No News is Good News

Oof.

Today is one of those days when looking at the news just plain frightens me.

My first click at www.nytimes.com was on a story about how fashion designers want to make it illegal for people to copy their designs and sell them for less. Is this because Calvin Klein and Diane Von Furstenburg are having trouble making ends meet? Somehow I don't think so. It seems selfish and unfair to want to keep style and fashion only for the rich. Then again, as they continue to get richer while the rest of us get poorer, fashion isn't likely to be the only thing reserved for them. I just hope I don't live to see the day that only the rich get dentists and doctors - it's heading there now, but hopefully not at too great a speed.

My second click was on a story about how brains in highly intelligent children develop differently than the brains of their average-intelligence counterparts. I had the frightening brave-new-world-esque thought of parents paying to have their kids brain-growth scientifically altered in an attempt to have the smartest kid on the block (1600?! feh! MY kid got 3200 on her SAT's!). Quickly, an even more horrible thought came: the opportunity for the government and educators to give up on kids who aren't doing so well in school as a lost-cause. "Those inner-city public school kids won't benefit from that funding anyway, let's give it to those super-smart kids." Yikes.

Rouding it out we've got "Doubt Cast on a Stockpile of a Vaccine for Bird Flu," 'As Life Returns to New Orleans So Does Crime," and "The Batchelor Pad Still Lives."

Oof.