50 Cent vs James Bond

A concerned reader wrote into the paper a couple of day ago comparing the posters of 50 cent's movie 'Get rich or die trying and the new one for Casino royale. Her beef was that both posters contained images of a man and a gun however 50 cent's poster was banned for promoting violence. Whereas she decided to take a black vs white angle on it, its was difficult to see how this was a racist issue. 50 Cent in his film, music, game and other forums glorifies violence and a violent way of life and this was why his movie and posters were criticised. As for James well how can you critise Bond!!!

I want one of those

Nikon D40

Snoop's new Album

Natural High

One has always suspected that women got a natural high from gossiping and now researchers have finally proven the point. One Researcher Professor Louann Brizendine of University of California claims that females, due to the programming of their brains, get this natural high from gossiping and thus can deliver over 20,000 words in a day as compared to 7,000 for men. He adds that as men do not get this natural high from gossiping their brains are setup to think about sex. He further claims that women's brains are better at remembering argument. Now that I can agree to.

Tall Men

All my life, I thought being tall was cool. Some would claim that size or height doesn't matter but we all know that's not strictly true. Being tall had more advantages than disadvantages or so I thought. So imagine my shock when I opened the paper this afternoon to see the headlines "Tall men face twice cancer risk'. According to a Maryland team that did a study on almost 1700 US servicemen under 45, to investigate links between diet, body size and testicular cancer; men over 6ft tall face a greater risk of getting testicular cancer. So where does that leave us tall men???

Ethical concerns of development Assistance

Every day we are bombarded with news and images of a war torn, poverty infested Africa. Reports upon reports from far and wide; Oxfarm to Red Cross show that most pledges among the G8 countries have gone unfulfilled. In real terms aid budgets are not increasing and the situation is getting worse.

One country that seems to be taking an contrasting view of Africa is China. As we all know China is tipped to be the next super world power and as we in the west look towards china for cheaper labour and raw materials so will China to Africa once it economy moves to a knowledge based one.
And thus China has increased its trade with Africa to a large enough scale that African governments are looking towards China as alternative partners in development of their economies rather than the West. The added bonus that the Chinese deal comes with no political strings attached makes the deals even sweeter. Nevertheless, one has note a word of caution. With no criticism of domestic policies within African economies, the Chinese can be seen to support the idea of ignoring accountability frameworks. Infact leaders like President Mugabe are welcoming the Chinese as they can carry out deals enriching themselves whilst the rest of the population suffers. Whereas the conditions the West puts on aid and development assistance may be too burdensome for most African countries we have to make sure that we don't just move to other end of the scale and ignore accountability frameworks

Security blunder

So this morning headlines was filed with the story of how London Underground's maintenance contractor hired the son a convicted terrorist Abu Hamza. Mohammed Mostafa himself a convicted terrorist served time in Yemen over a plot to bomb British and American terrorists. He was sacked when his identity was found out however one has to wonder how he started working in the first place. See here for more on this story.

After 7/7 bombing security on the underground should have been stepped up and everyone working in the underground vetted but it seems one slipped the net. The crazy thing is that it only takes one to slip through the net and we can have a repeat of 7/7. One has to wonder what is our security services doing about this? How comes know criminals can come into the country and work? Yet innocent refugees get sent back to face presecution?