Witches. Fluoridation. Aliens Invading Grovers Mill, New Jersey. DDT. Agent Orange. Acid Rain. Saccharin. Asbestos. Poisoned Tylenol. Second-Hand Smoke. Cellular Phone Brain Damage. Latin American Organ Merchants. Y2K. A Dirty Bomb. Beachcombing Sharks. SARS. Mad Cow Disease. Bird Flu. That which does not kill me, makes me dumber.
These things may not have killed you (yet, Dan, yet), but they have all sold books and newspapers. Billions o bucks. In addition, they have let millions of people feel in the know, savvy. So though they may be far less lethal than imagined, they have value to somebody.
What about hurricanes?
The fear of death in our society (quite apart from the normal aprehension of the great abyss, or hell, or judgement, etc.) is totally hysterical to the point where I really think people do not believe they will ever die. I note, for instance, that the aging boomers are obsessed with anti-aging mumbo-jumbo (I should quit my job and become a travelling sake oil, er...anti-aging tonic salesman).
As I've said before, I believe this to be because Man has rejected the Creator in favor of himself. If we fancy ourselves to be the center of the universe, our death really is the End of the World. When in reality, to paraphrase the hymn we sing at Easter, the memory of our lives will pass from this earth like a dream at the break of day. A dream that is so real when you awake, but by the end of the day, you can't even remember what it was about.
But why should I expect any less? In such a world where I must, if I'm to reamain Politically Correct, treat a "transgender" man as woman simply because he insists that he is, reality no longer has any place.
The real question Dan is whether or not you have ever eaten a carrot? Everyone who has ever eaten a carrot has died or will die. It's true. Every single one! I don't know why the MSM doesn't pay any attention to this silent carrot-caused holocaust.
All this talk about treating a "'transgender' man as [a] woman" and eating "carrots" is seriously sick.
"Doom & Gloom" is big business. Look at the Y2K scam.
Certainly, being intelligently cautious can help you to survive and will provide for ones longevity. As much as one can considering that little things like luck and fate are in the mix. But, if we believed and were afraid of everything that the media touts as being the next big killer, we all might as well just stay in the house in a plastic bubble with purified air, food and water pumped in.
I suppose there does need to be a crisis or a scare du jour.
Paul, what was the Y2K scam? That wasn’t a problem just made up by scare mongers or people bend on making a buck off of it (although, a lot of people did). There were legitimate business, financial and other technological reasons to address the fact that when computers and computer systems were in their infancies and for a number of years after that until recent times, century was not taken into consideration with regards to dates. And dates drive everything.
The fact that there were few problems as a result of the rollover was due entirely to identifying and addressing a potentially major problem.
You want a scam; try Swine Flu or something similar.
A dear friend of my family is near death with Mad Cow Disease...at least the doctors are 99% sure...they won't know for sure what it is that's killing him until the autopsy is done. It's a tragic disease. It eats away at your brain, causes you to go senile and literally "mad". Nick (the man's name) has been a missionary to China for over 20 years.
He was tentatively diagnosed in September, and his wife (also a missionary) says he is only a couple of days away from death. Some of these mentioned afflictions are not as distant as the post may seem. May God be with Nick and his family.
You can add McConnell's homemade Shepard's Pie to that list. The only thing it has enhanced sales of is toilet paper.
Paul: "'Doom & Gloom' is big business. Look at the Y2K scam"
There was no scam. GM rolled its Bowling Green assembly plant (during a refit) to the year 2000, just to see what would happen. They could not get the doors open because the security software just refused to work.
But I hear this talk all the time: Because a calamity didn't happen, it was a hoax. Not really. A lot of bank and insurance software would have refused to work in the year 2000.
The difference is that businesses made it critical that their Y2K exposure be ana-lyzed and minimized. The Y2K effort get businesses open and immune to market flux. You can't lay people off in a recession, expecting to pick back up on the other side, (as normal) if you need armies of IT guys working on the problem and product moving to finance it as best as possible. Your IT assets would have dissolved in the course of delay.
It's not a scam, we just handled it, that's all.
Add to the list sirloin and fish bought at "Tony's" during a late 70's experiment to go head to head with Warren St Market.The experiment failed and there was a class action lawsuit brought forth by the victims.
Danny,
Bird Flu may not have killed you yet, but from over here (where they are calling all chicken farmers to keep their hens in the barn starting Saturday), only a few hundred kms from the other end of the Donau (Danube), it's looking mighty close. So, it will probably kill me before it kills you, but it may still kill you.
But at least you have George Bush protecting you. I'll only have Angela Merkel and the Greens...
Oh, wait ... I mean, I have AM and the GREEENS!!!
And the problem with all this lack of death, Dan?
Yes, you got it - Stupid people live longer!
Yes, that's right: it's interfering with natural selection!
I remember the weekend before 9/11...I was at the beach with my sister and brother-in-law, and all anyone could talk about was "shark attacks". The media hysteria was such that people were probably worried about a Land Shark knocking on their door to devour them. Then, as suddenly as a plane crashing into your office window, nobody cared about sharks anymore.
They still have to eat don't they? Where did they go???
Media always has to have something to sell advertising.
Best you can do is eat well, sleep well, exercise and stay out of the way of falling pianos and bad neighborhoods.
