I attended a great meeting today. It was one where they served doughnuts. You will notice that it is doughnuts which is the legitimate spelling. When it is misspelled as donut, it appears that you are going to do something to a nut which does not make a good deal of sense.
When I was a freshman in college, my Dad purchased a combination magazine store and breakfast and lunch grill. He served glazed doughnuts. I ate so many of them that for the next sixty years or so I refused to eat any glazed doughnuts. Our youngest grandson thought that was funny, so I now will eat one, but only if there is no other kind available. I could mention the huge sugared doughnuts that I used to buy at a bakery in Ohio on my way to visit the future Blond in the House. However, that would make me hungry for them!
I do believe that doughnuts can be a force for good. If I were to run for office, I would not run on a “chicken in every pot” as some politicians used to. Instead, my campaign would be a “box of doughnuts in every home.” I bet that I would win in a landslide. I realize that those who would want favorable legislation might try to bribe me with some good cake doughnuts. I would tell them that doughnuts are never used for unsavory purposes. In fact, if I had some foreign dignitaries in my office, I would acquaint them with the best doughnuts which they would love. It would improve international relationships and add strength to our partnerships or even help create new ones. “World Doughnut Day” would become a day of peace and good fellowship!
Even the Russians might knock it off for a day.
Another subject that I learned in my Dad’s business was reading pulp and science fiction. Doc Savage used to take the bad guys he caught and transport them to a care center in upper New York. There they were reprogrammed so to speak until they became good citizens. They were then returned to life in the US where they became useful citizens. (I am certain the Doc used doughnuts in his treatment process.) In any case, it kept the prison costs down as the bad guys were no longer bad and everybody was happy. Too bad that there was not a real Doc Clark Savage around to make the world better.
As for science fiction, my favorite was Isaac Asminov. He wrote “I, Robot” He wrote a series of rules that robots were to abide by. One was that they were not to harm a human. I hope that the AI people who are creating robots today take that into consideration. It would not be well to have a home robot who might one day decide to whack you over the head. On the other hand, there could be a downside to that. For example, a bad guy or two might break into your house and start beating on you. The robot would just stand there not doing anything. The AI folks should at least make it so that you could tell your robot to disarm them or hold them while you called the police.
It is easy to see that life in the future can have many unknown problems. But at least there will still be doughnuts! They still will be – won’t they?
Barry Evans is a columnist for Villages-News.com.