I live in a nice neighborhood and I pay $1900/mo rent for a 2 bedroom apartment in a building with 5 other units, 4 of which are occupied by older people who have lived in their nice rent controlled apartments for 30+ years. The family that lives directly below me has three generations living in the same size apartment and probably pays $600/mo. The grandmother in that apartment is wheelchair bound, living on the second floor. Her daughter is in her 30's a responsible woman making just enough to pay the bills, she sleeps in the living room. Her son is 12 years old, a nice quiet kid. They recently got a computer but can't afford to pay for broadband internet. Probably 50% of my neighbors can't, but are able to live in this nice neighborhood because of rent control that they've lived under for 20, 30, sometimes 50 years. I don't know a lot of them though, so getting their info would be nearly impossible.
For most of them though I would happily provide a free wifi spot. Just because they are poorer than me doesn't mean they shouldn't have the access to information that the rest of us have. With a commercial media that has failed, and lately seems to have just outright given up, on the mission of educating the public regarding our country's politics I feel it is indeed a PRESSING NEED for these people to get information from other sources which are not wholly owned by the robber barons of our time.
I managed to find the school that was responsible for this...
HEMPFIELD AREA HIGH SCHOOL Phone: (724) 834-9000
The student, Cody Webb, was on the honor roll with "High Honors" according to this page: Honor Roll HAHS
I think the principle who apparently fashions herself as judge, jury, witness, prosecution, and executioner needs to be reminded that she is nothing but a pathetic public employee with a tiny tiny life destroying other people with more promise than she ever had.
When the Wii was announced Nintendo talked a lot about how the idea was more important then the money and such, but so far the Wii is still a very proprietary platform, locking out all the people with interesting ideas and only leaving the large publishing houses with their big money, which they make with the Wii thanks to crap ports and shovelware.
Wow, you have no idea what you're talking about. Nintendo licenses to guarantee quality. As for the COST, producing a game on the Wii is about 50% of the cost as producing one on the 360 or PS3. If you want to talk about requiring wealth to make a game then it's those two systems that require it. Producing a new and innovative game on the Wii is a lot less of a financial risk than it is for the other two.
I disagree. All the news coverage I saw when the PS3 and Wii were coming out talked solely about the PS3. The Wii lines were not as long. What happened though was that when those of us who got a Wii took them home and invited our non-gamer friends to play our non-gamer friends LOVED it. They're the ones who create the hype.
I've always loved Nintendo because of the quality and depth their games have. Everytime I play a PSX game I find that the story is lacking and generally the game play is poorly thought out. Nintendo sells a license which requires a certain level of quality. Sony sells libraries which require only dollars, and it shows.
The demand is so high because even the most basic sports game (WiiSports) is a lot of fun. You open up that box and next thing you know you're swatting at tennis balls, and it's fun. I hate tennis but I love Wii Tennis.
I agree with you that Nintendo needs to get some more games out. I got the new Sonic game and that's a ton of fun, and I've never enjoyed the Sonic franchise... so once again the new controls make that much of a difference!
Michael you missed the point, it doesn't matter if they have more disposable income, they aren't going to spend their disposable dollars on a $20 CD that probably only has 1 or 2 good songs on it. Not when they can get the same song for free from one of the p2p networks. The success of iTunes shows that they are willing to spend $1 for a song, or $10 for an album, but not $20 as can be seen by the failing CD market.
The point of my post was that the RIAA, radio, advertisers, and market choices have created a perfect never ending circle.
RIAA gets rid of singles opting to sell albums only -> Radio only wants singles that draw an audience their advertisers want (13-25 year olds) -> 13-25 year olds only want the single and don't want to pay for an album -> RIAA gets rid of singles oprting to sell albums only ->... and on and on it goes.
That's what this whole situation is. It's all about greed.
You have the RIAA releasing TERRIBLE full length albums while abandoning the single. You have radio operators like Clear Channel only providing space for 2 or 3 new songs on their national playlists, and demanding that those 2 or 3 new songs be songs that appeal to the target advertiser's say are the most important (13-25 year olds.) 13-25 year olds, not having a lot of money, opt to pirate the ONE song they like rather than pay $20 for a CD full of terrible music. And the circle is complete!
And let's not even get to how the music, radio, and retailers are failing people over the age of 25. When the hell is the RIAA going to realize that if 13-25 year olds aren't going to BUY the music, they should start making music for the people who will shell out the money (ie, people over 25.)????
If anything is going to cause America to fall behind in the tech sector it's the CEO's and other top execs at major companies that won't let the rest of us practice our ART the way we see fit to do so.
You know, they pay CEO's really really well and there are no shortage of people trying to get those jobs.
Maybe, I know this is crazy, but MAYBE execs should consider paying tech people better, treating them better, providing them the equipment they need, and stop letting their HR and Marketing wonks get in our way. Gosh, crazy!
