The weather service has always tracked those depressions and CNN has always reported on them. I remember them doing so when I was a kid.

Now people just pay more attention to them and want to hear more about them.

When it comes to tracking I'll grant you the weather service. That's what they do. However in regards to predicting I still argue that politics based on last years storm (fear) colored their predictions for this year.

In researching the original post, I did try and look up some old records on CNN. In years past tropical depressions just off the coast of Africa received little if any coverage and were certainly not listed on the main page off cnn.com until they were much more developed and heading in the right (or is that wrong?) general direction.

Who Jessica Simpson might be dating shouldn't be on cnn.com's front page either but there you go.

And here's when the age thing slaps me in the face. There was no CNN when I was a kid.

It's a wonder you all survived such hardships. ;)

News was only on for an hour when I was a kid. And they only broadcast live coverage if it actually was important.

Today I had reason to be standing in line behind a bunch of teenagers on lunch from school.

They were making fun of the way someone talked and one said "he talks like the guy in that old movie. You know, it had Austin Powers in it but he had straight black hair."

Yes, that "old movie" Wayne's World. Nobody in the crowd could think of the title and I wasn't going to pipe up and cement my decrepitude.