From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V12 #114 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Thursday, March 27 2003 Volume 12 : Number 114 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Emoticon 2003, registration this way ["K L N W" ] Re: A pox upon the media [Miles Goosens ] Re: ch ["Matt Sewell" ] A Hapy Typo ["Mike Wells" ] Re: Watching the war (response to Kay) [The Great Quail ] Re: Bupkas... [Miles Goosens ] Re: Heh heh [Miles Goosens ] Wonderful Merchandise ["FS Thomas" ] Re: ch ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: Wonderful Merchandise ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: Wonderful Merchandise ["FS Thomas" ] Re: Wonderful Merchandise [Marcy Tanter ] Re: Wonderful Merchandise [Christopher Gross ] RE: Wonderful Merchandise ["Timothy Reed" ] Re: Wonderful Merchandise [Christopher Gross ] Re: Wonderful Merchandise ["FS Thomas" ] Re: Wonderful Merchandise [Miles Goosens ] RE: Watching the war ["Timothy Reed" ] Re: Wonderful Merchandise [Marcy Tanter ] RE: Watching the war [Marcy Tanter ] Re: Wonderful Merchandise ["FS Thomas" ] Re: Wonderful Merchandise [Marcy Tanter ] Re: Wonderful Merchandise [Marcy Tanter ] Re: Wonderful Merchandise [Marcy Tanter ] Re: Wonderful Merchandise ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: Heh heh ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: Wonderful Merchandise [noam tchotchke ] RE: Watching the war ["Timothy Reed" ] RE: Watching the war [Marcy Tanter ] Re:Watching the war ["ross taylor" ] Alarming trends other than the obvious ["Rex.Broome" Subject: Emoticon 2003, registration this way James: >how do you punctuate around emoticons? Now heres a great high geek question! My answer is probobly a wonderful guide on how -not- to do it;-P Remember, Im the person who who thinks ellipses at the end of sentences should be done this way: ... . If you put punctuation at the the end of an emoticon it interferes with the visual impact of the emoticon. Example ;-). (This combo could mean "wink, smile, period" or "Im winking, smiling at you with a bit of spinach hanging from my chin.") The core difficulty is that we are using two different sorts of systems. Im relying on the other high geeks here to tell me the proper descriptive phrase for both of them. One, punctuation, is based on abstract signs that supposidly(tell that to your unconsious)have no purely visual meaning, their meaning is in what they signify, not in what they look like. While emoticons are the opposite. They are what they look like within a set of styalized conventions, like secular hiroglyphics. Thus the difficulty of intuitively combining the two systems with correctness and prescision for both systems. I tend to favor the visual over punctuation, but thats just personal preference. - ----------------- Last night I found a TV station that was playing the news from Ireland. The big story there was whether to allow the US to use Irish airports for refueling. After that, not much mention of the war. That was an interesting corrective to US outlets in and of itself. - ---------------- Monayhan reap. One of the few politicians I have ever had any respect or affection for. He may sometimes have been wrong about stuff, but he always gave it thought. He was never unthinkingly wrong, you could always see that there was some validity in his stance. Unusual that. And I loved the bow ties. Kay Kay _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 09:48:23 -0600 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: A pox upon the media At 04:21 PM 3/26/2003 -0800, Rex.Broome wrote: >Miles: >>> The former is far superior to the latter in breaking news and its equal >when >>>they do >>>in-depth stories, plus Auntie Beeb is thankfully sans the "SUV-liberal"- >>>appeasement attitude that pervades NPR, but both beat the bejeezus out of >the >>triumphalist cheerleading of the U.S. TV horde. > >Whoa, when I first read that I missed the hyphen between "SUV-liberal" and >"appeasement" and I though you were using the "A" word the way right-wingers >urging boycotts of "appeasement-loving celebrities" do (blehh). Sorry 'bout that, but you got it right on the second read. Ah, the Munich analogy -- one of the most patently false analogies ever trotted out, and one that wholly obscures a more nuanced reading of situations that are usually quite different from one another and from Europe in the late '30s. >But for those of you who are irritated by the gung-ho mainstream war >coverage... why are you watching it? I'm glad someone asked this question. I think it's the same reason my grad school friend Ted watched shows like the McLaughlin Group -- there was some sort of gratification he got from being irritated by talking heads and yelling at the TV. It wasn't like he didn't know what was coming when he turned on the show. Me, I doubt if I've watched 30 minutes of U.S. network/U.S. major