Yesterday on C-SPAN I heard an interview with Susan Jacoby, author of a variety of books on reason and unreason, who had this story to tell.

She was headed home in NYC one afternoon and the subway trains weren't running. Her walk was, she said, "about fifty blocks" long. Tiring out midway, she stopped at a cafe for a bit of a rest, and heard two people (whom she described as in their mid-twenties) conversing not too far away.

"That's like when they bombed Pearl Harbor," said the first.

"What's Pearl Harbor?" replied the second, without irony.

The first answered, "Um, it's like some harbor we had somewhere and they bombed it and got us into the Viet Nam War."

She wasn't joking.

I'm betting the guy holding the sign didn't have a clue.

--Diane