This Economist article …

This Economist article made me think about what kind of madness would break loose should the next terrorist attacks on the U.S. happen during Microsoft’s big marketing launch of Windows XP here in NYC. Think about it. America’s richest man. One of America’s richest companies. In America’s richest city. Scary.

Every day I see more articles about people freaking out about biological and chemical warfare. Much of this behavior stems from people being scared by the media. For the past six weeks, most of the nightly news shows like 48 Hours and 60 Minutes have been about nothing but terrorism, and chemical and biological warfare. I even watched a few minutes of Sam Donaldson walking around a giant map of the Middle East using his feet as pointers trying in vain to educate dumb America about geography. I think that what most people need to realize and remember is that the media is in the business to sell news. Meaning that they are a for-profit industry. Meaning that the more papers they sell and the more viewers they have, the more they can charge their advertisers which increases their revenues. Nothing sells more papers than printing scary articles (no matter how inaccurate or biased they may be). Whether we like it or not, America is a media-obsessed country and most Americans follow the mainstream media around like sheep. Monkey-see, monkey-do. The key to beating these terrorists is to educate the people. The more we know, the less scared and more prepared we are for whatever they may try next. The last thing we need is more sensationalistic news and footage of people making frantic runs on grocery stores and gas stations. I haven’t seen any news reports of it, but I’ll bet that there are a number of companies raking in the money from scared Americans building bomb shelters, just like they did in the 1960s during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

New slang, borne of IRC:

  joshua: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011021/re/people_britain_spices_dc_1.html
  susank: not like they were still reigning, anyways
     cam: susank is kind of like a spice girl
     cam: susank and the pussycats
  susank: gee THANKS
  susank: I like the latter better
  susank: that could be me, Kylie and Venus
  susank: Venus is the fat stupid one, so she'd be on drums
  susank: Kylie would probly do better vocals than me
     cam: yeah, but who's the one that dances around the stage and smashes guitars?
  susank: that would be Kylie.  She knocks everything over
  susank: crashed my orchid this morning
     cam: that sounds like some slang
     cam: "Man, I totally crashed some orchid last night..."
  joshua: drug slang, heh
     cam: who said anything about drugs?
  joshua: let's use this phrase and see if we can get it into the language
  susank: crashing the/my orchid?
  susank: sure
  susank: cam: all slang comes from drugs or sex
  joshua: dude, i'm gonna crash some serious orchid tonight
  joshua: No match for "ORCHIDCRASHER.COM".
*** sottix ([email protected]) has joined channel #collab
*** sottix has left channel #collab
     cam: man, my orchid is so crashed right now
  susank: who was that?
     cam: i don't know, but he totally crashed my orchid
   elise: this orchid phrase is bad.
  joshua: you're just not used to it yet
     cam: hey elise, wanna crash my orchid with me?
  susank: c/mon elise, you'll love it
     cam: it's kind of like the slang "whipping your own cream"

Americans aren’t the only ones raising concerns about Windows XP and their forced-arm software licensing schemes. [via Dermot O’Connor]

OK, who shot the Talking Moose?

The worst benefit concert ever! Hilarious account of Michael Jackson’s over-hyped benefit concert last weekend in Washington D.C. [via Backup Brain]

Posted by Cameron Barrett at October 22, 2001 06:30 PM

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