Eight years and counting (bin laden editorial)

Last September marked the eighth year since the terrible tragedy of September 11th. Our country immediately grew afire and painted on a “You don’t mess with us” face and it was seen all across the nation. A person couldn’t go anywhere without witnessing our face paint and hearing our battle cry. Every time a person turned on the radio, turned on the television, walked through a store, or sat a stoplight looking at flag after flag on America’s bumpers, one was reminded of that date that will forever go down in history.

 With a promise that we would catch the supposed man in charge of it all, news reports are still streaming in of the voice recordings revealing that very man’s proof of existence. How exactly we get tape recordings from a man and not find out where he is will remain a mystery to many of us. We can send the Hubble Telescope into space to capture and find the unknown but we can’t use any sort of technology to find a man hiding in a mountain range, on earth. This would make an average citizen wonder where our government is investing its time and money.

 Mr. Osama bin Laden recently spoke publicly about the Christmas Day airliner-bombing attempt that took place on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit just over a month ago. While graciously approving the effort, he specifically stated that the message was from “Osama to Obama.” Now, as Osama threatens with more attempts of terrorism, Obama is working on withdrawing troops from Iraq. Something about this picture forming seems a bit odd. Have we really won the war? According to this recent report bin Laden is believed to be hiding in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border. Well, why don’t we just get on the Internet and pull up Google map, America?

 “God willing, our raids on you will continue as long as your support to the Israelis will continue,” bin Laden stated. Well, in most cases this statement would probably seem threatening and perhaps a bit frightening to the U.S., or so one would think. But if you are the president now days you have better things to worry about because the economy is in a recession which in turn means it needs some serious work and you must back yourself up with an action to the incredible speeches that won you office. That war stuff is old news since Bush is out of the picture. Just keep the airport security extremely high for our safety and until the recession is over let’s just play phone tag with Mr. bin Laden. 

            So here we are in a “Where’s Waldo” type of game, just left wondering if we really ever will catch bin Laden and his gang. Something must be done. As the old saying goes, “It’s always quiet before the storm.” It’s been pretty quiet lately. There have been some scattered showers here and there but if we can actually stop a storm from coming, why not put the umbrellas away and get after it?

What's the prognosis? Over-diagnosis

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Something we’ve all heard of I’m sure, and we probably each know a handful of people who are diagnosed with this disorder and suffer immensely. Shoot maybe you suffer from it yourself. (If you do, can I have your attention for just a moment?) Every year the number of kids diagnosed with the disorder shoots up. Why exactly? Are kids just getting fidgety, knowing they have their Nintendo Wii waiting at home for them when they return from school? No, that’s not it. It’s because children aren’t paying attention in class right? They stare up at the ceiling and count the tiles and next thing you know the teacher is telling mom at parent teacher’s conference that “Your child my have ADHD.” Have we ever thought that maybe the kid doesn’t understand what the teacher is talking about? Maybe they missed a step along the way. Well if I didn’t understand fractions I’d probably be staring at the ceiling too. Maybe kids just need a little extra help, not a bottle of medicine. I think we need to give parents and teachers a disorder. Something like ODD, ITBD, you know, Over Diagnosing Disorder or I’m Too Busy Disorder.

 College students are even diagnosed with the disorder for showing symptoms like these: distractible, unorganized, impatient, and tendency to procrastinate. Oh gee, I’m going to go ahead and perform a self-diagnosis. Yes, it seems that I too have ADHD. I got distracted on facebook while writing this blog, my desk is well, quite messy at the moment to be honest, I always stare at the clock during class wondering when it will be over, and I still haven’t written my editorial that is due for this class so it is obvious procrastination is my enemy. Oh no. What should I do? Yes, tomorrow I think I will get on Ritalin, in which I will start experiencing symptoms like these: fast, pounding, or uneven heartbeats; feeling like I might pass out; fever, sore throat, and headache with a severe blistering, peeling, and red skin rash; aggression, restlessness, hallucinations, unusual behavior, or motor tics (muscle twitches); easy bruising, purple spots on my skin; or dangerously high blood pressure (severe headache, blurred vision, buzzing in my ears, anxiety, confusion, chest pain, shortness of breath, uneven heartbeats, seizure).

 I can’t wait to get started on my new journey of having a disorder. It will be great to create more problems for myself. Oh my gosh, look what I just did. I made this too long so some of you just skipped down to the bottom to read the last paragraph. You must have ADHD too you impatient people.

 

 

A bunch of Croc...

