twenty-eight years and a million words
Kenny's taken over feeding the fish in our new/old aquarium.
He remembers the ritual from the old tank in Japan, first smelling the food (I had him smell it once so that he wouldn't try to eat it) then adding the smallest pinch, then watching the fish eat. When they don't leap on the food, he exclaims, "not eating!"
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