The reading list
“We human beings are seekers. We seek love, wealth, security, power, happiness and recognition. We also seek knowledge. Aristotle said, 'All people by nature desire to know.' The desire to know can be very ambitious, like that of the scientists who sought to solve the structure of the DNA molecule, or rather modest. It can be enormously satisfying to know and understand things. What does it take to have intellectual success — to come to know and understand something challenging? Well, you need some raw intelligence and memory, and you need to work hard and persevere when it doesn't come easily. You'll be better off if you're surrounded by learned people and have enough leisure and resources to support your inquiries.
“However, you will also need to BE a certain kind of person. To achieve significant and challenging knowledge, you'll need some virtues. One of those virtues is intellectual humility. Of course, several other virtues are needed for optimum performance as well. I mentioned persevering, and that's of course the behavioral output of the virtue of perseverance; I mentioned working hard, and the corresponding virtue is diligence. The persevering and the diligent will have more success in knowing than the impatient and the lazy.
"While a love of knowledge, courage, open-mindedness and intellectual fairness or charity are also necessary for optimal performance, the virtue I want to discuss here is intellectual humility. What is it to be intellectually humble?”
From “What Is It to be Intellectually Humble?” at bigquestionsonline.com
A quiz
Within .5 million, what's the estimated population of the United States (as of July 4)?
Wisdom of the ages
“Greatness is not measured by what a man or woman accomplishes, but by the opposition he or she has overcome to reach his goals.” — Dorothy Height
Current wisdom
“The majority of the court said it's a tax and therefore it is a tax. They have spoken. There's no way around that. You can try and say you wish they had decided a different way but they didn't. They concluded it was a tax.” — Presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, saying Obamacare's requirement that all Americans buy health insurance amounts to a tax; but he contended that a similar initiative he started in Massachusetts was a penalty, not a tax.
Quiz answer
313.9 million.
Snob words
surfeit (SUR-fit), n. – excess; an excessive amount, as in: “The editorial writer quickly decided to leave the council meeting that had been overcome with a surfeit of silliness.” From the Latin roots sur, “over,” and facere, “to do.”
Today in history
On this date in 1949, “Dragnet” premiered on NBC radio (it was a TV series starting in 1951 and again in 1967) – “Just the facts, Ma'am.”
Now you know
Wyoming is the deadliest state for drinking and driving, with just over 13 drunken-driving fatalities for every 100,000 people each year, according to RandomHistory.com New York experiences the least amount of drunken-driving fatalities, with only 2.06 per 100,000 residents.
