Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.
Hey, Mom! The Explanation.
Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2740 - Monica Byrne on The Actual Star with Kim Stanley Robinson
Monica Byrne was the first artist to whom I pledged money on Patreon, and the only one who I have never lowered my donation or dropped entirely.
ART IS WORK as she advocated so as to make a living wage as an artist.
And learning about events like this one much earlier than the rest of the world, plus seeing her produce great art, make my annual donation total worth it each it, more than worth it.
Confession: I have not yet read The Actual Star, even though it has been in my possession for almost a full year. I will soon. The lack of reading is not evidence of a lack of desire. Just other things have taken precedent.
Last night's event with Kim Stanley Robinson was INCREDIBLE. What a wonderful conversation. And enough of you nudged me about making it accessible to all, that I asked the good folks at Flyleaf if they could remove the password after it aired, and they said sure, so...
You have to log in to view it, but that just means it'll prompt you to sign in with your Gmail or a social media account. (I'd go with the Gmail option, since the other routes ask for access to your data, blegh.) But if you want to bypass Crowdcast altogether and don't mind not seeing the video, I uploaded the audio (recorded on my phone) here. You can hear the rain on Stan's end and the cicadas on my end! (If you prefer YouTube, let me know--I started uploading it and it's taking FOREVER with my crappy upload speed, but I can post the link in the comments later.)
Thank you to all who came. Thank you to all who nudged me. And this is super nice of Flyleaf to do, so feel free to buy any book from them as a token of appreciation :)
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2208.19 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2604 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2271 - I wrote a story! Submitted to Dangerous Visions Volume Three
I wrote a story in a month and submitted it to Dangerous Visions, VOLUME THREE also known as The Last Dangerous Visions.
The first two Dangerous Visionsvolumes were produced and edited by the late, great Harlan Ellison.
The deal for this submission is it only applied to writers who have never been paid in money for their fiction. I can confidently say that this is a true thing about me.
The most important thing is that from the time I hear of this submission option to the time I started writing the story to finishing the story was much less than a month.
If I can do that, I can make time to write some each week. If not daily, then weekly and over the course of the month enough to finish things and make progress with long things like novels.
My story is called "The Spangle Maker." Here's a summary:
Driven into sealed habitats by a pandemic, TexAmerica restricted the population to keep it great: whites & straights only. All others were exiled. When true patriots forget the National Anthem, Neko HaffBrunner finds that one man can get him exiled for his hate crimes.
Intrigued?
I hope so. I had to submit that text with the story. I imagine that if there are, say, 1000 submissions, that JMS may use the summaries to cull out the top 20 or 50 or whatever that he will actually start reading to see if they catch.
SF fans may notice something about the character's name, which is an amalgam of Nickie Haflinger From John Brunner's The Shockwave Rider. I shamelessly stole the name of the other character -- Paul Freeman -- right out of that book.
Since the story is under consideration, I am not going to publish it here, though I doubt anyone would notice.
I am not over hopeful that the story will be selected for publication as I wish I had more revision time. However, just the thought of JMS skimming my work, if only for a few minutes, makes me giddy.
J. Michael Straczynski (JMS)
is creating Movies, TV series, Videos and Audio dramas via Synthetic Worlds
Harlan Ellison's The Last Dangerous Visions may finally be published, after five-decade wait
This article is more than 5 months old
Sci-fi anthology stalled since 1974 will be produced by executor, screenwriter J Michael Straczynski, adding stories by today’s big-name SF writers
Combative nature … Harlan Ellison, pictured in 1977. Photograph: Barbara Alper/Getty Images
It is the great white whale of science fiction: an anthology of stories by some of the genre’s greatest names, collected in the early 1970s by Harlan Ellison yet mysteriously never published. But almost 50 years after it was first announced, The Last Dangerous Visions is finally set to see the light of day.
The late Ellison changed the face of sci-fi with the publication of anthologies Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, in 1968 and 1972, which featured writing by the likes of Philip K Dick, JG Ballard, Kurt Vonnegut and Ursula K Le Guin. Ellison, who was known for his combative nature – JG Ballard called him “an aggressive and restless extrovert who conducts life at a shout and his fiction at a scream” – announced a third volume, The Last Dangerous Visions, would be published in 1974. Contributors were said to include major names such as Frank Herbert, Anne McCaffrey, Octavia Butler and Daniel Keyes.
