Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

Tue, 5 Jan 2021
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(IMAGE: Vaun Phan/vaunephan.blogspot.com)

There were an inordinate amount of clicks to this website for “mark yeow revology” last month.

Being curious, I Googled the phrase and discovered a certain Mark Yeow has been ordered to pay SGD60,000 in defamation damages to media personality Vaune Phan.

You can read more about Vaune’s ordeal here.

This is the same Mark Yeow of Scooter Narcotics with whom I had a protracted interaction, between 2013 and 2014.

In this, there is some irony.

After I posted my review, Yeow issued, through a lawyer, a cease and desist letter to take down the review, alleging it was defamatory.

I had a cordial discussion about the review with the lawyer, in which I established the review was a fair comment in light of the events that transpired.

Vaune, well done on staying the course so that justice could be served. “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum”!

The Kikwit handshake and culture

Wed, 19 Feb 2020
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(IMAGE: Metro.co.uk)

Some trivia from the Ebola outbreak in 1995:

Outbreaks and the news they create also give the public a chance to see culture being created and transmitted because people invent behaviours and management strategies when they encounter new diseases. One small example of this occurred during the early days of the Ebola virus outbreak in Kitwit, Uganda. Villagers who were deathly afraid of contamination began to stop shaking hands and to start touching elbows in greeting, a gesture that became known as the ‘Kitwit handshake’… Shaking hands in greeting became briefly supplanted by touching elbows as a polite way to greet one another without passing the pathogen” (96).

— In Epidemiology and Culture by James A. Trostle (2005)

I thought I’d share this because of the behaviours manifested in:

  1. The public responses thus far – boomer-tips, panic-buying after the raising of the DORSCON risk, the response to the panic-buying itself, etc.; and
  2. Me, because of my own responses to boomer-tips and hand-shaking.

Boomers and their medical expertise

Tue, 18 Feb 2020
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    (IMAGE: Gregory Grinnell/Northeastern University)
 

I like how, thanks – or no thanks – to the 2019-nCoV, almost every single boomer has become a medical expert on the subject.

Last Saturday morning, my Grab driver told me we can protect ourselves against the coronavirus by eating “a lot of hot stuff: ginger, chili, curry – all these!”

He added that going out into the sun and taking a walk will result in the sunlight “burn[ing] off the virus”.

These pro-tips were in addition to many other pro-tips from other boomers I’ve had the honour and privilege of receiving, such as:

  • Don’t use cheap toilet paper because it’s a possible cause of the infection;
  • Gargle with warm salt water; and
  • Take non-spicy food.

Interestingly, the last tip completely contradicts what my good friend told me today. I guess there are some things boomers still can’t agree on.

What boomer advice in relation to the 2019-nCoV have you received? Please share.

When all this is over, we’ll compile these nuggets of wisdom into a book and give a copy to each boomer during a mass ceremony to confer on them their honorary medical degrees.