Sep 17 2023 - Headlines in the News - Stupidity Crisis

 

Headline in the Bing News feed - "A neuroscientist explains why stupidity is an existential threat to America | Opinion by Bobby Azarian - a cognitive neuroscientist and author.   He explains that there is both "collective intelligence" and also "collective stupidity" and they have equal influence. His says that stupidity is a scientific concept that refers to a specific type of cognitive failure.  He theory is that it is a failure to use one's cognitive abilities effectively. You can be "smart" and still have a low IQ or no expertise in anything.  He goes on to explain the Dunning-Kruger effect. That's where individuals overestimate their level of intelligence, knowledge or competence in a particular area.  Ignorance of their ignorance. The worry in America is the politicians who are regularly being elected to office but clearly exhibit the Dunning-Kruger effect.  He goes on to worry about a stupidity crisis that is "threatening the nation." The news source that reported this opinion piece?  It is Raw Story.  There are a few articles by Raw Story in the Bing feed.  Who is this news organization? An American progressive news website founded in 2004 by John K. Byrne - they are bringing attention to stories they see as downplayed or ignored by other media outlets.  They are given mixed reviews - maybe because they are left-leaning.   They have won a number of awards for their stories and the big story they predicted/reported before the event - making it a predictive "breaking-news" story? “We’re gonna kill Congress”: Trump’s far-right supporters promise violence at today’s DC protests,” was published the morning of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, predicting exactly what would happen on that fateful day. Considering this, where should I look for stories and reports now that the internet retrieval is controlled by Google/Bing and similar organizations who are seeking revenue and not information? If we were looking for quality news organizations, who would we choose?  A survey was conducted by Gallup/Knight about Americans' perceptions of the least and most biased news outlets in the US.  The article is HERE.  It is a love and hate story that divides between Republicans and Democrats.  Who is the winner?  The Wall Street Journal - both Democrats and Republicans rated it favourably.  The rest are a story of love and hate.   I've been looking for this image and found it today.  It was taken in 2010 or so and from the Loblaw Warehouse on Queens Quay at Bathurst.

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Feb 13 2022 - Surplus Trucks Are Almost Being Given Away!

 

The CTV news coverage of the truck convoy protests has a header ad that shrieks irony.  What is the headline?   Surplus 2021 Trucks Are Almost Being Given Away  How perfect for the trucker convoy protest coverage.  While this irony is probably coincidental, there are many ironic headlines that can't be accidental.  Check out the ones in bored panda HERE.  These are their top two: Homicide victims rarely talk to police - The Express Times We hate math, say 4 in 10 - a majority of Americans Here's a list from the Morning Call located in Allentown, Pennsylvania.  This was from 2018. -- Worker suffers leg pain after crane drops 800-pound ball on his head. -- Homicide victims rarely talk to police. -- Barbershop singers bring joy to school for deaf. -- Miracle cure kills fifth patient. -- Bridges help people cross rivers. -- City unsure why the sewer smells. -- 17 remain dead in morgue shooting spree. -- Starvation can lead to health hazards. -- Man accused of killing lawyer receives new attorney. -- Parents keep kids home to protest school closure. -- Federal agents raid gun shop, find weapons. -- Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off considerably after age 25. -- Bugs flying around with wings are flying bugs. -- Man with 8 DUIs blames drinking problem. -- Marijuana issue sent to a joint committee. (This one comes from the Toronto Star in 1996) There's nothing like irony to bring a laugh.  What makes it so?  Quora says that irony is unexpected.  It is used when something ends in a way that is not what is expected, yet entirely related to what comes prior to it. Isn't that a perfect answer.  I thought this Ringling Circus picture might work with today's theme.

