Watching the World
World-shattering Year
◆ “War and Peace in the 20th Century as reported in the New York Times” is a new compilation of famous news headline pages covering the wars of our generation. The opening page offers this interesting background information:
“There had been no major international conflict for almost a century—since the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815. The century had seen astonishing progress in science and invention, together with the growth of vast industries that poured out useful products in wondrous abundance. Men thought perhaps they had reached the stage where peace and prosperity would be universal.
“But that vista from the early part of this century was to be shattered by an explosion that has kept the world in turmoil and ferment ever since. . . . The spark occurred on June 28, 1914, when the Archduke Francis Ferdinand—heir-apparent to the Austro-Hungarian crown—was assassinated at Sarajevo . . . World War I was on.”
Bible in 1,710 Languages
◆ According to the Bible Society in London, at least one book of the Bible is available in 1,710 languages. The Society reports that parts of the Bible appeared in 27 additional languages during 1980, and the complete Bible now appears in 275 languages. The Guinness Book of World Records says that an estimated 2.5 thousand million copies have been published.
No Escape
◆ Researchers have detected hexachlorobenzene (HCB) in the atmosphere of the remote Pacific Enewetak Atoll for the first time. “The chances are there’s now no place on Earth you can go without finding HCB,” said C. S. Giam, head of chemistry at Texas A&M University. “The relative constancy of the compound between sites suggests that HCB is very stable and may remain in the atmosphere a long time.” The chemical has been found to cause cancer in laboratory animals. It is a by-product of more than a dozen manufacturing processes, as, for example, rubber.
Marijuana on the Brain
◆ Physical evidence of marijuana’s damage to brain function has been observed by Dr. Robert Heath of Louisiana’s Tulane University School of Medicine. After six to eight months of moderate-to-heavy smoking, rhesus monkeys being used experimentally were found to have structural alterations in their brains. Microscopic examination revealed that the synapses, or tiny gaps across which brain neurons communicate, widened by 35 percent and became darkened. According to Heath’s report in Biological Psychiatry, even some of the neuron structure itself broke down and the brain’s electrical activity was disturbed.
Politicians in Clerical Clothing
◆ Recent international events have exposed just how far churchmen are involved in day-to-day politics:
After a strike by members of Poland’s new Solidarity union was settled, the New York Times reports: “The significance of the event . . . lay in the role of the church.” The article points out that Bishop Bronislaw Dabrowski, often regarded as the voice of Poland’s Cardinal Wyszynski, “made no attempt to disguise his involvement” in negotiations with the government. “Heading a special five-man mediation group from the Catholic Church,” reports the Times, “he popped in and out of the back room where the talks were going on, and he even announced the final agreement to the strikers, wearing a Solidarity badge an inch from his gold cross. . . . he conceded to reporters that he had engineered the agreement.”
The National Catholic Reporter says that “ten Catholic institutions in El Salvador published a statement which approves the current revolt against that country’s government as a ‘situation in which the church admits the right of legitimate insurrection.”’ The statement claims that the revolution is the people’s “last means to obtain justice and peace.” Thousands have died in the revolution. The Catholic paper notes that “the document was translated and distributed in the U.S. by Jesuit Father Simon Smith, Washington, D.C.—based director of the Jesuit Missions.”
In neighboring Guatemala during 1980, according to the Associated Press, at least “five clerics have been killed and several others, including the bishop of Quiche, narrowly escaped assassination.” “Blamed for Indian unrest, accused of harboring guerrillas and labeled ‘communists,’ 50 priests have fled the country, some have gone underground and at least one reportedly has picked up a gun to fight with guerrillas, church sources say.” Guatemala’s president Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia has declared: “If the priests and clerics don’t attend to the business of saving souls, we will throw them out.”
Getting Perspective
◆ Iran’s holding of 52 American hostages for over a year consumed the attention of much of the world. Great publicity also surrounded charges of mistreatment that came after their release in January. However, a guest editorial writer in the New York Times put the matter in a more realistic perspective, observing: “These 52 people have indeed had a very bad time. But it would be easy to find 52,000 people, 52,000,000 people, who have fared worse all their lives. And unlike the hostages, these multitudes of thousands and millions have no prospect of release. . . . consider the ‘boat people,’ both in the China Sea and half a world away in the Caribbean. In the past 14 months, it has been a good day when fewer than 52 of them have been drowned, starved, frozen, beaten, or raped to death.”
