I haven’t been updating my blog for a while, but I came across this story in the NZ Herald and had to vent my frustration.

This quote in particular annoys me:

Experts say there is a one-in-3200 risk of the six-ton space junk hitting someone – considerably greater than the chances of winning Lotto, at just one in 3.8 million.

Now… that is a totally inaccurate and misleading comparison. The 1-in-3200 chance refers to the chance of *anyone in the world* getting hit by debris. The 1-in-3,800,000 chance of winning lotto refers to the chance of *one person in particular* winning Lotto. The chance of *anyone in the world* winning Lotto (which would be a fair comparison) is actually extremely high!

To put it a different way, to calculate the chances of *me personally* getting hit by debris, I have to multiply 3200 by the population of the world, which was about six billion last time I checked, so the chances of me personally getting hit by debris is 1-in-19,200,000,000,000. The chances of me personally winning Lotto is, as the article stated, 1-in-3,800,000. Therefore I am much more likely to win Lotto than to get hit by space debris.

But as they say, never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right NZ Herald journalists?

Here’s another quote from that article:

…though given more than three-quarters of the earth is covered in water, NASA is expecting a splash-down, rather than a smack-down.

Wow, so it took a NASA scientist to work out that because more than 75% of the earth is water, it’s more likely to land in water than land? AMAZING! Well done, NASA!

Seriously, who writes this stuff?

I was hoping that this would never happen… but sadly, it’s here – Air NZ to allow calls, texts on new plane.

And I can tell you right now – I will fly on no plane that allows calls and texts if I’m expecting to sleep on that flight (which is practically every flight over one hour).

Can you imagine anything worse than being on a 24 hour flight from London, being woken up constantly with text message beeps, and “Hello? What? I’m on the plane. I said I’M ON THE PLANE. Yup, be there at 6am. Did you remember to buy washing powder? No, get it from Pak N Save, it’s eight cents cheaper there”.

Christ almighty.

I already prefer not to fly with Air New Zealand because their staff are unprofessional and they offer you no refund if they cancel your flight, but this will be the straw that broke the camel’s back I think.

They might try and disallow phones on during night hours, but my guess is that will go the same way as insisting people turn their phones off in the cinema… i.e. it will be neither respected nor enforced.

I visited BBC News today at lunchtime, to read this wonderful quote from one of their news stories:

“People who had a big breakfast, on average 400 calories larger than a small one, consumed around 400 more calories in a day.”

And apparently that required research from a university study. Ha ha ha. What next.

Yay, it’s official. Where I live – The London Borough of Tower Hamlets – is the UK’s swine flu capital.

http://www.thelondonpaper.com/…/tower-hamlets-is-swine-flu-hotspot

I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of London locked Tower Hamlets in using a very long length of barbed wire.  (I’m surprised London hasn’t done that even before the borough got Swine Flu.)

Lucky that I’m antisocial, and don’t know anyone else in the borough, so I don’t have swine flu… yet!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8163767.stm

I used to live in Camberwell on the 6th floor about 10 minutes’ walk from this building, it always scared me that we were on the highest floor in the furthest flat from the single stairwell, and I was never that happy about it.

When I look at the cost of flats in London, I wondered why the 15th and 16th floor flats near me are cheaper than the lower ones, despite the view they must have, and now I know!