room enough for a mountain lion and me

Killing comes easy.

That's what the lions in Cameroon would say, I suppose. To protect the dead and to provide for the living, now, that is a difficult task. I'm sure the Cameroon thieves would agree.

So my question is: who do we protect and preserve over others?

It is as I heard Mr Seervai quote Hegel in a discussion: The greatest moral dilemmas are not between right and wrong; they are between right and right.

For it seems to me highly deplorable to have conservationists say that they're worried about the lives of lions, because hungry villagers are stealing their kills. Don't get me wrong; I'm all for animal protection and conservation, but I'm also for eradication of poverty and hunger, so that the world can see at least one less starving child or mother, and one less man who kills himself working (and not because they die).

I'm not saying prioritize man over the lions either; they're both integral to Earth, and they both have equal rights over Earth - the lions more so, perhaps, because man has exploited their lands as well. But the solution can't only be to lament the impending death of lions, surely? The specialization of labour doesn't need to make one indifferent to other, equally pressing, problems, does it? And these definitely aren't issues of different degrees of importance.

Africa is still the world's sympathy lab. And we're experimenting.

***

I suppose it makes me a hypocrite, for I speak, but do nothing.

Random

It's a bug we all have. We want to know details about the private lives of others, especially celebrities, or people we admire or look up to, or those we hate and wish ill for. Those details help solidify our ideas about them, whoever "they" are, and aid understanding and love, or ill feeling and anger.*

Last trimester, Nicola Lacey's book did just that for me. Hart was no longer just one another genius in a madding crowd who had formulated a brilliant and path-breaking way to understand the philosophy of law; he was human. And it was easier, having read Lacey, to forgive the flaws and holes in Hart's theory of law, because after all, he was as human as the rest of us, and had his failings and brilliance. Lacey draws extensively from Hart's diaries, and there is much that is endearing in Hart's frank and candid - and sometimes wistful and wishful, at other times angry and confused - version of his life, the ideas and the people populating it.

And the Obamas too: they're very human, if you know what I mean. It's a fairytale marriage (but not a fairytale living it), going by this article. I'm tempted, through sheer Cassandra-ness, to believe there must be red herrings. But I won't. No, I won't.

*Illustrative, not exhaustive. :)