How to tell you're Not Ready for Prime Time
Killer Mobile Virus
...[T]ext messages warned of a virus [which] would not hurt the phone. Instead, in a scene out of a horror movie, it would kill the recipient. Immediately.
“Plz ignore calls frm 0A9-888888 or with screen with dancing snake & changing colours its a deadly virus and in some regions of Pakistan death are being reported,”
...The News, a respected newspaper here, ran a story on the front of its city section discounting the rumor. But another story in the section, written by the vague “Our Staff Reporter,” said two people were seriously hurt when they answered the bad phone numbers. One fell unconscious, the other started bleeding from the ears, and doctors had no medicine to treat this kind of virus. The story then concluded: “However, we will provide medicines to these patients on (an) emergency basis, the doctors said."
OK - that made my head hurt.
[Meanwhile in Afghanistan] “There’s a strange rumor that if you get a phone call from a strange number, if you hit ‘OK’ (to answer the phone), blood will come from your nose and ears, and you will die,” said Mar, a taxi driver, who said he was just about to turn off his phone.
The reassurance they received?
"We have no reports of anyone answering their telephone and then bleeding from their noses,” said Abdullah Fahim, a spokesman for the Health Ministry. “Not today, not yesterday, and not before then — we have no such reports."
No reports. Well.... Ok, then…
It is fascinating to observe how societies move from the 12th Century to the 21st in one generation. Not only did they skip teh development of their own version of The Enlightenment, Magna Carta, etc, but they also skipped things like Galileo, Madame Curie, etc. They have all the gadgets and capabilities and huge holes in their world view.
It would be very easy to go all mockingly superior.... But… well...
Devo may have had a point.
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