April 1, 2019
Dearest Readers,
Welcome to today’s column. Today the AMC Gremlin and Apple, Inc highlight On This Date, while the Turtles and Aretha are at The Top of the Charts, and fooling ourselves is the subject of Philosophy 101.
Enjoy, and many thanks for reading,
xoxoxo,
Kaitlyn
On This Date:
In 1974 – The AMC Gremlin is introduced in America. One of the ugliest cars in human history, the Gremlin was designed to compete with other economy car legends such as the Chevy Vega and the Ford Pinto. Appropriately, the first designs of the Gremlin by wizards at American Motors were drawn in an airplane on an airsickness bag. The Gremlin ceased production after the 1978 model year.
In 1976 – Apple, Inc. is founded in Los Altos, California by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne. Twelve days later Wayne sold his share in the new company back to Wozniak and Jobs for $800 and later accepted $1,500 against future claims, a total of about $9,500 in today’s money. Its first product was the Apple I computer and the Apple II would be introduced the following summer.
Top of the Charts
#1 songs on this date in 1967:
Hot 100 – Happy Together…The Turtles (2nd of three weeks)
Soul Chart – I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)…Aretha Franklin (2nd of seven weeks)
Country Chart – Walk Through This World With Me…George Jones (1st of two weeks)
UK Singles Chart – Release Me…Englebert Humperdinck (5th of six weeks)
Album Chart – More of the Monkees…The Monkees (8th of 18 weeks)
– Chart data courtesy of Billboard (US) and Official Charts Company (UK).
Numbers Racket
10,691: the continuous number of days the US has been at war.
22.171: the number of dollars, in trillions, of America’s national debt. – Source: usdebtclock.org
590: number of days until Election Day 2020.
Philosophy 101
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
Richard P Feynman
Our mind is at the same time our most useful and dangerous tool. Take, for example, the aphorism everyone can do something well. We preach this regularly in this feature and it is one of the earliest lessons we can remember learning. Though true, it’s a double-edged sword, carrying both good news and bad news.
The good news is some of us believe this and once we do, we are on our way to getting the most out the talents we were issued birth.
The bad news is some of us believe this and we delude ourselves into believing we are good at things we really aren’t very good at.
This feature is a good example of both. You’re reading this because we have a knack for writing and are vain enough to think others will like it. On the other hand, we are delusional enough to think everything we write is the very best human letters has to offer, though it should be noted that while this may not be true, a little ego usually attends all successful ventures.
The biggest way some of us delude ourselves is that we are making the most of our time on this planet. It’s easy to fool ourselves with the procession of aimless days, days full of the distractions that nudge us off our path. In fact, this nudging is so gradual we may not even be aware it is happening: a day or two off our path and the next thing anyone knows we’ve been off our path for weeks, months, years, the rest of our lives. When our time comes to die we will be looking back at time squandered instead of time well spent.
They key to not fooling ourselves is first to look inside ourselves, to find the talents we were born with and to spend our days courageously and diligently getting the most out of these talents.
Second, forget success and failure. These two imposters exist only in relation to each other: ignore the relationship and both disappear. The Taoists amongst us would say, somewhat contradictorily, that someone who never fails always succeeds, but dismissing success and failure means we are left only with the work we’ve put into our lives. If that work is substantial and consistent, then we will have a life well spent, life’s great prize.
Richard P Feynman (1918-88) was an American physicist, earning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.