbury area of London that it resides in. I love that there is a fantastic comic book store right outside the British museum where I go to reward myself for my intellectual and cultural endeavours.
I do not love that my favourite area of the museum is signposted "Egypt and Africa". Would they like a map? A globe? A slap upside the head maybe? I'm sick of Egypt being treated as a culturally distinct area, seperate from the rest of Africa. It seems that this is the only way that the world can acknowledge the advanced nature of a civilistation that was ancient to the ancient greeks and romans! Damn shame that it was on the same continent those black folk came from.
This one was sent to me by a fellow dental student avoiding revision as something we can aspire to when we qualify. To paraphrase - a scottish MP (Alex) has got himself into a bit of trouble after treating his dentist and his wife to a £1,400 meal and VIP tickets to a pop concert event on the taxpayer's dime.
So as an occasional tax payer I am incensed, but on the other hand, Alex had just had root canal treatment the week before. Unless you have felt the hot throbbing ache of an infected tooth you may not understand the gratitude that some patients feel to their dentists post treatment. Next time hopefully that gratitude will come from his own pocket.
When it comes to humanity I like to think that there is very little that will shock me. I watch the news and have to numb myself to the suffering because in my current mood (I'm in a funk) it would overwhelm me. Today I was reading the news on my Crackberry (woop woop) and read something that just left me speechless.
In Summary, a man is currently on trial, for stabbing a pregnant woman, Marwa El-Sherbini, IN A COURTROOM!
WTF?
How the hell did that happen?
Apparently this dysenteric individual was originally in court charged with defamation against Marwa. She had asked if her son could use the swing which his niece was playing on and he unleashed a torrent of racial and religious abuse. She sued him and won, but apparently he was able to enter and remain in the courtroom while in possession of a 7 inch knife, with which he stabbed her EIGHTEEN TIMES in front of her 3 year old child.
I wanted to call this "End of an Era", or "Death of a Legend" or something equally dramatic as is befitting the death of Michael Jackson.
Dad came in and told me an hour ago that MJ was dead. I didn't believe it and on some level I still don't. Apparently his Peter Pan complex had me and the rest of the world believing that he would always exist. News currently reports that he died from a cardiac arrest; he was in a coma on arrival to the hospital and died soon afterwards.
TMZ had the story hours before other more reputable news outlets. A source I would usually dismiss. The internet is fabulous though, within minutes my facebook wall was full of shocked, disbelieving messages. Even my own messages follow a pattern of shock "is it true? MJ?", disbelief "someone needs to show me some proof", and finally acceptance "RIP MJ,".
The world has lost a great artist tonight. Unfortunately he was unable to stay relevent and change as the world around him changed, but it is a testiment to the quality of his early music that we are still fans.
I guess his legal troubles should be mentioned. A grown man sharing a bed (and whatever else occured) with young boys is wrong. And with all the people surrounding MJ, and the awareness of his slightly "off the wall" mental state, this should not have been allowed to happen TWICE. But I also believe that if I was a parent and Michael had alledgedly fiddled with my kids, no amount of money would shut me up - I would want him to be tried, jailed and then repeatedly troubled by a tattoed guy named Butch. I also wouldn't send my child to "sleepovers" at a grown man's house who has no kids! Someone's story didn't add up. I guess we'll never know whose. But as I sit here listening to Billie Jean I'm reminiscing through the rose tinted specs of hindsight that obliterate the negativity.
I just bought a couple things from Amazon, the Moonwalker DVD which I've been looking for for ages, and a Motown MJ 3 disc album. I want them before the mad memoribilia rush begins.
Also I'm feeling a little guilty. Because my second thought (after ...tragic death of a legend...) was, are my concert tickets going to be refunded? Cold? Possibly. But I especially feel for all the people who bough concert tickets at wildly elevated prices. I wonder if there is a refund procedure for that? Also feeling guilty for the fleeting thoughts wondering if this was a life insurance scam - news of his brokeness is commonplace. But I hope I'm not that cynical.
Watching the news now I'm seeing people crying and fainting on footage of past Michael Jackson concerts. I remember those days! When seeing Michael was an EVENT on a grand scale. I saw his Dangerous tour in the UK. I was blessed, lucky enough to see his talent live and unadulterated. I remember going into school the next day head held high; I'd seen Michael Jackson! For a couple days (which included a show and tell) my news was the hottest thing!
This self taught (people forget he was SELF TAUGHT) man, BLACK MAN (yeah we claim him in death) will never be bested. No one currently even comes close. All those pretenders to the throne, the omarian's, chris browns, neyos and ushers need to show respect to the origin of all of their styles.
RIP Michael, I hope you find the peace in death that you so desperately craved in life.
michael in all his crotch grabbing, moonwalking, crowd pleasing glory
**************edit: Is this one of those deaths for which we are all slightly to blame? Our obsession with celebrity has reached fever pitch.
What causes a physically active, non-smoking man suddenly present to hospital in full cardiac arrest? There are many theories, but I'm postulating stress.
50 show dates, that apparently he didn't agree to, he only knew about 10, a legal fight on his hands (again!), brokeness, and constant media intrusion into his life from the age of 5, just typing it sounds stressful. Still a lil shell shocked - there may be more updates forthcoming...******************
This woman should be the poster child for the new Safe Sex campaign. Durex should recruit her and plaster her face on billboards across the country.
Read here how a pretty 26 year old singer had unprotected sex with 3 men, knowing that she was HIV+.
Now she has been arrested and charged with grievous bodily harm. But is she guilty?
There's is no doubt that HIV is a debilitating virus. After the initial infection there is a latency period which can last anything up to 20 years during which an infected person can live a pretty normal life. But eventually the immune system is destroyed because the lymphocyte (a type of white blood cell) population is depleted. Most HIV infected people develop AIDS. The weakened immune system leads them to contract oppurtunistic infections and cancers such as Cytomegalovirus or Kaposi's sarcoma (did you see Philadelphia? yeah - that) - you'd rarely see these in healthy individuals.
Sex with Nadja (for that is the singer's name) may have given these guys a long, drawn out death certificate (much like tobacco companies do, everyday - I digress) but where is the personal responsibility of these men considered? Why were they not concerned enough with their own health to wrap up and strap up? Unprotected sex is like playing russian roulette and unfortunately these guys got the bullet.
For Nadja to be charged with GBH a jury needs to prove that she acted with malicious intent. The BBC story doesn't really clarify if this is the case. If this was an "I hate men" campaign on her part, then throw away the key! But please bear in mind the ability of good sex to cloud sanity and good judgement. In the heat of the moment, protection is often forgotten - it has happened to everyone! But for Nadja and the guys the consequences were a little more severe. Edit: Yes I am aware that this woman is completely in the wrong, don't read me as condoning her actions. I am a huge fan of personal responsibility and I feel it's being lost in modern culture and replaced by blame culture, so here is an alternate view...
Maybe this story is motivation to judge if our own practices are healthy:
When was the last time you got a full sexual health MOT?
Do you always wear some kind of barrier protection method when you have sex?
