No fool like an old fool

I came home this weekend and my dad was recovering from some nausea and diarrhea he had had this past week. He’s always eager to share his ad hoc home “remedies” for all of his illnesses — including dipping a pair of glasses in boiling water because they made him “itchy,” eating a pinch of baking soda to neutralize his upset stomach, rolling from side to side to help “mix the food” in his digestive tract.

This time, he felt he needed to kill germs in his GI tract, so he took some Listerine, mixed it with water, and drank it. Never mind that if he had an infection it would be in his lower GI tract, and the alcohol in the Listerine would probably be absorbed/neutralized by then. (Note: don’t drink Listerine — it’s just stupid)

Earlier this week he also went on about how, if you think about it, there couldn’t possibly be enough ice at the poles to melt and cause sea levels to rise *that* much and cover major cities. He started making guesstimates about the amount of ice there was, and saying that there wasn’t any data, just people making baseless predictions.

I disagreed vehemently and said that there *is* a ton of data. And these are people who would know basic math and physics. And that sometimes I know we can think that we’re experts on everything because we have some expertise in a single area, but that doesn’t make it so.

And he said that there wasn’t any basis and that it’s just religious people trying to scare the public. (Jason Bateman, take me now…)

This is why I didn’t bother to tell my dad not to drink Listerine.