I saw a headline for a news story the other day that read, “Biker’s Poop Starts Wildfire.” Of course I had to read the journalistic feature to find out how this had possibly happened. I felt hoodwinked by the time I had finished the last sentence. It seems that a man was biking in an isolated area. He had a call of nature, specifically for a number two. Since there was nobody around he took a nice dump complete with cleaning himself with toilet paper that he had brought along just in case. Not knowing exactly what to do with the used paper he decided to burn it. Unfortunately the area was so dry that the tissue became a fire starter, quickly spreading and causing an out of control fire.
I suppose that if you follow the sequence of events it might be construed that if the man had not voided his bowels he would not have needed to use paper to sanitize himself and there would have been no need to light the object that became kindling. The fact is that technically his poop did not start a wildfire. I was rather angry that I had fallen for the age old ploy of writing such a clever headline that it attracted my immediate attention. This tactic has been around for a very long time and is one of the reasons that I tell people all of the time that they can’t jump to conclusions just from a few carefully chosen words. It’s always wise to play a bit of detective work and find out the whole story. Continue reading “Man Bites Dog”
There was a boy who lived in Nigeria in a small village. He was very bright and he had big dreams. He longed to attend the university and to study to become an engineer. He and like minded friends learned that they must take physics in high school to qualify for admission to the program. Sadly there was no physics class at the boy’s school. There were no instructors qualified to teach such a course. The boy and his friends were disappointed but they were not defeated. They heard that there was a man in the next village who had once been a physics teacher. They decided to seek him out and ask him for help.
Women are certainly in the news these days. There appears to be a very good chance that we will have a woman President of the United States before long. The female half of the human race is certainly on the move. In honor of a changing world for women a certain meme is circulating on Facebook. It asks parents not to teach their daughters to long for the glass slipper but to develop a desire to break the glass ceiling. Unfortunately this line of thinking seems to insinuate an either or kind of world. Instead I see the opportunities for women as choices along a continuum. Hopefully we are free to choose exactly where we wish to reside.
We all need money to survive in this world. We have to purchase food, pay rent, buy a bare minimum of clothing, and find the money for healthcare. There are extras that make our lives easier like owning a car, investing in an education, having a phone, and getting access to a television or radio. I’ve lived on a shoestring that didn’t allow for the cost of air conditioning even in severe summer heat and I’ve known the luxury of being middle class and having enough leftover money for savings, entertainment and vacations. I’ll be the first to say that money does make life better and less stressful but there is a fine line between having enough to live decently and being so obsessed with having more and more money that it becomes a driving force that overtakes us. Sometimes we humans become as greedy as the fisherman’s wife who was never satisfied with the financial blessings that she received. She always wanted more, more, more and never managed to find the happiness that eluded her. The truth is that aside from the basic human needs some of the most important things that we treasure don’t cost a dime. 
