October 2009
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Paul Anka — Black Hole Sun
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We’ve reached a very strange point in human history when it is assumed that people who don’t have access to food will have working cell phones.
[This was observed by Foreign Policy’s Joshua Keating, who] points to an announcement by the UN that it will use cell phones to send $22 vouchers to Iraqi refugee families in Syria every two months. They are provided with special SIM cards for the transactions, and the vouchers can then be exchanged for staples such as rice, flour, lentils, chickpeas, and oil at selected stores.
Perhaps expecting that eye brows might be raised at the idea that those needing food aid would have cell phones, the UN’s Emilia Casella reports, “all the 130,000 Iraqi refugees currently receiving food aid from the agency in Syria have mobile phones.” (tpr)
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I wish the same people who loudly speak out against vaccines were also just as loud against antibiotics, clean water, elevators, and hyperlinks.
The vast majority of vaccines are some of the greatest inventions humans have ever known. Just ask the last person to die of smallpox. Or that 13 year old healthy kid who died of H1N1 yesterday.They’d probably wish they received a vaccine. People who have little understanding of science, epidemiology, and the transmission of disease need to study how kick ass it is we don’t have to worry about smallpox or polio anymore.
Thank you D.A. Henderson.
” —Jay Parkinson (apsies: savagemike: david: soupsoup) (via abbyjean)
“I haven’t actually heard anyone pitch what they do as “groupware,” as the name apparently got such a bad reputation historically to have been banned. ”
—It Is 2009. Why Is “Groupware” Still So Hard? - Continuations
