Somewhere back in a Poli Sci lecture a beaver scout leader whom the kids called Bullfrog told us when talking about SPSS and crosstabulation tables and a Canadian federal election data set that crashed the VAX we needed to pay attention to Joe Six Pack. He definitely wasn't talking about 6-pack abs--I don't think anybody cared about that in those days--except maybe Joe Wieder or Ed Allen. We were used to being treated to tidbits of wisdom.  Frank MacKinnon, whose father had been a Minister of Agriculture and Lieutenant-Governor of Prince Edward Island, had made a career of writing about posturing, patronage and pork barelling in politics, encouraged all of us to take the Foreign Service Exam, telling us that the key requirement was not academic brilliance but your ability to hold your booze and your predilection for booze, bets and babes.  If you got drunk with a sniff of a beer cork (was beer ever corked?), or were easily drunk under the table or talked when you were un...

It figures that it was the daughter of a Scottish born judge who told me when I was fretful and fussing "Dinnae worry and keep your own counsel".  Dinnae fash yersel.  It was good advice.  But taking advice and following it require more than appreciating the fact a suggestion has been made and vaguely understanding what that suggestion means. Father Lonergan taught that the old-fashioned Scottish common sense was not so much a stock of pre-assembled knowledge that one can consult for a fix, but rather an active judging power that allows a person to assess a situation, compare all relevant insights, check progress, and trouble shoot until the problem is solved. So, for example, "Look before you leap" and "He who hesitates is lost" are perfectly good proverbs recorded in plain, idiomatic language.  But when choosing a course of action, one cannot simply heed one or the other--either checking the depth of the lake before diving in, or rushing headlong in...