This is a very old article.
Just saw on the local news that a local charity is saying the number of Great Danes (that’s a breed of dog, by the way) being abandoned is on the increase.
The dumbed-down BBC presenter chirped:
Join us later to find out why this might be.
I’ll be out. So, I’ll just go with: huge dog, costs a lot to feed, and we’re in a recession.
EDIT: Note that this post dates from the original outbreak, not the one making news in late 2010.
The potential risks associated with any flu epidemic shouldn’t be taken lightly. People have already died in Mexico, of course, but so far I don’t think there have been any deaths elsewhere – and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
But the situation is obviously being taken very seriously by the authorities. Yesterday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that a “pandemic was imminent “. You can see a news report and read about it here.
In addition, UK television has a new advert – which I saw for the first time this morning – aimed at trying to contain any possible outbreak. You can’t help but wonder if a mere tissue and washing your hands is going to be enough if you generate as much snot when you sneeze as that guy in the clip.
Of course, The Sun is laying it on with a shovel as usual. In today’s paper copy it announces:
IT JUST GOT WORSE: Pandemic is ‘imminent’
It’s current online story is trying its hardest to sound dramatic. It says:
Yesterday a red alert was issued across the planet **” as the boss of the World Health Organisation warned chillingly: “The whole of humanity is under threat in a pandemic.**
Still no mention of the fact that every case so far in the UK has been as a direct result of travel to Mexico. No cases yet of human-to-human transfer. Oh, and unless it is a typo, notice that the WHO spokesman actually said “in a ” pandemic and not “of a ” pandemic. The Sun specialises in this kind of detail. Specifically: ignoring it. Mind you, the WHO is guilty of hyping this up big time.
The Sun also trumpets:
Britain now has EIGHT confirmed cases of the deadly virus.
It isn’t ‘deadly’. The WHO have pointed out that there have only been 8 deaths associated with it (not the 159 reported elsewhere) and all those have been in Mexico (7) and the US (1). This is also blogged by someone here – slightly older data. In the UK, those diagnosed a few days ago are apparently getting better. Bear in mind that in the US alone about 50,000 people die each year due to normal flu.
And on a lighter note, there is this new product available that might just offer the same level of protection.
Oinksip – For Swine Flu
For non-UK viewers, there is a product in the UK called LemSip (a lemon-flavoured drink containing basic painkillers and decongestants) which purports to get rid of colds and flu.
It remains to be seen how bad all this turns out to be. But at least the British can joke in times of trouble. My own opinion is that this is massive overkill by the media. Again. A couple of years ago we were all going to die from Bird Flu and we were only one step away from roasting anyone who’d been to Hong Kong over an open fire. And Bird Flu was actually deadly in 50% of cases. It’s also worth noting that the WHO at that time was saying a flu pandemic was long-overdue and that an outbreak of Bird Flu could lead to 2,000,000-50,000,000 deaths worldwide (that last figure is almost the entire population of the UK).
Of course, before that there was the Armageddon that was the Y2K bug (though that was largely avoided by a lot of work before it could do any harm). And Foot & Mouth Disease . And what about Salmonella in eggs? The media loves to imagine up doomsday scenarios.
I’ve heard that people are boycotting pork already. Idiots.
Parallels are already being drawn with Spanish Flu and the early 20th Century outbreak. No consideration of the fact that no drugs were available to treat illnesses then (many died as a result of pneumonia, and we have drugs to treat that) or that the general state of health was not the same as it is now.
Don’t worry! If it does turn out to be The End Of The World then there’s not a lot you can do. But for me? Well, I’ll be planning what I’m going to do for next year’s holidays, just like always.
Saw this story in The Sun today.
Apparently, this guy in Russia thought he had cancer and went into hospital for treatment. When they opened him up they found a small sapling growing in his lung. The specialist believes that he must have inhaled a pine seed and it had germinated.
Fairly straightforward explanation, you’d think? Not so for The Sun’s journos. They needed to create a graphic to explain this difficult concept:
As you can see from this, the Pine Tree (1) shed some seeds, one of which found its way into a human (2) via the mouth, thence it traveled into his lung (3) where it germinated (inset).
