That's it. The press just sucks. I quit. Going out to find honest work now.
There's just no other way to react to the hundreds upon hundreds of news stories online at the moment purporting to draw a connection between lightning injuries and the world's most famous music player.
Geesh.
Here are just a few:
Burned jogger shows lightning, headphones don't mix
Washington Post, United States - 4 hours ago
Shocking news about earbuds and lightning
Canada.com, Canada - 4 hours ago
Listen to an iPod during a storm and you may get more than ...
International Herald Tribune, France - 4 hours ago
Experts warn of lightning-strike injuries with iPods
Eyewitness News, RI - 20 hours ago
CBS 11, TX - 10 hours ago
Toronto Star, Canada - 9 hours ago
Of course, not every version of this "story" was quite so ludicrous and many if not most made the blindingly obvious point that there is nothing special about an iPod that adds to the dangerous combination of lightning and metal. It's just that the sheer number of headline writers who couldn't resist the cheap - no, make that the dishonest - headline has sent me rummaging for the resume.
OK, neither my wife nor my mortgage company will allow me to take my fit of pique quite that far.
So allow me to finish this rant with perhaps my favorite of the "killer iPod" headlines:
Listening to MP3s during lightning can blow your brains out.
Yes it can, especially if you're a journalist.
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Lighting Strikes!
I just spent the last several days in Castle Rock. I did not realize I was in such danger, what with cell phone, iPaq, iPod, pager, and GPS. I was a walking lightning rod! I'm thinking this would be a good excuse to trade it all in on an iPhone! (Maybe not the GPS, but I could leave it in the car.) I could always tell my boss that reducing all this electronic crap fastened about my body, (and there seems to be an uncomfortable number of devices residing in the pelvic region) would reduce my LAQ (Lightning Attraction Quotient). Now, where did I put my expense requests? ...
Did I misread, or did the
Did I misread, or did the Washington Post article state that the odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 5,000?
Dividing that by the world population gives me a figure somewhere north of one million lightning strikes. Further dividing by their quoted 10% mortality rate yields fatalities in the 6 figure range.
Can anyone say "fact checking"? Or is it "proofreading"?