I'm feeling rather sheepish: tonight I watched Felicity, the hit UPN college drama.

Normally, I avoid television like the plague. Well, not quite: I do watch the X-Files and that guilty pleasure, Ally McBeal. In general, though, I think TV is trash, and won't watch it simply for it's own sake.

I'd been hearing good things about Felicity, though, all season, and I finally succumbed to my curiosity. Of course, this was due in part to the fact that the only other thing to do tonight was build a C++ class for my latest computer science project, so a little brain-numbing TV action was a welcome escape from the frustration of coding.

To my amazement, it was actually quite good! The actress who plays the Felicity is talented and likeable (and gorgeous), and the plot was fairly compelling. I was particularly pleased with the dialogue- it was very believable, and best of all, intelligent: most 'teen' shows pander to the lowest common denominator, and their characters sound like mere spoiled caricatures of young adults. Felicity's cast members really sound like intelligent college students, as they should: the show is supposed to take place at NYU or Columbia (I didn't catch which).

It's not likely that I'll go out of my way to watch again, since I don't exactly have piles of free time just waiting to be filled with the tube. Still, it's refreshing to know that that there are some TV producers out there who haven't completely lost touch with reality.

I've been meaning to comment on the situation in Kosovo for several days, but being the isolated student that I am, I am disconnected from 'the outside world' enough not to know quite what to think.

As a rule, I am a pacifist. I can't imagine how violence can possibly inflict anything but death and destruction, and I certainly don't see it as a path to peace. As one Mindspace denizen succinctly put it, "Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity." Bombs don't seem to me like "humanitarian" aid.

My pacifism isn't inflexible: If I am attacked and my safety is at risk, I will fight to keep myself safe. In that case, the attacker is clearly doing something wrong by violating my personal rights and inflicting harm, which makes it within the bounds of reason for me to defend myself. Some would say that the same principles apply to international conflicts. I emphatically disagree, for several reasons:

Most simply, any exchange involving multiple languages, cultures, governments, or religions automatically becomes bloated, complex, and virtually impossible to explain using the idea of aggression/defense. In large-scale conflicts, things become drastically less clear-cut:

To a country, what exactly does "attacked" mean? Or "at risk"?
How much can a country fight under the guises of "self-defense"?
Who defines the "rights" of independent international entities?
How is "inflicting harm" defined?

These potential inconsistencies are only the tip of the iceberg. When all entities involved come to a situation with differing agendas and "dictionaries", ambiguity is a given. In light of this, it doesn't seem like the smartest idea for the US and NATO to jump in and pound the region with destructive airstrikes, now does it?

Over one-quarter of Kosovo's population has had to leave their homes and communities. People fall uneasily asleep to the sound of gunfire, and awaken to the realities of a war-torn nation.

May you and I never experience the same.

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