Making the Awful Worse

I cannot imagine how the families of those West Virginia miners must feel - it was bad enough that the incident occurred and they were waiting around for 40+ hours, psyching themselves up for the news that their relative/friend was gone. To get word that the miners were alive against all hope, believe that for three hours, and *then* get news that they were gone must have made it infinitely more heartwrenching. Even worse, the president and CEO of the mine says he knew within 20 minutes that the information was incorrect but they held off on telling the families because they wanted to be able to give them more concrete information about the exact number of deaths. The mining company is saying that "through stray cellphone conversations it appears that this miscommunication from the rescue team underground to the command centre was picked up by various people." I know that it's easy to react in hindsight but to me, if you see families celebrating and you know the information is wrong, you let them know as soon as possible that what they overheard was incorrect and you will get them the correct information as soon as you have it.

[For those of you wondering at the time of this post, I'm up at 4 a.m. for a staff meeting *sigh*]

Making the Awful Worse

I cannot imagine how the families of those West Virginia miners must feel - it was bad enough that the incident occurred and they were waiting around for 40+ hours, psyching themselves up for the news that their relative/friend was gone. To get word that the miners were alive against all hope, believe that for three hours, and *then* get news that they were gone must have made it infinitely more heartwrenching. Even worse, the president and CEO of the mine says he knew within 20 minutes that the information was incorrect but they held off on telling the families because they wanted to be able to give them more concrete information about the exact number of deaths. The mining company is saying that "through stray cellphone conversations it appears that this miscommunication from the rescue team underground to the command centre was picked up by various people." I know that it's easy to react in hindsight but to me, if you see families celebrating and you know the information is wrong, you let them know as soon as possible that what they overheard was incorrect and you will get them the correct information as soon as you have it.

[For those of you wondering at the time of this post, I'm up at 4 a.m. for a staff meeting *sigh*]

Bowling

Wow! Just finished watching the Rose Bowl, the cap to what has been one of the more interesting college football bowl seasons. ( Cut out of mercy for those totally uninterested in college football )

I was very lucky this year that most of the bowl games were shown on ABC/ESPN and many of them were picked up by the local ESPN feed (even my alma mater game, not a marquee one, which was shown at 3 a.m.). I doubt I'll be so lucky with regular-season games next year here so at some point I'll be checking out Internet feeds. Meanwhile, I'm glad to have seen the quality end to this season.

Bowling

Wow! Just finished watching the Rose Bowl, the cap to what has been one of the more interesting college football bowl seasons. ( Cut out of mercy for those totally uninterested in college football )

I was very lucky this year that most of the bowl games were shown on ABC/ESPN and many of them were picked up by the local ESPN feed (even my alma mater game, not a marquee one, which was shown at 3 a.m.). I doubt I'll be so lucky with regular-season games next year here so at some point I'll be checking out Internet feeds. Meanwhile, I'm glad to have seen the quality end to this season.