We are so damned illiterate. By which I mean you, and me, and most everybody else in this wonderful modern era we call… well, “nowadays”.

Just transcribed a review of an influential anti-smoking tract, which was soundly dissed in an esoteric and exceptionally obscure libertarian Unitarian freethinker ‘zine edited by Sam Morse’s brother. Telegraph guy. You know.

While it is clear from the tone that the reviewer does not approve of Trask’s disapproval… well, I confess I can’t follow it all rightly.

See, like I could Google Ixion-and-his-sexy-cloud [do you need to?]. I can find out a bit — a merest jot, a weeny tittle — about the general overarching history of anti-smoking crusades in America. But you know… that whole differential calculus on a pony business.

We are so damned illiterate, it’s embarrassing.

Comments from the collective knowledge of the Smart Mob would be welcome, here or over at Odd Ends.