I’ve been making some minor site updates over the past few days (not enough to bump the version number—still at 17.2). The changes will slightly improve readability and also affect some legacy content. Here are the changes:
Poll Shows Many Can’t Find Louisiana on Map
Despite the wall-to-wall coverage of the damage from Hurricane Katrina, nearly one-third of young Americans recently polled couldn’t locate Louisiana on a map and nearly half were unable to identify Mississippi.Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 fared even worse with foreign locations: six in 10 couldn’t find Iraq, according to a Roper poll conducted for National Geographic.
In a Time of War . . .
Do you remember where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001? I certainly do—vividly. I remember pretty much every second. I remember every feeling—horror, anger, and fear are the first that pop into my head. That morning, life in the United States changed in a million little ways. We went from a firm feeling of security to a stunning realization that, yes, even the United States of America can fall victim to the evils we’d gotten so used to seeing ‘somewhere else.’
SoVA Trip Last Weekend; Other Updates
We had a great time last weekend visiting people in Southern Virginia. Between Friday morning and Sunday night we had driven from Fairfax to Bedford to Roanoke to Lynchburg to Bedford to Altavista to Lynchburg and back to Fairfax. Lots of driving, yes, but it was worth it to see a bunch of people we’ve been neglecting.
Breathe Easier: The World is Getting Cleaner . . .
So a lot of people like to talk about how the environment is collapsing around us (despite limited evidence that the climate change we’re seeing is anything other than one of the natural climate changes that have happened periodically throughout the history of the world—an inverse ice age, if you will). But what many in the United States don’t get is how much better the environment in our country is today than 36 years ago, and much it continues to improve.
Since 1970, carbon monoxide emissions in the U.S. are down 55 percent, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Particulate emissions are down nearly 80 percent, and sulfur dioxide emissions have been reduced by half. Lead emissions have declined more than 98 percent. All of this has been accomplished despite a doubling of the number of cars on the road and a near-tripling of the number of miles driven, according to Steven Hayward of the Pacific Research Institute. . . .
- Breathe Easier: The world is getting cleaner, Al Gore notwithstanding (Wall St. Journal; free email subscription may be required).
Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.