Watching the World
“Collision Course”?
◆ “It now seems apparent that there is developing a collision course between government and organized religion,” according to a statement made at the opening of the recent U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops. “During the next 25 years, the process of government in the United States will inevitably wrestle with, and resolve in some fashion, the question of whether or not churches are to be favored institutions under our system of law.” Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia complained of the government’s growing “mass of regulations, rules, licensings, directives and demands for information.” And Archbishop Bernardin of Cincinnati stated: “This growing intrusion of government into church affairs is something we must monitor and that we must resist.”
Pluto “Changing”
◆ New observations of the planet Pluto have produced surprising, previously unknown facts about its nature. The recent discovery of Pluto’s satellite, Charon, resulted in revising estimates of the size and the mass of the planet drastically downward, “making Pluto the smallest and lightest planet in the solar system—even smaller than our own moon!” according to Astronomy magazine. The mass of Pluto also has been calculated to be 40 times lower than current estimates, a density little more than that of water. “It can be nothing more than a low density snowball of frozen gases,” remarks Astronomy. And, at an estimated 40 percent of Pluto’s size, Charon is larger in relation to its planet than any other moon in the solar system.
Rights and Responsibilities
◆ The recent U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) booklet, Your Legal Rights & Responsibilities—A Guide for Public School Students, considers the matter of flag ceremonies. It states: “YOUR RIGHT: You may not be forced to take part in the salute to the Flag or Pledge of Allegiance if doing so violates your beliefs or values.” The booklet calls attention to a 1943 Supreme Court decision on the matter, saying that “the Court noted that the [Jehovah’s] Witnesses were in no way interfering with the rights of others when they refused to participate” on religious grounds. Under the heading “YOUR RESPONSIBILITY,” it goes on to say: “If you refuse to participate in the salute to the Flag or Pledge of Allegiance, you may not disrupt the activity of others who choose to do so.”
Talmud for Hotels?
◆ Jerusalem’s modern Hilton Hotel recently had its kosher status removed by the city’s chief rabbi, a cause for great concern in a hotel that entertains tens of thousands of Jews each year. Rabbi Bezalel Zolty complained that Jewish hotel employees were working on Saturdays. According to Time magazine, Zolty demanded that the hotel “use only automated equipment and non-Jewish employees to heat food and wash dishes on Saturdays; abolish Saturday checkout except for emergencies; and program hotel elevators on the Sabbath so that Jewish users will not have to push floor buttons.”
“Love Never Fails”
◆ The Washington Post reports that the B’nai B’rith Women Children’s Home has an “astonishing 70 percent recovery rate with severely disturbed children.” When asked the reason behind this success, Yecheskiel Cohen of the home’s staff merely answers: “Love.” And when questioned further about the details of therapy, he again answers: “Love.” Such experience is just another illustration of the practical value in the Bible’s observation: “Love never fails.”—1 Cor. 13:8.
Assured Milk Delivery
◆ Great amounts of milk used to go to waste when the weather was too bad for a delivery boat to take it from Ameland Island’s 70 farmers to the nearby Dutch coast. The Dutch solved the problem by building, in six weeks, the world’s first undersea milk pipeline, 14.85 kilometers (9.23 miles) long. Rather than pumping the milk, which damages it, the daily 30,000-liter (8,000-gallon) delivery is separated with rubber plugs and pushed through the line by compressed air.
“Lead Balloon” Flies!
◆ The proverbial lead balloon has had a bad reputation as the ultimate put-down of ideas that, so to speak, “won’t fly.” According to a recent report in Smithsonian magazine, researchers at Arthur D. Little, Inc., in Massachusetts, “decided to test the phrase with—what else?—trial balloons.” They built frames of three different shapes and covered them with lead foil, then filled them with helium. A cube-shaped one didn’t get far before it ripped and fell. A round one stayed up for about a mile, and a third one, shaped like an oblong watermelon, “was last seen heading out to sea,” says Smithsonian.
Work and Conscience
◆ When a man was suddenly assigned to make weapons parts by his employer, he quit the job for conscientious reasons based on his religious beliefs. An Indiana appeals court recently ruled that he could receive unemployment compensation, since his joblessness could not be considered his own fault.
Where Fat Is Beautiful
◆ King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV of Tonga, at 380 pounds (172 kilograms), is said to be the world’s heaviest monarch. Both he and his subjects are pleased with this distinction, and they, too, aspire to heavy-weight stature. Fat is beautiful for the 100,000 inhabitants of these Pacific islands, where food is ‘put on a pedestal.’ “We don’t like thin people, but we aren’t really in love with fat,” according to Tongan anthropologist ’Epeli Hau’ofa. “It’s food that is admired. We just can’t stop eating.” Until recently the hefty islanders remained relatively healthy for their weight. But now, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, “wholesome innocence [has] ended with the arrival of junk food.” And diseases associated with overweight in the Western world have begun to take hold.
