Information is not knowledge*

We are all led to believe that there is so little time in the world. Even for us today every spare moment is spent working or absorbing information. The work has been well documented. The information on the other hand comes largely through the radio. I manage to read an article in the bath but it’s through what's basically scoured wire services followed by mechanically reproduced audio sound that we gather most of our information. (Certainly today: on a Sunday.) What precisely is the information today? Well, there’s the thorny dispute over the toll of a country’s injured in a war. (It strikes me that anyone who lays themselves open to attack while protecting the interests of their country should feel the country by them.) The question is, are they protecting their country's interests or someone else’s? (I like to think the former.) Some of the other information is less noxious. There’s the one about young people enjoying themselves too much and it all getting out of hand. There’s the possibility of a snap election. (Snap? Is that a house of cards?) How about the human chains of environmental activists? (Daisy chains?) Or the actor leaving his art to a national body. (ART.) Anti-smoking talking flowerbeds? (No, really.) Toxic children’s bracelets in a country’s largest toy shop. (You’re kidding.) I'm not. A bill giving the security services of one major country the power to intercept all telephone calls, internet traffic and emails made by citizens of another: arguably their closest allies. (Not something like this, surely.) Young tombstoners. There's a phrase. (People for kicks throwing themselves off cliffs.) How about the perpetual rise of the yob? (That’s going to run and run.) Or – BIG - the bleak, ferocious, but still winnable war. (It won't go away.) I like the one about the great man of many parts who for over seventy years worked without a smidge of cynicism. Oh. There’s more on the dead princess. Here’s one I like: six hundred naked volunteers on a shrinking glacier. (ART.) Drugs and alcohol abuse in the stately world of opera. (ART?) There’s so much and it’s all coming at you. It’s like racing through a hail of bullets. Don't you think how much better it would be, sometimes, if it was all made up? (ART.)
*Albert Einstein (1879-1955)