INexact-itude

This year (2012), a few weeks after I’d turned 70 (21 MAY), my daughter Maya (52) sent me a book for Father’s Day (17 JUN): AGELESS MEMORY by Harry Lorayne. Why? I dare not ask.  Memory matters abound nowadays, lack of mastery of which constitute proof of dementia, Alzheimers’, etc. It's as though everyone’s under the microscope for proofs of debility. Why? To select-out the excess population? Probably. Has perfectibility ceded to rabid perfectionism? We now have to know so much more than we used to just to do our daily dozen. Now not fully mastering our increasingly complex living systems automatically chucks you into the trash can (see the computer file-dumping dynamic-image.) 

Today I spoke to a local telephone advice-nurse who didn’t know the difference between a terrorist & someone who terrorizes (terrifies) another. (Homonyms aren't synonyms.)That distinction must surely distort her advice & reports!  She may ‘process’ many advice calls per hour, but how many of them are seriously flawed with such inexactitude & unintended inexactness, which I think of as characteristic of California.

After my 1st few months here in northern California, I wryly reported back to Massachusetts Bay: “Californians seem to have invented inexactitude” (my variant) As a result, I value the minds of fellow NNEastern emigrants over native-born Californians. My advice to fellow NNEasterners:  ”When asking for directions, if you must ask a native-born Californian, try to also ask a non-Californian as well.” Try it. You'll often find it works.