We all like to flaunt our erudition. It's only human nature. I, on the other hand, don't have enough erudition to flaunt and have to fall back on the erudition of others. That's why these columns are filled with quotes from Shakespeare, Aristotle, Keats and Longfellow.
I sometimes even make up quotes that I attribute to illustrious sources. For years when my children were young kids and somewhat rebellious about eating everything on their plates I intimated them with, "The Bible says thou shall eat thy vegetables."
While that caveat did not result in totally clean plates, it was enough to get some of the veggies consumed. Recently I was a passenger in a friend's car and his phone rang. He picked it up and kibitzed for about three minutes while weaving his way through Highway 101 traffic.
"You know," I said when he hung up, "this cellular phone business is dangerous while driving."
"It's OK," he said. "I'm careful."
"Are you familiar with scripture?" I asked.
"Not really," was his reply.
"Deuteronomy, chapter three, verse nine, states thou shall keep both hands on the steering wheel while driving," I said.
"I didn't know that," he answered in all seriousness.
The point is if one wants to disseminate bunk, do it with a little authority and you can get away with murder; or at least enhance your reputation as an intellectual.
Recently our esteemed publisher wrote in one of his commentaries that "shoveling manure or stacking hay bales was preferable to droning lectures about Avogadro's number or German verb conjugations."
Upon reading that I said to myself, "This is not only a display of erudition, but also somebody is trying to slip something past us."
I can't quibble with the German verb conjugations, which is erudition displayed to the max. But who besides Goethe, Schiller, and the Kaiser gives a hoot about German verb conjugations?
But the Avogadro number had to be sheer hokum and I said to myself, "Hey, Bret is doing what I do. He's making up this stuff. How could he do this? He's the publisher; he can't take chances like that in print."
Then it occurred to me that just maybe there is an Avogadro number. I started asking around if anyone ever heard of Avogadro. And did they have his, her's or its number?
I got answers that ran the gamut from, "What are ya talking about?" to "All I know about avocados is that I don't like 'em and they are too high in fat for my diet."
"You wouldn't per chance know Avogadro's number," I inquired of a New York friend during a casual phone conversation.
"Just a second," he said leaving me hanging on the other end of a line. He returned momentarily.
"212-689-2843" he said.
"What? What? What's that all about?" I said.
"It's Avogadro's number," he answered.
"Are you kidding? Who's Avogadro?
"Vinnie Avogadro owns Avogadro's, the best trattoria in the Bronx."
"Are you for real?"
"Why would I kid you? It's a great place. I thought you wanted the number.
"I think I have been barking up the wrong tree," I said.
"I thought you had a cat," he said.
We ended our conversation. I was perplexed. Should I confront the publisher with the news that I got Avogadro's number and that Avogadro is a restaurateur in the Bronx and that I'm on to him with his slipping those same crazy things into his columns that I have been doing for years? No, I decided. I wouldn't do that just yet. I'll check it out further.
I called my brother-in-law in L.A. He is a WGAOE (World's Greatest Authority on Everything) if there ever was one.
"Hey, Maury," I said. "You know anything about Avogadro's number?"
"Doesn't everybody?" he answered with the detachment of a duke addressing his valet.
"I don't. So would you be kind enough to tell me."
"It pertains to the rule that equal volumes of all gasses at the same volumes and pressure contain the same number of molecules. It was formulated by an Italian physicist and count named Amedeo Avogadro almost 200 years ago."
"Well, I'll be damned," I said.
"You always have been," he said in typical brother-in-law fashion. "And in all likelihood you'll continue on that path."
So Ojai, I hasten to tell you, in all my 16 years at this paper I don't believe we have ever had a genuine, bona fide, 24 karat intellectual for a publisher until now.
This could be dangerous.

© 2002 The Ojai Valley News

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