bill2

Below is a web address and the actual interview with a woman who wrote a book on girls and bullying. I was curious as to what women on this site thought, is the stuff below accurate in your opinion? ___________________ http://www.harcourtbooks.com/authorinterviews/bookinterview_Simmons.asp Boys act out or get into fights to show aggression. Girls don't have the cultural consent to express anger in this way, so they express it in covert but damaging ways—the dirty looks, the taunting notes, total exclusion from "the group." Every generation of women can tell stories of being bullied, but Odd Girl Out examines and explains this problem for the first time. An interview with Rachel Simmons, author of Odd Girl Out Biography Rachel Simmons graduated from Vassar College where she studied political science and women's studies. A Rhodes Scholar, she began her research on female bullying and the psychology of girls while at Oxford University. She has worked in politics in Washington, D.C., and New York City. She is a national trainer for the Ophelia Project and lives in Brooklyn. Interview Rachel Simmons Odd Girl Out Discussion with Odd Girl Out Author Rachel Simmons about The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls Q: One of the grievances among the girls you interviewed is that girls "never forget." One girl stated that "Boys duke it out. Girls, they don't finish [the fight]. It grows bigger." Would it be better for girls to "duke it out?" Or do girls prefer "nice abuse" to outright aggression? Most girls long to have the kinds of conflicts they witness boys having. They want to be told something to their faces rather than be cut out of a group without a word. Part of the reason girls "don't forget" is that they don't have the opportunity to express their anger in a healthy, fulfilling way. Girls feel that in order to be "nice"- something most parents and teachers expect from girls-they cannot be in open conflict with others. They must be "friends," at least externally, with everyone. As a result, girls often repress their anger or allow it to emerge in indirect or covert ways. When girls cannot assert their feelings directly, resentment often lingers, leading to grudges and, in some cases, future acts of vengeance. Q: There seems to be no specific target for this aggressive behavior. It could be directed towards an unpopular girl, a new girl, or even a very popular girl—the simplest comment, whether malicious, thoughtless, or even innocent, can provoke a well-strategized and sometimes global "attack." Is it fair to say that, regardless of the "just do it" girl power promotions, society's influence on proper "good girl" behavior drives relational aggression and will continue to do so—perhaps indefinitely? Absolutely. When I first set out to write this book, I assumed girls punished each other according to an unfortunate teen logic. What I expected was that the uncool, the overweight, the differently-abled would be punished. What I found was a far different landscape of female anger. Because females are expected to be caretakers in our society, the challenge of negotiating the impulse to anger and the obligation to sacrifice one's needs for others is significant. In my interviews, girls told me that expressing anger would result in the loss of their relationships with others. The prospect of solitude terrified them, and it was, moreover, a major violation of their caretaking roles. "Nice" girls, they told me, have lots of friends. They don't get in fights. As a result, much of girls' aggressive behavior goes underground. The fear of confrontation makes anger a circular issue that increases the scope of the conflict and causes girls to use relationships with each other as weapons against each other. Although the weak will more often be preyed upon, relational aggression targeting has less to do with an external characteristic than with a conflict that has not been addressed directly and openly. Q: Is there some advice for parents and girls on how to deal with this type of relational aggression? That is, advice which doesn't simply advise a girl to "ignore it," and that helps a parent approach a teacher who may not believe that another child can be "manipulative, competitive, and underhanded?" Actually, I think it's a real mistake to tell a girl to ignore what's happening to her. Girls can't ignore it. When a girl is being targeted, it is pretty much the only thing she can think about. After I interviewed each girl, I asked her what she wished her mom or dad would have done to make her life easier. Overwhelmingly, the girls said they wished their parents had not trivialized their pain. Don't tell me that it will pass; that it's a phase; that she's "just jealous;" that I'm taking things too seriously; that they're just joking. Honor my pain for what it is - devastating." It's hard for a parent to just listen and hold their daughters. But that's exactly what the girls told me they wished for. Approaching teachers is no easy task. We don't have a language to talk about these behaviors, so parents are often forced to speak in derogatory terms about other children's aggressions, saying a child is a "liar" rather than saying she is engaging in an act of social or indirect aggression. Because alternative aggressions, as I call them in my book, lack a public consciousness, it is important for a parent to be calm in her approach to a teacher. It is very easy, in these situations, to get pegged as the "hysterical parent" who is overreacting to her child's social misfortune. Once that happens, well, a lot of teachers just turn off. Try to interview the teacher about what is happening, about how much she can see; ask if your child can switch classes (switching desks is often futile since girls can send mean looks anywhere they want), because a great deal of social chemistry, particularly in elementary school, forms along classroom lines. Q: In your book, you list incidents of young girls "steering clear of the details" and apologizing to end fights just for the "relief" of having it over. This is, as you say, because girls feel a "prime directive" to maintain a relationship "at any cost." You interviewed quite a few adults who either suffered from or delivered this type of aggression in childhood. Are they continuing this behavior as adult women and/or do they still suffer from the effects of being a target or perpetrator? One of the hardest things for me as an interviewer was to listen to the stories of adult women. These women, in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, still carried with them the vestiges of victimization. They told their stories with unusual clarity; they could remember the clothes they wore, the food they had eaten, the words they spoke on the hardest days of their girlhood. These women reported a life filled with troubled relationships with other women. Most difficult for them was trusting other girls or women afterward. Even when the women had close friends, they reported not being able to shake a nagging feeling that these friends might at any moment and without explanation, abandon them. These interviews in particular saddened me because they pointed to the great rift among women that I have long heard about but never experienced in my personal life. Women are the ones who say that women never help each other in the workplace, that they can't be trusted, and so on. I think the genesis for these adages is the experience of girl bullying. When these episodes go unexplained and unaddressed, it is not difficult to understand why a girl would grow into a woman skittish around others of the same sex. Q: This book is groundbreaking in its subject matter, but it is only the beginning of a new stage in female-to-female relationships. Where, Rachel, do we go from here? Now we act. We ask society to accept alternative aggressions as a valid form of aggression deserving the same attention more conventional kinds of aggression receive. One of the ways we can do this is to modify harassment and anti-bullying policies to reflect the new research on girls. Most rules in use at schools deal with physical and direct aggression-the behaviors disproportionately engaged in by boys. We need to amend those rules to include acts of ganging up, sustained negative body language, rumor spreading, and so on.

