Heart attack or giggle fit?

November 29, 2012 11:29 AM

A good professor of mine wrote one of the books for our class. A web link provided in an endnote has expired since this edition was published, and redirects to a website with highly dubious intentions. He's not exactly old and isn't frail by any means, but he's had a heart attack before and I don't want to give him another. Am I being paranoid?

My professor is well-known in his field, and the interloping webpage in question is kind of a warning splash / text-only launch page for a website that promises all kinds of access to free-of-charge images of, in my estimation, disrobed yutes.

I'm conflicted in that I really don't think it's any kind of big deal to tell him, but I also don't want to go to class tomorrow to find out that it's been cancelled on account of mortality.

Any advice? By all means, feel free to tell me that I should quite being a nervous prude, if that's what I need.

posted by Chutzler to grab bag (13 answers total)

What? Of course you tell him.
posted by rhapsodie at 11:32 AM on November 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

Just tell him the link doesn't work. It's the Internet; these things happen.
posted by rtha at 11:33 AM on November 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

(And maybe a "giggle fit" isn't the best antipode for this situation, either. Foot, meet mouth.)
posted by Chutzler at 11:33 AM on November 29, 2012

This is a clearly broken link in an end note of an academic text; you're not exactly telling him that his kid was just arrested for treason.
posted by griphus at 11:34 AM on November 29, 2012 [5 favorites]

If he drops dead tonight, it won't be because you told him a link doesn't work. He's working. It's something he should know about.

Don't coddle him. That's ableist. You're thinking of treating him differently because of his heart attack. That's not fair to him.
posted by inturnaround at 11:37 AM on November 29, 2012 [8 favorites]

Thank you, all. I'll have to admit I've been a bit distracted lately - the dose of common sense is much appreciated.
posted by Chutzler at 11:41 AM on November 29, 2012

If someone pointed this out to me, I'd look up the new correct address, post that plus add a warning-with-date under the "corrigenda" tab of my website and alert my publisher for them to adjust their e-version of the book, if possible. If it's a commonly used textbook, one could also alert the university's library.
posted by Namlit at 11:43 AM on November 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

professors are people too -- and not typically very innocent people. Part of what you're experiencing is a perfectly normal phenomena where the taboo-ness of taboo topics becomes intensified across authority/social hierarchy lines.
posted by advil at 12:08 PM on November 29, 2012 [4 favorites]

These days, I'm more surprised when a link in print on actual paper isn't dead. I'll bet your prof can handle it.
posted by Aquaman at 12:41 PM on November 29, 2012

Maybe you could tell his publisher?
posted by mecran01 at 12:49 PM on November 29, 2012

You may want to check first to see if the problem is that your browser has been hijacked or maybe you typed the website in wrong. I would tend to believe that the problem is on your end and not that his link is faulty.
posted by JJ86 at 2:34 PM on November 29, 2012

At his age, he's seen naked women before. Probably many times. Maybe even today. It's not like this was invented with the Internet.
posted by Houstonian at 5:29 PM on November 29, 2012

[yutes = youths = child pron]

Just to wrap up, I leapt through every possible hoop to make sure that this was the "right" website, to the extent that I found the right website earlier today (albeit with a much different url (and domain!)). A key word in the original address features prominently on the correct webpage, so I'm thinking the old address is just that.

Thanks again, everyone.
posted by Chutzler at 7:48 PM on November 29, 2012 [1 favorite]