Image of Jesus seen in picture of Jesus

Well, it's about the last place the faithful no, gullible and/or desperate for their 15 minutes have actually looked for an image of their lord and saviour, various of them having claimed to have seen him in clouds, random bits of wood, chocolate bars and even ruined cookware.*

Toby Elles, 22, made the discovery after burning the food when he fell asleep while cooking.
After lifting off the scorched bacon Mr Elles, from Salford, Lancs, could not believe his eyes when the Christlike image stared back at him.
The face is complete with eyes, nose, a beard and is framed by long flowing hair.

Well, let's have a look then.

Okay, I'll grant you that it looks kind of like a bearded man, but does that mean it's Jesus and not some randomised scraps of carbonised bacon fat? Not only does it seem unlikely that Jesus, who was Jewish if I recall, would choose to re-appear in bacon fat [and personally] I think it looks like John Lennon without his glasses.

However, let's for a moment assume that this is a benchmark for what the Son of Man looks like, and of course ignore the fact that what Yeshua of Nazareth actually looked like probably wasn't the medieval bearded guy from church windows or the BeeGee lookalike from more contemporary Christian art but a regular 1st century Palestinian male. So, if that's an image of Jesus who's this guy in the sock?

Sarah Crane, 38, said she was stunned when she saw a bearded man staring back at her from the laundry line.
Her boyfriend agreed the crumpled grey "holy sock" bore an uncanny likeness to the traditional image of Christ, and the couple took photographs to show their friends.

Oh, for fuck's sake. I'm going to regret this, but let's have a look anyway.

Really? Look, firstly that doesn't even look like a bearded man. I can see a face-like pattern, though that's perfectly natural and happens to people all the time, but to begin with I thought it look more like a robot than a human face before finally deciding that actually it reminded me a bit of Eddie from Iron Maiden album cover art.

Of course we're talking about the classic 1980s Eddie

And secondly, even if it did look like a bearded man it doesn't look like the bearded man in the frying pan who, it's suggested, is not John Lennon but our Redeemer, though unfortunately neither of them look a lot like I'd expect an ancient Palestinian to look and nor do they look like Jesus of Marmite Jar or Jesus of Cheap Interior Door.** And of course there's a reason for that: not everyone with a bloody beard is Jesus. I mean look up there at Eddie... see it? Beard. And Eddie the Head isn't even slightly saintly, much less Christ like. I shouldn't need to spell this out but beard ≠ Jesus.

Plus, and I realise this is obvious to both my readers, these things are not Jesus but are the leftovers of a couple of ruined slices of cured pig meat, a cheap sock, a few cents of plastic with some random blobs of yeast extract, and a fucking door. In fact the only three things that links these and any other example of the Jesus-appears-in-random-everyday-object phenomenon is their different looking Jesuses, their essential non-Jesusness that follows from the inability to agree on what Jesus looked like, and their being obsessed over by nutters. And by nutters I don't mean religious believers, though no doubt some are, but dedicated non thinkers who'd rather believe that they've been blessed by an entity whose existence is unproved, and if you ask me pretty doubtful, than that human beings are so naturally predisposed to recognising patterns that they see them in things that are random and patternless.

I mean, what's the alternative? Yes, the bloke who burned his bacon might like to think how miraculous it was he didn't die in the fire, but other people do die in fires all the time. Are we to believe that the Good Lord saves those who nod off while making bacon sarnies but not from dodgy wiring that they don't even know about? And the others, what do we make of those? Are B group vitamins particularly holy? Blessed are the squeaky doors, for they shall inherit the earth? Is the Bible wrong and Jesus actually say unto Peter "You are my sock, and on this sock I shall build my church" or does he just want to cure corns and verrucas?

Not if the experience of the sock Jesus woman is any indication.

They even talked about creating a shrine to the sock but then the face was lost when they moved it.

I was half expecting the Ascension to be mentioned at this point but fortunately for both my head and my desk it never came up. Instead, and almost as laughable, this:

"We think it's a bit of a sign - but for what we don't know."

Well, I can think of a couple of things that it could be a sign of. One is that you might just be a fucking idiot, and the other is that with electronic media making the space for online news practically infinite every day is a sufficiently slow news day for this stuff to be included, even if it's so ridiculous and embarrassing that nobody wants to put their byline on it.

I hope that 2012 will be the year this guff goes out of fashion in the MSM, but I'm not holding my breath. In fact I'm afraid that if that happens at all it'll only be because the 2012 Mayan apocalypse non-prediction and associated cockwaftery will be taking centre stage instead.

And there's no point saying "God help us" because if he's there at all he's probably too busy laughing.


* For those with the patience of Job or who find the whole thing funny (the only way I cope with this kind of lunacy) The Tele has a whole gallery of this stuff.
** Linking that really went against the grain.

A little light failure from The Teletubbygraph

Click for linky

Please, someone give the photo drones at The Telegraph an atlas for Christmas, or at least help them download Google Earth and show them how to work it. At the rate it's going downhill and screwing up junior school level stuff I'm going to have to stop taking the piss out of The Daily Mail.

