perfessor multigeek's Journal: OK, so we're pissed at Saddam; now what?

Well, I've been looking into our appalling proposals to go to war with Iraq and the cowardly rollover in Congress in voting for it (Hillary: I oppose the war but will vote for it anyway. Say what?) and I am convinced yet again that it's time for some heavy duty hacking of our electoral system. It's clear that the Republicrats are gaming the system shamelessly but not very well so it's well past time that some real systems people stepped up to the plate. Dave, more power to you.
As for the Beltway midgets, I'm with Pete Stark on this. I see no excuse whatsover for this sort of bloodthirsty warmongering. I don't know whether I would describe this first as insane, viscious, or simply deeply amoral. What it certainly isn't is any kind of reasoned response to a defined threat.
Sure, Iraq is a threat. So are Pakistan, China, Russian militants, Mexican guerrillas, our very own "domestic" (I love that word) militias and religious extremists, Colombian drug cartels (and we are *not* doing an effective job there), Triads, Serbian arms smugglers (who may well be nuclear armed), Indonesia, Malaysia . . . Oh, you get the idea. What are we going to do, just destroy (or rather, try to) every country or group that worries us?
We could even back the Kurds, arming them, training them on a serious scale, or best of all, by simply feeding money into their economy, but, no, that would bother Turkey and Iran (they're on our side these days, kinda) so we'ld better not, even though they appear to be on their way to creating a legitimate government from scratch with elections and a parliment and everything.
But, as the White House has all but openly declared, we don't actually want a democratic government in Iraq; we just want Iraqi Dictator Version 3.0. Version 2 was handy when it came out but it doesn't meet our needs anymore. Won't respond to commands, gives eccentric output, damages linked systems. And over time the system has accumulated far more dependencies then 2.0's designers promised.
Are we upset with Saddam? Then let's break him with McDonalds and Coke and birth control. Let's drop half a million cheap two-way radios (i.e. like cell phones but don't need towers) with spread-spectrum tech and other things to make them hard to trace but easy to use. Let's *really* trash his finances (paging Kevin Mitnick, paging Kevin Mitnick), set off EMP bombs over each of his "palaces", and send in commando teams to shred his labs. Let's blast DDT and RAID (kills tyrants FAST) in his windows and put LSD in his drinking water.
Let's have Baywatch episodes engineered to weaken Saddam and Arabic hip-hop saying that he has a small dick and has betrayed his clan. We know how to do this stuff. We're the best in the world at it. If we put Kirchenbaum/Bond and TommyBoy Records and SpikeDDB and Fox and USANetworks on the job we'll have them in chaos in four years, tops. And don't you talk to me about jamming. If we really choose to get serious about smuggling in hundreds of thousands of VCRs with independent power supplies (bicycle-driven, perhaps) we'll blow the Ba'ath party to bits in genuine, permanent ways.
We don't need warfare. We need a cross between Bill Casey and Aaron Spelling.
If we're REALLY serious then let's put wind turbines on every federal building and convert our fleet vehicles to biodiesel. Want to mess with Iraq *and* the Saudis *and* Quadaffi (forgotten about him, haven't we? He hasn't forgotten about us)? Then let's implement flextime, distribute solar ovens worldwide (basic ones cost under $15 in bulk) and buy LED lighting for every government building.
But nothing whatsover in this situation that I can see is rationally addressed by going to war. It is no more rational or ethical a response then firebombing random locations in the Middle East in the hopes that we get lucky and the justification that "they all deserve it".
Personally, when I'm faced with historical nitwits who back this sort of insanity, I'm finding it quite satisfying to pull out copies of my timeline (every US military incident since 1776) and start doing the litany. Most folk back down and/or start turning green pretty fast. Facts. What a bummer.
May we all see this frenzy fade away before the Resident in Chief cases too many more deaths.
Rustin

the war of the BigMacs

[memfree]

let's break him with McDonalds and Coke and birth control

Oh great. Like the world needs another Americanized country.

As an American, I'd almost prefer entering a war that can't be won, and that will result in even more violent and extreme U.S. hatred than to see the bland, bloated, soulless corporations that pass as 'culture' gain any more ground.

Re:the war of the Big Macs

[perfessor multigeek]

Oh great. Like the world needs another Americanized country.

