How do I go nuts? Let me count the ways.
1. Reading about plagiarists, most recently, the German Minister of Defense whose Ph.D. thesis he apparently plagiarized. This has hurt his credibility (yes!) which, in turn, may cost him the Chancellorship when Angela Merkel steps down, or so the NYT reports (3/2/11). He joins other unworthies who cannot admit with an attribution that they built on the work of others and who do not understand how readily they will be found out. I don’t know which makes the plagiarist and his aiders and abettors the bigger dummies. He might want to read Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation (which I have just started and, so far, love) and figure out how to have an idea he might legitimately call his own.
2. Hearing Michele Bachmann and “facts” in the same sentence, or maybe just hearing Michele Bachmann. A political fact-rating blog noted (on early morning MPR in late January) that of 13 facts she reported, 7 were false and 6 were ridiculously false, or vice versa or maybe they were absurdly false. Double aarrgghh!! A re-look at Farhad Manjoo’s True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post Fact Society (which I thoroughly recommend) could not right her wrongs, but his explanations helped the blood pressure, especially the chapter on questionable expertise. Down with ninnyness.
Rant, rant.
Breezes blow, ideas flow, the tide is out but will be in. All's well.
But then I find a nifty author with whom to share a cup of coffee and the world tilts back to tolerable, even pleasant and worthwhile. Currently I am enjoying every bit of Maira Kalman’s adventures with democracy and how it works in her NYT-blog-turned book, And the Pursuit of Happiness. With her, I have ideas. When I have figured it out, I will let you know how she fits into Steven Johnson’s good idea generators.
I, with other seniors, am learning the ropes in my new winter digs. Here someone walks off with the wrong walker instead of the wrong jacket. And plans to map the best cinnamon roll locations shift to oatmeal sites. I don’t believe our silverware is dulled, but it would explain why I have trouble piercing a grape with a fork. Morning coffee on the patio starts with the first tulip, which I hope really means with the first blossom. I am searching for a potted pasque flower or wild gentian to sneak beneath the leafless bush when the walk is bare and declare the patio coffee-ready. Hurry up, spring. If the ground weren’t so well and truly frozen, I would try to plant a magnolia bush, upon which the blossoms come before the leaves.
About ten weeks and counting.