ON a serious note (hattip Tina)
Darfur starvation will be televised ... eventually
By Andrew Stroehlein

BRUSSELS – When people are starving en masse, television is there to capture their fly-covered faces as they expire. The world is appalled by the repeated images of the dying and is stirred to action: People open up their purses to charity appeals, and politicians feel strong public pressure to address the famine and its root causes at the highest level.
But mass starvation doesn't just appear out of nowhere in an instant, so where are the TV cameras just before the emaciated bodies start piling up?
continues:
CSM 8th June 2004

ON a lighter and fluffier note:
You may not know that many non-living things have a gender. For example:

1. Ziploc Bags - They are Male, because they hold everything in, but you can see right through them.
2. Copiers - They are Female, because once turned off, it takes a while to warm them up again. It's an effective reproductive device if the right buttons are pushed, but can wreak havoc if the wrong buttons are pushed.
3. Tyre - Male, because it goes bald and it's often over-inflated.
4. Hot Air Balloon - Male, because, to get it to go anywhere, you have to light a fire under it and, of course, there's the hot air part.
5. Sponges - Female, because they're soft, squeezable and retain water.
6. Web Page - Female, because it's always getting hit on.
7. Subway - Male, because it uses the same old lines to pick people up.
8. Hourglass - Female, because over time, the weight shifts to the bottom.
9. Hammer - Male, because it hasn't changed much over the last 5,000 years, but it's handy to have around.
10. Remote Control - Female...... Ha! You thought it'd be male. But consider this -- it gives a man pleasure, he'd be lost without it, and while he doesn't always know the right buttons to push, he keeps trying.