A creature we humans will never get the chance to actually see, the one you all had models of as a kid, the one we all learned about in third grade, and the one that for some reason seems so known and familiar to us, is the dinosaur. Yes, it seems that although we physically never breathed the same air as a dinosaur or walked amongst their footsteps since they, you know, lived 245 million years ago, we know how fast one can run by looking at their bones. Although we have never really heard a dinosaur roar, after viewing Jurassic Park, you will know that they screamed and roared loud enough to pierce your eardrums. “Well how do we actually know that?” a common person like me would ask. Science of course! Some scientist came upon T-Rex and says wow he has a big jaw I bet he had a loud voice. Well look at a crocodile, a fairly big jaw I would say; have you ever heard a roar come out of that dude, and they are supposedly long lost cousins or something like that. Bones. That’s all we’ve ever found. How then can we be so sure dinosaurs weren’t hot pink instead of the browns and greens we label them with? Because we found them in the ground so we labeled them with the traditional earthy tones. Isn’t it just amazing that we know how a Brontosaurus mothered her children by carefully looking at her bones under a microscope, assuming the bones were female? Shoot I missed my calling. It would have been great to be amongst other archeologists uncovering a newly found bone structure and then vote on who had the best idea for a name for it. Sometimes I think God is looking down on us laughing, thinking “Geez, people really?” 

Where's bin Laden?

Last September marked the eighth year since the terrible tragedy of September 11. With a promise that we would catch the supposed man in charge of it all, news reports are still streaming in of the voice recordings revealing that very man’s proof of existence. How exactly do we get tape recordings from a man and not find out where he is will remain a mystery to many of us. Mr. Osama bin Laden recently spoke publicly about the Christmas Day airliner bombing attempt that took place on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. While graciously approving the effort, he specifically stated that the message was from “Osama to Obama.” Now, as he threatens with more attempts of terrorism, President Obama is working on withdrawing troops from Iraq. Something about this picture forming seems a bit odd. According to this recent report bin Laden is believed to be hiding in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border.

 “God willing, our raids on you will continue as long as your support to the Israelis will continue.” Well in most cases this statement would probably seem threatening and perhaps a bit frightening to the U.S. one would think. But if you are the president now days you have better things to worry about because the economy is in a recession and needs some serious work. That war stuff is old news. Just keep the airport security extremely high for our safety and until the recession is over let’s just play phone tag with Mr. bin Laden. 

Here's an idea. We could start publishing colorful books filled with pages of clutter and instead of calling it "Where's Waldo?" we can call it "Where's bin Laden?", that way we can help president Obama out just a little.

Live, Laugh and...Text?

Many of us consider it necessary to plug in our ipods as we walk across campus, turn on the T.V. as soon as we get home, grab our laptop and plop down on the couch. In fact these actions are not only necessary, they have become a habitual routine. Yes, it seems that walking to class would be quite uncomfortable if we were actually looking at the people walking by, maybe giving them a smile, instead of staring down at our phones. Texting, surfing the web and investing our money in the newest gadgets have consumed young peoples time away from school as many teenagers claim their lives would be “boring” without it. A recent study concludes that teenagers and young adults spend more than seven and a half hours with such devices. Look at how we are communicating though, through technology. As people sit on their computers chatting away with friends, while others text until their thumbs are so one starts to wonder where technology is leading us. Let’s fast forward to the year 2020, only ten years from now. A family sits down to dinner, in front of the television, all with brand new fancy phones in hand. They communicate by texting and pointing at their screens. The kids know when their parents are beings stern when the letters are placed in All Caps. Before they go to sleep they pull out their new gadgets Apple has just created. With these they can download things in seconds that most people go to the store to buy. Of course the word “book” has left their vocabulary, as turning a page has become something like pulling a sliver out of your very own finger. Yes, this family has forgotten how to speak, how to communicate. Technology has taken over. Oh wait, it’s 2010 right? This scene is already taking place today, let's not kid ourselves people.

A dignified goodbye

Most people are lowered into the ground in a casket; others are cremated, while still others choose to hand their bodies over to science when their time is up. Imagine though if our only choice was to be thrown into pits dug out in the hills of Haiti. A proper burial is what Haitians cherish, spending more money on this than an actual house. Yet families have no way of identifying their lost loved ones. Imagine this. The same thing happens in America. Would we bulldoze bodies away in the hills of California if a massive earthquake were to occur? Would we not allow fellow Americans the right to a proper burial, a last dismissal if you will? Makes you wonder anyway, the things we really do take for granted.

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