The Power of Rumor

So today was a bit exciting at the end of the day for some of us...

Rumors of a bomb threat in downtown Princeton had the streets blocked off and several people worked up into a frenzy. We had no idea anything was going on until the very end of the day, as students were being quickly ushered out the door and into their cars at the end of the day. All after-school activities were cancelled and all of the parents were called.

In a span of only a few minutes, I heard a whole host of different versions of what was allegedly going on in town. From the top to the bottom, stories included such drama as a bomb actually going off at Mediterra restaurant to an additional missing bomb that hadn't yet been found.

I even at one point heard "massive explosions" from a certain person at the top...

Isn't it amazing how rumors can travel and grow and manifest themselves so quickly?

In reality, what happened was that there was a bomb threat phoned into the police early this morning. The police have, as of now, found nothing, and there was never an explosion of any kind.

I would be the last person to knowingly put my wonderful people in danger, but I often wonder about the necessity of extreme reactions to rumors when often the case is such that people are very misinformed.

A wonderful allegory for rumor and hysteria is the image of a feather pillow being emptied into the wind. Each feather flies in a different way and lands in a different place.