No Halloween Masks!
This sign is posted on the door of a local grocery store. Could it be that they are afraid of . . . shoplifting?
We’re running out of water and oil . . . (yawn).
Today, the following Associated Press article was run on page-19 of my local newspaper (the St. Louis Post-Dispatch):
An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn’t have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York’s reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year.
Across America, the picture is critically clear — the nation’s freshwater supplies can no longer quench its thirst.
The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperature, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.
“Is it a crisis? If we don’t do some decent water planning, it could be,” said Jack Hoffbuhr, executive director of the American Water Works Association, based in Denver.
Water managers will need to take bold steps to keep taps flowing, including conservation, recycling, desalination and stricter controls on development.
The price tag for ensuring a reliable water supply could be staggering. Experts estimate that just upgrading pipes to handle new supplies could cost the nation $300 billion over 30 years.
“Unfortunately, there’s just not going to be any more cheap water,” said Randy Brown, utilities director for Pompano Beach, Fla.
Truly, this is a major story; our country is running out of a critically important resource. Combine that lack-of-water news, though with the equally unreported news that the world is running out of …
Don’t stare at dead things or animals having sex.
I bristled yesterday as I read yet another faux-controversy concocting article in my misguided home town paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. You see, Body Worlds is coming to my town and the morality “experts” are getting restless. The “concern” is that maybe we shouldn’t be staring at dead bodies. The morality experts quoted…
Father’s Day versus fatherhood
I am cynical about the day called Father’s Day. For most of my life, I have seen it as yet another store-sponsored holiday. America traditionally “celebrates” Father’s Day by buying trinkets from a store. I can’t think of a better way to degrade any occasion.
Father’s Day has become something much more meaningful to me since I became a father, but it is not about receiving trinkets bought at stores. I write this fully aware that there are other, more comprehensive, ways of interpreting the trinkets.
What is it to be a father? Like most things in life, being a father is not about being brilliant. It’s mostly about pacing yourself. It’s about staying reasonably focused over the long-haul. It’s about dealing with fatigue. It’s been about repeatedly saying “no” to one’s momentary desires in order to accomplish something much more important in the long run.
I envisioned this blog to be a place for ideas. For that reason, I’ve minimized revealing much information about my family. It’s not that I’m not crazy about my family. I am. I adore my wife and children. It’s just that I’ve tried to respect their privacy. Then again, writing about events from six years ago doesn’t quite seem quite so invasive. Therefore, I’m using this post about my real life children to illustrate the idea of parenthood.
It is true that being a father is about bringing home a paycheck to feed and clothes little children. Therefore, being a father can sometimes …
The danger of focusing on human differences
Bill Clinton’s Commencement Speech at Harvard – June 6, 2007
The former President explained much societal dysfunction when he asked a simple question: Should we focus on what human beings have in common or should we obsess about their minor differences?
The outcome of this simple choice determines innumerable personal and political agendas. To the extent that we choose incorrectly, the resulting contentious rhetoric has the capacity to mushroom into oppression and violence that can displace, maim and kill millions of people. It has done so repeatedly.
Many of our political and moral disputes stem from this basic low-level perceptual choice: whether to focus on differences or commonalities. Here is how Clinton captured the issue:
So if you look around this vast crowd today, at the military caps and the baseball caps and the cowboy hats and the turbans, if you look at all the different colors of skin, all the heights, all the widths, all the everything, it’s all rooted in one-tenth of one percent of our genetic make-up. Don’t you think it’s interesting that not just people you find appalling, but all the rest of us, spend 90 percent of our lives thinking about that one-tenth of one percent?
For at least six years, the air has been thick with violence, bigotry and oppression because too many people are making the wrong choice up front. The current Administration excels at choosing badly. The result? A de facto national policy that anyone who is different is suspicious.
As eloquently …