Bored of Estimates

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Our newspaper’s weekly circulation was a closely guarded exaggeration. The circulation manager knew the number, the editorial department knew it, the advertising manager knew it. The newspaper’s circulation was about 2000 copies per week. And now you know it, too.

The pliability of the words “circulation,” “copies,” “newspaper,” and “week” was tested with every ad sales phone call. This is because if we told an advertiser the (correct) 2000-per-week number, that advertiser might have asked us to pay them for the honor of placing their ads; thus, our ad sales manager gave them a number 10 times larger. More often than not, they were told that over 20,000 pairs of eyes “saw” any given issue of the newspaper. Actually, in a laudable effort at a specificity that would grant our numbers legitimacy, they were given a figure of “21,000 readers.”
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Today in History: May 14

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The Dalai Lama recognized six-year-old Tibetan Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the 11th Panchen Lama on this date in 1995. Almost immediately Chinese authorities detained the child and his family; he has not been seen since May 17, 1995, and his location has never been divulged. Human rights organizations once considered him one of the youngest political prisoners; now he is considered one of the longest-held. China, although officially atheist, used the tools of religion against Tibet and installed its own choice as the 11th Panchen Lama.
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Century’s …

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“Bacon makes everything better.”—a sign in Susannah Mushatt Jones’s kitchen.

The 19th Century came to a conclusion in the United States on Thursday night with the death of Susannah Mushatt Jones of Brooklyn, New York, who was born on July 6, 1899. She held the title of oldest person in the world since June 17 of last year. Every person alive in America right now was born after the dawn of the 20th Century or in this current one.

Every person who is not Emma Morano (pictured above) of Verbania, Italy, was born after January 1, 1900, too. Ms. Morano was born on November 29, 1899, and she is the oldest person alive on the planet now and is also the last human being who was here the century before last.
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