As an American, I'd almost prefer entering a war that can't be won, and that will result in even more violent and extreme U.S. hatred than to see the bland, bloated, soulless corporations that pass as 'culture' gain any more ground.

Now first of all, I do wonder if you actually sincerely believe that. After all, Iraq is estimated to have at least half a million dead from this ongoing bullshit since the "end" of the Gulf War. You can be damn sure that they'ld rather be "corrupted" then decaying.

But taking you at your words:
There was a time that I would have agreed with you on the whole global culture front but in the past few years I've started to see things differently (even aside from my almost religious allegiance to Coke ;-)).
First of all, "world culture" is ever more obviously just that. Superbly appealing choices from all over the world. Hamburgers? Pizza? Coffee? Sushi? These are all becoming commonplace from Nigeria to Norway because they are appealing and, in some compelling way or other, effective. Now, while I am well aware of the Fast Food Nation issues, nonetheless, if you're young, and rushed, and want something tasty and able to be eaten on the run, then various examples of "cultural imperialism" each have objective merit.
I was talking with a friend this weekend who insisted that the quickie Chinese (esque) restaurant with the $4.95 lunch special with egg roll or soup (adapted minimally for local tastes and costs) can now be found all over Europe, from England to Poland to Turkey. Now given that there is no great media campaign behind such food and it otherwise meets all the Bad Stuff criteria (greasy, salty, sugary, vitamin-drained), then I'm willing to conclude that the market is in fact working and that this is, in fact, legitimately what people want. In other words, they *chose* this stuff.
Oh, and by the way, this, like robot-created sushi, Hello Kitty, techno, salsa (food *or* music), and any number of other examples of homogenization is unambiguously not American in origin. We're just one more customer for a superior solution from It Doesn't Matter Where. To me, as a capitalist, that's a good thing. Pareto-optimality, here we come!
My second issue is that if you look at cultures that have had such muck for a while (US, Northern Europe, Japan, Taiwan), as time passes people who have used all or some of these quickie solutions to ease climbing the ladder raise kids who move beyond it.
Lord knows The Gap and The Body Shop are annoying but think about what a revolution it is that bulk, mainstream products are increasingly expected to be made of natural materials, come in subtle, sophisticated palates, and have quality detailing. We're none too far from "polyester is the future" and Wonder Bread Builds Strong Bodies Seven Ways ourselves.
Or, to put it another way, I increasingly look at the countries where people line up for a McGreaseburger that costs a week's salary and think, Okay, they're making progress. They're reaching nouveau riche. Taste and comprehension will reliably follow a few decades later. Give them two generations and they'll be doing yoga and worrying about their children's cognitive development.
Thirdly, I've been developing a theory this past few years about cultural hegemonies. [FLAMEBAIT ALERT ON] I am increasingly convinced that a superb way to remove a dysfuntional cultural element is to expose the people who are being, shall we say, non-optimal, to an alternative that is very enticing but doesn't have staying power. That way they drop the old, ill-advised habit (slave holding, racism, whatever) for the new one, get bored or dissatisfied with the new one, but are now "flushed clean" of the thing you had hoped would pass away.
Let's create a hypothetical. Let's say that a town has for thousands of years been obsessed with a dance that involves months of preparation (and thereby time lost from growing food, learning, etc.), the degradation of those whose families don't have five hundred years of dance leadership, withdrawal of the best land for exculsive use two days a year as the dance field, etc. So, very briefly, in their reverence for and obsession with this dance, they're neglecting the rest of their lives and keeping themselves impoverished, ignorant, etc. And, even worse, by now their noble titles, terms of reverence, courting rituals, and so forth all assume and thereby reenforce this behavior and thence worldview.
So, one day a movie troop comes through, sets up a movie screen, and shows five hours back to back of Stevie Nicks/Janet Jackson/Paula Abdul dancing. Even "worse", they leave a VCR, big screen, and tapes behind. The village goes WILD. Huge fights erupt, people argue, and for the next ten years people become ever more obsessed with this new kind of dancing. Language shifts, social status realigns, interest in the world beyond their valley quintuples, people travel to get special training, und zo vieter.
Well, it's safe to say that by twenty or thirty years down the road people will have gotten far less interested in big group dances like early eighties MTV.
But,
BUT . . . the old crippling habits will have been flushed out of the society as fever flushes out an infection. People will now be free to choose what suits them instead of taking their assigned places in a system made rigid by their great-great-great-great grandparents in the days when glass-sided oil lamps were a big new thing.
Meanwhile, the modern world being what it is, much of their language, folktales, crafts, and social structures will have been documented should they choose of their own free will to go back to the ways their grandparents dropped. Want to teach your kids Welsh? Go for it, baby. But take a look at your other choices first.
And to me *that* is a social good.

