journal features

chhhhhh-glachpt-chhhhh

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Halifax, 2004.01.26

I was enjoying a plate o' Korean foodcourt 'food' today when a fellow walked by who was clearing his throat. He'd had a tracheoddwordIcanneverremember, though, so when I say 'clearing his throat', I mean he pressed a kleenex to his throat, gagged something up, then looked at it on the kleenex. I looked up - at the sound - just in time to see what he'd produced.

I willed myself to continue eating, but cannot shake the sound/sight.

chhhhhh-glachpt-chhhhh

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