Knowledge, Wisdom & Curiosity
If you are lonely when you are alone, then you’re in bad company.” – Jean Paul Sartre On one of my pediatric training rotations, I became aware that the two biggest readers on the ward, and the two brightest kids – by far – were both cystic fibrosis patients. CF is a horrible disease, affecting … [Read more…]
Say you were buying a car, and the used-car salesman told you that you could get a car with an accelerator, or brakes, but not both. Then he enthusiastically explained that really, you only need one or the other. I think most of us would opt for the bus. The word ‘conserve’ means to keep, … [Read more…]
I remember overhearing a man talking about how hard he was working to ensure that his lawn was nothing but uniformly green St. Augustine grass, thick, neat edgings, and without crab or monkey grass.
To my mind, yards like that look a bit sterile.
The political right has become strongly identified with a vocal Christian base. The left is likewise identified with a strong secular/humanist element. Despite such disparate starting points, both of these approaches agree that love and service of humanity are among their loftiest goals. Which is pretty funny, because they absolutely loathe one another. And neither … [Read more…]
The Scariest Show on TV proves we remember little of our schooling; but as schools demand more, the students hate it more, and they remember less & less. Beating Children Some years ago I saw a t-shirt that read, “The beatings will continue until morale improves.” This applies to all sorts of bureaucracies, but particularly … [Read more…]
Professional arrogance is dangerous: We ignore the knowledge and wisdom of common people at our own risk.
If you have been reading here, you are probably aware that I am a physician. Which is interesting, because my wife is largely anti-medicine, or at least resistant to medical approaches. She belongs to some on-line groups that look at alternative medicine, and who emphasize the importance of a healthy diet. We get along fine. … [Read more…]
My wife is a few years younger than I am, and I think when I met her she was a bit impressed with me. She actually thought that I knew stuff, maybe I even had some wisdom. She quickly disabused herself of that opinion, of course. Familiarity, contempt, you know the routine. But it got … [Read more…]
I remember a friend of mine who had earned his PhD at the University of California once saying that he thought Lafayette was more tolerant than Berkeley. That seemed unlikely to me, so I asked a mutual friend, another scholar who read constantly about politics and social issues, and who also traveled widely. “Certainly,” she … [Read more…]
For many years, I tried to identify the key differences between liberals and conservatives, the functional definitions, beyond the hot-button issues. I have not completely given up on that, but I have decided that the division between left and right is secondary, that there are more important considerations. To start, one of the things I … [Read more…]