On Cultivated Ignorance
When I was 15 I decided life was too short to follow both basketball and hockey. (And I never understood what Icing the puck meant anyway.) That was the start of a life-long devotion to ignoring many of the thinkgs people today care about. I ignore much of the news everyday, starting with the sports pages–except for the NBA–then the gossip page (also known as arts and culture), then the financial pages, and even much of the political pages. On philosophy and politics, I read books and academic journals and journals of opinion and specialized reports. I read enough of the daily press to do my work and to follow the couple of sports I really enjoy, especially basketball. Even there, I pay a lot more attention to specialized on-line sports journals than the daily press. (Sports writers in the daily press are the worst of journalists, imo.) I pay… Continue reading