On a Sunday morning not long ago I read with interest an article in the Florida Times-Union of a movement here in Jacksonville called Operation Save Our Sons. The organization is designed to help 10-to-18 year-old boys develop better decision-making skills while helping their young fathers improve their parenting skills. It’s operated by the St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Jacksonville and was founded by Reverend John Guns, the church’s pastor. The thrust of the service is to encourage fathers and other men to whom these young lads look for guidance in selecting the right roads in life to be up to the task.

Speaking of roads, here are some interesting facts (that, hopefully, I have tricked you into reading about.  But, bear with me – I will come back to my point):

Continue “Forks in the road”

Cow tipping is an urban legend that tells of hayseeds on the farm sneaking up on a sleeping cow in the middle of the night and, well, tipping it over. In reality, this prank would be a lot harder to pull off than one might be led to believe in that cows do not sleep standing up, and a full grown cow can often weigh in at about a half-ton. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with cows: How about cow patty bingo?

Continue “Having fun with cows”

Had a little touch of the flu last week, but I am pleased to announce that I am back thumping away at my computer keyboard. But my run-in with what turned out to be a relatively benign parasite got me to thinking about how the relationship between a virus microbe and its human host might be considered an apt metaphor for the relationship of humans with this beautiful planet upon which we reside.

Viruses are different than your standard bacterium in many ways: most bacteria are harmless, for example, and, in certain cases, are actually beneficial to their human hosts. Further, fewer than one percent of all bacteria actually cause disease, although the ones that do can be doozies, such as those that are responsible for the bubonic plague, cholera, meningitis and tuberculosis as well as serious and life-threatening staphylococcus infections.

Continue “Parasites”