Keeping Greenland Sober
◆ Beginning in the spring, the people of Greenland reportedly will have to use coupons based on “points” to buy alcoholic beverages. It seems that the Provincial Council became alarmed, not only at the way Greenlanders were following the example of the Danes among them in “social” drinking, but also at how they were using the alcohol to “drown” their problems. Fights, petty crime, suicides and murder rates jumped. A monthly ration of 72 points will determine how much adults can buy. Beer is one point, wine six points (a bottle) and spirits 24 points. The rationing also applies to drinks at restaurants. No points may be carried from one month to the next.
“Sacred” Cow Causes Deaths
◆ After swerving to avoid hitting a “sacred” cow, a loaded bus crashed into a flooded ravine in West Bengal state, India. United News service of India reports that 88 persons were killed and 20 others injured—quite a price to pay for the Hindu belief that a person’s ancestors may be reincarnated into cows and other creatures.
Beetle Weed Killers
◆ A Cornell University scientist thinks that he may have found the ideal weed killer. The Argus tortoise beetle, often called the goldbug because of its shiny armor, eats only plants in the bindweed family, even dying rather than eating other plants. Bindweed infests crops of cereals, fruits, and especially potatoes. Professor G. Wilbur Selleck says that he noticed an explosion of the beetles in a cornfield that he was using for herbicide experiments. “By mid-July,” he says, “not a single bindweed plant could be found in the entire area of infestation.” Then the obliging bugs died out.
Similarly, in Australia, another beetle called crytobagous is reportedly munching through a troublesome water plant that has been overgrowing streams, lakes and dams. A previous $200,000 (U.S.)-eradication effort using chemicals had failed.
World’s “Finest Diamond”?
◆ Working for six months, diamond cutters finally produced what its owners call the “finest diamond in the world.” Temporarily called the Big Rose, it has 189 facets and weighs 137.02 carats. Though only the world’s 14th largest cut diamond, it is claimed to be the most valuable because of the cutting and polishing techniques used and its top rating for blue-white purity. “More than half of Big Rose went up in dust during cutting and polishing,” reports London’s Daily Telegraph. The stone from which it was cut, the Premier Rose, was found at the Premier Diamond Mine near Pretoria, South Africa.
‘Blind Leading Blind’?
◆ A questionnaire including the query: “Do you believe the Bible to be God’s inspired Word?” was sent to 10,000 clergymen. According to the publication Pulpit Helps, the percentages, by religion, of clerics answering No are as follows: 89 percent of Episcopalians; 82 percent of Methodists; 81 percent of Presbyterians; 57 percent each of Baptists and American Lutherans.
Something Wrong with System?
◆ To keep the prices that farmers receive for their products above specified levels, agencies of the European Economic Community (EEC) buy up surplus produce. Last year such food amounted to about 201,000 long tons (225,000 short tons), at a cost to taxpayers of over $30 million (U.S.). The amounts of some of these fruits and vegetables expressed in long (and short) tons are: cauliflowers, 30,000 (34,000); tomatoes, 23,000 (26,000); peaches, 60,000 (67,000); pears, 41,000 (46,000); oranges, 16,000 (18,000); and mandarins, 28,000 (31,000). What happens to all this surplus food? “Some of it was distributed free of charge to charities or used in animal feed,” reports the London Times. “But a considerably amount was simply destroyed.”
“Travel-Happy” Germans
◆ Are Americans the world’s most traveled people? No, the Germans and Japanese are. Dr. Malte Bischoff of Lufthansa airlines charter service says that “about 28% of all Germans take at least one trip abroad annually. This compares with 17% of all Britons, for example.” He says that Germans spend more money on foreign travel than anyone else, about $10.8 billion (U.S.) last year—$3.4 million more than American travelers spent—“even though the American public is three and a half times larger than the German.” Bischoff says German travel agents serve a “travel-happy, well-heeled nation.”
French Catholicism Foundering
◆ A new survey of French Catholics reveals that regular Mass attendance has dropped by more than one fourth since 1971. In that year 22 percent said that they attended regularly, while only 16 percent do now. And what about faith? Only about a third of the French Catholics would agree that Jesus is “really living” today, while the other two thirds disagreed or gave no opinion. Who bears chief responsibility for this state of affairs? “It must be recognized that we are doubtlessly responsible—we the bishops, the priests and also the (religious) activists,” admitted a “disturbed” Archbishop Robert Coffy, head of the French bishops’ committee on the sacramental pastorate.
Father of 212,000
◆ Bendalls Adema, called by the London Times “the most prolific bull in the history of Irish agriculture,” recently died of old age at 14. The bull’s semen has been used to inseminate artificially as many as 212,000 cows, who bore quality offspring. One of his daughters reportedly produced a record 11 gallons (13.2, U.S.) of milk in one day.