Fellas, there's no such place as Forrest Act, but there is a suburb called Forrest in the ACT. This isn't 'Act' being shouted. It stands for Australian Capital Territory. Saying Forrest Act is like saying Port Augusta Sa or Newcastle Nsw or even, to use something the photo drones may have heard of, Washington Dc. Let me put it another way:

Got it, photo drones?

And yes, David and Janean Richards are in the Forrest that's in the ACT because a few seconds on Google found them mentioned in The Canberra Times, so I reckon we can be pretty sure it's not some weird town called Forrest Act since Forrest ACT is within spitting distance of Parliament House. See?

Er... do you think the photo drones know that Sydney isn't the capital?

Advanced calculus for journalists - UPDATED

Lesson #1:

4 ≠ 3

Police said a 32-year-old Derrimut man was taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital with fractures, while a 27-year-old Taylors Hill woman and a Richmond man and woman - both believed by paramedics to be aged 19 - were transported to the Sunshine Hospital with minor injuries.
An Ambulance Victoria spokesman said another man who was injured refused to be treated.

It doesn't equal 5 either.


UPDATE - Lesson #2, from Professor Bucko of the Department of Inadvisable Cervid Power Modifications:

First up we have the story of an unexpectedly low turnout of Christmas shoppers this weekend.

Immediately following that we have the story of an unexpectedly high turnout this weekend.

Less is less. More is more. Less is not more.

Hopefully these aren't too difficult for the subeditors to keep up with.

That's not a hack - this is a hack

As I mentioned back in July The Age, the Melbourne based sister paper of Sydney Morning Herald, was all over the News of the Screws phone hacking scandal like flies on a piece of shit.

The thing is that Gingery Dullard, unlike the Yanks, may have rather more cause to investigate the Aussie media. And interestingly it's not the Murdoch owned mob but their competitors, the Graun friendly, lefty-loving, phone-hack hating Fairfax group, who have been accused of being up to no good.

THE editor-in-chief of The Age, Paul Ramadge, has refused to detail his personal involvement in the newspaper's unauthorised access of an ALP database now being examined by the Australian Federal Police.

And how did this happen?

The Age accessed the database from its own computer terminals using an unauthorised password provided by an undisclosed source.
"This story came through entirely appropriate journalistic methods," Ramadge said. "Entry to the ALP database came via a whistleblower who raised concerns about private information held on it.
"This whistleblower had authorised access to this material and we reported in the public interest."
[...]
The Age used material obtained from the database to inform a story run in the final week of the Victorian election campaign about Labor keeping a "secret" file on citizens. Several people whose details were accessed were contacted by the newspaper before publication. Others, such as Mr Faris, were contacted after publication and assured their information would not be stored or misused.

Okay, so they may have had good reason but it sounds like it's fair to ask the question. And even if they have good reason if they commit a crime in the process does it somehow un-crime it? I'm not sure a good reason would let me off something as trivial as a speeding offence - actually I'm pretty sure it wouldn't - so I can't help thinking that if a crime has been committed with good intentions it's probably still a crime and that there'd be a case to answer.

And this week a police investigation looks more likely as the body overseeing elections in the state have got involved at the same time as a member of the public has placed the blame squarely on the newspaper that was so tumescent with joy when bashing the Murdoch rags in distant country for listening to people's voicemail.

A VICTIM of The Age's hacking of an ALP database has come forward claiming the newspaper breached her privacy, as The Weekend Australian reveals the Victorian Electoral Commission asked police to investigate the claims of illegal activity.
Claire Watson, 24, has expressed her concerns about how and why The Age accessed personal information about her, which she had agreed to share with a local MP but not with the newspaper. The public servant, who appeared in a story by Age journalist Royce Millar last year as part of the broadsheet's investigation into the ALP database, said her views had been "distorted" and "words had been put in my mouth".
"I feel my privacy has been breached by the journalist, not the ALP," she said. "I agreed to share information with the ALP, but not with The Age. He seemed dodgy and was pleased with himself. He was so indignant with the ALP, but it is clear he was hacking my file. He was trying to whip me into outrage about it."
[...]
"The journalist kept trying to put words in my mouth; he was saying it was outrageous, but I didn't think it was outrageous," she said. "The whole thing was weird. I tried telling him I wasn't outraged as I understood large organisations keep that sort of data. I think it is reasonable and good practice to keep the data."
She said she was more concerned Millar had then accessed the information.
"He knew a lot about me - my date of birth, where I lived, my phone number, opinions I had shared with a local MP . . . he was hacking into my file."

As with the voicemail thing 'hacking' seems to be an inappropriate term for what looks awfully like a simple, old fashioned leak, but for whatever reason people seem to want to believe that any electronically stored information that isn't given out voluntarily must have been hacked. I think this is a bit like insisting that when you can't find your car it can only have been stolen rather than thinking that you just forgot where you left it or you parked in a tow away zone, but the real point is that if this is all hacking how did The Age have the front to throw so many stones at the Murdoch media for the phone not-hacking when they too had been accessing information they had no bloody right to? Was the temptation to throw those stones and hopefully damage their competition at the Melbourne Herald Sun and The Australian so strong that they forgot they lived in a greenhouse?

