Idiot Watch - Louise of London

Today's Times has the tragic story of a teenage army cadet who drowned in a Scottish loch.

Fast forward to the comments........Andrew of Godalming: 
"A tragic event but unfortunately not surprising given the level of incompetence in our armed forces."

Good point Andrew. Then, 2 comments later, an idiot turns up:

"Andrew this happened in the US so how can you refer to 'incompetence in our armed forces.? "

Says Louise of London, mental age of three.

I re-read the article to see how poor Louise got so confused......."Loch Carnan, South Uist..." it sounds distinctly Jockanese to me but, hang on, what's this....it mentions a "sheriff". Poor Louise, who probably knows how to handle a mobile phone, has a Facebook account, and a degree in media studies is blissfully unaware that Scotland has sheriffs too. When she reads that "sheriff" word she sees Kevin Costner in a big hat and disregards every other detail in the story, including the fact that the poor child concerned was from Aberdeenshire (that's in Scotland, Louise).

Louise I take my ten gallon (sheriff's) hat off to you. You are an idiot's idiot. Well done.

Phone Masts and Physics for Dimwits

Are you one of those people campaigning for the removal of phone masts because you believe they are a risk to your health? You are? Oh dear. You need to read a physics textbook and learn about density of radio frequency energy and how that varies with distance.You will soon come to understand that you receive a much larger dose of RF from that thing you are pressing to your ear than from a mast at the end of your lovely garden.

Then read a book about how cellular radio works. If you have more than three brain cells left, you will realise that the less phone masts there are in your area, the more power your Iphone needs to emit and therefore the more your brain gets fried.

I was going to take the tack that this is another example of people expecting safety regulation to provide them with a risk free life but, on reflection, I've concluded that this "fear" is another example of the pseudo science that does the rounds on the Internet, is picked up by the thick as shit media, and feeds the subconscious desire of dimwits to either be scared of, or  outraged by something, or other, every bloody day. 

It is the modern equivalent of the medieval fear of witches though, so far, no one has been burnt at the stake because of it.

Then there is the hypocrisy element: how many of those screaming for the removal of phone masts have thrown away their phone? Not many I would guess.

Sometimes I feel that we are drowning in a sea of stupidity, but that is my own fault for reading the UK papers - as I have previously believed that we were drowning in a sea of feral children, while having our faces bitten off by millions of pit bull terriers, but my anxiety went away when the media moved onto something else - a nice feel good story. 

Like Katie Price and Peter Andre's upcoming divorce.

"For Sure, Murray"

Ahhh wonderful, we are only six races into this years F1 season and the FIA Forsureing championship is very close. World Forsureing champion Lewis Hamilton threw down the Nomex gauntlet on the 14th with this skillful bit of gobbledygook:
"For sure when we get to mid-season if we've still not scored many points, then we will have to knock it on the head,"
Nice one Lewis, showing every bit of the form that made you last year's champ! And this years title contender Jenson Button could only muster this lacklustre response:

"They've been competitive today  and they're one to watch over the next few races, for sure."

Bit disappointing there Jenson, even Nelson Piquet Jr knows that the "For Sure" is most effective at the beginning of the sentence! Despite many years aways from the cockpit of a racing car, Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner came out with this today:
"There were signs that they'd woken up in Barcelona and for sure 11 points on the board here is a good team result for them."

Well done Christian, however the FIA have controversially decided to disallow your submission as you have a suspiciously Frog sounding name, and being Johnny Foreigner is an unfair advantage when Forsureing - Rule Number 141a (Mansell's Rule): 

"For Sure" only sounds ridiculous when spoken by native English speakers.

The Rehabilitation of Mr James Allen

I am a huge Formula 1 fan, in a very discreet, not painting my face, not going to the pub in 4 year old team jackets with all the wrong colours and sponsors, sort of way.

I have had a strong disregard for Mr Allen since ITV took over F1 and introduced motor racing fans to football style punditry and, non-football style adverts, throughout the event.
Maybe it was those things, or maybe the automatic association with Jim "Spear Chucker" Rosenthal, that led me to believe that he was a bit of a twat.
Nowadays, the BBC present F1 coverage in the UK and James was, apparently, surplus to requirements.

Mr James Allen, please accept my apologies. Now that James has gone back to being a print journalist, and not shrieking "Gooooooooooo!" at the start of each Grand Prix, I have grown to like the old boy and his excellent blog. Well done James!

Hang on, I've just remembered that he named his son "Enzo". Silly twat.

Shite Journalism Num 141

From today's Times, What a lovely example of shite journalism. 

A screaming, sensationalistic headline which is then completely contradicted by the text of the article that goes on to point out that, as WolframAlpha isn't actually a search engine, it is absolutely no threat to Google whatsoever.
I suppose that we can always blame the subby for the headline, but this is a typical example of FactLiteTM journalism. Then read the TwatLog at the bottom. Some bible bashing yank submitted a query about god bothering and got no answer:

"Well, I just punched in "john 3:16" (no quotes) and got... nothing. I then changed my search to "bible john 3:16" (again, sans quotes) and again... nothing. So much for beating Google."