But the work never appeared, and in the words of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, it “became legendary for its many postponements”. The encyclopedia notes that “a series of illnesses certainly impaired Ellison’s fitness for the huge task of annotating what had soon become an enormous project”; in their study of Ellison, The Edge of Forever, Ellen Weil and Gary K Wolfe say the anthology ran to over a million words.
The encyclopedia also points to “the moral dilemmas [Ellison] incurred by retaining purchased but unpublished stories – eventually in some cases … for close on 50 years” – a delay that so riled author Christopher Priest that he wrote and self-published a lengthy, scathing analysis titled The Last Deadloss Visions.
Straczynski is planning to include dozens of the stories originally commissioned by Ellison, as well as work by “some of the most well-known and respected writers working today”, who are yet to be revealed. It will also feature “one last, significant work by Harlan that has never been published, that has been seen by only a handful of people”, and will reveal why the book was delayed for so long, “a story known only to a very few people”.
“Rather than seeking a publisher first, and potentially compromise a book designed to be challenging and daring, or asking writers to wait until the book is sold to be paid, I will cover the cost of paying for all of the stories up front,” he wrote.
Straczynski plans to sell the book to a publisher next year, saying that several “major” presses have already expressed “significant” interest, “given the unique place in science fiction history occupied by Dangerous Visions in general, and this book in particular”. All royalties are set to go to the creation of the Harlan and Susan Ellison Memorial Library, in their home in California.
“It starts right here, right now, today,” Straczynski wrote. “After 46 years of anticipation, we are finally bringing this beast in for a landing.”
‘A lot of the writers have disowned their stories as juvenilia’ … novelist Christopher Priest. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty Images
Contacted by the Guardian on Monday, Priest was unimpressed, saying that Straczynski was “in the same sort of unenviable position as Trump’s caddie”.
“I kind of lost interest in all that years ago. Ellison clearly did too, along with everyone else. (Although I gather he went on with his magical thinking if anyone asked when he was going to deliver),” he wrote. “Many of the stories were withdrawn, because Ellison acted like a dick. Of the ones that remain, most of them are by writers who are now deceased, so the rights have expired and the estates would have to be traced. A lot of the writers have disowned their stories as juvenilia, or outdated, or simply because Ellison was acting like a dick.”
But, Priest added: “Mr Straczynski is an experienced professional, so maybe he’ll work something out.”
The Most Dangerous Sci-Fi Anthology A Look Back at Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions (1967)
by Ted Gioia
Almost every aspect of Harlan Ellison's 1967 anthology of science fiction tales, Dangerous Visions, disrupted the status quo. Unlike other anthologists, Ellison insisted on brand new stories for his book —in stark contrast to the time-honored tradition of collecting works that had already appeared in magazines. This proviso created, in turn, economic disruption for both Ellison and the publisher, because they had to pay more for new stories than for recycled ones. Ellison was even more daring in his choice of contributors, aiming to bring in both leading literary heroes of avant-garde fiction, famous genre writers and the very best of the up-and-coming sci-fi authors.
But the most disruptive aspect of the project came with the instructions Ellison gave his contributors. He really wanted dangerous visions, stories that broached themes and subjects too hot for the science fiction magazines of the day. He insisted that the tales in the book confront taboos, break down barriers and challenge prevailing attitudes and values.
Ellison did not achieve all his goals. He failed to secure an adequate advance from his publisher, and was forced to draw on his own money to pay his authors. One of the contributors, Larry Niven did the same, lending $750 to cover some of the publication costs. Ellison also ran into obstacles in his choice of writers. He successfully enlisted many of the best science fiction authors of his day for his project, but his hopes of snagging the leading literary lions from the counterculture proved ill-founded.
His initial list of possible contributors included Thomas Pynchon, William Burroughs, Terry Southern, Kingsley Amis and Thomas Berger. The mind reels at how they would have responded to Ellison's request for dangerous visions. But none of these writers participated in the project. I lament their absence, but still can’t find fault with a final roster that includes Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, Samuel R. Delany, Theodore Sturgeon, Brian Aldiss, Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny, Fritz Leiber and Robert Bloch, as well as an introduction from Isaac Asimov (who refused to offer a story on the grounds that he was "too sober, too respectable, and, to put it bluntly, too darned square").
Ellison lived up to his promise of violating taboos. I suspect that this willingness to offend, and risk the opprobrium of censors and the censorious, created much of the buzz around the book. Certainly sales were brisk. Dangerous Visions has stayed in print, and also spurred a high-profile sequel (Again, Dangerous Visions), as well as a proposed third volume slated for release in 1973, but still in publishing limbo. (A few years ago, Jo Walton reviewed this oft-discussed but never-seen anthology, The Last Dangerous Visions, as an April Fool's Day joke. As recently as 2007, Ellison was still claiming that he wanted to publish the work, but griping: "It’s this giant Sisyphean rock that I have to keep rolling up a hill, and people will not stop bugging me about it.")
Strange to say, the dangerous parts of Dangerous Visions have not aged especially well. It's hard to find anything shocking nowadays, not just in fiction but in any other form of narrative. And the few taboos that survived into the modern age are just as predictable as moral injunctions —no surprise there, since they are mirror image of each other—and readers can easily guess which subjects will show up even before they open this book. So we get a big dose of cannibalism, a smattering of incest, lots of sexual experimentation and kinky fetishes, some serial killers, etc. etc.. In other words, the usual suspects when people are asked to violate the inviolable. Alas, if this were enough to create great literature, Jerry Springer would be a Nobel judge.
That said, a few contributors stood out for the very vehemence with which they pursued the transgressive. Ellison’s single story in the volume, a futuristic reworking of the Jack the Ripper meme, presents more vivisection details than a coroner’s report. And Theodore Sturgeon not only serves up a story about incest, but offers a spirited treatise in defense of the same. Even Robert Heinlein, who put his hero Lazarus Long on a time machine so the character could have an affair with his own mom, never went quite so far.
Some of the finest stories in this book ignored Ellison's mandate to embrace 'dangerous' visions, and succeed through plain old- fashioned storytelling. J.G. Ballard and Fritz Leiber both contributed atmospheric horror stories. Ballard's reticence is especially surprising, given the outrageous and repulsive subjects in his other works of this period. Yet his tale of a traveling circus that arrives in town with cages for the animals, but apparently no creatures inside them, is darkly poetic, and saves a pleasing Kafkaesque twist for its conclusion. Leiber's contribution is a macabre fairy tale about a gambler getting into a high stakes dice game with the grim reaper. The story is unsettling, but more in the manner of Ambrose Bierce than New Wave sci-fi— and with a pleasing dose of Leiber's trademark flippancy and irreverence. I’m not surprised that it won the Hugo for best novelette.
Ellison makes a big deal about Philip K. Dick’s 'dangerous vision' —and hints that the story was written under the influence of a hallucinogenic drug. Frankly, I’m not sure I could tell the difference between Dick’s output on drugs and the stories he wrote cold-sober. They all are pleasingly weird. But "Faith of Our Fathers," his contribution to Ellison's anthology, is one of his best—it also earned a Hugo nomination (losing out to Leiber's story). Narcotics do play a prominent role in the plot, but with an ingenious twist: in Dick's universe, the citizenry all experience the exact same hallucinations when drugged, but while they are clear-headed, their perceptions of reality vary in inexplicable ways. Dick takes this provocative concept and incorporates it into a dystopian account of space aliens and global conquest straight out of the Golden Age of sci-fi.
Perhaps the most famous story in this book is also the longest. Philip José Farmer's "The Riders of the Purple Wage" was initially a 15,000- word tale, but after he had finished revisions, it had expanded into a rambling 30,000 word short novel. Ellison lavishly praised the work in his introduction, claiming that it was "easily the best" piece in the anthology. Certainly, many others agreed. Farmer also got a Hugo for his efforts—part of the Dangerous Visions landslide victory at the 26th World Science Fiction Convention in Berkeley. This Joycean pastiche is certainly one of the most audacious pieces in the collection, both for its prose style and the copious amounts of sex and violence in its plot. But the story constantly hints at more than it actually delivers. Farmer lays out the foundations for a penetrating satire of politics, art and culture, yet never pursues any of these promising paths with much vigor. And instead of moving towards a resolution of the plot, he merely builds up to a huge pun—one so over-the-top that even Joyce, that master punster, would have groaned in dismay at it.
