This $#!T Got Serious!

Hold on tight, this first paragraph is going to get convoluted. When many were not paying attention, the textbook manufacturers went digital and specialize in both curriculum and testing. this one entity earns hundreds of billions annually, under control of one company(one man really). They are joining forces with the largest online "schools", and see double digit growth for at least the next decade. Endless merger and acquisition syndrome tops both political and economic agendas. Get big or get out is no longer good business advice, it is touted (or rammed down our throats, depending on who you ask about it.) as the supreme law of capitalism. Routine recalls are a symptom of corporate greed playing fast and loose with the facts, basic physics and laws of nature. "Failing" schools often fail because students know that they have no future, We are told that healthcare costs have gone up 21% in three years, but (we are simultaneously denied) the reality, that in the decade prior to that, they spiraled up over three hundred percent! The exact same people who want you to be outraged at healthcare prices are the ones who don't want you to know that insuring more people and covering preventative medicine is actually lowering the rates at which health care costs are and have been escalating. It seems that our media and the public eye is so myopic that things going on right under our noses are out of focus because we obsess about thousands of virtually meaningless incidents, the minutia of Benghazi, or failed crackpot schemes like exploding shoes or underwear. This leaves no time for understanding the arc of "progress" toward our current, undesirable state. The long slow progression of "validating" slant wells drilled from Kuwait under Iraq, by unleashing Gulf War I, so no questions could be asked about fracking, or slant wells here, has never been reported as far as I know. Virtually nothing was said when the DOE reported the "failure" of all of the radiation detectors sent to the West Coast after Fukushima began emitting radioactive material. Never was it said, "They couldn't all be broken.", nor was the question even asked, "Who is responsible for making sure they work?". Even the nature of the malfunction was glossed over, they couldn't all be "overly sensitive", could they? We have become Kow-towed by whack-a-do media magnates who just want us to feel the right cocktail of fervent disgust, righteous indignation and powerlessness.

I'm not sure if it is lucky or not, but we now have the power to share images of exploding oil trains and pipeline ruptures, washed up sea lions and nuclear atrocities more easily and cheaply than ever before, like the printing press revolutionized communications five hundred-fifty or so years ago, we are able to share more than ever, more quickly than ever. How we adapt and mutate may not be totally under our control, but if we do not evolve and adapt quickly, our species and many others are doomed. Luckily, I'm still here to tell you that every issue that I just brought up is simple to "fix", well, perhaps not the nuclear one...I said on day one that they needed to start pouring the concrete, but hey, I'm not the one with my finger on the button, or the trigger for those sorts of decisions. My point in bringing these things up is that we have solutions to each and every one of these problems. We can take a more pro-active role in the raising of our own children, the way humans have done for millennea. turn off the idiot boxes in your life and learn to extract salient information that will help educate you...The best teachers never stop learning. When you continue to see the same old shit day after day, try meeting the challenges of life differently. Stand as a testament to the fact that we are entitled to honor and respect. Learning what we can about staying healthy requires sifting through a lot of scientific malarchy and to learn that food is medicine and our medicines need to be foods.