News

While most politicians and commentators in Europe are wringing their hands in angst about Greek, Spanish and Italian debt, one commentator is remaining remarkably calm. Why? He has seen it all before, and has a vision that spans 50 years of European union history. Who is this man?

Have you heard of the “10 percent myth”—the idea that the average person uses just 10 percent of the brain? Many people today take this for granted. What you may not know is that—from the writings of a nineteenth-century psychologist and philosopher, to the set of the popular “Mythbusters” television show—this well-traveled idea is quite brainless on many levels.

During the four days set aside last week to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, only a very few recognized its deepest significance. The British monarchy is generally considered to be over 1,000 years old, but it can in fact be traced back even further through the annals of time to the Scottish kings who were crowned on the Stone of Scone from the 5th Century AD. This stone is the same one that was returned to Scotland in 1996 and is on display in Edinburgh Castle. It had been absent from its Scottish home for almost 700 years.

A power outage, however brief, causes a lot of consternation. Lights go out, computers are down, refrigeration ceases and life as we know it with all our modern conveniences grinds to a halt. This happened in our city recently during a busy lunchtime, disrupting the schedules of thousands of people who were having their noon break. Restaurants and other enterprises lost business and customers went hungry. Happily, the power outage lasted only a short time, but long enough to remind everyone how dependent we are upon the power grid that supplies our communities.

In the days before modern mass communications, it was the church building or the schoolhouse where most would go to find out the news of what was happening in their communities. News from farther away would come when travelers passed through. It took time for news to travel, so most people were either out of date or entirely ignorant of what was going on in the rest of the world.