From Knowledge to Wisdom

U2 // How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

On our hols I bought U2 // How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb at Golden Discs on Grafton Street, Dublin. Which seems to me like a cool place to buy a U2 CD. I guess maybe to be totally cool it should have been somewhere on the north side, but in our Dublin days we were very much south side people, so there you are. (We did the tourist open top bus tour thing. (With Dublin Bus City Tours). The guide explained something of the north south difference in Dublin city: "A young lady from the south side would only ever go to the north side to fetch her handbag back.")

Some quotes from Bono on the video on the DVD:

When I write, it's there. There's no staring at a blank page.
It's sort of song writing by accident really. I mean, we don't really know what we're doing and when we do, it doesn't seem to help.

Can a song make a difference? Songs can change the world. They're not like movies where you see them once or twice - songs become part of you. They're more like smells. Freedom has a scent and it's like the top of a new born baby's head.

Over the years I have gathered several U2 albums. "How to dismantle .." seems even more durable than the others. The songs are becoming part of me.

I have not ever read much about U2, just enjoyed the music. Found the following quote attributed to Bono in an interview on beliefnet.com:

I often wonder if religion is the enemy of God. It's almost like religion is what happens when the Spirit has left the building.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Spent a chunk of my vacation reading Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything. This is a very readable overview of 'nearly everything' in the sense of our knowledge of the physical universe and life on Earth. And it is presented as a history - an account of how we acquired the knowledge. So along the way there are accounts of the people involved, the lifetimes of devotion to study and the accidents and politics that lead to them becoming the heroes and hermits who go down in history.

My main impressions are of:

• complex systems which run on chaos and chance - which somehow result in some order,
• how little we know by comparison with the stuff we have theories about and the vast amount of unknown,
• how chaotic we are with our knowledge management -
  • knowledge is found and then lost again,
  • not recognised as valuable for years,
  • and is, of course, the toy in all sorts of power games and political processes.