I’m not one to provide Public Service Announcements for the benefit of University of Florida football players (jean shorts – jorts – and mullets just don’t do it for me), but in this instance, I’ll make an exception. The more you use social networking sites, Facebook in particular, the less privacy you have the right to lay claim to.  

As evidenced by my 1,318 friend count, I rarely reject a friend request. That being said, I’m not so liberal when it comes to accepting invitations to join suspect groups and causes. But for many, a sense of “Facebook complacency” has set in: Rather than properly vetting friend requests and group invites, they’re prone to not pay attention, miss a few details, and join a group they’ll soon regret.

Incidentally, University of Florida lineman Jim “Jimbo” Tartt is either slap-happy when accepting group invites, or he’s just a moron (I’m inclined to believe it’s the latter). On Tuesday, the Florida senior joined “Africa gives nothing to anyone — except AIDS.” My advice to ole’ Jimbo: Be HIV-positive when joining any group in the future that it won’t burn your 315 pound ass.

Tartt’s momentary lapse of judgment – quickly remedied by deleting his entire account – is all the more awkward given his major: Anthropology, i.e. the study of humanity.

While the University gives serious consideration to Tartt’s athletic future, let’s review the group in question, shall we?

It will win no friends, and will provoke the self-righteous wrath of, well, the self-righteous, letter-writing wrathful, a species which never fails to contaminate almost every debate in life with its sneers and its moral superiority. So be it.

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Indeed, we now have almost an entire continent of sexually hyperactive indigents, with tens of millions of people who only survive because of help from the outside world.

[…]

How much morality is there in saving an Ethiopian child from starvation today, for it to survive to a life of brutal circumcision, poverty, hunger, violence and sexual abuse, resulting in another half-dozen such wide-eyed children, with comparably jolly little lives ahead of them? Of course, it might make you feel better, which is a prime reason for so much charity. But that is not good enough. For self-serving generosity has been one of the curses of Africa. It has sustained political systems which would otherwise have collapsed.

It prolonged the Eritrean-Ethiopian war by nearly a decade. It is inspiring Bill Gates’ programme to rid the continent of malaria, when, in the almost complete absence of personal self-discipline, that disease is one of the most efficacious forms of population-control now operating.

If his programme is successful, tens of millions of children who would otherwise have died in infancy will survive to adulthood, he boasts. Oh good: then what? I know. Let them all come here. Yes, that’s an idea.

Andrew Pennison, the verbose author of the above manifesto, had one thing right: He won’t be making any allies with these racially-charged epithets, though he’s evidently unaware of Africa’s abundant natural gas and mineral resources. One would assume Tartt, an Anthropology major, would be aware of this…