Here’s the latest nonsense fear cooked up by someone somewhere to keep us in a state of purposeless panic:  Supposedly, kids are now snorting nutmeg.

This is only the latest unfounded threat trundling our way. My second-favorite remains that your ringing cellphone might electrocute you.  The title of favorite false alarm goes to those “killer bees” that have been winging their way to us since the 1970’s. Those are some very slow bees.

Here’s the thing that nobody will ever email you, that you won’t see in the news — and I say this will full awareness of the recent financial struggles many people have faced — for the vast majority of people on the planet, things have never been better. Bubonic plague is just about gone; few of us have landed lieges forcing us to scrape in the muck all day; mortality during childbirth is at an all-time low; five out of six of us can get a drink of water easily; and more people have more regular access to education and information than ever before in history.

I’ll take all of that, and a lot more I could list, over misguided fears that somewhere some bored adolescent may have snorted nutmeg. And y’know what? If he did, he deserves whatever nasty little high he got. Because I can’t even stand the taste of nutmeg. I can only imagine how thrilling it is stuffed into your head.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 15th, 2010 at 10:52 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.