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Things you're surprised aren't/ weren't bigger news

Started by 23 Daves, April 19, 2005, 01:52:43 PM

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23 Daves

I'm constantly amazed by what makes huge headlines in the press in this country ("GYPSIES!!!" and "IMMIGRANTS!!!") and what tends to slip by relatively un-noticed, even when on the lowest level there's a genuinely fascinating piece of tittle-tattle to  be had.  

One example - a friend of mine is a researcher for a medical company who recently did trials to find out why various areas in the UK were more susceptible to cancer and heart disease.  They expected a result that would tell them it was due to pollution or industrialisation.  In fact, that was only half the story.

It transpired that the real reason for increased rates in certain areas was actually in-breeding.  In the smaller towns in West Midlands, East Anglia and the North East, they discovered evidence to suggest that little new blood had been injected into the towns over many decades, that there were higher rates of deformed births (six fingers, tails, etc), and, due to weaker and less developed immune systems, a higher susceptibility towards life-threatening ailments.  The end report estimated that a third of the UK's overall cancer budget was due to catering for "weak" inbred DNA - tens of millions of pounds, in fact.

Now, regardless or not of the accuracy of this report, I'm amazed more people don't know about it.  After all, the Daily Mail thinks nothing of publishing utterly inaccurate "FLOURIDE GIVES YOU CANCER!" scare headlines from one badly-researched source, so why pass this one by?  As it stood, I think the news only got as far as a few Medical Journals.  The only reason I can think of for this is the fact that perhaps a lot of the press were afraid of alienating their audiences.

Can anyone else think of any fascinating news stories that the press completely failed to pick up on with any great enthusiasm?  Please try to avoid libellous stories about celebs, though, I didn't really start this thread with those in mind.

TJ

I still find it really, really, really puzzling and disturbing that most of the papers wouldn't touch the Sidney Cooke peadophile ring murders with a bargepole (ten years after the event protests by gangs of outraged mothers notwithstanding).

Farking hilarious according to the BES, though.

RFT

one would have thought that no newspaper with an eye on maintaining circulation is going to print a report suggesting certain towns are full of inbreds, with the subsequent outcry and boycotts that would probably follow.

Jemble Fred

Last night BBC1 showed the last episode of the best drama series since Dennis Potter died. But no-one seems to give a shit about high quality TV any more.

petercussing

I was suprised that the partial melting of the third largest ice cap on Earth (the Hymalayas[sp?]) for the first time in 10 000 years wasn't bigger news.

gazzyk1ns

Hehe you loved Casanova, didn't you Jemble? I downloaded it a couple of weeks ago, I thought it was OK. They should have done away with the "raunchy" billing and comedy sex though, it wasn't necessary. This is a bit off-topic, isn't it? I'm not starting a new thread, I've started too many which I shouldn't have bothered with recently.

I'm always surprised about the lack of TV coverage when there's an important space-related incident, like the Titan landing at the beginning of the year. Aside from The Sky At Night, I think there was just a single token-gesture of a programme with Adam Hart-Davis and the usual news item, you know, "We've launched something into SPACE, SPACE is the big black thing up there". I suppose the lack of easily digestible data was a bit of a hinderance.

terminallyrelaxed

Quote from: "Jemble Fred"Last night BBC1 showed the last episode of the best drama series since Dennis Potter died. But no-one seems to give a shit about high quality TV any more.

Well, if you don't even know what it was called it can't have been that good.


slim

Peak Oil, as seen in other threads.

The probable extinction of 50% of plants and animals within the next 50 or so years, briefly reported in the Guardian.

Anything that is the direct opposite of celebrity trivia and/or gossip really. I was shocked the other day, in the dentist's waiting room, whilst flicking idly through Heat type magazine. I thought that the exaggerations and stereotypes we snooty fucks attribute to it were just that; exaggerations. Nothing of the sort, it seems. These mags really do fulfil all my worst expectations. The fact that non-news is news is widely under-reported.

