C H R I S T I A N P E E T
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Why is the construction of the sentence
Why is disorder increasing in the same direction of time as that in which the universe is expanding?
more difficult to grasp than the content of the sentence? If we're unable to “put it into words,” then we might find solace in flipping through National Geographic, “just looking at the pictures”—here a sand dune outside Cairo, there the crushed head of a child in Darfur. For although we may be inclined to proclaim “my backyard barbecue is round,” an objective fact, the importance of mathematical roundness remains to be seen. Likewise, Pissarro's rectangles—themselves the very stuff of legend—as well as Renoir's abandonment of naturalistic landscapes, rather than forcing us to question the validity of our domesticity, offer a welcome respite from witnessing such horrors as the Trials by Credit Card endured by middle-to-upper-class college graduates across the U.S. Although the metaphor of the rich as “pigs” has lost favor, not to say currency, since its heyday in the late 1960s, it is still important to note Sturtevant's (1947) observation that “when pigs squeal about the trough they are not asking anyone to get their food for them; they are doing their best to get it for themselves.” Accordingly, while it may be true that memorizing every word in A Brief History of Time increases the order in our brains by about two million units, we may find it is ultimately more productive to learn the value of wishful thinking and, perhaps most importantly, to avoid the trap of thinking we are not “doing our part.” Such negative thought patterns are, after all, in the words of breakdancing guru Curtis Marlow, simply “wack.”
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