“Nokia Unveils ‘Green’ Phone” - The Australian Online

If they do decide to develop this phone - made from recycled materials - I’d be interested to see whether the underlying manufacturing processes are as environmentally friendly as the finished product. It’s often the case that ‘green’ or ‘carbon-neutral’ products can be just as destructive to the environment as the old ‘bad’ products simply because the refining processes of the plastics, rubbers and metals that go into the final products require intense heat, huge amounts of water, harmful chemicals, and carbon-producing techniques of construction. If, as Nokia seem to be claiming, their ‘Remade’ phone is environmentally friendly, I’d also expect it to use energy-efficient batteries, which interestingly isn’t mentioned in the article from the press conference at all. Perhaps they could even consider using some sort of solar cell technology to recharge! Now wouldn’t that be a snazzy idea!

Every now and then something (a scent, a sound, a phrase in a book) will remind me of a line or phrase from a nursery rhyme.  Considering we spend the first few years of our lives having nursery rhymes recited to us on a daily basis it shouldn’t be a surprise that every now and then we regress as adults into humming ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ or ‘Humpty Dumpty’.  What we cannot appreciate when we are children but should find interesting as adults is that many of the nursery rhymes and songs we sing as youngsters are actually cultural remnants from times past - not meaningless little ditties but political and historical statements of life and death.

Take our good friend the Grand Old Duke of York (who had ten thousand men).  This rhyme is said to be about the invasion of Flanders by the second son of King George III: Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany.  Others believe that the song has been used on several occasions throughout the centuries when a Duke of York (or other related aristocrat) has ordered or led a nonsensical move in battle - Richard, Duke of York’s death during the Battle of Wakefield in 1460 is such an example.  Another English nursery rhyme, ‘Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary’, has had similar uses in British history, being used to refer to both Mary, Queen of Scots’ reign and Mary I of England’s reign.

‘Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush’ is another fine example of an innocent children’s rhyme having more sinister beginnings.  It is said that the song originated at H.M.P. Wakefield, where female prisoners danced around a mulberry bush singing songs to entertain their children.  ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’ has similarly dark origins - some scholars believe the phrase: ‘London Bridge is falling down my fair lady’ refers to the practice of burying live virgins in the foundations of bridges as a means of imbuing magic into the structure to prevent collapse.  ‘Rain, Rain, Go Away, Come Again Another Day’, is said to relate to the failure of the Spanish Armada to defeat English fleets due to bad weather, just as ‘Ring a Ring of Rosies’ is said to be a reference to the catastrophic death toll of the Bubonic Plague.  ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’, one of my favourites as a child, is actually a song that originated in North America during the region’s colonial period and is said to be a reference to the practice of Native-American women tying their babies up in tree branches to keep them safe whilst working, hunting and gathering.  ‘Three Blind Mice’ is said to be a record of Mary I of England’s ordered execution of three Protestant bishops during her attempt to reverse the Reformation in England.

Most interesting - and probably the most likely to be correct in my opinion - is the origins of the rhyme ‘Jack and Jill’.  It is said that the song was composed about King Charles I’s attempt to change the taxes on liquid measures.  ‘Jack’ was slang for a half-pint measure, whilst Jill (or ‘gill’) was a quarter-pint.  You’ll remember that the rhyme goes: ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water, Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after’.  Some historians believe that the phrase ‘Jack fell down and broke his crown’ refers to the changes in taxation and pricing to the half-pint (the half-pint was measured on glasses with a printed crown, hence the reference to a broken crown).  The phrase ‘Jill came tumbling after’ refers to the subsequent change in price and taxation of the quarter-pint.

You have to wonder, with such famous precedents, what songs of today will become nursery rhymes in the centuries to come?  John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’?  The Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’?  Wham!’s ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’?

In 1904 the Louisiana Purchase Exposition was host to a huge number of innovations, wonders and thrills. Some of the new products unveiled at the show included peanut butter (rediscovered in the late nineteenth-century after originally being invented by Incans), iced tea, the waffle ice-cream cone, the hot dog, the hamburger, and fairy floss (cotton candy). Unfortunately the Louisiana Purchase Exposition is not remembered solely for these contributions to the American culture (and quite possibly the current obesity epidemic), as it was also the venue for a frighteningly common sight throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - the human zoo.

As western influences spread into the farthest corners of the globe, so too did the desire to prove that the ‘White man’ was the most superior form of the human species. In the 1870s there were human zoos all over Europe and in New York. These zoos exhibited to the fascinated public the newly discovered ‘breeds’ of human-beings from places such as the Philippines, Samoa, Lapland, Papua New Guinea, South America, and in some cases the United States itself (the public were fascinated by the Native American Indians). In 1878 and 1889, the Parisian World’s Fair had a ‘Negro Village’ which held four hundred people in zoo-like conditions for 28 million paying spectators to gawk at. The twentieth century continued the trend - exhibitions in 1906, 1907, 1922 and 1931 displayed humans held in cages, often in enforced nudity. In 1906, the Bronx Zoo in New York City placed people from Papua New Guinea (from the Pygmy tribe) on display in the Primates section in enclosures next to apes and chimpanzees.

In 2007 the Adelaide Zoo in South Australia ran a Human Zoo exhibition using volunteers who would be put into enclosures during the day and allowed out at night time. Far from having the original intent of the human zoos, the Adelaide Zoo exhibition was a psychological experiment and a process of social education for the masses who filed past the humans’ enclosure. The public were asked to give donations that would be put towards a new enclosure for the apes, and the experiment was by most accounts a resounding success.

As we discover more about our links to our primate relatives and we begin to understand their level of intelligence and perceptions, you have to wonder if we are submitting these fine creatures to the same injustice which was imposed on hundreds of humans not so long ago.  With extinction an increasing problem and the failure to successfuly breed in captivity a constant concern, should we start thinking of our primate friends as something more than zoo enclosures to visit on a sunny Sunday afternoon?