A few days ago, my coffee-drinking buddy looked at me with his usual whimsical, quizzical grin and said, “Don, you’re somewhat of a know-it-all smart—, what do you consider the world’s greatest problems, overpopulation or the possibility of a nuclear proliferation?”

For once I was stumped and I said, “I’ll have to get back to you on that one.”

Later that morning something other than my prostate awakened me with a start. My subconscious had given me the answer to his question, and it was world overpopulation. When you read and see graphic pictures of 50,000 people being massacred in an African country and a barefoot 4-year old wading through human waste on the way to the city dump to find something to eat, it’s a graphic picture of overpopulation in Haiti after the earthquake, which hit two years ago. I’ve seen a pregnant woman wading across the Rio Grande so that her child can be born in the United States.

I’ve often thought that Bill Gates should spend some of his billions instead of AIDS prevention in as much as a child not conceived will never grow up to be an adult transmitting AIDS to her unborn fetus. I’ve often said, “giving birth to a healthy, wanted, provided for child is man’s greatest contribution,” baring none, I’ve also said, “Some male wearing a black robe or a politician seeking votes, who wants to reject Roe vs. Wade is hypocrisy at its utmost.”

I consider myself to be somewhat of an authority on the nuclear bit, in as much as I have received radiation exposure in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki while serving with the Army’s occupation in Japan. It has been estimated that the core temperature at the center of nuclear blast is somewhat higher than cremation temperature, which is well over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Being within a five-mile radius of a nuclear blast would be painless and instantaneous, whereas a child being the victim of overpopulation will never receive proper nutrition during its growth years will never grow up to be a healthy adult.

 

Don Skimland

Albert Lea