you didn't mention it but how about motorcycling; there are a lot of riders on this forum. or snow sports in general - skiing, snowboarding. how about another personal aviation sport, such as paragliding, ultra lites, gliding? heaven forbid - maybe even shooting?!

I have 31 jumps, and two more things to do to get my A license: hop 'n pop and catch the instructor after jumping out of the plane after the instructor jumps first. I'll probably start up again early next year sometime (due to back troubles and being unemployed for awhile).

From England _________________________________________ http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=388696§ion=news --------------------------------------- Most women have dog breath Thu 16 October, 2003 02:59 BST LONDON (Reuters) - More than half of Britons could have breath that smells worse that their pet's, according to a survey. And women are the worst offenders, with three out of five failing a sulphur emissions test, according to research by toothpaste manufacturer Aquafresh. "Some mouths may be dirtier than cat litter," dentist Brian Grieveson said in a statement that accompanied the research released on Thursday. "Most people in the UK do not realise that cleaning your tongue is as important as cleaning your teeth," he added. Scots had the best oral hygiene, with only 10 percent suffering bad breath, compared to 27 percent in London. Throughout the nation, 52 percent were rated at a level that could be worse than that of a pet animal. "We are one of the last countries to understand the need to clean our tongue, with people in America and parts of Europe practising tongue cleaning routinely," said Grieveson. Secretaries were the freshest profession, achieving 100 percent freshness in the survey of 1,000 people, while retail staff fared worst and received the warning: "You could be losing sales". Print This Article Email This

HA HA.....what a dumbass. I feel sorry for the bears that were shot. It's not like it was their fault some IDIOT came into their house. _________________ True, the bears paid the price for this idiot's lack of brains.