Now, I must turn to the biggest surprise of this book—namely that many of the most impressive stories in Dangerous Visions came from little-known and mostly-forgotten authors. "The Doll-House" written by James Cross—a pseudonym for career academic and government worker Hugh Parry (1916-1997)—presents a very appealing mixture of ancient mythology and modern psychodrama. But just try to find more information about this author, even with the help of all-knowing Google! I also enjoyed stories by Larry Eisenberg and Jonathan Brand, stylish authors who never achieved much fame but proved their mettle in this anthology. But best of all is David R. Bunch, the only writer to contribute two stories to Dangerous Visions. These are, in my opinion, the most ambitious and well-written stories in the whole book, drawing on a poised but unconventional prose style that is not a pastiche, in the style of Farmer’s piece, but a brilliant reconfiguration of language perfectly suited to avant-garde science fiction. Bunch’s work is like a blend of Flann O’Brien and Italo Calvino, leavened with the technology acumen of Isaac Asimov. I was saddened to learn that this author’s writings went out-of-print soon after they were published, and now command outrageous prices for tattered old paperback copies. Some enterprising publisher needs to rectify this situation!
But the star of Dangerous Visions remains Harlan Ellison, and though he contributed just a single story, his introductions to the book and each of the tales are what set this work apart from the other anthologies in the field. In a different time and place, Ellison might have written suppressed political manifestos, screeds that would have set off rioting in the streets and the toppling of regimes. Instead, he aimed at spurring a revolution in fiction, with an inflammatory zeal that no one else of his generation could match. He often took more risks in his intros to the stories than the authors did in their narratives, and I can only imagine how much behind-the-scenes prodding and nagging he devoted to making this cantankerous book, and its sequel, a reality. Ellison clearly possessed dangerous visions, and it is to his credit that he was able to get a whole cadre of sci-fi legends, near-legends, and should-be- legends to march to his beat. A half-century later, when the forbidden topics in this book are no longer prohibited and more than a few have entered the mainstream, Ellison's strident stances and extravagant expostulations can still captivate readers. So even if the dangers embodied in Dangerous Visions today seems less perilous, let's give some of the credit for that sea change to the visionary behind the visions, who helped tame them for posterity.
Ted Gioia writes on music, literature and popular culture. He is currently working on his ninth book, Love Songs: The Hidden History, which will be published by Oxford University Press.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2105.07 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2135 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1873 - How to Spot Bad Science about COVID-19: Rebecca Watson
So, back to some more posts from the amazing Rebecca Watson, who is one of my new, favorite people on the Internet. She's someone I feel a strong affinity with and with whom I would want to be pals.
Here's one of her recent videos with transcript on spotting bad science in articles about COVID-19.
The bad science video is a great example for getting students to think critically about sources and supposed facts, misinterpretation of data, and credibility in general in this age of political hate on science, in which the national leader routinely accuses credible news networks of "fake" news.
FOR MY STUDENTS, this video serves as a wonderful process-based approach to thinking critically about sources, verifying and corroborating data, and being skeptical of all assertions until proven.
Last week someone asked me if I’d consider doing a video on how to read a science paper. I thought that was a great idea, and made a note to record something for this week. A few days later, someone else sent me a Medium post called Evidence over hysteria — COVID-19, insisting I read it because of how good it is. I didn’t know what to expect going in, so I started reading it with high hopes because it seemed that the author wanted to use scientific data to reassure the general public that they shouldn’t be panicking. That’s great! That’s something I’ve been saying since January: don’t panic. Panicking doesn’t fix anything, it just creates new, shittier problems. Literally shittier, sometimes, like when you run out of toilet paper.
But then I kept reading and by the third sentence I went back to see who had written this, because I had assumed it was an epidemiologist but, well, you’ll see why I realized my mistake quickly. (Spoiler alert: it was not an epidemiologist.) At that point I realized, oh, this is my next video, because this article clearly got a lot of positive attention from people promoting it as good science despite it not actually being based on science at all. So yeah, today we’re gonna talk about how to not get conned by partisan hacks pretending to do science. This isn’t going to be a complete debunk of the Medium post -- Medium took it down, and there’s honestly way too much for just one video. I’m just going to pick out some examples to help illustrate 5 Tips for how you should be reading “science” breakdowns like this.
