Obviously something Oncidium-related. No tag, though.
wrong tags: 8.5
incomplete tags: 1
missing tags: 13
I'd like to write more about the orchid, but since I don't have an ID for it, and it's not my personal plant, there's not much to say. And anyway I'm sort of preoccupied by the mass shooting in Connecticut. (Also the mass shooting in Oregon last Tuesday. And the fourteen others in 2012 before those two. And the one that happened yesterday in Alabama but didn't kill anybody except the gunman.)
I tried for a few hours on Saturday to come up with something to say about all that. But I failed. Wrote lots of stuff, deleted lots of stuff. The Onion has it pretty well covered anyway.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Pretty picture: NOID NOID orchid
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3 comments:
I am still concerned that no news outlets have taken on board the advice to give no publicity to the culprit. Copycats often do it for the fame.
"Today some bastid killed some folk who didn't deserve to die. We are not going to mention who it was because the scumbag deserves to die in obscurity and be buried in an unmarked grave. If you are ghoulish enough to want to know all the details you can rely on internet rumour or wait for the report in Forensic Science International. Stories of heroism in desperate circumstances and celebrations of the lives so cruelly cut short after the break."
I will never forget the disgust I had for the papers here in the UK when a murderer stated in court that he wanted to be called The Crossbow Killer and the newspapers all obliged. Could they not think of something demeaning to call him?
Pat:
Unless it's illegal to name and publicize the attackers, no news outlets will ever take that advice. When you have 100 other news organizations trying to cover the same story, there's no economic benefit to withholding information, if it's information the public will want to know. And there is no information that the public doesn't want to know.
The insulting-name thing could still happen, maybe,[1] but there are only so many ways to call someone a murdering shithead before it becomes difficult to keep them all straight. ("Wait -- are we talking about the Psychotic Armed Shooter Jackass, or the Psychotic Armed Killer Jackass?")
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[1] I'm somewhat surprised that it hasn't happened already, actually. The only thing I can think of is that our news organizations are worried that it will make them look non-objective or non-serious. (Which is funny, if you know our news organizations.)
There could also be some legal issues about calling someone names before it's clear that they're the perpetrator and stuff. The media did misidentify this guy at first, as well as getting several other details wrong.
Well, that is what laws are for, convincing people to do the decent thing when they refuse to do so.
Charlie Brooker had a good piece on this 3 years ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PezlFNTGWv4
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