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

By the way, have I mentioned my Phagnum Opus?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A681563

Yes, the pictures are much better on radio, I find.

Yes, again - although the opus has moved on apace, I think! How does it come to you?

BTW, I got *two* entries on the front page today, including being 'Editor's Selection'!

I will try to find time to look at them.

I still have to Guide ML reformat the 'somebody's mother' it is finished...well, has been for a week.

'How does it come to you?' Simple. I am a liar. It is that simple.
I lie. I steal bits of the truth here and there and twist them an turn them into entertaining lies.

That's why I always have found the 'writing''teacher's' joke,"Write what you know," to be so irritating.

In order to write convincingly, you have to "write what you know isn't true". But well enough to convince others that it might be.

My spousal unit had me print out your 'diet' piece. I can't remember what it's called right now without linking to it. "something Control"
Anyway, she liked it and is thinking about it.

Ah yes, Candida Control. I'm still on the diet and I struggled hard at work today. I was hungry, only having had half of my lunch and someone had bought some cakes - almost pure sugar - you know the ones with a fluffy white inside atop a biscuit covered in chocolate. To my credit, I resisted!

I'm still working hard on my world debt entry and wondering if it's more than I can cope with - it's such a huge topic, however I feel very strongly about it.

You mean everybody's debt to everybody else? Stretching back to the turn of the last century? That kinda world debt?
Or the manufactured kind where you loan things to people at inflated interest and then take over their treasury?
Or the managed debt thing, where it is the future interest on the old loans that is the collateral for new loans that are used to finance loans to other people so you can be in debt to them for diplomatic purposes?

"Most people seemed to be worried about little green pieces of paper that didn't seem to be worried about anything at all."

Yes, yes and ... yes! It's a long entry.

I'd forgotten that quote - it sums it up quite nicely, I think, together with the First American quote which ends 'until people finally come to realise that you cannot eat money' - I think the first bit is about tearing up the forests, etc. Can't remember the exact quote, but it's a good one.

Is is a University of Life entry?

Do you think it needs cutting? Is it too long? Or do you need to think about finding a publisher?

Funny you should say that. The last posting suggested as the entry was getting so wide, that it might be made into a University Project. That though had been crossing my mind as well, although I've never had any involvement in one, apart from doing a part of the Greek Myths entry. Perhaps I'll find out a bit more about what's involved.

Whirled debt....sounds like legalized money laundering to me...
How many shekels is an euro worth...doesn't euro sound suspiciously like Yugo?

Have you looked at the site? I've spent more time looking at the other sites, especially the Jubilee 2000 one. I started the entry after having read an article on the subject and the more I read around it, the more concerned I became.

I even went out and bought a copy of The Economist - a journal I have never read in my life before. It includes an advert for a 'Global Historian' who will be paid a six figure package to 'deal with potentially sensitive historical issues' nad anticipate, identify and analyse 'historical issues with potential reputational risk for the Bank on a global basis'. I thought at first the advert was a joke, but it's not.

I paid my part in the alternative economy today by taking part in a LETS (Local Exchange Trading Scheme). A very busy day, but an interesting one.

I freely admit to being an American. I'm watching a Blue Jay try to decide whether to incorporate a piece of dryer sheet into it's nest.
I spent half of yesterday reading BBC news for the World, Asia, Scotland and Wales and the other half looking at Websites for bowling shirts....my usual reaction to reading about government ineptness and the Sharia and it's little gestapo.
I have tried to become interested in the Euro...but I have not found the hook to hang my interest on, yet.
I spent four hours the other day, in the midst of fighting ML, reading about burned churches.

The phrase I've incorporated into my nickname came from a rather lengthy and irritating transcript of a Scottish Parliament visit to Glasgow...some female MP or other kept saying dismissively,"Small solutions are for small minds."
Someone finally got tired of this and said,"Any solution would please anyone with a mind...."
Politicians make me sick.
Economic politicians make me confused.
When half the planet is run under one form of legalized fraud or another and there are ministries in one country who agree on principle to be ememies of ministries in other countries so they all can soak their individual treasuries to their mutual benefit...it would seem that war is at least a bit aboveboard and you don't have to wear a tie or go to lunch with someone you can't stand....

Is a LETS like a Co-op? Or an investment club?

I've had a Gerry Rafferty best of in my cd drive for the last week because I am too lazy to take it out and fight the Windows Media Player to put another one in. It is WMP that has been messing up my registry and Javascript abilities. I deleted most of it, but there are still some tentacles left.

Taken out of order:

LETS is a way of trading without money - a sort of barter scheme where you exchange skills and goods into a central 'pot'. For instance, you provide someone with two hours gardening and get back a massage from someone else. The day was a way of advertising the scheme to potential members. I provided mine free of charge - although some people attempted to pay me in 'Acorns' - the name of the 'currency' in this particular LETS. I did tarot readings and I was busy all day - just one break to 'powder my nose'. I'll probably do an entry on them, or if I decide to make the world debt entry into a University Project, it'll get a section.

