Friday’s Odds and Ends

Thomas Sowell had a thoughtful column this past week answering the question, Does Constitution still matter in modern times. This was in response to commentary following the Supreme Court’s decision that it is okay to sell violent video games to minors. Some analysts have said that the Constitution is out of date because the framers never envisioned  a world with computers, the Internet, and violent video games. Sowell writes, “Most people have enough common sense to know that a constitution does not exist to micromanage particular “events” or express opinions about the passing scene. A constitution exists to create a framework for government – and the Constitiution of the United States tries to keep the government inside that framework.”

Thank you Mr. Sowell for pointing out what has been wrong with people’s thinking about the Constitution. Here is a link to the entire article. It is well worth the read.

In a recent column Michael Lind wrote that conventional thinking about fossil fuels is wrong. He stated that there is enough natural gas and coal to sustain us for centuries. He also mentioned the studies being done by companies and governments in the U.s. Canada, and Japan to find ways to obtain energy from gas hydrates, which mix methane with ice in high-density formations under the sea floor. “The potential in gas hydrates may equal that of all other fossils.”

Lind may have been trying to sound hopeful and encouraging, but I found those facts extremely disturbing. How long can we continue to take things out of the earth before we have more severe reactions than what we already have. Let’s do a little physics experiment. Make a ball of rice, breadcrumbs, small nuts, and hold that all together with a paste of flour and water. When it dries, start taking bits of the rice and some nuts out. After a while the ball is going to crumble and fall apart.

Sure, that is a very simplistic example, but it illustrates what is wrong with the thinking that we can continually take from the earth with no bad effects. And the idea of messing with the ice under the sea is just ludicrous. It is melting from the surface of the earth faster than anyone can imagine, so we want to disrupt the foundation?

To end on a more upbeat note, a letter to the editor in The Dallas Morning News written by Arby Mason was clever. The headline was: Time-honored multitasking, and the letter read, “So, we’re just now in the Age of Multitasking? That started when Eve had to cook apple pies, applesauce and baked apples while changing Cain and Abel’s fig leaves and sweeping snakeskins off the front porch.