This Is What Causes Panics

[randomness]

From http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/this-is-what-causes-panics/.

Catherine Rampell writes:

Yesterday my mother wrote me the following (real) e-mail:

From: Mom
To: Catherine Rampell
Subject: Important
Try to take some $ out of your account at an ATM asap — doesn’t have to be [your primary bank]. Some are predicting scarcity of cash from banks in this mess.

I wonder how many other worried mothers are sending the same message to their offspring. For the record, I’m not taking my mother up on her suggestion. (She later retracted her advice, anyway, when I asked her if I could blog her e-mail — she became worried that muggers might read my blog post and follow me home.)

Comments

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Follow people home and mug them! Oddly, that was the advice my mother just emailed me.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

It's much better advice!

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

*LOL*

ok... i'm not sure which of your mothers scare me more.

then agian, mine is hip-deep in reading Mercedes Lackey books. :D

[evilmagnus]

Where do you live?
Also, what's your PIN? Just curious.

[dpolicar]

Wow. Now I have to give my Mom credit for not coming out with this.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

now I have to worry about whether going to get cash again as I happen to be a little low is going to be just one more bit of a run on the banks for cash.

oh, or maybe I should just mug you on your way home from your ATM.

[ketzl.livejournal.com]

You mean there are people who still use cash?!

[contrariety.livejournal.com]

I once agreed to housesit for a fellow church member while he was on a trip in Argentina. He had a house alarm system, and forgot to provide me with the code before leaving. He then refused to send me the code by email, citing security concerns about sending it by email. This implies that he believed that either a.) Argentinian thieves were monitoring his email and planning to follow him back to America so they could rob his nondescript middle-class house, or b.) American thieves were monitoring MY email in hopes that someone would send me a security code for a house alarm system, and planning to follow me to his house to ID it so they could come back and rob it later.

People have not fully sorted out which kinds of security concerns the internet heightens and which it doesn't.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

So, um, what did you do?