 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
The Book of Laurence - 9 -
- 9 -
VI.
Be flexible, shit happens.
12
Listen politely to lots of other
people.
Question your beliefs.
13
What makes you think
you are right all the time? I’m certainly not.
14
Don’t trust
secondary sources, give fair credit, and beware of
PhotoShop.
15
As John Maynard Keynes
16
said
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
VII.
Fellow Jazzoids, be reasonable, none of us is perfect.
Anything we say can be misused.
Take, for example,
Thomas Jefferson, one of my better creations.
17
12
OK I said five Tenets sufficed, but be flexible. You may view the remainder as Larry
101. Your life is the final exam.
13
In 1932, Einstein said "There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be
obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will. Erwin Schrödinger
wrote about his probability interpretation of my quantum mechanics
"I don't like it, and
I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it."
14
See my second Tenet. It should never be forgotten.
15
The recent war in Lebanon gets up my nose. Reuters bought several doctored photos
from Hezbollah Journalists while the BBC uses their numbers of casualties. What ever
happened to fact-checking? Even in the God-business most of us reputable Deities favour
keeping opinion and reporting separate. In all fairness Genghis Kahn was a masterful
media-manipulator, and Adolph Hitler had few peers if any. The “big lie” has more zing
than minor “spin-control”.
3
Maynard Keynes is one of my favourites. Try The Economic Consequences of the Peace but
remember when it was written. I’m not so keen on his admiration of Isaac Newton’s
alchemic writings.
17
Jefferson wrote to Issac McPherson on August 13, 1813:
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the
action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long
as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of
everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. [2] Its peculiar character, too, is that
no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea
from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lites his taper at mine,
receives light without darkening me. [3] That ideas should freely spread from one to another over
the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems
 |