chain (n) 1. a. A connected, flexible series of links, used especially for holding objects together or restraining

Guinea worm, Ghana. A father watches over his son who is in the process of having the parasite removed from his body. The worm is ingested in contaminated drinking water. Photograph by Brent Stirton.

Or in my case, restraining my attention and exercise of my intellect. I seem to have contracted a disease that involves compulsively clicking on links until I realize that I am, for reasons completely beyond my understanding, in the middle of a search for images of guinea worms. Aside from the obvious ick factor, and despite the fact that I do work as a researcher, there is no reason on earth that I need to see those pictures.

It all starts logically enough. I’m fighting, via IM, with an orthodox Christian friend. He is antagonistic to Islam and has a literal interpretation of the Bible that I yearn to poke holes in. We will get into why that’s a bad impulse that I shouldn’t be indulging in another post. Anyway, I start looking for web resources that back up my point, which is that all the holy books have awful bits and that his selective interpretation of the Qur’an is unfair. The chain of logic goes: Google search for inaccuracies in the Bible —> Skeptic’s Annotated Bible —> Obsessive reading of the long list of verses containing, in the Skeptical authors’ opinion, cruelty —> the Skeptics' guinea worm page —> the aforementioned search for guinea worm images —> a website devoted (with tongue in cheek I assume) to saving the guinea worm, which has been almost totally eradicated by a United Nations program. And it is on the last site, where I have clicked on a link telling me how I can help to preserve the species by hosting one myself, that I realize two things.

1. It has taken me 40 minutes of slack-jawed surfing to get to this page.
2. I must be out of my mind.

These are the symptoms of my disease. Unrestricted access to the internet, a wonderful and enviable resource, has ensnared me in an snarl of links, individually fascinating, but collectively a chain that fetters my attention. I still retain enough free will to do my work, but all that glorious free time I have that could be spent on projects or study is being poured instead into an endless search for irrelevant information.

Anyway, the eradication of the guinea worm, despite its dubious divine provenance ( Numbers 21:6), is a definite and unqualified good thing and I'm glad to know that the fight is going well. It may be mostly broken and corrupt, but I love the United Nations. Take that, Black Helicopter conspiracy theorists.

But what exactly is this black helicopter theory? I'll have to wait 'til tomorrow to Google it, I'm 30 minutes late leaving work as it is.