There are others, but my mind is a blank.

Santa's Boyfriend

The fact that this whole japanese school book riots in china is underpinned by something much more serious - a territorial dispute between China and Japan over who owns the suspected oil and gas reserves underneath the sea between the two of them.  China's sanctioning and encouragement of anti-Japanese feeling would seem to be laying the groundwork for a potential hostile takeover of the area, should one become necessary.  China, Japan and their ally the US need the oil so desperately that this could concievably kick off into something very serious indeed.  

BBC News last night just said "oh, and there's some kind of territorial dispute, too." and that was about it.

Dusty Gozongas

Quote from: "m...wW(wwMww)Ww...m"Was this big news?  Even if so, it wasn't big enough.

No anger anymore, is there?  Well now you know how THEY work.  Let that be a lesson.

you ain't seen me. roight?*


*or, as Rose said, "you got me very funny"

slim

Quote from: "Santa's Boyfriend"The fact that this whole japanese school book riots in china is underpinned by something much more serious - a territorial dispute between China and Japan over who owns the suspected oil and gas reserves underneath the sea between the two of them.
I was wondering about that. Has it been acknowledged anywhere then?

El Unicornio, mang


Borboski

900 a year die in MRSA related instances.

3000 a year die from car accidents!

30,000 a year die from obesity related conditions!

120,000 a year die from smoking related illnesses.

These, fucking, fucking, stupid tory twats.

Dusty Gozongas

Quote from: "Borboski"900 a year die in MRSA related instances.

3000 a year die from car accidents!

30,000 a year die from obesity related conditions!

120,000 a year die from smoking related illnesses.

These, fucking, fucking, stupid tory twats.

What doesn't kill you makes them stronger.

hands cold, liver warm

The chinese have been illegally drilling for oil in japan's water for some time.

Although the economic links between the two countries should prevent any conflict, the chinese owe a fortune to Japanese banks in loans and might use any trouble as a pretext to cancel their debts.

Dusty Gozongas

Hmmm. I notice that MDMA is still statistically as safe as houses, mind.

Dusty Gozongas

Quote from: "hands cold, liver warm"The chinese have been illegally drilling for oil in japan's water for some time.

Statistically speaking, some of that water is ours (even if Ghengis and Napoleon played some small part. Sod 'em.  They're only in books now).


levitica

Paula Radcliff dropping solids on the side of a road.

Beagle 2

Kind of related, I was reading Bill Bryson's "Down Under" recently and this caught my eye, although it was a long time ago I was shocked I'd  never heard of it.

(Very abridged):

Quote from: "Bill Bryson".....at 11:03 p.m. local time on the night of 28 May 1993 seismograph needles all over the Pacific region twitched and scribbled in response to a very large scale disturbance near a place called Banjawarn Station in the Great Victoria Desert on Western Australia. The problem was there was no obvious explanation. The Seismograph traces didn't fit the profile for an earthquake or a mining explosion, and the blast was 170 times more powerful than the most powerful mining explosion ever recorded. Scientists pondered over it for a day or two, then filed it away as an unexplained curiosity - the sort of thing that presumably happens from time to time.

Then in 1995 Aum Shinrikyo gained sudden notoriety when it released extravagant quantities of the nerve gas sarin into the Tokyo underground, killing twelve people. In the investigations that followed it emerged that Aum's holdings included a 500,000 acre desert property in Western Australia. There the authorities found a laboritory of unusual sophistication and focus, and evidence that members had been mining uranium. It emerged that Aum had recruited into it's ranks two nuclear engineers from the former Soviet Union. The groups avowed aim was the destruction of the world and it appears that the desert event may have been a dry run for the blowing up of Tokyo.

This is a country so vast and empty that a band of amatueur enthusiasts could conceivably set off the worlds first non-governmental nuclear bomb on its mainland and almost four years would pass before anybody noticed.

