David McElroy

When I was eating dinner Thursday night at Chick-fil-A, I looked out the window next to my booth and saw a colorful, dramatic sky as the sun set. I pulled out my iPhone and snapped a few pictures, including the one you see above.

But I noticed something. Other people didn’t seem to be paying attention to the spectacular light show going on in the sky outside. I stepped outside for a few pictures. People continued to come and go, not bothering to look up at the sky. A couple of people noticed that I was taking pictures and looked up to see what I was shooting. But it didn’t seem to warrant more than a quick glance in their eyes.

Once I had the picture transferred to my MacBook, I showed it to some other people around me. They all thought it was beautiful.

“Wow. I’ve never seen anything like that,” said one woman, as the fading remnants of that exact scene lingered in the sky outside the window.

I was reminded of the scene early in Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” in which Clarisse McClellan pointed out the moon to the disillusioned Guy Montag.

Dear Donald Trump:

I was really interested Wednesday afternoon when you made your business proposal to Barack Obama — the one in which you offered to buy copies of his college transcripts and passport application for $5 million. I had heard you had a big announcement coming, but I didn’t know it was going to be this big. Or this exciting. Honestly, the possibilities astound me.

Since I know you’re such a great and successful businessman — we won’t even mention those unfortunate bankruptcies — I know you always have your eye out for a better deal. And, boy, do I have a deal for you. Since you’re in the market for college transcripts, I just happen to have a very nice set of lightly used transcripts from the University of Alabama that I’d be willing to let you have for less than the $5 million you’re offering to Mr. Obama.

I know you drive a hard bargain, so I’m going to cut right to the chase. I know that owning a set of my transcripts wouldn’t be quite as prestigious as having a set from a sitting U.S. president, so I’m willing to cut quite a deal. What are you thinking? $4 million? Maybe $3 million? Good gracious, no, sir. I’m willing to take a measly $2 million for my transcripts.

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When an earthquake hit the Italian city of L’Aquila in 2009, it wasn’t much different from any other natural disaster. Earthquakes are impossible to predict with any degree of certainty, so nobody knew it was coming. Unfortunately, 309 people lost their lives.

The odd thing about this case, though, is that that local government is sending six scientists and a government official to prison for manslaughter — because their scientific opinion that a major quake was improbable is now considered “too reassuring.” Somehow, an accurate reading of the science at the time is getting these folks sent to jail.

When there were some tremors ahead of time three years ago, the local government set up a risk assessment committee to look at the scientific information and provide an opinion. There were six seismologists and one government official on the committee. After looking at the data, they concluded that a major quake was possible but improbable.

Other scientists now mostly look at the data and say they agree with the conclusions the committee reached. Still, the fact that more than 300 people died meant that government had to blame someone. There had to be scapegoats.

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