Analysanalyzeded

Why is everyone so lazy today? Why can't anyone take the time to edit or even effectively proofread anything? The internet seems to be the breeding ground for the new wave of modern day illiteracy, with the oversimplification of even the simplest words (e.g. "your" into "ur," "are you" into "ru," etc), overcomplication of simple words into gibberish trash (e.g. 1337 5p33k), and the demise of any kind of punctuation. It's a complete breakdown of language into the grunts they started from.
But, that is just your average internet chatter, forum poster, email sender, or small time blogger, right? Reputable sources are safe from this "stupidifying" (an ironically stupid term I coined in 2001 to describe and mock the phenomena), right? Newspapers and news sites still have editors who scour the material and fix simple errors, right? The answer is no. Yes, people... it is spreading.
One can no longer flip through our semi-local newspaper, The Evansville Courier out of Evansville, IN, without catching obvious errors everywhere that should never have made it to print. It is full of doubled words ("The the bear was mad."), wrong words for context ("The bare was mad."), misspelled words ("Teh bear was mad"), or missing words that make the sentence ambiguous ("The was mad."). It seems most people are satisfied by a quick spell check, and then they are ready to go to print.
Of course, in some cases, it seems that a spell check wasn't even thought of. I was reading an article from Reuters about the honey bee genome on Yahoo News and it contained the sentence:

"The scientists who analysanalyzeded the genetic code have discovered the honey bee originated in Africa and spread to Europe in two ancient migrations."

"Analysanalyzeded?" How did they miss this? Later in the article, they write

"The insects also have fewer genes than the fruitfully or mosquito for immunity."

Writing "fruitfully" in the place of "fruit fly" would imply that a spell checker corrected it automatically, but how did it miss "analysanalyzeded?"
Of course, I'm just giving examples. This is by no means an isolated incident, and these news outlets are not the only offenders. Editors need to actually take some initiative and do their job. If the trend continues, eventually, you'll see English textbooks with these kind of mistakes. Imagine how those kids are going to write.
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Big Cray: Accept No Substitute

Ghost Hunters

Yesterday, I happened to catch a long block of the Sci-Fi show Ghost Hunters. I had never seen the show or particularly paid attention to the advertising, but I was flipping through channels and happened upon it, so I gave it a chance. I tend to enjoy watching shows about the paranormal, mainly to see how strong of a case they can make. I really don't fall on either side of the fence. I don't say it exists, and I don't say it doesn't. I just love to watch people trying to prove it either way.
For those of you who have never seen the show, it is about TAPS, a team of "professional" paranormal investigators. In other words, two Roto-Rooter guys, a bunch of their friends, and a lot of expensive equipment. In each episode, TAPS goes to a location, plays around there for a night trying to get ghosts to interact with them while they are looking for EMF (electromagenetic fields) and recording the whole thing with audio recorders, DV cameras, and thermal imaging. Then, they show the owners of the location what they recorded.
Perhaps I shouldn't have said "whole thing," because they tend to miss a lot. It seems when the really spectacular stuff happens, they unfortunately have the camera turned the other way, they are reloading tapes, or they have some other convenient excuse. Then, all you are left with is the investigators' saying "Did you see that?" It is somewhat similar to when kids will go through a guided tour of a haunted house around Halloween, and the guides will be the ones who pretend to freak out in order to seed the idea into the heads of the children. This is either somewhat of a work, or the ghosts are simply outsmarting TAPS.
The show is put together as you would expect. The cameras record in the dark using IR, and thus the video is in itself a spooky glowing black and white. Add in the spooky music and sound effects, and the production adds more of the spook to the show than the actual paranormal phenomena they are recording.
I have to hand it to them about one thing, however. I like their approach. They don't point at every odd thing and scream "Ghost!" They are fairly even handed, and have on multiple occasions traced high EMF readings to leaking electrical boxes. They have, on at least one occasion, returned to the owner and told them that there is absolutely no paranormal activity in their house. This doesn't prove anything that they have brought back to other owners in the other cases, but at least it shows that they are attempting to be skeptical (or they needed a token wild goose chase story to add credibility to the other stories... you decide.)
All in all, this is not a bad little show if you're into this kind of thing or you need a seasonal spook fix near the end of this month. It beats watching Mr. T sell used cars.
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Big Cray: Accept No Substitute