One: The “random facts” interview theme is something I’d been wanting to pitch to some outlet for awhile but hadn’t gotten around to yet, and now it’d look like I’m ganking their idea. Jerks.

And two: Jaffe relates this little vignette that would make such an awesome premise for a story that it makes me angry I didn’t think of it:

I once called my childhood phone number — about five years ago — just to see what would happen. The phone picked up — no one said hello — and on the other end I heard two little kids playing and calling each other Philip (my brother’s name) and David (me, duh). Did I call the past? I still wonder. And no, you can’t take the idea and use it for a movie or book. It’s mine! Mine I tell you!

Isn’t that great? Check out the whole article, it’s a fun read.

[Photo by Jane Coleman. Used with permission only retroactively, because I'm a dumbass.]

And so it begins, this year’s health scare, and already it’s looking to beat out SARS for the quickest spread of misinformation. It’s on every news site and front page: SWINE FLU! SWINE FLU DISCOVERED IN THE U.S.! SWINE FLU DISCOVERD IN OHIO!

Hmm, I wonder why. Perhaps it’s because, like during any other fad, the people who create “report” the news are making decisions based on what will generate the most readership, thereby converting into ad sales, which converts into money in the pockets of the people who make descisions about what news to report.

No, I see no problem with that process, why do you ask?

By way of perspective, some numbers: In Mexico, where this outbreak is thought to have originated, there have been about 1600 reported cases thought to be swine flu as of this writing. Of those, about 100 people have died. I do not make light of those deaths. These are people with families and loved ones, and these are genuine tragedies, especially when you start wondering if those deaths could have been prevented with adequate medical care. But that’s a topic for another time.

No, I do not make light of those deaths, and 1 in 16 truly is a frighteningly high mortality rate for a flu. But remember two things: Mexico has more than one hundred million people. So while the chances of dying from swine flu once you’ve caught it seem to be rather high, the chances of the average person dying from it are at this point literally one in a million.

And two, this is in Mexico, where much of the country is rural and/or poor — which means less likely to visit a doctor for what feels like (and for most people, apparently is) little more than a common flu. So the number of people who’ve actually caught it — and fought it, and didn’t even think to contact a pricey or hard-to-reach doctor about it –  is likely to be much, much higher than 1600.

“Butbutbut,” you say, “the WHO called swine flu a ‘a public health emergency of international concern’!” Oooh, sounds scary. Until you look at the WHO website:

A public health emergency of international concern refers to an extraordinary public health event which is determined, under specific procedures:

• to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease; and

• to potentially require a coordinated international response.

Hmm, not so scary.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. It’s important to take reasonable precautions when dealing with a situation like this; y’know, wash your hands and don’t go out if you’re sick, that sorta thing. But it’s also important to keep perspective, and to remember that in our modern, cable-news-driven society, things like this almost always seem much worse than they are.

We’ll be seeing swine flu news everywhere for weeks to come, no doubt. But remember that for awhile we saw Paris Hilton news everywhere, too. The media follows the money, and the money follows the fad, and the fad follows psychology — not reality, at least not necessarily.

So let’s all calm the hell down, OK?

[Thanks to xkcd for inspiring this rant.]

Update: I never thought I’d say this, but thank you, CNN, for providing a bit of perspective. (And thanks to Mike for the link.)

First, a definition: In the article, Arrington says, “Let’s put the law aside for a moment – this post is about doing the right thing.” OK, so the question Arrington is actually asking is, “Is stealing music ethically wrong?” That’s helpful, because it makes the answer particularly easy:

Of course it’s wrong, you fucking idiot.

But Arrington — an erstwhile corporate attorney — disagrees. He spends the whole article setting up a lot of really awesome hoops and jumping through them all to arrive at the conclusion that it isn’t. Here are some of my favorite gems from the article:

“People who are older than say 30 think that downloading music is ethically wrong [because] they remember that music is something that you pay for. … But if you’ve discovered and come to love music in the last decade, I don’t see how you can be expected to know when listening to recorded music is ok, and when it’s wrong.”

Oh, I see: If you can’t figure out if stealing something is wrong, that means it’s OK to steal it.

“Just a couple of years ago anyone listening to free streaming music anywhere on the Internet was violating copyright and subject to being labeled unethical. Today, its no problem.”

Oh, I see: If something is easy to take, that means it’s OK to take it.

“If you live in China, you can download music legally from Google for free.”

Oh, I see: If something is legal in China, that means it’s ethical. Let’s celebrate this revelation: Lead sundaes for everyone!

“Over the last few years the line has blurred to the point where there really isn’t any line any more. We can listen to free, on demand streaming music at MySpace Music and lots of other sites. It’s ok to do it at MySpace, but it’s wrong to do it at Project Playlist, just because the right contracts aren’t in place?”

Um. Yes. Just like it’s OK for my friend to borrow my car when I tell him he can, but not to take it without my permission. Is this concept really so hard to grasp?

Look, you really need to read the whole article. Arrington dances around the issue with lots of insinuations about the recording industry and record labels and all the Big Bad Boring Wolves of the music industry, including one particularly awesome segment where he claims that the labels should be paying him for his stealing of their music. But nowhere in this article — not once — does he mention the people who make the fucking music he’s stealing. There’s a very good reason for that: Once you introduce musicians into the equation, all his carefully balanced hoops fall like festive dominos.

Because musicians are the people who are trying to make a living by creating and selling music. Sure, there are other revenue streams open to musicians: touring, merchandise sales, royalties, etc. But without ownership of their own music, all these things fall apart. If stealing music is OK, why should radio stations have to pay when they play it? Why should ad agencies have to pay to license it? Why should record labels have to pay the artist for the right to put it on a disc and sell it, for fuck’s sake?