As long as American executives are willing to hire talentless (yet, well educated) foreigners because they're "cheaper" and continue to disrespect the science and art that tech work is they'll continue to have trouble finding talented people willing to do this job.
Execs always forget the art part of these jobs. You can have all the book smarts in the world, but unless you have actual talent your not going to be a very good engineer. Most of the H-1B's I've met are book smart, but haven't got any natural talent. When I talk to them it becomes obvious that they are only in this industry for the money. If 5-10 years ago they had heard that nerf herding was going to get them an American visa and a high paying job they would've studied that instead. Somebody needs to tell execs that it's time to stop pinching pennies, and time to start thinking about what REALLY makes a good tech worker.
It begs the question of whether or not communist countries failed because they had a communist economy, or because they were a dictatorship.
So far all dictatorships have failed. So it's impossible to determine whether or not having a communist economy led to the end of the dictatorship that ran that economy, or vis versa.
My parents are teachers, as are many of my friends. I'm often disgusted when I hear them whining about not making enough money. They make GREAT money for a job that gives them 3 months off in the summer, 2 weeks around christmas, and one week off in the spring.
The other day I was telling my mother that in England children are taught Algebra begining at age 11 which would be 6th grade. Here in California we don't start Pre-Algebra until age 12, or 13. That puts American students two years behind on instructions. My mother thought that I had made it up, that it was impossible to teach children Algebra while still in Elementry school. I assured here that the higher standards of European schools seems to have only helped maintain the quality of their education.
I'm so tired of listening to teachers whine about their cushy tenured jobs that lower the bar on performance, while paying them well, and giving them months off in the summers. Teachers should be required to work during the summers just like the rest of us. (Not teaching, doing other productive things for the districts they work in.)
Did you know there's never been a communist economy in a democratic political system? Every communist state has been run by a dictatorship or some form. All dicatorships fail when the dictator makes a wrong move and his enemies take advantage of the error.
I often wonder whether or not a country with a communist economy would survive better if it were lead be a democratically elected body.
Nintendo likes to put out games that are quality. I know that when I go out and buy a game for the Gamecube that it is far less of a crap shoot than with other systems. The problem though is that they have completely opted out of some genres of gaming that I am interested in. For example the Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) style game which are fun (yes, you can admit it) but the only game they have in that style is Donka Konga... wich has a set of bongos. Where am I going to put bongos in my apartment?
They also completely skip the strategy genre. This is primarily dependent on the fact that it's a console, and strategy games historically haven't done well. I feel though that there are enough buttons on the controllers now to allow strategy games to be fun to play. Maybe I'm crazy go nuts.
Nintendo's skipping of the MMORPG genre is a bit weird though. This would seem like a natural source of long lasting revenue stream. It could possibly be related to the number of consoles on the market, possibly it's not enough to make the endeavor profitable on the Gamecube which is has not sold as well as the PS2. What I don't understand is why a software company can't make a cross platform MMORPG. Perhaps part of the problem is that patching on the game discs is impossible since they are read only. You have to get the game righ straight out of the door.
Soon after Sept. 11, Hyman's commentaries, "The Point," became a daily must-carry on Sinclair stations. Critics of the Iraq war are "whack-jobs," the French are "cheese-eating surrender monkeys," progressives "loony left," and Democratic members of Congress who argued against Bush policies are "unpatriotic politicians who hate our military." At first only Sinclair stations that aired its NewsCentral broadcast were required to carry "The Point." But recently all Sinclair stations have been told to feature Hyman's broadsides, often by shortening their sportscasts.
In St. Louis, Sinclair fired the entire 47-person news team at KDNL, making it among the first major-market television stations to broadcast without local news. At Sinclair's Rochester, N.Y., station, it fired the entire news, weather and sports anchor team, and half of the remaining staff. Variety reported that Smith assembled station employees in the company parking lot, climbed onto the hood of a car, read a list of names, and announced that those on the list were fired. (Smith denied the account.) On a smaller but still telling scale, after Sinclair took over WCWB in Pittsburgh, the company ditched the station's three public affairs programs, including "Girl Scouting Today," and replaced them with infomercials.
Typically, when Sinclair guts local news operations, it replaces them with a newscast beamed in from its Maryland studio, which is packaged as a homegrown broadcast. Dubbed "NewsCentral," the maneuver is first and foremost a money-saving enterprise. But an indirect consequence of beaming uniform newscasts across the country is that it has given Sinclair some political clout. "I don't think they anticipated the power they would generate with NewsCentral," says one news industry source. "They created a political animal."
But none of Sinclair's maneuvers, even the "Nightline" stunt, prepared observers for its most recent moves. Sinclair has shown no previous interest in documentaries. "It's never happened before -- ever," says filmmaker Robert Greenwald, who told Salon he offers all his films for Sinclair to broadcast, including "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War." George Butler, director of "Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry," as well as Paul Alexander, maker of "Brothers in Arms," a documentary of Kerry's Vietnam experience, have made similar offers, suggesting Sinclair, if it were interested in balance, would show their films to counter the attacks of "Stolen Honor." Sinclair has failed to respond to their offers.
