Thursday, May 20, 2010

A possible rant...


If I wanted to rant a bit about something that doesn't really matter, I might rant about weather forecasters on television. First of all, they have the authoritative tone of the expert, which very few of them are. They are info-tainers. And they have that media mania of making everything seem like a crisis: the driest/wettest month on record; the highest/lowest recorded temperature, etc. And it appears they don't understand the whole concept of average temperature. I heard a news weather man the other day say, "Well, we're a little below average in temperature today." The temperature was 72 degrees. The "average" temperature was 73. Has he ever heard of a margin of error? Or does he understand that there is no such day as "average", if it is an actual average of every day of that date for the last 100 years?

Don't get me wrong. I value science. I just tire of arrogance, ignorance, and over-statement.

Maybe I should stop watching the news at lunch time...

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