Let’s face it: if you are not emotionally, physically or financially involved with the earthquake in Japan, chances are pretty good that you find the videos of the tsunamis… well, “entertaining.” I admit that I certainly do. The scenes of massive devastation are, to be blunt, quite fascinating. And there are a lot of these videos available. Such as This One, which shows a flaming tsunami (!!!) sweeping over farmland and chasing down cars.
But I have a problem. Here’s a screenshot:
If you notice in the lower left corner you can see a road. Perpendicular across the road is a white vehicle in the process of trying to turn itself around to run the hell away from the Wave Of Grinding Flaming Death that is bearing down on it.
But at least in this video, you don’t get to see what happens. Why? Because all the friggen’ banners on the bottom cover that area of the image.
The screenshot is 640 pixels by 360 pixels, for a total of 230,400 pixels. The collection of banners and newscrawls and whatnot at the bottom is 640X106 pixels, for a total of 67,840 pixels. The “Reuters” at the top covers 84X34 pixels, for a total of 2,856 pixels. The total crap-coverage is 70,696 pixels, or a full 30.68% of the screen image.
GRRRRRR…
4 Responses to “Grrr. Stooopid TV media…”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
You keep watching as you hope to see what happens. That means you are exposed to more commercials. They win.
Raw footage without banners.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydnv2xo9Ndw&feature=player_embedded
The video footage really is something, particularly when you grasp the scale of what’s being shown, and that the little things being shown are buildings.
They are doing the already well-known Japanese tradition in anything related to a malfunction at their nuclear plants, in that the story keeps getting a little worse as time goes on, and you know full-well you still aren’t getting the full truth about what’s going on.
First it was one reactor and the pressure spike was 1.5 times what it was built to withstand.
Then it was one reactor, and the pressure spike was 2.1 times what it was built to withstand.
Then it was two reactors, and did we mention that radiation level 1,000 times normal?
Now, it’s been announced that three reactors at the Fukushima II plant, seven miles from the first one, have lost cooling:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/12/second_nuke_plant_emergency/
(there are a total of eight reactors at the Fukushima I installation, and four at Kukushima II.)
And today there was a second 6.6 quake on a different fault line in central Japan.
I’m waiting for the first mention of “partial meltdown”, and that something monstrous and reptilian was sighted at sea near the epicenter of the first quake, apparently swimming towards Tokyo…as volcanic activity is reported at Mt. Fuji and something resembling a immense pterodactyl is seen circling its summit.
And they’re called “lower thirds” in the TV biz for a reason. Sadly, the TV peeps think they’re kewl. ‘Cos who wants to see boring old Real Stuff? Ew.
Sigh.