The NCAA basketball tournament is held every year in March, and usually ends during the first week of April. Lois and I binge-watch parts or all of many of the playoff games, and we almost always watch all three games of the Final Four and the NCAA finals for both the women and the men. I never cease to be amazed at the athletic abilities of all the players, especially those of the few standouts who appear every year, like Caitlin Clark, of the Iowa women’s team.. These superstars regularly do things that can’t be done; they accomplish what no one can accomplish. They are a testimony to a particular brand of the unwarranted abilities that God created within the astonishing species known as Homo sapiens.

The US has long maintained a “tough on crime” policy. The size of our prison population indicates we are successful at incarcerating people but are failures at giving them encouragement to lead satisfying lives. It is far better to use government funds to teach young people ways to become productive citizens than to make them unproductive prisoners.      

Singlehandedly, and almost certainly unintentionally, President Xi has turned the world military situation into a new Cold War. No doubt there will continue to be limited wars here and there, a current example being the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But an all-out nuclear war between America and China is as unthinkable as an all-out nuclear war between the USA and the USSR would have been.

Acting with humanitarian impulses may seem counter-intuitive to political and fiscal conservatives. Nevertheless, in the end, it may improve the economies of the nations their conservatism is intended to protect. What the world needs now, besides “love, sweet love,” is altruistic humanitarianism which necessitates political and financial risks.

No doubt there is a limit to the number of inhabitants the earth can safely maintain, but no one knows exactly what that number is. The fact is that birth rates are dropping in virtually all developed states, and also in many under-developed states, which is a great relief. Demographers forecast a slowing of population growth from now on.

In many ways, smartphones are a great boon to every culture. In other ways, however, they are seriously undermining the thinking process of millions of people. For example, consider the nature of Mapquest. This technological device is failsafe. Even if a desired address is in a new subdivision, and new streets are continuously being constructed, Mapquest somehow seems to know that, and it gives newly updated directions with the passage of each day, courtesy of Big Brother in the Sky.

Celebrations of life are both solemn and humorous, heavy and light, productive of tears as well as prolonged laughter. Families may resist having any sort of public acknowledgement of the death of their loved one, but everyone is also loved by others who are not related to the one who has died. They too need closure for how they feel and think about the death of a long-admired friend and confidant.

Rightists fear that the nation is always making too many concessions to the wrong kinds of people, while leftists think not enough concessions are being made. The difference between the two sides is that conservatives are far more inclined to take up arms to challenge government, while liberals only yammer incessantly, trying verbally to convince government to change its policies.