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News Briefs 08-08-2006

By Gregon

It’s a rare and unique event – the daily news briefs. Cherish it…

Thanks Kat, Rainer and Corona.

Quote of the Day:

There are three ways of knowing a thing. Take for instance a flame. One can be told of the flame, one can see the flame with his own eyes, and finally one can reach out and be burned by it. In this way, we Sufis seek to be burned by God.

Unknown Sufi Scholar

Greg
Editor
Greg is the owner-editor of The Daily Grail, as well as the author of a number of books including Stop Worrying, There Probably is an Afterlife.
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10 Comments

  1. The Indigo Children
    That’s a great article about the Indigo Children.No, I have never seen small children with wise old eyes.I don’t really know what that means in a child.
    I have seen small children and babies with fathomless eyes, eyes that are elsewhere,eyes that absorb and sum up.
    But to me babies have always been like this, as if they have a secret that no one knows.
    When you meet a child who is different the difference is SO great, that it is something that hits you on the head immediately.
    My own children were not like this, but a grandson is.
    I would be interested to hear if any TDG member has had interesting experiences with their children when very young.

    shadows

  2. Kate Moss
    Kate Moss? I had no idea the cocaine-sniffing anorexic model is intelligent enough to be an author. Er, sorry, I’m sure Kate Mosse gets that joke all the time (making her year more annoying than just frenetic, I bet).

    But wouldn’t it be nice to own a house “in the shadow of the medieval walls of Carcassonne” to write your novel in? 😉

    If anyone would like to rent me a nice little cottage in the shadow of the medieval walls of Xian, or in the forests near Kyoto Japan, I’d be a very happy aspiring author!

  3. *Sigh*
    Sometimes you come up with a killer one-liner, and all you can hear are the crickets chirping in the night in response. Sometimes I wonder if anybody even reads the news…
    😉

    Kind regards,
    Greg
    ——————————————-
    You monkeys only think you’re running things

    2. killer one-liners
      I love your one-liners. ‘Any younger and it would have been natal’ was priceless.

      Maybe some TDG readers are too young to get the ‘lunatics in the head’ reference, but it’s from one of my all-time favorites. Tangent: Anybody remember that Home Improvement episode where one of Tim Taylor’s sons pretends he’s never heard of Ringo just to irritate Tim? Jameske blew my mind a couple of years ago when he told me he’d never even heard of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, only in his case, he wasn’t kidding. Ah well, I guess there are plenty of people my age and younger who’ve never heard of Spike Jones (the Al Yankovic of the Korean War era).

      >>Sometimes I wonder if anybody even reads the news…

      I told a friend of mine back in Miss. about TDG. Several months later she told me that TDG wasn’t exactly her cuppa, but that her husband had become a daily reader. So I asked her what he thought about some raging debate in the comments section at the time. So she asked him for me, and he said he just liked the news articles – that he’d never even looked at the comments section.

      There have been times after I’ve posted some really amazing news that I’ve sat here and hit ‘refresh’ about every 10 minutes just to watch the number of readers online go up – 117, 245, 292, 367, 494, etc., up to 989 on one occasion. Then I go to bed. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but when I wake up the next day, check in at TDG, and there’s not a single comment posted, I think to myself, how the hell could 989 people have read at least a few of the top news articles last night without coming up with a single thought they want to share with other readers? Those are the times when I console myself with thoughts of people like my friend’s husband, Jerry – who reads our news every day, but has never even looked at any comments, much less posted one himself.

      But to all of you who are reading this: Please don’t bother posting any more whining apologies about how little time you have. The 4 of us who collectively spend at least 100 hours a week to provide you with this fantastic news site don’t want to hear it. What we’d really like to see are comments about the news, so we’ll have a clue about which articles you found interesting – or boring, or awful, or revelatory, or frustrating, or whatever else.

      Kat

      1. Shadows in the Cave
        That’s why we have Shadows. 😉

        A message board would be different methinks, but comments for the news … well, it’s easy to go without commenting when a new brief gets posted the next day, plus all the extras Greg comes up with. It’s a lot of information to process. Most days I feel like I’m in the middle of a busy highway, trying to hear silence amidst the roaring noise of traffic.

        People read, that’s enough for me. 🙂

        1. I really like the comments on the news
          Because I live alone and hardly ever go out I appreciate very much the interchange of ideas we get here with the comments.
          If you want to know what I would like here it is…..
          less news from the news editors and more input from them.
          The news editors on this site have all got excellent minds and from doing the news are excellent sources of information.
          I really love it when one of you comments on something and I can hear what you think.
          But it hardly ever happens.

          Most of the people who post here are intelligent and have something worthwhile to say.I think even Oscar has something worthwhile to say except that I can’t understand it.

          Discussion is the best way to get to know people and to get your ideas across.
          People have told me that they would feel uncomfortable posting on a website, so it is not for everyone.But I believe that the more discussion you get going the more chance you have of more people joining in.
          People will have noticed that when I do a blog I only write what I think or have read because I have limited computer skills.But I would like mostly for other people to give us their ideas in blogs instead of just link after link which most of us don’t get to read.

