Technically Speaking

Editing is a profession that will always employ people. Computers just aren’t good enough at it. You type something into a computer, do a grammar check, and you think it is fine. However, sometimes (often?) it is not.

For example, today I opened the Salt Lake Tribune’s website, and I read the top story (in the Breaking News section) about the horrific commuter train accident in LA. The Trib picked up an article from the AP, and posted it to their website, obviously without editing it. Here is the text of the article straight from the Trib’s website:

Breaking: Suburban L.A. trains derail, killing 9.
A Metrolink commuter train struck a vehicle, derailed and sideswiped another train early today, killing nine people and at least 100 others, authorities said.

What is unfortunate about that, is the article states that the train killed nine people, “and at least 100 others.” When you read other media reports (like the one on CNN‘s website) you realize that the 100 others were injured, not killed.

Just to see how many media outlets published the AP story directly, without checking it first, I did a Google News search on the phrase “killing nine people and at least 100 others“. I found six outlets world-wide had made the same unfortunate mistake. (See my images of the SLTrib site and the Google search results, which I made in case they change.)

I don’t mean to minimize the tragedy in LA, but I continue to find it interesting how one small mistake can make a big difference in meaning. That is, technically speaking.

Today is a “Monday-Tuesday”. You know those kinds of days? Where you know that the calendar says it is Tuesday, but for all intents and purposes it might as well be a Monday? Yep. That’s today.

Last week I was sick, and was at home for the majority of the week. Rick pointed out to me today that I haven’t really updated my blog since I posted my cruise entry, so here you go.

I know it isn’t a lot, but hey, it’s something.

So in all my spare time last week, I watched some movies. Here is a movie quote– who can identify it? “Some people read because they cannot think for themselves.” Katrina would probably say that this is worth 20 points… Good luck.

Christina has a blog!! Yay!!! So everybody should go check it out: christinasmusings.blogspot.com. A link is now located in my links section in the sidebar.

I’m making one more post today so that the DUI Stop movie gets moved off the main page of my blog. I use Mozilla Firefox as my primary web browser, but it has come to my attention that when you view my blog using Internet Explorer the DUI movie plays as soon as the page opens. That means that as soon as you open my blog, you hear the phrase “Awh, hell.” I decided that wasn’t the first impression that I wanted you to have when you visited my blog, so I’m adding one more post so that the DUI movie moves off the main page.

I think the movie is funny, so I’m not removing it from the blog. Just pushing it off the main page.