I’m staying at a cheap hotel in Augusta, Georgia these few days, and I take advantage of the free buffet breakfast (the only edible thing here seems to be a bowl of Raisin Bran, and the coffee is terrible), which means, of course, that I sit in a common room with the TV blaring at us. “News”. CNN and Fox. And everyone is running around in circles shrieking about a doctor diagnosed with Ebola in New York.
Jeez, but I have come to hate the 24 hour news networks. I never watch them at home.
Turn off your TV right now and go read Tara Smith’s reasonable discussion of the situation. And sit the fuck down, talking heads at CNN and Fox, and shut the fuck up.
By the way, it was a great relief this morning when some kids came to breakfast, and wiser than their elders, went over to the TV and changed the channel. Why didn’t I think of that? So I finished my Raisin Bran watching Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. That was much better.
Although then I saw this video of a barnacle goose hatchling and saw the too-obvious similarities with the Bugs Bunny cartoon. It falls and falls and falls and bounces and bounces again, yikes.
My god. That goose video is like Kiwi!, except with a happy ending.
I have Ebola.
Caught it yesterday when I dropped the spawn off at the Government Indoctrination Centre and one of the other spawns blew airborne mucus, bacteria and viruses all over my face.
At least I think it is Ebola.
It’s Ebola, right? Ebola!!
I think that some Jon Rosenberg is in order. Ebolaids. Enough said.
This is my experience at the gym. I always try to pick the treadmill or bike in front of Agents of Shield, or even infomercials, but sometimes it’s not available, and even when it is, the constant screen movement of Fox and CNN one or two TVs away causes me to glance over. Inevitably, I wish I hadn’t. At least I only hear the dulcet tones of Steve Novella, Carrie Poppy, or Brian Cox in my headphones rather than the talking heads on screen. I wonder if I can talk the gym into creating a TV free area where the machines look out the window instead?
A couple of days ago, once everyone in Texas was officially cleared of danger from Ebola, CNN changed their whole story from “Oh God, Ebola!!” to “the only thing epidemic about Ebola here in the US was the panic and fear-mongering on the news” and I had this 1984 moment (we’ve always been at war with Eurasia)… and now they’re right back to freaking out about Ebola again. Because we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
Ebola was an inside job.
Pull out your phone, do a search for “coffee shop” and look for a name that implies local ownership. Walk there.
I don’t know why, but there’s always a coffee shop owned by a local bean worshipper near the hotels I stay at.
It is amazing how different my experience with the news is, but I don’t have cable as I just stream anything I want to watch these days so I do not actually see this talking head action. I prefer to read my news anyway, lets me skip the entertainment and sports stuff. Also, I have pretty much completely stopped looking at any American news sites. There are plenty of overhyped stories elsewhere but there seems to be a lot less panic and freaking out once I jettisoned US news.
Somebody in Augusta needs to take PZ out to breakfast. The circumstance he’s in is bad.
I have a hard time finding a balance between staying informed and not being overwhelmed with the hysteria. I think I’ll opt for the latter.
It occurs to me that I’m about as likely to catch Ebola from a person in NYC than the thousands of people in West Africa (read: not very). I felt bad that a guy doing a lot of useful medical things to help in West Africa got sick, and pleased that he didn’t mess around and it was handled better than the guy down in Texas*.
* Of course, then I wonder how much is class perceptions. A doctor not only probably has good health insurance, but I wonder if Ebola counts as an on-the-job injury. Ebola might not care about insurance, but people do.
As many people die from the flu in the US each years as die in car accidents. Pertussis and Measles are making a come back across the country thanks to anti-vaxxers and people are worked up over Ebola?
So many of our problems could be solved with better education.
Barnacle goose video: Egads, Homer Simpson didn’t have it that bad. Maybe this season the writers will have him fall off a cliff and catch ebola on the way down.
The rec center at the University of Missouri had a “quiet room” with a handful of machines, so I would always gravitate there, as my podcasts could not compete with the annoyingly loud music played in the main room.
Jackie @12
The Ebola freak out wouldn’t be improved by education, I don’t think. People are freaking out because it’s a “scary African disease” – it’s a disease most people only know as something terrible that happens to poor black people in Africa, ergo, this is the “Diseased Other” coming for us. This isn’t supposed to happen to good, white, god-fearing Murricans, so the fear is exacerbated far more than in the case of something like SARS. There’s an underlying racial anxiety at the heart of the fear-mongering and in the reception and embracing of the fear-mongering by the audiences. The parallels between this moral panic and the reaction to AIDS and HIV (which remains also associated with the “Diseased Other,” in that case gay men, even though transmission among heterosexuals remains a huge problem) are stark.