That is a lie, they were going to show the Documentry, and then after the 90 minute documentry have a "Q&A" session that lasted 30 minutes. John Kerry was invited to that in order for the Sinclair stations to be able to say they fulfilled their "equal time" requirements for political candidates.
You're the guy who posts those old, outdated, essays on how liberal the media is. Well here is a prime example of what you, and your cut-and-past essay, got wrong.
Broadcast TV: The Sinclair family owns 62 television stations throughout the United States. They are the largest holders of such media, and they are going to play an anti-Kerry movie that has already been debunked as a Republican propoganda piece full of lies. They have absolutely no intention of fulfilling the "equal time" requirement.
Network TV: Let's move on to Network TV. Just last week higher-ups at CBS pulled a story, with well backed documentation and sources, that exposed the rational Bush used to go to war in Iraq as lies. CBS pulled the plug on a biographical Reagan mini-series because it protrayed the Reagan's as something other than saints. The CEO of the company that owns CBS (VIACOMM) announced that he is pro-Bush.
Cable-TV News: -FOX News, do I really need to explain how they are biased? It's well documented in several books, and websites. CAP has examples. -CNN moved to the right in order to recapture FOX's market share. -MSNBC cancled the liberal Phil Donahue show (despite being the highest reated show on MSNBC) in order to put on arch-conservative Michael Savage. Once again, they moved right in order to capture back FOX TV viewers.
AM-Radio: AM Radio is the realm of political speech when it comes to the airwaves. Until this year there was not one single nationally broadcasted commercial liberal radio network. Not one! All the time major radio companies like Clear Channel, Viacomm, and Infinity Broadcasting claimed there was no market for liberal talk shows. Instead every single political talk radio station was far right conservative. That doesn't look like a bias to you Grym? Finally this year a bunch of liberals got togethor and formed Air America, the first commercial talk radio network for liberals. Guess what: It's out performing conservative stations in every market it has appeared in. So that begs the questions, was it a buisiness decision, or an editorial decision from the company executives, that kept liberal's off AM radio for the past 20 years?
FM-Radio: FM radio is not known for much political talk. However, there are nationally syndicated morning shows on FM that do discuss political issues on occassion. Howard Stern was pro Bush during the 2000 election year cycle, nothing happened. Literally one day after Howard Stern declared he would not vote for Bush, and no longer supported Bush, Clear Channel dropped him from syndication on their radio stations. For those of you who are not aware, the owner of Clear Channel is a close friend of Geroge Bush. When the Dixie Chicks openly discussed their embarassment of having Bush as their President, it was Clear Channel who held Dixie Chicks CD destruction parties.
Well Grym, I'm sure you're saying to yourself: BUT that has nothing to do with the reporters!? Of course it does! That study you relied on to prove reporters are more liberal is 20 years old. The ownership of the media has changed considerably since then and now lies in the hands of very few (about 6) majority stock holders in various companies. Those owners are very conservative, often direct hiring practices, and editorial content through their power. In addition, as can be seen with Viacomm's decision to pull the anti-Bush CBS story, or Clear Channels firing of Howard Stern, it is too easy for them to say "you publish that, and I'll fire you."
That's a lie, the media is not liberal. Just look at the Sinclair family owned stations (62 of them) which are going to broadcast the Anti-Kerry propoganda film. The Sinclair family ordered the stations to do so during Prime Time instead of whatever normal programs those stations would be broadcasting.
You're also relying on 20 year old studies as to what percentage of reporters consider themselves liberal. If you refuse to belive that, than consider this, if reporters are constantly surronded by information maybe you should consider why with all that information they would be liberal? Perhaps it's because being liberal is what intelligent people are?
Certainly Neoconservative George W. Bush isn't a poster child for intelligence. What about John Ashcroft? The guy had himself anointed with olive oil by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas when he took the office of the Attorney General. No, the only smart conservatives are the ones who are cut throat machiavelian rich people who would kill their own family if it meant keeping their power.
This is a prime example of the -real- bias in the media, not the imagined "liberal bias" you often hear AM talk radio hosts sobbing about. The media is owned by wealthy right wingers and that ultimately determines the bias of reporting. "Not true! Not true!" the Rush's ditto head army screams, "there was a study that said the majority of reporters were liberal!" That study is over 20 years old now, and major media consolodation has changed a lot of things for TV and Radio. Those changes have resulted in a small handfull of right wingers controlling just about every word that is printed, or broadcast. "But but but, they just own the media! They don't write the stories!" comes the laughable retort from ignorant AM talk show listeners. The people who pull the strings at the top ultimately hire people with their bias, or fire reporters that don't share their bias.
