Watching the World
Christians and Hitler
● A new book entitled Katholische Kirche und NS-Staat—Aus der Vergangenheit lernen? (The Catholic Church and the Nazi State—Learning From the Past?) recently was published in the Federal Republic of Germany. In its review of the book the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung comments: “Of particular merit is the fact that Lemhöfer [the author] makes reference to the few Catholics who refused military service under Hitler. Franz Jägerstetter from Tirol, the best known of them all, was later rehabilitated during the Second Vatican Council. For years his testimony had been suppressed, however, because this would have meant confessing—as Bishop Fliesser of Linz admitted—that the Earnest Bible Students [Jehovah’s Witnesses] and the Adventists, who rejected military service as a group, were the greater heroes and the better Christians.”
Modesty Changing in Japan
● The sexual revolution has seeped into Japanese society and is undermining traditional Japanese modesty. A report in the Japanese magazine Gendai estimates that 7 to 10 percent of married women are unfaithful and that adultery among women 30 to 40 years of age is rising sharply. Although this figure of infidelity now is lower than the rates of many industrialized countries, the report predicts that the Japanese rate will soar. No doubt the sexual revolution has contributed to Japan’s divorce rate of one out of every 4.5 marriages and to the sprouting of a business new to Japan—divorce consultants.
Malnutrition’s Effects
● Every day malnutrition kills 40,000 children in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and this is apart from any death caused by famine, according to a recently published UNICEF document. The report lists the main causes of death as dehydration and diarrhea infection. It says that when mothers are faced with these ailments, they very often reduce the food, solid or liquid, given to their children, thus unknowingly contributing to malnutrition. According to UNICEF, lack of clean water, infrequent washing of hands, poor hygiene and lack of education result in the average Third World child having between 6 and 16 attacks of diarrhea a year.
Wild Weather
● Worldwide, weather has been wet, wild and woolly this past year. In South America a series of downpours created havoc in some cities, even resulting in pools of raw sewage in streets. Unusual weather devastated Peru’s fisheries, destroyed millions of oceanic birds and took the lives of hundreds when mud slides buried villages. Guayaquil, Ecuador, known for its desertlike surroundings, was inundated with over a hundred inches (254 cm) of rain in just a few months. West Germany’s rain-swollen Rhine River rose to a record 23 feet (7.1 m), swamping homes and turning streets into canals in downtown Cologne—Germany’s worst flooding in 36 years. Many parts of the United States were the wettest on record.
Why such global climatic havoc? Weather experts are baffled. Some blame El Niño, the phenomenon of usually warm ocean currents off Peru. Others point to the high number of volcanic eruptions last year, 22 that spewed sulfuric acid into the atmosphere, possibly changing earth’s solar energy input. Or they fault last winter as being the warmest in 25 years for a large portion of the north temperate latitudes.
Miracle Water Polluted
● “The ‘miraculous water’ of Ransbach [Germany]—the water that superstitious ones said returned sight to the blind and [body] movement to paralytics—not only is not miraculous or mineral . . . but it turns out that it isn’t even drinkable,” reported Barcelona’s daily La Vanguardia. The article explained that the water’s contamination was due to infiltration from septic tanks and refuse left by visitors.
Cocaine Hotline
● In less than two weeks’ time, the National Cocaine Hotline (number: 800-COCAINE) in the United States received more than 7,000 urgent telephone calls. “The volume of calls has caught us by surprise,” says Dr. Mark Gold, director of the Hotline. “We had thought there were between 100,000 and 200,000 seriously dependent people in the U.S. The amount of calls indicates that the number may be much higher.” The 17-hour-a-day Hotline, staffed by eight trained counselors and two psychiatrists, planned to add more counselors and increase its time to around-the-clock service.
Africa’s Focus on Communication
Nairobi, Kenya, hosted a six-week conference of the UN agency, International Telecommunication Union. Since the UN has designated 1983 as World Communications Year and issued a resolution stating that communication is “an essential element in the economic and social development of all countries,” over a thousand experts from around the world met in Nairobi to determine future plans for international cooperation on telecommunication. Africa was its main focus. Only major towns and cities in that continent have telephone and telegraph services. “Rural people in Africa have virtually no telephone service,” states Africa Now magazine. “Tanzania, for example, has almost 10 telephones for every 100 people in Dar es Salaam, but less than one telephone per 1,000 for the whole population. This is typical of many African countries.”