I don't know if any of you heard about this one. The people who got killed sound like idiots. They forgot that mother nature can be a real bitch. Below is from the Anchorage Daily News. __________________________________ Wildlife author killed, eaten by bears he loved KATMAI: Many had warned Treadwell that his encounters with browns were too close. By CRAIG MEDRED Anchorage Daily News (Published: October 8, 2003) Timothy Treadwell (Photo from "Among Grizzlies" ) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Ron Engstrom / Anchorage Daily News) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Click on photo to enlarge A California author and filmmaker who became famous for trekking to Alaska's remote Katmai coast to commune with brown bears has fallen victim to the teeth and claws of the wild animals he loved. Alaska State Troopers and National Park Service officials said Timothy Treadwell, 46, and girlfriend Amie Huguenard, 37, were killed and partially eaten by a bear or bears near Kaflia Bay, about 300 miles southwest of Anchorage, earlier this week. Scientists who study Alaska brown bears said they had been warning Treadwell for years that he needed to be more careful around the huge and powerful coastal twin of the grizzly. Treadwell's films of close-up encounters with giant bears brought him a bounty of national media attention. The fearless former drug addict from Malibu, Calif. -- who routinely eased up close to bears to chant "I love you'' in a high-pitched, sing-song voice -- was the subject of a show on the Discovery Channel and a report on "Dateline NBC." Blond, good-looking and charismatic, he appeared for interviews on David Letterman's show and "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" to talk about his bears. He even gave them names: Booble, Aunt Melissa, Mr. Chocolate, Freckles and Molly, among others. A self-proclaimed eco-warrior, he attracted something of a cult following too. Chuck Bartlebaugh of "Be Bear Aware,'' a national bear awareness campaign, called Treadwell one of the leaders of a group of people engaged in "a trend to promote getting close to bears to show they were not dangerous. "He kept insisting that he wanted to show that bears in thick brush aren't dangerous. The last two people killed (by bears) in Glacier National Park went off the trail into the brush. They said their goal was to find a grizzly bear so they could 'do a Timothy.' We have a trail of dead people and dead bears because of this trend that says, 'Let's show it's not dangerous.' '' But even Treadwell knew that getting close with brown bears in thick cover was indeed dangerous. In his 1997 book "Among Grizzlies,'' he wrote of a chilling encounter with a bear in the alder thickets that surround Kaflia Lake along the outer coast of Katmai National Park and Preserve. "This was Demon, who some experts label the '25th Grizzly,' the one that tolerates no man or bear, the one that kills without bias,'' Treadwell wrote. "I had thought Demon was going to kill me in the Grizzly Maze.'' Treadwell survived and kept coming back to the area. He would spend three to four months a summer along the Katmai coast, filming, watching and talking to the bears. "I met him during the summer of '98 at Hallo Bay,'' said Stephen Stringham, a professor with the University of Alaska system. "At first, having read his book, I thought he was fairly foolhardy ... (but) he was more careful than the book portrayed. "He wasn't naive. He knew there was danger." NO PROTECTION Despite that, Treadwell refused to carry firearms or ring his campsites with an electric fence as do bear researchers in the area. And he stopped carrying bear spray for self-protection in recent years. Friends said he thought he knew the bears so well he didn't need it. U.S. Geological Survey bear researcher Tom Smith; Sterling Miller, formerly the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's top bear authority; and others said they tried to warn the amateur naturalist that he was being far too cavalier around North America's largest and most powerful predator. "He's the only one I've consistently had concern for,'' Smith said. "He had kind of a childlike attitude about him.'' "I told him to be much more cautious ... because every time a bear kills somebody, there is a big increase in bearanoia and bears get killed,'' Miller said. "I thought that would be a way of getting to him, and his response was 'I would be honored to end up in bear scat.' '' A number of other people said that over the years Treadwell made similar comments to them, implying that he would prefer to die as part of a bear's meal. All said they found the comments troubling, because bears that attack people so often end up dead. RANGERS RETRIEVE REMAINS Katmai park rangers who went Monday to retrieve the remains of Treadwell and Huguenard -- both of whom were largely eaten -- ended up killing two bears near the couple's campsite. Katmai superintendent Deb Liggett said she was deeply troubled by the whole episode. "The last time I saw Timothy, I told him to be safe out there and that none of my staff would ever forgive him if they had to kill a bear because of him,'' she said. "I kind of had a heart-to-heart with him. I told him he was teaching the wrong message. "This is unfortunate, (but) I'm not surprised. It really wasn't a matter of if; it was just a matter of when.'' What led up to the latest Alaska bear attack, as well as exactly when it happened, is