PG realizes he is late with New Year quotes and wishes.
His only excuse is that he was distracted yesterday.
Nevertheless, while he’s still a bit startled when typing a 20 instead of a 19, but there are more than a few 19 events that he hopes don’t repeat themselves in the 20’s.
- Two world wars that resulted in 60-80 million military and civilian deaths plus a whole bunch of smaller, often nastier, conflicts.
- A world-wide economic depression that occupied a lot of time between those two world wars.
That said, there are more than a few medical discoveries that will help more people live substantially longer and healthier lives in the 20’s than they did in the 19’s.
By this time in the 19’s, about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population had been infected with the Spanish Flu. The number of deaths from this flu is estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 deaths occurring in the United States.
Aside from fewer deaths we have inexpensive computers almost everywhere (we can even wear them) plus the World-Wide Web to explore.
Google instead of dictionaries or encyclopedias.
Authors finding readers without dealing with publishers and truly being in control of their writing careers.
Plus PG predicts that home pizza delivery times will plummet when delivery by drone becomes the standard. (For those living in apartments, PG forecasts a drone landing space will be hanging right outside your window.)
(PG understands that, by some measures pizza delivery by a drone driving a van is already the standard across the United States, but he’s talking about the unmanned [or unpersonned] flying drones that don’t require a driver named Hank who needs a shave and waits for a tip before he leaves you alone.)
So, PG wishes one and all a wonderful 2023!
Aside from the improvement in handling diseases (other than Covid, which was generally dreadful), and the revolution in technology (let’s not forget to credit the transistor, the invention of which made all the others possible), many parts of the culture are in worse shape (family stability, crudeness the norm, schools allegedly turning out ‘brilliant’ students, but a substantial number of them functionally illiterate and innumerate).
Scientific advances aren’t worth the civilizational deterioration.
I wonder about the fate of culture had such technologies been absent.
Without the technologies, the deterioration of culture would have ended long ago, either in collapse, or in the stern realization that Kipling was right, and ‘the Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return’.
Our inventions have enabled us to survive our diseases longer; but when the terror and slaughter come, they come on a larger scale than ever.
Hmm. Must be location dependent – the few times that we have ordered out for pizza in the last year, it’s been a cute young female delivering it. They haven’t hung around for a tip, either.
I do give a tip on-line when ordering, so that might have something to do with it. But it is probably that they’re paid here per delivery – so they’re trying to minimize their time to maximize their income. (One of my daughter’s had an acquaintance at the U of A that told her he was making fifty or more dollars an hour delivering on weekends around the campus. Not typical, I’m sure; probably he had an “in” with the local manager or franchise owner to get the “good” shift.)
In any case, I will certainly take 2023 over 1923 – and wish a happy and prosperous for our gracious host, his family, and everyone else here.