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

I'm sitting here swallowing all this stuff about how as an American I dont know what's going on in the rest of the world because the international news coverage of my local media is so crappy. (oops. I dont even watch TV).

So what am I missing? And what do YOU know about America that is so newsworthy?
(as far as I know, the only thing happening is a bunch of democrats wasting tax money on a junket in Boston.)

hmmm... clearly not much. I dont feel guilty anymore.

*...also waiting, but not holding his breath*

mind you Leo, Friday afternoon is probably not the best time to elicit a considered response from the prairie dogs who make up most of the brit researchers on here...

*the scene shifts to a cube farm, somewhere in Croydon :
enter office manager, somewhat agitated*

Off.Man.: "HEY! HEY YOU LOT!!...WORLD WAR THREE JUST BROKE OUT !!!!

*several of the prairie dogs raise themselves from their seats and stand on their hind legs, looking over the walls of their little cubes*

P.Dog#1 :"So, where we going tonight? Dog and Bone or Strimbles?"
P.Dog#2 :"Did you see the equipment on that new secretary down on the 8th floor?"
P.Dog#3 :"Oh rats! and I've got to mend my bike this weekend "


... cheers Leo...good luck.

alec.

OK, let's start with the easy ones:

Israel/Palestinians: still killing each other.
Iraq: still killing each other, and any US or other country's troops they can find.
Afghanistan: still killing each other.
The Balkans: seem to have stopped killing each other for the moment, but not exactly the #1 holiday destination.
Sudan: still killing each other.
Uzbekistan: US and Israeli embassies bombed.
China: Threatening war against Taiwan.
Pakistan: attempted assassination of Prime Minister-designate.

RF

Bangladesh

Do Taiwan have an army?

B

If they didn't up till now, you can bet they're rapidly assembling one! Bring your own pitchfork/farming implement of choice!

RF

In England, some shep are rolling over cattlegrids

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3938591.stm

Anyway, I don't think it really bothers the Chinese whether you've got an army or not before they invade. Did Tibet have an army?

RF

I remember seeing the rolling sheep on HIGNFY a few years ago. There's no news like tried-and-tested news, is there?

B

China has been planning to invade Taiwan for the last fifty years or so. Actually, this is something for Americans to know about, because it's their navy on the halfway line that has been preventing that one kicking off for some time now. Or making it look that way, anyway: in fact, mainland Chinese intimations that they might be taking their holidays in Taiwan this year are more to signal their displeasure to the Americans than any serious sign of intent.

Oops - really tempting fate there, aren't I?

aw... I knew all of that except the Taiwan thing, and I haven't had a chance to pick up a newspaper in a week. How new can any of that be? Lets face it: Pakistan, Israel, Iraq, Afganistan... its the been the same for at least 6 months, in many cases, more. And sheep in Britain isn't exactly the big news I thought I'd been missing. Chee...

Ok, lets go for Africa -
The stats for southern africa are currently that within 3 years there will be 1.6 million AIDS related deaths a year - this will steady out for 4 years and then slowly decline. Which poses challenges since in South Africa all the government-owned cemetries are full and people of African heritage cannot be cremated (in accordance with traditional belief) so there's general chaos facing the burial indistry in southern africa.
Our Minister of Health (N Zuma) stated publicly four years ago that the reason the government wont issue Neviropine to pregnant mothers (prevents mother to child transmission) is that the state cant support the resulting overflow of orphans that will be arround once the mothers inevitably die of the disease.
Hectic stuff? Most people at this point put their head in the sand or turn on the tele and look for a good escapist tale.
The reality is like this - I am a Trustee for a development trust and 3 of my fellow trustees live in Tladi - in Soweto. A simple challenge for us meeting these days is that on Fridays and Saturdays you cant get down the main road in Tladi faster than 10k's p/h because of the funeral processions that start at dawn and go on till very late. One of ur trustees's babies died of and AiDs related illness 4 months ago, followed by his wife 2 months ago and he's now in hospital. But no-one in Tladi will admit to infection because there isn't any viable treatment available for it anyway and a general acceptance of the possibility that you're going to die in the next while has taken hold and no matter how much education we do, its not going to shift the helplessness people feel against a tide they dont really understand and cant afford to do anything about anyway (in their minds).
But there are beautifull, joyous and precious men, women and children in all areas of southern africa that the world could truly learn something from, and it will be a true loss when they're gone.

Hmmmmmm, so I really should have posted this in the soapbox thread hmmmm? Guess I'll be accused forthwith of ranting. But you asked . . . *shrug*

Use it . . . . dont . . . . whatever

Wow. I knew it was bad, but not that bad. Still, mother to child isn't the only way AIDS is transmitted. Right?

<>

What???

