I was jolted out of my light reverie this morning while perusing the paper. A controversy in California had escaped my attention: a legal tussle over a law that would require more roaming room for egg-laying hens. Foregive me if my surprise reflects my inattention and if my amusement bespeaks my insensitivity. Surely in a world of competing sorrows we have better ways to spend time and money. Or do we?

Having seemingly moved on to other pressing articles in the paper raising profound issues of public policy, such as the sleeping habits of an advisor to NY City’s mayor, I found the article on hen-roaming continuing to peck at me. Before long, my free-floating reverie had become fixed on the Calornia hen-roaming law. I was experiencing a delayed double-take, wondering what was really going on. My speculations began to roam, comfortably unconstrained by any shortage of roaming room.

What indeed could explain the law?

1. Would hens with more roaming room lay higher-quality eggs? If yes, would the higher price justify the higher quality? Would the consumer forced to pay more for the higher quality egg receive his money’s-worth? Or would “society” benefit through a lower cost in its health care bill because higher quality eggs from roaming hens reduce cardiac stress?

2. Would it be cynical (or relevant) to inquire whether the hidden impetus for the law was a desire to promote a subset of the hen-raising industry, perhaps the subset that owns spacious turf to enable free-roaming? Or should I look elsewhere to find the money-trail?

3. Perhaps the motivation for the law is to ensure compassion to the fowl that provides us with daily bounty; perhaps, in other words, the law protects against any lapses in our ethical commitment to do the “right thing” by ensuring that the right thing will be done notwithstanding our frailties? In which case, three cheers to the wisdom of our law-makers for saving us from ourselves.

4. Might the law be designed to protect us against false advertisement and the scheming entrepreneur who purports to appeal to our better selves only to position herself to profit as we respond to the appeal?

Or have I misconceived the law altogether and engaged in a dialogue without foundation? Perhaps an exercise characteristic of subjective idealism (as in Bishop Berkely’s 18th century idealism)?

Although the article that prompted these observations (in the Wall Sreet Journal) did not explain the reasons for the law, other articles do. I found a few of these when I returned home and searched the Internet. As always, there is more than meets the eye. The challenge and opportunity lie in knowing when there is more, and we may fall short if we develop an unshakeable conviction that we have taken the full measure of the matter.

I read recently a book review that the reviewer must have written to exhibit his luminous intellectual prowess through ridicule of the dull author of the criticized book.

Reflecting on the thin and porous veneer of impartiality that the reviewer applied to his review, an urge to re-read and savor again Alexander Pope’s marvelous “Essay on Criticism” began to swell.

‘Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill;
But, of the two, less dang’rous is th’ offense
To tire our patience than mis-lead our sense…

And with the above quote, the pleasures and instructions of this poem have scarcely begun. Dolce et utile.

How often we encounter reviews patently intended, not to guide us through qualities of the work being reviewed, nor to situate the work in a coherent context, but to highlight the reviewer’s breadth of learning and perspicacity. How often we wish the reviewer followed Pope’s exhortation:

But you who seek to give and merit fame,
And justly bear a critic’s noble name,
Be sure yourself and your own reach to know,
How far your genius, taste and learning go;
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
And mark that point where sense and dullness meet.

What Pope found true in the early eighteenth century, we find true today. Would that each review came appended to a review of the review.

“A three dimensional thinker infused with empathy, imagination and a genuine and deep scientific understanding. No hour was too late when the phone rang; no question or questioner was unworthy of dignity. A model for us all.”