The State of Education in the Millennium

Headline: 17 bodies recovered near jet crash site

Link: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/06/07/20090607airfrance.html

This was so bad, and so short, that I'm actually posting the entire article.

RECIFE, Brazil - Brazilian military authorities say search boats scouring the Atlantic Ocean have now recovered 17 bodies of passengers on a doomed Air France flight that crashed a week ago.

Air Force Col. Henry Munhoz says four of the bodies were men and four were women. He did not immediately provide information about the gender of the other bodies. The flight was carrying 228 people when it crashed the night of May 31.

Munhoz also told reporters Sunday night that several structural parts of the Airbus 330 were recovered at the location from which Flight 447 sent a burst of messages saying it was having electrical problems and loss of cabin pressure.

Immediately, I have a problem with this article. Can you guess what it is? Why is it so important that we know the gender of those who died? Will this information better our lives? Will it enable us to determine what happened to the Flight 447? Will it lay to rest our fears for flying knowing that we could die at a moments notice? And finally, does it assist the friends and family members who have suffered a great loss at the hands of Air France's failure to provide the necessary maintenance to prevent this problem? Nope. Not at all.

It is superfluous information bordering on rhetorical!

It is sad that we live in the "Information Age" and all we can say is: "four of the bodies were men and four were women. He did not immediately provide information about the gender of the other bodies." We should be able to generate a long list of information from the moment a body is picked up. We have dental records, DNA, and a master list of the 228 people on-board. Surely they can tell us more that this.