I guess the Norwegians can suck a lemon like the rest of the world, only Brits seem worthy enough to appreciate the concert live.

Can Anyone tel I'm Bitter?

-Dina

What about us poor bastards in Hawaii? We get nothing...

(My ancestors were Norse. Frigid Northland!)

Merry Christmas?

Btw, I'm white.

Have you ever seen a humuhumunukunukuapua`a?

If you don't know what that is (without looking it up), then please don't use other Hawaiian words.

A humuhumunukunukuapua`a is the Hawaiian state fish. It looks similar to a pig and feeds of small fish and pieces of funk on the bottom of the ocean. They are all colors, but the one I have seen was brown. Apua`a is the Hawaiian way of saying pig, so that's the part of the word that gives away its pig description.

It's not bad. There is way too much noise though, too many highways and cars, towers and banks, military stations galore, and of course, McDonalds' are everywhere.

It's so sad what America did to Hawaii. They brought missionaries over here to change their whole system of beliefs. And it worked pretty well. Then the missionary descendants became businessmen, owning all or part of the sugar of pineapple plantations, where conditions almost identical to slave labor resulted.

These same descendants overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy. Then of course the canneries were brough in, and a great deal of Hawaiian land was used strictly for growing pineapples and sugar.

After decades of this, there was Pearl Harbor. White Americans would become angry against Hawaiians and local Japanese citizens whenever a crime was committed. There was no fairness in the justice system.

But Hawaii had to shape up for what has driven and still drives the economy to this day, tourism. People come here and spend money on hotels, cars, vacations, boats, submarine rides, cruise dinners, helicopter flights, waterfall hikes, all of the beauty of Hawaiian culture, food, religion, history, government, and even a good deal of Hawaiian people are gone.

There is one island where there live only native Hawaiians. The island is the western most, Ni`ihau. To even be allowed onto the island you must be minimum 1/8 Hawaiian. But they hardly let anyone on.

There are more interesting fact, like how we used Kaho`olawe for military bombing (and it's still radioactive), how we exploited cheap labor, how land has been torn up and never restored, how lying businessmen and politicians made their way here, how Hawaii is home to the world's only remaining leper colony, etc...

But it would take too long.

Cooking your own meal while camping - really camping, making your own shelter and bed, no gas, lighters, any of that - is a good way to connect with the ways of the past. But the future is always ahead, more unhealthy than today.

While society has progressed, life spans have become longer. This is not due to healthier foods or people eating healthier. It is because of our medications and the way we treat diseases and surgeries. It is one part of Capitalism beating another. You can blame McDonald's for addicting people to their food. Of course the people had a choice of what to eat. But in our perfect little Capitalistic world, advertising and convenience trumped health and causiousness (see the film "Supersize Me" to understand what I mean better).

Why not live on the wild side? Take a long time to get away from it all. Live in the wild. Live off of the wild. Of course help will only be a mobile call away. People would take their cell phones to keep in contact with people and just in case something drastic happened (paranoia). I don't own a cell phone, so I do not fall under the mobile call category. Experience a place where what you eat, where you live, how you cook, how you get your food, the way you wash your clothes, how you survive is only in your surroundings (not Wal-Mart or anything). Of course not many people want to do this. But I have it planned for a future time of my life.

The insurance was not available in those times - indeed. The ideas that civilization will grow faster than the goods around it can last and be produced were started by Thomas Malthus, an inspiration to Charles Darwin. The idea that someone would rob you or that plague would come or that the cow may die or that the harvest may be bad were (and in some ways are) the process of constant evolution, "survival of the fittest" if you will.

I'm sure every night before the starving Africans go to bed, they pray to God (Allah, Buddah, what have you) that Americans would come with Capitalism so that they can eat Big Macs, drive Ford Tauruses, and store their gallons of goat milk in their Kenmore refrigerators. Africans need Capitalism and McDonald's in the way that a serial killer needs a new victim and a gun. That is not what is on their mind, because they don't know if they will eat or even live the next day. If McDonald's ever made it's way to Ethiopia, then I would feel bad for the people there. They would succumb to the deliciousness of a hot Quarter Pounder with Cheese. McDonald's is partly responsible for America being the fattest nation on the planet. I do not want to see "Fattest Nation List: 1. United States of America; 2. Ethiopia." As soon as Capitalism comes, greedy scumbag exploiting businessmen aren't far behind. I do not want Ethiopia to be America Jr., the little Capitalism that could. If you think that McDonald's is what African nations need right now...I don't have anything to say...

I'm sure people that have their jobs will be afraid to have them outsourced to Africans - not. Most jobs today are being sent to the most populated nation in the world, India. The people in Africa cannot get jobs because the people who hail Capitalism, the big corporate businessmen, don't want a ragged weak poor African person who wants food and a house to get a job. They want people sometimes worse off, who work in sweatshops for chump change, to keep the job because a more desperate worker is one who will work harder. If the person works harder for less, then there is more profit. No big computer manufacturing facilities will be in Africa soon, perhaps ever.

