Shorts

• Your eighteen year old son or daughter tells you that they would like to go off and find themselves for an extended period, just to read and play and travel, and to experience the world and its wonders. After which, they'll settle down and get a job. They have figured that this will only cost $5,000 a month for, say, four years, just to pick a round number. $240,000. What would you say to that? Well, we can't print that here, but we get your point. And yet, we encourage the same young ones to scratch and claw and fight and score goals and ace tests just so they can find a place near a gritty old industrial town, high on a freezing cold hill to pretty much do the same thing for the same money. Strange.
• Who are the loudest people in the world? Librarians. They think nothing of speaking in loud voices from their perches at the Reference Desk on the phone and in person, while expecting others around them to shhhhuussshhh! If you ask them to lower their voices, they become highly insulted and might get security to escort you outside as a trouble-maker. Weird.
• We like mottos. In God We Trust. The one for our age might be: Maximize pleasure and avoid pain! True.
• We are quick to advise friends and family when we think they are developing unhealthy relationships with other people. But, how do we look at their unhealthy relationships with machines? Especially ones that talk back! Siri-ously.
• The more complex the world becomes, the more we try to simplify it. We have been doing this since someone came up with the term "sunrise,"which is a huge oversimplification if not a downright lie. Planets, stars, billions and billions of things are careening around faster that Lady GA-Ga can make a wardrobe change. Sunrise. We want to wrap up the complex and put it in one small package, a single device. Like a phone, which is really a computer, camera, encyclopedia, library, movie theatre, TV, bank, mall, cooking school, college. Sunset.

Having a sense of humor helps