          How about a topic of the week where the editors put forth their ideas and the posters comment on them?
          I think that reading the news takes a fairly long time and people do not have time to comment.Sorry Kat but that’s the truth.
          I don’t go out to work and I hardly get the time so I don’t know how very busy people cope.

          I totally support this site and I have found it like another home to me.But sometimes I get bogged down with the slew of information that comes at me all at once.

          Maybe instead of the editors spending 100 hours a week looking for news items, they could spend a fraction of that time commenting on some of the things raised here.

          Oh bum, Daphne has pooped on the new rug! Sorry. I will continue later.

          shadows

          1. OK I’m back
            The bloody parrot ate my mouse pad while I was away, but at least he did not get to the new keyboard.
            We are all busy in our own way.The things that keep me busy others would probably sneer at, but that’s what I do.
            That’s how I face day after day living a situation that most people would hate.
            I fill my life with things that I love.
            And TDG is one of them.

            Sometimes I think we try to do too much.An example of this is when I moved to the city from the country.I was so over-whelmed by having water on tap and not having to rely on tank water that I planted every single thing I could think of in my garden.
            I really went nuts.
            If it grew in the ground or on a tree I had to have it.
            Which was fine while I had water and I could tend the garden.
            Then I had the accident and then the dams dried up and we are now unable to water anything.I am watching my beautiful garden dry up and die.
            I had too much to care for properly and so when the crunch came they died.

            You could use the analogy here at TDG.
            There is so much going on all the time, which is terrific.
            But Kat feels under appreciated because people do not comment on news items.
            I feel that there are maybe too many news items to comment on so people just don’t bother.
            Whenever I read the news briefs it is a matter of which ones I will comment on.
            Sometimes I would like to comment on lots of them but then I feel that I am hogging space by doing that.
            I often times do not put up a blog about something because there are so many blogs going on all the time, and I don’t want to just add to the number of blogs, I want to add to the interest of them.
            I get disappointed too when someone puts up an excellent blog and then it disappears in a day or so because it is taken over by rubbish.
            Is there a way to keep the interesting blogs in the front so people can comment on them?

            I’m fine with people and their poems, but didn’t we have a poem section?
            Why does it require a blog for a poem?
            And if someone just wants to post a link is there a place where they could just post the link?
            That way they don’t have to have a blog to do it.
            And I thought that a blog was a continual thing, not a new piece every time.What I mean is, that you have your continual blog and your name could be there as a blogger and a red light if you have added something new.
            Because I sometimes feel I am being overtaken by blogs that have really nothing to say.
            Sorry people, but some of the blogs are as boring as batshit.

            I know that when people have told me that they have gone to TDG they have not read the comments.They look at the news, read the blogs.
            Maybe if we had fewer news items and instead when the news is posted, the editor could give his/her opinion of the item and invite discussion.
            I think you have to invite discussion to get discussion.
            People are not aware that they are expected to comment.

            And another thing…..writing comments on the net has not really got a good name.There are forums out there that are sick, and I suppose that people stumble on them and think they are all the same.
            To get TDG’s comments section going strong it needs to be advertised as a good discussion place, well policed,and with intellectual content.
            I just shot myself in the foot then as I am a criminal when it comes to saying wrong things in the comments section, but you can see what I mean.

            In all honesty, although I do not want to offend Kat, I think that people do not have time to comment.
            We are all so pushed for time.Look at Greg with his family and his writing and his website, Rick with his writing and his studies.
            Jameske used to write his rants but does not anymore, more’s the pity.
            I think the audience just got too big, and it became too impersonal.
            And people move on.
            To keep things fresh you have to come up with new ideas.
            By all means give people a chance to have their say as in the blogs, but hearing opinions of the editors would be the most valuable of all.

            Well I had my say, and thank you for the opportunity to do so.
            I don’t think in this lifetime that you will get appreciation for all the time spent doing stuff like hunting news items.
            It is rather like being a mother of small children.You just do it,you can’t put a price on it.And you do it because you love it.Your reward is the satisfaction of a job well done.

            shadows

          2. You’re right
            I’m definitely not in the right frame of mind to be posting comments myself. I need to just shut up and sleep – for at least the next two or three months.

            Kat

    3. actually Greg…..
      I very much enjoy your style of humor. Many times I have sat here and laughed at your quirky little one liners in your news briefs. I have even commented to that effect, though no comment was returned.
      But it would be a little silly to comment on that every week. The news by all you guys/gals is so interesting and with links from these sites as well, that it does consume a lot of time. Yes I do have time to comment on the blogs, but this is my thing. I would love to sit here and comment on every news item…..Items I find very interesting I will comment on and also comments of others that I feel the need to remark about.
      So Greg, rest assured that your one liners do not go un noticed. By me anyway.

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