Just last week the CEO of CBS's parent company Viacom announced he was voting for George W. Bush, and that Bush was the best thing for Viacomm. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, an important story regarding Bush's lies, what he knew, and when he knew it in regards to WMD claims in Iraq was stopped cold from being reported by CBS.
It does not help that today's reporters are profoundly lazy. For example when Bush gave his state of the union address and lied about the Niger's nuclear materials purchase by Iraq, the same day I was reading alternative news sites like BuzzFlash that headlined the story of how the documents Bush was referring to had already been debunked years ago. While Tony Blair was going before Parliament presenting "intelligence reports" about Iraq's ability to go to war in 15 minutes, the same day I was reading how these reports were in fact a 12 year old thesis from a graduate student. Yet this wasn't reported by major newspapers, or TV media for months.
We are in dangerous times when the Whitehouse's lies are reprinted, without any fact checking, by a lazy news media urgent to get a story out. At what point does the media just become a mouth of the party? If the media doesn't question, or fact check, what is to stop the lies from turning on Americans who don't agree with the Republicans? If the Republicans were to issue a statement, "Democrats planning to ban bibles*," would the press repeat that lie? The answer is yes, because they already have: two weeks ago in the south the Republicans sent out flyers with that very statement on it, and local media reprinted it dutifully.
Congratulations America, our press is now just a propoganda device for the Republican party, and we are just a step away from facism.
Actually, in Greek society a "citizen" (free man) was never to be penetrated. Once a man became a citizen it was abosolutely taboo for him to be penetrated by another man, but expected before that.
The boy/man relationships of early Greece were probably characterized in this fashion. In fact, since these relationships were mandated by social structures a man taking a boy in this manner is probably because he was actually desiring a female form without the consequences of male/female intercourse (pregnancy.)
First off, regarding the first paragrah starting with "Fuck you..." I wasn't attacking you, simply saying that I don't agree with your position on why Liberals think they way they do. Your response is a bit... angry.
Second paragraph: I do not agree with how you summed up the argument made by liberals. The argument is more like this, "If we were invaded by another country wouldn't Americans be in the streets fighting the invader?" It isn't a matter of what we made them do, it's is a matter of what is a reasonable response to an invasion by a foreign power.
Third paragraph you said: Why do I think people are attacking our soldiers over there? I can tell you it's not ordinary Iraqi citizens who have feel invaded and opressed. If that were the case, they wouldn't be attacking iraqi citizens who cooperated with Americans - they'd only be attacking the Americans. I think it's two bit punks like Muqtada al-Sadr who simply want to be in power for themselves, aided by jihadists who are crossing over the iraqi border to participate in what they see as a holy war. Notice that I have not explained their behavior in terms of anything we've done or anything about their situation - I've explained it in terms of who they are and what they tend to do.
Unfortunately I don't know if I can agree with you here. I don't think we get the full story from our news media here. I went over to Europe for a few weeks, while there I noticed CNN International tells the stories completely different from how CNN (America) tells the stories. On CNN International they show you images of Iraqi insurgents where they look like actual well trained, not chaotic, fighting units against US Soldiers. They also show things like angry Iraqi's (angry at both sides), and American soldiers actually firing their weaponry (not just slinging it over their shoulder in a non-threatening way that we most often see on our media here.)
As for whether or not is ordinary Iraqi's fighting us? Al-Sadr's men are ordinary iraqi's, but in our media, because they are against us, they are lumped into a special category that makes them something other than angry Iraqis.
In addition, I agree, Muqtada al-Sadr's power grab seems unsavory to my American sense of democratic values. It reminds me in a way of the scottish leaders in the movie Braveheart who were willing to sell out their countrymen for noble titles, and land. At the same time though, I recognize that the tribal form of government is what Iraqi's are used to and want to live under. To me it seems bad, to them it seems good. Does that make me a conservative, and them a liberal? Or does that make me a liberal, and them a conservative? Or does it just mean that relative to their position, my position is different?
I disagree with your premise. I think Liberals don't try to explain bad behavior, but instead examine what is considered bad behaviour as relative to the position of the person who is engaging in the bad behaviour.
A current modern day example might be the way conservatives vs. liberals think in regards to the insurgents in Iraq. The conservatives will automatically think, "They are attacking our soldiers! And disruptin' our brave leader Bush's plan for giving Iraq democracy! They are bad for killing American soldiers!" meanwhile, liberals are thinking in terms of the Iraqi perspective, "they are attacking American soldiers because they feel as though they've been invaded, and in their minds they are freedom fighters fighting off invaders attempting to steal their country's natural resources. Not to mention we may have killed members of their family during the invasion. Our soldiers should never have been put there in the first place by the vietnam dodging coward that occupies the White house."
Who's right? Both sides actually. In this case it is a matter of perspective and from which side you look at the events.
