Nyah, nyah.

Sometime in the 1960s, I had this conversation with my piano teacher, a dear lady who was born in the late 1880s.

Miss Lindquist: 'When I was in school, they didn't teach much about human biology. In fact, all I remember was, 'The spleen has no known function.''

Me: 'I believe the function of the spleen is to remove damaged blood cells.'

Miss Lindquist: 'You see? Even the little I learned was wrong!'

Miss Lindquist would be dismayed, but not surprised, to learn that in the 21st Century, many people insist on knowing less than they did when she was a teenager. Miss Lindquist was a realist whose brother had fought in the First World War.

It would seem from our public discourse that the motto of many people in today's society is, 'Forward into the Past!' You don't believe me?

Virology is still based on 150-year-old germ theory, which works well for pharmaceutical companies to create boogie men that everyone must now fear.

That was on Twitter this morning.

Now they're 'doubting' the germ theory. When the public finally accepted the germ theory back when Miss Lindquist was young, it made a big difference to the way she lived. She told me that women's skirts got shorter – okay, not a lot, but enough to get them off the floor. And the ground. So they stopped tracking in dirt from the street that would infest the house.

Stop and think about the fact that back then, there was a lot of horse traffic on those streets. Horses=manure. How thrilled would you be with horse manure on your kitchen floor?

As a side note: as women's dresses got shorter, women's shoes got higher in order to keep their ankles modestly covered. Hence high button shoes.

It must have been a comfort to the ghost of Dr Semmelweis, that martyr to hygiene, to know that finally, finally, humans had got the message about germs. At least they wash their hands regularly (and properly), right? Nah, studies are done in washrooms, not everybody does. Sigh. Poor Dr Semmelweis. And poor Dr Fauci, who takes an unnecessary amount of abuse.

At least now we appreciate the pioneers like Edward Jenner and what they did to eradicate smallpox – eradicate it! You can read about the history of vaccines, you know. Online. Of course, many people 'prefer to do their own research.'

As far as I can tell, 'doing your own research' is mainly a matter of typing random phrases into Google and taking the first shiny website that says what you wanted to hear in the first place as gospel. This 'doing your own research' nonsense is also predicated on the very silly idea that a reliable internet connection is the equivalent of a graduate degree in an abstruse academic discipline.

When I was a kid, we had a saying: 'Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.' If you go around pretending to be an expert in interior decorating, the worst thing that can happen is an ugly living room. If you go around pretending to be an expert in civil engineering, the whole building could collapse. See what I'm saying? Develop a healthy respect for those areas in which you lack the necessary expertise. Like virology.

Now, I'm not claiming that all, or even most people who lived in Miss Lindquist's time were clear thinkers. She told me enough funny stories about the principal of the high school where she taught to dispel that notion. And charlatans abounded, then as now. Take a gander at the book Zetetic Cosmogony by one Samuel Rowbotham. This fellow started the 'flat Earth' business. He also poisoned people with his quack 'cures'. In other words, trolls existed before there was an internet to attract them. But attract them it does, like moths to a porch light.

The main problem people have with the free availability of information is that they need to learn to distinguish between facts and skill sets. Any fool can look up a few factoids and pretend to know something. I can, for instance, look up statistics about motorcycles and state with pseudo-confidence that this or that motorcycle possesses such-and-such sized engine, burns fuel at this or that rate, has been successful in the following races or implicated in so many accidents, etc. But I couldn't tell them apart on the kickstand, as it were, and I certainly couldn't ride one. I have a balance problem and can't even ride a bicycle. For all things motorcycle-y, I defer to experts like Freewayriding. Ask me about something I do know about, like music or Germanic languages or where to put commas or Southern cooking or cows, maybe….

Mind you, yes, we all want to learn. The internet is a useful tool. So is the public library, and if you live in the US, that's an endangered resource, so guard it carefully! It's wonderful to be able to look up so much information at no notice at all. But caveat usor, y'all: know what you know and know what you don't know – and learn to weigh the validity of your sources. Just because that woman has nice blonde hair, or that guy makes you laugh on his podcast, doesn't mean they know what they're talking about.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

08.05.23 Front Page

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