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Midnight Traffic

I've been up since 6 am today. Had a long, relatively productive, busy and tiring day. Now I'm all alone at home since my roommates are out of town on vacation, and it's nice and quiet. Actually it's a little too quiet. I wish I had a dog, a huskie to be exact. Slightly grayish white/black fur with those sharp intelligent blue wolf eyes...

What a long day it's been. Have I mentioned that already? I've probably overexerted myself today as my back started to spasm...it's been tense all week long from basketball on Tuesday. Better get it checked. I think this was made worse as I was stuck in traffic at 1230 am!! WTF! The culprit---the Rolling Stones. They gave a concert at Duke's Wallace Wade Football Stadium. Supposedly 35,000+ people showed up, and each paid on average 100 bucks to listen to them. That's more than 35 million in a day!! And they caused a terribly traffic jam when I wanted to get home to sleep. Fucking bastards! Sorry to the fans out there, I really have nothing against them hah, it's just, I want to get home. I'm a big time rock fan myself...was listening to 96 Rock while waiting at every intersection on Erwin.

Actually taking the larger perspective, I realized how much coordination must go into events like these. It's no small feat getting that many people safely into and out of a single location. And more importantly, look at the amazing influence these musicians have on their fans. I think when one is propelled into such a visible and influential status, one has to be careful and try to do some greater good. That's why I have a lot of respect for Bono. He tries to make a difference not just in music, but also in the world. Here's a profile of Bono in the NYT Magazine from some time ago. I actually read it all the way through.

Its when disasters like the earthquake in South Asia happen that we need motivated, inspirational leaders to come forth and bring out all the good in those not directly affected, such that efforts can be made to help those in suffering. Every time a disaster like this happens in poorer nations and the death toll is in the tens of thousands, I always ask, could this have been prevented? Surely some will blast me for the nerve to ask a question like this when we should be first asking, "What can I do immediately to help the survivors." But its important after the initial phase of search and rescue to think hard about what could have been done to minimize the loss of life. Was it the infrastructure or the coordination that failed? Its a point the finger game with the intent to identify the problems and solve them. Thats different from a point the finger and blame game.

Time to sleep.

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