Secondary Effects
Various secondary effects occurred, notably toilet paper panics in Japan and the United States; these were unfounded panics which became self-fulfilling prophesies, and are classic examples of the Thomas theorem. Price rises and unfounded rumors of a toilet paper shortage—based on oil being used in paper manufacturing—caused a panic and hoarding of toilet paper in late October and early November in Osaka and Kobe, among other cities. In the United States, Johnny Carson inadvertently caused a three-week panic when, on December 19, 1973, he read a news item regarding the U.S. government falling behind on bids for toilet paper and quipping that the nation faced a toilet paper shortage on The Tonight Show.
Read more about this topic: 1973 Oil Crisis
Famous quotes containing the words secondary and/or effects:
“Cloud-clown, blue painter, sun as horn,
Hill-scholar, man that never is,
The bad-bespoken lacker,
Ancestor of Narcissus, prince
Of the secondary men. There are no rocks
And stones, only this imager.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)