How about this one I stole from the comic strip "Get Fuzzy" by Darby Conley. The animal says to the writer, "I'm writing a travelogue, what'ya think?" The writer responds: "Pecking at Provence? You've never been to France."

The animal responds: "I didn't let that color the way I think of it."

The writer: "But then it's not true."

The animal: "Rob, it's not a (some curse words) Medical Dictionary! No one's life depends on the factage of how many snails I crammed in my bouche in bouches-du-rhone! And to be honest, if it does, they probably deserve what's coming' to em."

BuckyÉ A travel essay.

Bucky responds: "Have you ever read one of them? It's like ÔMonday we tried to order pie but got a shoe with cheese on it, then we tried to figure out the Bidet! Do La La! É Rubbish."

writer responds: "So only idiots write books about their opinions?"

The animal has a quick response of "Yup".

The writer: "But aren't you doing that?"

And then the family dog puts in his two-cents worth: "You should write a book how only idiots write books!"

And after writing three books, I have come to believe that also!

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Another item, I stole Ð this one from the British magazine "The Economist" of Sept. 12th, 2009.

"Diplomacy without arms," said Frederick the great, "is like music without instruments." A former Tory defense secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, quoted him this week in defending the sale of arms to countries thought likely to use them responsibly. They presumably include the 45 or so states that sent delegations on September 8th to the world's biggest arms-fiest, the Defense Systems & Equipment International (DSEI) show in London. Libya and Saudi Arabia were among those invited.

"The British governments have rarely blanched at armaments as a style of trade. The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills has its own Defense & Security Organization to promote arms export, with palpable success: Britain is one of the world's biggest exporters of defense goods and services, usually ranking after America, with a market share averaging 21% over the past five years. Orders usually hover just over $6.6 billion a year, though they were boosted in 2007 to 9.7 billion by a big order from Saudi Arabia for fighter-jets. These days the big buyers are Gulf Arab states, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore. The Brazilian navy is almost entirely British-equipped, though some of the kit is second-hand."

And who says nations are not preparing Ð or ready to fight?

Another item from the same publication.

For the past three years, travelers around the world have had to surrender their drinks, toothpaste and shampoo to merciless airport-security guards.

Irate passengers swear that the endless queues and insolvence ece, while conspiracy theorists mutter darkly that security firms are in cahoots with the duty-free shops on the other side of the barrier.

Another item. This one stolen also from "The Economist."

Thomas Malthus first published his "Essay on the Principle of Population" in which he forecast that population growth would outstrip the world's food supply, in 1798.

His timing was unfortunate, for something started happening around then which made nonsense of his ideas. As industrialization swept through what is now the developed world, fertility fell sharply, first in France, then in Britain, then throughout Europe and America. When people got richer, families got smaller; and as families got smaller, people got richer.

Now, something similar is happening in developing countries. Fertility is falling and families are shrinking in places such as Brazil, Indonesia, and even parts of India Ð places that people think of as teeming with children.

The survey shows that the fertility rate (per family) of half the world is now 2.1 children or less Ð the magic number that is consistent with a stable population and is usually called the "replacement rate of fertility."

Something between 2020 and 2050 the world's fertility rate will fall below the global replacement rate.

At a time when Malthusian worries are resurgent and people fear the consequences for an overcrowded planet, the decline in fertility is surprising and somewhat reassuring. It means that worries about the population explosion are themselves being exploded Ð and it carries a lesson about how to solve the problems of climate change.

(I guess that the lesson we should learn from this is not to worry about things you can't change!)



Barron Mills is a former editor and publisher of The Randolph Guide. He lives in Asheboro.