I’m really glad they did this. I’d never have understood the idea that the guy breathed it in and it sprouted in his lung unless they had.
On the story itself, I’m a little sceptical. The small shoot in the picture is actually green – photosynthesis is taking place – so the shoot must have been growing in the light. As I recall from my school and University biology lectures. sunlight doesn’t really get into the lungs. I suppose the guy in question must also have inhaled a small torch as well? And some fertiliser – it looks pretty healthy, that shoot.
You could just about imagine a sprouting seed… only just, though. But something approaching a small shrubbery is a little harder to swallow (or inhale).
EDIT: I can’t believe the traffic this post is generating. Even after 2 weeks it is pulling in dozens of people! And it seems to go in cycles.
I would imagine that the Russian guy has been pruned by now. They may even be turning him into a nice range of furniture as we speak.
EDIT 19/09/2009: Hi to the people at Battlepage, who have sent this one skywards yet again! Haven’t got a clue what you guys are saying, but Hi anyway!
EDIT 22/09/2010: This story has been by far the most accessed on this blog, attracting daily hits without fail. However, it seems to have experienced some sort of renaissance today. Can someone tell me what is going on? Hits are coming from everywhere, so I can’t attribute it to a single media story anywhere.
EDIT 23/09/2010: Ah! I think I sussed it – here’s an updated story about some American guy who had a pea growing in his lung. It’s hot off the press and contains a TV interview.
EDIT 13/05/2011: This story has had yet another renaissance. Something has obviously happened over in America (and Canada), because all the hits are coming from there – and today the hit rate has gone sky-high again.
EDIT 1/6/2011: A-ha! A reader from New York tells me that this was the subject of an episode of Grey’s Anatomy (Season 7, Episode 21) , which was recently shown in the US. The same episode is on Sky TV tonight, so it’ll be interesting to see if it triggers many more UK hits.
EDIT 14/11/2011: Yet another rush of hits on this story. Just to remind everyone that it probably isn’t just a germinating seed anymore, but has grown into a healthy sapling!
EDIT 10/8/2012: Don’t forget the update to this story, where some guy in America had a pea germinating inside him
The Sun (and the Daily Mail , for that matter) have been strangely coy about this story following their earlier excitement over it (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). I heard this on the radio a couple of days ago, and this is the story as reported in The Register.
…turbine manufacturer Enercon's interim report says bolts holding the blade to the hub failed, and it's now "carrying out further tests to establish what caused the bolts to come loose, focusing on the blade and hub components to which they were attached". Dale Vince, co-founder of site operator Ecotricity, elaborated: "The bolt failure was the effect not the cause of the problem. They have ruled out bolt fatigue and design problems, and we know that they were properly put on."
The full/original story can be found in The Telegraph. Interestingly, The Sun still isn't giving up. Its own version of the story says:
A WIND turbine destroyed as stunned eye-witnesses described seeing strange lights in the sky did NOT have a close encounter with a UFO, scientists insisted today.
It goes on to repeat all that guff about UFO hunters flocking to the site, and persists in saying the blade was sheared off instead of just saying it sheared off – implying something did it. The funniest thing about this is that The Sun was prepared to do its own highly (un)scientific investigation, but it won't accept a proper one by proper scientists. And Nick Pope was unavailable for comment. He believes himself to be on a diplomatic mission to Omicron Persei 8.
I hope you’re all sitting comfortably, because today we’re going to learn how to build a proper British snowman.
‘Snow’ in the UK has – for the last 20 years or so – amounted to a spot or two of cold rain that looks a bit grainy when it hits your windscreen (windshield for American viewers) as you’re driving along. Even with the relatively vast covering today it was still nothing compared to what we used to get – and what almost all of the rest of the world still gets on a regular basis.
This dearth of decent snow has given rise to a very British creation: the British Snowman.
To build one you will need the following:
Begin by having a snowball fight. Throw snowballs at moving traffic then, when bored, place snowball on the ground amongst the mud and grass exposed in the previous activity. Roll it around until it gets too big to move any more – by this time it will have acquired a non-white exterior consisting of mud, grass, oil, and any dog turds lying around. It will be roughly spherical depending on how soon you realised you couldn’t move it for much longer.
