The usual porcupine sex analogy ∞
Dr. Gifford-Jones is a notorious Canadian monger of fear about things like electricity (scary!) and cell phone radiation (shudder) that rational Canadians find deeply annoying, because it’s weird nonsense that clashes badly with our national self-image as a sensible and pragmatic people.1 Here’s an article about him by Gem Newman for SkepticNorth.ca: Does Dr. Gifford-Jones Understand Science? (Just asking questions!) The footnote about Dr. G-J’s “usual porcupine lovemaking analogy” is a highlight:
I don’t know what it is about this comparison that he loves so much, but I find it strangely amusing that so many of his articles admonish people to ‘use cellphones like porcupines make love’. At least this time he got the phrasing right. In the past a slightly mangled version has made it past the editors, which on a literal reading is rather unsettling: ‘Teach your children to use cellphones like porcupines — make love very, very carefully.’
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Imagine being scared of an unplugged heating pad… ↩︎