Fedorpheux.com

You’ve seen it, and you’ve even noticed it too. And, if you have some obsessive compulsive tendencies (like myself), then it’s probably bugged you too. That damn cord that weathermen, or weatherwomen, or weatherpeople use. They have their precious little button so that just in case that robot dressed in Bob Barker’s carcass happens to come on the set, they can answer any question it asks and win a joyous cash prize.

What bothers me is the fact that they’ve been using the exact same buttons since about 1983. Since then, the weather-reporting world has been changed by enhanced GPS capabilities, advanced computer programs that can predict weather patterns far in the future, and computer graphics that can animate every single cute little sunshine graphic as well as display the pressure distributions across the world. But we’re still using the same damn button! We have technology that allows us to build tiny little robots that can do the cancan across the nail on your pinky finger, but every person reporting weather is still tethered to the magical weather machine by their little safety rope.

Seriously, they could choose infared, wireless 802.11 (a, b, or g), bluetooth, or any number of ways to get a signal from point at to point b without having to use a freaking cord. Price can’t be an issue, those things are cheaper than snot these days. And I’m not just talking about your piece of crap local news station, this shit happens on CNN too! They’ve made millions from spreading their newsworthy feces all over the world but they can’t afford a wireless button pressing mechanism?

Normally I wouldn’t care about this stuff at all, it’s just that I don’t want to see a rippling effect in that cord from Kansas City to Los Angelos when Mr. (or Mrs. (or Ms.)) WeatherDude (or Dudette) points out the showers in Chicago! Unless, of course, they are reporting the odd weather phenomenon known as the “Oh-shit-there-is-a-400-mile-long-50-foot-wide-black-cord-making-wave
-like-movements-across-the-majority-of-the-country” Tropical Depression.