Being right ain't fun

From our Local Cynics files.

Being right can be essential in your work, or in private life. Being right is valued in Western culture, so highly in fact that many debates which start out with facts quickly degenerate into an argument about who's right and who's wrong.

One member of the K-Landnews team engaged in an email exchange with a friendly German journalist in late June 2013, when the German media were reeling under the steady leaks by a certain young former American contractor.

So, on June 25, our valiant scribe ventured the following predictions: real time surveillance, "steaming open" of encryption, squeezing the TOR anonymity network and  maybe a swing at the virtual currency BitCoin.

Last weekend, TheEditor asked the scribe how he felt about the June predictions.

Not good. I'm not an expert, so, if I can get as close to reality as that, what does this say about the state of society?

What?

I don't know, but being right ain't fun.

We sent our pessimistic scribe away and began cutting up three large buckets of plums for our first homemade plum wine.

The apple trees in town have remained fairly bare this year, but the plum trees are aching under their heavy loads of fruit. This seems to be a regular pattern in the local micro climate. When apples abound, like last year, there are few plums and vice versa.

If all goes well, we'll have two or three gallons of plum wine in a few weeks, if not, well, plum vinegar is supposed to be good, too.

The plum wine venture illustrates the view of TheEditor re. being right: being right is less important than getting it right, and getting it right sometimes means being wrong.