Is the World a Better Place?

(image: Elephant Seal, California- Anne-Marie, 2009)

Word: Pandemic (adj.)- (of a disease) spread over a whole country or world.

Term: Epidemic (noun)- a sudden widespread of an occurrence of a particular undesirable phenomenon

Book: Hungry Planet- (Married Couple) Peter Menzel, Faith D'Aluisio

“As societies around the world grow more affluent, their members are eat more sugar, more refined carbohydrates, more dietary fats. Nutritionalists disagree on the effects of each one, but most believe that the collective impact of this transition is disastrous- producing a global onslaught of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease”(pg 245, Hungry Planet).

“Treating food, plant or animal, which high heat changes it, simplifies it so to speak, so our teeth and gut can deal with it more effectively. In general it transforms organic matter that, when raw, is unpleasant to eat, difficult or impossible to digest, and unhealthy or even deadly into nourishing food. On average chimps spend six hours a day chewing and people (that is to say, members of the cooking species) only one” (52, Essay by Alfred W. Crosby, Hungry Planet).

How does One Diffuse Violence, Revalue Humanity, Forgive, Slowly Progress and Acknowledge the Issues of the Present without Becoming Angry?

(image: Bathroom in South Africa- Anne-Marie, 2007)

“I felt so lame as an American saying that we no longer are a protest nation, and it’s true the government no longer listens to our cries and organizations. So organization must be taken to another level and technology will provide this...I have come to realize that comfort is something that is achieved by the individual first and community second...I like to watch people satisfied with themselves, and unsatisfied with their life situation or see how they view themselves- well off, comfortable, arrogant, greedy? What type of life am I living? Am I ok with being comfortable? What is comfort? Education, a good relationship with your family? What level of comfort does one need to have a good life? Is comfort the same for everyone?

-Notes from my past life, South Africa 2007.

How do you let go of Something Important?

(image: Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina- Anne-Marie, 2007)

Poem: One Art- Elizabeth Bishop

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something everyday. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, faster:

Places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

-Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Can Hope have a Secular, Materialism Overtone?

(image: The Year of Second Hand-Anne-Marie, 2008)

Word: Hope-1. a. A feeling or expectation and desire for a certain thing to happed, b. a person or thing that may help or save someone, c. grounds for believing that something good may happen 2. A feeling of trust

Term: Supply and Demand- the amount of good or service available and the desire of buyers for it considered as factors regulating its price

Book: The White Tiger- Aravind Adiga

“To break the law of his land- to turn bad news into good news- is the entrepreneur’s prerogative” (pg. 32, Munna, Balram Halwai, The White Tiger)

To desire something is often linked to wanting or wishing for something to happen, especially sexually. Hope is also a desire for something to happen, but hope has a “good” overtone- wishing something to happen that will help another. Desire is more about the individuals wish for themselves. No doubt one can desire and therefore demand good things. As an individual do you know where your products come from and why they are produced in that specific country? What does the world have to offer- product wise, and are we demanding well made, fair trade goods or cheapness? Supply and Hope?

Are We all the Same?

(image: Construction Worker, Qingdao, China- Anne-Marie, 2007).

*he was just as intrigued as I

Word: Human-of or characteristic of people as opposed to God or animals or machines, esp. in being susceptible to weakness (Human b. New Oxford American Dictionary).

Term: Structuralism- Complex system of interrelated parts (structuralism, wikipedia).

Article: Los Angeles Times, Obituaries, November 4^th, 2009.

“Claude Levi-Strauss towered over the French intellectual scene and founded the school of thought known as structuralism”(Obituaries, Nov.4^th, 2009, LATIMES)

“Part philosopher, part sociologist, and entirely humanist, he studied tribes in Brazil and North America, concluding that virtually all societies shared a powerful commonalities of behavior and thought, often expressing them in myths” (Obituaries, Nov.4^th, 2009, LATIMES).

“He concluded that primitive peoples were no less intelligent than “Western” civilizations and that their intelligence could be revealed through their myths and other cultural keystones. Those myths, he argued, all tend to provide answers to such universal questions as ‘Who are we?’ and ‘How did we come to be at this place?’” (Obituaries, Nov.4^th, 2009, LATIMES).

“By the mid 1980’s, however, his ideas were being supplanted by those of the so-called post-structuralists who argued that history and experience were far more important than universal laws in shaping human consciousness” (Obituaries, Nov.4^th, 2009, LATIMES).

What does it look like to Loose Everything?

(image: Jesusita Fire Smoke- Anne-Marie, 2009)

*we didn't know things were burning so badly, some of us hadn't evacuated yet

Word: Loss- 1. The act or and instance of losing. 2b. The condition of being deprived or bereaved of something or someone. c. The amount of something lost. 3. The harm or suffering caused by losing or being lost (pg. 1034, The American Heritage dictionary of the English language).

Date: Black Saturday- January 28^th, 2009. One fourth of the Australian state Victoria burns, 173 lives lost.

