"The Future is Here, it's Just Not Evenly Distributed."*

In an age of file-sharing, flying killer robots, and cyber-organized protests, it is easy to forget that parts of the world still fall victim to fates that are almost as old as agriculture. Exhibit A:

Bride abductions are an endemic phenomenon in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In Chechnya alone, rights activists say as many as one in four marriages begin with the woman being kidnapped and forced to wed against her will. 

The president of Chechnya has pledged to end so-called "bride snatching." Glad he's finally getting around to that.

Exhibit B illustrates the importance of good sanitation and the horror of societal breakdown:

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti's government and its aid partners fought on Friday to contain a cholera epidemic that has killed at least 138 people in the nation's worst medical emergency since the January 12 earthquake.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said the virulent diarrheal disease, which had affected 1,526 people as of late Thursday, would be the first cholera epidemic in a century in the disaster-prone Caribbean nation, already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. 

What a strange contradiction that one can blog about problems like forced marriage and cholera as happening now.

*(William Gibson, quoted in The Economist, December 4th, 2003)