cable coverage. The longest I've lingered on U.S. TV war coverage at all was for a local story about the soldier in the 101st Airborne accused of the grenade attack on Sunday -- the 101st is based in nearby Clarksville, TN, and it was possible that the local stories would have more to offer. (They didn't. Basically it was the same ol' murderer's neighbor story: "He was a quiet normal guy. He never bothered anyone." "Do you think he killed Buckwheat?" "Sure. It was all he talked about.") Also, despite my Packer/Vitale=Aaron Brown analogy yesterday, I haven't watched a minute of the NCAA tournament, half out of lack of interest, and half because one of the things that irritates me to no end during "wartime" is listening to sports announcers fall all over themselves trying to out-humble each other in diminishing the importance of sporting events, despite the fact that U.S. soldiers are always overwhelmingly in favor of sports and entertainment proceeding as usual. "Chuck, this really doesn't mean a hill of beans when something like this is going on." "Yeah, Jim, in fact, I'm ashamed to be taking CBS' money in a time like this, so I'm leaving the game at halftime and enlisting with the Marines." "That's great. Hey, isn't that a sort of swarthy guy sitting behind Arizona's bench? Look out, he's reaching into his jacket pocket!" [sound of Jim moving AK-47 to shoulder height, followed by gunshot] "...and Anderson inbounds to Walton..." The lure of the baseball season, which begins next week, will prove too strong for me to resist, but since the humble patriot banter of the announcers is so eminently predictable, I promise to confine my complaints to yelling at the TV, instead of yelling about it at you guys. That is, unless something they say is really, really funny. later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 15:51:10 +0000 From: "Matt Sewell" Subject: Re: ch And let's not forget the Welsh "ll", as in Llan fair (pron. Chlan vyer) Cheers Sewell the Steam >From: "Stewart C. Russell" >Reply-To: "Stewart C. Russell" >To: >Subject: Re: ch >Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 10:03:23 -0500 > >Jill Brand wrote: > > > > "ch", as heard in German, Yiddish, many Slavic languages, Hebrew, is > > probably considered a glottal fricative. > >Don't forget Scots ... > >I think it's an uvular fricative. John Wells thinks so, and he's The Man where IPA is concerned: > > Stewart - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Want your email in a hurry? Get Hotmail direct to your mobile ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 09:57:39 -0600 From: "Mike Wells" Subject: A Hapy Typo While moving over to www.msnbc.com yesterday I accidentally entered after typing only www.ms ...and I must say, I think I enjoyed whiling away the half-hour or so on the history of Montserrat infinitely more than the how the same time would have been spent on news. No mention of Mick Jagger, though. Michael "how do you feel about active volcanoes, anyway?" Wells ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:08:42 -0500 From: The Great Quail Subject: Re: Watching the war (response to Kay) Matt writes, >> No -- not enough! Jeb, George Senior, Uday and Qusay need to be in on > >it, too! > > Only if everyone could lose... Heh heh -- reminds me of Kissinger's comment on the Iraq/Iran war -- "Too bad they can't both lose." Barbara writes, >CNN has definitely cornered the market on news. How can a single, non-subscription cable-access channel corner the "market" on news? Somehow I think CBS, ABC, the BBC, CBC, and MSNBC might have something to say about that... - --Quail ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:16:45 -0500 From: The Great Quail Subject: Saddam in translation Terrence writes, > Also....any statement I've seen from Saddam or Kim Jong-Il has been stilted > and loopy. Is it that these guys are so out of it that they can't string > together a coherent sound bite? Well, I can't speak to Kimmy Ping-Pong Ill, but most Arabic reports generally indicate that Saddam is, yes, a bit loopy. He apparently rambles, has bad grammar, and goes on and on and on with lots of bizarre, quasi-religious rhetoric. (One Iraqi minister was recently fired for looking at his watch during one of Saddam's endless meetings.) Come to think of it, I can think of another president with similar habits.... - --Quail ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 10:29:55 -0600 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: Bupkas... At 06:18 PM 3/25/2003 -0800, Rex.Broome wrote: >For middle American kids of my age, yiddish was synonymous with "standup >comedy language". I had no idea it was an indicator of Jewishness. >Actually, "King of the Hill" has done some pretty entertaining (to me, >anyway) riffs on that phenomenon. Did you ever see the SNL skit where Jon Lovitz is a comedian whose punchlines are almost entirely in Yiddish? It