Ramblings

It was only five days ago that I was complaining about the blizzard and posting pictures of snow. Today felt like a spring day, with a high temperature of 75°. It must be February. The weather forecast calls for cold tomorrow, warm again the next day, then cold again, possibly with snow next Monday. Oh yes, it is definitely February.

I’ve recently become aware that I’m eating too much salt. Specifically, I’m getting too much sodium. So I’ve started reading nutrition labels. Turns out I can’t eat any food that comes in a package or can. Frozen meals are out; canned soups and stews are out. Even bread has a lot of sodium, so I bought a loaf of “low sodium” bread. The nutrition label says it has zero sodium. The downside is the bread is about as tasty as cardboard, which is the reason bakers add salt to bread dough. Actually, I could eat some of these products if I restrict myself to one or two meals per day. And they’d have to be small meals at that.

I’m tired of seeing news coverage of the 2016 presidential election campaigns. I’m burnt out. Will it never end? The Brits have their elections from start to finish in six weeks; why can’t we? Maybe that’s too quick for a presidential election, but surely six months is long enough for voters to figure out who they want to elect. If you don’t know which candidate you prefer after six months, I don’t think having eighteen months to decide will help you. After all, they’ll be repeating the same stuff over and over. How will hearing the same promises for eighteen months instead of six months – promises that will likely be broken, anyway – make your decision easier?

The Donald says he will build a wall on the border to keep out illegal aliens.  Janet Napolitano (former Secretary of Homeland Security) has often said, “Show me a 50 foot wall, and I’ll show you a 51 foot ladder.” And General George Patton once said, “Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.” People will go over, under, or around them to get to where they want to be. Interestingly, the Feds say that since 2007 net immigration from Mexico has been negative; a million more illegal Mexican immigrants have left the U.S. than have entered the U.S. Which may or may not be factual, but there you are.

Have you ever heard of passenger pigeons? When Europeans arrived in North America, passenger pigeons were the most numerous bird species on the continent. They may have been the most numerous bird species on Earth. However, in the 19th century their numbers went from 3–5 billion to zero in only 50 years. The reason: humans. We discovered the birds were tasty. The last wild bird was killed in 1900; the last captive bird died in a zoo in 1910. A Wikipedia article says of the passenger pigeon extinction, “It has been described as one of the greatest and most senseless extinctions induced by humans.”

We’re doing the same thing to other wild animals. For example, in the early part of the 20th century there were 3-5 million African elephants. Today, there are about 470,000 and their numbers continue to dwindle. Despite the ban on ivory, they are still poached in large numbers. The same thing is happening to lions. Fifty years ago the African lion population numbered over 200,000 animals. Today it is less than 25,000 and decreasing. I believe humans’ love of killing other creatures will prove to be our fatal flaw, the thing that will be our undoing. For the animals, it can’t come soon enough.