Monday 18 March 2024

Civility in Discourse

 A thing one learns in the course of teaching philosophy is that the first person to lose his temper loses the argument. In former days, it was the norm that disagreement did not require incivility and that eccentric viewpoints did not make you a bad person. (Thanks to Rod Steiger for the unforgettable ad lib in “No Way to Treat a Lady”.)

When I was at Oxford, we went to hear speakers of every viewpoint. You need to hear people first hand because you absolutely cannot rely on reported speech. (A certain authoress in my part of the world has recently discovered afresh that it doesn’t matter what you said, it matters what people say you said.)

The second reason to give everybody a hearing is that you can’t answer arguments that you haven’t heard, and in live debate, you need to be able to anticipate the arguments that will be used against you. People who respond to contrary viewpoints with anger are unable to learn anything at all, and are far more likely to tear society apart than to right perceived wrongs.

Saturday 16 March 2024

Writing for The Market

I sometimes decide, in the course of writing, that an emerging story is turning out to be the sort of story that such and such a publisher might like. That’s fine as long as I like it too.

In the early years of Flame Tree, I thought my views must be pretty much aligned with their senior editor. I have been known, as a result, to write or edit with Flame Tree in mind. I managed five Flame Tree anthologies, and would effectively have disqualified myself from WotF on Flame Tree alone, had I not also been securing a number of other pro publications at the same time, including three with AE. However, latterly, Flame Tree have been bringing in outside editors, so that now I can’t sell them a story to save my life.

This is not the place to digress into politics, but I did once stand for parliament, and I still believe that I stand more or where I always did, it’s just that no political party stands there any more. Not only could I not stand for election these days, I can scarcely find anyone to vote for.

It is always possible that I have taken to writing rubbish and lost the knack that I once had. But it is more likely, I feel, that fashion and conformism are enjoying a popularity boom. I sometimes wonder whether there is a correlation with the number of students taking the sort of creative writing courses that produce the opposite of creative writing.

I don’t know, because I never took a creative writing course, but I do know that in my days at Oxford, university professors would never have clubbed together to pronounce a public “excommunication” of a colleague for “heresy” in the way they did not long ago.

I rather fear that the frontier between education and indoctrination was crossed a long time ago. When I taught philosophy, I always said that I was not concerned with what my students concluded, but with how they concluded it. If they came to me with prejudices and went away with a capacity for reasoned justification, I used to consider my job done.

I’m sorry, but I have no wish to write more of the fashionable stuff that is already churned out to excess. And luckily, I can eat without having to do so. I acknowledge that this makes me fortunate.

I remember that Monet was reduced to painting still more water lilies so he could swap them for a car service, while Van Gogh only ever sold one painting during his lifetime. And yes, I have made the pilgrimage to Arles.

Tuesday 12 March 2024

Islamophobia, Liberalism and Epistemophobia (from Quora)

There are people who believe that criticising Islam is Islamophobia, but such people are not liberals.

Genuine liberals, following the precepts of J S Mill’s “On Liberty”, believe in free speech. The only constraint on free speech, for Mill, is where it would result in serious harm to an individual other than the speaker. By harm, he did not mean hurt feelings or taking offence. A fortiori, he would not have included the taking of vicarious offence on behalf of someone else. Liberalism recognises no right not to be offended. If it did, then, in many cases, it would be necessary to ban speaking the truth.

Any religion is a belief system, and although the adherents of a religion may hold that their particular belief system embodies the truth, they have absolutely no right to demand that other people should believe or behave likewise.

If a religion, for example, forbids the eating of pork, adherents of that religion have no right to demand that non-adherents should abstain from pork. It may, historically, have been the case that such abstinence was justified by the hygiene standards of the day; it is so no longer, and if the only justification is an outdated religious prohibition, then it would be quite unreasonable to expect non-adherents of that religion to practice it.

Now, in describing the above problem, it might be argued that I have criticised Islam. In fact, I have also criticised Judaism, and indeed any other religion which prohibits the consumption of particular foodstuffs on the basis of historic rules. Does that criticism make me Islamophobic? Obviously not. I am not giving vent to irrational fear or dislike, I am offering rational grounds for no longer pursuing what I consider to be archaic practices. The adherents of a religion do not have to abide by what I think, any more than I have to abide by what they think.
In today’s politically-correct environment, an awful lot of people are prone to demand what they call “respect” for their point of view, but they then fail to reciprocate by displaying respect for the contrary or differing views of others. A common method of displaying that disrespect is to burn flags or damage memorials which are valued, or assumed to be valued, by their opponents. But that way lies vendetta, not reconciliation. That way lies the opposite of respect.

