Dean Barlow » News

Watch what you eat

Dean — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:55:48 +0000

Some people are just so stupid it is hard to believe. I was going through old newspapers and noticed a headline about people getting sick from eating a homemade stew. The story was that an ambulance had been dispatched to a residence because “a person was sick.” When the ambulance arrived at the house, there were a LOT of people sick, and they were all transported to the hospital. I don’t know how many ambulances actually were used, I just know that they all ended up at the hospital. They were calling it a “mystery illness.” Well, it turned out that the people took ill because they had all eaten a stew that was made with some herbs picked from in front of the house that had been sprayed with some kind of pesticide and was not properly washed before used in the food. I can’t believe that people are so stupid as to use pesticide on their crops and then not wash it off! To give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they didn’t KNOW that pesticide had been used, but still for goodness sake you should wash your food before eating it, a dog could have passed by and peed on it!

The baby is back

Dean — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:23:45 +0000

I saw on the news that the statue of the baby Jesus that was stolen a few days ago has been found and recovered. Apparently the thief had posted on Facebook that she had it, and posted pictures of it on Facebook! Someone on her “friend” list notified the police and the police recovered it. Just exactly why the thief thought it would be a good idea to post of Facebook that they had the stolen statue is something I’ll never know. How dumb can a person be?

Two Suns

Dean — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 15:25:30 +0000

Yesterday I read some exciting news about the discovery of a planet in the Milky Way galaxy that actually orbits two suns. Just like the planets described in science fiction books and movies, such as “Star Trek,” this planet has two suns that are visible from the planet’s surface every day. However, they believe this planet is so cold and hostile that it cannot support life as we know it.

The scientists who made this discovery gave the planet the name, Tatooine after the fictional planet in the “Star Wars” films that boasts a double sunset. I hope to read more about this exciting discovery – I can only imagine what it would be like to have two suns.

Urban legend

Dean — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 23:03:24 +0000

I have loved Disney World ever since it opened. I was young teenager when it first opened. If I recall correctly my parents took the entire family down to Florida for Christmas vacation first year that it did open. That was my first experience with a large theme amusement park and I thought it was absolutely fantastic.

For that particular vacation I think my parents made a mistake by taking us to Disney World first because they also took us to other places such as Sea World, Cypress Gardens, and Busch Gardens during the same vacation.

I don’t know how it ever became an urban legend that Walt Disney’s body had been frozen using cryogenic equipment and was being stored on one of the Disney properties, but it was something I truly believed was correct! I was quite surprised and to be perfectly honest, but this appointment when I learned earlier today that story was simply an urban legend. Walt Disney was in fact cremated and the first known case of anyone being cryogenically preserved was a couple of months after Walt Disney’s remains were cremated.

To be perfectly honest I was rather disappointed when I learned that was an urban legend. I rather thought it was a romantic notion that the night in some future decade been brought back to life somehow!

Inspiring

Dean — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 14:19:41 +0000

Just when you start to lose your faith in humanity, something happens to make you think that maybe people aren’t so bad after all. For instance, this video that I found (thanks to yahoo.com’s home page) shows a lovely eight year old girl singing the National Anthem at a hockey game when the microwave stops working. Instead of a meltdown and major fiasco, the hockey crowd starts to finish the song with her. That really is inspiring. Here’s the video, have you already seen it?

When music is added to the news

Dean — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 04:16:11 +0000

I had never heard of autotune until my son showed me this video – a musical remix of a news story about a bed intruder. First he showed me the original interview of the victim and her brother, and then this musical remix. Whoever set this to music sure has a talent! The tune is catchy, too!

Gold is slipping

Dean — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 02:12:53 +0000

I heard on the news this morning that the price of gold was starting to fall. That is an indication that the economy is starting to recover! People invest in gold when they are afraid to get involved in Stock Trading. The financial news reporter was explaining that recent business reports indicated that there was an increase in new employment in December, so the consumers have more money to spend. That in turn is good for the optimism required for people to get back onto their Online Broker accounts and start ordering more “buy” orders and fewer “sell order” on their Online Trading sites.

I was a little bit confused by this news because it seems to me that I learned in my business courses that stocks go up when companies lay off workers. That seems to be a contradiction to what is happening now. Well, either way I like to diversify my investments!

Ski lift failure

Dean — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 01:37:54 +0000

I was astonished to hear on the news that there was a ski lift failure at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine earlier today. I have skied Sugarloaf Mountain many times (it is my all time favorite mountain to ski) and it is very disturbing to hear that the lift cable slipped off of the wheels! I’ve heard that several people were injured. I hope that none of them are seriously injured. And I hope that they can all return to enjoying skiing – it is such a fun sport! What a scary thing to happen!

Crazy Weather

Dean — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 20:42:08 +0000

We just missed the horrible snow storm that hit most of the east coast. We did get a bit of snow and the winds were crazy but for the most part we got off way easy this time around. But who would have thought that today it would be sunny and in the low 50′s. Crazy weather indeed.

Sensationalism

Dean — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 00:04:55 +0000

One thing that I’ve noticed in the media is the tendency to resort to sensationalism. Extreme headlines are created to catch the attention of the reader, or teasers are previewed on television to tantalize the viewers to stay in front of the television to watch the story. More often than not, the actual story is very anticlimatic. For example, the local newspaper has a headline that reads a local man suffers burns from a fire at a gas pump.

That leads the reader to think that the gas pump had something to do with the fire, but when you read the story the truth is that the man was sitting in his truck several hours after the place had closed for the night. The surveillance videotape shows light flickering inside the truck and then the man getting out of his truck with his clothes on fire. I think that the headline should have read that a man accidentally set himself on fire from smoking some kind of drug while parking in the parking lot of a closed convenience store (that just happened to have gas pumps in the parking lot.) I mean that’s pretty obvious what really happened here!