It’s how you see it

We moved here five years ago to retire and enjoy all the wonders and delights of Malta.

For the most part, it has been absolutely wonderful. Good friends made, historic sites, forts, and castles seen (albeit through a lot of stone dust), good Maltese food eaten, and the bliss of no longer driving. Relaxing on the beach and delighting in world-class Maltese wine. All in all, a great country to live in. In short, the very essence of what we aspired to do. Even slowly learning some Maltese.

Politics and intrigue was not something we planned. Is the best or worst yet to come? Rhetoric and counter rhetoric is building. Both sides manning the barricades. How does it end? Did it have to begin? Does each side have to inflame the other side, to score points and win votes?

There is an old shtetl (small Jewish communities in olden days eastern European countries: think Fiddler on the Roof) joke that I believe covers what is now happening. What’s the difference between a Jewish optimist and a Jewish pessimist? The pessimist says: “It can’t get any worse than this.” The optimist replies: “Oh, yes it can.”

Alan Zelt – Naxxar

Brandolini’s Law

Every morning, when I surf through the media, I end up asking myself how many are those who earn their living from it who are aware of, and give sufficient thought to, Brandolini’s Law.

Alberto Brandolini, an Italian programmer, coined the concept in January of 2013 and was inspired by what ex-Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and journalist Marco Travaglio said in an Italian TV talk show. But Brandolini also buffed his thinking after reading Daniel Kahmenan’s work Thinking, Fast and Slow.

And the law?

Well, it basically holds that: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.”

One is pushed to simply ask: how many working in Malta’s media are expending energy merely creating bullshit and, then, possibly/probably engaging (if at all) in efforts to rehash their ways or their original content?

One reason is, of course, the total sense of independent thinking, research, or examining of content when first created.

John Consiglio – Birkirkara