IN BED

Apologies for not answering comments and emails but I don’t have net at home at the moment and I have been a bit sick this week. In the course of being sick I have done what I usually do in such circumstances which is get myself to bed and watch a whole lot of documentaries.

Some of the subjects are not necessarily designed to cheer you up and make you better but it is like doing something in a not doing something sort of way.

I watched ‘Life Running Out of Control’ about GM food. Probably the most striking point in which is that chemical pollution will reduce after a while as long as you stop producing it whereas genetic pollution will behave differently and in ways we can’t know because DNA is self-replicating.

 

I also watched something called ‘Hawaii’s Last Queen’ which, despite being a rather loving tribute to an (albeit nonviolent) autocrat, is an interesting enough look at the tactics and strategies deployed to bring a highly reluctant Hawaiian population into the USA. The role of the missionaries was particularly pernicious.

I have had ‘War Made Easy – How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death’ for a long time but never got round to looking at it so I finally did. This statistic, which I already knew but always find striking was in it…

 

Civilian percentage of casualties..

 

World War 1 10%

World War 2 50%

Vietnam 70%

Iraq 90%

 

All hail the great march of civilization.

 

I watched a 2 hour presentation by Dahr Jamail for which I can’t find a link but you should really just search for just about anything by him to get the point.

I also watched ‘Speed’, which is about US soldiers being given amphetamines while on duty.

 

Finally, I took a look at ‘Behind the Labels’ which is about sweatshops in Saipan and is also definitely worth a look.

 

Hopefully normal service will be resumed next week.