I'm over a month late blogging this, but sadly, it's an evergreen. Over a billion people lack access to clean drinking water. Every day--including today, Christmas Eve--over 4000 children lacking good drinking water will die of diarrhea-causing diseases.

It's hard to wrap our heads around such astonishing statistics, or understand what causes this great gaping need, and how simple some of the solutions are. Last month MTV put up a set of videos in which Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter went on a tour of a home and a school in Africa to understand the basic issues. He was accompanied by his "homeboy," my uncle, Arunabha Ghosh, a Policy Specialist and one of the authors of the UNDP Human Development Report. Arunabha has spent the last few years tirelessly running around the world, raising the alarm about development needs and spreading the word about development solutions. Last week he addressed an Indian Parliamentary forum on national water issues. I haven't seen him in years, so it was a pleasure to listen to him guide Jay-Z through the essential issues of water development.

Bittersweet pleasure because these issues are so heartbreaking. Every day millions of girls go through the back-breaking work of ferrying water to quench their family's thirst. Children's school days are interrupted by the labor required to get a drink or go to the bathroom. These videos make it really, really clear what the problems are, and how hard people have to work to get around them. It's a little tricky, but click here and then click on the "Play All" button underneath "The Diary of Jay-Z in Africa: Water for Life." The videos will queue up and start playing in the player on the left hand side, and you can make them larger by clicking the "Enlarge Video" button on the bottom-right of the player. They should then each play in order, automatically, but in order they are: the intro, Eyes Wide Open, Ths Is The Real Hard-Knock Life, Together We Can Do This. There are also more resources and interactive tour-diaries over here. I have a couple of screen shots after the jump.

So, as you gather around with your families to enjoy crackling fires and Christmas dinner and shiny presents, consider gathering them around the computer to take just a few minutes to watch these short and well-made videos. There are several ways to give the gift of water. The first school Jay-Z visits has been improved greatly because of a grant from UNICEF. WaterAid has gotten a lot of good reviews. Ruchira has frequently pointed me to WaterPartners International. PlayPumps, featured in the videos, have programs for you to sponsor water-giving infrastructure, including their innovative merry-go-round pump. Global Giving lists a number of water projects you can sponsor, and you can keep a eye on Kiva's loan proposal page to see if there's a water-infrastructure project to finance.

Merry Christmas!

I received an email this morning from the head of my high school alma mater, The Athenian School, informing us that the founder had passed away. Dyke Brown was an amazing man. It was a privilege to know him at all, and to know from him how the school started with nothing and became something with so much significance to me. (Last Fall I blogged the school's 40th anniversary celebrations.) I recently visited Athenian and chatted with Eleanor, who has been leading it since I was a freshman. I think one of the things I mentioned to her is my gratitude that it always encouraged in us the notion that anything good you can dream up is worth taking seriously as a real possibility, no matter how seemingly outlandish or overly ambitious. We had the DIY aesthetic in spades.And small wonder, when Dyke built this outlandishly inclusive and ambitiously progressive school after dreaming it up himself. One more time--and not the last time--thank you so much, Dyke Brown.

Watch an octopus escaping through a 1 inch hole. Who knows what mayhem is in store now that the wily creature has escaped?

Rulings rule. Real rulings recently reached (reportedly):

Greanleaf, Idaho, passed Ordinance 208, saying all residents need to have guns, in case another hurricane sends desperate refugees their way. Fortunately, you're allowed to opt out as a concientious objector if you remember to ask.

Belmont, CA, by contrast, has now completely banned smoking within city limits. (This one, also, has a nod to reality: inside your private, detached home you get to puff away right in front of your kids).

San Francisco, as you locals know, has found a middle ground, and marijuana smoking is now officially the police's lowest priority. I'm actually not at all happy about this. I abhor unclear laws, and any governance by which an activity is illegal, but basically accepted, is set up for trouble.

So you'd think I'd be in agreement with the Powys County Concil (Wales). They had to warn the makers of Welsh Dragon sausages recently that they were guilty of misleading advertising, in that their sausages did not, in fact, contain even the legal minimum of dragon.

Meh. I guess even clarity can go too far. Lesson learned: news is fun! Sorry these are all a bit late -- hopefully there's something here new to you.

On Sunday Colin was saying that he doesn't like the new Bond film because this Bond has no class--action heroes who are just action heroes are a dime a dozen, and what made Bond interesting was his status as a gentleman spy. Here's a Richard Cohen essay in Slate saying, essentially, that the old Bond was too interesting--that gentlemen spies don't really exist, and the collective hallucination fed by the idealization of them is not entirely innocent or playful. Cohen, nervously throwing up his armor by preemptively calling the idea a joke, wonders if this hallucination helps send us to war. While we might think ourselves immune to characterizations laced with swimming pools and martinis, the underlying implication of breathtaking competence, power, and cleverness stays with us. Perhaps it is my general avoidance of spy movies that leads me to be very skeptical of the powers of Intelligence Agencies. When the Americans accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Serbia, it seemed to me that the people crying "conspiracy" were actually expressing a far greater faith in the American government than I had. I assumed from the getgo that they had been merely very stupid. Again, when Gulf War II rolled along, I was surprised at how wholeheartedly even my liberal brethren were accepting so-called intelligence reports.