The Daily Future

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.