For a research paper on the CBC radio show As It Happens, I’m skimming former (now late) host Barbara Frum‘s book As It Happened, and I’m falling in love with her tongue-in-cheek snark:

“Thank goodness for sociology–it fills in so many of the blanks. It tells you that people in elevators get squirmy if you stare at them, that ugly people make more grateful marriage partners, that short people aren’t as tall as tall people, that Italians and Jews are inclined to holler when they’re in pain, and that people read in the bathroom to kid themselves about what they’re doing there. Were tax dollars not paying for it, I don’t think I’d mind so much. If sociologists find it stimulating to observe the obvious and the useless, who am I to quibble?”