Miscellaneous Thoughts On A Summer Day

Sometimes I am amazed at the myriad ways humans have come up with to hurt and mutilate their fellow humans. I thought I had seen it all, but evidently I have not. In Africa, female children are having their breasts "ironed" in an attempt to keep them unattractive, so they won't be raped or harrassed. I'm at a loss for words on this one.


North Korea may have really screwed up by firing off several missles a couple of days ago. Of course the screw-up doesn't involve us. The North Koreans got exactly the reaction from us that they were hoping for. The reaction from Japan, South Korea, and Europe was also as expected. No, the country they may have screwed-up with is China. North Korea depends a great deal on China. They could not even feed their people if not for China. But China did not want them to fire off the missles, and had explicitly asked them not to do it. China has shown little reaction yet, but they are not known for their patience and understanding. North Korea had better be careful. China is not a friend they can afford to lose.


Many times we hear of corporate wars, where corporations spy on each other and try to steal from each other. This week, the opposite of that happened. Some criminals stole some secrets from the Coca-Cola corporation, and tried to sell those secrets to Pepsi. Instead of purchasing the secrets, Pepsi called the police. The criminals were apprehended and the secrets were returned to Coca-Cola. Kudos to the people at Pepsi for acting as good citizens.


Sometime this year, probably about October, the United States population will reach the 300 million mark. We're currently adding about 2.8 million people a year. We are the fastest growing industrialized country [Europe and Japan have negative population growth]. How many people is too many?