alexist

Had an OU tutorial tonight, at the LSE. It seemed like over half the LSE students were Americans.

Got annoyed at the Independent's "Disappearing World" supplement. First, at their usual enviro-hysteria; second, at the number of entries for various tribes. It's not that I'm a fan of cultures disappearing, but wanting them to be preserved simply so they're still there smacks of Western colonialist guilt. We killed off half the tribes, so now the others have to stand still to assuage our guilt over it. What if these people want to be Westernized? I was particularly annoyed by the inclusion of the Romany--their current situation is awful. A little integration might be in their best interests. Being stuck in ghettos certainly hasn't done much.

The Northern line decided to have another signal failure, and all the parties to the PFI contracts are pointing fingers. I'm no dogmatic on public services, but if the contracts have to be drawn up with so many sweeteners to make it worthwhile for the private firms, then possibly it's not the right place for private involvement? But this didn't occur to the government, oh no. Privatize at all costs, and who cares if there's no way to enforce the contracts and we're stuck with it for 30 years! It's no better than the US and Halliburton. There's no use pretending it's superior just because we didn't pick the VP's company. Maybe it's worse--Shrub sold out for a reason, the UK did it for fuck-all!

I've always suspected that Fair Trade is a bit of a con. Now I'm pretty much convinced.

I forget exact figures (which would, I know, boost my argument) but Fair Trade doesn't boost the price to the grower all that much, in absolute terms. One figure I read, which I THINK was for bananas but i'm not 100% sure, is 16p/kg for regular, 25p/kg for Fair Trade.

Today I did some comparison shopping in Waitrose.

Central American bananas: 89p/kg.
Windward Isles bananas: 99p/kg.
Fair Trade bananas: £1.25 for bunch of 5.

I weighed a bunch of Fair Trade bananas. They weighed 700g. Which, if my figures are correct, are £1.79/kg.

So if the growers are receiving an extra 10p/kg, where's the other 70p going? Bananas are not a value-added product. Is sticking a Fair Trade sticker on worth an extra 70p? I think not.

Speaking of which, the other con of Fair Trade: The vast majority of a product's value is added after it's been taken from the grower. Most of that is done outside the home country. I remember an article in the Observer where a company in Madagascar decided not to go the Fair Trade route largely for this reason--they reckoned that simply getting a few extra pence a kilo would be meaningless. To end poverty, they needed to bring the processing--all the "value-added" aspects--to them. The cost of the cocoa beans is minimal; what brings in profit is making the chocolate bars.

For the record, I bought the Windward Isles bananas, which are grown on small farms and not giant plantations. If you insist on buying Central American, at least buy Costa Rican: they actually have labour laws.

Tonight's Neil's bridge night, so it's tidying for me. I seem to have more energy for it after dark. :)

I finally put together that bookcase last week, too. I moved the excess books into it, but I need to sort all the books now so they're in some kind of order. The books currently in the bedroom are now just the ones that were stacked up; I need to work out which categories are going into which shelves, and move them all around.

BTW, we've been married over a year and we still haven't merged our book collections. Not sure we ever will: Neil's books are in a totally random order. I couldn't stand it. If I merged and alphabetized them, he'd probably just stick new ones in at random and we'd have fights about it. :)

And for a change of topic: Fuck off Jamie Oliver, you mockney whore!

(No, I will not be watching C4 tonight.)

I bought a bag of clementines today. It's early for them (they were Spanish) but they've been stretching the season for them for years. Since I'm not supposed to have orange juice (or any fruit juice), I really like citrus fruit, seasons be damned (I happily ate South African all summer). Clementines are my usual because they're small and have a good, sweet-acid flavor that's somewhere between orange and tangerine.

Well, I peeled it, sectioned it, and took a bite--then spat it out. It wasn't sour, it was bitter. That's a new one.

I'd sorted the books perfectly. The trade sized paperback nonfiction, the religious books, and the mass market paperbacks are in the bedroom. Everything else fills the living room bookcase perfectly. (Of course this means I'm fucked if I buy something else that goes with the living room books, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I'm on a self-imposed book buying ban until I read all the ones I've got.)

Then I noticed a cookery book on top of the bookcase in the bedroom. DOH! This will completely mess things up. It's quite tall, so it has to go on the middle shelf with the other tall books. Hmph. More reorganization ahead....

On top of the TV:
Snow leopard cub, blue and red monster, teddy bear, something I can't identify. Plus a rubber Cookie Monster.

Bookcase:
Colobus monkey, golden retriever puppy, mother & baby elephant.

Radiator:
Penguin.

Neil's desk:
mini bagpuss.

Alarm clock:
Giant fuzzy spider.

How old are we, again?

(Though personally, I think the goldie goes well with the giant whisky collection.)

Apple's released a new 17" powerbook... better display... wahh!
http://www.apple.com/powerbook/index17.html

The Guardian referred to Long Island as "a suburb of New York City".

I wrote them an article pointing out that as an area of 2.6 million people and an island measuring 120 miles, tip to tip, this is roughly equivalent to calling East Anglia "a suburb of London".

Gotta defend the hometown, baby!

(it was mentioned in reference to Kellenberg Memorial High School cancelling their prom. It hasn't gone over well. Long Island is a place with a lot of spoilt kids with a lot of money to spend on prom weekend. :/)