Yes. Where, you may ask? We'll take a look.



But to infuse the proceedings with appropriate levity, let's first present NewsLaugh's Ten Slams For New Heights In Underachievement.

Then we'll turn to those gifted and resilient human beings who refuse to partake in the worldwide slide toward the moronic and, instead, valorously persist in their commendable quest for overachievement.

Here are Ten Slams For New Heights In Underachievement

1. The insurgents in Iraq, for explosively undermining the peaceful and progressive rebuilding of their own country, along with terrorists everywhere, for cloaking murder with religious-speak apparently without realizing that their verbal yip “God is great” and operational guideline “Life is cheap” are at idiotic odds with each other, since, if God is great, He'd only make great things, just alike a great dumbbell maker would only make great dumbbells.

2. The Taliban in Afghanistan, for managing to preserve themselves from any notion of truly religious behavior, which must, for all God's chillin, include effusive mutual consideration, not to mention the same for one's perhaps turban-tossing self, as well as Islamic militants of similar ilk wherever they so mercilessly inflict their airborne medievalism.

3. The Palestinians who keep firing rockets at Israel, which are actually metaphorical rockets they're firing at their woeful selves.

4. The Iranian “mullahtocracy” for alarming the world and any sane member of their own society by the senseless and impossible pursuit of nuclear hegemony in the region and threats to civilized folks with far more weaponry.

5. The warring factions in Somalia and Darfur for managing to starve, rape, and kill off tens of thousands of their own men, women, and children, along with the equally insightful bombers in Bali who apparently think blowing up innocent people is the way to have their God reach down and drag them to paradise by their religiously motivated beards.

6. All governments who shrug their shoulders at the human role in making the globe too toasty for the survival of the Dairy Queen and other aspects of human life that require cooler temps to continue.

7. People on the home front who can't seem to restrain themselves from killing members of their own families, not to mention other innocents who happen to get in the way of their illicit intentions, and the occasional person who still seems to find it necessary to eat a fellow human being.

8. Men who insist on kidnapping and sexually molesting women, whether age 5, 25, or 95.

9. Corporate execs who can't seem to keep their fingers out of the till or otherwise take the companies they've been trusted to conduct will skill for a mighty big spill.

10. Young people who haven't got enough of a notion of their own self-worth and the worth of other people, including their distressed parents, to lay off of all forms of destructive behavior and tune into the still faint bleeping of their own best potential.

Now, with a spectacular increment in our approval rating, as well our joy, let's turn to our countervailing consolation and praiseworthy hopes: the gifted and resilient people who continue to aim for the heights of human achievement, despite the pervasive idiocy that encroaches on their persistent positive bents.

1. Medical researchers who carry on with their life-enhancing quest for drugs that will cure cancer, treat AIDS, depopulate mosquitoes, and address other amenable causes of human misery.

2. Tech wizards, who wake up each day bright-eyed in their goal of advancing the revolution in communication, mechanical medicine, and all other promising fields of extrapolation.

3. Politicos and execs who are worthy of the trust that leadership entails and distinguish themselves in the service of its inspiriting call.

4. People who really do believe in freedom and democracy, which, inconveniently for many, includes the wisdom to abstain from trying to make everybody march in lockstep with their own less than universally inviting enthusiasms.

5. Artists and academics who understand that a free mind can only cavort on a stage supported by a free economy, wooly wild and discomfiting that many of its aspects may be.

5. NASA, for continuing to believe in the benefits of space exploration, even in the face of so many short-sighted cutbacks that the space age is beginning to feel like a dream of a more farseeing age.

7. All teachers who care, except those who can't seem to resist sexually molesting the student body.

8. Smart people everywhere, including Bill, Melinda, and Warren for philanthropy that proves Santa Claus doesn't always dress in red and say, “Ho, ho, ho!”

9. Nice people anywhere, no matter how smart, dumb, educated or ignorant they are.

10. Everybody who appreciates the finally incomprehensible gift of life and knows that doing the best we can with it is the surest way to distinguish our own lives and express reverence for whatever gifted it.

May the first ten winners read about the second ten and decide to join them. Billions would cheer. And really soon would be a real boon.