An injunction by The Age against Victoria Police to stop the removal of computer equipment remains in place since Thursday's eight-hour raid. Two detectives from the e-crime squad remained at The Age overnight to ensure none of the computer equipment, which had been pulled apart, could be tampered with.
A spokesman for the Victorian Electoral Commission confirmed to The Weekend Australian that it had been the first to raise the issue with police.
Electoral Commissioner Steve Tully is believed to have been concerned about the manner in which the database was allegedly penetrated by The Age.
[...]
The Weekend Australian believes that police have been given access to ALP records and computer equipment but that there are mixed views in the party about how to handle the hacking issue. This is because of the potential blow-back on the Labor Party if The Age were to campaign against the party. "It's not something we wanted. There are some senior people who just want it to go away," a source said.
However, the fact the VEC approached police means investigators will have to push ahead with their inquiries. Either way, it appears police were honour-bound to proceed given the potential offences at stake and the role the VEC plays as an independent and impartial statutory authority.

And as I said back in July, since The Age isn't part of the Murdoch press and is fairly strongly left leaning politically this is not something British readers can expect to see in The Grauniad. You kind of get the impression that bashing lefties for their misdeeds and alleged misdeeds is against some kind of lefty journo code, but it's only fair to give The Age a little credit for running the story themselves.

Click for link - incidentally, I don't know if Paul and Royce Millar are related

Now, remind me. In all those column inches in The Graun slagging off companies for perfectly legal tax avoidance and minimisation was it ever mentioned that Guardian Media did the same thing or did we have to find out from Guido?

Tell me this isn't a coincidence

First, there's this:

A chief examiner at one of Britain’s biggest exam boards was recorded boasting about the lack of substance in the company’s tests – and their disbelief that it has been cleared by the official regulator.
Steph Warren, in charge of Edexcel GCSE Geography, said that teachers should pick her company’s exam because “you don’t have to teach a lot”.

And then there's this:

Now I do realise that these are from different countries but the UK and US have quite a lot in common, including the modern sleb culture and persistent worries about dumbing down of edumacation - 'dumbing down' is an American phrase, after all. If you want a more UK-centric example of sleb-fascination as an alternative to news you don't have to look far. Looking at The Daily Mail's site now their sidebar consists of the following (and I really don't blame if you don't read every line of this):

