Reflections

According to the subtitles which move under the picture in BBC News 24, the heiress Paris Hilton was sent to prison because of  “alcohol-related wreckless driving”.

Presumably this means that from now on if you drink and drive it will be necessary for you to crash, so as to avoid a prison sentence.

It also means that the BBC, in employing people who are close to illiterate to write its subtitles, is demonstrating only too clearly the value it places upon the language we all speak.

I had to close down my guestbook because it received such a large amount of spam that it became unmanageable. Unfortunately I am going to have to disable comments on here for the same reason.

There comes a point at which you can only allow commercial interests to steal so much of your bandwidth and your time, and that point has been reached.

If I find a version of the software which allows comments to be password-protected, I will use it and open comments again. In the meantime, if you wish to you can comment via email, and I will incorporate it here.

I see that one of the passengers on the doomed coach which crashed recently claimed that it had been travelling at 80mph on the slip road between the M4 and the M25.

A tachograph reading confirmed that the speed of the coach before the crash was in fact 62mph.

We are notoriously bad at reporting on things that happen. The game ‘Chinese Whispers’ demonstrates that only too clearly. Now it can be regarded as a simple human frailty. But why, if we are not certain about something, do we insist on making definitive statements?

Had there been something wrong with the tachograph, that passenger’s comments could have been enough to convinct the driver.

And why, when we are reporting incorrectly on things, do we insist on exaggerating?

It seems that some rumours are spread by compulsive liars, because they could not spontaneously appear any other way. I was on a train a few years ago which nearly derailed at high speed after hitting a cow. Not fifteen minutes after the incident, two stories were current: one, that we had hit a cow, two, that a pedestrian had jumped from a footbridge and under the train.

Let us admit our frailties. We cannot describe accurately something that happened to us five minutes ago. Ok, fair enough. Let us then admit that we are not sure, rather than making up some dramatic tale that suits our own sense of self-importance.

I have fortunately not been exposed much to television advertising lately, but that has changed with my acquisition of a new TV card.

I have noticed a new tendency with the way that advertisers refer to amounts of money. It varies according to whether it is a price or a claimed saving. If it’s a claimed saving, they will use the word “hundred”. So you will save, for example, four hundred and fifty-six pounds. However, if the item costs that amount, it will be “Only four, five, six”.

Are we really so stupid that when we hear small numbers we think of the quantity as being small also?  Sadly, because advertising is based on results, the answer must be “yes”.

Prestige toaster …

 

I have noticed that many drivers insist on driving at 40 mph. Why is this, I wonder. Many’s the time I have followed a driver on a single lane, 60mph road, and the needle on the speedometer never goes above or drops below 40. Why 40? Why not 36 or 45? At least that would provide a little variety.But the thing that really annoys me about these drivers is when, having held you up for the last 5 miles, they enter a 30mph zone, and continue driving at 40!

In fact 40mph seems to be their speed, and they won’t change it for road conditions, weather conditions, speed limits, fire, flood, acts of God or the end of the universe. Whether they are driving on a country lane, an urban freeway, a motorway or a garage forecourt, they will stick to 40 mph, come what may.

May their valves become gummy.

I seem to use these blogs for nothing but moaning about things, but it must be said, it seems an ideal format for complaining. So let me proceed without delay.Why is it that people insist on pressing buttons, when the button quite clearly indicates that it has already been pressed? You see it at pedestrian traffic lights, where the word WAIT will be displayed in 300-point type, and illuminated into the bargain, but still they have to press the button again, just to make sure.You see it also in lifts, where, for example, the 3^rd floor button will be illuminated and proclaiming to the world: “IT’S OK – YOU DON’T HAVE TO PRESS ME – I HAVE ALREADY BEEN PRESSED”. And still, still, they have to press it.

Why?

I wish people were more sceptical about the things that matter.

 

 

A couple of days ago I received an unexpected message from someone in my Yahoo Messenger address book.  They told me I should go to a URL and look at a Geocities site.  I was there as the message was posted, and saw the person log in, the message appear and the person log out immediately.

Foolishly (it was early in the morning, and I have man-flu) I went to the site, and discovered what seemed to be a genuine Yahoo page telling me the site was down.

That should have been an end of it.  But then I got a message this morning from someone else in Yahoo which was something like *scratches head*.  That gave me a clue that something was up.  I sent out a warning to everybody in my address book, and apart from giving me the opportunity of having six simultaneous conversations, this also demonstrated that the message had just gone out to these people under my name.

I have done a virus scan and a Spybot check, which have found nothing untoward, apart from a couple of files flagged as ‘suspicious’ in my email attachments.

What I find interesting is that I could only have been infected in one of two ways.  (a) Either the web site, which seemed to be a genuine Yahoo 404 page, unloaded some malevolent coding onto my computer, or (b) Just by reading the Yahoo message I was infected.

Both of those alternatives are rather disturbing.  Had the virus been a destructive one, I could now be looking at the wreck of my computer. 

One hopes that Yahoo get their collective fingers out, very quickly indeed, and sort this problem out.  Much as I would hate to lose Yahoo Messenger, it would be foolish to use it if it were not safe.  And that seems to be the case at the moment.

Oh yes, the site in question is: 

h ttp://w ww.geocities.com/one_n_only_becky69/

 Avoid it.  

Another Meldrewish posting about grammar, I’m afraid.  I have already spoken about the way the word ‘plus’ is incorrectly used these days, to mean ‘also’.  The following is a particularly good example, ironically from PlusNet:  “With our new Evenings & Weekends product you pay us for line rental, plus all your evening and weekend calls to regular UK landlines are included.” 

This is a particularly good example, because the word ‘plus’ is used in a way to  express the opposite of its actual meaning.  If the words ‘are included’ were in fact not included, the sentence would mean that you also pay for your evening and weekend calls, plus it would also be grammatically correct. 

Forgive me, I couldn’t resist.  

Yesterday was, I understand, the sixtieth anniversary of that radio channel that began as the Third Programme, and became Radio 3.

In my youth the Third Programme was a welcome oasis of culture, and in terms of music and discussion in itself made British broadcasting the best in the world. Indeed, it was one of three channels, the other two being The Light Programme and the Home Service. The Home Service was supposed to represent middle England, but even so, its contents were often very interesting. You heard classical music and intelligent discussion. Indeed, the first piece of Schoenberg I ever heard was in a concert broadcast on the Home Service.

Today I heard my first piece of pop music on Radio 3. Admittedly, it was Japanese pop music (so it didn’t really count), but it is just a continuation of the process of popularisation that has destroyed the heart of this institution. Nowadays when you switch on, you are just as likely to hear jazz, or a musical, and I have become used to rapidly switching over to Classic FM, which, despite its fondness for the popular classics (what it calls ‘relaxing classics’), at least only broadcasts classical music.

No wonder the anniversary celebration was a low-key event. The program-makers should hang their heads in shame at what they have done to this radio channel. They have, as part of today’s general process of dumbing down, eviscerated something that was unique and valuable. To hell with them.