My blogging time has been cut by over 35 minutes because of two surveys. Is it an indication of the nations' economy that businesses now want to do surveys so frequently? Are they nervous? Do they want to put their fingers on the pulse of consumers? Pretty nosy, I'd say. I liked the first one, although it was too long. I got tired of the second one; they keep on sending me questions and half the time they get bogged down in their loading problems. And they keep offering me rewards and I don't want a reward. I just want to be left alone. Yet I'm curious about what they want to find out. And I sort of like quizzes and I miss my swimming so I have the time. But I'm getting hungry and I haven't written my blog yet. I guess it will have to wait. Why don't those survey people read blogs?

I found the statistic I was looking for, about the world's stock of knowledge, probably the English-speaking world, probably the First World. The information was in a Globe and Mail article. According to some survey or other - you can always find a survey - the world's stock of knowledge doubles every five years. And that's not counting phone numbers and email addresses and teachers' and trainers' and dentists' and doctors' and receptionists' names, plus your car license and your family's birthdays that you have to remember. Who has time to be a polymath these days? Oh, and did I mention passwords? I can't stand passwords. I keep forgetting them and then when I change one and get a new one, with help from those drunken squiggly letters you have to copy to prove you're competent and can read, half the time you end up with two or three obsolete passwords and the computer has trouble deciding if you're you. As if I didn't know. I think the world stock of stress doubles every two years and I don't want any more. The Austrian-Canadian doctor, Hans Selye, (1907-1982) who founded the International Institute of Stress in 1975, (also memorable for his theory of altruism) gave sensible and calming advice about stress. Basically, don't worry about it. But here's something useful for would-be polymaths who are upset about not knowing everything. Don't. Don't be upset. Don't try to know everything. The secret is to have a good retrieval system. Know where you can find out what you don't know. Imagine! Selye said that in the days before Google. These days you can find everything. You have a poly at your fingertips. Isn't that nice?