• Something about Sinead O'Connor getting married again
• A story about the average weight of British women
• Something about Anna Nicole-Smith, who is apparently still dead
• Something about Angelina Jolie
• Something about Jennifer Lopez
• Something about X-Factor judges who are apparently called Gary, Kelly and Tulisa (who, who, who and who gives a fuck?)
• Something about someone called Selena Gomez and Justin fucking Bieber
• A story about a single father raising twins
• Something by Jan Moir about someone called Caroline Flack
• Something about someone called Kimberley Walsh
• Something about someone called Irina Shayk
• Something about Charlize Theron's clothes
• Something about someone called Chelsee Healey
• Something about someone called Kate Upton
• Something about Prince William's wife's clothes
• Something about Declan Donnelly's car
• Something about Katie Price
• Something about someone called Lea Michele
• Something about someone called Kris Jenner being upset about something Daniel Craig said
• Something about someone called Alicia Douvall
• Something about something called a Kardashian (who are apparently not Star Trek aliens but real people... for a given value of real)
• Something about someone called Amanda Seyfried
• Something by Jizz Loans
• Something about someone called Harry Judd
• Something about Paris Hilton
• Something about Beyoncé whatsername
• Something about Twiggy
• Something about Salma Hayek's tits
• Something else about that Caroline Flack person again, but not by Jan Moir
• Something about a coat owned by Emma Watson, Natalie Portman and someone called Kristen Stewart
• Something about someone called Anna Massey in something about a loony in Broadmoor
• Something about someone called Amy Childs
• Something about Ray Winstone being in something
• Something about David Jason being in something
• Something else about Angelina Jolie
• Something about someone called Jacqui Ainsley
• Something about Louise Redknapp's shampoo
• Something about Sacha Baron Cohen
• Something about someone called Kara Tointon
• Something about Venus Williams
• Something about someone called Kelly Rowland and someone called Amelia
• Something about something called JWoww (who seems to be a person but sounds like a cleaning product)
• Something about someone called Jennifer Hudson
• Something about someone called Kitty Brucknell
• Something about a transexual trying to turn him/herself into Barbie (just more plastic, I assume)
• Something about someone called Jennifer Garner
• Something about one of Michael Jackon's kids being in a film or something
• Something about someone called Christine Bleakley
• Something about that Grilled Bear bloke meeting Mrs Queen
• Something about someone called Andrew Garfield
• Something about someone called Pat Sharp and her daughter, and someone called Mark Wright
• Something about Andie MacDowell's daughter
• Something about someone called Rachel Crow
• Something about another one of the Kardashians
• Something about someone called Kris Humphries
• Something about someone called Dianna Agron and someone called Sebastian Stan (almost current affairs in that he sounds like he might be a country)
• Something about Shakira
• Something about someone called Coco Rocha
• Something about Jessica Alba's sprog meeting Santa
• Something that might be about sexual abuse in Mormon communities, but might be more about some Mormon piano group
• Something about someone who's someone's widow being angry with Alec Baldwin for whatever he did on that plane
• Something about Michael Jackson's doctor getting a prison visit
• Something about that Katherine Heigl who used to be in Grey's Annoying Me
• Something about that Tiff Needell who used to be in the old Top Gear
• Something about someone called Toni Collette
• Something about Kirstie Alley's current size
• Something about Demi Moore's daughter's arse
• Something about something called Chord Overstreet (who seems to be a person but sounds like gameplay from Guitar Hero) and someone called Emma Roberts
• Something about someone called Demi Lovato (who seems to be a person but sounds like musical notation)
• Something about someone called Jennifer Hudson
• Something about that Amy Childs again
• Something about someone called Selma Blair
• Something about Jessica Alba
• Something about Lady Gaga
• Something about Gwyneth Paltrow
• Something about Cheryl Cole
• Something about Christina Ricci
• Something else about Katie bloody Price
• Something about handbags
• Something about shops
• Something about shopping
• Something about Tom Cruise
• Something else about this Demi Lovato
• Something else about this Emma Roberts person having a tattoo like the one in that book about the girl with a tattoo
• Something about bridesmaids wearing tuxedos
• Something else about Tom Cruise
• Something about someone called Kendra Wilkison
• Something about someone called Kevin Federline
• A story about a fake doctor doing bad cosmetic surgery in the US
• Something about new Top Shop branches coming to your local high street, providing you live in Australia
• Something about someone called Abigail Breslin
• Something about someone called Danny O'Donaghue and Tom Jones
• Something about Jersey Shore
• Something about Brad Pitt's hair
• Something about someone called Ali Larter's son
• Something about cocaine and Charlie Sheen and someone called Brooke Mueller
• A story about how Christmas drives everyone fucking nuts
• Something about that horsey woman from Sex and the City
• Something else about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
• Something about a body scanner, but at clothes shops to help you buy stuff rather than airports to help delay you while you're treated as a suspected terrorist
• Something about some people called Arg, Mark and Dougie
• Something about Lindsay Lohan
• Something about Nigella Lawson
• Something else about Emma Watson, but apparently not her coat this time
• Something about someone called Adele
• Something about money and divorces
• Something that might be about sexual abuse in Mormon communities, but might be more about some Mormon piano group, and appears to be exactly the same something as the something about sexual abuse/Mormon pianists from earlier
• Something about someone called Jeff Probst and someone called Lisa Ann Russell
• Something about someone called Patrica Klanic whose husband is a soccer player and has been accused of rape
• Something about Blur
• Something else about Andie MacDowell
• Something about Cameron Diaz
• Something about David Cameron's hair (for fuck's fucking sake I'm fucking losing the fucking will to fucking live here)
• Yet another fucking thing about this Caroline Flack and someone called harry Styles
• Something about Prince Harry and his brother's wife's sister, except not really because they're only lookalikes (that's it - when I'm finished with this I'm going to book a holiday where I'm legally allowed to shoot things)
• Something about Katy Perry
• Something about that woman who looked all upset when Jeremy Clarkson said he wanted to shoot strikers and how she used to have a damp spot for Jason Donovan
• Something about a model who's going bald
• Jesus H. Christ in a fucking mothership, something else about Tom fucking Cruise
• Something else about a Kardashian, possibly one of the ones from earlier but I'm so far past fucking caring at this point I just asked Mrs Exile to hold a mirror up under my nose
• Something about Prince Charles not understanding Peter Kay's jokes or something
• Something about Madonna likeing Prince William's wife's clothes
• Something about someone called Gamu
• Something about someone called Zac Effron kissing Michelle Pfeiffer
• Something about Dawn French's clothes

For those that skipped much of that list it's 125 articles, 95% of which involve slebs, and close to 0% of which involve actual news. Okay, sure, they do put a lot of shite in the sidebar and more newsy news in the main bit, but even there Sinead O'Connor puts in an appearance along with one or two things about house prices (wouldn't be the Mail without them, would it?) while the story about exams being made easier appears nearly halfway down the home page.

Coincidence? I find that hard to believe. Whether it's just an effect of successive governments prioritising the appearance of educational success over actually educating or whether it's a deliberate attempt to create Orwell's proles, the undereducated 85% who were conditioned to have little or no interest in the world but were easy to manipulate. As always I tend to go with Hanlon's Razor and assume stupidity and cupidity over conspiracies, but sometimes I do wonder.

Midair shock death-risk sex horror Qantas outrage

Although I've not mentioned it for some time both my regular readers (hi Mum) will probably be aware that I think the Australian press have a bit of a thing for slating Qantas and that they do sometimes over egg that particular pudding. And here's another prime example of a classic media beat up involving Qantas, all from the online pages of the Murdoch owned papers, and all with near carbon copies of the same article.

A QANTAS pilot is under investigation over a mile-high scandal with a female passenger during a long-haul flight to Australia.
Passengers in the first class section of QF32 from London were stunned at the pilot's amorous antics with the woman.
He was seen sitting on her lap during the flight in the luxurious premium section of the Qantas A380 jet before things became quite steamy, sources told the Herald Sun.

