Back to basics

Halloween is almost upon us, time for that old English tradition of demanding stuff with menaces. Hey that's what it is "Give me something or I'll do something unpleasant to you, your house, your garden". Prompt calls from the Church to return it to it's original meaning - damn straight. So divide your livestock, slaughter and prepare some for the coming winter, and throw their bones in the fire; oops I think they were talking about the original Christian origin and not the original Samhein ritual. Easy mistake to make.

On a similar note of getting back to the way things were (or supposed to be) up popped a story on the local news about freezing human egg for later IVF, should we go against Mother Nature? Hell no, Nature gives you only a certain time to have children and that's when you should have them. Anything else is against Nature, like taking painkillers for headaches, or using antiseptics and bandages. Hell burn all the hospitals down how dare they go against Nature's way. Smash all the telephones, televisions, and computers, ground all the planes, stop all the cars and trains; Nature gave us mouths to speak and feet to walk. Are you wearing clothes! How dare you go against Nature, She gave us skin and hair and that should be enough for anyone.

Of course none of the people who give us these stories are paid to think that would make them journalists and they're all just reporters - paid to take in information and repackage it in a short 2 minute (column) segment to make sense to the listener/reader.

My favourite piece this morning was the news that in order to reach a wider audience in an appeal for information about a murder police are targeting people with Bluetooth mobile phones; anyone within 100 miles of the incident with such a phone will get a text message from them. Um firstly Bluetooth is a short range system, so maybe they meant 100 metres and not miles. Secondly Bluetooth as implemented in mobiles is a paired system; so anyone would have to acknowledge this unknown connection before being connected. Finally what's Bluetooth got to do with SMS texting?

Now they might have got the broadcast tower in that area to send an SMS to any mobile entering its cell except would that constitute an unsolicited message and thus be illegal? I suppose it depends on your T&Cs. In any case the 'news' is rubbish. Now I don't expect journ reporters to be experts, but when something like this crops up I would expect them to ask someone who might know how this works or at least ask the person telling them rather then take it on faith. Nah i'm just being silly.