Watching the World
Problems With Priests
● “The shortage of priests in the Roman Catholic Church, a growing problem worldwide for a decade, will soon reach crisis proportions in the United States,” reports The New York Times. According to the latest Official Catholic Directory, enrollment in Catholic seminaries in the US has dropped 50 percent in the last ten years, from 22,963 in 1972 to 11,500 now. And the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago predicts that the number of priests will drop from the present 58,085 to fewer than 25,000 in twenty years. According to the Chicago research group mandatory celibacy is one of the major causes of the decline, and so is the reluctance of modern Catholic parents to let their sons become priests.
Anticancer Diet
● The National Academy of Sciences recently released a 500-page report entitled “Diet, Nutrition and Cancer,” giving tentative dietary guidelines that “are likely to reduce the risk of cancer.” The report recommends reduced intake of both saturated fat (in meat and whole milk products) and unsaturated fat (in vegetable oils), and smoked, pickled and salt-cured foods, such as sausages, bacon and smoked fish. It also recommends eating more fruits and vegetables rich in vitamin C (citrus fruits, tomatoes and broccoli) and beta-carotene, found in squash, carrots and other yellow and green vegetables, along with moderate use of alcohol. The report, which reverses the Academy’s former position on diet and cancer, is the result of a two-year review of some 10,000 nutritional studies.
Wages of Wars
● Aside from the destruction of life and property, the wars in Lebanon and the Falkland Islands have increased the economic problems of the countries involved. Israel’s defense bill now stands at 18 percent of its gross national product, three times the percentage that the US spends on defense. To pay for it, the government is imposing a 12- to 19-percent rise in food and fuel costs, and a 12- to 15-percent increase in sales taxes. All of this is expected to push Israel’s inflation rate up to 150 percent a year. Similarly, inflation in Argentina, as a result of the recent war, could hit 200 percent by the end of the year, and there is a $34-billion (US) foreign debt to be met. Even Britain is a loser when it comes to expenses. Using the luxury liner Queen Elizabeth 2 as troop carrier cost the government $225,000 a day, and the bill for keeping 3,000 troops in the Falklands would be about $37 million a month. So a tax increase appears unavoidable in Britain.
Superstition Amid Marxism
● After almost thirty years of Marxist indoctrination, folk superstition is still very much alive in China. A dispatch from Beijing, appearing in Canada’s Globe and Mail, relates that an exemplary couple who are party members decided that their deceased son needed a mate. They found a suitable dead partner and arranged a wedding. “The two bodies were exhumed,” says the dispatch, “the ritual marriage rites were performed and then the bride and groom were reburied side by side.” Wedding pictures were proudly displayed in the parents’ homes. Marriage of the dead and other rituals are remnants of Chinese folk religion, which is a mixture of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucian ancestor worship. Constant denunciation of such practices in the press only attests to their popularity.
More Gore and Horror
● Success at the box office has led Hollywood to turning out ever more gory and bloody horror movies. According to film critic Larry Cohen, about fifty such films were produced each year in the mid-1970’s, but “it is now possible to release two new horror flicks every week.” Book publishers are also cashing in on spine-chilling novels. “It is one of the hotter genres working right now,” says the editor in chief of Pocket Books. But why are such films and novels so attractive? Psychoanalyst Morton Kissen believes their popularity is a reflection of the times we live in. “We live in a very escapist time,” he says. “People don’t want to deal with the real serious problems of the age.” Others, perhaps, feel the way psychologist Joyce Brothers does: “When your own life gets very complex and scary, . . . it is easier to escape into a fearful story. . . . Then you can go back to your own frightening or threatening situation better able to handle it.”
An Eye on the Sky
● The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), with its powerful radars, telescopes and cameras, is keeping an eye not only on all the roughly 1,200 satellites of various national origins in outer space but also on nearly three times that many pieces of orbiting ‘space junk’—spent rockets, disabled satellites, scraps of metal, ceramic tiles and sundry nuts and bolts. All of these are carefully monitored and catalogued by NORAD. Why? Because an unidentified object in space can easily be mistaken for an attacking enemy missile and thus trigger a retaliatory holocaust. NORAD’s powerful cameras can pick up an object the size of a basketball 20,000 miles (32,000 km) away, and recently an orbiting glove was sighted.