Oh, and by the way,
I do not consider some of the things that I mentioned bad in the least. I do, however, consider them very effective tools for undermining tyranny. Let's face it - cheap, available birth control of a sort that gets used is, in any number of senses, a fucking revolution. That and micro-loans are easily the most powerful tools for tearing out the heart of customs that reduce women to chattel.
The same goes for phones. You want to mess with a dictatorship? Give them tons of phone lines and photocopiers. In fact, photocopiers played such a role in liberating Eastern Europe that they still call them "Soros machines" in honor of George Soros, who realized this and made sure that they were all over the place.
Only we Americans, with our staggeringly easy access to such things and comparatively grime-, disease-, and fuss-free lives, can afford the smug dismissal of tech (cheap syringes, electric light, modern tampons, ball point pens, refrigerators, and diapers all come to mind) that is an absolute miracle if you've ever truly HAD to do without.
Off to work on peltier-junction, collapsable case refrigerators,
Rustin

Re:the war of the Big Macs

[gmhowell]

If possible, could you elaborate on the microloans->women's liberation (for lack of a better term) link?

Re:microloans

[perfessor multigeek]

Hoo-boy. The original articles are on shelves I can't get to at the moment and I haven't read up in a few years but basically this is the deal. Also let me say that if Some Woman or one of the other feminists among us has better data on this, I'ld love to see them wade in.
Back in the fifties and sixties when folk like UNESCO and the Ford Foundation started putting money into rural villages in places like India or Kenya they hit a terribly politically incorrect problem. You see, in most such cultures, it's considered very bad behavior (justifying group punishment up to and including death) for one person of the same social group (village, extended family, or equiv.) group to have more quickly acquired (that's an important distinction) wealth then the people around them. In particular, money still seems odd to them and wealth is measured in goats, land, wives, and three or four other "appropriate" metrics. Cash, on the other hand, if not conveniently convertable (which it isn't in what is perceived to be a zero-sum game) into the few permissable forms of wealth (goats, land, etc.) is expected to be dispursed to the entire group. In other words, it's fine for the "acquirer" to do the equivalent of getting the best part of the recently hunted animal, but most of the meat is to be spread around. Double quick. And, "of course", wealth is managed by men, who do not allow women any role at all.
Well, I could go into causes for pages and pages more but the short form is this. Big clueless European/American shows up, chooses most promising two or three men in given community and gives them money for use building houses, buying food, etc. Men then have huge blowout and spend almost all of the money on food and beer, thereby dispersing the wealth in the socially approved fashion and minimizing jealousy and "disorder". "White man" comes back, asks "where did my money go?" Everybody looks at the ground, wonders why he keeps asking such rude and unpleasant questions, and waits for him to go away.
So, in the seventies (I believe mostly first in India) they starting trying a different approach. Instead of dispursing cash in Great White Father mode, they trained people of moderately similar ethic and social backgrounds to go around and start credit unions.
The way that this works is that the women of a village are asked to join a circle, and some do. Each member is expected to kick in some cash, let's say the equivalent of five dollars a month, to the general pool. UNESCO or whomever provides basic skills and tools for managing this wealth (from bookkeeping lessons and notepads to small-transaction saving and loan institutions) and sometimes (generally) matches the money put in.
When the pool reaches some point (let's say eighty dollars), then one woman in the group is given a loan of sixty dollars. This loan is designated for some specific set of purchases (such as a used sewing machine and some fabric) that allow the woman to start a business. Crucially, this business must be one that can be done part time and from home. In other words, under no circumstances are the husband or other family members to feel any more put off then can be avoided.
The recipient of this loan will now be both getting (one hopes) support from the other women in her circle to do things right and massive social pressure not to do anything irresponsible. Meanwhile all the women are still doing their best to keep kicking in that five bucks a month. This includes the recipient of the loan who, within a few months is expected to start paying back the loan.
You get the idea.
So. . . . what this means is that for the first time when a husband/father/brother gets extreme (beatings, forced sex, etc.), for the first time ever a woman has both an independently supportive social network, and (once the system is up for a while) her own money, and, usually, basic skills like ground-level literacy, an ability to face conflict without just retreating, and so on.
What does this add up to? Material bargaining power and the cogintive skills and pyschological grounding to understand and use it.
To the extent that data has been collected on this, they are finding that places that implement this system tend to have smaller families and lower infant mortality, lower rates of wife-beating and other abuse, better educated and more emotionally together kids (not only daughters, sons too), better land use, more wealth and that wealth being more stable. The works.
Funny what happens when one stops treating half the brains and will of a community with contempt.
Rustin

