Learning

You've heard this before: Don't believe everything you read. It is especially true now. Every entity - whether the news media or commercial ventures - wants you to read their stuff so that they can sell ads. Me too. In the process of doing so, they sensationalize everything as much as possible. They also want to be the first out there with whatever news there is to report; therefore, they cut corners and their stories are not always factual. In fact, the "facts" can be outright fabrications. The New York Times likes doing that a lot. Take every little morsel with a grain of salt. Don't believe everything you hear either. 

Ok it is 2012

There is something wrong with our radio station tonight - it keeps repeating universal time every ten seconds. The music from New York is not there anymore. Someone must have hacked the automatic pilot. Happy 2012.

The Truth

Oscar Wilde said: "If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all." If you think about it, this applies to ALL art. That's why dissonant, incoherent contemporary music has failed so dramatically and resoundingly. Nobody is interested in listening to it a second time. Mascagni's opera, Cavalleria Rusticana, has been performed over 44,000 times since it was composed in the late 1800s - about 350 times per year. By comparison, the modern opera, Nixon in China, has perhaps been produced 10 times and performed 50 times since it premiered in 1987 in Houston, an average of 2 times per year. It may as well be dead.

The Truth

So, you feel disappointed after trying to accomplish something and it just does not work out no matter how hard you try? Thomas Edison tried hundreds of combinations before he hit upon a substance that would work as a good, effective filament for his light bulb. Winston Churchill walked for days through the jungle in an effort to get to safety. George Washington fought desperately at Valley Forge after the odds seemed completely against him and his little army. And so it goes. Perhaps the difference between great men and ordinary ones is the simple fact that they do not give up and we do. If you keep going, what have you got to lose? If you keep going, you just might accomplish something extraordinary.

The Truth

There was a story on NPR this morning about the low birth rates in developed countries. The story included some history about how birth rates were high when the nations (the human race) thought they could be doomed to extinction unless they seriously and assiduously multiplied and multiplied some more. Now that the threat of extinction seems to have disappeared, the focus on reproduction - at least in the Western world and Russia - has been lost. The truth is that we are now closer to becoming extinct than ever before. The nuclear arsenals stockpiled here and there are more than enough to destroy life on the earth 100 times over - except, perhaps, cockroaches. World leaders know this well but are doing their best to keep the lid on.

The Truth

The truth is that if government ever wanted to put a stop to crime, they could do it simply by outlawing cash transactions. That way, everything you did would be known to them. That's the truth. Who would be the first to say "you can't do that.?