I can take five minutes of Andy Rooney and not be too bothered by his crotchety befuddlement. These 150+ essays, however, are redundantly crammed with balderdash and misspellings (which made it through spell-check, but were—obviously—never eyeballed). One strikingly obtuse slice of balderdash, which he repeats at least twice: ...more people are alive today than all the people who ever lived..., caused me to become a fact-checker. I found some plausable semi-science by using the keywords: number-of-people-who-have-ever-lived. The results indicated that maybe 100 billion+ have been born in the last 50,000 years. The current world population is less than 6% of the people ever born, Mr Rooney.
These blog-like essays wouldn’t bother me if they were posted in a free web journal (and may even receive my applause) but compile them in a book and I expect editors, fact-checkers, and publishers have earned their percentages. Not true, here.
If someone gives you this book for free (I’m re-gifting mine) stick it next to your toilet. It’s not worth buying, but a couple of the essays will maybe pass the time while you take a dump.
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