How much better off would we be if newspapers printed stuff like this instead of the daily roster of human tragedy?

“She asks me what I think of a pending bill in Congress that would allow the “opening up of our borders” to allow the importation and marketing to seniors of “potentially contaminated” drugs from foreign countries like China and Mexico and if I would support such a policy? Talk about a loaded question.”

Read more about your friendly neighborhood drug company’s efforts to lie to congress through statistics at cranberry190’s blog.

Bomb or Aqua Teen hunger Force advertising device?

For anyone who hasn’t already heard, the residents and city officials of Boston have gone completely insane. It all started when two guys working with Interference, Inc., a marketing company hired by the Cartoon Network, installed the device pictured above and others at various locations in 10 US cities.

The devices had been in place for two to three weeks before a number of overly paranoid residents called police and reported the “suspicious devices”. What followed is absolute insanity. Police closed major thoroughfares and a subway line near where the devices had been installed, and after discovering that they were just battery-powered lights advertising a TV show, labeled them hoax devices. “Those conducting the campaign should have known the devices could cause panic because they were placed in sensitive areas.” “The individuals who placed these packages should be warned that there is a heavy penalty — two to five years imprisonment for each one of them. We are not playing around.” In addition, Time Warner is being fined half a million dollars.

Okay, so let me get it straight. It’s your fault if some idiot panics over your light-up cartoon character, and you deserve to be put in jail for 2-5 years for every one of them you put up? If that’s true, these guys are going to get life in jail! It just blows my mind that the general public has gotten so riled up about this supposed terrorist threat. Let’s see… 2,819 killed by terrorists in the last 5.5 years comes to 513 per year. Compare that some 16,000 murders that take place every year, and I think it’s obvious the terrorist threat isn’t really that big.

If this stuff isn’t thrown out of court, we all need to be afraid, very afraid. Successful totalitarian regimes don’t gain power by force; they convince the populace to hand it to them thankfully in exchange for perceived safety. The news of the day shouldn’t be that two guys freaked out an entire city with their lite-brites, it should be that they were arrested and prosecuted by an overzealous police force working for an over-paranoid populace.

Update: Turner Broadcasting, parent of Time Warner, has agreed to pay a $2,000,000 fine and has publicly apologized. “We understand now that in today’s post-Sept. 11 environment, it was reasonable and appropriate for citizens and law enforcement officials to take any perceived threat posed by our light boards very seriously and to respond as they did.” What, meaning that because the media and the government have gotten people all paranoid over a very small threat, it is reasonable and appropriate for people to be paranoid? I guess that makes sense in a sad sort of way. At least it’s a media company paying the fine.

The good news is that prosecutors are, “in discussions with the [guys who put up the signs] attorneys to resolve the charges before a trial.” So I guess we can hope the real victims of this won’t spend the rest of their lives in jail as officials had originally threatened.