Headlines that make you shudder

When I was growing up in Toronto, we sometimes had the TV tuned to Buffalo’s Channel 7 (they were/still are the ABC affiliate there) and one of their “public service” type announcements that ran regularly between the end of prime-time and late-night programming was Irv Weinstein intoning “It’s 11 PM… Do you know where your children are?”.

With this latest headline on the BBC News website, you could paraphrase ol’ Irv by saying “It’s 11 PM on the Doomsday clock… Do you know where your warheads are?“.

Sigh…

Headlines that make you smile and/or have a cow

The BBC News website reports that ” EU farmers to produce more milk“.  Now, I had always been under the impression that it was cows producing the milk, but I guess things have changed a bit in agribiz…

Truth In Advertising For A Change

I’m sure there are plenty of you reading this that cringe at the thought of answering marketing surveys, giving businesses information about yourself that will let them sell more stuff to you, or at least to people who are like you.

I’m a bit ambivalent about it all, as I’m disinclined to help out most companies that are trying to market to me — I’m the kind of consumer who bases their purchases on sober reflection after thorough research, most of the time. Actively trying to convince me that I need to buy some company’s product that I wouldn’t otherwise even be thinking about buying just gets up my nose most of the time — there are exceptions, when occasionally I learn about a product that I haven’t been aware of that suits some need.

But I still do often fill out the surveys that you’re invited to participate in via a URL printed on the receipt from a store, or that get sent via e-mail after having responded to one of the former — and no, I’m not daft enough to respond to just any old survey invitation that arrives in my Inbox…

It’s the carrot of being entered in a draw that motivates me to respond. That and a slightly perverse sense of satisfaction in knowing that by answering honestly, I’m going to really mess up their demographics… you may have noticed my avatar here is a drawing I made of a square peg in a round hole. ‘Nuff said.

And I actually have won something (a fairly decent prize too, certainly worth the time it took) from filling in one of these surveys — could’ve knocked me over with a feather when it happened.

Anyway, the point of this post is actually a new survey invitation I received in my e-mail, from a company that I’ve responded to before. And usually there will be some statement about how long the survey should take to complete — generally a wildly optimistic i.e. short time, as in “this survey will take approximately 5-8 minutes to complete”.

Riiiight. And monkeys might fly out my butt… Usually about 15-20 minutes in and after 30 to 40 web pages of clicks with seemingly no end in sight, I’m alternately cursing myself (for having been sucked in) and the survey company (for having lied to me about how long it would take).

So when this latest invitation arrived, I nearly fell down ROTFLMAO — at last, a truthful survey invitation! Here’s what it said:

Thank you for taking the time to answer a Leger Marketing survey regarding Healthcare. Your cooperation would be greatly appreciated. This questionnaire should take you about 2400 minutes to fill out.

That’s my emphasis there… Diogenes, I think I’ve found your honest man.

Headlines from someone’s fantasy land

So the BBC News website reports that “Bush insists US not in recession“.  This from the same lips that assured the world Iraq had WMDs out the wazoo to justify unilateral military action.