Shortly after I read a (very) abridged version of Don Quixote in grade school, I started noticing little references to the book everywhere: a favorite cartoon would do a takeoff on the tilting-at-windmills bit, I saw a Gustave Dore print in a history book (see image to right), a local high school did Man of La Mancha, the answer to a Final Jeopardy! question was Sancho Panza. I thought the all the karma of the world had colluded for a few days, until I mentioned this strange quixotic pheomenon to my dad, who introduced me to the concept of ‘topical sensitivity.’ I’m sure he called it something different and that it also has a different name in the psychological literature (with a degree in psychology, you would think I may be able to remember this sort of information), but simply put, once you’ve become attuned* to a specific topic or concept or so on, you become hypersensitve to its appearance.

I say this because the most recent culprit is the phrase ‘conventional wisdom.’ Apparently when super-economist John Kenneth Galbraith coined the term, he meant it in the most pejorative of senses, more in the vein of ‘we believe it because it’s easy and/or makes us feel good,’ though is not necessarily true. I’m currently reading Steven D. Levitt’s ‘Freakonomics’ and, while it’s a great read, the entire thing is a long, meta-data fueled attack on conventional wisdom: First instance – happenstance, as the military adage goes.

Today, the New York Times is talking about whether or not French woment are thinnner because they smoke more, right on the heels of French Women Don’t Get Fat and all its resultant hullabaloo, stating that ‘conventional wisdom … has long held that short-term weight gain is the price to be paid for quitting smoking.’ Second instance – coincidence.

I picked up an issue of Newsweek the other night – from June 13, 2005, the one with Deep Throat on the cover – and rediscovered one of its bite-sized content sections: Conventional Wisdom Watch. My parents had a subscription to the magazine, so I grew up looking at six red arrows that told whether or not Bill Clinton was acceptable, politically, socially or otherwise, that particular week. Third instance – enemy action.

Maybe I should stop noting instances of the phrase ‘conventional wisdom,’ as it’s becoming somewhat a) OCD-type behavior, and b) boring. Conventional wisdom, though, would dictate the opposite. Ha.

Newly-discovered old-skool classic album: ‘Yo! Bum Rush the Show,’ Public Enemy. This record has been on my radar for some time, but I’ve finally given it the listen it’s been due. Ed Rowlands from the Chemical Brothers once said in an interview that once he heard ‘Miuzi Weighs a Ton,’ it was like a switch was flipped in his head and, while I can’t claim the same, I definitely see the brilliance here. Beats are heavy, Chuck D is the anchoring gravitas and Flava Flav is just, well high-pitched and spastic – but in a way that keeps the album from being too topical or heavy at the hands of D.

*[Correction, 7:35 a.m., July 27, 2005: Incorrect word changed. See both post regarding said correction.]