View From the Bushes

Big news day today: Driving into work, I heard that North Korea had officially announced that they had nuclear weapons and that Prince Charles is finally going to marry Camilla Parker-Bowles. What's interesting is that I'm not sure that the former news is more important than the latter. For one, there's some possibility that NK is lying; for another there's also a fairly strong possibility that the weapons will never get used. Obviously in both cases, the significance of the story is greatly dimished. And what if they are used? Well, certainly I hate to contemplate such a scenerio, but in terms of upheavel, death and catastrophe, it would barely register next to the goliaths of history like World War 2, or the Napoleanic Wars, and that leads me into my somewhat twisted reasoning for why the significance of Charles and Camilla getting married might outweigh the news that NK admitted to having nukes.

My reasoning would be something like this: Charles marrying Camilla is the beginning of the end of the British Monarchy, a govermental body which stood against the rest of the world or at least the rest of Europe over and over again, from the Spanish Armada, up through World War Two. And yes, I'm sure I'm giving the royals far too much credit, but let me put it his way (and yes, I agree I'm probably reaching): compare the entire existance and history of the British Empire with the news that there's yet another mad-man in the world with the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of people. You see where I'm going?

Speaking of which, my friend from Uganda, whose family is originally from Rwanda and who's a Tutsi gave me the book "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families," and trust me it doesn't take a nuke for mad-men to kill hundreds of thousands of people. As you can imagine the book is very sad, but there is of course also a very surreal quality as well, because it's so difficult to grasp the reality that was the Rwandan Genocide. The level of violance is frankly unfathonable.

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross