It seems Americans, at least American businesses, have a love affair with bags. Grocery, hardware and department stores bag everything, even single items that already come in a bag.

I try to remember to bring my canvas bags into the store, but even that doesn’t always work. The clerks will put an item in a paper bag and place that in my bag.

One has to be continually watchful. I was distracted the other day when I went to the store for a bottle of wine. Suddenly I found the bottle in a paper bag, within a plastic bag. I usually just grab the bottle by the neck and carry it to the car.

Things often come in containers, dress shirts are in plastic, but that doesn’t stop the clerk from also bagging it. I buy whole bean coffee which is poured into a paper bag. Then I have a tug or war with the barista to keep her from putting that in another bag.

Glass beverage bottles are put in paper bags before being added to the main bag, assuming that a thin piece of paper will keep thick glass bottles from breaking.

If it’s convenience they are after, why do stores place only a few items in each bag, making it necessary to carry many bags to the car?

Compared to the rest of the world, America is in the bag. Perhaps it time we sobered up.

An old friend e-mails me with warnings about every conspiracy theory on the blogosphere. He also consults astrology and believes all of Nostradamus’ predictions. I’ve learned that his son is a fundamentalist who thinks that the theory of evolution is totally false and that the world is a few thousand years old.

Recently people paid $60 to attend a UFO conference in San Jose to listen to exciting lectures on alien visitors, the earth being hollow, humans being living on earth for hundreds of millions of years, a Bigfoot/UFO Connection, civilization on the dark side of the moon, and surgeries for removal of alien implants. They even have a medical doctor who wrote a book called Hidden Truth – Forbidden Knowledge. If it’s hidden and forbidden, why is it a best seller?

After every earthquake or hurricane, someone says it’s divine punishment for something or other, even though we have learned the causes of these events.

Why do people use pretzel logic to create difficult explanations for things that can be explained simply? Why, when thousands of geologists agree on the inner earth, do some people believe the one who says it might be hollow?

I wonder if we are hard wired for superstition. Perhaps ancient sages and cryptic new age gurus are more fun to read than hard nosed realists. Maybe some folks just like being among the in crowd that is privy to these hidden truths and forbidden knowledge.

Each Spring schools go into testing mode. Because of No Child Left Behind, schools basically drop everything and test for three weeks.

Why? To make students better educated? Not really. It’s the hoops we jump through to get needed money.

Sure testing is necessary. When facts or concepts are taught, a test or quiz quickly determines if the class “got it.” If not, teach it again. That is not what this testing is all about. These standardized tests are supposed to measure mastery of the basics: reading, writing, and math. That’s what they test, so that’s what we teach. Well, almost.

Actuallly, they test a narrow range of reading, writing, and math skills. We know what the tests measure, so we teach to the tests, spending a lot of time drilling on these few concepts and weeks testing them. How do we have time to really educate these students? We don’t.

Basic skills are part of education, but so is understanding our world, critical thinking, applied knowledge, technology, art, music, literature, and writing—not just formula essays, but expressive, creative writing.

This new accountability is going to turn out poorly educated drones in a world where drone work is outsourced to third world countries. They will end up getting their education from TV, meaning their ideas will lack depth and subtlety. We’ll lose our ability to be intellectual, technological, and artistic leaders in a world that will quickly pass us by.