a far too cynical approach to heroes

In thinking about how to respond to this tag, I realized that while I can list a number of people I admire, and there are plenty of heroic acts I appreciate, I am wary of explicitly labeling anyone as my hero (to me “hero” suggests perfection and is a bit too strong a description for the inherently flawed human). So instead, I leave you with Ralph Waldo Emerson words to consider:

“The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires”

the more we know, the less we understand?

Daniel Gilbert in Stumbling on Happiness:

Once upon a time there was bearded G-d who made a small, flat earth, and pasted it in the very middle of the sky so that human beings would be at the center of everything. Then physics came along and complicated the picture with big bangs, quarks, branes, and superstrings, and the payoff for all that critical analysis is that now, several hundred years later, most people have no idea where they are.

VS

Albert Einstein quoted in the The New York Times:

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.

only in NYC

Gas-Like Odor Permeates Parts of New York City:

Mysterious odors come and go in the New York City area, sometimes never identified.