4 ms·

My partner's director of studies at Cambridge believed in ghosts and once played a tape recording purporting to contain a recording of one (random static) in a

My partner's director of studies at Cambridge believed in ghosts and once played a tape recording purporting to contain a recording of one (random static) in a supervision. It's fairly surprising how often you'll encounter fringe views in academic circles, but I think when it's not something directly to do with the things you're teaching it's generally just thought of as a harmless idiosyncrasy.

reaperducer 8y ago
It's fairly surprising how often you'll encounter fringe views in academic circles It's not just academia, either. I've known a few somewhat prominent people who believed in some off-the-wall things. When I worked in television, I knew a top-ten market anchor who didn't believe in dinosaurs. Not in the way a creationist doesn't, because she wasn't religious. She simply didn't believe they ever existed. At a top-five market station there was an anchor who believed drinking his own urine made him healthier. He was a medic during the Vietnam war and said he started doing it then. The same station had a manager in the newsroom who believed that Jesus, the Bible, and everything associated with it was a fabrication because there is no recorded history before the invention of the printing press in the 1400's. If you ask him about Egyptian hieroglyphics, or the Rosetta Stone, or the Dead Sea Scrolls, he insists that they're all made up. At another top-ten market station my boss (a high-level manager) believed that those yellow sodium lamps are used along freeways because it helps police see black people better in the dark. She learned it from her boss (an even higher-level manager) who believed the reason that highways are built in elevated circles around cities is so that if the city needs to be evacuated, the police can stand along the highway and shoot black people as they're trying to flee. When I think about these things I wonder if certain professions attract whackjobs. Then I wonder if I have any deeply-held beliefs that I don't realize qualify me for a rubber room.

reaperducer 8y ago

It's fairly surprising how often you'll encounter fringe views in academic circles It's not just academia, either. I've known a few somewhat prominent people who believed in some off-the-wall things. When I worked in television, I knew a top-ten market anchor who didn't believe in dinosaurs. Not in the way a creationist doesn't, because she wasn't religious. She simply didn't believe they ever existed. At a top-five market station there was an anchor who believed drinking his own urine made him healthier. He was a medic during the Vietnam war and said he started doing it then. The same station had a manager in the newsroom who believed that Jesus, the Bible, and everything associated with it was a fabrication because there is no recorded history before the invention of the printing press in the 1400's. If you ask him about Egyptian hieroglyphics, or the Rosetta Stone, or the Dead Sea Scrolls, he insists that they're all made up. At another top-ten market station my boss (a high-level manager) believed that those yellow sodium lamps are used along freeways because it helps police see black people better in the dark. She learned it from her boss (an even higher-level manager) who believed the reason that highways are built in elevated circles around cities is so that if the city needs to be evacuated, the police can stand along the highway and shoot black people as they're trying to flee. When I think about these things I wonder if certain professions attract whackjobs. Then I wonder if I have any deeply-held beliefs that I don't realize qualify me for a rubber room.