Addams Family Values: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal

July 02, 2004

Addams Family Values

James Di Benedetto Wishes His Family Had Been More Like the Addams Family. Or does he? It's not clear:

The Eleven Day Empire: I'm Just Not Sure What to Make of This: As you may or may not know (I didn't, until a couple of minutes ago), the Centers for Disease Control has a Kids section on its website.

And one part of that Kids section is a helpful tool to assist kids in, I suppose, knowing and being able to recognize various diseases that they might encounter in the world. And how, you may ask, did they decide to do this?

Infectious Disease Trading Cards, of course!

There are cards for such things as, say, Ebola.

I'm not sure whether this is a reasonably clever and moderately non-threatening way to introduce kids to science and so forth, or if it's a horrifyingly misguided and warped idea that will scar the minds of impressionable youth for the rest of their lives. Or, possibly, both.

Posted by DeLong at July 2, 2004 09:10 AM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this post

Comments

The back text on the Anthrax card, btw, is wrong; it claims that there have been bioterrorism threats with Anthrax, but that only skin anthrax (not inhalation) has been seen in the US in recent years.

So, apparently, as part of the "there have been no terrorist attacks since 9/11" disinformation campaign, the administration has gotten the CDC to promulgate outright lies and pretend the anthrax attacks never happened.

Posted by: cmdicely on July 2, 2004 09:18 AM

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"Addams Family Values" was a great film.

Posted by: MattB on July 2, 2004 09:53 AM

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"You have ten seconds to name that disease, and Beat the Reaper!"
-- Firesign Theatre

Infectious disease trading cards sound cool to me - wish I'd had 'em when I was a kid!

Posted by: RT on July 2, 2004 10:12 AM

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They'd be better off with a link to this page:

http://www.giantmicrobes.com/calamities/ebola.html

They sell plush toys based on various microbes. Ebola looks like E.T. from the collar bone up.

Posted by: The Goddess on July 2, 2004 10:14 AM

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Wow! Totally cool.

Even better than the Australian Post Office's Poisonous Sea Creatures of Australia postage stamp sets! (I think they had three or four of a dozen noxious critters each).

As George Orwell put it, people worship power in what forms they comprehend it. Hence, boys will worship prize fighters, while grown ups will worship Stalin (or George Bush for that matter).

Tuberculosis got George Orwell, despite the streptimycin. Maybe Giant Microbes will do a tubercule?

Posted by: Kaleberg on July 2, 2004 11:21 AM

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Wow! Totally cool.

Even better than the Australian Post Office's Poisonous Sea Creatures of Australia postage stamp sets! (I think they had three or four of a dozen noxious critters each).

Posted by: Kaleberg on July 2, 2004 11:21 AM

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For the older set, there are microbial ties and other garments from Infectious Awareables at http://www.iawareables.com

(“Mad Cow (Prions) and West Nile Virus are here! Also, new outbreaks of Syphilis, Gonorrhea, Ebola, Flu-A.”)

no connection, except that I gave my brother Ebola a few years back.

Posted by: Anna on July 2, 2004 12:57 PM

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Interestingly, the back of the HIV card says that "You can protect yourself from being infected by not having sex, using latex condoms if you have sex,..." I'm sure that's an oversight and this disgusting promotion of pre-marital sex will be purged as soon as someone from Focus on the Family notices it.

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