I have not written in quite some time... must be writer's block or something. So I thought I'll just dump something here, though it isn't as coherent as I wish it was.
If you do the mistake of watching/reading any media, you would have realized by now that pretty much everything around us can harm or even kill you. Here I am not referring to things like bombs, guns, etc. Those are so 90's-ish. These days the fad is writing about things that you always thought were benign and telling you why those are the new criminal scum that you should be highly afraid of. "Car AC can kill you", "Chocolate can harm your sleep patterns", "Pesticides in fruits could eat your first born", "Antibiotics could make you grow 10 heads" and so on. Every other day, you learn that one more thing you use regularly in your life could be the worst thing to ever happen to you.
No doubt, there is truth, in whatever quantity, in each of these reports. However, many reports project just one side of the coin, while totally ignoring the other side. I feel the report makes sense only when both the sides are thought about. Also, the reports are decorated with flashy headline and filled with exaggerated claims to ensure that people read it.
People sometimes fail to realize that this 'bad' thing that they are writing about is bad only in very long term or the chances of them really harming you are so small compared to various other things around them. I have seen a lot of people stopping doing what they have been doing for years because they saw one such report. Some examples: a) Stopping eating any rice because that's what makes you fat b) Stop eating apples because they are covered by wax (really, this has happened) c) Stop drinking coffee completely. d) Stop travelling in city buses because there is swine flue threat.
tourism is bad
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