Baudrillard is dead. Long live Baudrillard.

From NPR:

"Controversial French philosopher and social critic Jean Baudrillard died Wednesday [3/7/2007]."

He was 77 years old.

For more about him go here.

I feel sad when people die, especially people that I feel close to in whatever way.

It's hard to write that in a way that doesn't just look stupid.

The Boston Mooninite Thing

"If someone can go around at night and place these devices throughout the city with ease, what makes one think terrorist couldn't do the same."

This grammatically challenged quote, attributed to some "man on the street" in a New Hampshire online newspaper, pretty much sums up how dumb many people are about terrorism in this country.

This is the sort of stupidity that makes me want to move to a parallel universe where US citizens are educated in logic and reasoning.

If the world was as scary and full of America-hating terrorists as dumbasses like this guy seem to think, then a very high percentage of USers would be dead and dying. This whole Boston thing is proof of the exact opposite. This country is still a pretty safe place. SURPRISE!

Here's a statistic you might not hear anywhere else: Since immediately before (and including) the Sept. 11, 2001 tragedy, about 0.001% of the entire US population has been killed by terrorists within our national borders. By contrast, during roughly this same period of time about 0.08% of the entire population has been killed by traffic accidents. That's because over 40,000 people in this country die in car accidents every year, year in and year out. Gosh, that's way more than get killed by terrorists every year isn't it? I'm no lightning calculator, but I think something like 80 times as many people have died in the last few years because of car accidents than have died because of terrorist incidents.

So citizens of Boston, New Hampshire, and everywhere else in this country, STFU about your stupid, irrational fear of terrorism and start driving more carefully. And stop smoking while you're at it, you're killing yourself with that stuff! You could probably stand to eat healthier and get more exercise too.

Let's have more TV news stories about fatal car crashes and grossly obese people in diabetic comas and people dying in cancer wards - that stuff is plenty sensational and disturbing to grab some ratings. It's actually REAL too, unlike this "terrorist threat" BS!