This really came as something of a shock to me. Apparently a group of presidents of some prominent universities have dared to suggest that the drinking age be LOWERED back to 18. Read the whole story here.
The group makes what I consider to be the blazingly obvious point that putting alcohol out of the legal reach of the 18-20 year olds at universities has NOT stopped their drinking, but merely forced it underground, where truly idiotic behaviors like funneling flourish.
Apparently, however, not all university presidents who were approached agreed to sign on. Donna Shalala, former Clinton administration Secretary of Health and Human Services, now president of the University of Miami, is quoted in the article as opposing the initiative:
“I remember college campuses when we had 18-year-old drinking ages, and I honestly believe we’ve made some progress,” Ms. Shalala said in a telephone interview. “To just shift it back down to the high schools makes no sense at all.”
She believes that they’ve made “some progress.” Really. Wow, that’s inspiring. And contradictory of every report I’ve seen on campus drinking in the past 20 years.
I cannot for the life of me understand the knee-jerk nanny state opposition to letting a person that the law considers an adult have a beer. I mean, we let 16 year olds drive - far more lethal than a beer. But yet drinking must be reserved for age 21. It’s completely backwards and totally illogical. If anything, the drinking age should be 16 and the driving age 18.
I wish this group of university presidents the very best. They are taking on the ultimate issue of political correctness in America. I wish them well.
Here’s a story about a Baptist church in Florida who has a member who won $6 million in the Florida lottery. The member then wanted to tithe and contribute $600,000 from the winnings. The pastor rejected the money.
My first reaction is that this is silly legalism of the worst kind. I don’t see how playing the lottery occasionally is any worse than buying a raffle ticket - something no one blinks at, morally speaking.
I have reread this thing several times, and I can’t get over two things. First, are there really that many Muslims in Shelbyville, Tennessee? And working at a poultry plant?
But, more importantly, what’s so mind boggling about this is that a LABOR UNION has voted to ditch LABOR DAY as a paid holiday!! That it’s ditched for some far-flung religious holiday is just icing on the cake.
If you have time, one of his most interesting books is a memoir of his literary work called The Oak & the Calf. I’m not sure it’s still in print, I listened to it on Audible last year and found it to be extremely intriguing.
If you’re sick of reading my posts bemoaning the fact that we don’t teach logic anymore, then you probably should skip this one. For those of you brave enough to read on, I offer the following as a quiz. Yesterday Senator Obama gave a major speech on his energy policy. As summarized by the outstanding Politico website, below are the three main points. The quiz is to see if you can identify the flaw(s) in the logic of the plan.
The three main components of Obama’s plan are:
— Get 1 million 150 mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on U.S. roads within six years.
— Require that 10 percent of U.S. energy comes from renewable sources by the end of his first term – more than double the current level.
—Reduce U.S. demand for electricity 15 percent by 2020.
Got that? We’re going to ADD 1 million plug-in vehicles to the electricity grid, yet REDUCE demand for electricity by 15%. Obviously, these two goals are facially contradictory. But it’s really worse. Even without the increased load that all these plug-ins would add, demand for electricity is constantly increasing, for (what ought to be) fairly straightforward reasons: the population is ever increasing, we constantly add new electric gadgets to our lives, etc. Without major changes to the way we live, how exactly can demand be expected to decrease?
Let’s take this debate a step further, shall we? Leaving aside adding 1M new plug-ins, given that we live in a (relatively) free economy, how, exactly, will the government achieve a goal of reducing the demand for electricity 15%, when the vast, vast majority of electricity is consumed by the private sector?
But the final flaw in the logic is this: why is there a need to reduce electrical demand by 15%? What’s really wrong with electricity in and of itself? After all, he’s advocating plug-in vehicles!! Isn’t the real issue with electricity how it’s generated? There was an article recently about a possible breakthrough in solar energy technology by researchers at MIT, which, if it pans out, could provide vast amounts of energy with no pollution and no C02. You can read about that here. If we could generate electricity that way, why reduce its consumption?
It blows me away that a howler like this can get past the layers and layers of speechwriters, advisers, etc., that typically accompany a presidential campaign. The question is, though, (aside from nerds like me) does anyone notice, and if they do, do they care?
I realize that we should “pray without ceasing.” But have we really run out of things to pray for?
I am reminded what R. Laurence Moore (Cornell University) said of much of American Christianity:
“…most American Protestants have merely confused the sacred with their well-known devotion to practical results.”
Isn’t that what you want to tell your co-workers: “Yes, I worship the great-god-of-lower-gas-prices-and-occasional discounts-on-detergent-almighty. Won’t you come to my church? Also: can I borrow a couple bucks?”