EXCLUSIVE: A Qantas pilot is under investigation over a mile-high scandal with a female passenger during a long-haul flight to Australia.
Passengers in the first class section of QF32 from London were stunned at the pilot's amorous antics with the woman.
He was seen sitting on her lap during the flight in the luxurious premium section of the Qantas A380 jet before things became quite steamy, sources told the Herald Sun.

A QANTAS pilot is under investigation over a mile-high scandal with a female passenger on a flight to Sydney.
First class passengers on QF32 from London to Sydney were stunned at the pilot's antics with a woman in seat 2A. He was seen sitting on the woman's lap during the flight in the luxurious premium section of the A380 jet before things became more heated.

Shock! Outrage! Disgust! How dare this individual leave the controls of the aircraft for a bit of a sweaty fumble. Not only is it a disgraceful dereliction of duty but also an issue of demarcation - everyone knows that with Qantas it's the stewardesses responsibility to have sex with the passengers.* Not an unreasonable reaction to those headlines, but on further reading it turns out that nothing like that actually happened.

The pilot was off-duty and not in uniform at the time of the incident.

So what's the big deal and why the lurid headlines? Basically what we have here is a pair of passengers, one of whom happens to be an employee of the airline and whose job is to fly planes, got frisky in First Class and had to be told to pack it in a few times before the cabin crew ended up separating them. Probably happens all the time, and the only thing that makes this any different from any other incident where a couple of passengers have to have the mid air equivalent of a bucket of cold water thrown over them is that the guy's a pilot for the same airline and should reasonably be expected to know that that behaviour isn't tolerated on their planes. As a result of that he's under investigation, but it sounds more like an internal Qantas investigation than anything official - The Telegraph headline may say 'court hears' but neither their article nor either of the others mention any court at all, just what sounds like a Qantas in-house disciplinary. And of course if the guy hadn't worked for Qantas there wouldn't even be that. Hell, if he'd been ground crew he'd have had the same investigation but the papers wouldn't have bothered to report it because there's no much value in headlines like this:

Qantas check in guy gets steamy midair

Qantas baggage handler's wild blue wander as court hears of mile-high scandal

If you'll pardon the pun, they don't exactly fly, do they? But because it's a pilot we can go crazy with the headlines and make it look like it was one of the blokes flying the plane who decided to leave the flight deck and try entering the cockpit instead, at least until people get down to paragraph four when it's finally mentioned that the guy wasn't actually working at the time and had no more to do with flying the plane than the fat guy trying to sleep back in 56G or the bawling child kicking the back of his seat. It seems it's not always about what's newsworthy but about making something newsworthy out of something irrelevant, especially when it comes to the Aussie media and their national carrier. Just you wait and see how they'll cover a real emergency, like one of the toilets running out of soft paper and having to use that horrible cheap shiny stuff instead.

* Kidding, of course. It's been a while since I last flew but when I've used Qantas I've found the cabin crew to be polite, helpful, professional and incidentally pretty easy on the eye, but none of them have ever offered me sex instead of tea or coffee. Maybe you just have to be Lord Voldemort. This is in contrast to the booking departments of several airlines which have certainly fucked me in various ways, generally involving the words 'extra charge'.

Hello, I must be going

Click for linky

Both my readers (hi, Mum) along with pretty much the entire English speaking world, and certainly those parts of it that have seen either Crocodile Dundee or any of a large number of Australian beer ads, will be aware that "G'day" is a common greeting between Australians.* That's a greeting, Telegraph. A greeting, got it? "Good day" might have been used both as a greeting and a farewell, but not "G'day". Or if it is it's very rare. Certainly I've only ever heard Aussies - and we'll leave aside the fact that Mrs Windsor isn't one anyway despite being queen of the place - say "G'day" when they arrive, not on their way out of the door. It's Australia's "Hi" or "Wotcher"not some Down Under equivalent of "Aloha" that can be used interchangeably.

So I can think this headline is down to one of three things: it was done by someone who's about 80 and can remember when British people said "Good day" and thought it was used the same way; it was done by someone middle aged as a very subtle tribute to early 80s Phil Collins music; or it was simply reaching for a stereotypical Australian stock expression because fuck it, the tabloids would have and they outsell The Tele, and who cares if the result makes as much sense as saying "Chuck another prawn on the barbie, we're off now."

And what the hell's a picture of Barry O'Barma with Mrs Queen in London doing in a story about her leaving Oz? Jeez, couldn't you guys find a picture of her in Perth?


* Generally it should not be attempted by naturalised Australians, resident migrants or visitors - it sounds right in an Aussie accent but makes anyone else sound like a tit.

The white whale, the whiiiite whaaaa... sorry, whiiiite wombat

Okay, everybody. It's Rolf harris impersonation time. Just look at Polar, here, isn't he a brave little fella?

And now place your bets on which newspaper's online edition will be the first to fuck up and use a picture of Polar the white wombat for a story about piglets, doubtless referencing Babe, and how long it'll take.

Call me Fishmeal, eh?

Don't ask a journo to check your pulse

A terminally ill taxi driver? Really?