Pets and Health
● Caring for a pet can have a positive effect upon one’s health—especially among older persons—claims biologist Professor Erika Friedman. Her study showed that the chances for recovery from a heart attack were quadrupled by the patient’s getting a dog! Increased physical activity alone does not completely explain the effect, she notes, because patients with other kinds of pets (jerboas or iguanas) also had a higher survival rate than those without. Thus her study indicates that the interrelationship between animal and human is what matters. It keeps the patient busy feeding, grooming, petting and walking his new “friend,” as well as talking to him, and helps the patient to communicate with other people they meet in elevators, hallways or parks. Pets also serve as a clock for persons out of work, giving their lives order and discipline. Of course, if a loving relationship with animals can have such positive effects upon health, how much more so a loving relationship with other humans!
Spaniards Gambled $7 Billion
● Some thought that the authorization of slot machines, bingo parlors and casinos in Spain would diminish the amount of money spent on the more traditional forms of gambling—the state lottery and the football pool. These latter increased by 5 percent and 12 percent respectively with a take of $1,800 million and $400 million during 1982. But both took a backseat to slot machines and bingo parlors, which registered an income of well over $2,000 million (U.S.) each during the same period. The total amount spent on all forms of gambling during 1982 passed well beyond the $7,000-million mark, a figure about equal to the combined annual budgets of Spain’s Education and Science, Defense and Interior Ministries.
“Terminal Case”
● VDTs (video display terminals) along with computers make tasks easier for millions of office workers, “but they do not necessarily make a job easier, more pleasant, or healthier,” reports The Harvard Medical School Health Letter. Why? Because “the VDT is not just another piece of office equipment” but, rather, the Letter continues, “it changes the nature of the work people do.” Visual difficulties, musculoskeletal problems and job stress are associated with VDTs. The conclusion: Careful and thoughtful design of work areas, lighting and placement of furniture are crucial to work productivity and comfort. Padded and adjustable chairs with firm support for lower back are essential for VDT operators. Set reasonable workload requirements to human capabilities, not to that of the machine.
Diagnosis Errors
● One in four diagnoses by doctors at a leading Boston hospital was wrong, concludes a research report on autopsies in The New England Journal of Medicine. The study is based on comparing the diagnoses for 300 patients randomly selected from the years 1960, 1970 and 1980 with the findings in their later hospital autopsies. The autopsies found that in about 10 percent of the cases, if the condition had been properly diagnosed before death and treated, it could have resulted in prolonged life. The study “also found that doctors might be missing some important diseases because they are overrelying on new diagnostic tests,” notes The New York Times.
Brazil Uproots Drug
● Over one million marijuana plants, the equivalent of 500 tons of the drug, recently were destroyed in a combined operation of the federal police of two Brazilian states, reports O Estado de S. Paulo. Worth about $200 million (U.S.), it was the largest quantity ever seized in Brazil. The police calculate that more than 500 families were in some way involved in the illegal business of growing the plants in their outlying farms. The federal agents and their workers, with the aid of the military police, uprooted the plants one by one.
How Old Is Young?
● People thought 61-year-old Clifford Young, a potato farmer from Colac, Victoria, Australia, was out of his mind when he entered a marathon run of 875 kilometers (543 mi), between Sydney and Melbourne, against nine other competitors. Clifford, the oldest in the race, was the first across the finish line, 5 days, 15 hours and 36 minutes from the start and 43 kilometers (26 mi) ahead of his nearest rival. He wore out ten pairs of running shoes during the race and ran the last two and a half days with a dislocated shoulder after falling the second night running. He slept a total of only 12 hours during the race. Clifford did not take up running until 57 years of age. For the marathon he trained about 50 kilometers (31 mi) a day, consisting largely of chasing cows around the paddocks of his farm, wearing the heaviest gum boots he could find. By the way, his 89-year-old mother greeted him at the finish line “with hugs and kisses.”
Horns of a Dilemma
● The Daily Telegraph of London noted this unusual “No Trespassing” sign outside a farm field near Nottingham, England: “Don’t cross this field unless you can do it in 9.8 seconds. The bull can do it in ten.”