Current Affairs

I have a cell phone with which I can talk to almost anybody, from almost anywhere. It has a 1.3-megapixel camera, with which I can take stills or very short videos and post them on the Web, again from just about anywhere. Apple just introduced a new iPod. It enables users not only to carry around thousands of songs and still photos, but also downloaded video; people can watch last night's episode of "Desperate Housewives" (or their own homemade videos, for that matter) while they're on the train or waiting in the doctor's office (OK, make that two episdoes).

I'm certainly glad to read this:

Believe it or not, you can walk and talk in your 70s.

Ronald Reagan must be spinning in his grave. Vigorously.

Breaking news over at Indiana Parley:

When peace activists were setting up Camp Casey in Fort Wayne, they said one of its purposes would be to solicit suggestions for how to get of Iraq. Well, how about by winning? Even if they don't want to give war a chance, I guess I'd ask them what they would do differently to fight terrorism, but I suspect I wouldn't like the answers.

How many foreigners does it take to equal 1,000 Americans? I ask after noticing that today's Journal Gazette put the story of the Asian earthquake on Page 2. America's Gulf Coast hurricane was Page 1 news -- for all of us -- for weeks. I thought maybe I was being too hard on the JG, picking on a competitor, so I checked a number of today's front pages, and the vast majority had something besides a tease on Page 1.

I know smaller-government advocates like me are always complaining about Americans' growing expectations of cradle-to-grave security, but, really, we are such small thinkers here. And pay attention to the part about when prostitution is legal.

It's good to have all the nuts in one place so we can keep an eye on them. It is comforting to know, however, that the future has been set:

This week's congress has been organized by the Alfa y Omega group, which believes that a fleet of UFOs will fly to Earth at the end of the world and that Jesus Christ could use one for his second coming.

I read this story three times, and unless I'm missing something, the numbers just don't add up to the alarmist tone taken. In the mid- to late-'70s, we are told, half of the members of the U.S. Army had no high school diploma, and one-third were "Category 4" (the real dummies, not to put too fine a point on it). By 2003 (latest figures available), the Army had been professionalized to the point that only 6 percent lacked a high school diploma or GED, and only 1 percent were Category 4.

You know, of course, about the top three major disasters predicted by the federal government -- we've now had the terrorist attack on New York City and the New Orleans hurricane, so that means only the San Francisco earthquake is left. But what about the 10 most likely disasters now seen in our future?

Pay special attention to No. 5, the Midwest earthquake:

A lot of people think the current president's bioethics council is concerned a little too much about the ethics and not enough about the bio, although the way they usually put it is "religion trumps science" or some such. That's a fair assessment; I think the administration is less science-friendly than it should be. But some people don't worry enough about the opposite extreme, our scientific enthusiasms running way ahead of our ethical and moral sensibilities.