The “…ist” words or “…phobia” words are regularly employed as a device for preventing or ending discussion. However, since those words are intended as pejorative, those who use them appear to be reasoning, “I may criticise or abuse others, but if people criticise me, I will condemn them for being prejudiced”.

In condemning reasoned criticism of religions, we are in danger of allowing the introduction of a blasphemy law by the back door. It is not hateful to criticise. It is not disrespectful to criticise. Indeed, if a religion advocates violence or socially harmful behaviour, it is, at least arguably, a citizen’s duty to criticise it.

We should remember that stifling of dissent is not only a tool of the totalitarian, but also a barrier to progress and innovation. This world is not perfect. Anyone who believes that there is no more truth to be revealed than has already been revealed, or that no research or discoveries should be allowed that might lead people to doubt what they think they know already, is someone whose mind is closed and who does not wish for knowledge.

Such a person is epistemophobic. An irrational fear of knowledge is more of a threat to human progress than is criticism of any religion.

Monday 11 March 2024

More about Writing Classics

Quality and marketability are not necessarily the same thing. There are at least three types of publisher.

Probably most numerous are the “More of the Same” group, who have established what sells in their market segment and are content to supply their readers with variations on that theme. There are writers who are (perfectly reasonably, since they have to eat) happy to write within these established bounds. I take this group to include the politically correct, who like to praise each other for their conformity.

Then we have the “Anybody Famous” group, who will take (or have ghost-written) works by celebrities, regardless of literary merit, because the bulk of their marketing effort has already been done without expense.

But also we have those who will at least entertain the unusual and the original. Now, these guys need to be brave, because risk precedes reward, and by definition a large proportion of risks won’t pay off. Sad to say, one of the risks is being unable to stay in business. I’ve worked with a number of those, so I do hope I’m not a Jonah. But I do believe that this group is far more likely to make a worthwhile contribution to literature, and that is probably why they do it.

Friday 8 March 2024

The Long, Slow Decline of the EU


I have commented before on the failings of the Euro as a currency.  I have also mentioned protectionist trading and politicised economics, but in addition, I think if you put together:
  1. The capture of the Commission by the big business lobbies,
  2. Regulation by process rather than by outcome,
  3. The precautionary regulatory principle to stifle innovation,
you have a fairly good recipe for long term relative decline.

Not so much an economy as a museum, still popular, but in the process of becoming a quaint antiquity. A bit like Rome in the 5th century AD, complete with a gradually shrinking empire.

Tuesday 5 March 2024

The Basic Principles of Teaching

In a formal classroom or seminar environment, proceed as follows:

1. Tell them what you are going to be telling them.

2. Tell them.

3. Tell them what you have just told them.

It helps, especially with beginner students, if you do not expect a multiplicity of outcomes from a single lesson. Depending on the complexity of the elements concerned, consider it a success if, at the end of the lesson, the class has absorbed three solid points.

Our lessons used to be forty minutes, minus a certain amount of initial disruption as the students arrived and got themselves organised, so that made 36 minutes / (3 x 3) points = 4 minutes per iteration of each point.

That was all subconscious as far as I was concerned. I used to take my cues from class reaction as to how well a point was going over, and extemporise when I felt a point needed more explanation. I learned at a very early stage that the detailed lesson planning required of you in teacher training college would get you precisely nowhere. As the man said, "No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy." Or as the other man said, "Everyone has a plan until he gets punched in the face."

Sunday 3 March 2024

Writing a Classic

 Classics require to be written without fear.

When I was first published professionally, I joined an online forum which had many useful features, but on which you would get demands for censorship as soon as you strayed into controversial territory. (Being English, I had very little idea of how immune to criticism certain issues were in the US). You would also get quite horrendously politically-correct offerings which, to me, were almost unreadable in their sanctimony.

I well remember receiving a criticism on a story I wrote about The Albigensian Crusade, informing me I was being offensive to Catholics. I remember thinking, if modern Catholics are offended by their own church’s history, it’s going to be difficult to write about some subjects at all.