*looks at thread title*

oh.


az

No, you're right, its not the only way HIV is transmitted. Take Hamilton and Maria as an example. Hamilton has raised his grandson Tsepo who is now 9 and is HIV positive (from birth - his mother was 15 when she had him). Hamilton has since married Maria and they have a 4month-old baby - Midas. With 6 kids in the house and both parents busy with their own business, the kids (aged 5 - 12) look after each other after school etc. Maria is worried because Tsepo keeps putting Midas's pacifier in his mouth - but how do you explain to a 9 year old that one drop of his blood on the smallest wound on Midas could kill him? Especially in a community where HIV carries such a stigma, but over a third of the population are likely "positive".
Or how about in schools where kids run and play and aren't very carefull about transmission generally but how do you explain to a child that just one "oops" could be deadly? You dont get a second shot.

Grandchildren that transmit to their grandparents innocently and husbands who "slip just once" and transmit to their wives. Or how about the teenagers discovering life and boundaries and get infected at 14? Did you ever take warnings seriously at 13 or 14? Weren't parents and adults just such killjoys? (especially at a teen party where someone slips vodka in the punch).

The point is that there are hundreds and thousands of orphans out there - sometimes living together in "group houses" where all the parents have passed on so they look after each other and the social welfare system isn't evolved enough to even begin to know what to do with them.

A little off the topic, but I struggle with a question - should HIV positive children be attending normal school? Sure reading and writting is important but is the whole school system really nescessary for a child who's life expectancy is 5 to 15 years? Not that there's funding for any other kind of schools . . . but I think about it a lot. Shouldn't we somehow make these kids lives as life-experience filled and joy-filled as possible? Hmmmmmm.

Sorry, off on a tangent again. Of course there's sexual transmission, and in any community unprotected sex is russian roulette. For full adults that's one issue, but for teens (flooded with sexualised social signals) its another matter all together and between kids . . . well, its just larger than a sexually transmitted disease. (Over a million and a half deaths a year within 4 years is no small figure - how many families does that affect?

I'm really not a fanatic about all this, it would just be good for people to know the true face of HIV and poverty, and not just the statistics.

may the Lord forgive me for my lack of sympathy for teenagers who contracted AIDs after drinking too much vodka laced punch and ending up in bed with somebody else. Somehow I managed to negotiate much of my teenhood without coming even close. (2 years left before that's definite).
I do feel bad for those poor kids born HIV pos. though. It must be horrible knowing you're destined to die in about a dozen or so years.

Did you negoitiate through it through strength of beliefs or lack of oppertunity or what? It's not as though those kids are raised in a culture where one is expected to wear a condom or have the oppertunity to acquire one.
I know from my own experiance that you can find yourself having sex without a condom quite easily and here it's not hard or weird to find a condom. And I've always taken VD seriously.

SO DONT DO IT!!!
I really dont get whats so hard about this thing called abstainence. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Ever hear that one? And just by doing one stupid thing when you're 15 shortens your life, your kids, and anyone who touches your drool. I think any intelligent being can make the calculation and figure out whether it's worth it.

You got it Stealth.

Reality check Leo!
Ok, so maybe this is a little more information than I was planning on but here goes: Since the whole education-drive thing on HIV, the condom manufacturers have been strong-armed to produce "free" condoms" to fight HIV. Ok! But hell, no-one wants to kill their own market - so the free ones are industrial strength tyre-rubber helmets that (i'm told - make a man what to change his name to Dunlop - with a puncture!). But the kids here to whom 10 rand (convert to your equiv) is a veritable fortune! (a pack of 6 condoms costs close to R40) - they believe that the free condoms are IT. So they try it once and then choose (in the height of hormonal explosion) to actually have sex (ie- no dunlop) and hey presto! Another HIV infection!
I think the point here is that you can never judge based on your environment, there are all sorts of subtleties that run through issues like this. Now free Durex-quality condoms may provide a solution, but the free industrial ones just compound the problem. but dont worry condom manufacturers, cause your market is safe and it only cost a few million lives!

Ok, now I confess I AM ranting, but the topic of this post (loosely) is what information an American wouldn't get from limmited media exposure, so Im not feeling too off track.

Remember too that in a community where if people can afford food at all its a good day amusements like movies, tv and computers are a dream. A skateboard or a bike? Only if you can forrage the parts and make one.
So how would you have survived teenhood without tv, computers, movies?? Free entertainment becomes a lot more attractive then . . . .

Sorry Leo, but you touched a nerve. Judging these kids (from where you are) is like judging a Betelguesian for not eating voolazian worm-crud when its in season.

Keep passing open windows
Kosh

I feel I should point out that you'd have to drink about four litres of drool from an infected person to have any realistic chance of acquiring AIDs.

I've spent along time writing this post, but in the end I must admit I can't address what in my opinion is the laughable notion of abstinence without heading off on a long stream of conciousness rant. I'll just say that abstinence is very USian. Very Bush.