Well, I certainly have dropped the ball with this blog. I was shocked to find that I have not posted since Sept. 15. I have no good excuse other than being busy (for a retiree, at any rate) and consumed with the midterms and a family wedding and publishing my church history and...
All that is not to imply that I wasn't observing events and trends and reading commentaries and various news articles. Oh, and I have been investing hours per day trying to finish Star Trek Voyager so I can move on to something else.
It might be Star Trek TNG, in honor of Sir Patrick Steward dying on Oct. 28, but that is TBD.
I could chime in on the midterm results, but despite all the news coverage, most of what is locally compelling is still up in the air as ballots are slowly being counted and "cured" and tabulated. Today it looks like we are about 90 percent done, and many issues are still too close to declare one way or another.
So, let's skip the election madness in favor of three posts I read in the past couple weeks, any of which would be worth more research and all of which would push me to think more about the broader future.
The first was a commentary by Malcolm Gladwell that claimed that the U.S. would benefit from MORE police officers rather than fewer (as some "defund the police" boosters would claim). To bring the latest election news back: Johnson County, Iowa voted down a measure to build a new jail to replace the increasingly old and decrepit jail. Opponents argued for more programs that would keep people out of jail in the first place, which sounds appealing and idealistic and in opposition to human nature.
Gladwell based his argument on comparing relatively peaceful cities and their numbers of police with various American cities. For instance, Aurora, Colorado has the same population as Zurich, Switzerland and HALF the number of police. The same is true of Los Angeles vs Berlin.
Turns out that when there are more police, response times are greatly improved and interactions between the public and police are more common and therefore less "fraught." Interactions in Aurora often involve violence and the guns come out. Gladwell's contention is that normalizing police presence can reduce more dramatic interactions.
So maybe Iowa City voters really need to double their police force.
My next quick item was a post that pointed out that women are beginning to join the ranks of tradespeople. There is money and pride in work for plumbers and electricians and construction workers, and those traditionally male occupations are looking quite attractive for women.
Of course, women taking plumbing jobs would be yet another reason for males to be generally pissed off, I assume, but in the age of AI taking many office jobs, why wouldn't a woman (or a man) take a look at a profession that is relatively safe from the robots?
Right now, women outnumber men on college campuses 60 percent to 40. I bet many would be decent plumbers.
Finally, the number of 16-year-olds with a drivers license has gone down over 20 percent over the past decade. Being able to drive seems to have lost some allure. This seems like an area that most high school journalists should be exploring.
Perhaps this trend is part of some larger changes in the American mythology of freedom and wanting to explore. Or maybe it's just the cost of a car is exhorbitant.
What I know for sure is that any of these posts would be great starters for further research.