Repeat this process to make a smaller sphere (the typical snowman-builder will likely need two tries at this, since the first will result in a ball too heavy to lift). Place it on top of the first. Ideally, the primitive snowman will be located on a pavement or in the road – because that’s really funny.
The snowman now needs a face. The nose is usually created using a ‘carrot’ – the typical snowman architect will need to look this up on Wikipedia, not being familiar with vegetables in general, and especially not carrots in particular. The eyes and mouth will be carefully fashioned out of stones or small rocks taken from someone’s garden. The adventurous snowman builder will use clothes and possibly shoes to adorn his creation.
Since the majority of British Snowman builders are students, optional extras include genitalia and bosoms.
Suggested further activity: wait until dark, then go and demolish as many snowmen as possible – ideally by pushing them on to paths or into roads.
The Sun is still on its 'must prove extra-terrestrial UFO hit wind turbine at all costs ' paddy at the moment. As I have posted previously, it is digging up old news and pretending it is new to try and keep the irons hot in the fire (i.e. persuade its readers that aliens definitely exist).
Well, it did it again today.
ALL MEN ARE FROM MARS.. AND WOMEN We could all be Martians, an expert on the planet claimed yesterday.
They mean 'an expert on the subject of Mars' and not someone who is actually on Mars – I'm sure they use poor grammar and punctuation to purposely mislead those who are easily misled.
The expert in question is Heather Couper, and the 'new' idea was first put forward in 1996 when bacteria-like structures were found in a meteorite. Indeed, the basic premise goes back to 1969 and the Murchison meteorite (sorry it's Wikipedia again), which fell in Australia.
Hardly the earth-shattering news The Sun is claiming – and if Ms Couper is trying to get publicity out of this, then shame on her.
Still determined to prove that it was a UFO that hit that wind turbine last week, The Sun has now splashed the news across its front page that there is life on Mars.
ALIEN bugs are responsible for strong plumes of methane gas detected on Mars, it was claimed tonight.
The thing is, this story contains exactly the same information as this one and this one – separate stories from March and September 2004 . The gas was actually first detected in 2003 . Personally, I'm not really concerned about whether the methane is due to life or not. I'm more fascinated by these details:
Even Colin Pilger – the guy who made Britain a laughing stock by crashing a probe, which had no chance of landing safely, into Mars – quoted from the Telegraph's version of this story says:
It's not proof, but it makes it worth a much closer look.
(The Sun makes the same quote, but obviously attributes much less importance to it). Of course, to The Sun's staff and readers, it is a very small step from primitive methanogens to aliens driving spaceships into wind turbines in Lincolnshire. I was talking with a pupil last night and she says that everybody at work accepts completely that it was a UFO that hit the Lincolnshire turbine! Frightening, isn't it? They'd laugh at anyone who confessed to believing in God, and yet they're happy to believe in spirits, new age crap (aromatherapy, crystallography, and so on – I even have some who kiss photos of famous film stars before they take their tests), and UFOs with far less evidence to support them…!
The Sun can't let this one go. In the printed version (again, I can't find it online) they had one of their reporters at the site of the wind turbine damaged by that UFO carrying out scientific experiments. The story is titled 'Farmageddon '. Apparently:
The shroud of secrecy thrown around the wind turbine wrecked by a UFO was lifted yesterday for The Sun's X-Files-style hunt for aliens.
Oh dear! But intrepid reporter Brian Flynn managed to keep his wits about him on the 'eerily silent' fen (well, it was cold, and the fens aren't exactly the best place to be after torrential rain) as:
…the faint hum of [his] metal detector broke the silence as [he] swept around the base of the 290ft-high turbine.
Now that's how to set the scene, isn't it? There's a well-posed photo of Mr Flynn pointing to the turbine lying beside him (it's about the size of a jet engine, so you could easily miss it if he didn't point). Oh, and wait. It needs to appeal to Sun readers here:
Decked out in boiler suit, hard hat and high-visibility vest, [he] scanned the site for clues of alien life forms.
