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Eat, Bug, Bother...

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     One has to ask, what on Earth do those title words have in common?  Turns out that only 2% of the world's population is considered "smart" enough to join Mensa by passing their qualifying test (sample question to start you out: what does "mensa" even mean?).  But anyone can join (for a fee).  Instead of AI consider it AI-Q.  But how many of us really know our IQ?  As with age, it may be just a number, something assigned to you by a series of tests or whatever, but something assigned to you by someone or something else.  No matter, the question of "smarts" can only be answered by yourself.  And there are many ways to be smart.  Take street smarts, a field which I would fare poorly at.  Some people simply have it, an ability to adapt quickly to a situation, a quick comeback or an immediate reaction; such people seem to have a different way of looking at things, a common sense and one that comes without panic or hesitation....
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The Formula (1)

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                    Photo of F1 steering wheel:  The Sports Rush      What exactly is that word "formula"?  Put "baby" in front of it and you sort of know what it is, although does anyone really  know what goes into baby formula?  Or throw a few chemicals or math equations together and you may come up with a new "formula."  So the question I had to ask was, where did auto racing pick up the word ?  Of course, this sort of question came up because of watching an aging Brad Pitt playing an aging character named Sonny Hayes in the Apple film, F1 , a film weak on plot but full of action (IF you're into Formula One racing), something which could almost be said about the aging Tom Cruise ending his own aging MI series.  But while the effects and all were well done in the F1 movie, what caught my eye more was the money involved in the sport (in  Formula One, NASCAR, Indy and others , there...
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Natural Wonder/s

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    The world of wonder almost parallels the world of wander.  By exploring the world around and within us, we begin to see more and more.   The world will never starve for want of wonders, wrote G.K. Chesterton,  but only for want of wonder.  That quote stood out for the prolific author of both adult and children's books (with 20 million copies sold worldwide), Katherine Rundell.  Her recent book, Vanishing Treasures begins with this: A common swift, in its lifetime, flies about 1.2 million miles; enough to fly to the moon and back twice over, and then once more to the moon.  For at least ten months of every year, it never ceases flying; sky-washed, sleeping on the wing, or has no need to land (the swift, like the porpoise, can shut off half of its brain to sleep while the other half functions normally and stays alert; the swift also eats only what bugs are in the air and needs to find 100,000 such bugs each day  when breeding). ...
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Too Many People

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     Let's face it, there are too many of us humans.  Drive on most any freeway, at any hour, and wonder where the heck everyone is going?  Multiply that feeling if you're at an airport.  Or drive past any hospital parking lot and wonder how the heck are so many people ill or injured?  Big concerts, packed stadiums, large protests, all of them leave you scratching your head.  How do you feed and satiate all those people, much less get rid of their trash and poop?  We number in the billions, as in soon to be nearly 10 billion within 25 years, according to projections from a  United Nations report .  Put another way, if you could put away $100 per day, it would take you nearly 274,000 years to reach $10 billion.  Translate that to feeding 100 people a day and, well, you can see the enormous task ahead.      So it bears repeating of that recent poll from ReliefWeb  that showed that the continuing "p...
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