CuriousAmerican wrote

• At 05:05am on 23rd Mar 2011, CuriousAmerican wrote:
  In the immortal words of one of the modern day greatest poets.....
  
  "you think you're special...I can see it in eyes"...rage against the machine..
  
  Once you realize that you aren't...you begin to accept correction...and begin the life-long goal of searching for Wisdom...some days better than others....
  
  "it is hard to fill a cup that thinks it is already full..."
  
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• 77. At 05:51am on 23rd Mar 2011, Chris-TH wrote:
  Ref 74
  
  ...to keep people from killing each other in a civil war....?....You better have a better story to tell the widow and orphans than that.....
  
  I could live with (die for) that, but not if it meant that I had to kill by myself in order to achieve the goal (of stopping other people from killing each others). Where is the limit and the justification?
  Using "black humor" you could even use "by any means" to justify erasing Benghazi from the face of the Earth. That would for sure prevent the forces of Col. G. from killing their own citizens in that city!!
  
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• 78. At 06:07am on 23rd Mar 2011, KScurmudgeon wrote:
  I think all of this conversation is the result of the live media's urgent need to fill every second with compelling noise and eye candy.
  
  I am of the opinion that there is nothing in the real world that moves fast enough or contains controversy enough to keep the modern TV viewer continually excited and attentive.
  
  For example, a category 9 earthquake in one of the richest and most populous nations on earth, followed before the news can be spun, with a thirty-foot wall of rushing death and destruction, killing at least 10,000 and leaving half a million to make their lives exposed to the icy rain and snow, only set the talking heads to a faster pace of interpretation, specious speculation, and endless rebroadcast ing of the few most spectacular clips they could find.
  
  Even with the appearance of not one, or two or three, but four rapidly failing nuclear reactors in the midst of it all, the pace of real events couldn't keep up with their need to fill all available cyperspace with incoherent and often nonsensical babbling.
  
  Predictions of melt down began before anyone knew what had happened at the power stations, and continue to this hour. Many commentators had no idea what a melt down was, and talked on about it for days without getting out a recognizable description. Today was the first day I heard a responsible explanation of the relative hazard of the levels of radiation that has been released, of what warning levels have been issued, and what they mean. The first time anyone I heard said that there is some appreciable difference between 'detectable', 'above normal', 'potentially dangerous', or 'life threatening'.
  
  And for Libya - President Obama has done the worst thing he could have done - he kept the people waiting. He must have been dithering. Remember the hand wringing before he announced he would join the no-fly-zone? Remember the crying that he was already too late? There are at present, I believe, no facts to support this claim. Future events may show that he was in fact too late, or, if Gadhaffi falls tonight, next week, or in six months or a year, probably history will show that Obama was not, in fact too late at all - it may actually decide that he achieved an epochal triumph for all mankind. Tonight none of these things are true.
  
  But all of this is merest speculation - it has not happened, and it is likely (as not) that the outcome has not yet been imagined or described, although the scribes are busy trying.
  
  Real facts, real wars, real disasters and real heroism isn't done at an unbroken run. Each takes it's time happening - the time required by real things to develop and to have consequences.
  
  Beware the man or woman who not only holds your buttonhole, but refuses to let go your ear. He most likely hasn't a clue what he is talking about - he just wants, desperately, to keep your attention.
  
  I will pay more attention to the play by play during the basketball tournament (as long as my teams are playing) than I will to those 'newsmen' or '-women' who have already shown their only job is to fill time.
  
  Mr. Mardell is not one of them.
  
  KScurmudgeon