Silly People - Too Much News

A Stodghill Says So blog:
It has been oppressively hot the past few days so I had no intention of writing a blog. Watching the noon news on TV changed my mind. It also made me wonder why so many Americans are frightened of everything today. Perhaps it is because there is too much news on TV and the Internet.
The big scare right now is swine flu. People are actually wondering what President Obama intends doing about it.
We have reached the point, have we, where we believe the president needs to take immediate action over an illness?
When I was a kid, polio was a far bigger threat than swine flu. People too young to remember those days probably can't comprehend the magnitude of the concern and justifiable fear. Everyone knew President Roosevelt had been stricken with polio when he was a young man. It left him crippled. Did Americans turn to him to solve the polio problem? Even kids my age would have laughed at the suggestion.
Then some woman who finished second in a beauty contest claims she would have won had she not said she was opposed to gay marriage. Why was she even asked? When did beauty contestants start thinking about anything more than themselves and how they look? It has become a big deal. Does any sensible person care what she thinks or says?
Next came Somali pirates. They have captured scores of ships without anyone putting up a fight. Half a dozen ragtag men just climb aboard and take over. When some are captured they are turned loose to do it again.
In the latest incident Israeli guards on an Italian cruise ship did fight back and drove them off. Ship owners say they don't have armed men aboard because some countries won't allow them in their ports if they do. So just tell them, "No guns, then no more ships will arrive."
Many of these incidents take place so far out to sea that the pirates in tiny craft are operating from a mother ship or ships. With all the modern technology, is it possible that no one can find these mother ships and sink them? Knowing the ports they come from, why aren't they raided? The French did it a few weeks ago to rescue one of their ships. Pirates are the worst sort of criminals. It is amazing that so little is being done about them.
I just don't understand people today. They worry about what some silly beauty contestant says, turn their back on pirates, call on the president to keep us safe from swine flu. Whatever happened to perspective and common sense?

I agree Dick. It seems useless fluff pieces are used to divert our attention from things like fighting off pirates.

Swine flu is useful to know about if you are near where the breakouts are, but asking for presidential intervention is totally loony.

The news media is supposed to "report" the news, and many do that. Sometimes they "create" news when nothing earth shattering is happening. Even with a valid story, overkill is a problem. They bleed it to death. They evaluate, speculate and theorize to create public interest. The public begins to do the same thing in conversation with others often jumping to erroneous conclusions and causing panic.
It has become a way of life. Headline news. Being inundated with repetition of the same crap. Best defense is to use the remote and click it off. The facts will eventually come out once the dust settles.

Sometimes I think that East Texas relative of mine - the one who told my grandfather he didn't believe in Germany, much less Hitler - had the right idea.

Ann

Then there is important information they leave out completely. The Mexican cartels were killing hundreds of people long before this news hit the mainline news, as well as the agreement with Iraq as to when we would have our troops out.

Carol

And the Spanish-American War was the product of "manufactured" news creating a fear-based reaction.

Ann

Tipton sounds like a charming place.

Marie,

That is a good picture of living in small town America. I love our small town, and people are very vocal on all issues.

We live near an army ammunition plant from World War II, Korea and Vietnam. A woman in the area decided they had done terrible things to our water. So now every three months our water is tested for bad things. The bay in the river nearby has been dredged twice, and the army has put in new wells for people. Sometimes this woman has been annoying, an obstructionist to getting rid of the thousands of buildings our of fear they would explode as they were being taken down.

Now I go by and see the buildings disappearing. (Is that possible?) It will be a nature preserve, a place where the Native Americans are going to raise Buffalo. At one time a joke went around that they were going to raise "buffaglow." It will be divided between two other entities also.

I grew up in the city. I will never go back if I can help it.

Carol

Me again.

About news. Last year many throughout the world watched as a flood in Wisconsin took down a road and swept houses away as Lake Delton drained into the Wisconsin River. (A friend told me to watch the river nearby as the roof of one of the houses would be floating by at 10:30 on Friday. Not possible as the river takes many bends with many sandbars before reaching this point, but the river did turn dark brown for a few weeks.)

Last year we drove the thirty miles to Lake Delton, a large area of ugly brown mud. A few weeks ago, we decided to go check it out, now once again a lake with piers and boats and fishermen.

But the good news, the repair of the road, the refilling of the lake and restocking so people could once again fish has made local news, but has it made national news?

Carol

It hasn't made the news here, Carol, that I am aware of. Here, they are doing things with buffalo as well. They started some time back with 'beeffalo'. It was, as the name implies a cross between cattle and buffaloes. Now you see places advertising Black Angus and Buffalo dishes. Some places are exclusive to one or the other.

Carol,

I'm within a couple hundred miles of you and I hadn't heard anything about the reconstruction.

Tipton District Library, which was built in 1905 but has not been used as a library since the service was moved to a new site in the town centre in 2000

Until the 18th century, Tipton was a collection of small hamlets in the midlands. Industrial growth started in the town when ironstone and coal were discovered in the 1770s. A number of canals were built through the town and later railways, which greatly accelerated the pace of industrialisation.

The engineer, James Watt, built his first steam engine in or very near Tipton in the 1770s, which was used to pump water from the mines. In 1780, James Keir and Alexander Blair set up a chemical works there, making vast quantities of alkali and soap.

The massive expansion in iron and coal industries led to the population of Tipton expanding rapidly through the 19th century, going from 4,000 at the beginning of the century to 30,000 at the end. Tipton gained a reputation as being "the quintessence of the Black Country" because chimneys of local factories belched heavy pollution into the air, whilst houses and factories were built side by side. Most of the traditional industries which once dominated the town have since disappeared.

Sorry, Dick! See what happens when you talk about silly people -- we do silly things!

Tipton is in the West Midlands:

http://www.any-village.com/UK/England/West-Midlands/Tipton/home.aspx

C'mon, Marie, any metropolitan area under half a million is hicksville. I lived at a hotel in Tipton, Indiana for six weeks in 1946. Corn, tomatoes, soybeans and 5,000 people. The soybeans were more interesting than most of the people. Spent two years in Cooperstown, N.Y (2,400) but there were more than a million visitors every years and the residents were well educated, informed and interesting. If I could afford to live anywhere in the world it would be New York City, but the Akron area is pretty nice.

I lived in the best suburb in the whole of the UK. A unique place that you won't find anywhere else in Britain:

http://www.bearsdencross.co.uk/

A twenty-four minute drive through spetacular countryside takes you to the banks of Loch Lomond. If Glasgow had California weather, everyone would want to live there. A million people do and the weather is !

Those are lovely photos in that link, Shelagh. You make me want to move over there!