Been enjoying the dispatches from GoogleNews, the NY Times, BBC, NPR, and waypoints? Amazing stuff, isn’t it?
Lately, since I’ve been flat on my back in the sack most of the time, I’ve been spending altogether too much time reading news reports. Whaddaya think of some of this stuff?
US sends 3000 troops to fight Ebola in West Africa
No kidding? The civilized world is under attack from the most vicious, pernicious enemy we have faced since World War II, and we’re sending the army to try to fight a disease?
That’s all very civilized and humane, of courses. But one wonders what, exactly, armed troops are supposed to do against a hemorrhagic virus? Confine the population to their homes and see to it that none of them ever pokes their noses outside their doors?
Okay, we’re going to build hospitals and provide treatment and training. Again, that’s altruistic and good. More to the point, it’s self-defensive: sooner or later this disease is going to cross the Atlantic and end up in the US. To say nothing of Europe and Asia.
That of course raises the question of whether Europe and Asia are sending troops to help out in this effort, and if not, why not?
Fox Play-Gnus quotes Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey as saying, “The Department of Defense’s number one priority is combating Ebola.”
Izzat so? When did that come into being? Shouldn’t our number one priority be trying to control the spreading cancer that is ISIS? What part of “we are at war with this bunch, not just in the Middle East but all around the world” are we missing here?
Sending US citizens into a plague zone and then, shortly, bringing them home guarantees that the disease will soon arrive on our shores. Now it’s true, it will be here eventually, anyway. But the puzzled news consumer is left wondering why hurry it along? In fact, there is some evidence that in some circumstances Ebola can already be transmitted by air, even though it is not presently airborne among humans or from other species to humans — that we know of. All we need is to have a US citizen exposed to a slightly mutated Ebola virus and bring it home.
Okay, that’s a “maybe.” What’s not a “maybe” is we have a homicidal enemy with increasingly deep pockets that sooner or later, speaking of crossing the Atlantic, will bring its hate-saturated war against the West to our shores. It has already done so in a small way, with the World Trade Center and the Boston Marathon attacks. It would be naive to imagine that these maniacs are incapable of building a nuclear device. (It’s really quite easy — see, for example, John McPhee’s Curve of Binding Energy…but don’t do it unless you’re into alarming reality checks. In light of current events, it’ll scare you sh!tless.)
Poverty Rate Drops for the First Time Since 2006.
It’s a miracle. Actually, it’s the result of a few full-time jobs coming available. And about time it is.
But…uhmmm…take a closer look at this. We’re talking about a drop from 15% (say what? more than one in ten Americans lives in poverty?) to a mere 14.5%.
A half-a-percent change is not exactly cause for a ticker-tape parade, eh?
Okay, it’s better than a .5% increase. But still…
Interesting. The median income in this country is now $51,939. I hardly know anyone who earns that kind of money, except maybe for a couple of professionals and some affluent choir members. My income is about 61% of that, long as we’re revealing our paychecks. Possibly that’s explained by the fact that “the wage gap between men and women showed no change. Women on average had an income of $39,200 last year compared with $50,000 for men — meaning they earned 78% of what men earned.”
Moving on.
Scots to Vote on Whether to Peel Off from England
Where do people get ideas like this? For sheer shoot-yourself-in-the-foot élan, that one takes the cake. And other than demolishing the country’s economy for the sake of a nationalistic ego trip, one wonders what is the point?
Dump Your Hubby to Profit from Your Ex’s Social Security Bennies
The definition of bureaucracy is “bizarre.” Well. Assuming you buy everything Larry Kottlikoff says, o’course…
Thai Woman Flings Self into Crocodile Pond
Here’s an original new way to off yourself. I have no imagination when it comes to this sort of thing. About the best I can come up with is collecting all these Oxycodone Rx’s and enjoying them with a nice bottle of wine.
US Religious Extremists Continue War on Women
One thing’s for sure, we have nothing on the Moslem crazies: our home-grown version of religious extremist is just as virulent, even though they haven’t started chopping off people’s heads. Yet. Firing the head of St. Joseph’s Hospital because she OK’ed an abortion to save a woman’s life is comparable, though: let her die for our beliefs. That seriously is the stance of the religious group that runs one of the largest regional medical centers in the state of Arizona.
Net Neutrality Back on the FCC’s Table
As of September 10, the FCC has received over 3 million comments about the net neutrality issue. In case you’ve been napping with Rip Van Winkle, the FCC proposes to allow ISPs to charge users for faster speeds, leaving the rest of us to crawl along at a land-line pace. “If net neutrality is completely done away with,” we’re told, “then it means that companies with deep pockets will be able to get their traffic moving along at a fast pace. Meanwhile smaller companies will languish in the slow lane, unable to grow their traffic because they don’t have the funds available to do so.”
So much for American ingenuity and entrepreneurship, eh?
MIT Faculty Gets Paid to Build Erector-Set Cheetah
Okay, it’s toooo easy to make fun of this bouncing fake cheetah. But it is entertaining to watch. Compare the gait of the mechanical “cheeetah” with the real thing, which comes out on the other side of “entertaining” to enter the realm of “fearsome.”
It does have some practical applications: in the design of better prosthetic devices, for example. And think of how it could chase those ISIS crazies around the desert!
Republicans Say “Yes” to Obama
Aw…say it ain’t so, Politico!
Well, anything’s possible, I suppose. Could the cheetahs be changing their spots?
Too much time spent in front of the computer screen here…it’s time to move along.
What’s your favored News of the Day?