Tip 1: know your source! In this case the author is Aaron Ginn, who is a silicon valley marketing guy. Does that mean he’s wrong? No! But you need to ask yourself: what does the scientific consensus have to say about this issue, and what is the author arguing? In this case, the consensus of epidemiologists are telling us that COVID-19 is an emergency pandemic that needs to be mitigated with extreme measure to prevent significant loss of life. The author is arguing that it’s not that big of a deal and we shouldn’t bother sheltering in place. If the author was an epidemiologist, you’d want to read his dissenting opinion carefully. If the author is formerly a writer for Breitbart with no previous expertise in science, you’d want to read it with extreme skepticism.
Think of it this way -- most physicists think that dark matter exists. If a respected physicist writes a paper about an alternative hypothesis that involves modifying general relativity, it may be worth your time to read it. But if your accountant writes a paper on the same subject, you’d be forgiven for finding better things to do with your time because it’s probably going to take a theoretical physicist to point out all the things that are wrong with it.
Adjust your bullshit detector accordingly!
With that in mind, and knowing that we are on high skeptic alert, tip number 2 is to click the links! This is what initially tipped me off on my first read through. Aaron Ginn writes in the first paragraph, “When 13% of Americans believe they are currently infected with COVID-19 (mathematically impossible), full-on panic is blocking our ability to think clearly and determine how to deploy our resources to stop this virus.” Ginn supports his 13% figure by linking to this article, in which a survey company says that in a poll of 500 people, 10% said they think they currently have COVID. At first I assumed Ginn must have just mistyped, but after reading the survey data I realized that Ginn got the 13% figure by looking at a chart that only considered about half of the respondents who gave their age, not the full survey of 500. It is, by definition, a less rigorous number than the 10% figure. But Ginn scrolled down and went through the data until he found the highest number he could. And he used it.
And while that’s a very minor quibble -- a difference of 3% in an informal survey that doesn’t really change anything about how we should react to COVID-19 -- it’s a very good example of what Ginn does through the rest of the article. If you click the links, if you seek out the actual citation, you will know whether the person you’re reading is truly representing the data or not.
You might be surprised at how often people fail to look at sources, which is why people who, say, want to trick people into thinking the science is on their side can just throw in a link that completely contradicts them and trust that the average reader won’t bother to click it.
As another example, Ginn’s very next sentence is “Over three-fourths of Americans are scared of what we are doing to our society through law and hysteria, not of infection or spreading COVID-19 to those most vulnerable.” That’s just a straight up lie. The link he gives goes to a Yahoo! article about a Harris Poll. Like the first half of his sentence says, the poll did find that “Seventy-nine percent of respondents said drastic headlines about how society is changing is the No. 1 reason they are fearful,” with many of the respondents saying they were freaked out by hysterical people fighting over toilet paper, though there was no mention of “law,” despite Ginn’s words. The second part of his sentence is a lie that is debunked by the same link. Ginn says those people are not scared “of infection or spreading COVID-19 to those most vulnerable,” but the poll actually found that “74% of Americans are afraid of accidentally spreading the virus to vulnerable people even if they are asymptomatic.” Like, they even use the word “vulnerable.”
Sometimes you don’t even have to click the link to find the lie. A little later, Ginn claims in a headline that “1% of cases will be severe,” and to illustrate that he includes a pyramid showing that by mid-February in China 2.3% of cases died. How “severe” does he consider “severe?” Can you imagine your mom calling you and saying, “Your brother has been in a car accident!” “Oh no, was it severe?” “No!” “Thank god!” “I mean, he did die but it wasn’t that bad.”
He got that 1% number by considering how many cases were severe compared to everyone who is ever tested for COVID. That’s a different (and pretty pointless, in this instance) number than the ones in his chart. He’s comparing apples and oranges and hoping you won’t notice. If he was being accurate to his graphic, the headline would read, 21.3% cases will be severe. He didn’t do that, because that doesn’t fit with his narrative that COVID-19 isn’t a big deal.
This brings me to Tip #3: don’t be taken in by headlines and graphics. Even in “good” science journalism, headlines aren’t often written by the writer of the article, and graphics aren’t necessarily chosen by them. Hell, I had a video once where my editor slotted in a graphic of red blood cells (which tend to not have nuclei) while I was talking about DNA. Whoops! Headlines and graphics are extremely good for persuading people, but they’re not always good at communicating facts. Don’t be tricked.
