Facebook & Some Not Nice News

Facebook is a useful place for finding and reconnecting with old friends, but it can also be a place where you reveal to anyone and everyone more about yourself than you should. And your words are there forever, uneraseably stored in one of those mysterious clouds above. Emily Dickinson, over a century and a half ago, wrote about the dangers of being too public—too many deplorables in the bog, pretending admiration. Remember, all you Facebookers, the whole world is watching. Emily, in 1861, wrote, “I’m Nobody! Who are you? / Are you—Nobody—Too? / Then there’s a pair of us. / Don’t tell! they’d advertise—you know! / How dreary—to be—Somebody! / How public—like a Frog-- / To tell one’s name—the livelong June— / To an admiring Bog!”

Not Nice News:

Puerto Rico looks like an island ravaged by war, where bombs and artillery leveled cities and countrysides. But the war was a mean lady called Maria. And the same amount of rebuilding will be required as that of the bombed-out European cities in WWII or the Iraqi cities Mosul and Fallujah. The news reports that power on the island won’t be restored for three to six months. In this day and age, how do nearly three million residents exist for that long without power?

In the next century (maybe even sooner), the oceans will rise by six to nine meters as polar ice caps melt faster and faster. What will happen to coastal cities and low-elevation islands when the seas rise that much? The world’s heaviest populations are located in coastal cities. Millions and millions of people will have to relocate inland and upward. Low-level islands will disappear. What happens to Japan, Ireland, England, Polynesia, the Philippines, Guam, the Caribbean islands? And what can we do to slow or reverse this trend? Stop all industries from using carbon-fossil fuels for power, acknowledge that we’re to blame for this dramatic climate change.

Last Wednesday at Yankee Stadium, a young girl was struck in the head by a foul ball liner going 105 mph. Yankee third baseman Todd Frazier hit it and when he saw what had happened, he bowed his head hoping it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. And the girl is recovering. But this incident once again shows us the dangers of close stands along the foul lines, especially if one isn’t paying attention, especially if one is too young to get out of the way. There will probably be more plans by all stadiums to extend the netting farther down both lines. Breakable bats is another danger for the fan. A bat can act like a spear when it flies like a helicopter into the stands. Solution? That’s easy. Require unbreakable bats, aluminum or something equally light, just like they use in colleges. Batters would complain that the feel isn’t the same. But that’s tough, boys. Just do it, commissioner.

Another comment in my feud with the NRA and gun owners: According to Wikipedia, the U.S. leads all nations in the number of guns legally owned 101 guns 100 people, or one per person. It goes on to point out that only one in three households have guns, which means that those household have an average of three guns. Wow, that’s a lot of guns. Is there a true need for that many? The next closest to us is Serbia with 58.21. Tunisia has the fewest at 0.1 guns per 100 residents, or about one gun per thousand people. Also according to Wikipedia, over thirty thousand deaths happen by firearms in the U.S.—about 20,000 suicides, 11,000 homicides, and 500 accidents. Okay, the suicides would probably find another way if they couldn’t find a gun; the homicides could be reduced by stricter laws about who should and who shouldn’t be allowed to own a gun; and the accidental deaths would go down to zero. I think the numbers make a resounding case for stricter laws.