Unfortunate Juxtapositions

Posted August 11, 2009, 9:43 p.m.

WTOP, a Washington, DC, area all-news radio station, has a pretty good web site. It’s not the flashiest or fanciest news web site, and they occasionally have trouble with journalism fundamentals, but they’re usually pretty fast with local news and provide a good overview of relevant local stories (in addition to national and world news). Plus, the radio station can’t be beat (especially the ‘traffic and weather together on the eights’ filling you in on the these essentials every ten minutes).

One thing that I occasionally run into on the site though is that they have a featured photo section called ‘Picture This’ which appears on the right-hand side of almost any news story. This section usually features a humorous or random photo, but that photo is not related in any way to the story you’re reading. Usually this is harmless, but occasionally it results in unfortunate juxtapositions. Here are two I’ve run across recently that just didn’t seem right.

Update 8/12/2009: Just found a new one today! A story about a pit bull with an un-related (but somewhat inappropriate) photo.

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

If the goods and services available . . . are greater as a result of international trade, then Americans are wealthier, not poorer, regardless of whether there is a [trade] ‘deficit’ or a ‘surplus.’

We may have equality of opportunity, but if the only opportunity is to be equal, it is not opportunity.

I like to do my principal research in bars, where people are more likely to tell the truth or, at least, lie less convincingly than they do in briefings and books.

The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

Falsehood can hold out against much in this world, but not against art.

Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody.

We must be careful not to discourage our twelve-year-olds by making them waste the best years of their lives preparing for examinations.

There is no conflict between science and religion.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money.

Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

It’s always good to break ice that you’re not standing on.

Let Republicans be mindful of their heritage. It was moral conviction—and the courage to act on moral conviction—that gave birth to the Republican Party and made it grand. Now it is old but need not be any less grand.

However, it would be the height of irrationality to postulate innumerable universes just to explain the particular features of our universe, when we can do so by postulating just one additional entity: God.

There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.

The up-to-date science of one century soon becomes the primitivism of the next.

You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.

How is it possible for us to retain the advantages of simplification, without falling prey to the accompanying blindness? The answer is to be found in the constant dialogue between genuinely different types of people.

The ultimate victory over radical Islam will have to come from civilized Islam.

There is no bigotry in treating genuinely different things differently.