So called

Just caught a piece on the late TEN news. About a bloke who "wrangles" sharks. WTF? It's a study about sharks and they "lasso" them and then they tire them out by fluffing around with them on the end of a rope, then they attach some radio transmitter thing to... do whatever the hell they want to do.

I'm sure that aggravating animals wouldn't be condoned by the powers that be who control the Ethics Committee... and I know how some of them work, too. The rules, etc.

Anyway, the news announcer talking head was rabbitting on about the sharks and the danger, and she called them "so-called killers of the sea" or some such. Do these idiots realise that the "so-called" before naming something really means that the something isn't widely known or referred to as whatever the name/term is they're using? It drives me nuts. Right now I can't remember an example, but there are so many grating references to "so-called" whatevers, and it's a widely known and used scientific name or terminology.

Oh, now, Mt Everest is melting at an alarming rate, proof of Glowball Warming - someone needs to wake these wankers up! Oh, we're doomed. The ice at the top of the world is melting. The Himalayas are melting... arrgh! They found what was obviously an stream of water, frozen solid, and this was proof that the ice was melting. HELLO? Glaciers don't last forever, they do melt... the underneath of a glacier is moving, dragging all under it down the mountain... they should remember the hanging valleys caused by glaciers. And now some knob is saying that the melt is causing the crevasses which are opening up on the glacier... HELLO? Crevasses open up on glaciers everywhere because the glacier IS MOVING.

Bloody hell. I'll have to dig up the comment by Wand about how the ice melts at the poles and in cold, mountainous climes - it happens all the time. The sun comes out, it's hot, it melts the ice, then the sun goes down, the water freezes again, until the sun comes out again... ARRRGH!