Ever-inane Good Morning America profiled Airship Ventures, an “airship tour company” which claims to be the first to fly a Zeppelin in the U.S. for commercial purposes since the Hindenberg crashed in 1937.
Called The Eureka, the dirigible is shown flying above the San Francisco Bay Area, and Good Morning America includes ariel views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz.
Reporter Lisa Fletcher does a masterful job of shilling for the company, describing the trip as “an experience unlike any other.”
She also manages to strike a blow for woman-kind by introducing “the world’s only female Zeppelin pilot,” but then fails to disclose her name.
Fletcher manages to let Airship Ventures founder Brian Hall spout off on the significance of his venture: ”You can think of them as the ocean liners of the sky,” and “This is what travel was meant to be.”
Letting Hall comment on the viability of his company is akin to letting a restauranter review his eatery. Kind of hard to get an unbiased opinion. In fact, an hour-long excursion in a tour plane would have provided the same spectacular views as The Eureka, only with a great deal more range.
It also would have been nice to include some context, Good Morning America. What’s a ticket cost? How many passengers has Airship Ventures taken up? When did the company start?
The Hindenberg video was a nice touch to the story, however.
The Telegraph reported last week on studies that reported students who pursued humanity degrees saw little or no financial reward connected to the pursuit of a higher education and that students taking courses in areas such as media studies and sociology did significantly less work than that expected of medical undergrads.
While this shouldn’t be a revelation, the story included the following interesting tidbit:
“Researchers blamed an over-bureaucratic education system – coupled with more “teaching to the test” at schools – which meant many teenagers were too reliant on tutors, teachers, careers advisors and Government recommendations to get along.
“Removing individual involvement and decisions from the process has the danger of undermining the values of successful education – personal discipline, curiosity, independence of thought and hard work,” said the report.
“It has helped to create a something for nothing culture. One result is the growth of spoon-fed generation that wants to receive education passively and without effort. This generation prefers the X-Factor to A grades.”
That some students don’t want to work very hard shouldn’t surprise anyone. What’s discouraging is that many schools long ago made the decision to dumb down the curriculum to appease the slackers, rather than expecting students to step up their efforts at acquiring a decent education.
