Random Observations
I think most people with double-digit IQs and a sense of decency would like to tell Saudi Arabia, Guys, you abuse women and teach terrorism. You are brutal and racist. For too long we have kow-towed to your unenlightened ways, because you have petroleum. How crude. Now, thinking more clearly, and convinced that we can develop solar energy successfully — as if on a wartime footing — we're telling you instead of drilling into your sand, go pound it. We're gonna stop paying the huge bribes to you and the other miscreants with whom we have traded oil for money, obsequience, and blood — and spiritual growth — for too long. We recognize that it was our own greed and foolishness that sustained you; that our policies retarded normal human progress for many millions of people who suffered under regimes that wouldn't have survived had we not propped them up, financially and militarily. Shame on us. You might say you didn't know any better. Maybe now you'll learn.
All of the dentists in Redding have come out in vocal and visible support of a plan to fluoridate the city's water supply. They say it will help prevent cavities, especially in young children, a problem that is needlessly extensive up here in poor-'n-rural Northern California. You'd think there wouldn't be much opposition, but here in the wilds are a lotta peg-tooth dinosaurs who continue to sidle ever deeper into the mud of their own confusion. They adhere to the belief that having an opinion means implies that it has some value. Wrong-o, and chief among their miscantations is the notion that fluoridation is a plot to unload industrial waste. It's gettin' colder in their grey-haired swamp, but not fast enough. My personal man-of-the-tooth, Doctor Mike, warned also that the net number of dentists in the country is declining; he explained that a lot of the medically-minded choose doctoring because the start-up costs — while enormous — are considerably less than for the dentist, who has to buy an officeful of equipment. Hardly a good way to pick a profession; maybe the government will provide the assistance they used to and it won't be a problem keeping our mouths healthy, but in the meantime, keep up that brushing and flossing.
Another contingent of people whose clearly-unused brains should be donated to a local food program are the football fan-atics who think it's all right to throw bottles and cans onto the field of play when they are unhappy with a ref's call. That's what they did in Cleveland last weekend, and again in New Orleans on Monday night. The president of the Cleveland franchise, Carmen Policy, said he saw nothing wrong with the assault. "I like the fact that our fans care," he said. Come to think of it those brains probably wouldn't be very nutritious, either.
One brain that performs well does its thang in the cranium of Thomas Friedman, who is a columnist for The New York Times. And you don't have to buy the paper to read him; it's on-line. Friedman on Sunday wrote an essay called "Spiritual Missile Shield" in which he discussed how the Muslim community was going to have to enlighten itself out of the Twelfth Century, that such a transformation couldn't be promulgated from the outside. In closing, he noted the irony that our president announced our abrogation of the 30-year-old ABM Treaty, and he did so only minutes before releasing the mea-bin Laden-culpa tape. Said Friedman with acerbic whimsy, "The president's emphasis on a missile shield reminded me of a man whose house had just been burned down by his neighbor's son and his response was to call a plumber, because that was the only phone number he could remember." Yep.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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