Sunday morning, slept in and didn’t dribble on my pillow, good start! Time for coffee and see what’s happening in the world.
Still half asleep, hit the radio, it’s politics and ‘midterm elections’ fanning the morning air. By the first bathroom break and coffee number two, midterm coverage had consumed about 95% of the waking time. Does the media not realise that the majority of people with the actual power to exercise their democratic right, don’t care. Only approx. 40% of eligible voters turnout for midterm elections. Time to change the channel!
Hello, good news, unemployment at its lowest level in 50 years. Surely, this must be fabulous news for all Americans, but somehow an opinionated detractor has managed to deflect the noise so it’s about discrimination and gender issues. Apparently we should be setting aspirational targets (100%) and not outcomes we could realistically achieve. Maybe these views reflect the difference between the academic theorists and the practical application applied by those who actually work. Time to change the channel!
A story about a warning from the U.N. Population Fund and the famine conditions in Yemen. They predict that some 2 million Yemeni mothers face starvation. Why the gender breakdown when the U.N. has already warned that 13 million Yemeni civilians face starvation in what it says could become “the worst famine in the world in 100 years”. Why sanitise the truth for your target audiences. Time to change the channel!
Here we go again, a story about the right to bear arms and the relevance of a Constitution that was drafted in 1787, back when the arms borne were muskets and not semi-automatic rifles. There is something like 12,000 firearm homicides in the U.S. each year and about 22,000 suicides. But today’s horrible news tops all that! The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency reports that ‘drug overdoses’ killed 72,000 Americans in 2017 and it wasn’t even a headline story. Time to change the channel!
A story about ‘Punishing Iran’ and how U.S. led sanctions are about stopping oil exports from Iran, the source of 80% of the country’s revenue. The story leaves me wondering who will benefit from the sanctions, given that neighbouring Saudi Arabia is the world’s number one oil exporter and the country with the largest oil reserves, the same country who denies murdering a U.S. citizen in their Embassy in Turkey. Will Iran resemble Yemen in a couple of years if this administration has its way? Time to change the channel again!
Now a legal story about whether Harvard admissions are unfairly discriminating against Asian Americans. The story states that Harvard is stereotyping Asian Americans accusing the institution of racial balancing, when it’s illegal to use quotas in college admissions. Meanwhile, the data shows that Asian Americans make up 22% of admitted students at Harvard compared to 6% of the U.S. population. I wondered how Native Americans feel about this apparent discrimination, the real ‘forgotten minority’ in higher education. Changing the channel!
Good Lord a story about how busy all our lives are now and what are we to do? Come on, seriously, compared to who? For a starter, google how to improve your ‘time management’ skills. Don’t sit around while you’re whinging, learn how to multitask and double your productivity by ‘whinging while you work’ to gain ‘favour’ with your colleagues. Maybe whinge instead of eating so much and improve the robustness of your energy levels and save the environment by displacing less bath water. Organise yourself better, do what you say you’re going to do and get off social media, yep social media! You’re not busy, just disorganised; get over yourself!
That’s it no more, too much bullshit for me, radio off and back to bed. Maybe I need to sign up to twitter or facebook so I can have a fanciful virtual life, one that is too busy and unfulfilling enough to complain about!
4 November 2018
“We cannot make good news out of bad practice” – Edward R. Murrow
Billy Blogabout 