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Topic: Today's Bad News (Read 116710 times)

Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #75
That would be CNN. The same news all day long over and over and over.

Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #76
Maybe we need a thread devoted to "journalism." The British tabloid, The Sun, "Britain's most popular newspaper," would win an Oscar for junk journalism.

Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #77
Don't be so sure. The German tabloid Bild published by Axel Springer AG. is a serious candidate for that prize and could beat The Sun .

Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #78
Does Glasgow have a contender?

Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #79
The Howie Report.


Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #81
More your kind of paper ensbb3 so I couldn't comment on midden thinking. My weakness is that matter of contending with envy from you lotbut then i remember you are ex-colonists and I smile nod and muse"hhhm, yes. explains it."
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #82
From the mouths of ex-colonials...

Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #83
 :hat:
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #84
Every time I use my clothes drier there is a handful of lint in its filter.
I calculate that in just under twenty-eight years I will have no clothes left.


Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #86

Maybe we need a thread devoted to "journalism." The British tabloid, The Sun, "Britain's most popular newspaper," would win an Oscar for junk journalism.


The front page in question has its admirers

Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #87
I looked but found no admirers just a few people who thought it worthy of commentary. I do wonder if the woman just slept or is there more to the story.  :cheers:
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Feb. 2012
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Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #88
Very bad news...Günter Grass, the Nobel-winning German novelist, died at 87.

I'll never forget Grass's Oskar in The Tin Drum. Bye-bye Günter.

Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #89
Yes an outstanding man and wasn't it only recently he admitted that in the last days of the War as a teenager he had served in the SS? Why did he leave it so long to admit that?
"Quit you like men:be strong"


Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #91
Seems he was 17 when into the military at a desperate time for his country and as he admitted was a keen Hitler Youth member so kind of understandable he would be all for the allocation into the military. A great many clever people who were very active Nazis continued after the war in law, arts, police, government. Although it is maybe a passing negative keeping it quiet so long I don't think however it in any way detracts from the man and his talented contribution. He still deserves the accolades of course.
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #92
Quote
A book as wide-ranging as this one needs a governing metaphor to give it at least an illusion that all is well:
It was said in the old days that every year Thor made a circle around Middle-earth, beating back the enemies of order. Thor got older every year, and the circle occupied by gods and men grew smaller. The wisdom god, Woden, went out to the king of the trolls, got him in and armlock, and demanded to know of him how order might triumph over chaos.
"Give me your left eye," said the king of the trolls, "and I'll tell you."
Without hesitation, Woden gave up his left eye. "Now tell me."
The troll said, "The secret is, Watch with both eyes!"
Woden's left eye was the last sure hope of gods and men in their kingdom of light surrounded on all sides by darkness. All we have left is Thor's hammer, which represents not brute force but art, or, counting both hammerheads, art and criticism. Thor is no help. Like other gods, he has withdrawn from our immediate view. We have only his weapon, abandoned beside a fencepost in high weeds, if we can figure out how to use it. This book is an attempt to develop a set of instructions, an analysis of what has gone wrong in recent years with the various arts —especially fiction, since that is the art on which I am best informed— and what has gone wrong with criticism.

The language of critics, and of artists of the kind who pay attention to critics: […]

These are the opening words of John Gardner's (…no, the other one!) collection of essays titled On Moral Fiction, which I would have recommended to you before, Jaybro, had you not so thoroughly convinced me that your interests lay elsewhere… But the happenstance of Grass's demise, your mention of it and my faulty memory (beginning on page 9, and later starting at page 60: Gardner cites a William H. Gass…) had me rummaging through the few books I have left.
I started to type the quote above and soon realized I'd got two names confused.

I'll admit, I expected to have something negative to say about Grass. It appears I don't, not even second-hand. So, I will merely add my meager condolences.
And promise to read -if I live long enough- some of his work. (On your say-so? Not exactly; but as penance for my intended slight — and for its impulse! But you already know I can be a jerk.) What would you suggest I start with? :)

I confess, I've not too much to say about a teenager in Nazi Germany… The only way for the likes of me to understand his circumstances -the choices he made- is through fiction, or the kind of history that is extremely difficult to write and even more difficult to find, once it's written.
If your intent (in your "pedestrian" career…) was to steer your students towards understanding of their fellow man, I'd applaud it; and consider the remote possibility that you've -somewhat- educated me…
————————————————————————————————
Might I recommend another novel?
I can only give you a hint: A British author -obviously, an academic- re-wrote the Faust story. (Parts of it were despicable…) It was the ending that sticks in my mind:

Having connived the means to kill the Pope on Easter Sunday, he, Faust, crowed! But the Pope did not die…
The Host paten was to hold a poisoned wafer, secreted the night before in its sanctuary. But it turned out that transubstantiation was more than a dogma of the church… :)
The poison was gone -since the wafer was transmuted- and Faust was hoist upon his own petard!
(Much of the novel, I found offensive… But you know how the British -specially, the "upper crust" or their pretenders- think! Perversion is their main interest.
But they do, most of them, have an education: Would one of them write a whole book to make such a silly point? Of course, most would! Mere logic -based on premises- present the opportunity. And why not pursue it? :)

Me, I've been schooled as a Catholic. So, the "surprise" ending didn't surprise me.
But, if you can find it and read it through, let me know what you think…
进行 ...
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)


Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #94
That kind of explains your problem Oakdale so thanks for sharing the straing........
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #95
That kind of explains your problem Oakdale

No sir! But it kind-of explains part of your problem with me… :)
进行 ...
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #96
Oh I don't have a problem with you dear boy as i know the head shrink industry of the ex-colonies is a mighty big thing so I can relax.
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #97
Psychoanalysis is as well documented, as an effective therapy and a scientific or medical discipline, as Scientology!
But almost any therapy would help you… Are you too cheap to spend the money? :) Or too far gone to know you should? :(
进行 ...
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #98
Unlike over the pond Oakdale outr head shrinking does not cost you but in a land of gun nut jobs, school massacres and much else it is good you have such a big machine. Hope it helps in the long run because it isn't working just now!
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: Today's Bad News

Reply #99
No one speaks about Katmandu earthquake?
I have a theory. When the earth sakes, obviously, the shaking is much bigger at the top of the biggest mountain in earth.
A "7,something", at sea level,  Richter scale earthquake, at 9.000 meters altitude it's equal to a "20.something" earthquake.

Much bigger earthquake was the Chinese invasion of Nepal, and no one said nothing about.
A matter of attitude.