Tony Blews

After my mention in the b3ta newsletter on August the 7th, this happened:

I’m sure there must be a damn good reason for me buying this, but I can’t recall it. And for the record I was sober. For a change.

A bit of investigation has revealed that this is an Electone FE-30, from way back in 1984. Thankfully I’ve found the manual, as Yamaha keep all their old manuals on line, so I can learn how to work the thing!

Statistics, apparently, can’t lie. Just like the camera never lies (according to Bucks Fizz and/or Elton John). However, just like Photoshop can remove unsightly warts and disgraced aides from a photograph, if you present statistics in the right way you can turn some slightly alarming news into something utterly terrifying to the masses.

The Sun (again) gives us this story about how the number of unemployed people has reached 2.4 million. In this story they present this graph:

To the casual observer who knows nothing about how to read a graph, this would appear to indicate that unemployment has grown threefold.

If we show this graph with a properly scaled y axis, things don’t look quite as bad:

Of course it is still a massive leap, but it doesn’t look so scary and thus won’t sell as many papers.

And as i’ve shamelessly violated one copyright today, I might as well go for two. So here are some Marillion lyrics:

…You call for justice and distort the truth
Well Ive had enough of all your pretty pretty speeches
Receive your punishment
Expose your throats to my righteous claws…

-Grendel, Marillion

Oh, and for the record, I only buy The Sun for the Alphapuzzle, the crossword, and to look for all the two-faced double standards and downright scaremongering bullshit.

Oh, and the free TV guide and Jeremy Clarkson’s column on Saturdays.

Last Tuesday (August 4th, 2009), The Sun printed a story about Claire Haver, and how she was reunited with her family after running off with some bloke she met on Bebo.

The story also had a sidebar entitled “Helping kids to be fine online”, which gave 10 handy tips on keeping the kiddywinks safe on t’internet. Point 8 was particularly interesting:

“8. The internet can be accessed from many devices – including mobiles – so make sure kids’ phones are registered as such with the provider and filters are in place.”

Fair words, but illustrated with a poorly chosen picture (versions from the printed copy, and The Sun website):

Ah, the good old Nokia 3310, that well known internet capable phone from 2000. But not only is it possibly the most internet-useless phone of the century, it is also the most dangerous.

I don’t mean that the Nokia 3310 in general is a dangerous phone, just that one in particular. It was, after all, the one used by terrorists, as shown in The Sun’s story of December 17th, 2008.

Clearly The Sun either don’t know anything about phones, or have a really rubbish picture researcher. Or this particular phone is cursed.