[tbird5]

Another book on same topic : http://www.cis.org.au/policy/spr03/polspr03-7.htm

[bikewench]

The problem with our western culture is that we are owned by our "things" and that we have given up our sense of freedom and self determination in order to protect our being "possessed".

[murdoog]

We have piled up mountains of marginally improved stuff, in the chaos of which we cannot find any of our nine hammers, so we buy a tenth, and the pile grows higher.

I have this problem with fingernail clippers. Except it's more than 10.

[Auntie Mame]

American life expectancy has dramatically increased in a century, from 47 to 77 years.

I was killing time in a cemetery a couple weeks ago and realized that this type statistic is a bit misleading. Actually there were a lot of headstones of people from the old days who lived into their 70's, 80's, 90's and a few 100's. The big difference is that there were lots of babies and children's headstones. There were quite a few deaths of people in their 20's and 30's, also.

In reality, the majority of people back then didn't die in their 40's as I'd been lead to believe by this statistic, it's that we have far fewer infant and childhood deaths.

It's really amazing what you can do with statistics, isn't it?