The late Mr Bills has become the first man to be mummified in the style of the ancient Egyptians for at least 3,000 years.

"The late Mr Bills" would tend to suggest that he's not so much terminally ill as actually dead. Or did The Mainly Fail get a second opinion?

Oh nos, anothr newspapr typo

Click for linky

I'm sure whoevr does the headlins at The Austrian received sufficint educaton to know that 'smash' has a secnd 's' but everyoe makes mistaks now and thn, and maybe spellcheckrs don't work on headlins which would explan why it's often wrng in the headlin and right in the article. But doesn't anyone ever come back and check? This one's been talking about a 'smah' for two days now. It's just a little thing, I know, and I'm probably being a pedantic grammar/spelling nazi as well as a hypocrite because there certainly are mistakes around here. The difference is though I have a staff of one, and I'd like to think that if I had a fraction of the resources of a big newspaper there'd never be a mistake on the blog at all. Now and again I'll give a longer blog to Mrs Exile to read right before I hit publish and sometimes she'll spot a typo I hadn't seen, but like most bloggers I'm my own proof reader and inevitably it's hard for the person who writes something to do a good job at checking it for errors. You tend to read what you know you meant to say rather than the words formed from the keys your fat, useless, sausage fingers actually hit. So is the reason for typos in some publications simply that they don't have someone proofreading and the writer is expected to do it? I've no idea what the procedure is in real newspapers but surely at least two people, the writer and an editor, see an article before it gets published? You'd think that at least one would be able to spot it when a five letter word is missing a letter.

The bleeding obvious

Another example of the journalistic art of stating the perfectly obvious, this time courtesy of The Australian reporting on the sad death of a 15 year old girl at a railway crossing, the latest in a series of railway deaths recently (my bold).

The girls's death comes a week after a three-year-old boy was struck by a train in regional Victoria and died in hospital the next day.

Last month, a 70-year-old woman was killed by a train at a level crossing at McKinnon railway station.

Police believe she was standing on the wrong side of the pedestrian safety barrier when struck by a city-bound train.

Oh, you think? Hard to see how the train could have been travelling on the wrong side of the barrier without the article being about a deadly derailment. Oh well, I suppose it makes a change from wildly inaccurate or inappropriate picture captions.

Could have been put better - UPDATED

'Live blog'? Really? You don't think that perhaps that's an unfortunate phrase to use?

And has this obsession at The Teletubbygraph with live blogging got a little out of hand? Of all the things you could live blog is the death of a well known businessman, or even the death of anyone at all, the right sort of event? It lends itself to ongoing stories, so floods, earthquakes, political party conferences and other disasters are all suitable for live blogging. But this? How's that work?

1.55 Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has died.

2.20 Steve Jobs still dead.

2.40 He's still dead.

3.05 Still dead.

3.20 The Daily Telegraph has spoken to medical experts who have confirmed that not being alive is a very common symptom of being dead.

3.30 Steve Jobs persistently not alive at this point.

3.45 Still not alive.

For Pete's sake, Tele, you've probably got obits for every other famous name all teed up somewhere ready to go the moment they drop off the twig, and sometimes before. Why not just dust it off, update it and click publish? The only reason I can think of for live blogging this is that Steve Jobs' death has been falsely reported a few times by reputable sources as well as hoaxers (that one was only last month), so there's an outside chance of an update to the effect of 'It's just another bloody hoax' around half five or something. Since even Apple's home page is showing a tribute photo and 'Steve Jobs 1955-2011' - which The Tele must know as they've used it too and they said where they got it - this seems a lot less likely than parts of the MSM still trying to work out this new media thingummy.

As for Steve Jobs himself, whatever I've had to say about his company (and there's more on the back burner) and some of its products, his death is still sad. I'm not joining this trend for mourning people you've never met, but the guy had a family and 56 is no age at all these days.

UPDATE - Oh, Christ.

Click for linky

Still busy, but... - UPDATED

... not so busy that I can't find a few minutes to join in taking the piss out of The Mail for this:

It's almost like they're making up the news as they go along or, as Newsthump suggested, from time to time they occupy a parallel universe (a Dacreverse?) in which things happen a bit differently.

The Daily Mail is insisting that it published family reactions and prosecutor quotes to an Amanda Knox verdict that was never delivered due to a brief trip to an alternate universe.
[...]
Daily Mail reporter Nick Pisa told us, “It definitely happened, I saw it with my own eyes. There’s was a flash of light and then Amanda Knox was crying, before being taken back to prison – and all the prosecutors were celebrating.”
“I took copious notes and then there was another flash of light.”
“I filed my copy quickly like any good reporter, only to find out that in this universe she was found not guilty. I’m as shocked as anyone.”
Media analysts have suggested that this latest incident points to to the fact that the universe is clearly ganging up on the Daily Mail...

Hopeless knobs, they really are.

UPDATE - see the whole thing in all its glorious failicity over at Max Farquar's. The cunning bugger screencapped the whole thing before The Fail could take it down. Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!

More light blogging

But in the meantime I thought I'd add to the list of shotgun library photos on stories about airguns and photos of wolverines on stories about bears and other bum captions with an Aussie example. And you don't need to be much of a petrolhead to see where The Age's Drive section have gone wrong here.

