Stop trying to save the world

why do people always think being lazy is a bad thing? You lazy bum! I don’t know what number it has, but laziness or sloth as it is known, is one of the deadly sins. (it’s #7; ed. note)
Actually, sloth is the most noble of human qualities. The divine nature of sloth should be apparent to all. Everywhere, creatures seek to find a place for rest and reflection. Survival is the only motivating factor to interrupt this heavenly activity. Working hard to prepare a shelter or store food provide safety and comfort for resting.

As creatures became more intelligent, they developed tools and many other strategies to streamline the survival related activities and maximize the time available for rest and reflection.
As our memories developed, the perception of time led us to other abstract thinking and ultimately, sentience. Somewhere along this path, the divine quality of sloth came into question, as other divinities were proposed in its place.
(Note that despite intelligence and sentience, not all humans behave rationally, or, as I propose to put it, understand “preemptive sloth” strategies.)
Also, society grew and became organized, and it became inconvenient for the ruling classes to let the gray masses live as God intended, so the work ethic was invented.

Google takes on federal government in data showdown - Mar. 14, 2006
Google takes on US in data showdown
Internet search giant to defend decision to deny federal government access to search records related to child pornography case.
March 14, 2006: 8:15 AM EST

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc. faces off against the Justice Department in federal court Tuesday as the Internet company seeks to quash a subpoena for search data, including millions of user queries, in a battle over privacy issues on the Web.

Google will defend its motion to deny a demand by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for data the government wants the company to produce as part of a separate case over the extent to which online pornography is a threat to children.

Examiner
Latvian minister ‘concerned’ over citizens’ behaviour
By Ann Cahill, Europe Correspondent, Salzburg
THE Latvian foreign minister is to visit Ireland to get a better picture of reports of crime and drunk driving among his citizens here.

Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern has invited his counterparts from Latvia, Lithuania and Poland to visit Ireland to see how their citizens are integrating.

It follows a surge in road deaths, drunk driving and murders among the country’s newest immigrants.

Sofia News Agency
Bulgarian Notch below Blood Alcohol Level World Record
2006-03-07
Police has seized a driver who had 8.35 promilles of alcohol concentration in his blood, just 0.79 promilles below the world record set by another Bulgarian last year. The 57-year-old man, whose name was not disclosed, was arrested during a regular check on a ring-road near the town of Pleven, Northern Bulgaria. In January last year a 67-year-old man blew a 9.14 promilles of blood alcohol level after bumping into a truck in Bulgaria’s second biggest city of Plovdiv. The amazed doctors at the local hospital conducted several blood tests to confirm the initial result, which set a new world record, beating former Latvian champion by 1.14 promilles.

Why texting harms your IQ - Student - Times Online
Why texting harms your IQ
By Michael Horsnell
Txts n emails mk ppl stupid coz they R worse than smking pot & lead 2 a st8 of ‘infomania’

THE regular use of text messages and e-mails can lower the IQ more than twice as much as smoking marijuana.

That is the claim of psychologists who have found that tapping away on a mobile phone or computer keypad or checking them for electronic messages temporarily knocks up to 10 points off the user’s IQ.

This rate of decline in intelligence compares unfavourably with the four-point drop in IQ associated with smoking marijuana, according to British researchers, who have labelled the fleeting phenomenon of enhanced stupidity as “infomania”.

Daily Times - Site Edition
Baltics’ unemployment could fuel sex trade at WC: activists

RIGA: Less than 100 days to go before the World Cup, activists in the Baltics warn that women from these new, poorer EU states are at risk of being drawn into the sex trade as the June-July event becomes a magnet for prostitutes.

“Prostitution is the oldest crime, not the oldest profession,” Latvian activist Iluta Lace, vice-president of the European Women’s lobby, which groups around 4,000 women’s organizations, told AFP. Women’s rights activists have forecast that around 40,000 prostitutes, mainly from eastern Europe, could swell the numbers already working in the sex trade in Germany during the World Cup 2006, which is expected to see millions of football fans flood into the country. And women from the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — all former Soviet republics that joined the European Union in May 2004 — are among those at high risk as wages in the three countries are low and unemployment high in places.

Welcome to the Vancouver Courier - On Line - Travel
A night at the opera in Latvia

By Peter Neville-Hadley-Contributing writer

Riga, Latvia-”Riga,” sneered Napoleon, “is a suburb of London,”