Watching the World
“Spy” Learns “Respect”
● An associate English professor from the University of Notre Dame visited a district convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses and reported her impressions in the magazine Notre Dame: “I still carry somewhere inside me the old, phobic Catholic reaction against contact with other religious sects. I feel a little like a spy. . . . I have already noticed that all women and girls wear dresses, all men and boys wear ties.” After observing the program, she wrote: “I walk away from Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I do so with more understanding than I had four days ago, and more respect. In a chaotic and random world, they have banded together to strive for an ultimate order. I think of the earnest faces, the precision, the urgency of separateness from the world. I think of the newly baptized Bill Stewart’s statement when I asked why he and his wife had chosen Jehovah’s Witnesses: ‘We wanted an organization that was clean.’”—May 1983, pages 14-16.
Arms “Absurdity”
● “World military spending is rapidly approaching $800 billion [thousand million]” this year, complained Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar at a recent UN Economic and Social Council meeting. “According to my rough calculation, the total amount of official aid to all developing countries from all sources in an entire year is now equal to 18 days global military expenditure.” He concluded: “At some point this absurdity—and there is no other word for it—has to come to a stop.”
Church Bows to Ritualism
● “Shonas [tribal members] in Zimbabwe can now pour beer on the graves of their dead and call on the spirits to safeguard a dead loved one with the approval of the Catholic Church,” says the Sunday Tribune of Durban, South Africa. “Catholics used to dismiss this ritual as heathen, but now the booklet Kuchenura Munhu [‘to purify the spirit-soul of a dead person’] details a ritual which is the same, but has the name of Christ in the wording.” The booklet “was commissioned by the six Catholic bishops of Zimbabwe,” says the newspaper. “Now Zimbabwe’s Christian Shonas can continue to perform their traditional tribal rituals, knowing that they have the sanction and approval of the Catholic Church of Rome.”
● “Saints live on flowers, candles and incense,” declared a Mayan Indian shepherd in San Juan Chamula, Mexico, as he laid flowers before a “saint” in his church. “I feed this one so he will give me lambs.” The Indians here “hold Mass and are baptized,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “But they also sit on the church floor, smoke cigarettes and swig posh, a numbing sugar-cane rum, while a healer hired for $1.50 implores Jesus Christ, their god of the sun, to help cure a headache.” Anthropologists maintain that the 64 “saints” in the local church correspond to specific Mayan gods. Even so, “we have to consider the Indians of Chamula as Catholics,” said nun Lucia Jimenez, adding: “They do have a slight problem with idolatry.”
At Home in Heat
● Bacteria that thrive at well over twice the boiling point of water—482° F. (250° C.)—have been found in volcanic vents on the ocean floor. That is more than double the temperature at which it was previously thought possible for life to exist. The British science journal Nature reports that these microbes actually failed to grow below a torrid 167° F. (75° C.), yet most other plants and animals die when kept at temperatures above 104° F. (40° C.). And while most life draws energy from organic sources, directly or indirectly from sunlight, these organisms produce energy in darkness from inorganic chemicals such as sulfur, manganese and iron, using a process called chemosynthesis rather than the usual photosynthesis.
“Clash” for Freedom
● The book Fragile Freedoms—Human Rights and Dissent in Canada describes events contributing to freedom in that nation. One important factor, according to author Thomas R. Berger, was “the clash between the Catholic Church and the [Jehovah’s] Witnesses, the confrontation between [Quebec Premier] Duplessis and Jehovah . . . [which] laid bare competing ideas of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.” The book reports on the Duplessis era (1936 to 1959) when “Church and State joined in persecuting Jehovah’s Witnesses, who carried their struggle for freedom of speech and freedom of religion to the Supreme Court of Canada again and again. . . . The fervour of this small Protestant sect had more than a little to do with establishing the intellectual foundations for the Charter [of Rights and Freedoms].” Why such a struggle? Answers Berger: “The Jehovah’s Witnesses have always been zealous to spread God’s word. They believe they must share their faith with others . . . the world has often been indifferent and sometimes hostile to them.”
