My friend Steve sent me a list of the most popular stories in Wednesday’s New York Daily News, highlighting Orville, the dead helicopter-cat that I refuse to discuss (I have eliminated the link below). His comment:
Note that half of these are about zombies and/or cannibalism. (Well, one of them is borderline L “‘Vampire’ Skeletons found in Bulgaria.”) Note that number 8 is going mainstream. WEIRD!
Here they are. I weep for my country:
Most Popular
- Zombie Apocalypse:’ Man bites ex-wife’s husband’s face
- HS withholds diplomas because families ‘excessive cheering’
- Girlfriend defends face-chewing attacker
- More ‘zombies’? Man tries to ‘eat’ cops
- Miss Pennsylvania resigns crown
- Dock from Japan washes up on Oregon beach
- Vampire’ skeletons found in Bulgaria
- Artist turns dead cat into remote-controlled helicopter, dubbed ‘Orvillecopter’
- Wig thief bites off chunk of store owner’s arm: cops
- Ark. teen who shot sister gets 45 years
Might that not be a comment on who reads the New York Daily News?
It’s probably zombies. Who loves stories about zombies more than them?
I believe the term is “selection bias”.
Yep. It is like watching a local 5K running race and then concluding that Americans are NOT overweight.
It’s not as though the NY Daily News is the most credible paper in town. I doubt they even have a Science Beat section.
Helicopter cats are more engineering, really…
A pretty informed selection really;
Education at number 2, geography/marine biology at number 6, engineering, as noted, at 8 and ballistics at 10…. oh yes, and some zombies…
How wide really is the circulation of the NY Daily news? I’m a lot more depressed by Fox News than this.
However, if it makes Jerry and other readers feel better
At least number 6 has potentially important biological implications. The dock floated in carrying a whole small ecosystem. Tis included a seaweed and a crab that are not native to North America but are known to be invasive, as well as starfish, tube worms, barnacles, and other species.
I visited the dock yesterday (Saturday) after the organisms had been scraped off and buried further up the beach. (It is hoped that if they survive burial they will die of the fresh water infiltrating the beach there.) Some parts of the dock were scorched to kill lingering, potentially invasive species.
Most of the tsunami debris, with its load of wildlife, is expected to land this fall.
Exactly – this was a science story!
Hillbilly soap operas and Donald Trump (who would certainly win any Mr. Girly Boy competition) … who could ask for anything more?
Sorry but the list is incomplete, as it does not contain ONE STORY of some official repeatedly TASING an elderly man who did not want to go to the hospital, a pregnant woman or a small child.
Wow, that’s a lot better than I’d have expected! Perhaps things are looking up here in the US of A.
Zombies are currently popular because they are the only *socially acceptable* way to express contempt for your fellow man without having to justify it. Be they black/white, young/old, funadamentalist/atheist, doesn’t matter, we all get to use the same, no-questions-asked excuse: “Hey, he was a zomebie.”
This is what happens when news becomes a branch of the entertainment industry. We finish up with all the news that’s fit to titillate.
Stake-in-the-heart ceremonies must work. If not, these vampires wouldn’t have been found as skeletons. Proof!!
There’s some oceanography to be learned from the dock washing up in Oregon.
What is the definition of “most popular?” If it’s the most shared over social media, the sensational nature of the stories is easy to explain–people just aren’t likely to forward serious news stories to friends. Also, sensational headlines are likely to grab the attention of people from around the world and don’t necessarily reflect local or US sensibilities.
When i followed link #2 I was shocked – shocked! – to see that the families were African-American. Non-whites subjected to arbitrary, draconian, infantilizing punishments? A tabloid’s readers titillated by humiliating, racially-tinged? This is still happening in Amrica???
It’s demons, dontcha know.
Fortunately, all of this can be blamed on a combination of bath salts and satan.
Regarding the vampires in Bulgaria, the archeologist who announced the discovery is saying in a follow-up interview, that initially he talked to journalists about a number of archeological discoveries the team made (of weapons and battles, etc.) and only in the last sentence he mentioned the vampire, but on the next day stories in the media were exclusively about the vampire, because journalists were looking for sensations.
The whole interview is here:
http://www.24chasa.bg/Article.asp?ArticleId=1412898
Google Translate gives a decent translate into English.
Why worry about cannibals, zombies or apocalypses? The real problem is closer to home — the destruction of the US legal system. Some murderers, for example, get less than a life sentence while a few get death for arbitrary reasons mostly to do with political gain.
In California, you can get life in prison for shoplifting (Leandro Andrade). In Texas, you can get it for not refunding payment for your bad repair to an air conditioner (William James Rummel). Surely a murderer should not get less.
Once you abandon justice, you abandon everything. That’s the real doom for the USA.
+1
To that I would add willfully ignoring DNA evidence that would exonerate a prisoner (The Innocence Project.)
Yes, the rule of law is even more important than democracy.
Reblogged this on emmageraln.
What? Miss Pennsylvania resigned her crown? That’s sooooo sad. Not a lot to complain about those other ones.
Yes, there is hope for America and the world. My argument is that Google YouTube has been streaming live acts from the Bonnaroo Music Festival for about 12 hours a day since Thursday. Any lover of the popular music scene is into his 4th day of ecstasy.
http://www.youtube.com/user/BonnarooMusicFest
The New York Daily News is equivalent to toilet paper.
Equivalent to toilet paper, only not as soft – and it leaves ink stains on your butt.
Do not weep, Jerry. As one who reads the Daily News every day except Sunday, I can attest to its value as a, well, it’s a tabloid, not quite a newspaper. Just like many drugs, it is meant to be taken with a real newspaper, i.e., the New York Times.
The stories you list may be the most popular by some standards, but the Daily News also runs real stories, and its Letters to the Editor section (called Voice of the People) is an anthropological view of opinion. If you can stomach reading it, that is.
It is good to face the enemy and while the Daily News itself isn’t really the enemy — its editorials vary greatly, and focus primarily on local issues (the dedicated province of the News) — it does give readers a glimpse into the dark and stupid heart of this country.
It’s stuff we usually don’t get in the Times.
(And the sports section is good. So’s the gossip.)