And on the subject of rocks, I just found something on statistics that contains this quote, "Neurobiologist William H.Calvin suggested that early human mothers carried their babies in their left arms, close to the soothing rhythms of the heart, leaving their right hands free for throwing rocks at rabbits."

Jesus. I sound about fifteen years old.

Somebody shoot me.

(No disrespect intended to actual fifteen year olds, incidentally. Needless to say.)

Catching up: Americans do have Asterix and Tintin, but knowledge of them seems to be limited to (a) geeks and (b) haute-bourgeois/upper-class children. Don't ask me why. I found both in the Lower School Library when I was very young, and loved them even though I didn't get most of the jokes, and re-read Asterix recently with great pleasure. (An Italian friend tells me that in the Italian version, Obelix says SPQR stands for "Sono Pazzi Questi Romani" (What fools these Romans are.))

Also, Eddie Izzard -- to this day, I am unable to see a listing for Speed without saying "Et Jeff Daniels est deja mort."

My friends who took French had to read Tintin as part of their homework and they also got to watch movies like "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg." We Spanish kids got crap like "Destinos," despite there being Almodovar right there at the local video stores.

But I don't feel confident that my comforts aren't founded upon other people's poverty. Coffee, chocolate, sugar, trainers, clothes - lots and lots and lots of things that I use are produced by people who are being exploited and kept in poverty (even effective slavery, for a lot of the cocoa trade, apparently). I mean, I suck, so I make only half-assed efforts to buy FairTrade type products - I'm not being moral highground girl. But my understanding is that, for these people to enjoy near-middleclass Western conditions, the actual middleclass Western folks would have to give up some of the stuff they take for granted. And people absolutely won't do that for the greater good. I mean, I agree that it's the politics and economics that's the problem,

Yes and no on that Fay. Yes most of those things as actually produced involve the expoitation of of most of the earths population, just as you say. No if we arrange things differently, the western middle class could still have those same comforts, and everyone else could as well. Basically the problem is the rich. (I mean millionares and such.)And I know that normally the response to that is add up the income and wealth of the rich and conclude "not really that much - divide the wealth and income of the world up evenly and everyone is still poor". But the problem with having extremely rich people around is like the problem of being invested with cockroaches. It is not what they eat, but what they spoil.

Most of the waste is institituional. It is extremely difficult (I think probably impossible) for a first word middle class person to choose an indivual life style where they don't use more than their fair share, but still don't end up living like a poor third world person themselves. That is because most of the waste is instituional. Very little of it is based on individual choice. And I know this is controversial.

I have just finished polishing an article I'm writing on that very subect to first draft stage. (Before it was an increasingly improved outline, and I did not really consider it a draft. Even though it is about fifth time through I really consider the current version the first draft.) It deals mainly with energy, but a bit with materials and food as well. Wanna beta it for me when I get it to third draft status? Before you say yes, it is about 20,000 words, not including footnotes. By the time it is in third draft state I hope to have cut the wordage substantially, but it will still be long.

Fay or anyone interested, my profile e-mail is valid.

My friends who took French had to read Tintin as part of their homework and they also got to watch movies like "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg."

We did that. We also watched Au Revoir Les Enfants and La Gloire de mon Pere and Les Enfants du Paradis and at least 5 different Gerard Depardieu movies. And we read Huis Clos, which I'm sure the school board would have objected to if they'd read the English version.

Wanna beta it for me when I get it to third draft status? Before you say yes, it is about 20,000 words, not including footnotes. By the time it is in third draft state I hope to have cut the wordage substantially, but it will still be long.

If I had the time, petal, I'd love to - but I've got 2 weeks in which to get a hideously big mountain of planning work done for school (History half-done, Geography half-done, Maths, RE, English, Science, CDT, IT, Music all still to do...), and I sure as hell shouldn't be here at all (la la la I'm not here, no sir, not me) - so I'd just let you down if I said yes.

Sounds v. interesting, though!

We Spanish kids got crap like "Destinos," despite there being Almodovar right there at the local video stores.

We never watched movies, but for reading material, we got Borges and García Márquez. I don't feel cheated in the least!

Later on we got Cervantes and Calderon, but pretty much nothing written in the current century.

Sorry, I wasn't blaming the guys in the lab coats as such, more expressing disappointment that they haven't been able to fix all the important yucky stuff. The ones I blame are the god(s), the high priests and the clerics of the church of neo-liberal global economics, as well as the ones that 'use sharp stones to whack people over the head'.

But I don't feel confident that my comforts aren't founded upon other people's poverty. Coffee, chocolate, sugar, trainers, clothes - lots and lots and lots of things that I use are produced by people who are being exploited and kept in poverty (even effective slavery, for a lot of the cocoa trade, apparently).

But my understanding is that, for these people to enjoy near-middleclass Western conditions, the actual middleclass Western folks would have to give up some of the stuff they take for granted. And people absolutely won't do that for the greater good. I mean, I agree that it's the politics and economics that's the problem, but I think that the middle class westerners are culpable to some extent.

Exactly Fay and this squirmy feeling of at least half-assed culpability, I believe, is leading to the feelings that have been mentioned just a little upthread, of a real uncomfortableness in talking about all of this stuff, including the war, with people, even friends and family. I mean it really is becoming difficult to blithely plead ignorance about the part that 'every one of us who benefits in any way from the current unfair system' plays.

But I think that consumerism - the very concept of consumerism and wastefulness, which is so thoroughly ingrained in the West, is a Bad Thing. Labels. Logos. Throwing stuff away when it's still useful. All that stuff. The sense of value being limited to how much money it costs absolutely permeates our society, and it's terribly flawed, but it's insidious.

Yeah it's a pretty much unsustainable way to live in the big and long pictures, but what is even worse is the fact that the 'value', as in how much money things cost, is false/incorrect because it does not include environmental, social, etc. etc. costs. A good example is organic produce prices versus agricorp produce prices (assuming that the Australian situation of is pretty much applicable across US/UK otherwise I'm talking out my ass). The cost of organic produce in Australia is costed far more 'realistically', taking into account environmentally sustainable practices, 'fair' wages and conditions, property rights, transport, distribution, etc. whereas the multinat agricorp's prices often reflect cheap/ripped off land, slave or child or just bad labour wages and conditions, harmful agricultural practices, and so on. And this does not take into account the number of un-employed, under-employed, and paid-bugger-all-even-though-I'm- employed people who are all struggling to buy the produce even at the cheap price.

I mean take the airline industry (who would at the moment). I understand that there are a few big things going on that have severely impacted their ability to make huge profits for their shareholders, but can they not see that by sacking thousands more staff, that's thousands more people that can't afford their product. And then there is the flow-on effect, as more and more in the tourism/service sector (the sector that much of the latest round of western affluence comes from) are sacked/retrenched because less travel, less tourists, less business, and you keep increasing the number of people who can't afford a ticket on the goddam airplane. So next year the airline profit forecasts don't look good either, and then the whole downward spiral spins another revolution.

Science & technology - airplanes - Next Big Thing, travelling at the speed of sound - Concorde - not enough profit - out of business. Are we going forward?