A bone of contention

When a newspaper runs a correction, this is either a "sin" committed by the newsmaker and requires clarification on his or her behalf or is a lapse by the newspaper itself. Nobody is perfect and a consistent zero-defect record is all but impossible.

But there are bloopers (some can be hilarious) that should have been spotted by the checkers. From time to time, I'll point these out, my catchment being both The Straits Times and Today. ST, unfortunately for it, takes the first hit with its "What it should have been" today (22 March). Within the newsroom, we refer to this short column as the WISHBone.

Here is what it had to apologise for today: "In Saturday's report, 'Quality of air, water and food in S'pore all safe', we said Singapore's higher level of radiation was due to its proximity to the equator. This is wrong. The level of radiation varies from country to country depending on cosmic rays and the underlying rock structure."

Indeed! If natural background radiation is highest near the equator per se, all the sunbathers soaking in the sun will not only get their desired perfect sun tan but will also be highly radioactive. The confusion here is to equate intense direct sunlight and its associated harmful UV rays with other cosmic rays including those that are radioactive.

So, sunbathers in "equatorial" resorts including our sunny Sentosa beaches, go ahead and soak in the sun -- in moderation of course, and with plenty of sunscreen slapped on!

Here's some equatorial trivia to wrap this posting up.

The African country known as Equitorial Guinea is not on the Equator, But the countries listed below do have territories within the Equator:

Sao Tome and Principe
Gabon
Republic of the Congo
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Uganda
Kenya
Somalia
Indonesia
Equador (aha, this one got its name right!)
Columbia
Brazil

(Source: Wikipedia).