Tears

There’s no making sense of the killing of Bentley Miller. The tragic circumstances surrounding the 4-year-old boy’s death stir our community’s rage. We’re sickened that a guardian entrusted with the child’s care is accused of causing a death the coroner could only describe as horrible.

In grief-stricken times like these, we turn to each other for strength and solace. We look within, find it hard to admit a monster — one or our own — has risen up within our midst and done this atrocity.

We go online and talk about justice. Some angrily demand more than justice — torture, public hangings — an infliction of pain greater than what little Bentley already suffered. It won’t bring him back.

Many of us quietly blame God himself for sitting idle, allowing unconsolable grief like this to happen to an innocent child. For some, the possibility of God no longer exists.

Well, let’s talk; and listen. “Give sorrow words,” William Shakespeare wrote, “the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”

The best talkers among us, our church pastors, have an unenviable task this weekend, standing before the faithful and framing the senseless death of this innocent 4-year-old boy in a message that might shore up our faith. What will they tell us?

Maybe inspiration is nearby. Many already have been to see “The Shack,” a movie currently playing at Regal Moraine Pointe Cinema. It deals specifically with the killing of a child.

We hope Butler’s churches are packed this weekend, and the congregants find a sliver of hope in the midst of their collective grief. Justice will come.

Jeer

More and more, social media is criticized and scrutinized as an algorithm-driven, data-mining ad scheme. Enter the word “blue” on Facebook or a Google search, and you get overwhelmed with offers of antidepressants, baby boy clothing, IBM stock quotes and Miles Davis music. So much for targeted marketing.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. joined a growing number of companies pulling much of their advertising from Google after their ads appeared next to extremist “hate speech” messages on YouTube.

Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006

The moves by such major advertisers amplify a problem for Google, whose chief business officer, Phillip Schindler, issued an apology on the company’s blog on Monday: “We know that this is unacceptable to the advertisers and agencies who put their trust in us.”

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt says YouTube has a responsibility to match ads and content properly. “What we do is, we match ads and the content, but because we source the ads from everywhere, every once in a while somebody gets underneath the algorithm and they put in something that doesn’t match,” Schmidt said on FOX Business Network. “We’ve had to tighten our policies and actually increase our manual review time and so I think we’re going to be OK.”

Good luck with that. People view more than 100 million hours of YouTube video each day. The global titans of business are uneasy.

Cheer

It’s a cheerful description of boom times: “Everybody’s working but the chickens.”

Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate dropped in February for the third straight month, hitting a post-recession low of 5 percent as payrolls climbed to a record high.

Following a five-year revision to employment data, Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate issued Friday by the state Department of Labor and Industry is the lowest since 2008. It’s down two-tenths of a percentage point from January.

A survey of employers found that seasonally adjusted nonfarm payrolls rose by 12,500 in February to a record high above 5.9 million.

A household survey found that the civilian labor force shrank by 6,000 in February. Employment rose by 7,000 to a record high above 6.1 million while unemployment dropped by 12,000 to 321,000, the lowest since 2008.