Slashdot Mirror
I live in a nice neighborhood and I pay $1900/mo rent for a 2 bedroom apartment in a building with 5 other units, 4 of which are occupied by older people who have lived in their nice rent controlled apartments for 30+ years. The family that lives directly below me has three generations living in the same size apartment and probably pays $600/mo. The grandmother in that apartment is wheelchair bound, living on the second floor. Her daughter is in her 30's a responsible woman making just enough to pay the bills, she sleeps in the living room. Her son is 12 years old, a nice quiet kid. They recently got a computer but can't afford to pay for broadband internet. Probably 50% of my neighbors can't, but are able to live in this nice neighborhood because of rent control that they've lived under for 20, 30, sometimes 50 years. I don't know a lot of them though, so getting their info would be nearly impossible.
For most of them though I would happily provide a free wifi spot. Just because they are poorer than me doesn't mean they shouldn't have the access to information that the rest of us have. With a commercial media that has failed, and lately seems to have just outright given up, on the mission of educating the public regarding our country's politics I feel it is indeed a PRESSING NEED for these people to get information from other sources which are not wholly owned by the robber barons of our time.
heh. You're right, my bad. She ain't my Principle Pal though that's for sure.
I managed to find the school that was responsible for this...
HEMPFIELD AREA HIGH SCHOOL
Phone: (724) 834-9000
The student, Cody Webb, was on the honor roll with "High Honors" according to this page: Honor Roll HAHS
I think the principle who apparently fashions herself as judge, jury, witness, prosecution, and executioner needs to be reminded that she is nothing but a pathetic public employee with a tiny tiny life destroying other people with more promise than she ever had.
This is all about the Principle:
The Principle's Page
In reference to CD-i veresion of Zelda: You Tube: Zelda: Faces of Death
wows.
When the Wii was announced Nintendo talked a lot about how the idea was more important then the money and such, but so far the Wii is still a very proprietary platform, locking out all the people with interesting ideas and only leaving the large publishing houses with their big money, which they make with the Wii thanks to crap ports and shovelware.
Wow, you have no idea what you're talking about. Nintendo licenses to guarantee quality. As for the COST, producing a game on the Wii is about 50% of the cost as producing one on the 360 or PS3. If you want to talk about requiring wealth to make a game then it's those two systems that require it. Producing a new and innovative game on the Wii is a lot less of a financial risk than it is for the other two.
I disagree. All the news coverage I saw when the PS3 and Wii were coming out talked solely about the PS3. The Wii lines were not as long. What happened though was that when those of us who got a Wii took them home and invited our non-gamer friends to play our non-gamer friends LOVED it. They're the ones who create the hype.
I've always loved Nintendo because of the quality and depth their games have. Everytime I play a PSX game I find that the story is lacking and generally the game play is poorly thought out. Nintendo sells a license which requires a certain level of quality. Sony sells libraries which require only dollars, and it shows.
The demand is so high because even the most basic sports game (WiiSports) is a lot of fun. You open up that box and next thing you know you're swatting at tennis balls, and it's fun. I hate tennis but I love Wii Tennis.
I agree with you that Nintendo needs to get some more games out. I got the new Sonic game and that's a ton of fun, and I've never enjoyed the Sonic franchise... so once again the new controls make that much of a difference!
Michael you missed the point, it doesn't matter if they have more disposable income, they aren't going to spend their disposable dollars on a $20 CD that probably only has 1 or 2 good songs on it. Not when they can get the same song for free from one of the p2p networks. The success of iTunes shows that they are willing to spend $1 for a song, or $10 for an album, but not $20 as can be seen by the failing CD market.
... and on and on it goes.
The point of my post was that the RIAA, radio, advertisers, and market choices have created a perfect never ending circle.
RIAA gets rid of singles opting to sell albums only -> Radio only wants singles that draw an audience their advertisers want (13-25 year olds) -> 13-25 year olds only want the single and don't want to pay for an album -> RIAA gets rid of singles oprting to sell albums only ->
That's what this whole situation is. It's all about greed.
You have the RIAA releasing TERRIBLE full length albums while abandoning the single. You have radio operators like Clear Channel only providing space for 2 or 3 new songs on their national playlists, and demanding that those 2 or 3 new songs be songs that appeal to the target advertiser's say are the most important (13-25 year olds.) 13-25 year olds, not having a lot of money, opt to pirate the ONE song they like rather than pay $20 for a CD full of terrible music. And the circle is complete!
And let's not even get to how the music, radio, and retailers are failing people over the age of 25. When the hell is the RIAA going to realize that if 13-25 year olds aren't going to BUY the music, they should start making music for the people who will shell out the money (ie, people over 25.)????
*sigh*
If anything is going to cause America to fall behind in the tech sector it's the CEO's and other top execs at major companies that won't let the rest of us practice our ART the way we see fit to do so.
You know, they pay CEO's really really well and there are no shortage of people trying to get those jobs.
Maybe, I know this is crazy, but MAYBE execs should consider paying tech people better, treating them better, providing them the equipment they need, and stop letting their HR and Marketing wonks get in our way. Gosh, crazy!