Re:microloans

[gmhowell]

I must say that's terribly interesting. Thanks for the explanation.

Re:the war of the Big Macs

[memfree]

I should have emphasized "almost" in "I'd almost prefer".

Great info on microloans, too. I seem to remember a recent story about the same structure being used in South America. They got women to group together to build traditional brick/mud homes. All women pitched in to help one woman build her place, then they were supposed to repeat the process for the next, and next, until all had housing (still in progress). Some women complanied that any one of them got a home before they got one, themself.

Back to 'Americanized' culture. I understand that people will often purchase bland, inoffensive items, but I am not convinced they think such things are good -- just that the items are low risk. Some people surely do want the lowest-common-denominator products -- if for no other reason than because advertising has taught Americans to crave the things they see on TV. Personally, I tend to distrust all the highly visible items -- be it Nike, Hot Pockets, Target, Blockbuster, or Old Navy.

Most of the 'ethnic' items I see are NOT ethnic -- they are pale rip-offs of something that was done well and artfully in their country of origin. Starbucks coffee is BAD. It might be better than 7-11 coffee, but it isn't nearly as good as coffee you'd get in a NYC cafe -- let alone a French cafe. I rarely find sushi as good as I had in an Asian dominatated section of Alaska. The wasabi tends to be muted, and the fish old. The same goes for Thai food. Having had GOOD, traditional Thai food, I find all the little joints (mostly owned and operated by Thai people) flavorless. Double that for Italiain food (Olive Garden? bleah!). Triple that for Korean (if you can find it).

I pray that if people were exposed to better things, they'd buy them. My grandmother gives me hope. She lives in farm country USA (ok, Michigan) where the local stores sell crap. She had tried some lousy store-brand version of biscotti at some point in her life, and deemed it useless. I brought her biscotti from an Italian-style bakery (run by Italian Americans for 3 generations), and she fell in love with it. I now have to mail her pounds of the stuff throughout the year to keep her in stock. She -- like too many folks -- had no exposure to high quality products, and didn't realize that things should be better. And this isn't even _real_ Itallian biscotti -- this is merely one recipe that was brought over.

Or take this one: my mother's aging-but-sturdy solid-wood TV-tables (with raised and beveled lips, and a painted floral inset laquered onto the tray surface) needed replacement after kicking around for 20-some years. I wanted to get her a new set. After going to seven different stores, I found only three types of TV-tables were being sold -- all of them inferior to her old ones. I could buy the exact same set at 7 different prices, but I couldn't buy a good set. I gave up. I couldn't get myself to spend money on crap. I KNOW others will because better options aren't available. In the end, my mom became one of the 'others' as she, too, gave up on finding anything better and saw a close-out sale on the better of the cheap sets. They are dull, smaller, and less sturdy than her old ones, but the paint isn't chipped. *sigh*

The older I get, the more things become homogenized and dull. Part of it is the kick-back companies give to grocery retailers for shelf space. I _remember_ better choices. Now, we pay for advertising *instead* of quality. Now, I go out of my way to find spots where quality still matters. Even for video rentals and groceries, I'll drive an hour out of my way to pick up basics in the Oriental grocery, cheese that actually has FLAVOR from Europe, and beautiful foreign and/or forgotten films from the artsy-farsty rental place in the city. I am lucky. I have enough money to buy the things I want, the time to go get them, and live in a place where they are accessible.

