I think I will no longer read about the future. Doing so irritates the bowel.
I should not read the newspaper since, while it is mostly about what happened yesterday, some of what happened yesterday may have implications for the future. So I should not pay any attention to it.
Of the newspaper Henry David Thoreau wrote:
Do not read the newspapers.
And:
If words are invented to conceal thought, I think that newspapers are a great improvement on a bad invention.
And:
Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and, through her, God.
He also said newspapers are just gossip; but HDT was in not into things so transparently transcient. He inquired into eternity.
I wonder what he would think of the news today.
The day I read about Peak Oil Production, I went online to check my email, and the first thing on the Yahoo New’s Story List was “Brittany’s Big Day!” I did not click on “Brittany’s Big Day.” But I assumed the Brittany to which reference was being made was Brittany Spears (is that her name). Later that day I asked my students what Brittany’s big day had been about. They said she had to go to court in a fight for the custody of her child.
Well, I suppose that was a big day for Brittany. But honestly, I can’t see why it would be news for anybody but Brittany.
To see if Brittany’s court case had some implications perhaps for constitutional law, or something important that I was missing, I went back to my Yahoo Page, but the link to “Brittany’s Big Day” was no longer there. I guess her Big Day was over.
At least with the newspaper, the news happened only daily.
Now it changes by the hour and the minute.
