I think that I shall never see

Whatever happened to the paperless society?

Once upon a time I remember reading that with computers we'd eventually find we didn't need paper.

So why am I still dumping loads of paper in the local recycling dumpster?

Obviously we still have newspapers despite predictions that the 'Net would cause their demise. They may go the way of the dinosaur, but not for a while.

I left newspapers to become a paralegal and discovered a whole new profession dedicated to the construction of trees.

Our office does title opinions for the natural gas industry.

On a frequent basis, we receive boxes full of materials we have to review to trace the chain of title for properties the gas companies intend to drill on.

The boxes contain notebooks full of paper, sometimes of a couple of thousand pages.

Our lawyers will review those thousands of pages and then produce opinions, which will be printed out for other lawyers and the paralegals to review.

More printouts will follow, and in the end, even a simple opinion can consume a ream of paper.

More complicated opinions consume cases of reams of paper.

It's not like we don't have computers and sophisticated word processing programs that could eliminate the need for paper. Those tools just make it easier for us to use up paper.

According to Conservatree -- whoever they are -- one ream of paper only requires 6 percent of a tree. I assume that's a fairly large tree.

I've not paid close attention, but it may take us all of a week to use a whole tree.

That would mean just 52 trees a year. Doesn't seem too bad. Maybe twice that much if you include the paper the companies sent to us.

But how many other firms are consuming that much paper, or more?

This is not an environmental rant. I just can't figure out why we continue to do something we don't have to do.

This trend isn't likely to end any time soon, either. Most of our lawyers are young, and we're teaching them that this is the way to do things.

They're the computer savvy generation who should be making the change, but I don't think I'll ever see it.

Drat. The printer's out of paper again.

Genesis redux

A friend from church regularly sends me e-mails that have been forwarded to her and asks me for my comments.

Given the makeup of our church, it is not surprising that the e-mails are almost universally anti-Obama, though occasionally Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and illegal immigrants make an appearance, all always in a negative light.

The most recent e-mail amazed and amused me greatly.

It purported to be a sermon that had been preached at a predominantly black Virginia church and used Genesis 47 as its text.

I immediately had a number of questions. Who preached the sermon? What town in Virginia? What church? When exactly was this preached?

Now, when you're trying to sell a bogus e-mail you do one of two things. You include enough details to make it seem plausible, or you don't include any details, which makes it virtually impossible to track down.

In either case, the author trusts that readers won't bother to check.

This e-mail's author was obviously hoping to gain the sympathy of the conservative church-going crowd, which for some reason I've yet to figure out has decided that Obama isn't just wrong, but evil and bent on the destruction of all things good, beautiful and American in life.

I guess the author, I'm going to say "he," figured he could get away with a little creative exegesis as well.

I'm pretty sure he's not actually a preacher because it's way too short for 99.44 percent of the preachers I know.

In his version of the end of Genesis, Pharoah has taken advantage of a famine to nationalize the grain supply in Egypt and suck his subjects into slavery.

Obama, our exegete proclaims, is following the path of the Pharoah.

Only one problem, though. In the Genesis story, it's the hero, Joseph, who comes up with the idea of buying up all the grain, and when people bargain with someone to buy that grain during the famine, they bargain with Joseph, not Pharoah.

Now one of two things has to follow from that. Either Obama is like Joseph and therefore a hero, or Joseph is the bad guy in the story.

Somehow I doubt our biblical "scholar" would be willing to concede either point.

That church people would be fooled by such an e-mail tells me the complaints about biblical illiteracy are valid, and that their distaste for the president so distorts their thinking that they can't recognize nonsense when they see it.

Either way, or both ways, it's a sad commentary on the state of the church.