unknown. The bodies of Treadwell and Huguenard, a physician's assistant from Boulder, Colo., were discovered Monday by the pilot of a Kodiak air taxi who arrived at their wilderness camp to take them back to civilization. A bear had buried the remains of both in what is known as a "food cache.'' The couple's tent was flattened as if a bear sat or stepped on it, but it had not been ripped open, even though food was inside. The condition of the tent led most knowledgeable observers to conclude the attack probably took place during the daylight hours when Treadwell and Huguenard were outside the tent, instead of at night when they would have been inside. Most of their food was found in bear-proof containers near the camp. Officials said the camp was clean but located close to a number of bear trails. Because of the concentration of bears in the Kaflia Lake area and a shortage of good campsites, however, it is almost impossible to camp anywhere but along a bear trail there. EXTENDED THEIR STAY Treadwell and Huguenard, who was in the process of moving from Colorado to Malibu to live with Treadwell, had last been heard from Sunday afternoon when they used a satellite phone to talk to Jewel Palovak. Palovak is a Malibu associate of Treadwell at Grizzly People, which bills itself as "a grass-roots organization devoted to preserving bears and their wilderness habitat.'' Palovak said she talked with Treadwell about his favorite bear, a sow he called Downy. Treadwell had been worried, Palovak said, that the sow might have wandered out of the area and been killed by hunters. So instead of returning to California at the end of September as planned, Treadwell lingered at Kaflia to look for her. Palovak said Treadwell was excited to report finding the animal alive. PILOT CALLS IN TRAGEDY What transpired in the hours after the phone call is unknown. The Kodiak pilot who arrived at the Treadwell camp the next day was met by a charging brown bear. The bear forced the pilot for Andrew Airways back to his floatplane. Authorities said he took off and buzzed the bear several times in an effort to drive it out of the area, but it would not leave the campsite established by Treadwell and Huguenard. When the pilot spotted the bear apparently sitting on the remains of a human, authorities said, he flew back to the lake, landed, beached his plane some distance from the camp and called for help from troopers and the Park Service. Interviews with sources who were on the scene provided this account: Park rangers were the first to arrive. They hiked from the beach toward a knob above the camp hoping to be able to survey the scene from a distance. They had no sooner reached the top of the knob, however, than they were charged by a large brown bear. It was shot and killed at a distance of about 12 feet. The Andrew Air pilot, according to Bruce Bartley of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, was convinced the large boar with the ratty hide was the same animal he'd tried to buzz out of the campsite. The boar was described as an underweight, old male with rotting teeth. Authorities do not know if it was the bear that killed Treadwell and Huguenard. They were to fly to the site on Tuesday to search the animal's stomach for human remains but were prevented from doing so by bad weather. After shooting that bear, rangers and troopers who had by then arrived walked down to the campsite and undertook the task of gathering the remains of the two campers. While they were there, another large boar grizzly went through the campsite but largely ignored the humans. A smaller, subadult that appeared later, however, seemed to be stalking the group. Rangers and troopers shot and killed it. "It would have killed Timothy to know that they killed the bears,'' Palovak said, "but there was no choice in the matter." "He was very clear that he didn't want any retaliation against a bear,'' added Roland Dixon, a wealthy bear fan who lives on a ranch outside of Fort Collins, Colo., and has been one of Treadwell's main benefactors for the past six or seven years. "He was really adamant that he didn't want any bear to suffer from any mistake that he made. His attitude was that if something like this were to happen, it would probably be his fault.'' Bartlebaugh of "Be Bear Aware'' has no doubts that Treadwell loved the animals but believes the love was misguided. "I'm an avid bear enthusiast,'' Bartlebaugh said. "It's the same attitude that I think Timothy had, but I don't want them (the bears) to be my friends. I don't want to have a close, loving relationship. I want to be in awe of them as wild animals.'' Palovak, Treadwell's associate, and Dixon take a different view. "I think (Timothy) would say it's the culmination of his life's work,'' Palovak said. "He always knew that he was the bear's guest and that they could terminate his stay at any time. He lived with the full knowledge of that. He died doing what he lived for.'' "He was kind of a goofy guy,'' Dixon said. "It took me a while to get in tune with him. His whole life was dedicated to being with the bears, or teaching young people about them. That's all he ever did. It was always about the bears. It was never about Timothy. He had a passion and he lived his passion. There will be no one to replace him. There's just nobody in the bear world who studies bears like Timothy did.'' Dixon acknowledged Treadwell took risks with bears but dismissed as envious those who criticized his behavior .

