twenty-eight years and a million words
Tonight on the way home from the daycare, Mari and I found a fellow of about our age lying on the sidewalk, unmoving and eyes closed. Mari said, "We should do something." It was only then that it occurred to me that he wasn't simply sleeping one off the way you see in this city (photo below).
not a medical emergencySo, remembering my CPR training, rather than touch him I patted on the ground next to the fellow and said in Japanese, "Hello? Do you need any help?" I did this a second time and he sprang to sitting upright with a shocked look on his face. Looking about him in confusion, he turned away from us. Again in Japanese, I asked him, "Should we help you?" but he only sat resolutely looking the other way (saving face?).
So we went on our way. Mari twice looked back. The first time he was lying flat. The next time, when I also turned to check on the fellow, he was standing and preparing to go.
Had he been mugged? Or maybe drugged? Was he diabetic, perhaps? Overly medicated? We won't know.
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