BS: What's wrong with this headline

Subject: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 04:13 PM

Headline from Breitbart.com:
'Chinese company develops 'UFO': report' June17

Seems to me if we know what it is, it ain't a UFO.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Wesley S
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 04:31 PM

Maybe in Chinese UFO stands for words that mean "banjo that stays in tune".

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Bee
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 04:31 PM

Maybe the Chinese company hasn't identified it yet. (They will call it 'George').

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 06:35 PM

"A Chinese company has developed a prototype flying saucer that can hover in the air and be controlled remotely from afar, state press said Tuesday.
The aircraft is 1.2 metres (four feet) in diameter and is able to take off and land vertically and hover at an altitude of up to 1,000 metres (yards), Xinhua news agency said.

The unmanned disc is driven by a propeller and can be controlled remotely or sent on a preset flight path, it said.

Its top speed is 80 kilometres (50 miles) per hour, it added.

It took the Harbin Smart Special Aerocraft Co Ltd 12 years and 28 million yuan (4.1 million dollars) to develop the prototype craft, which is designed for aerial photography, geological surveys and emergency lighting, the report said."

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Don Firth
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 06:44 PM

UFOs fly over my neighborhood all the time. We're on the flight path to the Seattle-Tacoma airport about fifteen miles south of here. Time was when I could tell one commercial jet from another, but they're starting to look an awful lot alike (laws of aerodynamics being what they are) especially when they fly over at maybe 1,000 feet. I definitely can't tell the difference between a Boeing 757 and a 767 (both twin-engine) at altitude. One evening just at dusk, I parked my car in the garage and was heading toward the front door when a large commercial jet flew over—at least, I assume it was a large commercial jet—with its landing lights on, and in the dusky sky, it looked for all the world like the Klingon cruiser that Kirk and the kiddies had commandeered and were flying around in "Star Trek: The Voyage Home."

One day I was parked in one of the Green Lake parking lots in north Seattle, eating my lunch, when I saw a couple of UFOs. That afternoon I described them to a co-worker who was a bit of an expert on that sort of thing and he told me they were Brewer's blackbirds. Near the same spot, standing on the raft on the swimming beach, I saw one of these, looking very much as in the photo. This is a characteristic pose. Cormorants are diving birds, and after harassing fish for awhile, they often stand still and dry their wings in the sun. Until then, I didn't know there were any around here.

However, I don't have any difficulty identifying the hyperdrive runabout of my friend, Lorixto Phnotlup, when he stops by on his way from Proxima Centauri 2 to Wolf 359 and back. He's particularly fond of waffles with lots of butter and maple syrup. Interesting guy. Great sense of humor and I enjoy his visits, but I really wish he wouldn't drool on the carpet like that.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 07:45 PM

It's got a propellor and is disk shaped?

We've had those in the toy stores for years!

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 08:39 PM

John made a valid point: If you have ever seen anything in the sky that seemed to be moving, and you didn't know what it was, you have seen a UFO, by definition.

If you later found out it was something perfectly ordinary, and you weren't at all surprised because you figured all along it was probably something perfectly ordinary, then it was still a UFO—until you identified it.

A lot of people don't understand this.

Dennis Kucinich was unfairly labeled a nut case by FOX News (and probably others) because he admitted having seen a UFO—when in fact he was merely using the term correctly while FOX News was understanding it wrongly.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Don Firth
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 10:41 PM

I ate a UFO in a restaurant once. It was an unidentified fried object.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 04:57 AM

I live surrounded by UFO's - Un Finished Objects like bears, embroideries, quilted item, knitting, bobbin lace ...

I used some of them to cover a bag containing my needles, threads, scissors, thimble & other stuff that I take to craft group each week!

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 10:07 AM

Don Firth, are you certain that photo is not of a starling? Blackbirds, my memory tells me, are a little rounder.

UFOs- they are all around us. :)

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Bee
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 02:41 PM

Ebbie, these are Starlings as most of us know them: European Starlings (unless you live where Splendid Starlings are native).

http://images.google.com/images?q=starling&rls=com.microsoft:*:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLR&um=1&sa=N

I resent Starlings, and have ever since I watched them methodically pushing baby Barn Swallows out of their mud-nests in my grandfather's old barn. They have been the quintessential invasive species, not being native here at all. One hardly ever sees a Barn Swallow now, and the skies used to be full of them, hundreds of them would sit on the power lines. There were dozens of nests in that old barn, wiped out in a few seasons by Starlings.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Slag
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 03:34 AM

<=^^=>
_!__!_

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 07:32 AM

To get back to the question of what's wrong with the headline, what's wrong with the headline is that some editor was pretentious.

As Amos shows, the Chinese company has developed a flying saucer. Somebody decided that 'flying saucer' is old-fashioned and naive and changed it to 'UFO.' Lost the meaning, but in the media, outward appearance is all...