Perhaps this shockingly ignorant argument can be better illustrated with a different profession. Let’s say you’re, oh, I dunno, the editor of an awkwardly named technology website. And let’s say one day you decided you wanted to collect all your editorials into a slick e-book, complete with commissioned illustrations and bonus material. Now let’s say you wanted to let people read the material of the entire book for free on your site, but you wanted to charge a buck or two for the deluxe edition, for those who wanted to download it to their Kindles and whatonot.

You’re saying it’s ethically fine for me to pirate a copy of Internet Ramblings of a Fucking Idiot just because some of the material is available for free on your website? And not only that, but you should actually be paying me for the privilege?

No? Because you should have the right to earn a living from your talent, hard work, and clear intelligence? Hmm. I wonder how that’s different from musicians.

Oh, that’s right — it’s not.

Update: OH GOD THE IRONY!

“Rapture porn.”

I’m glad I’m not alone in thinking this way; Ty Burr at the Boston Globe positively nails it. Though his score of 1.5 stars is, I believe, too generous.

I am often disappointed by movies, but I am rarely disgusted, and almost never actually offended. Knowing pulled off a hat trick with its impressively bad writing, acting, and heavy-handed allegory. After that it’s hard to care how technologically impressive a film may be.

Avoid at all costs.

Yeah, me either.

That wouldn’t bother me so much if I weren’t confronted by ordinary goodness every single day. I look at CNN or Yahoo News or the local paper and I think, “The real world isn’t like that. Things are not this bad. They just aren’t.”

Do bad things happen in the world? Yes, of course. Sure they do. They happen all the time. But they aren’t the only thing happening, and they aren’t even the most common thing. Humans are, by and large, good people. The problem is, our brain is wired in such a way that only the exceptions stand out. Which means that only the exceptions are “newsworthy.”

Do the bad things happening in our world need to be talked about? Absolutely. We should be aware of events in our community, whether that community is our immediate neighborhood or the entire freakin’ planet. But here’s my question: Do they need to be the only thing talked about?

I say no. I say the reason we see only the bad news is that only the exceptions sell — and the news media has to sell ads to survive. We are fascinated by train wrecks and car crashes, so the news feeds us an endless stream of train wrecks and car crashes, hoping we won’t change the channel.

I say: enough.

I’m tired of it. It’s depressing, a bombardment of negativity that gives us an utterly skewed view of the world, from our perception of people in far-off lands to the fact that OH MY GOD A PREDATOR COULD LEARN YOUR CHILD’S BIRTHDAY BY HACKING HIS DS OVER WIFI!!!!!!! EVERYBODY PANIC!!!! (When I was a kid, we roamed the neighborhood from dawn until the streetlights came on. Now there is a predator behind every bush. Has the world changed that much in 25 years? No, it hasn’t. We just hear more about the bad shit that goes down. We hear more about the exceptions to the general okay-ness of people.)

And on top of this, there’s this sudden proliferation of websites devoted to letting you tattle on strangers anonymously. Don’t like someone’s driving? Post their license plate online! Think someone was speaking too loudly on their cell phone? Post all the personal details you overheard! (Yes, because the simple human exchange of walking up to the person and saying, “Excuse me, are you aware you’re speaking very loudly?” would be so far out of the question. Because you might get shot, of course. Or sued! Let me ask you a question: Out of all the people you personally know, how many have been shot, or sued? Yeah, exactly.)

So: enough.

I propose that the news media has got the job of circulating the bad news pretty well covered. So let’s take on the job of circulating the rest of the news ourselves.

Here’s what I’d like for you to do. Take a moment and think about something kind, or honorable, or just plain good you’ve seen someone do recently. It didn’t have to happen to you, and it could even have been you doing it, if you’re comfortable with blowing your own horn. Think of something you saw recently that made you think well of humanity. Then write about it. You can just drop a comment on this post, or write in your own blog and leave me a link.

I’m sick of hearing only bad things about other people. Aren’t you? Let’s do something about it.

I’ll start:

One of my favorite bands of all time was called Jawbox. The primary singer and guitarist was J. Robbins. These days he does a ton of really excellent producing work (he’s maybe even produced bands you’ve heard of, like the Promise Ring) and also plays in a band called Channels with his wife. Last year they had a child named Cal. It turns out that Cal has a pretty serious, and generally fatal, neurological disease for which there is no known cure. So his former bandmates, who now own a small record label, put up a post on their website about it, and took it upon themselves to ask for donations to help Cal’s parents with the astronomical medical costs.

Shortly thereafter, J. posted this on his blog: “Our great friends Kim Coletta and Bill Barbot took the step of setting up a donation page for Callum on the DeSoto Records website back in December, which has opened the door to an incredible surge of goodwill and support from friends and acquaintances around the world. It’s given us energy and resources to move forward that we simply wouldn’t have otherwise, and it’s hard to find the words to express our gratitude. We both dream of a day when we can try to explain to Cal how, when he was just a baby, so many people rallied to give him a shot at a better way forward.”

Here’s an excerpt from a more recent post: “A bunch of friends did benefit shows for Cal this weekend: Nick Pimentel and the Owls and Crows folks did one in DC; Jessica Hopper organized one at the Empty Bottle in Chicago with Bobby Conn, our pals in the Life and Times, and Red Eyed Legends; and our old friends at North Six in Brooklyn put on a show with Ted Leo, Medications, the Forms, and Last Letters. Cal is so lucky, and we are so lucky, to have these friends and this kind of support. I don’t know how we will ever be able to thank people for the kindness they are showing. I don’t see how Callum will ever grow up to be a proper cynical punk rocker, since he is already experiencing undeniable proof that at least some people are essentially good at heart.”

It is terrible and tragic that a child should suffer this sort of disease. But it is beautiful and moving that so many should come together to support him and his family.

Your turn.