It’s not time to talk about gun regulation when people use guns to kill for fun, politics or revenge. It’s not time to talk about human contributions to climate change when hurricanes sustain category five winds for 36 hours or dump five feet of rain in a few days. It’s not time to talk about health care when GOP politicians are rushing a vote on damaging legislation through secret meetings. It’s not time to talk about the antiquated electoral college despite two of the last five popular vote count winners losing the election. Continue reading
problems
Four Ways the World is Changing
To paraphrase the Greek philosopher Heraclitus and the vocal artist Otis Redding: “Change is the only constant (and yet) everything still remains the same.” Continue reading
Park Geun-hye’s Troubled History Led to Her Impeachment
To begin, we go back in time to the end of WW2. The Japanese lost the war and were forced to relinquish control of their annexed Korean territory which they had established in 1910 and cruelly administered. The Soviets, who had only entered the Pacific theater of the war weeks before, were given temporary authority over lands north of the arbitrarily decided 38th parallel whereas U.S.A. was given the lands to the south. Continue reading
Suffering
Back in college, at the Blue Hen University of Delaware, I used to enjoy reading on a little bench in the waning sun of autumn. There was a squirrel that would come visit me and I’d throw him a nut or whatever I had. I like to think it was the same squirrel every time, but who knows? The trees would whisper in the cool breezes, the students were wandering all around, oblivious to my bench, and it was a respite from the normal college life of binge drinking, Adderall cramming or trying to be cool. But I remember once, I had a strange day sitting there. Continue reading
First World Problems
There are first world–FW (annoying, bothersome, petty, but usually solvable) problems and then there are third world–TW (really difficult, hard to handle, life shattering, and systemic) problems. For an example, I will be using U.S.A. as the first world and let’s say Rwanda or Afghanistan as the third world. For your imagination’s sake, picture a pretty blonde girl from Colorado in yoga pants and a Starbucks speaking as a first world representative, and a sun-hardened, war-battered peasant akin to the Afghani girl from the 1980’s National Geographic cover holding an empty clay pitcher representing the third world. Continue reading
To Drink, or To Get Drunk…
“Don’t puke now Sabia.” So the quote reads in my senior yearbook. My friend wrote that to me as what I can only assume is the thing he remembers most about me from our four years together in high school. I was a puker. I was a drinker. So, I didn’t think it was that strange at the time. (My Mom didn’t like it I remember.) I wasn’t really addicted to drinking. I was in love with the atmosphere of getting drunk. Continue reading
Who is Penn State?
The abuse scandal at Penn State has new findings. Former FBI director, Louis Freeh, interviewed hundreds of people, went through millions of emails and came to the startling conclusion that Paterno, Spanier, Schultz and Curley, the four highest posts at State College, blatantly covered up Sandusky’s behavior, thereby making them culpable via sin of omission. Whatever minimal effort they may have put into alerting child safety officers or police, they didn’t solve the problem. Continue reading
American Thoughts Abroad
America. It was always home, and when it becomes the place that you only read about or hear about, it takes on a special, enchanted vibe. A place where there is delicious food from every country in the world, a place where pizza is sold in slices, a place with ice hockey rinks, water parks, and Whole Foods stores. It is a place where English is spoken widely, a place with crowded highways filled with massive cars—not crowded public transit filled with skinny people. Continue reading
William Sabia 