Puffs

The Book of Genesis tells us that the Lord entrusted human beings with the responsibility of being stewards of creation (Gen 2:15). Care for the Earth, then, is a moral obligation for all men and women as children of God. (Pope Francis)

As you can read, the quote above is from Pope Francis and I came across it last weekend. It is partially responsible for what I write this week.

Two items came to mind, both somewhat connected with the quote. Consider the following:

1: I received a nice letter from a reader a week or so ago. I tried to do a little research on the subject of the dying off of honey bees.

Again, unless you haven’t read a newspaper or listened to TV in the last 10 to 15 years, you’ve heard of the mysterious disappearance of the honey bee population. It seems that the “experts” are having a hard time figuring out why the bee population has been declining so greatly in recent years.

The bees contribute greatly to our food production system that their reduction in numbers do, in fact, pose a substantial threat to our ability to grow certain foods.

From what I’ve read, I could fill all the pages of this newspaper and I’m sure you probably would not like that. Instead, I’ll try to pass along a little of what I learned.

“Experts” from various businesses and organizations as well as from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have all done ‘studies’ on this subject and have come up with various and at times contradicting results.

A general conclusion seems to center on a probability the die-off is the result of the use of certain insecticides or fungicides, and what chemicals are used to make them.

There have been a considerable number of tests done (especially in Europe) and the results are not 100 percent in the ‘cause and effect’ of using the chemicals that may have a positive effect on other problems in the agricultural business.

One particular pesticide, ‘Sulfoxaflor’ was recently allowed by the EPA to be used again after an earlier decision had banned it. This seems to have brought about a large objection to many people concerned about the protection of the honey bee.

I’m far from an expert on honey bees and the mysterious dying off of huge numbers of them. However, there seems to be a lot of evidence that just maybe this sulfoxaflor may be a contributor to this problem.

As I have mentioned, it seems that a great deal of time, money and interest has been spent already to solve this problem. However, maybe not enough to come up with a creditable answer. This sulfoxaflor seemed to come up in most of what I’ve read.

As an average citizen without any scientific knowledge, the best I can do is to contact your representatives in congress, and or, Nebraska legislature and ask for further study and hopefully a definitive answer to the question.

2: This second subject I’m going to talk about may be just a little further from the quote I used to start this week with. However, to me it still applies.

“A. I.” . . . In today’s society “A. I.” is usually the acronym use for “Artificial Intelligence.” You know, the possibility of computers becoming superior to human in solving problems and maybe replacing the human population all together.

The Nebraska Press Association holds its annual press convention every spring of the year and they just completed the 2023 version. I did not attend, but the good editor of The Superior Express did attend and he told of one little part of the convention that had to do with A. I.

The moderator of this session asked those attending what ‘A. I.” meant to them. I understand one editor from up in the Sandhill area of Nebraska answered with the words “Artificial Insemination. A. I. has been used in the cattle business much longer than that acronym has been used in the computer world.

Somewhere in the past few weeks I’ve read that some of our smart students in colleges have been using A I to write reports for them. And, some of the college professors were beginning to realize this was happening. The teachers thought that this use of A. I. was not good for the students. As such, the professors have started requiring students to turn in reports written in cursive, hoping this would give the professor an idea of whether-or-not the students was actually learning anything.

I got a laugh out of both the editor’s answer at the press convention and the item I read about the college professors.

Then . . . I remembered another situation in our changing culture concerning the education of our children.

Seems that the use of computers is getting so invasive in our society that some schools are no longer teaching students how to write in cursive. The idea, I guess, is that the use of computers is so invasive that the art of writing in cursive is no long needed.

It should be interesting to find out how students, never taught to write in cursive, are going to write out their college reports.

Interesting dilemmas, how to protect the Honey Bee, and . . . how do we educate children ? ? ?

A O

Whoever said life was “dull and boring”? They just have no interest in life at all.

A O

I appreciate the quote from the Pope as it gives us all much to remember and think about. God gave us a perfect world, but it isn’t always easy to know what the correct thing to do is as we try to take care of our world.

I highlighted the word “expert” with quotation marks above as I’m just not sure what an “expert” is. The ‘E P A’ in the United States has the responsibility to protect our environment and they don’t seem to be able to make a decision on how to protect the honey bee.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for protecting humans from harmful drugs. These “experts” in the FDA have, for 20 years, allowed a drug to be sold that kills unborn children.

Just in recent years, a federal judge in Texas decided that the “humanity” of the unborn human had not been taken into consideration by the FDA when they approved the drug.

I would suggest the FDA would be held responsible for the deaths of all those humans by their action as the EPA is being held responsible for the deaths of all those honey bees.

A O

God made the world perfect and then turned it over to us humans. We have been less than perfect in our care of that same world. He gave us ‘freedom to choose’ so we have to learn and pray so we can maybe make better decisions that we have in the past.

It is not an easy task.

A O