Article: The New Yorker, October 26^th, 2009

“The six hundred fires that started that day were not just the deadliest that Australia had ever known but among the worst the world has ever seen for decades” (pg. 48, The Inferno by Christine Kenneally, the New Yorker October 26^th, 2009).

“Firefighters described the Black Saturday firestorm as “alive,” and said that its behavior was completely unprecedented. In some area it was apparently cyclonic, coming at them from all sides, burning up a road in one direction and then, minutes later, burning in the opposite direction…the energy from all the fires that day was the equivalent of fifteen hundred Hiroshimas” (pg. 50, The Inferno by Christine Kenneally, the New Yorker October 26^th, 2009).

“Leaving at the last minute is the worst possible strategy. By the time you can see the firewall, you exits may be blocked, and by fleeing your forfeit the heat shield of your home. Often bodies were found between house and car, keys in the ignition.” (pg. 52, The Inferno by Christine Kenneally, the New Yorker October 26^th, 2009).

As the Price of Oil Rises, Moves Toward Democracy Decline in Qatar.

(image: Santa Barbara in January- Anne-Marie, 2009)

Word: Spoiled- 1a. to impair the value or quality of b. To damage irreparably; ruin 2. To impair the completeness, perfection, or unity of; flaw grievously 3. To do harm to the character nature, or attitude of by overindulgence 4. Pamper 5. Decay (pg. 1678, American Heritage of The English Language).

Term: (Economic) Externality: An impact (positive or negative) on anyone not party to a given economic transaction. The participants in an economic transaction do not necessarily bear all of the coasts or reap all of the benefits in the transaction (Externality, Wikipedia)

Book: The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

Workers in Qatar have, “eliminated a negative externality, work, while maximizing a desired commodity: leisure time.” (185, Weiner).

“Researchers have found that people who are too busy are happier than those who are not busy enough” (185, Weiner).

Its interesting that pamper and decay mean the same thing according to the American Heritage of The English Language. Spoil is a powerful destructive word, how can we joke about spoiling kids? It ruins them.

What is Globalization? PART II.

(image: Family Dinner Party- Anne-Marie, 2009)

Part II. Food & HOW

Word: Evitable- In a format that can be edited by the user (New Oxford American Dictionary)

Term: Industrialization- The act of developing industries on a wide scale

Book: Hungry Planet: What the World Eats

“The Industrialization- and dehumanization- of American animal farming is a relatively new, evitable, and local phenomenon: no other country raises its food animals quite as intensively or as brutally as we do. Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to do it this way” (pg 163, Essay by Michael Pollan published 2002).

Children with Type 2 Diabetes, “are the victims of a society that does not seem to care, of an economic structure that makes it cheaper t eat fries than fruit, of the food industry and the mass media luring them to consume what they shouldn’t” (pg. 243 Essay by Francine R. Kaufman, M.D. author of Diabesity, a call to action against he dangers of Diabetes)

KFC is located in 30 countries: 4 North American Countries, 10 European countries, 14 Asian countries, Australia and New Zealand.

Do you choose what you wear or eat, or does the media choose for you?

Do you care?

Do you have time to care?

What is Globalization? PART I.

(image: Los Angeles- Anne-Marie, 2009)

PART I. Fashion & WHY

Word: Totality- The whole of something

Term: Globalization- Flow of information and products increased global systems, coming to think of the world as whole, “totality”

Article: Wall Street Journal Magazine- pg. 15-16, Spring 2009 Issue 3. Edited from Tina Gaudoin’s interview with von Furstenburg.

No better place to start looking for signs of a mass world than food and clothes. What the world is eating and wearing has changed to be more uniform in the past 50 years. You don’t need Micheal Pollen or Diane von Furstenburg to tell you that, but you do need them to explain to you WHY and HOW it happened.

Diane von Furstenburg is a fashion heavyweight- in her corner lies the wrap dress, and the Design Piracy Prohibition Act. This act copyrights clothing designs. If this bill is passed it may enhance the value of design and stop stores such as H&M from producing clothes right after runway shows.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal Magazine von Furstenburg states that, “Designers are not elitists, they have a trade and a skill like any other craftsman. H&M, Topshop and Target are actually giving value to design because they admit they use designers- with or without names. This actually makes it clear that designers are required to create something special. You can’t just copy someone else.”

H&M now has stores in 37 countries: 22 European countries, 9 Middle Eastern countries, and 2 in North American countries. Kuwait boasts 2 stores, while Texas totes zero (http://www.hm.com/gb/storelocator__storelocatorhtml.nhtml).

The rise of H&M is the result of consumer’s desire to look in-style at a low cost. DVF’s Design Piracy Prohibition Act addresses the problem that plagues this concept, “Piracy is just counterfeiting without the label, which actually makes it legal! You see it right now with the Golden Globes and after the Oscars; on TV they say, ‘You don’t need to go buy the Zac Posen dress; you can get the 39.99 version.’"

High fashion with a low price comes at a cost-

originality and craftsmanship.

Do you care about this loss?