Things I have worked out to be true and important

In the early part of my 59th year on earth, here are some of the things I have worked out to be true and also important, not in any order -

• The internet is both a good and bad thing (Neils Bohr's Complementarity Principle at work)

• The best people work because they gain deep satisfaction for what they do, not because of what they are paid. Performance-based remuneration is nonsense

• There is very little point in drinking bad wine

• Electric toothbrushes are a good idea

• You don't have to beat your Black Dog; instead just keep wrestling it to a draw

• Don't work in an Australian university, as it is very likely to be bad for your mental health

• Abbott and Costello, the 3 Stooges, and Fawlty Towers will all live on forever as comedic genius

• JFK was right when reading Ted Sorensen's words in his late-1963 speech at the American University:

         'In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we inhabit this small planet, we       breathe the same air, we cherish our children's future, and we are mortal.' 

• There are 2 types of people - quants and poets. Try to be both

• Climate change is real, Always has been and always will be. The issue is about building human resilience to it, not babbling on about whether it is a great moral issue or not. 

• I have never seen a thin kookaburra on the Fleurieu Peninsula

• If there is a God, there is no point praying to it. If there is or isn't a God, that's OK

• Generation Y will generally do better than Generation X

• Islam urgently needs its own form of the Reformation; and to somehow create equality between men and women

• Tarzan (JW version) lives on his escarpement, will do so forever, and is the ultimate alpha male

• We should be very grateful for the ancient Greeks and Romans for the foundations and principles of democracy, duty, science, art etc