Who will even remember quality when the world becomes as devoid of choice as my grandmother's town?

Re:the war of the Big Macs

[perfessor multigeek]

I do see your point but on the whole I think that the countervailing trend is already well on the way. Just as we passed through the realm of plastic wood everywhere and now have $150 stereos being sold with solid wood fronts and fabric speaker covers, people are beginning to get a clue.
To me a good example is The Bombay Company. Twenty years ago they sold high-end stuff to the Metropolitan Home crowd. Solid cherry, teak, etc. and prices in the stratosphere. They reorganized and began selling stuff shaped like good furniture but made of particle board and cheap pine and then coated with a glossy opaque varnish. Look at their stuff now. The quality of finish is much better, they're going back to real wood and using thinner varnishes now that they have something to show, and are overall far better then they were ten years ago.
The same goes for KMart. You and I may not buy Martha Stewart stuff but others can and do. And I can tell you that the materials, cut, color, and coordination are all far better then the plastic/melamine/MDF shlock that it is slowly supplanting.
To me the question is not "is this as good as the original?". It is "is it as good as what these customers would have otherwise bought?".
The relevant comparisons for Starbucks are not Gevalia or proper cappucino. They are McDonalds, Dunkin' Donuts, and the brown sludge sold for decades across countertops all over America.
Sure the biscotti at Safeway is bland, but the point is not how does it compare to a cafe in Florence (or, in fact, the places I buy mine in Astoria) but how does it compare to Keebler or Ritz.
Look at Ikea and compare it to ten years ago. You'll find that they now have more parts that are cast and fewer that are stamped. More solid wood or well done wood veneer and less plastic surfacing. More glass in things like light fixtures and less acrylic. It's only in the past three years that their rug section has stopped smelling like a plastics factory.
A friend of mine from Wisconsin visited me here in Manhattan in '95 and came to stay for two years starting in '98. While here he learned volumes about esthetics and taste. Then he moved back to WI. Since he's been back he's watched for ways to replicate his New York advances and has seen (again, in less than two years) as his local supermarket now carries pretty decent rice noodles and far more varieties of mushrooms, an Ethiopian restaurant has opened up, the local video selection has improved. And so on. And this is in the suburbs of Milwaukee, not exactly teh cultural vanguard.
As for your list, Nike, Hot Pockets, Target, Blockbuster, or Old Navy, hmmmm.
Nike I have nothing to say about (I've got wierd feet so can't wear their stuff). Clearly their manufacturing practices are reprehensible, but that doesn't seem to be what you're addressing.
Hot Pockets? Well, I'll concede in theory that they could be considered a negative on sodium and price grounds but what about something like the Dilberito [dilberito.com], which is tasty, handy, healthy, in some case even vegan?
Target? Again, certainly a mixed bag, but I would ask what their customers would be buying instead. Their design sense is certainly improving and, based on my minimal time there, I do get the impression that they are far more likely than in the past to have, for example, soy milk, clothes in natural fibers, gay-friendly movies (no small deal for kids growing up gay and isolated in the suburbs), mineral water, low-sodium foods, and ecologically positive stuff like solar battery chargers and peltier junction-based coolers.
Blockbuster? Well now, here things get complicated. Personally I think that the market for content is shifting to an on-line model, either with electronic distribution or simply with electronic purchase/rental. Did your local video store have as good a selection as Amazon? How about Cinema Classics [cinemaclassics.com]? Of course, this is all easy for me say as I spend many of my days in New York's East Village. But then I also know that the best video store I ever went to was outside of Plainfield, Vermont. And they were large and growing.
I am rabidly in favor of independent video store/book shops/movie theaters but in my experience the one with business sense are doing just fine these days, here, *and* abroad. Old Navy? Yet again, a case could be made either way. Personally I consider their reliable habit of putting such short pockets in men's pants that stuff *always* falls out a classic bit of looking to cut costs anywhere the customer won't notice. On the other hand, on of my favorite jackets was bought there for about thirty or forty bucks (gift from a girlfriend so I can't be sure) and it looks great and has stood up to regular usage since '97. In other words, I would consider them no worse then some far more high-end places, just subject to a slightly stronger need for caveat emptor.
