out of frame, out of mind
27/09/2009
If there is one thing I can’t stand, is how the news is presented sometimes. All I want, is for people to report. What happened, in its entirety, accurately and succinctly. I’m not even asking for opinion. I prefer mine.
But no, objective news is, apparently a dying art. So is reporting facts in their entirety.
Here’s my favourite example, a seemingly innocuous one, too. The report went, Facebook users are growing older. Blah blah, everyone’s on Facebook now, and Twitter here and there.
I guess these are the two new buzzwords. Facebook and Twitter. If even celebrities are on it, it has to be dumbed down enough to be understandable.
Which makes a statement like Facebook users are growing older infuriating. It is one thing to report that. It is another to make it sound like it’s a serendipitous occurrence. It is not. It is a result of Facebook making sign-up finally available to ANY one, instead of US college/high school alumni.
If you start off with a bunch of students on your product, and then you let everyone else and their border collie into the network, naturally your demographic gets older, no? It isn’t hocus pocus. It isn’t a big fat successful marketing blitz. It was simply a natural progression. Just because it happened to Facebook doesn’t mean anything more.
There is always a bigger picture. You’d just figure people reporting the news would report the entire picture.
organic gardening
27/09/2009
It’s been a little on the warm this September, and thanks to the prolonged Summer-like weather the bugs in my front yard are going wild.
A bunch of somethings or another have been chewing holes into my viburnums and roses, and it’s been really annoying the heck out of KF.
So after a little research, and perhaps to fulfill the kid in him, we went out and got a tub of ladybugs. Ladybugs, aka Ladybirds, are little beetles, and they make quick snacks out of aphids and leaf-attacking buggies.
I suppose a part of me was willing to go along with the game, even though I am not convinced that the ladybugs effectiveness in our case, because ladybugs make great pictures. Ha!
They are indeed fairly cute and docile, they don’t really bite (although my dad is convinced he was bitten once). They’re pretty light too, so I don’t really feel them on my hands. They don’t have particularly hairy or sticky legs, so they slip off with a quick flick, unlike spiders or other bugs.
What I’ve mistaken for their eyes all my life, is actually the protonum. Their eyes are beadier little things in front of it. And their wings aren’t the happy red bits, they’re actually fairly boring looking wings under the red covering.
Next thing you know they’ll tell me they aren’t all ladies.
