journal features

the Sydney groove

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Sydney, 2000.11.07

It's surprisingly difficult to get back in the Sydney groove. But I got a good roll of black and white film off (my first), learning that there's a lot more to that technique than I'd guessed. I suspect that exposure is the biggest trick to it...

We've now pulled off nine months in Sydney!

I've arranged for our flight to Toronto. Dunno how we'll cope with the cold.

Time for me to pull the plug on the Royal Bank. Last month I told the buggers I was sick of their crap, and now I'm hunting around for a better bank.

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