Mmmm, I’d say more like Wile E. Coyote. I’m pretty sure the little gosling held up a tiny sign with “Yikes!” printed on it just before it fell.
Hey PZ, you want one of these. From the blurb:
Small keychain device for turning off obtrusive TVs at bars and restaurants
Contains 209 separate turn-off codes for nearly every TV model
Cycles through entire range of codes in fewer than 69 seconds
Barnacle goose hatchlings are clearly made of rubber or carbon fiber or … I know ! They are all Jackie Chan in that ball thing at the beginning of Armour of God II: Operation Condor!
Ah ha ! The Zorb Ball Scene
Barnacle goose hatchlings have built-in under feather Zorb ball systems.
gussnarp #4:
It is worth a try, surely you can bring this up with them? I am not much of a gym person but the few ones that I ever went to all had this arrangement. In one case the manager of the place found that the machines by the window were much more popular that those in front of the screens. So they took a cue and rearranged all the rooms. Loud music was abolished as well because most people who want noise during exercise have headphones anyway.
And hopefully “Loud Whatever-That-Is,” too. >.>
I want to hear more about you being holed up in a cheap hotel in Georgia. I have this vision of you easing the curtain back with a shotgun barrel, checking for the guys you burned during a heist.
OK, never mind. I just saw the post about your son’s graduation.
I like my scenario better, however.
At least my gym is quiet. No music or volume on the TVs without headphones. But it’s also pretty ossified, I expect change will be hard. On the plus side, there’s free child care which makes juggling getting in some exercise a lot easier.
anteprepro @ # 6: Ebola was an inside job.
US wingnutz have started pointing the conspiratorial finger at Tulane University, for some reason, but a more comprehensive list of the (usual) suspects can be found at Scientist in Largest Liberian Newspaper: Ebola, AIDS Manufactured by Western Pharmaceuticals, US DoD? (along with urgent info about “Which Vitamins Work Best To Shield Against Chemtrails?” and other useful advice).
Pierce R. Butler @24
Don’t keep us in suspense. Which vitamins should we use for chemtrail protection?
Vit. Stinger or Vit. Buk, depending on which three-letter-goonency is responsible.
On the subject of unwanted public TV channels you need either a TV-B-Gone or even better a universal keyring sized remote unit. allowing you to change channels almost anywhere.
I assume BBC World News (and BBC World Service), Al Jazeera English, France 24, and others are not hysterical. They are also, notably, professional.
Faux is not professional, except when it comes to ensuring Murdoch profits. CNN is variable.
(This ignores the worldwide print media entirely, where there is a fair amount of quite responsibly journalism.)
B12.
It is always B12.
@Jackie #12
@drst #15
It certainly is a lot harder for racist kneejerkers to blame measles or pertussis outbreaks on those dirty African savages they are currently blaming for the current Ebola outbreak. It seems that every news article concerning Ebola has a comment section inevitably devolving into some paranoid racist argument about how “those people” brought this upon themselves.
And yeah, I guess it’s not much different from the 1980s when HIV/AIDS was shrugged off as a “gay disease,” which seemed to imply that somehow even a viral infection could be homophobic, and wasn’t worth public acknowledgement by a sitting president for years.
Wait…there are Bugs Bunny cartoons still on tv these days?
Have they found a way to connect Ebola with Benghazi yet?
@Tony!,
There’s still some good in the universe.
Bah, that’s simple. They’re both in Africa, as is Kenya, where Hawaii is located.
Need I say more?
I’m PrettySure™ that Alaska is also in Africa.
No, but you can see it from your doorstep.
So, then: Americans have already forgotten about the Ottawa shooting, have they? Good: at least they won’t be giving us advice on how to take care of ourselves.
(My MIL who has lived in LA for the last 35 years is visiting this week. Every so often my wife and I look at her and say, “Mother, have you been watching Fox News again?” OK, not quite, but close.)
TV news? Oh, yeah, I remember that. I watched Ed Murrow jerk the rug out from under Joe McCarthy. What are they up to now?
Your kid found a channel that still plays old episodes of Looney Toons? I thought they didn’t do that any more!