A wholesome fruit, a versatile vegetable, an artist's Still Life subject, the Avocado is in a class of its own. Whether diced in a bowl of salad, blended in a nourishing juice or scooped straight out of its shell, for me the avocado's sensual texture, colouring crayon colours and milky taste, evoke sensory delights at once exotic and familiar, sophisticated and homely. Not only that, the avocado is equally comfortable in the company of delicate vinaigrette dressing served in a pretentious nouvelle cuisine dish or covered in chunks of dark palm sugar in a child's dessert bowl. Packed with vitamins and natural goodness the Avocado truly balances the mind, body and spirit. A truly creative food. - desi anwar
Paul Rosenberg
The first high-profile article to offer a sensible explanation of Occupy Wall Street came from anthropologist David Graeber, author of the recently-published book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years. In his op-ed, "Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination", he wrote:
"We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt... Just as in Europe, we are seeing the results of colossal social failure. The occupiers are the very sort of people, brimming with ideas, whose energies a healthy society would be marshaling to improve life for everyone. Instead, they are using it to envision ways to bring the whole system down.
"But the ultimate failure here is of imagination. What we are witnessing can also be seen as a demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008.
"There was a moment, after the near-collapse of the world's financial architecture, when anything seemed possible. Everything we'd been told for the last decade turned out to be a lie...
"It seemed the time had come to rethink everything: the very nature of markets, money, debt; to ask what an 'economy' is actually for. This lasted perhaps two weeks. Then, in one of the most colossal failures of nerve in history, we all collectively clapped our hands over our ears and tried to put things back as close as possible to the way they'd been before."
