Unconnected items today:

1. Everyone has probably heard about yesterday's plane crash in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. My thoughts and prayers are with the families of those who were killed; I know what it's like to "get the call." The plane overshot the runway, which was the right length 50 years ago, but was not meant to accommodate modern jets. This has long been a topic in Honduras, but even readers of this humble thread could have seen it coming...in an entry in January 2007 about my trip to Tegucigalpa, the first numbered item was entitled "A Wing and a Prayer," about the hazards of the airport.

2. Whenever I hear Hillary Clinton yammering about the importance of counting every vote in Michigan and Florida, it almost makes me sick. She talks as if she truly cares about the people of those states getting their votes counted, for the sake of democracy. What utter hooey. If her role was reversed with Obama, she would be pounding the table, insisting that everyone play by the rules that were agreed upon previously. Or at the very least, she would not be banging the table on counting every vote in those two states if the vote had gone against her. So it's not so much that she cares about the people getting their votes counted; it's that she is desperate to be President of the United States and will say practically anything to further that goal. She should go take a math lesson from Mike Huckabee and gracefully end her campaign; it would do more for her "legacy" than pugnaciously sticking it out until the bitter end.

3. I read a wrenching article in Newsweek about poppy farmers in Afghanistan giving their daughters to lenders in lieu of monetary repayment...basically handing them over to lives of servitude, rape, and trauma. It's frowned upon, but fairly widely practiced and there are enough "buyers and sellers" that it hardly seems taboo. What kind person does this to his own daughter? How could he ever look in the mirror again? How could he ever sleep again? When I start to whine about my problems, I shall need to remind to myself how fortunate I am that I live in place where this type of inhumanity is utterly unacceptable. The fathers who do this to their daughters in Afghanistan probably comfort themselves with platitudes about how their daughters will be better off; live more comfortable lives, etc. But it's not true; the psychological impact of being "sold" by your father is shattering, no matter what kind of culture you grew up in. Until people stop thinking of their daughters as creatures that can traded for monetary value, Afghanistan will remain a deeply troubled country.