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4A ♦ THURSDAY, AUGUST 3, 2006 3Suustott |mmtal OPINION Daniel F. Evans Editor and Publisher Julie B. Evans Vice President Don Moncrief Managing Editor Will this be the answer? Scientists in California have devel oped a vaccine that allegedly will control weight gain. It has been used successfully on rats. That’s good news. The bad news is that years may go by before the vaccine is tested on human beings. Is this just another meaningless prom ise for the overweight or will this vaccine turn out to be the panacea that weight conscious people have been waiting for? In past years there have been many announcements by scientists and drug companies that they are on the verge of offering the public some form of medica tion that will help them lose weight or keep their weight down without enduring a near starva tion diet. All of them have wilt ed away as they failed to perform as promised. Is it a different story this time? We will have to wait and see. A few years from now this vaccine may appear on the market to the delight of everyone with a weight problem. Or a few years from now this vaccine will be forgotten because it did not make the grade. Toothless UN resolution Hooray! The United Nations has made a decision. It has issued a warning to Iran to come to the table and stop efforts to create weapons grade uranium to make a bomb and Iran has been given one month to comply. At the end a month the United Nations is going to act. Yes it is. It is going to meet again and discuss the problem with Iran and issue another ultimatum. That’s the kind of problem solving we have come to expect from the United Nations, which is impotent when it comes to dealing with rogue nations or follow ing up on its resolutions. United Nations peacekeepers have been guilty of raping people they were sup posed to protect and have been ineffec tive in roles assigned to them. So there is no reason to believe that Iran will quake in its boots because of a threat issued this week. Iranians will just wait out the 30-day period, doing what they want to do, and wait for another mean ingless ultimatum from the UN. LETTER TO THE EDITOR Time to elect Brasswell It’s time to elect to our county commission Maurice Brasswell to replace long-term Commissioner Jay walker. Maurice has attended countless commission meetings over the years and has a great knowledge of the workings of this important body. He will stand up for the common man and not just for the special interests and wealthy developers. Maurice believes in impact fees, SPLOSTs and making newcomers pay their fair share of all the costs that their arrival brings for new infrastructure, schools and roads, that come with growth. He believes in planning our growth and improving our quality of life. Maurice is a retired , concerned citizen who wants to give back to our community for all the blessings that he has received. He is a kind, intelligent, informed citizen who will look after the interests of all of us! And make our quality of life better! Frank W. Gadbois, Warner Robins Foy S. Evans Editor Emeritus In past years there have been many announcements by scientists and drug companies that they are on the verge of offering the public some form of medication that wiN help them lose weight or keep their weight down without enduring a near starvation diet. Parents welcome start of school Children return to school tomor row. I doubt there are many parents who do not welcome it. It has been a relatively brief but very hot summer. It seems nowadays that just about everything is “for the children.” And if you want to get support for any pro gram, all you have to do is somehow connect it with being for the children. Our country is hung up on this one purpose in life. What else is impor tant? It is easy to raise taxes if politicians can tie the tax increase with something for the children. It is almost as if nothing else is important. Our children are important. I won der if everything in life should revolve around them and their wants. All this actually came into vogue after World War 11. In pre-World War II days children were an integral part of families, too. But the world did not revolve around them. Parents cared for their children. They loved them. They nurtured them. But children were kept in their place, as a member of the family. The family did not revolve around them 24 hours a day. Children ate their meals with the family. They ate what was put before them. Children did not dictate what was served. They ate or could go to bed hungry. They were not pampered. When there were guests the adults ate first and the children waited. Little Jimmy Dickens had a hit record titled / If you want a good yield in \ ( weather like this, you've got ] \ to plant the right crop! J Everybody's on the 'raids - me too The world’s fastest man may mere ly be pedestrian. The world’s fastest cyclist may just have a bum hip after all. The world’s greatest home-run hit ter may be a fly-ball swatter soaked in medicinal disguise. And the world’s greatest mustache may be peach fuzz in reality. Where have you gone, Mario Mendoza? This week, the sports pages brought us two more “champions” with posi tive tests for performance-enhancing drugs. The “world’s fastest man,” Justin Gatlin, an American Olympic gold medal winner, tested positive for