You think that Capitalism has saved America, and perhaps the western world. Have you ever heard of The Great Depression? And if you want insight to the possibility of another crash in economy and life, read Rama II by Arthur C. Clarke (chapters 4 and 5).

My mistake: "While society has progressed, life spans have become longer. This is not COMPLETELY, perhaps not even partially due to healthier foods or people eating healthier.

The fact that McDonald's is convenient is what drives lazy Capitalists to buy unhealthy food. And what do you mean safer? You are right in one aspect - the food from McDonald's does not poison you and kill you quickly. It addicts you and over a long-term period makes you unhealthy. Again, see "Super Size Me." I'd prefer people to "poison themselves" and really know what they're doing. McDonald's has recently introduced a Fruit and Walnut Salad. Does that suddenly mean that all of their food is healthy? Of course not, but that's the effect that it has on some people. I'd rather see someone cook an unhealthy meal himself to really know that it's unhealthy versus seeing "I'm lovin' it" stickers, happy clowns, and several salads at a fast food restaurant and not realize that he is slowly shortening his life span more than he has to.

If you would simply read and grasp that paragraph, you would understand that I clearly, blatently, and purposely wrote, "But I have it planned for a future time of my life." If it is planned for a future point of my life, than I needn't bother writing a hypothetical situation or state that it was planned for later. Please read what I have written before you call me "a city dweller idealist and nothing more." I have actually lived outside of major towns or cities for 8 years of my life, not bad for a 15 year old who lives in a travelling military family, wouldn't you say? Once was on a farm in Wisconsin, and the other was in the backwoods of central Texas. Maybe you should see how life becomes more and more desolate as you leave the city sometime. Perhaps you are also a hypocrite in this respect.

And even if I do not have all of the answers for Ethiopia, do you? Saying, "Capitalism", and "democracy", and "free trade" does just as much as me saying, "No." to all of those things. I have never said that I know any better than anyone else "how Ethiopia should live." Have you been there? Nor I. Either of us could be at the opposite end of a right/wrong table. We'll never really know. Again, I'm sure they dream of H2 Hummers and Happy Meals like I do every night (sarcasm at its finest). I do not live driving a car and eating cheeseburgers all day long, nor do I dream of it. And I sincerely doubt that Ethiopians do either. Alas, we shall never know unless we ask them.

Are you actually suggesting that people in the Ukraine and England during "the past" - which is very specific, thank you - had no sources of healthy food? Where there not, say, simple fruits and vegetables? Where there not grains and dairies? Am I wrong that there were healthy things to eat as well?

Yes, there were unhealthy foods in the Ukraine, and in England. And pretty much everywhere else in the world. But there were also healthy alternatives. Not everyone in "the past" weighed over 300 pounds, had a cholesterol count of 275, and a failing heart because they ate pig fat on occasions.

Does it sound very healthy to eat raw meat? That is what eskimo tribes in Alaska did for generations. When America came, it provided ways of cooking the meat. This expanded their standards of living. But as I have already stated, these types of changes do not completely or even start the ways in which newer technologies have helped people to live longer.

How does it sound to eat a human being? Do you suppose it is very healthy? No, of course not. But Hawaiian tribes used to cannibalize fallen enemies, eating the parts that helped them as warriors. For example, if I had killed you in battle, and you were known for fast running, I would eat your legs. Most of it was done without cooking. America came, taking away the religions (except for the island of Ni`ihau), and installed Christianity. It brought food alternatives through trade, as did the British beforehand. But do these changes that America brought account for all of the health benefits now seen in Hawaiian people? No.

Unhealthy parts of our past have been changed. Instead of things such as eating pig fat, raw meat, or other people, we eat a Whopper, King Size French Fries (or are they Freedom Fries to you?), and to think they make it healthy, a Diet Coke. Is this not what an average American does? In some ways, we are just as unhealthy or more because of people who want to make money. They do not care if lives are shortened or if people go through drastic surgery because of body fat. It is the same way with tobacco companies. Why do they refuse to stop advertising to youth, refuse to let people know of all of the dangers of smoking, and why even add nicotine to cigarettes anyway? Why have arsenic (found in rat poison) in a cigarette? Who knows. The problem with all of it is that people become addicted, and that's good business. It is the same way with fast food.

I guess, like you, they see a very strong, visible line between serving people delicious food and slowly shortening lives through addiction.

And please, before you send your next rebuttle - if you can keep it up - actually watch the film "Super Size Me."

-- Edited by meekus at 10:43, 2005-06-24

Indeed.

I'm glad that there are no taxes on military installations.