It's tough to articulate all the things that go into a good relationship, at least for me it is. But here goes. 1) I always treat my wife with respect, and she does the same for me. I don't make fun of her in public just to get a laugh - I've seen that happen and it really can hurt someone. 2) It sounds like a cliche, but we really are good friends. Great sex is great, but it's not going to happen 24 hours a day. 3) We were very honest with each other before we got married about what we liked and disliked - especially on the big issues: money, sex. religion, kids, careers, hobbies. 3) We knew each other for almost 3 years before we got married - and knew that it wasn't just infatuation. 4) We have made a real committment to be there for each other, no matter what. That means not cutting out just because things aren't going perfectly. That also means when she or I come home from a bad day at work and need to vent, the other one stops what they are doing and listens; and I've learned not to jump in with lots of solutions. 5) We do little things for each other unexpectedly - she got home from a week seeing relatives in SoCal, and I had a card and a dozen roses waiting for her. It really made her day. 6) We also give each other space - another cliche but it helps. I took off for 2 weeks last year on a motorcycle trip with 2 riding buddies. She knew she would be bored with nothing but motorcycles for 2 weeks and didn't throw a fit about my leaving. I also don't mind when she takes off for a week to see her relatives or when she goes out for a night with her girlfriends. 7) Lastly, and it's been hard for me - I really tell her what I'm feeling. I don't stuff it inside, nor do I blame her for what's happening. I let her know how I feel when she does something I don't like. We argue, but don't call each other names - this enables us to thrash things out without descending into namecalling and inaccurate accustations. There may be more that I/we do, but I can't think of anything else right now.