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April 20 2021 - Sports headlines

 

Somewhere in the history of sports writing came this question:  "Do you ever wonder why a grammatically correct sentence you’ve written just lies there like a dead fish?" And the answer to this worry was the hundreds of sports verbs.  To be fair, describing 'actions' in an interesting way takes some creativity.   There is a universal love and appreciation of sports.  It has been magnified in the 20th century with newspaper, radio and television.   I am biased and had thought it is about keeping the reader's/viewer's attention to the written words or the replay. Something that's already happened seems a bit like getting leftovers for dinner, so how to make leftovers appealing?. I thought I would find dozens of articles on the funniest sports writing - the most extreme verbs and sentences, etc.  This is because there are numerous articles on the sports verb. There are hundreds of words full of activity and action awaiting the writer and announcer. But actually finding them proved elusive.  A article says that the worst column written about sports ever published was by celebrated N.Y. Times writer, David Brooks on Jeremy Lin.  But it isn't bad writing.  A sports writer apologizes for "worst piece of sports journalism ever" - he used a framing device of a real person who had been  abducted and held captive for 18 years to review sports activities in the 18 year period that the person missed.  That might be tops on horrible mistakes. There's lots on the best in sports, the greatest sports moments - are the 200, 51 or 21?  Are you ready for the greatest sports headlines ever?  Most are unrepeatably bad taste and sexist - sex-oriented puns on player surnames.  Think "balls" and you can imagine the treasure trove.  So they might in fact be the "worst". My conclusion for the day:  Oh well, that was worth a try.  Here's the miniature world of alpine rock garden displays.     Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Jan 24 2021 - CBC on Boredom

 

Yesterday afternoon CBC Radio's topic was boredom.  She wants me to give boredom a chance. I didn't get to listen to the pod cast with Sandi Mann so looked up the summary. Mann's research has shown there's a direct relationship between boredom and creativity. "Boredom gets the creative juices flowing. And when we try to get rid of all our boredom, we're perhaps eliminating our creativity as well. "When we allow ourselves space to be bored, our minds begin to daydream and that's when the creativity and eureka moments occur." That's an ok article, but just below it is the strangely humorous headline.  "Woman with dementia accidentally given Pfizer vaccine after receiving Moderna dose." The article goes on to explain that's because she was transferred to a different long-term care home. It gave rise to worries that would bring this headline back to life: "Miracle cure kills fifth patient" Once you are looking at these headlines, you just have to continue scrolling through - they are so funny! Police arrest everyone on February 22nd Thursday is Cancelled Breathing oxygen linked to staying alive Bridge closure date:  Thursday or October Safety meeting ends in accident Alton attorney accidentally sues himself Hospitals resort to hiring doctors I went in search of trees yesterday and found 3 birch trees at Spring Valley on Seventh Avenue just in from the street.  What a find.  Why is that?  They make for fantastic motion blur images.  Here are three - such different light as the clouds passed over - lots of lake effect clouds.   Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

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Nov 17 2020 Headline Decisions

 

We think of headlines as something on the front pages of newspapers, but they also are names of hair design salons.  Hair salons seem to excel at naming themselves: By the Blade Crisp Edge Flo Cutters Hair 'n the Hood Hair Rap II Rap Unzel. Ready to Dye Snip Dogg These come from Ballatory.com where they list 220 clever names for hair salons.  Organized by categories such as:  Shakespeare inspired - "All the World's a Salon" Old English-Style:  "Off with their hair" Movie-themed: Barbarella, Director's Cut, Hair and Back Again Song titles or lyrics:  Comb Together, Hairbreak Hotel Religious-related:  Angel's touch, Anointed hands, Hair Mary Children's salons:  Hair Castle, Cut and Play Hair Puns:  Get the Hair Outta Here, Hair Play, Neither Here nor Hair There is advice for overused names: Cutting Crew Hair Dot Com Headlines Mane Attraction That's a lot of creativity for just one service industry. We had a fly-over of the Lancaster at 11:00 am on Remembrance Day.  I ran out with the camera and got a picture of it.  It flies right over the house.  I guess it seems to fly right over all the houses in our area - given how narrow the land is between the escarpment and the Lake.  I expect that Grimsby has the narrowest point.

