New frontiers #24

One day on my way back to Europe from the US, I was assigned a seat in the plane, right next to the window but there was a problem.. the person next to me was so fat he looked like an hippo and I was figuring out how dreadful would be those 9 hours of flight getting laminated against the wall of the plane.
Fortunately that person kindly asked me if I would mind to exchange my seat with a friend of his on the other aisle of the plane.. Of course not I immediately was on my way, the guy waved to someone who stood up to show a similar overweightness and having compressed me against the side of a seat, thanked me a lot while crossing my way . I moved to his now vacant seat and met a nice woman all smiles out sitting by the window. She looked as relieved as I did. I sat down and said that we both seemed to have escaped a difficult flight to which she agreed. she was a conservator at Washington DC National gallery and we had a very interesting talk about painting while drinking Champagne. I warned her that I was aware that Americans loved the impressionists and that I was really not liking those painters very much, she smiled again and said "we are all fed up with Monet". let's talk about quatrocento.That was a good start.

I just heard some interesting debate on the radio. Someone was making a new analysis to explain why 30% of the US citizens were extremely overweighted. It is not just a question of bad eating habits, one proof being that in France the region where is located the most important number of overweighted people is also the region where there are really no fast food restaurants, it is Corsica.
So the journalist said he was using Baudrillard's theory to understand the american problem : people are trying to find new frontiers ..even in their bodies. I found this explanation rather poetic.