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Re: FYA

Subject: Re: FYA
From: Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 16:07:13 -0800

Janice Gelb wrote:

Tariel, Lauren R wrote:
>
> Well that's one way to get your name and article
> published in a big newspaper.
>

What is, writing an amusing and clever column? Ian
Frazier is a well-known humor writer

I appreciate the shot of mirth :-)

Still, the essay distresses me because I feel it is very derivative--I know I've seen similar articles before, and am surprised that the editors at the New Yorker would let it be re-hashed in their marvelous mag, which after all has the reputation for publishing fine original creative and journalistic writing.
So I googled "shower curtain physics" and Lo! Wikipedia has it, with links to other versions of this topic for a broad spectrum of audiences. An Ignobel Prize was awarded in 2001 for research into shower curtain billowing. Scientific American covered it as a physics problem in 2001. NPR (National Public Radio) covered it on their program All Things Considered in 2006.
Perhaps I'm being overly harsh in labeling this essay as derivative or unoriginal. I know that not everyone listens to NPR/ATC or subscribes to the Annals of Improbable Research or Scientific American, so maybe many New Yorker readers won't feel their antennae twitching when they read about the shower curtain thang. Can I extrapolate that any topic is fair game for an article--all I need to do is make a frappe from a couple of published sources and pour it out, for sale, to another market? I would feel like a feather merchant for doing something like that. Am I naive?


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Follow-Ups:

References:
FYA: From: Janice Gelb
RE: FYA: From: Tariel, Lauren R
Re: FYA: From: Janice Gelb

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