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June 4 2020 - Horoscopes Vs Bridge

Some days I do a search on what is the daily news.  I know the news today so don't really know what made me search for   "News today June 4 2020."  The top retrieval will be coronavirus.  What was the second one?  It was the daily horoscope,  and just down the page is this surprise: Bridge: June 4, 2020 - The Mercury News.  Playing today's four spades, he ruffed West's ace of diamonds and took the A-K of trumps... Like a horse race, I wonder if bridge has made it to the front of the line. But don't underestimate the horoscope as news;  there are two more horoscope headlines.  So for today, it looks like horoscope wins by at least a head, and maybe a neck.    How popular is bridge if we compare it to horoscopes? Worldwide 200 million people play bridge.  25 million people in the U.S. are bridge players. The American Federation of Astrologers put the number of Americans who read their horoscope every day as high as 70 million, about 23 percent of the population. So wouldn't that mean that horoscopes has won by 3 lengths in the horse race of news.  Or maybe it is much more.  Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths - an astonishing record that will remain for decades. It takes skill to play bridge while it only takes basic reading for a horoscope. So much easier to play at horoscopes.  And we have a lot more invested in what's going to happen to us each day.  So my bet stays with horoscopes as winning by a lot. Our pictures today are courtesy of special effects software by flaming pear  - flexifly for bending and twisting images and flood for creating wave reflections.

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Headlines Like This

There's only one headline like it: Headless Body in Topless Bar One can read the story of this famous headline in wikipedia.  Here is the 'film synopsis' loosely based on the true story of the headline, which had its own story. "A nameless gunman (Raymond Barry) robs a shabby downtown strip club, but in his nervousness and haste, he accidentally kills someone. Taking the rest of the bar's few patrons hostage, the disturbed man leads the group -- including street-hardened stripper Candy (Jennifer MacDonald), her lesbian lover (April Grace), creepy businessman Bradford (David Selby) and wheelchair-bound loner Carl (Paul Williams) -- in a violent and perverse variation on the parlor game Truth or Dare". There are more crazy headlines: Super Caley Go Ballistic Celtic are Atrocious Axis of Weasel Midget sues grocer, cites belittling remarks Threat disrupts plans to meet about threats Marijuana issue sent to a joint committee There are even more at thoughtcatalog.com HERE or at boredomtherapy.com HERE.  Here are some images of the models in the competition room at the Denver Train Convention.

Severe Weather Ceremony Cancelled Due to Severe Weather

Our headline is a real headline from the weather network today.  It appears that in Topeka, Kansas a "severe weather ceremony" was canceled due to freezing rain and ice.  The proclamation to be signed was about the importance of severe weather preparedness. The Weather Network was having some fun. What about the headlines at the side. Here's the link: Need snow removed in Russia?  Put Kremlin critic's name in it (This is about spray-painting the opposition leader's name on the snow, and it gets removed promptly) Read grasshopper found embedded in Van Gogh painting (From October 2017: “It is not unusual to find insects or plant material in a painting that was completed outdoors,” said paintings conservator Mary Schafer in a statement. “But in this case, we were curious if the grasshopper could be used to identify the particular season in which this work was painted.”) Your forecast:  Sunny, chance of 100-km-swath of butterflies (From October 2017:  "After putting out the call for help from birdwatchers on Twitter, the curious forecasters were able to determine the cause of the signal - a swath of Painted Lady butterflies some 110 km wide, spanning the entire width of Arapahoe County, east of Denver".) More from our Niagara Butterfly Conservatory.

Have Camera will Capture

One of the benefits of a camera handy is a picture at hand.  This picture of station wagon and wooden canoe was fun, and then we pulled up to the station wagon at a traffic light and had a conversation with the owner.  I recall he told us the canoe was older than the car.   What about those funny newspaper headlines: Man eats underwear to beat breathalyzer Alton attorney accidentally sues himself City unsure why the sewer smells Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25 Federal Agents raid gun shop, find weapons Waterford boy, 8 saves sister's life - "I wouldn't do its again.  She's been a pain this week Most earthquake damage is caused by shaking Utah poison control center reminds everyone not to take poison Homicide victims rarely talk to police Here's the website for the rest.  And there's the Buzzfeed site - where the headlines are a little ruder.