Occassionally I will be grabbing egregious errors in print or over the air — even overheard, but there usually are too many overheard — and ranting a bit about them here. Today’s entry comes courtesy of the flu pandemic. Actually, there are two entries. The first is trying to change the media from saying “swine flu” rather than “H1N1.” So not going to happen. Lots of poor pigs will suffer. . . .

Next comes to us from none other than Janet Napolitano herself. She was asked why the US doesn’t use thermal imaging devices at our borders or airports to identify people who are sick. She spoke correctly about people being contageous before symptoms appear, thereby rendering the thermal imaging devices less than perfect. She then went on to say that these devices don’t always register “people who have temperatures.”

Um, if we have a pulse, we have a temperature. Or, do we have a previously unreported problem of dead people crossing our borders? What she meant to say was
fever, I think.

Sigh.