Monday, February 15, 2010

Send in the Cones

Blogger and media commentator Russell Brown is a very scholarly chap. He is a virtuoso at gathering data, stats, hard-boiled facts and all that grown-up left-brain stuff. As such an erudite bird, he has recently been venting his disdain for the current trend to gather our information from people who "don't know anything". Kind of funny coming from a blogger, but presumably he means anyone but him. He rails against this newspaper for daring to ask readers for their views about what causes autism. "It's the age of the vox pop, of the harvesting of feelings rather than thoughts." The study of autism should be left to scholars and medical professionals, Brown splutters.
Word, as the young folks say. Here at the Institute for Advanced Feeling, we say: back off Brown; let the man on the street have his say. We don't need your education, we don't need your data, stats and facts.  What we need is a woman who glares, who says "ex-squeeze me" and who does not make sense. Otherwise, we could end up like that Herman Rockefeller.


So, how about those experts then? Haven't they done dazzlingly well in unravelling autism so far? And how about those quantum electrodynamics?




2 comments:

Grace Dalley said...

I can forgive her even less for wilfully misunderstanding Richard Feynman!

I note that as well as dissing facts, Feynman, and Russell Brown she also disses Alan Bollard. She obviously isn't a keen Public Address reader, or she would know what happens to people who diss Alan Bollard.

Unknown said...

Couldn't care less about the Cone's clubfooted attempt at hatchet-jobbery, but Thomas Dolby always looked - and sounded - as if he was dying of a full-body tinea infection.