journal features

voted!

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Sydney, 2000.11.22

Another week, another entry. Managed to wake up at 6 AM still reeling drunk this morning from last night's 'dinner'. I somehow knew that today was the day my ballot for the Canadian federal election would arrive. And I was right. I had to run around town finding someone who could mail it for me, and eventually had to settle on sleepy Post Australia, who charged me $AUD 30 for vague promises of 2-5 business days delivery.

So I wrote down the name of a friend who's running my riding, and slapped down the cash (well, my ATM card, anyway), and I've now voted for the first time in six or seven years. Who knew that it would take nine months of living abroad to get me interested in politics in Canada.

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