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: GUEST,HughM
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 08:04 AM

Talking of strange headlines, I was surprised to see on the BBC's web site yesterday "sturgeon knew of C. diff. deaths". (C. difficile is something which infects many hospitals in Britain.) Maybe dolphins aren't so smart after all.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 06:59 PM

No, Ebbie, according to Frank, the local expert birder, after I described the birds I saw, he said that the yellow eye and the fact that when the light hit them a certain way, they looked like a dark iridescent blue-green, was a dead giveaway that they were Brewer's blackbirds. He said at the time that there were a whole bunch of them around Haller Lake, north of Seattle, and that lately they'd been showing up around Green Lake.

HEREs another one. I went to google, clicked on "Images" and put it "Brewer's blackbird," and came up with a whole flock of photos, all labelled "Brewer's blackbird." Dead ringers for the birds I saw.

One day I saw what I would have sworn was a bald eagle heading downtown. I asked Frank about it and he said that it was indeed a bald eagle. "There is a pair of them out at Discovery Park. Once in a while, when they get tired of eating fish, they head downtown for a change of diet."

"Downtown?" I asked. "What do they find down there?"

"Pigeons," he said. "Lots of pigeons."

Can you imagine sitting there on a bench eating your lunch in front of the First National Bank Building across from the new Seattle Public Library with pigeons bobbing around you and pecking at crumbs when a big bald eagle swoops in and joins you for lunch? Kinda awesome!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: GUEST,HughM
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 07:49 AM

Just remembered these from a few years ago:
"Tonight Nature Watch visits the Galapagos Islands, where no less than twenty endangered species are thriving."
"The Democratic Republic of Congo is about to hold elections for the first time in forty years."

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Grab
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 08:53 AM

Don, that reminds me of one of my dad's favourite stories from his time as environmental officer at a British Nuclear Fuels site. They got a call from the factory saying "we've got a couple of pigeons in here - what do we do about it?" As anyone who's worked in a large warehouse-type plant knows, birds often get in through the main doors and there's not much you can do about it. So my dad said to just leave them alone, keep food scraps out of their way, and they'd find their own way out soon enough when they got hungry. Anyway, a couple of weeks later he gets another call from the factory. "OK, we've got rid of the pigeons. Now how do we get rid of the sparrowhawk...?"

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 12:48 PM

HughM - It's a good thing my chair has side handles, else I'd have been rolling on the floor on reading those examples...esp. the DRC.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 03:03 PM

I've heard it said that the common city pigeon could very easily prove to be an inexpensive source of protein. When you figure that in places like St. Mark's Square in Venice, in Trafalgar Square in London, and in such places in many cities the world over, pigeons can become real pests ("Rats with wings!"), among other things, paving the area with poop, this might be worth considering. Problem, of course, is that they sometimes carry various diseases.

I've heard it claimed that, properly prepared common city pigeon compares favorable with Cornish game hen, and it's one helluva lot cheaper.

For some reason, some cities don't want people molesting the pigeons. I heard of someone who managed to get around that ordinance when going "shopping" for pigeons. They equipped themselves with a net, a cage, and a clip-board, and wore a lab smock. When they netted a pigeon and put it in the cage, they would make a note on the clip-board, then go after the next pigeon. Everyone assumed they were doing some kind of scientific research rather than merely filling the larder.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: kendall
Date: 21 Jun 08 - 05:29 PM

Prop driven and 50 mph? Needs work to ever make space flights.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jun 08 - 09:49 PM

If its Chinese, it's most likely a "knock off" of a real UFO,

Or, maybe just an "unidentified flied object", from the kitchen?

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: GUEST,Ed T
Date: 21 Jun 08 - 09:50 PM

Sorry, the last post was from me, forgot to add my name.
Do not wish to be seen as a potential UFO.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Mrrzy
Date: 28 May 21 - 09:43 AM

World’s Oldest International Teenage Anti-Fascist Dies at 101

I would have thought the oldest teenage *anything* would be 19.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Donuel
Date: 28 May 21 - 12:49 PM

toddler

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 May 21 - 04:10 PM

Don Firth

I assume your broken links of UFOs was a pun. Unless they are only visible to Proud Boys and MAGAtrash.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 May 21 - 06:08 PM

Don died several years ago. [sigh]

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 May 21 - 06:14 PM

"Sigh" indeed. A critical response to a thirteen-year-old post without checking the guy's posting history. I mean, who would do that...

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 May 21 - 06:18 PM

On June 19, 2008 Don's first link went Here (via the "Wayback Machine"). I couldn't reproduce the rest of his links and one of them my Malwarebytes blocked and insisted it wasn't a good place to hang out. I pay Malwarebytes to tell me that kind of thing so I have no idea what that link went to before bad actors got involved.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with this headline
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 May 21 - 07:55 PM

Don was a good old boy. I miss him.