pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

My ex is reading a book called "The Four-Hour Workweek". It's written by some sort of (self-described) millionaire entrepreneur and renaissance man. It purports to tell all us wage-slaves how we, too, can have the life he leads: working only an hour a day and papering our kitchens with spare hundred-dollar bills.

In the introduction, he gives a brief biography of himself and his various business adventures. He first became rich inventing and marketing a vitamin product called brainQUICKEN. He was a Princeton undergrad at the time, with no background in health or nutrition.

Now, this suggests to my cynical brain that he has a proven track record of selling snake oil to the overly optimistic.

His book is hardcover. The retail price is something like twenty-two dollars; a fairly high price for snake oil even in today's market. I ask myself why my ex -- a doctor and overall a smart man as far as I can tell -- bought twenty-two dollars worth of snake oil and is eagerly rubbing it all over his body. Apparently he hopes that this book will teach him to see twenty-five hospital patients each day in under an hour.

Is he really that gullible?

But then I remember: he swallowed Islam whole in childhood without giving it a cursory critical thought. And although the only way he manages to live with it is by breaking every rule he finds inconvenient, he still never asks himself if Islam really is, as he was taught, a perfect system for living created by God.

So that pretty much answers my question.