Significance

I'm a pretty big Lakers fan... or used to be. When I first moved to LA in the mid-80's, it was Showtime with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, James Worthy, and Pat Riley as coach. Lately however, I haven't been watching that much, even when the Lakers had both Kobe and Shaq. While I was in China, I didn't even know which team they were playing after beating the Utah Jazz (San Antonio Spurs).

Anyway, during a staff meeting this Wednesday, two of the people in the room started talking about sports, mostly about basketball and Boston teams. I found myself totally disinterested since all I heard about the previous week was the earthquake in Sichuan. I'm not sure how you can compare anything to a natural disaster but the NBA playoffs seem so insignificant in comparison. The amount of money spent on courtside seats is obscene when the need for relief supplies are so great in China.

Sigh... but where do we stop? I just watched a video about people risking their lives to escape from North Korea. There is an estimated 300,000 North Koreans living illegally in China where they have no status and are in fear of being deported back. Unlike the earthquake, all this suffering is man-made. How come nobody does anything about that?