took the combination of (years later) Melissa reading through a Jewish cookbook and (even more years later) a SEINFELD episode before I realized the true horror of one of Lovitz' jokes: "That's the last time that I get gribness from a moyle!" >-Rex, narrowly avoiding deployment of his "Dick Butkus tried to kill my >dad's drummer" story Not fair to drop that line and not explicate... :-) later, Miles "Never Threatened by Any Member of the Tennessee Titans / Enough Jewish Blood To Get Executed By Hitler But No Meaningful Jewish Heritage In His Upbringing" Goosens ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 10:37:52 -0600 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: Heh heh At 12:06 AM 3/26/2003 +0000, rosso@videotron.ca wrote: >On 25 Mar 2003 at 20:36, Tom Clark wrote: > >> Five popups and countless cookies later... > >Mozilla! History shows again and again how Java points out the folly of man. later, Miles "how many X-10s must I buy before it stops?" Goosens ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:22:11 -0500 From: "FS Thomas" Subject: Wonderful Merchandise http://www.screwmoore.com/ - --- FS Thomas ferris -at- ochremedia.com It's easy to grin when your ships come in and you've got the stock market beat, but the man worth while is the man who can smile when his pants are too tight in the seat. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:33:19 -0500 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: ch Matt Sewell wrote: > > And let's not forget the Welsh "ll", as in Llan > fair (pron. Chlan vyer) It's a different sound; the Welsh 'll' is the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative. It's an unvoiced L sound. Say 'antler'; the L in the middle is pretty close. Stewart - -- Now Playing: rhotacized schwa ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:39:51 -0500 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: Wonderful Merchandise FS Thomas wrote: > > http://www.screwmoore.com/ I can't see where the site explains, in their words "why he's full of shit". Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:40:32 -0500 From: "FS Thomas" Subject: Re: Wonderful Merchandise - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stewart C. Russell" > > I can't see where the site explains, in their words "why he's full of shit". Well, winning an Academy Award for a documentary that relies on conjecture and flat-out incorrect information, may be as good as any a place to start. From what I recall, documentaries don't take liberties for the sake of entertainment. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 10:49:29 -0600 From: Marcy Tanter Subject: Re: Wonderful Merchandise Poor Mike. He exercises his right to free speech and gets vilified for it. Great country we live in. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:51:42 -0500 (EST) From: Christopher Gross Subject: Re: Wonderful Merchandise On Thu, 27 Mar 2003, Stewart C. Russell wrote: > > http://www.screwmoore.com/ > > I can't see where the site explains, in their words "why he's full of shit". IMHO the problem with Michael Moore is not that he's "full of shit" so much as that he's an obnoxious, pretentious asshole with grossly exaggerated ideas of his own significance. Or that he's a Republican mole working to make liberals look stupid, if you buy that explanation. But screwmoore.com, while mildly amusing, is just as stupid and obnoxious. - --Chris "Nothing has ever shaken my faith in my own politics like having Michael Moore in the same camp." --David Edelstein on salon.com, 24 Mar 2003 ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:54:57 -0500 From: "Timothy Reed" Subject: RE: Wonderful Merchandise Follow the links at the bottom of the page. The link to fiercehighway is pretty detailed. http://www.fiercehighway.com/roadsigns/blogs/archives/000593.html Tim > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-fegmaniax@smoe.org > [mailto:owner-fegmaniax@smoe.org] On Behalf Of Stewart C. Russell > Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2003 11:40 AM > To: fegmaniax@smoe.org > Subject: Re: Wonderful Merchandise > > > FS Thomas wrote: > > > > http://www.screwmoore.com/ > > I can't see where the site explains, in their words "why he's > full of shit". > > Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 12:01:46 -0500 (EST) From: Christopher Gross Subject: Re: Wonderful Merchandise On Thu, 27 Mar 2003, Marcy Tanter wrote: > Poor Mike. He exercises his right to free speech and gets vilified for > it. Great country we live in. Fuck Mike. It's wrong to vilify him just for the act of speaking out (which some might do), but there's nothing wrong with abusing the actual things he says (as I do). Exercising your right to free speech means running the risk that others will think, and say, that your speech is full of shit. Anyway, I'm sure all the abuse makes Mike feel a nice warm glow of martyrdom, so there's no need to feel too sorry for him. - --Chris ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 12:01:19 -0500 From: "FS Thomas" Subject: Re: Wonderful Merchandise - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Christopher Gross" > > IMHO the problem with Michael Moore is not that he's "full of shit" so > much as that he's an obnoxious, pretentious asshole with grossly > exaggerated ideas of his own significance. It's also a matter of tact. He's running a bit low on it at the moment, by my account. Granted, the Oscars is as good a soapbox as you're going to get these days without being embedded in a Marine division, but his delivery, phraseology, and demeanor were *wretched.