I haven't seen that many of them lately: those bumper stickers that proudly proclaim, "I don't believe the liberal media." That sounds blundered, but there is a point here.

Who are you going to believe? You can't, as the classics did, examine all things and retain what is good. To examine the thousands of pounds of printed matter that are produced every year would take more than one lifetime (and probably more than one salary, because you have to buy before you can examine). You'll have to select who you are going to pay attention to.

Here is a candidate. Leter Brown is on our list of good guys: he is one of the two 1991 Humanists of the Year. Brown is the president of the World Watch Institute, a think-tank of specialists on the environment and the global economy. For the last seven years, he has been producing the annual State of the World, which is widely considered to be the final word on the earth, and which is published in more languages than Reader's Digest.

--Anne Zeilstra