Can You Live Without China?

When I was learning to use Linux, I was challenged by a mentor to use Linux exclusively for thirty days; I was not to use Windoze for any reason at any time. I accepted the challenge, loaded a Red Hat partition on my laptop and on my home PC, and did not boot into Windoze for a month. I learned to get email, edit spreadsheets and .doc's, play games, surf the web, everything I would normally do on the the Beast of OS's. Unfortunately, this is a Windoze world and I was dragged back to reality kicking and screaming. Eventually, I was assimilated back into the Windoze world for personal computing and Linux returned to being the backoffice mistress of servers. The experiment served an important role in my education, though. I learned that I could make do without Bill Gates, and that some of the solutions are as easy and are much sexier than the unaesthetic crap offered to the average PC abuser. Sara Bongiorni is at least 12x braver than I am: she tried to go a whole year without China! After another materialistic American Christmas, she realized how much of the holiday was "Made in China". Upon further investigation, she found that most of her home was imported from China. She got her whole family to live a whole year without China, and found out that they had to do without on many items. For instance: they were unable to replace their coffee maker (ouch) when it broke, without buying a Chinese model. For their children, they found that pretty much the only toys available to them were Lego's. As a woodworker, her hubby had trouble buying tools. The story from Foreign Policy is here. She wrote a book about her family's experience also.