When Someone Works For Less Pay Than

The Media Have Just Buried The Last Yuppie, A Pathetic Creature Who Had Not Heard The News That The Great Pendulum Of Public Consciousness Has Just Swung From Greed To Compassion And From Tex-mex To Meatballs

The 'working Poor,' As They Are Approvingly Termed, Are In Fact The Major Philanthropists Of Our Society.

At Issue Is Not Only Knowledge Of The World But Our Survival As Individuals And As A Species. All The Basic Technologies Ever Invented By Humans To Feed And Protect Themselves Depend On A Relentless Commitment To Hard-nosed Empiricism: You Cannot Assume That Your Arrowheads Will Pierce The Hide Of A Bison Or That Your Raft Will Float Just Because The Omens Are Propitious And You Have Been Given Supernatural Reassurance That They Will. You Have To Be Sure.

Anyone Who Has Invented A Better Mousetrap, Or The Contemporary Equivalent, Can Expect To Be Harassed By Strangers Demanding That You Read Their Unpublished Manuscripts Or Undergo The Humiliation Of Public Speaking, Usually On Remote Midwestern Campuses.

I Think It's Tragic That We Have This Human Capacity, Which Appears To Be Hardwired, Or So The Evolutionary Biologists Say, For Collective Joy. We Have These Techniques For Generating It That Go Back Thousands Of Years, And Yet We Tend Not To Use This.