Puffs

Education . . .

I haven’t been to a commencement program at a university for some time now, but I was reminded the other day of one of the things that stood out at each university graduation ceremony. Besides the graduate, of course.

That was reading the description of all the programs the students earning advance degrees were working on. I was amazed at the programs and words used to describe the programs.

Many words which I never knew existed before.

Well, just last week I learned another new word. It came from the quarterly publication of the “Nebraska Water Center.” The University of Nebraska organization deals with water, wherever it is found.

An article was about the “Vadose” zone.

In my limited education I never came across “Vadose” before. The definition being: “this zone is the interval between the crop root zone and the water table.” It is key to the storage, transport and transformation of chemicals that impact groundwater quality.

The accompanying article talked about the Vadose Zone Nitrate Report for the City of Hastings.

Now, I’ll probably never use the word again, and probably never remember it past a month or two. I contend, however, educational efforts like this are essential as they all add to our knowledge of the world and at some time, another Albert Einstein or St. Gregory The Great will come along and put the many parts of our knowledge together to help explain the workings of God’s universe.

A O

Memories . . .

Not from my childhood, that was too many years ago. How about from just a year or so ago.

You know, back at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. To their credit, the national media did a fairly good job of informing us of what all was happening, and where it was happening.

However, do you remember all of the “prognostications” made along with the news? The national media made a point to tell us what some “experts” thought would happen in the foreseeable future.

It’s tough to predict the future and history is full of predictions that did not happen, or were just wrong. I bring this up primarily to highlight the national news media, picking and choosing what they want to publish.

A big part of those predictions I remember was the warning that suicides would increase because of the stress and trouble of the pandemic. I remember thinking that ‘maybe’ that could happen, and maybe it was good for the news media to give a warning that it might happen . . . but I also wondered if maybe the result of the warning might just be to give people an idea.

Fast forward to now, almost the middle of April 2021, more than a full year since the pandemic started.

The suicide rate for 2020 . . .

The rate dropped by nearly 6 percent.

According to government data there has been a general increase in suicides since 1941. It fell slightly in 2019 and in 2020 it took its biggest drop, that of nearly 6 percent.

I bring this up now to highlight my contention that the national news media (in general) does a job of promoting only that news which it thinks supports the agenda of the liberal, radical, progressives.

A year ago the news media contended the world was going to hell in a handbasket and their suicide prediction was just another sign they were correct. Somehow it was all the fault of the government and a Democratic Party government could and would do so much better.

Today, I have not heard, or read, more than one news story about the decline in suicides. The one I read came from the Hastings’ newspaper.

I am surprised that the Democratic government has not taken credit for this happening. But, perhaps they came to realize the change in government has very, very little to do with the suicide rate. Just maybe we people can recover from the killings on our own and we really don’t need another government program to solve our problems.

But, maybe that’s too much to hope for from the liberal, radical news media and Democratic Party.

A O