Paper Monitor
10:01 UK time, Wednesday, 4 October 2006
The massacre in the Amish community in the United States continues to fascinate the papers – with the Daily Mail giving its front page to the background of the assailant, Charles Roberts.
But the real appeal of this story is to give everyone a chance to publish photographs of the other-worldly Amish and their Little House on the Prairie-style homesteads. On the front page of the Daily Telegraph, four sombrely dressed Amish girls stride across a field – and inside there are two more atmospheric pictures of beards and buggies – plus a big picture of Harrison Ford in the movie, Witness.
On the subject of other-worldliness, the Telegraph also makes the most of Boris Johnson’s apparent culture clash with Jamie Oliver. Both the faces of Boris and Jamie appear below the masthead – with the pairing presumably representing a complete male dream team for the Telegraph.
The Times has a small picture of an Amish man on its front cover, but the big picture is given to a dramatic image of a lion attack an elephant, taken by a 91ȱ wildlife team.
Meanwhile the Sun has the breathless news that Prince William has visited a bingo hall – presumably calling out “House of Windsor” when he wins.
But there’s an even odder piece written for the Sun by Google chief Dr Eric Schmidt.
“Most Sun readers know about gigabytes and megabytes,” writes Dr Eric. “But it’s estimated that in the year 2002 we created five exabytes (that’s a byte followed by 18 noughts) of information. To translate that into television hours, absorbing five exabytes of data would mean sitting in front of a screen for 40,700 years.”
Right, could you just run that by me again… We’re absorbing exabytes from 2002 through the television screen right up until the year 40706. How is this information converted into televisions? What happened after 2002?
The man from Google has the answer: “So remember, it’s a great time to be alive.” Thank you, doctor.
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