I know, I know; another day, another questionable use of the term ‘Zombie’:

A geostationary satellite that become a “zombie” earlier this year and stopped communicating with ground controllers has now finally been reset and is under control. The Galaxy 15 communications satellite had its “brains fried” by a solar flare and went rogue in early May. Although it was still functional, its navigation and communications systems would not accept commands, and the satellite drifted out of its orbit. On December 23, 2010, engineers at the company Intelsat were finally able to command the unit to reset after a battery drained. Shortly thereafter Galaxy 15 began accepting commands, and then was put into safe mode.

Not only is this another in the lazily pejorative overuses of the term ‘Zombie’, but it doesn’t even fit the stereotypes. Zombies, generally speaking, are supposed to be almost uniquely vulnerable to having their ‘brains fried’, as it were; in the Romero/Russo canon it’s the only sure way to stop them from ‘attacking’ you. Yet here, you become a Zombie by having your brain fried. I guess it’s supposed to be a reference to Voodoo-related drugging? No, wait, that’s stupid. Voodoo Zoms were supposed to be continuous hard workers, not slackers.

Why am I putting this much thought into it, anyway? We all know why they chose the term; it’s trendy, and journalists love to fit in with a trend.

Sigh.

Tags: Don't Use the Zed Word, Journamalism

This entry was posted by John Sears on Thursday, December 30th, 2010 at 12:13 am and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.