The car in front might still be a Toyota but they use a different slogan for Aussie adverts - d'oh, what a feeling!

Subbies on the piss?

If someone at The Teletubbygraph was testing it while writing that sentence I'd say it's not working.

Satellite apocalypse

No, I don't mean Big Brother Australia will be shown on Sky. I mean this:

We're doomed. Doomed, I tell you, dooooo...

... oh, just the size of a bus and weighing about six tonnes? And that's giant now, is it? I mean, I kind of assumed that giant meant, you know, giant. Biggest thing to have hit the planet since Tunguska, sort of thing. At the very least all the flapping would make you think that it's the biggest man made thing ever to have hit the plant. It's 'giant', after all. Except that if you use that word to describe something that weighs about the same as a luton van with some large furniture in the back, what word do you use to describe the 77 tonne Skylab that de-orbited and fell onto Western Australia in 1979? And since the article specifically mentions that Skylab was the 'biggest piece of space debris to fall from orbit' I wonder why The Teletubbygraph felt the need to spice up the headline with the giant thing. 32 years ago the rather more worrying news that 77 tonnes of space junk hit a populated country, albeit a pretty sparsely populated one and in a mostly empty area, was reported like this:

And the NYT headline now? A very un-scary 'Satellite to land, somewhere'.

Why is it the British press doing the beat ups? Why has the once respected Teletubbygraph joined in? Harden the fuck up, for heaven's sake.

Quote of the Day

Via the Pistonheads forum, Sky's Kay Burley turning a tragedy into an embarrassment:

KB: What's this colliery used for?

Interviewee: It's a coal mine.

Subtext: Coal, woman, fucking coal. Do you not know what the word colliery means? Are you asking for the benefit of an audience with a room temperature IQ? Get a dictionary, for Christ's sake. Sheesh!

Who cares?

So Sarah Palin, someone I'd probably agree with on several issues while at the same time suspecting she may be a little mad, has supposedly had some Bolivian marching powder while on a snowmobiling trip, smoked marijuana at college and had a one night stand with a professional basketball player. And to that I'd say simply, so what if she has? Seriously, so what? Who died as a result? Nobody. I don't see the attraction but coke has gone up enough noses, particularly noses of fairly wealthy people and certainly some politicians, without doing any appreciable damage to much beyond their own septums that I really can't see what difference one more or less makes. As for weed, many students past and present have smoked it, and again some will end up being politicians. Do you really believe Bill Clinton didn't inhale? Really? Or Obama? In fact we can be pretty certain he did because when asked he said he thought inhaling was the point. Ah, but the basketball player. Scandal, sharp intakes of breath, miscegenation, ruined marriage... oh, give over. If it happened it was before she married and in this day and age should be a non-issue, not to mention it's bugger all to do with anyone other than the people concerned. Come on, if she's supposed to be as mad as a crate of badgers there ought to be something better than that to put everyone off the idea of her being president. Except there's not really a lot of point since she's not running for president, so the question stands: who cares?

In other news, son of former Labour leader so useless he couldn't even defeat John bloody Major is accused of being gay by wife's enemies who are trying to prevent her becoming PM of Denmark.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

This isn't news, it's fucking soap.

Helping reduce Islamaphobia..... not

I'd never, ever suggest that they should be banned from doing this or that free speech should be 'lightly restrained' in order to make that possible (though Christ knows speech in the UK is not free anyway), but what the hell do these guys think they're going to achieve by doing this, especially yesterday of all days?

A number of radical Islamic groups including Muslims Against Crusades (MAC) gathered outside the US embassy on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
The group of around 100 men shouted "USA terrorists", brandished anti-American placards and chanted through a loud hailer.
Several members of the Muslim groups made anti-American speeches following the flag burning.

Hell's bells, it's Pavlovian, isn't it? Any chance to really offend the west in general and the Yanks in particular and some headjobs will take it. In fact it's more than Pavlovian, it's as predictable as gravity. Look, fellas, when you've stopped lighting American flags for five minutes (is it me or does it seem like most American flags are bought by people who hate America?) I want to run an idea past you. Ask yourselves this: was Britain consumed with Hinduphobia when Mohandas Ghandi, that famously non-violent yet persistently passive-aggressive pain in their arses, was trying his best to get the British out of India? No? Then maybe, just maybe, you could be playing your hand better.

Such as, for instance, the group of reasonable, moderate Muslims - I'm guessing British Muslims for Secular Democracy, who I've mentioned a couple of times before, or someone quite like them - did by going along to counter protest. And if it was BMSD I think The Teletubbygraph did you no favours by leaving your name out.*

A moderate group of Muslims opposing the extremist protests were also in attendance, as were roughly 60 members of the English Defence League.

Hang on a mo, if the EDL are raaaaacists and they were counter-protesting the same event as the moderate Muslims, does that mean in lefty-MSM-lala-land that moderate Muslims are raaaaacists? Clearly not, but that seems likely to cause a little head popping.

