<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Re changing political opinions:  perhaps the best measure of intelligence, and my favorite, is the ability to adapt to new situations.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">If your opinions on nearly anything are the same as they were last year, or ten years ago, then you aren't moving with the times - not adapting, not thinking much about the issues, not learning other points of view.  Now probably you won't change such things as your favorite music, that sort of thing, your mother's apple pie.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">There are good reasons to stay with basic principles, and you need really impressive changes in the environment to change those, but many of them will have to be adapted to new situations, new data, new news, new people affecting your life, new ways of thinking about your principles, beliefs, likes and dislikes.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">All of you know all of this, so I am just reminding you of it.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">bill w</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div></div>