Are These the Sand Times?

Times are so difficult and complicated these days that even the best of news seems framed in a context of negativity ... even if you have to reach a bit to fit the negative around the positive.

For example, in a report on how British researchers may have discovered that somewhere in a father's gene is the determiner of a baby's sex is buried that news that more boys than girls are generally born, but that more die sooner in childhood as well as a hint that dad's controlling the sex of the kids was found by studying how many men died during World War II. So, the news of life has to be told within a box of death.

Not that you actually need positive to find some negative news. Bad news can travel on its own. For one, there is the report of the Punjabi dad who realizes to his shame that his son was one of the Mumbai terrorists. Another: the mind nearly boggles at the tale of a father whose 15-year-old goth daughter was part of a blood-sucking posse arranged for someone to stab him to death in a back alley where he kept his car parked ... although his 20-year-old son always loved him according to his MySpace page.

With news all around like this, is it time for dads to go ostrich?