Anyway, back to the point. Winning friends and influencing people is the game, and here are two alternate strategies for doing so on the tenth anniversary of the world's most destructive terrorist atrocity: first, jump up and down and rant and set fire to the flag of the nation which was on the receiving end of that terrorist attack; second, release a PR signed by more than fifty Muslim organisations and mosques saying something like this (quoted en bloc).

As the tenth anniversary of the atrocities of September 11th 2001 draws closer, we wish to take this opportunity to come together to reiterate our profound sympathy for the victims of the attacks in the US. We also honour the memory of all victims of terrorism in all nations around the world.

The last ten years have not been easy. Tragically, we have seen thousands more people from all walks of life become victims of terrorism. We have also seen the impact of the conflicts resulting from 9/11 in different parts of the Muslim world and experienced the terrible consequences of acts of terror here in Britain on 7th July 2005. The recent tragic events in Oslo show us that terrorists still continue to plan and carry out attacks against people regardless of their race, religion, gender or social circumstance.

As a community we have rejected the terrorists, the emptiness of their words and the futility of their actions. They have nothing to offer the world. Those who seek to divide society have failed. Indeed, their destructive actions have only brought communities closer together. Their message that terrorism is the only way to achieve change has been rejected by ordinary citizens standing in peaceful protest for greater political participation and freedom across the Middle East and North Africa.

Ten years on from the 9/11 attacks, our communities are growing stronger and more resilient. Communities have come together to find common ground and resolve differences. For those of us who are Muslims, our faith gives us hope– a hope shared by people of all faiths and of none - for a world free from terror and injustice.

Now is the time to look to the future with greater optimism. Our common humanity, our spirit of community, the values we share as human beings, will give us the strength to confront those who seek to divide rather than unite us, now and in the future. We will continue to stand together in troubled times, not just against terrorism but against all forms of criminality that pervade our society - as we saw during the riots that spread across the UK in recent weeks. Only together can we defeat such problems. Only together can we work to build communities whose unity honours the memory of the victims of September 11th and victims of conflicts and terror around the world.

I dunno, maybe that's not as newsworthy as the broken record rantings of a few dozen headjobs with a loudhailer and a monthly account at their local guaranteed flammable flag shop. But I do know who I'd rather sit next to on the bus.


* The last time I mentioned British Muslims for Secular Democracy it was to ask where the hell they'd been for two years, and an anonymous commenter, who I'm pretty sure was from BMSD, politely assured me that they had indeed been active over that time. It occurred to me while replying that reasonable people doing reasonable things is probably less interesting to the lame-stream media and less likely to get coverage than people who are being absolute bastards (unless there's a way to spin reasonable people as absolute bastards, of course - I'm sure they'd go for that in a heartbeat), so BMSD are always going to struggle for column inches compared to the loudhailer flag burning boys. If the media can't be arsed then I guess it falls to sympathetic bloggers, so I'm resolving to try and keep half an eye out for what the BMSD are up to. Giving them a positive mention in my little corner of the blogosphere now and doesn't make up for an indifferent press more interested in the flag burning shouty mob but it's better than nothing. They deserve a fair go.

Response to James

In the comments on the last post about the Beeb's getting Indians and Libyans mixed up James Higham wrote:

Bit like the Beeb's reportage of WTC7 coming down before it did. ;-)

Nope, not a bit like that. Exactly like it. The difference is that I don't assign any more significance to either event than plain fuckuperation on the part of a news service desperate to keep up with or ahead of its rivals and the mug in front of the camera not having the knowledge needed to recognise that what was on the autocue wasn't correct, and as a result reporting something wrong. This happens enough that inevitably wrong reporting will sometimes become right later. The person who put the Indian flag waving "Live from Tripoli" vid on YouTube also believes there's something sinister in it if the "Media Lies" title is any guide, but why would they tell such a stupid and transparent lie? It's just a mistake, nothing more sinister than that. And if it's possible for two experienced journos with uni educations - one of whom supposedly studied Middle East politics for a year - to not recognise that the people on the screen looked a bit sub-continental rather than North African Arabic and are waving the wrong flag then it's entirely possible for another one to say a building's come down without realising that live feed shows it still standing. Would they necessarily know which is Building 7? Probably not, so if someone sticks a piece of paper under their nose saying that Building 7 has fallen down and get it out quick before ITV and Sky they'd see no reason not to go on the air and announce it. That in such a rapidly changing situation and the urgency to cover it in full Chinese Whispers can easily change "this might happen" to "it's likely to happen" to "it's going to happen" to "it'll probably have happened by the time the next news report goes out" to "it has actually happened", even though it hasn't yet, will rarely occur to anyone in time and wouldn't stop them if it did. Report it before the opposition do, retract and correct later if we need to - that's what they'll be thinking.

Of course, this is supposition on my part and journos responsible for reporting daily news might really be as zealous at fact checking as the best investigative types and all the crap that's flung at them from various bits of the blogosphere and elsewhere for slack and lazy journalism is completely undeserved. And maybe Harry Truman stole the 1948 US presidential election.

Because this headline wouldn't have been someone trying to scoop everyone else and just getting it wrong, would it?

Nope, sorry, James, but Hanlon's Razor still wins out for me.