journal features

back in Fukuoka

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Fukuoka, 2024.06.03

I've decided to take a break from constantly changing the water of tiny baby goldfish. I've taken an early train and fetched up in Fukuoka to visit with my staff in this city. I guess it'll be a quarterly affair as long as I have this job (om nom cold oatmeal). I do like it here, it's only 1.5 million people and it feels like a good size. The weather is perfect and the small office we've set up seems to be gelling nicely. All is well.

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