"Don't you think the UN is kind of useless, though?" It's a question my brother will ask me every few months or so when we get on the subject of wars and conflicts going on unabated as the UNHQ debates around a horse shoe-shaped table in what looks to the outside world very much like high-profile futility. Well, yes and no. But often it seems like yes. I thought of that today when I found myself in a hidden corner of the main building looking for a restroom and saw this unoccupied desk in front of this colouful mural that called to mind a Mondrian - a jumbled abstraction slightly misaligned. Around the corner committee rooms are bustling with international voices trying to solve all the tiny little problems an inch at a time while the big ones -  the ones that get all the headlines - remain. As implacable as human nature. Illuminated but seemingly immovable.