As long as American executives are willing to hire talentless (yet, well educated) foreigners because they're "cheaper" and continue to disrespect the science and art that tech work is they'll continue to have trouble finding talented people willing to do this job.
Execs always forget the art part of these jobs. You can have all the book smarts in the world, but unless you have actual talent your not going to be a very good engineer. Most of the H-1B's I've met are book smart, but haven't got any natural talent. When I talk to them it becomes obvious that they are only in this industry for the money. If 5-10 years ago they had heard that nerf herding was going to get them an American visa and a high paying job they would've studied that instead. Somebody needs to tell execs that it's time to stop pinching pennies, and time to start thinking about what REALLY makes a good tech worker.
It begs the question of whether or not communist countries failed because they had a communist economy, or because they were a dictatorship.
So far all dictatorships have failed. So it's impossible to determine whether or not having a communist economy led to the end of the dictatorship that ran that economy, or vis versa.
Legally the principal did not have the right to veto any section of your student Newspaper.
My parents are teachers, as are many of my friends. I'm often disgusted when I hear them whining about not making enough money. They make GREAT money for a job that gives them 3 months off in the summer, 2 weeks around christmas, and one week off in the spring.
The other day I was telling my mother that in England children are taught Algebra begining at age 11 which would be 6th grade. Here in California we don't start Pre-Algebra until age 12, or 13. That puts American students two years behind on instructions. My mother thought that I had made it up, that it was impossible to teach children Algebra while still in Elementry school. I assured here that the higher standards of European schools seems to have only helped maintain the quality of their education.
I'm so tired of listening to teachers whine about their cushy tenured jobs that lower the bar on performance, while paying them well, and giving them months off in the summers. Teachers should be required to work during the summers just like the rest of us. (Not teaching, doing other productive things for the districts they work in.)
Did you know there's never been a communist economy in a democratic political system? Every communist state has been run by a dictatorship or some form. All dicatorships fail when the dictator makes a wrong move and his enemies take advantage of the error.
I often wonder whether or not a country with a communist economy would survive better if it were lead be a democratically elected body.
Nintendo likes to put out games that are quality. I know that when I go out and buy a game for the Gamecube that it is far less of a crap shoot than with other systems. The problem though is that they have completely opted out of some genres of gaming that I am interested in. For example the Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) style game which are fun (yes, you can admit it) but the only game they have in that style is Donka Konga... wich has a set of bongos. Where am I going to put bongos in my apartment?
They also completely skip the strategy genre. This is primarily dependent on the fact that it's a console, and strategy games historically haven't done well. I feel though that there are enough buttons on the controllers now to allow strategy games to be fun to play. Maybe I'm crazy go nuts.
Nintendo's skipping of the MMORPG genre is a bit weird though. This would seem like a natural source of long lasting revenue stream. It could possibly be related to the number of consoles on the market, possibly it's not enough to make the endeavor profitable on the Gamecube which is has not sold as well as the PS2. What I don't understand is why a software company can't make a cross platform MMORPG. Perhaps part of the problem is that patching on the game discs is impossible since they are read only. You have to get the game righ straight out of the door.
SOURCE: Salon.com
Soon after Sept. 11, Hyman's commentaries, "The Point," became a daily must-carry on Sinclair stations. Critics of the Iraq war are "whack-jobs," the French are "cheese-eating surrender monkeys," progressives "loony left," and Democratic members of Congress who argued against Bush policies are "unpatriotic politicians who hate our military." At first only Sinclair stations that aired its NewsCentral broadcast were required to carry "The Point." But recently all Sinclair stations have been told to feature Hyman's broadsides, often by shortening their sportscasts.
In St. Louis, Sinclair fired the entire 47-person news team at KDNL, making it among the first major-market television stations to broadcast without local news. At Sinclair's Rochester, N.Y., station, it fired the entire news, weather and sports anchor team, and half of the remaining staff. Variety reported that Smith assembled station employees in the company parking lot, climbed onto the hood of a car, read a list of names, and announced that those on the list were fired. (Smith denied the account.) On a smaller but still telling scale, after Sinclair took over WCWB in Pittsburgh, the company ditched the station's three public affairs programs, including "Girl Scouting Today," and replaced them with infomercials.
Typically, when Sinclair guts local news operations, it replaces them with a newscast beamed in from its Maryland studio, which is packaged as a homegrown broadcast. Dubbed "NewsCentral," the maneuver is first and foremost a money-saving enterprise. But an indirect consequence of beaming uniform newscasts across the country is that it has given Sinclair some political clout. "I don't think they anticipated the power they would generate with NewsCentral," says one news industry source. "They created a political animal."