Now, one thing we know about fashionable morality is that today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping. It also happens that modern identity politics is so destructive of social cohesion that either it, or society, cannot last long. In the former case, no one at all will want to read today’s politically-correct writing in two decades’ time; in the latter case, there’ll be no-one to read it anyway. Already half the population or more does not want to read what well-regarded writers of today are writing because they find it insufferably puritanical or intolerant.

Classics cannot be flavour of this month. Villains need to be nasty. Insoluble problems need to be stressful situations. People need to lose as well as win. The unspeakable needs to be spoken. Otherwise, we should give up writing and take up making blancmange.

What we, as writers, must resist is the temptation to self-censor because we fear the mob. Good writing may be loved by some, hated by others, but it is never bland.


Thursday 29 February 2024

What should aspiring writers know about self-publishing books in the UK?


I’m going to assume you actually mean self-publishing and not the vanity press. The latter is expensive, not well regarded in the trade, and I personally wouldn’t use it.

I am also going to assume that you have tried getting a literary agent or submitting your work directly to publishers and have enjoyed no success. This will certainly happen if your writing is not good, but it can also happen if it is not commercial and even if it is good but can’t get through the less than perfect filtration systems that publishers employ to shield their top people from the great mass of submissions that flood in. Remember, these days half the world’s population believe they can write.

The explosion of social media and internet facilities in the last couple of decades means, provided you are willing to do the formatting required by the particular form of publication you choose, that it is not a complicated matter to publish an e-book and only slightly more complicated to turn that e-book into a print-on-demand paperback.

There is no point in my setting out a detailed list of instructions since online firms such as Amazon and Smashwords already provide such guides, and you can also download free software to help you with the formatting.

It does help if you can get some impartial beta readers to look over your work before you do this. For the purposes of finding straightforward errors, wrong punctuation, and so on, it doesn’t matter too much if these are family and friends who will do the job for nothing. For the purpose of telling you that your work needs editing, you will probably find things are different. There are writing clubs that may help for nothing; there are of course professional editors whom you will have to pay. I personally got a lot of good advice from membership of an online club where members in good standing exchanged critiques with each other.

But getting your work self-published is the beginning of the process, not the end. It may be out there, but it is invisible. The half of the world that think they can write are self-publishing alongside the relatively few people who actually can, and your book is not likely to stand out in the crowd unless you make it.

Nobody is going to market it for you. If you don’t do your own marketing, it will be unlikely your book will sell in significant numbers. Marketing is considerably harder work than self-publishing, but that’s not what you asked about.

Monday 19 February 2024

Who is benefitting the most from the Brexit chaos? (Quora)


Are you all sitty comfybold on your toileybox earlymordy? Goodly gumdrops swill beginification.

I personobly also finding much sardonifaction in ratiocinating aborderline nincompoopdom questiposers hereabovely. One of these upsidaisies will edgeup shaking loose remaigelling braincell and fal-folollop whoopsibuttercup over EUniversal translaming. Oh yes, deep joy.

Til then, neddle abiding more quasitellification supposiaskiform, sadly.

Sunday 11 February 2024

Is Labour's new 20% tax on private education too low? Should it be 40%? (Quora)

To begin with, the Labour policy (not yet implemented) is not for a new tax, it is for the removal of VAT exemption on those public schools which operate as charities. This is not all public schools. In 2022 the government stated that around half of public schools were registered as charities. Most of the remainder will be operating as regular businesses, allowed to make profits and already paying VAT.

Charities have no shareholders, do not pay dividends and therefore do not aim for profits. In any given year they may or may not generate a surplus of income over expenditure, but all they can do with a surplus, other than hold a reserve against a year in which they make a deficit, is either to reinvest in their own fabric or activities, or else enlarge their charitable activities by providing additional public benefits such as scholarships, assisted places or co-operation with state schools to assist the facilities of the latter.

Charities are required by law to provide these public benefits and may not exclude “the poor” from the receipt of them. Pretty much by definition, such benefits are not self-financing and are effectively subsidised by those customers paying full fees for their children’s education. It is therefore not unlikely that removal of charitable status from public schools would result in cutbacks of existing public-benefit provision.

Such reductions could result in the complete loss of these services, or could throw the burden of providing them on to the state. In either case, it would reduce the operating costs of the former charitable schools. Alternatively these schools might continue to provide charitable services despite not being recognised as charities, provided they have or can still generate the necessary funds, but it seems improbable that most would be in that position.