I met someone I'd lost touch with at the LETS event, which was nice. She lives nearby and does massage and reiki. We could do an exchange and have offered to help declutter each other's houses. Now that would be really good.

I'd not really thought of myself as a political person - like you, I've little time for polics, however I found myself surprised by how keenly I felt about this issue. I've had an interest in 'green' issues for a while, but I've felt myself a bit of an ignoramus about the money system. It was also something I felt I could do nothing about. Now I think that if people are at least aware of what is going on, action might be possible. I'm not a fiery type though, slow and steady is more my style.

Until I started learning more about the money system, I was vaguely in favour of the Euro. I liked the idea of coming together with its connotations of harmony, however I think it would be harder to do something once inside - not impossible, but more difficult.

I haven't got sound on my computer (nor a printer yet either). Does it mean you can play stuff whilst doing other things?

Are you getting to grips with GuideML now, then?

Yep. With the gaming thing such a big deal, most computers sold today have a MIDI sound card and a CD ROM. A silent computer must be a pain.
Half the sites I visit have sound of one sort or another. I don't have anything to do with MP3s if I can help it, but I do have some soundbite files and a couple of bits from old radio and TV shows.

I have caught the end of the bit of cellophane needed to unwrap the secrets of ML and I am slowly tearing it open, but I am furstipated by it's limitations.

Money confuses me. The more I know about it, the less I understand.
I've always vaguely mistrusted the Euro scheme, but I am unable to articulate why. The whole EU thing is vaguely disconcerting, too, but I still am not sure.

Kinda reminds me of the days when every country's monarchy was related to every other's. The little people are somehow gonna get it in the neck.
My cursory perusal of the BBC News pages gives me an outsider's view of the BBC reporter's mixed messages about the way the national and local governments work...oddly enough, it all reminds me of vintage Andy Capp, if that makes any sense.

I'll reply more fully when I've got back from Quaker meeting and my singing group.

Notes to self - lowest common denominator and favourite Andy Capp cartoon - no that's easily done here.

Flo and Rube giggling like crazy - third woman comes up and asks why they're laughing. Flo says 'Our Jessie's getting married and she says she'll be giving up work once shes married'. Next block - all three women laughing like crazy!

Actually, the next part to this posting may not have been worth waiting for.

I was going to mention the bit about the EC being formed as a counterbalance to the enormous economic power of the US - it's one of the big four - US, Canada, Japan, EC. Things like safety standards sound enormously good when they're European Safety Standards, however they're often not as good as UK standards - all the countries have to agree them, so they're often based on the lowest common denominator, which is not terribly good.

The Andy Capp strip still makes me chuckle, though.

Sorry, been building up threads on my space. Missed this one.
Lowest common denominator...I had been waiting for that.
Actually, there may be an entry in that subject: "Lowest Common Denominator; Culture According to Idiots who think everyone else is and Idiot, while true Idiots think everyone is smarter than them and poorer for it." I'll think about writing it.

Safety is an odd thing. It has become a commodity.
Like Knowledge Management.

Now here is a strange thing...where is the cultural need for bravery met in 'safety'? If the true goal of the 'Industrial Revolution' is making one happy tightening nut #48 on bolt #3 all day long without striking, moaning or quitting or blowing things up, then the brave ones are those who shut up and do their jobs for thirty years and provide a good home for JDs that are roaming the streets while their parents are at work or asleep from swing shifts.....

Then 'they' want more money for police and social programs, which are pitched to the legislatures as economically feasible because they hope to socialize and reform miscreants into 'productive' members of society who will....see above....

When the whole purpose of the police forces in the first place was to protect the merchants so that they could sell goods manufactured at 14p a piece for 4 quid...(sorry, couldn't help myself)...

Are you aware of how long and how piteously GB asked to be included in the European Market during the sixties? And how utterly polite the French were in their rejection?
One account I found suggested that the UK didn't recover from WWII economically until 1965....

Oh, I'm sorry!
Yes, I remember that strip. We have several reprint books of old strips from the sixties and seventies that I have given to my eleven year old. She carries them or one of them with her to read in church or at doctor's offices...

Now that Smythe is dead, I wonder where the strips are coming from?

This is very strange. It popped up in a search for Andy Capp on the Beeb machine:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/england/thinkofengland/northeast.shtml

Is this navel-gazing or what?

I've not read the Andy Capps for a little while and I didn't realise that Smythe was dead, although I should have realised it was likely.

I would not have thought of describing de Gaulle as polite. Firm, yes. Arrogant, yes. Opinionated, yes. Paternalistic, yes. I think de Gaulle's 'Non!' as about as famous as his hooter!

You are probably right about the UK not recovering economically until 1965. I understand that rationing carried on into the fifties and that it was if anything worse later on. Ugh! That has thoughts of 'spam'!

If you do decide do do an entry on the Lowest Common Denominator, do give me the reference. It should be worth reading.

It will probably be with a straight face and a clean boot.

Really, I thought you recognized sarcasm when you saw it...(re: De Gaulle ((of that man!))).