Chicken Soup? Computers? Google? Pshaw!

Modernity's full of fine inventions and healthy advice, but don't they really make us dimmer, sicker, and less prone to stumble on sex? So writes Nora Ephron in the New York Times, as she opines on hand-washing, breast-feeding, and rumors that chicken soup cures colds. "You have chicken soup; you get the cold anyway," she writes. "So: is it possible that chicken soup gives you a cold?"

And what of computers? They make screenwriting a breeze, "and yet movies are nowhere near as good as they used to be." She admits to loving Google, but wonders if instant answers kill fine conversations, which through their amblings "might get you to sex. This meandering had its charms," she writes. "So: is it possible that Google will mean the end of conversation as we know it?" (More chicken soup stories.)