From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri 09 Dec 2005 - 03:38:36 GMT
>From: "Kenneth Van Oost" <kennethvanoost@belgacom.net>
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
>Subject: Re: Giving a presentation on memetics
>Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 21:06:29 +0100
>
[snip]
>
><< That is because we " see/ feel " the danger of cars as something self-
>evident,
>we given 't it that much thought. We know the danger and live with it, but
>with
>an Asian flu pandemic at the horizon we ain 't sure about the hazzards and
>we
>don 't know what to do. We take the chance that we can be killed in a
>freeway
>pile- up as a part of our daily life/ routine. To die of the Asian flu
>would
>be some-
>thing out of order.
>
Car wrecks typically involve some cosmetic damage to the vehicle or a
certain degree of personal injury, sometimes death. They happen quite often
and the deadly wrecks tend to make the news. Deadly wrecks do have an impact
on society, both personally and economically. The personal losses affect
immediate family and friends of the victim.
The potential magnitude of a pandemic would probably swamp that of car
wrecks if said pandemic were to kill a significant proportion of the human
population within a relatively short span of time. The economic consequences
could also be severe. Unlike with previous flu scenarios, our medical
scientists do have a better grasp of the science so maybe measures could be
taken to reduce the impact.
>
>I ' know ' I can be killed by an atombomb and I learned
>to
>live with that knowledge, but I ain 't know how to ' behave ' if scientists
>tell me
>that I can die by a meteor impact. The latter ain 't something of my '
>lived
>expe-
>rience '. All what I can suppose what will happening is Hollywoodian and
>thus
>fiction....abscract....
>
Try this website out if you don't mind stressing yourself out over all the
stuff out there that is cruising around in space with the ability to really
mess up our day:
Those things that have serious potential impact magnitudes don't seem to be
hitting Earth all that frequently, but if one did bird flu would be the
least of our worries.
The possibility of global catastrophe due to asteroid impact spawned several
movies. I remember _Deep Impact_ and _Armageddon_ as being notable recent
contagious fear sources.
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri 09 Dec 2005 - 03:56:45 GMT