More Pictures of Spain
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In August 2019 we returned to Turkey, after fourteen years, for a more encompassing holiday in the part that's variously called Western Asia or the Middle East. There were iconic tourist places we had not seen so with a combination of flights and a rental car we hopped about the map in this very large country.
We began, as one does, in Istanbul.
When I first saw this colourized image of Christmas Shopping in Pitt St in Sydney in December 1935, on Facebook (source: History of Australia Resources).
I was surprised. Conventional history has it that this was in the middle of the Great Depression. Yet the people look well-dressed (perhaps over-dressed - it is mid-summer) and prosperous. Mad dogs and Englishmen?
So, I did a bit of research.
It turns out that they spent a lot more of their income on clothes than we do (see below).
David Attenborough hit the headlines yet again in 15 May 2009 with an opinion piece in New Scientist. This is a quotation:
βHe has become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, a think tank on population growth and environment with a scary website showing the global population as it grows. "For the past 20 years I've never had any doubt that the source of the Earth's ills is overpopulation. I can't go on saying this sort of thing and then fail to put my head above the parapet."
There are nearly three times as many people on the planet as when Attenborough started making television programmes in the 1950s - a fact that has convinced him that if we don't find a solution to our population problems, nature will:
"Other horrible factors will come along and fix it, like mass starvation."
Bob Hawke said something similar on the program Elders with Andrew Denton: