Thank you. I was getting annoyed that the only example was a "devout Baptist," as if only professing Christians care about what other people do.
That said, I don't know if it's discrimination. There's something to be said for conflicts of "interest," social conflicts, conflicts of preferences, not fitting in with the team, etc. If the entire office likes to go out drinking from 8pm to 2am every Friday night and I don't drink, maybe that should be brought up. If the team has had problems with people in the past surfing for porn at work (and if that's a problem for the team/office/business), maybe that should be brought up.
The idea that "work life" and "non-work life" are completely separate and what you do in one has no effect (or should have no effect) on the other is absolutely ridiculous. You're the same person and you have the same character at work and not at work. Whether or not certain activities affects you negatively or positively is debatable, of course, but there seems to be a growing attitude of "I should be able to do anything I want when you're not around, and you shouldn't care about it."... whether "you" is your wife, your boss, your kid, your parent, or whatever.
I have had nothing but trouble with my ATI linux drivers. Granted, it was an older and a mobile card, but it was a pain to get 3D working at all. Actually, not that old - X1400 Mobile, I believe.
So, what we need to do is take more money away from them and have the [very efficient] government fund R&D?
Yes, they do have narrowed focus and they aren't interested in all aspects of science, especially if it doesn't benefit them. But I don't think that means we should rely on the government to handle it completely, either. Seems to me that a lot of modern inventions came from profit-driven interests.
Now, if - speaking of my US government, anyways - the government was actually good at managing money, I wouldn't be so opposed to it. But I haven't seen too many government-managed money/ventures that have been very efficiently run.... and a whole lot of them seem to be much more inefficient than profit-driven businesses.
No, profit-driven business is not the answer to everything. And neither is government.
They used it post-1960 because local air temps were available, correct? At least, according to the person I responded to.
If the tree-rings suddenly changed in accuracy, I would ask how we know they are accurate at any time.
If I were testing something and found results that were "accurate" and then suddenly the results from my test were inaccurate, I would say that my method for measuring was unpredictable and thus would find another way to test it.
To me, it sounds like they were trying to get a result, and chose the data set that provided them that result. To me, it seems strange that one method of estimating the temperature (and it doesn't seem like it's a very good way to do it, or at least not very precise) would be deemed inaccurate at a certain date while trusting it for the other dates.
And if they had thermometer records for pre-1960, why not just use those and not the tree rings?
And I have seen the mistrust and betrayal (and jealousy) associated with extramarital affairs, the broken homes it gives, the heartbreak, etc.
No, I was not raised by religious wackos who thought sex == devil. But I was raised to believe that sex is for marriage, and marriage is for a guy and girl. That's laughed at now, scorned at, scoffed at, and otherwise ridiculed as old fashioned, outdated, etc... my response? I don't care. Some of the happiest people and most tightly-knit families with the fewest squabbles believe the same way I do. I haven't seen many really happy people that have gone through divorces, affairs, etc. They seem to be happy at times, but just because of their temporal pleasure and sexual gratification, as far as I can tell.
And, incidentally, I like how you go from me expressing some more conservative views on sex to you thinking that I apparently think nobody under 35 should know what it is; furthermore, you seem to think that it's a neutral act and people just need to be educated (preconditioned?) to not care about what people's spouses do. Or something like that?
In which case, as LWATCDR said, if they find out you did do it and lied about it... well, I guess that just shows how much you've changed since your "youthful days." Uh-huh.
Not really though. It's not a Windows 7 tool. You don't really use it from Windows 7.
That is like a calling a Windows tool to install a Linux iso to a usb driver a "Linux tool." It's not a Linux tool. It's a Windows tool used to do something with a Linux iso.
Yes, it runs under Windows 7, I'm sure... but it's really meant to help install Windows 7, as I understand it. "Windows 7 Tool" implies that it's included in Windows 7 or used by Windows 7, not used by older OS's in order to install Windows 7.
Swear words, maybe not. Sex? Yes. Let's see. We have STD's, broken families/divorce, sexual abuse, domestic violence, emotional trauma... all very closely, in varying degrees, tied to sex.
Yes, I am of the opinion that adultery in a marriage has very, very severe adverse effects on a marriage, which in turn very adversely affects all in that family - especially the children. And yes, I do think that porn brings similar issues along with it.
It seems that the world today wants to base many things on trust and honor, but nobody wants to take personal responsibility in relationships even to have that trust. Many seem to dislike untrustworthy corporations, politicians, and banks, and yet get all upset if their spouse thinks it a horrible thing that she can't trust him around other women, or alone in Las Vegas, or whatever.
People apparently like to think that trust, morality, ethics, and all those good things are what other people should do so that I can benefit from them, but that I should be able to do whatever I want, as long as it doesn't hurt* anyone.
* By "hurt" I apparently only mean direct physical harm.
That's because of the way you said it. You didn't explain it clearly, IMO... because you said that it is equal to 1. "Equal to" has very big connotations to most people that haven't taken calculus or something like that.
If you were to say that 0.9 followed by X number of 9's... as X approaches infinity, the value of the number approaches 1, that would be different. However... as I recall, from calculus, the value never actually equals 1. Practically speaking, we treat it as 1, but it never actually gets to 1. It approaches 1. I know what you meant, but I don't think you chose your words very well... and if you tell non-calculus-class-taking Joe that 0.99999999999999999999999999... is equal to 1, he's going to laugh. Of course it's not equal to 1. 1 is a very, very, very tiny bit larger than 0 followed by any number of 9's! That is, if he remembers his algebra:)
So in other words, they used tree ring data pre-1960 to show a general warming trend even though they didn't want to use it post-1960 because they knew it wasn't accurate?
If it isn't accurate in comparison to the actual temps post-1960, I see no reason I should believe they are accurate pre-1960. If you can only accurately give me data from post-1960, then just give me data post-1960, don't try to prove your point using faulty an inaccurate "temperature" readings from tree rings...
There's definitely a difference between homosexuality and religion, I agree... and it's not quite a fair comparison. I guess I just get upset about some things getting preferential treatment because of a loud minority group. Since I happen to live in a state that has quite a loud homosexual minority group, things like that happen.
I'm not sure why using public funds for a Christmas celebration would be bad? Presuming it's not extra funds, or whatever... but it seems most schools have some sort of winter festivity thing going that is basically based on Christmas, for the most part, except - at least where I live - people try, constantly, to take "religion" out of it completely because I guess they find it offensive, while still retaining the family good-feeling-ness. But now I'm wandering off into philosophical dangerousness on slashdot:-o
I can agree with you that pro-PC and anti-PC types tend to be pretty wacky and both seem to like to feel victimized... with the conservatives feeling they are the victim and the liberals feeling the conservatives are victimizing the poor, helpless minority groups who need the liberals' help to cope with life. Or something like that.
Thanks for the discussion, and I apologize for any curt responses I gave. Posting at work has its disadvantages;)
Per song or per album, it's up to me. I don't recall how much music I have, but it ended up being somewhere between $5 and $10 per album to get the non-DRM ones. Something like 30 cents per track if individual?
The upgrade is done through iTunes. From one random online source, it was "... $0.30 a song, 30% of the current album price and $0.60 a music video to upgrade..." I guess it was probably around $5 for me per album or something like that, then. Of course, when you have albums that are rather expensive or long (like Mendelssohn's Elijah)...
You know, the reason that people are so non-offensive about the holidays is purely capitalist and doesn't come from the evil left. They don't want people to be fighting over religious beliefs, because if they do, they buy less crap.
I agree, corporate "Christmas" is just to make money. Whether or not you *cough* buy in *cough* to the profit/money-driven Christmas holiday stuff is up to you, the individual. I'm not really that concerned about them. Unless the government mandates ACME Widgets Inc. to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas for discrimination reasons. If ACME Widgets Inc. decided that on their own, that's fine. I think it's stupid, but it's their choice.
I agree. I think there are a lot of problems. I think it likely starts with the American people who appear to care more about Tiger Woods' recent scandal than their country. The country isn't going to run itself, and smart/honest/nice people aren't going to get elected by default if no one does anything. If that were the case, anarchy would probably work:P
Next at the chopping block, in my book, are dishonest politicians, no matter what party they are affiliated with.
Having the deadliest armed force may or may not be a good thing. That's definitely one of those debatable ones. If nothing else, I'm glad the USA is #1 in that are and not, oh, I don't know, Iran.
Incarceration per capita... don't know anything about that, so no comment:)
Greediest corporations... seems to me we likely have the largest corporations as we have been perhaps the most prosperous nation. That appears to be changing, so maybe all those evil greedy corporations will go somewhere else, too?
Incidentally, what's greed, and how do you define it? (am I defending "greed" or corporations that act wrongly? No. But "greed" seems to be thrown around as though corporations shouldn't want to profit...)
Hehe... thank you for the non-insulting accusation of ignorance;)
As Zardus said, I don't think "Black" is a bad word; in fact, some of my black friends and I tease each other about black/white and whatnot. I completely agree. So when people say we shouldn't refer to them as black, as that's racist, we should say "African American" instead... I think that's stupid, and put that in the "politically correctness" category. Some, IMO, are definitely rude.. like nigger or something like that, wihch seems to hearken back to slavery days when blacks were very wrongfully treated. I think that's a very rude word to use and find it offensive, personally. Then again, I find "white trash" and the like offensive, but it seems hard for minorities to get in trouble with what they say:)
Celebrating a holiday - by that I mean having a public school sponsored event. IMO, if the school can have a "Gay Day" (Harvey Milk thing in CA), I don't see why it's such a problem to have an actual Christmas celebration, complete with the actual story of Christmas (not Santa Claus). Do kids HAVE to take part in it? I suppose not. But saying that it's not right to "force" Christianity on our kids by celebrating Christmas in public schools while saying it's ok to "force" homosexuality on our kids by celebrating Harvey Milk Day is stupid and, I think, stunningly hypocritical. And if the kids come home asking their [insert religion here] parents what the deal is with Christmas and Jesus, then fine their parents can answer them.
Really, my take on being PC and the whole religious-holidays-in-school thing is I'm not sure that minority groups should be the ones deciding what the majority wants. I think it's also very different in different areas of the country, since some areas of the country have very loud minority groups... and others don't seem to have any minority groups at all, and others have majority groups that aren't the "typical white nominal Christian" American. I say that without trying to say that one of them is better than the other, just in case that's misunderstood:)
And yet, they want me to pay $100 to "upgrade" my iTunes store-bought music (the worst mistake in my online purchasing history...) to the DRM free version. Sounds like it was just another way for Apple to make more money.;)
I am fine with you saying what you want to say. I'm even fine with you saying I live in an insular world. But I'm not fine with certain double standards - like being called "white" and not being able to say "black" and things like that.
And, of course, we could get into Christmas celebrations and all that. I don't have a problem with celebrating - even in *gasp* public schools - "Christian" holidays while not celebrating every other religion's "winter-ish" holiday. That is what comes from being in a country that has a predominant culture. If that changes, fine... but forcing it to change from the top down seems strange, to me...
I don't have a problem with fox criticizing people or policies, so long as it is presented as opinion and not as news - msnbc isn't perfect in this regard, but it's considerably better than fox.
Hmm. It seems the lines between "news" and "opinion" has definitely blurred in organizations, at any rate... and to some extent, I can see how it is difficult. For example, the recent Reid comment. Is simply reporting that expressing opinion? Or how about not reporting it?
Or in the case of Gibbs' response to the questioner about the social secretary, I believe it was... I read one news article that simply said she "peppered" him with questions and then took one quote from Gibbs which did not include the particularly offensive part. Another news article spun it a different way and Gibbs was shown in a bad light, instead. Is that news or opinion? The one that showed Gibbs in a better light than he apparently was was from Reuters, I believe.
News itself can be very opinionated by simply choosing which news stories to report... that's more why I would say certain organizations lean left or right (or blatantly ARE left/right).
Kieth's bio blurb may portray him as a newscaster (he occasionally plays the straight anchor for political events) but no one who has ever watched countdown would mistake that show for a newscast.
You might be surprised... I believe there are people who mistake politicians for honest people, too...;) And his bio blurb didn't portray him as a newscaster but Countdown as a newscast. This is MSNBC's own description of it's own show. If they think it's a newscast and openly tell you it's a newscast, what does that say about what they feel is news? Seems to me this is basically the same as Fox claiming fair-and-unbalanced. If we take issue with them claiming that, we should take issue with what MSNBC considers it's "news" to be, too...
I also get uncomfortable when a news organization uses it's platform to materially support events, and then reports on them as if they're organic - as we saw with the teabagger nonsense.
This I would tend to agree with. I am not a Fox junkie. I'm not even a Republican junkie. The best thing that could happen to America is honesty, IMO... in news, in political arenas, in journalism, etc. Whether you're liberal or conservative is actually less important to me.
That said, leaving news out can be just as dishonest as making up news, and trusting a left-leaning "news source" solely is just as bad as trusting a right-leaning "news source." Or, I should say, might lead to just as a narrow-minded and ignorant opinion... or just flat out ignorance of what's going on. I tend to just read stories on google's news site, regardless of who publishes it, and simply take into account various leanings. What I do find is interesting are stories that a certain paper reports and others don't report. Those, to me, tell a *lot* about the papers. And I find that Fox has a lot more critical news stories about the current politicians than others.
And just because I'm in rant mode, I find it very annoying that people are more interested in Tiger Woods' escapades than health care reform (no matter what they think about the current reform bills). Just figured I'd throw that in there.:)
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Thank you. I was getting annoyed that the only example was a "devout Baptist," as if only professing Christians care about what other people do.
That said, I don't know if it's discrimination. There's something to be said for conflicts of "interest," social conflicts, conflicts of preferences, not fitting in with the team, etc. If the entire office likes to go out drinking from 8pm to 2am every Friday night and I don't drink, maybe that should be brought up. If the team has had problems with people in the past surfing for porn at work (and if that's a problem for the team/office/business), maybe that should be brought up.
The idea that "work life" and "non-work life" are completely separate and what you do in one has no effect (or should have no effect) on the other is absolutely ridiculous. You're the same person and you have the same character at work and not at work. Whether or not certain activities affects you negatively or positively is debatable, of course, but there seems to be a growing attitude of "I should be able to do anything I want when you're not around, and you shouldn't care about it." ... whether "you" is your wife, your boss, your kid, your parent, or whatever.
I have had nothing but trouble with my ATI linux drivers. Granted, it was an older and a mobile card, but it was a pain to get 3D working at all. Actually, not that old - X1400 Mobile, I believe.
So, what we need to do is take more money away from them and have the [very efficient] government fund R&D?
Yes, they do have narrowed focus and they aren't interested in all aspects of science, especially if it doesn't benefit them. But I don't think that means we should rely on the government to handle it completely, either. Seems to me that a lot of modern inventions came from profit-driven interests.
Now, if - speaking of my US government, anyways - the government was actually good at managing money, I wouldn't be so opposed to it. But I haven't seen too many government-managed money/ventures that have been very efficiently run.... and a whole lot of them seem to be much more inefficient than profit-driven businesses.
No, profit-driven business is not the answer to everything. And neither is government.
They used it post-1960 because local air temps were available, correct? At least, according to the person I responded to.
If the tree-rings suddenly changed in accuracy, I would ask how we know they are accurate at any time.
If I were testing something and found results that were "accurate" and then suddenly the results from my test were inaccurate, I would say that my method for measuring was unpredictable and thus would find another way to test it.
To me, it sounds like they were trying to get a result, and chose the data set that provided them that result. To me, it seems strange that one method of estimating the temperature (and it doesn't seem like it's a very good way to do it, or at least not very precise) would be deemed inaccurate at a certain date while trusting it for the other dates.
And if they had thermometer records for pre-1960, why not just use those and not the tree rings?
Humm. Interesting. Is it treated that way in all disciplines of math? i.e., calc, discrete math, etc.
I am actually happily married.
And I have seen the mistrust and betrayal (and jealousy) associated with extramarital affairs, the broken homes it gives, the heartbreak, etc.
No, I was not raised by religious wackos who thought sex == devil. But I was raised to believe that sex is for marriage, and marriage is for a guy and girl. That's laughed at now, scorned at, scoffed at, and otherwise ridiculed as old fashioned, outdated, etc... my response? I don't care. Some of the happiest people and most tightly-knit families with the fewest squabbles believe the same way I do. I haven't seen many really happy people that have gone through divorces, affairs, etc. They seem to be happy at times, but just because of their temporal pleasure and sexual gratification, as far as I can tell.
And, incidentally, I like how you go from me expressing some more conservative views on sex to you thinking that I apparently think nobody under 35 should know what it is; furthermore, you seem to think that it's a neutral act and people just need to be educated (preconditioned?) to not care about what people's spouses do. Or something like that?
In which case, as LWATCDR said, if they find out you did do it and lied about it... well, I guess that just shows how much you've changed since your "youthful days." Uh-huh.
Because the only things you can do that are "wrong" are things that are criminal... ?
Open standards are a good thing. They avoid these kinds of problems.
They do? I guess so, since, obviously, it's only evil corporations that disagree on things....
Not really though. It's not a Windows 7 tool. You don't really use it from Windows 7.
That is like a calling a Windows tool to install a Linux iso to a usb driver a "Linux tool." It's not a Linux tool. It's a Windows tool used to do something with a Linux iso.
Yes, it runs under Windows 7, I'm sure... but it's really meant to help install Windows 7, as I understand it. "Windows 7 Tool" implies that it's included in Windows 7 or used by Windows 7, not used by older OS's in order to install Windows 7.
Swear words, maybe not. Sex? Yes. Let's see. We have STD's, broken families/divorce, sexual abuse, domestic violence, emotional trauma... all very closely, in varying degrees, tied to sex.
Yes, I am of the opinion that adultery in a marriage has very, very severe adverse effects on a marriage, which in turn very adversely affects all in that family - especially the children. And yes, I do think that porn brings similar issues along with it.
It seems that the world today wants to base many things on trust and honor, but nobody wants to take personal responsibility in relationships even to have that trust. Many seem to dislike untrustworthy corporations, politicians, and banks, and yet get all upset if their spouse thinks it a horrible thing that she can't trust him around other women, or alone in Las Vegas, or whatever.
People apparently like to think that trust, morality, ethics, and all those good things are what other people should do so that I can benefit from them, but that I should be able to do whatever I want, as long as it doesn't hurt* anyone.
* By "hurt" I apparently only mean direct physical harm.
Please note the sarcasm :)
That's because of the way you said it. You didn't explain it clearly, IMO... because you said that it is equal to 1. "Equal to" has very big connotations to most people that haven't taken calculus or something like that.
If you were to say that 0.9 followed by X number of 9's... as X approaches infinity, the value of the number approaches 1, that would be different. However... as I recall, from calculus, the value never actually equals 1. Practically speaking, we treat it as 1, but it never actually gets to 1. It approaches 1. I know what you meant, but I don't think you chose your words very well... and if you tell non-calculus-class-taking Joe that 0.99999999999999999999999999... is equal to 1, he's going to laugh. Of course it's not equal to 1. 1 is a very, very, very tiny bit larger than 0 followed by any number of 9's! That is, if he remembers his algebra :)
So in other words, they used tree ring data pre-1960 to show a general warming trend even though they didn't want to use it post-1960 because they knew it wasn't accurate?
If it isn't accurate in comparison to the actual temps post-1960, I see no reason I should believe they are accurate pre-1960. If you can only accurately give me data from post-1960, then just give me data post-1960, don't try to prove your point using faulty an inaccurate "temperature" readings from tree rings...
That's why IBM, Microsoft, etc., have such small R&D departments, of course.
There's definitely a difference between homosexuality and religion, I agree... and it's not quite a fair comparison. I guess I just get upset about some things getting preferential treatment because of a loud minority group. Since I happen to live in a state that has quite a loud homosexual minority group, things like that happen.
I'm not sure why using public funds for a Christmas celebration would be bad? Presuming it's not extra funds, or whatever... but it seems most schools have some sort of winter festivity thing going that is basically based on Christmas, for the most part, except - at least where I live - people try, constantly, to take "religion" out of it completely because I guess they find it offensive, while still retaining the family good-feeling-ness. But now I'm wandering off into philosophical dangerousness on slashdot :-o
I can agree with you that pro-PC and anti-PC types tend to be pretty wacky and both seem to like to feel victimized... with the conservatives feeling they are the victim and the liberals feeling the conservatives are victimizing the poor, helpless minority groups who need the liberals' help to cope with life. Or something like that.
Thanks for the discussion, and I apologize for any curt responses I gave. Posting at work has its disadvantages ;)
Per song or per album, it's up to me. I don't recall how much music I have, but it ended up being somewhere between $5 and $10 per album to get the non-DRM ones. Something like 30 cents per track if individual?
The upgrade is done through iTunes. From one random online source, it was "... $0.30 a song, 30% of the current album price and $0.60 a music video to upgrade ..." I guess it was probably around $5 for me per album or something like that, then. Of course, when you have albums that are rather expensive or long (like Mendelssohn's Elijah)...
You know, the reason that people are so non-offensive about the holidays is purely capitalist and doesn't come from the evil left. They don't want people to be fighting over religious beliefs, because if they do, they buy less crap.
That has nothing to do with public schools though, does it?
I agree, corporate "Christmas" is just to make money. Whether or not you *cough* buy in *cough* to the profit/money-driven Christmas holiday stuff is up to you, the individual. I'm not really that concerned about them. Unless the government mandates ACME Widgets Inc. to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas for discrimination reasons. If ACME Widgets Inc. decided that on their own, that's fine. I think it's stupid, but it's their choice.
I agree. I think there are a lot of problems. I think it likely starts with the American people who appear to care more about Tiger Woods' recent scandal than their country. The country isn't going to run itself, and smart/honest/nice people aren't going to get elected by default if no one does anything. If that were the case, anarchy would probably work :P
Next at the chopping block, in my book, are dishonest politicians, no matter what party they are affiliated with.
"Health care" seems to be an ambiguous term.
Having the deadliest armed force may or may not be a good thing. That's definitely one of those debatable ones. If nothing else, I'm glad the USA is #1 in that are and not, oh, I don't know, Iran.
Incarceration per capita ... don't know anything about that, so no comment :)
Greediest corporations... seems to me we likely have the largest corporations as we have been perhaps the most prosperous nation. That appears to be changing, so maybe all those evil greedy corporations will go somewhere else, too?
Incidentally, what's greed, and how do you define it? (am I defending "greed" or corporations that act wrongly? No. But "greed" seems to be thrown around as though corporations shouldn't want to profit...)
Hehe... thank you for the non-insulting accusation of ignorance ;)
As Zardus said, I don't think "Black" is a bad word; in fact, some of my black friends and I tease each other about black/white and whatnot. I completely agree. So when people say we shouldn't refer to them as black, as that's racist, we should say "African American" instead... I think that's stupid, and put that in the "politically correctness" category. Some, IMO, are definitely rude.. like nigger or something like that, wihch seems to hearken back to slavery days when blacks were very wrongfully treated. I think that's a very rude word to use and find it offensive, personally. Then again, I find "white trash" and the like offensive, but it seems hard for minorities to get in trouble with what they say :)
Celebrating a holiday - by that I mean having a public school sponsored event. IMO, if the school can have a "Gay Day" (Harvey Milk thing in CA), I don't see why it's such a problem to have an actual Christmas celebration, complete with the actual story of Christmas (not Santa Claus). Do kids HAVE to take part in it? I suppose not. But saying that it's not right to "force" Christianity on our kids by celebrating Christmas in public schools while saying it's ok to "force" homosexuality on our kids by celebrating Harvey Milk Day is stupid and, I think, stunningly hypocritical. And if the kids come home asking their [insert religion here] parents what the deal is with Christmas and Jesus, then fine their parents can answer them.
Really, my take on being PC and the whole religious-holidays-in-school thing is I'm not sure that minority groups should be the ones deciding what the majority wants. I think it's also very different in different areas of the country, since some areas of the country have very loud minority groups... and others don't seem to have any minority groups at all, and others have majority groups that aren't the "typical white nominal Christian" American. I say that without trying to say that one of them is better than the other, just in case that's misunderstood :)
music you buy from iTunes has been DRM free.
And yet, they want me to pay $100 to "upgrade" my iTunes store-bought music (the worst mistake in my online purchasing history...) to the DRM free version. Sounds like it was just another way for Apple to make more money. ;)
Sounds like you have a problem with lawyers. Maybe we need fewer lawyers in Congress... :P
say what you want and let other people do it too.
It's not just words. Where have you been?
I am fine with you saying what you want to say. I'm even fine with you saying I live in an insular world. But I'm not fine with certain double standards - like being called "white" and not being able to say "black" and things like that.
And, of course, we could get into Christmas celebrations and all that. I don't have a problem with celebrating - even in *gasp* public schools - "Christian" holidays while not celebrating every other religion's "winter-ish" holiday. That is what comes from being in a country that has a predominant culture. If that changes, fine... but forcing it to change from the top down seems strange, to me...
USA should be the best nation
It's politically incorrect for the USA to be the best nation in anything nowadays.
I don't have a problem with fox criticizing people or policies, so long as it is presented as opinion and not as news - msnbc isn't perfect in this regard, but it's considerably better than fox.
Hmm. It seems the lines between "news" and "opinion" has definitely blurred in organizations, at any rate... and to some extent, I can see how it is difficult. For example, the recent Reid comment. Is simply reporting that expressing opinion? Or how about not reporting it?
Or in the case of Gibbs' response to the questioner about the social secretary, I believe it was ... I read one news article that simply said she "peppered" him with questions and then took one quote from Gibbs which did not include the particularly offensive part. Another news article spun it a different way and Gibbs was shown in a bad light, instead. Is that news or opinion? The one that showed Gibbs in a better light than he apparently was was from Reuters, I believe.
News itself can be very opinionated by simply choosing which news stories to report... that's more why I would say certain organizations lean left or right (or blatantly ARE left/right).
Kieth's bio blurb may portray him as a newscaster (he occasionally plays the straight anchor for political events) but no one who has ever watched countdown would mistake that show for a newscast.
You might be surprised... I believe there are people who mistake politicians for honest people, too... ;) And his bio blurb didn't portray him as a newscaster but Countdown as a newscast. This is MSNBC's own description of it's own show. If they think it's a newscast and openly tell you it's a newscast, what does that say about what they feel is news? Seems to me this is basically the same as Fox claiming fair-and-unbalanced. If we take issue with them claiming that, we should take issue with what MSNBC considers it's "news" to be, too...
I also get uncomfortable when a news organization uses it's platform to materially support events, and then reports on them as if they're organic - as we saw with the teabagger nonsense.
This I would tend to agree with. I am not a Fox junkie. I'm not even a Republican junkie. The best thing that could happen to America is honesty, IMO... in news, in political arenas, in journalism, etc. Whether you're liberal or conservative is actually less important to me.
That said, leaving news out can be just as dishonest as making up news, and trusting a left-leaning "news source" solely is just as bad as trusting a right-leaning "news source." Or, I should say, might lead to just as a narrow-minded and ignorant opinion... or just flat out ignorance of what's going on. I tend to just read stories on google's news site, regardless of who publishes it, and simply take into account various leanings. What I do find is interesting are stories that a certain paper reports and others don't report. Those, to me, tell a *lot* about the papers. And I find that Fox has a lot more critical news stories about the current politicians than others.
And just because I'm in rant mode, I find it very annoying that people are more interested in Tiger Woods' escapades than health care reform (no matter what they think about the current reform bills). Just figured I'd throw that in there. :)