Ultracrepidarians – know any?
by Simon Leyland
I was in the pub having a quiet pint and as you do, caught the end of a most peculiar conversation. Man (a) was talking to man (b). Man (b) was attempting to reply but with some of the most bizarre replies possible. No offence to the fellow involved but it led me to consider the word ultracrepidarianism
Ultracrepidarianism is giving opinions on subjects that you know nothing about, and is thus a terribly useful word. Ultracrepidarian was introduced into English by the essayist William Hazlitt, but it goes back to an ancient story about the great Greek painter Apelles.
The story goes that Apelles used to leave his new paintings out on public display and then hide behind a pillar to hear people’s reactions. One day he overheard a cobbler pointing out that Apelles had painted a shoe all wrong. So he took the painting away, corrected the shoe and put it out on display again.
The cobbler came back, saw that Apelles had taken his advice and was so proud and puffed up with conceit that he had made the great painter change a detail that he started talking loudly about what was wrong with the leg; at which point Apelles jumped out from his hiding place and shouted: ne sutor ultra crepidam, which approximately translates as the cobbler should go no further than the shoe. Thus ultracrepidiarian is beyond-the-shoe.
Resurrection and Our Coronavirus Times
Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox
Recently, in response to my DM’s on resurrection, Easter, and our current coronavirus emergency, I received a tweet from a reader in the UK who asked “Why the current situation does indeed bring a resurrection?” I believe it brings resurrection if it wakes people up to:
1) Our interdependence–which is much deeper than our apartness or differences;
2) Learning not to take basics for granted such as good health–and the health of our planet;
3) Honoring the good work that people do and can do when they get themselves trained to serve;
4) The holes in our so-called ‘safety-nets’ and how to remedy them;
5) Getting out of denial about climate change, which will make this pandemic seem like a picnic compared to the changes to come if we don’t change deeply in the next 9 years;
6) How we can all live more simply on this planet;
7) How we ought to celebrate more deeply while we are healthy;
8) How we can–when we have to–take radical life-changing decisions as a group and must do re. climate change bearing down on us;
9) How much generosity and willingness to sacrifice resides in the human heart–a lot more than we are often aware of;
10) Lessons in how precious life and existence are for all of us born of the 13.8 billion years of the Universe’s unfolding;
Continue reading “Resurrection and Our Coronavirus Times”Francis Cabrel: Jour 38
Revealed: leader of group peddling bleach as coronavirus ‘cure’ wrote to Trump this week
The leader of the most prominent group in the US peddling potentially lethal industrial bleach as a “miracle cure” for coronavirus wrote to Donald Trump at the White House this week.
The leader of the most prominent group in the US peddling potentially lethal industrial bleach as a “miracle cure” for coronavirus wrote to Donald Trump at the White House this week.
In his letter, Mark Grenon told Trump that chlorine dioxide – a powerful bleach used in industrial processes such as textile manufacturing that can have fatal side-effects when drunk – is “a wonderful detox that can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body”. He added that it “can rid the body of Covid-19”.
A few days after Grenon dispatched his letter, Trump went on national TV at his daily coronavirus briefing at the White House on Thursday and promoted the idea that disinfectant could be used as a treatment for the virus. To the astonishment of medical experts, the US president said that disinfectant “knocks it out in a minute. One minute!”
He went on to say: “Is there a way we can do something, by an injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that.”
Trump did not specify where the idea of using disinfectant as a possible remedy for Covid-19 came from, and the source for his notion remains obscure. But the Guardian has learned that peddlers of chlorine dioxide – industrial bleach – have been making direct approaches to the White House in recent days.
Grenon styles himself as “archbishop” of Genesis II – a Florida-based outfit that claims to be a church but which in fact is the largest producer and distributor of chlorine dioxide bleach as a “miracle cure” in the US. He brands the chemical as MMS, “miracle mineral solution”, and claims fraudulently that it can cure 99% of all illnesses including cancer, malaria, HIV/Aids as well as autism.
Since the start of the pandemic, Genesis II has been marketing MMS as a cure to coronavirus. It advises users, including children, to mix three to six drops of bleach in water and drink it.
In his weekly televised radio show, posted online on Sunday, Grenon read out the letter he wrote to Trump. He said it began: “Dear Mr President, I am praying you read this letter and intervene.”
Grenon said that 30 of his supporters have also written in the past few days to Trump at the White House urging him to take action to protect Genesis II in its bleach-peddling activities which they claim can cure coronavirus.
On Friday, hours after Trump talked about disinfectant on live TV, Grenon went further in a post on his Facebook page. He claimed that MMS had actually been sent to the White House. He wrote: “Trump has got the MMS and all the info!!! Things are happening folks! Lord help others to see the Truth!”
Paradoxically, Trump’s outburst about the possible value of an “injection” of disinfectant into the lungs of Covid-19 sufferers came just days after a leading agency within the president’s own administration took action to shut down the peddling of bleach as a coronavirus cure around the US.
Continue reading “Revealed: leader of group peddling bleach as coronavirus ‘cure’ wrote to Trump this week”Merde: 4/24/2020
According to Worldometer, a site that tracks coronavirus data by country, the US has, in fact, done more testing than any other individual country that reports data — the number of tests conducted in China, for instance, isn’t available — but the US is nowhere close to doing more testing than all other countries combined. Well over 20 million tests have been conducted across the world, and just over 4 million have been done in the United States.
Pas De Merde 