Just in time to put your fans away.

The person who wrote the article on fan death at Wikipedia links to this blog for some reason. I didn't write the article, honest!

Anyway, having many visitors from wikipedia made me curious about the article. I was very surprised to read that a professor from my university is quoted in the article. About a week ago I met him and interviewed him on the subject. Here is how he is quoted at wikipedia:

Dr. Yeon Dong-su, dean of Kwandong University's medical school in South Korea. "Many people say that these victims die from lack of oxygen, but that is not true. Hypothermia does not only occur in the winter when it is cold. The symptoms can also take place if a person has been drinking and turns on a fan in a closed room. Most people wake up when they feel cold, but if you are drunk you will not wake up, even if your body temperature drops below 35 degrees Celsius, at which point you can die from hypothermia. It doesn't matter so much about the temperature of the room. If it is completely sealed, then in the current of an electric fan, the temperature can drop low enough to cause a person to die of hypothermia." Note: It is likely that the symptoms discussed by this doctor are actually due to excessive alcohol consumption, which can decrease body temperature.

As you will hear, he didn't really say all the things he said. I don't know if the article is the result of a bad translation or a reporter claiming Dr Yeon said things he didn't.

Oh, in our discussion, I talk about, and show a printout of, a post from the Marmot, dated somewhere around Aug 17 of this year. I couldn't find it to link here - sorry about that.

I tried to use a few sound effects - specifically me on the Danso to denote breaks in the interview. The recording sounded fine on it's own but really slowed down when pasted into this interview. Is that an 'Audacity' flaw or something I can fix?

Download the MP3 (Blogger is giving me trouble again): http://media.odeo.com/files/2/3/2/868232.mp3


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