tes tosterone or other steroids recently. A week prior to that revelation, it was reported that this year’s Tour de France champ, American Floyd Landis, tested for an abnormally high testos terone level. Add those to baseball’s ongoing steroid scandals. Barry Bonds is closing in on Hank Aaron’s career home run mark while prosecutors are closing in on him for his involvement in an alleged illegal steroid scheme. And a year ago this week, baseball’s Rafael Palmeiro, and his dense, jungle like mustache, was busted for steroid use. These headlines beg the question: When is football season going to get here? They also call into question any athletic feat accomplished in this era. OPINION Foy Evans Columnist foyevansl9@cox.net “Take A Tater and Wait.” He didn’t invent the phrase. He just took one that applied to children before World War II and turned it into a song. Children knew their place. They were not head of the family. They were not catered to. They were loved but not put on a pedestal. Things are different today. It is our fault. My generation, which had so lit tle during the Great Depression, came home from the war and benefited from this country’s greatest boom. We gave our children all the things we never had and we spoiled them. The generation that we pampered continued this trend and, in most instances, we now have children who do not appreciate what they have, because they have so much. Everything is “for the children” and they are smart enough to know it. They pull our strings and because “my friends do it” we capitulate and give in, whatever the subject may be. We don’t want to hurt their feelings. Keeping up with the Joneses was almost a joke when people started talk ing about it. Now it is a necessity of life or our children will be “deprived” and we will be scorned as adults who Len Robbins Columnist airpub@planttel.net Skeptics, these are your times. Of course, there are explanations/ excuses. Gatlin’s coach, Trevor Graham, claims that Gatlin is a victim of a setup by a massage therapist who held a grudge against him. In a Washington Post story, Graham said the massage therapist rubbed a testosterone cream into Gatlin’s legs, unbeknownst to the sprinter. He thought it was anoth er type of cream - perhaps shaving cream. Bonds reportedly also claims he was a victim of the same kind of steroid cream hoodwink. Apparently, rubbing unfamiliar creams on a person is as common as hand-shaking in the world of profes sional athletics. A word to all you kids out there: Don’t get naked and let people that hold a grudge against you rub foreign objects on your person. It may sound like fun, and it probably is, but you could also lose your job if your employ- ' L.„ JL HOUSTON DAILY JOURNAL just don’t understand that everything should be “for the children.” Some parents rule their homes. Not many. Children are smart enough to see what is going on around them and they play their parents like a violin. As I said, it is our fault. We are not doing the children favors by making them the center of the uni verse. They would be better served if taught humility and appreciation for being part of a family. Doing without something they want might be a shock and it might help them, too. Materialism is at the heart of most parents’ dealings with their children. It is easier to give in than to deny them something they cry and scream about and demand to their last breath. Just because someone says that something is “for the children” does not mean that it is good for the chil dren. We have come a long way since my generation made the first mistake of overloading children with so many material things and allowed them to believe that what they want is the most important thing in the world. Generations that followed us have perfected the mistake. We are not doing our children a favor when we forget the place they should have in the family and permit them to be'dictators (young and small or teenagers). If we want to really do something “for the children” we will let them know that parents rule and parents will not cater to their every whim. After all, parents hold the purse strings and should use this power. ee tests for steroids or testosterone levels. So, in summary, if you plan on being an accountant, go ahead. Landis, who came from behind to win the Tour de France despite hav ing a degenerative hip condition that causes him to walk with a limp, said he has “a naturally high testosterone level” and will prove he wasn’t doping. That, I hope, is an explanation rather than an excuse. We’ll see. The reason I think everyone is on steroids is because I’m on steroids. A couple of weeks ago, I went to the doctor to be treated for a harsh cold and found out I had a bronchial infec tion. My treatment included a shot of steroids to my butt. No wonder I made a C in ninth-grade Physical Science. I had no idea my bronchi were located in my booty. Anyway, all ‘“roided up,” I went home and found out that performance enhancing drugs indeed do make you stronger and full of pep. I did four push-ups - in a row. Then I tried to call the phone com pany and went into a ‘“roid rage” when their automated system hung up on me after 25 minutes of navigating through their robotic obstacle course. That’s proof enough for me - every one’s on the juice. I knew there was no way a guy named Floyd could win any athletic contest.