I wish it were playing in the bay area here in CA. Hopefully soon.

I can't help but feel like you're using different standards here for something that affects you personally. Take a different article: ---------------------- A couple of years ago, I was eating out when I heard a conversation at the next table. What I heard - a couple who said they had been happily married for a while now; nothing unremarkable about that. But I also heard his wife say she was from town X, and had been married for 17 years. And I remembered then that, statistically speaking, the average marriage in the US lasted only 7 years, and that, statisically speaking, women from town X cheat on their husbands 60% of the time.* And rather than think anything negative about people like her, I wanted to give her a high-five! She beat the odds, and they're still together - she's managed to not cheat on her husband and destroy their marriage. That's the problem with all these liberals. They think people like us hate women. But we love to see people like her overcome their disadvantages and succeed against the odds! Anyone who claims we're 'prejudiced' because of that doesn't know what they're talking about. -------------------------- * - replace town X with any town you want; 60% is the national average. Seem any different when it's about you? ___________________________________________ Bill, if you had read an article like this would have you have posted the message about feeling sad?

I'll have to tell my wife about this. _________________________________________ http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,98797,00.html Husbands need sex, and it's a wife's job to provide it - as much as he wants, whenever he wants it. So contends Laura Schlessinger (search) - better known as Dr. Laura, the ever-provocative radio-show shrink - in "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands." In a galley of her book, coming out in January, Schlessinger describes what she calls "loving obligation" - that is, a spouse's duty to do something whether or not he or she feels like it. If husbands are expected to "go to work and earn money" and visit relatives they don't like, she argues, why can't their wives put out on demand? She also describes other ways a woman can make her marriage flourish: by making her husband her No. 1 priority; by not nagging, nitpicking or whining ("Be honest, girls, this is what we do") and by seeing her husband for what he is: "a gift from God," and respecting him accordingly. This may all be very well, coming as it does from a married, conservative, 56-year-old with a Ph.D in physiology, but some therapists aren't buying her major thesis: that it's men who are starved for sex. "In most marriages, it's the wife who wants sex, and the husband who doesn't," says Frederick Woolverton, a clinical psychologist and director of the Village Institute for Psychotherapy. "Dating and honeymoons are all about sex. Marriage is all about intimacy. Men have affairs because they're afraid of intimacy." It's true that sex is an essential part of marriage, Woolverton says, adding, "It's the women who are complaining." Marcella Bakur Wiener, a clinical psychologist who has counseled couples for 30 years, agrees that the notion of the sex-starved husband is a generalization. "Some men are insatiable, but so are some women," she says. But no matter who needs it, she says, sex should never be something that's supplied on demand. "There are so many things we already 'have to do' in life," Wiener sighs. "Why should there be a 'have to' in an intimate relationship?" Yet another therapist sees Schlessinger's point - sort of. Diana Adile Kirschner, a couples therapist, believes husbands and wives should meet each other's needs as long as it's not "a one-way deal." "In the couples I see, the women want foreplay, romance, communication, which tends to open them up to being sexual," she says. "When the man gets more sex, he feels more connected, and more like communicating. When a woman feels understood and romanced, she's more likely to feel more sexual." Memo to Dr. Laura: Can "The Proper Care and Courtship of Wives" be far behind?

Chiropractors are great for certain problems, however it is necessary for you to maintain good physical fitness, especially for your trunk area (abdominal, oblique, and back muscles) to keep you out of pain. In short, your muscles need to be strong and flexible. That said, chiropractors can be a real help; I have been seeing mine for over 7 years. Before that, I used to go into spasms in my low back about 3 - 4 times a year. Now I don't get them at all. However, due to a broken bone in my back, it's not something that will ever go away, therefore I keep seeing him. Also, have you considered a physical therapist? They can work wonders in strengthening and correcting muscle problems, as well as giving you the correct exercises to fix your particular problems.

Can you explain what you mean?

And inadvertently becoming the bad guy would not sit well with my conscience. It happens with alarming regularity when firearms are in the picture. I'm glad everything in this case turned out well. Score Good Guy: 1 Bad Guys: 0 Firearms needed: 0 ____________________________________ If he had used a firearm to defend himself against thugs like these after they attacked him, he would not have been the bad guy - even if all of the thugs ended up dead. Furthermore, everything did not end up well. These guys humiliated him, shoved him around, and may come back and do it again since they got away with it once. I would not score one for the good guys - the only reason he wasn't hurt was that the bad guys decided not to do anything more to him. As was already pointed out, leaving your survival and well being up to a bunch of thugs is the wrong way to live your life. You essentially give up control of your life to a bunch of scumbags. It should be the bad guys who are afraid for their life, not the other way around. I know some people think that pacificsm is the best way to handle this, but when you do that you cede control of society and your life to the bad guys and that is wrong, both practically and morally.

