I actually had something in mind to write about tonight, but I spent way too much time watching the local NY City television coverage of the explosion in mid-town New York, which spewed steam and debris dozens of stories into the air and scared many folks big time.

It appears from the very confusing television coverage that there may have been one fatality associated with the event, which appears to have been a ruptured steam line, the cause of which remains to be seen.

The thing is that the reporters have so much air time to fill, the viewer winds up with a fact to speculation ratio of about 20 to 1. One reporter “on the scene” stated, “Obviously the injuries are all related to the temperature of the steam,” when, at that point, the nature of the yet-to-be determined number of injuries was not at all clear, and the nature of the yet-to-be-determined number of injuries certainly was not “obvious.”

On one station the “anchor” asked the Con-Ed (Consolidated Edison, the company responsible for NYC’s steam lines) spokesperson, “Do you have any idea when this will be cleared up?”

The Con-Ed guy responded that the workers were still trying to get the matter under control and that there was no way to tell when things would be back to normal. At that point, the genius co-anchor asked, “What about tomorrow’s rush hour? Any idea how this will affect that?” DUH!!

Journalists? Hardly.

I figure I’ll write a bit of what I had intended to write about, save it, and then return to watch more of the local Speculo-News.