The elimination of extended charitable work might give some schools enough margin to absorb some of the newly-imposed VAT, rather than increasing fees by the full 20%. However, it seems inevitable that the net result would be a rise in fees.

I have seen no estimates by The Labour Party of the elasticity of demand that they attribute to this market. The most well known public schools, of ancient foundation and splendid fabric, may be what they are thinking of, but they are far from typical. A significant number of public schools already operate on the margin of the industry and will therefore go under. All their pupils will probably end up transferring to the state sector. The schools that survive will in many cases lose a proportion of their customers who are on the margin of being unable to afford the present fees and will not be able to afford the increases. Their children will also end up in the state sector.

Assuming class sizes in the state sector are not allowed to increase by any significant extent, this will oblige the state to enlarge the fabric of those existing schools that are already full (and sometimes already suffering from less than ideal levels of maintenance) as well as to hire a fair proportion of the teachers being shed by the public schools. (They don’t like doing this, as many teachers who have tried to return from public school employment to state school employment can testify. It is often assumed that in going where you can find work, you are really making some sort of political statement.)

As a result, firstly a significant proportion of the estimated tax yield will not be raised at all, that is, it will not be paid by those parents returning their children to the state sector (which they were already paying for through their regular tax bills, so they won’t need to make any additional contributions).

Secondly, it means that expenditure on the state education system will have to rise to accommodate additional numbers. It cannot all be devoted to increased quality; indeed, it may turn out to be a rather small amount that can be so purposed.

Further, I have seen no acknowledgement that separate legislation would be required in Scotland and would have to pass the Scottish parliament. If such legislation were possible, there would be no cross border distortions. If it were not possible, there are some good public schools in Scotland that might attract a lot more custom.

Moreover, education is a major invisible export for the UK. Reducing the size of an export industry is not usually considered one of the smarter political decisions.

TL: DR

It is seldom a good policy to kill geese that lay golden eggs.

Monday 29 January 2024

Old Father Time

A phone? 

People consider themselves old because they once had an old phone? 

Hey, I remember when we had a washboard, a zinc tub and a mangle. Washing machines? Newfangled nonsense.

I remember when the house water supply was one cold tap in the kitchen. 

I remember when the toilet was outside the house. 

I remember when our neighbour had the only family car in the street. 

I remember going to school on a tramcar. 

And I remember when people were just people, and nobody bothered to identify as anything but one of the people, and nobody cared what else they happened to be.

Monday 22 January 2024

What is the general response to Nikki Haley questioning Trump’s mental health? (Quora)

Oh come on, guys. Anyone could confuse Nancy Pelosi with Nikki Haley. Look how similar they are. I mean, they’re both women and both their names begin with N. How is anyone supposed to tell the difference?

So what if a presidential candidate has a mental aberration and complains (mentioning her name four times, according to CNN) about how Nikki Haley refused the offer of extra security for The Capitol before January 6th 2021? We should surely cut him some slack.

Even if Nikki Haley wasn’t in Washington or in office on the said date, let alone responsible for Capitol Security.

And even if Nancy Pelosi wasn’t responsible for Capitol security either.

And even if the said candidate does want his finger on the nuclear button.

I mean, we all make the odd mistake here and there, don’t we? No big deal.

And if Nikki Haley thinks (four) little slips of the tongue constitute an unreasonable attack on her, it just shows she really isn’t a good sport.

Sunday 21 January 2024

Why doesn't the UK send JK Rowling to jail already for transphobia? (Quora)



In those parts of the world where it is still legal to express an opinion differing from the prevailing orthodoxy, there seem, these days, to be an awful lot of people who wish it were not.

Probably because they are incapable of answering criticism with rational argument, they readily resort to abuse. A very common form of abuse is labelling your critic with some neologism, usually ending in “-ist” or “-phobic”. This is intended to put an end to uncomfortable debate, by effectively declaring that people to whom such labels are attached have no right to an opinion and should be socially ostracised. Sadly, there is a reason why those employing this tactic find debate uncomfortable.

Intolerance of dissent is self-reinforcing, since unused faculties are liable to atrophy. Those who persistently refuse to engage in rational debate, and who only converse with people who agree with them, will come in time to be unable to engage in rational debate. They will declare themselves to possess a truth, but if challenged to prove it, they will have no reasons, only feelings.

