bluefacedpixie

Ever wonder how many dollars are spent on the military-industrial complex?

President George W. Bush appeared at the Elgin air force base in Florida on 4 February 2002, clad in a leather bomber jacket, to announce his plan for a huge hike in military spending over the next five years. The proposed increase for 2003 alone – $48 billion – was itself higher than the entire defense budget of the United Kingdom, and the overall annual figure of $396 billion would be more than the combined total of the next fifteen highest-spending countries, including Russia and China.

I’ve just finished reading “How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World” by Francis Wheen, which is a cutting non-fiction political book about how things have changed in the last twenty-five years in a rather post-Enlightenment way. It was a birthday present a few months ago and after a long hike up Mt. Si today with my friend Paul, who teaches History on the east coast, I have decided to pass it along as it makes for good quotes and a different perspective on life. Even if the politics don’t matter the random facts are great.

The ‘quintessentially British’ meal of fish and chips owed its existence to Sir Walter Raleigh, who brought potatoes back from Virginia in the 1580s; it has in turn yielded place to the nation’s new favourite, chicken tikka massala, an Anglo-Indian hybrid. Meanwhile, India may have become the world’s largest producer, consumer and exporter of chillis, but the plant itself is native to Mexico: it was introduced to Europe by the Spanish in 1514 and then to Asia by Portuguese seafarers a century later. How many Indians today regard the chilli as a symbol of Euro-American hegemony?

And I always thought the story of pizza was interesting.