Fan Death Rides Again!

Fan Death Threat!

Blithely unaware of the looming danger...

(Image from Yonhap News)

Robert Koehler, founding rodent of the Marmot's Hole, has posted an entry on fan death that betrays his obvious disbelief in the truth of fan death despite his ostensibly journalistic commitment to noncommitment:

Fan Death -- Urban Myth?

Yonhap News ran a surprisingly long piece on the "debate" surrounding "fan death."

It seems most Korean doctors find "fan death" to be groundless, but Yonhap did find two med school professors who said fans could kill.

Unfortunately, the Yonhap article is in Korean, which I am incapable of deciphering, but since I -- and not those 'Korean' doctors -- am the local expat expert on fan death, I felt compelled by honor to speak out against this shoddy excuse for journalism:

I haven't read the article, but I am sure that it is wrong. Readers who value their lives should come to my website, do a search for my entries on fan death, and read my various defenses of the fan-death facts.

Don't listen to the experts. Listen to me. Fans can kill you.

Later, I posted a direct link to a complete index of my various writings on fan death:

To save all those who wish to circumvent termination by the whirling blades of death, I'm offering this public service: an index to all my blog entries on fan death!

Unfortunately, there are always the scoffers, the doubters, the sceptics -- and none such are worse than the wolves in sheep's clothing (do sheep wear clothes?). I mean those who, under pretense of arguing for the solid proof of fan death, actually intend to debunk the belief through despicable parody, such as in this comment by Mizar5:

I would warn you, dear reader, that any man with the curmudgeonly moniker H. J. Hodges cannot be trusted. He parodies an issue of utmost significance when any number of logical constructs can be used to justify the beleif in fan death.

For instance, negative proof may be used to assert that a proposition that has not been proven false is therefore true.

Statistical proof can also be offered. For instance, there is the statistical proof of spurious correlation, in which correlation may be used to imply causation. In this case, the causal connection is produced through the operation of a third causal variable ie. "lurking variable") such as the wind vacuum mentioned above.

The "three men make a tiger" proof (三人成虎), or argumentum ad populum, can be invoked to show that the premise of fan death has been mentioned and repeated by many individuals, and must therefore be accepted as the truth.

Contextomy may be employed to effectively remove an event from its surrounding circumstances in such a way as to prove that deaths that would otherwise have been attributed to strokes, heart failure and numerous other causes by mere medical science are in fact attributable to fan death.

Need I go on? With proofs so abundant, there is no need to investigate any further.

Mizar5 is obviously unserious, for what individual would seriously defend fan death by calling it a "beleif"? Another skeptical commenter with the crazy moniker of KrZ added his own two centimes:

No wonder H. J. Hodges believes in fan death, he certainly seems to enjoy the Korean delicacy of SPAM.

Naturally, such attacks could not go unanswered, even at the risk of more groundless accusations about my throwing a 'spammer' in the works, so I wrote:

SPAM? Me? Nay, KrZ! I am simply doing my logical, empirical best to warn expats against the true dangers of fan death. Articles like the one offered by Yonhap make my job tougher, admittedly, but I simply struggle all the harder.

Perhaps, as rebuttal to Yonhap, I should write for the Korea Herald another Expat Living column devoted to this pressing issue.

Meanwhile, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, Mizar5, whose moniker announces fivefold misery! His is the obvious parody, whereas my posts are in dead earnest!

I admit, however, that some of Mizar5's arguments -- against his obvious intention to debunk -- can nevertheless be used to help prove the solid fact of fan death. I especially admire his inadvertently compelling use of contextomy for its pure, empirical way of isolating a fact:

Fan + Death = Fan Death

Okay, that's actually two facts and an equation, but it's really close to the actual event, and by multiplying instances, we can amass a very considerable amount of empirical data as support for the scientific truth of fan death.

In fact, I'll go do that now . . .

With this post, consider that promise now kept.