Chicken or Clown? Part 2

The purpose of this post, and the last, was to look at some irrational fears. In the last post we established that, no, we should not be afraid of chickens. We also solved the age old question of the chicken and the egg.

In this post, we will try and answer the question of whether we should be afraid of clowns. I know what you're thinking - of course we should be afraid of clowns - there needn't be a debate. But before we jump to conclusions, let's look at the problem in more detail.

Let's face it - a lot of people are scared of clowns. There's even a name for this type of phobia: Coulrophobia. Then there's the people that hate clowns but are seemingly not scared of them, such as the "I Hate Clowns" website. I think fear and hate often go together, but I'm not about to start a fight with the I Hate Clowns people - they have logo'd t-shirts.

I don't blame the clown fearers or the haters. I've always found the aspect of someone hiding behind a mask both fascinating and creepy. I've written two short stories about clowns; one was for "tweens" called Clown Town, and the other an adult story called The Clown. If you keep reading my blogs you'll also see quite a lot of clown cartoons.

On the clown side; dressing up in disguise can be quite liberating. It allows you to be another person - to let go of inhibitions (or so I am told). Okay, I'll come clean - I have a thing for novelty wigs - there, I've said it - admitting you have a problem is the first step ...

And further support for the impact parents can have on their children:

It warms my heart.

So anyway, clowns have also had a bad wrap in the world of story. Take for instance; Killer Klowns from Outerspace (1988). And now, 25 years later, I hear there is a new movie; The Return of the Killer Klowns from Outerspace in 3D set for release in 2013. Stephen King didn't help the cause when he wrote the book "It" featuring "Pennywise the dancing clown". Unfortunately Pennywise didn't just dance, although that would have been creepy enough. I could go on, but a quick search of the web will give you more than enough information, if you really want to go there.

So, it's looking bad for clowns. But what about the good clowns? The ones that do make us laugh and generally don't creep us out. Jerry Lewis for instance - my favourite "clown". Ben Stiller. Robin Williams. Jim Carey. You know what - they don't usually dress up. Neither do chickens. I want to know who I'm dealing with - and although you can't always be sure - it's easier when you can look someone in the face - and it's their face you're seeing - not a mask. We often hate things we fear, and fear things we don't understand.

So is fearing clowns irrational? There are many real risks in life that we seem to easily dismiss, and attach greater risks to stuff that's highly unlikely. That was the point of the original post in Part 1.  Things such as smoking, drinking, eating too much junk food, driving in cars, etc are all reasonably high risk activities that cause untimely death. Yet, we all partake in at least some of these activities. Clowns, on the other hand, probably rank in the very low risk category along with being struck by lightning.

Therefore, should we fear clowns?  The answer is yes ... but only a little. Much like with lightning - where you don't go out in a storm carryng a metal object - if you see a clown coming toward you, either cross the road calmly, or decline their offer politely.



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Journey into Stuff by Jeff Bilman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Chicken or Clown? Part 1

So what's your irrational fear? I know some people are afraid of chickens - they get creeped right out by those squat, feathery, beady-eyed, lipless egg factories. I know a lot more people who really, really, really hate clowns (and fear them even more).

We have two chickens at the moment, and I had lots of chickens growing up. I'm not afraid of them. Chickens give me eggs and eat scraps that otherwise would go in the bin. They are sociable and sometimes amusing. I like the fact that their ancestry goes back to the dinosaurs - they're like little mini T-rex's (here's the proof). The thing I like least about chickens is that they are poop machines. That begs the obvious question: were T-rex's poop machines?

Unfortunately, that will have to be the topic of a future post. The real question is: are chickens something to be feared?

Incidentally, as a bonus to my loyal readershp, I shall also answer the age-old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Clearly it's the egg.

The chicken had to hatch first, didn't it - so it was inside the egg. The egg therefore came first. At best you could say the chicken and the egg came at the same time, because from its most embryonic stage the chicken and the egg were forming at the same time. But then it's still the egg then isn't it - because it's an egg before it's a chicken.

But what if the egg wasn't a chicken type egg?  What if normally from that particular egg a chicken-like creature usually came out - but this time, through the miracle of evolution/mutation/transmogrification a whole new entity (ie. the chicken) arose. It was a chicken, and then from that point on that chicken began laying chicken-like eggs, from which more chickens came out. Okay, this is getting confusing.

... though I still think the egg came first.

See, in this instance Humpty came after the chicken, but at the dawn of the chicken, I think it was Humpty's ancestors (ie. the eggs) that were first.


What's my point? Anyone ... please.

I heard on the radio the other day a guy talking about how people often fear highly unlikely events more (and equate a greater likelihood of the event occuring), than they do for more likely events. The example he gave was the Western world's fear of terrorism (people fear and percieve the chances of injury from this event far more than the real risk) versus their (lack of) fear from, say, driving whilst sending text messages on their phone (there's a far greater likelihood of injury).

Curious, I had a little surf around the web to see what I could find out. Barring some extreme activities like, perhaps, base-jumping, the riskiest thing you can do in life (ie. leading to premature death) is regularly smoke. It's literally 20 times more dangerous than the next most dangerous activity - being in a motor vehicle. These two risks are classified as "Extra high" and "high" risk respectively.

The next rung down was "elevated risk", and that included things like being a frequent airline passenger, a regular skier, a moderate drinker, or a pedestrian. It went down from there: Moderate (background radiation), Low (cycling), Very low (Saccharin?), Extremely Low (Lightning).

This data was twenty years old, so I'd love to see something more current. For instance, where does eating processed meats, or highly saturated fat food products, sit on the risk scale? My guess would be, fairly high up. However, based on the above data, if you're a smoker who drives a car, enjoys drinking moderately, walks, lives on Earth and (adding my own) likes a nice salami every now and then - then you're in a lot of trouble. That fear of chickens is soon becoming pretty irrelevant.

By the way, maybe the cartoon below with help with those still confused about the whole chicken/egg thing:

Okay, I'm glad we got that sorted. Now stay tuned for Part 2: Should we fear clowns?


COPYRIGHT

Journey into Stuff by Jeff Bilman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Please note, visitors to this website are solely responsible for the information they post. Any posting of copyrighted material is strictly prohibited and the owner of this website shall not be responsible for any copyrighted material uploaded by third parties.