In this particular case, I suspect that a very large proportion of those expressing condemnation of JKR have never troubled to read her original (widely publicised and carefully chosen) words, but rely on second-hand reports from others. Sadly, many of those others will fall into the same irrational, name-calling category as themselves, and their reports will spread a great deal more heat than light.

As mentioned above, there are plenty of places where freedom of speech is already forbidden. Before we allow our society to be numbered among them, perhaps we ought to give a little more thought to whether we really want all dissent suppressed.

Or one of these days, the voice being silenced will be our own.

Tuesday 16 January 2024

Opinion Polls and EU Membership

The British, like many others, have a tendency to fall for the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy. That is, we tend to confuse A happening before B with A having caused B. Here’s the popular reasoning:

1. Fact: we left the EU.

2. Fact: we have subsequently suffered cost of living difficulties.

3. Conclusion, leaving the EU caused the cost of living problems.

Problem 1. Brexit did not cause either Covid or the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These two added together did, for a while, make us look like one of the ruins that Cromwell knocked about a bit.

Problem 2. The Eurozone economies fared even worse as a result of these problems, and none of them, by definition, had left the EU.

Problem 3. The EU responses to both Covid and Ukraine were a lot slower than the UK responses, and eventually they had to follow us, rather than vice versa.

Problem 4. The UK is increasingly attracting foreign investment that the EU’s over-regulatory system is driving away.

Better Conclusion: 

We are faster on our feet and more decisive as an independent nation. None of our current problems would have been eased by remaining in the EU. We would simply have added to the inevitable economic problems caused by world events beyond our control. How we proceed is now up to us to decide.

Wednesday 10 January 2024

In Medieval Times, People were called Lance a Lot.


Humourless types might like to point out that the spelling Lancelot only dates to 1170 and the writing of Chrétien de Troyes. 

So the name was not used a lot in medieval times, and in any case the name is French and hence 'lot' would be pronounced 'low'. 

However, Chrétien gives so little detail of Lancelot's background that it has been suggested the Lancelot myth was already known to his readers before being incorporated into "The Matter of Britain." A popular view is a (perhaps reverse) Euhemerism of the Celtic god Lugh Lonbemnech.

I bet you always wanted to know that.

Sunday 7 January 2024

Prejudice and Fallacy (Quora)

Marcus Aurelius
Prejudice is built into the human psyche by circumstances, upbringing and education. As a result, we perceive to be true a variety of things that our own society is accustomed to credit or accept, and find it very hard to grasp that other societies have different belief systems. We tend to project our own attitudes, including value systems, on to strangers with different backgrounds, and assume they are perversely rejecting the obvious, when all they are really doing is looking at the world the way they were brought up to look at it.

To doubt the necessary truth or justice of one or more of your society’s accepted norms, requires considerable mental agility and effort. In many societies, it also demands courage, since dissent is harshly discouraged by those who derive power, or simply mental comfort, from the status quo.

The road to enlightenment starts with asking the right questions. A great many people won’t get this far.

Learning proceeds through enquiry, exploration, investigation and logical analysis. It is here that you encounter fallacies. Fallacies are logical errors, or mistakes in the reasoning process. Many people who get as far as the reasoning process will get no further because their reasoning is insufficiently rigorous. However, they may well persuade themselves, and others who are uncritical, that they have the answers they sought.

In the modern world, many believe in cancelling, or abusing rather than reasoning. They shut themselves up in echo chambers of like-minded individuals and won’t hear contrary views. As a result, when challenged by a rational objection, they cannot answer rationally. Being convinced of their own rightness, they have allowed their reasoning faculty to atrophy. They often resort to doubling down on their cancelling.

If you know what you are looking and listening for, you will find throughout any popular discussion forum, from Quora to the local pub, examples of the pathetic fallacy, affirmation of the consequent, argumentum ad misericordiam, straw man fallacy, correlation / causation confusion, ad hominem fallacy, appeals to authority, false dichotomy, and, of course, at least where I live, the eternally popular “No true Scotsman” fallacy.

All of them tend to generate more heat than light, which is why I was always taught that the first person to lose his temper loses the argument.

Saturday 6 January 2024

Was not expecting power flickers today

 

So wrote an American friend of mine on Facebook.

Okay, so I first read that as a Spoonerism. I thought she must live in an unusual climate, if she got flower pickers in January. 

