There is nothing under the sun

I am sitting and trying to separate the good chaff from the bad chaff at a meeting and I find that the best way is to ignore content completely and assume that anything of value will be repeated by my peers later on. So I get to thinking and a bunch of random thoughts pop into my head.

First off -- is it wrong that when listening to the "Top 1001 rock songs" on the radio this morning, I get angry at the relative placements of numbers 999 and 1000?

Second thought -- when we look at history and we worry that our material to teach history is somehow outmoded is it possible that history never was the way we imagine it but is always some artifical construct that we teach? Do we worry about "accuracy" when we might never have been accurate, only true to that same artifical construct?

Next idea has to do with rearing my kids. What will they be like when they grow up? Am I trying to turn them into what a "success" was defined as in earlier generations? The thing is, if I try to turn my kids into what I have become, I am missing an important variable -- I became what I am because of the time, and the parents. The times have shifted, and the direct causal "parent" influence is different. No two generations can be identical because there are too many variables. We need to continually reevaluate our goals and try to figure out what we want and what we think is proper.

I know these ideas aren't well thought out, but that's because the speaker is making me angry with the stuff he says so I can't effectively ignore it. That's a rant for another day.