But none of Sinclair's maneuvers, even the "Nightline" stunt, prepared observers for its most recent moves. Sinclair has shown no previous interest in documentaries. "It's never happened before -- ever," says filmmaker Robert Greenwald, who told Salon he offers all his films for Sinclair to broadcast, including "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War." George Butler, director of "Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry," as well as Paul Alexander, maker of "Brothers in Arms," a documentary of Kerry's Vietnam experience, have made similar offers, suggesting Sinclair, if it were interested in balance, would show their films to counter the attacks of "Stolen Honor." Sinclair has failed to respond to their offers.
That is a lie, they were going to show the Documentry, and then after the 90 minute documentry have a "Q&A" session that lasted 30 minutes. John Kerry was invited to that in order for the Sinclair stations to be able to say they fulfilled their "equal time" requirements for political candidates.
Grym,
You're the guy who posts those old, outdated, essays on how liberal the media is. Well here is a prime example of what you, and your cut-and-past essay, got wrong.
Broadcast TV:
The Sinclair family owns 62 television stations throughout the United States. They are the largest holders of such media, and they are going to play an anti-Kerry movie that has already been debunked as a Republican propoganda piece full of lies. They have absolutely no intention of fulfilling the "equal time" requirement.
Network TV:
Let's move on to Network TV. Just last week higher-ups at CBS pulled a story, with well backed documentation and sources, that exposed the rational Bush used to go to war in Iraq as lies. CBS pulled the plug on a biographical Reagan mini-series because it protrayed the Reagan's as something other than saints. The CEO of the company that owns CBS (VIACOMM) announced that he is pro-Bush.
Cable-TV News:
-FOX News, do I really need to explain how they are biased? It's well documented in several books, and websites. CAP has examples.
-CNN moved to the right in order to recapture FOX's market share.
-MSNBC cancled the liberal Phil Donahue show (despite being the highest reated show on MSNBC) in order to put on arch-conservative Michael Savage. Once again, they moved right in order to capture back FOX TV viewers.
AM-Radio:
AM Radio is the realm of political speech when it comes to the airwaves. Until this year there was not one single nationally broadcasted commercial liberal radio network. Not one! All the time major radio companies like Clear Channel, Viacomm, and Infinity Broadcasting claimed there was no market for liberal talk shows. Instead every single political talk radio station was far right conservative. That doesn't look like a bias to you Grym? Finally this year a bunch of liberals got togethor and formed Air America, the first commercial talk radio network for liberals. Guess what: It's out performing conservative stations in every market it has appeared in. So that begs the questions, was it a buisiness decision, or an editorial decision from the company executives, that kept liberal's off AM radio for the past 20 years?
FM-Radio:
FM radio is not known for much political talk. However, there are nationally syndicated morning shows on FM that do discuss political issues on occassion. Howard Stern was pro Bush during the 2000 election year cycle, nothing happened. Literally one day after Howard Stern declared he would not vote for Bush, and no longer supported Bush, Clear Channel dropped him from syndication on their radio stations. For those of you who are not aware, the owner of Clear Channel is a close friend of Geroge Bush. When the Dixie Chicks openly discussed their embarassment of having Bush as their President, it was Clear Channel who held Dixie Chicks CD destruction parties.
Well Grym, I'm sure you're saying to yourself: BUT that has nothing to do with the reporters!? Of course it does! That study you relied on to prove reporters are more liberal is 20 years old. The ownership of the media has changed considerably since then and now lies in the hands of very few (about 6) majority stock holders in various companies. Those owners are very conservative, often direct hiring practices, and editorial content through their power. In addition, as can be seen with Viacomm's decision to pull the anti-Bush CBS story, or Clear Channels firing of Howard Stern, it is too easy for them to say "you publish that, and I'll fire you."
That's a lie, the media is not liberal. Just look at the Sinclair family owned stations (62 of them) which are going to broadcast the Anti-Kerry propoganda film. The Sinclair family ordered the stations to do so during Prime Time instead of whatever normal programs those stations would be broadcasting.
You're also relying on 20 year old studies as to what percentage of reporters consider themselves liberal. If you refuse to belive that, than consider this, if reporters are constantly surronded by information maybe you should consider why with all that information they would be liberal? Perhaps it's because being liberal is what intelligent people are?
Certainly Neoconservative George W. Bush isn't a poster child for intelligence. What about John Ashcroft? The guy had himself anointed with olive oil by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas when he took the office of the Attorney General. No, the only smart conservatives are the ones who are cut throat machiavelian rich people who would kill their own family if it meant keeping their power.
This is a prime example of the -real- bias in the media, not the imagined "liberal bias" you often hear AM talk radio hosts sobbing about. The media is owned by wealthy right wingers and that ultimately determines the bias of reporting. "Not true! Not true!" the Rush's ditto head army screams, "there was a study that said the majority of reporters were liberal!" That study is over 20 years old now, and major media consolodation has changed a lot of things for TV and Radio. Those changes have resulted in a small handfull of right wingers controlling just about every word that is printed, or broadcast. "But but but, they just own the media! They don't write the stories!" comes the laughable retort from ignorant AM talk show listeners. The people who pull the strings at the top ultimately hire people with their bias, or fire reporters that don't share their bias.
