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:
- the way The Sun chooses to omit or gloss over any information which might lead to the conclusion that the methane isn't produced by living organisms
- the way The Sun deliberately pushes information that it likes down its readers' throats (reminds me of its pro-Thatcher bias in the 80s)
- the way The Sun leaps on this in the wake of the damage caused to that wind turbine last week by what it says was 'definitely' a UFO from outer space.
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…!