Watching the World
More Food Shortages Ahead?
◆ More and more experts are joining the chorus that is saying, as recently expressed in the Boston Sunday Globe: “The world . . . is teetering dangerously on the edge of a chronic food shortage.” What is the reason for their concern? E. M. Martin, special adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger, claims: “The world has been skating on very thin ice with respect to food supply. It needs only one or two of the larger countries to have bad harvests, whether because of weather, shortages of fertilizer or various other accidents, so as to face a critical situation because there are so few stocks to draw on.”
UNICEF’S Children
◆ UNICEF, a U.N. agency, is concerned with the health and education of the world’s children. What future does it foresee for babies now being born in the world’s one hundred “developing nations”? Using twelve children as an example, UNICEF says that two will die from one of the multiple infant diseases or from protein malnutrition. Of the ten survivors, only five will attend school; the other five will remain illiterates. Of the five who go to school, three will quit and eventually experience days of hunger and, in some cases, irreversible mental and physical damage due to malnutrition. Of the original twelve, therefore, only two will graduate from elementary school, as UNICEF sees it.
Evolutionists’ Dilemma
◆ Last October, Awake! reported that R. Leakey’s discoveries near Africa’s Lake Rudolph were causing evolutionary confusion. Now the uncertainty is being compounded. Less than 200 miles north of Leakey’s location is the Omo Valley, where another evolutionist, C. Howell, has also made findings. Both sites have pig fossils. Layers of sediment in which the fossils are found at both sites have also been dated by the evolutionists. Layers at each site that are dated by them to the same time period should have the same kind of pig fossils in them. But Leakey says: “Our pigs tell us one thing, Omo’s pigs tell us another.” He is said to attribute the difference to ‘prehistorically different environments’—another unprovable conjecture.
Alcoholics Abundant
◆ Alcoholism scourges much of the world. It is possibly the major health problem in Canada’s Yukon Territory, according to a recent study. The equivalent of $250 worth of alcohol is sold there yearly for every man, woman and child. That is three times the national average. The Soviet Union’s Literaturnaya Rossiya says that alcoholism is rapidly increasing among their youth and women. In the U.S. a recently issued pamphlet The New Alcoholics: Teen-Agers reports that alcohol outstrips marijuana as youth’s preferred drug. Why the increase in alcoholics? Russians accuse boredom. In the Yukon a disruption of traditional Indian and Eskimo society is blamed. American youth are said to drink simply to “get high.”
Church Bingo
◆ One thing seems to get people into Christendom’s churches: Bingo! So popular is the gambling game that a Catholic in Champion, Michigan, says that half the youngsters in her church’s religion classes listed “bingo workers” as among those who, along with priests and nuns, assist people to get to God. She heard an elderly woman kneel and pray: “Lord, I’ll light five candles tomorrow if you just keep your eye on my bingo card tonight.” Why the stress on bingo in churches? An answer comes from New York’s Staten Island. A commercial bingo parlor was recently about to open. Nearby Catholic churches sought to stop it, says the Daily News, because they were afraid it “would take away players from their own games and thus cut into needed revenue.”
Rector Bans Bible
◆ Recently the rector of St. Mary’s Church, Stoke D’Abernon, Surrey, England, “banned” the use of the “Old Testament” in his church. Secular Christian literature is scheduled to replace the unwanted portions of Scripture. Why the ban? He says: “It is that horrible stuff about the invading Israelites being ordered by their repulsive war God to massacre innocent people.” He is also upset by “the revolting and unhistorical Passover saga of Jewish tradition.” Does the rector find Jesus Christ equally “revolting and unhistorical”? Jesus not only commemorated the Passover, but is referred to in the “New Testament” as “Christ our passover.”—1 Cor. 5:7.
Mass Transit
◆ Mass transit has come in for much discussion recently. Seattle, Washington, has successfully encouraged free bus rides to clear congested streets. But Rome, Italy, found that free bus rides drew mainly former pedestrians, not auto drivers; so traffic remained heavy. Many will agree with Business Week, which notes: “One of the ironies of the present situation is that the specter of shortages and gasoline rationing is encouraging people to use mass transit at a time when its amenities and capacity to absorb them are limited.”
Why They Quit
◆ It took Chicago’s Bill O’Shea twelve years to become a Catholic priest. A total of 367 boys started at the minor seminary with him in 1955. Only 109 of that number entered the major seminary in 1960. A mere 49 were eventually ordained in 1967. Since then almost half that number, or 24, including O’Shea, have quit the priesthood. This, he says, is “an incredible percentage compared to a decade ago.” Why the high dropout rate? Essentially, he argues, because seminaries belong to the past. They do not prepare youth to face life’s real problems successfully.