Alien life forms? Where did that come from? Is someone suggesting an alien might have had the passenger door open, whacked the turbine by accident, then fallen out? A spacechav , maybe? Now the bit I liked most of all:
In the shadow of the looming structure lay the remains of the 65ft-long blade torn off in the encounter.
Hang on a minute! The multitude of stories we've had to put up with this last week all clearly implied that the blade was missing – presumably, being examined by alien scientists at the equivalent of The Sun HQ on Omicron Persei 8 , or wherever the mothership the blade was embedded in flew back to after it pranged the turbine.
Close examination suggested it had taken an almighty blow from a large solid object…
No, really? But unfortunately:
…our hour-long mission to the bitter cold uncovered no sign of alien life.
Damn. And I had money on it – what with all that technology (i.e. the metal detector). I promise you, this one is going to run and run. With or without Nick Pope .
…Nick Pope simply cannot consider any other possibility!
I wrote the other day about the UFO that had undoubtedly flown into a wind turbine in Lincolnshire. Nick Pope is the 'renowned' UFO expert who did not – even for a split second – consider any possibility other than it being a UFO from another world. The next day the story developed a little and it was being suggested that the collision might have involved a secret robotic stealth aircraft being tested by the military. Mr Pope was quick to dismiss this outright as an absurb idea – it was definitely an alien spacecraft which did it.
It does make you wonder what colour the sky is in Mr Pope's world.
And today, in The Sun newspaper again (paper version – I can't find it in the online version), Mr Pope is now saying that even if it was a stealth aircraft the technology it used was not of this world.
Great stuff in yesterday's press. The Sun (registered at the Post Office as a comic) declared:
UFO Hits Wind Turbine
across its front page. The Daily Mail – which has got into the habit of reporting exactly what The Sun has, but a day later – has enhanced the story:
Unmanned stealth bomber could have been UFO responsible for destroying wind turbine
I love the way the most ridiculous explanation possible comes so readily and excitedly to these people.
When you consider that a sparrow is quite capable of bringing down a 747 if the two happen to meet unexpectedly you can't help but marvel at the technology which could smash into a 65ft wind turbine blade and then fly off unharmed. Even more so when you remember that the same technology wasn't quite so robust over Roswell in the 1940s.
I particularly like the 'definitive' photo of (the) UFO taken by a local village idiot. The crash happened at 4am (that's in the middle of the night – when it's dark) – the photo is clearly taken in broad daylight . The Mail reckons the crash happened 'hours later' – technically this is correct, but 'many hours later' would be a more appropriate claim given the position of the sun in that photo, and allowing for the fact that sunset is around 4pm this time of year.
So this photo was taken more than 12 hours earlier – probably more than 15 judging from the sun's elevation. Getting on for a whole day earlier, in fact. Not quite as neat and tidy as they'd have you believe.
But anyway, back to that photo.
Anyone heard of Sundogs? (Sorry to use Wikipedia as a reference, but it illustrates what Sundogs are all about. In any case, it's probably the primary research source for most journalists involved in this story anyway). Can anyone see the obvious similarities here?
Let's face it, the 'definitive UFO picture' isn't a UFO at all, is it? It's just an optical phenomenon caused by clear sky, low sun, very low temperatures, and a few clouds or even aircraft contrails.
It's a Sundog!
It even appears slap in the middle of a cloud or contrail – precisely the way it happens!
Yet the jackasses at both The Mail and The Sun aren't interested in facts, and behave as if the photo is actually of a UFO. Doesn't it occur to these people that the simplest and most logical explanations must be considered first?
And the official crazy guy… sorry: UFO Expert … Nick Pope, who follows all these things up said:
What's particularly exciting is that because there's been a collision, there will be residue of the object involved.
What's funny is that they haven't even found the missing turbine blade, let alone the Mothership it is apparently embedded in. So Mr Pope is perhaps a little premature in proclaiming:
Forensic science will enable this material to be recovered and analysed. This elevates this UFO case, because with most sightings all you have is eyewitness testimony or indistinct and shaky film footage taken on a mobile phone.
Yeah, it's a good job that photo of the UFO is so incontrovertible! It's got to be the funniest story for a long while.