Sunday, October 26, 2008

We have heard it before

Two headlines that I have read or heard of before in almost the same way:

1. Dog saves family from fire
2. Financial expert (or anyone else) compares bank managers (or anyone else) with Jews (other minorities; Hitler, other dictators)

The first one was what I saw on the news. Actually, what was presented as yet another heroic story of a dog barking a family awake that was almost getting too warm in the fire at night turned out to be quite lame. The family had two dogs. One dog ran out of the house with the family that woke up by themselves (probably because of something that went like "honey, isn't it totally warm in here?") while the other dog refused to leave the house because some little kitten were still in there and the dog didn't want to leave them alone. All were rescued in the end. But I don't see what's so heroic about them. Sure, it's unusual, but it's still natural because also a mother would rather die with her baby in the flames than save herself for her husband, even if the situation is hopeless.

Well, I have nothing against the dog's fame, it's just that this story isn't new. The better version of the story is that the dog wakes up the family (and just let me ask you, why is it that family always need a dog to save them? Are they too drunk to wake up? Okay, I know, the smoke). It is this specific story that has taken place in several countries, and the news never fail to let us know about each of them.

The second story... ugh... don't get me started. It's always the same, especially in my country with its history. There are things you just CAN'T say. The most dangerous thing to say in front of a CAMERA is to say:"Haven't we had that before, about 60 years ago?". That's a reference to our Nazi time and usually means that someone shows the same behaviour as Hitler. Most famously, someone once compared George W. Bush and Hitler that way. Even though you might agree with this, the person who said this had to give up her position in our government.
It goes like this all the time, and I wonder how people can become politicians, financial experts or other types of "never have to work again after this" and still make the same stupid mistakes. You might as well erase "Jews" or "Hitler" from your vocabulary because as soon as you make comparisons, someone feels terribly pissed. It also goes internationally, someone makes a stupid drawing of a religious leader, and suddenly all the followers go crazy, even if they usually only look down ashamed and don't say a word when someone blows himself up on their behalf.

What do we learn: Just don't do it. No... don't. No... not even for fun. Just don't do it.

I could now compare the dog to Hitler, because they have things in common, or I could compare Hitler to Franklin D. Roosevelt, saying they have in common the exact same years of being in power and the same year of death, but that is the kind of stuff that doesn't come across the right way in public. See, you have to be careful.

I want to rant about some other things. Why do some things only get worse when they were so good? For example, the search function to youtube. When it was still the old way, you could type exactly what you were looking for, and whatever keywords in whichever order you used, you only got what you were looking for. Now they show everything, even things that are unrelated. If I look for some band starting with "the", I get all the thes. Uh... yeah.
On wikipedia, one of my favourite sites, it is the opposite. It is bad and stays bad. You misspell a name, you try right again because it gives you no correction clue. So if you don't know how to spell a name, and you misspell it without knowing better, it never helps you out, it's like you searched for something that exists by no means. What if I can't spell a name but I know how the name sounds? Can't there be some "did you mean this..." as in youtube?

Another thing got worse at t-online and it has to do with opening different windows. The old way it went like this: I see a headline, I right click on it and open a new window or tab. If I find another interesting thing I want to read, I directly click on it because I still have the first window (the one that I have been looking at from the beginning). So I had two windows with different articles. But now, when I left click the second article, it changes the OTHER window and skips the article I actually wanted to read first. So that one gets lost and I have to click "back" on that window, and I have to open yet another window for another article. Why? Why do you have to change what was good?
And just now I found another flaw. My cursor was strangely disappearing, kind of flashing. I thought it was a virus. But it's only one of these flash games (hence the name "flash", I guess) that pop up at the side of a page. Irritating and annoying.

I wonder what else I can talk about. But I think there will be more in the next days and weeks, because I have a new job and it deals with a lot of bureaucracy... I can tell you, working for a business that's run by the state means pure bureaucracy. Oh how I hate that stuff. I hope my tasks are at least okay.

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