The Shameless Gee-Whiz-Wow Nature of Modern News

I’m watching CNN’s coverage of the US presidential election, and I had to laugh at what they came up with: WILL.I.AM being broadcast as…a hologram. A hologram? Puuuuhlease. A hologram is a projection of light. What CNN did, as near as I can tell based on Anderson Cooper looking at a monitor to figure out where should look, is just a green screen trick where they projected WILL.I.AM like a weather map. It’s a nice trick, sure, but don’t insult science by using a term that’s completely inaccurate.

Oh yeah, and Obama is the next president according to CNN – and by a huge electoral margin. I tend to skew pretty strongly towards right-wing, conservative political thought, but after the past eight years of watching “W” doing his thing, let’s just say I was rooting for Obama. This is a historic day in a lot of ways, and I think Obama is going to do some good things in this world.

And being the pragmatist that I am, I’m going to compare the current USD to CAD exchange rate of 1.13 to whatever it is tomorrow morning. 😉

10 thoughts on “The Shameless Gee-Whiz-Wow Nature of Modern News”

  1. I agree with you. “W” really mucked things up in these past 8 years.

    For the record:

    Live rates at 2008.11.05 14:26:42 UTC
    1.00 USD = 1.15418 CAD
    1 USD = 1.15418 CAD 1 CAD = 0.866415 USD

    That’s at 7:28AM Mountain Time.

  2. Jason,

    Where do you get your currency quotes from? I use xe.com… I still see it sitting at:

    Live rates at 2008.11.05 15:18:42 UTC
    1.00 USD = 1.14918 CAD

  3. George Dubya was no less a felon in my eyes… he just hasn’t been convicted (yet?) of anything.

    I’d like to say that I’m shocked they voted the guy in again, but I’m not. Keep in mind that the people of Alaska have been getting profit-sharing cheques from the government for decades due to this guy. They are probably willing to overlook receiving a few handouts since they’ve all been doing it for years… granted, they were receiving their payments legally. Bah… Semantics!

  4. T-Will,
    Thanks for the link, that is a bit more involved that I thought! It’s still not a hologram though. 😉 I was impressed by some of the computer-generated things they’ve created though, like the virtual congress building (I think that’s what it was called).

Leave a Reply