Entertainment For Lively Minds
Dumbing down.
Posted by Beany on 28 August 2010 - 10:51am.
Is it me? I can understand the need (sometimes) to speak in plain language when faced with a serious subject but is this just an example of treating the internet-viewing public as clots? It's not even a Murdoch owned website.
50% rise in male food pipe cancer
Cancer Research UK said the annual number of men diagnosed with oesophageal (food pipe) cancer rose from 2,600 in 1983 to 5,100 in the last year for which data was available.
http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=154520093
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Don't start me....
It's not just the dumbing down, it's the sensationalising of everything. Last nights Beeb news at 10, reported on a better than expected reduction in US growth as if it where Armaggedon.
I really despair of the news media. They don't tell it like it is anymore, that's for sure. Bastards.
Not only that, but...
...on the news on Radio 4 (RADIO 4!) they described the US economy as having grown about one percent less than forecast. NO. It grew about one PERCENTAGE POINT less than forecast. There's a sodding bastard fucking difference.
And, frankly, hearing 0.8% described as "about one percent" riled me anyway, because who doesn't know what 0.8% means? Especially among Radio 4 listeners?
I say oesophagus...
...you say food pipe?
I though exactly the same thing when I saw this article over breakfast. Surely anyone with even a passing interest in such an article will know exactly what an oesophagus is? Are the masses really so stupid, or is it just the media who think they are? I am irked...
Better lay off the fags as well
they play havoc with the old breathing bags!
To be fair
Oesophageal is a bastard to fit into a headline. Still no excuse for 'food pipe', though.
And I just thought, they wouldn't call bowel cancer 'shit pipe' cancer would they?
Ouch
Shit pipe cancer's horrible. They have to stick a bumcam up there.
Bumcam
Is that Nick Clegg's pet name for David Cameron?
We say
wind pipe for the trachea so it's not without precedent.
I'll pipe down now which - oh happy coincidence - is what my bowel does.
Talking of pipe(r) down
Not us
This is the internet and Johnny Foreigner may be reading this stuff and they can more easily translate 'food tube' into, for example, Slokdarm or Speiseröhre than oesophagus.
Unless
Johnny's language is derived from latin...;)
The statistics in the headline are wrong as well!
In my book, an increase from 2,600 to 5,100 is actually a 96% increase!
And over 27 years as well
Which wasn't exactly prominent in the headline.
Change in number
If the number had changed from 2,600 to 2,700 they could have said that there had been a decrease in 'food tube' cancer.
Which book are you reading?
At least
they've spared us the usual insult of telling us what 50% means: "...50% or half..."
Or
one in every two...
Surely...
...the common word for 'oesophagus' is 'gullet'.
Perhaps they were
concerned that a story about Oesophegal cancer would be ignored by everyone but the Ancient Greeks.
It annoyed me.
Shouldn't it be œsophagus? Have subs forgotten how to use Character Map?
Anyway. It should be called œsophageal carcinoma.
Spare a thought for the ladies too
they have to deal with fun bag/love pillow cancer
common misconception
Men can get breast cancer too - mammograms hurt them even more than those for women. 'food pipe' made me shudder. Sounds stupid.
It's like a headline
off the end of "The Day Today"...