Super bowl: sunday, february 2
olympics: july 23-august 8
nba finals: june 4-june21
a billion people, two-thirds of them women, will enter the 21st century unable to read a book or write their names,” warns UNICEF in a new report, “The State of the World’s Children 1999.”
UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, points out that the illiterate “live in more desperate poverty and poorer health” than those who can read and write. The shocking number — 1 billion people illiterate — generated frightening headlines in major newspapers.
Poverty in the poorest countries is indeed something that ought to concern all of us, especially in a season when we pause to remember the less fortunate. But as usual, there’s more to this striking statistic than UNICEF tells us. Consider three points.
The Good News. Bad news sells, news watchers tell us. And 1 billion people unable to read and write — about 16 percent of world population — is certainly bad news. But let’s deconstruct the news.
First, UNICEF’s actual number is 855 million, a figure that did not appear in major newspapers. That’s still a large number, but it is 15 percent less than 1 billion.
Answer:
The word patriot signifies a person who loves his or her country and is ready to boldly support and defend it. That meaning has endured since the word's arrival in English in the 16th century, but it has not marched through the years unchallenged.
Ultimately derived from Greek patrios, meaning "of one’s father," patriot entered English via French patriote—meaning "fellow countryman" or "compatriot"—during a time of political unrest in western Europe that was characterized by infighting among fellow countrymen—especially among those of the Protestant and Catholic faiths. For much of the 17th century, words like good were attached to patriot to distinguish patriots who shared both a love of country and a common allegiance from those having opposing beliefs and loyalties: to be deemed a "good patriot" was to be a lover of country who agreed on political and/or religious matters with whoever was doing the deeming.
