journal features

knee-high life-and-death struggle

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2003.08.23

I saw two sparrows flying low, today. Very low, like knee high! The birds were flying in close proximity to one another, zigging and zagging as if playing a strange game of tag. And they were movnig so slowly they had to beat their wings furiously just to stay airborne. Whatever they were doing had their full attention, too - they didn't mind as I drew nearer.

Then I saw what it was. They were pursuing a beetle. It was a big (for S. Ontario) black thing, and it was giving off a hell of a racket as it ducked and swooped to avoid the birds. The two birds - which were half a wing's span from collision as often as not - seemed to be blocking one another from making the catch. It wasn't until the beetle headed for the shadows under some bushes that the matter was resolved. A bird landed atop the thing and triumphantly flew away with it still buzzing fearfully in its mouth.

A knee-high life-and-death struggle. It was fascinating.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton