It Won't Happen To Me

Yesterday, the high school hosted its annual pre-prom Don't Drink and Drive program for the student body. Last year's program was a refreshing change of pace: the usual scared-straight videos and parent-style lecture was replaced by a heartfelt discussion by a young man who had been paralyzed by a drunk driver, aided (because he could not, in fact, speak) by his loving mother.

This year, no such luck. Bill Richardson, a former Gwinnett County police officer, came to give his presentation about, purportedly, teens and alcohol and driving. The presentation is part of Mr. Richardson's It Won't Happen To Me campaign to reduce the number of teen deaths resulting from car accidents. (Reported accurately by Bill as "the leading cause of death among teens today".) The program was mostly what you might expect: Bill spent a long time lecturing the kids things they should already know. A lot of dontdothises and dontdothats intermingled with graphic video clips of some real car accident tragedies and even more reenacted car accident tragedies.

The worst of these videos can be seen below. It should be noted that the students had seen before during an entirely separate "don't text and drive" program delivered as part of our school-wide Advisement program.



A couple of things stand out to me about this program, and this video in particular.

First of all, don't we all know by now that Scared Straight doesn't work? Taking young toughs to the jailhouse in the hopes of frightening them away from crime forever only ends up teaching them new and more troublesome ways to look and act tough. Likewise, when the students see tragedy in a movie, they are inclined to think of it as just that: a movie. It is clear from the first moments of the above film that it is a reenactment -- a fiction. We are conditioned to percieve this distinction, even when it does not exist: on the big screen, even true events seem "unreal." It seems like creating this sort of separation between viewer and event makes more, not less, likely an attitude of indifference or insusceptibility.

That it doesn't work, to me, seems a good thing, and we should immediately turn to different methods. This sort of pathetic appeal (pun intended) is precisely the argumentative style we should be teaching kids to recognize and reject. If we learn anything from the current state of world politics, it must be that fleeting, gut-reaction emotional response should be -- indeed, must be -- no basis for the formation of opinions and plans of action. In fact, it seems like this sort of emotional conditioning might very well lead to an increase in poor decision making. If I base my negative reaction to drunk driving on my gut reaction while viewing a disturbing video, I may just as likely base my positive reaction to drunk driving on my gut reaction while totally wasted and trying to impress a girl or seem tough or save face.

Furthermore, if your intention is to persuade kids not to drink and drive, it is advisable to stay on message. Pick your battles. This program is given 3 days before prom for a reason. Mr. Richardson lost sight of the immediate goal, and a lot of his time (and mine -- this was during my planning period) could have been saved if someone had simply told him that the texting thing had been done. That what we are really worried about is drinking. Prom is right around the corner, after all.

But Bill didn't stop there. And this is what really gets me. At some point he made the leap to eating and driving, as well. He implored the students not to eat their chicken biscuits behind the wheel.

This all reminds me of the numerous Don't Do Drugs programs that I experienced as a child. Aside from the failed reasoning behind a "just say no" philosophy (an issue I explore in some depth in an earlier post), drug use prevention programs always take one too many steps. As a child, I am with you for don't do heroin, don't do cocaine, don't do marijuana -- especially if you show me some scary pictures or bring in a convict to prove the dangers. Adding cigarettes and alcohol to the mix, though, starts to muddy the waters. After all, my dad drinks alcohol. My grandfather smokes. What gives?

The program they gave my fifth grade year also went further: caffeine is a drug.

This sort of divergence from a central theme seems to risk a complete loss of effectiveness. After all, once a Georgia-born, Coca-Cola-raised raised fifth grader hears you say that he shouldn't drink caffeine, you are finished. He no longer hears a word you say, and there is a good chance that whatever you said before has also been tossed out. You have become an unreliable source. Your credibility is shot.

Ever thus to Bill and his chicken biscuits.

The real reason for this post, though, is less a polemic than a curiosity.

You see, Bill Richardson started his program by saying, "we all have said 'It won't happen to me' before, and it's important to remember that it can happen to you." Which got me thinking: nobody ever says "It won't happen to me." In fact, the very idea of anyone saying such strikes me immediately as ridiculous.

A discussion which uses "It Won't Happen To Me" as its jumping-off point surrounds nearly every great social ill of the last 20 years. Alcohol and drug addiction, domestic violence, AIDS, even diabetes: all seem at least in part to be caused by some uninformed person saying "It Won't Happen To Me" just before partaking in some ill-advised risk behavior which leads to their inevitable ruin. The following hypothetical conversations illustrate the point:

TODD (Slamming his 14th brewski): Well, I'm bored of this party. I'm leaving. Anybody need a ride?
SUE (Concerned): Todd, you're drunk! Don't you know that driving under the influence is the leading cause of death in teens?
TODD (Climbing into his hatchback): Yeah, but it won't happen to me.

TODD (Flexing his biceps): Well, it's Friday. I am going out to have anonymous unprotected sex with multiple partners.
STU: (Stepping from the kitchen): Todd, be careful. AIDS can affect anyone. If you are going to choose to have sex out of wedlock, you should really wear a condom.
TODD (Checking his high-top fade in the mirror): Nah. It won't happen to me.

Now, I understand what these activists are aiming at when they use "It Won't Happen To Me" to start their spiel. They are not referring to an actual spoken phrase, but are rather making reference to an assumed mindset that we share before we make decisions which are statistically inadvisable. They hope that by facing the mindset beforehand we can avoid it when faced with a real situation. As I said with regards to D.A.R.E., context-free, all-or-nothing social practice is at least pointless and ineffective, at worst damaging in itself. We cannot hope -- nor should we -- that something as complex and nuanced as peer group sociology and adolescent psychology can be reduced to a set of predesignated rules and regulations. To do so is at once irresponsible and unimaginative.

"It Won't Happen To Me" is a false construct. It doesn't actually exist, in our minds or elsewhere, when we are in the midst of making a crucial decision. Or, if it does exist, it is a spontaneous generation of our psyche which likely gets much more positive reinforcement than negative. When we get in the car, even entirely sober, and face the chance of being hit by another driver. When we place our money in the bank, despite the fact that banks can collapse. When we get our hair died, knowing that many dye-jobs turn out just horribly. When we squeeze again into our skinny jeans and confront the risk of an embarrassing rip. In each of these situations, undoubtedly, we must also say to ourselves, "It Won't Happen To Me." And inevitably, more often than not, we are right.

Something I've Probably Said Before

This is an email response I wrote to a friend who recently forwarded me some chain letter about the "dangers" of Neale Walsh's book, Conversations with God. The chain letter can be read here. I have, in the interest of my friend, omitted her introductory text, though I quote enough for you to get the idea. In case you are getting any ideas: i do frequently react virulently to stupid email forwards. This is no exception:

---

First of all, I am concerned at your idea that a book might pose a "danger to Christians and non-Christians." While I understand the concept of words and ideas being "dangerous" insofar as they question our assumptions or prompt a change in attitude, it is this very "danger" which makes words so powerful and ideas so important to leave unimpeded. It is in the interest of this danger that our 1st amendment explicitly protects these words and ideas. It is my belief, as it was the belief of the founders of the nation, that the benefits of supporting a free exchange of ideas far outweighed any danger they may pose.

Furthermore, wouldn't most enlightened Christians invite a broad range of ideas? It seems like the more diverse viewpoints from which a person might view their face, the more complete his understanding would become. An idea is only "dangerous" to the extent that it might hold water. To attempt to block out any idea which someone deems "dangerous" will undoubtedly prove catastrophic. Don't believe me, go ask China. Ask North Korea. These places are world famous for their intolerance of ideas. And no matter how they might try, these ideas will get in. In fact, the very act of attempting to block out unwanted ideas seems to make ideas even stronger.

If we tell our kids "don't read that book, it's bad," I'll be willing to guess that they will be equally, if not more, likely to read the book. The difference is that, if we had accepted the ideas for what they are -- words on a page that some person or people believe to be useful or valid or "True" -- we might be more likely to give our children the context by which they should view the ideas.

This same failure to understand the motivations which lead to actions can be seen in the "abstinence only" programs which are pushed by so many religious groups, as well as those who lately ran the executive branch. It can be seen in the failed D.A.R.E. campaign and "Just Say No." If you tell someone, especially a child (who, necessarily, and as you well know, will inevitably begin to question the authority figures in his life), that the only acceptable course of action in a complex and nuanced social situation is to deny any nuance and refer to a pre-written script for action, that person, when actually faced with the situation, will inevitably realize the inadequacy of the script. It's all well and good to practice "saying no" in a classroom or a bedroom or a family meeting, but it's a whole different story when it's your friend who offers the weed. Likewise, "abstinence only" fails to address the "what if..." because it absolutely refuses to accept that there is, or ever will be, a "what if..." The concept is steadfast in its idea that the world is black and white, that there is no room for discussion or confusion or questions or replies.

The world does not work like this. There is no room here for "black and white"; we are overwhelmed with gray. What divides a civilized society from a mindless raging mob is its ability to recognize another point of view.

If there is any danger to Christians in this email forward, I would posit that it lies in the continuing -- and, i fear, growing -- trend in the Christian Establishment (and there is one) to resort to this sort of "all or nothing" rhetoric. Those who resort to it are at risk of alienating themselves and their ideas as they create ever stricter and more one-sided viewpoints and then use misinformation, or disinformation, to move the flock. There is a prevailing viewpoint in the evangelical community that the less you know, the better. Don't read science books; they're full of lies. Don't read books about other cultures, religions, or faith traditions; they might taint your faith: they might raise questions. These "believers" (for they are not limited to the American Christian faith, though the majority will be found there and in the radical muslim community) operate on the erroneous and truly dangerous assumption that you can have Truth -- the all-encompassing, deep-feeling, soul-enlightening, Truth-with-a-capital-T Truth -- while at the same time denying the observational and experiential truth which has guided human cultural development for the past 10,000 years. They forget (or deny) that religion itself started as a form of science, as we observed our surroundings, observed the inner behavior of our minds, and began an attempt to make sense of it all. They also seek to quash any suggestion that "The Way" is not entirely in line with "Their Way." This has resulted, in some instances, in the denial of basic truths about the world, and in others, in the denial of basic human rights and dignity.

Finally, any point of view which would demand that we NOT allow our children to read, a standpoint which, to me, strikes an Orwellian discord, should be examined very closely, at least. And yet you freely admit that you have "not personally researched the validity." I find this statement heartbreakingly ironic when taken in the context of your paragraph, which you end by demanding that I "be a fighter in the War of Truth!" There was a time when truth could be approached not through war, but through debate, discussion, heartfelt appeals, and logic. I long for that time.

Incidentally, I have read (in high school, I think) a large portion of the book to which the email refers. It came out quite a while ago, which leads me to believe that this email has been circulating for quite some time. If I remember, the book's philosophy might be classified as mystic. That is, it understands the world through a Western, Judeo-Christian lense, but it's advice almost strikes you as eastern. A lot of talk of peace, I think, and spiritual unity. I'm not sure that the author is, or even claims to be, a Christian. He's not going for dogma, his aim, as is implied by the title, is conversation.

It's really quite good. I recommend it to anyone.

Razors and Renovations

It started as a leak in the toilet drain.

I hadn't done any plumbing since we bought our house and was eager to try my hand at it. The toilet job seemed pretty simple: There was a cast iron pipe leading out of the bottom of the toilet. About a foot below, in the crawl space under the house, the pipe took a 90-degree turn and headed off into oblivion. The leak was above the 90-degree turn, but below the toilet. Replace that section of pipe, and you're home free.

On Friday afternoon I visited the locally-owned plumbing supply store, told the salesman about my project, and bought the things that I needed. I had planned on replacing the piece of pipe from the floor to just past that 90-degree turn, using PVC instead of cast iron. This required taking the toilet up off the floor, as well as a handy little piece for making an easy transition from the PVC to the cast iron. I thought I'd just saw through the cast iron pipe with a hack-saw.

I spent about 30 minutes making a 1/8th inch dent in the 4 inch pipe before I went looking for another tool. (One thing I have learned, from the home improvement work I have done, is that there is nothing worse than working without the right tools.) I saved 60 bucks when, at Home Depot preparing to buy a "Sawz-All", I ran into an acquaintance of mine who owned one. That made short (45 more minutes) work of the cast iron pipe, and I was on my way.

After the section of pipe was removed, and as I was preparing the floor for the new flange upon which the toilet would sit, my wife made a suggestion, and our project took a 90-degree turn.

"Wouldn't it make sense, while the toilet is off the floor, to put the tile in?"

We had been discussing a bathroom renovation project for some time, which involved tiling the floor and tub enclosure, replacing the vinyl chair rail, installing a new vanity and toilet, and giving the room a paint job. Truthfully, it was the guest bathroom that was in direst need of the overhaul. This question is how it began.

So if we are going to install tile, we need to go ahead and get a new vanity, and so a new toilet. And of course the wainscoting we had discussed, and the paint, and why not get the shower curtain while we're at it? After all, it's on sale.

Our new vanity stands up on legs. It's finish is Dark Espresso. The white ceramic counter top sits on top and overlaps each side, as well as the front, which extends out in the rounded shape of the basin. Very nice to look at, and the contoured counter top saves a few inches in the already tight space.

Our old vanity was the cheapest one at the store. It was white coated particle board. It sat on the floor. The counter top was a hazy pink pearl, the basin in the shape of a seashell.

Since the old vanity sat on the floor, it was alright that the pipes came up through the bottom. This wasted a significant amount of cabinet space, but wasn't unsightly (setting aside the pink pearl seashell). Because our new vanity stands up on legs, pipes through the floor are unacceptable.

I should mention here that we didn't think about the pipe issue until we had demolished the old ugly vanity. This was my first headache, because it meant moving all of the pipes back into the wall. My second headache came shortly afterward, when, upon examining the situation from below (in the crawl space that is, not laying with my head to the floor), I realized that a large beam ran the length of the wall just below the area through which our new pipe assembly must pass.

As we pulled away the wall board in the area behind the old vanity, we found our first piece of human history in the house. When we had moved in I had scoured the attic and crawl space for signs of those who had come before us. Living in an old house appeals to me partially because I feel a curiosity about and a personal connection to the events that have been happening here for the last century. I always hoped to find something significant: a picture or a letter, something human.

What we found was not a letter or a picture, but was somehow more human than either. Apparently, old medicine cabinets were fitted with a slot at the back or the side, specially designed for your used safety razor blades. In the crawl space I had found an old medicine cabinet, broken severely, and had paid little attention to it accept to avoid cutting myself on the glass. What we found in the wall were the razors. Hundreds of Gillette flat safety razors poured out of a gap between wall joists. My wife put on some gloves and began picking them up to throw them away, and I thought perhaps this was human history. This was evidence of time spent, the beginnings of days, for days and weeks on end.

This bit of plumbing required a little ingenuity. for each pipe (there are three, two small pipes bringing hot and cold water into the house, and one larger pipe through which water drains) I bought two 90-degree fittings and two 45-degree fittings. I also bought a length of 1-1/2 inch PVC (for the drain) and a length of 1/2-inch CPVC (for the hot and cold spigot). (CPVC differs from PVC in that it is made to withstand the heat of the hot-water tap. The plumbers who had come before me, wherever they may now be, had used CPVC for both the hot and water taps.)

Then I set to work. Instead of sending the pipes straight up through the middle of the beam, which would have required a great deal of drilling and I feared would compromise the house's stability, I used a 90-degree fitting to turn each pipe straight up (I was starting with pipes running parallel to the floor), then a 45-degree fitting to angle them back toward the beam and the area inside the wall above. I ran them through a hole into the room, and then used my other 45-degree angle to re-straighten them. The last 90-degree fitting turns the pipes out into the room, now from within the wall, instead of out of the floor.

I did this for two of the three pipes (the drain pipe and the hot water tap). The only shut-off valve under our house does not turn off the cold water in the front half of the house. We've called a plumber to put in a valve, because I couldn't find the shut-off at the street. I also completed the original project: repairing the leaky toilet.

Next, we repair the walls and prepare the floor for tile.

John the Baptist Lumberjack

I have been interested in Early Christianity for some time. Having been raised in the Christian tradition, and eventually coming to question it, I had some vague understanding of the process, more political than prophesied, by which the New Testament, and our current form of Christianity, came into being. It was always a topic of interest to me, as I found myself particularly annoyed and frustrated by those Christians who take the Bible as literal truth, without considering the long and convoluted process by which we have been granted access to the Book. I understood that translation was an issue, as well as the many times that the Bible had to be recopied by hand before it was collected and finalized. Both of these certainly led to errors, as well as omissions and additions by those very scribes doing the copying and translating, who were not likely without their own ideas and interpretations.

Until recently, though, my understanding of the topic came from what I had heard and the conclusions I had myself come to. I just picked up a book on the subject. Bart D. Ehrman's Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scriptures and the Faiths We Never Knew is an examination of some of the earliest forms of Christianity, occurring throughout the region in the years before the New Testament was collected and one form of the religion, the form we are all familiar with, won out over all the others.

The book so far is wonderful. Ehrman, a New Testament scholar and chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill, uses myriad primary source material, translated by him from the original (ancient Greek, Coptic, Aramaic) to support his understandings of some of the earliest forms of Christianity. Only one of these groups (Ehrman refers to them as proto-Orthodox) comes out of the early centuries CE in one piece. The rest of them, and they are many and varied, were "lost," only to be rediscovered in previously unknown texts, found covered in dust in monastic libraries, or, more frequently, covered in sand in the deserts of the Middle East.

One chapter of the book is dedicated to a group of early Jewish-Christians known as the Ebionites. Ehrman makes the point of calling them Jewish-Christians, as these early followers of Jesus saw their budding religion not as something new, but as a simple extension of the Jewish faith. Jesus, of course was Jewish, and he Ebionites held that his appearance did not make null and void the teachings of the Old Testament, God's Law to his chosen people, which involved keeping the Sabbath, eating only certain things at certain times, and of course, circumcision.

You can imagine that these Ebionites may have had some trouble finding converts. How many, after all, are likely to choose a religion which not only institutes some pretty hefty rules and regulations, but also requires a painful and sensitive surgical procedure? Most of the Ebionites were likely already Jewish, and it is not surprising that this form of Christianity didn't catch on as the religion of the masses. As Ehrman puts it:

Had Ebionite Christianity "won" the internal battles for dominance, Christianity itself would probably have ended up as a footnote in the history of religion books used in university courses in the West. (p. 110)

This, however, is not the most interesting aspect of this ancient Christian sect, nor have I yet come to the reason for this post. You see, the Ebionites, according to Ehrman, seemed to have given up the sacrifice of animals, considering Jesus' death on the cross to have been the ultimate sacrifice and thus making any further sacrifice unnecessary. This also lead them to strict vegetarianism, considering any killing of animals as an unnecessary sacrifice. This also led to some interesting developments in their holy book, which Ehrman refers to as the Gospel of the Ebionites:

Probably the most interesting of the changes from the familiar New Testament accounts of Jesus comes in the Gospel of the Ebionites description of John the Baptist, who, evidently, like his successor Jesus, maintained a strictly vegetarian cuisine. In this Gospel, with the change of just one letter of the relevant Greek word, the diet of John the Baptist was said to have consisted not of locusts [meat!] and wild honey (cf. Mark 1:6) but of pancakes and wild honey. (pp. 102-103)

Pancakes! Ha!! I had always pictured John the Baptist as a grizzly, poorly-groomed bear of a man, coming out of the woods like a beast with visions and premonitions of some looming event. He had seemed to me like the first sidewalk caller, unwashed and unfed yelling out the prophetic words of God to anyone who would listen. But reading this put a whole new spin on this image.

I laughed out loud as I imagined John the Baptist coming out of the woods, famished, donning a soiled red flannel shirt, jeans, suspenders and boots, sitting down at the first table he could find to a steaming hot pile of flapjacks and honey as tall as they could be stacked. This seemed to me something that might turn up in a Cohen Brothers "loose adaptation" of the Gospel according to Mark. John the Baptist Lumberjack!

Further, somewhat cursory, research outside Ehrman leads me to the feeling that the Ebionite interpretation may in fact be more accurate. The word in question, which according to Ehrman needs but one letter changed, is the Greek word for locusts, akris. The Ebionites changed this word to egkris, or pancakes made of ground coriander seed. Paula Gott, an Essene Nazarene minister, sites earlier references to this same food, found in the Old Testament descriptions of the Jews' 40 years in the wilderness (Numbers 11:7-8, Exodus 16:31-32). It seems appropriate that in a New Testament Gospel like Matthew, which is decidedly pro-Jewish (Ehrman 98), parallels would be drawn between John the Baptist's wanderings in the wilderness and these earlier Jewish experiences there.

Whatever version is "correct," and Ehrman's book will lead many people to the conclusion that arguments over Biblical "correctness" may be moot, my own personal version of John the Baptist has been forever changed.

Thanks, Bart.

The Story Teller -- A Call to Action

In my previous post, I mentioned the proprietor of the Book Nook, who has held a dear place in my heart since high school, as both a Loud Talker, and a Story Teller.

During my research for that post, when looking for a suitable link to information about the Book Nook, I came across the following post in an online chat forum:

Barry

Marietta, GA · May 31, 2007

"Love books worked in retail books for last 20 years(was just recently fired as manager of Book Nook Marietta after 10 years).....anyway I'm mostly a non-fiction guy ,but I love fiction from John Steinbeck to Stan Lee."

Is this The Loud Talker of my youth?! Has the Story Teller been silenced? I never knew the name of The Story Teller, or if I did that has been lost. What has not been lost, what I will never lose, is the memory of The Book Nook, a memory that is inextricably linked to The Loud Talker's voice, continuously telling his stories to whomever would listen.

If this Barry is indeed The Story Teller, and it seems likely that it is (I recall that The Story Teller seemed to hold some position of authority. In my last post I called him "owner," but "manager" fits nearly as well), I feel that it is my responsibility to cast the light of inquisition on the circumstances surrounding his firing. What is The Book Nook without The Story Teller?

I am calling the readers of this blog to action regarding this horrible turn of events. This, as Barry says, is "an unexpected shock and trauma" for me and all those like me, whose memories of childhood book buying are crystallized in the image and sound of The Story Teller. Please post any pertinent information regarding Barry's firing. We will know the facts. We, like Barry, are "non-fiction guys".

Oh, Barry! You have fallen on hard times. Your stories stifled by the limitations of print and the character maximums of chat forum posting boxes. You are not forgotten, Storyteller! You talk more loudly than ever now, and what you say will resound in history!

Loud Talkers, Story Tellers, and Monster Molecules

I have fallen out of contact with too many people.

Those with whom I have maintained contact with are the most valued friends I have. I do not wonder that the value of friendship increases with time. This fact seems plain, and can be explained with simple logic: the longer you know someone, the more they know you. This is true even if, upon meeting a person, you tell them nothing about yourself before that moment. By virtue of spending regular time with the person, they know more everyday of who you "are". The argument could be made -- indeed likely has been made, and made sufficiently in my imagination for me to stand in agreement with it -- that it is impossible for someone to know anything about you before they day on which you meet. This given that any description of yourself prior to your meeting would be colored necessarily by who you "are" at that given time, and thus would not in fact be your "past," but your "current" version of that past.

I digress. I recently had a message from a friend of mine from high school. Indeed, we were best friends, and we have known each other since we were very small. Since high school, though, we have rarely talked.

His message regarded the "Monster Molecule," which, of course, is methane. He is in science now, and his masters studies bring him regularly in contact with this mother of all molecules.

Why we had termed methane the Monster Molecule escapes me, now. I do know that it was mostly nonsense, owed to our preoccupation with making Chemistry not only educational but also extremely funny and entertaining. (After learning about Johannes Brønsted's theory of acids and bases, I began writing my name with the "ø" in place of a traditional "o", figuring, simply, if Brønsted can do it, so can I. I wrote my name thus on the tops of my papers, inside chemistry and out, for the better part of the next two years. This is humor in AP Chemistry. Incidentally, my Chemistry teacher used the "ø" to sign my yearbook. She knew funny when she saw it.) We imagined methane, which has four strong covalent bonds, as some sort of molecular monster truck, coming into the chemical arena to crush all those lesser molecules in a fantastic spectacle. We even went so far, whenever mentioning the Monster Molecule, as to say it exclusively in our best "Monster Truck Rally Announcer" voice.

Gosh, those were the days, weren't they? The spirit of free creativity reigned supreme in all our endeavors.

I remember the Book Nook. This was (and still is) a used book store in the town where we grew up. Books, of course, having great importance to me, and to him as well, we spent time at the Book Nook. A bit of lore grew up between us regarding the owner of the Book Nook(or the manager, although in an establishment of this kind we assumed the two were one), who was an immense person. He was fat to the point of using a cane to get around. Not old, and not well kept, he wore t-shirts and sweat pants behind the counter where he totaled the books. He would buy back your books, if they weren't rubbish, for store credit, which you could use to buy other (though fewer) books. Whenever we would enter the store, the owner would be telling a story, thus The Story Teller, loudly enough so that everyone in the store could here him, thus the Loud Talker. He was invariably talking to someone in the store, telling them about a piece of gossip, a recent happening with regards to the business, the latest headlines, the plot of a book of interest. However, there was the sense as we perused the science fiction section, the history/cookbooks section, that he was telling us all a story. There was no music in the store, as one is used to hearing in bookstores -- classical or jazz or top 40, or jazz versions of top 40 -- just The Story Teller, The Loud Talker talking on and on, telling his story.

None of his stories do I remember. I don't remember if I cared what he was saying. Most of the time his stories had nothing to do with me. The Story Teller, though, lives on.

Once we went to the store. I think they were in the midst of relocating, to a new free-standing building down the street (which seems to me now to have formerly been some sort of restaurant). My friend and I came to look, and perhaps to buy a book. What we found were two shelves of discount books. Discount books in a used bookstore are sold at a very good price. Here we found a steal. "4 for 50¢ or 1bag for $5." We had $15 dollars between us, and left the store with upwards of 70 books.

This in itself sent us rolling. Why did we buy all these books? We hadn't even looked at the titles, but chose the ones which fit most snugly into the bags, thus more books for our buck. We left the store with only one possible reason in mind: we need to give these books away. And so we went to a Wal-Mart parking lot, emptied the bags of books into the trunk of his car, and began offering "free books" to anyone who happened by the car on their way to or from the store.

It was surprising how many people wouldn't take a book. Who doesn't want a free book?

Conventional Wisdom's Role in our National Debate

I have been reading The Assault on Reason, by Al Gore. Overall, I find this book extremely relevant and timely, as well as disturbing in its examination of the current state of affairs in our nation. Gore perceives and expresses with great clarity the danger posed to our democracy by the decline in reading, public participation, and the manufacture of consent.

In addition, I appreciate Gore's continued and insistent call to action with regards to our environment and the looming threat of global warming. His continued struggle to build support and public awareness for this issue continues in The Assault on Reason, where he describes the great lengths to which Big Business (especially Big Oil) and special interest politics go to sow seeds of misinformation with regards to global warming. The behavior of these businesses (and the executive powers which are beholden to them) is reprehensible, and must be dealt with swiftly and in the strongest possible manner. I laud Gore for his attempts to bring these issues to the forefront.

However, in the 7th chapter of his book, entitled "The Carbon Crisis," I came across the following quote:

"Our 'footprint' can now be measured not only by the impact of all the CO2 we are pumping daily into the earth's atmosphere, but also by our careless destruction of one football field's worth of forest on the surface of the planet every second of every day." (p. 202-3)

Gore continues by discussing the depletion of our fisheries and human-caused extinctions in the oceans. Both this point, and of course the Carbon point that makes up the first half of the above quote, are explored in more detail. However, the issue of deforestation is let rest with that single statement regarding its overall rate.

The "football field a second" statistic is one that I have heard before, which made me curious as to its origins. It is a stat that seems to me to ring more like conventional wisdom than established fact, much like the "every two minutes a teenager dies in a drunk driving accident" statistic that is given over and over in middle school Health classrooms. High impact, but perhaps at a substantial cost in reliability.

The book contains a notes section which delineates sources for a majority of the claims it makes. However, any reference to a source for this information is notably absent.

I did a little thought experiment with this statistic in mind. Using a number from Wikipedia for the total surface area of the earth, I attempted to see, at Gore's stated rate, how long it would take before a theoretical earth covered entirely with forests would be laid bare by man's destructive impulses. My math, which I attach below, left me a startlingly low number: 209 days.

I checked my math a couple of times in a couple of different ways. I encourage readers also to do so, and to suggest any flaws in my thought experiment that may account for this startlingly low number.

209 days. And considering that the earth's surface is nearly 71% water (this statistic also drawn from Wikipedia), the actual number could not be more than around 61 days. Considering Gore's book was published in May of this year, if the entire land mass had been covered with trees the first of which were cut down and processed to make the paper on which The Assault on Reason was published, we would currently be living on a planet devoid of forests.

This number obviously does not account for reforestation efforts (as well as any reforestation that may occur by accident), but in 209 days, let alone 61, little reforestation could occur.

Perhaps I'm missing something.

This is not to suggest that Gore's book is any less important in its analysis of the state of American Democracy with regards to participation "by the people." And his condemnation of the Bush administration's policy on, well, on just about everything, goes over very well with my own reactions and personal analyses. However, I think that the appearance of such conventional wisdom, obviously intended to generally overstate the issue, in this book, which founds its argument on the importance of reason, logic, and a public supplied with reliable information, is dangerous, if not downright irresponsible.

By tossing around conventional wisdom amidst well-founded scientific fact, Gore runs the risk of depleting his own authority on an issue to which he has dedicated his career, as well as a significant portion of his conscience.

Conventional wisdom in this sense is little more or less than the "gut reaction" of the masses. It is the stuff of conversations over tea, of email forwards. And we know all to well what happens when one acts on an uninformed "gut feeling" in affairs of global importance. Malcolm Gladwell examines the "gut" in his book Blink, and also discussed Bush's insistence on using his "gut" in an interview on The Colbert Report. By relying on anecdotal statistics, the stuff of email forwards and urban legends, Gore runs the risk of landing himself in the same camp.

This is one incident in a book that I otherwise find well-grounded in empirical knowledge, I will not right Gore off for a slip that may or may not have been intentional. I hope, however, that he heeds his own warnings with regards to bent facts and misleading statistics. These tactics are not his strength, which is a good thing, unless he decides to pursue them further, which will undoubtedly result in a loss of his audience to those factions which specialize in manufacturing consent.

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My Thought Experiment

Earth’s surface area = 510,065,600 km² (196,937,429 mi²)

196,937,429 mi² x 5280 ft/mi = 1,039,829,625,120 ft²

Football field dimensions = 160 ft x 360 ft (including end zones) = 57,600 ft²

Number of football fields that would fit on Earth’s surface:

1,039,829,625,120 ft² / 57,600 ft² = ~18,052,598 football fields

Number of football fields destroyed in a day:

1 per second (according to Gore and conventional wisdom)

1 field/sec x 60 sec/min x 60 min/hr x 24 hr/day = 86,400 fields/day

Area destroyed per day:

86,400 fields/day x 57,600 ft²/field = 4,976,640,000 ft²/day

Total days until total destruction:

1,039,829,625,120 ft² / 4,976,640,000 ft²/day = ~209 days

To check the answer:

~18,052,598 fields / 86,400 fields/day = ~209 days