h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

 I was on the bus last week and over heard a conversation between two old ladies (always a good source of amusement). They were discussing why brown sugar wasn't as sweet as white sugar. They came to the conlusion that some of the sweetness had to be sacrificed when they put the browness in!

Two days later I was heading home on the train, the day after a programme with trevor MacDonald had been talking about Gulf War Syndrom. On the program they had been talking about how depleted Uranium had been used to make the shells, and was contaminating the soldiers, and the poor civilians being bombed, and causing them to have Leukeimia (i could also rant about how infactual and biased this programme was, but thats another story). On the train I overheard yet another conversation, this time two young(ish) blokes talking about how America was making poisoned bullets, with cancer on the tip, and if you were shot by one of these bullets you would not die form the wound, but instead you would "catch" cancer, and die from that.

Gah!

People are soooooo thick!


Arggghhhhhhh!

They were all obviously sun readers! I am constantly amazed how much people believe everything they read and hear in the media, and how little the media has to do with facts or the truth!

I know what you mean - everyone always says that you shouldn't believe everything you read, but most people do. I always used to, sub-conciously - if it's in the press it must be true. But I currently work for a millenium landmark project, of which there has been a lot of bad press, and having read the articles in both tabloids and broadsheets, with glaring errors, it really hit home how easy it is for them to get the facts wrong, and for tha majority of the nation to believe it!

I worked for a nuclear energy company and while somethings that were printed were true most were completely exaggerated and ridiculous. Also the first episode of casualty last week showed the hospital being contaminated by low level waste which is crap because low level waste is basically the stuff you or I would chuck in the bin on a daily basis. The reason it has to be treated is because it has been used in a nuclear building and there might be contamination - However, I know longer work for that company so why should I fight their battles for them!

the thing that got me most cross about the articles were the references to "a simulator based on the challenger space probe" which should be "an educational simulator set up by the families of the astronauts tragically lost in the Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster". Apart from the fact that it makes it sound like some arcade game simulator thing, it's not "based on" Challenger (could *anything* be sicker? or less tasteful?), which was a shuttle not a probe, and 7 astronuats were killed in the biggest disaster NASA has had. Do the papers mention this? NO! they call it a bloody probe!