twenty-eight years and a million words
My Japanese instructor informs me that we've been working together for four years, as of this week. It seems like the three-year mark was only two months ago. 時間は早く流れる。
The other milestone is that I've now lived in Japan for a total of 9.5 years. That's the same duration that my Japanese wife lived in Canada. We're tied, and I'm taking the lead! Mwahahaha!
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