the "news"

[temp]

found this on the net somwhere...thought it was funny mainly, but it inspired me to complain about stuff...see below after.

!!! BREAD IS DANGEROUS !!!

Research on bread indicates that:

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.
2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.
3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations.
4. More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.
5. Bread is made from a substance called "dough." It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average American eats more bread than that in one month!
6. Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence of cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, and osteoporosis.
7. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days.
8. Bread is often a "gateway" food item, leading the user to "harder" items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter, and even cold cuts.
9. Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person.
10. Newborn babies can choke on bread.
11. Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute.
12. Most American bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling.

In light of these frightening statistics, it has been proposed that the following bread restrictions be made:

1. No sale of bread to minors.
2. A nationwide "Just Say No To Toast" campaign, complete celebrity TV spots and bumper stickers.
3. A 300 percent federal tax on all bread to pay for all the societal ills we might associate with bread.
4. No animal or human images, nor any primary colors (which may appeal to children) may be used to promote bread usage.
5. The establishment of "Bread-free" zones around schools.

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Creating a topic for discussion here...completely unrelated to sci/fi but that's why I put it in the chat section!

Although above is all just humour...I have a lot of problems with the news on TV, the paper less so...
anyway, I see all the time that when it's a slow news day, they'll make something up and create a report on it. the above joke has more real facts in it then half the news I see on TV. So, how can I know that what I read/see in the media is actually true? In my view, the news is an entertainment program in the same vein as a sitcom or sporting event. I don't trust it, and as such I don't watch it. Does that mean that I am being ignorant of what's going on in the world?

My local news channel here in Toronto is the worst...I'll get a "teaser" at around 5:45 pm telling me that something I use everyday (such as home furniture) is going to harm by baby, news at 6. Then I watch at 6, and wait through the entire show, and then at the end they'll tag some story for 1 minute at around 6:27 to tell me that there have been some reported accidents where bookshelves have fallen on children. the moral of this story, bookshelves are dangerous and should not be used? ok, fine, but then the next day they come up with some other story about how my baby is going to die because of something else. I swear, this new anchor spends their entire job looking for things that will kill by baby and then make a new story out of it.

Then my wife gets mad at me because I don't know what's going in the world cause I choose not to follow the "news". I think I'll get my news from a more reliable source of factual data, such as the internet.

[admin]

I follow the news by reading Slate every morning, and listening to NPR when I'm driving, and reading Time, The Week, National Geographic, and Entertainment Weekly. As a result, I know how to solve all the problems of the world. But what good does that do me, when nobody will listen?

[temp]

hehe, I chuckle as I read that bread story above again.

I found this somewhere:
The CDC claims that influenza is “a highly contagious virus that causes an average of 36,000 deaths and 200,000 hospitalizations in the U.S. every year.”

so that is the "normal" flu virus that everyone gets from time to time and we are all familiar with.

Then here on CNN:
The number of confirmed cases of swine flu jumped to 1,025 on Monday, comprising 20 countries, the World Health Organization said.
The death toll climbed as well as Mexico's health minister announced that a 26th person in the country was confirmed to have died from the H1N1 virus, also called swine flu.

..so why are we all upset about swine flu again?...oh yeah, DEATH TOLL RISING. PANDEMIC spreading across the world, run and hide or die.
I'm not saying the swine flu does not exist, but really...must have been a slow news week or something so they look for some bad news to report or. We're tired of hearing about the end of the world because the economy is going to hell. Let's find some other harbinger of doom to put in the front page.

I have some ideas for a news story:
"It is a great buying opportunity on the stock market now that prices are low."
"It's spring, the nice weather is rolling in."
"Lottery winner donates millions to the poor"

nah, probably won't sell. Not scary enough.

[SusanCalvin]

Temp,

Really liked the bread warning thing, that was hilarious. What's really even more funny to me is that... I could whip up a bad translation of this (I live in Spain) and send it around at work, and just listen to the coffee machine conversations afterwards, say a couple of hours after sending the email. Well maybe it's not that funny and it's a little bit sad instead. Like when someone you like sends you the "jar kittens" email yet again with an outraged comment at the beginning, and you think oh, not you!

About swine flu reports and panic inducing news on TV... Thanks for that, I though I was the only one who refused to get worried. I used to say to my friends: look, no one dies of that flu or any other flu. People die of being poor mostly, and weak, and in bad health to begin with. Then they catch a flu and maybe they die, but man... Don't take your kids off school because you heard ONE morbidly obese diabetic person with a bad asthma case who had been working in silver mines since the age of 4 came to Spain and died. You know?

So what's the name of the pharmaceutical company with the vaccine this time... Not to sound too cynical, and soylent green is people and there's a conspiracy and all that, but someone always profits. Right? Right.