NZ Herald Horror (and I mean it's standards!)

Yesterday (03 Aug.2016) an Emirates Boeing 777-300 crash-landed at Dubai: amazingly all 300 passengers and crew were saved.

I found out about the story when I opened the NZ Herald website today. Note: NOT a newsworthy headline like "All safe after Emirates crash in Dubai" or "Dubai Airport closed by crash" or even "300 saved by Boeing technology" ...no, I was offered a chance to "WATCH terrified passengers inside smoke-filled cabin"!!!
Yeup, in these days when everyone's cellphones make them 'photo-journos', someone FILMED what was nearly their moment of DEATH!
As if that particular action was not 'braindead personified', we were shown confusion, panic, screaming, yelling, every-man-for-himself ...and OMG! In the most crucial 60 seconds of their lives, passengers were opening overhead lockers and getting their cabin bags!
But the 'curdled-cream-on-the-rotting-cake' must surely be NZ Herald's decision to actually run this 'citizen footage' in the first place!
Posting pix of the crash site to support the story is one thing. To stream footage of terrified passengers clawing their way out of a smoke-filled cabin - and call it news - is completely different...and quite frankly piss-poor journalism.
Oh, but then, it's NOT real journalism, is it? It's yet another example of CNN-type sensationalism in the interests of reaping a few more dollars, more of the pathetic NZ Herald non-thoughts such as we've seen over the past few years.
One can only assume the editorial staff were born in the late '90s and bought their journalism qualifications on-line...

All Hail The Happy And Hardy!

In history on 26 July 1903, the first automobile trip across the United States was completed by two happy and hardy gentlemen.
It was America's first transcontinental road trip and, like all hard drives, an unforgettable experience.

Happy and hardy butcher

This year on 26 July, another hard drive...this time in the beautiful Faroe Islands, where it's stunning rugged beauty was once again savagely tarnished by one more bloody and brutal grindadráp.
A pod of approximately 200 long-finned pilot whales was driven by 25 Faroese boats for two hours, before 135 were eventually beached and hacked to death on the rocky shoreline at Hvannasund.
This was the second slaughter of 2016 - the largest so far, following the totally unnecessary deaths of up to 50 pilot whales on 06 July.
In 2015, the "gentlemen" of the Faroes butchered 501 whales - now just one month into 'the season', they're already a third through last year's tally. I hope these hardy gents are happy...

This Time, The Whales Win

A new court ruling, in an ongoing battle between the US Navy and marine wildlife advocates, has come down in favour of marine mammals that're affected by navy sonar.

Sonar, which involves detecting underwater objects using sound waves, is used by whales and dolphins to locate prey or members of their pod. But the human-developed sonar can be harmful to marine mammals and their feeding and mating patterns.
An Appeals Court in California has found a 2012 decision - to allow naval use of low-frequency sonar for training, testing, and operations - was contrary to the US Marine Mammal Protection Act, which states peacetime oceanic programmes must have "the least practicable adverse impact on marine mammals."
Environmentalists have claimed 155 whales and dolphins in certain parts of Southern California and the Hawaiian islands were killed by the US Navy's mid-frequency active sonar and explosives, with estimates for serious injuries in the range of 2,000.
The use of sonar has been shown to cause whales to swim hundreds of miles to escape, change depth so fast that injury is caused, or beach themselves in order to avoid rolling walls of noise that're nearly twice the volume of the loudest rock concert.
This lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defence Council is part of a larger campaign to limit man-made oceanic noises impacting the health, feeding, and breeding patterns for marine mammals. Other examples include sounds caused by shipping vessels and seismic oil and gas drilling.