Washington, D.C., is said to be the only city in the world where sound travels faster than the speed of light. Rumors and gossip have a speed all of their own—the especially destructive ones reaching speeds that boggle belief. Good rumors, on the other hand, take longer to travel from one place to the other.

Humans seem to yearn for gossip, even if they know that what they hear is untrue. No good comes from passing on rumor or gossip (though evil certainly can, as we read in Ecclesiastes 10:20). It is better to bring things into the light of truth than to conceal them in the darkness of rumor.