journal features

toy

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2008.12.18

As noted previous, I'm making a wooden "inch-worm" pull-toy for my little nephew Ta-kun. It's a thing with two wheels that have an offset axel. Attached to the axel are the 'fuselage' pieces that make up the body of the worm itself. When the toy is pulled forward by a rope through the nose of the worm, the wheels roll and the midsection of the body is lifted off the ground effecting the rise and fall of the inch-worm.

I stole the idea from a toy I found in a store.

It's been fun to make, though my usual impaired level of craftsmanship has diluted the overall effect to some degree. Still, I managed to get through the spray-painting of the body without any accidental coloration of the patio, and the overall effect is rather good. Next I have to paint on some legs and then paint the wheels. Then comes the glue. Sweet, sweet glue.

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