Just last week the CEO of CBS's parent company Viacom announced he was voting for George W. Bush, and that Bush was the best thing for Viacomm. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, an important story regarding Bush's lies, what he knew, and when he knew it in regards to WMD claims in Iraq was stopped cold from being reported by CBS.
It does not help that today's reporters are profoundly lazy. For example when Bush gave his state of the union address and lied about the Niger's nuclear materials purchase by Iraq, the same day I was reading alternative news sites like BuzzFlash that headlined the story of how the documents Bush was referring to had already been debunked years ago. While Tony Blair was going before Parliament presenting "intelligence reports" about Iraq's ability to go to war in 15 minutes, the same day I was reading how these reports were in fact a 12 year old thesis from a graduate student. Yet this wasn't reported by major newspapers, or TV media for months.
We are in dangerous times when the Whitehouse's lies are reprinted, without any fact checking, by a lazy news media urgent to get a story out. At what point does the media just become a mouth of the party? If the media doesn't question, or fact check, what is to stop the lies from turning on Americans who don't agree with the Republicans? If the Republicans were to issue a statement, "Democrats planning to ban bibles*," would the press repeat that lie? The answer is yes, because they already have: two weeks ago in the south the Republicans sent out flyers with that very statement on it, and local media reprinted it dutifully.
Congratulations America, our press is now just a propoganda device for the Republican party, and we are just a step away from facism.
How much do you think it costs to not meet her friends?
Actually, in Greek society a "citizen" (free man) was never to be penetrated. Once a man became a citizen it was abosolutely taboo for him to be penetrated by another man, but expected before that.
The boy/man relationships of early Greece were probably characterized in this fashion. In fact, since these relationships were mandated by social structures a man taking a boy in this manner is probably because he was actually desiring a female form without the consequences of male/female intercourse (pregnancy.)
First off, regarding the first paragrah starting with "Fuck you..." I wasn't attacking you, simply saying that I don't agree with your position on why Liberals think they way they do. Your response is a bit... angry.
Second paragraph: I do not agree with how you summed up the argument made by liberals. The argument is more like this, "If we were invaded by another country wouldn't Americans be in the streets fighting the invader?" It isn't a matter of what we made them do, it's is a matter of what is a reasonable response to an invasion by a foreign power.
Third paragraph you said:
Why do I think people are attacking our soldiers over there? I can tell you it's not ordinary Iraqi citizens who have feel invaded and opressed. If that were the case, they wouldn't be attacking iraqi citizens who cooperated with Americans - they'd only be attacking the Americans. I think it's two bit punks like Muqtada al-Sadr who simply want to be in power for themselves, aided by jihadists who are crossing over the iraqi border to participate in what they see as a holy war. Notice that I have not explained their behavior in terms of anything we've done or anything about their situation - I've explained it in terms of who they are and what they tend to do.
Unfortunately I don't know if I can agree with you here. I don't think we get the full story from our news media here. I went over to Europe for a few weeks, while there I noticed CNN International tells the stories completely different from how CNN (America) tells the stories. On CNN International they show you images of Iraqi insurgents where they look like actual well trained, not chaotic, fighting units against US Soldiers. They also show things like angry Iraqi's (angry at both sides), and American soldiers actually firing their weaponry (not just slinging it over their shoulder in a non-threatening way that we most often see on our media here.)
As for whether or not is ordinary Iraqi's fighting us? Al-Sadr's men are ordinary iraqi's, but in our media, because they are against us, they are lumped into a special category that makes them something other than angry Iraqis.
In addition, I agree, Muqtada al-Sadr's power grab seems unsavory to my American sense of democratic values. It reminds me in a way of the scottish leaders in the movie Braveheart who were willing to sell out their countrymen for noble titles, and land. At the same time though, I recognize that the tribal form of government is what Iraqi's are used to and want to live under. To me it seems bad, to them it seems good. Does that make me a conservative, and them a liberal? Or does that make me a liberal, and them a conservative? Or does it just mean that relative to their position, my position is different?
I disagree with your premise. I think Liberals don't try to explain bad behavior, but instead examine what is considered bad behaviour as relative to the position of the person who is engaging in the bad behaviour.
A current modern day example might be the way conservatives vs. liberals think in regards to the insurgents in Iraq. The conservatives will automatically think, "They are attacking our soldiers! And disruptin' our brave leader Bush's plan for giving Iraq democracy! They are bad for killing American soldiers!" meanwhile, liberals are thinking in terms of the Iraqi perspective, "they are attacking American soldiers because they feel as though they've been invaded, and in their minds they are freedom fighters fighting off invaders attempting to steal their country's natural resources. Not to mention we may have killed members of their family during the invasion. Our soldiers should never have been put there in the first place by the vietnam dodging coward that occupies the White house."
Who's right? Both sides actually. In this case it is a matter of perspective and from which side you look at the events.