Josh Witten

Complainers

We’ve all heard, and perhaps uttered, some variety of a line designed to dismiss whiners along the lines of:

“Don’t complain unless you have a better solution.”
–someone named “virago”

For the sake of consistency in my life, I just phoned my wife and informed her that she is no longer entitled to tell me if the sink is leaking*.

*My lovely and talented soul-mate is both lovely and talented in a variety of areas. Plumbing is not one of them. We divide up responsibilities in our household, based on the distribution of skills. Therefore, I take the plumbing duties and she takes the singing duties, the latter of which, with small children, is the more important tasks.

Knievelism – Is your stunt dramatic enough?

Previously, I wrote about the issues that The 10:23 Campaign and its participants needed to consider in their laudable opposition to homeopathy. There, I wanted to focus on technical issues like safety and logic.

A major tactic of The 10:23 Campaign in 2010 was to generate educational opportunities by means of an attention gathering stunt – the mass overdose. While I have safety and scientific issues with the mass overdose stunt, it is also not clear why it should be a particularly compelling event to the relatively disinterested audience that is the general public. Why?

The mass overdose stunt is boring. Continue reading “Knievelism – Is your stunt dramatic enough?”