h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A334655

PEDERS 885 BULLSHIT WORDS ABOUT GLOBALISATION

When I came to Australia (the last continent I had yet not visited) I thought, for some reason, that this world down under would not be captured bye the big fat guy called Globalization. How wrong I was, but I guess that’s why they call it globalization….

I don’t know why I started writing this, it’s just that every time I’m traveling outside Norway’s narrow boarders I start thinking about how similar everything has become. I can’t help it. It’s as predictable as lost luggage and rain in London. This time I had to write something down. What I wrote was this:


The world has become much smaller. Two hundred years ago I could have sent a letter from Norway to Australia and after eight months got it back from the post office with the explanation that the continent was jet not discovered. Today you could travel to the other side of the world (Norway, I’m sure. It was a fxxxing long flight) in less than one day. You can book tickets faster than you can say intercityexpress.com, and you can send internet porn to people you don’t like at the incredible speed of bad news.
I don’t know when Globalization started, but I know that today’s globalization is nothing compared to the globalization in the good all days. By the good old days I don’t mean the 60.thies or the 70.thies but the b.c. kind of old days. Back then globalization meant that one guy took a wrong turn, rode for ten years and ended up in a country nothing like he had ever seen before. We are talking different clothes, different food, different skin color, totally different language, different sticks to put the food into people’s mouth, but basically the same way of treating women as less than dirt. That kind of globalization where the same guy rode home with some silk and weapon on a horse bored with the whole discovering thing. Back home globalization made him able to dress up or kill his wife (depending on the circumstances) in new fashionable ways and ether way impress all the neighbors. A task that he would be happy to spend 20 years and kill a couple of hundred innocents to carry on with.


Today globalization is more about one big company in one big country who whishes to become even bigger. Today globalization is more about advertising than products. US drug companies use, so help me God this is true, tree times the amount of money on advertising for their products than they use on develop new and better medicine. If they had used their money the other way around we would probably have a cure for cancer and reality TV by now. But, the mother of all the big global companies, Coca Cola, has made 70% of the worlds population capable of preannounce their name and the left the last 30% fed up with the whole soft drink thing and, therefor, go fore the diet one. Microsoft have shown the whole world it’s not about having the best products or solving peoples problems, but about having enough money and a set of company values Mussolini would have been proud of. Yes, globalization is here and it’s pissed.


So what follows in the black dusty lane of globalization? Well, here is my list:
- Globalization has made traveling to weird places a little like expecting Hellraiser while the reality is more like Driving Miss Daisy.
- Globalization has made my able to listen, even how much I would rather get lead poisoning, to Britney Spears on local radio stations from Uganda to Fiji.
- Globalization has made it possible to bye a Swedish nurse prostitute in Waikiki (at least that’s what the ad told me).
- Globalization has, ironically, left Australia stuck in the 80-thies.
- Globalization has made me able to differentiate countries and cities all by the taste of a medium fries at Mc Donald’s. It’s true! Barcelona has big fries with no salt, Paris is average, New York has the crunchiest and Hawaii is all about survival. It’s like wine. I can determine where it’s from but helpfully not which year.


So is it good or bad, globalization that is? Well we probably will never know. Globalization has made it possible for morons like me to discover the world without more effort than breathing. At the same time if Columbus had made his famous journey today the only difference he would have found in the new world would have been another collection of Poce’mon figures in Happy Meal. On the other hand they would most likely had a GPS to tell them where the hell they where and a better diet taken care of by home delivery. So my conclusion is this. There are some good things about globalization and there is some bad. While some claim that we owe it all to globalization and that it’s the best thing since sliced bread, other say the best thing about globalization is that it sucks. The thing is that there is one hatch when it comes to globalization. And this hatch is that is that there's just no way one can say; "Globalization, it' just not my cup of tea" and then travel without it.

Hi! The way this works, you need to create an entry (on your home space, there should be a button that says "add guide entry", click that), and put the text in there. Then, come back to Peer Review and make sure that you follow the directions for submission -- this is probably the one area of h2g2 where they tend to be pretty strict about things -- otherwise it would get overwhelming really quickly for all of us.


Mikey

Additionally, I, too, tried to compose in my word processor then cut and paste to the page here.

The problem is that your word porcessor is taking the tick mark(') and the double tick mark (") and converting them into proper opening and closing quotes and double quotes.

The goobledygook in your posting represents the codes used by your wordp processor to specify those particular characters. While it is quite clever of your word processor to realize that things are being cut from its page and to replace those marks with the codes, the online editors simply paste in whatever is text in the scratch pad buffer.

Either save your text out as a text file, then open up a text editor, load the file, copy it, and paste it. Or, just use your favorite text editor in the first place.

Oh, and the system will give your article a valid number when you create it.

Barton

The link at the top of this thread, isn't working!! The link to the piece on your space should be http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A567920 Hope that helps. Maybe you'd like to get involved in a project at the university that's just enrolling fair trade vs. free trrade http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F59030?thread=117699 Z.

It would be best to abandon this thread and start a new one with the corret link.

This thread will probably be sent to the sin bin as it is.

Barton

Yes, just to keep things tidy and orderly, I'd say we move this thread out of Peer Review and you create another. You know, Germans have an extra gen

Interesting ideas btw, hope to see it back. Only next time a more decent header please, and mind the Writing Guidelines.

Bossel (Scout)

Ok, I recommend this to go to the Sin Bin.

Editorial Note: This conversation has been moved from 'Peer Review Sin Bin' to 'PEDERS 885 BULLS**T WORDS ABOUT GLOBALIZATION'.

Back to Entry - this is an opinion piece.