Michael Workman

Whereas fans of the online Slate magazine are curious news junkies, fans of that magazine's column "The Explainer" are curious about the castoffs or unanswered factoids in their reporting. And these omissions can be about pretty much everything, especially if it's a question, as the jacket copy puts it, that fill in the "blanks in our everyday lives." Interesting idea. And the product is a book just short of inspired. The editors ask their readers, for instance, to riddle such questions as what are the rules for experimenting on humans? What happens to frozen terrorist assets? How do super-intelligent billboards spy on your car radio?

Didn't even know about that last one? According to Slate, referencing a story in The New York Times, what channels a driver has tuned in on their car radio can and does get monitored by a breed of electronic billboard that shuffles through new text and graphics every few hours. They're able to track listeners because of a phenomenon known as "radiation leakage," that is leftover radio waves that don't get converted into listenable sound by a car's tuner. Easily picked up on, marketing wizards have developed sensors for taking advantage of the leftover radiation, which in turn provides useful data on listening habits.

This and other such questions can be answered by the carnival of wonderment and trivial fascination provided by "The Explainer." So does "The Explainer" actually manage to entertain? As the detritus of Slate's reporting, the esoteria reveled in here reads useful only in bolstering Slate's quirky brand of deadpan humor. Otherwise, most of the factoids resurrected for this little encyclopedia of omissions prove forgettable five minutes after reading them.

The Explainer

By Slate Magazine

Anchor Press, 272 pages, $11.95

(2004-03-03)

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