Treasure Trove of Bullshit - This issue has been pissing me off to no end lately: the use of the words "alleged" and "suspected" in various forms, by news reporters and the media in general, when describing criminals, suspected or otherwise. There are too many cases to try to link to, but I'm going to post new ones as I find them.

If you are reporting something as "alleged," it is required by prudence and ethics to report the source of the allegation. A better word is "suspected," but prudence and ethics still dictate a disclosure of the reason behind the suspicion. Admitting bias and disclosing a reason are anathema to and impossible by, respectively, the leftist-tilted media.

Take as example the case of Ahmad Alghamdi, as reported by alleged news source Reuters (link and story skimmed from the Best of the Web). BOTW points out that Reuters calls Alghamdi a "suspected Saudi hijacker." What does "suspected" mean, in this case? I would take it (as would many readers) at first glance as meaning that some law-enforcement officials somewhere suspect Alghamdi to have been a hijacker who happens to be Saudi. The article does not specify a third party that suspects the guilt of Alghamdi. It does not specify what, exactly, Alghamdi is suspected of hijacking (in case you do not know, Alghamdi was one of the hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania on 09-11-2001).

I believe the term "suspected" is totally appropriate, perhaps even necessary, as long as you specify that the FBI is doing the suspecting, and as long as you take the space to mention (yes, again) just what the suspected crime is. To the informed, it's redundant, but the journalist must always err on the side of ethics, and account for the possibility that their audience is not informed. Ommiting these critical facts leaves only the "suspected Saudi hijacker" phrase as fact, further leaving the logical reader to assume (correctly) that it's the journalist that merely "suspects" the guilt of the accused, which is a biased stance, just as stating only "Saudi hijacker" would be a biased stance in the opposite direction.

There is no place on a news wire for bias and blatant opinion unless it is so marked and disclaimed, and there is no disclaimer on this article by Reuters. Bias of and in itself is not bad or wrong, but sleighted, propagandistic bias of this nature is more than wrong. It's deplorable, a threat to the very freedom that allows it, and must not be tolerated.

Connect the Dots - I wish I could write like this man. Too much sleeping through English class in high school, I suppose, has damned me to only being able to spew this almost unbearable chunder. I still say, emphatically, fuck you to my AP English teacher, for making that class so unbelievably mind-sapping and worthless. I further say to her, with no small amount of spittle, that my college GPA for my four English classes is 3.4. Thppt!

Anyway, go check out James Lileks, and when he has you trapped in his death-grip of amuesement and enlightenment, remember you can come back here to have it all drained happily away again...

I could have had lunch... - ...but I purchased lottery tickets instead. Actually, my girlfriend did. Five of them, $5 spent. The impetus for this frivolous purchase is today's Big Game drawing, which will pay an estimated $325+ million, annuitized, if there is a winner. I don't consider the money a total waste, because I have already derived much, much more than $5 worth of entertainment from the ticket (you only get one ticket, physically, with up to five lines containing your numbers, for those of you who have never, ever played. Sourpusses!). I consider it a partial waste because I am dead certain that there are no winning numbers on my ticket, at least not in such a combination as to actually win anything.

What kind of entertainment could be derived from a lottery ticket? Hearing about the source of the complex formulas that allowed my girlfriend to select the ripest numbers. Possessing a little piece of cultural history. Being able to shoot-the-shit with my co-workers about "how close" we were to the millions (when in fact we were about as close as we would be standing next to the vault in a bank where we had no account). Working in a manual labor position (data entry) you get to meet people with this "just a few numbers away" mentality, and an equal amount of people who think the whole lottery thing is a sham, crock, and waste of time, which makes for interesting conversation indeed. I won't call it a sham or a crock, because I think it's a good tax on stupidity, and I feel a responsibility to pay my share. As far as being a waste of time, well, it might have been a waste of my girlfriend's time.

Just like that $5 could have bought me lunch, that 5 minutes could have been spent doing other more interesting or productive things, perhaps, but if the experience helps her to decide not to play in the future, then the tuition was cheap and the lesson was short, and I'm a happy man.

Across the Hall - COM has taken to singing his short, scatological ditties again. Just as a sane person may well break into tune, with words like "Que sera, sera," the Old Man likes to break into such refrains as "Dog manure for two." I shit you not (no pun intended). He has many more, quite a few in fact, but I do not really want to post them here. Suffice it to say that I always knew the Old Man was full of shit. I wanted to post about how he used to sing the same tunes in the past, but I couldn't quite remember how they went. I have since learned that selective memory is a good thing.

I like going across the hall to watch the Braves with the Old Man. They've played mostly night games so far, and I'll go over in the middle of the 4th or 5th inning to watch the ends of the games with him. He gets a kick out of Tim Spooneybarger, just because of the name. That damn Sporkenfarker won't quit diggin' ditches, he keeps throwin' the ball into the dirt... And although he is a big Braves fan, he believes that all of the current players cannot play, and acts surprised when they do something right (which is more often than not). But then, even if they played perfect ball and scored twice an inning, he'd think they weren't playing good enough because they weren't scoring three times an inning and working no-hitters every night. That's how liberal old men think, but I digress...