WASHINGTON — The Institute for Common Sense on Monday released “The State of Things: A Comprehensive Assessment,” a 400-page report that took 39 months and $4.1 million to complete and concludes, on its only page of findings, that things are “fine, mostly.”
The report was released on Labor Day, which the Institute said was chosen “so that nobody would be too busy to have read it already.” Its findings page, page 3, contains the words “Fine, mostly,” centered, in 14-point type. The page is preceded by a two-page executive summary that summarizes the finding as “fine, for the most part” and followed by 397 pages of appendices documenting the methodology, which the Institute described as “looking around.”
Dr. Chad Brickhouse, the Institute senior fellow who led the study, said he was not surprised by the result, which he first stated in a phone call to the Reporter in June 2023, from a car wash.
“We looked at everything, and everything was fine. Mostly,” Brickhouse said by phone from a bowling alley, where he said he was “in the middle of a frame.” “I told you that three years ago. We ran the numbers, and the numbers agreed with me. It’s just common sense.”
According to the appendices, Institute researchers assessed 11,412 things in 40 categories, including roads, sandwiches, Tuesdays, parking, the moon, and the general situation, rating each on a scale ranging from “fine” to “fine.” All but one were rated fine. That item, listed in Appendix Q, was rated “not fine” and is the sole reason for the word “mostly.” The Institute has declined to identify it, citing concern that people would worry about it, and describes it only as “about the size of a toaster,” “mostly in Ohio,” and “not getting any worse, as far as we know.” Staff said it has been kept in a locked room in the Institute’s basement since March 2024, where it was observed last week to have moved slightly closer to the door.
Prof. Desmond Achterberg, who holds the Prewitt Chair in Comparative Annoyance at Ellery State University, said the report belonged to a long tradition. “The court chroniclers of the ninth century recorded the condition of the realm as ‘fine, mostly’ on 41 separate occasions, and as ‘mostly fine’ twice, which produced a schism that lasted 200 years,” Achterberg said. “The scholarship is clear that ‘fine, mostly’ is the more optimistic of the two. The ‘mostly’ comes second, so you’ve already had the good news by the time it arrives.”
A competing organization, the Center for Things Being Bad, issued a 600-page rebuttal on Tuesday morning concluding that things are “bad, honestly,” but conceded on page 412 that the toaster-sized item “does sound fine.”
Asked by phone what, specifically, was not fine about the item in Appendix Q, and whether the public had a right to know, Brickhouse said, “Look, any reasonable person can see that it’s mostly fine. The thing about the thing in Appendix Q is that it’s,” at which point the call dropped. Two subsequent attempts to reach him went to a voicemail greeting that said, in full, “Fine, mostly.”
The Institute said a follow-up report is already underway and will be released in 2029. Its conclusion has been drafted. It reads “Still fine.” Production of the remaining 399 pages is expected to take four years.
Glenn Whitacre filed this report by phone from the upper deck of a car ferry, where he said conditions were fine, mostly.