Different Slants

On Christmas Day, I always close my back-issue magazine store, Magazine Memories, just north of Chicago, and I try do something else more spiritually stimulating.

This year, my son David, then 29, and I decided to spend the day together, going to movies and also have dinner. He is a filmmaker and had just returned from eighteen days in Asia after being hired to record the daily activities and performances of a DJ called Jazzy Jeff.  He went all over, including Hong Kong; Jakarta, Indonesia;  Taipei, Dubai; and Bangkok. He especially liked Bangkok.

So, after hearing that, I suggested we go to an intimate Thai restaurant I knew about for dinner, because that’s one of my favorite Asian cuisines, as well.  We had green tea, mild tom-yum soup with shrimp, bamboo and lemon-grass, mini toasted egg rolls, spicy crispy chicken wings with sweet and sour sauce, and then roasted duck. Great food and great conversation, too.

For Dave’s 12th birthday in 1990, my wife Joy and I gave him a video camera, and it must have been the right thing to do, because now he’s traveling the world, filming it.

After dinner, I went to pay our very cute and slender Thai waitress, who was also the cashier. After handing me my change, she wished me a “Merry Christmas” as people had endlessly said to me that day and other recent days. Then she looked uncertain, her lovely black eyes looking into my dark brown ones and she said, quietly: (Read on …)

The climate debate drags on. The latest twist is to debate whether a scientific consensus exists or not. The good thing about science is that there is always room for new evidence and new theories to explain the evidence. In the case of global warming, there seems to no longer be much question about whether the Earth is warming, just why. Is it the result of human activities, increased solar radiation, volcanic activity, or just part of a natural cycle? We may never know. We don’t have a control Earth were we can change the variables one at a time to see which has the greatest impact. Well, I have heard a theory that there is an identical Earth on the opposite side of the Sun, where we can’t see it but…

So, the theories that greenhouse gases are contributing to global warming may or may not be correct. What should people do in each case?

(Read on …)