much needed updates

Dissertational woes kept me away from my emerging interest in blogging - both micro and macro [made that sound appealing, didn't I?]. But now those 24,000 words are down the tube I'll attempt to give this blog a bit more lovin'. Jazz it up a bit. Add some photos [too adventurous?] Maybe stop being so serious.
Either way, I left you hanging way back when in March when I promised you some 'Meow' links and how dodgy some newspapers can be generally.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2747979/Lad-ripped-his-scrotum-off.html
Legal Drug Teen Ripped His Scrotum Off.Bollocks. [Excuse the pun]
Please enjoy this from New Scientist Magazine, a publication which is pretty much dedicated to cold hard scientific facts rather than gossip, passion and hearsay.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18712-miaowmiaow-on-trial-truth-or-trumpedup-charges.html:

"November 2009 The Sun newspaper in the UK published a story under the headline: "Legal drug teen ripped his scrotum off". Quoting a police report, the paper said an unnamed teenager high on mephedrone needed hospital treatment after he tried to "rip off his testicles". Acting Sergeant Michael Urwin, of Barnard Castle, County Durham, later pointed out that this headline-grabbing tale and other aspects of his report to senior officers had been cut-and-pasted from blogs and internet forums. "That particular information came from a section of the website www.mephedrone.com under the heading 'Experiences'," Urwin told New Scientist. The Press Association agency, which sends out its copy to most newspapers and TV channels, obtained the police report, wrote up the scrotum story but omitted a warning in this report that it had come from an internet site and so may or may not have been true, says Urwin. The owner of www.mephedrone.com told New Scientist that the story had been published online as a joke. It has been repeated as fact by dozens of news outlets around the world."

Oh my days. Emphasis on the recycled information theory in the post below.
On another note I'm afraid I couldn't find the actual article reporting on the Scunthorpe teenagers, but do have a follow-up from the Metro which says that there were no traces of the drug in their systems. Hmm...
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/828366-mephedrone-not-to-blame-for-deaths-of-scunthorpe-teenagers
Cudos to the Metro for reporting that a few days ago.

I am absolutely not advocating drug use or abuse.
The reason I am focussing on the meow issue is because it is a highly controversial topic and both sides argue their cause passionately. Both sides have good arguments to support their causes - my emphasis is on the fact that a newspaper's duty is to report facts over fictions purely because of the massive influence they hold upon the general population.
Some of them have a long way to go.