On the furniture front overall, did your mother check at Pier 1? Did you go to any thrift stores? St Vinnies and their cohorts have been getting better and better for decades now all over America. If the issue was paint, then did you go to the Home Depot and check into your options there? Minwax is pretty kickin' these days and even HD now can order the good stuff like Varithane. As I pointed out in an earlier post , there are now plenty of ways to get good brushes and such cheap online and stores like Pearl are opening branches in new cities on a regular basis. Food in general? Yeah, McD's is big in Asia, African villagers spend a weeks salary to get Coke, etc. But if we're talking about America/Europe then what do you say to the massive upswing in artisinal bakeries, companies like Fresh Samantha [freshsamantha.com] and Innocent Drinks [innocentdrinks.co.uk], Au Bon Pain (go ahead, tell me that the average American working lunch was healthier then that twenty years back, I dare ya), veggie burgers at McD's (best sellers in England), Ben and Jerry's, salad bars at Wendy's, whole wheat bread in every supermarket, and ingredient lists that get more accurate and rigorous every eight or nine years?
I guess that part of my problem is that I'm not sure what about these companies you find objectionable. If we're talking about quality of the stuff that MOST people wear/eat/buy then I think we've got a messy but strong case for global cultural imperialism. I *know* what people were wearing in China and Russia and, to some extent in Central America and Africa and I'm sorry, Gap imitations are better. They'll last longer, are more socially flexible, are more comfortable (oh yeah, mandarin collars and Peruvian shirts *look* cool, but how many people you know don't get throughly sick of them in two or three years?), are harder to make wrong and easier to adapt.
Also, I'm not sure that you addressed my fundamental point, which is that these are symptoms, not permanent things. I would be curious to know if you agree or disagree that if you look at those who gleefully buy the latest sneakers and track suits and fried chicken, their kids will quite probably do what people now do in places like Japan and Wales, choosing from a position of knowledge but with a lesser sense of prejudice and compulsion and ending up with a hybrid that is, in fact not only better then either "our" choices or their old ones, but in fact likely to add further to the glorious pool of resources and knowledge of which global culture is made.
You talk about available choice. Can you tell with a straight face that the selections of vegetables, vinegars, breads, yogurts, sodas, mustards, wines, hot dogs, pastas, or salad dressings at the supermarket are any less than five times better then they were when we were kids (you being the same age as I am and all)? When we were kids, veggies were carrots, potatos, and about ten others, vinegar was apple cider or generic white, bread was one of five or six brands (and most Americans *believed* that Wonder was just as good as, say, Arnold's), soda was Coke, Pepsi, or one of a handful of others, wine- I can't handle talking about what average Americans in the seventies thought and knew about wine. No way will I believe you if you want to tell me that the average American knows less or experiences less then they did before.
Homogenized? Can you honestly tell me that most Americans have access to fewer or a narrower variety of movies, televison shows, clothes, food (go ahead, give me a list of Japanese restaurants in the US in 1975, how about Thai? Ethiopian? Vietnamese? Now compare it to that same list for any *one* US city today), music, working hours (gotta stick to your choice, but the choices *are there*), sexual activities, religions, books, ah, hell HAIRCUTS! SPICES! SHOES!?
I just don't think so.
Thnigs are getting "bland"? Oh? A nation that considered the Laz-y-Boy with vinyl slipcovers the height of achievement now shops at the Pottery Barn and Ikea. It may not be Stickley originals or dovetail-jointed colonial, but, again, most people never had that stuff anyway. The gracious, well built pieces we see are what was loved and survived. The dressers with painted cardboard bases and backs didn't. Go read some Jake Riis [bartleby.com] and then come back and tell me again how much better it used to be.
Would I like to live in a world where everybody wrote notes on handmade paper using fountain pens while they sipped their fresh-made sencha and watched the fifteen children of their extended family take didgeridoo lessons from ol' Grammy Yuen? Yes. Certainly. And, in fact, I suspect that much of the world is heading towards that precisely by passing through the stage of quickie burgers and sheetrock houses.
But,
a.) let's not forget that things are flat out not blander for most people then they used to be, or provided with less variety, or with access to less and
b.) this too shall pass.
We are watching much of the world enter adolescence and their taste for N-Sync today in no way precludes their taste for Cage and Zappa and Bach tomorrow.
Sitting in my Smith and Hawken rattan chair, in front of my ornately carved maple-front desk, and munching Chinese takeout shrimp w/ lobster sauce w/ brown rice and mixed w/ spices, fresh beans, and brown rice,
Rustin

