In a recent photo of the Obamas bicycling on Martha’s Vineyard, Michelle and their two girls are wearing helmets, Barack isn’t. Message to the world: women and children need to wear bicycle helmets; real men don’t.
I can tell from the way my book The Quote Verifier gets referred to online these days that most of those who refer to it have only seen that work on Google Books. Needless to say this doesn’t please me. Better they should buy a copy, or at least look at it in the library. Recently, however, I wanted to try to verify a quotation used by Paul Krugman in his New York Times column: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Krugman attributed this insight to the oldtime radical Upton Sinclair, as did his colleague, the late news columnist Molly Ivins (constantly). When writing The Quote Verifier I tried to confirm that Sinclair had made this remark, without success. I doubted that he had. But now, when I entered the key words “Upton Sinclair” and “salary depends,” on Google Books, within seconds those very words appeared in a 1935 work by Sinclair.
Google giveth and Google taketh away.
Years ago, while doing research for a book on risk-taking (Chancing It: Why We Take Risks), I interviewed lots of skydivers, rock climbers and the wire walker Philippe Petit. Even though such activities have caused countless fatalities, all told me they were sure they wouldn’t be one. Why? “Because I’m good at it.” The implication was that others – especially those who died – were not. This has some bearing on the otherwise intelligent people who continue to talk on cell phones while driving, despite overwhelming evidence of how dangerous this is. I’m sure they feel that they’re so good at this form of multi-tasking as to be in no danger from doing it. I’m also sure that if we could dig up and revive the corpses of those who died while driving and cell-talking and put them back in time to just before their fatal accident, they’d say the same thing.
I’ve been a runner for decades, fully aware that the pounding was probably destroying my knees. A recent article in the Times says that to the contrary, this longtime conventional wisdom is wrong. Studies have found runners’ knees are stronger than those of non-runners, and less susceptible to injury. The same issue of the Times had an article saying that – contrary to previous assumptions – weight training was good for the arms of those who’d had mastectomies, not bad for them. This reminded me of all the years we were told that eggs were poison, until we were told maybe they weren’t so bad after all. Eat them in good conscience. Same thing with butter. Don’t eat it, we were warned. Eat margarine instead. Except margarine turns out to have far more saturated fat. Back to butter. Moral: avoid rigid warnings about what to do or not do based on studies that are subject to new studies.
During a Los Angeles radio show about retrotalk, a caller told me that someone had recently told him, ‘’Don’t gaslight me.’’ The host, Patt Morrison – more of a movie buff than me – said that this alludes to the 1944 film Gaslight in which a man played by Charles Boyer tries to drive his wife (played by Ingrid Bergman) insane by making the gaslight in their house go up and down, and then telling her she’s seeing things. “Gaslighting’’ someone, therefore, means trying to drive them crazy. It turns out that it’s used by some therapists as shorthand for psychologically abusive behavior.
In our debate about health care, the clinching argument by opponents of significant reform is usually “Do you want a health care system like Canada’s?” Any time I’ve asked a relative or friend in Canada whether they want a health care system like that in the United States, the answer has always been “No way!”
Several years ago we had to decide what kind of piano to buy for our children. Electronic keyboards were attractive because of their size, economy and versatility. But most reviews I read compared them to “real pianos.” (“Sounds almost like a real piano.”) This raised the question: if you’re looking for a product being judged by its resemblance to another product, why not buy the one that sets the standard? That’s what we did. We bought, and still have, a sturdy Hamilton upright piano.
The current discussion surrounding Kindles and other e-book readers brought this to mind. So many assessments I read and hear about these products compare them to “real” books, usually unfavorably. Their resolution is not as good. Their graphics are anemic. You don’t know what page you’re on. Etc. The e-book’s admitted edge in compactness isn’t enough for a real book lover. For them, nothing will replace printed books. They’re irreplaceable; a superb vehicle for delivering text. Instead of asking whether printed books will disappear, we might better ask, “How will writing reach readers in the future?” Conventional books will certainly be one vehicle. E-books will be another. But their form will evolve into something quite different than books-on-a-screen.
Recall how automobiles evolved. Early versions looked like buckboard wagons with engines attached. It was decades before cars began to resemble a new product altogether. Similarly, when it was first introduced at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, television was viewed as an extension of radio (it was even called “illustrated radio”). Early news broadcasters read copy before cameras, looking down at the paper in their hands, as if they were still in a radio studio. It took a couple of decades for television to become a medium all its own.
The same thing will happen with e-books. Today they look like conventional books on a screen. In time, just like cars and television, e-books will find their own form. Their length will vary more than conventional ones; they’ll be shorter on average, with more varied formats, more flexibility, more fluidity, and a wider range of prices. Short stories and novellas are better suited to the e-book format than novels. Articles and essays work better on their small screens than full-scale nonfiction books. E-books might be updated on a regular basis, and perhaps incorporate reader feedback, or author-reader dialogue. The possibilities are infinite, and intriguing.
When such as Bill Clinton, or Bill Richardson, or Jesse Jackson travel abroad to “negotiate” the release of hostages, aren’t they more like escorts sent to accompany home those whose release has already been negotiated?
Would Sgt. Crowley have arrested Dr. Gates if he’d been alone? The reason I ask is a longstanding observation that when in the presence of each other, men tend to behave far differently than when they’re by themselves, or in the presence of women. My favorite illustration is a study in which drivers were observed as they attempted to execute a tricky left turn against heavy traffic to enter a shopping mall. The longest average time recorded for making this turn, 17 seconds, was recorded for men driving alone. The next longest time, 12 seconds, was observed among lone women drivers. By far the fastest turns of all were made by men who were accompanied by other men. They averaged only seven seconds to make this risky turn.
Think about it.
In another study, when high school and college students were paid by the minute to sing “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing,” male subjects were far faster to quit when facing an audience of men than one of women.
Which returns me to my original question. If Sgt. Crowley hadn’t had to consider how he’d look in the eyes of fellow (male) police officers, would he have been so quick to slap the cuffs on the loudly protesting Dr. Gates?
A New Yorker writer recently called Iran’s president “Chauncey Gardinerish.” In the 1979 movie Being There, Peter Sellers played a dim-bulb gardener named Chance who is, when dressed in the well-tailored suits of his late employer, is taken to be an upper-crust executive named Chauncey Gardiner (because he introduces himself as “Chance . . . the gardener”). His inane observations are confused with genuine profundity and he becomes a media star. Eventually Gardiner is touted as a possible U.S. president. Chauncey Gardiner is still a common way to refer to pseudo-profound figures of limited intellect.