Travel Changes
◆ The fuel shortage is changing patterns of travel. In West Germany the sale of bicycles in November 1973 was up 61 percent over the same month in 1972. Holland’s largest bicycle builder says sales in the last three months of 1973 rose 70 percent over that period in 1972. In the U.S., Continental Trailways, a bus company, reports that the number of passengers it carries increased 20 percent between October and February. Meanwhile, two major airlines have virtually mothballed eleven of the huge 747 passenger airplanes in Roswell, New Mexico. The U.S. Postal Service is taking bids on 350 electric delivery vans.
Dancing Typewriter
◆ Typewriters are said to be available to write every known alphabet, including braille. Now a U.S. corporation has developed an accessory to type the dance vocabulary. The ball-shaped element has the physical movements in Labanotation, developed almost a half century ago by Rudolph von Laban. Labanotation uses a central vertical staff to represent the dancer. Its length indicates how long action continues, while other symbols are attached to the staff to describe the position and movement of body parts.
An End to War?
◆ Some visionaries have concluded that if men ran out of natural resources they could no longer make weapons and so war would end. But Dr. Polykarp Kusch, a 1955 Nobel laureate and professor of nuclear physics at the University of Dallas, does not agree. He told an audience recently: “Ultimately, as major resources disappear, we will go at each other with bows and arrows and poleaxes.”
Not at Work
◆ The problem of work absenteeism is rising. In the U.S. semiskilled factory workers and laborers are said to have most absenteeism, although the rate of increase is growing faster among management personnel. How do companies cope with this problem? Some now purposely overstaff their work force to compensate for those that will not show up for work. Others give special benefits or gifts to employees with regular attendance records.
Earth Satellites
◆ Billions of dollars have been spent to send various devices into space, some even to the moon and toward far-off planets. But what have researchers concluded is the most important place in space? Answers Dr. James C. Fletcher, administrator of NASA: “It is becoming apparent that geosynchronous orbit is the most important place we have discovered yet in our advance into space.” Geosynchronous satellites orbit 22,300 miles above the equator. This enables them to orbit at precisely the same speed as the earth. So they are valuable as communication satellites, relaying messages from one part of the earth to another part of the earth.
A Divided Church
◆ The Catholic Church appears strongly divided over even certain movies. A recent film that presents a twisted “rock” version of the life of Jesus Christ has caused violent demonstrations among some Catholics in Rome. One priest actually sprayed holy water at the Rome Opera House where the film was shown, to “cleanse it from the works of Satan.” But, in direct contrast, a report by Leslie Childe from Rome says that the pope viewed a twenty-five-minute excerpt of the film and was “enthused.” And one cardinal, who also saw the clipped version, noted: “It taught us a lesson. If only the Church could do such marvelous publicity for Jesus Christ.”
Paper Shortage
◆ The paper shortage continues. Stores are posting signs asking customers to carry smaller items without using a paper bag. Two major New York supermarket chains pay customers to return bags. Detroit reports that refills for staplers are hard to get, not because of a wire shortage, but because of a lack of cardboard boxes in which to ship them. Magazines, newspapers, sales brochures and catalogs are smaller. The printing of the St. Louis telephone directory was delayed when paper ran short. Who is among the latest to voice its suffering cry? The U.S. Mint complains that it needs paper to print money! Depending on whom one asks, the paper problem is blamed on consumer hoarding, ecology controls, tree and mill shortages and politics.
Dentists and Doctors
◆ In 1969, there were about a half million dentists in 130 countries and territories of the world, according to the World Health Organization’s latest records. However, the dentists are not evenly distributed. About half of these countries and territories have only one dentist for over 20,000 persons. Eight countries and territories have only one dentist for every million or more population. A survey in the U.S. reveals that there was a ratio of 5.6 cardiologists (heart specialists) for every 100,000 Americans in late 1971. But they, too, are not evenly distributed. Miami, Florida, for instance, has 17, while Milwaukee has 3.3 cardiologists for every 100,000 population.
Selfish Nationalism
◆ Men of affairs know that nationalism has aggravated, not lessened, man’s current critical situations. Thus, an editorial in The Western Producer of Saskatoon, Canada, recently noted: “The economic fate of the developed nations seems to depend utterly on their own quick recognition of this inescapable fact: The selfish, narrow nationalistic game cannot, will not, work. . . . The only thing that can save the world from complete chaos is the willingness of all nations to see that narrow self-interest at this crucial time in the history of the civilized world is the most destructive force ever to have threatened the world order as we have known it. Discussions leading to changes in that world order must take place soon if chaos is to be averted.”
Fire Toll
◆ An estimated 11,900 persons died in U.S. fires last year. Fires set purposely increased a drastic 16.8 percent, to a total of 84,200.