journal features

roundabout new year's resolutions

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2016.01.08

For the new year, a friend has decided to exercise less and pay less attention to his finances. That is; he's decided he can no longer jog as it's hurting his knees too much, and he's decided to scrap the under-served "full service" brokerage account and go back to passive investing.

As for me, I've decided to pursue a course that will result in my spending a whole lot less time with the family. And no, I'm not referring to buying a metro-pass for Janaury and leaving myself at the mercy of the TTC.

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