The world as a whole is getting better. It is a common misconception that the world is about to self-destruct. World hunger is down, and could be lower if it wasn't for the EU, people are living longer, pollution is down, infant mortality is down, our water supply is cleaner. In the US there was this big debate about the gap between the poor and the rich. How many families have more then one car, VCR/DVD player, and TV and yet consider themselves barely getting by? 6 years ago I had to buy a new monitor. It was the cheapest 17in I could find and it cast $250. In the past year I have had four 17in monitors given to me. A couple are even nice Trinitron ones. I have recently been upgrading the main PC at home, all with parts that farther up the technology curve then my orginal machine yet at 1/4 the price.

25 years ago if you had said that we would be out sourcing technology jobs to India you would have been laughed at. That is how much better the world is now.

It all boils down to "Good news is boring, If it bleeds it leads." That is the attitude of the news in this country. We get this relentless pounding of "2 people died in a shooting today. More at 11.." That we get the feeling that there are these horrible killers prowling our streets looking for their next prey. In reality most people are killed by people they know.

Jafo wonders just how old fIvE sPiDeRz really is...if he's a decade older than 'anyone'....

this ol' spider's 62 on the 13th!

I don't hitch-hike any longer myself. 'cause I have a car.

10+ years ago I started to hitch-hike from Hungary to Portugal. We had some of those cardboard signs. The sign said "New York". And "Portugal" of course. It was fun watching people in their cars, you could read their lips saying "NNEEWW YYOORRKK??". They must have thought they've lost their way.

It was fun when people in totally full cars stopped by just to ask where were we really going, 'cause they didn't beleive the New York sign. They laughes when we started to describe "just before entering Manhattan you could us out, as we actually wanna go to New Jersey first". Then we showed the Portugal sign. They kept on laughing, and didn't beleive we were heading to Portugal indeed.

But lot of people gave us a lift just because they liked our New York sign.

Life became more complicated when we were on our way already in italy, as from local newspapers we found that a hitch-hiker had just killed a driver the previous week. We took the train to leave Italy soon.

But still remember the feeling of telling hitch-hiker stories to drivers, when sitting in their posh air-conditioned cars, drinking their ice-cold cokes or beers for hundreds of miles/kilometers and then get off, and put up a tent in no-mans-land in the middle of nowhere.

OK, nostalgy over, back to work.

There is a pretty cool advertisment out now for LandRover I think, where two college kids are walking along a highway talking about their future. One kid is saying how he's really into ceramics and that will be his major. Then a car comes along and they both hitch, and the car stops... they get in and it's soo nice in there. The ceramics major looks at his buddy and says, maybe I'll minor in ceramics. It's smile.