People are strange animals as animals go.
Even a child in a room full of toys will notice what is not there before he notices what is.
For a parent this can be frustrating but we grown ups do the same and do it frequently.
Perfection is always missing just one more thing that we don’t have.
We guess it is human nature.
Wendover of course is far from perfection and it is easy to notice what we do not have here.
But on the other hand maybe it is time to notice what we do have.
Every three or four years we happen on a story where the price we pay for electricity has to be mentioned.
And every time we are amazed by how good we got it.
We are always surprised.
But thanks to a combination of being in the right place at the right time and being served by a far thinking electrical cooperative rather than a public utility when it comes to electrical power we have it made in the shade.
Yes it would be nice to have natural gas.
It might attract more industry.
The airport expansion, the compost plant, the industrial park, the new city hall even the golf course were also to attract new business.
They have not.
We don’t think about electrical power because it is already here and thus invisible.
But think about it. We pay less than 60 percent the national average. That is a considerable savings to almost any business any where.
It is a wonder we don’t tout it or don’t tout it enough.
Natural gas is fine and dandy but electricity runs our lights, computers, machines and coffee makers.
There simply is no substitute.
Every one needs it and we get it cheaper than almost everyone else.
It is an asset that perhaps because it is so available we forget we have it.
We shouldn’t.
In fact the price we pay should lead off every single brochure, pamphlet and letter we send to prospective developers.
A 40 percent saving on electric bills is not a small amount especially for energy intensive high tech industry and unlike every other pie in the sky incentive this one is bought and paid for and managed by people who know what they are doing.
In 1991 then General Secretary of the UN Butros Butros-Ghali complained that no one in western Europe or North America took him seriously because he was a ‘wog’.
Wog in British English to refers to people from the East Indies, India, as from the Middle-East and Mediterranean. Most dictionaries refer to the word as derogatory and offensive.
We think he was wrong, it wasn’t because he was a wog but rather because he was an Egyptian.
A bird’s eye view of the Mediterranean today reveals smoke rising from almost every north African and Asian country.
Welcome to the Arab spring.
Just what is the matter with those people?
Yes we sound racist but can’t those people get their act together?
Forget about democracy and human rights.
There is not a single Arab country that is not either in the middle of a revolution or teetering toward one.
There is something seriously flawed in a culture that cannot produce even one small island of peace and prosperity.
How can anyone in the west take anyone from the Arab world seriously?