I came upon an article about zebras that, for some inexplicable reason, were being born with spots instead of stripes. No one had brought forth any as yet concrete evidence as to what was causing this obviously stressful situation for the zebras. But the rhetoric was twisted in such a manner as to blame the usual guilty parties: humans, habitat destruction and global warming. Why or how was never fully explained, nor was any solid evidence to support this ludicrous hypothesis ever presented. But here it was complete with pictures, for all to see.
Then I realized just what it was I was reading. I had experienced this sort of thing many times before, usually at weddings or the occasional funeral. The section of the service where the minister preacher or pastor extracts some obscure quote from the scriptures, and in some mind-numbing excruciatingly endless exercise in religious, literary dogma, eventually succeeds somehow in translating the aforementioned quote from the good book into words the happy couple can gleefully forget as soon as they are received, and the congregation can recover from the verbal coma in which they have been induced.
I am still not sure why, but this was the article that broke the proverbial camels back. I realized that morning that I was thoroughly inundated by dumb and just could not take it any longer. I shut my phone off, placed it on the table, and never even looked in its direction for the rest of the day. Felt great, no problem.
Never one to criticize a problem without offering a well-thought-out solution to a problem that, I am sure, causes zebras the world over a great deal of consternation. It is called radiation, and the planet is bathed in it, comes from the sun, and can quite possibly be blamed for every mutation on this planet for untold millennia. Scientific fact, been around for years. Look it up. And enough already.
Peter foster, Craven SK
Opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of LMT. That should be obvious.