Opinion

When we work together, everything is better

SAINTS PERSPECTIVE, SCCC President Brad Bennett

Collaboration. There was a time when collaboration was an unwelcome term that described someone working against the agenda, possibly in cahoots with an enemy in a time of war.

That’s no longer the case. At Seward County Community College, we list collaboration as one of our core values because we are huge fans of what collaboration means in 2025. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, that is: “to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor.” The word itself comes from the Latin Latin collaboratus, meaning to labor together (from Latin com- + laborare to labor). The word was first recorded in 1837, a moment in history that also saw the introduction of the terms “American way,” “bread-and-butter,” and “rebirth.”

Messiah: where He is now

MY PERSPECTIVE, Gary Damron

For several months, we've been looking at Jesus who is best described as God-man, both fully divine and fully human. After Jesus' ascension into heaven, there were three biblically documented appearances to people on earth. One was to Stephen as recorded in Acts 7:55. "Being full of the Holy Spirit, [Stephen] gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God." A second appearance was to Saul of Tarsus, on the road to Damascus, in Acts 9:3-5. And the disciple John recorded in Revelation 1:12-16 that Jesus appeared as a person, but more than revived in flesh, He was spiritual in nature.

What a difference a week makes

GUEST COLUMN, J. Basil Dannebohm

Last week I wrote a commentary entitled, “Grading Elon: Rocketman's realistic report card.” In it, I laid out the numbers indicating DOGE was a complete failure. The piece was met with the usual, highly predictable responses from the far-right: “Fake News,” “Go Elon, MAGA baby!”

The Publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett sent me an email which read: “LOL Nice try dude..MAGA!!”

For the record, I’m 43 years-old – not 23. I’m not exactly a “dude.” I’m also a stranger to this individual, who receives my commentaries via a mailing list; including “LOL” as though the message was a text betwixt longtime drinking buddies is slightly juvenile. But it’s not the first “LOL” I’ve received from this publisher. Earlier this year, he sent me a message that read: “LOL- nice try. Maybe you'd prefer the gender confused fetal murdering Kamala Harris in the Oval? Much more along your lines of Christian teaching I'm sure. Don't forget... a bankrupt America can't tythe. When you're done pouting, you might try helping Make America Great Again.”

We need strong intellectual property rights for a sustainable future

GUEST COLUMN, Frank Tietze, Innovation Engineering professor

A peculiar idea has taken hold in climate policy circles: That intellectual property rights stand in the way of solving the climate crisis. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres recently called for removing "intellectual property constraints" on renewable energy technologies, arguing that they impede the rapid transition we need.

But this overlooks the reality of how these transformative innovations are developed, scaled, and adopted globally.

Do we depend too much on our devices?

LETTER TO THE EDITOR, Reita Isaacs, Liberal

What you wanna bet this little gadget in my hand has already guessed what I’m going to be discussing: Artificial Intelligence, also known as AI for short. Mercy me. Yup, losing my train of thought even before getting started.

My life started a long, long time ago when I can remember helping chip the ice from the old ice box in our kitchen; then when I came home one afternoon, there was an electric refrigerator in it’s place that not only had a light when you opened the door, it had four medal ice cube trays with handles to break them apart. Guess how many times we opened that before “divine intervention” powered by Dad’s hand stopped us.