Then I thought about it, read it right, and decided she must be accustomed to manual flickers, so power flickers would be an interesting novelty. (I did not know they had mechanised tiddlywinks in the US, but I suppose somebody has to spoil everything sooner or later). 

I thought I should point out that I am old enough to have driven cars that did not possess any kind of flickers, and in which even the wipers worked off engine pressure, so they slowed down when you drove uphill. 

Then, at about the fifth attempt, I figured out that she was referring to periodic interruptions of her electricity supply. 

Two nations divided by a common language, or what?

Saturday 30 December 2023

Let's Talk About Squirrels

I stirred up some controversy by posting a photograph of a grey squirrel on a nature forum.  Suppose we lay aside the emotion and look at the facts.

All squirrels, correctly, have been described as "rats with good PR". I used to use that phrase when teaching PR, because it made students think about the difference between reality and presentation. Since the grey was introduced to the UK in 1870, it can hardly be classed as a recent immigrant. The present generation may be regarded as "invasive", but equally obviously, all its members were born here, as were their progenitors for a couple of dozen generations. We should perhaps consider that.

Greys do not directly harm red squirrels and are thus not in the same category as feral mink, unwisely released by people who mistakenly thought they were doing good. Among its several advantages, the grey is hardier and more efficient at storing fat through hard winters than the red, and is immune to the squirrel pox virus, which it may however carry.

But, like American Indians, the red squirrel can, over time, develop immunity to initially fatal imported diseases which decimated their numbers. (The date is not still 1870). The red will nevertheless not out-compete the grey, because it is simply less efficient in most habitats. It is however possible to take action to preserve reds in the areas where they remain dominant.

Friday 29 December 2023

The Eternal Cycle

Sheffield (South Yorkshire) Council electrified their tramway system in 1899. After an enquiry, they decided to go straight from horse power to electric power. Electric trams were designed to be driven from either end, to avoid the need for turntables, and originally had open platforms at each end for passengers to board and alight.

Already, before the First World War, double-decker designs had replaced single, and after The Second War, the streamlined Roberts Tram, seen below on the left, was introduced, though the older models, such as the Standard, introduced in 1927, continued to run on the network because they had been built to last. Notice that the Roberts had folding doors, air-brakes, and upholstered seating for 62 passengers. I rode on both these designs in my youth.

Roberts Tram (left)

In 1951 the Council decided motor buses were the future, and they cost less than trams, although they didn't last nearly as long. The last Sheffield Tram (so everyone thought at the time) ran in 1960, and the one in the picture took part in the final parade. The tracks were dug up or covered over, and the overhead electrics taken down.

The moral of this story is that the Council of 1899 were more forward-thinking than the Council of 1951. By 1994 it was realised that the combustion engine was not the future of public transport, and what the city really needed was electric propulsion. Of course, you could just call the vehicles you needed trams. Nah. Bring on the Super-tram.

Only, if number 513 and her sisters had been just allowed to continue back in 1960, I wouldn't be surprised if she'd been still running today. In fact, I travelled on her myself when I visited Beamish open air museum, where I took this picture, although I gather she's now in a museum near Lowestoft.
 
And it would have saved the public purse a fortune.

And it would have been environmentally-friendly.

But, hey! Who knew, eh? Only a century to get back to Square One, give or take a few technical improvements. What odds am I offered on the return of the motor bus in the middle of this century? Running on environmentally-friendly fuel, of course. 

I think we should call the prototype The Hindenburg.

Tuesday 19 December 2023

The Baby's Skin Colour

To save time, why don’t we compile a list of people who don’t think it’s perfectly normal to speculate about which of its parents a baby might resemble more?

Hesketh Pearson’s biography of George Bernard Shaw relates that a strange lady from Zurich once wrote to the playwright, suggesting that with her looks and his brain they should produce the most perfect child. Shaw is said to have replied that the risk would be of the child having his looks and her brain.

The same story is told about Anatole France and Isadora Duncan, Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe, and Albert Einstein and an unnamed chorus girl.

It is entirely within the bounds of possibility that all these stories are apocryphal, or perhaps cases of reporters inserting contemporary famous names into an old, anonymous piece of repartee.

Now, we should not let the mere fact that nobody ever said it get in the way of a good story, should we?

On the other hand, in the current case, perhaps we should let this non-story drop because it wouldn’t have been of the slightest significance even if somebody had said it.