Beware spellchecker and sloppy newspapers

It seems that newspapers are getting increasingly sloppy these days with their proofreading, if they even do it at all. It's bad enough that they get smaller and slimmer by the year, slashing reporters, merging sections and relying on wire services to pick up the slack, but now it seems that they are also relying on computer spellcheckers, which often don't work as they should. Yesterday, I was reading Martin Schram's column in our local newspaper and it started out, "It has been almost four decades since Spire Agent warned us to beware of "nattering nabobs of negativism" (an oratorical gem that proved to be a genuine Safire). Yet we are just wising up to the greater peril we face now that the nabobs are aiming their nonstop natter at us via 24/7 cable news and an unfiltered world-wide web." Spire Agent? Was this a case of a spellchecker not reading the name "Spiro Agnew" correctly and automatically changing it to what it thought it should be? Later in the article, it said, "Faster than you can shout "Incoming!" we were assaulted by a barrage of babble. Some from the far right, others from just the plain right -- and they seemed intent upon painting the ideas as some sort of fanciful notions of a liberal president who was, well, nave." Nave? Isn't that the main aisle down the center of a church? Could it be that it misread the word "naïve" because the letter "i" has the diaeresis (the two small dots) over it? Honestly, while I admire technology, it can sometimes have disastrous results. Anyone using a word processing program knows that you have to very carefully check its desire to correct the spellings of words it doesn't understand, and you can add words to its dictionary that you regularly use that it might try otherwise to correct. And then this morning, reading the Akron Beacon Journal's Op-Ed page (a regular favorite in any newspaper that I read), a headline read, Beware, Senators, of Absuing the Filibuster. Um, excuse me? Didn't anybody check the misspelling of "abusing"? Where are the proofreaders among the newspaper staffs? Or did they get laid off when the papers slashed personnel? Maybe most people don't notice these little things, but they become major annoyances to me. It's bad enough that newspapers have become a shadow of their former selves and that they often get rid of their best writers, but to see these constant misspellings - and another annoyance, stories cut off before they end due to someone's carelessness - really makes me wonder what's going on and whether newspapers will survive our increasingly electronic 21st century.

PIRACY ON THE HIGH SEAS

I'm puzzled as to how a bunch of guys in a little boat like the one in the picture from an incredibly poor nation can hijack an ocean liner many times bigger than it with far more personnel aboard. It seems that every time I listen to the news or read the papers, another freighter is being taken by Somali pirates on the high seas, and it seems incredulous that a few guys in a tiny boat can do this. Either they're heavily armed and the large ships aren't, or they're just incredibly bold - or something. I just can't see trying to go up against an ocean bound freighter when you're in the kind of boat you normally see on local lakes in the summer time. I'm beginning to think that what needs to be done about this is to make sure that every single ocean bound ship or freighter is accompanied by a Navy destroyer to escort it safely to its destination. I mean, no one in a boat this size in the picture would dare to try to go up against a naval ship bristling with heavy armament. I don't think that a stable government will be possible anytime soon in Somalia because so many of those African nations are ruled by corrupt leaders who concentrate the country's wealth among a few people and leave everyone else to starve and fight over scarce resources. It seems that most people in Somalia make their living as pirates because that seems to be the only source of money making in that country. And that people willingly pay the ransoms they demand makes it even more possible for their acts of piracy to continue unabated. I'm wondering if the US will pay a massive ransom to them to free the captain of the hijacked Maersk Alabama, the latest ship to fall victim to Somali pirates on the high seas. What galls me is that they've been able to call back to shore for reinforcements and they're speeding to the scene to assist their fellow pirates in this hostage situation and to assure that the US won't attack them, further complicating the situation. About the only thing I can think of to solve it is to ring the areas plied by the pirates with a fleet of Navy destroyers that can escort ships through the areas most heavily traveled by pirates to assure that they can safely reach their destinations without being hijacked. I assure you that the pirates would think twice about venturing further out to sea in their tiny boats to continue their acts of piracy, because obviously such tiny vessels would never survive the high seas far from the safety of shore. These are not ocean going vessels - they appear to be nothing more than little pleasure boats that aren't built to be able to handle the conditions far out to sea. They'd need to stockpile plenty of food and water to venture far out to sea and the first big storm to come along, the boats would capsize and they'd surely die so far from the safety of shore. These are most certainly not the pirates of lore in large and well stocked ships, after all. Send in the Navies of large countries to patrol pirate filled waters and these guys would certainly think twice before trying to go up against a military vessel. That may be just the thing that's needed right now until Somalia can become a more stable and prosperous country, if that's even possible at all.