Apparently, someone found some cached electronic documents that show the Chinese Gold-Medal Winning Women’s Gymnast ain’t quite 15 yet.
Darn interwebs…
Category: News
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Coke Going Down?
Two volunteers at a British Alternative Film cinema are replacing the familiar taste of Coca Cola with a home-grown variety.
They object to Coke’s business practices so they don’t serve the beverage, however people keep asking for it. They’ve spent two years trying to work out a substitute.
Read all about it. Go them!
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Still Being Nitpicky
While I’m on the topic of critiquing news reports, here’s one from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA, pronounced “nitsa”).
Secretary Peters said that in 2007, the overall number of traffic fatalities fell to 41,059, the lowest number since 1994. In addition, the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled was 1.37, the lowest fatality rate on record, she noted.
That’s good news. When over 40,000 people die every year in traffic collisions, that’s big problem. But my nitpickiness was triggered by this:
“Thanks to safer vehicles, aggressive law enforcement and our efforts, countless families were spared the devastating news that a loved one was not coming home last year,” Secretary Peters said.
Countless? Really? I bet I could count them. After all, we have very good numbers.
For a prepared statement, I’m not happy with the verbiage. Government agencies should do better.
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Bigfoot! A.K.A. "Fleecing Gullible People"
Don’t forget that today is the Big Reveal™ of the big foot carcass that was found/shot/planted in the north Georgia mountains. I commented on this yesterday.
Today, however, I clicked over to the
alleged big foot finders’scam artists’ website searchingforbigfoot.com. Alas, I was horribly disappointed. I was hoping that if you’re charging $1,000 a slot for positions on a big foot expedition, at least you could have an attractive website. Despite the design, there is a wealth of information about the creature on the site. For example:A body that may very well be the body of the creature commonly known as “Bigfoot” has been found in the woods in northern Georgia.
Next time I turn in a traffic report for consideration by my client, I’m going to use the phrase, “this traffic report may very well be an honest representation of the development in question. You be the judge!”
I’m not going to nitpick everything on the website, but this keeps popping up:
DNA evidence and photo evidence of the creature will be presented in a press conference…
Gosh, no one has ever manipulated photos before, and while I’m not any kind of biologist or forensic specialist, what kind of “DNA evidence” is this exactly? Will this prove that the creature has DNA at all? Or will it demonstrate that it’s a large biped? I honestly don’t know if someone can determine what a creature is from its DNA. I posted a question over at Pharyngula about this. I’ll update when there’s an answer.
Update: Thanks to Llewelly and Ranson for helping out. Apparently, yes, you could do a determination with DNA that a sample is a primate and run some comparisons, but still, what is this really going to teach us? They’ll probably say that this DNA sample is “98% consistent with human DNA” or something like that. It could be chimp DNA for all we know.
So, if you’re interested, the Big Reveal™ is today at noon (pacific time, I assume). We’ll see what comes about. My bet is “nothing”. Or “nothing that can’t be faked up by three guys with some time.”Here’s the info on the reveal as posted on their website.:
Date: Friday, August 15, 2008
Time: From 12Noon-1:00pm
Place: Cabana Hotel-Palo Alto, 4290 El Camino Real
Palo Alto, California 94306
(A Crown Plaza Resort)I just love the “(A Crown Plaza Resort)” parenthetical remark!
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Bullshitese
I was reading an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution this morning concerning Georgia’s budget cutbacks. One statement in particular stood out:
Sen. Kasim Reed (D-Atlanta), said those new jobs should be reconsidered.
“I don’t know any organization that faces the kind of budget challenges we’re facing that doesn’t take a serious look at right-sizing itself,” Reed said. “We need to drill down and give some thought to whether our government is the right size or not.”
Ahhh, the concept of the “right size”. It’s good to avoid inflammatory language like “down size”. I’m also not sure how “drilling down” is relevant to the “right sizing” unless we’re changing up our menu options.
[sigh]
Well, I guess I shouldn’t nitpick too much. I’ve never been cornered by a reporter and asked to comment on an issue that will cause a lot of heartache and layoffs.
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Cool News Reports
This morning I awake to learn that Julia Child was not only a legendary cook, but also a spy with the OSS. Awesome! I also learned that there’s a hoaxer living in Georgia who claims to have found Bigfoot’s corpse. Stupid!
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Google Streetview Captures Drunk
Thanks to Steph for pointing this out
Google Streetview has captured a moment of drunken unconsciousness in Australia.
My thoughts on this are: Public photography is legal (in the US) except for some very specific cases. If you’re drunk in a public space, or doing anything else, you’re available for photographic recording. If I, or Google, take a picture of you, you don’t really have much to say about it.
Of course, if I took a picture of someone in a compromising position, and that person requested I remove it from my Flickr stream or my blog, I’d consider the request. I might not acquiesce, but I would consider it.
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Flat Earth
The Bad Astronomer posted about this BBC article, but I just need to chime in.
According to the BBC, the idea that the Earth is flat, and not an oblate spheroid, is still alive and well amongst people who are obviously unsuitable for being around my children.Two of the interviewees said:
Mr Davis now believes “the Earth is flat and horizontally infinite – it stretches horizontally forever”.
“And it is at least 9,000 kilometres deep”, he adds.
James McIntyre, a British-based moderator of a Flat Earth Society discussion website, has a slightly different take. “The Earth is, more or less, a disc,” he states. “Obviously it isn’t perfectly flat thanks to geological phenomena like hills and valleys. It is around 24,900 miles in diameter.”
In this day and age, the fact that someone who was interviewed for a news story (that was posted on the Internet!) can believe that the Globular Earth Theory is a massive conspiracy just boggles my foot. I like to think I’m relatively tolerant about people’s beliefs and such, but if someone were to present this idea to me as fact, I’d have to either tell them they were a bonehead and leave, or if they were at my house, let them know that they were no longer welcome. Some types of anti-intellectualism should not be tolerated.
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Russia + Georgia = ?
I’ve been paying attention to the Russia/Georgia/South Ossetia war that’s going on and I’m trying to figure out (from my Oh So Worldly knowledge) what Russia’s angle is here.
Obviously you don’t go committing a division of troops without a good reason. I don’t know enough about the Republic of Georgia to understand what it is about the area that makes Russia want to either destabilize it or force a regime change (or to split of South Ossentia). Are they looking for weaker states on their borders to force them into economic satellite-hood? I’d think, just given their geography, that they already were. I’m assuming that Russia is Georgia’s majority trading partner, unless it’s Turkey. I really don’t know. I also assume that there’s no reason that Russia would want to conquer Georgia from a geographic standpoint. They’d acquire a couple Black Sea ports, a mountain range and a valley. I’m guessing that this is all political (which Clausewitz would say is the whole point of war).
Anyone have any knowledge or thoughts?
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JREF $1M Challenge
Phil Plait announced today that he is ascending the ranks of the skeptic community by accepting the Presidency of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). But that’s not why I’m writing.
After reading JREF’s press release, I went to the website and found their forums that include the list of people who have applied for the $1M Challenge. If you’re not familiar with the challenge, JREF offers a million dollars to anyone who can demostrate under controlled, mutually acceptable conditions that they have a paranormal power. The forum details the correspondence with various applicants for the prize. It’s interesting reading.