* Brody's words, however, came across very, very well. > Or that he's a Republican mole > working to make liberals look stupid, if you buy that explanation. But > screwmoore.com, while mildly amusing, is just as stupid and obnoxious. With shining beacons like Moore, Daschle, Jackson, and Sharpton, the DNC can't *help* but shoot itself in the other foot. - -f. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:10:23 -0600 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: Wonderful Merchandise At 11:51 AM 3/27/2003 -0500, Christopher Gross wrote: >IMHO the problem with Michael Moore is not that he's "full of shit" so >much as that he's an obnoxious, pretentious asshole with grossly >exaggerated ideas of his own significance. Or that he's a Republican mole >working to make liberals look stupid, if you buy that explanation. But >screwmoore.com, while mildly amusing, is just as stupid and obnoxious. Well put, as usual with Chris' posts. I value Moore as a gadfly and for when his barbs (even when re-edited or staged) land on target, which is enough of the time for me to watch his various presentations. But I try to be aware of what is and isn't "real." And as Chris says, he's often a total jerk who seems to think that his words carry greater significance and influence than they actually do. There's also his whole anti-intellectual side, which I find that extremely problematic. To an extent, I sympathize -- my own time inside the "Ivory Tower" did nothing so much as create my own laundry list of Things That Are Wrong Wtih Academia. But Moore's mistrust of professors, professionals, etc., goes well beyond reason, and cuts himself off from worthwhile people with whom he could make common cause. In this vein, there's also his appearance in the Grand Funk "Behind the Music," where he extols the virtues of his hometown's idiot rock band and takes visible joy in denouncing the "critics." This was my own Moore Rubicon. Vilifying CEOs works for me, but extolling Mark Farner? Ack! later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 12:05:07 -0500 From: "Timothy Reed" Subject: RE: Watching the war Since the war began, Fox News has averaged the most daily cable viewers in the US than CNN, despite CNN having more correspondents in the field. I think that NBC has had the most viewers overall if you include MSNBC. > >CNN has definitely cornered the market on news. > How can a single, non-subscription cable-access channel > corner the "market" on news? Somehow I think CBS, ABC, the > BBC, CBC, and MSNBC might have something to say about that... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:10:46 -0600 From: Marcy Tanter Subject: Re: Wonderful Merchandise At 12:01 PM 3/27/2003 -0500, FS Thomas wrote: >It's also a matter of tact. He's running a bit low on it at the moment, by >my account. Granted, the Oscars is as good a soapbox as you're going to get >these days without being embedded in a Marine division, but his delivery, >phraseology, and demeanor were *wretched.* Brody's words, however, came >across very, very well. I don't see that what he said is all that bad. I didn't see the broadcast but I heard the clip of him speaking on the radio. What was so terrible? Was he so wrong? where are the weapons of mass destruction that were supposedly the whole reason for this so-called war? Just today Hans Blix is saying there's no evidence they exist. If they aren't found, Mike will have been correct--the fiction of the wmd was created as an excuse to drop bombs and kill innocents. I think that would be shameful. It's shameful now that innocents have died and that when speaking of our military losses, the administration has said that they were to be expected, almost saying that it's OK those men have died---they're not even notifying family in a timely manner that the men have died. 2 women found out that their sons were dead by watching tv instead of hearing from the Army. That is very shameful. Marcy ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:11:47 -0600 From: Marcy Tanter Subject: RE: Watching the war At 12:05 PM 3/27/2003 -0500, Timothy Reed wrote: >Since the war began, Fox News has averaged the most daily cable viewers >in the US than