It does strike me as strange that this never gets mentioned, although you're probably going to tell me the whole thing's either really famous or been proved wrong now..

slim

Fuck me, that's pretty scary. Straight out of a James Bond movie... I'd be interested to know if it's true or not.

Santa's Boyfriend

Quote from: "hands cold, liver warm"The chinese have been illegally drilling for oil in japan's water for some time.

Although the economic links between the two countries should prevent any conflict, the chinese owe a fortune to Japanese banks in loans and might use any trouble as a pretext to cancel their debts.

Blimey, I didn't know that.  I do wish the whole oil politics was in the news a bit more.  The problem is that China wants the same kind of cheap private transportation abundance that the US has, and is quickly becoming the US' main rival in oil consumption.  The problem is that there simply isn't enough oil for the both of them, never mind the rest of the world.

danielreal2k

(Very abridged):

Quote from: "Bill Bryson".....WA much goings on..

Yes I also read that, Western Australia was also subject to a series of British atomic bomb tests during the war, which at the time,  being the jolly old fellows that they were thought it was safe , but many years later that area is still very hazardous with many cancer reports, come to thnk of it when i visited WA 3 years ago they did all look a bit toxic accident looking in features.

Something that is never in the news, is Crohns Disease which I believe is the result of Western farming methods, (cattle, BSE, milk production, chemicals used on crops) there is currently no cure for it and no explanation why, yeh because if it ever that modern food production methods are poisoning us it would cause a claim so big it would cripple Governments.

Crohns Disease is increasing by 1000's each year, 1 million people suffer from it in America , many thousands here, and in Australia

There are no known, or not many known cases in Asia or Africa.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

There was a story last year about how people wrongly put  in prison as a result of a miscarriage of justice had to pay back the government for the bed and board they received at her majesty's pleasure. Blunkett's doing, I think. But I was amazed at the lack of outrage over that.

And I'm staggered that people don't seem all that bothered about Skull and Bones. Especially during the American election, where it was revealed that both Bush and Kerry were members.

Bollock Chops

QuoteThe U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source -- antimatter, the eerie "mirror" of ordinary matter -- in future weapons.
-----------
It almost defies belief, the amount of explosive force available in a speck of antimatter -- even a speck that is too small to see. For example: One millionth of a gram of positrons contain as much energy as 37.8 kilograms (83 pounds) of TNT, according to Edwards' March speech. A simple calculation, then, shows that about 50-millionths of a gram could generate a blast equal to the explosion (roughly 4,000 pounds of TNT, according to the FBI) at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/10/04/MNGM393GPK1.DTL

I thought Crohn's disease is increasingly being attributed to
Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis, a bacterium present in human food chains.

Crohn's disease also appears to vary widely within populations here

I suppose eating shit doesn't do you any good, but who have you got to blame but yourself for that. Crohn's is also linked with anorexia.

QuoteThere are no known, or not many known cases in Asia or Africa.
not true. Lower prevalence rates, but it is there.
here
and here

Could be due to genetic or environmental effects, but probably in the last analysis both.

Fucknose

My brother's got crohns disease, in fact he's in hospital today having a camera shoved up his ass. He's definitely never eaten his own shit though. (Not That Im aware of anyway) The only explanation he's ever been offered is that it's something to do with drinking milk. Or maybe all the antibiotics he took for his skin as a teenager. At  least the dotors weren't vague.

23 Daves

Quote from: "RFT"one would have thought that no newspaper with an eye on maintaining circulation is going to print a report suggesting certain towns are full of inbreds, with the subsequent outcry and boycotts that would probably follow.

Well, there is that, but where certain rags are concerned it probably presents an argument for more immigration as well.  It would seem the British are rather more in-bred than we'd like to believe.

MonkeyDrummer

I was told of a family last night where an Uncle and Neice are an item. They have had 7 children, all of them disabled in some way, and they are trying for more.

The Uncle has apparently already done time for his actions but obviously this just made them stronger.