Danielle Levy

Our culture doesn’t like termites. We associate them with being destructive and exterminate them. As much as our attitude is based in reality, compared to what they’re beginning to do with termites in Africa, it may reflect a certain bias. Termites, as well as ants, are used to improve crop yield. Given the one billion hungry people in the world, finding any way to increase crop production is a big boon. Recent research at the University of Sydney reveals that by digging tunnels termites and ants irrigate the soil and allow plants greater access to water. In many arid areas of Africa, that is being shown to make a big difference making soils more fertile and productive.
Maybe we can now look at termites without shudders and fears.

Anders Behring Breivik as we have all heard killed 77 people in Norway last Summer. He has been undergoing psychiatric evaluation. The two psychiatrists who examined him have found him to have paranoid schizophrenic psychosis. But several forensic psychiatrists disagree believing that he suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder. They question the diagnosis of mental illness, some pointing out that he was capable to plan an elaborate scheme to carry out his crime. They believe him to be competent to stand trial. As it would in the U.S. the distinction matters because if he is mentally ill, he would go to a psychiatric facility. If he does have a narcissistic personality disorder he would be able to stand trial and end up in prison.
It’s reassuring in a world where so many principles are found wanting to know that taking away the freedom of a known murderer is not being done without a great deal of thoughtful argument.

It’s safe to say that to a person those reading this aren’t being abused, persecuted, jailed for their beliefs, or aren’t living under the hardships of civic strife and wars. We all enjoy basic freedoms of religion, speech, assembly. We can dislike our elected representatives and say so without reprisals. We enjoy a certain material well being too. We can count on sanitation, not only running water but running hot water, flushing toilets, electricity not only to compensate for the dark but to fuel the appliances and electronic gadgets we have come to rely on. We have the power to eat healthily and if we don’t, the onus is on us. In brief we start out the year better off than a number of millions who share the planet with us. Certainly all of us have problems and some of us have serious problems, but the context in which we struggle to deal with those problems is far easier and far less harsh than the one of so many who struggle with the same issues in far harder circumstances.
As the new year begins may we keep our perspective, may we be grateful not because it’s become trendy, but because we genuinely have more than many, people as human as we, who are as deserving as any of us.