Title: New Year-Live By Purpose Instead Of Drift ...

Title: New Year-Live By Purpose Instead Of Drift 4/24/2007

Many of us have a tendency to focus on what’s wrong, which gives us a distorted picture of life -- as Barry Siegel shows.

He wrote this column, "World May End With a Splash," for the Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1982.

Consider what some scientists predict.

If everyone keeps stacking National Geographics in garages and attics instead of throwing them away, the magazines’ weight will sink the continent 100 feet sometime soon and we will all be inundated by the oceans.

If the number of microscope specimen slides submitted to one St. Louis hospital lab continues to increase at its current rate, that metropolis will be buried under three feet of glass by the year 2224.

If beachgoers keep returning home with as much sand clinging to them as they do now, 80% of the country’s coastline will disappear in 10 years....

[They have also] reported the striking discovery that pickles cause cancer, communism, airline tragedies, auto accidents and crime waves. About 99.9% of cancer victims had eaten pickles sometime in their lives....

So have 100% of all soldiers, 96.8% of communist sympathizers and 99.7% of those involved in car and air accidents.

Moreover, those born in 1839 who ate pickles have suffered a 100% mortality rate. And rats force-fed 20 pounds of pickles a day for a month ended up with bulging abdomens and loss of appetite.