Eaten by Tapirs

A whole lot's happened...

First up, I offer a world of congratulations to my brother on the birth of his son, Raine Michael Rushton Sonelle, whose existencec became known to me merely a week ago. Can't wait to meet the little guy, who currently resides in Montreal.

The blog has suffered a bit of late as life has taken on some frenetic proportions. Commitment number one was the UPeace Model United Nations conference, which drew some 150 delegates, mostly from within Costa Rica, and threatened to devolve into a nightmare of Bushian proportions. Fortunately, much of it came together at the last minute and most delegates were unaware of the great well of chaos behind the scenes. My committee, where I represented China, addressed the issue of Iran's nuclear weapons program over three looong but entertaining days (Iran got quite snooty at times). I passed a resolution and won the Best Delegate award - yay me!

Other than that, my thesis looms and I'm busily digesting all I can about evolutionary psychology, while attempting to keep fed. I have approximately 300 pages of papers due in the next 3 months, so life is a touch busy. I'm also writing endlessly stimulating tracts on the symbology of terrorism and Iran's nuclear weapons, on which I have a short paper semi-published here. Another yay me!

In other news, I'm still hoping to visit Panama in April, when the entirety of Central America apparently enters a coma for the week leading up to Easter. I've applied for the aforementioned job in Thailand, as well as another in Afghanistan (not to terrify Mom, I swear), but still have no firm plans for what to do when school ceases to exist in June. Although I still plan to take a month to learn Spanish, but I know not where to head after that, nor how to fund said wanderings. We'll see.

P.S. In political affairs, I'm thrilled by the news that Basque separatist/terrorist group ETA has declared a unilateral permanent ceasefire. Who knows if it'll stick, but it would be nice to see an end to one of history's stupidest guerrilla campaigns.

Hugs 'til next time (when I post about the latetst crop of movies I've seen)!

posted by Paul @ 12:32 PM 11 comments

Baby steps...

Slobodan Milosevic, the Butcher of the Balkans, has been found dead in his cell, apparently of natural causes.


I'd certainly be happier if he'd been successfully tried and convicted first, but this is better than the travesty that occurred when Pol Pot died a free man. The wheels turn slowly, but they do turn.

posted by Paul @ 12:33 PM 1 comments

That didn't work...

So the Flickr Uploadr which was to bequeath my vacation photos on the wired world ran afoul of the perplexing instability of the University internet access. I'll try again tomorrow or Monday. Argh.

In other news, I'm attempting to determine how I feel about taking a job in Thailand teaching Burmese refugees about sustainable development. It's a phenomenal opportunity, but would take a long two years, pay next to nothing, and might pull me away from the string of friends' weddings and other commitments I've sworn to uphold. We'll see. I'm thinking hard about it.

posted by Paul @ 4:16 PM 5 comments