journal features

to the falls!

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Niagara Falls, 2017.07.29

We took Mari's nephew to Niagara Falls, as one does with visitors to Toronto - but then we did something a bit unusual. We dropped by the museum at St. Catharines, and watched a ship from the Netherlands cycle through lock three of the Welland canal. The Nephew was delighted - in his reserved Japanese way - because he's a big fan of such things.

Quite a crowd turned up for the event, and it turns out there's a radio station in Niagara that alerts everyone to bridge closures due to passing ships.

Compared to the gaudiness of Niagara Falls (the city) and expense of the boat trip we took to get into the falls, this was quiet and free. A great way to convey what Niagara's all about.

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