Tip #4: don’t be intimidated by jargon. Ginn tells us to “watch the Bell Curve,” but what does that mean? He writes, “Bell curves is the dominant trait of outbreaks. A virus doesn’t grow linearly forever. It accelerates, plateaus, and then declines. Whether it is environmental or our own efforts, viruses accelerate and quickly decline. This fact of nature is represented in Farr’s law.” That’s more or less correct, but it’s strange to call it a “fact of nature” (which is never something you’d hear out of a scientist’s mouth” and it’s equally strange to randomly namedrop Farr, a researcher who did suggest that epidemics may follow a regular curve back in the 19th century. Ginn throws all this at the reader with this chart, which he says is “a graph from Italy showing a bell curve in symptom onset and number of cases, which may point to the beginning of the end for Italy.” He wants you to look at it, see that “Bell Curve,” and assume he’s right. Italy’s gonna be just fine! Farr’s Law says so. The Bell Curve says so. But wait! What’s that written right there on the chart? “Data in the shaded area should be interpreted with caution due to the possible reporting delay of more recently diagnosed cases and cases with date of onset within the reporting period that have not yet been diagnosed.” This is something researchers have been yelling about for the past two months: we don’t have all the data. We aren’t testing everyone in a population. Our numbers will, therefore, always be inadequate and several days to a week behind the curve. The Bell Curve, if you will.
I guess we’ll just have to see if Ginn was right and that really was the beginning of the end for Italy. Oh hold on, we don’t need to wait because that chart is from March 15, about a week before Ginn’s article was posted. March 11 is the last date with confirmed data and that shows 2,313 newly discovered cases. There were 2600 the next day, and the day after that, and then 3500, and then a few days later 4200, and a few days after that on March 21st there were 6500. Maybe that’s the beginning of the end?
Does that mean the epidemiological Bell Curve isn’t true? No! It means that you trusted some jabrony who can’t read the legend on a chart he’s posting to tell you how a general rule of thumb (not a “fact of nature”) might apply to this particular pandemic. The major drawback of “Farr’s Law” is that we are hampered based upon how much data we can collect. And when you’ve got one epidemic in a shady ass place like China and another one in the United States where people with COVID-19 symptoms can’t get tested unless they are an NBA player or literally need life support, laypeople like Ginn and like me can’t make pronouncements about where the top of the bell is going to be. That’s why I leave it to the professionals like the epidemiologists at the WHO and CDC, and I just tell you what they’re telling the general public.
This video is already way too long to talk about everything Ginn screws up, but I may do another video on his other points in the future if I see the misinformation traveling (like the idea that COVID-19 will die during the summer -- scientists absolutely do not know if that will happen). So I’ll end with my final tip: don’t fall for the Gish Gallop. I’ve talked about this in previous videos -- it’s the technique pioneered by the creationist Duane Gish, who could spew so much bullshit in such a short amount of time that it would take any debate opponent months to dissect and debunk each of his points. Don’t be impressed by the utter volume of arguments put forth by people like creationists, 9/11 truthers, flat-earthers, or Aaron Ginn.
Please listen to the epidemiologists. Stay inside, wash your hands, don’t visit friends, play some video games. If we get enough tests to start testing everyone like in South Korea, or if the disease peters out, we can get back to normal. I assure you that the hit our economy takes will be nothing compared to the hit it would take in the worst case scenario of millions of people with critical illnesses that stop them from working. Or living. I know, it’s the “working” part that has the market guys worried. If this were a zombie pandemic and they found a way to put the zombies to work, our stock market would be through the roof right now.
Skepchick was founded by Rebecca Watson in 2005 to discuss science and skepticism from a woman’s perspective. Over the years, it’s grown to be a home to dozens of writers who tackle those issues as well as progressive politics, feminism, and social justice.
About Rebecca Watson
Rebecca is a writer, speaker, YouTube personality, and unrepentant science nerd. In addition to founding and continuing to run Skepchick, she hosts Quiz-o-Tron, a monthly science-themed quiz show and podcast that pits comedians against nerds. There is an asteroid named in her honor.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2004.04 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1736 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