CNN, despite CNN having more correspondents in the field. >I think that NBC has had the most viewers overall if you include MSNBC. How do they know how many people watch which channel? Isn't it really just guessing?? Marcy ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 12:14:55 -0500 From: "FS Thomas" Subject: Re: Wonderful Merchandise - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcy Tanter" > they're not even notifying > family in a timely manner that the men have died. 2 women found out that > their sons were dead by watching tv instead of hearing from the Army. That > is very shameful. I don't know the details behind that, but in a conflict where you've got "embedded" reporters sending live satellite transmissions and a completely biased Al-Jezera (sp?) willing to play mouthpiece for all things radical sending images of dead and captured soldiers out, it's no surprise that the Gov't can't keep up. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:25:06 -0600 From: Marcy Tanter Subject: Re: Wonderful Merchandise At 12:14 PM 3/27/2003 -0500, FS Thomas wrote: >I don't know the details behind that, but in a conflict where you've got >"embedded" reporters sending live satellite transmissions and a completely >biased Al-Jezera (sp?) willing to play mouthpiece for all things radical >sending images of dead and captured soldiers out, it's no surprise that the >Gov't can't keep up. I disagree. If they can put a gag on the reporters stating where they are exactly, they can put a gag on them showing any dead soldiers' faces, etc. They can have some control over what the camera people shoot. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:27:40 -0600 From: Marcy Tanter Subject: Re: Wonderful Merchandise At 11:25 AM 3/27/2003 -0600, Marcy Tanter wrote: >I disagree. If they can put a gag on the reporters stating where they are >exactly, they can put a gag on them showing any dead soldiers' faces, >etc. They can have some control over what the camera people shoot. oops to clarify: I mean among the US and allied journalists. Obviously we can't control what outsiders do, but we also don't have to air their footage on our networks. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 11:31:17 -0600 From: Marcy Tanter Subject: Re: Wonderful Merchandise I was looking at the screw michael moore site again and I noticed the prices of the "merchandize"--very hefty. Good ol' American capitalism at work again!! :) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 12:31:41 -0500 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: Wonderful Merchandise Timothy Reed wrote: > > Follow the links at the bottom of the page. The > link to fiercehighway > is pretty detailed. who has time to follow links? And since when were blogs peer-reviewed criticism? At the very least, I would have hoped that screwmoore.com would have written down some of their arguments, and cited a couple of independent sources for each refutation. If one is accusing someone of being dishonest in reporting, one's own refutation must be beyond reproach. And calling someone an "obese infidel we all hate" is getting pretty close to hate speech; possibly actionable, definitely juvenile. A site with a "Hate Mail Wizard"? What next? A sandpit? Mudpies? Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 12:35:00 -0500 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: Heh heh Miles Goosens wrote: > > History shows again and again how Java points out > the folly of man. JavaScript, surely ...? Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 12:43:05 -0500 From: noam tchotchke Subject: Re: Wonderful Merchandise one time at band camp, Marcy Tanter said: >I disagree. If they can put a gag on the reporters stating where they are >exactly, they can put a gag on them showing any dead soldiers' faces, etc. to my knowledge, the embedded reporters have not aired any images of dead soldiers. al-jazeera originally broadcast the video of the dead and captured uk/usa soldiers. cnn elected to not broadcast clips of the footage until they knew the families had been notified but decided to air snippets, despite pentagon requests not to do so at all. however, one mother learned of her son's death because she was watching, on satellite tv, a filipino station which aired the footage. i haven't watched cnn for a couple days so i don't know if they have revisited this decision and i know nothing of the other cable news stations. woj ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 13:14:45 -0500 From: "Timothy Reed" Subject: RE: Watching the war > At 12:05 PM 3/27/2003 -0500, Timothy Reed wrote: > >Since the war began, Fox News has averaged the most daily cable viewers > >in the US than CNN, despite CNN having more correspondents in the > >field. I think that NBC has had the most viewers overall if > >you include MSNBC. > > How do they know how many people watch which channel? Isn't > it