Your thought for the weekend is from the movie, The Birdcage:
Senator Kevin Keeley: Louise, people in this country aren’t interested in details. They don’t even trust details. The only thing they trust is headlines.
Well, CNN headline writing is as bad as their broadcast. Is that Helvetica?
Since it is Nobel Prize time, here is an anecdote by Walter Gilbert (1980 winner in Chemistry) about what happens when you travel with your medal:
When I won this, my grandma, who lives in Fargo, North Dakota, wanted to see it. I…decided I’d bring my Nobel Prize. It was uneventful, until I tried to leave Fargo, and went through the X-ray machine. I could see they were puzzled. It was in my laptop bag. It’s made of gold, so it absorbs all the X-rays—it’s completely black. And they had never seen anything completely black.
“They’re like, ‘Sir, there’s something in your bag.’
I said, ‘Yes, I think it’s this box.’
They said, ‘What’s in the box?’
I said, ‘a large gold medal,’ as one does.
So they opened it up and they said, ‘What’s it made out of?’
I said, ‘gold.’
And they’re like, ‘Who gave this to you?’
‘The King of Sweden.’
‘Why did he give this to you?’
‘Because I helped discover the expansion rate that the universe was accelerating at.’
At which point, they were beginning to lose their sense of humor. I explained to them it was a Nobel Prize, and then their question was: ‘Why were you in Fargo?’”
How corporatists fight Ebola in Texas:
The truth is, everyone is infected by the headlines:
And the headlines gripped Wall Street:
The following from the Hackettstown (NJ) Patch:
A man who allegedly showed signs of Ebola at Rite Aid in Hackettstown on Friday does not have the disease, police said.
At approximately 4:50 p.m., the Hackettstown police and rescue squads responded to the Rite Aid, 203 Mountain Ave., in reference to an ill man who was possibly showing the signs on Ebola, police said.
When officers arrived on the scene, the area was closed off and the individuals inside the store were advised they had to stay. Members of the Warren County Health Department arrived on scene and the male was then thoroughly questioned, police said.
The man was then checked by the Hackettstown Rescue Squad and it was determined that he didn’t have Ebola. The man refused any further medical assistance. The store was reopened approximately an hour later. Also assisting at the scene was the Warren County HazMat, police said.
…. this is what panic does!