The coronavirus story right now is confusing, full of dogs that didn't bark (places you'd expect to have huge infection rates, that don't). The only common factor is a high degree of certainty by everyone involved about what's going on, and what to do. It reminds me of something!
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I wrote an essay ten years ago about how the cure for scurvy was found and then accidentally lost again. I was provoked into writing it by a fascination with that sense of certainty. People are almost pathologically incapable of believing they don't know. https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm …
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Replying to @Pinboard @hadleywickham
Wasn’t the cure to scurvy known by the 1500s? Granted, no clinical trials back then, but observational studies led the Portuguese to plant citrus trees in specific ports for treatment of sailors that were sick. Maybe it’s my biased Portuguese education though...
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Replying to @Pinboard @hadleywickham
Yep. It’s there. I take it back. Very neat essay, by the way.
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Replying to @DiogoMCamacho @hadleywickham
Thank you! I am glad you enjoyed it
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I am reading between the lines here, but, does this say that still in 2020 no human being has ever been at the pole _at night_?
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Replying to @forking_pasts @Pinboard and
Follow up, is this the same group of humans that thought they would be going to Mars
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There's a year-round research station at the South Pole, so people spend the polar night there. But no one to my knowledge has done an overland expedition in the Antarctic night since Terra Nova in 1911.
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