State of the onion; taking a deuce

Debbie downer here, trying to bring a little optimism today. I just got out of a two hour conference call followed by a three hour meeting, so.. Acting out some optimism might be a stretch. Putzing around the house last night, I was thinking about what I wrote yesterday. And also thinking "Man are we fucked." And I still feel that way. At the same time, I couldn't help but think that there must be some things that have improved from our parent's generation to ours.

So, loosely defining these things as things that have happened since about 1955, I tried to come up with a list. It's not pretty, but hopefully it will at least in some ways balance my pessimism from yesterday.

• Medical Care has improved. I'm not talking about the cost of healthcare, or insurance, or even necessarily the availability. Nope. Those things have not, in my mind at least, improved. No, I'm talking about straightforward cures of diseases. At least in the US. If you live in Africa or parts of Asia, sorry, you're still fucked.
• Liz, if you know otherwise, don't tell me. I'm grasping at straws here.
• Access to information has improved. With the coming of the internet, anyone with access to a computer can get access to any information you could possibly desire. (Unless, of course, you live in China. Sorry, no free speech for you.) Of course, there is an equal amount of false information out there, and most people have a hard time telling the difference.
• Porn. This is one thing that has indusputibly improved. One thing the dawn of the internet has brought us is free access to plenty of smut. Even in Asia.
  
• More sports on TV. When our parents were our age, there was no ESPN, no NESN. There was one game on a week. Otherwise, you listened to the radio.
  
• Speaking of TV, our parents generation has brought us cable tv. Thanks to this wonderful invention, I can know see the truth being distorted on 15 different channels!

I'm really stretching it here... Thinking.... Thinking...

Seriously, there must be other things that have improved in the last 50 years, right? I mean, smut, sports and the world wide web are great and all, but as landmark achievements for a generation, I'm not so sure they're going to stand the test of time.

So much for optimism. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.