I would hate the idea of not having guns, but getting guns involved in the above situation would probably have made it very ugly, because the thugs would most lieky have them too. Although, if they knew he had a gun, they might not have tried it. _________________________________ Thugs have guns whether or not the law allows it. Gun laws only prevent honest citizens from owning them. Just like illegal drugs, banning guns doesn't stop criminals from getting them.

They may not have come up with the "gangsta look", but the attitude is all their responsability. To say that this is a reason why people hate the US is wrong. These guys that assulted him are simply scumbags, nothing more - to blame it on a particular aspect of US pop culture is misplacing responsibility, which belongs with these guys. You will always have bad guys wherever you go, no matter what kind of culture is available. What about other Somalis who don't subscribe to this kind of behavior? How come they don't act like this? This incident also points out the fallacy of simply calling the cops when you get in trouble, most of the time they will no be there in time to help you. Many times people are just left to their own devices when it comes to defending themselves against crime.

That was a really good show! Thanks for letting us know it was on _____________________________ You're welcome. I liked the segment, only wished it could have been longer.

Austraila: home of the most worlds most poisious spiders, scorpions, snakes. most nasty crocks, sharks, well you get the picture. Damn I love it there. Its really worth it. Beautifull! ____________________________________ Is that why all the hosts of those wild animal shows are from Australia? You know, where the host starts waving his hand in front of a Cobra just to piss it off, while laughing like a maniac. Or they let some god-awful giant spider crawl over their head while talking to the camera about how beautiful it is. If I had a spider that big crawling on my head, I would be screaming like a banshee. Well, not screaming, but actually yelling in a manly fashion.

Last night, while watching Mail Call on the History Channel, there was an ad for the show Tactical to Practical, saying that tonight (Tuesday) at 900 pm Pacific time, that they would show how parachuting evolved from military use to what it's like in the civilian world today. Sounds interesting. That's channel 62 if you've got At&T in the bay area.

Well, I agree. But the above article seemed to claim that the westerners writing about Iraq _are_ biased towards the negative. If there are questions about what Iraq is really like for the people living there, you will get a better answer from the people living there than from the force occupying the country (in general.) And both will be better than a journalist in Atlanta. __________________________ I agree with you on that one. It does seem that on big media you hear more on the negative from the Iraqis they do interview, and more positive things from Iraqis on blogs.

If blogs are your thing, perhaps a blog written by an Iraqi living there might be less biased than a western blog _or_ mainstream media. The "Salam Pax" blog is one good one _____________________________________ I've read that one, as well as others. But just because a westerner/military person writes on Iraq doesn't mean that they are necessarily biased or that their writings are inaccurate.

