President-Elect Lee Myung-bak: Policy Suggestions from Gypsy Scholar

President-Elect Lee Myung-Bak

"Squinting to the future..."

(Image from JoongAng Ilbo)

In a record voter turnout, Lee Myung-bak has won the presidential election by a landslide -- almost most of all those Korean voters who voted actually cast their votes for him!

Okay, so we've factored down the concept of landslide to mean 50 percent of the vote, or thereabouts, and the record is a record low, but still, the guy won, and that's pretty darn good for a slippery politician who's been caught on video lying about his involvement in the obscure BBK scandal.

Hey, don't think that I'm dissing President-Elect Lee. I happen to kinda like the guy . . . even if he does always squint at me from those supposedly flattering campaign posters.

Anyway, since readers depend on my blog for political insight regarding peninsular matters, then I'm sure that everyone will be interested in my opinion as to what the future holds for Korea's President-Elect Lee.

Doubtless, there are two questions on everyone's mind:

Question 1: Will President Lee Myung-bak be the first Korean president to serve his time serving time?

Answer 1: No. As president, Lee can pardon himself.

Question 2: Will President Lee Myung-bak make a concerted, public effort to alert the whole world to the dangers of electrical fans, namely, the very real risk of fan death?

Answer 2: Definitely yes maybe. This is a very delicate issue upon which every Korean politican has had to tread very lightly. Now, each Korean knows -- and knows to the core of his or her Dokdo soul -- that fan death is real. Absolutely real. No doubts. And I agree with Koreans on this issue, as regular readers will recall. Many a time, I have promoted the truth of fan death on this blog, hoping to alert foreign readers mired in ignorance of the risk that they face on those hot, sultry summer nights in bed when they have to strip down to . . .

But let's not get so specific about that detail.

My point is that fans left running at night can kill you in your sleep, a truth that I've defended ad nauseum on this blog:

Fan Death is Real!

Fan Death Redux

Another fan-death disbeliever!

Doc Rock's diagnosis: "You've been smokin' way too many fans"

Nevertheless, fan death is real!

Okay, five posts in three years of blogging might not constitute an ad nauseum defense, but take a look at the comments, where much of my fan-death defense has been carried on. There, I've faced constant ridicule from non-Koreans who are aggressively ignorant about the scientific truth of fan death and who stoop to the lowest of personal attacks to ridicule me for my views.

I've been called crazy, stupid, drug-addled, ignorant, and even had my scientific knowledge questioned -- yes, questioned, despite my master's degree . . . in history of SCIENCE. Most recently, a commenter calling himself 'Christian' quoted one of my facts and denied it:

"[Hodges stated:] It's a little-known fact that the whirling blades [of a fan] cause disturbance in the ether that pervades the universe, and the ripple effect impairs organisms up to 500 feet distant."

[Christian blathered:] Yeah, that's true, it is so little known that I didnt knew about that. Oh,and btw, aether does not exist, and there was a famous experiment about that in the 19th century (and many other later): Michelson-Morley Experiment.

In my reply to this screed, I ignored Christian's difficulty with orthography and courteously focused upon his appalling scientific ignorance:

Christian, thanks for visiting and posting.

As for the Michelson-Morley experiment, it was obviously flawed. How else explain that those two so-called 'scientists' missed the obvious existence of the ether, the very fifth element known to natural philosophers since antiquity?

Yes, there are only five elements. Forget all that stuff you learned in chemistry. It's utterly wrong.

Only fan death is real.

How can anyone rationally argue with my view? Obviously, I know far more about the ether than 'Christian', who thinks that the ether doesn't even exist! I mean, how ignorant can one get?! Ether has existed since the days of the ancient Greeks!

So, you see what I'm up against in my struggle to publicize the very real risk of fan death. Those people whom I'm trying to save from mortal danger are the very ones who ridicule me.

So . . . I wouldn't blame President-Elect Lee Myung-bak if he opted to ignore the issue of fan death, for he has to deal with foreign policy and can't afford to jeopardize his credibility on international affairs by announcing to a hyperskeptical, disbelieving world that his administration has a position on fan death.

But this Lee administration definitely must take a position, even if an unannounced one, for no device so dangerous as an electrical fan can be ignored, especially since at least one other country does accept the scientific evidence for its deadly effects and is rumored to be pursuing a secretive fan-death program.

I refer, of course, to North Korea.

The danger is clear. A line of towering, gigantic electrical fans can be erected by the Communist North along the DMZ, and the threat of their being turned on at night when all of the South should be sleeping soundly after a hardworking, capitalist day will cause many an anxious, sleepless night and thereby significantly impair the South's economic performance.

To paraphrase the inspiring Churchill's famous words on spine-stiffened resistance to an oppressive regime's infamous, threatening rule:

That is something up with which we shall not put!

Let us echo those Churchillian words! The South must act now to protect itself, for under the progressives' Sunshine Policy of the past eight years, the North has already been left free to forge ahead with a fan-death program, and the South is in danger of falling behind. I therefore appeal to President-Elect Lee Myung-bak to act quickly:

"Mr. President, we cannot allow a fan-death gap!"