I agree with your analysis of current magazines and sites. We seem to
share may opinions - and Bob, you perhaps should reflect on that!
Time is a waste of whatever it now costs. One I add is Vanity Fair, not as
I am looking for designer clothing or Swiss watches, but as it always has
interesting long articles on recent trials. Occasionally the Walrus or
Atlantic. On line, NYT and WP.
I have fallen into a continuing series of very long telephone calls.
Almost daily with my best friend who lives on Vancouver Island and another
in Denver. Both are women such as I. Calls are never less than an hour and
very wide ranging. Present activities, current affairs, theology, history,
and more. Neither are book addicts such as I. These calls ever last
less than 45 minutes and up,to two hours. They fill my evenings.
On my home front, I have unboxed and shelved our rather large DVD
collection as well as a massive classical CD collection assembled. Many of
the dvds are from Britain over the years (less expensive to buy and lower
shipping costs)so I have a multi zone player. The CDs are are also
purchased from Britain. Again shipping, but prices at Amazon UK are often
less than half of Amazon.ca. One CD I bought for under $10 from the UK
while on ca. The price was over $200! I grant that my musical taste has
wandered during the years. Atonal - pass. Early music? Only recorders
asI play that instrument. I end to avoid Baroque; Britain provide the
Complete Mozart for a song. Not the real Mozart, of course. Just his
music. Most of the CDs are from the romantic period. Of recent, one label
has released box sets of a number of Scandinavian composers, hitherto not
know me. The 20th Century? Hmmmm. A few good, but most to postmodern.
So many resident and expat Russians. Almost all of this collection is of
symphonies. Composers from all over - South America, Japan, China, Canada
and many more.
Evenings are for long telephone calls, reading, and music.
I have only rarely left home for over a month. The cold, yes. Covid too.
On those rare occasions I use my scooter. The car is under a lot of snow.
It took me a while and some experimentation to find the best hand and head
solutions. My very old sheepskin jacket is more than adequate. For my
hands, exposed as they are on the scooter, gloves worked until -15 or so,
mittens after that, and finally gloves in mittens! Arn’t delivery services
Devine?
Willow
On Fri, Jan 7, 2022 at 12:15 PM Bob Thomlinson <bthomlinson@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I could have mentioned that Time magazine also arrives in our postal mail
according to whatever greatly diminished schedule they have been reduced
to. I subscribed to it 5 years ago to get access to their online archive of
back issues – wonderful stuff. Five years later it still comes but I have
never received a renewal request or paid for more than the first year.
Willow you are correct that Time used to write long and well researched
articles on a broad range of issues (hench my interest in their archives).
Some of the current issues continue to have articles like that but there
seems to be an increasing percentage of issues pumped out the door full of
tabloid style “Best of ..” (leaders, influencers, ever form of minority,
etc.). Those issues seem to all be very short articles written by other
supposed celebrities so I don’t know how Time’s editors can claim
copyright. They quickly depart to the recycle bin unread.
For full disclosure I was also a subscriber to The Guardian (scary to many
Brits) and preferred the television reporting of Al Jazeera back in it’s
hey day to MSNBC, CNN, etc. which all seemed like talking heads
continuously recycling whatever “breaking news” they could find. When
travelling we will look for BBC News World, which does not seem to care
about having attractive news announcers and seldom tries to sensationalize
news events.
I think television is an OK media for entertainment but a very poor media
for education and intelligent information. How could any TV news program
attempt to answer your question about voter fraud in the 2020 US election –
and do it in the 30 to 45 seconds allowed. Perhaps there is some evidence
of voter fraud somewhere, but it just doesn’t fit into the “story” time
allowed without bumping revenue generating commercials. All this should
explain why we cancelled our cable TV service a few years back now
subscribe to some selected streaming services for sports and entertainment.
Don’t even get me started on my opinion of social media.
In answer to your question I have not read of any hard admissible evidence
of widespread voter fraud that would have changed the outcome of the 2020
election. It appears that the duly appointed state electoral officials were
not presented with anything significant either.
Cheers,
Bob T
P.S. Willow, we really do have to get together once our “pandemic” virus
has been downgraded to an “endemic” one. The current thinking is that might
happen from the highly transmissible Omicron variant tearing through the
population while producing symptoms similar to a common head cold. That
seems to be the current opinion of Dr. Bonnie Henry, the Provincial Health
Officer in B.C. and I think she has been right a lot so far.
*From:* dsp-ea-general-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <
dsp-ea-general-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> *On Behalf Of *Willow Arune
*Sent:* January 7, 2022 9:28 AM
*To:* dsp-ea-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* Re: Bob’s Optimism
I often look to books on current affairs. At times, I go overboard.
TIME, with all its faults, until it shank to its much smaller size. I
prefer the long articles that really dig down.
I do wonder how much of my viewpoint comes from the increasing bias of
MSNBC. For years I tried to follow both sides, National Review and Nation,
for example. That was back in the days when both sides presented reason
arguments. Starting well before Trump, that became impossible. Skip O’Neil
and “You are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts”.
Which brings to mind a serious question. Has any Republican presented any
evidence of voter fraud? They (GOP) all claim it is a real problem and
say they have a lot of evidence but I have yet to hear or read a GOPER
presenting evidence to support that belief. It seems to be akin to a
religion based on nothing but the Big Lie and its repetition over and
over. In all the past year, no supporting evidence. They do not like
Biden but can never enunciate WHY they do so, only repeating that yes,
they do have evidence but never disclose what it is (excepting the quacks
that give any number of “evidence” directly from God. Doctored and
misinterpreted videos are not evidence.
Bob. I have to break off here. I may be back later, once back to my
normal...
Willow
On Fri, Jan 7, 2022 at 8:37 AM Bob Thomlinson <bthomlinson@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Yes, Bob does tend to be optimistic, although I like to think of it as a
measured realism. Things seldom are as great as they might seam, nor as bad
as they might seem when you are in the middle of an emerging event. No I do
not need to be reminded of the long list of events where this philosophy
proved wrong for various countries and peoples.
However, it seems timely and very relevant to refer to Barbara F. Walters
new book *How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them* (see Goodreads for
a description:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58369678-how-civil-wars-start?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=0anPS2K8qq&rank=1
).
I could refer to the book itself but, although I have pre-ordered it, it
is not being released until January 11th (next Tuesday). However what is
very timely to this discussion, and illustrates some of my reasons for
optimism, arrived in my Inbox yesterday in my daily briefing from the
Economist newspaper. The Economist is a weekly publication but calls itself
a newspaper and I have subscribed to it for almost 20 years. I am attaching
a copy of the book review of Ms Walters new book that is being released in
tomorrow’s weekly edition. The review is critical and argues that she might
be ignoring other facts.
My long trust in the Economist is based on their apolitical editorial
stance, their detailed investigative research, the international scope of
reporting, and a consistent approach to a writing style that avoids all
forms of sensationalism. I have also found that they have proven to be
right far more often that they are wrong (unlike weather reporting).
Although I acknowledge that Willow has a much wider knowledge of history
than I will ever have, my optimism has some supporting evidence.
What I discovered while living and working in the USA was that news
reporting and coverage is very inwardly focused and seldom refers to events
outside the country. We quickly stopped buying the Denver Post when we
figured out that their International Section was where they put articles
about events happening in Washington DC. I see the same kind of very local
reporting in the newspaper of our winter home, the San Diego Union-Tribune.
I agree that the New York Times and Washington Post continue to employ real
journalists, but I still think they are also too inwardly focused on the
USA for me to be a subscriber.
