Life Since the Baby Boom

( Note: I always watch Ken Burns productions, and generally enjoy them, although I have to admit I fell asleep for both Baseball and Jazz. So this is not an attack on his documentaries as entertainment.)

In writing my Eliot Ness article, I was inspired by Ken Burns’ inane comments and those of his collaborator Lynn Novick about Ness. I thought we all need to look at him, the PBS King, again. We need to recall the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect about reading a news story where you actually know the facts:

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.

Since Eliot Ness went to my high school, I was inspired to read up on the real person, not the Robert Stack / Kevin Costner caricatures. You can read that article, but to sum up:

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