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.