Archive for Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Opinion: What price progress?
"Oh beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain..."
What's wrong with this picture?
Thanks to Norman Borlaug's Green Revolution, the storied amber waves of grain of our beloved "America" have been transformed into a squat, ugly plant that has few of the aesthetic characteristics of its forebears.
Those of us of a certain age can remember when a drive across Kansas would reward the traveler with vistas of great beauty, of broad expanses of those storied golden wheat plants, undulating in the wind as the waves of a sea of wheat. No more. Today, the traveler is rewarded, if that is the term, with vast expanses of stumpy plants the color of muddy water.
What has happened, of course, is that the long, slender plants we remember from 20 or 30 years ago have been replaced with, stumpy, ugly varieties that pour their energy into producing grain and resistance to disease instead of beautiful, slender stalks.
No one in his right mind would suggest, in the face of global hunger concerns, changing back to the plants used back then. It is worth noting, however, that there's always a price to be paid for any gains we make in this life.
That's progress.
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Talking points
Do you think Veterans Day should be a prominent holiday?
Absolutely. We wouldn’t be able to sit here and eat lunch like this if it weren’t for the veterans. We’ve got millions of people that fought and died to save this country; it should be more than a bank holiday.
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