I spend a lot of time on the net researching and so come across all sorts of weird and wonderful sights. During the Olympic Games, I got stuck looking at the incredible photographs of the opening ceremony, which understandably was given a huge amount of coverage. But, at the same time, there was devastation in Syria. I have to admit, I found myself more drawn to the celebratory than then destructive fireworks. I should have spent more time being outraged but it just felt too tiring.

I remember watching the first live war on TV, around 20 years ago. It was an extraordinary thing – there was a British reporter who stood each night on the roof of a house in Bagdad (wearing the same blue shirt night after night) reporting on the day’s events. As he spoke, tracer bullets were clearly shown streaking across the night sky. Completely surreal. There I was, lying in my comfortable bed, a million miles away from that intensely violent and frightening space, listening to this man regaling me with horror stories. Atrocious as it was, it just didn’t seem real. That kind of footage must seem even less real now, in a world used to watching war unveiled on TV screens.
What sort of message, though, does the incongruence of sporting celebration and disgusting war bring? It’s a strange world where you can choose to be entertained by anything from the stark reality of live war to an unfolding natural disaster, or some celebrity wardrobe malfunction to an Olympic event featuring people walking fast.
All our differences and all our similarities are what make for a world filled with opportunity and the pure spirit of being alive. All of the information I can access gives me the occasion to rejoice with the victorious and mourn with the ravaged. It makes me all the more human, I think. But at the same time it makes me realise just how small my individual universe really is.
I found a news post today that really sums up the strange world we live in, where even though we’re all connected so much more than ever before, we are all very different still. Check this link out: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2195275/What-Street-View-van-saw–The-random-anonymous-slices-life-captured-Google-documents-world-road-side.html