really just guessing?? It's a pretty scientific guess and the accepted way to count TV viewers in the US and Canada. TV ratings are calculated by Nielson Media Research. Viewing habits of thousands of Nielson households are uploaded to the company on a nightly basis and used to calculate ratings, which are published the following day. Ratings are broken down a bunch of ways, including by sex, age group, ethnicity and income. Tim nw: CNN ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 12:17:58 -0600 From: Marcy Tanter Subject: RE: Watching the war At 01:14 PM 3/27/2003 -0500, Timothy Reed wrote: >It's a pretty scientific guess and the accepted way to count TV viewers >in the US and Canada. TV ratings are calculated by Nielson Media >Research. Viewing habits of thousands of Nielson households are >uploaded to the company on a nightly basis and used to calculate >ratings, which are published the following day. Ratings are broken down >a bunch of ways, including by sex, age group, ethnicity and income. I know about using the Neilson counts, but I'm very dubious about how accurate it really is. Almost everyone here at my work has been watching CNN or MSNBC. Nobody's even mentined Fox. Now I know we're not a scientific sample or anything, but if Fox were logging the most, wouldn't someone I know be watching it? I guess I'm just a skeptic.... (on this list? how absurd! ha ha) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 13:17:55 -0500 From: "ross taylor" Subject: Re:Watching the war I like the machine-edited (or so they say) news links at Google. The splash page is sometimes sort of weird, but if you find a story in the general news area you want, i.e. the war, and click on the link at bottom which says "Plus 125 other links" you get to a page that gives you a pretty good selection. I must admit I rarely click on the links from 3rd world publications. I think the country should have more perspective about news "objectivity." Objectivity is extremely hard to maintain, even in sciences dealing w/ things that are quantifiable. (My wife is a reporter, mostly business topics, so we have this debate all the time. She's very idealistic &, IMO, concientious, and she freelances for mainstream publications.) There's only so much raw data we can use--it has to be *selected* for relevance, and there's the rub. The NY Times & Washington post are what's delivered to our door, but I'm often just as happy bouncing back & forth between things like the Village Voice and the Washington Times & drawing my own conclusions. My understanding is that a bunch of Higher-Ups at the Washington Post are pro-war & a bunch at the NY Times are anti. And why does TV actually have to show the reporter or anchor person so much? Can't they just fill the screen w/ the footage? Or even a map? I'm not interested in the reporter or anchor person. Either that, or give us some appeasement-oriented analysis, or something, in the processs. Ross Taylor "sometimes it sounds like a velcro fricative" Need a new email address that people can remember Check out the new EudoraMail at http://www.eudoramail.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 10:26:19 -0800 From: "Rex.Broome" Subject: Alarming trends other than the obvious James: >>Rex, hang on to that wife, she sounds like a goody :). Thanks, that is indeed the plan! >>* how do you punctuate around emoticons? And there it is... the primary reason for me never fully embracing emoticons. Punctuation is so dicey as it is in your average internet post. And typos even occasionally crop up around here... umm, ;-) ! (???) >>I'm a little concerned that Prog seems to be making a small comeback. And >>if groups like the Flaming Lips keep coming up with good stuff then it >>could be more than a small one. Yeah, and it's slowly turning me into a (bigger?) hypocrite because I'm liking a fair amount of this newer prog-inflected stuff and I don't like real prog much at all. I'm the guy who gets irritated that fans of any given modern genre so often reject its antecedents (liking '80's guitar pop but not '60's rock, thinking punk started in 1992, disliking country unless it has the alt- in front of it). Well, now I'm looking at the man in the mirror. Although thankfully the face staring back at me does not have mummy-like gaping nostril holes which must be covered by a fake nose in public as Michael Jackson's does. - -Rex, who figures that at minimum he'll end up with a King Crimson album or two before it's all over, what with having so many records featuring members of Crimson already, but dammit, he's not quite ready to throw in the towel yet np: war (not the band, or the Edwin Starr song, Springsteen's cover thereof, the Frankie Goes to Hollywood song, the Jam song, the Cardigans song, the Bob Marley song or the U2 album, but actual war) ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V12 #114 ********************************