July 13, 2004

Energy-Efficient ? Pros: Energy Efficient, cheap, appropriate use of available resources, easy to maintain, no need for expensive siren - a "moo" suffices, Cons: well... On one hand i'm tickled by the whole idea, BUT it saddens me to think that people still dont have access to basic health care in parts of the world while others bitch about how HMOs are teh sux0rs. In developing countries, healthcare is not a basic human right, it's a luxury available to only the rich. Yes most developing countries are full of corrupt politicians that divert much needed funds and aid for their personal gain, but try explaining that to a mother watching her child die of malaria with no access to healthcare. Sometimes i hate the world we live in!!
posted by ramix 20 years ago
  • well, stone-age indeed, but with a broke (or broken) system some ambulance service is better than no ambulance service. i say good job to the person who came up with a way to keep the system from going under. i say to those who detract from it to come up with a better solution - put up or shut up. sure it isn't very modern, but i again refer to the lack of money available...
  • This is very sad. Good God, how lucky am I?
  • The real tragedy is that for Zimbabwe it didn't have to go this way. They could have been doing a lot better, but aren't. This reminds me, I found this the other day. It's written by Theodore Dalrymple (pseudonym), who is currently a doctor in the UK. He worked as a doctor in Rhodesia for a while, and this is his interpretation of why things went downhill after it became Zimbabwe. As ever, take with salt.
  • blame it on the white man.
  • Know what? Sometimes the white man is guilty. Not always, not by a long shot. But sometimes he is.
  • Dalrymple's writing is delightful, but if you read him for long you will see that he has but one idea, namely that everything was better in an ideal, non-existent, prewar England. This is why he now lives in rural France... In this case, you could sum up his position as a prose White Man's Burden. Why is the despicable Mugabe in power? Because he was, initially at least, a distinct improvement on the revolting apartheid-like regime that preceded him. Who installed that previous government, that climaxed in the nasty Ian Smith? Why, Dalrymple's precious philosopher kings. Indeed, even Dalrymple admits that problems in modern Africa stem from the imposition of models of state-government-whatever that do not fit there. It seems to me that we needn't have an either-or here. Mugabe & co are indisputably bad, and African. Their predecessors likewise, and English. Everyone gets to share the blame.
  • It's a shame Zimbabwe doesn't have oil ... sorry I mean WMD ... then the UK and the US would have 'liberated' it some time ago. Instead we're sending them the English cricket team