I don't know how many of you read web blogs (blogs) but there can be a big difference between what big media like CNN/BBC/NY Times report and what you can get from blogs. Below is a column written by John Leo on Iraq reporting. ___________________________________ http://www.townhall.com/columnists/johnleo/jl20030929.shtml If you rely on newspapers and TV networks for your news, chances are you have no idea that the controversial performance of Western reporters in Iraq is emerging as a big issue. The mainstream media have virtually ignored the stunning charges made by John Burns, the New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. But those charges are all over the Internet and carried by Fox News and conservative commentators. In his new book, "Embedded," Burns says the vast majority of correspondents in prewar Iraq played ball with Saddam and downplayed the viciousness of the regime. He said Iraq was "a grotesque charnel house" and a genuine threat to America, but to protect their access, the reporters did not tell the truth. Burns named no names (he should now) but he was particularly contemptuous of the BBC and CNN. Burns' comments are echoed by those of U.S. District Court Judge Don Walter of Shreveport, La. This is another Internet story (dozens of sites carry it) that you aren't likely to find in newspapers. Walter was vehemently anti-war but changed his mind after an assignment in Iraq as a U.S. adviser on Iraq's courts. He says we should have invaded sooner to halt the incredible butchery and torture that the United Nations, France and Russia knew all about and were quite willing to tolerate. And he is distressed by the reporting on Iraq now: "The steady drip, drip, drip of bad news may destroy our will to fulfill the obligations we have assumed. WE ARE NOT GETTING THE WHOLE TRUTH FROM THE MEDIA." (Capitals his.) Some members of Congress are sounding the same theme. Georgia Democrat Jim Marshall says negative media coverage is getting our troops in Iraq killed and is encouraging Baathist holdouts to think they can drive the U.S. from Iraq. Marshall, a Vietnam vet, said there is "a disconnect between the reporting and the reality," partly because the 27 reporters left in Iraq are "all huddled in a hotel." Marshall and a bipartisan group of six other representatives just returned from Iraq. The lawmakers charged that reporters have developed an overall negative tone and a "police blotter" mind-set, stressing attacks and little else. Ranking member Ike Skelton, D.-Mo., said he was impressed with the flexibility and innovation of the American military, including 3,100 projects in northern Iraq, from soccer fields to schools to refineries, "all good stuff, and that isn't being reported." The campaign to get more balance into Iraq reporting has been driven by the Internet bloggers, particularly by Andrew Sullivan (AndrewSullivan.com) and law professor Glenn Reynolds of the University of Tennessee (Instapundit.com). Reynolds deplores 'the lazy Vietnam-templating, the "Of course America must be losing' spin, the implicit and sometimes explicit sneer ..." Both Reynolds and Sullivan encourage U.S. soldiers and others in Iraq to send in their own reports, which have generally been positive and hopeful. "I don't trust most of the journalists, I'm afraid," Sullivan wrote in a July appeal for firsthand accounts. Letters home from Iraq are now regularly put up on the Internet. One last week from Senior Chief Petty Officer Art Messer of the Navy Seabees said: "The countryside is getting more safe by the day despite all the attacks you are hearing about. Imagine if every shooting incident or robbery committed in Los Angeles was blown out of proportion." A few military personnel have their own blogs. One, who calls himself Chief Wiggles, is quite good. The Internet campaign is another example of the new media going around the old media, in this case to counter stories by quagmire-oriented reporters. Perhaps goaded by Internet coverage, USA Today became the first mainstream outlet (as far as I can see) to highlight problems in current Iraq coverage. A strong article last week by Peter Johnson quoted this from MSNBC's Bob Arnot in Iraq: "I contrast some of the infectious enthusiasm I see here with what I see on TV and I say, 'Oh, my God, am I in the same country?'" Time magazine's Brian Bennett added: "What gets in the headlines is the American soldier getting shot, not the American soldiers rebuilding a school or digging a well." Bennett says the violence and threats are real, but so are growing signs of stability in Iraqi life, with restaurants reopening every day and women feeling increasingly safe on the street. Columnist Tom Friedman of The New York Times says he is a "worried optimist" who thinks things in Iraq are not as good as they should be by now, but not as bad as they seem from afar. That view might be a starting point for the big media to discuss how the "look from afar" got so skewed.

i don't know if any of you at the Byron boogie saw it, but there was a setup by the Skyventures business group stating that the Silicon Valley wind tunnel will be in business next summer in Union City, just off Hwy 880 at Union Landing. It looks fun, but the guy said it would cost $600/hour to rent. I don't know if this is high for tunnel rental time or not.

Hey John, nice meeting you on Saturday. great pictures, as usual.

You're right, putting on a side care makes the bike handle very differently. You need training, but there's no license for it here in the US. There are ways to attach a side care but it's a fair amount of work; I haven't heard of one being attached to a sportbike, most of the models are built for specific bike makes, such as BMW and Moto Guzzi's as was mentioned in an earlier post. I'm sure your butt will fit fine on the sport bike, or tell him to get a different bike.

This was on MSNBC, reporting an 8.0 earthquake in Hokaido in northern Japan. A 7 ft tsunami was generated by the quake. http://www.msnbc.com/news/971921.asp?0cl=cR#BODY