Poison Power
● “Paraquat is probably the most effective herbicide that exists right now on the Earth,” asserts lung specialist Edward Block, who has treated some of its victims. But “it is also one of the world’s worst poisons.” It accumulates in the lungs, making them brittle, and there is no effective antidote for those who ingest it, breathe it or get it on their skin. Yet sales are booming worldwide because it so effectively prepares fields for economical “no-till” farming (planting without plowing). Treated overgrowth quickly wilts to a protective mulch, while the poison itself neutralizes on contact with soil. Dr. Block believes that the risk is acceptable only under controlled conditions. But it can readily be purchased in developing countries by uneducated workers. Paraquat deaths over a period of 20 years are estimated at between 600 and 1,000, but experts fear a much higher toll as use escalates among the inexperienced.
Turtles Tricked
● Going after what they see as a tasty jellyfish meal, the ocean’s leatherback turtles often consume floating plastic bags instead. One study indicates that 44 percent of these largest marine reptiles have death-dealing plastic material in their digestive tracts. Scientists believe that one factor behind the leatherbacks’ dwindling numbers is plastic pollution spread by water enthusiasts. “For their own benefit, swimmers and boaters should realize that these sea turtles help control the jellyfish that plague them in the summer,” says the director of the International Center for Endangered Species.
Picasso’s Prank
● A letter to the editor of the Manchester Guardian Weekly commented on the newspaper’s review of a London gallery’s recent exhibition of cubism (abstract art): “Speaking of those who desired only the peculiar, the sensational, the eccentric or the scandalous in today’s art, [the late cubist artist] Picasso said: ‘And I myself . . . have fed these fellows what they wanted and satisfied these critics with all the ridiculous ideas that have passed through my head. The less they understand them, the more they admire me.’” Picasso became rich and famous by means of his artistic distortions, but admitted: “When I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all—not in the grand old meaning of the word. I am only a public clown—a mountebank.” (More in Awake!, 10/22/80, page 31)
Alcoholic Killers Curbed
● The number of lives saved when driving drinkers were curbed in New South Wales, Australia, illustrates the extent of carnage they cause. The Sun-Herald of Sydney reports that road fatalities dropped by 42.9 percent during a recent three-month period of random breath testing by police. “It is fair to say that around 200 lives have already been saved,” notes the report. During the period, the fatality rate in New South Wales fell from 3.0 per 100 million kilometers (62 million miles) traveled to a rate of 1.7, lower than Great Britain (2.0), Canada (2.7) or the United States (2.1).
Autos Less Deadly
● Traffic deaths in the United States dropped again last year, to 46,300, down from 49,125 in 1981 and 51,077 in 1980. Correspondingly, the motor vehicle death rate fell to 2.95 per 100 million miles (160 million kilometers). Officials are not sure just why there should be such a decrease, since the overall number of miles driven actually increased by about one percent.
● A recent federal study has revealed that the average amount of lead in the blood of U.S. residents fell by more than one third between 1976 and 1980. “The most likely explanation for the fall in blood lead levels is a reduction in the lead content of gasoline during this period,” said the study published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The government requires that all new cars use unleaded fuel. Most lead in the atmosphere is said to come from gasoline, and the amount of lead used for making gasoline reportedly has decreased by more than half during the four-year period.
Simple Ulcer Remedy?
● In a desperate effort to help a patient suffering sharp ulcer pain one night in Iran’s Evin prison, an imprisoned physician prescribed the only remedy available at that hour—water. He gave the patient about a pint (500 cc) of fluid and, as reported in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, “his pain became less severe and then disappeared completely after eight minutes.” Experimenting with other prisoners, the doctor settled on prescribing a glass of water half an hour before eating and another two and a half hours later. During his imprisonment he was able to document the progress of over 600 patients, noting that the prison pharmacy had almost no demand for antacids toward the end.
“Dead” Pet Revived
● When a car struck the Chihuahua Percy his heart stopped. The saddened owner’s father buried the little dog in a sack in his garden in Barnsley, England. But the father’s own terrier, Micky, kept whimpering at the grave site. Seven hours later, Percy’s owner related, Micky “ran inside and barked at my parents until they followed him outside. They found Percy in the sack—and his heart had started to beat again.” Apparently the terrier, sensing life, had dug up the sack and pulled it toward the house. “The incredible thing is that normally these two dogs are at each other’s throats,” Percy’s owner marveled.
“Placebo” for Smokers?
● The fire that killed at least 23 people on an Air Canada flight in June raised the issue of smoking on airline flights. The director of the U.S. Aviation Safety Institute said that about 25 fires have to be extinguished in airplane lavatory waste containers every year. Cigarettes are often the culprit. “Cigaret smoking should be banned from commercial airliners,” he said. “Give the people a placebo if necessary but let’s get smoking off the planes.”