The iPod as scapegoat.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes points to piece that all too well demonstrates the tendency to take unfortunate events and draw irrational conclusions. In this case, the implication is that the death of a British Columbia man who was hit by a falling helicopter could have been averted if he hadn't been wearing his iPod.

Kingley-Hughes says

Now, I don't know about you, but iPod or no iPod, I really don't expect to be crushed horribly from above by a wildly flailing helicopter when picking up my mail. On top of that, I really don't fancy my chances of dodging an inbound chopper whether I was wearing earphones or not.

Indeed.

It's not exactly as if earphones were invented with the iPod. Old people have been railing against the evils of "that damned racket" since before the Sony Walkman was introduced.

There are certainly good personal health reasons to keep the audio piped into your ears to a reasonable volume, but retaining your ability to dive, John McClane-style, out of the path of an incoming helicopter is not one of them.

[ripragged]

The juxtaposition of a Macalope post about death by iPod with a Zune ad directly below strikes me as odd somehow. I don't know about 'copters, but I'm pretty sure drive-thru coffee is hotter if you have the earbuds in.

[LFransson]

Having read the (doubly indirectly linked) article, I didn't get the impression that anyone was anti-iPod. Although the iPod is mentioned by name once or twice, the concern seemed to center around the use of portable music players and headphones in general (with iPod being a generic term for such devices, which tells you just how ubiquitous they are!), and playing them at high volume - a valid concern for any number of reasons.

[MATTAND]

Gotta go with LFrannsson on this one. As I posted on Kingsley-Hughes' site, the only thing that comes closes to "anit-iPod" is a woman horrified by iPod wearing cyclists. Even then, I'm not entirely sure this woman is singling Apple out, per se.

As LFrannsson says, the term "iPod" does seem generic throughout the whole article. Did I miss something?

Matt A

[clem_cowsie]

Um, what?
Sorry, but that's just ridiculous. Whoever wrote that newspaper article about that (extremely unfortunate) guy is very biased. They're basically just saying, "mp3s are terrible devices! Look, they caused someone's death!" Too bad for them, though; the victim in question not only had terrible luck, but probably had the volume up too high if that happened to him.