Hav­ing recent­ly once again cheat­ed the Bib­li­cal wis­dom “The days of our years are three­score years and ten…”, I have found myself won­der­ing why it is that the wis­dom that is sup­posed to come with age con­tin­ues to be over­tak­en by an increas­ing num­ber of things that bemuse, amuse, sad­den and often as not, irri­tate me. 

Maybe it’s because jour­nal­ists tend to be peo­ple who know a lit­tle about a lot of things but not a lot about any one thing, that I’ll nev­er achieve the Socrat­ic def­i­n­i­tion: “The only true wis­dom is in know­ing you know nothing.”
But then, the great Greek philoso­pher nev­er had to con­sid­er things like the war in Gaza.
A Hamas pres­ence among civil­ians in one of the most over­pop­u­lat­ed enclosed pieces of land in the world earns them the denun­ci­a­tion of using civil­ians as human shields, which is true. So when a Wash­ing­ton Post col­umn on the war not­ed that “Most of the inter­views took place at the mil­i­tary com­pound known as “the Kirya,” in cen­tral Tel Aviv, where young sol­diers and reservists stream through the gate day and night”, would it have been jus­ti­fied in say­ing  the Israeli Defence Force was emu­lat­ing Hamas?
If a Hamas rock­et were to hit the com­pound, I won­der if the inevitable casu­al­ties among pass­ing civil­ians would be described as “col­lat­er­al dam­age” or “ter­ror­ist vic­tims”. How would the com­pound have been described if the inter­views had been with Hamas commanders?
I’m not defend­ing either Hamas or the Israeli Defence Force. I’m sim­ply try­ing to fig­ure out the wis­dom of when stan­dards become dou­ble standards.
The news busi­ness, where I toiled for what at this point is three quar­ters of my life, which of itself is now more than three quar­ters of a cen­tu­ry, seems to rely as much if not more on pun­dits as it does on reporters.
The per­ceived wis­dom that dri­ves the prac­tice is summed up by my long-time col­league (and Full Dis­clo­sure loy­al “perch” fol­low­er”) Lar­ry Doyle:
“Pun­dits are picked, or should I say “cher­ry-picked”, not so much for their sub­ject knowl­edge but for their appear­ance and long-wind­ed­ness. Ever see an Addams Fam­i­ly pun­dit on your TV? Or hear one short of breath? In a world of peo­ple with some REAL exper­tise, why do the same pun­dits make repeat­ed appearances?…because they fit the require­ments of the broad­cast­er or pub­lish­er. Print media is a lot bet­ter at pre­sent­ing oppos­ing pun­dit­ry. TV sticks to the script. Have you ever heard a pun­dit give a coher­ent answer to an uncom­fort­able direct ques­tion?. Have you ever found pun­dit­ry with­out prej­u­dice? It’s as like­ly as a menu fea­tur­ing bangers with­out mash.”
As a cer­ti­fied old­er per­son I take umbrage at the con­ceit of the pun­dits, thumb suck­ers and blovi­a­tors of the Amer­i­can media who rate an occa­sion­al oral glitch or gaffe by Pres­i­dent Joe Biden as more wor­thy of their crit­i­cal atten­tion and appro­ba­tion than an hour’s worth of ungram­mat­i­cal self-pro­mo­tion and vul­gar vit­ri­ol from Don­ald Trump.
Dit­to when Biden’s age is deemed to mat­ter more than the prospect of his suc­ces­sor being a ser­i­al liar with dem­a­gog­ic aspirations.

                            IDIOTIC SAVANTS

Not being of the tech­nol­o­gy gen­er­a­tion, I’m baf­fled by AI.  Depend­ing on one’s lev­el of gulli­bil­i­ty or para­noia, it’s either going take over the world, or be the answer to everything.
The recent per­for­mance at Chat­G­PT made it anoth­er syn­onym for farce. How else to explain that the won­der tool didn’t fig­ure out in advance that fir­ing the CEO would out­rage his staff to the point where he’d be rein­stat­ed before a week was out?
The wis­dom of whether not we can trust AI’s “gurus”  is best summed up by the writer and sci­en­tist Isaac Asi­mov, who used the “Three Laws of Robot­ics” to explore the unin­tend­ed con­se­quences of tech­nol­o­gy, and how human­i­ty could over­come them: “The sad­dest aspect of life right now is that sci­ence gath­ers knowl­edge faster than soci­ety gath­ers wisdom.”
Fur­ther proof is the num­ber of politi­cians who com­bine unwill­ing­ness to find and nav­i­gate the mid­dle ground, with social media posts, speech­es and ad lib remarks that are a col­lec­tion of words and bare­ly formed dis­con­nect­ed thoughts in search of an idea and a coher­ent sen­tence, to reach their full poten­tial on the  pin­na­cle of  medi­oc­rity and then get re-elected.
It’s as big a mys­tery to me as why the last week on my beloved lake, wind and waves required mul­ti- lay­ers of cold weath­er gear for paddling…and the day the kayaks were stowed and the cot­tage was being shut­tered up for the winter…the morn­ing broke like this…

Maybe it’s life’s way of telling me to make an effort to cheat the num­bers again next year.

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