News

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 It took time for news to travel, so most people were either out of date or entirely ignorant of what was going on in the rest of the world.

When I was a boy, like seemingly every other boy on the planet, I liked dinosaurs. Back then, I only knew of a few different kinds, the main ones being Tyrannosaurus Rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Pterodactyl and Brontosaurus.  Brontosaurus was a very, very large plant eater that walked on four legs and had a very long neck and tail.  Now, years later, as the parent of two growing boys, I am again becoming familiar with dinosaurs.

Time! Who can explain it? “Use it or lose it,” the experts say. All of us have the same amount of it, and it is never enough. There are many sayings about time, such as “Time marches on,” “Time waits for no man,” “Time is money” and “Time is fleeting.” Especially in today’s stressful, fast paced, high-pressure world, time is at a premium. People are constantly checking the time on their wristwatch or smartphone, or their computer—or on the radio or television.  Whatever time of life we are in, we seem to be pressed for time to accomplish what we need to do each day.

Corn farmers in recent years have seen a growing demand for their crop, for processing into products as varied as ethanol gasoline and soda products. Seeking higher yields, many increasingly use insecticides—poisons—to "protect" their investments. These two trends have long been a source of controversy among nutritionists and ecologists, and now among biologists concerned about their effect on human and animal life and on our food supply.