Centenarians’ Advice
● A research group in California called the Committee for an Extended Lifespan conducted a study of 1,000 Americans who are 100 years old or older in an attempt to learn the secret of their longevity. Among the most important advice the centenarians gave was “to do nothing in excess,” reports the Seattle Times. Moderation in food and drink, rising and retiring early, working hard, avoiding stress and living a spiritual life are cited as important factors contributing to their success. Though exercise, diet, heredity and numerous other factors have been looked to as important by specialists, the centenarians’ experience seems to bear out that “more mental self-control” and “a more positive and relaxed attitude” are the key to long life, says the report.
Problem Drivers
● Who are the accident-prone drivers? Contrary to what most people think, “the largest part of the traffic-accident problem has been shown to involve lapses by normal drivers rather than errors by a few problem cases,” according to highway-safety expert Theodore Forbes. An Indiana University study reveals that the leading cause of accidents is not speeding, tailgating or drinking but carelessness when pulling into traffic, changing lanes or passing. While other studies show that 90 percent of those involved in accidents considered themselves above average drivers, analysts say that 90 percent of all traffic accidents are caused by “the nut behind the wheel.”
Transfusions and Malaria
● With the increasing use of blood transfusions in ‘improved’ hospital facilities, “transfusion transmitted” malaria has become “a problem of increasing importance in tropical areas,” reports the South African Chamber of Mines publication The Reef. The report points out that “donors living in, or coming from tropical malarial regions, are without exception liable to be infected with parasites capable of being transmitted by blood transfusion to the recipients who may suffer a severe, and unless promptly treated, sometimes fatal attack of malaria.” Some types of malarial parasites can remain dormant in the bloodstream for as long as forty years and are difficult to detect. The usual practice, however, is to give the patient the infected blood anyway and worry about malaria later.
Falkland Oddities
● In reply to a British press inquiry as to whether or not the Argentines believed that a British bomber forced down in Brazil was headed for Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands, the Argentine press officer, Captain Enrique de Leon, answered: “The islands in question were called the Malvinas [Argentina’s name for the islands] and, since April 2, the capital had been called Puerto Argentino. So the bomber could not have been on its way to either the Falklands or Stanley since these places did not exist,” reports the London Guardian.
Another irony of the Falklands conflict is recorded by Canada’s The Moncton Transcript. Last September a family of four left their home in Mission, Canada, looking for a haven from a third world war. Where did they settle to start a peaceful new life? You guessed it—Port Stanley, Falkland Islands.
Britons’ Cup of Tea
● Do the British still stop at teatime for their cuppa? Apparently so, for according to the Tea Council, caterers use 20,000 tons of tea leaf and brew 10,000 million cups of tea a year. That is an average of more than four cups per person per day. By far, tea is still the most popular drink in Britain, accounting for 75 percent of all beverages consumed, and it is still one of the cheapest. Figures published by the Council show that it costs 2.23 pence (4c, US) to serve a cup of instant coffee with milk and sugar, 6.15 pence (11c, US) for a cup of ground coffee, but only 1.47 pence (2.7c, US) for a cup of tea.
Surfers’ Turf
● “There’re too many people on the waves,” says a resident surfer in Malibu, California. According to the Los Angeles County Department of Beaches, there are 100,000 surfers in California, and as the number grows, territorial disputes break out at the state’s favorite surfing spots such as Malibu. “There are occasional fights in the ocean over somebody taking somebody’s wave,” reports a local police sergeant. But there are also fights out of the water, usually at the isolated spots favored by the surfing elite. “You’ve got your basic surf rat down here, the blond-haired, bleached-out, radicaled dude,” said one surfer at Zuma Beach. “They’re just geared toward drugs and surfing and girls and not going to school.” Then he added soberly, “A surfer doesn’t have much purpose in life—not the hard-core ones.”
Modern Greek Games
● The Greek penchant for athletics is still very much alive today. Enthusiasm for the games is seen in the elaborate preparations made for the XIII European Athletic Championships, held in Athens September 6-12, which the Press Bulletin of Athens called “the great sporting festival of the European new generation.” For the occasion, a one-million-square-meter (250-acre) sports complex was constructed in Kalogreza, Athens, at a cost of 4,000 million drachmas ($62 million, US). The main structure is an 80,000-seat stadium, appropriately called Olympic Stadium, in honor of the ancient games. Great aspirations were placed on the meet, from which, said the Secretary General for Athletics, Kimon Koulouris, “we expect a better future, not only for our own Continent but for the whole world.”