The Beginning of Wisdom

Yours truly encountered the publoications of both Hugh Hefner and Chaeles Schulz at roughly the same time in his life. He arrived at the cow college of Michigan at age 17 and very quickly found a cigar store/magazine stand which stocked (until the supply ran out) a glossy new publication named "Playboy": as bait for the normally sex-obsessed teenage male, it contained a number of photos of busty young women. Shockingly, the writer observed there were also word articles on pertinent topics of the day and even clever cartoons, such as two hairy guys peering over a snow bank and one is saying,"here comes another one of those abominable moiuntain climbers". But the most famous scrap of wit casme from Mort Sahl, who almost invented standup comedy. He foresaw an entire generation of young American men who would arrive at the marital bed expecting their brides to have staples in their navels.
Schulz clearly absorbed a lot of scripture during his up=bringing in Minneapolis. It is heartwarming to people of faith to hear Linus quoting "There were shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. Still, he was frustrated by the existentialism of being his parents' second-born. "I didn't ask to be born second. I didn't even get to fill out an application!"
And so, a naive but voraciou-s reader of a boy arrives from the orchards of north-western Michigan and begins to learn unimagined beauty, unimagined sordidness and poverty and, gradually, the complexity of human society. Some boys (and girls) go where their hormones lead them, some are delighted to learn of philosophers and are attracted to a life of the mind. Some are so overwhelmed by the sheer number of human beings that they are ready to apply statistical mechanics to their behavior. We become more careful about choosing our gods; it was Albert Einstein who said "My God does not play dice games" and a Japanese named Esaki who said "Electrons trapped between two hills have a finite proabability of tunnelling out. If we believe that, what could we build? Tunnel diodes, anyone???