Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Things I Learned Today

40% of Afghanis are illiterate. 25% of Afghani teachers are illiterate.

80% of all refugees (worldwide) are women.

Teddy Roosevelt at times thought that only those willing to hunt should have citizenship. At 24 he went west to kill a buffalo before they went extinct.

The Supreme Court of the US accepts about 1% of cases submitted to it for review (about 80 out of 8,000).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As long as you mentioned T. Roosevelt...here's an excerpt from a speech he gave in Paris about 100 years ago. It's a rather long speech, entitled "Citizenship in a Republic", but it's worth a read.

Perhpas, it will offer some perspective to Roosevelt's hunting = citizenship comment,

T. Roosevelt -

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Roosevelt as President established 51 federal bird reservations, expanded U.S. forest reserves from 43 million to 194 million acres, created six national parks and dedicated 18 national monuments. To this day, he remains one of the greatest crusaders for conservation in American history.

His hunting of big game may perhaps only be explained through Roosevelt's association with it as a masculine activity (a "Hemingway-hunter); a proof of self-worth in some form.

TT