Sewage Fertilizer for Sale
◆ Tokyo authorities are now marketing a fertilizer made at the government-run Minami-Tama Sewage Disposal Plant. Not only is the product claimed to be more effective than chemical fertilizers, based on growth tests, but it also is about half the price of commercial fertilizers. At a “taste test” in Tokyo, “sixty percent of the participants declared the waste fertilizer-grown cabbages to be delicious,” reports the Daily Yomiuri, “while only 40 percent said the same about cabbages which had been treated with chemical fertilizers.”
Precolored Cotton
◆ All cotton is not white, at least in northern Peru, where a University of Texas anthropology student went to study the local Indians. He returned with samples of cotton in five natural colors—white, beige, brown, purple and gray. The plants also seem quite hardy. Scientists plan to return to Peru for study of the unusual cotton and its commercial possibilities.
Religion Outlawed
◆ Albania’s government reportedly has outlawed all forms of religion in an effort to end its influence completely. Believers who have operated underground are said to be suffering a new wave of arrests for possessing Bibles or religious literature.
‘Deafening Silence’
◆ In its review of The Terrible Secret, a book based on newly available documents about Hitler’s slaughter of the Jews, The Wall Street Journal observed: ‘The Vatican, better informed than anyone else by its priests and its faithful throughout Central and Eastern Europe, knew [about the holocaust] beyond a shadow of doubt in the summer, even in the spring, of 1942. Where was the fiery papal encyclical that might have created a crisis of conscience among the Catholics in the German nation and the German army? Pius XII maintained a deafening diplomatic silence while the furnaces continued to work full blast.”
Violent Smokers
◆ After a Chinese bus conductor in Beijing stopped some youths from smoking, he was killed by the angered juveniles. According to The Beijing Evening News, when the conductor got off his bus to check tickets as passengers left, 11 youths also got off and surrounded him. They hit him on the head with a brick, then punched, kicked and finally stabbed him to death. Apparently they, like many others, felt very strongly about “smokers’ rights.” All were caught by the police.
Overeating Disorder
◆ ‘What could become the eating disorder of the ’80s,” states Parade magazine, is bulimia. Persons with this tendency alternately gorge themselves on food and then purge themselves of it, either by inducing vomiting or by using laxatives, diuretics or diet pills. According to Vivian Meehan of the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders in the United States, the typical bulimarectic gorges and purges from once every few weeks to several times a day. The majority of such persons are women, and at one sitting they can consume as much as 40,000 calories before trying to clean out the digestive system. This destructive cycle can result in heart, kidney and digestive disorders and can lead eventually to death.
Thefts Alarm Clergy
◆ “Even churches in staunchly Roman Catholic Spain have not escaped the country’s rapidly rising crime rate,” observe Reuters news service. It notes that valuable statues and other religious articles are being stolen from churches at the rate of more than one a day. Many of these objects are valuable because of their gold and jewelry. It has been suggested that the churches turn such relics over to museums where they would be safer, but religious authorities are reluctant to do so because “that could cut off the congregations from objects of worship.” However, a bishop acknowledged: “Protecting these objects is very difficult, given the present deterioration of social attitudes.”
Schools’ Toll on Teachers
◆ Fear of students is becoming commonplace among teachers in many parts of the world. The chief of psychiatry at Ontario’s York-Finch Hospital in Canada calls some teachers “shell-shock” cases. “They come to us for treatment,” he explained. “They’re in a constant state of acute anxiety, they feel completely inadequate. They can’t control their classes anymore. They were good, sensitive teachers once . . . and eventually they’ll just leave teaching.”
TV Affects Grades
◆ A survey of over half a million California public school students found a “strong statistical relationship” between hours of TV watching and test scores. One example was the steady decline of mathematics test scores between 12th graders who said they watched an hour or less a day and those who watched six hours or more. Those who watched the least television scored about 24 percent higher than those who watched the most.
A Tokyo elementary school that urged parents to reduce their children’s TV viewing had similar results. “TV Viewing Down; Students’ Scores UP,” headlined an article on the subject in Mainichi Daily News. The results of the efforts so far have been impressive,” observed the article, noting also that “with the decrease in TV viewing, the attitudes of the pupils toward their lives have improved remarkably.”
Safer in the Air
◆ Large and small U.S. airlines set a new safety record in 1980: 13 fatalities in one crash incident. The previous record low was in 1933, when 17 were killed. The year 1980 also was the first full calendar year during which no fatal crash of a large passenger jet occurred. Yet enough passenger miles were covered to fly everyone in the United States on a trip of over 1,000 miles.