Re:the war of the Big Macs

[memfree]

I would be curious to know if you agree or disagree that ... kids will [be] ... choosing from a position of knowledge but with a lesser sense of prejudice and compulsion and ending up with a hybrid that is, in fact not only better then either "our" choices or their old ones, but in fact likely to add further to the glorious pool of resources and knowledge of which global culture is made.

I'm dubious, but will let time tell. I see my generation and the one behind me choosing based on ad campaigns. I find that sad, but predictable. One of this year's Nobel Prize winners for Economics, Daniel Kahneman [washingtonpost.com], won basically for proving that markets are not logical [independent.co.uk]. I expect the market of purchases of items meant for immediate use to be even less logical than the studied stock purchases.

When we were kids, veggies were carrots, potatoes, and about ten others, vinegar was apple cider or generic white, bread was one of five or six brands (and most Americans *believed* that Wonder was just as good as, say, Arnold's)

We certainly have more produce variety than we used to, but at the same time, produce has lost quality, and it seems to have a smaller percentage of the store. Personally, I'd rather have the old-style broccoli that wilted faster, but had thinner skin and more flavor. It happens that the FDA recently discovered broccoli isn't as nutritious as they thought. They blamed bad testing methods of the 50s, but I suspect change in growing conditions (poor soil, and modified plants that grow in 1/2 the time). They give no proof, and I have none, either.

I miss the icky looking, small, sometimes-wormy, unwaxed apples that were also *so* juicy and far more tasty. The last several times I've had the misfortune of eating store-bought apples, they've been a mixed bad of: mealy, or watery, or tasteless. Visually, they were large and flawless -- like plastic models, and with a taste to match. And what about things like Garlic? There are dozens of types of garlic, but I only see two or three in the store -- the mild varieties. In fact, our staple produce has gotten so bad, that I just won't get it -- especially the fruit. Store-bought bananas, strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries are now pretty inedible. I *know* good versions of these foods exist. I've eaten wild and privately owned versions within the last couple years and was flooded with the memory of what food SHOULD taste like.

Given the choice I'd also go back to corn that had bugs on it, but was free of pesticides. The choice is not there. Like France, et al [washtimes.com] (editorial), or José Bové [metropoleparis.com] in particular, I often do not want genetically modified food -- yet the big Agro-businesses want to make the choice for me, and we (WTO, actually) punish countries whose citizens [bbc.co.uk] or policies [bbc.co.uk] want to choose for THEMSELVES what to buy. When they retaliate, we try to block them [bbc.co.uk].

I've yet to find seeds for a more antique broccoli stock, so my attempts to grow it have only been so-so (though a friend says she has a catalog that will help me out). I do grow my own tasty versions of lettuce, pak choy, onions, garlic, lots of spices, peppers, rhubarb, strawberries and catnip. I am too lazy to use fertilizers OR insecticides, so I guess you'd call it organic. It's amazingly bug-free, too. Perhaps its because I mix everything together -- no big mega-farm setup with acres of one crop. Each row contains a random mix.

I understand why you applaud the great increase in the variety of things available. I'd be with you if it was governed by a free market... but it isn't. I feel like we now get to choose between a wider assortment of mediocre items instead of having several crappy nation-wide items with a few local gems.

I wouldn't mine the option of mediocrity, but did they have to force out [asu.edu]* the good stuff?

*note that produce is less subject to slotting fees than many other grocery items

Thank you!

[Some Woman]

Finally! Somebody understands that we don't just hop into a country, assassinate their leader, hop out and suddenly the world is perfect forever. Version 2.0 sucks and Version 3.0 will still suck. All we're doing is cramming more stuff into a system with fundamental problems, as far as we are concerned. Our attention span is far shorter than the amount of time it takes to actually finish the job, so we will always end up installing a different version of Dictator, when what we really want is to gut the system and start over, Leader X, if you will.